Any Advantage?

Children’s Bible Page 1225

Introduction: Have you ever been granted some privilege, but it is didn’t turn out to be what you thought it was going to be?

Robin has this unique way about her to go to an interest meeting at one of our children’s schools, and return as the president of the board.

No joke, at the first PTO meeting Robin attended at one of our kid’s schools in Rocky Mount, she came home to announce to me that she was not just the president of one but two school’s PTOs!

I mean, that has to be something for the book of world records or something.

And of course, she could have seen it as a great honor, but by the end of the first week, she learned about all the challenges, and they were now her responsibility!

I open with that, because in our passage today, the Jewish people had been offered such an amazing privilege in the history of humanity dating all the way back to God telling Abram to leave his country and people and to become a great nation through whom God would bless, and through that nation, finally bless all the families of the earth.

My introduction will be longer than usual, than the body of the sermon shorter, because the context of the passage really sets us up for understanding our verses for today.

God had miraculously saved His people from captivity in Egypt, and given them his unique promises and His law.

And, to the time of King David, He promised that there would be a king to sit on the throne of David forever!

It was a massive privilege.

Yet, now, here we find the apostle Paul writing to the church in Rome about 20-25 years after Jesus had been crucified, resurrected, and ascended back to Heaven.

And the church in Rome is made up of Jews and Gentiles, as the gospel has gone to all kinds of people.

And the Jews were even kicked out of Rome for a while, so naturally, Gentiles had to keep the church going in Rome while the Jews were gone.

Gentiles is a reference to all people who are not Jews by the way.

And now, they are all back together in one church, and Paul has utilized the 1:18-32 to cover the great sinfulness of Gentiles who had grown up apart from God’s people and God’s law.

They had exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator.

Then, in chapter 2, Paul has argued that while all Gentiles have sinned against God and are rightfully condemned, the Jews must not judge the Gentiles because they are sinners too and are no better off.

Then, Paul explains how the Jews will not be saved by having and knowing the law of God, and they will not be saved by their ritual practice of circumcision which God had used for the Jewish people to distinguish themselves from the other nations of the earth.

And I want you to understand that Paul teaching this way was deeply offensive to the Jewish people.

Now, of course, the Jews who were a part of the church had come to know and understand their sinfulness and need for Jesus, but most Jews in the time of the early church were deeply offended by this message.

Much of the persecution that the early church experienced was Jewish persecution due to their offense of the Christian gospel.

Which makes sense, because the Jews were the ones who were so offended by Jesus, they had him killed.

You see, God had given the Jews great privilege in being his chosen people, but if you look at their history, from a human perspective, the Jewish people have not been well advantaged by this privilege.

I want to lay out a bit of Jewish history I heard from Pastor John MacArthur:

Theirs is a sad saga of struggle, of war, captivity and death. 

They have been hated, persecuted, slandered, imprisoned, slaughtered, and this repeatedly through their history. 

And yet they live on almost defiantly as an indestructible seed. 

Today rebuilding their small piece of land in the center of the world, they are a noble people made even more noble by their struggles.

But looking at the story of the Jew historically, it would seem that there was little advantage to being Jewish. 

They were slaves in Egypt for over 400 years under the bondage of Pharaoh, who were given the most menial tasks and also they were given circumstances which made those tasks even more difficult.  

When they were dispossessed from Egypt they wandered in the desert for 40 years until an entire generation of them died off in the wilderness without ever having a home. 

When they finally entered into the land of Canaan, they had to save themselves from the destruction of the surrounding peoples who constantly attacked them both religiously, morally and in warfare. 

They were slaughtered and taken captive finally by the Assyrians first and then the Babylonians.  From the Assyrian captivity they never returned and from the Babylonian captivity it was 70 years before a remnant began to come back.

After returning from the captivity in Babylon, they set out to rebuild their land from the rubble and were mocked and harassed and hindered and unaided in their efforts. 

They were dominated by the Greek Antiochus Epiphanes when they were under Greek rule and he took liberties to desecrate their religion, desecrate their priesthood, desecrate their holy place, quell their rebellions by slaughtering many of them. 

Their babies were massacred by Herod.

Their land was oppressed by Roman legions. 

They were utterly devastated under the power of Rome. In 70 A.D. the city of Jerusalem was destroyed by Titus Vespasian, the great general of the Roman army. 

One point one million, according to Josephus, were murdered.

One hundred thousand bodies of the Jews were thrown over the wall in some kind of sport. 

Two years before that, the Gentiles of Caesarea slew twenty thousand Jews and sold thousands more of them into slavery. 

In a single day the inhabitants of Damascus cut the throats of ten thousand Jews. 

In the actual siege itself, there was devastation beyond description in the city of Jerusalem. 

One hundred thousand remaining fugitives from that sacking of the city were sold into slavery.  

