No Escape // Pastor Bobby

Whoo. Alrighty.

We continue in Romans.

I'm enjoying it and hope you are.

And if you're getting the gathering in the Word Devotionals,

then you get the message before I preach it because it goes out Monday

through Friday,

and it was fun for me.

A couple weeks ago,

I did a podcast with a one of the professors from Bruton Parker College

University down in Georgia,

and he was asking me that the title of the conversation was From

Hermeneutics to Homiletics.

And I said,

well, before we talk about this,

you need to explain it.

No, I'm just kidding.

But anyway,

the idea of how to prepare to preach,

and God's done a lot to prepare for this morning's message,

and quite honestly,

because it's very simple,

y'all might get to the pancakes early.

I don't know.

But Romans,

chapter two,

verses five to 13.

We're picking up verse five from the end of last week's message because

it leads us into this week's message.

And verse five starts with the word but.

But because of your stubbornness.

And why does it start like that?

Because when it talks about in verse four,

God's kindness,

God's restraint is given to lead to repentance.

But because of your stubbornness or your hardness of heart and

unrepentant heart,

you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation

of the righteous judgment of God,

who will render to every man according to his deeds,

to those who,

by perseverance and doing good,

seek for glory and honor and immortality,

eternal life.

But to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth,

but obey unrighteousness,

wrath, and indignation,

there will be tribulation and distress for every soul of man who does

evil of the Jew first and also of the Greek.

But glory and honor and peace to every man who does good to the Jew first

and also to the Greek.

For there is no partiality with God.

For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law.

And all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law.

For not the hearers of the law are just before God,

but the doers of the law will be justified.

Alrighty, let's just pray together and hope and pray that God gives us

understanding. God,

we thank you for your word.

And we thank you,

God, that indeed you have spoken.

And we thank you for the apostle Paul and God his obedience and

willingness to write down that which you inspired and placed in his heart

to give for us and to Us all these years later,

God help us to recognize and discern God,

what you are showing us about yourself,

God, what do we need to see about you,

God, that it might change us.

God, thank you for this time,

thank you for this hour.

Thank you for the opportunity,

privilege God that you give us to come and gather in this place that we

might get a little better glimpse of you.

And we pray it in Jesus name.

Amen. Alright,

so thus far we have basically Paul's introduction of himself.

Hi, I'm Paul.

I'm a slave of Jesus.

God revealed Jesus.

God has given us grace.

Grace. And God has provided for us this opportunity to know him through

the gospel.

And Paul is saying,

I've been appointed an apostle.

And God has revealed this idea of faith and belief.

And God told me that I need to preach and am sent to preach the gospel

and that's the apostleship.

And I want to come to Rome and preach there in Rome,

but I'm actually also called to preach everywhere else in the Roman

Empire. And why?

Because the gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who

believes. To the Jew first and then to the Greek.

In it,

the righteousness of God is revealed.

So God has revealed himself,

God is revealing his righteousness.

The world rejects God,

the world rejects his righteousness.

And so Paul begins this for the next two and a half chapters,

from halfway through chapter one to chapter three starts to point out the

sin that is rampant in the world.

I mean,

he just breaks it all down that,

guess what?

Everybody sins,

everybody's unrighteous.

We're going to get to that as we work our way the rest of chapter two,

chapter three,

and you know,

the passages in verse three because it's kind of the beginning of the

Roman road that says,

you know,

for the wages of sin.

Well, I mean,

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

There's none righteous,

no, not one.

None of us are righteous.

And yet judgment's coming.

Judgment's coming,

y'all. So what Paul is going to do in the next several verses of chapter

two is to take us from God's revelation of himself.

Now the reason I'm looking down the whole time is because I did write all

that down.

I'm not used to reading stuff like that.

But so God's going to take,

I mean,

Paul's going to take us by inspiration of God from the point of the good

news, the gospel,

to why there's a need for the gospel.

Well, what's the gospel for?

What's the gospel supposed to Accomplish.

Why is God revealing himself?

Why is God revealing his righteousness?

Because quite honestly,

we need it.

We need good news,

we need righteousness.

We can't achieve it in and of ourselves.

So God is revealing his righteousness from faith to faith.

For the righteous shall live by faith or the just shall live by faith.

