They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is forever worthy of praise! Amen.who exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.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.for that they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
7 sermons cite this verse
… 24. Romans 1, 24. Remember this passage is dealing with how some people have rejected the knowledge of the true God and replaced it with a God of their own making. They've exchanged the truth of God for a lie. Look at verse 24 of Romans 1. Have your pens ready to underline some things. It says, therefore, God gave them, who? Those who rejected the knowledge of the true God. God gave them over in the lust of their hearts to impurity that their bodies might be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever. For this reason, why? Because they exchanged the truth of God for a lie. For this reason, God gave them over to, underline it, degrading passions. For their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural. And in the same way also, the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire one toward another men with men committing what kind of acts? Indecent acts and receiving their own persons the due penalty of their error. And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a what kind of mind? Depraved mind to do those things which are not proper. …
… in my opinion, and what it does, it puts it right in our lives. In fact, Romans chapter 1, verse 25 says that sinful humanity, what does it do? It exchanges the truth about God for a lie and worship and serve the creature rather than the creator. So when you think, as we understand, what is idolatry? What is idolatry? Well, idolatry is an exchange, right? But we take something, create it, and we ask it to give us only what the creator can give us. Now the thing is, a lot of times when you think of idols, we can miss the reality that most dangerous idols that we have are actually not evil things. They're actually good things that's carrying too much weight in our lives. Right? Children are a wonderful gift, but they're terrible gods. my marriage is a wonderful gift from God but it's a terrible God career, money, success, ministry these are all great gifts but a gift becomes an idol when I or you begin asking it to define us give us identity, give us security give us significance, give us peace, give us hope ultimately all those things belong to a great God to give so so idolatry a lot of times is not loving a bad thing it's very important for us here but it is asking a good thing to do a God sized job in our life and Heidelberg really gets to underneath this you say well okay I get that Eric to idolatry …
… let it happen to you. That God gave them up to their lust to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason, God gave them up to vile passions. What does that mean, gave them up? He turned them over to themselves. He let them stand in the cement. That's what they wanted? You can have it. Do you remember when the children of Israel rebelled against God because they were sick of manna? Remember that? And so Moses said, you should be thankful. You should be nice. And God says, just Moses, get out of the way. They want meat? They want meat? I'll give them meat. About this time tomorrow, there's going to be a bazillion quail coming, flying across just in the strike zone. They're going to kill all these quail. They're going to have so much meat. I'll give them meat until the meat comes out of their noses. …
… Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their 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. Let me remind you of the flow of this passage. You look at verse 22, claiming to be wise, they became fools. Paul from Romans 1.18 through chapter 3 verse 20 is pouring upon his readers this argument about the universality of sin. And here particular in chapter 1, it's about sins in the Gentile world. Now, not the Gentile world alone. There's a reason that the Mosaic Covenant had rules about homosexuality because it was known even in that part of the world. …
… and he gives us Romans chapter one, verse 18, through Romans chapter one, verse 25. He's gonna talk about, I'm just warning you, some negative stuff. You heard it. He's gonna talk about some stuff that we don't like to talk about, that I don't like to talk about, but I've gotta talk about it because it's in the word of God. He talks about, you ready for this? the wrath of God. Some of us have a hard time with that. We have a hard time thinking about using God and wrath in the same sentence. Others of us, when we hear and see the word wrath, we think about our family of origin. Because maybe you had a mom or a dad who raged on you. Or you're thinking about the person you've seen who's just gone absolutely crazy with anger over a situation. Paul talks about the wrath of God. Well, I've got news for you. The wrath of God is not the way you think it is. …
… the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is forever blessed, who is blessed forever, amen. So did you see that? Worldly worship led to worldly thoughts which led to worldly desires. God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, which then led to what? To the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves. Worldly actions. So then, and then it comes back to the core, why do they have these worldly desires and act in this worldly way? because they exchanged the truth of God for a lie. That's worldly thoughts. And they worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever. That's worldly worship. So don't miss it. Sin with our bodies, like worldly actions, these actions have a root in worldly desires and worldly thoughts and worldly worship. So sin starts, don't miss it, when we open up our minds to things which do not come from God at the center of our lives. …
… to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served created things rather than the creator who is forever praised. Amen. So this is the reality of sin in every person's heart. In my heart, in your heart, and in every person around the world. We have all sinned against God. turned from God's ways to our own ways, from God's truth to our thoughts, all of us have. Which then leaves the truth number three. There are no innocent people in the world. These initial verses in Romans, Romans 1, 2, and 3, some of the most sobering verses in all of Scripture. From Romans 1, 18 to 2, 16, Paul talks about the sinfulness of the Gentiles, the non-Jewish people. And you can almost hear the Jewish people like, amening at every verse. Yes, they are bad. And then he gets to chapter two, verse 17. He says, now you, if you call yourself a Jew, if you rely on the law and brag about your relationship to God, if you know his will and approve of what is superior because you have been instructed by the law. …