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What I'd like to do is a quick overview of the first eight chapters of the Book of Romans and then look at, especially at Chapter 1, mostly as a context for Chapter 2. I'd really like to focus on the first few verses of Romans Chapter 2.
It's probably a little bit aggressive. We'll see where we get. I'm usually pretty bad when it comes to time, but I'll try my best. So, the Book of Romans, just to give a little bit of background, of course it was written by Paul around A .D. 51 while he was at Corinth.
Most scholars believe that the Book of Romans was probably Paul's greatest work. I have that opinion. I'm not a scholar. But it certainly is the most comprehensive work in the most comprehensive presentation of the Gospel and all of Scripture.
Of course, the main theme of Romans is what? It's the justification through faith alone and the finished work of Christ alone. Not a lot is known about the founding of the Church at Rome or even its early history.
Apparently, there was no founding apostle at the Church in Rome. According to Ambriosi Astor, if Pradeep were here, I'd ask him if I pronounced that right, but he was a 4th century historian. He says that the Roman Church was not established by an apostle, but it was established by unnamed Hebrew Christians.
Most believe that these were people that were originally from Rome that God saved on the day of Pentecost. And that they went back to Rome and they founded the Church. And perhaps this is one of the reasons why this work of Paul's is so comprehensive.
We see in Chapter 1 that Paul says that on numerous occasions he planned to come to Rome, but his plan was thwarted by the Lord. And personally, I believe that this is probably one of the reasons why this work is so comprehensive.
And it's kind of nice to know that even believers throughout history, even at the present day, are probably benefiting from Paul's thwarted plans. And that we have this very comprehensive work. Had he been able to go to Rome when he wanted to, perhaps we wouldn't have such a good work.
Perhaps this might have been passed on to them verbally. And I'm sure the Lord would have made another plan to give us his word, but it probably wouldn't be in the current form that it is in Rome. Of course, I tend to get bogged down in some of these details.
There's a whole lesson to be had in how Paul reacted to his thwarted plans, right? You'll see that he kind of just went with it. He said it was the Lord's will and that was that. But another day. This book is loaded in theology.
It's chock full. It's loaded in practical instruction in the Christian life. And you can see, if you read it slowly, you can see how easy it is to get bogged down in it. And being bogged down, I don't want to mention that in any negative way.
It's actually not a bad thing to be bogged down in the book of Romans. So by the time that Paul wrote this epistle, the church was pretty well established. And we read in chapter one that their faith was even being proclaimed throughout the entire believing world.
The makeup of the church is both Jews and Gentiles. Both Jewish and Gentile believers were in the church at Rome. There's some debate as to who the majority of the makeup was. I didn't find anything definite as to whether it was majority Jewish or majority Gentile.
But suffice to say that both Jews and Gentiles had a good representation at the church at Rome. Okay. Here we go. At the risk of sounding very geeky, and Kathleen's not here yet, but she warned me about this.
In some of our memory studies, we've learned that some of the most effective ways to remember something is that you associate it with something really, really wacky. Okay. Now, when I look at the first eight chapters of the book of Romans, right, it actually reminds me of the sine wave.
Do you all know what the sine wave is? My twelfth grade trigonometry teacher, Mr. Terberg, would be really proud that after all these years, we have a good application of the sine wave curve. Okay. If you're familiar with it, it just looks like this.
Okay. And it just goes on. It's just a curve that goes down to a lower limit. It goes up to a higher limit, comes back down to the lower limit. Okay. And you might ask, what in the world could that have to do with the book of Romans, right, the first eight chapters?
And basically, what it has to do with the book of Romans is that if you were to put some instrument on me that would judge my emotions when I'm reading the book of Romans, right, it would be just like the sine wave.
You could put them right on top of each other, that my mood goes from euphoria down to depression, back up to euphoria and down to depression. And I kind of notice that when the focus is on the Lord, it's euphoric, right?
When the focus comes back down to me, it's depressing. Okay. But just to go over it real quickly, let me just show you what I mean. At the beginning of Chapter 1, the book actually starts out pretty okay.
Paul introduces himself, and I'm told that in an ancient letter such as this that typically there are three parts that make up the introduction. The letter will have who it's from. It will have who it's to.
