In this 1983 talk given at a South Bend community meeting, Paul read Romans 1, explaining all the sins and wrongdoing that result from denying God’s authority. Sexuality, riches and power are areas of particular concern where people can easily fall into idolatry. Paul discussed antidotes to these three forms of idolatry.
Transcript
This document is a direct transcript of an audio recording, and may contain transcription errors and other minor edits for the sake of clarity.
[Tape begins after Paul has already begun speaking.]
PAUL: . . . a little bit with you about the first chapter of the letter to the Romans. Normally, I would be continuing our teaching series that we have begun to repeat. But because of the length of the play, which was so enjoyable, I’m not going to continue that teaching today, but move on to something else, something that in particular struck me as being relevant because of the various prophecies that we received in the beginning of the meeting.
In the first chapter to the Romans, in verse 18, it is written:
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities—that is, his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal men and birds and animals and reptiles.
Therefore, God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural. In the same way, the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
And it goes on to talk about all kinds of wickedness, evil, greed, depravity:
They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant, and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things, but also approve of those who practice them.
I found myself in several of those categories. And I think when I heard the prophecies today, especially, I could identify with wickedness in my heart that I needed to repent of.
But as I was praying about the meeting, it struck me that there were—one thing—some things in particular that I should share with you, not so much about my own sins now, but about how it is that, in order for us truly to receive the incarnate Word of God into our hearts, we have to take something else out of the manger. We have to remove some things that are in our way, and in the way of the Lord’s coming into our hearts.
And when I was trying to figure out what are the things that need to be removed from my heart, I came across the idea of idolatry. And that struck me as being somewhat strange and unusual for me to be thinking about, because I remember I used to spend weeks at a time, at one time in my life, trying to figure out exactly what idolatry could possibly mean. It seemed to me so strange that there would be people around who would make images of birds and worship them, or the sort of thing that was described in here—tokens or wooden nickels or something like that, that they would actually fall down and worship. And I couldn’t understand how that could be—how it could be that there could ever be a culture in which that could happen. And for that matter, what difference would it—could it possibly make to God that people would be so foolish as to do something like that?
But today I think I began to understand something about idolatry, and I wanted to share that with you. And the secret, I think, to understanding it is here, in what I read: “For since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen.”
That is to say, God says that he is one, and there is no other beside him. He will not permit any other gods to be held up parallel to him. There are no other gods. The Lord is one. And he has made that clear to all people, throughout all times, through the work of his hands in nature, if no other place, as it says in this passage that I read. So that nobody, you see, not a single person here, however dull or hardhearted one might be, can say that they do not know, that it never occurred to them, that God is one. God has revealed that to all men.
Now, what is it that is “one” about God? What is it about God that is one? There is only one source of power. There is only one source of eternal power and divine nature, and that is God. It is not you, nor me. It is none of us, nor anything created. Nothing that has parts or that can decay is God. If they decay, they can’t have power that can free us.
If we can make an image of God and worship it, okay?—if we make the image of God, like a bird that was described here, and say that that is God and fall down and worship it, what we are doing is using our limited power to make something else whose entire existence, really, as formed, depends on our having made it. We are the source of the power in that graven image. And when we look at it and we expect it to do something good for us, we are basically worshiping ourselves. Because we know, down deep in our heart, that we are the only ones that can be counted on. That “number one” is the only one—that is, me. I have to take care of myself. I am number one. I make this image, and this image has power because I made it, and I fall down and worship that.
But the Lord says, “No, it’s not like that.” There ain’t no other power in heaven and on earth, except the power that is in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the only source of power, wrapped up in that Trinity and divinity, the oneness of God. There is only one source of power in the universe. All things begin in him, and all things end in him.
And for us to hold up anything else, however noble it may seem to us, of our own imaginations or making—whether it is of our own credentials as scholars, our own beauty as lovely people, our own strength as growing young men, our own sexual attractiveness, our own wealth and riches and powers that come from that, our own ability to extort and to cause people to be afraid of us because of our financial abilities, or simply because of the power that we think we have in our hands—all these things are things of our own creation, things over which we have power, which in themselves have the seeds of decay and deterioration.