Many more died in the gladiator games sponsored by Rome.

In 115 A.D. the Jews of Cyrene, Egypt, Cyprus and Mesopotamia rose up against Rome and tried to defeat Rome and were unsuccessful, and so Hadrian, the emperor, destroyed 985 towns in Palestine and slew at least 600 thousand men.

For two centuries they were oppressed under the Byzantines.  Heraclitus banished them from Jerusalem in 628 and endeavored to exterminate them again. 

In 1492 the Jews were expelled from Spain as Columbus was heading to discover America. 

In 1496 they were expelled from Portugal.  Soon after, all of Western Europe was closed to them except a few spots in northern Italy and Germany.

Toward the middle of the seventeenth century in Poland, more persecution broke out. And though the French Revolution tended to emancipate some of the European Jews around 1789 or so, anti-Semitism continued in many areas.

In the nineteenth century Dreyfus affair in which Dreyfus, a Jewish officer, was accused of treason.  And an attempt began to oust the Jews from all the higher ranks of the French army. 

And, of course, it all came to a horrifying climax in the 1940s when six million of them were systematically exterminated. 

And anti-Semitism religious as it had been in the Middle Ages but it became racial. 

So that the legacy of all of that today in the world is not that we have a religious anti-Semitism but we still have what is left of a racial anti- Semitism. 

And Jewish people today find themselves in many cases to be hated, to be slandered, to be defamed, to be misunderstood, to be mocked.

Yet, throughout this Jewish history, many have held onto the hope that they are the chosen people of God, that they are the keepers of God’s law, and that they bear in their bodies the mark of circumcision which separates them out as God’s special people.

But Jesus said:

John 8:39–47

39 They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, 40 but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. 41 You are doing the works your father did.” They said to him, “We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father—even God.” 42 Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. 43 Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. 44 You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. 45 But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. 46 Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? 47 Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.”

And now Paul is teaching:

You are sinners. And you cannot trust in the law of God or in your circumcision in order to save you.

It is no wonder then, that in the book of Acts, the main charges the Jews bring against Paul are these:

Acts 21:28

28 crying out, “Men of Israel, help! This is the man who is teaching everyone everywhere against the people and the law and this place. Moreover, he even brought Greeks into the temple and has defiled this holy place.”

Paul is speaking against the Jewish people, the law of God, and this place - the holy temple.

So, now, Paul writes Romans 3:1-8 in order to answer the questions no doubt unbelieving Jews challenge Paul and the believing Jews in the church with all the time.

Romans 3:1

1 Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision?

Can’t you feel both the anger and the agony in these questions?

And I would argue that verse 2 is the most powerful verse in the passage, as by this point, we would all expect Paul to respond:

None, the Jew has no advantage, there is no advantage to circumcision, but that’s not what Paul says.

Look at verse 2:

Romans 3:2

2 Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God.

1. The Greatest Advantage Is Having God’s Word

So, when it seems as if Paul’s argument would be that being Jewish held no advantage, Paul surprisingly says, “It holds great advantage in every way!”

How can that be?

Well, while my English translation reads “to begin with,” the original language gives off the idea of a primary advantage.

It’s not going to be the first in a list of advantages.

It is only going to be one advantage, but that one advantage is most advantageous.

Like if you had a list of 30 advantages over on this side, and only one advantage on this side, you would always choose the one because it is so sufficiently advantageous.

And what is this greatest of all advantages?

That the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God.

I don’t love the word oracle there because it conjures up thoughts of witchcraft or the occult, but that should not be the case at all.

In the original language, it is simply the “logia” of God, meaning the word of God.

What advantage has the Jew?

The Jews were entrusted with the word of God.

Of course, in this context, where the New Testament was not yet completed, Paul is referring to the Old Testament Scriptures.

Consider how Paul speaks of the Old Testament Scriptures to His fellow Jewish believer Timothy:

2 Timothy 3:14–15

14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it 15 and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

In other words, Paul is saying that the great goal of the Old Testament Scriptures is to make one wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

You see, a clear and unhindered reading of God’s word in the Old Testament reveals:

God created us to glorify Him in perfect relationship.

Man sinned and fell under the righteous condemnation of God due our sin.

Man needs an offspring born of woman to come and crush the serpent’s head (an allusion to taking on and defeating man’s sin on his behalf).

Then, as God calls Abram, we are to read and believe the promise that through Abram’s family line all the earth shall be blessed, and we are to look for the one who will come from His line to do this!

And as we read God’s law summarized in the ten commandments, we come to see that we fall far short of God’s perfect standard.

And as we read the history of God’s people, we see God graciously sustain a Jewish people who fall, fail, and sin over and over again.

Until we come to King David and read of a Son of David who will come to sit on the throne of David forever, and we are to watch for this righteous king to come.

Then, we read in places like Isaiah that this great king will also be a suffering servant who will be pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities.

