What is Right? | Dr. John Ewart

And thank you for being here. Listen, I'm just going to be

honest with you. This sermon seems like it's a

little bit complicated. So I need you to hang in there

with me. And I promise at the end, it's

going to come back around for you.

Are you OK with that in the meantime?

It's not, it's not. Don't, don't turn it off, but

help process with me a little bit as we're walking through the

book of Romans together. It's at times just a little bit,

a little bit deep. So we'll get there.

You know, I pastored a church called Emmanuel Baptist one time

and just that one day, it was all what?

No, I've been for a while and we were along a state highway.

And I've shared some of this with some of you in a different

context, but we had a, we had one of those big signs, old

fashioned church signs back in the day.

It had kind of a steel girder that came up and it's all made

out of metal. And it got kind of elaborate up

there. But it had one of those

marquees, you know, where you put the little plastic litters

back at before digital signs and all that kind of stuff.

And so when I got there, I inherited Hubert, not Herbert,

but Hubert. And Hubert was 91 years old and

a wonderful, godly, wonderful man who just loved to serve.

And Hubert's job was to go down and change that sign every week.

And, you know, and he'd go down there and put a, you know, a

pithy sign, you know, like 7 days without prayer makes one

week. And, you know, these cute little

pithy church signs kind of saying things.

And he'd go down there every now and then we'd have a special

event. He'd go down there and do that.

Well, they had fashioned this special ladder to do this and

and it had a cut out towards it right on that still beam.

And you could go out there and lean it up against that still

beam. Kind of made a platform.

That ladder had to weigh 6075 lbs.

And so I'd watch week to week and I watch this 91 year old

sweet man drag that ladder out to his pickup truck, force it up

into the back of his truck, drive down there to the sign,

drag that thing across the grass with all the strength leaning up

against that sign, and then carefully go up the ladder to

work the letters. And I thought to myself that

there's probably a, a better plan than this.

But then the other thing that happened was, is I don't know

what Hubert's thing was. Wonderful man, wonderful godly

man love Hubert. Now he's passed away many years

ago, but so he doesn't care what I'm saying about him right now.

But but Hubert could not spell. I mean, he couldn't spell.

And so Hubert, we, I watched Hubert drag that ladder down

there and I thought to myself, we got to do, but he's going to

die dragging that letter, that ladder down there one of these

days or trying to get it up there.

And then. And then the fact that so every

week there was a lady who lived in the neighborhood across the

street and it was her spiritual gift to call us and to tell us

all the misspelled words that Hubert had put on the sign.

I figured she was a former member of Emmanuel.

That's what I figured. And, and so every week we get

the phone call and we'd find out what was wrong because I always

came in the back way and I never came in that way.

So I never looked at the sign. So every week I'd get the 60 to

75 LB ladder Dragon, put it back in and then would Dragon, I

don't have to go fix the letters.

And so after a while we retired Hubert and we also retired the

sign. Frankly, we put the schedule up

there and it never changed after a while.

You know, that's good static, never change anything.

But I think about that story and sometimes we just can't get it

right. Maybe we just might need a

little help getting it right. And maybe, just maybe this thing

called life, this thing called eternity, that we're really not

capable of doing all this on our own in a correct way and we need

help. And Romans is really going to

spell that out for us. Romans helps spell this out for

us as we continue in our series called Justify as we talk about

the study of the book of Romans and kind of like good old

wonderful godly Hubert, we can't we just can't get it right on

our own. In fact, we we might not even

know how to properly identify and define right.

We think we do. This world will give us its

opinions, but but we need to examine God's word to really to

understand and to answer the question, which is our question

for the day of what is right. And so Romans is going to help

us. But I want you to listen first

of all to Doctor Herschel Hobbs. Herschel Hobbs has passed away

many years ago. He was one of the authors of of

the Baptist Faith and Message, not the latest version, but a

previous version which the latest ones are all based on.

Doctor Hobbs was the pastor of Oklahoma City First Baptist

Church for many, many years. He was known across Southern

Baptist life and the nomination as a leader wrote the Baptist

faith the message which is a doctrinal statement.

If. Here's what most of these

Baptists believe. Commentator, author, preacher,

Listen to what Hobbes says. He says man could not or would

not achieve the righteousness which God demands in them.

