All Of Us Are Guilty - Romans: Book of Revolution

Hey, I'm Pastor Steve Hole.

I want to empower you today to walk in your true identity as a worshiper and warrior.

Today, embrace the power of God's Word and the Holy Spirit.

Welcome to the Born for War podcast.

So turning your Bibles to Romans, we're in Romans 2.

For you that are guests with us today, we are in the book of Romans.

We're going through Romans.

And to be honest, this isn't like the most awesome part of Romans.

But we're going through it because it was a letter to Rome where they had issues.

And they're not altogether different than the issues we have today in that in Rome the first believers were Jews.

Okay?

And then the next layer was more your Greeks and what we call Gentiles or non-Jews got saved.

But the conflicts within the Roman church were related to how do you get saved?

How do you come to know the Lord?

How do you legitimately get born again in your heart?

And for many of the Jewish believers, and this would be true of some of you that come out of maybe Christian backgrounds, we tend with knowledge that we have from the Bible and the knowledge we have of moral living to begin, it's just a natural impulse to think that's what saves us is being good and being a good person and treating people well.

And that's important, man.

I mean, if you have to choose between treating people badly or treating people good, you should treat people good.

I mean, it'll go better for you.

But it doesn't save you.

That's not what saves you.

So he's setting up in his letter, which you guys understand that when a letter was written at that time, they would read the whole letter.

Now we're going verse by verse, so I'm that's why I'm always rehearsing where we've been in the past.

So look back at Romans 1.

And in Romans 1, we talked about the fact that God gives you over.

You can have it your way.

Burger King didn't come up with that.

That God came up with that.

You can have it your way.

If you want to go into sin, God will always allow you to go into sin.

You can go your own way.

And then he talked about a regression or a cyclical effect of sin.

We've already gone through this before, but at verse 28 is where it goes.

In verse 28, it says he gave them over to a debased mind.

That means confusion.

And I talked about, even biologically, that when you're sexually stimulated, you release dopamine.

And dopamine has an addictive quality to it.

It's like on the same level as heroin and cocaine.

And it actually can build ditches in your prefrontal cortex if you keep stimulating it in a certain way.

Well, then with women in the sexual relationship, you release oxytocin, also a chemical which is called the bonding chemical.

So the bonding chemical bonds you to that person.

For guys, it's vasopressin.

Vasopressin bonds you.

Less so with men than with women.

So that's why sometimes when you've been sexually active with a lot of partners, you start to have a debased mind.

Because you're actually biologically going against the way your brain functions.

So if you just keep breaking the laws of the kingdom, the kingdom will break you.

Does that make sense?

So you don't want to do that.

It's kind of like if you eat fast food all the time and you're always eating fast food and you pre-regularly have headaches and you come up for prayer for your headaches, and then we pray for you and you get healed of your headaches, they're all coming back as soon as you go to Chick-fil-A.

And I know you think you're paying your tithe by going to Chick-fil-A, but it's not true.

Okay?

So we call it, so Paul calls it a debased mind.

You're confusing.

You're not working even with the biology of your body.

So give you an example.

Um I was listening to a psychologist and another sociologist this week on a podcast.

I always do that.

I'm always listening to different kinds of disciplines and stuff.

And he was saying that the one of the number one things you can do as you grow older to actually increase or decrease the degeneration of your IQ is to work out.

That's how important working out is.

Lift weights, take walks, whatever it is you like to do.

But keeping your brain oxygenated.

That's just a law of the kingdom.

But you're not gonna read it here.

That's why it's important to know truth and be a truth seeker, because it doesn't matter where it comes from, because all truth is God's truth anyway.

So if a psychologist says it and it's true and it's God's truth, man, take it, you know?

So those that say, well, I'm a Bible guy, I don't do anything with psychology or any of that stuff, and I'm going, then you're missing out because God's working in all these different places, man.

And it's good to make yourself wise on those things.

So that's just an example of how we keep ourselves healthy.

