18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness 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.
If we go back to verse 18 for a minute we see people doing two things. 1) They want to suppress the truth about God - they don’t want the world to know about Him. They refuse to acknowledge Him before men. 2) They replace Him and rebel against Him.
The ungodly are in rebellion against the laws of God. The ungodly are described in the Bible using Sodom and Gomorrah as an example which was entirely destroyed due to lust, rape, violence, and murder. They exhibited all kinds of sexual deviations and perversion. Jude also described ungodly people who want to suppress the truth about God. Certain men crept into the church who turn the grace of God into licentiousness. How is this different from leaders in many of the churches today? Immorality is running rampant among priests and pastors even abusing children. They are trying to establish their own righteousness for our nation and rejecting the righteousness of God. Our society wants to live by our different moralities and declare what is right and wrong, not what God calls right and wrong. The arguments of the people became vain and meant nothing to them. Ephesian 4:17, calls it "futility in their thinking". Isaiah 5:20 says, “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil."
We struggle with dealing with sin in America today. The big word in our society is tolerance. The only agreed upon sin in America today is intolerance. People don’t accept themselves as guilty anymore. There are all kinds of rationalizations and blame sharing. Also, what used to be sinful, has become sickness and now is acceptable. Any wrong is now due to "my environment" or "my genetics". Nobody wants to admit personal guilt. The bad thing about that is that confession of our sin is the first step to repentance. Trusting Jesus is the only way into the kingdom of heaven. Repentance is precluded by saying “I was wrong and I’m sorry, God. Forgive me.”
Rebellion is seen in the carrying out of immorality. This passage is clear about the sin of homosexuality. It takes a lot of Bible twisting to explain this away. Gay-rights people are very successful through politics and media of pushing their agenda to change public opinion regarding alternative lifestyles. A few short years ago no one thought homosexual marriages would be possible. Now almost every TV show must have homosexual relationships to be politically correct. The worst name you can be called is racist or homophobic.
The Boy Scouts of America lost funding because they refused to have a gay scout master. The ban on adults who are "open or avowed homosexuals" from leadership positions was lifted in July 2015. The organization is repeatedly under attack for not allowing atheists to join. Recently our nationally celebrated Pride Days highlighting the advancement of gay and sexual deviant lifestyles ans acceptable and even taught in elementary school settings.
Once a person rejects the truth of God, he embraces a lie about God. The result is his heart becomes “darkened”. He imagines God to be something He is not. Man’s image of God is warped. He makes God into something to his own liking rather than receiving the truth about God. Willful rejection of God’s revelation of Himself causes man to glorify his own intellect. He de-thrones God.
God did not initiate rejection of people. People rejected the God of the Bible, so they are without excuse and so are we.
Dale
