Interestingly enough, Paul is
not including himself in the context of Chapter 2 in the sense
that he is one who is an unbeliever or that he is, in some sense,
uncircumcised in heart, but recognize that Paul did include himself
in Chapter 2 as a Jew before his conversion. That Paul is
saying there, we Jews, ethnically, what I've just argued, though
we have an advantage, why does the Jew have the advantage? The
Jew has the advantage because he's been given the oracles of
God. But does that advantage give the Jew a greater opportunity
for salvation? A greater stance before the Lord? Not at all. As a matter of fact,
that's what Paul now is going to close this statement with
as he begins to, if you will, allude to the Old Testament in
many places. So we ask the question, what
then? Are the Jews any better off?
He says, no, not at all. For we have already charged that
all, both Jew and Greeks, are under sin. So that's what he's
tried to do with the argument thus far. Everyone is under sin, but the
Jew himself, because he had an advantage by being given the
Word of God, should have been far beyond where he was. Should
have understood clearly. Should have had the clear vision
of who Jesus Christ was and understood the Gospel. But it continually
shows us at every turn of all of the polling letters, and specifically
here in the argument of Romans, is that there is no way that
a man, there is no way that a human being, can come to the knowledge
of the faith without an intervention of divine proportions. So that
it comes through the simplicity of hearing the Word of God, but
the actual reality of one coming out of darkness into light, from
death to life, is only done through divine power. So he says then,
as it is written, look at the latter part of verse 10. None
is righteous, no, not one. No one understands. No one seeks
for God. All have turned aside. Together
they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their
lips. Their mouth is full of curses
and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed
blood, and their paths are ruin and misery, and they know not
the way of peace, or the way of peace they have not known.
There is no fear of God before their eyes." Now I want to just
probably, in the time we have tonight, deal with these verses,
these nine verses. I don't think that if I go any
further, chapter 3 is one of those chapters like chapter 7
and chapters 9 and 10 that we'll have to really digest in smaller
pieces than just doing a reading of larger portions. If we think
about what Paul is doing here, he's quoting many places in the
Old Testament. He's quoting some of the Psalms,
he's quoting some of the prophets, he's quoting some areas, and
not verbatim. He's taking pieces out of here
and pieces out of here and he's putting them together. But he's
doing that to show not only the truth of how humanity is, and
that there is none who is not guilty before God, That was double
negative in the stints, it was correct, but that all people
are guilty before God. But more specifically, he's showing
that the very oracles that Israel had teach them that they're guilty. But yeah, they couldn't see it.
And so he uses the Old Testament as now New Testament writing
to prove that the Jews should have seen their guilt. That the
Jews should have seen that their salvation was by the grace of
God. That the Jews should have seen that there was nothing good
in them. But every time, now think about this, We've been
in church before. We've been hearing somebody teach
or preach, whether here with us as Grace Truth or in the history
of our lives. And we've heard something that
was really well stated that was sort of pointed. And we've gone,
I wish so and so were here to hear that. And we're all guilty
of it. Now, it's not wrong to think,
oh, I wish so and so were here to hear that. But a lot of times
it comes on the tail end of an unspoken idea We didn't really
need to hear that, but so and so need to hear that. And that's
sort of what's happened with the Jews, in a roundabout way,
is they heard it, and heard it, and heard it, and they placed
every aspect of God's wrath, and judgment, and every idea
that God was angry with anyone, and they placed it on the Gentiles.
They thought to themselves, surely the Bible teaches about God's
wrath, and God's vengeance, and God's righteousness, and God's
justice, and God's anger. But God is not angry with us. He's angry with the world. And
that's what Israel, that's what Jews called the Gentiles. The
world. There's us as Israel, God's holy
and elect, chosen people from the foundations of the world.
