“People and nations, even the covenant nation Israel can come to a point where they are abandoned by God. … Now I’m going to say something, you’re going to have to hold on to your seat a little bit. I’m convinced beyond doubt that in this same sense, God has abandoned America. … This is the most graphic and the most detailed and the most comprehensive discussion of what it means for a people, a society to be abandoned by God. And it perfectly describes the moral chaos in our own nation today. …
Throughout history these calamities continue to even happen and they all fit in the category of God’s judgment of sin. But there’s this other category of the wrath of abandonment, it is a form of God’s wrath in which He lets go of a society and let’s it catapult full speed without restraint in the direction of its own sinful desires and devices and choices. …
We’d like to talk about the fact that America was founded on Christian principles and God was at the center of it, and all of that, whatever it might have been in our founding, it’s no longer the way it is and I want to show you how you know that has happened.
Go down to verse 24. You see in verse 24 the first word “therefore,” this means we’re now going to see a description that connects to what has been said. If you go back to verse 18, “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men,” and we could stop at that point. The wrath of God is revealed. And then it goes on to talk about the wrath of God and the reasons for the wrath of God. And then in verse 24 it then describes the wrath of God and here’s the description. “Therefore God gave them over, or God gave them up, in the lust of their hearts to impurity that their bodies might be dishonored among them, for they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever, amen. For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions, for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural. In the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman, burned in their desire toward one another, men with men, committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind to do the things that are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, envy, full of…or evil full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, gossip, slander, haters of God, insolent arrogant boastful inventors of evil, disobedient to parents without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful. And although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, and not only do them, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.” …
The first thing you look for in a society you’re trying to discern whether God has abandoned that society is whether or not that society has gone through a sexual revolution so that illicit sex, adultery, every form of immorality is accepted as normal in that society. And we’re there.”
“This is what it means when God abandons a society. Sexual revolution, down one more step; homosexual revolution, down one more step; you can’t ever get your way out of it because the mind, the cultural mind is gone…it’s gone…it’s gone. And I would put it this way, maybe simply, there’s no surer indicator of a corrupted, wicked and abandoned society under God’s wrath than when that society does not tolerate anger against sin. This society will not tolerate you standing up and displaying righteous indignation against sin.”
— John MacArthur (1939) Pastor of Grace Community Church and host of Radio Show Grace to You