Worship God and Do Right

Romans 1:18

SERMON OUTLINE

Worship God and Do Right  Romans 1.18

Introduction

-The meaning and the order of the words ungodliness and unrighteousness

-Paul summarizes all sin under these two words.

Ungodliness

-No reverence and devotion to God. Impiety

-The meaning extends to an outrage against God, an attitude of rebellion and the rejection of relationship with God. A refusal to honor, worship and submit to God.

-First tablet of the Ten Commandments toward God

-First great commandment by Jesus. Matthew 22.37-38

-Words used in Romans 1 …did not honor …exchanged the glory for images …worshipped and served the creature …did not see fit to acknowledge God

-The witness of Creation. Psalm 19.1-4

-The sinner is “hostile to God”. Romans 8.7

-Christ died for the ungodly when we were enemies, but now we are reconciled to God. Romans 5.6, 10

Unrighteousness

-Not doing right acts, wrongdoing

-Second tablet of the Ten Commandments toward man

-Second great commandment of Jesus. Matthew 22.39

-Words used in Romans 1 …exchanged truth for a lie …lust, impurity, dishonor bodies …passions, shameless acts …envy, strife, maliciousness, heartless, ruthless

-We are declared righteous (justification) and called to live in righteousness (sanctification).

Godliness Then Righteousness

-Godliness must always come before righteousness and ungodliness always precedes unrighteousness.

-First a relationship with God (reconciliation) then good works.

-Pattern of Lord’s Prayer; Example of Jesus; Life in the Spirit. John 5.19-20; 12.49

-We become what we concentrate on. Psalm 115.8

Conclusion

Seek God, be godly, then do righteousness.

SERMON NOTES

Worship God and Do Right                   Romans 1.18

What I would like to draw your attention to this morning is two words in verse 18. Both the meaning of these two words and the order in which these two words are found has something to teach us as believers. Those two words are ungodliness and unrighteousness. The NIV translates these two words as godlessness and wickedness.

Paul’s letter to the Romans teaches us how God makes ungodly and unrighteous people, who are under God’s wrath, into godly and righteous people who are accepted by God and called sons. An ungodly and unrighteous person becomes godly and righteous before God through the acceptance of what the Son of God, Jesus Christ, accomplished on the cross. The big question that Paul answers in the book of Romans is how a sinner can be right with God, how a sinner can be accepted by God. That is extremely important information considering that one day soon each one of us will stand before God.

What Paul means by the wrath of God is the judgment of God both now in the present, and then finally in the Day of Judgment. Romans 2.5 clearly makes the connection of wrath with judgment. “But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed”. God’s judgment will be hell for those who are not in right relationship with Him, and heaven for those who are right with God through faith in Jesus Christ.

In the first three chapters of Romans, Paul proves that all men are sinners and therefore under the wrath of God. Paul summarizes all sin under the two words we are considering this morning.

First the word ungodliness or godlessness. The Greek word is the word for reverence and devotion with a negative prefix and means “no reverence and devotion toward God”. The word extends beyond no reverence and devotion toward God to outrage against God with intent to break His laws and His moral requirements. This impiety describes a refusal to honor God and a refusal to worship God. Ungodliness reflects an attitude of rebellion and the rejection of a relationship with God.

So the first way that Paul describes the sin of mankind is by his rebellious attitude toward God and his refusal to acknowledge and worship and submit to God. Remember the Ten Commandments? God gave the Ten Commandments on two tablets. The first tablet consisted of commandments regarding man’s response to God. We are to have no other gods besides the true God. We are not to make any false images to represent God and we are not to worship those images. We are not to take the name of God in vain. We are to set aside a day of worship toward God.

Jesus summed up this first tablet of the Law in Matthew 22.37-38, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment”. Ungodliness is the opposite of the first tablet and the great commandment of love toward God.

In Romans 1 Paul describes this ungodly, godless, impious, undevoted, rebellious, law-breaking attitude with these phrases, “although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him …and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images …they worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator …they did not see fit to acknowledge God”.

Paul also makes it quite clear in this chapter that this is a choice made by people who have creation all around them which speaks of the eternal power and divine nature of God. “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” Psalm 19.1-4 teaches us the same truth. The first sin of man is his refusal to honor and worship and bow down to God.

In Romans 8.7 Paul describes to us the mind of the sinner. Let me read that verse to you. “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed it cannot.” The mind of the sinner is first hostile to God and then refuses to submit to God’s law. What comes first is rebellion against God. That is followed by a refusal to submit to God. Mankind is ungodly. Mankind refuses to honor God and refuses to worship God. Refusal to honor God as God results in a refusal to submit to God’s Law.

In Romans 5.6, we are told that “Christ died for the ungodly”. A few verses later we read, “while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son”. We should realize this morning that when we ignored God as unbelievers and did not love Him and worship Him with all our hearts we were like fist-shaking rebels in His sight, and yet in His love God sent His Son Jesus Christ to die for us. By the sacrifice of Jesus Christ we have been reconciled to God. We are now in a God-honoring relationship with God. Now that we realize such love and grace we voluntarily bow down in worship and submission to God with thanksgiving and service.