Which goes all the way back,

as we mentioned,

to the book of Habakkuk.

This idea of God's imputed,

imparted, given to us,

righteousness, because that's the only way we can be righteous.

And there's a word in this text that identifies the problem.

Verse 8.

But to those who are selfishly ambitious,

now, as we work our way out of verse 13,

we're going to see this transition into God.

Wanting to highlight the disobedience,

rebellion, rejection by the Jews of God's outreach to them,

his providing for them his oracles,

as we saw last week,

that it was to the Jews that God gave his oracles,

the oracles of God.

So they received something of God,

of God's revelation of himself.

And yet still,

still they rejected.

Why did they reject?

Because they were selfishly ambitious.

Why do people today reject God?

Because of selfish ambition.

Okay, so as I began working through this this week and really going back

through, and some of the devotionals don't actually address a lot of what

I'm going to address this morning,

but title of today's message is simply no escape.

Because we've talked the last two weeks about God's judgment.

God's going to judge,

right?

And guess what?

Last week the point was God's going to judge.

So I don't have to,

I don't have to chase you around,

point at you about what you did wrong,

right? I mean,

obviously all I got to do is read the Bible and go,

let's look at a few things,

right? I mean,

God's already judging and has judged and will judge.

And in the day of judgment,

there will be wrath.

So I challenged myself because I believe God was challenging me to

examine my heart.

Just like two weeks ago when I said,

you know,

when I read this sin list from chapter one,

what does it do?

It puts me on my face.

God, show me my sin.

Don't show me your sin.

I don't want to know your sin,

right? Don't show me my neighbor's sin.

Don't show me my family's sin.

God, show me my sin.

Reveal to me that that which has originated in my heart as selfish

ambition, what I want,

when I want it.

Remember that I say that a lot.

And it's funny that people say it back to me as a joke.

And I go,

what's going on?

Well, why'd you do that?

Because I want what I want.

And I go,

exactly. That's what I'm telling you.

See, it's the selfish ambition that produces that.

It's a selfishness,

right, that causes us to act on our wants.

So I began to kind of walk out my own heart again this week.

And it really comes as a result of some conversations and discussions

that we have.

And I go back to a question I ask myself all the time.

As a youth pastor for 14 years,

it was always really easy for me with young people to go,

well, why'd you do that?

And then get the answer,

well, I don't know,

right?

And I say,

well, I can tell you,

but you don't want to hear it,

right? And that's kind of the thing.

So I start asking myself,

well, why do I do what I do?

What is it that causes me to rise up in pride or arrogance or anger?

What is it that causes me to rise up in judgment or.

Or some sort of vindication against society,

culture, politics,

agendas, all that kind?

What is it in me that makes me want to rise up and sort of exert my self

righteousness against all the unrighteousness in the world?

Right. I challenge myself in that.

And so I started looking at some things and remembered that In Matthew,

Matthew 15:19

chapter 15,

verse 19,

Jesus is talking about the heart because he says,

out of the heart comes evil thoughts.

Murder, adultery,

immorality, sexual immorality,

theft, false witness,

slander. Out of the heart that comes out of my heart,

right? And then I began to think about King David.

And King David was a man after God's own heart,

so. And yet he was corrupt.

If you study David's life,

whoo. And it's easy for me to watch the best movie on King David and go,

oh, look how corrupt he was.

Well, what am I doing?

I'm judging.

I'm judging back through the centuries,

right?

Why? Why would I do that?

Well, if you really want to take a sort of a.

Let's call it a rationalization approach to it.

Well, because I don't want to be like that,

right?

I don't want to pursue the way David pursued,

right? Well,

no, I mean,

we want to be righteousness.

We want to honor God,

but because God's providing and giving and imparting and imputing to us.

Righteousness. But how do we do that?

Right? This is going to be our challenge as we Walk out the whole book of

Romans, and we're only in chapter two.

So I got a feeling that.

And I've already outlined this all the way up to June.

And I'm looking and I'm like,

this is going to take us apart,

you know?

Yah. This is going to cause us to really examine the depth of our being.

So it really comes back to a simple question.

Why do we do what we do?

And then I look at the two great commands,

and this has been great conversation over the last couple of days.

Particularly, do we love God with all our heart and soul and mind and

strength, depending on which gospel you read.

Do we love God?

