Romans chapter three and verse
one. What advantage then hath the
Jew? Or what profit is there of circumcision? Much every way, chiefly because
that unto them were committed the oracles of God. For what if some did not believe?
Shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect?
God forbid. Yea, let God be true, but every
man a liar, as it is written, that thou mightest be justified
in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged. But if our unrighteousness commend
the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unrighteous
who taketh vengeance? I speak as a man. God forbid,
for then how shall God judge the world? For if the truth of
God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory, why yet
am I also judged as a sinner? And not rather as we be slanderously
reported, and as some affirm that we say, let us do evil that
good may come, whose damnation is just. Amen, may God bless
to us this reading from his word. Have you ever wondered why we
have the Old Testament scriptures? Kind of off the wall question,
I suppose. Why do we have the Old Testament
scriptures? Why do we treasure them, cherish them,
honor them, endeavor to obey them. Why is it that the New
Testament is not simply sufficient? What is it that has to be gained
from all these experiences of an ancient people in a faraway
land and all the blood that was spilled and all the terrible
things that happened? What is it that keeps those scriptures
relevant to us today? and brings them together with
the words of our Lord, the doctrine of the Lord Jesus Christ, the
very clear heavenly message of grace and faith that the Lord
Jesus Christ taught his people. Why this melding together of
that Old Testament with the New Testament words, works, gospels,
epistles of the apostles. There might have been an argument
to say that when the New Testament was brought together, it superseded
the old. and the old was allowed to disappear
in the same way as other ancient writings have become a historical
point of interest, something useful for facts, useful for
context, but not necessarily the inspired word of God. So
have you ever really thought about why the Old Testament scripture
takes up the place that it does in our minds? Well, in one respect, perhaps
by way of answer, we might think that the Old Testament is as much
the word and the words of God as is the New Testament. Why would we ever consider or
conceive of forgoing the revelation of God, the divine revelation
of God? The Old Testament speaks God's
words to us. And it speaks of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Certainly the New Testament has
the words of Christ set forth in the Gospels, the doctrine
of Christ set forth in the apostolic testimony, but the Old Testament
just as much speaks of the Lord Jesus Christ. Abraham spoke of the Lord Jesus
Christ, witnessed to the Lord Jesus. Moses did, David did,
Isaiah did. They all speak of and point to
the Lord Jesus Christ. We would only have part of the
story if we only had part of the Bible. The Lord Jesus Christ himself
says that he is spoken of in the Old Testament. I want to
read you a few verses from Peter just to reinforce in your understanding
the depth and the power and the significance of the Old Testament
text in the minds of the apostles as they brought their own epistles
and letters to the attention of the church and of the Lord's
people. The Old Testament speaks of salvation
to our souls. It speaks of grace, the grace
that was to come. It speaks of the sufferings of
the Lord Jesus Christ. It speaks of the church, it speaks
of redemption, it speaks of forgiveness, and it speaks of eternal glory.
Listen to the words of Peter. I'm reading from 1 Peter 1, verse
9. Peter there says, receiving the
end of your faith, that is the object, that which our faith
looks towards, that which our faith dwells upon, the end of
our faith. even the salvation of your souls."
