The Exchange

The Exchange

A sermon delivered by Rev. Peter T. Atkinson

June 10, 2018

at Bethany Presbyterian Church, Zuni, Virginia

Romans 1: 18-25

Jeremiah 2: 11-15

Let us pray,

Help us to see despite our eyes

Help us to think outside of our minds

Help us to be more than our lives

For your eyes show the way

Your mind knows the truth

Your being is the life.

Amen.

Continuing in Paul’s Letter to the Romans

Why this text is challenging – not to simply be resounding the same, the otherness of sin and sinners, but to instead to find something new, different, and challenging for us as sinners in need of God ourselves.

¹⁸ The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, ¹⁹ since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. ²⁰ For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

²¹ 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. ²² Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools ²³ and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

²⁴ Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.²⁵ They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised.Amen.

Now I want to look ahead to where this text goes next. . .

²⁶ Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. ²⁷ In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

²⁸ Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. ²⁹ They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, ³⁰ slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; ³¹ they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. ³² 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.

Its challenging and I said it was challenging for us because we hear all the words that some may expect from a pulpit. . . envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice, gossips, slanderers, God haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil, disobey parents, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.

The Wages of Sin is Death – Sign on neighbor in Gordonsville

Death with no life – just started Brian Blount’s book on Life and the Resurrection, aptly named invasion of the dead. . .

Something missing in our reading:

I want to do a few things this morning: first I want to go deeper into our text to retrieve something we may have missed, attracted to sin, wickedness, etc. . . as our minds are apt. . .

Then I want to think about how this text may have different intentions for its different audiences. . . including ours.

So let’s look at the three movements of our text:

1^st movement is 18-20

¹⁸ The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, ¹⁹ since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. ²⁰ For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

Revealed vs. suppress

Godlessness linked to wickedness – suppression of truth linked to wickedness (wickedness begats wickedness

Plain to them, because God has made it plain to them

Invisible qualities – Clearly seen – God Consciousness + ignoring of God

FAITH stanza 7 – Without excuse – not ignorance, but ignoring

²¹ 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. ²² Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools ²³ and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

Knew God – knew power, they did not give thanks and glorify it

Futile thinking, foolish hearts, darkened

Claiming to be wise, they became fools

Exchange the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal

Idolatry – finding other replacements for God –

look at FAITH 10

Now in the middle here lets look at the Old Testament Lesson Jeremiah 2: 11- 16

¹¹ Has a nation ever changed its gods?
    (Yet they are not gods at all.)
But my people have exchanged their glorious God
    for worthless idols.
¹² Be appalled at this, you heavens,
    and shudder with great horror,”
declares the Lord.
¹³ “My people have committed two sins:
They have forsaken me,
    the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns,
    broken cisterns that cannot hold water.
¹⁴ Is Israel a servant, a slave by birth?
    Why then has he become plunder?
¹⁵ Lions have roared;
    they have growled at him.
They have laid waste his land;
    his towns are burned and deserted.

²⁴ Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.²⁵ They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised.Amen.

God gave them over – look at our call to worship, what happens with the wicked?

There is where the degrading comes – that exchange

They exchange the truth for a lie – serving created things, worshipping created things not Creator!

And it is this that is the issue, the exchange. . . this is the disease, the list of the deadly sins

Fornication, sexual unnaturalism, envy strife, disobedient children. . . we know the list, are merely the symptoms of the great disease. . .

Look at 8 and 11 in my FAITH

Now lets think about how the different audiences would hear this:

The Jewish, new Christian, listening audience

They here Jeremiah, they here all the prophets, the exchange of God’s for idols, absolutely

They need to hear that Christ somehow is a culmination of the prophetic message. . . and they do

But think about the Gentile audience

What is this new cult?

Is it anything like other cults, popping up for years. . .

Play by Euripedes, The Bachaei – Conservative Greek thinking

Dionysis Cult, Orpheus Cults, Pythagorean Cults, no not a glorified math club

Cults that have unlocked the secret of eternal life. . . membership, secret knowledge, secret rituals

Is this what Christianity is? We don’t want that

Apologists – are you really cannibals? Eating the body and the blood

Is this just another sex cult?

Paul – emphatically no, this is about one true holy God, something completely opposite of what you may think!

Now what about to us:

What do we make of this disease symptom language?

How often do we, does the church at large, work to treat symptoms, and focus on the disease, second or not at all?

How have we taken up idols? What are our idols?

Live by the sword? But what if it is a hammer and not a sword? Everything looks like a nail?

How do we use our idols to solve problems of symptoms and never get to the disease?

Neighbor’s sign?

Let us focus on the disease, reminding folks about what is already there, what is all around them, what is undeniable and true. . . God is. . . we have need. . .