Alright, we're going to begin
our study in Romans 3. Romans 3, and we'll be looking
at verses 1 through 4. Romans 3, 1 through 4. has been showing his hearers
that both Jew and Gentile, all people are guilty of denying
God as he has revealed himself in the scriptures. And so now
he proceeds to answer the objections that some would raise and these
are likely objections that he heard when he would preach the
gospel to the Jews because now these are objections that the
Jews typically are raising up. And what we find is that the
flesh objects to the truth of God, right? The flesh is enmity
against God and against God's truth. And so the flesh looks
to justify itself. It'll raise these objections
to justify itself. It's a form of self preservation. It wants to feel good about itself
and to not be fearful and afraid that they're not under the favor
and grace of God. But when they raise these objections,
what they're doing is they're arguing against God even to the
point where they'll willingly tear down God. And they'll take
God down before they allow themselves to be taken down. And so they
make God out to be the one who's at fault rather than themselves,
and so they're blameless. And our title this morning is
The Objections of the Stumbling Jew. The Objections of the Stumbling
Jew. And we'll have three divisions.
The first we'll look at the Jew stumbles. We're going to look
at what it is that the Jew is stumbling over, the religious
person. What are they stumbling over? And then we'll begin to
look at their objections and see the first objection that
they raise, answered by Paul, and then the second objection
that they raise, answered by Paul as well. All right, so let's
begin. The Jew stumbles. So Paul, Paul's
Jewish hearers, they were stumbling over what they were hearing Paul
preach. They were stumbling over the gospel that Paul preached,
which is the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so when they heard
it, If they didn't receive it, they would begin to argue against
that truth. They would contradict and blaspheme
the things that Paul was saying. And we see examples of this throughout
Acts. For example, in Acts 13, verse
45, We read that as the Gentiles
were gathering around, the Jews saw the multitudes and they were
filled with envy and spake against those things which were spoken
by Paul, contradicting and blaspheming. And so they were willing to speak
against God as he's revealed in scriptures. Paul was showing
them from the scriptures the truth of God revealed in the
face of Jesus Christ. And so Paul He was, what he was
doing in preaching Christ is he's revealing the mystery of
godliness. He's revealing the mystery of
godliness, and what was becoming clear is that those who spoke
against Paul and against this gospel, they had no understanding. And so, to understand what it
is that the Jew was stumbling over, why were they having so
much trouble with what Paul was saying? Well, to understand what
they were stumbling over, we need to understand what Paul
is saying regarding our salvation. What is Paul saying regarding
salvation? And we saw how he was showing
that the Jew can't be saved by the works of the law, and he
was showing that the Gentile can't be saved by the law of
nature. so that God's salvation is apart
from man's works. And what Paul was showing is
that every one of us comes forth as condemned sinners. Every one
of us is guilty of offending God, of breaking His law, of
breaking the law revealed in the heart, of denying God as
He's revealed in Scriptures. Every single one of us. And When
you think back, as you read the scriptures, as you read the Gospels,
you see that, well, the Jews were looking for a Messiah. They believed that when the Messiah
came, he was going to say, alright boys, gather round here, let's
get your pitchforks and your spears together, and we're going
to go crack some Gentile heads, and we're going to subdue them,
and bring them under our rule, and we're going to reign over
them. They stumbled because when Christ came, he didn't come as
the one that they thought, the way that they thought he would
come. He didn't come in that manner, but he came and stripped
them down of their false, vain religion. He showed that what
they were trusting in was themselves, their own works, and they weren't
looking to the Messiah. And so they were confused and
taken back when He began to expose the deadness of their faith and
the deadness of their practices and their religion. And that's
what the Lord does. When we're gathered here and
we hear his gospel, he's tearing down our false refuges, the things
that man has confidence in. Just think in your own heart,