And then there's some kind of greeting in it, some salutation. If you look at the Apostle Paul, he is so saturated with the gospel that he can't get through a single part of even the introduction without proclaiming the lordship of Christ and proclaiming the gospel.
Right at the very beginning in verse 1, Paul introduces himself as a bond servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets and the holy scriptures, concerning his son, who was born of a descendant of David according to the flesh, who was declared the son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord.
We could camp here for a whole session, too. Paul basically here, he's just saying who he is. He's an apostle. And he's going to be bringing the gospel to the Gentiles. But just in his introduction before it's all in that same sentence, before he even gets done introducing himself, he's declared Christ as having the rights to both the heavenly and the earthly throne.
Right. It's important that he says that he was born of a descendant of David, but then most of all, that he was declared the son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord.
And so he's he states his intention that he's taken this gospel to the Gentiles. OK. And this is a powerful gospel. And in fact, it says that this is a very power of God to salvation to everyone who believes in it.
God's righteousness is revealed from faith to faith. This powerful gospel is the only way that sinful men who would describe so well in the following chapters here can be justified in the eyes of a holy God.
It's like, hey, this is good news. Right. We're we're kind of up here in the top of the sine wave now that we have this powerful gospel that's about to go forth. And this powerful gospel that can can make sinners clean in the eyes of God, the father.
Right. It's like I'm feeling OK about this. Right. Then as we move on, we go to the second chapter, the second half of the first chapter. And from here for about two chapters until the second half of Chapter three, Paul starts to focus on the nature of man.
And he presents this huge problem that each and every one of us has, without exception. And namely, that is our sin and our rebellion problem that we have towards the Lord. And in this, he looks at all kinds of men.
He looks at the good guys. He looks at the bad guys. In the second half of Chapter one focuses on the pagan world. And this was described by by one as the most devastating indictment of human nature in all of the literature.
And we'll give it a quick read here in a minute and we'll see exactly why. Chapter two, which is where I hope to get to this morning, and I hope to focus in on Chapter two a little bit this morning. Paul shows that the moral man or the religious man, and these would be those that some would be tempted to call the quote, the good guys.
Right. He focuses in on them and basically they have the same problem as the pagan does in Chapter one. Right. They're in total rebellion and they're also condemned before this holy God. Suddenly, we're at the bottom of the sine wave now, aren't we?
It's like we've gone from this powerful gospel that Jesus is Lord and then the solution to our sin. And now we're focusing on our sin and we're down almost to the depression area. Paul describes the total futility of trying to justify oneself in the eyes of this holy God.
No matter whether you think you're a good guy or you think you're a bad guy or what other people think or whatever, that this is a universal problem that no one is exempt from. Then finally, we get to the second half of Chapter three and Paul gets to presenting Christ and his finished work on Calvary and his resurrection as the only solution to this universal sin problem that we all have.
And personally, the second half of Chapter three is about my favorite passage in the entire Bible. Just imagine where we'd be if Paul stopped at the first half of Chapter three and never put in the second half of Chapter three where he talks about Christ being our propitiation.
As we get to the solution to our problem, things are starting to look up again. There's a solution to this awful thing that we all have, this sin problem that we have that is so depressing when we look at it in Chapters one and Chapter two and at the beginning of Chapter three.
There's a solution to our sin problem. And Paul continues in Chapter four and he's expounding upon the idea that how the justification through faith alone is the way that it's always been, even in the Old Testament.
You hear a lot about, well, the Old Testament God, the New Testament God, and Paul kind of kills that theory that he was different back then as he is today. And he uses Abraham and David as his examples of the idea of how they were justified, not because of their goodness, but because of their belief in God.
It's like, hey, we're getting a little better here, aren't we? David was justified. Remember him? That murderous, adulterous king? There's hope for him. There's hope for me. There's hope for you. So I think this is getting a little better.
We're kind of moving back up again here. By the end of Chapter five, we're really riding high because Paul's talking about the assurance that we have in Christ. And here he brings out the truth that our pastor Steve puts in his email signature all the time.
If you get an email from Steve, he'll say, forever grateful for grace greater than all of my sin. And I think he's taken that probably right from Chapter five. Grace greater than all of my sin. Because here we read things like that where sin abounds, that grace abounds even more.
And Paul explains the riches and the depth of God's grace towards the redeemed sinner and the fact that not even the worst sinful man amongst us can out sin. The amazing grace, as the song says, that God gives to believers.