Therefore, either man must be left in a hopeless state, or

else God in mercy and grace must provide the means whereby he

could bestow righteousness upon man.

And in keeping with God's holy righteous nature, he could not

condone or ignore sin, but in His gracious love, neither could

he fail to provide man the opportunity to receive as a gift

the righteousness that he needed.

The state of being justified before God.

I want you to listen to this sentence very carefully.

This is worth noting. A sent this statement.

Hear this carefully. Loving forgiveness was in God's

heart before sin was in man's heart.

I need you to understand that our sin did not, nor does it

surprise God. He is aware before we ever sin

of who we are and whether we're right or not.

And so Jesus was the the Lamb slain from the foundation of the

world, the Bible tells us, and we need to listen.

And you ought to listen. If you missed it, you ought to

go back and listen to a study I did a few weeks ago on midweek

about the eternality of God and his relationship to time.

It'll help you understand why God knows all things because we

recognize in Hebrews Chapter 9, verse 26.

Hebrews 9:26

For then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the

foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared

once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the

sacrifice of himself. Speaking of Jesus, obviously God

always knew, but the eternal redemptive work that had to be

carried out also had to be done in what we would call the

timeline or arena of history where where it took place.

Where we could see the life, the death, the burial, the

resurrection, and the ascension of Jesus Christ, so that we

could see this and believe this and understand God's Son more.

And so Hebrews 10 says this. Consequently, when Christ came

into the world, He said, sacrifices and offerings you

have not desired, but a body. Have you prepared for me in

burnt offerings and sin offerings?

You have taken no pleasure. Then I said, Behold, I have come

to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of

the book. And when He said above, that you

have neither desired nor taken pleasure, and sacrifices, and

offerings, and burnt offerings, and sin offerings, these are

offered according to the law, then He had to behold, I have

come to do your will. He does away with the first in

order to establish the second. And by that will will we have

been sanctified to the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once

for all. And every priest stands daily at

a service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices which can

never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for

all time a single sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right

hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be

made a footstool for his feet. So God took the initiative in

justifying us, making us right. And this initiative is clearly

seen in Romans 3 as Paul is still revealing that God in

Christ made this provision whereby all men, both Jew and

Gentile, might be made righteous.

Now you got to remember, if you haven't been here at all for any

of this or you're a guest, we've been walking through Romans

verse by verse basically. And, and what we, we recognize

as the church was made-up of both Jews and Gentiles and there

was a tension and there was misunderstandings about them and

Paul's trying to level the playing field.

So speak theologically so that everybody understands what they

need. So last week Paul's describing

the guilt of all humanity, didn't matter who they were.

And he demonstrated that everybody's guilty, whether they

be wilfully ignorant like a Gentile or self-righteous or

even super religious like a Jew. And so they and we all deserve

the wrath of God. That was last week.

So the chapter break, and you always remember this when you

see these numbers in your Bible that that chapter 2 verses

chapter 3, those numbers weren't there in the original version.

And that chapter break, the beginning of chapter 3 really

isn't a breaking thought for Paul.

This is a continuation of what he was saying last time.

So hang in there with me. I promise it'll all come back

together. So what we see is he's

introducing a new phase as he's dealing with God's saving

purpose for us. And so he showed that all needed

salvation. And then he proceeded to show

that that God has both condemned sin and provided a means of

salvation all at the same time. And and that's what we call

grace. We don't deserve that.

We deserve the condemnation. We don't deserve the opportunity

for redemption. And God provides both.

And so Paul then begins in chapter 3, think of it like a

courtroom. He paints A hypothetical picture

of of of a, an objector, A questioner interrupting his

teaching and asking questions. And so you'll see him walking

through a series of questions. You'll see an outline on the

back of your worship guide or you can also download these

notes. But you see that somebody's

interrupting his teaching. And so he begins to answer this

imaginary objectors, objectors questions.

The question number one, what advantage does possessing the

word of God bring? Now the way it's written in

verse 1 is this Romans 31, then what advantage has the Jew or

what is the value of circumcision much in every way.