through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the lineage of David, we've got
it all, and then there's everybody else. Which makes good sense
when we understand what John is writing about the dialogue
with Jesus and Nicodemus in John 3, which is where we will probably
be next Sunday, not this coming. when Jesus says, for God so loved
the world. The context of the world is the
totality of human depravity and the totality of the lost. And Paul here now in Romans 3
is saying, ta-da! Everybody who is in the world,
Israel is part of the world. And they're guilty. But now we'll
use the Jewish writing to prove their guilt. What then, he says,
don't you remember it is written, we have already charged, as he's
already done in chapter one and two, that everyone is under sin. There is none who are not under
sin. Beloved, if you don't understand
where to go in the Bible to teach you about total depravity, or
if we want to be sort of avant-garde, radical corruption, If you want
to learn about the totality of the corruption of the human heart
and the human mind and the human condition and understand that
there is none who are without sin at any point of their existence
from zygote to, what is this guy's name? Methuselah. However
long we live, we are under sin. Romans 3, 9 says it clearly. It says it clearly. All are under
sin. And then Paul proves it with
the Hebrew Scripture as he quotes all of these different places.
Let's go through them and let's contemplate what it might be
teaching us one by one. Oh, let me see here. Yeah, I'm
not going to do that. Let's just do what I just said.
No one is righteous. No, not one. Now that's probably
one of the hardest indictments against an Israelite that has
ever been spoken outside the mouth of another Israelite. For
a Jew to say to a people who call themselves the righteous
ones of God that you are not righteous is a very bad thing. I'll never forget, I wish I could,
but I'll never forget a season of my itinerant ministry where
I would speak at a lot of different places, camps and conferences
and campuses, and just, I had this way that I thought I was
being very clever of showing people their inability to be
good enough. And what we did is that I set
everybody up by stating something like this, who is the most holy
person you know? See, right there, it's already
an error. But I was very ignorant of the deep truths of Scripture
when it came to the condition of man. And some people, you
know, of course it was a large crowd, so it wasn't, it was rhetorical,
I didn't want them to just start spouting it out, but inevitably
you would hear somebody say, the Pope! At an evangelical camp,
or the Baptist, at a Baptist school. Okay, the Pope. Mother Teresa, you hear, we're
batting a thousand on Catholics now. Keep going, you know, Saint
so-and-so. All right, how about contemporary
people that you might could meet? Billy Graham! You know, Billy Joel, who said
that? Oh, Brother Joel, yeah. That's sort of a stretch. But
that's what it's like when you're up here and you got a crowd just
yelling stuff, Billy Joel, y'all crazy? So you take a few cues
and after I did that a couple of times, I had a good list of
people. And I'd say, how many of you would think, and I'd go
on, by a show of hands that you're just as righteous as the guy
next to you? And every hand there would go
up except like a few smart kids. A few smart college students,
a few smart adults. Or either they were scared to
raise their hand because they knew it was a trick. I said, keep your hands raised
if you're still as righteous as your neighbor, as your mother,
as your pastor. And then almost all the hands
would go down. Except for the pastor's kids. Their hands are
still up. As Billy Graham, nobody's hands
were up. as the Apostle Paul. Of course,
everybody's hands were down, as Jesus Christ. And then I would teach what the
Scripture teaches about the standard of righteousness is Jesus. The
standard of righteousness is the holiness of God. But what
I didn't get during those years in my 20s is that there was no
comparison at all. The very question is a fallacy.
Are you as righteous as your neighbor, as Billy Joel, as Billy
Graham, as the Pope, as your pastor, as St. Paul? Yes, I am
just as righteous as they are. Unrighteous. And Paul is saying that. We're
all of equal righteousness, which is none. We're in unrighteousness. There is non-holiness. We're
all unholy, unrighteous, wicked, depraved things. Which there's
a problem though when we think about the gospel of grace in
the context of this teaching. That's why Paul goes to such
lengths sometimes in his contrasting texts where he says, but you
once were alienated, you once were dead, you once were... Beloved,
we are alive in Christ. We are no longer sinners held
to the bondage of wickedness. We're no longer slaves to the
old nature. We're new creations in Christ,
but we still, even in any way that we would formulate some
exterior righteousness or the image of some exterior holiness,
we are short Greatly short of the righteousness of God we have
fallen greatly from the glory of God as Paul is going to argue
in this very chapter There is none righteous Not even
one now a Jew that would hear this could say okay. I know my
own heart. That's right But I'm working good and I'm staying
course and I'm doing what I can do and some of them might have
even said by the mercy of God I'll walk the way I need to walk
"'cause the walking will take me to righteousness.'" And then
some of them would think, wow, that scripture, that includes
Moses. Well, we know Moses was unrighteous.