in your own self, what is it that gives you peace? Where do
you run when you see that you're in the wrong? Where do you go
to when you're troubled? What do you look to for comfort
and for peace? And so the Lord strips these
down, He takes these, He knocks these things out from man, so
that He might shut man up to salvation, the true salvation
that God has provided in His Son, Jesus Christ. So, God has
to do that work for us. And if you remember, what Paul
is saying, where he's going is, go back to Romans 1. Look at
Romans 1, verses 16 and 17. Before he began talking about
the sin of the Gentile and the sin of the Jew, look at Romans
1, verses 16 and 17. He was preaching the Gospel of
Christ. The Gospel of Christ, and he
said, it's the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth,
to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the
righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith. As it's
written, the just shall live by faith. And so this was contrary
to the practices and the beliefs of man, whether he's a Gentile,
right, worshiping a stump in the field, you know, and pagan
practices, or he's a Jew practicing the ceremonial law of the Jews
that was given to them through the law of Moses. And he's saying
it's a part, salvation of God is a part from your works. And we're not used to hearing
that. And that's why I repeat it so often, because we're not
used to hearing that. We're constantly looking back
to and examining our status with God, our relation to God, by
something we've done or not done. And that's exactly where the
Gentile was and exactly where the Jew was, especially. Alright,
so it's by faith. And so everything Paul was showing
in chapters 1 and 2, when you read these chapters, and I know
we don't typically spend a lot of time in Romans 1 and Romans
2. Those are chapters we tend to
read through so we can get to the more the parts that we think
are more interesting to us and have more meat. But there's,
this is foundational. And he's, everything that you
read later in Romans is all a deeper dive into what he's shown us
in chapters one and two. All right? So he's showing that
no man is righteous by his works. Every one of us comes forth as
a condemned sinner, but but it's God who has provided the propitiation. the means of forgiveness so that
it really is apart from our works. And so there's nothing we can
do and we're shut up to saying, wait Lord, you're righteous and
I'm not. But He shuts us up to Christ
so that we can't go anywhere for any comfort or satisfaction
with God except in His Son, Jesus Christ. And that's what He's
showing us here. And so the Lord God, what He
does is He speaks of faith. He declares His righteousness
in His Son, and He reveals that to faith. He reveals it to faith. That is, God gives His people
faith to hear, and then He preaches it, he declares it, and he brings
it home to your heart, and he causes you to hear it by the
faith which he's given. And he keeps that understanding
and that knowledge of what Christ has done growing and increasing
in the preaching of the gospel, in Christ, all by his grace and
mercy and power, so that we're seeing more and more, Lord, this
really isn't me, and it's not my works, it's your work. It's
everything you're doing, but he keeps us hungry and thirsting
and seeking and looking to Christ. And so Peter said it this way,
that it's according as his divine power hath given unto us all
things that pertain unto life and godliness through the knowledge
of him that hath called us to glory and virtue. so that He brings us to this
glory, the glory of Christ, and to virtue, that is, we walk by
His Spirit, looking to Him, trusting Him, and our works do follow,
because He produces these in His people, whereby, Peter went
on to say, whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious
promises, that by these, by these promises given to us freely,
By the grace of God in Christ, by these ye might be partakers
of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is
in the world through lust." Because the reality is, if you believe
Christ, if you trust Him, if you rest in Him, He seals you
with His Holy Spirit. We'll see more of that in today's
studies, but He seals us with the Holy Ghost, whereby now we
walk by faith, looking to the Son, trusting the Son, not trusting
this flesh, not putting any confidence in this dead flesh, but trusting
Him, and walking by faith. So even when we stumble and fall,
we're brought to continue to look back to Him. And he does
that. He strengthens that faith and
that hope, trusting Him. And He will grow you. He will bring out those works
that are pleasing to Him because it's His Spirit dwelling in you.
