Romans 1:18-32
In our human experience we know that all people kneel before some kind of god. In Egypt they worshiped a dung beetle at one time and another time they worshiped a sun god. In India the cow was worshiped as a god. In many ancient cultures they carved gods out of wood that set in their houses and places of worship. Some times they would take rocks and make themselves a god. There is no such thing as an atheist, because what we love the most becomes our god. When an atheist tells you they don’t believe in God, they tell something not true. For to deny something it must exist so it can be denied. Religions have built all types of altars to worship their gods.
Five thousand years ago the God that created all things, and that includes human life, made himself known to a people that we know through the Old Testament. God called a man named Abram to leave his home in Haran and go to the land of Canaan. In Canaan Abram built two altars: one in Shechem and one in the hill country with Bethel to the west and Ai to the east. “There he built another altar and dedicated it to the Lord and he worshiped the Lord.” God called Isaac and he worshiped Him. God called Jacob and he worshiped Him. In Jacob’s conversion experience God gave him a new name ‘Israel’. God called Moses to serve him and he gave Moses the laws that Israel was to live by. God used Moses to free Israel from slavery and the Passover celebration was to remind Israel who they worshiped. In their freedom and free will Israel chose to worship the pagan gods of other nations. We read in II Kings 10:18 about how God used Jehu to kill the priests of Baal that had led Israel away from worshiping Him. Israel would worship many pagan and false gods, so God said “I will send my Son into my world to save it from the pagan gods that they have been worshiping.”
God did send His son Jesus to give us a way to be restored to His family. “For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only son so that everyone who believed in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world but to save the world through him.”
Jesus’ life, death on the cross and the resurrection is God’s plan for our salvation from sin and death. We Christians believe that God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit formed the church, which is the body of Christ. For over two thousand years this has been the focus of our worship. We kneel before his cross and worship a holy living God who, out of his love grace and forgiveness, has saved us from death and our sin. In repentance we have eternal life because we stand before the only true God and His empty cross that is at the altar that defeated our sin and gave us life.
But Paul writes to the Romans about how they have abandoned Jesus and forgot to kneel at the cross of life. They had chosen another god. It was one of the many laws Israel rejected also and now the church in Rome and many of the churches today have rejected God’s laws and word. In Leviticus 18:22 we read this word, “Do not practice homosexuality, having sex with another man or with another woman. It is a detestable sin.” Paul wrote these words for the church in Rome and for the churches today, “So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desire. As a result, they did vile 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 is worthy of eternal praise. Amen. That is why God abandoned them in their shameful desires. Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and instead indulged 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 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. They are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud and boastful. They invent new ways of sinning and they disobey their parents. They refuse to understand, 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.”
Remember the fable where the king hired two weavers to make him some beautiful clothes. They faked making his clothes, but convinced him that he now had beautiful clothing. In reality he had no clothes on. Two little boys were honest and told the king the truth that in reality he was naked.
We now have Bishops, elders, leaders and laity kneeling at the false altar of homosexuality. We also have judges, political leaders, sports figures kneeling at the altar of homosexuality. Movies, television, and educators are pushing this altar of homosexuality. It has become an idol god In our culture. They have rejected the Biblical word that is very clear that homosexuality is evil and is a sin. It separates them from the true altar of Christian believers that is given to believers by the cross of Jesus. This has happened because church leaders are preaching cheap grace and with cheap grace nothing is evil.
The Bible exposes the sin of homosexuality as one of many human sins. The answer for this sin and all our sins is to repent, seek God’s forgiveness, grace and mercy that will clean up our wicked way of living. This evil has divided homes and churches. God’s plan will heal this division and that calls us to repent and kneel before the cross that gives us a new life.
“Kneel at the cross, Christ will meet you there, come while he waits for you. List to his voice, leave with him your care and begin life anew. Kneel at the cross, leave every care. Kneel at the cross, Jesus will meet you there.” The altar of our salvation is the cross of Jesus. It is God’s plan for us to be restored to Gods’ eternal family.
