Sunday Sermon: No One Does Good (Romans 3:10-12)

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.

Well good morning.

Good morning.

The Bad News in Romans and the Need for the Gospel

I feel it necessary to continue to inform you that in our study of the book of Romans, we are still in the bad news section. So the message won't be terribly uplifting for the majority of it. But just to remind you that this is all pointing us toward the gospel, which we are building toward in the section that we've been in studying in the book of Romans.

So let's come back to our study in Romans chapter three is where we are today. If you would open your Bible please to Romans three, and we're looking at that section where Paul brings his argument home so that his readers may understand that none are righteous.

No one is righteous. Romans chapter three, I'm beginning in verse 10 and we'll read through verse 18 in honor of the word of the king. Would you please stand once again, Romans chapter three, beginning in verse 10 and reading through verse 18, hear the word of the Lord.

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. You may be seated as we pray. Heavenly father, as we come to your word this morning, there is something of a bias in us that we want to think of every person as being generally good.

And we want to think of people that way because most likely we think of ourselves that way. I'm not a bad person. I'm not Hitler. I haven't committed genocide and grading one another on a curve. We tend to see ourselves and therefore projecting that onto others as better than we really are.

But the standard by which we will be judged in the end won't be this grading on a curve. We will be judged by the standard of God's righteousness. And so as we look into the Scriptures today and therefore through the Scriptures look even into ourselves, may we see by nature who we really are.

And the nature that we have been made in in Christ Jesus. The new nature that we have been given. That we might seek after God and desire you and your ways and live according to the things that you have instructed of us.

Live according to the way of Christ and what he has directed and what he has given. Lord, as we read here in this passage, together we have become worthless. But in Christ Jesus we've been made worthy.

And so please, Lord, see in us today not some righteousness that we think that we have perfected or attained or acquired by our own deeds and our own merits, but see in us today the righteousness of Christ.

And may we come to understand that as well. That we may live in a way that is worthy of the calling that we have received in Christ.

Jesus.

It is in the name of Jesus that we pray and all God's people said, Amen. Surely you remember the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego from Daniel chapter 3. This great Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II had set up this golden image, a statue is the way that we often picture it, which was 90 feet high.

And the order was given that whenever the music played, everyone was supposed to bow down and worship that image. Well, as you know, there were three Jewish men, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, by their Hebrew names, who refused to bow to that image and this incensed the king of Babylon.

So he called them to appear before him and he said, Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the golden image that I have set.

Up?

Now if you are ready, when you hear the sound of the music, to fall down and worship the image that I have made, well and good. But if you do not worship, you shall immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace and who is the god who will deliver you out of my hands?

And the men replied, O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you on this matter. If this be so, our god whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king.

But even if he doesn't, be it known to you, O king, that we will still not serve your gods nor worship the golden image that you have set up. And Daniel 3 .19 says that the countenance of the king's face fell and he was so filled with fury that he ordered that the furnace be heated seven times hotter than usual.

So hot that it killed the men who threw Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego inside. Not only this, but Nebuchadnezzar ordered that his mightiest men would be the ones who would bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and throw them in this furnace.

He was willing to sacrifice some of his greatest warriors just to kill these men who feared God instead of Nebuchadnezzar. Well as you know the story, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego did not die. In fact, Nebuchadnezzar himself saw that there was a fourth man inside the furnace, one who looked like the son of the gods, he said.

And when Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego stepped out of the furnace, they did not even have the smell of fire upon them. Now it's interesting the level of detail given to us in scripture of just how enraged Nebuchadnezzar was because these men would not bow down and worship the image that he had made.

Of course, the king's fury was not at these men exactly, but at God himself. Remember Nebuchadnezzar's statement, what God is there to save you out of my hand? His heating the fiery furnace to this unreasonable level of intensity was an outward manifestation of just how infuriated he was about this whole thing.

