What’s Gone Wrong With the World

Good morning, everyone. If we haven’t met, I’m Matt VanCleave, one of the pastors here at Blue Oaks.

And if you’re new to Blue Oaks or new to church in general, I’m especially glad you’re here today, because we’re going to talk about a question I think pretty much everyone has an answer to.

What’s gone wrong with the world?

That’s the title of the message.

And depending on who you ask, you’ll get very different answers:

Some people would say politics.
Some would say greed.
Some would say social media.
Some would say religion.
Some would say secularism.
Some would say technology.
Some would say bad parenting.
Some would say the other political party.

Most of us are pretty good at identifying what’s wrong with the world. Usually because what’s wrong with the world is something someone else is doing.

Last week Wendy brought us into the opening of Romans. Paul introduced what he calls the gospel — the good news.

And he says in Romans 1:16:

I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes. (Romans 1:16)

Then in verse 17:

For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed… (Romans 1:17)

That’s where we left off.

And then Paul says something that feels almost like hitting a wall.

Verse 18:

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people… (Romans 1:18)

Paul escalated that pretty quickly.

One sentence ago: good news. Now: wrath.

And if you hear the word wrath and picture God losing his temper or exploding in anger, that’s understandable.

But that’s not really what Paul goes on to describe.

Look what he says.

Verse 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, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. (Romans 1:18-19)

And then verse 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… (Romans 1:20)

Which is kind of perfect coming off Wendy’s message last week.

She was writing that sermon on an Alaskan cruise, surrounded by mountains and ocean and whales, saying, “I know I’m not technically preaching Romans 1:20, but I’m surrounded by it.”

And Paul says: exactly.

Creation tells us something. The world is not mute. There’s something about beauty and order and power and life itself that points beyond itself.

But then Paul says the problem is not that creation failed to reveal God. The problem is what we did with what was revealed.

Verse 21:

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him… (Romans 1:21)

And then verse 23:

They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. (Romans 1:23)

That word “exchanged” is important… because Paul says the fundamental human problem is an exchange.

We take the Creator… and replace him with something he created.

And once you see that, Romans 1 becomes much more personal.

Because most of us are not tempted to carve a little statue of a reptile and bow down to it. At least I hope not.

But we are very good at taking created things and asking them to do for us what only God can do.

Achievement
Money
Success
Approval
Marriage
Children
Sex
Control
Comfort
Politics
Our reputation
Even religion

Most of those things are not bad things. That’s what makes this so deceptive.

Sin isn’t only loving bad things. Sometimes it’s loving good things in the wrong order.

It’s asking something created…

to tell me who I am…
to make me feel secure…
to prove that I matter…
to tell me I’m enough…
to save me.

And every time we do that, we’re making an exchange.

Creator for creation. The gift for the Giver.

And one way to discover what that might be for you is to ask:

What am I most afraid of losing?
What do I need to happen in order to feel like I’m okay?
What, if it were taken away, would make me feel like I don’t know who I am anymore?

Because whatever comes to mind may be a very good thing. But it may also be something you’re asking to carry the weight of God.

For me, achievement can do that. It’s very easy for accomplishing something to stop being something I enjoy and start becoming evidence that I’m okay.

And Paul says once that exchange happens, everything else starts to get disordered.

Verse 22 says:

Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools… (Romans 1:22)

Their thinking becomes distorted.
Their hearts become darkened.
Their worship gets disordered.

And eventually their lives do too.

And I don’t want us to miss one phrase in verse 21.

Paul says they neither glorified God “nor gave thanks to him.”

That almost sounds too small to belong in a passage this serious. But I think Paul is showing us something —

Gratitude keeps the world in its proper place.

When I give thanks, I’m acknowledging: I didn’t create myself. I didn’t give myself life. Everything I have is gift. My abilities are gift. My relationships are gift. Creation is gift.

And gratitude allows me to enjoy the gift without confusing it with the Giver.

But when God disappears from the center, created things have to carry a weight they were never designed to carry.

And that’s where Paul says the problem begins.

The world doesn’t first go wrong because people break a bunch of rules. The world goes wrong because our worship goes wrong.

And then Paul says something three times that helps us understand what he means by the wrath of God.

Verse 24: “Therefore God gave them over…”

Verse 26: “Because of this, God gave them over…”

And again in verse 28: “God gave them over…”

Three times.

And notice what Paul doesn’t say. He doesn’t describe God throwing a temper tantrum. He describes God’s judgment as giving human beings over to the trajectory of the life they’ve chosen.

We say:

“I want my life on my terms.”
“I want to decide what is good for me.”
“I want creation without the Creator.”

And eventually God says: “I’ll let you choose that.”

Which means one of the most frightening forms of judgment may simply be God allowing us to have what we keep insisting we want.

