Romans 3:1-20

Good morning, I'm not preaching, sorry.

(audience laughing)

I read Roman and see it, chapter three, verses one, three, 20, so give me a second, if you do have one, so three is the front, not the front. (audience chattering) So what advantage does the Jew have? Or what is the benefit of circumcision?

Considerable in every way.

First, they were entrusted with the spoken words of God. But then, if some did not believe, will their unbelief cancel God's faithfulness? Absolutely not. God must be true, even if everyone is alive, as is written, that you may be justified in your words and triumph when you go.

But if our righteousness highlights God's righteousness, what are we to say?

I use a human right now. In God, is God unrighteous to him with wrath?

Absolutely not.

Otherwise, how will God judge the world?

But if by my lie, God's truth is amplified to his glory, why am I also still judged as a sinner?

And why not say, just as some people slanderously claims, we say, let us do what is evil so that good may come. Their congregation is deserved.

What then are we to do better? Not at all.

For we have previously charged that both Jews and Gentiles are all under set, as is written.

There is no one righteous, not even one.

There is no one who understands.

There is no one who seeks God.

All have turned away. All the life have become useless.

There is no one who does what is good, not even one.

Their throat is an open grave. They deceive with their tongues.

Vipers venom is under their lips. Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Ruin and wretchedness are in their paths. And the path of peace they have not known.

There is no fear of God or their eyes.

Now we know that whatever the law says speaks to those who are subject to the law so that every mouth may be shut and the whole world may become subject to God's judgment.

For no one will be justified in his sight by the words of the law because the knowledge of the law, sorry, because the knowledge of sins comes through the law.

- Good morning.

So part of me hopes that as Kyle was reading and he got to the end, you kind of felt like you felt when you were sitting in the theater at the end of "Avengers Infinity War." You're like, wait, that can't be the end, right? I can't be all that there is. I can't be more. This passage is pretty much just bad news.

And the good news is that, and we're gonna talk this later, this isn't the end of Romans, right? This isn't the end of the story. This isn't all the news there is. Next week Paul's gonna come back and explain

what happens as a result of this. But if you remember, when we started the Romans series, we talked about how one of Paul's main aims with the Book of Romans is to address this disunity that was happening in the church. There was disagreement about the gospel. There was disagreement about how Jews and Gentiles sit together and got a spring of salvation. There was disagreement about what to do with the law.

And in today's passage, one of the things that Paul was doing is he is putting every body together in the same boat. So he started in chapter one talking about how all the Gentiles are without excuse. Last week he kind of started building this case for how the Jews were in the same situation. And today he's gonna kind of bring those things to completion. So he kind of tying up that and his other role in this specific section that we've been in in the Romans is to answer the question like why do we need salvation? So he's been driving to this point, building his case. And today he's gonna kind of come and crescendo where he ends by saying like all of us are,

like none of us are righteous, none of us are good. All of us are in need of salvation. And so what happens in today's passage is there's essentially two parts like Gekhara and they both start with almost the same question. In verse one Paul says, what are the beginnings do the Jews have? And then in verse nine he says, are the Jews better off? And what's interesting about these two questions, even though they're very similar, they don't get the same answer. Paul gives two different answers and he's not just kind of talking out of both sides with his mouth, he's making a case. So at the beginning he says that they have some advantage but then later he says that they're not better off. So we're gonna walk through this passage and we're gonna see what Paul has to say to us and then we're gonna talk about kind of what we should do and how we should feel, what we should think as a result of it. So first one Paul says, then what advantage has the Jew or what is the value of the circumstances? So chapter two he was talking about how the Jews are kind of in the same situation as the Gentiles and he comes back and he asks this question, what advantage has the Jew? And Paul's answer is much in every way.

So he says to begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. So chapter one, God said the Gentiles, God revealed himself to them because his invisible attributes were plainly seen in his greetings. That's what the Gentiles got, that's what everybody is. But the Jews in particular, Paul says, were entrusted with the oracles of God. So they get the law of the prophets, the writing of them, the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, they get all this knowledge of God. They have access to him, they have relationship with him, they require the covenant people of God and the Old Testament, they have all these benefits, all these advantages that the Gentiles didn't have. I'm calling now this, and I ask questions that some of them were unfaithful. And really, I think Paul is underselling it here, right? If you read the Old Testament, it's not just that some of the Jews were unfaithful, many of them were. He says, does their faithfulness nullify the faithfulness of God? So they have all these God-given advantages, they didn't take advantage of that, they weren't faithful, so he's asking does their faithfulness nullify the faithfulness of God? And the answer is a strong no. He says, by no means, let God be true, though everyone is alive. God is true even though their lives didn't demonstrate the truth of his relationship with them. And then he says, as is written, that you may be justified in your words and prevail when you are judged. So even though they were unfaithful, God remained faithful. And then he quotes Psalm 51-4. This is when David is confessing his sin after he's been confronted by Nathan. So I wanna read the first four verses so we understand how Paul is kind of using this quote from the Old Testament. So Psalm 51-1-3-4 says, to the choir master, a solemn David, when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone into that scene. So David is just screwed up, oily, kind of destroyed his life, and Nathan is confronting him with sin. This is how David responds when he's found out. He says, have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, allow out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.