And He'll work this all by grace and by faith in His people. Alright,
so these religious practices that men were doing, those are
the lusts of the flesh. glorying in the flesh, glorying
in something I did, boasting over others because I'm doing
something and they're not, or I'm not doing something but they
are. So he delivers us from the lust of the flesh because that's
all the practice is that the flesh does. even under the guise,
the disguise, the look of it being religious and sanctified
before God. So it's God by his divine power
through this gospel of his son Jesus Christ that strips down
all this man-made righteousness which is a very precarious place
to be. It's like being on an ocean going
up and down and all around twisted and getting confused and frustrated. He delivers us from that. He
shows us that's not your home. It's not your salvation. Stop
looking to you. You keep looking to my son Jesus Christ. And so
he shows us that by our nature, all we're bringing forth in the
flesh, when it's the flesh's work, is stinky, corrupt, rotten
fruit that just attracts maggots and flies. Nobody wants that
stuff. So it's the mercy of God that
does this. It's His grace that reveals this
to you. That's the favor of God to send
you this gospel and to cause you to hear it and give you rest
and peace in His Son, Jesus Christ. That's grace and mercy. So the carnal man being led to
himself, rather than thanking God, He objects. He says, wait
a minute. Wait a minute. You're telling
me that my works don't save me? You're telling me that all this
that I've done, and I can look back down on all these people,
you're saying that I'm a corrupt sinner too? And that I need the
grace of God? I can't accept that. That's madness. So the Jew, they would understand,
right? They would understand, yeah,
I get you, Paul, where you're going with the Gentile. I see
what you're saying about them. They're lost. They're just, they're
bound down to rocks and sticks and worshiping fire and the sun
and all kinds of weird things. I get what you're saying about
the Gentile, but I don't understand what you mean when you're talking
about me. And so they were stumbling over that. And here's why. They had all these what they
considered benefits. I'm a child of Abraham. I come
from his line. I've been circumcised, or my
sons have been circumcised, or I've been given the law, the
ceremonial law, and I practice it. I bring a good sheep out
of my flock. You know, I do what I'm supposed
to do, or I bring the doves, and I do what I'm supposed to
do. I do all these things, and I can even tell others about
what the law says. I'm an instructor in the law.
And so clearly, this is showing that God favors me, as opposed
to those Gentiles. So they were trusting in that. And so the Jew, that's where
they were fixed. And so they couldn't understand
when they were being leveled and put on the same plane as
every other person out there in the world, they were really
confused by this sound that they too needed salvation. I need
the grace of God. Hasn't He already revealed that
I'm His child? What more do I need? Why do I
need a Savior that saves? Why do I need a Christ that puts
away my sin? If I already have the favor of
God, what are you talking about, Paul? So Paul was declaring both
Jew and Gentile, they all need salvation by the Lord Jesus Christ. And so the Jew was stumbling
because they're saying, well, why do I need Christ for the
Jew when I have the law? And why does God need the Gentile
even when he has the Jew? He's got a people. And he's,
you know, we're already set apart from him, all right? Now this
brings us to the first objection that they were raising that Paul
lists here, right? So they heard this, the Jewish
hearer heard this, and they would ask in 3.1, well, what advantage
then hath the Jew? If what you're saying is true,
that we're all sinners in need of the grace of God, which he's
provided in his son, Jesus Christ, what advantage then hath the
Jew? Or what profit is there of circumcision? And you notice
they go right to the lineage, right? Back to the lineage and
to that circumcision. They're going back to the law
and the ceremonial things. That's where they were trusting
him. That was their token of God's favor. So what's the purpose,
they're asking? Why did God even bother separating
out Abraham then? If it's all by grace, why did
he bother separating out Abraham? And why did he give Abraham circumcision
if that doesn't prove God's favor toward a people based on physical,
carnal things? Why would he have even done that?
