Sunday Sermon: The Rock of Offense (Romans 9:30-33)

You're listening to the preaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on this podcast we feature teaching through a New Testament book, an Old Testament book on Thursday and our Q &A on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to present our sermon series. Here is Pastor Gabe.

Justification by Faith in Romans 9

We're finishing Romans 9 today. Now the way that Paul wraps this up at the end of chapter 9 is to come back to the doctrine of justification by faith. We are saved by faith and not by our works. The Jews were attempting to gain their salvation by their works, so they rejected Christ, believing it is by my work that I can be saved, not the finished work of Christ.

And we will be reminded once again as we come to finish up chapter 9 here today that we are saved by faith. As the Puritan John Durant said, the whip or a blow may stir the horse into action, but it does not strengthen it.

A conviction of need or a fear of hell may stir us to go to Christ, but it does not enable or enliven us. Beloved, faith is the grace that strengthens. As the Scripture says, the just shall live by faith.

So let's reflect upon this truth once again as we read in the Scriptures today, Romans 9, verses 30 -33. And I will, in our reading, go on to chapter 10, verse 4. In honor of the word of the King, would you please stand.

This is Romans 9, beginning in verse 30. Hear the word of the Lord. What shall we say then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it. That is, a righteousness that is by faith. But that Israel, who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness, did not succeed in reaching that law.

Why?

Why?

Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone. As it is written, Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.

Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness.

For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. You may be seated as we pray. Heavenly Father, as we come to this Word this morning, I pray we would be reminded once again of the grace of God that has been given to us through faith in Jesus Christ.

We are saved not by our works, but by Your grace. We have read of that as we have been going through chapter 9. That it's not based on any works that we have done, but it is so Your purpose of election might continue.

It is so that You, through the giving of Your Son, would be glorified in that You paid the price that we owed because of our sin. We couldn't pay it. We couldn't do anything to absolve it, to erase it, to earn the favor of God.

We could do nothing. It is by Your grace that we are saved through faith. And this is not our own doing. It is the gift of God, not of our works, so that none of us may boast. May our boast be, as we have sung about this morning, in Christ and all the more as we come to these scriptures today.

It is in the name of Jesus that we pray, amen. In the setup to Jesus telling the parable of the Good Samaritan, there's a lawyer who comes to Jesus and puts Him to the test. And says, teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?

And Jesus said to him, what is written in the law? This is a lawyer. So you know the law. How do you read it? And the lawyer answered, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.

And you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And Jesus said to him, you have answered correctly. Do this and you will live. Can we be saved by our works? Well if it were possible for us to do everything perfectly and not having stumbled at any part of it, well according to what Jesus says here, yeah.

Yes, if we could have done everything perfectly, if we could have loved the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and loved our neighbor as ourself and never stumbled in any part of that, a summary of the whole law, then we would have been saved by our.

Works.

But of course you know that we've not done that perfectly. Unfortunately, you have never at any second of your life loved God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. And we all fall short of the glory of God as we have read about already in Romans 3 .23.

R .C. Sproul loved to play with his audience sometimes in beginning a message such as this by standing in front of the congregation and saying, you are saved by works. And he would just let that sink in to everybody and he would have that Sproulian smile that.

He has.

And after letting that sink in for a moment and letting people squirm going, I don't think this is the sermon, I think we walked into the wrong session, is this the right R .C. Sproul that we're supposed to be listening to?

He would finally say, but not your works, but Christ's. It is by Christ's finished work that we are saved. We do not do anything to accomplish salvation in and of ourselves. But everybody who rejects Christ is trying to be saved by their works.

It is only in Christ that we are saved by grace.

Through faith.

And this is the gift of God. So we see this, we've read of this so far in Romans and we come back to it again today. It's kind of funny that whenever we think about Romans 9, we don't think of that as necessarily being a chapter that lays out a doctrine of justification by faith.

But that's exactly what we have here at the end of Romans 9. And Paul is saying this is why the Jews were not able to attain the righteousness of God because they were trying to do it by their works and not by faith.

Of everything else that we've read in Romans 9, everything that we've read about how it's not as though the Word of God has failed and that it is not according to works but because of Him who calls. And that there is no injustice on God's part but that He has mercy on whomever He wills and He hardens whomever He wills.