They are not God! God said, “I am one, and everything else that is not me is not God.” That is extremely important. There is only God in God. There is only one God. And then when we put other things in his place and give him [sic] first priority—give these other things first priority, whether it’s a girlfriend, a boyfriend, whether it’s our business, whatever it may be, we are in fact “idolitizing”. We are idol worshiping. We are falling down before the source of wickedness and decay that will last forever.
When we look around, then, at this time, Christmastime—as we approach it, I think that it would be very healthy for us especially to focus on the three major areas, which I’ve mentioned already, along with a longer list. Three in particular that we human beings are especially able and willing to fall into idolatry about.
The first is sexuality: that if we are not social- —sexually adapted, well-adapted and received and accepted and praised and plaudited people of sex—if we don’t have our sexuality straight, if we don’t have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, if we don’t—aren’t the best makers of love, if we aren’t the most proud and arrogant in sexuality—then there’s something wrong with us, we feel. We feel unsatisfied, and we think that there’s something seriously wrong with us.
Sexuality is not the most important thing in the world.
And riches is the second category. We have, in America, so many wonderful things. We have so many of them, in fact, that it’s very easy for us to forget what the source of all these good things is.
The other night Jeanne and I went out for dinner. And we have some wonderful cars which are kept in very good condition by wonderful mechanics. So, we pulled up to this place, and I parked in the wrong place. And when I got out, I realized that I’d made a mistake. And so I went back to try to start the car again, after having dropped Jeanne off at the entrance to the restaurant. And I turned the switch on—the ignition key—and nothing happened at all, as characteristic of this particular car, as a matter of fact. But it is really a nice car! It’s just that it doesn’t work often. [Laughter.] It’s very pretty. However, it wasn’t so pretty in this particular location, because there were several cars that were gonna run into it as they left, if I didn’t move it.
So, I had to walk over and get Jeanne, and then I brought her back through the snow, and I said, “Now, you steer it.” It’s—of course, [it] has wonderful power steering, which doesn’t work at all when the ignition isn’t on. It’s a very wonderful spacious car, which is extremely heavy. [Laughter.] And it was on a flat section where there was a lot of ice. And what I had to do was push this wonderful car down the way. And all of a sudden I realized as I was pushing what a wonderful blessing it was for me to realize that all these riches that I have—this wonderful car—really are so fragile. In fact, they cause me more trouble than they do good. Especially on that occasion.
We can very easily begin to count on our riches as the things which are going to give us security and provide for us in our old age, as one of the prophecies mentioned. In fact, it isn’t our riches, and it isn’t in the strength of the leg of a man or in a horse, that the Lord takes pleasure. But rather, it’s in those who see that the Lord God is one and worship him. And that means: serve him, and him only. Love him, and love all men for the sake of him.
And the third area I wanna just mention—I’ll repeat them in a minute. I ask you to think these areas over especially. The first was sexuality, the second was riches, and the third is power.
And look at the way each one of us idolizes power in our own lives. It may be in the power that children have over their parents when they pout, or when they throw a tantrum, or they threaten—they threaten to do something very bad. It may be the kind of power that a parent exercises harshly over a child: “You do that again, and I’ll knock your head off.” It may be in the kind of power that we exert on each other—those of us who are married—as we try to force our own agendas on those whom we’re married to. It can be any kind of power.
These three things I’ve mentioned have their antidotes. In sexuality, we must be chaste. Whether we’re married or single, we have a right way to behave in matters sexual. With riches, we should not put our heart on them. Rather, blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And with regard to power, our Lord laid down all of his power as he became the incarnate Word of God and humbled himself, as we also must humble ourselves to obey one another and submit to one another and be subject to all legitimate authority.
So as we approach this Christmastime, let’s throw out those idols in our lives of sexuality, riches—I mean false sexuality—love of riches, love of money, and the love of the exercise of power, and replace them, rather, with chaste behavior, with concern for the poor, and a real desire to be free from the entanglements of this world, and a rejection of all kinds of unlawful authority exercised on our part against men or women, whoever they may be.
Amen.
MAN’S VOICE: Praise God.
[Applause.]
[Recording ends here.]
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