So whether you're a Christian or non-Christian, if you work out, you're oxygenating your brain, and it's important as you grow older to stay sharp mentally.

Now, what's happening in chapter 2 is that Paul is explaining to the Jews and the Greeks, the Gentiles, look, there's nothing that can save you.

I don't care how righteous or how good you are, how many rituals you have, or whether you come from the Torah or the or the Ten Commandments or the law, that's not what's going to save you.

And so here's where we're pick we're gonna pick it up today is uh chapter 2, verse 11.

And I'm gonna read 11 through 13.

For there is no partiality with God, for as many as have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and as many have sinned in the law will be judged by the law, for not the hearers of the law are just in the sight of God, but the doers of the law will be justified.

And that's the key word, doers of the law.

And so he's saying here that there's a conscience, that you have a conscience in your spirit, whether you had the law or didn't have the law, you have a conscience that is already programmed with right and wrong.

And so even, you know, even those on some deserted island out there, they know, because of the God image within them, a little bit about right and wrong.

Now they don't have the whole picture, but they get it.

And so his point is that, okay, to you Jews, or in our case, you that have grown up in a Christian home, or you come out of a Christian lifestyle, or you've been Christians a long time.

It's not just that you hear it and understand it, or even study it.

As important as that is, it's doing it.

It's not just hearing it.

You gotta do it.

And sometimes people, and you know this, there's people out there, my granddaddy on the ranch used to call them just good people.

If if I was talking around the dining room table or the kitchen or something with granddaddy, and he would hear me say some kid's name on the football team there in the town, he'd say, now what's their last name?

And he and he knew their dad.

He knew their grandpa, you know, he knew them, and he said, That's a good man.

He said, That's a good man.

If he didn't say anything, not good man.

Like, oh, oh, that's the uh Harvey family, past the beans.

Right?

So there's people out there that, you know, they may not go to church.

They don't, they don't have, they, you wouldn't indicate they have a relationship with God, but they're good people.

He's saying, look, even a Gentile, even a Greek, even a non-churchgoer, a non-Christian who's a good person is being honest with their conscience.

It's not just that you know the law or you know the Bible, are you doing it?

So he's kind of setting you up here.

He's kind of he's he's setting us up that these Jews who keep talking about the law, but they're not living it.

That's where he's guiding us.

And he's saying the Gentiles who don't have the law, but they're living it.

So he's that's this, there's no partiality with God.

That's the point in verse 11.

No partiality.

Doesn't matter if you had it or you didn't have it.

Stay connected to your conscience.

When I was in college, I'm in the dorm, away from my parents, I don't have to report anymore to mom and dad.

No curfew.

Da-da-da.

Women everywhere.

Lots of opportunity to mess around, but I had been given something of a conscience because of the way my mom and dad raised me.

So I knew with certain actions that I was stepping out on that I was actually breaking the law of my heart.

But I didn't know the Lord.

But then there were others on our hallway that went to Campus Crusade, or they went to navigators, or they went to all these different Christian groups, and they were always witnessing to me and preaching to me, and they were doing the same stuff I was doing.

And I just remember thinking, wow, man, you're just such a hypocrite, you know?

Like I was the big judge, right?

But anyway, I thought I was.

But here's the point.

I think this is the point.

The greater the light, the greater the responsibility.

The more God's invested in you, there's a greater responsibility now.

You have greater responsibility by having the law, you have a greater responsibility by having the Bible, you have a greater responsibility by having a Christian home.

Now, I didn't think about that at the time, but that's what he's saying here.

So he's saying instead of you religiously people condemning those who've never had any religion, I'm talking about in Rome, you, instead of looking around and blaming others, you actually have a greater responsibility to be doers of the word.

So quit judging or pointing your finger at those who don't do the word, point your finger at yourself and say, Are you doing the word?

That's the point.

For when the Gentiles who do not have the law by nature, by the by the God-divine nature, because they're we're all created in the image of God, do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law unto themselves.

Who show the work of the law written in their hearts.

This is really important.

