Romans 1:18-25
June 25th, 2023
Things of Earth
* We had technical difficulties on Sunday and will not be uploading the audio for this sermon, here is the script from Pastor Don Straka.
We talked last time about how God created a good world, and he, in fact, created it for us to enjoy. Yes, God has also dropped us in a world full of "yes" but gave us a few "no's" that we might be able to fully enjoy him and this world. Sometimes the most godly thing you can do is let the waves crash over you. These waves that tell us of the greatness of our God.
But, we quickly run into a problem. But we are not in the garden of Eden, we live east of Eden What happens when those waves turn into siren calls of seduction that try and win our hearts away from the creator and to the created. What do we do with the ever-present lurer of idolatry — when we start to love the things in this life? When we fall in love with our little baby boy, or apple pie, or our pet puppy or skiing and bike riding and basketball. Our problem though is that we feel, see, know the effects of the fall. We are broken, rebels, so now don’t we need to guard against worshiping created things?
That is where we are going today. We are in the middle of the first part of our summer series — summer of joy. We are leaning on some insights from Joe Rigney’s book “Strangely Bright,” but really taking time to exposit texts to help us navigate this reality in the Christian life. Today, we are going to focus on Romans 118–25 and pull in other texts to help us see what God has to say to hearts that all too easily make idols.
[Pray: first for me, now for your heart as you receive the word, finally for those around you, close in prayer]
The first words in Romans 118 show that we need to take this tension seriously:
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.” (Romans 118).
God has wrath stored up for men and women who make idols their object of worship. To fall in love with waterfalls and forget the creator of water does not
result in a slap on the wrist. The fullness of God’s wrath comes pouring down. Why? Romans continues:
“For 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.” (Romans 119–20).
God had actually designed that waterfall to be beautiful. He placed it there as an announcement. It tells some of the story of who he is. Notice how this text confirms what we saw last time. God has created a world and this visible world makes it so we can see his invisible attributes.
The problem with idolatry is not that the gift is good or that the gift is telling a story or that it’s beautiful or something to be enjoyed. In fact, most often the problem is that the person looking fails to see the whole beauty of what they are looking at. They are suppressing the truth that this waterfall has a creator.
Verse 21 clarifies:
“For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” (Romans 121).
They see the created thing and fail to give thanks to the creator. And the result:
“Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” (Romans 122–23).
They start worshiping waterfall instead of the creator of the seas, the skies, and everything around. They turn the majesty of an Elm Tree into a totem pole that they bow down to. They exchange the stunning strength of mountains created by the Rock of Ages and instead make a statue of stone in their likeness and sing praises to the cold, hard stone.
And Paul ends this section leaving us no doubt:
“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 worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.” (Romans 124–25).
There was truth to be seen in the waterfall, the elm tree, and the massive stone — but in a back-alley exchange they trade that truth for a lie and worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator — God himself.
Put very simply, idolatry then is worshiping the creature rather than the creator. It’s worshiping the created thing rather than the creator of all things. Whether we worship ourselves, an animal, convenience, a nation and its politics, or food, or friends, or family. We are exchanging a better for a lessor, a truth for a lie, the creator for the creature. And in doing so, we actually separate the gifts of God from the gift giver.
Now, we see idolatry as a problem, but what is the solution? How do we fight this tendency to worship created things? First, let’s make sure we understand the danger.
I love Rocky Road Ice Cream, being with my family, learning new things, fiddly hobbies, and a good book. Now, I don’t think that I’m going to wake up one day and decide that Rocky Road Ice Cream would make a good God.
Not at all. Here is the danger. The danger is that I would be surrounded by such good things — family, a comfortable home, a bowl of ice cream and a warm bed, a sense of purpose as I discover something new, and I would take all that and feel full. I would find that I don’t need God to make me happy because I’m actually fulfilled by all these good things in my life. There is the danger for me.