The second word in Romans 1.18 that we want to consider this morning is unrighteousness or wickedness. The Greek word is the word for doing right with a negative prefix and means “not doing right acts, wrongdoing”. By these sinful actions mankind suppresses the truth. This word relates to the second tablet of the Law where our actions toward our fellow man are described. Jesus stated this in the second great commandment in Matthew 22.39, “And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself”. Paul describes mankind’s unrighteousness with these words in Romans 1, “they exchanged the truth of God for a lie …the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to dishonor their bodies among themselves …dishonorable passions …shameless acts …debased minds …evil covetousness, malice, …envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness, …gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless”.

In Jesus Christ, God declares us righteous before Him which is called justification, and then begins the process of making us righteous which is called sanctification.

We once were ungodly and unrighteous before a Holy God but we have received forgiveness and righteousness in Jesus Christ, and honor and worship God and seek to obey the truth.

Now let us look at the order of these two words and learn what they have to teach us about living the Christian life. You will notice that the first word, ungodliness, points to the need for a reverence and submission to God, while the second word, unrighteousness, points to the need for doing what is right, right behavior, right living. I think this order is very important. Godliness must always come before righteousness and ungodliness always precedes unrighteousness. The Christian life is not primarily an ethical system that we decide to keep, or a list of rules and commandments that we religiously follow. The Christian life is first of all a relationship with God. First God reconciles us to Himself, takes away the enmity between us, turns our heart to worship Him and call Him Father, and then sets us on the road of good works.

We mostly think of God’s wrath against acts of sin but what comes first is an attitude of rebellion and refusal to submit to God. As Christians we now acknowledge the Supremacy and Majesty of God and we worship God. As Christians we grow in fellowship with God and learn to submit to God. An understanding of the absolute Sovereignty of God and the Holy and Loving character of God is where the Christian life begins. From our understanding and worship and submission to God comes a righteous and holy life lived in glory to God.

When Jesus gave us a pattern for prayer in the Lord’s prayer in Matthew 6, he gave six statements. The first three are focused on God. “Our Father in heaven; hallowed be your name; Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”. Then the last three statements are prayer for ourselves. The pattern followed in this prayer is the pattern on which we are to pattern our Christian life and the same pattern shown in the order of these two words we are considering this morning. A focus on God first, then on actions and service.

Our understanding of God and our relationship with God is what directs our behavior. In the life of Jesus, particularly in the gospel of John you find that the words and actions of our Lord Jesus came out of his relationship with his Father-God. Let me give you a couple of verses on that. “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can only do what he sees the Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does.” (John 5.19-20). “For I do not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it.” (John 12.49). There are a number of other verses like this in the gospel of John that show that the actions of Jesus came out of his relationship with the Father. Jesus was first godly and then righteous and we need to follow the same pattern. First we need to be in relationship and devotion to God, and then do what is right and true.

If we do not begin our Christian life each day with worship and devotion and in fellowship with God we will end up with a legalistic, heartless, ethical, religious system. Our righteous behavior must be the result of an ongoing and vibrant relationship with God.

If we focus only on reverence to God and ignore righteous obedience to the truth we end up with mysticism, lawlessness, and worldliness. We need to be both in reverent relationship to God and do what is right.

The Christian life is life in the Spirit. The Christian life thrives by communion with God and obedience to His Word. Paul teaches us that God has given to each believer the Spirit of sonship whereby we cry “Abba, Father”. We come to God regularly crying, Father. We must make worship a daily practice.

There is an interesting verse in Psalm 115. Let me read the first 8 verses of this Psalm to you. [Read].

In the first three verses of this Psalm the author lifts up the greatness of God. Then in the next five verses he describes the futility of idols who are made with the hands of men, who cannot speak or hear or see. Then in verse 8 he says this, “those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them”. The principle here is that you become like what you worship. You come to resemble what you concentrate on. God calls us to continually worship Him and learn to know Him and submit to Him and love Him because God knows that this will direct and guide our ideas, our attitudes, and our behavior in the right direction.

God calls us first to Himself and then to holy behavior. That is how we need to establish our daily priorities and that is what will lead to conformity to the image of His Son Jesus Christ.

My plea this morning is that we seek God, worship God, submit ourselves to God and then obey God. We seek God by spending time in His presence each day. We worship God with words of praise, with singing, in quiet adoration before Him, with thanksgiving, by telling Him of His greatness, with the Psalms, etc… We submit to His Sovereignly and Rule by accepting the circumstances He brings into our life and reacting with a God honoring attitude to them, growing in character through those experiences. We obey God by doing what His Word teaches.

We are to be a godly and righteous people because of the work of God in our lives through Jesus Christ. When we were ungodly and unrighteous God saved us through Jesus Christ. Now we worship God and call God our Father and do what is pleasing in His sight. To God be the Glory.