Their conscience also bearing witness between themselves, their thoughts accusing or excusing them.

So in Timothy chapter four, Paul writes about men who have a seared conscience.

In other words, they keep doing what they know is wrong, and they and actually literally that Greek word for seared in conscience is the idea of building up scar tissue on your heart.

You build up scar tissue in your heart by doing the things you know aren't right.

That's a depraved mind.

And my theory is that if you continue in areas that you know are wrong, it's interesting that as we look at the sexual revolution and the rise of sexual revolution, and there's a lot of, okay, let me just be honest, there's a lot of data on a lot of different um venues that I'm not bringing up, but I'm just gonna tell you from a from a kingdom perspective, that as we see more and more men and women going against their conscience, and I'm gonna talk about the sexual revolution in that area, especially with the hookup culture, you have a rise in Alzheimer's.

Because you're messing with your brain, man.

You're actually going against your heart, you're going against your brain, you're going against your body.

And so it's not that we're just bringing breaking kingdom laws, kingdom laws then we'll break you.

Okay?

And so and so what's happening here is he's saying, look, there's people who've never had the law, but they're a law on themselves because God has put enough of, there's still enough of the God image in that heart that if they'll follow their conscience, if they follow them conscience, they become a law unto themselves.

This is the way James says it.

Therefore, lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls.

But be doers of the word, not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he's like a man observing his natural face in a mirror.

For he observes himself, and then he goes away and immediately forgets what kind of a man he was.

So here's what he's saying.

He's saying, look, the word of God, let's put it this way.

In the first century, they didn't have mirrors like we have mirrors now.

They had bronze.

And for the wealthy, it was gold and silver, and they would make, they would make a plate and they would pound it out, and then they would polish it.

That was your mirror.

So it was never like as clear as it is today.

And as you grow older, that's with a little bit of chagrin.

But you have this mirror and you look at your indistinctly, but it's a pretty good idea.

You could see yourself, you see who you are, but then you walk away and forget who you are because this book is the mirror.

That's what James is saying.

This is the mirror that shows us who we really are.

And church, that's why if you're not spending time on a regular basis in God's word, you forget who you are.

Good and bad.

Because in the good side of who you are in Christ and the victory that you have in Christ, but then on the other hand, realizing without Christ you're up to no good.

And so, and so he's saying, look, you saw yourself, it's a mirror, but then you just closed it up, you forgot who you are, and you kind of go your way again.

That's what he's saying.

So the Bible doesn't save us, the law doesn't save us, it shows us our sin.

It shows us who we are.

It's a mirror, it's a thermometer.

You know, you take your temperature and you've got a fever.

The thermometer doesn't heal you, it just registers who you are.

It registers that you're sick.

And so he's saying you're saved.

What he's gonna say, looking at chapter three.

Again, they would have read this all together, chapter three and four, and moving all through Romans.

You're saved, church, by faith alone, but not faith that is alone.

You're saved by faith alone, but not faith that is alone.

And so the way we know we're saved is by the works of our life, through living it out.

So the problem that you have now who come to the road, and I have coming up through Campus Crusade, and then the vineyard, and all the different Bible churches I've been a part of through the years, is that I've heard it and I've heard it and I've heard it, I've heard it so many times.

And it's that cult, it's that contempt for the familiar.

How many of you as parents, well, if your kids aren't here, um I'm like no show of hands.

But you can become so familiar to your kids, and they just take you for granted.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard someone say, man, I was talking to so-and-so, and they said this, and oh, that's it.

That's what I've been searching for.

We've been saying that for 20 years, man.

But it's us, if it's parents saying it, but then someone else says it, then it's okay, right?

And it has an unfamiliar ring to it, so we like it.

So the Bible can be that way.

We become too familiar with it because we know it, we've heard it, but God wants us to do it.

He wants it to go from information to formation to transformation.

And that's what the word is designed to do in our lives.

For when the Gentiles who do not have the law by nature do the things of the law, these, although not having the law, are a law unto themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts, in their conscience, also bearing witness, and between themselves, their thoughts accusing or else excusing them, in the day when God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel.