Of which salvation? The prophets. Now remember Peter
is speaking about the Old Testament and he's speaking about the Old
Testament prophets. Indeed that was the scriptures
that these men had in that day before the New Testament was
brought together. and established in the canon
of scripture. So these men were speaking about
the prophetic utterances of the Old Testament saints and the
prophets, of which salvation the prophets have inquired and
searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come
unto you, prophesying about grace. Searching what, or what manner
of time, the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify
when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and
the glory that should follow. So Peter, the apostles, realized
and understood that these things were in the Old Testament Scriptures. The Spirit of Christ, the sufferings
of Christ, the glory that would follow, The prophet speaking
of them unto whom it was revealed that not unto themselves but
unto us they did minister the things which are now reported
unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the
Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. Which things, says Peter, the
angels desire to look into. So the Old Testament scriptures
contained all of these truths bound up in them. And as the
prophets spoke, as they were inspired by the Holy Spirit,
they spoke to reveal and to declare and to testify what God would
have men know. For all of the wisdom of this
world, for all of the science of this world, for all of the
philosophy and the ingenuity of men, for all of the things
that men have sought out in this world, there are certain things
that God would have people know. And these things are revealed
to us in the scriptures of the Old Testament. They are profitable
as such. for doctrine, for reproof, for
correction, and for instruction in righteousness. And the Lord
Jesus Christ himself emphatically tells us that the Old Testament
is about him. He says in Luke chapter 24 and
verse 27, beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded
unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. Now these Old Testament scriptures
were a divine blessing, a godly blessing, a heavenly blessing
to the Jews. They, amongst all the nations
of the world, And there were many, we read about many of them
in the scriptures. Undoubtedly there were many beyond
the borders of the scriptures activities that were out there
and yet were not even mentioned in the scriptures. Nations covering
the face of this globe. And yet the Jews amongst all
the nations were given the Old Testament scriptures. Not the
Syrians, not the Greeks, not the Egyptians, but the Jews. That little people were given
these scriptures. They were committed to them. And that's what Paul is telling
us here at the beginning of Romans chapter three. He is saying that
the Jews were privileged beyond all men and women. all nations,
because to them God committed the revelation of the divine
purpose. He gave them, He gave them the
message of the Messiah. He gave them the gospel. He gave
them the way of salvation. He gave them the message of forgiveness
of sins, the grace of God, and mercy to overcome the worst sinners. And these are the oracles that
Paul is here speaking about. He has established at the end
of chapter 2, in chapter 2, that the Jews are guilty because they
have disobeyed the law that God had given them through Moses,
and the Gentiles were guilty before God because they had broken
and disobeyed the natural law. that they had in their own hearts
and minds, their consciences telling them what's right and
wrong, they'd done wrong, they'd followed, they'd pursued their
own lusts, they had sinned against their very own standards, which
were much lower than the standards of God, much lower than that
holy standard which had been revealed to the Jews, and yet
whether you were a Gentile, a non-Jew, or whether you were a Jew, measured
by different standards certainly, but all falling short of the
standard of God's holiness. So the Jews came back and they
said, well, what's the point of being a Jew then? What's the
point of having circumcision? What's the point of being in
receipt of all these promises that were given to Moses and
to Abraham and to David and to Noah? All of these things which
we have inherited as a people, are they all worthless? No, no,
says Paul, they're not worthless at all. These are the oracles
of God that you were given. This was the Old Testament canon. This was the scriptures of the
prophets that were given to you and revealed everything to you
that was needful for the message of Christ to be meaningful to
your souls. From Genesis to Malachi, from
the start to the finish, from the beginning to the end, Christ
was preached to these Old Testament Jews. The oracles, the word oracle
means the speakings or indeed the voice, the voice of God. This was the voice of God. These
Old Testament scriptures were the voice of God given to the
Jews. Remember Adam and Eve as they
were in the garden, what it is said of them? They heard the
voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of
the day. They heard the voice of the Lord
God. I have no doubt that that was
a manifestation, the personification of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the eternal Word of God. The Word is spoken by the voice,
so when they heard the voice of the Lord God in the garden
in the cool of the evening, they heard the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one who spoke in the
beginning, God said. let there be light. That voice
that spoke in the absence of anything else that ever was created
was the Lord Jesus Christ, that eternal word. whether we're thinking about
the creation of the Garden of Eden, or whether we go to the
very end of the scriptures in the Book of Malachi, what do
we discover there? But the voice is still speaking. I have loved you, saith the Lord,
saith the Lord. He's still speaking. He spoke
to them in the Garden of Eden. in that environment that he himself
had put into place by the power and authority of his own voice. And he speaks still at the end
of the Old Testament scriptures. I have loved you, saith the Lord,
