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The River ChurchSermons

The NEED

Rescued from Ruin

Keaton Washburn · Sunday, 4 May 2025 · Romans 1:18-32 · 33:25 · 4,194 words

Romans S2 · 1:18-32 Goodrich

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Exploring Romans 1:18-32, the message explains that God's wrath is revealed against those who suppress the truth through unrighteousness. It describes a progression from bad belief—like thinking one knows better than God or prioritizing personal desires—to bad behavior such as idolatry and sexual immorality. The sermon emphasizes that all people are without excuse because creation testifies to God's existence. It calls listeners to recognize their sin, heed God's warnings, and turn to Christ for forgiveness and new life.

What this sermon is about

Ranked by keyness against every other sermon in the corpus. Each one is a word this sermon actually said — nothing here was written by a model.

sleep 14 bad 22 behavior 11 unrighteousness 10 sex 7 design 9 compassion 8 lead 18 idol 9 ignore 9 warn 10 suppress 7

Topics

Sin 5 The Gospel 2 Righteousness 1 Election & Predestination 1 Hope 1

Scripture referenced 27

Verified against the transcript. A reference the recording does not support is never listed here.

Romans 1 1:09 Romans 1 1:18 Romans 1:18 1:21 Romans 1:18 1:26 Romans 1 1:58 Romans 1:18 1:58 Romans 1:16-17 2:09 Romans 1:18 3:27 Romans 1:19-20 4:10 Romans 1:20 5:13 Romans 1:21 6:19 Romans 1:21 6:23 Psalms 135 7:16 Romans 1:21-23 8:34 Romans 1:24-25 10:42 Jeremiah 17:9 12:07 Matthew 9:36 20:42 Ephesians 4:15 21:14 Romans 1 21:53 Romans 1:28 21:53 Romans 1:28 22:46 Romans 1:20 23:23 Romans 1:32 25:19 Romans 1:18 26:35 Ephesians 2 30:18 Romans 10:9 30:55 John 14:6 31:25

Transcript

Every word, as spoken, with the second it was said. Each word links to its own entry in the index.

Pre-service announcement — 5 lines, 0:24. Excluded from every count and search on this site, kept here so nothing is hidden.

Hey everyone, my name is Zach Hannon and thank you for checking out the message today.

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Thanks again for joining us today and we hope you are blessed by today's message.

So I want to begin, I want to ask you, have you ever had a time that you ignored a warning sign?

Maybe it was a do not enter sign or a do not cross.

Maybe it was the check engine light on your car flashing at you.

Maybe it was a friend that said, hey, don't do that.

If we're honest, every single one of us have done that.

We have ignored.

We have ignored warning signs.

And so today, what we're going to see in the second half of Romans chapter 1 is

what happens when humanity ignores God's warning signs.

He's given us warnings.

And so as I said, we'll be in Romans chapter 1.

Begin reading in verse 18.

Start there.

Romans chapter 1 verse 18 says this.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness

and the unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

For what can be known?

What can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them.

For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature,

have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world

in the things that have been made.

So they are without excuse.

Verse 18 is the main point for the second half of Romans chapter 1,

for the whole passage today.

It's this idea that as we saw last week,

it's God's righteousness in verses 16 and 17

contrasted with the wickedness,

the wickedness of humanity.

The thing about the wrath of God is that if God is just as he is,

he must punish sin.

There has to be a price that's paid for it.

And the standard for salvation to get into heaven is not good enough,

but the standard that all people are measured by is the righteousness of God himself.

He is the standard.

And it's not his standard is his perfect.

It's that God is unblemished.

There's nothing sinful in him.

There's nothing not right.

And what the gospel does is the gospel reveals our wickedness,

reveals our unrighteousness, our sinfulness,

and our need to be rescued.

And to see the goodness of the gospel, to get to the good news,

we first have to get to the bad news,

the warnings that God has given, that is our sinfulness.

