Romans 1: 16-32

Theme: Salvation

It started earlier than ever this year. People are protesting the Christ of Christmas. A couple of weeks ago Fox News ran a piece called "Taking Christ out of Christmas." An increasing number of legal actions are being taken to silence any religious emphasis of Christmas. For years they have tried to take manger scenes off of public and private property. Some are offended by the Baby in the manger. But, what amazes me is the cry that Christ does not belong in Christmas and that somehow Christians have stolen the holiday. That is bizarre.

Karen was telling me her sister was in the post office the other day. While there, a woman came in wanting Christmas stamps. She said that she did not want stamps with all of that religious stuff on them. What do they think Christmas is about in the first place? But, they know that and that tells you something about what is going on. It is an act of rebellion, an act of rejection of God.

Bill O’Reilly on Fox News should know better. He was trying to defend Christmas as a secular holiday and described it like this. There was this philosopher named Jesus and he said a lot of good things. We celebrate the life of this philosopher with a secular holiday called Christmas. It just so happens that some people think Jesus was God.

We Christians are shocked at such statements and even perceive it as ignorance. But it is not ignorance, it is rebellion, it is sin. We need to get out heads out of the sand for a moment and see what the world thinks. There is a whole mind set that defies our Christian world view. Furthermore, they think we, who follow Christ, are backward and ignorant.

There is a large segment of the population who have rejected the God of the Bible and have made for themselves other gods. Recently George McGrovern wrote an essay in Harper’s Magazine called The Case for liberalism. What McGovern was selling is a kind of natural human progress. Here is how this works. This enlightened world view believes in the basic goodness of humanity. There is nothing wrong with us that a good dose of progress can’t cure. Progress is a product of the human mind. If there is a god, he blesses human progress and condemns those who oppose progress. If you are enlightened, you believe in the right to abortion. You must not only accept, but promote homosexuality and its agenda. And, If you are enlightened, you believe in complete sexual freedom. There are no limits as long as "no one is hurting anyone." The traditional ideas of morality are obsolete. Thus, the God of the Bible must be done away with. The God of the Bible is not enlightened, he is restrictive and judgmental. The greatest sin in this world of progress and enlightenment is to be judgmental.

Do you see why so many voices are calling for Christ to be taken out of Christmas? It is a coup, God is being overthrown. According to the world, we don’t need God anymore, God is the problem. He keeps us from doing what we want to do, He keeps us from progress. Make no mistake about it, our world is hostile to the Christian faith and anyone who follows Jesus is considered backwards and maybe even dangerous.

Romans chapter one addresses our human condition and it’s not pretty. To put it bluntly, we are sinners and God’s wrath burns against us in our sin. Most of humanity denies that they are sinners. Our sinful natures will not allow us to be honest with ourselves. We are much like the nobility in the day of George Whitefield, the great evangelist of the 18th century. He infuriated the duchess of Buckingham who found his preaching repulsive. She resented his implication that she was a sinner like ordinary people. She said, "It is monstrous to be told that you have a heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl upon the earth. This is highly offensive and insulting . . . "(H. Stout, "Heavenly Comet," Christian History, issue #38, p.11). It is like someone holding our face to a fire and forcing us to see the light and feel the heat. We are sinners of the worst kind, rebellious sinners who freely reject God.

What God's wrath is revealed against is summed up in two words, ungodliness and unrighteousness. Ungodliness is not just neglect of God, but the out right rebellion against God. Unrighteousness means man's unjust treatment of our fellow man. These two concerns are found in the Ten Commandments. The first tablet dealt with Man's treatment of God and the second tablet dealt with man's treatment of man.

Not only has man committed godlessness and wickedness, man has suppressed the truth. Paul clearly indicates that man has always known the truth. We cannot plead ignorance. Paul said, that all mankind automatically knows about God in two ways: because that which is known about God is evident within them (v. 19) and that creation reveals God as well(v. 20).

The first one, God is evident within them is one of the most compelling arguments for the existence of God. All of mankind has a sense of right and wrong. There is no culture on earth that does not have a set of rules that govern right and wrong. Each of us has a sense of right and wrong built into us. We really do know, don't we?

Nature also witnesses to us. Paul says that nature itself reveals to man three things: God's invisible attributes, His Eternal power, and His divine nature. We know from nature that there is a God. The world did not just happen. We can detect God in the largest objects of the universe and in the smallest objects in the molecular world.

In Verse 21, incredibly, we find that man refuses to honor God even though man knows that God exists. In other words, man became his own lord. We have rebelled against the Lordship of God, we have rejected his rightful place as the king and ruler of our life and our world. Man willfully ignores God.

However, apparently man is going to worship something, anything other than God. We exchange the truth for a lie. Early man turned himself over to the worship of creatures and statues and the earth itself. We have different idols. We worship cars or houses or jobs or sports or women or men or movie stars. The list could go infinitely on. The fact is that each one of us, at some time has bought into the lie.

The result is tragic, God turns man over to his corruption. He lets us have our way. We go spiraling down into sin and perversion until humanity reaches the pits of sin described in verses 26-30. God has turned humanity over to our perversities, including homosexuality, unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil, envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, gossip, slander, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, and unmerciful.

It sounds hopeless doesn’t it. With God’s wrath burning against us, what hope do we have? That is why the world needs Christmas. The world can scoff but Christmas is the only solution to the troubles of humankind. How can I say that? Because the message of Christmas is the Gospel, which is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes!

Christmas celebrates the coming of Jesus who is our long awaited Savior. The prophets foretold his coming. We do not celebrate his birth because he was a great teacher or a wonderful philosopher. We celebrate him because he is God become flesh and he dwelt among us and he died for us and rose from the dead. Jesus died as our perfect substitute so that we might be redeemed from our miserable condition. Just as in the days of Christ, people scoff and reject the one who has come to redeem them. They celebrate his birthday but they don’t want to hear why he came. He came to redeem rebellious sinners like us.

Salvation becomes ours when we come to Christ by faith, for it is written, "but the righteous shall live by faith." God has done all the work. We are called upon to respond to him by faith. Instead of letting the season cause us to rebel against God, why not respond to the Gospel call? The world needs to hear about the Christ Child. You need to hear about the God who became flesh to redeem us from our sins. You need to come to Christ by faith.