Bible Guys Classics: Romans 1 Part 2

Sometimes you make me so angry. Oh wow, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. But sometimes some things makes God angry. Well, yesterday Paul started off telling us, Hey, this whole book is going to be talking about the good news, but sometimes in order to get to the good news, you have to have clearly defined what the bad news is. And that's what he's talking about today. So he's Chris and I'm Jeff, and we're the Bible guys. So Jeff, yes, we're going to do a segment today called the Whisper Challenge, which is I think we've seen made famous by Jimmy Fallon. I think is who it is, and you put the head phone Actually I think several late late night show guys do this. But yeah, but you put the headphones on and then you just try to whisper a phrase. I don't have a phrase prepared. Do you have a face one? I have one for you if you want to. Oh, excellently good. I'll go first. Then okay, okay, what did you do too? Come up with two phrases? Then I'll switch, Well, came up with one? Come on, okay, here you go. I'm putting them on. I cannot hear you, all right, and then I'm gonna. Play play some music, so okay, and I have to whisper. I have to whisper, but you have to be able to see me, right, I have to whisper. Okay, ready, yes, sure, okay, okay, I have not because you ask me. I'm not even close. Go slower, have not because you. You have something. No, you don't have it. I'm not even close on this one. Book, James says, you have not because you ask not. Oh I saw that you have yeah yeah, yeah, yea yeah, okay, you want to do another one, sure. Let me think of another one real quick. All right, tell me when play? I said iPod. Okay, this is really hilarious. Okay, not iPod, it's my iPhone. Here you go. God so loved the world that he gave his only son. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son. I said it out loud. So you said gott son. No, I said his only son. His only son. Excellent, Okay, yeah, yeah, all right, yeah. I kind of planted in your head that it was Bible versus right. Ye, well, let me choose. And by the way, he chose the most famous one of all time. I was hoping you'd know that one. I mean, you are one of the Bible guys, right, all right, so I'm gonna put these headphones on. Ye and then. Okay, all right, ready, yes can you hear me? Whoa? My goodness? I know? Ready, okay, here, that's a spicy meet the ball. Oh man, you said something about that. Let's say it again. That's a spicy Meet the ball. That's a spicy meatball, I said. I said, that's a spy I meet the ball. Yeah, all right, I picked up on spicy. And then I thought, okay, zar Bas gonna be talking about me, Yeah for sure. Let me think of another one. Here we go, okay, all right, here we go, all right, here we go. Okay, I bought a Honda. Should have bought a Hyundai? What I bought a Honda? Should have bought a Hyundai? Something? All day? I don't know, I can't. I said, I bought a Honda, should have bought a Hyundai. That's funny, Okay, that's right, that's right, that's hilarious, making fun. Okay, those are fun fun ones to do. They're so hard, Yeah, they're really difficult. Yeah, it's it's pretty pretty amazing. Actually, it dawned on me just a second ago. I have a phrase I'm going to say next time we do it. Oh oh yeah, wow. Well jeez, you know we're only three minutes in. I promise you you will not get it. It's not possible that you could get it. Yeah, all right, I guess we'll just save the suspense because the minutes are going all right. So anyway, so yesterday we introduced the idea that Paul is writing a book or actually writing a letter to the Church of Rome, but he's actually never been to the Church of Rome. So there's a there's a church that has, you know, growing, it's popular, and you know, Paul eventually gets there, but right around fifty seven AD. And I'll keep in mind he actually dies in Rome and write around sixty eight or sixty nine AD. So this is about eleven years before his death that he doesn't know that's coming obviously, and and he says, hey, I long to get to you. And it's actually the second time that he goes to Rome. He was actually advised not to go, but he went anyway, and he ends up you know, losing his life, was in prison and things like that. But anyway. So right now, he's just introducing himself to the the Church of. Rome, right, So that was the first seventeen verses, yep. And then he immediately pivots. I think the most important verse that we're going to read in understanding why he writes the next three chapters was verse seventeen of yesterday when he says, this good news tells us how God makes us right in his sight. So that means you have to understand that means we're not automatically right in his site. We need to be made right in his sight. Right. So the good news is how God rescues us from our sins, how God saves us from the tragedy that we're heading towards apart from Christ. Right, So this whole thing that he's talking about now he's going to give us bad news, and it's like three chapters, four chapters of five chapters, six chapters of bad news, and so it's kind of tough unless you understand he's just setting the stage for the overwhelming delight of the good news of God's grace. You know, it's it's really good that you brought that up, because it's also important for you know, for all of us, not just our listeners, but but me and you to understand that even though this may seem like common sense to you and I because we've grown up living in church world, this was brand