WWUTT 1193 There is No Fear of God Before Their Eyes? (Romans 3:18)

The person who does wickedness has no fear of God before their eyes. Now we have a fear of God, it's not a fear of judgment, but it is a reverence of God because He is God when we understand the text.

Romans 3:10-18 and the Sinful Condition of Man

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Here's our host, Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. In our study of Romans chapter 3, we've been in verses 10 through 20 this week. I will start out by reading this section again and then we'll pick up where we left off yesterday. The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome.

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. 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. Now, as we've been looking at this section this week, and we started in it last week, we recognize that this is divided up into three parts.

And first of all, Paul makes the argument that we are sinful from the inside out. There are certainly things that are outside of us that are wicked. Just say, for example, Satan, Satan is not in your heart.

He's out there. But he can do things from the outside to tempt you to sin. There are wicked people who tempt you to sin. So evil is external as well as it is internal. But the condition of man is sinful to the core.

We have a sin nature being born in the line of Adam as a descendant of Adam. Since all of creation was cursed and everyone who would come who would be born of Adam would be under that curse. We are born with a sin nature.

We are by our natures rebellious against God. And because this is our nature, you cannot of your own will decide you don't want to be that person anymore. Any more than a cow can decide to be a pig. It's not in a cow's nature to transform itself into another animal.

So you can't change your nature into someone else. As we read here, none is righteous. So your nature is to be unrighteous. No one understands. No one seeks for God. Your nature is to be in rebellion against God.

All have turned aside and become worthless. No one does good. Not even one. You cannot even make the decision to repent. That's outside of your nature. It is against your own sinful will to repent of your sin and follow God.

You can't do that on your own. That would be a good thing. If no one does good, then you can't even repent. So how is it that we come to repentance? Because the heart is changed. This was prophesied back in Ezekiel 36.

I will take out your heart of stone and I will give you a heart of flesh or a soft heart. I will put my spirit within you and pour clean water on you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

In Titus chapter 3, we read about that doctrine of regeneration. Verse 4, when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not by works done by us in righteousness, which we read about even here in Romans chapter 3, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

So this concept of regeneration is the Holy Spirit changing our heart to even hear the gospel and respond to it in a righteous way. In your sin nature, you would not be able to, but it is by the powerful working of God within our hearts, even as we hear the gospel, feeling that conviction of sin within us.

All of this is a work by the Holy Spirit. All of it is most certainly good, which is why it is a work of God and not a work of man. So we in our sin natures, we are wicked to the core. We have a sinful condition.

That is who we are. We need to come to a new condition and that happens only by the inner working of God. So first of all, we're sinful to the core and then that manifests itself even in the words that we speak.

So in verses 13 and 14, we read about the wicked speech that pours forth from a wicked heart. 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.

And as I talked about this on Monday, one of the things that I encouraged you toward is as a follower of Christ, everything about you should change, even your speech. That doesn't mean it's going to happen overnight, but we must submit even our tongues unto the Lord.

Don't you believe that you are to worship the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength? Don't you think that you should be doing that? After all, it is the first and greatest commandment.

Isn't the tongue part of that? Part of all yourself in worship to God, the tongue is in that as well. So even our speech must be pleasing and honorable unto the Lord. And in fact, according to Ephesians 4, 29, giving grace to those who hear before we came to Christ, our speech was full of cursing and bitterness.

But let it now be in Christ, full of blessing and rejoicing. Verse 15 is where we see the third section. So we have, first of all, the sinful condition that was versus 10 through 12, the sinful speech that was versus 13 and 14.

And then what we looked at yesterday was the sinful action versus 15, 16 and 17. Their feet are swift to shed blood in their paths or ruin and misery and the way of peace they have not known. The wicked person does wicked things and it causes misery to other people.

No one sins on an island. Everything you do is going to have an effect on others. So will you be a blessing to them through the grace and love of God that's been poured into your heart through the Lord Jesus Christ?

Or will you be a scourge to other people whom you are around, whom you are affecting with your sin? I was just watching a news report yesterday. It wasn't a wasn't a current news report. It was actually kind of a flashback, an interview between two people from years ago.

I won't mention who was in this interview or what it had to do with, but but what the question that the host asked of the guest is, if you have a message for anybody, what would that message be? And then the guest was given like three minutes to just spout off whatever they wanted.

And what came out of their mouth was I mean, they spoke with like a kind hearted nature seemed to be, you know, like making direct eye contact with the camera and saying, you need to know this about yourself.

But everything that came out of that person's mouth for the next three minutes was nothing but a lie. It was it was just one humanistic lie after another. No gospel, no grace, nothing of the Lord Jesus Christ in this person's heart at all.