He was condemned by God, or prohibited by God from going into the promised
land because he rebelled against God in a simple task. You might
say, why does someone have to die for touching the Ark of the
Covenant? Because God said not to touch it. Why did Moses have to die in
the desert and not go into the Promised Land? He had to put
up with these people for 40 years and he could see it and God let
him die in the desert because he disobeyed God. You remember
the disobedience of Moses? You know what God had told Moses
to do previously when they needed water? What did he say? Strike
the rock with your staff and water will come out. The second
time, God said, speak to the rock. And Moses is just disgruntled,
he's like, I'll strike it. Water came out. That, rather
than speaking, caused Moses not to enter the Promised Land. And
commentators and Sunday school teachers are like, well, see,
Moses' heart was wicked. Moses' heart was wicked before
he hit the rock. Moses, many times, prayed against
his own people, and then God would say, okay, I'll kill them
all, and he'd go, oh, oh, oh, I'm sorry, don't kill them all,
I love them. You know, like parents with children. Kill them, kill
them, I don't kill them. We're schizophrenic as parents, we
are. Moses was too. He had a million children walking
around for 40 years having babies, being disobedient, waiting for
the generation of the unfaithful to die. That's why the Israelites
were put in the wilderness for 40 years. Do you know that? The
Scripture says, so that those rebellious and unbelieving generations
would die. There's none not righteous, no
one. Not Moses, not Abraham, not Jacob. None. Only Jesus. There's no one righteous. He says, no one understands.
Paul will argue strongly about the condition of the mind, because
we are not righteous. Because we are not righteous,
we are depraved. And because we are depraved,
we don't understand. Imagine going to a foreign country.
Imagine going to this country and going into these peoples,
not speaking their language very well, but being able to communicate
with them in some small way that we could handle the necessities
of life. But imagine that it was a crime,
if you will, to yawn. a neurological response to the
lack of oxygen in the body that's empathetically spread like a
virus. See? There we go. Some of you
are yawning now. It's something that you can't
control. But what if it were a crime? What if it were wrong? What if it was just culturally
off? But they would come to you And
they would try to say to you in a language you could not get
that it's not okay to yawn. And if you yawn more than 10
times in a week, they'll top off your head. And you're sitting
there and they're coming to you and they're trying to explain.
So they mimic a yawn and then you yawn because of seeing them
mimic a yawn. And then they think you're being
disrespectful. And one thing leads to another
and you die. Why? Because you don't understand. The law, as we'll see, was not written to the righteous.
That's what Paul tells Timothy. The law was not given to the
righteous, but to the evil. But even then, they could not
understand. Do you realize that because we
are guilty before God, because we are depraved, because we are
not righteous, we do not, without the work of God, have the ability
to understand the depth of our depravity? That's why in our
world, especially our country, most people think it's okay to
steal small things, like pens, excess change at the drive-thru,
books, TV remotes, pillows, towels,
and sheets from the hotel. Why would you want those? Six
million people washed off with my sheet, or my towel, yay. Bleach that thing with fire,
then use it. But either way, people think it's okay to steal
that stuff. Oh, they've got plenty. Or they expect it. You know what
they expect you to take? The soap. The shampoo, the toothpaste,
the deodorant, and the hair net. You can put it all in one hand
and you leave. That's what you're paying for
anyway, the $100 a night. You're paying for that. People think it's okay. Why?
Because we don't understand. Not only do we not understand
the depth of what sin is, and the fact that we are actually
condoning sin many times in our lives, we make excuses, and we
come to the place where we will actually begin to justify certain
sins in our culture, or even worse, our own lives, because
somebody else doesn't really understand what we're going through.
Like yelling. Yelling. Well, you don't understand,
my children don't listen. That's because you're yelling
all the time. Talk softer, then they'll listen
a little better. Pay close attention about this down there. Don't
forget what I'm about to say. Say you're like, what's he saying?