And so in verse 18,

scriptures tell us that there are people that the unrighteous

suppress the truth about God with their unrighteous,

their sinful acts here.

This idea of suppression, it's like a beach ball in a pool

or at the beach, wherever you are with that.

You try and push it down in the water and you let go.

And what happens?

Pops right back up.

So you got to continually suppress it.

And the scriptures make it clear that this is what humans do with our unrighteousness.

We are suppressing, pushing down the truth about God.

But what happens to those that maybe haven't heard the gospel, you say?

Well, verses 19 and 20 make it clear that all are without excuse.

What can be known about God is plain because God has shown it to them.

We can't see him with our eyes, but we can see the works of his hands.

We can see his attributes.

We can see what he's created in theology,

which is just,

the study of God.

It's called general revelation.

It's that all people have a knowledge of God.

God is easy for all to see because creation,

everything around us is a testimony of God's existence.

It's like the world around us is an arrow pointing directly to God's existence.

Creation is a direct line.

It points us to him for all people, for all time.

So as the end of verse 20 says,

so all people are without excuse.

Every single person has an opportunity to understand who God is and that he exists.

And some choose to reject him.

Some choose to suppress the truth about him with their unrighteousness while others acknowledge him.

There's a pastor, Christian author by the name of A.W. Tozer.

In his book, The Knowledge of the Holy, he begins it with this powerful statement.

He says,

What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.

So what comes into your mind?

What comes into our mind when you think about God?

Everyone has seen God through creation, but some choose to ignore him.

What we're going to see here is what happens when maybe you think about God and you say,

I don't care what he says.

I think I know more than him.

Let's pick it up in verse 21 as it teaches us about this.

Romans chapter 1, verse 21.

They knew God.

They knew that he existed, the unrighteous this is, but they chose to not honor him.

And ultimately, claiming to be wise, thinking they knew something, they became fools by making idols, man-made idols of things that are foolish.

The psalmist says,

The psalmist in Psalm 135, you don't have to turn there, tells us this about idol worship.

He says,

It's the foolishness of idolatry, making things in the image of humans, in our image of birds and creeping things.

I just find it so funny.

I just find the irony here that the psalmist draws out that these idols that are created have mouths, but they don't speak.

They have eyes, but they don't see.

They have ears, but they don't hear.

They don't even breathe, but yet people choose to worship them.

And so today we're going to, this idea all throughout the text is that bad belief leads to bad behavior.

What we believe about God affects how we live.

There's a progression of bad belief and bad behavior.

There's a progression of bad behavior into suppression of the truth about God by unrighteousness.

And so the first thing we see here, the first bad belief that leads to a bad behavior in verses 21 to 23 is,

I know better than God does.

I'm not going to worship him, but I'm going to make idols.

I know better than he does.

The bad behavior that it leads into is creating idols in the image of men and animals, worthless, foolish idols.

Becoming a fool.

Refusal to honor God leads to futile thinking.

Which leads to idolatry.

And so what each of us believe about God is the most important thing because that determines how we live.

It would be easier, easy for us to be here and to say, well, that's those out there.

I've never made a physical idol.

I've never carved something and worshipped it.

But I think we're closer to doing this than we think.

I think we do it ourselves because what we think about God determines how we behave.

If we think.

If we think that the Lord really can't fulfill us, then we chase after other worthless things.

Money, power, ours, boats, stuff, success, our kids' success.

We're quick to chase after things that leave us well short of what God has created us for.

These things that we look for our purpose in, we look for hope.

When only God can give us hope in the purpose we truly crave.

So the first thing that we saw, that we see.

Is that when we believe I know better than God does, it leads us creating idols of things that won't fulfill us.

But the suppression of sin doesn't end there.

Let's continue in verse 24 and 25.

It comes up three times throughout this passage.

It's a scary phrase.

God giving people what they really want.

It's God demonstrating the consequences of sin.

God allows sinners to be immersed in their sin, which is the punishment.

It's this is what you chose and the consequences are terrible.