And saying that He has prepared certain vessels for destruction in order to show the riches of His glory for vessels of mercy which He has prepared beforehand for glory. These are all the passages we're familiar with from Romans 9.

But so that it would be understood that this is all on us and not on God. For those who fall, for those who stumble. Nobody can point the finger at God and say, why did you make me like this? Paul comes back to the Jews at the end of the chapter and points out they did not attain their righteousness because they didn't seek it by faith.

They sought it through their works of the law. This was not God who did this to them. It was they who by their own stubbornness refused to listen to the Word of God. And we'll see this also as we look further into this together.

I really just have two parts that we're looking at today and you can tell that this section of Scripture is divided into by two questions. Verse 30, what shall we say then? In verse 32, why? So Paul asks these two questions and answers them and that kind of divides our text.

And really what we're looking at today in my two-part sermon is that we are saved not by our works, but we are saved by faith. That's it, two parts. And you're thinking, Gabe's been gone for so long he's forgotten how to do a three-part sermon.

But we'll also have some application at the end so that will come in as well. Looking at verse 30 once again, what shall we say then? That the Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it and that is a righteousness that is by faith.

We've read this at the very beginning of Romans. Remember our thesis statement in the book of Romans was Romans 1 .16. I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to all who believe, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

For in it the righteousness of God is revealed by faith for faith, for as it is written, the just shall live by faith. So we heard that from the very beginning of the Scriptures and that quoting from the Old Testament.

Paul regularly comes back to citing Old Testament Scriptures for one of those reasons to show that this is not some new doctrine that he has invented. This is not new theology. This is what has been proclaimed to the prophets from the very beginning.

It has even been said to the prophets, through the prophets, we can go back to the Scriptures and we can read it, that the Gentiles would obtain righteousness and many of the Jews would not. We consider what the Scriptures have said about the salvation of the Gentiles.

Isaiah said in Isaiah 49 .6, it is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. This is a prophecy concerning the Messiah. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.

And whenever we read in the Old Testament about salvation that comes to the nations, this is a reference to salvation coming to Gentiles and bringing them into the kingdom of God. Zechariah 2 .11, many nations will be joined with the Lord in that day and will become my people.

Remember the message that Chris had preached a couple of weeks ago, that section where it says that those who are not my people, they will be called sons of the living God. As Paul had referenced from the Old Testament and we have seen that fulfilled in Christ.

Psalm 67 .2, may your ways be known on the earth and your salvation among all the nations. Jeremiah 16 .19, Lord, my strength and my fortress, my refuge in time of distress, to you the nations will come from the ends of the earth and say, our ancestors possess nothing but false gods, worthless idols of no benefit to anyone at all.

So even the eyes of pagans would be open to realize these false gods are false. They aren't real. They don't give me anything. They're of my own making to feed my flesh and my flesh is giving me nothing.

And so through the very blessing of God that would come to the nations, through the gospel that would be proclaimed in the name of Jesus Christ, even the nations, even the Gentiles would come from the ends of the earth to know the Lord our God.

But in addition to these prophecies has also been the prophetic utterance that Jews would.

Perish.

Many Jews would fall. Though God had rescued Israel out of slavery from Egypt and had given them a land flowing with milk and honey, a land of prosperity, a land in which they could worship and sacrifice to their God, yet many of them would not truly believe.

Deuteronomy 31, they will forsake me and break the covenant I made with them. They will turn to other gods and worship them. Jeremiah 6 .21, therefore this is what the Lord says, I will put obstacles before this.

People.

Parents and children alike will stumble over them. Neighbors and friends will perish. Surely you know the call that was given to Isaiah, in which Isaiah was told, go and prophesy to this people, but they will hear and not understand.

They will see and still be blind. They will not know the word that Isaiah would prophesy to them, though they are called the people of God. They would not listen to God. Hosea 4 .6, my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge.

Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as my priests. Because you have ignored the law of your God, I will also ignore your children. And in Psalm 119, verse 165, we read, Great peace have those who love your law, and nothing can make them stumble.

We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And how have we come to know Christ? Because we have heard the word of God proclaimed. And we have come to believe. And so we are saved. But there are others who, hearing that word, reject it, and so then the word of Christ becomes to them a stumbling stone.

