After Darkness, Light - [Romans 3]

I'm quite confident that people love the idea that God knows everything, God's omniscient. But I'm not so sure they like it that He's immutably omniscient. It would be one thing to think, well, God knows everything, but those secret things that I've done, maybe He wasn't omniscient at that time.

The things that you've done are thought, skeletons that are in each of your closets and mine. Maybe God wasn't on the throne at that particular moment. Maybe He wasn't omniscient, but the thing is, He knows everything.

He's never learned anything. He knows every person, and on judgment day, knowing the skeletons we have in our closets and the sins we have committed, who will stand? God is holy, and God is immutably holy.

He's always holy. So how do we, sinful people, stand before a thrice holy God? How do we get rid of our own sins? How much work do we have to do to somehow make atonement? Let's turn our Bibles to Romans chapter 3 and find out that even though we were sinful, God's grace is greater.

The Centerpiece of Christianity in Romans 3

Romans chapter 3, chapter by chapter through the book of Romans, we're a little faster in Romans than we were in 1 Corinthians, 16 weeks, 16 chapters. Maybe my all-time favorite chapter, but I want to reserve that maybe for in two weeks because I think Romans 5 might be my favorite.

But here we come to the centerpiece of Christianity, both the bad news and the good news, and if the bad news isn't that bad, the good news isn't, well, that good. F .F. Bruce said, there's no telling what may happen when people begin to study the book of Romans.

There's no telling what may happen. It's been my prayer that if there are people here today who do not have their sins forgiven, who think they're hiding underneath their baptism, they're being good, they're religiosity, done more good than bad, that I want God to expose you to your need of righteousness and then God would grant you the righteousness found in Christ Jesus alone.

And if you're a Christian today, my prayer has been for you that you'd be strengthened. Romans 16 says Christians get strengthened with the gospel. The gospel isn't something, well, we already know all that.

Jesus died on the cross and was raised from the dead, and we move past it. No, the gospel is what strengthens Christians, and I don't know if you have big trials in your life, but if you have big trials, you need a big view of God, don't you?

If you have small trials, okay, a little kind of pet God might work, but if you have a large trial and if you don't have one now, there would be one coming soon, there will be one. You need a big view of God.

What's happened in Romans so far? Chapter one, two, and most of three is all about men and women having no righteousness before God, have nothing to offer God except sin and a lot of it. And what Paul is trying to do is to say, until you realize your problem, you don't seek a remedy.

You don't go to the doctor when you're feeling well, and the great physician, you think you're self, I have no need of him until you realize that whether I'm a Gentile, chapter one, I need righteousness.

Or if I'm a chosen person of God, that is to say chosen nation of God person, a Jew, you need righteousness as well. Chapter three, our outline for today, let me give you three no's, N-O, three no's that I want to try to, by the words power, weld to your mind, fuse to your mind, attach to your mind so you don't forget your sin and then the savior of that sin.

No Objection Against God Holds Water

Three no's, it'll be beneficial for you to understand the book of Romans chapter three. Weld number one, no objection against God holds water. That is to say, all objections that man gives to God about life and death, heaven and hell, God's truth are all smokescreens.

Specifically, let's look at Romans chapter three, one through eight, Paul is continuing to talk to the Jewish person, and he does it by a very lively style. How do you write in such a way to engage the audience and have the audience kind of sit on your shoulder, listening to you?

And so he's writing primarily to Gentiles, and so how do you get Gentiles to be engaged when Paul's addressing Jews? He uses this kind of dialogue, it's actually called a diatribe. You'll see lots of questions, lots of answers.

And Paul is anticipating Jewish objections, and then he's annihilating those objections. And you can just think for a second, if you're Jewish and you say to yourself, I've been circumcised, that was Romans chapter two.

I'm in the nation of God. I've been chosen by God. Out of all the nations, God has chosen us. And people hide behind their nationality. People hide behind other things too, don't they? They hide behind religious stuff.

I hope no one here hides behind their religiosity and says, you know, on judgment day when I stand before God, I'll hide under my baptism. I was a member, my parents attended the church. I went to Oana, I got that award in Oana, and we cloak ourselves with religiosity.

And Paul wants to expose that. Verse one, then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? See these rhetorical questions? What advantage do I have for being a Jew? If you just annihilated my Jewishness as a means to please God in chapter two, then what advantage has the Jew?

Paul, you're undervaluing our heritage. There's a good heritage as a nation we're chosen. But each individual Jew has to stand before God on his or her own merits. And we know those merits are sinful.

So they need righteousness found from God. What advantage has the Jew? Specifically, you know, all those people that run around and worship trees and stuff, those Gentiles and those really bad people in chapter one.

You mean we're no better than they are? There's no distinction. Paul, you're you're smudging and blurring the lines between Jews and Gentiles. How could you? What's the benefit of circumcision? Verse two, much in every way.

Great. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. The Jews were the ones who received the Bible, definite article, the Old Testament, the channel for the truth of God. When God speaks, he spoke through one nation, the Jews.

That's an advantage. And now just when you start to question God, it's like when people say, OK, God, if you're all powerful and all good, why is there suffering in the world? Somehow bringing God to the to the bar of justice, to the dock in the courtroom.