The second bad belief that leads to bad behavior here is doing what I want.

The bad behavior it leads to is sexual promiscuity and worshiping created things instead of God himself, the creator.

Doing what I want matters most sounds innocent, but it's dangerous.

The book of Jeremiah chapter 17 verse 9 says the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick.

Who can understand it?

Yet so many people are led by their heart.

We hear follow your heart.

It's dangerous.

Our hearts do not honor the Lord.

Our hearts seek after temper temporary pleasures.

Here is leads to as Paul draws out the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, not using, not honoring, even not first.

We saw not honoring God.

Now we see people not even honoring their own bodies.

Paul is writing here from the from Corinth.

He's writing to the church in Rome, the book of Romans.

And as he's writing, what has to be in his mind is the rampant sexuality.

He's surrounded with in Corinth.

Corinth is recorded as having a temple with over a thousand sacred ritual prostitutes that could be bought as a form of worship to their false gods.

And so if this is happening in Corinth, this is most certainly happening in Rome to the church that he's writing with people dishonoring of their bodies, but also people worshiping the creature instead of the creator creatures designed as we began to point to the creator.

But so many times our worship ends.

Right there with what has been created, which is ultimately foolish.

Now, as we say creature creator, what might be coming into your mind is activists, climate activists, or maybe lovingly tree huggers, doom and gloom.

People are shouting the world is ending.

Maybe that's what coming in.

Maybe that's what's in your mind.

And that is what Paul is saying.

But this also the dishonoring of our bodies, worshiping the creature instead of the creator also looks like sex outside of marriage.

It looks like living.

A man and a woman without being married, choosing to take the easy way out to worship you instead of the Lord pornography, satisfying the flesh doing because doing what I want to do matters most.

This is what the lie that's believed.

And this takes root when we choose to do whatever makes us feel good.

The second bad belief is doing what I want matters most that leads to the bad behavior, sexual promiscuity and worshiping created things instead of the creator.

All of these things are outside of God's design.

Paul continues this idea by saying in verses 26 and 27.

Let's read.

For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions.

For the women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature.

And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another.

Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

So for this reason,

Because they are continuing to do what matters most to them as we do this.

For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions.

Continuing the logical thought that God continues to give those who desire what they really want.

This is men and women not living according to God's design, but turning against it by women having sex with women and men having sex with men.

When according to God's design, the natural order that he created, sex is only to take place between a husband.

And a wife.

This is men.

This is consumed with passion for one another.

Men and women consensually choosing to have sexual relations with the same sex.

Let's call it like it is homosexuality.

One of the commentators, Longman and Garland, they put it well in saying sinning against God results in them sinning against their own nature.

The third bad belief that leads to bad behavior is that God's design doesn't matter.

Bad behavior it leads to is to sinning against God.

The point that Paul is making here is that it doesn't matter someone's sexual orientation, but what they do with it doesn't matter if you're straight or not.

What do you do with your sexuality?

Being tempted is not sinning, but acting on that temptation is where it becomes sin.

Now there's some here in this room that are right here with me.

There's some that say, well, I've never dealt with same sex attraction.

This isn't for me.

And you've tuned in.

You've tuned out.

Well, I had something happen to me recently that the Lord has convicted me, and not in this, but the Lord has convicted me.

So my wife and I, we have a four-month-old son, an almost four-month-old son.

His name's Hayes.

He's been great.

For the first three and a half months, he was a really good sleeper.

Everybody was like, how's it going?

And I'm like, yeah, we're actually sleeping really good.

And then at three and a half months, he decided not to sleep.

He decided he was done with sleeping.

I'd be up with him.

My wife and I would be taking turns getting up with him in the middle.

And I tell you, when I am up with him with the third time that hour at three in the morning,

the kid was getting pretty frustrated with him.

Like, just go to sleep.

You need sleep.

But he just continues to wake himself up.

I was just exhausted and so frustrated.