new news for them. Yes, think about think about Let's pretend you're a man who's thirty years of age and you live in Rome, Okay, and the only thing you really know about religion and especially the god of the Jewish people, right, is that is that people have temples everywhere, right, actually one main temple, right. Uh. And you you're supposed to bring, you know, sacrifices to pay for your sins, and and you know, and there's all these sort of you know, laws that are laid out and you hear about them, and there's so many of them, and and and so I mean, you just really, truly, you know, don't have an understanding of what poets talking about. Paul's laying the ground, because what he's saying is is like, Hey, I'm going to talk about all this bad news, all this sin because theologically you have to understand what happened. The event of Jesus Christ coming to the earth has theological implications for the world but also for you, and so I'm going to get very specific because this is brand new news for people. That's right. So he's going to give the bad news now so that he can delight us with the good news of God's grace and that God's grace is enough. Remember he talked about that in Two Corinthians when he begged God to take away this storn in the flesh. Remember, yeah, And God's answer was, my grace is enough for you. And so Paul delights in teaching us about God's grace. But again, you don't need grace unless there's something in your life that requires it. So I just want to caution people as we read. He gives lists of various sins and different things, and a lot of times we focus on the one that's not our issue, or we can only see the one that is our issue. But I understand in this next passage he's unpecking almost every kind of sin you cannot yeah, and so like twenty of them. So this applies to every one of us, every one of us as what he's talking about here, there's none of us that aren't included in Paul's next little talk. So here we go. Ready, this is going to be interesting. In verse eighteen of the first chapter Romans, He says, but God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppressed the truth by their wickedness. They know the truth about God because He's made it obvious to them forever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky through everything God made. They can clearly see his invisible qualities, his eternal power, and divine nature, so they have no excuse for not knowing God. Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn't worship him as God or even give him thanks, and they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused. Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools, and instead of worshiping the glorious, ever living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles. So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful thing their heart's desired. As a result, they did evil and degrading things with each other's bodies. They traded the truth about God for a lie, so they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the creator himself, who's worthy of eternal praise. Amen. That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires. Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and instead indulge in sex with each other. And the men, instead of having normal sexual relations with women, burned with lust for each other, men did shameful things with other men, and as a result of this sin, they suffered within themselves the penalty they deserved. Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done. Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip. Their backstabbers and haters of God. Insolent and proud and boastful. They invent new ways of sinning, and they disobey their parents. They refuse to understand, they break their promises, are heartless and have no mercy. They know God's justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die, yet they do them anyway worse. Yet they encourage others to do them too. Yeah, so there's a lot in this passage there's a ton and when when when Paul sort of shifts gears in verse number eighteen, which is where we started. Let's talk about that first part before we get into all those those lists. Absolutely, but when it says, by the way, I absolutely love this idea because Paul says, he starts off very clearly saying that God has anger and judgment for wickedness and for sin. He talks about that, and then he goes right on to say they know the truth about God because He's made it obvious to them. And I think that that is so interesting because he says, for since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky, and through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities, his eternal power, and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God. And so isn't this the sort of the big debated passage about you know, the scenario of what if a man was born on an island and he's lived and died and he's nobody's ever going to tell him about Jesus Christ, you know, how can he come to know God? And that's really sort of the scenario in the Christian world, right Well, I've. Told the story before getting out in a village where there's never been any outsiders coming too the village. And when we asked the chief, we had a big meeting. There's all these chiefs there and elders of the village and the main chief, I've got a photo of him on my phone, and we asked them, have you ever heard of Jesus Christ? And they all had a consultation, they met, and the chief came back and said, none of us here