What's he saying? Well, not only do we not understand
the depth of our sin and depravity, but we don't understand the depth
of the righteousness of God. We don't comprehend in our fallen
state just why God must give us over to judgment. Because
we're blinded to see what holiness actually is. The scripture says that the natural
man is hostile to God. It does not understand. It does
not submit to His ways. Indeed, what does it say? It
cannot. He cannot. The mind cannot. It also says
in verse 11, no one understands and no one seeks for God. Oh, how I wish I had paid attention
to this verse before I went to Saddleback Community
Church. Because had I really understood
this the first few days I was there, it would have been very
easy for me to go, whoop, I'm in the wrong place. Because all
we talked about is how people were seeking after God. The highways
and the byways, and all the way out there, and what was taught
to me as the community. This is the purpose-driven church
model, which is wicked, unbiblical, demonic, depraved. And that's being kind. And we
connect with them, and we move them down, and we move them down,
and we move them down until they become core. And the way that you go after
people who are supposedly seeking after God, and see if I was smart
enough in my logic then, I would have realized that's just stupid.
It's contradictory. We said there were seekers who
were seeking after God, but when we took God to the seekers, they
didn't want to hear about God, so we had to meet their felt
needs, which is what they were really seeking, so that we could
drag them into the fellowship of the church, and then by some
bait or switch, like, hey, two gallons of milk for 45 cents,
there they're all out but we got a 900 pound bag of dog food
for $1,000. While I'm here I guess I'll buy
that. That's what it's like for the seeker-sensitive mindset
of meeting felt needs in a world that hates God, doesn't understand
Him, and is not righteous. When we say, look at the righteousness
of God, look at Jesus Christ, look at this God who became man
to suffer under the idea of obeying the law which reflected His own
nature. He did it, and then He died for
your disobedience. And you're like, why did He do
that? That's dumb. You know what we're gonna have
a circus and I got some flamethrowers and David Copperfield's coming
and the Motorcycles will be here and the planes will be here.
Oh, let's take the kids and while we're here, by the way, do you
feel lost? The world's going not at all.
This is great It's exactly what I thought it was going to be
the people who are Christians are going. Yeah. I thought this was
a church But then they're told oh no,
no, no, it's for the sake of the loss that we're doing this
and Do you feel lost? Do you feel like sometimes you're
overwhelmed? Do you feel like maybe there's a point in your
life where you're out of control? Yes. Raise your hand if that's
you. Bow your head and close your
eyes. If you want to be free from that, I want you to hear
the words that I say. And you go on and you go on and
you go on. Would you say this prayer and
you lead them through it? And if you said that prayer today
and you really meant it, then you are born of God. And they
never heard the gospel? They never heard the Bible? They
just heard a lot of sad stories and a lot of cool jugglers and
some fire coming out of people's dogs and thought, this is the
coolest church I've ever been a part of. I don't even feel
guilty about who I am. That's probably not a pastor. That life coach did not even
say anything about my alcohol. He did not say anything about
my multiple girlfriends. He did not say one thing about
my foul language. As a matter of fact, he used
profanity when he met me. I thought he was so cool. You
see, this is how the world sees Christ. Let's make Him turn into
something more fleshly When I say flesh, I mean carnal. No one seeks for God. Friends,
these are the tactics that are employed by a majority of what
we call evangelical Christians every single week. And we wonder
why people are starving spiritually, why those whom God saves in spite
of that because they happen to hear the Word or pick the Bible
up, or in a small group or a Bible study class, that God saves them. When you hear a testimony that
comes from someone's mouth about how horrible their childhood
was and then they found Jesus and now that ruined childhood
has been wiped away, that's not a testimony of grace. Because if that's a testimony
of grace, then what about the childhood that was nice? What about the
children who had their parents together and had three squares
and a cot and a place to play and a good education? You know
what? They don't need Christ. Yes, they do. They don't need
Christ in the world's ways. They don't seek after God. Do
you know why we must proclaim the hard news of the gospel?
Because no one's seeking after God, but through hearing the
hard news of the gospel, many will be offended, but God, through
the hearing, will save some. He will save some, and we are
of the number of some. Praise God for faithful pastors. Praise God for faithful Christians.