To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of

God. So a subset question or a

secondary question might be, is the Jew in a better position to

be saved than a Gentile? Right now, Paul implied that

they had more than one advantage.

If you see much in every way. But in this chapter he only

shares one. Now in Chapter 9, he'll talk

more about this, but right now he's only talking about 1.

And the advantage is that they were entrusted with the word of

God. Now this translation will have

the word oracles, the Greek word loggian.

You might know the word logos or logos.

And so it comes from that same idea.

But these are important divine messages.

So Paul is using this word to refer to the Old Testament.

So the Jews had the Old Testament.

That's an advantage for them. And so they had received God's

specific revelation. Last time we talked some about

God's general revelation and God's specific revelation.

You need the specific revelation of Christ to be saved.

So they had a fuller revelation of God's will and God's Word

than others did, and they also had a fuller revelation of the

messianic hope because the prophets would point to a

Messiah that come than the Gentiles would have.

In fact, it's an unequalled privilege that the descendants

of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had received more truth than any

other group of people on the earth up to that point.

So this was a huge advantage and and we need to stop and think

about that for a minute. Now, how does this apply to us?

Listen, you need to be careful that you never take for granted

the glorious privilege of possessing His word in your

heart language. Never take that for granted.

If you were raised, if you were raised in the church or you were

raised in a Christian home learning the Scripture, what a

glorious privilege, what an incredible advantage that you

have. You ought to be much further

along than I am because I wasn't raised that way.

And So what an incredible advantage you have.

In fact, here at our church, our children are doing that, our

preschool ministry and children's ministry all the way

through our student ministry. They're all doing that.

And we need, we're going to celebrate that later this year

in a very, in a very formal way. We're going to celebrate the

hard work that your children are putting in learning this word.

But it's also, and this is part of the catch, this is also a

great responsibility. So even though you have the

advantage, you also have a responsibility.

Listen to Deuteronomy 6. It says now this is the

commandment, the statutes and the rules that the Lord your God

commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to

which you are going over to possess it.

That you may fear the Lord your God, you and your sons and your

son's sons by keeping all His statutes and his commandments,

which I command you all the days of your life and that your days

may be long. Mark or in Mark chapter 12,

Mark 12 · chapter mention

Jesus is confronting people. He's does this throughout his

ministry. Who who had the Old Testament,

but they weren't doing anything with it.

And he said in Mark 12/24 Jesus said to them, is this not the

reason you're wrong because you neither know the scriptures nor

the power of God. Are we taking full advantage of

possessing God's word? Are you taking full advantage of

actually having the opportunity? And if you let me tell you

something, if you don't own a Bible and you're here, no,

there's no joke. I had somebody come up to me a

few weeks ago who needed a Bible.

If you need a Bible, you let me or Charles know and we'll get

you a Bible today, a nice one. We got nice Bibles in our room.

We'll give you a Bible. OK, Don't leave if you don't

have a Bible. That's let's let's take care of

that right away. But, but are you taking full

advantage of it? One of our 7 essentials for

discipleship that we believe is a pillar of what it means to be

like Jesus is to engage the Bible with a humble and

teachable spirit. And we want to teach that.

We want you to know that. And we want you to take

advantage of every opportunity to be involved in our weekly

Bible studies in our connect groups.

Did I say connect groups? I meant to say connect groups.

Everybody ought to be in a what exactly?

But we also have ministries for men and women and students and

children and preschools throughout the week.

And we have ministries for your entire family.

And I hope that you're taking advantage of every single

opportunity you can get through all these ministries, because

there's so much more about Inglewood than this service on

Sunday morning alone. Much, much more.

And so cherishing owning a copy of God's Word to study at home,

to be able to go into God's Word every day, to be entrusted with

God's word like that. So for them, it meant much more

than just being a recipient. You're also not just a

custodian. You're not just the maintainer

of the museum. I got a really pretty Bible.

I know a lot of people who own a lot of Bibles.

Some of them are getting pretty dusty, sit on a shelf.

Sometimes people only pull it off when they're in crisis.

Everyday, chew, live, drink, feed on this word.

So they needed to do something with their advantage.

It's almost we. Frankly, it's almost we.

So this advantage led to a greater obligation to live as

God's will and God's Word, obviously.

