ROMANS 1: 18-25

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; 21 for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools; 23 and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.

24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, 25 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.

Pagan Rome

The Roman world saw paganism at the peak of its power. The Greeks took paganism to its peak sophistication, but the Romans turned the religion of Olympus into a world power. 

Paul addresses the church in Rome as a little light surrounded  and threatened by the overwhelming crush of pagan darkness. Paganism was the backdrop of Roman Christianity. 

At the heart of pagan morality is the idea of taboo. Something is forbidden for people because it is the property of the gods. You do this or don’t do that because you have to respect the boundaries of the divine. 

Taboos are still with us, but we find that they are hard to pin down. Taboos seem to be changing on us.

Think of a barge—a barge with cargo moving down the river. This is a picture of human culture moving through time. “Stem to stern,” “fore and aft”—the barge is like our country sailing through time. But as a barge, it is a cargo ship. The boxes and crates are our cultural values. And we experience cultural changes as seeing that cargo tipping off the back of the barge into the sea. 

It appears that so much of what used to be taboo is simply being dropped off the back.  We can see the world as in decline or going to Hell in a handbasket as we see all these things—formally thought of as sins—becoming normalized and part of the new cultural code.  

So-called Progressives celebrate these changes while others mourn them and feel such changes are dangerous to society. 

If we tend to be among those who watch the back of the barge and observe all that cargo being jettisoned, we can indeed feel that our values are being trashed. Standing at the back end of the barge, we see so many good things being discarded that we feel the barge is going somewhere bad and being wrongly steered. Any of you know that feeling? I do. 

The problem with standing astern is that we don’t always see where we’re going but only where we’ve been and are not anymore. 

But the barge has a front end as well (fore and aft, as in before and after—our very words for time come from sailing). If we stand fore, we see something else; namely, that new cargo is being loaded on the front of the barge all the time. 

New taboos are being constantly added while others drop off. Were you to stand only fore, at the stem, you would see new values busily being loaded as we move through time.

In our text from Romans today, Paul uses a keyword several times. “Exchanging”—even meta-exchanging—which means something like deals or trades—big deals and big trades.

Trades Good & Bad

Here’s an example. When Gone with the Wind hit American theaters, Clark Gable’s famous line, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” caused sensitive women to faint from shock. No kidding—newspapers around the country reported people actually fainting from shock. Today, it’s tame—so tame, that I, a somewhat traditional Presbyterian minister, just dropped the word damn in a sermon and don’t think I raised a single eyebrow!  

Those standing toward the back of the barge think, “Oh, the language in today’s movies! The words young people use so freely! We’re certainly in moral decline!”   

But walk to the front of the barge and you’ll notice that there are once-acceptable words that are now taboo. Words for different races or ethnicities used to be thrown around easily. Though these words were never in good taste, they were common, used on stage, screen, tv, and newspapers. 

The same is true for derogatory words about women, homosexuals, and now every variation of sexuality or gender identity. 

And here’s the thing: morality isn’t disappearing, it is just changing. 

Premarital sex and divorce used to be scandalous; now they are the American norms. Smoking cigarettes used to be normal—everywhere—now it has become a vile evil. What used to be considered vile, evil, and perverse? Well, a long list of “orientations” now protected by California Law. 

Morality never disappears, but it changes. We exchange one moral code for another, one old norm for a new norm, and new shame replaces old shame. 

I, for one, tend to see an incredibly rigid moralism among a certain section of the Progressives. A hundred years ago, it was the church ladies—you know, the kind with the long dresses and the high, Calvinist collars—noses in the air looking down upon smoking, drinking, gambling, and going to the movies. Rigid, inflexible, and calling the public to the high bar of righteousness. Today, it is the same, only the church ladies have been replaced by secular folks—rigid, inflexible, waiting to condemn your opinions, judge your freedoms, and correct your use of pronouns and/or gender-exclusive language. 

We still have moralists, just different moralists. 

The big question is not do we still have morals and ethics in America—for I would say that America remains as moral as ever—but rather are we trading well? Are these exchanges of one moral code for another good exchanges? Are they good trades or bad trades?  

