Romans 3:1-8

We've made it. Not technically because that I mean the chapter separations are just arbitrary.

They're there for study and reference. So we're still on the same subject.

If you thought we were done with condemnation, not yet. We're getting there.

We're doing 1 through 8 today, and Paul begins to end this section in condemnation in 1 through 8.

9 through 20 will break into two parts, and that will be his summation of what he's talked about so far.

But starting in verse 1, 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. What if some were unfaithful?

Does their faithfulness 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.

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.

Paul has over the course of chapter 2 removed everything that the

Jews put their faith in that was not the truth. Their traditions, their blood relation to Abraham, even the circumcision.

And here he continues with a series of questions that he knows will be asked in response to what he has said in chapter 2.

In verse 1, 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. He starts this verse with then.

So we know for a fact that it's connected. He's still talking about the same thing. You can't argue that it's a different argument that he's

Not only were they of the advantage of having been given the

Word, they were also of the advantage of being commanded to teach it.

So there wasn't this, it's not this idea of they were given the Word, they were told to hang on to it, you know, hang on to it, keep it safe.

No. They were privileged that he gave it to them, and they were privileged that he commanded them to keep it, to keep the law, to keep his oracles, to know them.

We know this from Deuteronomy 6, which I know that I say a lot, as it was pointed out to me.

But starting in verse 4 of Deuteronomy 6, it says, Here O Israel, the

Lord your God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might.

And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall take of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.

You shall bind them as a sign on your hand. You shall be it, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.

You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. So in every possible way, be reminded every day of who

I am and what I said. This is what

Moses is telling them. Constantly remind yourself of who our God is and what

He has told you. This is we were listening to in a podcast before everyone else showed up.

This is the last time that Moses speaks to his people. Moses doesn't he doesn't get to go into Israel.

He gets to see it. They were commanded to fill their minds with God's Word and live in a way that they were consistently reminded of this fact.

What a privilege that must have been. What an absolute privilege.

No other people group in the entire world was given that opportunity.

None. There wasn't a small sect of believers on the other side of the planet that had what

God had given the Jews, but to have the privilege of not only keeping it, but for young ones to be raised in it.

This is one thing for the adults to be there while Moses is speaking as he does in Deuteronomy, right?

It is another for their children because they will have the law, all that Moses taught.

They will have all of it growing up. Now, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't take it that it doesn't take all that long for them to forget all of that, unfortunately, but providentially.

Let's go through a few verses here. Again, Deuteronomy 33 29.

Happy are you, O Israel, who is like you, a people saved by the Lord, the shield of your help and the sword of your triumph.

There is another part of the promise. The Philistines did not have that.

God said, do this and you'll win, and they did it and they won. He protected them when they were faithful.

Psalm 147 verse 20. He declares his word to Jacob, his statutes and judgments to Israel.

He has done this for no other nation. They do not know his judgments.

Hallelujah. And in Acts 7 37 through 38, this is the

Moses who said to the Israelites, God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers.

This is the one who was in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai and with our fathers.

He received living oracles to give to us. As Matthew Henry puts it in his commentary, which if you have not read his commentary or used it,

I suggest you do, but brush up on Puritan language because it's difficult.

Now these oracles were committed to the Jews. The Old Testament was written in their language.

Moses and the prophets were of their nation, lived among them, preached and wrote primarily to and for the

Jews. They were committed to them as trustees for succeeding ages and churches.

The Old Testament was deposited in their hands to be carefully preserved, pure and uncorrupted, and so transmitted down to posterity.

The Jews were the Christians' library keepers, as it were.

They were entrusted with the sacred treasure for their own use and benefit in the first place, and then for the advantage of the world.

And in preserving the letter of the Scripture, they were very faithful to their trust.

They did not lose one iota or title in which we are to acknowledge

God's gracious care and providence. Now we'll get to this a little bit further down the road, but to have as many authors over 1 ,600 years and as many books are in the

Old Testament, they are the original books. What other text can claim that?

None. And as I stated the other day or the other week, what other nation do you know that preserved that kind of text about themselves?

None. I mean you can you can read about British royalty and Britain during the

Middle Ages, and France during the Western countries and Arabic countries. They do not paint themselves in the same way the

Jews paint themselves in Scripture. They're a lot more faithful in their writings to themselves than the

Jews were because they had to preserve the truth. And this is done providentially.