Think of the parable of the seeds in the Gospel of Luke — some seeds fell on soil and “they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life (Luke 814).
One of my favorite Piper quotes has this line in it:
“The greatest adversary of love to God is not his enemies but his gifts. And the most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for the simple pleasures of earth.”
Look at Luke 1418–20. Jesus is giving a parable where he is calling people to himself, to join him, and you know what keeps the people from God:
“But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’” (Luke 1418–20).
Here’s Piper’s summary:
The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night. For all the ill that Satan can do, when God describes what keeps us from the banquet table of his love, it is a piece of land, a yoke of oxen, and a wife (Luke 1418–20). The greatest adversary of love to God is not his enemies but his gifts. And the most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for the simple pleasures of earth. For when these replace an appetite for God himself, the idolatry is scarcely recognizable, and almost incurable (Hunger For God, 18).
And that is why I think we have to dig in here as we are in the middle of a series in which I’m saying I think the Bible actually calls us to enjoy these things. These things that I think the Bible is saying can lead you away from him. Things that lead us to idolatry which incurs the very wrath of God.
Now, we might think that solution is that we should just distance ourselves from these gifts that can steal our attention from God. Not only do I think that is impossible, you are never going to be able to escape a world full of wonderful gifts that God has created. I actually think that you are falling into another deadly trap,
you’ve tried to avoid idolatry but fallen for its sneaky, but equally deadly alter ego—ingratitude.
Listen again to Romans 121–22
“For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” (Romans 121–23).
Romans 1 and other passages don’t say run away. They call us to look — to look at the waterfall and see the beauty of God, not to run away. The problem with the goodness of coffee, the simplicity of a evening walk, the joy of the home team winning is not in the goodness of the gift, but in the thankless hearts of those receiving the gifts
The remedy is not to despise and reject the gift but to give thanks for the giver of the gift. The Bible calls us to see this as foolishness. Here is Colossians 2
“If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations— “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.” (Colossians 220–23).
This kind of approach has the appearance of wisdom, but it is full of danger.
This is why I said we need to understand the danger. We sometimes think of idolatry as something like worship a statue. But there are layers or subtle tricks that look different.
Let me put it this way. Picture your life with God as a journey. And along the way you want to avoid getting off course by making something an idol. But idolatry actually has at least two paths to try to stir you off course. We are going to come to
the sharp right turn of full on idolatry. But we can’t miss this first subtle turn that seems like a helpful detour, but is actually a deadly trap. It’s the beginning of idolatry or perhaps even idolatry by another name — it’s a left turn you could take of not receiving God’s gifts with thankfulness.
For all the danger apple pie presents, the solution is not to reject apple pie, but to receive it with thanksgiving.
We are teaching our kids to receive food (especially at other people's homes) with thanksgiving. Why? Well because if they say yuck and push it away, that insults the hosts. But now imagine in this scenario, they are serving chocolate cake, some of the best ever made, and you love chocolate cake. Imagine that you say yuck, no, get that away from me. All because you fear you are going to make it into an idol. But in your fear, you have failed to not only give thanks but you have made something unclean that was never meant to get that label. You insulted the creator, and yes avoided idolatry, but exchanged idolatry for its sneaker alter ego — ingratitude. You are refusing to receive a good gift as good. Calvin put it this way: “In despising the gifts, we insult the Giver.”
Here is Paul in his first letter to Timothy:
“Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared,” (1 Timothy 41–2).
There is some really serious deceit going on here. Paul even says it’s the teaching of demons. Now, what does this teaching consist of:
“Who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.” (1 Timothy 43–5).
They are stopping people from getting married and then enjoying the wedding cake. They have barred people from bacon or Rocky Road Ice Cream or sushi. And that denial of God’s gifts are causing people to fall away.
This is not the first time that Satan (remember how the text said “teaching of demon”) used the approach of despising God’s gift. Go back to where we were last time, remember how we said that God gave us a world full of “yes’s” but with one “no.” Look how Satan tempts Eve:
“He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”” (Genesis 31).