So they were given the Scriptures not just to have, but

to grow and to obey in their discipleship, to become who they

were supposed to be as the people of God, as well as to

share through the whole world. To be a light to the Gentiles

about Yahweh, about who He was, and about how to live for Him so

that they could receive God's grace as well.

Listen to Galatians 3 and the scripture for seeing that God

would justify the Gentiles by faith.

Preach the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, in you shall

all the nations be blessed. Often times I think we read the

Old Testament to some separatist movement.

They had to maintain their purity and there were certainly

moments they had to withdraw from ungodly peoples.

But at the same time they were supposed to be influencers.

So they should have all believed and they should have helped all

the others to believe, and so should we, Second Timothy 3

says. 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.

When Paul's writing some of the very last words he writes, he's

writing to his spiritual son. And those sacred writings for

the Old Testament, they pointed to Jesus.

They pointed to how to be saved. They pointed to how to serve.

So it's a powerful advantage to possess the word of God.

But this possession alone does not mean that you were saved.

You're not simply saved because you own a Bible.

And they weren't simply saved because they were Jewish.

We got to be careful. We have a heresy called dual

covenant theology that's actually out on the media in our

world today that believes that the Jews get to be saved in some

other way. And we'll talk about that more

in a minute. So the privilege of having God's

Word does not take you very far if if you don't believe it and

if you're not trusting in the promised one, Jesus Christ, to

whom the whole thing points. That's the whole point of the

Bible. So Jesus rebuked these religious

leaders, these Jewish religious leaders for not believing while

he was here on earth. Listen to John five.

He said you search the scriptures because you think in

them you have eternal life. And it is they that bear witness

about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.

We got to follow through all the way.

So Paul then says, listen, that the advantage isn't enough.

So he's going to move now to a conversation about obedience.

Listen to question #2 Does our unfaithfulness nullify God's

faithfulness? Romans 3 Three.

What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify

nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means let God be true,

though everyone were a liar. As it is written that you may be

justified in your words and prevail when you are judged, I

need you to focus and listen for a few minutes.

See, it's a little tricky because there's a context here

that we got to talk about as well as the application to us.

So God expected faith and obedience from the Jewish

people. Paul had already spoken about

the hardened Jews who rejected God and who had stored up His

wrath for their sin. So I need you to be careful.

And Paul knew that these Jewish readers would disagree with some

of his statements that God has not guaranteed to fulfill his

promises to every physical descendant of Abraham.

Now, there's some people who disagree with that.

They would argue that such teaching nullified the promises

that God made to them in the Old Testament.

If this isn't true, then God's a liar.

Basically, it's a conclusion. But Paul's answer reflected the

teaching that before any Jewish person, regardless of their

lineage, could inherit the promises of God, he has to come

to repentance in faith, just like us.

Paul rejected the idea that for God to be faithful, he must

accept Israel. Whether they are right or wrong.

That's just not biblical. So more is going to be.

A lot more is going to be shared about this in the later

chapters, but Jewish people have to be saved in the same way.

All of us have to be saved by grace, through faith in Jesus

Christ. There's a heresy called Dual

Covenant theology that teaches that Jewish people can be saved

in a different way, but that's not biblical.

Salvation happens one way, by grace, through faith in Jesus

Christ and Christ alone. So though they were the

custodians of God's word, many did not believe and were

unfaithful to their covenant with God.

The Jews failed at the point of faith and obedience.

And so does this mean, so we come back to the question, so

does this mean that God's faithfulness to his covenant

fails? Is God going to be unfaithful

because of this? And then the point that Paul's

trying to make is God's going to fulfill His promises he made

even if individuals are unable to receive them because of

unbelief. He transcends the individual.

God stands ready to fulfill His promise to Israel whenever she

obeys His voice and keeps His commandments.

Read the end of the book. You'll read more about that in

the Book of Revelation. Even so, the lack of

faithfulness was on the Jews part, not on the not on God's

part. And so they rejected the

covenant. They killed his Son until Paul's

concluding and saying that there really is no difference between

them and the Gentiles who also rejected God's revelation and

also participated in the death of his Son.