And so my wife, a couple days ago, I'm so grateful for her.

She said to me very clearly, she said, you need to understand why he's doing this.

She said he's learning how to sleep.

He's changing from newborn sleep to the next version of sleep to adult sleep.

He's waking up as our bodies do, but our bodies know how to get ourselves back to sleep.

He's waking up.

His eyes are open.

He's confused at what's going around.

And he doesn't know how to soothe himself back to sleep.

And so we need to come in and we need to soothe him.

And for me, this was like this light bulb moment.

Understanding why he was waking up gave me compassion for him.

Instead of judgment and frustration.

And so I'm still exhausted at four in the morning when I'm up with him.

But it's no longer frustration towards him.

But it's compassion because I understand why he's waking up.

He needs us to help get himself back to sleep.

My attitude has changed because I understand why.

And so it is with those who don't know Christ and are living a homosexual lifestyle.

The proper response if you don't struggle with same-sex attraction is compassion.

We can have compassion because now we understand.

We can understand why this is taking place.

It's because they have a bad belief about themselves and about God's natural order.

So they act on their sinful desires.

And God has given them up to their sin.

He's given them over to it.

Jesus in Matthew chapter 9 verse 36 says,

As we follow Jesus and his example,

filled with compassion for those who don't follow Christ as we follow his example.

But at the same time that we lead with compassion,

Ephesians 4.15 says,

Rather speaking the truth in love were to grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ.

And so it's compassion, but it's also speaking the truth in love.

You can't have one without the other.

It's a both and.

So what is your response to those that don't know Christ that are living in sin?

Is it compassion?

Is it truth in love?

Or is it judgment and frustration?

Let's read the last couple of verses.

Chapter 1, picking it up in verse 28.

Watch this progression of sin.

Paul says,

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God,

God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.

They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice.

They're full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness.

Their gossips.

Slanders, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents,

foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die,

they not only do them, but they give approval to those who practice them.

Verse 28 is continuing this logical progression.

Begins by saying,

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God.

This is the final stage.

This is the final stage for the unrighteous.

Those that are suppressing the truth about God with their unrighteousness, their acts, their sin.

They didn't honor God.

They've exchanged the truth about God for a lie.

And they've rebelled against his natural order and design.

They've put the Lord totally out of their minds.

And this was a conscious choice.

Because as verse 20 reminds us, all are without excuse.

So as a result, this is the final thing that God gave them up to.

This terrible phrase.

The truth.

The last thing.

The last thing God gave them up to is a debased mind.

Now, it's not a term we use often.

But this idea of a debased mind carries the idea of counterfeit money.

A mind that is not sound.

A mind that is unapproved.

Or even we could go so far as to say worthless.

It's unable to think rationally in the way that God designed.

And so these bad beliefs that the unrighteous have,

have led to a debased mind,

which led to bad behavior,

which is seen in all of us.

It leads to ultimate chaos.

Do you catch that list of these vices here?

These words?

But what do you expect when a mind God has totally given them up to their sin?

They're not able to think clearly.

They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness.

They are full of envy.

This is what their mind is filled with.

Because rejection of God leads to a vacuum that's filled with moral corruption.

And this leads to ultimate chaos.

People who live out these vices as you look over this list,

people who live this out have the ability to threaten the undoing of the fabric of civilization.

If every person lives like this, the world is not going to go well.

And so, the outcome of living this way of a debased mind,

"Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die,

they not only do them, they give approval to those who practice them."

This is God's warning that so many people ignore.

All are without excuse.

They knew God's warning sign of the destructive power.

The power of sin.

But yet, they ignore it and approve of wickedness.

This is no longer wickedness and sin done in secret trying to cover it up.

But it's fully exposed.

Not done in secret, but not even just exposed.

It's the propping up of wickedness and sinfulness.

My heart just breaks as we look out at the world around us.

We see the propping up of sin and wickedness in our legislature.

We see it promoted on social media.

We see influences.