So Paul addresses that in the next verse, verse 2, Romans 3,
2. He says, well, much every way, chiefly because that unto
them were committed the oracles of God. Oracles of God. Now, oracles of God is referring
very specifically to the written word. It's the written testimony
that God gave the people. Paul doesn't go to the ceremonial
law. He doesn't say, well, you had
all the ceremonies and all these things. He goes to the written
word of God, the testimony that God gave of himself revealed
in these scriptures. So, what do the scriptures reveal?
We know what the scriptures reveal. It's revealing Jesus Christ. And you can see that beautifully
in places like Luke 24 where Christ went and preached it.
But turn over to Luke 4 and we'll look at a different one. Luke
4, because the testimony of Scripture is repeatedly showing us that
it's Christ that ransomed His people, it's Christ that was
to come. We were to be looking to, waiting
for the salvation that God would provide in His Son. Luke 4, verse
16. I'm just going to give you this
one example here. It says that Christ came to Nazareth.
where he had been brought up, and as his custom was, he went
into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto
him the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when he had opened the book,
he found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord
is upon me. He's reading this Old Testament.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed
me to preach the gospel to the poor. He hath sent me to heal
the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives,
and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them
that are bruised. to preach the acceptable year
of the Lord. So Christ is going to a scripture
that shows the grace and the mercy of God towards sinners,
those that are captive and bound by their sin. And when you think
of your life in religion, and your practices and the guilt
and the shame and the stain of sin that we worked up under religion,
you see that's a mercy of God. He's not an exactor the way the
Pharisees were exactors. I mean, he is true and right
when he judges. He's just and right and holy
and he has no sin. There's no hypocrisy with him.
But he knows that we can't do this. And so he's revealing this
to us. And you see how the mercy and
grace of God reveals to us the Savior. And this Savior is here
reading this word from the Old Testament, which is pointing
to Him, Christ the Savior, the Savior of men. And it says there,
Verse 20 And Christ closed the book, and he gave it again to
the minister, and sat down, and the eyes of all them that were
in the synagogue were fastened on him. And he began to say unto
them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. And all
bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded
out of his mouth. And so he's showing them, I am
the savior and the promised one of God is here who brings salvation
to his people, who does for them what they cannot do for themselves. We're never going to, you try
and please God by the law, By the law of nature or the law
of this word, you're never, ever going to succeed. You're going
to come up short. And it'll be a horrifying day
to stand before the judge of all the earth and the judge of
all the universe, who's created all things, and say, look at
my works. Didn't I do good for you? And
so that'll be a shameful day. They thought, wow, what gracious
words is he saying, until he then stripped away their hypocrisy.
Because he went on to talk about the elect Gentile widow that
God sent a prophet to, Elijah, and he went on to talk about
the elect leper that's a Gentile that Elisha told how to be healed. So he did that work for them,
but it was all for Gentiles. And he's showing election, that
God has a people whom he reveals to them the salvation that God
has provided. Well, the Jews, trusting in their
lineage and trusting in their circumcision and trusting in
their ceremony and this law and that they were favored, they
became very offended and wanted to kill Christ that very day.
And so, What we see there is that the Lord must strip us of
religion. Every one of us had to be stripped
of religion and continues to still need to be stripped and
we still see these grave clothes and these blinding things and
foolish thoughts and the folly of our heart and the Lord does
that because we we grow proud and we grow confident and we
grow complacent in ourselves and and trusting of ourselves
and so the Lord and mercy allows us time here and there to see
what we are by nature that that we really have no hope but in
him and so they stumbled and Having heard these same things
that you hear today But not having faith not having the faith that
God reveals they stumbled over it and they didn't believe All
right, so and Peter, you know, I'm not going to read it because
we don't have time but Peter speaks of the Jews They stumbled over
that rock that chief cornerstone that God said this is your salvation
All the house is built upon this foundation Christ without this
without this stone the whole house crumbles and falls apart,
this is the chief cornerstone. He is the salvation of his people.