know who Jesus Christ is, but if you tell us what village's from, will help you find him. And all they didn't know who Jesus Christ was. They thought these white guys are in a village because some guy named Jesus Christ was lost, so they never heard of him. So what happens to that person? Right? And God is saying that every person is without excuse in that creation exists, which should make us recognize there's creator. Right, And that's the beginning. The beginning is that, and then us being sent out with the Great Commission is to tell everybody is that may or may not help people connect automatically to Jesus Christ and salvation, but it should point us towards the Creator, and so God's riled up in this passage over people who've rejected even the idea of the Creator. Rejecting that idea, He's riled up, and instead they've gone on and they've worshiped the created things. Have you ever been You've been in Rome? Right? Have you been in Rome? Yes? I've been in Rome only on a layover. We're there for like twelve hours and we sort of drove around quickly and saw. Things, coliseum and stuff like that. Just drove by it. You didn't even get to go in it. There's a building there that's a church. It became a church, but in the early times it's called the pantheon. And the Romans celebrated the fact that they have lots and lots of gods, and inside the pantheon, all around the inside of the pantheon, they were all these statues of all these gods, and they embraced many of the gods that the Greeks had, they just renamed them. And the Greeks had tons of gods, some of them were created things, and like the Egyptians, it was mostly all their gods were created things, and some were you know, characters that they kind of had put in place to worship, and God said, this is the natural thing. Either you choose to believe in the Creator, or you start worshiping the create, the things that the Creator made. Humans naturally worship. It wasn't until the Enlightenment when you know, Voltaire and a few others began to put out this idea of atheism. Very I mean, this is a very new thing in the development of humanity to start rejecting the idea of any god. It's that so we have always been pre wired to worship, and either we worshiped the Creator or we worship what's been created. Yeah. Yeah, And I love that because I think that, you know, the idea that there is a god, you know, is just it's amazing to me how you can look at creations and you can say, man, there has to be a creator. And also it's also amazing to me how people look at that and think, no, you know what I mean, like the idea that somebody would say that there is not a creator. I actually saw a TikTok the other day with Ronald Reagan and he said, he said, I long to have a dinner with the atheists and agnostics of the world. I love Reagan's jokes, and they're becoming more popular by the way. They're coming back their color. And he said, he says, and I long to give them the best meal that they've ever had, like a nine course meal, he said, just just to delight them in such a way to where they would have no choice but to say, please give our compliments to the chef. And and he goes, I would look at them and say, whatever gave you the idea that there was a creator of this food? Yeah, a chef. But I didn't know Reagan had a TikTok Does that creep you out just a little bit? It's not Reagan's TikTok oh. I thought you said you saw I saw on. A TikTok oh? I see, yeah, yeah, I'm pretty simple person. His jokes are very clever, very clever. Now, so so this idea, then, you know, he's talking to Romans who would build a building to celebrate all their gods. And it's in that context that he's trying to differentiate between the way that the major majority of their population, which was very sophisticated, even by our own standards, very sophisticated. The indoor plumbing, Uh, they took baths, they had uh, you know, water in their homes. They built, they built stadiums as big as the stadiums we build now, right, their sophistication, they're the ones who developed the republic concept of government. Now they have an emperor at this point, but they they're the ones who developed it. They had a senate, they had representative government, they had the most powerful military in the world. They were incredibly sophisticated people. Yeah, and and yet they worshiped all these other gods. And so he's he's kind of going at that that there's either one God or there's all these gods, and that's what happens. But the natural order of things is when you reject the Creator, then you begin to indulge just in your own flesh. And then the Creator steps back and says, fine, do your thing, and then that's where he brings up all these issues. He brings up homo sexuality, he brings up every kind of wickedness and sin and greed and hate and envy and murder and quarreling and deception, malicious behavior and gossip and backstabbers and haters of God, insolence and pride and boastfulness, and disobedient to parents and refusing to be taught, and they break their promises and they're heartless and they have no mercy. He gives like these twenty things. Yeah, they said, this just becomes the natural order of society when you've rejected the creator. Yeah. And it's interesting the concept of what he's trying to talk about here. And he spends a few extra verses talking about sexual sin. But you know, this is actually the pattern of Paul. You know, later on in Romans, doesn't he talk about how of all the things that we do, sexual sins are are done