And there are millions and millions of other ways that the Old Testament Scripture leads the reader to look for the perfect one to come through every story, and every sacrifice, and every word of wisdom, and every prophecy of righteous judgment and salvation, and every perfect commandment - all ultimately pointing us toward Jesus Christ.

You see, it was not that the Jewish people had not been given the greatest of all advantages by being entrusted with the Word of God.

The problem was throughout Jewish history, we read just how many times the majority of Jews either completely ignored the Scriptures, or they turned the Scriptures into some kind of religious code with all law and no promise.

Consider Jesus’ words:

Matthew 23:23–24

23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. 24 You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!

They nitpicked about the rules while missing the very heart of God for His glory and the good of others.

John 5:39–40

39 You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.

Don’t you see: the great advantage was not mainly about being born of the right ethnicity, and it wasn’t about staking your soul on the fact that you could know and teach the law, and it wasn’t about an outward religious ritual of circumcision.

It was about being convicted of your sinfulness and God’s righteousness, it was about agreeing that God is righteous to judge you a sinner, it was about believing God’s promise that one was coming who would crush sin and bring salvation, and it was about displaying the glory of God in these truths to the other nations of the world.

So I must ask us: do we today believe that our one great advantage as the people of God is be entrusted with the Word of God?

Do we understand that there is one way and one way only that any of us has a genuine faith in God that will save us from the wrath of God?

And what is that way:

Romans 10:17

17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

Do we understand that we have one way and only one way of knowing how to enter the kingdom of God, who makes up the church of God, who is granted entrance into the church of God, how is one supposed to behave in the church of God, what the church of God is to believe, and to practice, and to obey?

1 Timothy 3:15

15 if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth.

We can be tempted to believe that we need all these different strategies, systems, and programs in order to do God’s work, and while some of those things can be avenues for God’s work,

The advantage of the work and power of God is always manifested by the Spirit of God as we seek, believe, trust in, and obey the Word of God.

For, this Word of God is sufficient for all things pertaining to life and godliness.

The reason why we baptists don’t do much in the way of religious decoration, and the reason we put the pulpit right in the center of the worship service is to reenforce this great truth:

The the foundation of our faith and the foundation of the church is not in a personality, or in a leader, or in religious ritual observance, or in how relevant we can be to the culture, or in icons or incense or candles or art or mission trips or music styles or political engagement or satisfying a felt need for community and belonging or feeling like a family or and on and on it goes, and some of those things are really good things that we love and desire as a church,

But none of them are the foundation.

The foundation of our faith and the foundation of the church is faith in the Word of God written that displays to us the Word of God made flesh in Jesus Christ.

That’s why the word of God must be uniquely central in the life of the church.

It is the great advantage we have.

Now, this led to another Jewish objection:

Romans 3:3–4

3 What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? 4 By no means! Let God be true though every one were a liar, as it is written,

“That you may be justified in your words,

and prevail when you are judged.”

2. God Is Completely Faithful To His Word

In the Jewish mind, men and women who were Jews, who had the law, and who were circumcised were all saved and going to Heaven,

But now, Paul is saying that knowing the law and being circumcised doesn’t save anyone.

So, a lot of Jews, who were God’s chosen people by the way, are not saved?

Well, doesn’t the unfaithfulness of the Jews to truly believe God negate God’s faithfulness to His promises? I mean, wasn’t the promise to save all Jews?

Verse 4: By no means! It is the greatest of negatives Paul could have used.

God is completely faithful to His promises!

Let God be true though every one were a liar!

And we all are liars, no one, Jew or Gentile, has lived with the perfect integrity of love of God and others. We have all lied.

But that does not negate God’s perfect faithfulness in any way!

Paul is going to pick up on this theme more later in Romans 9-11.

Paul then quotes the words of King David in his great Psalm of confession and repentance after His great sin with Bathsheba:

“That you may be justified in your words, and prevail when you are judged.”

You see, what the Jews had missed was that throughout the Old Testament, God had not just promised to show off His righteousness by saving those who believed in Him, he had also promised to show of HIs righteousness by judging those who sinned against him.

David was saying, “You, God, would be completely faithful to your word to righteously judge me for my sin no matter what the judgment.”

The Jews thought their ethnicity, knowledge of the law, and circumcision would save them, so if they ended up being judged by God, surely God is not being faithful to His word.

But David knew, “God is always faithful to His word, whether it be to save those who believe, or to judge those who continue in sin and don’t believe.”

He promised to do both throughout the Old Testament.

And He still promises to do both today.

To show off his righteousness in saving all who repent of their sin and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.

And to show off his righteousness in eternally judging all who do not believe.

Do you need to repent and believe right now?

Romans 3:5–8

5 But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.) 6 By no means! For then how could God judge the world? 7 But if through my lie God’s truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner? 8 And why not do evil that good may come?—as some people slanderously charge us with saying. Their condemnation is just.