Do we love God?

I had a teenager years ago ask me,

is it possible to be in love with God?

Well, that's a very cultural way to ask the question,

isn't it?

Because teenagers are all concerned about falling in love.

And so that's what she was thinking,

can I be in love with God?

And I think there is an.

I think that out of our obedience and surrender,

we act with love toward God.

But can we be emotionally in love with God?

That's an examination of the heart.

On the way to the gathering this morning at like quarter till seven,

except it felt like a quarter to six.

I don't know why.

On the way in,

there was a song that came on my playlist,

and it was just,

I love you,

God. And that was the lyric,

I love you,

God. I love you.

Does that mean I feel it or is that just what's coming out of my mouth?

Do I feel a love for my heavenly Father?

I was showing some folks in the hallway this sort of juxtaposition of

pictures. How y'all like that word?

Took a picture yesterday in the yard of me holding Ezekiel.

Little boy,

he's about this big right now.

And I was holding him in the yard and Angie took my picture.

And so I sent it to my sister,

I sent it to my niece and.

Because they want to keep up with Ezekiel as he grows up.

And then today,

when I pulled up Facebook thing to share the worship gathering this

morning, there popped up a memory in my Facebook of Eli and I.

We were standing on the stage down at the high school for the elementary

school talent show.

And Eli's about this tall,

and he's looking up on the podium because he's my co emcee for the talent

show, right?

And he's trying to read a joke that I gave him to tell.

And I'm looking over his shoulder and somebody said,

what are you looking at?

Because you look like you're.

And I was looking over his shoulder,

doing like this.

I had this wrinkle and all that.

It looked like I was being very judgmental of what he was reading,

you know.

And I looked at that and I thought,

okay, father and son and father and grandson,

and there's a son in between that.

And I thought to myself,

I thought,

do I love God?

I love God like that.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul,

mind and strength.

And then I thought about,

if I'm just running at Kiwanis park all by myself,

I'm going to get to the text,

y'all. You guys really want.

I went through the text and I was going to unalign all the important

words I wanted to cover.

And I'm going to just be honest with you.

I don't like the whole text,

underline the whole thing.

So I'm going to get there.

So you might not get out early after all.

Running at Kiwanis park yesterday,

I thought,

as I run,

does God know I love him?

How does he know?

1st Samuel 16,

7. As Samuel was looking at the sons of Jesse and fine looking young men,

he said,

certainly this is the king that God wants to appoint.

And God says,

sammy, don't look at the outer man,

because what?

Because the Lord looks at the heart.

And then I.

That bounced me off.

These verses have nothing to do with each other except it's the same

sentiment. If you go to 2nd Corinthians 9:7.

Paul is encouraging the Corinthian church to get ready to take up an

offering because he's getting ready to keep going on his mission journeys

and they've promised an offering and he's coming to get an offering.

And y'all think I'm about to go into money and I'm not.

But anyway,

Paul to the Corinthian believer says,

give as your heart directs the motivation of the heart,

that's what goes to the text.

But because of your stubbornness and what unrepentant heart you are,

storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the

righteous judgment of God.

So God is going to judge.

God is the judge.

Judgment is coming.

How will you be judged?

Will you be judged by the clothes you wear on Sunday morning?

No, but I was as a kid,

just so you know,

with them patent leather shoes I had to wear.

That hurt my feet,

right?

God's looking at the heart,

the stubbornness.

Unrepentant heart is storing up wrath.

God's righteous anger,

not temper.

Tantrum, anger,

not emotional reaction,

but the response to rejection and rebellion because of selfishness,

because of selfish ambition,

right? The righteous judgment of God,

who will render to every man according to his deeds.

Doesn't say to lost man,

doesn't say just a Jewish man to every man.

Every man will be judged according to his deeds.

Why according to his deeds?

That makes it performance related.

That makes it work,

salvation, right?

No, because the counsel of the whole scripture is,

is that our deeds are produced out of our hearts,

right? So if I'm running,

is God going to say,

that was a great five mile run,

Bobby? No.

What's he looking at?

He's looking at while I'm running,

do I love him?

Right? While I'm telling jokes,

do I love him?

See, so and then it says to those who by perseverance in doing good,

seek for glory and honor and immortality,

they're going to get eternal life by perseverance.