And they had received no prophets, they had received no

Old Testament. So when Israel fractured the

covenant, God's faithfulness compelled him to judge them even

to the point of captivity and exile.

However, and this is what this verses, these verses are saying,

the unbelief of the entire Jewish race would never prevent

God from accomplishing His will. He keeps His promises and he'll

remain faithful despite the failings of humanity.

So Paul rejects any suggestion that God's faithfulness would

fail. His promises stand, and God

remains faithful. Listen to Isaiah 55, seek the

Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near, Let

the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his

thoughts. Let him return to the Lord that

he may have compassion on him and to our God, for he will

abundantly pardon. So when you look at verse 4,

does God fail to be faithful? And literally, Paul says, by no

means let it, let it never be, let God be true.

For such a thought would not even occur to Paul in our today.

We would say, perish the thought.

And what he says here, if you read this carefully, is God is

going to be true even if every single man alive is a liar.

What do you mean? Well, truth is one of the moral

attributes of God. He is love, He is holiness, He

is truth, just one as much as the other.

Now, that's not all He is, but those are three things that He

is. And He is true to His promises

because He's true in His own nature.

He cannot not be true. I think that's OK.

So what he says, what Paul says, even if all of mankind got

together and voted, even if all mankind got together and agreed

that God had been unfaithful to His promises, all that does is

prove that all of humanity are a bunch of liars because God will

always still be true. In fact, he quotes Psalm 51.

If you know anything about Psalm 51, you know that's the the

Psalm of confession and repentance from David after he

sins with Bathsheba and kills her husband.

And so he quotes Psalm 51 for that.

Even David had to repent. David would have been held in

very high esteem by these Jewish readers.

And so if they repented as David did, God would would be eager

and ready to forgive him to restore them.

So will unbelief cancel God's faithlessness or faithfulness?

Excuse me, will unbelief cancel God's faithfulness?

The answer is absolutely not. Now, what does that matter to

you? No matter what you do, no matter

how much you've sinned, no matter how far away you've run,

God is still faithful. And He'll forgive you if you'll

repent. He'll forgive you if you'll

confess. He'll forgive you if you'll run

back to him, if you'll come to him.

You're not too far away for salvation and His grace.

But Paul goes one step further. Question #3 Is God unjust?

Now this gets weird. Is God unjust to judge us?

Because does not my sin 'cause God's truth to abound?

Now Paul's going to have to talk about this again later in the

book as well. But listen to verse 5.

It says, But if our righteousness serves to show the

righteous, excuse me, 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, by no means, for then how could God

judge the world? But if through my lie 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? As some people slanderously

charge us with saying, their condemnation is just.

So again, the the imaginary objector is, is now questioning

God's justice and also accusing Paul of some heresy.

And so the argument here is that our wickedness would actually

serve God by providing A contrasting background to God's

righteousness. Let me help you understand this.

You ever go to a jewelry store and buy something, they'll bring

out that that black velvet pad. They'll bring out that dark

velvet pad and they'll lay that diamond OR that that ring or

that piece of jewelry out on that black velvet.

And they do that on purpose because it makes it look better.

You see the contrast between the shiny, the shiny diamond and

that dark background, right? That's exact.

So that's what our sin. So really, I'm doing God a favor

when I sin. I'm just, I'm just showing how

great God is. I'm I'm contrasting his

faithfulness to my unfaithfulness.

So I should sin more. This is an argument that runs

through the book of Romans some or this discussion and Paul

says, listen, I'm I'm going to speak in a human way.

All that means don't make more out of that.

It just means I'm using a human argument, logical way of

talking, paraphrasing the weak unbiblical logic of this, this

questioner don't don't make any more out of that.

It's just a technique. So if God were unjust, He would

be disqualified to judge. His truth would not be true.

And yet what we have to recognize is that God's truth is

the definition of truth, and that's the truth.

God's righteous character has always been the standard.

So the law, just bear with me for a minute.

The Old Testament law illuminated and magnified the

target, so to speak. It, it, it, it left humankind,

left man with even less of an excuse for missing it.

It's kind of like the black cloth.

It, it, it was contrasting and, and so should I send more to

make God look better? Paul saying this is a twisted

concept and some were slanderously reporting this

heresy. So tragically, the the message

of salvation by grace through faith have been perverted by

Paul's opponents, who argued that it provided only a license

to sin and even outright encouragement to sin.