For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only have I sinned and done with evil in your sight,

so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.

So David's confessing his sin. He calls on God, he pleads for his mercy, he completes her steadfast love, he asks God to cleanse him from his sin. David says he knows his transgressions. He understands what he's done, he understands the craftiness of every sin. He's not trying to hide it, he understands in his first and foremost against God. And so he acknowledges his sin, he recognizes that God has seen his thoughts in his actions in the midst of all that he's done. And then in the name of his Lord, he says that God is justified in his words and blameless in his judgment. What David is saying here is that he knows that his only hope is mercy. And he understands that God would be completely and utterly justified and righteous just to snuck his life out and pour out judgment upon him. He gets that and he confesses that to God. And Paul is saying something similar. He's saying God would absolutely be just and righteous to pour out judgment on the faithless. He didn't do that, thanksfully, but he would have been perfectly justice to do that. He makes this point in the next verse of Jesus. One thing he's gonna do is as we move through Romans, Paul consistently poses these objections that people will raise against what he's saying with questions, kind of like having this conversation with someone that would be opposed to what he's writing in the book of Romans. And so here it is, he says, if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteous of God, what shall we say that God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? And so the argument is, well, if us doing bad things makes God look good, then why can God judge us for doing bad things when all that we're doing is just making him look good?

Paul said, by no means, for then how can God judge the world? Paul's saying that that was true, God would not be as adjustable or righteous there. So the objection is continued. I didn't get the answer they wanted, but at that point, they're gonna ask me another question. They said, if through my life, God's truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner? And why not do evil that good may come? Right, let's just continue and sin, and praise the name of that. That's a question that's gonna come up later. Paul's saying that this is how some people slander him and slander the gospel, and Paul says simply, their condemnation is judged.

And Paul is not preaching or teaching cheap grace here. The gospel is not cheap grace. It doesn't mean that we can do whatever we want because God is gracious to us. It doesn't mean that we can be thankless because he is faithful. Right, last week, Paul said that we don't presume on God's kindness.

Instead, his kindness and patience and mercy tend to lead us to repentance.

So Paul's point here is that the Jews did have something. They had significant advantage. They had the Old Testament, they had a covenantal relationship with God, but many of them were faithless in that relationship. And because of that, they are rightly under God's condemnation. Let's lead to the next question, the first time. He says, what then? Are the Jews any better off? Or are we Jews any better off? Paul is putting himself in that boat with him. And Paul says, no, not at all. Why not? Why are we these better off?

Because both Jews and Greeks, Paul says, are under sin. And the reason we give us this series of quotes from Old Testament passages, which are mostly the song, kind of like a little bit of Isaiah sprinkled in, what these Old Testament quotes express is the sinfulness and the depravity of humanity.

Says, 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.

The sin to be the universality of that. He's including everybody. None, no one, no one, no one. All, no one.

Just in case we can't find the rest, not even one.

We're all in this situation. So their throat is a moment of break and into their tongue from the seed. The minimum pass is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. In their paths are ruined in misery and the way of peace they have unknown. There is no fear of God before their eyes.

All here is using the Old Testament to describe who all of us are, apart from God and the nation and earth.

And we need to resist the urge that we have to argue with Paul here.

I'm thinking that, like that does describe all the people that I interact with in my life.

All the other people.

There's this book, Council from the Cross, which is a really helpful book for helping counsel ourselves with the gospel and also helping counsel others and in it and we've just talked about this before. But the authors say that humanity can break down into two groups. There are some of us that are happy moralists

and we are the people that think, I am amazing and of course God loves me. Why would we love him?

There are also sad moralists. Sad moralists are the people that are like, I'm terrible, no one will love me. How could anyone ever love me? It's like, it's your integrity essentially.

And so when we hear this passage where Paul talks about who we are apart from Christ, I think that we can have, we have a couple of different responses.

Like that the happy moralists, and honestly like sometimes we're both trying different areas. And so the happy moralists want us to argue with this and say like that's not who I am. Like I'm better, like of course God likes me. I'm not the sparing person that Paul describes here.

And so we might think, Paul's gonna get to this later in the passage, that we can do enough to please God apart from Christ's work in our world.

The sad moralists might look at this and say, yes, that's exactly right. No one could ever, God could ever love me. Jesus couldn't even do enough to save me. And whatever it is, we take it to an extreme.

