22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 23 and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. 24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: 25 who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: 27 and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. 28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; 29 being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, 30 backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31 without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: 32 who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.
Let’s just go to prayer. I pray that you just help us as we look into your word and Father help us to understand how horrible sin is. How horrible what’s happening in our world is. Where people are in rebellion against God.
Doing this very things that you’ve shared in your word with us that we should not. Lord help us to look to you. Help us to realize as the last song said that joy and peace and happiness is found in the name of Jesus?
Not in the things of this world. Lord now speak to us through your word. We pray in Jesus name Amen This morning. I wanted to concentrate in the last portion of the passage We just read and I wanted to open up with the first two verses which we’ve used on the last two Sundays that we’ve met verse 22 and 23 professing themselves to be wise they became fools and Changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like unto corruptible man and to birds and to four-footed beasts and to creeping things man knows That which is holy and righteous and pure God gave us as we studied last week and saw a conscience So we know what is good and evil Yet we can sear that conscience and burn that conscience to the point That God no longer speaks to us through it and by it but gives us over to our corrupt and Evil and wicked minds and sad to say many people in the world today are at that point There are those Who desire to be the leaders of the world and Set the direction and their main goal is to come against all that God stands for all that is holy and righteous and pure And establish their own standards Which we’re going to look at these standards that they are so in love with the last portion of the The text this morning that I read beginning at verse 28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge God gave them over to a reprobate mind To do those things which are not convenient First thing I want you to see is if you are Dead set on and walking in open rebellion against God and God gives you opportunity after opportunity To repent and turn from your rebellion to embrace his forgiveness to find his love that is found in Jesus to embrace truth and To desire to walk in the full impact of what truth means and how that that brings all the things that we sang in that last song joy and peace and happiness and real meaning to life But if men are so hateful of God and Hateful of all that he stands for in truth.
The Lord says I will give you over to a reprobate mind It’s interesting if you look at the book of Genesis and Exodus in the book of Exodus you will find that as Moses was getting ready to lead the nation of Israel out of Egypt Pharaoh didn’t want to let them go Pharaoh had a reprobate mind Pharaoh viewed himself as God and Desired to be worshipped of the people one of the gods of Egypt was the Pharaoh or the king and as Moses brought the ten Plagues against Egypt that God was presenting him. He’d go to Pharaoh and he’d tell him let my people go the Lord says let my people go and Then God would through Moses share what would happen if Pharaoh refused to let the people go and there were the ten plagues every one of the plagues and if you want to study the Egyptian theology and and who their gods were every one of those ten plagues came against an Egyptian God and It was to show not only Pharaoh, but all the Egyptians in Egypt their gods are nothing but lies and Demonic spirits trying to emulate themselves as God and it’s interesting every time the plagues came and The pressure was on Pharaoh because of the plague Moses would come and say let my people go and Pharaoh would say okay you can go But then an interesting thing would happen It says in Scripture that Pharaoh hardened his heart and changed his mind and He wouldn’t let them go He did that nine times And it’s interesting as you get closer to the end It said that Pharaoh hardened his heart and Pharaoh hardened his heart and Pharaoh hardened his heart and all of a sudden it says in God hardened Pharaoh’s heart There came a point of no return Where God gave Pharaoh opportunity after opportunity to acknowledge him as God to let his people go To worship him to give up his false gods Pharaoh refused to do it and would continually harden his heart and so for the last plague the Lord took the firstborn of all the animals and of Egypt unless you were covered by the blood of the Lamb a profound statement of how salvation was to come and would come through the blood of the Lamb of God that would come a Few thousand years later when Jesus was born Went to the cross died was buried and rose again to pay the penalty for the sin of the world That was to show the Egyptians that God was real God had a means of salvation of Deliverance, but it had to be God’s terms not man’s Pharaoh hardened his heart and it resulted in his son Dying then he said let my people let you can go But they didn’t even they just got to the banks of the Red Sea When all of a sudden Pharaoh’s army was closing in on him because he’d hardened his heart again He had no opportunity He’d used them up. I want you to understand We oftentimes don’t look at that what the real consequences of sin are and what the real things implications of sin are in our life Paul lays them out a lot of times.
We don’t take time. We come to this particular passage. We go.