It's crazy. And so, since human failure

could bring sharply, bring out more sharply the righteousness

of God, God ought to be grateful for my service of sin and lessen

his wrath on me. I should not be condemned.

I'm doing God a favor by making him look even better by being so

bad into this logic. So here's the truth.

Obviously God does not want our evil as a contrast to His

goodness. He wants our goodness to

actually be a reflection of His likeness and so He wants us to

be like Him. So God didn't give the law and

the Old Testament to humanity to justify His wrath.

He established clear lines of right and wrong as means of

grace to confront us with our offenses.

You understand that the purpose of the law, the giving of the

law, was the first, was the first step of this plan to

redeem us, rather than to discard us or to abandon us or

to forget us to our own self-destructive ends.

So God cared enough to confront us and to identify our source of

sin and our our source of separation from Him.

And he did this so that we could see our wrongdoings, that we

could repent, and that we could seek reconciliation.

Because if God condones sin, He would have no way of righteously

judging anything else. Psalm 50 verse 6 says the

Psalms 50:6

heavens declared His righteousness for God Himself,

his judge. So we do not do evil that good

may come out of it. One commentator said it this

way. Attempting to show God's mercy

by sinning is outrageous and can never be justified.

We must not do evil that good may come of it.

We must remember that God is the just judge.

He hates evil and we must too. We must not put the Lord to the

test. You are never doing God a favor

by sinning. And so the advantage of the

Jewish person possessing the the word of God, the Old Testament

also brought a liability upon them because they were

unfaithful to the covenant with God as a people.

So God's salvation by grace through faith was the only way

then and it's the only way now. And Paul moves on, says that

once again, the equal need for salvation on the part of both

Jew and Gentile exist. We all must be saved the same

way and far from glorifying God, sin grieves God.

It's an affront to his character.

AS11 commentator says. It's a it's a stench in his

nostrils. It's against all he is.

It's against all he desires. It's against his character.

Sin separates the Creator from the creation and and He loves us

so dearly that He won't let us get away with it.

Now after answering these questions, let me bring it all

together. This will make sense, I pray.

Paul concludes by proclaiming the whole world is under the

judgement of God and we see a correct accusation and a very

just verdict at the end here. Look at verse 9.

What then? So what?

Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all, for we have

already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin.

As it is written. 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.

Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to

deceive. The venom of ASPs is under their

lips. Their mouth is full of curses

and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed

blood. In their paths are ruin and

misery and the way of peace. They have not known.

There is No Fear of God before their eyes.

Nothing like Paul that ended all up with a happy, happy, happy

huh? So are my people any better off

and their status apart from Christ?

He asked and the answer's no. The bottom line is pretty

simple, Lost is lost no matter who you are.

And though they have an advantage of having the word of

God, they're still accountable to him for their sin, and so are

you, so am I, and both the Jew and the Gentile are going to

stand before the bar of God's judgement charged equally with

sin. So one of the things you need to

note in this passage, which is interesting, if you'll go back

to verse 9, it's the first time that Paul uses the singular for

sin. Before this, he's been talking

about our sins, the actions, the attitudes, the things that we do

or don't do. Now he's talking about the

nature of sin, the principle of sin, the the presence of sin

that dominates the unredeemed. And then he shares this list of

what these are, are Old Testament passages from the

Psalms and one from Isaiah, where he basically is levying

these charges against these people, showing guilt.

It is like the evidence that a lawyer would bring in a court of

law against somebody where we see the universality of sin.

No one is righteous. Nobody's good, nobody's

acceptable to God. In fact, we don't get to decide

what's right. That's something our world

chafes against. We don't get to decide what's

right. That's already been decided.

We in the whole world need the gospel and he brings 14 charges

to prove that unrepentant humanity is guilty before God.

Tim Keller and his comments on this passage says the effects of

sin in the list relating to our minds, our motives, our wills,

our tongues, our relationships, and our relationship to God.

See how holistic it is? Every single aspect of who we

are is sinful. No one understands.