All of it was just about you need to do what's best for you. You need to pursue your own dreams and goals. You need to do whatever it takes to get there. You need to follow your heart. You need to do what makes you happy.

On and on it goes. It was it was nothing but a secular humanistic lie. And this is going to be destructive for many, many people. For as it says in the book of Proverbs, there's a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.

And many are going to be following their heart to their own destruction. For as it says in Jeremiah 17, nine, the heart is deceitful and wicked. Who can understand it? You cannot follow your heart to righteousness.

You follow it only to your destruction. And everything that you say and do is going to influence others in that direction as well. They will follow you to their own destruction. So there's the three parts that we have in this section.

Sinful condition, sinful speech, sinful actions. What about verse 18? I kind of left that one out. There is no fear of God before their eyes. That doesn't really go with the previous section, 15, 16 and 17.

For those three verses were all drawn from Isaiah 59. Verse 18 doesn't come from Isaiah 59. It comes from elsewhere. It's actually Psalm 36, one transgression speaks to the wicked deep in his heart. There is no fear of God before his eyes.

That is the perfect summary of all of these passages that Paul had drawn from to express the sinful nature of man. So verse 18 doesn't go with the previous portion. It's rather a summary statement of verses 10 through 17.

Once again, Psalm 36, one transgression speaks to the wicked deep in his heart. There is no fear of God before his eyes. What does that really mean to have no fear of God? No fear of any retribution against the sinful or wicked actions that a person does.

Like I'm not afraid of any consequences. Maybe there will be natural consequences for what I go through. Like for example, a person who is promiscuous might contract a sexually transmitted disease. They know the risks of that, but they're going to do it anyway.

So maybe there will be natural repercussions for the ignorant things they do. A person who gets drunk, gets behind the wheel of a car, might end up hitting somebody else and killing them, or they get in an accident and harm themselves.

They understand the risks, but they do it anyway. But there is no fear of God. There is no fear of there's going to be any kind of eternal punishment for these careless, wicked, sinful things that I do.

They wouldn't even consider them to be wicked and sinful. As long as I'm not harming anybody else, then really what's the problem with all of this? So going on in Psalm 36, he flatters himself in his own eyes that his iniquity cannot be found out and hated.

He just bolsters himself, presents this nice guy persona or this running resume of himself so that you just think of this great guy and you're not aware of the selfish, wicked things that he does to the expense of everybody else just to benefit himself.

You're not aware of those things because all you see is the flattery, the great guy, the fakeness that he presents in front of everyone. Verse three, the words of his mouth are trouble and deceit. He has ceased to act wisely and do good.

He plots trouble while on his bed. He sets himself in a way that is not good. He does not reject evil. Verses five and six. Now this is still Psalm 36. Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds.

Your righteousness is like the mountains of God. Your judgments are like the great deep man and beast you save. O Lord, how precious is your steadfast love? O God, the children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings.

They feast on the abundance of your house and you give them drink from the river of your delights. For with you is the fountain of life. In your light do we see light. In you is the fountain of life. So contrast that with the wicked man whose feet are swift to shed blood and in their paths are ruin and misery.

But with God is the fountain of life. Verse 10. O continue your steadfast love to those who know you and your righteousness to the upright in heart. Let not the foot of arrogance come upon me, nor the hand of the wicked drive me away.

There the evildoers lie fallen. They are thrust down, unable to rise. So everything kind of bound up in the context of that particular Psalm becomes our summary statement at the end of this section here in Romans 3 18.

There is no fear of God before their eyes. They do the wickedness that they do, and they continue doing that wickedness, never to repent or turn from that wickedness because there's no fear of God. There is no real concern that there will be any everlasting eternal consequences for the actions that they do.

And my friends, we were all here at one point. All of us were the same. We had no fear of God before our eyes. Now, there are certainly some that fall into deeper wickedness than others. And God, by his grace and his mercy, did not let us fall into as deep a wickedness as we could have fallen into.

But nevertheless, there was a point in our lives before we heard the gospel, before we had knowledge of our sin, before we worship the Lord God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. There was no fear of God before our eyes.

There was not a genuine concern about the judgment of God that is coming against all the sinfulness and unrighteousness of man. And it's only because of the gospel. It's only in light of Christ, whom we recognize as righteous.

And in his righteousness, we see our sinfulness, that he is holy and we are not. It is only when the gospel was presented to us that we recognized our need for a savior. And knowing that, staying in the condition that we were in, we would have fallen under the judgment of God.

We repented by the Holy Spirit working within our hearts. We turn from sin and turn to Christ. And as followers of Christ, now we have a reverent fear of God. Yes, he is our heavenly father. Yes, he indeed loves us with a love that is without comprehension.

