This passage that we have before
us this evening is a passage which is a little bit dark and
depressing and doesn't have very much in
the way of encouragement in it. And yet it speaks to us of the
true nature of our hearts and the condition of our souls. So what I'm going to do is having
gone through the verses that I have planned to speak on this
evening from Romans chapter 3, I'm going to select one little
phrase from the middle of the passage And I'm going to introduce
what I have to say on the back of that little phrase because
the phrase is that which is encouraging. Because the Apostle Paul talks
in Romans chapter 3 and verse 17 of something which he calls
the way of peace. The way of peace. And this is
a reference to an Old Testament verse. He says, the way of peace
they have not known. The way of peace they have not
known. And he is referring to a passage from the book of Isaiah. It's in Isaiah 59 and it's verse
8. Let me read it to you. It says
this, The way of peace they know not. So Paul has taken that and
he's adapted it slightly, he's paraphrased it slightly, which
is a pattern of the apostolic writers from time to time, just
because they're quoting an Old Testament passage. doesn't mean
to say that they will quote it verbatim, word for word, as we
have it translated in our Old Testament scriptures. And it
shows us both the authority that they had as apostles and the
inspiration that they had as those inspired by God the Holy
Spirit to set these things in proper order. And sometimes even
they teach us an interpretation that we would never have picked
up ourselves. had we looked at that verse and
not had the benefit of the apostolic commentary upon it. So it's always
interesting if we do encounter passages in scripture that are
being used by the apostles in the New Testament to explain
or expound their position, to compare what it says in the Old
Testament and see how the Apostle's minds have been working in order
to bring these truths to our attention and our understanding.
And so the Apostle in Romans 3, verse 17, he says, of peace they have not known
and he's drawing that from Isaiah where Isaiah says in 59 verse
8, the way of peace they know not and there is no judgment
in their goings. They have made them crooked paths,
whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace. you walk in crooked
paths, then you won't have the peace of God. You won't know
anything of the peace, the divine peace, the gracious peace that
God gives to his people. And this way of peace is what
I want to, as it were, open up by way of introduction, just
so that you've got something encouraging, you've got something
comforting before we get into the really heavy stuff. Now the way of peace, it's not
a lifestyle choice that we're talking about here. It's not,
as it were, an alternative way of life that we might choose
to follow as opposed to something else. It's not, for example,
an alternative to war. Sometimes we think of peace and
war as being alternatives. Well, this way of peace is not
an alternative to war in the sense that the world would understand. Nor is it the wording of some
sort of treaty that might be made between nations or some
sort of agreement and contract that might be made between men. It isn't an answer to anxiety.
It's not the end of trouble. It's not a method to get to sleep
at night. But the way of peace is a person. The way of peace is a man. The way of peace is the Lord
Jesus Christ. And when Paul says, the way of
peace, they have not known. He is speaking about the fact
that there are people in this world who don't know the Lord
Jesus Christ. They've never encountered the
Lord Jesus Christ. And this one Christ, this one
whom we have come to worship this evening, this one whom we
come to think about regularly, frequently, and desire that we
might know more of him, is that one who is the way of peace.
