God is Righteous // Pastor Bobby

Romans, chapter three,

verses one to eight.

I remember when I sort of carved out this little section in the outlines

for. As I was laying out all the outlines for Romans over the last few

months, and I looked at this one and there's a quote in the middle of

here that comes from David.

And we always talk about David and King David and everybody knows King

David. And this is an interesting little,

little eight verses that I enjoyed studying.

So I'm going to enjoy preaching it because God,

like I say,

God beats me up before I beat y'all up.

So let's read it.

Here it goes.

Then what advantage has the Jew?

Or what is the benefit of circumcision,

great in every respect?

First of all,

that they were entrusted with the oracles of God.

What then,

if some did not believe,

their unbelief will not nullify the faithfulness of God,

will it?

May it never be.

Rather, let God be found true,

though every man be found a liar.

As it is written that thou mightest be justified in thy words and

mightest prevail when thou art judged.

There's a little King James language there.

Some of you like that.

But if our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God,

what shall we say?

The God who inflicts wrath is not unrighteous,

is he?

So I'm speaking in human terms,

may it never be.

But if through my lie the truth of God abounded to his glory,

why am I also still being judged as a sinner?

And why not say,

as we are slanderously reported and as some affirm,

that we say,

let us do evil,

that good may come,

their condemnation is just.

Alright, let's pray before we start to pick this apart.

Father, thank you for today and the opportunity we have to hang out

together. God,

the privilege we have in Christ is that we get to walk and talk with you

all week long.

And then on Sundays we get to come together as the body and the family

and we get to spend this time together singing.

We get to shake hands and hug each other's necks and say hi again this

week. And God,

we want,

as we gather,

we want to hear from you.

We want to hear your voice from,

from your word as you speak through the Bible.

God, we want to understand what you're showing us and revealing to us

about yourself.

So God help us to hear you this morning.

In Jesus name,

Amen. All right,

so I asked myself after I read this passage,

and this was months ago,

the question that popped into my mind is,

can I multiply God's righteousness?

Can Anything that I do in any way increase the righteousness of God,

right? Now,

here's the truth of it is we can help each other be righteous.

Did y'all know that?

I can encourage you.

I can read to you.

I can actually,

if I happen to notice you're a bit unrighteous,

I can get in your face,

right? And go,

whoa. So see,

I told y'all,

I'm a good judge,

I'm a great legalist,

which makes me a great judge.

And yet God didn't call me to be one,

right? But you see,

we are to encourage one another to righteousness and to the walk that

draws us closer and closer to God.

So this whole argument that Paul's making that God is,

has given for Paul to make in Romans chapter three is.

I like it because of the way Paul asks the questions.

He asks the questions with an assumed answer.

And it's a practice of rhetoric that Paul likes to use.

And that's fine because we have to answer the question as he answers the

question.

So here's the whole point.

God is revealing himself to us.

Word of God is the revelation of God himself to mankind.

It's the written word.

We've got the living word,

that's Jesus.

We've got the spirit of God who opens this up for us.

You see,

we've got God revealed.

He's showing Himself to us.

So therefore,

we've got to take notice,

we've got to pay attention.

We've got to understand that God is revealing himself to us.

And the better we get to know God or the better glimpse of God we get,

the more God is able to change who we are,

transform us,

refine us,

shape us into the image of His Son Jesus,

because He's told us that's what he's doing.

So as we look at this,

the statement that I set out this morning was just to simply say God is

righteous.

That is a simple three word sentence.

God is righteous,

okay? So when we understand that God is righteous,

we don't start trying to pick apart God's righteousness.

We understand that God is righteous.

I'm not.

You're not.

And we know from Romans chapter 1,

Romans 1:17

verse 17.

Remember, the whole outline leading up to this point is Paul says,

hi, I'm Paul.

I preach.

I preach the gospel.

The gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes,

to the Jew first,

also to the Greek,

for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith,

you see?

So God is revealing his righteousness to us.

God is showing us more about himself.

He is identifying those things about him that we can have some semblance

of understanding.

But here's what we're learning as we make our way through Romans chapter

one and chapter two.

I'm not righteous,

and neither are you.

Right? Sin is.

Sin is sin.

And that's what we get in chapter one.

And remember,

everybody wants us to.

Everybody wants a preacher to look at chapter one and go,

all right,

this is sin.

You know,

and since we sit in this church,

we're not guilty.

Since we sit in a room that's pointed on top,

we don't have to worry about that.

We point at all the world around us and go,

that's sin.

Well, guess what?

Sin's in here,

too. That's why Paul takes the next chapter and a half to say,

guess what?

Sin is sin.

And all the Gentiles are sinners.

And. And all the Jews are sinners.

And then we get to chapter three,

and it's like he kind of puts an exclamation point on it in chapter

three. Fact of the matter is,

what God is trying to reveal to us is we are all sinners.