Praise God for those who seem to be odd and off in the world
and don't fit in at all, but they'll share the faith. with
the lost. Verse 12 says that all have turned
aside. What is he talking about? All Jews have turned aside, all
men have turned aside. There is no one that is following
the way of God. They together have become worthless. Now see, what in the world do
we say to a world that is so established upon self-esteem
and self-worth and the will of man? What do we say to a world
of academia where when there is trial in life, they cancel
classes and postpone exams and they give coffee and movie and
cards and Play-Doh to twenty-year-old men because they're grieving? Wah! Grow up! You know, that's
what I want. I want to bust into these quiet
rooms sometimes when I hear that stuff. And if you don't know
what I'm talking about, universities, the day after the election, provided
peace and quiet rooms for these troubled adults to deal with
the horror of the death that they just experienced because
the carrot man won. The carrot man won! Yes, it was traumatic for some.
But you still got to go to work and you still got to go to school.
Friends, I think that that's a reality of what Paul in the
Scripture in the Old Testament was talking about. We've become
worthless. We can't even look at the totality
of humanity. Yes, we as the church are precious. We sang it, didn't we? We are
the object of the affection of our Creator. It is because of
us that Christ died so that we could be redeemed and snatched
out of darkness and brought into light. We have value because
God has placed His affection upon us, not because we are worthy
of having value. But they lost. Now don't hear
what I'm not saying. I'm not saying everybody who's
lost, we ought to forget. We ought to have a zeal and a horror
and a heartbeat to see God save every soul around us. We ought
to be actively praying that God would utilize us in any way to
share the faith and to share the gospel. But we must understand
that as a race, There is only one race. It's the human race.
As the human race, we have no value in our righteousness, because
we aren't. In our understanding, because
we don't. And in our walking, because we've turned aside. If
the world has been created by God, inclusive of all people,
to the praise of His glory, to depict the reality of His righteousness
and the power of His majesty. Look at the world, y'all. And
oh wow, there are pockets. There are pockets of people who
decide to put aside the sublime and bring about the encouraging
of social justice. That we should stand against
the tyranny of the world. Well, good grace, what are we
supposed to do? How long can we stand against
an eternal problem? When has there never been tyranny? Let's think about some of the
social issues that Jesus dealt with. Slavery. Ownership of women. Child prostitution. Homosexuality. Unfair merchants. Murder. What else? False prophets. Hatred of another because of
their ethnicity. Bigotry. Stupidity. Wait a minute. No, wait a minute.
I'm not thinking of Jesus. I'm thinking of Gandhi. I'm thinking
of Buddha. Hunger. Famine. Jesus never talked about these
things. As a matter of fact, when Mary poured $35,000 worth
of nard on the floor and washed her hair in it so that she could
clean Jesus' nasty feet. $35,000. I'm not exaggerating. was a year's normal household
salary to have that much nard. Precious, priceless. And Judas,
ha ha, Mr. Social Justice guy says, wait
a minute, don't waste it, we could sell it and give it to
the poor. And Jesus says, the poor you
always have with you, you're not wasting this, buddy. Let that rest. Jesus didn't do
that. Jesus did not stand at the precipice
of creation, at the precipice of time, at the precipice of
His ministry and say, don't worry about the glory of God, don't
worry about the glory of the Father, don't worry about the
kingdom that is to come, but let's straighten this crap up.
We've got to clean this house up. We might have some people
visiting. We need to get this community
straight. We've got to get our priorities
straight. How much water did you take to the prison? How many
clothes did you take to the clothes closet? Well, if you're a real
Christian, you'll take clothes to the clothes closet. How about
if you're born again and you got clothes you don't need? You
probably shouldn't have bought them to start with. Or maybe
we just outgrew them from one side to the other. Who knows?
Or maybe they're just out of date. Or maybe somebody thought
you needed some new clothes and they gave you more than you need.
So now you've got more. There might be all sorts of reasons
why we have more clothes than we need, but the bottom line
is we have more clothes than we need, we have more food than
we need, we have more stuff than we need, we have all sorts of
things that we don't need in this country, and it would greatly
benefit someone else if they had them. That's being a good
steward. It's got nothing to do with being the body of Christ,
because the greatest benevolent philanthropists in the world
are lost atheists who have lots of money. But Jesus said, if you don't
give a gull a cup of water, if you don't visit in prison, you
don't know how to read context. We'll get there one day. See,
that's what you hear. No, we are worthless. No one
does good, not even one. I didn't read that, but that's
what I'm talking about. It doesn't matter what good we do in the
eyes of society. It doesn't matter how good it
looks on Fox News or CNN. It doesn't matter how many presidents
or multi-millionaires or how many athletes stand up and say,
man, that's a humanitarian award. Give it to them. Give it to them.