Let me ask you guys something.

How many people in here were born in America? Pretty much everybody?

Yeah, I know you were. Pretty much everybody? All right. How many were raised with full, unadulterated access to the

Scriptures? Pretty much everybody, especially if you're born after the

Internet was invented. It's true. How many were encouraged or are encouraged to read it?

Now let me ask you a different question. Who was raised in church? That's different than the other questions.

My point here is not to make some special argument that being raised in the West or in America is special.

It's not. It's another secular nation that hates God. It has the elect people of God that live in it.

It's like every other country in the world. Rather, the church is special.

There are so many today that profess to know God, and they don't.

Raised in a place where they have the full counsel of God's Word, and yet they do not read it.

I pointed out last week that Paul doesn't have Romans to read. He's writing it.

The Jews had the Old Testament writings. They had the law and the prophets, and that was it.

And they are exegeting them providentially to us. We have the luxury of having that, notwithstanding the amount of blood of the many martyrs that were spilled so that you could read it in English.

We are all blessed that Israel was chosen as a people to preserve the revelations of God through time.

And now that privilege falls to the church. Preserve and proclaim the

Word of God. Please do not lose sight of this.

Do not lose sight of the fact that we are privileged beyond even those that lived in the nation of Israel.

We have the full counsel of His Word. We are members of His church.

We are His people. While nations and empires and floods and seasons change, so long as there is a

Savior, and there always will be, He will have

His people, and He will be our God. Paul continues in verse 3,

What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God?

By no means. Paul says in the Greek, Meganoita.

Meganoita. It is the strongest... I don't do this to boast.

I cannot read Greek, but it is the strongest and emphatic no that you can give in in the

Greek language. Like, think of the strongest no you can think of.

That's what he means. By no means. May it never be.

Let God be true, though everyone were a liar, and we are, as it is written that you may be justified in your words and prevail when you are judged.

He is quoting from Psalm 51 here, and this is the psalmist speaking of God, just in case there was any confusion.

May God be justified in His words and prevail when He is judged. It is easy to come to the conclusion, as some did, which

Paul addresses, that because they were sons of Abraham, they were good.

They could do whatever they wanted, so long as they did their sacrifices for the things that they knew about, they were fine.

This is not the case. He's also making a statement about God's attributes here, that even if the entire world claimed, everyone simultaneously claimed that God was unjust, it would not change the fact that He's just.

It does not matter what man says. It only matters what God has to say.

Period. He is always in the right, and the fact this is quite easily proved, it is not a matter of majority, because it is impossible for God to lie.

Now, follow me here. Logically, He is the being that created the universe.

He created it with His words. What He says literally is the truth.

Everything that comes forth from the mouth of God is the truth. He cannot lie.

Well, let's go to Scripture and see if their unfaithfulness proved

God to be unfaithful. Isaiah 7 14. We're not quite to the day yet, but in Isaiah 7 14, it says,

Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin will be with child, and will give birth to a son, and will call him

Immanuel. 600 years later, many years for many

Jews to be unfaithful, we get to Matthew 1 18 and 21, or 18 through 21.

Now, the birth of Jesus took place in this way, when His daughter Mary had been betrothed to Joseph.

Before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit, and her husband

Joseph, being a man, being just a man, and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.

But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying,

Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the

Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.

As many years as God had to watch the

Jewish people be unfaithful, and there are many years between Isaiah and Matthew that we do not have a record of.

We just don't. About 400 years there. But it doesn't take a huge leap of imagination or a twisting of the mind to surmise how they were as a people, from the point that when we left them to when we get to Matthew.

You know, I have to think about everything, but culturally, how are humans, right?

By the time that we even get to King Herod, right, and all these people, the wise men, the

Magi, and all these folks that are coming two years after Christ's birth, what's the first thing

Herod wants to do? Figure out a plan to kill him. Not what he ought to do, which is hallelujah and sing

God's praises. He comes up with a way to kill him, but God was faithful.

He did exactly what He said He would do. Verse 5.

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, or with human logic.

By no means. For then how could God judge the world?

This is a common question, as difficultly as it is worded.

It is common if you have done evangelism. You have heard this question before. How can

God be just if He created me being able to sin so that He could show off His righteousness?

How could He judge me for how He made me? That's what Paul is saying.