He is our peacemaker. He is our reconciliation. There is one mediator between
God and man, the man Christ Jesus. He is the one who is, of whom
it is said, he is the way. The Lord said it himself, I am
the way. And he brings us into that place
of peace, that place of reconciliation with God. He is our ever blessed
peacemaker, who himself by his own works, by his own deeds,
has fulfilled the covenant of peace, the covenant of peace
which God established in eternity between the Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost, from which and through which every blessing comes to
the church and the elect of God, the chosen of God, those for
whom the Lord Jesus Christ died. Remember we said before that
the Lord Jesus didn't die for everyone. When he hung upon the
cross, he had a particular people, he had a chosen people. We call
them the elect, the elect of God. This is a scriptural name
for that people that were chosen of God from before the foundation
of the world in order to be delivered and saved from their sins. And
the Lord Jesus Christ, he is the one who accomplished everything
in order to achieve that salvation. And so when we call him the way
of peace, we are calling him the one who has fulfilled all
of the obligations of that contract, that covenant of peace. He is the one who has won for
us, his church and his people, all the blessings of God, all
the divine blessings that flow through that way of peace. He satisfied every requirement
of a holy God and he secures every blessing of goodness for
the church. That reference to the covenant
of peace, it draws its source as well from Ezekiel, the prophet
Ezekiel in the Old Testament in the 37th chapter and the 26th
verse, where we read, moreover, and God is speaking, I will make
a covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant
with them. And I will place them and multiply
them and will set my sanctuary in the midst of them forevermore. Now that reference to the sanctuary
there also is a reference to the Lord Jesus Christ and his
continuing presence with his people. So God the Father says
that he will make an everlasting covenant, what he calls a covenant
of peace, and he will place Christ in our midst, the sanctuary in
our midst. And so when we gather here this
evening, We have the promise that on the basis of this covenant
promise, the basis of this covenant of peace that God has established
with his people, the Lord Jesus Christ is here with us. It's
a promise. And so we understand the promise. and we see the fulfilment of
that promise. And that fulfilment is revealed
to us, it's shown to us in the early verses of Luke's gospel. So the Lord said in Ezekiel chapter
37, I will make a covenant of peace with them and it shall
be an everlasting covenant with them and I will place them and
multiply them and I will set my sanctuary in the midst of
them forevermore. That was the promise. So what
about the fulfilment? Well, it was fulfilled when Jesus
came. And Zacharias, the priest, the father of John the Baptist,
he understood that. The angel revealed to him and
he prophesied as to how we were to interpret the coming of the
Lord Jesus Christ in the context of this covenant of peace. And
he says, through the tender mercy of our God, whereby the Dayspring
from on high hath visited us. It's another reference to Christ.
The Dayspring is another name for the Lord Jesus Christ. The
Dayspring from on high hath visited us, and that's where the Lord
says he will place his sanctuary in the midst of them forevermore.
The Dayspring from on high hath visited us to give light to them
that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our
feet into the way of peace. Isn't that lovely? Isn't that
lovely? There's the way of peace again.
Paul says in Romans, they haven't known the way of peace. What
have they not known? They haven't known the sanctuary
of God amongst his people. They haven't known the Lord Jesus
Christ. They haven't known that one who
came in order to give light to them that sit in darkness. and
to guide our feet into the way of peace. When we come together
on an evening like this, I hope we come with an expectation that
we're going to hear something that will do our souls good.
I hope we come hoping that the Lord will be true to his promise. and let me know if he ever lets
you down, hoping that he's going to be true to his promise and
be there amongst his people where two or three are gathered in
his name, where the sanctuary has been set up in the midst
of the church, in the midst of the elect, where that one who
is the good and gracious God is pleased to come and dispense
his gifts amongst his people and encourage our hearts and
comfort our souls. I hope we come with an expectation. I hope we come thinking to ourselves,
I need to get there because if I don't I'm going to miss out. and to teach us, to lead us,
to direct our feet into the way of peace, into Christ, that we
might deepen our understanding of Him, know more about Him,
have a greater portion of His blessing and of His Spirit in
our hearts and in our understanding. So how were these words of Zacharias,
how were they accomplished? How is it that this blessed fulfilment
of the covenant, whereby that peace from God was achieved between
the divine, holy creator and the creation which fell and sinned? How was that accomplished? Well,
Colossians 1 verse 20 tells us that the Lord Jesus Christ made
peace. through the blood of his cross. So here we are once again returning
to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ because this way of peace
has its origin in the covenant of God, the covenant of peace
fulfilled by the covenant the Covenant Christ, the Covenant
Fulfiller who came and by his own blood, by his death upon
the cross, opened that way of peace and reconciliation for
us. That death of the Saviour upon
the cross is to the forefront of our attention once again because
there we see him willingly entering into those responsibilities to
achieve and accomplish the will of God for his people. He made
himself the peace offering. He made himself that offering
so that the Lord Jesus Christ was both like the priest who
made the offering and the sacrifice that was made. And he, as the
peace offering, paid every debt that was outstanding by his own
precious blood. The Word of God had said, the
soul that sin must die. The Word of God had said that
without the shedding of blood, there is no remission for sin.