His own mightiest warriors could not stand the intensity of the flames. But all of this was to demonstrate that no matter how fierce this mighty king was in his anger, God's mercy and his deliverance were greater.

His love and his faithfulness toward these men was no match for the powerful king of Babylon. Scripture will often give us these contrasts so that we will see no matter how great the sinfulness of man, the loving kindness and the mercy and the grace of our God is so much more.

As we sing about in our hymns, grace, grace, God's grace, grace that is greater than all our sin. As we have been going through these first two and a half chapters of Romans, Paul has been ensuring that his readers see that all men are under condemnation, Jew or Greek.

This started in chapter one, verse 18, and continues up through chapter three, verse 20, which we'll get to in a couple of weeks. Last week, we read this statement in verse nine. We have already charged that all both Jews and Greeks are under sin.

And then in verses 10 through 18, Paul is going to bring his point home with some of the most descriptive verses in the Psalms that speak of the totality of our sin. This is shown to us here in Romans chapter three for five reasons.

Number one, so that we will see the universality of man's sinful condition, that it affects every single person. No one is able to stand before God and declare his own goodness or his own righteousness.

Number two, so that we will see this problem is ancient. It goes all the way back to the beginning of man. Number three, so that we will see that theologically, this argument is nothing new. Remember that last week we read of how Paul defended himself against the charge of teaching new heresies.

And here Paul is saying, no, scripture has always been quite clear about our sin problem and exactly who it affects. Number four, so that we will see that sin affects every single part of us. Not only that sin is universal, it's total in every man.

Not any part of us, of you or me, is unaffected by sin. It affects all of us and every part of us. And finally, number five, so that ultimately we will see that the ultimate solution to our sin problem is Jesus, who is greater than all our sin.

Paul doesn't state it here in these nine verses, but this is ultimately leading to that presentation of the gospel. That though all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, we are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus to be received by faith.

We need to understand just how bad our badness is, so that we will see and understand how good God's goodness is. We're still in the bad news portion of Romans, but this is setting us up for the good news.

Now in these nine verses here, I'm going to divide this up into two portions, which we're going to split into two weeks. So this is part one of how none are righteous, and then next week we'll have part two.

This week, we're concentrating mainly on verses 10 through 12, deepening our understanding of the universality of our sin. And then next week, we're looking at verses 13 to 18 to see the totality of our sin, how it affects every single part of us.

We'll take some time toward the end of this sermon as well to reflect upon what we have read and even make some applications as we go. So let's come back to verse 10, if you have your Bible open. And I'll remind you again that this is right after Paul has said, if you look back up to verse 9, we have charged that all, everyone, Jew or Greek, is under sin.

And in case anyone is still confused about this point that Paul has been laying out for two chapters, he goes straight to the scriptures to drive the point home. As it is written, none are righteous. No, not one.

Now we have in verses 10 through 18, a reference to one, two, three, four, five, six psalms. Seven though, if you consider that the first reference is actually found in two psalms. Keep in mind, these are psalms that speak about just how bad we are, right?

And if you remember that the psalms are song lyrics. So it's as if Paul is saying, guys, we've written songs about this. Psalms 14 and 53 both begin the same way. Here are the first three verses of Psalm 14.

The fool says in his heart, there is no God. They are corrupt. They do abominable deeds. There is none who does good. The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God.

They have all turned aside. Together they have become corrupt. There is none who does good. Not even one. Here are the first three verses of Psalm 53. The fool says in his heart, there is no God. They are corrupt, doing abominable iniquity.

There is none who does good. God looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all fallen away. Together they have become corrupt.

There is none who does good. Not even one. In case you're unaware where we are on the calendar, April Fool's Day is coming up on Tuesday. Beware of any practical jokes anyone might try to play on you on that day and take all the news that you're going to hear with a grain of salt.

I hate this day. Because it's like, everyone's a liar day. You cannot believe anything that anyone tells you. A few years ago, a pastor acquaintance of mine used April 1st to announce that he was now convinced of the Paido-Baptist position.