I think what's important for us to realize here is that Paul is saying that this is who we are. And he's using scripture to do this, which is God where God understands fully who we are. Whether we think we're better than we are, whether we think we're worse than we are, God knows who we are. And he understands who we are. And Paul is describing us from God's perspective, can, as we're seeing today, the good news is that it doesn't stop here. Let's continue, and we'll wrap this up. Paul says in verses 19 and 20, that the law speaks to those who are under the law, so that excuses and objections are silent. So we can't offer respondents. He says the world is not a counter-regard, and he concludes that by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight. Sins through the law come knowledge of sin. So Paul's point of your hand is that no one is gonna be justified. It's gonna be made like God's eyes through works of the law. Works of the law is us doing something, whatever it is, even if it's just being our amazing self, us doing something to make God pleased with us, apart from what gripes them for us by grace through faith.

And we're, as God described us in verses 10 through 18, none of us is righteous, none of us are good, we can't do enough works of the law to be justified in his sight. Like that's the problem that Paul is describing. This is the situation that both Jews and Greeks, all of the community, we're all in this boat together. We need salvation, where without excuse, we're not righteous, we can't keep the law perfectly, we can save ourselves.

That's the bad news.

Thankfully, Romans doesn't stop you.

Right, that passage that Paul quoted earlier from Psalm 51, four, right, we're standing in David's situation,

apart from Jesus, right? We've screwed up our own will of mercy, God's will be completely just to pour out a judgment of honor.

If the book of Romans ended here, God would still be just.

We wouldn't like it.

But he would still be just.

But praise God, when it doesn't end here, and in the very next section of Romans, Paul's gonna unpack how we are saved. He's gonna explain how we can be justified by faith, apart from the works of the law. He's gonna move forward from saying, we're not righteous, we're not good to say that Jesus is good. Jesus is righteous, and he came so that we could be saved. He came so that God could make a way, so that God could be both just and the justifier of those who have faith in Jesus.

But today, we don't get that good news just yet.

So I think what we should do is we should sit

under the weight of this passage, showing us who we are on our own, apart from Jesus.

And let's consider, let's look at our lives and see the ways in which we squander the advantages that God has given us like he gave to Jesus. Where we are faithless in response to his faithfulness. Where we're deserving of judgment and condemnation like David, like we sinned against God and done with people in his sight.

He would be perfectly just and blazed and pouring our judgment upon us.

Let's also marvel at the grace he's shown us in Jesus. Like we were dead, but God made us alive in Jesus.

Everything we have, everything is good about us. Anything in us that anybody looks at and says, that's not awful, is a product of his grace in us. Working to make us who he desires us to be in him and less like we were before he or me.

And I want us to be balanced in how we hear it. Because a second moral is here's the fact, it thinks you're right, I'm terrible.

But God doesn't really love me.

He just wanted to save people. And so he saved people and it's kind of made him by outside.

Thinking important thing for us to realize is that God would have been just in our passage here.

That's not belief.

That's because he does love his creation. He does love people. He is for us. He cares about us. He wants to teach sin Jesus. There's that song above all.

We're talking about how to come across Jesus as well as me above all. And I remember a period in my life where I just mocked that song in verse 11.

So it's like, I don't think he was singing about me. Because even though I'm great, I'm not that good.

But the reality is that Jesus came for us. Not for us as a, you know, a more of a blog of people, but for us as individuals. And so all these sad and normal stuff, remember that Jesus came to die for you. Because he loves you, he cares about you, and he wants you to be in relationship with himself, in a relationship with his father. He came to redeem you. All you have to do for us, remember that you needed safety.

You still do.

Even though you try to take credit for what Jesus has done for you, he still can't be saved.

God has shown so much grace to us in Jesus that we will never, ever, ever understand what that means.

We could spend the rest of our lives together talking about how much we've been saved from, and how much we've been saved for, and we're barely scratching the surface.

We're still gonna be tempted to take advantage of it.

So let's sit with passages like this that remind us of how much we've been saved from.

Let's marvel and praise the G-d has shown us in John. And in Christ we continue to worship him as he is and what he's done for us in spite of who we are and what we've done. Let's pray.

(congregation murmuring)

God, I thank you that even though

we are far worse than the understanding that we're in it,

that you have shown us more grace than we could ever come with.

That despite the fact that though we were dead

and enslaved in our standard,

you sent Jesus to make us alive.

When not even one of us was good or righteous,

when none of us were seeking you,

you put a plan in place to bring us back, to buy us out of our slavery and sin, to bring us back into relationship with yourself,

that you came for us.

And so we pray this morning that

you help us to remember that

your grace isn't just an abstract intellectual concept,

but is a motivator

for which you orchestrated history

to redeem us who didn't deserve it. And so we pray this morning that you help us to

own more of our brokenness, to recognize the depths of our sin,

but not to give way to guilt and shame,

but instead to marvel and revel in the grace you've shown us in Jesus.

We thank you for dying in our place, for paying, for living a life of obedience, for that we can be righteous in you.

And so we pray that you would cause your spirit within us to help us to--