Latest / Journey Elgin / Sunday Message April 13, 2026- Romans 1 in Living Color- Keep Calm and Carry On
Transcript
- Phillip Thomas: So today we're going to be looking in Romans chapter one. I don't know that these are those sermons that I really struggle with ⁓ because I don't. It's very uncomfortable. And it's one of the reasons that I know, I know that we have been labeled here in Elgin as a political church that we get political. That is not ever the intent. Do we talk about political stuff? Yes, because that's a part of the world that we live in. You may think that that doesn't impact you or it doesn't impact the church and the church should stay out of that. Okay, that's fine. We kind of have done that and now we're in the place that we're in. ⁓ It's important to recognize that this is not a political issue that we're seeing all around us. It is a spiritual issue playing out many times in the political realm, but then that filters down into our communities. It filters down into our schools. It filters down then into our families, and then it ultimately filters down into your relationship with Christ. This is a, and that's how I try to approach this. And one of the things that I try to do, and have always tried to do is make this book that I believe is 100 % true and 100 % God's Word and yet was written by dozens of different people across hundreds of different years in a culture that the most recent is over 2000 years ago. Now, so how do you make something that is both true and relevant and things like that, but was written 2000 years ago, how do you actually say, well, how does that apply to the year 2026? Well, it means that you have to try to find examples that have happened within our lifetime, not just examples of what happened back here. Does that make sense? And that gets really hard because you start using examples around us. And now that the spiritual battle has filtered down into the political realm, and I mean it is raging in the political realm, and I have said this numerous times, this is why I don't think that we are trying to overtly be political. There is no party that is on the side of God. Okay? And we will not find hope. We will not make our way out of this mess because of one political party or the other. That doesn't mean we don't engage in the process. That doesn't mean we don't, you know, still vote. I think we do. You have to recognize that we, know, many people have the lesser of two evils. Well, you're always voting for the lesser of two evils, right? Because you're voting for humans. Guess what? Humans are flawed. All of us. Every human is flawed. And so you're always voting, well, what's the closest, right? We can struggle with all those things, but this is so much bigger than what's just happening in our political discourse. However, that is driving a lot of the chaos. It flows through that. And so it's important to bring up examples for today and check them with scripture. But the moment you do that, because nearly all of us see things through a political lens, whether we're consciously thinking about it or not, then immediately you have a different perspective from the example that you're using. Does that make sense? And it's hard and it's a challenge, but I think it's one that we have to take. And as we're reading Romans chapter one, Remember what Paul is writing to the church in Rome. It is entirely pagan. They are completely given over at this time to worshiping Caesar, to worshiping ⁓ Apollo, worshiping all of these other pagan gods. And the church is beginning to grow in that. and Christianity is starting to spread. It's starting to make a difference. And within about couple hundred years, unbelievably, the Roman Empire will start to move, by the way, partly because of the political process, right? Starts to move where it moves from being hostile, openly hostile to Christianity and persecuting Christians and throwing them literally to lions, right? For entertainment. to actually making Christianity the main faith. Now, that had negative consequences too, but that's incredible, right? That's an incredible transformation. so, but Paul is writing at a time where the culture is depraved. It is a culture that is not worshiping God, it's not following God, it is a culture that is following pagan gods. Now the sad thing is, Is that as we read this this is nothing always know there's nothing new under the Sun Right. So so the things that are described in Romans chapter 1 have happened before and have happened throughout history there's times that it's more heightened than others and Sadly our country started on a different trajectory than Rome Rome was down here in the pagan dumps Right Christianity came in and began lifting it a little bit towards Christ. We started out actually in history at the pinnacle of what being ⁓ a Christian nation, a biblical foundation nation, a nation that tried to incorporate that flaws and all tried to incorporate into its time frame in the 1700s, right? To incorporate, we're gonna put these biblical foundations in the foundation of our country. So we started up here. But now we're basically where Rome was because we have fallen. So Romans chapter one applies to us, I believe, just like it applied to Rome, except we got there from a different direction. And it's really frustrating actually. But let's read in Romans chapter one, because... One of the reasons I want to do this after Easter is we talked about the power of the resurrection and how that gives us hope, but we need that power to engage the world around us because right now