yet ye say wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob's
brother, saith the Lord? Yet I loved Jacob and I hated
Esau. Picking out once again that distinctive
activity of blessing some and passing by others, which was
the history and testimony of the Jews from the very beginning. And so the Lord Jesus Christ
was from the beginning revealed to this people. And this was
a gift. unique and distinctive in its
blessings to them. The Gentiles never had the oracles. The Gentiles never had the voice. The Gentiles never had the speakings
of the divine persons. The word of God revealed to them. And yet, says Paul, this blessed
gift, this revelation of grace, this covenant promise was not
received by the Jews. They did not value it. They did
not receive it because as it pointed and directed and led
them completely up to the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, what
was the reality when the Lord Jesus Christ came but that they
immediately rejected him? All of their scriptures pointed
to Him. All of their prophets spoke about
Him. And when He came, the complete
genesis to Malachi, which was granted and given and bestowed
in order to point to the Lord Jesus Christ, was just completely
ignored. They had employed it, they had
woven it, they had manufactured out of it a religion which satisfied
their own human nature and their own self-righteousness, and they
completely bypassed the Lord Jesus Christ. They rejected the
Messiah that was spoken of in Scripture. Now that's true as a nation,
but there were always some upon whom the grace of God settled
in those Old Testament times. And the Apostle Paul asks here
in the introduction to this chapter, in these early verses of chapter
three, he asks a question, he asks a pointed question, and
he says, because some don't believe, does this invalidate the promise
that God gave? It's an interesting question
because it's a question that is relevant and valid all the
way through history. If someone that you're witnessing
to says, well, I don't believe that. Well, so what? The fact that
you don't believe it, do you think that means it isn't true?
You think that means, because you don't believe it, it's not
true. How preposterous, how presumptuous that men and women should take
such a view. Oh yeah, you can preach about
Christ all you like, but I don't believe that. Okay then. It's still true. It's still real. And Paul asks that question. He says, does that nullify God's
word? Does that dismantle that which
he has built? Does that do away with the grace
that he has spoken of and invalidate the promise? Is God's truth made
ineffectual because men won't believe it? And he answers this
question, God forbid. No, he says. I'm not going to
shout, but that's a loud no. That was a real loud no. God
forbid, he said, that you should imagine that for a moment, that
because some didn't believe, in some way that nullifies the
word and the promises of God. And people will still say the
same to us today. Whether it's the most strident
atheist, And you find them coming out with their defense, their
apologies. They say, well, here are the
reasons why. I always, I do look in sometimes YouTube and see
some of these philosophers, atheists, whatever you want to call them,
and their accusations and allegations against religion. And invariably,
they go for the easy targets. You know, they'll talk about
the immorality of the child abuse in the Roman Catholic Church.
And because they can touch upon religion and obvious hypocrisy,
they use that sort of logic and argument to expound upon their
own atheism and their own philosophy of humanism. So what? Does that mean that God's a liar
because you don't believe it or because you find an easy target
in the religion of men? Not at all. In fact, the verse that we are
concentrating on this evening is the fourth verse here, where
the apostle Paul writes, God forbid, yea, let God be true,
but every man a liar. as it is written, that thou mightest
be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou
art judged. Our God will be justified in
all that he has revealed of himself, and all that he has ever said
by way of revelation through the prophets, testimony of the
scriptures, promises that have been granted, the whole covenantal
system that he has established to gather a people for himself
and bring them through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, will
be vindicated. There is no question about that.
As God is God, he will be justified. And he will overcome the gainsayers
when they judge him. Some of these men that you see
on the YouTube videos have already passed into eternity. And I had
the thought, of course, as many believers would, the day that
we saw, whoever it might be, there's no need to mention any
names, but as these individuals leave this world and go into
eternity, what a dawning. Oops, we made a mistake. we made a mistake. And the Jews,
they made a mistake. They denied the Lord Jesus Christ. They did not see what God had
taught them. They did not value the oracles
and the revelation that he had given. Men imagine that they can sit
upon judgment or sit in judgment upon God. But all the time, God
is judging them. His truth will be established,
His word will be justified, and His glory will be upheld. We can be absolutely certain
and sure of this, brothers and sisters in Christ. We may be
a few, we may be, as far as the world is concerned, inconsequential
and limited and without any significance. But we will be the evidence that
God will demonstrate in a day to come, that everything that
he says is true. And here is the people who are
the beneficiaries. Here are the people who have
received the blessings of all my promises of grace and mercy. Men pervert the word of God at
their eternal peril. and they run on in their foolishness
in so doing. Look at verse five of the chapter
three of Romans and see what Paul has to say here. Now, I think personally, and
maybe you won't agree, but let me just tell you what my personal
thoughts are about the next few verses. I think they're quite
complicated. I think they're complicated and
I think that we're going to have to have our thinking hats on
if we're going to understand what the apostle is saying here.