Yes God’s talking about homosexuality there God’s talking about illicit relationships there God’s talking about that and then we just pass over it this morning I want us to take a look in depth. Look at what these words mean and Then I want you to look at what’s happening in our culture today We have Pharaoh’s in our culture today Men who will give lip service to God when it’s to their advantage But their whole intent is to harden their heart against him and their attitudes express it When you look at these words and what they mean, let’s take a look beginning at verse 29 being filled with all on righteousness What is unrighteousness? What does it mean to be filled with unrighteousness Well to be filled with unrighteousness is that you like to violate divine law? Unrighteousness is the violation of justice and equity. It’s a it’s true wickedness It’s a virtual concern to continue in the course of wickedness That’s what unrighteousness is.
It’s not just a term that kind of flows off the lips and sounds not that bad It is wicked and evil and it is exactly against everything that God stands for That’s unrighteousness That is the characteristic of a reprobate mind These are all the characteristics that we’re going to go through hopefully we get through them all they’re the characteristics of what a reprobate mind is It’s a mind that is no desire to do that which is Expression of the truth and has no desire to discover truth and has all desires to walk in unrighteousness wickedness evil Talks about the next thing. He says non-righteousness in all unrighteousness and fornication. I think it’s also interesting You look at any culture When a culture becomes reprobate filled with people of reprobate minds they get involved in wicked activities and wickedness and they think that that is normal and They exalt that and one of the first things that you see Paul laid it out earlier is Sexual deviancy Going against that which God established as the most Beautiful gift he could give to man a heart a man and a woman Created for each other complementing each other that within the bond of a commitment together of a husband and wife a man and a woman would be a marital Relationship and within that would be a sexual relationship a gift of God to bring children into the world that men could be part men and women could be part of the creative act of God and bringing new life into the world and Then establishing a home where you could nurture that new life and raise it up to worship the same God that you worshipped What does Satan do? Reprobate minds attack that which is holy and precious to God and that which God loves and has given his precious gifts And you will see that the first thing that often happens is fornication, which is Deviant sexual behavior outside of marriage our culture is filled with it.
He goes on And Paul says this reprobate mind Is filled with wickedness What is wickedness? Wickedness is a departure from the divine rules and standards that God has established It’s really a departure from truth Truth is laid before you and you deny it and you depart from it. You want nothing to do with it It’s evil disposition. It’s filled with immorality crime sin Corrupt manners and signified by evil character This is wickedness oftentimes wickedness tries to hide and conceal itself By not openly presenting itself as wickedness as you get into some of these other characteristics Oftentimes when we sin we want to conceal our sin.
Why is that? Because it’s the manifestation of wickedness When you rebel against God what you are doing is you’re denying his truth and you’re denying his character and you’re saying his standard doesn’t mean anything and If you say that you know God what you would desire to do when you do that is oftentimes conceal it The Bible tells us that as Christians what we’re to do in that when we when we fail because we will fail What we are to do is to confess of this sin immediately acknowledge. This is wicked This is evil and We’re to turn from it and confess it as sin to God and ask for his forgiveness And he says he is faithful to just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness but if we do not ask he cannot cleanse and The person who is of a reprobate mind never asks They have no desire to They love the wickedness Paul goes on and he says not only is there wickedness but there’s covetousness and Covetousness sometimes we kind of give that a light ride We say well everybody kind of wants something that somebody else has But I want you to know that covetousness Was driven by pride in Satan To cause him to desire that which only God can possess and that is to be the most high Satan coveted God’s position He said I shall be as the most high how many most highs can you have you can only have one? Covetousness was manifested by the pride that Satan possessed and in desiring what God could only possess well covetousness is a strong or inordinate desire of obtaining and possessing some supposed good That isn’t ours It’s a strong strong desire to have that which is not ours It’s not something that’s light and we as Christians should not be led into covetousness and Desiring things that God never intended it for us to have instead Paul says we are to be filled with gratitude and praise for what God has given us and provided for us I Want you to know as we look at this as you begin to look at you will see that the world Promotes all of these characteristics that Paul lays out as a part of a reprobate mind What is most advertising done? What is the purpose of most advertising? to make you covet something you don’t have and Oftentimes it isn’t the need It’s a want and