And his church is now a Paido-Baptist church, though they are not really part of a presbytery. They're just an independent Paido-Baptist church. It wasn't an April Fool's joke. He really had switched sides of the Baptist debate.

But because he did this on April Fool's Day, I recently said to him, you know, I know it's been years now, but I'm still in denial that you've become Paido-Baptist. I've never seen any footage of you baptizing a baby.

And even if you had, I still think this is a setup and you're joking because you broke this news on April Fool's Day. It's just the longest running April Fool's joke that he's doing now. On social media on this day, there will be Christians who will post Psalm 14 .1 and Psalm 53 .1 and they will brand April Fool's Day, Atheist Day.

Why?

Because the fool has said in his heart, there is no God. Now, while these verses certainly would be an indictment against atheism, they would be considered fools in this sense. That's not really the group of people that these two Psalms are speaking of.

They're talking about anyone who in his heart has said, there is no God. Outwardly, they may profess that there is a God. Inwardly, they profess there is no God. As if there is no God who sees everything that I do.

There is no God to whom I owe my absolute and total allegiance. There is no ultimate judge who is going to hold me accountable for my thoughts and actions. There is no God who is angry at my sin and will pour out his wrath on the unrighteous.

That's foolish. These two Psalms are not talking about atheists. They're talking about everyone. Every human being who by his default rebellious state has said in his heart that there is.

No God.

He is a fool for denying the very obvious reality that there is a God. Remember back to Romans 1, 18 to 20, that the evidence of God is seen in all that has been made, but man suppresses the truth with his unrighteousness.

And as we read in verse 22, claiming to be wise, they became fools. Friends, you and I are fools every time we sin. Do you think that God does not know? Do you think that God doesn't see? That it doesn't offend him?

As we read in Psalm 94, 7 through 9, it is the wicked who say, the Lord does not see. The God of Jacob does not perceive. Understand, O dullest of people, fools, when will you be wise? He who planted the ear, does he not hear?

He who formed the eye, does he not see? And by the way, there's a band called Sons of Korah who does a fantastic rendition of this Psalm. It's very simply called Psalm 94. You can find it on YouTube, and I would highly commend it to you.

Back to Romans 3 here, verses 10 through 12, as it is written, none is righteous. No, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. Now, as you look over these verses, just 10, 11, and 12, how many times do you see none or no one or no, not one come up in these verses?

You see it one, two, three, four, five, six times. You think this Psalm is trying to make a point to us here? Now, the heading is this. None is righteous. No, not one. There is none who does right. Specifically, there's no one who does what God says is right.

Now, as we've already considered previously in chapter two, everyone has an understanding of there being a right and a wrong because, as Paul argued, the work of the law is written on every person's heart.

Not the law itself, but the work of the law. Everyone has a moral standard of some kind, but that standard has become corrupt by our sin nature. If a person does something good incidentally, by nature, they do what the law requires, even though they do not have the law.

Paul said in chapter two, verse 14, it doesn't make them righteous. It just means a broken clock is right twice a day. I don't know if you've heard the story of the widow who lived next door to an atheist, and she would come out on her porch every morning to praise God before the entire neighborhood.

Lord, thank you for this day. Thank you for giving me breath in my lungs today. Thank you for the salvation that you have given to me in Jesus Christ. I can do nothing apart from you. And there was this atheist.

He would come out every morning about the same time to get his newspaper. Back when people got newspapers. I don't know if you still receive a newspaper or not, but he comes out to get his paper. He hears this woman every morning.

Drove him crazy. God, thank you for giving me life today. Breath in my lungs. Thank you for the salvation you've given me in Jesus Christ. He heard it over and over again every single morning. And he would also hear this woman who would come out and say, just as God taught us to pray in the Lord's prayer, give me this day my daily bread.