And so we see here the work of Jesus Christ as the surety for
his people, entering into covenant obligations and saying, as it
were, to the Father, put their charge on me. The soul that sinneth
that must die, well, I will die in their place. That death will
require the shedding of blood, but not just ordinary blood,
precious blood, the very blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, the
perfect one, the holy one, the God-man. He who came from on
high as the dayspring of God, as the opener up of light, as
the one who brings his illumination into this world, and as the sanctuary
amongst his people. is the very way of life to us. The Lord Jesus Christ, he took
upon himself that obligation to placate the wrath of God against
our sin. There should have been a price
to pay. There should have been a justice
to apply. And the Lord Jesus Christ said,
I will take that price, I will carry that load, place that indebtedness
upon my shoulders, and I will stand substitute and surety for
them. And the Lord Jesus Christ satisfied
every demand of the holiness of God against our persons and
for our sin. He came to give his life a ransom
for many, we are told in Scripture. He came to give his life a ransom
for many. and he did so successfully. He made peace and he reconciled
us to God. So he is the way. He is the way,
the truth, and the life. He is the way of peace. He opened
for sinners that way of peace that we might enter into that
peaceful relationship with God, being reconciled to him through
the death of our substitute, our redeemer, and our great peacemaker. And that's the gospel. That's
the gospel right there. That's the gospel, the good news
to sinners. That there is a way of reconciliation. There is a peacemaker who has
come. That the Lord Jesus Christ has
fulfilled all obligations and he gives freely the gift of life,
the gift of peace, the gift of salvation to his people for whom
he died. The gospel of Christ And it is
the gospel that Paul preached. It was the gospel message that
he carried to the Gentiles. The gospel message that he stood
for in the midst of the Jews in Jerusalem. The message that
he carried, whether it was to the little villages and towns
in the desert, in the countries through which he travelled or
whether it was in Athens and in Rome and in the metropolises
of his day. And he says, I'm not ashamed
of this gospel because it's the only message. It's the only message
which does any good to the heart and the soul of an individual. And yet, That is not the natural
state of men. The Word of God tells us that
these people would not walk in the way of peace. And in fact,
the natural inclinations of all men, whether they be Jew or Gentile,
that's the point that the Apostle has been making, is antithesis
towards, contrariness towards, these things that God has revealed
in His Word and the accomplishments of the Lord Jesus Christ. The
natural man Is it enmity against God? He is God's enemy and doesn't
want anything to do with God. And Paul has been making this
case very clearly. His argument is to demonstrate
our need for peace. But the implication of that is
that there is a need. and the true state and the true
character of men and women is that they are condemned before
God because of their sinful state and there is nothing that they
can do about it and nothing that they desire to do about it because
they are implacably opposed to God with every fibre of their
being, with every desire of their heart, Indeed, the word of God
says, so opposed are we to the things of God that we may be
considered as being dead in our sins, that there is no spiritual
life in us whatsoever. So now we'll turn to Romans chapter
three and we'll read what it has to say to us there. Romans
chapter three and verse nine. The Apostle, as you may remember
in the last couple of chapters, has been establishing this principle
that whether you were a Jew who had been given the law and all
of the benefits of the law, or whether you were a Gentile who
had never had the law, never received the law, nevertheless,
All men know that they stand guilty before God. Natural law
tells the Gentiles, because in their own conscience they are
aware that they have fallen short of the standard of God's glory. And revealed law that came to
the Jews also rendered them guilty before the holiness of God. So
Paul in writing, he came in at the beginning of chapter three
and he says, what advantage then hath the Jew or what profit is
there in circumcision? We won't read these verses, but
perhaps you'll remember back a little while where we said
that the Apostle Paul goes on to show that there was much advantage
in being a Jew because they had received the word of God. It
had been granted to them. So he goes on in verse 9 and
he says this. What then? Are we better having
received these oracles of God? Are we better than they? No,
and no wise. The Jews aren't any better than
the Gentiles. We're no better than them, for
we have before proved, and this has been his argument, and it's
a closely argued defense that he has set forth. We have before
proved, both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin. As it is written, there is none
righteous. No, not one. No one is righteous. There is none that understandeth.
There is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of
the way. They are together become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good.