with our bodies and uh, and he says that Firstians and no, yeah, I'm sorry, Yeah, that's right, it's first Corinthians and and uh. And so Paul hangs on that and and he actually lists all these other things and and the the umbrella of what he's talking about is he's talking about how when people get lost in their own ways, and they get lost and they get hung up with all these different things. Number one, not only are they denying the god of creation, which they should surely know, and he's saying. They've rejected them. But then he's also saying some people can get so lost in their ways and and and in their sins that God turns them over, turns them over, He abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. And it just gives this laundry list of people. And then I think it's interesting how he says, uh, that they start worshiping the creator instead. Of creation, the creation, the creation instead of the Creator. Yeah, I'm sorry backwards. Yeah, And I love also how he gets specific and says, they make these idols represent mere mortals and mere animals. Right. You know, he's really taking what they worship. You know, they're they're thinking, oh, they're worshiping these idols. They treat them as God's little g And he's saying, that's a statue of a bird. It's just a bird. It's just it's not even a real bird. It's a statue of right. It just it ranks all the way down here. Right, they're just mere mortals. These are things that are going to turn into dust. Right, And you're and you're worshiping these things. And that's sort of the category that he's listening these sins to. Right, He's saying, he's saying, listen, God has given things and we just we just we're just spending all of our time indulging, worshiping, and focusing on all the wrong things. And we could do it to such a degree that God just abandons us and our sin and just says, man, they're just lost. And and then then he goes on and talks about how you know, he says, he makes a really sort of a big statement and says, they know God's justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die. And by the way, some of these things he's listening, I'm sure that there are laws that we talk about death. But actually I think Paul is actually referring to the spiritual here because he's talking about how sin he's about to unpack, right, how sin brings death. Yeah, chapter five, he's gonna bring that up. Yeah, chapter five. So he's leading up to the fact that there is a high price. It's physical and spiritual death. All of the terrible things in life, like death, are because of sin. Right, And this is what he's trying to do, is he's building the argument. So some people get hung up on whatever their favorite thing is to argue about. In this passage on oh it's you know, he gave special attention to sexual sin or whatever, and then they'll minimize disobeying their parents or being heartless, or refusing to understand or breaking you know, promise breakers. They refuse to recognize those things. But what Paul's trying to say is all these sins are rejecting God. There's a consequence. It's physical and spiritual death. Later on, he's going to say all the world is broken and groans, all of creation groans under the weight of the sin that has happened in the world and this sin. Eventually, what we're going to find out is this sin killed Jesus. Jesus paid the price for it. So he's building this argument of why we need Jesus, and so don't dismiss these things, accept them. Accept what he says as this is the natural order of how humanity winds up rejecting God and then indulging in these things that then cause all this devastation and brokenness. And the only solution is God's grace, and that's what he offers soon And at the. Beginning of the podcast, we said there is no good news without bad news. Yeah, and so you know it's there's a reason why he says, I once was lost, but now I'm found right, right, And that's the reason why the song is written that way, because you have to be lost in order to be found. And by the way, there has to be a problem before Jesus can come and offer the solution. That's right. And so the problem is the payment for sin is death right, and so deserving to die. Sure, maybe according to some laws that were put into place that people understood well. And also he's referring to the natural law. Yeah, the natural law, if you sin, you will die, God said at the very beginning to human Yeah. Sure, right, so that's what he's referring to you. That's right. It's not about government law here, he's not talking about government. He's talking about the natural law of if you sin, you'll die. And so in the same way that you should be able to look at creation and know there's a creator, he's also saying instinctively, we know there's a consequence to sin. Oh, gotcha, that's I never read it. That way, yea, yeah, so that's interesting. So so either way though, there's is the physical and then there's the spiritual, and both are true, and he builds on that idea. So you know, hey, I once was lost. But the good news is Jesus Christ has come and it's just right about that time, so we're excited to drive into chapter two next time. As he continues on, actually of more of the same in some ways, but he'll eventually just sort of weave in the good news of grace. He peppers all this bad news with some good news. From now on, there's always a good news statement with more bad news, so it'll be encouraging as we keep moving forward. Yeah, so we'll hopefully see you next time. All the Bible gush