That means acting out of the love that we have for God.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart,

soul, mind and strength,

folks.

Don't turn it into a list of dos and don'ts.

Don't turn it into religion.

It is,

it is a love relationship with our heavenly Father.

It is an intimacy with God.

So what does that mean I've got to do in my own life?

That means every day and as much as I can all day long,

I need to work for the stimulation in my heart to love God.

So yeah,

I look forward to a song that pops on my little earbuds and says,

I love you God.

And we just sang that one where,

oh, there you are over there.

I love you Lord.

Right?

I mean,

we're encouraged to,

with our mouth express our love for God.

Why? Because what Jesus,

out of the heart come all these other things.

But what proceedeth out of the mouth starts.

So if I can say to God,

I love you,

God, then the idea is that that comes from my heart,

comes out of my heart.

And so I'm looking as to those who by perseverance and doing good,

seek for the glory,

honor, many more times they get eternal life.

But to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth,

but obey unrighteousness,

guess what their reward is?

Wrath and indignation,

tribulation, distress for every soul of man who does evil.

Of the Jew first and also of the Greek,

don't you love how when he said,

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

the Jew first and to the Greek,

guess what?

Judgment and wrath to The Jew first and also to the Greek.

What does it mean?

It just means everybody.

So it's not about an ethnic context.

It's not about any of those things.

It's about what's in the heart of mankind.

And I've known some really good looking,

quote Christian people,

right? Look great.

But that's looking at the outside,

not the inside.

Whew.

So as we tribulation now in verse nine,

some of your translations will say,

there will be tribulation and distress for every soul of man who does

evil. That's a contextual insert right there.

Because if you read it straight through,

do not obey the truth,

but obey unrighteousness,

wrath and indignation,

tribulation and distress for every soul of man who does evil of the Jew

first and also to the Greek.

But glory and honor and peace to every man who does good to the Jew first

and also to the Greeks.

For there is no partiality with God.

I underlined that one twice.

God doesn't pick and choose who gets judgment because everybody gets

judgment. See,

God has reached out to the world with his love,

with a kindness and patience unto repentance,

right? Look at the world around you.

Is it our job to judge?

I've already said no two weeks in a row,

right? I've already said no two weeks in a row.

But why is God so tolerant?

See, that's a big word in our culture right now.

God's not tolerant.

He is patient because he wants people to know his love for them so that

they can respond in love to Him.

See, why do I do what I do?

Why have I been to church?

Probably, and I'm using the word intentionally,

why have I been to church all my life?

Because it was indoctrinated into me.

Well, at some point that was a true answer.

Why now?

Because I want God.

I want to love God.

God sees whether or not I have love in my heart.

God sees that I can't look at your heart and tell whether you love or

not. God can.

So God sees the motivation of the heart.

No partiality with God.

And then verse 12 begins this.

As we work our way into chapter three,

you're going to see it.

For all have sinned.

For all who have sinned without the law will perish without the law.

All who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law.

Now people start taking this all apart and those under the law,

this just is kind of repeating that sort of differentiation between the

oracles of God who received the oracles of God who were established under

the law of God,

okay, Because we're about to break into the whole.

Where we've already dealt with the sin of the Gentiles.

We're about to get to the sin of the Jews in the book of Romans.

Just so you know,

we'll be judged by the law,

for not the hearers of the law are just before God,

but the doers of the law will be justified.

We get to next week,

we start talking about,

forgive me,

but we start talking about circumcision of the heart.

See, that's in Romans.

That's understanding that what God is looking at is not the outward

display, but the inward posture and attitude of our lives.

So as we consider this sort of verses 5 through 13,

we know that we're about to get to verse 14,

where we start off,

it's kind of the continuation,

but it works itself.

So when Gentiles,

right?

So Jesus,

I mean,

Paul, God,

by inspiration,

Paul is writing to us and giving us this.

This trajectory of how God has revealed himself.

Okay? Can you imagine?

And I remember seeing it in movie form,

because I'm a child of the 70s.

I remember seeing it in movie form.

Oh, Abraham kind of out tending some of his daddy's flock or something,

and he's out in the wilderness and trying to take the sheep to water

because that's what shepherds do.

And all of a sudden,

a voice somehow,

some way to Abram,

Abram, not Abraham.