So I'm going to endeavour to the best of my ability to be
as clear as I can about what he's saying here. Paul is telling
us that our unrighteousness, the unrighteousness of man, actually
commends the righteousness of God. The sinfulness of man could
be said to commend and glorify the holiness and the righteousness
of God. How is that possible? Well, because
our sin draws forth from God because of this overarching love
that he has for his people, because of this covenantal desire that
he has to be united with a chosen people. Our sin calls forth from
God a grace and a goodness and a
faithfulness and a righteousness which overcomes our sinfulness. The gospel reveals redemption
and it reveals forgiveness and it reveals mercy. Qualities Qualities
in the character of God that could not be known except for
sin. Okay, get that? Forgiveness, mercy, grace. Qualities in God that could not
be known except for the presence of sin. Had there been no sin, those
attributes of the divine nature would have remained hidden. But
now, because of sin, they're manifested. We can see them. God has revealed these attributes
of his character because of man's sin. More than that, The greatest
love that ever is possible would not have been demonstrable had
not God chosen himself to become a surety for his people. could
not have been revealed because the Lord Jesus Christ tells us,
greater love hath no man than this, than a man lays down his
life for his friends. That is the pinnacle, that is
the peak, that is the absolute summit of love. Now I know that there are examples,
perhaps in war, perhaps in crisis, where a man will lay down his
life for his friends. We hear about that, we hear about
it in the history of humankind and they are laudable, admirable
occasions, but this is different. This was God himself becoming
a man for the sake of love in order to redeem his people by
taking their sins in his own body and paying the price for
them. That is the greatest love that
you could ever conceive of, the love of God towards his people.
and it would not have been revealed, it would not have been demonstrated
had it not been for the state into which we had fallen and
the depth to which we had gone. The humanity of the Lord Jesus
Christ would not have been witnessed, nor the eternal praises of Christ
by his people for him in ages and eons to come as eternity
unfolds. Forever and ever and ever and
ever. That praise would not have been so rich, so deep felt, so
sincere if we did not realise the depth from which we had been
plucked by the Lord Jesus Christ in coming into this world and
doing for us what he did. If Adam had not fallen, the fuller
glory of God would have remained hidden. And that's the point
that Paul is making here. Let me give you a supporting
verse for that from the Lord's own teaching. He says in Luke
chapter seven, verse 47, wherefore I say unto you, her sins, he
was speaking of this woman who had come in and wept upon his
feet and cleaned his feet with her hair. Her sins, which are
many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But to whom little is forgiven,
the same loveth little. Okay? Now, I'm not going to make
this too personal for you this evening, but I suspect that some
of you who perhaps have the greatest sense of your own sin is because
you've seen the depth to which your own depravity has taken
you. And that's just the way that we are. We know what we
are on the inside. And I'm not your priest. You
don't come and you confess to me. We have but one priest. But
we know what we are. And the deeper the level to which
our sin has taken us, the more precarious that we have been
in our position as far as the eternal well-being of our soul
is concerned, then the greater the love that we have for the
Lord Jesus Christ. Tell me if I'm wrong. The Lord asked the question in
Luke 7, he said, two debtors, one owed 500 pence, the other
owed 50 pence. And the Lord comes along and
he says, you're both forgiven. Which one loveth more? Well,
I suppose the one that was forgiven 500 pence. Yes, that's what the
Lord says, yes. So the depth of our sin speaks
of the extent and the nature of the love of God. Now, that's
the principle that the apostle is establishing here. And if
you heard me right in what I was saying there, I hope you still
got your thinking caps on. If you heard me right, you would
have heard me say that God's glory is magnified by our sin. If you are one of the Lord's
people, if you are forgiven, if you are cleansed, then the
more you have sinned, the greater the witness of God's glory to
you in your forgiveness, in your cleansing, the more lustrous
his righteousness and his faithfulness becomes. And that's true. That's Paul's message here. And it's verily the truth of
the gospel. It's what the gospel says. And
it speaks to us of the nature and the effect of grace. That
no matter how bad your sin, no matter how wayward my life has
been, no matter the depths to which I had fallen, The grace
of God is sufficient to reach the very lowest. It bottoms out. And the lower I go, the greater
the revelation of the grace of God, the greater the revelation
of the love of God towards me. The worse the sinner, the greater
the forgiveness. The more evidently wonderful
the love that redeemed us. and the Saviour who carried our
iniquity. Now there are two reactions that
you could have to that message. And Paul anticipated them both
in what he has to say here. One, the child of God will hear
that message and they will love God more. And they will praise