No, not one. Their throat is an open sepulcher,
with their tongues they have used deceit. The poison of asps
is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed
blood. Destruction and misery are in
their ways, and the way of peace have they not known. There is
no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know that what Soever,
what things soever the law saith, it saith to them that are under
the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world
may become guilty before God. Therefore, by the deeds of the
law, there shall no flesh be justified in his sight, for by
the law is the knowledge of sin. Amen. May God bless this reading. But perhaps you can understand
something of what I meant when I said that it was a dark and
depressing passage. Could there be a more damning
assessment on the nature of men than what Paul has written here?
I doubt it. I doubt it. I think what Paul
has said here is just about as comprehensive a description of
blackness and wickedness and evil as could be penned by anyone. And the faithful apostle hasn't
been eager to win friends in writing things like this, but
he has been honest and he has been sincere. with the nature
of men and women and the true state in which we find ourselves. There is none that doeth good.
No, not one. Now is there anybody here that
doesn't think that they're included in that? Because it includes
every one of us. No, not one means that I'm included
in that. And what Paul has to say here
His description about the attitudes of men and women, be they Jew
or Gentile, is applicable to me and to you. And this is what the apostle
has before us. He has shown whether they be
Jew or Gentile, whether they had the law given to them as
the oracles of God or not. that no one is better than another
under God's holy gaze. He looks out into the world,
he looks out into the nations, he looks out into the families,
he looks out into the individual hearts of men and women, and
there is no not one who has anything good about them. Now, I think
we need to just establish this. We need to understand what we're
saying here, because some people will say, well, you know, that's
a little bit over the top, isn't it? Because surely there are
some people that live good lives, and there are some people that
live bad lives. I mean, we're not all as bad
as, and you can name your criminal. We're not all as bad as him.
Or we're not always, we're not all as bad as her. Oh man, we
read some terrible things that people do, don't we? We read
some terrible things. Do you know, I think we like
reading those terrible things. Because in some way we can think,
I'm not as bad as that. How could they possibly do that? But the truth is that but for
the grace of God, we are all capable of doing the very worst
imaginable. And there is nothing in us to
hold us back from doing that, save the restraining power of
God. And I'll tell you something,
if you're not one of God's elect, that restraint isn't for your
good. It's for the good of the people of God who are living
beside you and going through this world with you. That's the
only reason why God holds you back from allowing you to vent
the wickedness that is in your soul. What a place hell's going
to be. Can you imagine what hell must be like with all of those
people with no restraint and all that wickedness and all
that opposition? and all that anger and all that
wrath. No, not one. Not for the benefits
of revelation that the Jews had. nor for the withholding of revelation. There's no excuse. If God doesn't
give us a full revelation of these things, that's no excuse.
He still holds men guilty before him. And Paul's argument here
is to demonstrate our need of peace and the utter impossibility
of achieving it for ourselves. Men are at war with God. Men
and women are so opposed to God that if it were possible, we
would slay him, we would kill him. We would kill him and we
would drag him from the throne and we would set ourselves up
in his place. That is the nature of man and
that is the heart of man. And we are no better, and we
need to understand it, we are no better for a Christian upbringing
than any Islamist or Buddhist in the world. We are all by nature
at enmity with God. Now, I've previously spoken about
four Roman Catholic nuns that we find in this passage, and
some of you maybe remember that sermon. Well, here we are again,
and it's these nuns Not an N-U-N-S, but an N-O-N-E-S. It's these
nuns that seal us up, that seal us up under condemnation. Paul
is saying that this is how God regards us. Now, you know what?
I was sitting recently in front of a gentleman at a counter and
he needed to do something for me and he wasn't going to do
it. And I felt completely at his disposal as to what he was
going to help me with or not. And I wanted him to do something
and he wouldn't do it. I was powerless. I had to get
up and walk away because I couldn't insist because he had all the
power. It was his job to do what he
was doing and he was able to withhold from me those things
that I wanted. And I simply had to accept that. Now let me take that analogy
and just put it for a moment in the context of God and us. Whether that person was right
or wrong in taking that position with me, I just had to accept
it. And we should know that when God makes a statement, that's
the end of the matter. When God declares something to
be as it is, we don't have an opportunity to go to a court
of appeal. We don't have a way of saying,
let's talk about this, let's negotiate. God has made a statement. God has set in place what he
is going to do and how he is going to do it and when it will
be done. And there is nothing that we
can say against. That's why we hate him so much.