Yet some voice says to abram,

abram, I want you to leave your family,

your land,

your people.

Go to a land that I will show you.

I mean,

how does that conversation start?

Okay? I mean,

is it not Abram by himself with a bunch of sheep out in a wilderness type

area, Mesopotamian plain,

somewhere in Ur,

going, what's all this about?

And God revealing himself individually to a man and saying,

I will make of you a great nation.

Right, folks,

if you hear the word of God from this table,

as I share on Sunday morning,

great. If God speaks to you,

I love it.

That's what we do.

Want to take a portion of scripture,

try to break it down to the point that we can understand what it is God

was saying in 55-57 AD through Paul to the Romans,

and yet carried down through the centuries to us?

What is God saying to you?

Is God saying to you,

that preacher wants me to walk down the aisle and get in the water?

Right? Is that what God's saying to you?

No, God's saying to you,

I love you.

Love me back and act like it,

because the deeds of your Heart will be judged,

man. Can I just tell you,

it's kind of where I've been this week,

and I walk through the theme of scripture that God's not looking at my

shirt, which.

My button's broken right here,

y'all. I'm afraid that it's going to pop off completely,

and then I'm going to have one button down and one not.

And that's just out of order.

That looks bad.

You should have sewn a new button on that before you wore that to church

this morning.

Right?

He's not concerned about this.

He's concerned about this.

And he wants to nurture this like a daddy,

a heavenly daddy.

He wants to nurture our hearts.

Perfect message yesterday,

Cole.

He wants to nurture our hearts like a daddy,

you know?

And so this morning,

when those two pictures popped up on my phone and I'm holding my

grandson, I was like,

see, that's going to be crazy when that kid's old enough to walk.

Because I told him yesterday,

I said,

dude, when you're able to walk and talk,

we're gonna play,

we're gonna dig holes,

we're gonna run.

And that's what I was telling him yesterday.

He doesn't have a clue.

He's just like.

And I go,

I got plans for you,

big boy.

Right, right.

Because then I look at the picture that popped up this morning of Eli,

and he's got that long blond hair in that picture.

You.

You know that he had looked like a surfer kid that hated surf.

He did hate surfing.

It's not like he looked like.

And I thought,

you know.

And I don't want to minimize the perfect,

incredible, overwhelming love of God,

but does my son know that I love him?

Does my grandson know that I love him?

You see?

Well, see,

we need to make sure that our actions,

our words,

our attitude express our love back to God.

Do it in your devotional time.

Study the word of God.

Study what God has said.

Let God know by your choices,

actions, attitudes,

everything. Let God know you love him.

I love you,

Lord, for your mercy.

Something. I don't memorize y'all songs.

You know that,

right?

So I've sung to you two weeks in a row now.

And everybody,

last week.

I had a few folks last week say,

can you write down the lyrics to that Patience song?

Google it.

It's in there somewhere.

Anyway, folks,

God's judgment's coming.

We don't strive for perfection because we'll never get there,

but we do strive to perfect our love for God.

All right,

if you don't know Jesus.

That's where it starts.

I always tell folks it starts with knowing Jesus.

Maybe you're here this morning and yeah,

like me,

you kind of had that church introduction to faith or to the gospel or

whatever. But one of the things that we've really going to be centering

on in the days ahead is the fact that,

you know,

loving God is our first priority to love God.

Our second priority is to love each other.

Okay? So if you don't know Jesus,

we want to introduce you maybe as a Christian,

you know,

there's some priority problems in your life and you need to pray about

that. And if you want to be a member,

quote of the gathering,

you can come be a member of the gathering.

We'll tell you what that means and what that looks like.

But just respond to God this morning because God has said to you at least

that he loves you.

Okay, let's pray.

God, thank you for today and for what you're doing in our hearts and

lives. And I thank you,

God, for your word that.

Yeah, this is a harsh scripture.

This is a text that tells us that in selfish ambition,

God, we somehow want to pursue our own way.

Like those who would promote themselves.

God, help us to bow.

God, help us to surrender.

God, help us to love youe back.

God. This morning as we sing,

God, just hear our hearts.

Let us sing our Love to youo with whatever the words of the song are.

Help us to love you as we sing.

Help us to love you as we respond.

And we pray it in Jesus name,

Amen.