God more. And they will worship God in
proportion to the extent that he has revealed the sinfulness
of their sin to them. Now I know that not all believers
have the same history and experience. And yet all believers have a
sense of sin. That's part of our coming to
Christ. We come to him because we see
in him the only way of salvation and deliverance. We've tried
the other ways and we've found, we've proven them to be dead
ends and cul-de-sacs. So we come to Christ as the only
way of salvation. And we see that he is the only
forgiveness of our sin. His blood alone will forgive
us of our sin. And we understand something of
the preciousness of that blood to the extent that we understand
the depths of our own iniquity and unworthiness. And the believer will grasp that
and understand that and it will motivate his love to God. It will motivate his desire to
follow after God and be obedient to the ways and the will and
the revelation of God. That's why we keep coming back
to this point about the law. The law's a busted flush. It
doesn't take us anywhere closer to the Lord Jesus Christ. It
can't. It couldn't for the Jews and
it won't for a Christian. It's as we see how far short
of the law we have come that our love and our praise and our
worship to the Lord Jesus Christ is intensified. That was one
reaction that there could be. Paul anticipates the other one
as well. Because the enemies of God, the
self-righteous man, he'll cry foul. He'll say, wait a minute,
are you telling me that God is glorified because I'm a sinner? Are you telling me that there
is something in God that gets magnified because of my unworthiness
and my disobedience? If my sin glorifies God's righteousness,
then God is unfair to judge me. God's no right to judge me. If
I, by my sin, magnify God's forgiveness and his grace and his mercy and
his love, then why would God judge me if I have done some
benefit and some good to him? And that's Paul's argument. That's
what he's saying. He's saying, he goes on to say
in verse five, I speak as a man, because that's the way that an
unbeliever would speak. If our unrighteousness commend
the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unrighteous
who taketh vengeance? If God judges me, he's unrighteous. I speak as a man. That was the
logic that the unbeliever would apply to this situation. And
Paul cuts that argument down. Oh no, he says, God forbid. God
will certainly judge and he will judge sin and he will judge this
world. He will, he must, for he is holy
and he is righteous. Don't you for a moment think
that you can wriggle out of the fact that there is a judgment
coming because the mercy and the glory and the love of God
in some way has been enhanced by your wickedness. He must judge
sin and he must judge the sinner and let none be mistaken. There
is no other way of facing the reality of eternity except under
this knowledge. that the soul that sinneth, it
will die. Judgment for sin is coming, and
all sin, because of the very nature of the holiness of our
God, all sin must be judged. Either it will be judged on the
substitute, it will be judged on the Lamb of God that taketh
away the sin of the world, or it will be judged upon the shoulders
of each individual perpetrator. Now he continues his argument
in verse seven and eight, and here he shows the contrariety
of man. He shows just how opposed to
God man is. Man will say, God has no right
to judge me as a sinner if my lies and my unbelief lends itself
to his greater glory. In fact, If your logic is true,
Paul, we should just go out and sin some more, because as bad
as we can be, God's faithfulness and his forgiveness is going
to be even more glorified. Paul says, I am slandered. because people make that argument
against the gospel that I speak. He says, we be slanderously reported
and as some affirm we say. So people were saying that the
apostle Paul and the other apostles were advocating that people could
be as wicked as they like to be. because there was always
enough grace, there was always enough love, there was always
enough mercy, that God had an limitless amount of these blessings
which he was freely, willingly prepared to bestow on men. So
go out and sin. Sin joyously, sin vigorously,
because there's always enough forgiveness to go round. Paul
says they slander this gospel by making that accusation. So I'm gonna summarize these
thoughts in three sentences. Two sentences in a paragraph,
an extended paragraph. Okay, here's the first sentence. God's plan of salvation, this
is a fact. God's plan of salvation shines
more intensely Our blessed Saviour's wonderful accomplishments at
the cross sparkle more brightly. The Holy Spirit's powerful work
of regeneration flashes more radiantly against the black background
of our deepest iniquity. As bad as we are, the grace of
God shines more brightly. And that's a fact. That is why
this message goes out to the whole world. That's why this
message is for every man. That's why we can take this message
to the world and say that there is grace in the Lord Jesus Christ,
that we can say that all who come to him, none will be cast
out. The Apostle Paul said of himself
that he regarded himself the cheapest of sinners, and yet
there was sufficient grace to reach even me. The measure of God's love and
grace and mercy is the depth of our sin. The measure of God's
love and grace and mercy is the depth of our sin. Second sentence,
but that's no excuse for sinning. That's no excuse for sinning.