That's why man hates them. That's why the natural flesh
is at enmity against God. And these four Roman Catholic
nuns, these four nuns that we have in this passage, there is
none righteous, there is none that understandeth, there is
none that seeketh after God, there is none that doeth good,
are so emphatic and all-encompassing that there's nothing that we
can say before God that is going to help us or solve our problem. None righteous, none that understandeth. We're fallen creatures. We're
fallen creatures and we are condemned in our sin before the holiness
of God. Maybe you don't think your sin
is so bad. Well, maybe it isn't compared to the next guy. But
as far as God is concerned, it's as bad as it could possibly be.
We are an idolatrous people. We have built up idols that we
worship in place of the true God. You know, God has revealed
himself in this book. God has revealed himself in Scripture. But we don't believe in the God
of Scripture. We have our own God. One that
we've constructed. One that we've moulded. One that
we have set up in the place of the true God because we find
that we can deal with this one better and he has a higher opinion
of us. And God says, there is none righteous. There is none that understandeth.
There is none that seeketh after me. There is none that doeth
good. And we are ignorant. We are ignorant of God. We are
blind, we are deaf, and as far as God is concerned, we are dead
before him. There is nothing in us that can
reach out to God, that can do anything to please God, that
can honor God in any way. There is no goodness. Oh, there
is plenty of religion, don't get me wrong. There is plenty
of religion in this world. And that doesn't really matter
whether it's Baptist or whether it's Roman Catholic or whether
it's Christian or whether it's Islamic or whatever. Everyone
has got their religion. Right around the face of this
globe, everyone has their religion. But there is no one that seeks
after God. That's what Paul says, there's
no one that seeks after God, not truly. And that is the result
of the fall. That is the result of Adam's
disobedience against God. God says, there is none good.
We are all corrupt. And Paul later in Romans chapter
seven and verse 18, he says, I know that in me that is in
my flesh dwelleth no good thing. So that's the position that we're
in. That's the state of men who don't walk in the way of peace,
who don't care for the things of God, who don't seek after
the Lord Jesus Christ. The apostle in verses 10 through
18, He quotes by way of evidence and proof and to substantiate
his argument, a whole list of things that characterise these
people that are opposed to God. These know not ones that God
has spoken about or that Paul has written about. And these
references, he starts off there in verse 10, he says, there is
none righteous, no, not one. And all of these phrases, none
that understandeth, all gone out of the way, verse 13 through
to 18, they're quotes. They're quotes that he has drawn
from the book of Psalms and the book of Isaiah and he has pulled
these in and he said look what God has said of you, look what
God has declared, look what God has already testified hundreds
and hundreds of years ago and this is the state of individuals. He uses scripture as an argument
and to support his message. As I was thinking about this
evening and thinking about how I might present some of these
things, I thought to myself, you know, there's a little lesson
in there about the fact that the Apostle Paul used these Old
Testament scriptures in order to support his argument and justify
his case. And we should learn from that. We should learn not to argue
evolution with a scientist. And we should learn not to argue
ages with a geologist. And we should learn not to argue
about sin with a criminal psychologist. We should just bring forward
what the Word of God says. We should just say what the Bible
says, because the scientists and the geologists and the criminal
psychologists will beat you with their arguments, but they'll
never beat God with his argument. And this is what the Word of
God says. The scriptures are our double-edged
sword. The Apostle Paul didn't argue
from culture, didn't argue from tradition. He simply brought
out the Word of God. He didn't say, I'm going to get
into a debate with you here. He simply brought out the Word
of God. And he says, there is none righteous. No, not one.
How? Because I'm saying it? No, because
God said it. And God has the power, and God
has the authority, and God is the judge, and God is the one
who measures every man. And so if you've got a problem
with this, if you've got a problem that you're not righteous, that
God looks at you in disgust because of the sin that's in your life,
then take it up with God. That's what Paul's saying. This
is God's testimony. And the other thing I noticed
about the way in which Paul presents this is that he uses some interesting
imagery of the mouth. Did you see that? When we were
reading through these verses, how frequently he talks about
the mouth. He talks about throats, and he talks about tongues, and
he talks about lips. I wonder why he used those phrases. I wonder if perhaps it was because
if you want to see what's inside a man, you listen to what comes
out of his mouth. Someone once said, if you want
to know what a person's thinking, just listen to what they're saying.