So they stumbled. So what you see in the Jew, and
we'll examine our own hearts, and you see that we are by nature
guilty of the same thing. They were trusting in these natural
outward things. They were trusting in their lineage,
trusting in circumcision, trusting in the ceremonial law, trusting
in the fact that they were instructors and they had the law and others
didn't. That's where their confidence was, not in the Messiah. You see, so is it clear why they
stumbled? Because that's what they were
really trusting in. And so they couldn't get over
this fact that this is what Paul is preaching grace to them and
they're saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what do you mean? This
is our hope. And now you're telling me that's nothing and God always
purposed it by grace. Alright, and that's what he was
saying. For therein, in Romans 1 17, for therein is the righteousness
of God revealed from faith to faith as it's written, the just
shall live by faith. That's always what God intended,
that we would live by faith which looks to the Lord Jesus Christ.
That's what he works in his people. That's the mystery of godliness
that God is revealing to us in his son Jesus Christ. All right,
now that takes us to the second objection which must be answered. So these Jews, they heard Paul
and they'd ask them, well, if it's by faith, if it's by faith,
then what if there were Jews that didn't believe? You know,
if the Jews are the people of God, but it's by faith, well
then, what about those that don't believe? Again, they're still
fixed in this physical lineage type thing. Look at verse 3,
Romans 3, 3. For what if some did not believe?
Shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect?
Will it make it without effect? And so Paul affirms again, what
he's gonna do, what he's driving towards, and what he's saying
is, the works of man cannot disannul the promise of God. God has promised
salvation through his son, Jesus Christ, and the works of man
are not going to derail that at all. In other words, God will
save his elect people. He's going to bring salvation
to them. So the Jews, all they were understanding
at this time is a law covenant built upon their obedience to
it, right? As long as they're obedient to
the law and doing the best that they can do as far as they were
concerned, then this, everything's all right here. We're doing And
so, and that's going back to the law of Mount Sinai, you know,
that it's conditional that if you do this, then God will give
you these blessings. If you don't do this, then God,
not only won't he give you these blessings, but he'll bring these
curses and punishments upon you. So, but that's what they were,
that's what they were trusting in and resting in. But what the
living, the true and living God, the God who created all things,
He rests the promise of salvation, the hope of sinners, entirely
on Jesus Christ. So either that's true, and that
means it's not of works, or it's of works and it's not of faith. You can't mix the two. It's not
two, and you know what religion teaches you. Religion teaches
that it's got to be by works. Man's works have to do something,
that they have to have some part in determining the favor of God,
whether you're favored of God or not. It's going to be shown
by your works. That's what they're always looking
to. That's what religion, man-made religion teaches. The promise
to Abraham was by faith, and it's dependent entirely on the
faithfulness of Jesus Christ. It's entirely rested on Him alone. So the promises of God, they
can't be altered in any way by the law. By the coming and the
giving of the law does not alter the promises of God. The law
doesn't take away from it, and the law doesn't add to it. We don't add to the promises
of God. We're not aiding it and we're
not hindering it. It's all resting on Christ. you know, when we
think of religion, when we think of where we sat and the places
we've gone to and the family members and friends that we talk
to and the way they speak, they put a lot of emphasis on the
law of Moses, because they really believe that it has some impact
on whether God is favoring you or not. They can't get away from
that. So that if they're saved, well
then they're going to go back to the Law of Moses and they're
going to keep it, right? They're going to do their best.
And so we have to understand that that's not at all, the promise
of God does not hinge on man's obedience to the Law or lack
thereof. And then if it's not the law
of Moses, you still see where man introduces works through
that cardinal doctrine of his called free will, right? Where
he says, well, maybe they don't speak about the law of Moses,
but they say, well, but you've got to make a decision. You've
got to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. You've
got to make him Lord of your life and accept you believe,
accept you do this work. or walk this aisle or come down
here to the prayer team and say a prayer with somebody. Unless
you do this work, God can't save you. His hands are tied. So you
see how either way, dead religion always is trying to find some
way to put that work of salvation into your hands. That it's got
to be something that you do, because if you don't do it, then
clearly God isn't favoring you. And if you don't do what we say,
but we're seeing and the scriptures are revealing that salvation
is by grace and the Lord is going to do it. All right. So Paul,
he smacks that down. You know, when they said, well,
shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect?