Christ instead of being the cornerstone, as he was prophesied to be, as we've heard read this morning from our call to worship, and even we see the proclamation that's made here in Romans chapter 9 about him being the stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.

Christ was proclaimed to be the cornerstone upon which the kingdom of God would be built. But for those who would reject Christ, he would be a stone of stumbling. Verse 31, Israel pursued a law that would lead to righteousness.

They did not succeed in reaching that law.

Why?

Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. So the Gentiles have attained it. How have the Gentiles attained it? They attained it the way that God meant for that righteousness to be attained.

By faith.

Remember back in Romans 4, who was our example there in Romans 4 of righteousness by faith? It was Abraham. And it was said to Abraham in the covenant that was made with him, that those who bless you I will bless, those who curse you I will curse.

Talking about the offspring. And we have read as we've kind of considered these things, we'll even come back to this again when we get to Romans chapter 11, but we have read that in Galatians chapter 3, it is those of faith who are the children of Abraham.

There are many who claim to be of Abraham, descended from Abraham. Jesus said to them in John, he said to them in John chapter 8, you are of your father the devil and your will is to do your father's desires.

What was it that marked them as children of Satan rather than children of God? Because they rejected Christ. They rejected his word. Jesus would go on to say in John chapter 10, why do you not understand what I say?

Because you are not among my sheep. And those who are of the flock of God, when he calls, we will hear the word, we will listen to it, and we will follow him. But those who are not among the sheep will reject that word, and it will be by their rejection of that word that they will come to judgment.

Israel pursued a law. They pursued their law. They pursued this idea that I can be righteous by my works. They pursued a law that would lead to righteousness, but they did not succeed in reaching that.

Law. Why?

Because all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Because none of us can be saved by our works. Though the world around us, not just Jews, but even among Gentiles, even among pagans around us, there are many who are attempting to achieve everlasting life, righteousness, goodness by their works.

George Whitefield, the great preacher of the first great awakening, he said, Works, works. A man get to heaven by his works? I would as soon think of climbing to the moon on a rope of sand. Can that be done?

Neither can we attain heaven by our works. Israel pursued a law that they thought would lead to righteousness. They did not succeed in reaching it because they cannot be saved by their works. We cannot be made righteous by our works.

Back when we were in Romans chapter 8, I had mentioned to you that if you could resolve to yourself to say, right now, at this moment, I am now going to live perfectly. I'm going to keep every law of God.

I'm going to do everything that he says for me to do. I'm going to live righteously and watch me be successful at it, and I will be able to attain salvation by my works. Now, you've already failed because you're prideful in thinking that you can do that.

So there, you've already sinned. You've already failed at the task. But even if you were to be able to do that, even if I gave you the benefit of the doubt, I would be stupid to do so. But if I did give you the benefit of the doubt and thought, okay, let's see you do it.

You still would not be able to attain glory.

Why?

Because none of your good works are going to undo any of the bad works that you did beforehand. So even if it were possible for you, now from this point forward, I'm going to live my life righteously.

Even if it were possible for you to do that by your own power, none of your good works are going to expunge any of the bad works. Whenever Ray Comfort does his presentations on the gospel and he takes a person through the law and brings them to an understanding of their sin and need for a savior, he loves to use the courtroom example.

We understand that good works, we understand naturally, without me having to take you through a Bible and preach to you the scriptures, we understand naturally that good works do not undo our bad works.

Everybody understands that concept. Because if you had a rich guy who killed a child and he goes to court and he tells that judge, look, I've done so many incredible things for this community. Yes, I killed this child, but look at all the things that I've done and how many lives I've probably saved.

And he starts listing out all of his grants, all of the ways that he's used his millions and millions of dollars to contribute to the community and improve people's lives. So you're going to take me away from the community?

I mean, you're going to take me out of a place where I've benefited so many people and throw me in prison? That would not be good for this people. So you can see by all my good works why you need to just declare me innocent and let me.

Go.

And if that judge were to say, well, you make a compelling case and he were to land the gavel and say, this man is declared innocent, we let him go. What do you think would be in the news the next day?

Do you think that the news is going to look at that judge and go, what a gracious and forgiving judge? They would call that judge unjust. Even unbelievers understand that. They would call him unjust. He killed a child.

