We're going to be talking today about power, sex, and Hollywood
from Romans 1.
I'm a Bible teacher, you guys, and so I love God's Word.
And I frame things that are happening in our world from the
perspective of a biblical world view or a Christian world view.
And so when I look at what's happening within the culture,
that's the frame, that's the parameters that I use.
And God's given us clear guardrails in these particular
areas.
And having recently taught this at our church, the road at
Chapel Hill, then it was on my heart to also do this podcast,
broadcast, because the reality is this, that if you don't have
any kind of a grid by which you can judge what's happening in
culture, you're going to be really, really frustrated.
And so Romans 1 is one of the most important passages in the
entire Bible related to sex, having to do with image, having
to do with kind of the degradation of culture.
And no passage in all of Scripture says it better from
God's perspective, and even from man's perspective.
And Romans is one of those revolutionary books of the
Bible.
Probably no book of the Bible has had more of a revolutionary
revival impact than the book of Romans.
And I'm not going to teach the book of Romans here, but Romans
1 frames up, it kind of sets up the whole rest of the book.
And I've entitled this, Power, Sex, and Hollywood, because I
think Romans 1, the passages I'm going to look at, just a section
of Romans 1, gives us a biblical worldview better than any other
passage I know.
And let me just give a metaphor, an illustration of what I'm
talking about in relation to Romans 1.
In Colorado, where I live, I like to ski, and I like to hunt.
And we're often going into the mountains.
And we have this major highway called I-70, which is a big
thoroughfare.
It actually goes across the United States, but it's really
an east-west highway that goes through the mountains more than
any other highway we have.
So, if you're going to go skiing, or if you're going to go
hunting in the mountains, you have to take I-70 out of Denver.
So, I live in Colorado Springs, so you come through Denver, and
then you go west.
And we have this big, massive tunnel called the Eisenhower
Tunnel.
And the Eisenhower Tunnel is really long.
It's over a mile long.
And when you go through it, it's very much almost smoky inside
because of all the fumes, because a lot of the truckers,
truckers that go east and west go California to New York.
They have to go through I-70, and they go through that tunnel.
And so, it's very fumigated by gases and stuff like that.
So, it's really kind of, ugh, it's nasty.
And then, if you throw in some snow and ice, it's actually
pretty hazardous.
And there's accidents that happen in the Eisenhower Tunnel.
Here's my point.
My point is, it's not the most beautiful place to go through,
to go through over a mile underneath this mountain of the
Eisenhower Tunnel.
And then, to make matters worse, when you come out of Eisenhower
Tunnel going westbound, man, it's a huge 6% drop that drops
down with signs everywhere telling you to be careful with
your brakes, gear down.
A lot of truckers get into trouble here.
There's actually some runaway places to the side because
there have been so many bad accidents.
So, if Eisenhower Tunnel wasn't enough, now you're on this
steep grade going into a little town there called Dillon, which
can be kind of dangerous.
And I've actually been in a couple situations
through the years that I would consider very hazardous, wherein
I was, if I wasn't knowing what I'm doing and if I wasn't
careful, I should have had a massive pile-up accident.
I remember one time I came off.
I was coming down there and we were going to Breckenridge to
ski, and I literally put on my brakes and zero happened.
I mean, nothing happened.
We were just on a slab of ice.
And I was in a Toyota Camry back then, didn't have a four-wheel
drive yet, and I pumped the brakes, and gradually I found
some traction about 50 yards from a pile of cars in front of
me that had hit each other, and I was smart enough to swerve off
and miss it, but that's how dangerous it is.
Here's my point.
My point is, is that 90% of the time, when you're driving in
the mountains and the Rockies in Colorado, it is beautiful.
It is clear skies.
It's snow-capped mountains.
It's gorgeous, but there is a period, whether it's in a
beautiful time of year or a nasty time of year, you still
have to go through the Eisenhower Tunnel, you still
have to go through the ice, and there are certain times
You'll have to go down this steep grade
when it's the snow-capped mountains.
to get into the mountains where the beauty is.
What kind of Romans 1 is like that?
Romans 1 is like the Eisenhower Tunnel
and the steep grade into Dillon time,
like you're traveling in the Rockies.
It's not real fun.
I don't enjoy teaching Romans 1
from the perspective of the beauty of the book of Romans
and even the beauty of the gospel, but it's so necessary.
So you'll understand over the next few sessions
that we have together why Romans 1
can be difficult to deal with and why Paul put it there.
But I wanna start with verse 16
and that's why I call it power sex in Hollywood
because in verse 16, we have the theme,
the theme of Romans, and I think you could arguably say
the theme of a Christian worldview
and also the theme of the whole Bible.
So let me read that and then we'll get into
some of the harder passages that follow.
Romans 1 16 says, for I am not ashamed
of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God
to salvation for everyone who believes
for the Jew first and also for the Greek.
So Paul's writing to Gentiles and Jews
that were in the church in Rome,
and he's saying, this is the power that you need,
that this is the power for living.
This is the power of the kingdom of God
and that is our faith to believe,
that is putting our faith in Christ.
And putting our faith in Christ
is the beginning of the great adventure, the great journey.
It's not about us earning our salvation,
it's not about religion, it's not about a moral code,
it is about faith in Christ
wherein there's a transaction that occurs.