We're all guilty,

we'll all be judged.

And that we're not the judge.

Okay, so this.

And it was funny walking up the sidewalk with Kyle this morning.

Didn't y'all enjoy seeing Kyle again?

We sent him off to Burgos for a little bit,

and now we're working out sort of how that team looks to be sharing and

preaching up there in Burgos.

So anyway,

it's kind of cool Greg's preaching up there this morning.

It was really funny because Kyle got a note from Greg this morning,

said, who's preaching this morning?

Kyle was like,

what? And finally Greg said,

I'm just kidding.

So anyway,

so Greg dabs preaching up at Burgo this morning.

So y'all pray for Greg.

Scott left just now to go up there and lead worship up there.

So Scott and two guys,

Scott and Marvin and Jason,

yeah, all three of them are going to be leading worship up there this

morning. So it's cool to see a team come together to help lead up there.

So y'all pray for them.

Alrighty. So anyway,

so it was good.

Kyle and I were walking up sidewalk and he said.

He said something about the message this morning.

I said,

well, I said,

honestly.

I said,

we'd probably be done early.

This is the same message I've been preaching the last two months,

three months,

January, February,

March. See?

And so basically,

now, as Paul comes to summarize it with a Question.

He says this,

then what advantage has the Jew?

Or what is the benefit of circumcision?

Now, what we've seen is Paul identifies sin.

He says,

gentiles are sinners,

Jews are sinners.

And he said,

what is this advantage of being Jewish?

And so this idea that all of Christianity,

and remember,

Paul's audience is primarily,

or the larger part of it are those Jews who have trusted and received

salvation in the shed blood of Jesus Christ.

And so he's making this case.

He says,

so those of us who are Jews,

what's the big advantage?

He said,

well, it's great advantage.

It's great in every respect.

First of all,

that they were entrusted.

And I love that this translation comes this way because a lot of them do.

Entrusted with the oracles of God.

Y'all like that word?

Doesn't it sound really important?

Doesn't it?

I mean,

oracles of.

I did that on purpose,

so it'd sound important,

right? The word's still Logos.

Logos loggia.

It's just the word of God.

The Jews were entrusted with the word of God.

They were entrusted with the revelation of who God is.

I mean,

think about it.

God called Abram,

right? Probably a shepherd out in the wilderness somewhere.

And God goes,

hey, I want you to leave all this behind and go somewhere where I'm going

to lead you to,

and I'll tell you when to stop.

And they went,

okay, right?

I mean,

just think of Abram as a normal guy.

Put yourself in Abram's shoes.

My challenge in scripture all the time is to ask myself,

what did that look like?

What if I was the guy tending sheep when God said,

hey, Bobby,

I want you to leave your family,

I want you to leave all your kinsmen.

I want you to leave your land,

and I want you to go until I stop you.

Huh? I kind of like it here.

God, no.

Abram said,

okay. So he takes his family,

packs them all in,

heads up to Canaan,

up to.

You know,

first they stop in Haran,

and then they go to Canaan.

You see,

Abram, he has this promise.

You know,

I'm gonna be the father of a nation.

I'm a hundred years old,

75, probably,

at the time of the promise.

But anyway,

then he has a son.

Wow. And then the son has a couple sons,

And Jacob has 12 sons.

And you see,

so the Jewish people,

this family group,

understand, that's how it started,

right?

It started as a family.

And they go into slavery,

into Egypt,

and they multiply and expand to millions.

They come out and in the Wilderness.

God shapes them into a nation and shares through Moses all of the law,

the specificity of how to be a people separated unto God.

So yes,

it was a privilege that God reached down and went,

I called you,

I formed you,

I made you,

I grew you up,

and now I have made you a people and a nation.

You know why I wanted to go through all that?

Because I want you to think about when God called you.

I want you to think about what God's done in your life.

You know,

quite honestly,

I like to think I'm pretty good guy.

I like to think I do things right.

You know,

the word right is simply the first part of the word righteous.

I know I'm not righteous,

but I like to think I'm right.

Right?

You see my point here,

right? We tend to like to think of ourselves as right.

And so when I look at this and I look at what he's saying here,

he says,

first of all,

they were entrusted with the word of God.

What then?

If some did not believe,

their unbelief will not nullify the faithfulness of God,

will it?

You see the argument he's making Because God is always righteous.

And God revealed himself to the Jewish nation,

called them,

made them,

made them who they are.

Just because they refuse to believe.

Does that mean God's not righteous?

No, absolutely not,

is what he's saying.

Matter of fact,

that may never be.

Is this double,

double argument in Greek that makes that like a absolutely not.

My Greek professor said,

no, you can translate that.

No way,

Jose. I was like,

dude, that doesn't even sound right.