And there's some truth in that. It speaks of a man's attitude
when you listen to what he has to say. It betrays his heart. and you can tell what's in his
mind when you listen to what it is that he's saying. And he
speaks of the throat that is an open sepulchre, tongues that
have used deceit and the poison of asps that is under their lips. How would you like to kiss that
mouth? Not much, eh? An open sepulchre. This heart-wickedness of man
manifests itself in the actions of the individual, and it says
that their feet are swift to shed blood. And again, that has
been the history of humankind. The apostle is not telling us
anything that should surprise us too much. It doesn't matter
where people have mixed together, right from the very first in
the Garden of Eden, or just outside the Garden of Eden, All the way
through, men have always been ready to shed blood, the blood
of each other. And that's great, isn't it? You've
got something that I want, and I'm prepared to fight you for
it. I'm prepared to take it from
you. And the blood of Christ. Fast to shed the blood of Christ
we were. The Lord Jesus Christ came. He
was meek, he was gentle, he was careful, he did good to those
around about him. And within three short years,
those that were in authority at the time of his ministry had
him on a cross. They had him on a cross and they
were shedding his blood. Destruction and misery is in
the way of man. Life and peace and joy is in
the way of God. That is the way of peace. That
is the Lord Jesus Christ. Men know not the way of peace. They do not walk in the way,
nor do they know the Lord Jesus Christ, who is peace. Now you
can follow a Christian lifestyle, you can use Christian words,
you can have a Christian vocabulary, and you can never have spiritual
life. There are lots of people out
there who carry Bibles to church every Sunday. There are lots
of people who endeavour to emulate the best Christian witness that
you can imagine. And we can do it, you know, we
can set ourselves these challenges. We can watch what we say, we
can watch what we do, we can be careful about all of these
things, and we can be as dead on the inside as ever we were. Imagine talking about the Bible
all your life and never knowing the Christ of the Bible. Paul says in verse 18, there
is no fear of God before their eyes. No reverence. Oh, they might talk a good game,
but there's no reverence of God. Not really. No reverence. No
honour to God. No humility before him. No respect. No understanding
of his true nature, who he really is. Do you imagine that you can meet
God as an equal? Do you imagine that you can negotiate
with the creator of the universe? Do you think you're going to
be in a position someday to be able to strike a bargain with
your judge who condemns you as a sinner? Do you think that you might,
by your own ingenuity, find a way of escape? Well, it ever was so. And proud
man mocks God. Proud man says, I'm not having
anything to do with you. And he hastens on his way to
judgment, careless of the state of his soul. So Paul returns to his argument
and he says, you are condemned. You are now guilty before God. And he says in verse 19, now
we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to those
who are under the law, to them who are under the law, that every
mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before
God. Man. The law of God stops your
mouth. It should. If you had any understanding,
it would. The law of God should stop your
mouth. It should cause you to put your hand over your mouth
to stop those rebellious words uttering forth out of that sepulchre
of a throat that is yours. And out of that poison that is
under your lip and the deviousness that is on your tongue, you should
slap your hand over your mouth. Lest that natural vileness come
out before the holiness of God. The law of God stops your mouth,
it denounces you. And either now or in death, your
vain words will cease. and your conscience, it ought
to forbid you arguing against God's truth. It ought to tell
you that you're a sinner unfit for his presence. It ought to expose and condemn
you, for by the law is the knowledge of sin, and all the world is
guilty under law before God. I'm going to draw two things
in conclusion here, and that's us done this evening. And I want
to just stress these in the context of this passage and some of the
things that we've been saying. First thing is this, that the
Apostle Paul puts the law in its proper place in this passage. To use a phrase, he uses the
law lawfully. There's a lot of people who use
the law unlawfully. But the apostle uses the law
lawfully. He shows us that the purpose
of the law is to reveal sin in a person's life. And that's what
it does. It's successful in doing that. And every quickened sinner, everyone
who has been made alive by God the Holy Spirit, everyone who
has been brought to a knowledge of the truth, who understands
something of their own nature, who sees something of the kind
of person that they really are. Everyone to whom some understanding
of spiritual things has been granted confesses from their
heart the genuineness of the fact that the law condemns sin
because we see ourselves as a sinner. And we understand the properness,
the propriety of God's condemnation against us. And that conviction
is a spiritual work. And that application of the law
against us is a work of God the Holy Spirit. And the gospel that is preached
is preached in word, it's preached audibly, it's preached to the
ears of men and women. And would that this church was
full and we were preaching to as many again and as many more.