It's incomparable. There's nothing to compare it to. But he is still God. You don't run up to God and feather his hair. You fall down before him in humility and in worship. It's a wonderful thing that we get to be called friends of God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

We don't have to fear the judgment of God. We are his sons and his daughters. But there still must be that respect of God because of the fact that he is God. All the power and control he holds in his hands.

Time itself, the most incredible force of nature, he made it and he is more powerful than even the sun or the largest star that can be explored or gazed upon in the universe. The billions of stars that are in the universe just testify to God's infinity.

We can't even count the stars. God is even beyond all of that. This is a being who is worthy of this kind of reverence. And this kind of fear. And what a wonderful thing to behold this, that it fills us up all the more with praise and appreciation for who he is.

The God who's created all of this, you go outside, you look at the night sky stars farther than the eyes can see. And yet this God who has created all of this loves us and has sent his son to die for us to redeem for himself a people for his own possession.

Who are zealous for doing the works that he has called us to do. And these are the things that David pondered over in Psalm eight. Oh, Lord, our Lord, how excellent is your name and all the earth. We need to have that kind of reverence for God.

Just this this awesome amazement at who he is and the works that he is constantly doing in the world and in our lives day by day. We don't have to be fearful of judgment because in our Lord Jesus Christ, we're justified before God.

It's through Christ that we've been adopted into the family of God. So we don't have to fear judgment. But there is that that respect that we have of God. And the person who does not have the fear of God does not have that respect.

They continue doing the wicked and unrighteous things that they do because they just do not think there is a God there who is even going to punish me for these wicked things that I do. When you've got that kind of a person who just who thinks that there's really not going to be any serious, lasting, eternal repercussions for my actions, when a person believes and thinks that way, they are a very, very dangerous individual.

That's exactly why their feet are swift to shed blood and in their paths are ruin and misery. And they don't really care about the words that they say to you, how they might cut you down or hurt your feelings.

No concern about that whatsoever. There's no fear of God before their eyes. So Paul goes on in verse 19, having summarized this argument for the wicked person, sinful to the core. Remember that he started this by saying, we have already charged that all both Jews and Greeks are under sin.

So then he says, we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law. Everyone is under sin who is under the law. Well, everyone that was just described in verses 10 through 19, they are going to be judged by this law.

That was the argument that Paul made back in Chapter two, whether they had the law or they did not have the law, they are a law unto themselves. And when they are judged by God, he will be vindicated in all of his judgments.

They will be revealed to be wicked, lawless, idolaters, rebellious against the high king of heaven. God alone will be holy and righteous and and all of his ways are justice. And he will exercise judgment against those who had practiced lawlessness instead of godliness.

So these are those who are under the law, those who have not kept the law, those who tried to be righteous on their own and yet failed at every part. They couldn't even keep their own righteousness, their own standard, let alone amount up to the righteousness of God.

So we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, do not murder, speaking to those who murder, do not lie, speaking to those who lie, do not steal, speaking to those who rob from others and do all of these things without the fear of God before their eyes.

But it is through the law that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God. It's in the knowledge of the law that we recognize that we are not righteous and we are not good so that everyone may be held accountable before God by works of the law.

By keeping the law, no human being will be justified in his sight since the purpose and function of the law is to demonstrate God's righteousness and our unrighteousness. So therefore, through the reading of his perfect law, his righteous law, we gain knowledge of our sin.

I'm going to come back to this section again next week when we pick this up. I'll look at verses 19 and 20 once more, and then we'll continue on with one of the most beautiful presentations of the gospel that we have in the scriptures here in Romans chapter three.

That's that's where we'll be on Monday. Let's conclude with prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for giving us your word, convicting our hearts, leading us to life everlasting in your son, adopting us into your family, calling us your sons and daughters, calling us friends of God, revealing to us your will as we have it written down for us in the pages of scripture.

You are God who has done these things, and who are we but amiss that is here for a moment and then poof, we're gone. May we in these moments in which we live, commit our every way unto you and live lives of submission and worship and holiness unto the God who alone is worthy of our worship.

Let us not ever enter into these seasons where we might think that we can dabble in sin for a little while and there won't be any repercussions for this. For you are God who knows and sees all. May the very desire from the core of our hearts be to please this God who has saved us by giving his son to die for us.

What a great price was paid for the forgiveness of sin. So let us not continue to walk in those sins that led to the death of the son that were the reason why the son died, for which the son died. But let us walk in righteousness and holiness in his great name and to the praise of your glorious grace.

It's in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ we pray, amen.

Program Close and Schedule

You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study. Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book.

On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers. Tomorrow, we'll pick up on an Old Testament study, When We Understand the Text.