Anyway, but the point was,

is that what he's saying is,

no, no,

no, in any case,

ever does the unbelief of mankind make God unfaithful or unrighteous?

God is always faithful.

God is always righteous.

And even if we want to put the charge against God,

that in my life something didn't work out,

so God,

you didn't treat me right.

The argument is,

God's always right,

God's always righteous.

And that's the case that Paul's making right here.

But that's when he goes in to say,

may it never be.

Rather, let God be found true,

though every man be found a liar.

And then he quotes from Psalm 51,

which is David's great confession of his sin with Bathsheba,

remember? And he says that you might be justified in your words.

What David is saying is that God,

in judging me,

you are righteous,

you are just in judging me.

That's what David saying in that psalm.

And that you might prevail that your words are true when you judge.

See? So I look at this whole thing and I go,

God, I'm not that great.

Which brings up the next argument that Paul makes here.

But if our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God,

what shall we say?

The God who inflicts wrath is not unrighteous,

is he?

So here's the whole point.

Well, you know what?

If I'm as bad as I can be,

doesn't that just magnify the righteousness of God?

I am crushing something up here.

You see what I mean?

If I can be just as bad as I am,

doesn't it just magnify the righteousness of God?

Because I am so bad,

and a righteous God says,

me, who is so bad?

And that's kind of the argument that was sort of going on among

Christians and those who were not during Paul.

And he said,

no, God's not unrighteous in punishing sin.

God's not unrighteous in judging the sinner.

God's not unrighteous in being the judge of the world.

For otherwise,

how will God judge the world?

God's the judge.

I'm not.

You're not.

Do you know that when we decide somehow that God's unrighteous or God

didn't treat us fairly,

you realize we're putting ourselves in a place of judgment over God?

Whoo.

Be careful.

Be careful.

So I got angry twice this week,

just so y'all know.

Think it's funny?

When I get to confess sin,

I do it to 100 people.

It's okay.

I was at Dad's house this week.

Dad's doing well.

Thank y'all all for asking.

He's doing fine.

He does his thing,

and that's cool.

He gets outside more when I'm there.

So he rode around in his golf cart and watched me work all week long.

That's not what I got mad about.

But my sister told me a story this week that made me mad.

That wasn't her.

It was something that something had happened,

something had been done.

And I just.

I. In the moment,

I just had to be quiet.

I learned something years ago in my life.

Things kind of rocked along pretty good.

In my life.

Things happened the way I'd like them to happen.

And not that I didn't suffer some things or experience some bad things in

my life,

but, you know,

the only time I get mad is when things don't go the way I want them to.

Y'all know that.

You know,

they tell me now they call It OCD or something.

I'm a control freak,

just so you know,

right?

And so when things don't go just the way I want them,

I get frustrated.

I look for who to blame,

right? If they don't go the way I want them to,

then somebody's at fault.

And if I can't find somebody in reach,

then I.

Am I susceptible to going,

God, why didn't that happen the way I wanted it to?

See my point here?

I got angry.

I get angry when.

All right,

so when I was thinking about this little part of this thing in my own.

Because I have to.

I have to take the text every Sunday and look at it like a mirror.

God, what are you revealing to me?

What are you revealing about me?

God, what is it you're showing me about myself before I ever get up and

share with you guys what I believe God's word is teaching us right here?

So the idea that God somehow is unrighteous in his.

In his judgment or in his dealings or in the way that he conducts himself

among his creation,

I mean,

we wouldn't be here without him,

right? That he could somehow be.

No, no.

May it never be.

You see that twice in this text?

Verse 4,

verse 6.

May it never be.

Under no circumstances is God unrighteous,

for otherwise how will God judge the world?

So when I look at this thing and I thought about it this week,

I thought,

you know,

Wednesday before I.

No, it was Thursday morning at about 5:30.

And we were talking and I was like,

that just isn't right.

And in the moment,

here's the true confession of this.

In the moment,

I was thinking,

what can I do about it?

I want some vengeance.

I want to go correct this thing.

I want.

And then it happened again Friday,

I heard another story,

and I was mad because of something that had been done.

I was like,

mmm, I wanted to strike out in anger.

Then I remembered Paul also wrote in Ephesians,

it's okay to be angry.

Just don't sin in your anger,

right?

Don't let the sun go down on your wrath.

So in my anger about an event that I heard about on Thursday morning,

and then on Friday,

I heard about another event.

And so it was two days in a row.

I started to yell for y'all,

but I decided not to.

But in my anger,

I was just like,

I want to do something about it.

And God used that to shine this mirror back on me and ask me this

question.

Do you think sin in the world angers God?

Listen to what it says.

But if through my lie the truth of God abounded to his glory.

Why am I also still being judged as a sinner?

And why not say,

as we are slanderously reported,

and as some affirm,

that we say,

let us do evil,

that good may come,

their condemnation is just.