It's like, hey, that's probably the best news I've heard now in a long time. If we camp at Chapter five, it's like I'm back up high again. I'm almost euphoric here. Because no matter how bad I am, I can be forgiven.
Christ's righteousness, which was sacrificed for all believers, is infinite. So he can cleanse my sin no matter how bad. His infinite righteousness can be applied or imputed to my account. It's like, wow, if I stop here, it's like I almost have a license to kill now, don't I?
I'm riding high again. It's like things are going OK. And some days, I must admit, I'm tempted to almost wish that Paul stopped at the end of Chapter five. But he didn't. And as Paul does so well, especially in this epistle, but in so many of his writings, he's about 20 steps ahead of his reader.
You know, maybe 30 steps ahead of this reader anyway. I've noticed that his thinking is so far ahead that, you know, he'll say something and then he knows what your reaction is going to be. And he knew what my reaction would be if he stopped at Chapter five, right?
Can you imagine debating him? That if you ever had to go up against him, it would... that would be tough. But he knew that when somebody like Guido read Chapter five, that if he stopped there, Guido would be more unbearable than he is now, right?
So here we go, right? We're going back down the same wave again, right? We're going back down. He's going to bring us right back down to earth. And in Chapter six, Paul asks, you know, an amazing question.
And he's so good at that, too, at asking the right question. And he starts off and he says, after saying that we're sin abounds, right, that grace abounds even more, right? So Guido says, hey, license to kill, right?
And then Paul says, what should we say then? He says, should we go on in sin that grace might abound even more, right? Of course, the answer is going to be no, but I looked at a few different translations here.
And he condemns this question in the harshest of terms, right? In the King James Version, he says, God forbid, right? God forbid that we would go on in sin to get more grace, right? The New American Standard says, may it never be by no means in the English Standard Version.
Certainly not in the New King James Version. I remember some of the older Italian folks that preached the gospel to me, right? And I remember the first time that this thought hit me, that I'm like, whoa.
And I went up to one of them and I said, hey, I got it now. It's like, I can sin, right? It says that grace abounds. And he didn't use the real theological terms, God forbid, or may it never be. He kind of looked at me and he said, what's the matter with you?
I had to duck with the backhander, right? So I was quicker back then. I was able to get out of the way before. Okay, but the answer to this question is very, very clear. Can we go on in sin that grace might abound?
No. No, we can't. But here Paul goes again and he begins to tell us why. Why can we not go on in sin? Well, back down the sine wave again, right? And of course, as we read his answer, it's a great answer.
He says, we can't go on in sin. He says, don't you know that you've been baptized into Christ's death? He says, you've been crucified with Christ. How can you go on in sin, right? And not only that, he says, you're also taking part in Christ's resurrection.
You walk in newness of life now, right? So how can we sin? How can you even think of sinning? Why would you want to sin? We walk in newness of life as we're partakers in Christ's resurrection. And now we're charged to be dead to ourselves and dead to our sin and alive to Christ.
It's like, okay, you know what I mean? And while that is encouraging, it's like, wow, you know, this is getting difficult again. We're sliding back down, right? And then as chapter 7 progresses, we're really sliding back down the sine wave, right?
That Paul talks about the great struggle that even he has. Even somebody like Paul who's so, you know, he's the epitome of the Christian, right? And he talks about his very own struggles that sound so familiar, don't they?
And he talks about how the law of sin is still within his members. The great struggle that he has, that sin is at work. And in this passage, he says things like, for I know that in my flesh dwells no good thing.
And he says, I struggle constantly within myself. He says, I try to do the good thing, but I end up doing the bad thing. He says, I struggle constantly. He says, I try so hard to do the thing that's good.
And not only do I fail in doing the thing that's good, but I end up doing the very, very thing that I hate to do, right? And, you know, stepping it out of theological terms, it's like Paul almost looks like he's focusing on himself.
He's having a little pity party, right? And I think if we focus on ourselves, that's about all we'll do, too, is have a pity party, right? Because we'll see our shortcomings. We see our sin. We see the law of sin at work in our members.
And boy, this is not something that we can overcome in and of ourselves, is it? So Paul's saying that basically he's a hopeless case. He's stuck in this miserable, sinful flesh. And at the end of the chapter, Paul asks another great question, right?