Here’s how Rigney puts it: “One no becomes a universal restriction. In the Serpent’s mouth, God is not a father, but a forbidder, a cosmic killjoy who creates pleasures and then denies their indulgence.” From Genesis through the OT through to Paul all the way to revelation we hear the warning to flee from asceticism.
Now, I know most of us are not taking vows of celibacy, moving to the middle of nowhere and eating only moldy bread to try and avoid idolatry. But have we let a more subtle monk-like posture creep in? Do we heap on some kind of monastic ideal that makes us not want to enjoy a quesadilla for all its goodness? Or that dumbs down the joy we feel at the first whistle kicking off the soccer game? Do we feel some kind of guilt when we enjoy the things of earth?
The remedy hopefully is on the tip of your tongue. It’s what Rigney calls the integrated approach. It allows us to fight against this unhelpful rejection of God’s gift. Here is how it works. Instead of seeing God’s gifts with ingratitude, you receive them with thanksgiving to him.
This means that when you delight in a sunset or a hot shower or a cold cut sub you thank God for that good gift. He is the one that created it. But then you turn your attention to enjoying the gift to its fullest extent. That is what God designed it to do. And then when you are done, you remind yourself that no matter how good that was it is but a foretaste of what is to come in the presence of God. We are going to talk more about this next time. But that is just a sample.
Let me just pause here though and see if I can really clarify what I mean. What I think the solution is to the danger of receiving God’s gifts with ingratitude is to let
the gifts God gives knock you off your feet. Enjoy them with thanksgiving to him, and enjoy them to the greatest extent possible.
The subtle danger of what we could call the “modern-monk-life” is that you would tone down your enjoyment of the gift of God. If your time with your family is set to shoot your joy through the roof, don’t try to build a ceiling. If you love sunflower seeds and an evening baseball game, don’t try and squelch the joy. What is it that you love to do? My advice, go out and love doing it to the greatest extent possible.
And now, rightly, you are probably feeling squirrely. Why? Because now you are probably starting to feel the tension that what happens if you start enjoying this gift so much that you lose the truth that Jesus is better. And that is where we must come to the second sharp turn — straight up idolatry.
We do live in a fallen world. So, yes, we do need to live integrated lives where we are enjoying God by enjoying his gifts. But we need some more help. Because we need to avoid making gods out of these gifts. Yes there is the danger of rejecting them, but then there is the danger of worshiping them. That brings us to the second help, if the first was to live lives of thankfulness when we receive God’s gifts, the second help is to test our reception of the gifts with the “Jesus is better test,” what is called the comparative test.
Here is idolatry in its final form according to Romans 1
“They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.” (Romans 125).
It happens when we start to worship the object that God designed to point to him. There are really two ditches here. One ditch is what we are talking about, we despise the gifts of God and forget God, the second ditch is that we fall in love with the gifts of God and forget God. This is why the Bible is full of not just passages that say, enjoy the gifts of God, but also comparative passages to help warn and test our hearts to make sure we have not turned a gift into a god.
Here is how Rigney describes this comparative approach, what I called the “Jesus is Better” Test:
We separate God from his gifts in order to determine which is more valuable to us. We put God on one side of the scales, and his gifts on the other side of the scales, and we ask ourselves, “Which one is weightier, more precious, more valuable, more delightful?” And if that’s the question, then the answer is obvious: God is. You hear the comparison in many of the passages I quoted. “There is nothing I desire besides you.” Your love is better than life. Paul clearly gives us a comparative approach in Philippians 3. See if you can hear it.
But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him... (Phil. 37–8)
Do you hear the scales in the passage? Put all of my gain on one side and Christ on the other. I count all of that gain—all of the ethnic heritage, moral virtue, every earthly blessing—all of it is trash and rubbish compared to gaining Christ and being found in him. Knowing Jesus is better than all of the other things apart from Jesus. That’s the comparative approach.