It'll burn in hell with the rest of judgment. Every good human
deed is worthy of ashes. Every good poem that strikes
the heart of a nation, that causes them to have an affection for
lost dogs and starving children, burns in the ashes of judgment.
And I'm not saying that those things aren't vital and important
when they come across us. But beloved, if everything we
know about everything that's happening in this world would
not be known to us because we didn't watch TV or stick our
face in the internet all day. We don't need to know about it.
You see. We need not concern ourselves
with the loud mouth squeaking wheel that needs the oil. Don't
even oil it. Set it on fire, kick it over
the cliff and watch it burn. And get to the glory of God,
who is a consuming fire, who is not destroyed. We've got to
stop having arguments that make no sense, that have nothing to
do with that old, what is it, with the price of rice in China.
What do the Chinese say? The price of the iPhone in America? First world, isn't it? No one
does good. So all of the good that we see
in the world, all of the good that makes the hometown section
of the paper, it's not good. And we certainly, when we do
it as unto the Lord, it is honoring to God and it is a good thing,
but it is not something that's going to make us right before
the Lord. And it's not something for which
we ought to be patted on the back. Why? Because the nature
of our created beings is that we live in a community and we
take care of those who are of us. And if I see my neighbor's
house on fire and I roll over and go to sleep, I'm a wicked
man. If I'm eating and going to scrape my leftovers to the
dog and my other neighbor is starving and I watch him starve
while my dog eats the fat off my bones, I'm a wicked neighbor. But the point in doing any of
it is that God is glorified. And the worst act of hate, the
worst hate crime that ever befell the world in this day and age
is when those who profess the name of Christ do everything
in the name of love except teach the gospel. It's a hate crime. We ought to teach the gospel.
We don't do good. We don't speak good things. Look
at verse 13. Their throat is an open grave. We're liars. We
use our tongues to deceive. The book of James comes there.
I don't have to go out and talk about that. Look at the lies.
Every news broadcast you see is a liar. Every weather report
you see has always been a lie. Except when they come on and
say, there's a storm outside sea and he's standing in it.
There it is. It's not a lie. It's always a lie. I'm jesting. The venom of asps is under their
lips. If we want to put it in the context
of our culture, the venom of rattlesnakes, pit vipers. That
means we use our tongues to destroy. It's poison. What we say tears
down. Beloved, let me tell you right
now, there are people that I see in the small sphere of what I
can see on social media and what I can hear in community who claim
to be in Christ. If they were part of our church,
we would not even be able to have service for the next seven
months because we'd be too busy dealing with church discipline.
Because what they say, it's like what we were talking about earlier,
what they say and what they share and what they bring attention
to is poisonous to the lives around them. It is not building
up, it is not encouraging, it is not true, it is vile, it is
worthless, it is no good, it is poisonous. And then when we
respond to that, verse 14, our mouth is full of curses and bitterness.
This is the reality of who all mankind are. That's why we can,
with all good assessment, say that when those who profess to
be born again by the power of the Spirit of God, and all they
do is curse their brethren, that they need to be brought under
discipline. So that God, through the discipline, would correct
such error. I'm not going to say that they're
not born again, but, beloved, if we don't correct the behavior,
how in the world are we supposed to learn? And then it goes on down. A couple
of verses. We'll run right through this very quickly. It's sort
of self-explanatory. Their feet are swift to shed
blood, and their paths are ruined in misery. Now see, a lot of
us right now are thinking, but that doesn't describe our culture.
It doesn't. Yes, it does. Every person who's
ever said anything off-color in a public way in defamation
against Barack Obama has murdered him. And every person who's done
likewise against Donald Trump has murdered him. And every person that says His murder. Our feet are swift
to shed blood. We love it, like sharks in the
pond. We smell it, and we're coming
in there, we're going to cut it some more. We want to see this thing turn red, like
Moses in Egypt. We want to see all the water
red. And I'm not saying that we don't
need times of good dialogue and discussion and things of that
nature, but friends, you know the world in which we live. If
God had not saved us out of the world, We would all be murderers
at heart. And in our paths would be misery
and ruin. Don't take a knee, take a knee.