Because freedom from God doesn’t turn out to be freedom. It just means something else takes God’s place.

And look at what gets affected.

In verse 24, Paul talks about our “desires”.

In verse 26, he talks about our “passions”.

And in verse 28, he talks about our “minds”.

What we want… what we feel… and how we think.

The disorder moves through the whole person.

And this is where Paul talks about sexuality.

Verse 26:

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. (Romans 1:26-27

Now, I don’t think we should skip this because it’s uncomfortable… and it is uncomfortable.

Paul includes same-sex sexual behavior here as one expression of the disorder he sees in humanity.

We don’t need to pretend he doesn’t say that.

But we also shouldn’t pretend that’s all he says.

Because if we hear those two verses and think: “Exactly. Those people. That’s what’s gone wrong with the world.”

Keep reading.

Verse 29:

They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity.

And then Paul starts listing things.

They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice.

They are gossips,

That one probably just eliminated most churches.

slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents;

Some of you just looked at your teenager.

Don’t do that. Paul is about to come for you too.

they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. (Romans 1:29-31)

Do you see what Paul is doing? He won’t allow us to keep the problem safely located in someone else.

Because disordered worship eventually produces disordered relationships.

When something other than God becomes ultimate, it begins reshaping what we love… and what we want… and how we think… and eventually how we treat one another.

And this is where Romans 1 can become dangerous in the hands of religious people.

Because it’s very easy to read a list like this and use it as a microscope. We hold it over someone else’s life and say: “There. That’s the problem.”

And I can imagine some of Paul’s original listeners doing exactly that.

Remember where he’s writing — Rome. A culture filled with idolatry… and temples… and sexual practices that would have been deeply troubling to a Jewish follower of Jesus… and violence… and greed… and status… and exploitation.

And I can imagine someone listening to this letter being read in one of the Roman house churches and nodding along — “Yes, Paul. Exactly. You should see these people. This city is a mess.”

And then Paul writes the next sentence.

Romans 2:1:

You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else… (Romans 2:1)

Oh… wait…

Has Paul been setting a trap here?

Because just when you thought he was giving you a list of everything wrong with “them”… he turns around and starts talking about “you”.

This is where Paul’s argument gets uncomfortable.

Because apparently one of the symptoms of what’s gone wrong with the world… is our extraordinary ability to see what’s wrong with everyone else.

I don’t know about you, but I’m really good at this. I can explain almost anything I do.

If I’m late for a meeting, traffic was terrible. If you’re late for a meeting, you’re irresponsible.
If I haven’t responded to your text, you have no idea how busy my week has been. If you haven’t responded to mine… apparently I’m not that important to you.
If I interrupt you, it’s because I’m excited about the conversation. If you interrupt me, you really need to learn how to listen.
If I spend a lot of money on something, it’s because I did the research and I appreciate quality. If you do it, you might have a materialism problem.
If I refuse to change my mind, I have convictions. If you refuse to change your mind, you’re stubborn.

Now, you may be wondering how I came up with that list so easily. It’s because my kids do all those things.

I’m kidding. It’s because I’m guilty of all of those things.

Although blaming my kids kind of proves Paul’s point.

It’s remarkable how often the evidence seems to confirm that I’m a basically reasonable person surrounded by people with character defects.

Psychologists actually have a name for part of this. It’s called the “fundamental attribution error.”

We tend to explain our own behavior by our circumstances while explaining other people’s behavior by their character.

I know what was happening inside me.
I know how tired I was.
I know what they said first.
I know what kind of day I was having.
I know what I intended.

But I don’t know all of that about you.

So I give myself an explanation… and I give you a verdict.

And Paul says: That’s a problem.

Romans 2:1:

You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. (Romans 2:1)

Now, Paul isn’t saying we should never make moral judgments. He just spent an entire chapter making moral judgments.

He’s saying something much more uncomfortable: You don’t get to use someone else’s sin to avoid looking at your own.

And I think this is the genius of the way Paul has constructed this argument.

Romans 1 gets us looking out the window. Romans 2 hands us a mirror.

And most of us prefer the window.

Because comparing myself to someone else can make me feel pretty good. I can always find…

Someone greedier than I am.
Someone more judgmental.
Someone whose marriage is more dysfunctional.
Someone who drinks more.
Someone who lies more.
Someone who is angrier.
Someone whose kids are more out of control.
Someone whose theology is worse than mine.

And as long as I’m comparing myself horizontally, I can usually construct a version of the story in which I’m doing okay.

But Paul takes away the comparison.

Verse 2:

Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. (Romans 2:2)

That phrase matters.

“Based on truth.”

God doesn’t have the fundamental attribution problem. God doesn’t see the carefully edited version of ourselves that we present to everyone else.