I use the word test here because I think it helps capture the idea that the Bible is wanting for us to see. We need to be able to look into our hearts and ask the hard questions, in this case, it’s the yes or no questions in a two column scantron test.
Which is better?
Jesus
Sunsets
Your wife and kids
Or God himself
All the praise of the world
The ability to praise God
We are prone to wander, even as Christians. We are prone to forget the Giver and fixate solely on the gift. And so God gives us comparative passages to test our enjoyment of the things of earth.”
Now, the danger here is that we would choose to live defending against one danger and not the other. We can’t do that. We need to recognize that ingratitude and idolatry are both dangers. We need to leverage both the integrated approach — being thankful to God for his gifts, and the comparison approach — the “Jesus is better test.”
Rigney summarizes it by saying that we are called to “live integrated lives and use the comparative approach to test our hearts along the way.”
The place where this comes together is indeed in the person and work of Jesus. We have walked through two dangers, the danger of ingratitude and the danger of idolatry. And in the person of Jesus we have one who did not fail in either of these.
In being born a man, he confirms the way we are to receive earthly things. They are not a filthy thing to be rejected, but something God designed. And as he went through life, Jesus never lost sight of his Father. He never hesitated to give God thanks and to see him in the world that surrounded him. He gives thanks before he eats, for the hospitality he received, for the goodness of his Father. He received the gifts with thanksgiving.
And then, despite the devil’s best attempts to entice him, Jesus did not succumb to idolatry. He was led into the wilderness and given the chance to receive all of God’s gifts as his. He did not fall in love with the gifts in a way that would lead him to forget his Father.
And so we sit here as those who have fallen into both of these ditches. But for those in Christ, we not only get those sins washed away, but we get his very Spirit in us that finally allows us to avoid these two ditches. Living in you is all that you need to fully enjoy the world that God has created, to give him thanks, and to not make an idol out of it.
I love Rocky Road Ice Cream. Now, my love for Rocky Road Ice Cream pales in comparison to my love for God. I'd happily give up Rocky Road for the rest of my life if it meant I got God instead. That's the comparison approach. But we don’t just need the “Jesus is Better” Test. We don’t need to be living as constant test takers. God actually wants us to enjoy the gifts as a way to enjoy him. So God calls us to live integrative lives while using the comparative test to help guard against idolatry.
Back to Rocky Road, God does not call us to give up Rocky Road. What does he call us to do? He calls us to love him more and then love him in this good gift. Here are two options I read this week from Rigney:
Jesus is better than Rocky Road Ice Cream, so maybe I shouldn’t enjoy the chocolate flavor and nuts and cool goodness as much as I do. So does that mean that I should suppress my joy for Rocky Road in order that it might not exceed my joy in God. Maybe pour vinegar all over my ice cream so that it doesn't taste as good so that I can remember that God is better.
The second says, Rocky Road is unbelievably good. As I eat it, I want to do so in such a way that I see and taste that the Lord is good. That I end saying that was so delicious, but a foretaste of the heavenly feast.
Do you see the difference? The first one is missing the integrated life and has exchanged it for ingratitude. We are seeking to make Jesus better by making creation worse — [the subtle monk-lifestyle of the 21st century]. In the second we see that creation is grand only to remind ourselves that we have yet to taste true greatness. In the first we try to make the ice cream dim so that Jesus is brighter. In the second, we let the ice cream be sweet so we can remember that Jesus is so much sweeter. In the first we make creation stoop so that Jesus stands taller. In the second, we let creation reach as high as the heaven’s only to remember from the bottom of our heart that:
““What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”—” (1 Corinthians 29).
Now, we turn our attention to the table as a needed reminder of the day when we will not need to work so hard against our sinful desires. We will be in a new heavens
and new earth where we will be able to perfectly enjoy God and his gifts. But until then we come to this table needy, and needing God to help us now to avoid those traps.