We want this message to be heard by the world. But see, men aren't
interested. Men and women aren't interested.
They would rather be watching the television tonight than hearing
about their soul's state. And the gospel is good news only
to those whom the Holy Spirit makes it. necessary for. And so we see that the preaching
of the word requires the work of God the Holy Spirit to apply
it to the heart of an individual. And once applied, that individual
knows that they are a sinner before the Holy God. They know
that the law has done a work in their soul. They know that
they have fallen short of that legal standard. They come into
conviction. And if you have never felt the
law's piercing conviction, then I say you don't know your own
heart, and you don't know the way of peace, and you don't know
the Lord Jesus Christ. So Paul uses the law lawfully.
Here's the second thing. The law provides itself no righteousness,
no justifying righteousness, no sanctifying righteousness,
no righteousness at all. The law can't make you righteous. It can show you how far short
of the standard of righteousness you have fallen, but it can never
lift you up from where you are. There is no justifying holiness
in the law. It cannot make us right with
God. It can only show us how wrong
we are. It never could, and it doesn't
now, and it never will. The law reveals sin, and the
strength of sin is the law. Sin is aggravated by the law. I don't know whether you've ever
seen any of these pictures. I've never actually seen it happen.
Well, you know, let me qualify that. I have seen it happening
in a sense. I wonder if you've ever seen
a crow attack itself in a mirror. Have you ever seen that? I've
never seen it done in a mirror, but I have seen a crow attacking
itself in a car windscreen. And what happens is that the
crow sees its reflection. And it makes it angry. It thinks,
what's that crow doing in my space? What's that crow doing
so close behind me? And it starts to peck at the
crow. But it's not pecking at another
crow, it's pecking at its own reflection. And that's what the
law does. That's what the law does. The
law shows us what we really are like. And it riles us. It makes us mad. And we start
to get angry. And that's why the power of sin
is the law. Because it stirs us up. It stirs
us up in our antagonism towards God and our opposition to him. It's never going to make us righteous.
It'll only make us worse as we see the true nature of our character. So Romans chapter three, verse
20, the apostle says, by the deeds of the law, there shall
no flesh be justified in his sight. What the law did do, as far as
the Lord Jesus Christ was concerned, was it examined him and it showed
him to be a worthy sacrifice for sin. And while the apostle
here asserts that we are not justified by the law, and that
we are made righteous by a righteousness that is apart from the law. We see there that that righteousness
that we need, the holiness that we need, must be a free gift
from God. It's never going to be earned.
It's never going to be purchased by ourselves. It's never going
to be gotten by anything that we can do. Our best efforts,
our best will, will never attain to God's level of holiness. The law will always condemn us.
We need a free gift. We need grace and we need mercy
from God. And that's the way of peace.
That's why the Lord Jesus Christ came. That's the gospel of the
Lord Jesus Christ and the presence in the sanctuary, the presence
of the sanctuary of God amongst us is the person of the Lord
Jesus Christ. One of the names that the Lord
takes is the Lord Our Righteousness. And the Lord, our righteousness,
dwells amongst his people. He dwells in their hearts by
faith as the way of peace. And believers who trust in the
Lord Jesus Christ and what he has accomplished on the cross
and the fact that he took our guilt and he took our sin and
he carried it in his own body there on the cross, those people
who trust him, who believe that that is the source of their peace
with God. They receive a righteousness
from God. Not a righteousness of the law,
but the very righteousness of God himself granted to us because
the Lord Jesus Christ becomes the sanctuary of God in our souls. He gives us peace in our lives
and he is the Lord, our righteousness within us. So here's the end. If you need peace in this life,
If you want peace in this life, peace with God, don't go to the
law. Don't go to your works. Don't
go to the things that you can do to earn it or achieve it or
gain it or buy it or win it. Go to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Just Christ, just Christ. Don't try to live to please God. You will fail. You must fail
because the law will never give you any righteousness. It's a
futile exercise. If you need peace, go to Christ
because after all, as Paul says, he is the way of peace. Amen.