the desire that turns into a wicked desire Where you will give up something good to try and attain that which you’re coveting after and if you look at the way that the World sells things to make you lust and covet after them They’ll oftentimes sell them using things that are totally unrelated to the thing that they’re trying to sell What is the purpose in a bikini-clad girl Trying to sell a car and it’s got to be a hot Sports car that goes really fast There’s an undertone there that they’re trying to tie the two together and appeal to your lust and your covetousness And you can go down the list of a whole bunch of things We’re not to be covetous He goes on and he says he uses the word maliciousness Now maliciousness is something that we think of all is the world really involved in malicious activity Yes, it is a maliciousness malicious means the quality of abhorring all will or It No, it means enmity Without any provocation Extreme enmity that is I will hate be filled with hatred in the state of opposition It’s a disposition to injure Because I feel I have the right that is the thing that the world does Getting even revenge Malicious if you stop and read the Sermon on the Mount You will begin to see that everything that we’re going to look at today is being of a reprobate mind Jesus states If you’re going to be part of the kingdom of God, it’s the exact opposite mind maliciousness What did Jesus say about maliciousness? He says love your enemy and Pray for those that despitefully use you He says that if you do that you shall heap coals You shall heap Coals of fire upon their head. We’re not to be malicious The world is malicious what you see happening in in activity around the world in various countries and things is acts of maliciousness of Revenge he then says Full of envy full of envy means that you are completely Consumed with envy a reprobate mind is consumed with envy.
What is envy? Envy is a discontent by the side of other success It’s with some degree of hatred or an effort to cause the other person displeasure or Problems and To bring it about it springs out of pride and ambition mortified That another has obtained something that you haven’t what one has is a strong desire to possess something that another has envy Willing to go to extremes to get it full of envy. That’s a reprobate mind Not only that Murder to kill with a premeditated malice to destroy to put an end to a Lot of times we think of murder and we think well, I’ve never murdered anybody. I’ve never killed I’ve never put an end to a physical person’s life There’s other ways of murdering People murder reputations people murder people’s position of authority people murder It’s to put an end to and to do it Driven by Premeditated desires and of a reprobate mind full of wickedness and envy and hatred the next Paul mentions of a reprobate mind is Debate Now we think debates good and debate can be good, but what does Paul mean by debate here? What is the word that he’s using here, what does it mean it means? Strife and argument But the strife is to make your point at the expense of truth You’re not really pursuing truth Rather you want to be the winner and You will do anything it takes when debating another Including assassinating their character or do whatever it takes, but you’re really not seeking truth You see there’s a type of debate where you go and you’re debating someone you’re presenting the truth to them And they are coming back and you’ve come back with the truth to set them free from their reprobate mind But the reprobate mind who’s caught in debate.
He doesn’t care about truth he’s driven by wickedness and So he desires and do whatever it can to win the argument deceit deceit a catching or ensnaring fraud fallacy to cheat To mislead with the full intention to get people to believe that the false thing is real and And Willing to obtain it through guile fraud or oppression and what I mean is guile fraud or oppression through through telling lies through misleading or by force But you’re deceiving Right now Anthony Fauci Is sitting before Congress trying to give answers of how he had Deceived Not only America, but the whole world about the whole virus situation in 2020 and those of you who may have Happened to hear some of his testimony his great non-testimony He gave pleaded the fifth Instead of giving answers to the question to the senators 110 times You couldn’t keep track from one day to another when he was telling these things about What was really the situation? With the virus where it came from how bad it was what was how we needed to help prevent it it changed and Then he used absolute control to make everybody do What he said you had to do even if he didn’t believe it our church here Was instructed That it would probably be best by Governor Burgum that We would meet in smaller groups. He wasn’t going to shut churches down like they did in, Minnesota They suggested we probably meet in smaller groups and wear masks and stay apart Yet the deceit was real Because Deborah Burke who stood beside Anthony Fauci came out and said last earlier this spring or last fall Well masks really didn’t do anything and the six-foot distance There was no scientific proof for it yet. She was running around the country Making people wear masks telling them to stay apart and she knew the whole time.
It was a bunch of lies What did it do it gave them control? Deceit enables people to get control and if Wickedness is driving deceit. What is the purpose to control you from the truth? Now when you begin to understand these words, and then you begin to look at the letter that Paul writes or the letters that Peter writes