Anyone who says or even thinks that this gospel gives license
to sin betrays the depravity that is in their heart and the
just condemnation that is coming down the line to meet them. They
will be judged and they will be judged severely. The third
point is this. The very fact that Paul had to
address this allegation testifies to the substitutionary atonement,
unconditional election, and the free grace of God towards sinners. Those great principles, these
three great pillars upon which our doctrine of the gospel stands
today, are revealed by the fact that Paul had to address this
argument. And it's an argument that is
still used, and these doctrines are still under attack to this
day. Substitutionary, or we sometimes
say limited atonement, because God punishes our sins. upon Christ the surety. There
has to be a punishment of sin and either it will be Christ
or it will be you. That's it. It'll be either Christ
or it will be you. That punishment must be born
and it is a universal truth that God will punish sin either in
the substitute or upon the one who commits the sin. So here
we have substitutionary atonement revealed to us. Paul, by this
teaching, shows that there has to be a substitute or else we
are going to die under God's judgment. It speaks also of unconditional
election because God's choice of men is not based upon their
eligibility for salvation. Not because they believe, not
because of their good works, not because of anything in themselves. Therefore, it drives us back.
There is no personal merit which commends us to God. On the contrary,
it's not our imaginary righteousness or self-righteousness that recommends
us to God. Rather, it is our need of righteousness
that commends us to God. Our need of righteousness and His provision. of that righteousness
is found in the person of Jesus Christ. So again, our election
is shown in the fact that God has chosen a people upon whom
he is pleased to bestow his grace and his mercy and his love. In
Mark chapter two, verse 17, the Lord Jesus Christ said, they
that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that
are sick I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. And then lastly, grace is free. The free grace is God's gift
to his people. It is free because it comes to
sinners at no cost to themselves, though it cost the Lord Jesus
Christ dearly to obtain it. It's free because nothing that
we have done, either by way of our personal obedience or our
law keeping, is the reason for receiving it. It has nothing
to do with those things. It has to do with our need of
righteousness and forgiveness. It's free because it flows as
liberally to cleanse our sin as our sin rises to condemn us. And that's true. That's true. As much as our sin condemns us,
the free grace of God flows to take that sin away and lay it
upon the shoulders of our Saviour. Today's sin is freely forgiven. Yesterday's sin is freely forgiven. Tomorrow's sin is freely forgiven. Whatever you do tomorrow to sin
against God's holiness, whatever you do to sin against the Lord
Jesus Christ, As one of his blood-bought people, that sin is already forgiven
and the grace for that sin has already been dispensed. We cannot
out-sin the grace of God. Now if that motivates you to
go out and sin to your heart's content, then it betrays the
true nature of your heart. If it motivates you to love the
Lord more and praise him and worship him more, then it betrays
the true nature of your heart. Free grace means free grace,
liberal, unrestricted, plenteous. And if you can't handle that,
then you don't know the gospel. It is free because our loving
Heavenly Father delights to give good gifts to His Church and
to do His people the best. Amen. May God bless to us these
thoughts.