And he says, oh, wretched man that I am, right? He's down here. Who shall deliver me from the body of this death, right? It's like, yeah. I'm glad he answers the question, you know, at the end of chapter 7.
But if he didn't answer that question, it's like we're back down to rock bottom again, aren't we? Because we're focusing on ourselves and we're focusing on our sin. Well, thankfully, at the end of the chapter, he answers that question.
He says, I thank God through Jesus Christ, our Lord. And then he transitions into chapter 8, right? And chapter 8 is a great chapter, right? We read things there like how now, right now that we're in Christ, there's no more condemnation for those that are in Christ, right?
We're coming back up again, right? Next time you see a sign wave, think of Romans, please, right? No condemnation. And now it's the law of the spirit of Christ, the spirit of life in Christ that set us free from the law of sin and death.
And then later in the chapter, there's so many familiar scriptures here, but probably the most famous one that we all love to quote, right, in verse 28. It says, we know that all things work together for good to those that love God and to those that are called according to his purpose, right?
And Paul continues to ask more questions. And these are great questions. These are very, very encouraging questions that he asks here in chapter 8. He says things like, so if God be for us, who can be against us?
That's a good one to remember sometime when you're struggling, isn't it? Who can be against us, right? In some ways, it gets even better. He's saying, who is going to bring a charge against one that God has chosen, right?
And he asks a question. He says, who justifies? Is it me? If you want to find something wrong with me, that's easy. But according to Romans, God justifies, right? It's a comforting thing that when a believer passes on, right, God justifies.
Who's going to bring a charge against that person? It's a great question. And the answer is no one's going to bring a charge against it. Who's going to condemn him? Nobody's going to condemn him, right?
Here it is, that the believer is victorious through Christ, even over death. And then he even gets towards the end of the chapter where he talks about how we're not just conquerors, but we're what? He says, we're more than conquerors through Christ.
We're more than conquerors over anything that's thrown our way that attempts to separate us from the love of God through Christ. It's like, wow, right? We're back up here, back in Romans 5 territory again, aren't we?
This is really cool. This is really, really encouraging. We're more than conquerors. Have you ever thought about the idea of what it's like to be more than a conqueror? Not just a conqueror, but more than a conqueror?
I've heard a great illustration of this once, right? The risk of whatever. Y 'all remember the L .E. Frazier three fight? This was the thriller in Manila. It was a very famous brawl, right? It was unbelievable.
And these two guys probably both should have been dead by the end of that fight, right? When you saw the shots they absorbed and just the energy that they exerted trying to win this fight, it was just brutal, right?
With the end, Muhammad Ali won the fight. I think it was round 10 or something like that. If I remember right, I think Smoke and Joe didn't come out, right, at the end of one of the rounds or something.
I know it was late in the fight, and I know that it was a long, grueling thing that if you saw these guys, that Frazier's eyes were closed and everything. He took so many shots to the head, and Ali took so many body shots that even he could barely talk at the end of the fight, right?
It was just a war, okay? So now Ali won. So in a sense, I guess that he conquered Frazier that night, right, that he could say that he was a conqueror. Of course he did. I seem to remember him saying something about defeating the guerrilla in Manila or something like that, but he was a conqueror, right?
Who do you think was more than the conqueror that night in the fight? Just think about it. I think it was Mrs. Ali, right? And the way I come to this conclusion is that I think Mrs. Ali was more than a conqueror because what she did was that the next day, she took the check, the prize money from the night before, and she brought it to the bank and cashed it, and she moved on, right?
She was more than a conqueror. Ali won the fight, right? Mrs. Ali reaped the benefit of it, and she took the cash, and she was able to walk without suffering a single blow, right? Think about it. That is a good illustration of this, of the victory that we have in Christ, isn't it?
Kind of makes me wish I thought of that one myself. I didn't, but, okay, so that's it. I want to quit here at the top of the sine wave for the overview, okay? But you get the idea how the Book of Romans, at least the first eight chapters, how, you know, if you go by feelings, which I know we're not supposed to do that, but you are tempted to kind of ride the sine wave.
It's up and down. I sort of have a little rule of thumb that when I do something in the Book of Romans, I kind of feel like I should go through at least either top to bottom or bottom to top, just one full motion, just to make sure that I'm not going to go flying off either being too depressed when looking at myself or getting too liberal that I have a license to sin, right, and abusing the grace of God, okay?
