Sermon Cloud

·        One danger that exists for each and every one of us is the danger of taking things for granted.  When someone is gracious to you, especially if they are gracious to you continually (gives you gifts or does something nice for you) the temptation is to then expect those things instead of viewing them as gifts or graces.

• This is one of the dangers of raising children in the affluent society that we live in today.  I know for me, my children have so much more stuff and so much more access to stuff than I ever did.  Because of that, we have to be really mindful to make sure they don’t think those things are entitlements. 
  • I remember when I was a kid collected two things:  football cards and comic books.  A comic book was $.40 and a pack of football cards (with the incredibly hard pink bubblegum) was $.25. 
  • I would come home from school in the 4^th grade and take out all the nasty trash from my parents flower shop and do other errands so I could earn a quarter.  Those things were my responsibilities anyway, but Mom and Dad decided let me earn some money by doing it.  I was tiny kid back then as you can imagine, so I would drag these giant trashcans full of flower trash down the street and empty them into the dumpster.  Then I could run down to the store and buy a pack of cards.  If I wanted a comic, I would have to save for two days.
  • Then, one day, a family friend of ours gave me a year’s subscription to 7 different comic books.  Each month, 7 comic books showed up for me in the mail.  I would while away the hours reading Spiderman, X-Men, Alpha Flight, and my all-time favorite comic:  Rom, the Spaceknight.  To do this day, I still have every comic that he ever appeared in.
  • Guess what happened?  My motivation to work at my parents’ flower shop dimmed.  I no longer thought that I had to do my part even though my parents were paying me for something that was my responsibility to do in the first place.
  • My thankfulness to my parents for paying me was replaced with arrogance and presumption because I was getting what I wanted for free.
• Believe it or not, you do the exact same thing with God.  The starting point of any relationship with God begins with humility and faith.  You become humbled by your sin realizing that your sin is an affront to the character of God, Himself.  You become humbled when you learn that the penalty for you sin has been paid, not by you, but by your perfect Savior, Jesus Christ.  That humility causes you to proclaim faith and trust in Jesus who would secure payment for sin, offer forgiveness, and restoration to you with your heavenly Father. 
  • Initially, it is very easy to walk in humility and faith because you realize just how undeserving you are of all the grace that God pours out on. 
  • You live a life of humble thankfulness for everything as you realize that your sin should cause you to have a life of misery and judgment, but God pours out His grace to you because He poured out His wrath on His Son.

• But, guess what happens?  After you have believed awhile, your faith and humility gradually are replaced with arrogance and presumption.  We begin asking God questions like:
  • God, why don’t you give me what I want? 
  • God, why don’t you give me enough money to pay off my credit card?
  • God, why don’t you just make me happy?
  • We even go so far as to say, “God, why did you make it rain today?”
• And what happens is, instead of being humble and living by faith, you get used to God’s grace.  You think it is your entitlement.  You think God has wronged you if He doesn’t give you what you want.  That is not humility and faith.  That is arrogance and presumption.
  • There is a reason why so many of the bestselling Christian books right now are all about how to make sure you get everything God is going to give you in your life.  Everything is “your best this or your best that” or “God’s best for you” blah, blah, blah. 
  • You want God’s best for you?  Walk in humility and faith seeking to glorify Him and you let Him worry the details.
  • It is pretty easy to attract a crowd when you talk about God like a cosmic sugar daddy I guess.
• So this week, we are going to address that very human temptation and ask this Big Picture Question: 

Big Picture Question:  What does it look like to live a life of humility and faith instead of a life of arrogance and presumption?

12 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. 13 For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified.