We see it in our workplaces.

This happens because instead of acknowledging that there's a God and repenting,

people choose to go the other way.

And they're encouraging others to follow suit in rebellion against God and His design.

So looping back to where we began, verse 18,

This is the bad news.

We must acknowledge in order to get to the good news of the gospel.

C.S. Lewis, in his book, The Great Divorce, he writes this.

There are only two kinds of people in the end.

Those who say to God, Thy will be done.

And those to whom God says in the end, Thy will be done.

All that are in hell, choose it.

Do you see why sin is such a big deal?

Why sin is so grim?

When I was a young kid, my family, we went on a camping trip to a Christian music festival in Kentucky.

And you think, okay, you're camping, you're in a campground.

You're in a campground.

Think again.

This music festival, we camped on just acres of a wide open field.

They're just packing people in left and right.

And so we get there and it starts raining.

And then it keeps raining into day two, day three, day four.

The music festival is called Ixthus.

And we end up, there was so much rain and mud that we started calling it the Mudthus year.

We just couldn't get anywhere without just, you know, just boots and mud everywhere.

Everybody was just covered.

Showers were no use because there was mud everywhere.

On the final day.

On the final day, it's time to go home.

So my family, we're packing up, attach our minivan to our little pop-up camper.

All right, let's get out of the mud.

Let's go home.

Put it in gear.

Go to pull forward.

We're stuck.

We're not going anywhere.

The tires are spinning.

Can't even get the minivan to go at this point.

Detach the trailer.

We're trying to figure it out.

I'm like six, seven years old at this point.

And I, I'm a worrier.

I'm an anxious person.

And I'm like, we are never going to get home.

I'm going to be stuck in Kentucky for the rest of my life.

What are we going to do?

What are we going to do here?

We enlist some of the youth group kids to try and help push the van and the trailer out.

And we're getting inches, but it's a mile through this field.

We're stuck.

We're just dead in the water.

And over the horizon come the local farmers with their tractors.

I've never been so relieved.

I've always liked tractors.

And maybe that's why, because they just saved me.

And so the tractors come and they get us to the road.

But this is a picture of us, powerless in our sin, dead in the water, dead in our

trespasses, trying to get ourselves out, trying to get closer to God when yet we've

fallen so short of his perfect standard.

And then Christ comes over the horizon, offering his obedience, his perfect life and death

and resurrection as our rescue.

You've been suppressing the truth about God by your unrighteousness, not honoring him,

running from him, ignoring his warning about sin.

Ephesians chapter two begins with a beautiful phrase.

But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when

we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

By grace, you have been saved.

So though sin destroys, sin can wreck our lives, there's forgiveness in Christ because

of his life and death and resurrection.

Nobody is too far gone.

Though we've all fallen short of God's standard.

Romans 10, 9 says,

There's forgiveness for sin through Christ.

So the solution, this whole thing, that when we've said, I know better than God does,

when we have rejected God's truth, Jesus came as the truth.

John 14, 6, Jesus says,

The times that we've chosen to do what we want to do because that's what

matters most, doing what I want matters most, where we've chosen to ignore God and do what

we've wanted, in Christ, we can become a new creation.

We're given a new heart that pursues him and the things he's about.

We've said God's design doesn't matter.

Times that we've rebelled, Jesus welcomes us back with forgiveness and grace, offering

his perfect life and death and resurrection.

So bad belief leads to sin and death, but right belief in the gospel

of Jesus leads to life.

What do you believe today?

Let's pray.

Thank you for your word.

Thank you for the warnings that you've given us.

Lord, I thank you most for sending your son, Jesus, to die in our place, to die in my place.

Though we've all fallen short of your standard, he did not.

Help us to heed the warnings of your word.

Help us to speak with truth and love, to never forget the dangers of sin, to live according

to the way of holiness that you have shown us.

Through the power of your Holy Spirit, I pray all this in the powerful name.

name of your son, Jesus. Amen.

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