When's the last time any of you ever watched an NFL game? Don't
raise your hand. Sunday, right? Who cares? Who cares? And I'm not being
cavalier with that, but I'm asking literally, who cares? You know
who cares? Nobody cares. Nobody gives a flip that these
players squatted down during the national anthem. Nobody really
cares. What they care about is the noise
they make. They don't care. $30 million to take a knee. What's happening in Haiti? What's
happening in Puerto Rico? I don't know, because I can't
find out. I got an email today, any of you guys going to Puerto
Rico, did you hear what happened? No? Turn on the news? Well, they
didn't stand for the national anthem. Well, maybe the band
stunk. Or maybe the singer, maybe it
was, I don't know, terrible. Or maybe they were tired. Or
maybe they're just sick and tired of being in a country where everybody's
feet are swift to shed blood and in front of everybody's path
is misery and ruin. Maybe they're tired of it. I'm
tired of it too. But you know what? I have a greater joy and
I have a greater reward and I have a greater inheritance because
this world is already dead. It's a rotted case of meat that's
already on the way to the grave. We are not part of it. And when
we don't speak the truth of what the Word of God teaches about
these issues, When we don't look at the culture and when it comes
away and we go, okay, that's nice, but look here. Take your
eyes off this temporal garbage and look at the ineffable glory
of God through the face of Christ and His Word. And God does supernatural
things. Do you think there wasn't more
to do in the ministry of Jesus than what He did in this world?
There was so much to do that according to most people, He
failed. He did not do anything to help
those in need. He fed groups, and then when
they did not receive Him, He refused to ever feed them again.
He went into a colonnade, and there were a thousand invalids
who had been trying to be healed for years, one for thirty-five
years. He healed him, and the Scripture
says He vanished because there were too many people there, when
with just one word, He could have healed them all. Jesus was
not on a mission of healing broken people. He was not on a mission
of raising people from the dead so that they could just die again.
He was on a mission to display the glory of God. And to save
people from eternal damnation. And to save people from the American
dream. And to save people from their
social justice platform. And to save people from their
double-sided, double-standard racism. And to save people from
abortion. And to save people from hunger
and famine and corruption. Because all that is because we
live in the world. If humanity disappeared, the
world would be perfect. Except for the poor creation,
according to Romans 8, which is subject to the futility of
sin. Unwillingly. That's why our dogs die. That's
why the leaves die. That's why the storms come. In verse 17 and 18, the way of
peace they have not known. Scripture tells us in many places
something of this, that they will say peace, peace, but then
corruption, then destruction. Sometimes people say peace and
they don't even know what peace is. Sometimes we work for peace.
If you've ever been in a beauty pageant or seen one, every contestant
wants world peace. There is no such thing as world
peace. God has not decreed it. It is an impossibility. God has
decreed that all who are corrupt will suffer. God has decreed
that all who are elect will suffer. And it will take place, and there
is no way to have peace. It doesn't mean that we don't
try, because Paul would tell us here in Romans 5 actually,
that as long as it is up to us to have peace with one another,
But beloved, if we can't even sit in our own homes and have
peace over what's going to come on the television, how in the
world are we going to have peace with Israel? Or peace with Syria?
Or peace with China? Or peace with Kim Jong-un? It's
not going to happen. Christ is our peace. And the
reason that we'll never see it and they've not known the way
of it is because they're lost, they don't understand, they don't
see. Friends, we were all that same way until God reached into
us through the hearing of the Word and the Gospel, brought
us to life through the Spirit. There is no fear of God before
their eyes. You know, that's never been truer.