• Paul begins here by noting another way in which God reveals Himself.  Back in chapter 1, he said the creation itself declares that there is a God, and anyone that does not worship Him creator God is without excuse and is guilty.  This type of revelation from God is called Natural Revelation.  Anyone that would worship any one or any thing other than God as He revealed Himself will receive the just wrath of God.
• Now Paul in this passage mentions another way in which God has revealed Himself.  God has revealed Himself through the scriptures, here specifically the Law of God.  That is called Special Revelation.  It is a more descriptive and purposeful revelation of God that is redemptive in purpose. 
• Paul lays out two types of people:
  • There are those that sin without ever having been exposed to or raised under God’s law.
  • There are those that sin and have been exposed to and raised under the law. 
  • Notice what they both have in common:  they both sin.  No one is without excuse.
• Apparently, the Jewish people of the day and of the Old Testament felt that just because they had been given the law of God, that they were thus entitled and that the blessing of the law was enough to secure that they would ultimately be saved.
  • Paul asks, “What good does it do to know the law if you don’t do it?” 
  • “What good does it do to know that lying is a sin if you still lie?”
  • Paul makes it clear:  Hearing the law doesn’t make you righteous.  The does of the law will be justified.
• Now that statement is pretty clear, but it does mess with some of our foundational beliefs like “Salvation by faith alone not by works lest any man should boast.”  The answer lies ahead.  Let’s keep reading.
• Paul says that the revealed laws of God are so powerful that people who have never heard it still know they are disobeying it.  He says in verse 14-15

14 For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them

• A Gentile is anyone that is not Jewish by birth.  Since they are not Jewish, they were not raised underneath the keeping of the law with its do’s and don’ts and sacrifices and festivals.  However, God has so ingrained His law into the fabric of life, even people who are not raised under the law know it. 
• Three things prove this:
  • The work of the law, that knowledge of right and wrong of God’s law is written in their hearts. 
  • Guilty consciences bear witness that people know the law.
  • Even conflicting thoughts accuse people’s hearts and makes excuses why it’s okay to disobey.
• You see this worked out every where you go. 
  • Every human culture esteems truth telling and punished the telling of lies.
  • Every human culture punishes murderers in some way.
  • A guilty conscience is not an evolutionary survival mechanism.  It is a God ingrained proof that God exists, had commanded us how to live, and that He is Lord.
• But these passages appear to leave us without hope.  What we have heard so far is that the doers of the law will be justified and that everyone is guilty of breaking the law whether or not they have ever heard it or not. 
• To rephrase that, unless you obey the law perfectly and do not break God’s law, you are going to be judged and found guilty. 
• Our hope is found in verse 16: 

16 on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.

• There is a day when God will judge the hearts of all people and God will be true to His word.  The hearers of the law will be judged and the doers of the law will be blessed.  And God is going to look at everyone human being through the lens of the Gospel.  This means that any and all who fall under the grace and righteousness of Jesus Christ will be judged on the basis of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.  
• There is no other hope for salvation apart from Jesus.
  • That means that ultimately, when God looks to see if you are righteous, He will find you righteous if you have faith in Jesus Christ.
  • That also means that if you do not have faith in Jesus Christ, God is going to find you lacking.
• Now practically apply this with me for a moment.  If God is going to love you so much that He will apply Jesus’ Gospel righteousness to you, why would He leave you hopeless in any other arena of your life.  In fact, why would you rely on anything other than the Gospel?
  • Remember Paul’s words, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel for it is the power of God for salvation.”
  • When you look to God for help or prayer or strength or anything else you need, the basis by which you come to him can only be the Gospel.
  • We don’t say,
    • I’ve been baptized or
    • I take the Lord’s Supper or
    • I believe in Reformed Theology or
    • I speak in tongues or anything else.
• We don’t refer or count on any of those things when we come before God and ask for help or offer Him our prayers.  Those things are wonderful and gifts of God, but the only thing we rely on when we walk before God is the Gospel and the Power promised within it.
  • You see counting on anything other than Jesus and the Gospel makes us presumptive brats.  We think other things, even the gifts of God, are why God should help us, but we have no other hope than Jesus.
• Paul addresses that concern as it applied to the church in Rome.  Let’s look at it and see how it would apply to us. 

17 But if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast in God 18 and know his will and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed from the law; 19 and if you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, 20 an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth— 21 you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? 22 You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? 23 You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. 24 For, as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.”

