“The Depravity of Humanity” (Romans 1:24-32)

“The Depravity of Humanity” (Romans 1:24–32)

Pastor Cameron Jungels

Eastside Baptist Church

Sunday AM, February 26, 2017

 

Romans 1:24–32 (NIV)

24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. 32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

 

1. God’s wrath is justly directed against humanity, because we have purposely rejected the knowledge that he has revealed in Creation (18–20).

 

2. This rejection of the knowledge of God revealed in Creation leads humanity to idolatry, the substitution of the one true God with gods of our own making (21–23).

 

3. Human depravity and moral perversion is the direct result of our false worship (24-25).

 

4. The clearest and most prominent demonstration that people have rejected the knowledge of God that is revealed in the natural order is their sexual depravity and homosexuality (26–27).

 

5. A descent into deeper and deeper sexual and moral perversion is an indication that God is judging that culture by “giving them over” to live out their damnable lifestyles without his gracious restraint (24, 26, 28).

 

6. The sexual perversion of homosexuality is a sin and a distortion of the created order, but it is not the only sin that reveals our depravity and rejection of the knowledge of God. Our depravity is demonstrated in a variety of sins and injustices (28–31).

 

7. God will justly condemn those who commit immoral, sinful acts, along with those who approve and enable those immoral, sinful actions (32).