So you don't want to know the secrets of my heart.

And I don't want to know the secrets of your heart.

But God knows the secrets of your heart.

So you can fool all the people some of the time, or some of the people all the time, but you can't fool mom.

And you also can't fool God.

And so he's talking about the great white throne.

Here's the way it's described in Revelation 20.

Then I saw a great white throne, and him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away, and there was found no place for them.

And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and the books, plural, the books were opened, and another book was opened, which is a book of life.

And the dead were judged according to their works by the things which were written in the books.

The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one according to his works.

So we're not saved by our works, but it appears we will be judged by our works.

And I think this has a lot to do with the rewards that come in the afterlife that we have.

So works matter.

They don't save us, but it's the only way to grow, and it's the only way to find joy in Christ.

Because your life is not defined by when you got saved.

Your life is defined by today.

How you doing?

How's it going?

How's it going, gang?

How are we doing?

And a lot of us we're not doing well.

So let's let's go back to the Lord.

Let's redefine life and go for it and be in his word and let God begin to work in our lives at a deeper, deeper level.

Because it's about sanctification and growth over time.

Verse 17.

Indeed, you're called a Jew and rest on the law and make your boast in God.

And they should.

Jews should do that.

He's not saying they shouldn't.

Make your boast in the law.

And know his will.

And approve the things that are excellent, being instructed out of the law.

And you're confident that you yourself are a guide to the blind and a light to those who are in darkness.

I mean, that's fantastic.

That's fantastic to have a Christian background.

That's fantastic.

In this case, in the first century, have a Jewish background.

The Jew is proud of the world.

He should have been.

He should be.

That's great.

I'm proud of my background.

I hope you're proud of some aspects of your background.

I'm glad that I grew up in the Lutheran church.

I'm glad that I went to confirmation class.

I'm glad that I'm not glad that I was baptized in a dress, but other than that, it got, you know.

But what he's what he's saying is, that's great.

But then he turns the corner in verse 20.

An instructor of the foolish, a teacher of the babes, having the form of knowledge and truth in the law, you therefore, this part we don't like.

You therefore who teach another, do you teach yourself?

You who preach that a man should not steal, do you steal?

That's an instruction to me, gang.

That's something I'm the main instructor of the word at the road, and it's the most important thing that I'm living what I say, I'm preaching.

So what I say, am I living it?

And my standard is not here.

My standard is not in the lobby.

My standard is not staff meetings.

Because anybody can fake that.

My standard is what happens at home.

It's up in my study when no one's around.

It's what I'm looking at when no one's around.

That's the standard.

Am I a hypocrite?

Am I saying one thing and then I'm doing the other?

And he's saying to the Jews, Guys who are so uh proud of the law, and he's saying, and that's good, I'm proud of the law too.

I mean, Paul was a Pharisee of Pharisees, but when you lay that and have a condescending spirit to those who don't have it, are you breaking the law?

Steve Holt, are you breaking the law?

Do you have secret sins that nobody knows about that you're being a hypocrite over?

And that's the challenge for me.

That's a challenge for all of us.

So the standard of your life is not how you act in public, it's who you are in private, and everyone of us in the room will go, uh, well.

Because the heart of the problem, this is what he's leading to, the heart of the problem is a problem of the heart.

The heart of the problem is a problem of the heart.

And all of us have hearts that are not reaching the standard of God's law.

You see how he's setting us up?

You can't save yourself.

You can't do it.

You're gonna have to have Christ in your life.

An instructor of the foolish, a teacher obeys, having the form of knowledge and truth in the law.

You therefore who teach another, do you teach yourself?

You who preach that a man should not steal, do you steal?

Isn't it interesting that the first words out of a kid's mouth is never yes?

I mean, yes is not any harder than no.

But it's no, man.

And then the second word is mine.

No and mine.

And then when you finally get up the courage as a parent to take your kids out, and you go like safe way or something, and they just start whacking on each other.