• Let me summarize this passage for us.  In Paul’s day, there were a great deal of folks who thought that their relationship with God was secure because they were born Jewish and had been given the law of God.  Surely, God had made a lot of promises to the people of God.
• They knew the law of God, boasted in it, lived a life of obeying it, and instructed others in it.  They felt they had been gifted with so much from God that they felt it was their mission to guide others out of the darkness of sin and into the light of God.  That all sounds really good, right?
• Paul says, “If you are going to teach others about righteousness, do you practice righteousness?” 
  • If you are going to tell people not to steal, how about not stealing?
  • If you are going to tell people to be faithful to their spouses, how about  sleeping in your own bed?
  • If you are going to tell people to worship the one true God, how about not robbing the people of God or robbing the church?
• Paul is righteously angry about hypocrites who declare that they obey the law to God’s pleasure and approval yet live and teach hypocritical lives.  In this we see a couple of things:
  • No one is ever going to be able to say that God’s pleasure lies on them because they have obeyed perfectly.  No matter what, every human being whether religious or not, is a flat out hypocrite.  Look around, look in the mirror and meet the hypocrites in your life.
  • Second, if you are all hypocrites, there should be no place for self-righteousness in our midst.  None, it stinks of hell.
  • Third, just because you can’t obey perfectly, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t strive to obey whole-heartedly. 
    • To see what that looks like, look at verse 25.

25 For circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law, but if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision. 26 So, if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? 27 Then he who is physically uncircumcised but keeps the law will condemn you who have the written code and circumcision but break the law. 28 For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. 29 But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.

• You see in that day, circumcision meant everything to the Jewish people.  It was the sign that they were the people of God.  The problem with that was this.
  • They trusted circumcision instead of trusting God.
  • Circumcision was part of obedience to the law, and they trusted their obedience to the law more than they trusted God.
  • What’s that called?  Trusting anything more than trusting God is called idolatry. 
• So Paul says, circumcision doesn’t matter unless you obey perfectly.  Obedience actually condemns you if that is all you are counting on before God.
• That is true for all of you.
  • None of you should obey because you think you are proving yourself or earning your way before God.  Any amount of obedience towards that end is condemning because you cannot obey perfectly.
  • People talk about this all the time.  They will say, “Well when it is all over, I just hope I did more good than bad.”  No, no, no.  It is not a cosmic scale that your obedience is weighed.  It is perfection or not.
• You see, from Abraham going forward, God called the people of Israel, also called Jewish people, also called children of Abraham:  the People of God.  God promised to never leave them or forsake them.  He promised to always remember them and to save them.
• In that day, being Jewish meant being born into a Jewish family and taking on certain ceremonial marks like circumcision or partaking in the Passover.  But relationships with God are never based solely on ritual, even biblically commanded ones.  Why?  Because ritual doesn’t always touch the heart. 
  • That is why Paul says, “29 But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter.
• Folks, we mentioned this back in our study of Galatians which was also written by Paul.  Paul says, if you have faith in Jesus Christ, then you are a child of Abraham.  In Chapter 6, he describes all that have faith as the Israel of God.
  • So to answer the question, who is really a Jew?  The answer is those that have faith in Jesus and trust faith alone as their hope of salvation.
• You don’t want to make the mistakes that the Jewish made in Romans.  You don’t want to take the gifts of God for granted.  How do you do that?
  • Instead of seeing them as gifts to build your faith, you see them as badges of righteousness that think makes God love your more and makes you better than everyone else.
  • Do you read your Bible?  Great.  God doesn’t’ love you more nor are you better than every one else.  However, you will fall deeper in love with God if you do read your Bible ever day.
  • Do you pray?  Great.  God doesn’t’ love you more nor are you better than every one else.  However, you will fall deeper in love with God if you pray to Him
  • Do you take the Lord’s Supper?  Have you been baptized?  Great.  God doesn’t love you more nor are you better than every one else.  However, those are incredibly special gifts of God meant to encourage you.
• The big picture is this:  the human heart will take any gift that God gives and think that the gift is why God loves us and why we are better than others.
  • No credit card debt to not cursing, The ability to sing to the ability to balance a checkbook, From the self-control not to curse to the freedom to say you want, From drinking to not drinking
• But none of those things are the Gospel.  They might be good, but they are not the Gospel.  The people of God are the one who are circumcised in the heart.  That is, they have faith in Jesus and recommend themselves to God for no other reason than by His son.