He knows the whole story.

Our actions.
Our motives.
Our rationalizations.
The things no one else knows.

And then Paul asks:

So when you, a mere human being, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? (Romans 2:3)

And then verse 4:

Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance? (Romans 2:4)

I love that.

Because what does God do with people who are wrong?

Paul says he’s kind… patient… and forbearing.

And what do we sometimes do with people who are wrong?

We get on social media.

God’s kindness is intended to lead us to repentance.

Which means the appropriate response to discovering sin is not: “Thank God I’m not like them.”

It’s: “God, show me what’s happening in me.”

And then Paul starts dismantling another way religious people reassure themselves.

Verse 6:

God will repay each person according to what they have done. (Romans 2:6)

And down in verse 11:

For God does not show favoritism. (Romans 2:11)

That would have been unsettling for some of Paul’s Jewish listeners.

Because remember, there are Jewish and Gentile followers of Jesus together in these churches.

The Jewish people have the law. They have Scripture. They have this extraordinary covenant history with God. Those are real privileges.

Paul isn’t denying any of that.

But he’s saying: “Knowing what God says is not the same thing as doing what God says.”

Verse 13:

For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. (Romans 2:13)

In other words:

Having a Bible doesn’t make you righteous.
Knowing theology doesn’t make you righteous.
Growing up in church doesn’t make you righteous.
Listening to sermons doesn’t make you righteous.
And, unfortunately for me, preaching them doesn’t make you righteous either.

Religious knowledge can do something very strange to us. It can make us increasingly aware of what everyone else should be doing… without making us increasingly aware of what’s happening in us.

And that’s exactly the kind of religion Paul is dismantling.

Because if the deepest problem with the world is simply that “those people out there don’t know what we know,” then the solution is education.

Give people better information. Teach them better morality. Get them to believe the right things.

The problem isn’t that we don’t know enough. We often know exactly what’s right — and still don’t do it.

Which means the problem isn’t merely a lack of information.

Something has gone wrong in here.

And if you’re a religious person listening to Paul at this point, you might still have one card left to play.

“Okay, Paul. But we’re not like everyone else. We have the Scriptures. We know God’s story. We’re God’s covenant people.”

And Paul says, “I’m glad you brought that up.”

Beginning in verse 17, he turns directly to his Jewish listeners.

Now you, if you call yourself a Jew; if you rely on the law and boast in God; if you know his will and approve of what is superior because you are instructed by the law… (Romans 2:17)

And Paul keeps going.

You know God’s will.
You have the Scriptures.
You’ve been taught what is true.
You can instruct other people.

Those are good things. Paul isn’t criticizing them for knowing Scripture.

The problem is what happens when knowing the truth about God becomes a substitute for actually being transformed by God.

And Christians can get really good at this.

We can know exactly what a healthy marriage looks like and still be difficult to live with.
We can listen to a podcast about being emotionally healthy while driving aggressively because someone won’t get out of the left lane.
We can underline a passage about patience in our Bible and then get irritated because the person in front of us at Costco has apparently never used a self-checkout machine before.
We can know the fruit of the Spirit by memory: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness… and think, “I really wish some of the people in my life would start doing this.”

That’s the strange thing about spiritual knowledge. I can become increasingly informed about Jesus without becoming increasingly like Jesus.

And that’s what Paul is confronting.

So Paul asks in verse 21:

You, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? (Romans 2:21)

As someone whose job involves standing up here every week and telling other people what the Bible says, this is not my favorite verse.

Then he gets painfully specific:

You who preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? (Romans 2:21-22)

Paul is exposing another way we hide.

In Romans 1, we hide behind other people’s sins. Here, we hide behind our religious identity.

And those things can all be good. But none of them answers the question Paul is asking: What is actually happening in you?

Because you can know Scripture and still be cruel.
You can believe all the right things and still be arrogant.
You can worship every Sunday and still be consumed by envy.
You can serve other people and still desperately need their approval.
You can teach grace and still have a really difficult time giving it to someone who hurt you.
You can know a lot about God… and still resist God.

And Paul pushes the point even further. Because knowing the right things isn’t the only place we can hide. We can also hide behind belonging to the right group.

And for Paul’s Jewish listeners, there was a physical sign of that belonging: circumcision.

It was the sign that you belonged to God’s covenant people.

So Paul says in verse 28…

A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. (Romans 2:28)

And then verse 29:

No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit… (Romans 2:29)

There it is again — “the heart.”

Paul keeps pushing beneath the surface. The problem is deeper than behavior. Deeper than information. Deeper even than religion.

Because religion can change what we do on Sunday without changing what we love on Monday.

And Paul says what we need is something we cannot accomplish merely by trying harder.

We need the heart itself to change.

And if you’ve been with us through this series, that language should sound familiar.