3. The Gospel Of Grace Upholds God’s Holy Judgment

Okay, let me try to make this as clear as possible.

If the greatest advantage given the Jews was the Word of God, and if God is completely faithful to His word even though many Jews fail to believe, then there is one more argument the unbelieving Jews used against Paul and other Jewish Christians.

Remember back in Acts? The said Paul spoke against the Law of God (no actually the word of God was their greatest advantage).

They said Paul spoke against the people of God (no actually, God will show His righteousness in saving those who believe and judging those who do not).

So, what’s left? They said Paul spoke against this holy place, the temple, the very place that displayed to the people the holiness of God.

But think about it, Paul preaches a gospel that says God is glorified in saving sinners.

Well, if God can be glorified through someone’s sin by saving them, how can He possibly judge anyone under his wrath?

In modern day terms, it is like saying, “I’m going to go ahead and commit this sin today, because I know God is so forgiving and gracious that I will ask Him right after and He will forgive me.”

Be honest with yourself, have you ever thought that way? I know I have many times.

Look at the start of verse 8, “why not do evil that good may come?”

I mean, if I sin now, God will be even more glorified in forgiving me. Right?

Do you see this last charge laid against Paul and the gospel?

The charge is: it speaks against God’s holy judgment.

It causes people to believe that they can and should go on sinning so that God’s grace and forgiveness can abound all the more.

This is a position theologians call antinomianism meaning against the law.

No room for law leading to licentious living - not holiness.

But Paul speaks against this accusation to the gospel in the strongest terms.

End of verse 5, would God be unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? By no means, me geneta! The strongest negative!

For then how could God judge the world?

If there is one truth all Jews understood is that God is the judge of the world and He is righteous to judge.

And in verse 8, why not do evil that good may come? - as some slanderously charge us with saying.

That’s not what Paul’s gospel is, and those who say it is are slandering Paul, and their condemnation is just.

Paul is going to pick up on this theme against in

Romans 6:1–2

1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?

You see, the true gospel does not downplay God’s holiness, God’s holy justice, or God’s holy law.

Instead, the true gospel honors the perfection of God’s holiness, God’s holy justice, and God’s holy law to a much greater extent than the unbelieving Jews ever could.

You see, the unbelieving Jews believed that their ethnicity, knowledge of the law, outward appearances of righteousness, and ritual of circumcision were enough to make them holy before God’s law.

But, the gospel of Jesus Christ preached by Paul upholds a much greater standard of holiness.

For the gospel of Jesus Christ says you must be perfect in loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and loving your neighbor as yourself,

not only not outwardly murdering anyone, but not even hating someone in your heart,

not only not committing adultery, but not ever lusting after someone in your heart,

And the gospel of Jesus Christ goes on to say God’s holy justice will justly punish all sin both inward and outward, no matter what your ethnicity, your religion, or your rituals,

And the gospel of Jesus Christ says that because perfect law keeping from the heart is upheld as the perfect standard,

The only means of salvation is the perfect love of the perfect God offering His perfect Son to take the full punishment of our sinful law breaking onto Himself,

So that Jesus ends up being both just and the justifier of the one who places their faith in Him.

And when Jesus saves you, not only does He forgive you of your sins and add all of his righteousness to your account,

But, he writes the law on your heart, meaning by the Holy Spirit of God you begin to grow to obey God’s law because you begin to love what God loves and obedience is the natural expression of this divine love.

Two applications in order to close the sermon:

First, for those of you who are not yet saved, salvation is no pithy sentimental ceremony.

You and I do not deserve just some slap on the wrist for some small slip up.

You and I deserve the eternal judgment and condemnation in the fires of hell for stubbornly rejecting the one true and Holy God.

And if you have not been convicted of your sin against God from your heart, and turned from sin to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you are right now presently by your nature as a sinner, a child of the devil, and you are awaiting God’s perfect judgment and wrath to fall on you with full force for eternity.

And your only hope is to fall in conviction of sin under the covering of the Lord Jesus Christ who takes all that judgment and wrath on himself for you, when you repent and believe.

Second, for those of you have a saved and part of God’s family - the church, your greatest advantage in this life is that you have been entrusted with the Word of God.

Do you spend time to read it, know it, set yourself under its authority, and allow the Holy Spirit to use it to teach you, to reprove you, to correct you, and to train you in righteousness, so that you may be complete, equipped for every good work?

Do you tend to make excuses for your sin leaning on the fact that God will forgive you like those whose condemnation is just?

Or do you make war against your sin by the truth of the Word of God and by the power of the Holy Spirit within you training you to reject what is killing you and embrace holiness which leads you closer to the one for whom at His right hand are pleasures forevermore?

Elder at couch.

Let’s pray.