But when you flip that back up to what he says right here,

the God who inflicts wrath is not unrighteous,

is he?

That's up in verse five.

Sin. You know,

when we make light of our sin,

that's the injustice.

When we don't really look at ourselves and recognize that God called us

like he did Abram,

that God revealed himself to us like he did Abram.

These oracles of God.

As I made a big deal about the word of God,

guess what?

God's revealed himself to us.

We've got the word of God.

What is the advantage of being Jew?

Ask yourselves the question,

what's the advantage of being Christian?

We've got the word of God,

the revelation of God.

We should pay attention to it.

We should bow before God.

We should submit and surrender ourselves to him and recognize that he

loved us so much that in the face of my anger,

in the face of my sin,

in the face of my unrighteousness,

when the court of heaven was held,

Jesus stood in my place and took my sin and died the death that I

deserved. See,

and I want to go back and read this.

If some did not believe,

their unbelief will not nullify the faithfulness of God.

See, God is always righteous.

God is always righteousness.

If you want to know what righteousness is,

study more about God.

Discern what it now.

It doesn't give us the right to act like God or be the judge.

Understand? God is righteous.

God righteously reveals himself to us.

God righteously acts to accomplish salvation and redemption and to do for

us on our behalf that which we can't do ourselves.

We can't accomplish it ourselves.

We don't deserve it.

And yet God says,

because I love you,

I'm calling you my child,

and I'm giving you a redemption that you can't accomplish on your own.

God is righteous when he created and made and formed and shaped the

Jewish nation,

the people.

God is righteous in choosing Gentiles.

And I look at God,

I honestly,

as I study.

And God took me all right,

yesterday morning.

I don't know why,

something crazy overtook me.

So I went for a run yesterday morning for the first time in eight years.

I ran six miles.

I haven't run that far since I ran that marathon in 2017.

But it was throughout the run that God started leading me in my own heart

and mind down a purity question.

What does righteousness look like in my life?

What does purity look like in my life?

Do I make light of my sin?

Do I let my angry thoughts result in.

I mean,

you know,

Jesus is one.

He says,

you heard it's wrong to murder,

but if you hate your brother in your heart,

you've committed murder already.

See, God.

God took me on a journey on that six mile run yesterday to go,

Bobby, before you get up to preach tomorrow,

you got to examine your heart,

got to examine your motivations,

you got to examine who you are against the backdrop of who God is.

See, God's righteous and I'm not.

And I somehow believe I can put myself.

And maybe it's because I've been in ministry and a pastor for so long,

I think some God's given me some sort of special place.

Then what advantage has the Jew?

Well, okay,

I've studied the Bible for decades now.

Doesn't give me a right to act unrighteously in anger.

Doesn't give me any added sort of right.

I've got to examine my heart every day,

every moment of the day.

And can I just go ahead and tell you.

So do you see,

God loves you.

And yeah,

we're dealing with judgment.

Over and over and over again we're talking about judgment.

Because what I heard one preacher say this week when I was listening to

him say,

one of the reasons why people struggle with the gospel being for them is

they're not convinced they're lost.

They don't think they're that bad.

They don't see themselves as unrighteous.

But we all are.

And God said,

I love you,

which takes me back to the first verse we ever memorized,

right? For God so loved you the world that he gave his one and only Son,

that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.

God loved you that much,

right? It all starts with Jesus,

folks. If you don't know Jesus,

you need Jesus.

That's where the book of Romans takes us.

It explains to us the how and the why God did it the way he did it.

And we'll get there.

There's 16 chapters.

We just started three.

That means you got to be here every week for the next decade,

right? I mean,

God's.

God's blessed us with his oracles.

Let's study them together,

okay? If you don't know Jesus this morning,

we want to introduce you to him because you're loved.

And if this is the first time you're here this morning.

I hope somebody hugged your neck because we love you too.

We're glad you're here.

Alrighty. We're going to sing one more song and gives you the opportunity

to respond to God and his word.

And I want to encourage you.

I think one of the things I learned yesterday on that run was God was

just saying,

be careful,

Bobby. And I thought about it after the fact because I know that that

whole statement of the devil's crouching at your door,

look out,

pray with me if you will.

God, thank you.

Thank you that you love us and God,

you have called us and provided for us to have salvation and actually

healing God,

in many ways,

sin can be seen as a sickness in a way.

We're incomplete,

we're broken.

And God,

the only thing that can make us whole is redemption in Christ.

So God,

this morning,

if there's somebody here that doesn't know that redemption.

God, I just pray.

Pray for them to see you and to acknowledge you.

God, I pray for Christians in the room today.

God, that as we examine not just the world,

but examine our own lives,

God, help us to see your truth.

Help us to surrender and bow before you.

And we pray it in Jesus name,

Amen.