He got let go. And even people can recognize that all the good things that he did does not erase that evil act that he did to that child. We all understand this concept that our good works do not erase the bad.

In fact, a lot of times when we're trying to erase the bad stuff that we've done, we just make it worse. I remember one time one of my kids had drawn on a whiteboard with a Sharpie. Not the dry erase marker, but the Sharpie.

And I went with the eraser and I tried to erase it. Nothing happened. It just, the eraser over the mark and it was like it was painted on there. There was nothing I could do about it. But for whatever reason, it didn't occur to me that that was a Sharpie that they had drawn.

With.

I just thought it was a dry erase marker that had been sitting there for a long time. And so all we need is some Windex. So I got some Windex out, I sprayed, sprayed, sprayed, and I got really aggressive with that eraser and I pressed and pressed and pressed.

What do you think happened? It smudged black all over that whiteboard. It just made it even worse. And our attempts to try to cover over our bad deeds by more of our own works are just going to end up doing that.

We just smudge the filth around. But it doesn't actually do anything to get rid of the bad things that we have done. I was counseling a couple one time. I was counseling this couple through premarital counseling.

They were engaged. The wife, well the wife, the woman had done something really, really bad in the relationship. What it is, is not important. But it's bad enough that if I were to tell you, you would have been, I don't understand why the relationship didn't just end right there.

And she pled with her fiance. She pled with him and said, forgive me please for this thing that I have done. And he said, I do forgive you. But within a week, the relationship came to an end. And she sat in my office and wept and she said, I don't understand.

He said he forgave me. And she was now accusing him of lying. Because he said, I forgive you, but the relationship still came to an end. And I had to help her understand, which I don't think I really successfully ended up.

Doing.

But I had to help her understand, just because he forgives you, doesn't undo what you did. It changed the entire relationship. There's a vast difference between, I forgive you and I trust you. That trust was not rebuilt.

And the relationship couldn't continue forward. So even our best deeds do not undo all of the horrible things that we've done. And when we're talking about the bad things that we've done, we're most especially talking about the sins that we have committed against God.

There are plenty of things in my past that I've done against other people that are reprehensible. I mean, I look at my own resume of things that I've done against other people and it disgusts me. But what's worse about those sins that I've committed is who I've really committed them against.

And that's God. As David said in the Psalms in Psalm 51, against you only have I sinned. And sin against an eternal God demands eternal consequences. And that is why Jesus talks so much about hell in his earthly ministry.

Nobody talked about hell more than Jesus did in the Bible. So that we would know what our sin deserves. That our sin against a holy God deserves eternal destruction, perishing forever, eternal torment.

As said in Revelation chapter 14, the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever and they have no rest. Because our wickedness against an eternal God demands eternal punishment. But that makes the gift of Jesus Christ look all the more amazing.

When we know that eternally our sins have been forgiven and eternally we have been given life forever with God. And how do we attain such a thing? It can't be by our works. Because our works are what got us into this mess in the first place.

It is by His perfect work. Where we sinned over and over again and could not help but sin. That was our condition. We've read about it in Romans chapter 3, we've read about it in 5, in 7, 8, and 9. We've read over and over again about how we could not do anything to be saved by our works.

So Paul comes back to this again at the end of chapter 9. You can't even attain righteousness by your works. It must be by another way. And it is by the one righteous man, Jesus Christ, who lived life perfectly when we could not be perfect.

He died the death that we were supposed to die, rising again from the grave. And all who believe in Him will not perish but have eternal life. And furthermore, not just having our sins forgiven, but we have the righteousness of God imputed to us.

So that we may live in a righteous way that is pleasing to God where previously we could not do it. Remember what we had read back in Romans chapter 8. The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God and it does not submit to God's law.

Indeed it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot. Please God. You can't be righteous on your own. But then Paul went on to say in verse 9, you however are not in the flesh but in the spirit if in fact the spirit of God dwells in you.

If Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousness. And we have the righteousness of God that has been imputed to us in Christ so that we may live life in such a way that what we do, the good works that we do, which we may do,.

We must do.

There is still a requirement for us to do good works. They just don't save us. But the good works that we do now in Christ with his righteousness are now pleasing to God where previously they were not.