No one seeks for God. The verb therefore understands

means to bring together, not unlike trying to put together

the pieces of a puzzle. You just can't make the puzzle

fit. It just doesn't come together

correctly. You can't see the picture.

We don't know how to spell. We need help.

No one seeks out God. Instead, they seek out their own

initiatives and when people have no other choice, instead of

turning to him, Paul says they turn aside.

All have turned aside. It means to deviate.

It means to turn away. Now that word can be used in a

positive way. Peter writes in first Peter 311

let him turn away from evil and do good.

Let him seek peace and pursue it.

But here, but here the people are turning away, deviating from

God. And so the Lord designated he.

He designates truth and designed us with certain needs that only

He can fulfill. Only He can do that.

And rather than come to Him to satisfy those longings, people

are pursuing these fleeting and even destructive substitutions

for Him. And inevitably these

substitutions fail. They don't feel longing, they

don't bring Shalom, they don't bring completion, they don't

bring satisfaction, and they leave us more empty than before.

How many times do you have to hear about some rich person who

recognizes that life is is far more some some billionaire who

recognizes that that life is still empty.

People will leave notes of of self destruction when they

recognize that their life is empty even though they have

everything the world might possibly give them.

No one living, no one living this way comprehends or

understands the true deep things of life.

That's what Paul's saying. They don't search for God.

They turn aside from the right and together they have become

worthless. They become unprofitable.

The Greek word means to go bad. It's the word used when milk

goes sour. They're like sour milk or

garbage that's good for nothing. Would be another way to

translate it. Humanity believes sometimes this

world teaches us, as one humorist said, that the world

teaches us. Sometimes you have to look

reality square in the face and then deny it.

And that's what our world will do, pretending that they know

when they don't. Our current culture is guilty of

that constantly. We can't get the story right.

We can't get the spelling right. We need correction.

Even our speech is corrupt and sinful.

Paul goes on and says they use their tongues to deceive.

The original Hebrew version of that is, listen, it's kind of

gross. They smooth their tongues with

oil, slippery tongues, deceitful.

And it was written in a habitual way.

And with the word, the verbs written in such ways happening

over and over and over and over and over and over.

This is just been a constant behavior, a pattern of life.

Sometimes I see that in the church people can cut like a

knife with their mouths. Man is marked by blood,

destruction and misery. He says.

They've never known peace. They tread in the way of

violence. I mean, this entire description

shows how man's spirit, body, mind and will are holistically

captivated by evil without Jesus.

I mean, it's a condemnation of the entire human nature without

God and then showing their image in this mirror, in God's mirror.

Here's the verdict, verse 19 and 20.

Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who

are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped and the

whole world may be held accountable to God.

For by works of the law no human being will be justified in His

sight. Since through the law comes

knowledge of sin. The undeniable verdict is

simple, guilty. Every unbeliever, whether Jew or

Gentile, didn't matter under God's holy law and accountable

to him. And the only response is

silence. No one, no one has an argument.

No one can defend this. No one can speak in defense

before God's judgement seat. We are without excuse in the

presence of God. He's painted that picture force

throughout Romans 1 all the way through Romans 3.

We are without excuse apart from Jesus.

There is no defense apart from Christ.

So to say 1 did his best is not sufficient outside of Christ to

call yourself good. To have the preacher say that

you're good at your funeral doesn't count.

It doesn't cut it. The only one can stand mute.

That's all we can do. We stand mute and condemned.

Even the law condemned them. They have to accept the verdict.

The law wants you to know that you're guilty.

The law wanted you to know that the law tells you of your own

righteousness. No one is declared righteous by

the works of the law. Sinful man is incapable of

keeping law, God's law, perfectly.

God never gave the law with expectation that anybody would

keep it perfectly. The law had standards of conduct

and served to cause men to know frankly that we are lost

sinners. It was there for conviction and

confession. No one even desired in

themselves, according to Paul, to obey God that way.

We all have a sinful nature. Yes, human beings still all

around the world, every world, every major world religion, even

within quote UN quote Christianity.

Human beings have this default mode of their heart to try to

achieve this through works righteousness.

If I can just be good enough, if I can just do enough good

things, if I can just do more good than bad, then maybe, I

hope so. I possibly can make it.

Somehow they think they can earn it.