it depends on how much you're involved. mean, if you're just reading, watching headlines on the news in the evening, you're getting a glimpse and it's crazy, right? That's crazy enough. If you really are looking at what's going on underneath. going on online with lots of different influencers from both sides. It is crazy right now. I mean, we are being divided on every possible front. And so we need to try to figure out how are we going to navigate this? And we're not going to be a church that sticks our head in the sand and just sings praise songs. Right? That's kind of what I want to do. I'll be honest. I would rather just come in here and sing wonderful praise songs and get that fun, wonderful feeling inside and then just read a scripture about how God loves all of us. And that's true, but there's way more going on. And listen, I think most of you, when you're out there, you feel it and you know it. And probably a lot of your friends know it too. and are struggling. What if you can be one that knows what's going on and when your friends are overwhelmed with it, you can be the voice of reason that points them to the hope of Christ. But you know enough to engage in the conversation. You don't say, ⁓ I just don't pay attention to any of that anymore. How many times I've heard that from Christians? ⁓ I just don't even watch the news. You don't have to watch the news. I'm not saying that. Don't be a news junkie. You will be depressed, right? But we need to know enough so that when people are struggling, we at least know what they're talking about. And then we can point them to the hope of Christ. If we just check out as Christians and say, no, you know what? I don't pay attention to all the bad stuff going on around the world. You know, I'm just focused on Christ. OK, great. But a lot of people are being pulled away. A lot of people are questioning their faith because they can't make sense of what's going on in the world around them. Maybe we can help them, right? Point them to how God is at work in the midst of this. Even as there are Christians in Nigeria who are being killed because of their faith, directly because of their faith, we can talk about the reality of evil. And while that shows that evil does exist, it also shows that the light will not be extinguished. We can engage the world and we can point people to Christ, but we have to look at the ugliness as well and we have to understand how it works. So Romans chapter 1 for the fifth time that I've said that. Let's Starting in verse 17. shall live by faith. For the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and all unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 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, divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world. and the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. All right, so what's that saying? Let's stop there for just a moment. What is that saying? It starts off, the righteous shall live by faith. So it's important to strive to live righteously. However, we're in a world where the wrath of God is revealed. Now, so often we hear that word wrath and we think of this angry God with lightning bolts throwing them down like the wrath of God right with the wrath of God actually is just God allowing Sinfulness to run its course and have its own consequences that's the wrath of God is that you you do X that is goes against the Word of God and Why is the consequence the wrath of God is that he allows that to happen? Right? Which makes sense. We're choosing which way we're going. And so the wrath of God is expanding, especially in a culture that is embracing ungodly things. So the more a is ungodliness, what is the natural extension? You see the wrath of God being revealed even more. Right? Because we are choosing to go that way. And all cultures, none of them get it right, but there are some that are worse than others. And sadly, we tried to get it right for a while, and it built a wonderful foundation. But then we thought, ⁓ we don't really need those foundational principles anymore. And now we have been going on a path that is leading to the wrath of God being revealed. And what is one of the key things that it says? who by their unrighteousness suppress what? The truth. The first element after the wrath of God ⁓ being revealed, what's the sign that that is happening? That a culture that people start to suppress the truth. Alright. If you don't know that the truth is trying to be suppressed today, Well, here's your wake up call. It is. It's everywhere. Right? You may have heard the term, my truth. That is suppressing the truth. Right? It may be your experience. You can say my experience. You can say my belief. You can even say my understanding of the truth. But there is only one truth. in just little ways that we use our language of my truth, right? Or this has been going on now for a while in academic circles of debating ⁓ is there absolute truth or not, right? This is a postmodern idea. This is a philosophical idea that has permeated our society. So now we're at that point where it's like, okay, is there truth? And we get so desensitized to it. And it's like, okay, fine. If that's what you want to believe is true, fine. But we need to be careful. And not saying that we all have to agree, we're not going to, but we need to at least recognize there is truth and it is only found in Jesus Christ. And so then it goes and it says, this has been plain to people. That has been revealed through creation. By the way, that is... 100 % through you look through