This is the question that he is posing. This is the logic of a depraved mind.

This is not a question that you get from someone who is indwelt with the Holy Spirit, at least not for very long.

It is hard to come to true repentance with this idea in your head, if you're blaming

God for your sin. The first issue with this is the assumption that God needs anything, period.

Because He says, if my unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, that God would need something to show

His righteousness. God doesn't need anything from us or from anyone at all.

He is righteous without having ever created anything ever. This is also an issue of the matter of responsibility of sin.

Human beings sin because they love it. We sin because we love it.

We hate it more and more and more and more through the grace of God and through the sanctification that is done to us by the

Holy Spirit. But we still do it because we live in our flesh. And as much as we hate it, it will continue until the day that He calls us home.

But human beings do it because they love it.

And Paul says, how then can God judge the world? This is his answer to that question.

It's not a double question. He answers that question in chapter 5 with his own question in chapter 6.

We know for a fact that God cannot lie. We've established that. That's taken care of.

And God has said He's going to judge the world in the final judgment. So if He's responsible for your sin, how could

He judge you for it? That would make God a liar.

And we know He's not that. So we also know that He's not responsible for your sin. In Genesis 18, 24, and 26 through 26.

So suppose there are 50 righteous within the city. Will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the 50 righteous who are in it?

Far be it from you to do such a thing, to put the righteous to death with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked.

Far be that from you. Shall not the judge of all the earth do what is just?

And the Lord said, if I find at Sodom 50 righteous in the city,

I will spare the whole city for their sake. There was no righteous people.

So they got destroyed. But then also we have the multiple texts that speak to the final judgment.

God said He's going to do something. He'll do it. So logically, He cannot be a liar.

But we'll go on to verse 7. But if through my lie God's truth abounds to His glory, why am

I still being condemned as a sinner? And why do the evil, or why not do evil that good may come?

As some people slanderously charge us with saying, their condemnation is just.

Paul here is asking a similar question to the last one, but it's more personal.

He states that he and others who preach the gospel have been accused of teaching that Christians ought to sin more so that God's glory is magnified.

There were people at the time that took the sound teaching of Paul and interpreted it wrongly in their lack of understanding, and then blamed him for it.

Just as there are those today that can hear teaching on sovereign election, or the supreme sovereignty of God, and say, are you telling us not to do missionary work?

Don't share the gospel. God is sovereign. No. You will not find a sound teacher teaching that.

But people in their lack of understanding will come together, and talk with each other, and come to that conclusion, and then blame the pastor for it.

He doesn't want us to do missionary work. Never said that. Paul doesn't even answer, if you notice.

He doesn't answer this question. Not with a question, not with a straight -out answer, nothing.

Paul doesn't even answer this question here that he asks. He knows, by the way, that these questions are going to come up, as he stated, as some accuse us of saying.

He knows that someone's going to say this, but he doesn't even grace it with an explanation.

He simply condemns them by saying their condemnation is just. If you've ever wondered about the sarcasm of Paul that people talk about, that's it right there.

These questions are from a mind that is so erroneous and off -the -mark. It's difficult for most people who love to read

Scripture to get their mind to that place, to a type of logic that could come to this conclusion, and we could tell that because they even asked the question

Paul is saying in his response. No one with an understanding of Scripture and being indwelt with the

Holy Spirit would continually argue that you should sin all the more.

They prove themselves condemned by simply posing the argument.

I'll end with this. Please recognize how blessed we are to have the full counsel of God's Word at our fingertips.

There has been no other time in history when the Bible has been as available as it is today. There is no excuse, especially if you are a professing

Christian, especially if you are a man, especially if you are a husband or a servant.

There's no excuse for not reading it. I work 16 hours a day, not an excuse.

I've got five jobs, not an excuse. Got a lunch break at one of them. Got air pods.

You might not have air pods. You got a speaker on your phone. I know you got a phone. Everybody's got a phone. Listen to it.

Listen to music all day. You listen to the

Bible. We cling tightly to the truths as we should because we have them.

We are privileged in that. Not lose sight of the promises that He has made to us, and most of all, do not lose sight of who

God is. He is the only one that we can trust.

I'll leave you with this. You shall love the

Lord your God with all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your mind. This is the great and first commandment, and the second is like it.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and prophets.

My apologies. Please go and by the