Only One Sin

Paul tells the Romans that humankind had made bad trades, and that all the sins which plague humankind—all the excesses and unfortunate exchanges—stem from the same thing: failing to acknowledge that God is God. 

That’s it—at the end of things, there is only one sin—one sin from which all other sins issue forth. That one sin can be called idolatry. Idolatry is Israel’s kryptonite throughout the Old Testament—their one unshakable bugaboo. But it is still the one sin from which all other sins develop. 

Paul says that humankind exchanged the truth of God for a lie. They made a bad trade that ruined everything else, even pulling down the natural world into sin. 

This is the one trade that matters—the one bad trade from which all bad trades derive. 

Our Bad Trades

Are you aware of making any bad trades yourself? We’ve all made some bad trades individually, I’m sure. We’ve been too demanding or too nice. We’ve caved in and compromised or else pushed our personal agenda unthinking of the needs of others. You quit disciplining your grandchild because you were just so tired of the hassle, or you criticize others for how badly they raise their kids or grandkids. 

Bad trades are called rationalization. Rationalization is a huge player in the heart of sin. Rationalization says, “Well, I can take this little liberty because I’m more than making up for it over here.” Rationalization says, “It’s not so bad; everyone else does the same.” 

 We all have done this, to be sure, but that doesn’t justify it. Our every attempt to rationalize bad behaviors and attitudes is just a deeper part of our sinfulness. 

Can We Avoid Bad Trades?

Can we avoid the bad trades? I think so. And I don’t think the answer is to stop cargo from being unloaded or loaded. I think it begins with knowing what stands at the center of all true morality. To be most direct, it is the acknowledgment that God is God. 

God is good and worthy of our worship. God alone is worthy to be glorified. All morality issues from our living relationship with God. We have that relationship through Christ alone. We come to know what is good by acknowledging that God is the highest good and the source of all good. 

When God is not acknowledged, it is like an off-center wheel. Put the hub of a wheel slightly out of center, and the wobbling will soon throw the center out to the rim and into complete chaos. 

When we acknowledge God as God and give Him our worship, that wheel spins like a top, stable and efficient. 

Idolatry is Still a Threat

Idolatry is still a threat to society. 

Whenever God is not acknowledged, something else is put at the center—we can’t not have a center. If God is not central, other things vie for that position. Selfhood, power, and pleasure are major contenders for American Idol of the Year. 

When God is not the center, ideology takes the place of faith, and the adherents of any ideology rise up and try to claim all power for their particular, pet cause. 

Most popular cultural movements do not have God and His glory at the center, so you can find idolatry everywhere. Politics, education, business—all are driven by ideologies that generally keep God out of the picture. 

So what keeps the whole shootin’ match from devolving into utter chaos? Only the grace of God. 

Even the Church is not immune. The Church battles idolatry in every generation—every decade and even every year. We proclaim that God is God and that He is to be kept at the center, but we too have a way of letting other things slip into that central position. 

Church history shows us how the love of power corrupted the institutional church (The “Roman” Church, by the way). We see selfishness in theological debates and denominational narcissism ruining our witness. 

Denominational narcissism is self-love of our own denomination. There can be no denominational pride. There is no one righteous denomination; all are fallen, so we need to embrace humility and keep a sense of humor about ourselves. 

Lighting a Candle

Even so, it is always better to light a candle than to curse the darkness (those weeks we spent remembering Mister Rogers really rubbed-off on me!). What is the candle? What is it we can light that is better than simply cursing the darkness? What is it that kept the little flame that was the church at Rome alight amidst the darkness of Roman paganism? 

The message is unchanged. Our evangelism is what it has always been; namely, a call to worship: 

Worship the Lord God. He alone is worthy of all worship. 

Our evangelism is like that old gospel song, “People Get Ready.” The lyrics say: 

People get ready

There's a train a comin'

You don't need no baggage

You just get on board

All you need is faith

To hear the diesels hummin'

You don't need no ticket

You just thank the Lord.

That’s it—that’s the invitation to faith—You don’t need no ticket, you just praise the Lord..  †