Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share Out of Their Minds
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
Out of Their Minds
Or, Cultural Cognitive DisobedienceRomans 1:28-32October 31, 2021 Lord’s Day Worship Sean Higgins
Introduction
We have to work extra hard to ignore the moral collapse of our culture, like ostriches burying our heads in the sand. The madness doesn’t just affect our so-called elites, the politicians and professors and media personalities. A good portion of our fellow citizens want what we’re getting; they vote and march and donate to get it. We think they are out of their minds, and we are right.
We also need to remember how it happened, where it all started. It wasn’t the 2020 election, it’s not the current presidential administration, or a generation of public schools, or the 60s sexual revolution, or Darwinism, or the Enlightenment with its enshrining of human ability. It started with the Serpent. He said we could be like gods, judging for ourselves good and evil. We wanted that, in our federal head, Adam. We chose the lie in Adam. And God Himself established hostility between the offspring of the serpent and the offspring of the woman. What our culture needs is not mandated equality, but a heavenly Father. Our culture doesn’t need to redistribute wealth, or not, but to repent from our ingratitude to the Maker. Our society is full of sin, though a lot of it is legal, and so we need a Savior.
The gospel has changed hard hearts and then leavened neighborhoods and nations. We are seeing the leaven go stale, both as unbelievers are given over to their lusts and as believers are flattened by their own little-faith. Christians are to live in righteousness from faith to faith. We’re to live in our righteousness by faith, confessing Jesus as Lord. Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth. Our worship of Him is exactly what the world needs and what they hate.
God’s wrath is revealed against knowers, and He says all men are knowers (Romans 1:19, 20, 21). He judges fools, not the ignorant, but the willfully ignorant. As they exchange the truth for the lie (1:25), God delivers them over into a life of chaos and confusion controlled by darkness. They are consumed by their own desires, gladly deceived by the sins that destroy them.
In verses 24-27 God gives them over to dishonorable and unnatural relationships. Homosexual desires and wanna-be transgenders are signs of regression, not progress or liberty or fruitfulness. It is not about equal rights, it is evil. As I said, it is not ignorant, it is willful hostility toward their Creator. They’ve been seeking religious exemption from gender and gender roles.
Verses 28-32 are an expanded vision of the debased mind and of a debased culture. Arguments could be made that we have it much better than the first century Romans, as bad as Paul’s description is. At least we have Romans, and we have 2000 years of gospel leavening to give thanks for. We also have the ugliness of knowing better. Men reject not only the Creator, but the gospel of Christ. God is giving men over to a debased mind that not only refuses to acknowledge His sovereignty, but also the Son of His love.
Their Comparative Cognitive Disobedience (verse 28)
The third refrain of abandon begins:
And just as they did not (approve) to have God in their thinking, God gave them over to an (unapproved) mind to do that which is not approved.
Dokimazo (δοκιμάζω)/“test” or “approve” is a word frequently used in the NT. It refers to testing something to find its value, as with metal, so “fit to acknowledge” (ESV) or “think it worthwhile” (NIV), “approve of having God in knowledge” (YLT). Men made themselves judges over God and decided that He wasn’t worth keeping in mind. As a judgment, God gave them over to an adokimon mind, to an unapproved, worthless mind. Different translations take it as a depraved, reprobate, debased mind. They think they are hot snot intellectuals but really they just have cold boogers for brains.
[...]
View all episodes
By Trinity Evangel ChurchOr, Cultural Cognitive DisobedienceRomans 1:28-32October 31, 2021 Lord’s Day Worship Sean Higgins
Introduction
We have to work extra hard to ignore the moral collapse of our culture, like ostriches burying our heads in the sand. The madness doesn’t just affect our so-called elites, the politicians and professors and media personalities. A good portion of our fellow citizens want what we’re getting; they vote and march and donate to get it. We think they are out of their minds, and we are right.
We also need to remember how it happened, where it all started. It wasn’t the 2020 election, it’s not the current presidential administration, or a generation of public schools, or the 60s sexual revolution, or Darwinism, or the Enlightenment with its enshrining of human ability. It started with the Serpent. He said we could be like gods, judging for ourselves good and evil. We wanted that, in our federal head, Adam. We chose the lie in Adam. And God Himself established hostility between the offspring of the serpent and the offspring of the woman. What our culture needs is not mandated equality, but a heavenly Father. Our culture doesn’t need to redistribute wealth, or not, but to repent from our ingratitude to the Maker. Our society is full of sin, though a lot of it is legal, and so we need a Savior.
The gospel has changed hard hearts and then leavened neighborhoods and nations. We are seeing the leaven go stale, both as unbelievers are given over to their lusts and as believers are flattened by their own little-faith. Christians are to live in righteousness from faith to faith. We’re to live in our righteousness by faith, confessing Jesus as Lord. Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth. Our worship of Him is exactly what the world needs and what they hate.
God’s wrath is revealed against knowers, and He says all men are knowers (Romans 1:19, 20, 21). He judges fools, not the ignorant, but the willfully ignorant. As they exchange the truth for the lie (1:25), God delivers them over into a life of chaos and confusion controlled by darkness. They are consumed by their own desires, gladly deceived by the sins that destroy them.
In verses 24-27 God gives them over to dishonorable and unnatural relationships. Homosexual desires and wanna-be transgenders are signs of regression, not progress or liberty or fruitfulness. It is not about equal rights, it is evil. As I said, it is not ignorant, it is willful hostility toward their Creator. They’ve been seeking religious exemption from gender and gender roles.
Verses 28-32 are an expanded vision of the debased mind and of a debased culture. Arguments could be made that we have it much better than the first century Romans, as bad as Paul’s description is. At least we have Romans, and we have 2000 years of gospel leavening to give thanks for. We also have the ugliness of knowing better. Men reject not only the Creator, but the gospel of Christ. God is giving men over to a debased mind that not only refuses to acknowledge His sovereignty, but also the Son of His love.
Their Comparative Cognitive Disobedience (verse 28)
The third refrain of abandon begins:
And just as they did not (approve) to have God in their thinking, God gave them over to an (unapproved) mind to do that which is not approved.
Dokimazo (δοκιμάζω)/“test” or “approve” is a word frequently used in the NT. It refers to testing something to find its value, as with metal, so “fit to acknowledge” (ESV) or “think it worthwhile” (NIV), “approve of having God in knowledge” (YLT). Men made themselves judges over God and decided that He wasn’t worth keeping in mind. As a judgment, God gave them over to an adokimon mind, to an unapproved, worthless mind. Different translations take it as a depraved, reprobate, debased mind. They think they are hot snot intellectuals but really they just have cold boogers for brains.
[...]