The great transaction of the Christian life
is that we put our faith in the life, death
and resurrection of Christ
and then supernaturally, Christ imparts his power
and his love and his grace into our heart
and that's when we're born again.
So we could put this in contrast also to Ephesians 2 8 and 9
for by grace, you've been saved through faith,
not of yourself, it is a gift of God.
So it's the whole book of Romans
is about we cannot earn our salvation,
that you can't be moral enough,
you cannot be religious enough,
you can't follow the law enough,
if you come out of a Jewish background,
you can't follow the Torah enough,
you'll never be able to reform your sinful flesh.
But that Christ has taken on the wrath of God,
Christ has taken on all of your sins,
past, present and future
and he has taken the bullet for us
and when we put our faith and our trust in him,
it is accounted to us,
it's actually like a mathematical calculation
where we were bankrupt, he now deposits
his righteousness in us,
his life is righteousness enough,
his death is righteousness enough,
his resurrection is righteousness enough
and he pours that into us
and we begin to experience the salvation of God.
So now we come into these passages,
these verses that speak of what happens,
these steps that we go through
both individually and culturally
that can destroy our relationship with God,
it can destroy an entire culture
and America is on a slippery slope right now,
very slippery slope of giving itself
into and for the sexual revolution
that somewhat began in the 60s
but actually really began in the 40s
and we're gonna cover that in our time together
and I would just say this is like Burger King,
Burger King says you could have it your way,
you can have the burger the way you want it
and in a sense God's saying have it your way,
I've not created you as robots,
I've created you to be my sons and daughters
and so if you wanna go the way of sin,
if you wanna follow the ways of idolatry,
if you wanna follow the flesh,
God lets us do that,
so God's not gonna come
and stop us from falling into sin.
So in verse 17 onward,
he begins this discussion,
Paul begins this discussion to us
about this process of our falling away from God
and this is instructive to us today.
So starting at verse 17 he says,
for in it, meaning the gospel of Christ,
is the righteousness of God,
it is revealed from faith to faith,
as it is written the just shall live by faith.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven
against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men
who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
It's really step one.
Because what may be known about God is manifested in them,
he's speaking about all of us,
that God has manifested himself to us
for God has shown it to us.
For since the creation of the world,
his invisible attributes are clearly seen.
So now he's talking about creation.
Through creation, we can clearly see that there is a God
being understood by the things that are made,
even his eternal power and Godhead
so that they are without excuse.
Because although they knew God,
they did not glorify him as God,
nor were they thankful, but became futile in their thoughts.
So we could say that the wrath of God
begins with suppressing truth,
but then it leads to futility in our thinking.
And that just makes complete sense.
How many people have you known through the years
who know the right thing to do,
but they suppress the truth?
They don't wanna follow the truth.
They're going to get as far away from truth as they can.
And then guess what happens?
They become futile and confused in their thinking.
Well, it continues.
So then their foolish hearts are darkened.
Verse 22, professing to be wise,
they become fools and change the glory
of the incorruptible God into an image
made like corruptible man and birds
and forfeited animals and creeping things.
Therefore, God gave them up to uncleanness
in the lust of their hearts
to dishonor their bodies among themselves.
They exchanged the truth of God for the lie,
worshiped the creature rather than the creator
who is blessed forever.
For this reason, God gave them up to vile passions.
So he says, look, you can have it your way.
If you're going to follow a life
of suppressing the truth,
then what's gonna happen to you naturally
is you're gonna start becoming confused in your mind,
not just confusion that relates to relationships
and the years of our life that we regularly involved in,
but it becomes confusion in our hearts about morals
and about what we should do in given situations.
And I think that confusion leads to a futility of thinking,
which we're gonna find out actually leads in verse 28
to a debased mind.
I'm not gonna cover that right now.
But let me just say this,
that God's love supersedes all the dumb things we do.
And we people do a lot of dumb things.
And when I look at Adam and Eve
in the first sin in Genesis three,
one thing we notice here is that God never curses Adam.
He never curses Eve.
He curses the serpent.
He curses Satan.
He curses the ground that was going to make it difficult
for Adam to till the land.
He does in a sense say there's going to now be pain
in childbirthing.
I don't know, maybe they just popped him out before that,
but there's gonna be a pain in that.
But he never curses Adam and Eve.
And I think that's so important, how much God loves us,
how much God cares about you and me.
And wherever you are in your journey with the Lord,
God's love is always available.
You are his beloved and he cares for you.
Second Peter 3.9 says,
the Lord is not slack concerning his promise,
as some would count slackness,
but he's long suffering toward us,
not willing that any should perish,
but that all should come to repentance.
So before I go into the other messages about Romans 1,
I think it's really important to frame up
what I'm gonna say this way,
that wherever you are in your journey,
wherever you are in your understanding love of God
or lack of love of God,
God's grace is bigger than any sin you've committed.
Wherever you are and as far as you're running from God,
he's there for you.
And what I'm talking about today
in the subsequent episodes is that there is hope,
always hope for the child of God
that'll repent and come back to him.
And what I hope to do is frame this up
so that you understand you don't wanna go there,
you want the kingdom way
and the kingdom way is always the smartest way.
So may we enjoy going through Romans 1,
I'm pumped and excited to teach it.
And I think it's gonna set a lot of you free
in a whole new way.