But anyway, like I said, I really wanted to focus on Romans 2. I'll try hard here with the time again. And, of course, to focus on Romans 2, we've got to look at Romans 1, right, to set the context for this.
So I'd like to read Romans chapter 1, verses 16 through 32. So I'll read it real quickly and make a few comments and hopefully set the context for chapter 2. Verse 16, Paul says,. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, that the righteous man shall live by faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
Because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature has been clearly seen, being understood through that which has been made, so that they are without excuse.
For even though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible men and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.
Therefore, God gave them over in the lust of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored amongst them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever.
Amen. And for this reason, God gave them over to degrading passions. For their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural. And at the same time, also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another.
Men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind to do those things which are not proper.
Being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedience to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful.
And although they know the ordinance of God that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them. Wow, you can see my sine wave example.
This is a really hard-hitting piece of scripture, isn't it? In our home group, we spent about four or five months in the first chapter of Romans. It's really an incredible passage. And this talks exactly about the natural state of man in his sin, that basically that God's revealed himself to man.
In fact, not only has he revealed himself, but he's put a knowledge of himself on the heart of man. But man, in his sin, suppresses this knowledge and even rejects this knowledge. He rebels against it.
And man refuses to give honor to God as God. He refuses even to give him thanks for his very existence. In their rebellion, they try to come up with all kinds of speculations to rob God of his deity, or even as Pastor Mike preached a couple weeks ago, to try to take the judge title away from him, right?
To remove himself from any kind of imposition that God places on man morally. And again, it basically is just an attempt to rob God of his deity. In essence, what man is saying is that, no, you're not God.
Either I am or part of your creation is God. That something else, not you, is going to be God in my life. And we still see this around us everywhere. And God's response to this is not very favorably. He responds very harshly to this, as he should and as you would think.
In verse 18, we read that the wrath of God is revealed against man in his unrighteousness and in his suppression and in his rejection of the truth. Now, the wrath of God in this case is really kind of interesting.
It's kind of scary that I kind of think that many times we almost become kind of immune to this, that we don't really see it for what it is in many cases. In this case, it's not that God zaps people right away, right?
He doesn't send fire from heaven yet to deal with rebellious man, right? But what he does is that he pretty much just gives man over to himself, right? That you want to be God? He says, okay, go for it, right?
And what's the end result? And the end result is just more sin, isn't it? And in this chapter, we see on three different occasions that because man didn't respond to God or respond to the knowledge of God in a proper way, that we see the phrase in the New American Standard says that God gave them over to something, right?
In verse 24, we see that God gave them over in the lust of their heart to impurity. In verse 26, we see that God gave them over to degrading passions. In verse 28, we see that God gave them over to a depraved mind.
It's like you want sin? Go for it, have more sin. Let's see what the result is going to be of this, right? The sins become worse and worse. It's like this accelerating downward spiral, right? Just down to the ground, right?
The condition gets worse and worse. The sin gets worse and worse. The misery gets worse and worse. The world becomes worse and worse around us, right? And the end result of this is what is called the total depravity of man as it's described in the last verses of Chapter 1.
James Boyce calls this moral insanity, right? And towards the end of this chapter in verses 29 through 31, Paul talks about 21 different kinds of evil that are prevalent within sinful man, right? Let's just quickly, let me read this again.
It's being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmercifully or unmerciful.
In our home group, we actually went through these, all 21 of these, right? We went to the Greek root of it and everything. And man, this is not a pretty sight. This is absolutely hideous. It's amazing to me.
And the world likes to resent man as getting better and being elevated, right? And we look at Romans Chapter 1. It's like, man, I don't know if Paul could have gone much further than this, right? It's like, what's left?
And when you look at this description, like how much worse can we get without God? And that's what we're all about. You know, this is man in all of his glory right here, right? Imagine folks like Kyle Rogers and Abraham Maslow and other people that hold to the view that man is basically good.
I guess either they didn't read this chapter or more likely they reject this chapter, right? But as biblical Christians, when we read something like this, we are very hard-pressed to come up or come to the conclusion that there's something good that dwells within me outside of Christ, aren't we?