And he says in verse four, God forbid, yea, let God be true.
But every man a liar. Now, what the Jew would do is
they could go back to David and David sinned with Bathsheba.
And they could say, well, God favored David because he was
of the lineage of Abraham, and he had the law, and he was circumcised,
and he did his best. So that was their confidence. goes to that scripture, right? The promise to David was first
in Psalm 132, verse 11, that the Lord hath sworn in truth
unto David, he will not turn from it, of the fruit of thy
body will I set upon thy throne. That was the promise of God,
and God said, I'm not turning from this. I'm going to bring
the Christ, the Messiah, through your lineage, David, and he's
going to sit on the throne and rule, nothing's going to change
that. And the Jew would say, well, yeah, it's because he's
the son of Abraham. God's not going to turn from
that. He's going to bless him. He's favored by God with the
law. and the ceremony. But David goes
in the second half of Romans 3-4, it says, as it is written
that thou mightest be justified in thy sayings and mightest overcome
when thou art judged. That's from Psalm 51-4. And if
you read right before verse one, verse one was added by men, but
part of that psalm, it tells us that this was written to the
chief musician, that it's a psalm of David when Nathan the prophet
came to him after he had sinned with Bathsheba. And so what Paul's
doing is he's going to that very psalm that was written from the
adultery that David committed with Bathsheba. And he killed
Uriah, her husband, to cover his sin. So he broke laws. I mean, he coveted another man's
wife. He committed adultery with her.
And he killed the man to cover his own sin. He broke some pretty
serious laws there from the law of Moses. And yet, God fulfilled
his promise to David. It didn't prevent God from fulfilling
his promise to David, showing, and Paul went there to show that
it's not man's works. It's not because David's the
son of Abraham. It's not because he was circumcised
and had the law. This man was a breaker of the
law. And yet God fulfilled that promise to David. And so he was
showing that it is completely, entirely, has nothing to do with
man's works. It is based on the promise of
God only because God provided salvation in the Lamb of God
who paid that sin debt for David. He bore that sin and he put it
away through the shedding of his own blood. The punishment
has been put away. God is satisfied so that now
when God judges, He's just and justified. He can do it because
Christ paid the price. The sin is put away. And so then
that leads to the next thing. We'll deal with it next time,
but where man says, well, then wait a minute. That means man's
just going to run wild into sin. He's going to be licentious and
crazy and just do whatever he wants. If it's only by the grace
of God, then man's going to just do whatever he wants. And so
we'll look at that next time, but that's just not true. Not
by the spirit of God. we won't be doing that. So basically
what we're seeing here is that God has to reveal the truth of
Christ to the faith which He gives. He gives faith and He
reveals Himself that it is by faith that He's put away your
sin and that it rests entirely on the promise of Christ. not
upon your works. You're not adding to it, and
you're not taking away from it. It's got to be by the grace of
God in Christ. So I pray the Lord will bless
that word to your hearts. Let's pray. Our gracious Lord,
we thank you for your promise, the promise of your Son, Jesus
Christ. Lord, we see what we are by nature,
what sinners we are. The evil that we do in this flesh,
Lord, save us from the works of darkness. Save us from the
works of the lusts of vain, dead religion. Lord, by your grace,
help us to look to Christ and to Him alone and to see Him.
Lord, that you would convince us in the heart, show us, and
teach us, and keep us ever looking to Christ, knowing that all your
promises of life and forgiveness, of eternal life, of dwelling
with you forever, all rest entirely on your Son, Jesus Christ, in
Him alone. And it's in the name of Jesus
Christ we pray and give thanks. Amen.