history not every culture has worshipped the God of the Bible But every culture has just said yes, there's some sort of a godly thing that created this until the last hundred and fifty two hundred years, know and good old Darwin and his brilliance and all of this stuff and we start to think that science even though science came about because we believed that God created an ordered world. Because why would you think you could find anything out about the world if you didn't believe that there was some order and structure to it? So because of a belief in God, we had science. And then as it continued to elevate, it started to supplant the idea of God. And so now we are where we are. But the scripture is clear. Listen. The evidence is out there if you're going to look for it. It's there. God is making it clear. He's not hiding himself. So there in verse 21, for although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him. But they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools. ⁓ I could give lots of examples here. And we can all be easily fall into this one, right? ⁓ That you think you have all your stuff together and no one else does. No, that's foolish, right? Thinking that the culture that thinks it's wise but is actually foolish. Look at what people post online. Some of them think that stuff makes sense. And you're like, ⁓ my gosh, please. you know, it's better to keep that one on the inside. Right? Don't let that out, because now everybody's going to know. Right? And so they became fools. And what does that foolishness lead to? It leads to they exchange the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. So now all of sudden they think they're so wise. They think that because they can go to the moon, that because that they can start curing cancer, because they can solve all of these problems. ⁓ we can be God. Why do we need God? Look at what we're doing. Now our culture hasn't gone full create ⁓ other idols yet out of carved images. Not yet. I actually think we there's a there's actually more of a move. mean, have you looked up Wiccan? Have you looked up some of this stuff? It is very real and very out there. Right. So so we're we don't see open worship of pagan gods, but we see the influence of pagan ideology everywhere. And it is being worshiped. Right. And so we are definitely seeing those things. So verse 24, is exactly, we are worshipping our government. We worship our ideologies. We worship our families. We worship the Almighty Dollar. We worship things and we exchange the worship of the Almighty God to the worship of things that we have created. For the reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions. real quickly, so what is the main problem here? The problem is that we have begun worshiping other things than God. It is that idolatry, it's the Ten Commandments, that we have begun worshiping other things. When we do that, that leads to unrighteous behavior. Now one of the things that we have to be careful of, and it's very hard, and it's a challenge, and we should struggle with it, sometimes we can focus way more on the unrighteous acts that people do. And listen, we need to push back against some of those, right? There's reason that you have laws. However, sometimes we just attack people based on their unrighteous acts. Okay, that is simple. That is a problem. However, the root of it is actually what we've been reading before, that they have turned away from God. They have been worshiping things of man. rather than God and that leads to the ⁓ sinful unrighteous behavior. Does that make sense? All right, so for this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions for their women exchange natural relations for those that are contrary to nature. And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another. men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. So, isn't it interesting? The first check engine light of when a culture starts to worship the creature rather than the creator is perverted sexual passions. That's the first thing that you see. Verse 28, and since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. So once you keep going down that road, step by step by step, all of a sudden, it starts to get really hard to see what is true anymore. You have a debased mind. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. Covetousness, always wanting what other people have. We literally have a term that is a hashtag on a regular basis. Fear of missing out, FOMO. What ultimately is fear of missing out? It's coveting. that you're coveting something else so much that you're afraid you're going to miss out on it. Malice. Malice is that, it's that ⁓ level up. It's one thing to disagree with people. It's one thing to say, you know what, I kind of don't want to hang out with that person. It's another to say, you know, I disagree with that person. And not only do I wish ill on them, I'm going to look for opportunities to do ill to them. I'm going to celebrate when ill happens to them. Are we not there? Seven months ago, we had a very popular influencer, both spiritually and politically, who was assassinated on a college campus. The most public assassination in the history of the world. That day, there were people celebrating that. That is malice. And by the way, the college where that happened, just invited their commencement speaker for this year. So it'll be less than a year from that event that celebrated the assassination of Charlie Kurtz. the malice, it is just spitting in the face of your opponent. We all of a sudden, we're not seeing