It flies in the face of most things that we see around us, even, unfortunately, in much of Christianity today. But I find this passage amazing in that I think this is about the best explanation that I've seen anywhere for things that I see happening around me day in and day out.
I took about 10 minutes the other day. Just real quickly, let me go through this. Just looking at some newspapers, right? I look at newspapers occasionally. But I took 10 minutes the other day, and I just did a little bit of cutting and pasting here just in light of what I read here in Romans 1.
So listen to some of these headlines, and let me know if this reminds you of Romans 1. And let me know if you think Romans 1 is relevant to the world today, okay? The first one, violent deaths at home.
Far outnumber U .S. fatalities in Iraq. In 2005, 894 Americans were killed in Iraq. According to recently released data from the FBI, there were more than 16 ,900 victims of murder or manslaughter in the United States in 2005.
Scary. Now for a little local news. Three masked men robbed Westboro Motel. Culprits sought and two Lancaster fires. Just down the road here. Father reigned and baby beaten. Did you see that they released the Columbine Diary the other day in the news?
Did you happen to see some of the stuff in there? There was 1 ,000 pages of just the plan these two had to descend on this school. The headline said, set up, gear up, ha, ha, ha. You know, laughing in murder, laughing in death, okay?
Here's one, AIDS at 25 years old. Subway rider attacked with power saws. Some battery-operated saw. Someone attacked a guy, tried to rob him on a subway, you know? I don't think I could make this up as good as this, right?
This one I really debated, but I'm trying to illustrate a point. Get this one. Castrated California child molester seeks freedom. It's like he's had an operation. He thinks he's okay now, right? Do you see Romans 1 here?
I mean, this is amazing, right? When I listen to the experts explain these headlines, right, I don't get a lot of an explanation. I mean, it's kind of strange because most people that I talk to, they'll concede that nobody's perfect, right?
You don't hear people saying everybody's perfect. So they're okay there, but yet they won't say that you're sinful either, right? You're not perfect, even though Christ commands you to be perfect, but yet we're not sinful.
It's not the sin problem that we're having here, right? It's something. It's a syndrome or it's an upbringing problem or whatever, right? Man is basically good. A lot of people blame squarely either the Clinton administration or the Bush administration for it all, right?
It's their fault, right? All these things that we see going on, right? As Christians, I mean, what do you think of in light of Romans 1? It's like it kind of makes me think that this is the result of man's suppression, okay, of God's knowledge.
This is the result of man wanting man to be God. God gives him over. He wants him sinned. Go for it. Go do it, right? And, you know, I can only imagine what I could come up with if I spent more than 10 minutes looking at this stuff, right?
It's pretty scary. I find Romans 1 really amazing. In our home group, we spent about four or five months in this chapter wanting to bring it all out, and for the most part, I really did enjoy the study of it.
I enjoyed the preparation for it too. I will admit at times that it did get a little bit interesting, like when you'd have a new person coming over that you knew nothing about whatsoever, someone I never met before, and I'd say something like, here, welcome to my house, you know, have some food Kathleen made.
It's over there on the table. Sit down, make yourself comfortable, open up to Romans 1, and let me tell you how bad the Bible says you are, right? Like it or not, right, this is the word of God, isn't it?
Man does not have a solution to this problem at all. All right, now, you know, I will concede that I think most serious evangelical Christians like Romans 1, right? I love Romans 1. How many here like Romans 1, right?
I know Pastor Mike likes Romans 1. He told me so, right? When I hear Romans 1 preached, I say amen, and rightfully so, right? Now, can you tell I'm really trying to set you up here for Romans 2? I am really trying to set you up for Romans 2.
But I look at myself as the most guilty offender of this, right? I look at Romans 1, and I say amen. Just like I think that, as I said before, that the church makeup in Rome were pious Jews, right, that God saved, and Gentiles, and they were in the pagan capital of the world.
They saw all this stuff that we see today, right? When God saved them, he gives them Christ's righteousness, and he explains it in the pagan world around them. I'll bet they said amen, too, right, especially the religious ones amongst them.
Okay, so this scripture, when I was glad to get out of Romans 1, I was kind of relieved, like in my home group, and then I'm like, okay, let's get to Romans 2. And when I got to Romans 2, I felt like a truck fell on top of me, really.
This was about the most convicting thing I've read in a long, long time that just hit squarely here, just boom, right? And so that's why I really wanted to get here today, hoping that if it did it to me, that it would probably do it to others amongst us here as well.