And sometimes I see that even in the church where we do things

that to make ourselves feel better about ourselves, we'll

compare ourselves to others, we'll compete with others, we'll

even cut one another down to make ourselves feel better about

ourselves. Well, if I'm just better than

them, I'm better than he is. I'm better than she is.

Then somehow that's the standard.

But your righteousness cannot be earned.

So is there any hope? Gloom and despair?

Woe is me. Is there any hope?

Well, thankfully God knew the outcome from the beginning.

God gave the law because He knew that the bad news of our sinful

condition should lead us to the good news of the gospel.

Still does that today, just in a different way.

He uses the Holy Spirit to convict us and draw us so that

we can see who we really are. We can understand our need for

Christ that and bring us to a point of confession and

repentance and salvation. So thank God.

Thank God for his relentless, loving confrontation of sin.

He doesn't let us get away with it.

He loves us too much. And he acted on our behalf to do

for us what we or anyone else or anything else could not do for

us. And that's the essence of grace.

Dostoevsky, the author, writes in it's most famous book, If God

does not exist, everything is permissible.

But he does exist, and he is at work right here, right now.

So not all things are permissible.

We need the gospel. This world around us desperately

needs the Gospel. Luther said it this way.

The principal point, therefore, the law, is to make men not

better, but worse. That is to say, it shows them

their sin, that by the knowledge thereof they may be humbled,

terrified, bruised and broken, and by this means may be driven

to seek comfort and so come to that blessed seed that is Christ

to know the truth. You want to know the truth about

your morality? Go check the law.

It only takes 1 violation in your sinful nature to be

sickened with the disease of sin.

And God will not tolerate sin in His presence.

He won't tolerate it, the Bible says in His presence, any more

than you would tolerate the presence of just one malignant

tumor in your body. So agreeing that we have sinned,

agreeing that we need Him as the beginning for God to show us the

depths of His grace. And so the only cure for the

disease of sin is a relationship with Jesus who paid the the

complete penalty for our wrongdoing.

And the gift of freedom from sin has been paid for by the Son of

God in full. And he's here right now offering

that gift to you by grace. Believe it.

Faith in it. By grace, Father, thank you.

Thank you, Father, that before the beginning of time you knew.

Before the beginning of time, loving forgiveness, grace

existed in your heart. Before our sin, forgiveness was

there. Love was there.

But our sin is tragically real and it separates.

It condemns. And so, Father, I pray, Lord,

that Father, you'll help us, help us to recognize, Father,

our need for you. Lord, I pray if there's anyone

here or listening online, the Father doesn't know you, that

Lord, they would recognize right now in their heart of hearts the

Holy Spirit, much like much like the law did.

Now the Holy Spirit works and convicts, shows us, reveals who

we really are and what we really need.

And Father, I pray Lord, that we will believe recognizing Him

moving in our hearts. Father, that's Him drawing us to

You. And in a moment, Father, I pray

that we would respond, believing that Jesus is the only one who

can save us, the only one who paid the price because he died

on a cross and rose again and sits the right hand.

Father, there may be believers here who recognize that they

have a whole stack of Bibles, but they're not doing with them

and for them what they ought to be doing.

So maybe this morning is a moment of recommitment for them.

Maybe somebody needs to be baptized.

Father. Father, maybe somebody needs to

say I need to publicly identify with Christ.

Maybe they need to join the church.

Maybe they're called the missions.

Maybe they're called the ministry like these that we've

commissioned. Father, I pray that they would

come talk to a pastor, talk to our next step counselors, the

Father, they might understand more what you want them to do

with their lives. So Father, I just pray that

we'll surrender, that we'll give up our desire to define right.

And Father, we'll surrender to your righteousness.

Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for the way that you

speak to us through it supernaturally, miraculously.

And I pray, Father, you'll stir our hearts now in Christ's name,

Amen. I ask you to stand with me.

Our worship team will lead us. We'll sing.

Their pastors are going to be here.

Our next steps room is open. You can go have a private

conversation with someone there. Just want to love you and pray

for you. You can come and kneel and pray

at these steps. Our usher's going to take up the

offering while we sing and you come.

Don't worry about them. You just come on and come talk

to one of us.