Lord, I don't know where my next meal is going to come from, but I know that you are going to provide it for me. Give me today, God, as you love your daughter in Christ. The atheist said, I'm going to show her that there's not really a God there.

I'm going to provide her meal for her. So he goes to the store and he buys groceries enough to make up a great meal. Even sticks a little recipe book in there. And he comes up to the front porch and he sets it there on the porch and he rings the bell and he runs back over to his porch to wait and see what's going to happen.

And as the woman comes out on that morning to once again give praise to God, she about trips over that bag of groceries. See, she sees it right there. Her entire disposition changes. She goes, oh, Lord, you have brought me groceries today.

I did not know where my next meal was going to come from. But look, you have provided it for me. How great you are, God. And that atheist jumps out and goes, ha, that was not God.

That was me.

I went to the store. I got you groceries. There is no God. It was me who provided for you. The woman looked at him and kind of smiled and chuckled to herself. She once again bowed her head and raised her hands.

And she said, oh, Lord God, you have provided a meal for me today and you made the devil pay for it. As Lorraine Bettner wrote in his work on the reform doctrine of predestination, the inability under which man labors is not an inability to exercise volition, but an inability to be willing to exercise holy volition.

In other words, it's not that man is unwilling to be good, but rather that he has no inherent desire to be good in the way that God says he must be good. We might, from a human perspective, say, oh, he's such a good person.

He bought groceries for that lady next door because we like to grade on a curve. But what was that man's motivation for buying groceries for that woman? To try to tell her that God did not exist. It was in rebellion against God.

Not out of affection for God or even for his next door neighbor. Mankind, as I said in my prayer this morning, is not going to be graded on a curve. We are judged according to God's standard of righteousness.

And it's by God's standard that it is written, none are righteous, not even one. Now, from here, the psalmist, as Paul quotes him, shows how corrupt man has become in these five verses. Again, we're talking about the universality of sin.

That it affects every single person. Every single man on earth has become corrupt. And it is shown in these five ways. His doctrine, his drive, his direction, his desirability, and his duty. Okay, so first of all, man's doctrine.

No one understands. Remember what we read in Psalm 14, the Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand. John Gill explains, man thinks of himself as a very wise and understanding creature, though he is born a very ignorant one.

It must be allowed that natural men have some understanding of things natural. Civil and moral. Though there is none that understands even these as Adam did. But then they have no understanding of things spiritual.

No spiritual knowledge of God. No true sense of themselves, their sin, or their misery. Nor do they truly know the way of salvation by Christ. Nor do they have any experience of the work of the Holy Spirit of God upon their souls.

Nor any experimental knowledge of the doctrines of the gospel. No man can understand these of himself by mere strength of reason and light of nature. Nor can even a spiritual man fully understand them in this life.".

So what is it that man doesn't understand? He does not understand God or his ways. And it's not simply that man doesn't know, but even that he doesn't want to know. That is expressed in the second part.

Number two. Second is man's drive. His pursuits. The second clause of verse 11. No one seeks for God. Whatever man is after, God is not on that list. This is, of course, the phrase that flies in the face of what has become known as the seeker-driven movement.

This is that pragmatic strategy in modern evangelicalism to create a church environment or a philosophy of worship that appeals to someone they call the seeker. Those men and women in a culture searching for meaning who are seeking after God, though they may not know it is God that they are seeking after.

The trouble is, the Bible tells us that person doesn't exist. No one seeks for God. But that hasn't stopped the vast majority of churches from filling up their church services with worldliness in an attempt to appeal to this elusive creature.

As Easter will soon be upon us, you may see videos of churches who had Star Wars-themed Easter services. Or Easter egg drops from a helicopter. Or they offered free giveaways and door prizes to visitors.

Something that's been popular for a lot of these churches to do during the summer is have a Summer at the Movies series where they will do a series of sermons and each one of those sermons will be themed after a popular movie.