So basically after Paul finishes off talking about the pagan in Chapter 1 and gives us a good description of the pagan world, he basically turns his guns on the good religious person, the good religious Jew, or the self-righteous moralist in Chapter 2.
And these are really the folks that most would say, yeah, they're good guys, right? And unfortunately, these are also probably the folks that would be tempted to think that they're better than the other guy, right?
That there's something in them that's good, and they can look at the pagan person and say, gee, look at how bad they are, right? And, man, we have to be careful not to fall into that thinking. It's so easy to do that.
So the question is, do you think that this passage that was written originally for the religious Jew and the self-righteous person at the time in Rome, do you think that would apply to the Christians today?
It's like, yeah, I think it would. I think it would, especially the way we hear the term Christian thrown around, right? I mean, I think I've read that the majority of Americans claim to be Christian, right?
Do you think Romans 2 would be a good thing? I think it would. Let's read it here real quick, Romans 2, verses 1 through 5. It says, therefore, you have no excuse, every one of you who passes judgment.
For in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself. For you who judge practice the same things. And we know that the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who practice such things. But do you suppose this, old man, that when you pass judgment on those who practice such things and do the same yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God?
Or do you think lightly of the riches of his kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.
So we see here in verse 1 that the first word that we see is therefore, right? Now, how many have taken Abendroth's Hermeneutics 101 here, right? If you've taken that, right, you'll remember, or I remember this part of the course at least, that therefore is really a power word in the New Testament.
In Paul's writing, it's particularly a power word. When he says therefore, right, brace yourself, because he's about to say something either really good or really bad, but he's about to say something very substantive after he says therefore.
And basically what he's saying here is that in light of what was just said, right, therefore, in light of what was just said, remember what I just said, right? Try to remember my condemnation of the pagan.
Remember back then all those bad things that I said about how they're rejecting God, they're suppressing the truth of God, they're rebelling against God? And maybe you can remember it like this. You probably just said amen to that, right?
Okay, yeah, I got it. I remember that now. And he says therefore what? He says therefore, he says you have no excuse. Every one of you who passes judgment, for in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself, for you who judge practice the same things.
It's like, wow, what gives here? We were doing okay, weren't we, riding Romans 1 and saying, yeah, he's talking about the pagan world, he's talking about these people around me, he's talking about the guy in the headlines here that I just read.
And now you're saying therefore I have no excuse, right? Paul's about to lose his audience here, right? I mean you can hear the protest going on, can't you? It's like what are you talking about, Paul?
It's like you're talking about the pagan here? I'm not an adulteress, I'm not a murderer. It's like what do you mean I have no excuse? What do you mean, you know? What's Paul doing here? I mean basically what Paul was saying is that in and of yourself, it's like you're no different than that pagan guy.
Don't think you are for a minute, right? Outside of Christ, it's like we have absolutely nothing to boast in. That is so clear in the scriptures, and boy, as life goes on, I can see that more and more, and I struggle with that more and more.
But if that's one principle that we want to take out of here, it's that, right? That we have nothing going for us whatsoever outside of Christ. Read Romans 1, read my headlines, right? Read about the pagan, and you're reading about Guido, right?
But you can hear the protest, right? That I'm a good Baptist, I'm a good Catholic. How many have heard that? Like when you ask somebody, like, are you going to heaven? Are you really justified in the eyes of the Lord?
Yeah, why? I'm a good Baptist. I'm a good Catholic, right? But even protesting to the point of saying I'm not a murderer, right? I'm not an adulterer, right? It's like the words come out of my mouth, and then you can kind of hear the words of our Lord in the back of your head saying on his sermon in the mount, right?
You don't think you're a murderer? It's like he says, if you hate your brother, you're as good as a murderer, right? You look the wrong way at a woman, you're as good as an adulteress, right? Even heavier than that, at the end of that chapter, is something that our Lord said that really gets lost in a lot of circles, right?
He basically says to be perfect. He's commanding us to be perfect. It's not just not having the bad thought. It's like, be perfect as my heavenly Father is perfect, right? So we really have a problem here.
But is Paul really saying that I'm just like that pagan out there? Yeah, outside of Christ, that's exactly what he's saying, right? We hear a lot about judgment these days, right? Now, is he telling the religious person and telling the Christian not to judge in this scripture?