Because we’ve already read the later chapters of Romans. Paul has already told us that what the law was powerless to do, “God did.” He’s already told us about the Spirit of God living in us.

So we know where Paul is eventually going. But at this point in his argument, Paul isn’t ready to take us there yet. Right now he’s still making the diagnosis.

And the diagnosis keeps getting worse —

The pagan world can’t fix itself.
The moral person can’t fix themselves by judging everyone else.
The religious person can’t fix themselves simply by knowing more about God.

So who’s left?

Before Paul answers that, he deals with one final objection — If Jewish people need grace just like Gentiles, does that mean their whole history with God was meaningless?

Paul says, “Not at all.”

Paul says they were entrusted with the very words of God. Their privilege was real.

And human unfaithfulness doesn’t make God unfaithful — we’ve already spent several weeks in Romans 9 through 11 talking about that.

But privilege is not immunity.

And now Paul is ready to answer the question: “Who’s left?”

Verse 9:

Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin. (Romans 3:9)

Who’s left? Everyone.

Jews and Gentiles.
Religious and irreligious.
Moral and immoral.
People who know the Bible and people who have never opened one.
People whose sin is obvious and people who are really good at hiding it.

“all are under the power of sin.”

And notice that Paul doesn’t merely say everyone sins. He says we’re “under the power of sin.”

We know what he means because we’ve already read the rest of Romans.

We saw it in Romans 5 with Adam.
We saw it in Romans 6 when Paul described sin as a master.
We felt it in Romans 7: “I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing.”

Sin, for Paul, isn’t merely a collection of bad decisions. It’s a power humanity cannot free itself from.

And then Paul does something interesting. He starts piling up passages from the Old Testament.

Romans 3:10:

There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away… (Romans 3:10-12)

Then he talks about our mouths.

Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit. (Romans 3:13)

Then our relationships:

Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways… (Romans 3:15-16)

And finally:

There is no fear of God before their eyes. (Romans 3:18)

Paul is describing a problem that reaches into every dimension of human life.

What we think.
What we want.
What we say.
What we do.
How we treat one another.
How we relate to God.

Now, Paul is not saying every human being is as evil as they could possibly be.

Clearly we’re not…

People love their children.
People sacrifice for friends.
People show extraordinary generosity… and courage… and compassion.

Paul’s point is that — there is no part of us completely untouched by what’s gone wrong.

And now think about the journey Paul has taken us on.

Romans 1 began with: “Them.”

Look at what “they” do.
Look at their idolatry.
Look at their desires.
Look at what happens when people turn away from God.

And if you’re listening and thinking: “Yes, Paul. Tell them.”

Romans 2: “You — You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else.”

And now Romans 3: “Us — Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin.”

Them.
You.
Us.

Paul has slowly removed every place we might stand to look down on someone else.

And then he arrives at one of the most powerful lines in this entire section.

Verse 19:

Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law…

Why?

…so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. (Romans 3:19)

Every mouth silenced. I love that image.

Because we’ve been talking for two chapters…

explaining
accusing
comparing
judging
defending…

“Yes, but you don’t understand what happened.”
“Yes, but what they did was worse.”
“Yes, but at least I never…”
“Yes, but I’m a good person.”
“Yes, but I go to church.”
“Yes, but I believe…”

And eventually Paul says: “Silence.”

No more comparisons.
No more defense.
No more pointing across the room.
No more explaining why someone else’s sin is worse than mine.

Every mouth is silenced.

And now we can finally come back to the question we started with — What’s gone wrong with the world?

If Paul has done his job over these last two chapters, I can’t answer that question by pointing across the room anymore.

I have to begin here.

I am.

And so are you.

Not because human beings have no value. Not because there’s nothing beautiful or good in us.

Our faith says something much more interesting than that. It says human beings have extraordinary dignity because we were made in the image of God.

And also, human beings are profoundly broken because we’ve turned away from God.

Both are true.

Which means the line between what’s right with the world and what’s wrong with the world doesn’t run between the people I agree with and the people I don’t. It doesn’t run between religious people and irreligious people. It doesn’t run between the people inside the church and the people outside it.

It runs through every human heart. Including mine.

And then Paul finishes his diagnosis.

Verse 20:

Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin. (Romans 3:20)

The law can tell me what’s wrong. It cannot make me right.

And until we stop pretending we can make ourselves right, we’ll never understand why the gospel is such good news.

And that’s where Paul leaves us.

No excuses.
No comparisons.
No moral superiority.
No religious résumé.

Just people who need something we cannot do for ourselves.

And if that feels like an uncomfortable place to stop… it is.

Because the next two words Paul writes are two of the most important words in the entire letter.

But we’re going to leave them for next week.

Pray with me as the worship team comes to lead us in a closing song.