In one of these sermons that I watched a portion of, the pastors dressed like characters from Toy Story. Now, I'm not just standing here and saying, look how silly they are, because I'm one who has had to repent of this very thing.

I was on the planning committees of some of these churches, devising ways that we could appeal to the seeker-sensitive unbeliever. And one of the chiefest of ways that churches do this today is through their music.

Now, I have a cousin who used to be in the worship band of a very popular megachurch. If I told you the name of that church and who their pastor was, you would recognize it immediately. He once sent me a video of the band performing what was at that time a very popular rock song.

He was very proud of it. And indeed, it was a tremendous performance. It was a very professional cover of this song. And I said to him, that sounds fantastic. Like, were you playing this during soundcheck or something or during rehearsal?

And he said, no, this was the first song of our worship service. We always open with a song that's current or popular to attract people and get them interested especially people, he said, who are searching for God.

My friends, the Sunday worship service in the gathering of the saints, this that we are doing here this morning, this is for God. It is not for unbelievers. We are to minister to unbelievers. We do that through evangelism.

We do that through maybe acts of charity or service that we may extend to every person. As said in Galatians 6, as you have opportunity, show charity to everyone, but especially to the household of faith.

All of those things, though, take place outside the church. And we may have many unbelievers that come in here. I'm certainly not screening people at the door. Whoa, you can't be in here, get out. But we should share the gospel with them, not cater to their worldly interests.

And understand that I'm not bashing the heart of these people who might organize a church service in this way to attract who they think is the seeker. There's good intentions in their heart. We would rather have them be in here than out there.

We want to find a way to bring them in so that we may show them the love of Jesus. But is it the way that God has said? We are to have worship such as this, or even reach out to those who are unbelieving.

As Charles Spurgeon once said, a time will come when instead of shepherds feeding the sheep, the church will have clowns entertaining the goats. Man doesn't seek for God. He is corrupt in his drive and seeks for ways to get away from God.

A third corruption is man's direction. So his drive is corrupt, and even the direction he's going is corrupt. All have turned aside. They have turned aside from God. But remember that our heading was none is righteous.

So more specifically, he has turned aside from the way of righteousness as God defines it. He wants to live by his own righteousness, not by what God has said. And like I said before, we all know unbelievers whom we might call good people, but their orientation, his direction is not toward God.

So whatever righteousness he has, it doesn't come from God. It's actually self-righteousness. And as we will see later in Romans 14, 23, whatever does not proceed from faith is sin. Years ago, a friend of mine in my church that I pastored in Kansas brought a friend of hers to me for me to share the gospel with her.

And I knew who this woman was. It wasn't a stranger that I had never met before. She'd even come to our church and attended several services. She was a very sweet, kind woman. Her husband was in the military, so he was deployed.

And I saw how faithful and adoring she was of her husband. They had a little girl together. She was such a good mother to her girl. And her disposition was just, it seemed to be naturally cheerful. She was a pleasant person to be around.

And I had to look this woman in the eye and tell her, you're a sinner going to hell. That's not easy. When I would have this conversation and I would take her through the law and I would ask her, have you ever told a lie before?

And she was so sweet and so honest. Yes, yes, I've told lies. What do you call a person who tells lies? You call that person a liar. I said, have you ever killed anybody? It felt like a completely silly question to ask this woman.

No, I've never killed anybody before. Have you ever felt hatred in your heart for somebody or called them names? And she said, well, yes, I've done that. And I pointed to her that Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5, if you've even called somebody a fool, you are guilty of the fires of hell.

She said, have you ever used God's name as a curse word? She said, well, I have to admit that I've done that before too. And I said, God takes that very seriously. It's one of the Ten Commandments. You will not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

Or even say you love God when you really don't have any desire to honor Him. And so I had to look this sweet, kind woman in the face and tell her, you're a lying, murdering, blasphemer at heart. Hard to do with somebody that I thought so sweet and had such a great reputation.