No, not really. He's not telling them to judge. And as a matter of fact, what Paul is saying is that your judgment really condemns you because by virtue of the fact that you're judging that pagan, right?
And your judgment happens to be correct, right? We just read at the end of Chapter 1, it says, and although they know the ordinance of God that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but they give hearty approval to those who practice them, right?
It's not that their judgment was wrong. It's that they very conveniently forgot to apply that judgment to themselves. And the real problem that they have now is that unlike the pagan, the pagan who did not have the Old Testament law of God, he had the law of God written in his heart, and he had the evidence of God written on his heart, and he's guilty of that.
He's guilty of violating that law, right? But unlike the pagan, the religious Jew at this point had the Old Testament law of God, and it looks like he even knew it, didn't he? He applied it so well to the pagan.
And his problem was that he didn't apply it to himself, okay? And what should our response be when we look at Romans 1, right? Our response should be, it's like, wow, it's like the pagans out there, that's really bad.
When we go to Chapter 2, we should be reminded that our response to Chapter 1 should be, I'm just like that pagan, right? We hear a lot about the teaching of our Lord where you had the Pharisee, that he was praying to God, that thank you, God, that I'm not like that guy over there, right?
When really our prayer should be, God help us, I'm exactly like that guy over there. It's like, it could be me chasing that guy with a battery-powered saw on the subway or something, right? It's a scary thought.
So in terms of our justification, what is it? When we say that we're not like that pagan, it's like that's no justification at all. In light of the command that God gave us, that Christ gave us to be perfect.
And we see here in verse 2 that Paul is very, just so cleverly that he's agreeing with the reality. He hits him with this body shot that says that you have no excuse. And then he says, look, he says in verse 2, he says, and we both know, right?
We know that the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who practice such things. And he says, but do you suppose this, old man, that when you pass judgment on those who practice such things and do the same yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God?
It's kind of a scary thing. I see the clock ticking. That's a scary thing, too. I'm way behind here. And I don't want to, Pastor Steve warned me not to cut too far into coffee time. So I don't want to do that either.
So I guess I'm going to have to get an incomplete on Romans chapter 2. I want to end, like I said, we've got to get back up the sine wave here. I want to end by reading chapter 3, because that's really where it's at, isn't it?
We've got to leave with the gospel. If you don't quite get Romans chapter 2 or whatever, or chapter 1, the gist of it is basically that you need the Lord, that you cannot justify yourself. In and of yourself, you're sinful.
And you need somebody righteous to advocate to you and to save you. And so I'm going to have to close here just by reading Romans 3, 21 through 28. I'm sorry that I'm long-winded. Verse 21 says,. But now apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been manifest, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe.
For there is no distinction. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith.
This was to demonstrate his righteousness because, in the forbearance of God, he passed over the sins previously committed. For the demonstration, I say, of his righteousness at the present time, so that he would be just in the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
Where there is boasting, it is excluded. By what kind of law? Of works? No, but by a law of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. This really is the crux of Romans.
It's the crux of the gospel, isn't it? We have no righteousness in and of ourselves. We have to rely totally on the righteousness of another. And the great thing about it is that this righteousness is available to anybody who believes.
As Paul said in Chapter 1, that this gospel, it is the power of God unto salvation. It's only in this gospel that those described in Romans Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 and at the beginning of Chapter 3, that folks like them and folks like me can only be cleansed and only be declared righteous in the eyes of God through this propitiation that God provided.
I'm going to have to leave it there today, but this is what the gospel is all about. Number one, if you've not been cleansed by this incredible sacrifice, run to the cross today. Don't put it off. If you have, remember that your cleansing rests totally in this, not in anything good in and of yourself.
Let's be careful the way that we look at unbelievers, that we really want to proclaim this gospel to them and pray to God that he cleanses them the same way that he cleansed you. All right, let me close in prayer.
Thanks. Heavenly Father, we thank you again for your word, Lord. As David said, it is a light unto our feet, Lord, a lamp unto our way, Lord God. Help us to be diligent doers of your word, Lord, and help us to study it harder, Lord, and help us to listen to it proclaimed and prepare our hearts also, Lord, for the remainder of the service today, Lord.
And we just thank you again and we'll be careful to give you all the praise in Jesus' name. Amen.