There are some advantages to keeping quite a spread, you know, between your kids.

We we just bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, every two years, you know.

So it was it was people would just, I mean, airports, because we traveled a lot, I was speaking a lot, we were doing all that stuff when I was younger, and they'd see us coming.

And and you'd see people with, I remember one guy he had two bags with him, and he just dropped them because we just kept coming in.

And I kind of made them all line up according to age because Anna would kind of take care of Daniel, and Daniel would take care of, you know, on down.

So everybody had the responsibility of watching out, make sure that kid had his stuff and all that, and especially on an international flight, you know.

I mean, I know some of you guys that have done international flights, you drug up your kids.

We never did the drugs thing, you know, to get them to sleep.

Um, but but they're all coming in, you know, and everybody's like, whoa, you know.

And so there was a sit-around, and I I thought we were the Kardashians or something.

Because there were just so many of them.

How many do you have?

And I go, seven.

All the same woman.

See her right there?

She's a fox, right, man?

That's a good-looking woman right there, man.

And they would agree with me, or I wouldn't talk to them anymore.

But but they would do stuff sometimes, right?

Because they're kids.

So we've got this innate part of us that goes against our conscience.

We just do.

We go against our conscience, and we and we have the law to give us a standard, to give us a mirror to see, but that's not even good enough.

You who say do not commit adultery, do you commit adultery?

You who abhor idols, do you rob temples?

You who make your boast in the law, do you dishonor God through the breaking of the law?

Or the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.

And you guys know, I mean, we've seen it in Colorado Springs.

We've had Christians, we've had pastors, we've had leaders who are total posers.

And they came across one way from the pulpit, or they came one way in public, and they had a private, secret life, and we still and we have to deal with that because of those that have been poor witnesses for Christ.

Well, let's not be that way.

It's what he's saying.

Let's, as roadsters, as road people, may we be authentic.

And the best way to be authentic is be real with the right people, of course, but start working on your stuff.

Because God already knows what's going on.

And let God begin to equip and train and empower you in new ways.

For circumcision is indeed profitable if you keep the law, but if you're a breaker of the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision.

Therefore, if you if an uncircumcised man keeps the righteous requirements of the law, will not his uncircumcision be counted as circumcision?

So his point here is that it's not an issue of ceremony, it's the issue of a transformed heart.

So I was baptized as an infant.

I went to confirmation.

I graduated out of confirmation at 16 years old, and I wasn't a believer.

And so I went through the ceremony, but it didn't have a changed heart.

But the point of circumcision was to be a sign, the physical sign, physical circumcision was to be a sign of a circumcised heart.

Deuteronomy 10, Deuteronomy 30, Jeremiah 4, Jeremiah 6.

Circumcised heart.

Baptism's the same way.

The baptism doesn't mean anything without a circumcised heart, without a baptized heart in our lives.

And will not the physically uncircumcised, if he fulfills the law, judge you who even with your written code and circumcision are a transgressor of the law.

For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh.

But he is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, not in the letter, whose praise is not from men but from God.

His point is ritual without reality.

A changed heart is unrighteousness.

It doesn't mean anything.

But here's what's cool reality, a changed heart without ritual is righteousness.

In other words, we may not have the ritual right, we may not do everything the way certain maybe church people tell us we should do things.

But if your heart is right and you're trying to wholeheartedly seek God, God's blessed by that.

And you can have all the religious ceremony and ritual you want and go through all the, I mean follow the law to the nth degree, but your heart's not in it.

You're just doing it because you're religious, it's unrighteousness.

Well, it all begins, church, with faith in Christ.

Put your faith in Christ, and then sanctification, that process of God growing us, is also by faith.

It goes faith unto faith.

We're growing in faith as we trust the Lord, asking him, God, give me a whole heart.

Give me a whole heart.

Thank you for listening to the Forn for War podcast.

We hope today's message has empowered you to make a difference in your world.

To connect with Pastor Steve's sermons, books, and blog, visit Steve Holtonline.org.

God bless.