But you want to know, despite the human sensitivity that I had, that human tendency to want to go, no, you're really... I don't mean to hurt your feelings. You're so nice and sweet. That was what my flesh was saying.

But I was obedient to the Word and told her what God's Word said. And I tell you, friends, she was broken right there.

And wept tears.

And came to me later and said, I'm a sinner who needs a Savior. Please baptize me. And I was pleased to baptize her before that congregation. And then what happened to her after that was she began to realize, my husband's not a believer.

My husband's going to hell. How do I show him that he needs Christ? And that was a different work of labor going with her through that. She was dealing with that and struggling with what the Bible says, even about people that she so deeply loved and wanted them to be saved and have faith in Jesus Christ.

We understand what the Bible says about these things, not what we in our natural sensibilities want to say about ourselves or about other people. As it says in the book of Proverbs, it says it twice, as a matter of fact, that every man thinks he's right in his own eyes.

But as it also says in Proverbs, there is a way that seems right to a man, but it's in this the way of death. And it's only by faith in Jesus Christ that we are saved. A fourth way that these passages reveal our corruption.

The psalmist speaks here of the corruption of man's desirability. What's the next line? Together they have become worthless. Now, as I've expressed to you in previous weeks, it is not that God made us worthless.

He did not. The creation account states to us very plainly that God looked at the man and the woman and all that he had made, and behold, it was very good in his eyes. But mankind in pursuit of his sin and in rebellion against God and his commandments, it's in these things that we and all of us have made ourselves worthless.

We are the ones who took the image of God that we were made in and we desecrated it with our sin as if we could have done the same thing to God himself, given the opportunity. I cannot begin to tell you the number of sermons that I've sat through from my youth all the way up to adulthood that were centered around how wonderful I am.

God loves you just the way you are. He loves your beautiful face. He doesn't love the sinner just the way he is. Let me be perfectly blunt. God hates the sinner the way he is. Psalm 5 -5, He hates all evildoers.

Psalm 7 -11, God is a righteous judge who feels indignation toward the sinner every day. Psalm 11 -5, His soul hates the wicked. Psalm 21 -9, the Lord will swallow them up in His wrath and fire will consume them.

My friends, He doesn't do that to sinners He loves just the way they are. Proverbs 6 -16 -19, there are six things the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to Him, and then the proverb describes seven kinds of people the Lord hates.

There was an interview with a false teacher, a charlatan. He does false miracles and claims that they're the miracles of God. It's not difficult to discern that. And in this interview, he argued that the cross of Christ shows us just how valuable we are.

The cross isn't just the revelation of my sin, White said, it's the revealing of my value. Something underneath that sin must have been of great value for heaven to go bankrupt to get me back. Jesus paid such a high price for me upon that tree, and when I see that, I see my value.

He gave an example of the amount of money that someone would be willing to pay for a car. In the world, if you're going to buy a car and someone says, hey, I want you to give me $150 ,000 for this car that's really only worth $3 ,000, you'd never do it because it's not worth it.

Well, if in the world, what's paid for something determines the value of that thing, then that's what heaven did to purchase me. That makes me of great value to the Father. See, we've said that we are worthless, and that right there is where I would cut Todd White off.

And I would say, right, because that's what the Bible says. Together, we have become worthless, every one of us. Understand this, my friends, you are not worth dying for. God was not obligated to give his son for you.

As we have already read in Romans 3, God could have judged us in our sin as we all deserve, and he would have been completely just in doing so. As we read in verse 4, let God be true, though every man were a liar.

And as David was quoted from Psalm 51, that you may be justified in your words and prevail when you are judged. Remember, though, what we have previously heard from Ephesians 2, we were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

What does that mean? We were by our nature deserving of the wrath of God. But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our sins and our transgressions, he made us alive together with Christ.

By grace, you have been saved. And we read last year in our study of Titus, Titus 3, 3, for we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.

What a worthy person. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God, our Savior appeared, he saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy. My eighth page is right here.