This is that wonderful great exchange that we refer to as double imputation. Talked about in verses like 2 Corinthians 5 .21, for our sake he became sin who knew no sin that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

Our sin imputed to Christ who dies on the cross for us, his righteousness imputed to us that we may live righteous lives before God. And so it is as John MacArthur has said, as though God looks at us and when he sees us he sees not our sin but the righteousness of Christ.

He looks at us as if we lived his life. And where Jesus dies on the cross for us, he looks at Christ as though Christ had lived my life. And all of my filthy, horrible sins and deeds are put to death with Christ on the cross.

And now given his righteousness that I may walk in newness of life. You know Galatians 2 .20, for I have been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me. And the life I now live, I live by what?

Faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. The righteousness that we need to stand before God and be accepted by him is given to us in Christ. And we attain it by faith. Our works therefore are going to be a testament to that righteousness that we've been given in Christ.

The works don't save us, they're the evidence that we have been saved. But for Israel, they continued to try to attain this righteousness by their keeping of the.

Law.

The Gentiles Attain Righteousness by Faith

In verse 32 we get to the why. So first part in verse 30, what shall we say then? The Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it. They've attained it how? By faith. But Israel pursued a law that would lead to righteousness, they did not succeed in reaching.

That law. Why?

Verse 32, because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone. As it is written, behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.

I'm going through Acts right now in the podcast, and it's the spread of the gospel to the entire.

World.

The apostles fulfilling what Jesus commissioned them to do, you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. And so we're reading in Acts about how the gospel made it to the entire world.

Why was the gospel so attractive to so many pagan people? You would see this over again in Acts, over and over again, where Paul goes into a synagogue, he preaches, the Jews reject it, like what happened in Corinth, shakes his garment and says, I am free of you, your blood is on your own heads, from now on I'm going to the Gentiles.

So he takes the message of the gospel of the Gentiles, and the people are convicted of heart and many Gentiles come to believe. How was the gospel so attractive to so many Gentiles? The answer to that is grace, the grace of God.

Because here are the apostles proclaiming, and as missionaries go throughout the world today preaching the gospel, we'll say, guess what? You don't have to sacrifice a virgin in a volcano in order to appease the gods.

You don't have to cut on yourself for the gods to hear you and notice you. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine that God would just love you without having to cut on your body and spill your own blood?

You don't have to burn your firstborn in the fire to appease the gods to give you good crops this year. You don't have to make this pilgrimage or pay this large sum of money to absolve some sin or debt or whatever, and then therefore earn the favor with the gods.

Best of all, you get eternal life. This was a question that none of the philosophers and none of the religions could answer for anybody in that day 2 ,000 years ago or even in this day today. None of the philosophers, none of the religions could answer the question, what happens to you when you die?

The Greeks just largely believed you cease to exist. You just die and that's it. Your body becomes worm food. There's no existence that we continue to go on into after we die. You can see this problem that exists even among the Thessalonians when Paul writes to them his first letter to the Thessalonians, because the Thessalonians were concerned about their own Christian brothers and sisters who had preceded them in death.

Are they missing out on the day of Christ? And Paul's answer to them is, we grieve, but not as those who have no hope. For here's what happens with those who die, though they precede us in death, they're still going to be with us on that day when the dead and Christ will rise first.

And then we who are left will be caught up with them together in the air and we will be with the Lord. I grieve that I was not here when Mike died. I cried tears over it and prayed for my brother Phineas who had to go through all of that, not losing his roommate, his brother in the faith.

I was sad that I wasn't here, but yet I know that Mike, as my brother in the Lord, is at the throne of God celebrating now and I'll get to join him one day. And so we mourn the loss of our brother, but we don't mourn without hope.

We know that all together we will be risen and we will be with the Lord. And this is the grace of God that answers this question for us. Even the pagans, the philosophers, none of the religions could answer or tell a person what happens to you when you die.

Yet here comes this message of the gospel of grace. It's not by your works, it's not by any of these ridiculous acts that any of these religious leaders ask you to do. It's by faith in Jesus. That's it.

Faith.

You believe in the one who died for you and rose again from the dead and you have your sins forgiven. You were made right with God who made the entire universe and you will dwell with him forever in glory when you die.

And even in the words of Christ in John 11, though you die, yet shall you live. And that's what became so amazing to all the people who heard this gospel message that they put their faith and trust in Christ and believe because of grace.