people as people created in the image of God who are flawed, who have different understandings, who are consumed by what's going on in the world. No longer are we doing that. We just want to see people destroyed. They were filled with all-manager of unrighteousness, covenaness, malice. are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil. That one's, what a powerful one, inventors of evil. Hey, it's not good enough that we just pervert sexual desires. No, we actually promote the falsehood of multiple genders. We're going to, we're actually going to, rather than help children who are struggling, we're going to affirm what they're struggling with and we're going to give them things that they can never recover from. That's inventing ways to do evil. And man, we've been good at it. disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Whenever I hear words, haughty and boastful, I think of our political leadership right now on a regular basis. What does that fuel? It just continues to fuel the animosity. It fuels the hate. It fuels the malice. though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, now listen to this, they not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them. That is where we are. Now, I never want to overstate where we are. And I'm always trying to look at, ⁓ where is our culture going? And are there examples that kind of point to, man, this is Romans one time. And I believe we're there. And again, I'm going to please take off your political lens here. And I'm just gonna walk through a period that has been less than 20 years in the making. Okay? This first clip is from 2020, no, not 2020, 2008. So show this first clip. Define marriage. I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now for me as a crystal, for me. Define marriage. A between man and woman, between one man and one woman. That's my definition of marriage. Okay. Two political candidates running for president. By the way, shocking Obama won that, right? Just listening to the contrast there. Holy cow. Both political candidates verbalized marriage, which has always throughout history been defined as between a man and a woman. Now there were debates at this time on civil unions. There were debates on things like that. But listen, the vast majority of the country believed that. In fact, between 2000 and 2008, 36 states passed proposed amendment changes to codify that marriage is between a man and a woman. 33 of those passed overwhelmingly. This year, A little bit after this, in 2008, when President Obama won and he won California. Now, I don't know how familiar you are with California. If you think they are a bastion of conservatism, you would be mistaken. They are not. In 2008, on the same ballot where you could vote for President Obama, there was a proposed amendment. to codify that marriage was between a man and a woman. Guess what passed? The marriage amendment in California. And these were a majority of Democrat voters that were voting that had to have voted for Obama and for supporting that proposition. Again, I know this was not long ago. that we all, at least on the basic, okay? Then you started to have some things challenged. That Prop 8 in California was actually challenged, made it to Supreme Court. The Supreme Court copped out. no, know, because it was ruled it was overturned in a ⁓ appellate court and the Supreme Court wouldn't hear it because they said, ⁓ the people bringing it, you don't have standing. The voters? who voted for the proposition that now the government is just going to not pay attention to, they don't have standing to challenge that. I'm not going to get in the weeds on this. I'm sorry. It's ridiculous. I want you to show that whenever a government becomes evil, it doesn't matter what the people want. And then what happens? The people began to become evil. So in 2015, the Supreme Court with a ruling basically just pulling it out of thin air. Thin air. Out. They pulled it out of thin air. That basically said, no, marriage is not limited to a man versus a woman. So seven years after that statement, this picture we see. where the White House is lit up in pride flag colors. You're talking six years, six, seven years-ish. Now, again, maybe you agree with that. If you can't tell, I do not. But even if you do, that's shocking change from both candidates. running to live in this house saying that marriage should be between a man and a woman. And seven years later, the White House is lit up in pride colors because the Supreme Court struck that down. That's massive change. Then in 2022, 2023, to see once things start down the road, you see how Romans one, once it starts down the road, it elevates. What do we have in 2023? You have a pride flag that now has, because that can't be good enough. You have to add other things. So it adds the transgender thing is prominently centered on the White House at a major event where things like this happened. This next picture. I had to be careful to find this picture. You may not remember this. This person here is not a woman. They are a man. And you can see in the background where they are, this person takes topless pictures of themselves right there, who is not a woman, but is a man. Okay, something has happened. Something has changed. This is massive. This is a massive slide. What is happening? You see, that ideology, that pagan ideology, seeks to infiltrate everything. This is what Romans 1 is talking about. So if it can start infiltrating in the government, it will come for everything else as well. There are numerous churches that now