This sermon continues an exposition of Romans, moving from Romans 1:24-32 into Romans 2:14-16, to press home Paul's argument that all humanity stands guilty before God — not merely through ignorance, but through willful, conscious disobedience. In the previous sermon, the preacher had shown that Romans 1 argues humanity has turned away from the Creator, whom it clearly knows through the created world, to worship idols instead — money, sex, power, human approval, statues, and other creatures. As an act of judgment, God gave humanity up to its own evil desires. Paul anticipates an objection: what about those who never received God's written law? Can they be judged for laws they never knew? Paul's answer, unfolded in Romans 2:14-16, is that even Gentiles who lack the Mosaic law are "a law to themselves," because "the work of the law is written on their hearts," with conscience bearing witness and either accusing or excusing them. This inward moral knowledge, the preacher argues, is evidenced across history: the Code of Hammurabi predates Moses by roughly three centuries yet mirrors the Ten Commandments' moral core, and Genesis records Cain, Abimelech, Jacob, and Joseph's brothers all instinctively knowing right from wrong long before the law was given at Sinai. Even cultures with no contact with Israel, such as ancient China, arrived at strikingly similar moral codes without cooperation or shared discussion.

The sermon then tests two popular secular explanations for this universal moral sense — instinct and pragmatism — and finds both insufficient. Morality cannot be mere instinct, because instinct only compels behavior without judging it; humans regularly act against their own moral instincts (for example, lying comes naturally yet is universally recognized as wrong), showing that conscience stands in judgment over behavior rather than simply producing it. Nor can morality be reduced to pragmatism, the idea that what "works" defines what is good; while God's good laws do tend to produce good outcomes (honoring parents, working hard), the two are not identical — it would be pragmatic but is clearly immoral to kill one person to harvest organs for five, or to endorse slavery for economic gain. The only sufficient explanation, the preacher insists, is Paul's own: this law is not learned from the world but written on the heart by the God who made humanity in his image.

Working through the specific sins Paul lists in Romans 1:26-32 — covetousness, murder, lying, boasting, gossip, disobedience to parents, promise-breaking — the sermon notes that most hearers, Christian or not, readily agree these are wrong. The sermon then turns deliberately to the sin Paul dwells on at greatest length in verses 26-27: homosexuality. The preacher argues this is the sin Paul treats as most self-evidently wrong, because unlike other sins that merely violate the (somewhat subjective) voice of conscience, homosexuality violates both conscience and the objective order of nature — the created complementarity of man and woman, made in God's image, male and female, blessed to be fruitful and multiply (drawing on Genesis 1). The preacher acknowledges this view runs counter to contemporary Melbourne culture, but argues that the modern acceptance of homosexuality required society to first dismantle the very concept of an objective moral standard — since, absent such a standard, no coherent case that anything is "wrong" can be made at all. Listeners are urged not to read Scripture through a postmodern lens that presupposes there is no fixed right and wrong, but to see the sin as Paul described it.

Having established that humans do know the wrong things they do, the sermon presses to a second, weightier point: humans know that these wrongs deserve death. Romans 1:32 states plainly that people "know God's righteous decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die." The preacher reasons that the severity of an offense scales with the dignity of the one offended — it is worse to wrong a king than a commoner, so how much worse to sin against God, who is both King of the universe and humanity's own Father and Sustainer? Yet even knowing this, people persist in doing wrong. This leads to the sermon's third and final point: humans not only sin but actively invite others into their sin and approve of those who do likewise (Romans 1:32b). The preacher explains this through a psychological observation — when people sin in groups, individual conscience is dulled; a person diffuses personal responsibility into the group, feels less guilt, and fears less punishment. The deeper aim of this collective approval, the sermon argues, is not merely to do evil but to build a world in which evil can be done without shame.

The sermon closes by turning from diagnosis to answer. In the quiet moments when conscience cannot be silenced by crowds or excuses, humanity faces the verdict of Romans 3: "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." This universal bad news, however, is met by an equally universal good news — that the God against whom humanity has sinned chose to love sinners and give his only Son, Jesus Christ, so that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. Jesus died the death that sinners deserved, so that in him forgiveness is found from a God who does not overlook evil but has fully satisfied justice at the cross. The sermon ends by setting two paths before the hearer: to keep denying either one's own sinfulness or God's existence, living in surface comfort but underlying fear; or to turn back to the God one already knows and fears, trusting in Jesus Christ, who alone can rescue sinners from judgment and restore them to God.

Bible verses used:

• Romans 1:24-27 — "Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity... For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions... men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error." Cited as evidence that humanity's rejection of the Creator results in God's judicial "giving up," with homosexuality highlighted as the sin Paul treats at greatest length, framed as violating both conscience and the created order of nature.

• Romans 1:28-31 — "They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice... gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful... disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless." Used as the catalog of sins that violate the moral law written on every human heart, sins the preacher argues nearly everyone instinctively recognizes as wrong.

• Romans 1:32 — "Though they know God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them." The key verse structuring the sermon's second and third points: that humans know their sin deserves death, and that they further approve of and recruit others into sin.

• Romans 2:14-16 — "For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires... They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness... on the day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of man by Christ Jesus." The central text establishing that even those without the written Mosaic law possess an inward moral law, making all humanity accountable before God.

• Romans 3:23 — "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Cited as the inescapable verdict conscience ultimately confirms when a person is alone and honest with themselves.

• Genesis 1 — Referenced for the creation of humanity "male and female" in God's image, blessed to be fruitful and multiply, grounding the sermon's argument that human sexuality and gender are rooted in created reality, not merely social construction.

• Exodus 20 / Deuteronomy 5 — Referenced as the location of the Ten Commandments, used to illustrate the moral laws written on the human heart that God later codified explicitly for Israel.