Given Over

Have you ever been on an airline when the pilot comes over the system and say please put on your seatbelts because we are going to have severe turbulence?  Going through the letter of Romans is like flying in a plane with severe turbulence- its rough.  Here is why God reveals to us the truth about our sin: For God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth, since what can be known about God is evident among them, because God has shown it to them.  For His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what He has made. As a result, people are without excuse.

For though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or show gratitude. Instead, their thinking became nonsense, and their senseless minds were darkened.  Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds, four-footed animals, and reptiles.  Therefore God delivered them over in the cravings of their hearts to sexual impurity, so that their bodies were degraded among themselves. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served something created instead of the Creator, who is praised forever. • Amen .  This is why God delivered them over to degrading passions. For even their females exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.  The males in the same way also left natural relations with females and were inflamed in their lust for one another. Males committed shameless acts with males and received in their own persons the appropriate penalty of their error.  And because they did not think it worthwhile to acknowledge God, God delivered them over to a worthless mind to do what is morally wrong.  They are filled with all unrighteousness, evil, greed, and wickedness. They are full of envy, murder, quarrels, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, arrogant, proud, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, and unmerciful.  Although they know full well God’s just sentence —that those who practice such things deserve to die—they not only do them, but even applaud others who practice them. (Romans 1:18-32)

Humanity turned away from God, so he gave them over to their sinful cravings because they exchanged the truth about him for a lie.  Idolatry is a heart issue. We as humans tend to dismiss the idols of our day; we make excuses for having them.  The only problem is we don’t call them idols.  Three times we read that God gave them over to their sinful desires, has God given you over to your sinful desires?  If you don't know if God has given you over to your sinful desires ask the Lord to search your heart and show you.  He wants you to be free from the sin that is holding you back.  If you are a Christian and think that you can live in willful known sin and get away with it because you prayed a prayer and were baptized read this passage again.  God will discipline the Christian because you are his property and not your own.  If you are not a Christian, God still created you, paid for your sin debt in full, and if you continue to say no to him then at some point he will turn you over to your sin.  This is the reason I invite you to examine your life today and seek the Lord Jesus with all of your heart, to turn from all known sin in your life and submit to him as the Lord of your life.