have drag queen story hours, drag queen services in the churches. This is one that was just this last week, April 1st. This is not a church, but this is very interesting. Okay. What was this? This promo, ⁓ poster. All right. The next picture. Alright, notice what the theme is. Veggie Tales. Now, why is that? Is that because it's just fun? Now, most of those people do not probably even realize the significance of what they're doing. Well, actually they probably do. This is directly going after an influential Christian ⁓ foundation. Ironically. The creator of veggie tales has been given over to the spirit of the age and he will not, I promise you, will not push back against this. He wouldn't agree with it, but he's not gonna push back against it. He wouldn't stand up and say marriage is between a man and a woman. I'm assuming, I've just seen some evidence. But whenever you don't recognize the battle you are in, Things happen quickly. The wrath of God starts spilling out quickly. All right, you can click off of that. We probably should have clicked off of that earlier. There we go. Okay, there's a couple ways. I use that because that's the first check engine light sign in Romans chapter one. Okay, we're there. So now what do you do? Do you just put your head in the sand? No. No. Do you gear up for war? ⁓ No, but you better recognize you're in a spiritual battle. That's what you better recognize. But this can't be... done on human terms. See, Dudes? In our humanness, we can actually stand up against evil when we need to. But when you're in a spiritual battle, you need more than that. You need more than human will. But you do need human will. And human will makes a difference. Leading up to World War II, whenever Britain finally turned to Churchill, and Churchill, again, very flawed leader, but he recognized the battle. He recognized the evil of Hitler, the evil of Germany. And there were a lot that were basically saying, let's just make a deal. They were wanting to just make a deal. They were wanting to say, forget it. They knew it was going to get serious. And famously, Churchill actually goes down into the subway and he's talking to the people and not the pinheads who are making all the decisions. And he's just talking to the people. And the people are like, no. We'll fight them in the streets. That's the sense that he got. And so Churchill, he gives his famous speech. But then the government, they were like, man, we've got to encourage people. So they created three different posters that kind of were going to move in progression because they knew it was going to get bad. And so the first poster they created, I believe I could have these backwards the first two, but the first poster that they created was this. Your courage, your cheerfulness, your resolution will bring us victory. Millions of those were put around, you know, posted everywhere. The bombing starts. They're being bombed and they're being bombed. This is reminding them we're going to have victory. But the bombing continues. And so they put out the second poster that they knew they would need to put to keep people engaged, to keep them encouraged. Freedom is in peril. Defend it with all your might. Now they created a third poster that was never put out. But millions were printed. And then later in the war, was actually, ⁓ the paper was recycled on most of it. But it was actually their most serious poster because they were trying to convey, what do we do with the people if we've been basically conquered? Basically, if it's Germany's coming in and they're winning, right? When we get to that point. What poster do you put up? This was the poster. You may recognize that. That phrase is all over the place now. It wasn't until about the year 2000 in an antique store in Britain that a couple was going through a, an old book and they found an original poster just like that. And they put it in a frame because they were like, that's awesome. Put it in a frame, put it on their wall and their old deal. People came and would just take pictures of it. They were like, and then they began. printing it and now it's everywhere. Keep calm and carry on even if you're conquered. Now. I think that's a good start for us as we move forward. Keep calm, carry on. But we need more than that. Because this isn't Germany dropping bombs. This is Satan seeking to kill, steal, and destroy, and to take people's eternal solace. So we can keep calm and carry on. But we also need, as Paul continued to write, he didn't stop after Romans chapter one. One of the things that he says, verse five, or chapter five, therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him we have also obtained access by faith into His grace in which we stand. And we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that in suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And hope does not put us to shame. because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. That is why we can keep calm and carry on. It's because of the hope of Christ that is instilled within us because of what He has done for us. And so even in our sufferings, we endure. We endure so God will change our character, draw us closer to Him, make it to where we can help others and give others hope because we are keeping calm, we are carrying on, we are sharing the hope that we have found in Christ, we are enduring the sufferings around us, and we are at peace because of it. Not peace because the bombs stop, peace because of who Jesus Christ is. So keep calm, carry on in the hope of the glory of Christ. Let's go to him.