When Paul wrote that, he thought to himself, this has never been
truer than now. look at the world in which we live, look at where
my ancestors were, and look where we're, friends, look where our
ancestors were, and look where we are, were. My grandparents and great-grandparents
and their siblings would die again if they were to get a glimpse
of the way the world is now. They would not believe it, it'd
be an impossibility in their minds. There's no fear of God
before the eyes of men. Jacob and I were talking about
how cool and somewhat innocent the music of the 40s and 50s
were. And by the end of the 50s, it started getting a little racy,
sorta. But it was covered up. It was
tongue-in-cheek. He said, man, it'd be cool to
have music like this. Talk about how cute the girl was or how
sweet the guy was, and that's as far as that kind of music
went. And that's what I told him, I said, the sin of humanity
was just as depraved. The stuff we see and know of
today was happening in great abundance during that day too,
but it was socially disallowed. Now, it's socially accepted.
There comes a time in every culture where that which is darkness
and wicked is so accepted when you don't do it, whether you
say anything about it or not, but when you don't engage in
the wickedness of a culture, you are hated and put to death
because you're a threat. Paul and Barnabas caused a riot
of 20,000 people in Ephesus because the people of Ephesus weren't
worshiping Artemis. And the people who had the shops
that made money on the worship of Artemis were losing their
money. And Paul and Barnabas didn't
say a word about idol worship. He didn't say a word about buying
idols. They never preached one time about going in now that
you're Christian and taking the idols out of your house. It just
happened because God grows His people. And then when it happened,
the culture blamed them. Christianity will always be persecuted,
and the true Church of Jesus Christ, as the world grows darker,
in openness, will suffer greatly. Those who claim Christ who don't
suffer have placated to darkness, and have compromised the message
of the truth, and even they, then, have no fear of God before
their eyes. We have fear of God in one sense
because we know what we deserve and we know who He is because
He's revealed it to us through His Word and by the Spirit. But
the other side of that table is we do not fear God because
we can call Him Papa. We can call Him Daddy. We can
call Him Father. And we can go bold before the
throne of the King of the cosmos and we can say, Daddy, and we
cannot fear. We do not cower, for perfect
love drives away fear, John says. And because of that, we will
prevail. Even if we're given over to death,
we live. It's the words of Paul in 2 Corinthians
4. So beloved, as we see this indictment, as we see what Paul
is teaching, let us remember that we were counted in that
number, but because of God's electing grace, we have been
snatched out of that number. Though we bear the same guilt,
We should receive the same judgment. Jesus Christ received it on our
behalf, so we are free. And that is worth celebrating.
Let's pray. We thank You, Father, for the
truth of Your Word. Lord, I thank You that You give me clarity
when I teach, sometimes. I pray that what I say would
do well in the hearts of all of us. that as we learn that
it would not cause confusion or lead us astray, but Father,
carry us down the narrow side of truth, the narrow way of righteousness, the razor-sharp stream, Father,
of the gospel. And I pray that as we think of
this, as we look at the Word, as we pray, based on what we've
heard in the Word, Lord, that we would rejoice, that we would
see our world and everything in it, and that we would be disturbed
and burdened and even disgusted at the evil and the darkness.
But Father, that we would not seem so ridiculous in our minds
to think that we are the heroes to change it. Let us proclaim
the Gospel to those who are suffering persecution because of their
skin, because of their gender, because of their love for righteousness,
because of their economic status. When people suffer, Father, even
because of their sin, let us share the gospel of grace with
them, Father. Let us pray that You would send
messengers into the harvest and that out of all of that darkness,
light. knowing that You would not save
all man, but that You will save some out of this. Father, we
pray that Your Word would cause all to come to faith, but Father,
we know that Your will be done, and we are satisfied in that
which You have purposed and decreed that will come to pass. Send
us into the darkness. Lord, there are people in our
lives this very day that we see very often that we need to be
praying that You would shed the light of the Gospel in their
lives. For they are possibly Your people. They are in need
of salvation. They must hear the truth. Send us there. And let our testimony be not
one of how horrible things are or were and now Jesus took away
the pain. But Father, let it be a true
conversion experience that we once were the cause of evil. We once were evil in itself. And You have saved us out of
that and You have drawn us out of the darkness and You have
given us a new life and a new heart and a new mind because
Jesus Christ has lived as we should have lived and therefore
replaced us in obedience and righteousness. And Father, He
has died as we are supposed to die and replaced us in judgment.
And God, He has been raised to life that we can share the hope
of tomorrow that we will live if we are in Christ. Help us
to share this truth. Help us to live this truth. Help
us to love this truth. In Jesus' name, Amen.