That kind of perverted thinking is seen here as Paul unravels the Jewish questioner. What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? God chose the Jews. Now the Jews are being unfaithful.

So I guess God chooses people and then they're unfaithful. God really didn't choose rightly, did he? He didn't follow up on his promise. He didn't follow up all the way to the end. How can the Jewish people have failed from their high spot and still we insist that God's faithful?

So you're running into bad ground when you start questioning God like that. The people are saying, you know what? God made a promise to the Jews and I'm included whether I believe or not. You have to be careful when you talk like that.

What does Paul say? This is the toughest connotation of impossibility found in the Bible. By no means. No way. Romans chapter 3 verse 4, by no means. You can't talk like that. You're going to say God's unfaithful because some Jewish people don't believe?

By no means. Anybody here has the King James Version? It says what? God forbid. Let God be true. Do you notice in your text? Let God be true, though everyone were a liar. And then Paul to the Jews quotes Psalm 51 as it is written, as it stands written.

I want you to think properly, Paul says to the Jewish people away with such a thought. Why? That you, God, may be justified in your words and prevail when you are judged. Verse 5, you can see how this logic keeps going.

The Jewish interlocutor says, but if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what should we say? Oh, I know what we'll do. Let's cut ourselves so we can show everyone how great our body heals itself.

You know, the body is a wonderful thing and it can heal itself. And so let's just make a lot of lacerations on our bodies so we can go around and say, look, our body heals itself. What they're doing here is not that, but it's similar logic.

Let's see. God judges sin. Let's sin a lot. So God shows his judgment of sin. That'll work. God likes to show his judgment. We like to sin match made in heaven. God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us.

By the way, this shouldn't even be talked like you shouldn't even talk like this. I speak in a human way because that's not a divine way. It's a fallen way. It's a sinful way. You ought not to talk that way.

I'll sin a lot. So God judges that God's put on display for his judgment. That's the wrong way to talk. That's how a human talks. I'll be unfaithful. So God shows his faithfulness. Fallen man argues that way.

Speaking in human terms. Verse six, he says the same thing again. By no means. Banish the thought, God forbid, for then how could God judge the world? The Jews knew that God would judge the world one day.

And they knew that judgment would be just judgment. So how can God be a just judge if he's not a just judge to the Jews? He justly judges the world, but not the Jews. Paul says, no way. How would he be fit to judge the world?

Chapter three, verse seven, it says in Romans three. But if through my lie, God's truth abounds to his glory. See the same kind of logic. Why am I still being condemned as a sinner? Hey, I lie a lot. God truthfully judges.

Helps out God to show himself. This is ridiculous thinking. This is wrong thinking. I'll do evil so good might come. It's wrong thinking. And why not, verse eight, do evil that good may come? Paul cuts to the chase and listen to how firm he is.

As some people slanderously charge us with saying. No explanation. Their condemnation is just. You want to sin freely so God can show himself? That's absurd. And Paul with a machete just cuts it down.

Their condemnation is just. Hack that thing down. He doesn't even stoop to answer that false accusation. Number two. Well, number two to help you understand Romans three. The first one is no objection can hold water before God.

No One Keeps All of God's Law

Number two found in Romans three, verses nine through 20. No one keeps all of God's law. No one keeps all of God's law. Not Jew, not Gentile. Not you, not me. Still, it's dark here. It's foreboding. It's terrifying.

We're not going to get really any good news until verse 21. Verse nine. See the questions again. What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. Individually, no, you're not any better. Because you need a righteousness from outside yourself.

For we have already charged that all. Charge is a legal word. It's a court word. We're already charged. I charge you with sin. Both Jews and Greeks are under sin. Under sin means dominated by sin. Like a straitjacket's put on you.

You can't get out of it. You're under someone's control. You can't get out. Jews and Gentiles are under sin. Pagans, religious people. People who worship their ancestors and Baptists. Both are sinful.

How many people are sinners? Everyone. How many people are righteous? No one. They're under sin. Now, if you're a Jew, here's what you should do right now. You know what, Paul? That's all fine and dandy.

You're an apostle. But show me the Bible. Why don't you prove it to me from the Bible? And you know exactly? That is what Paul does. Verses 10 through 9. 18. If you look at your Bible, you should see a lot of capitals.

Maybe if you use NAS. If you use ESV, you should see it set apart somehow. These are all quotes from the Old Testament. Paul is going to say, okay, Jew. You want me to show you that you're personally sinful.

Even though there are national promises for Israel. And this doesn't just go for the Jews. This goes for all of us. This is your resume. I know a lot about you. And you know a lot about me. Romans chapter 3, verses 10 through 18.

All kinds of quotes from the Old Testament. And it's very fascinating. Lots of people running around today. I'm glad for their evangelistic zeal. They say the way to evangelize is to use the Ten Commandments.

Found in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. You know what? Paul does use the law. But he doesn't use the Ten Commandments. He doesn't use the Decalogue. He doesn't use anything from the Pentateuch. He uses things from the prophets and from the Psalms.

He uses the law. This is God's standard reflecting his holy nature. But he never uses the Ten Commandments. Oh, if you want to use the Ten Commandments, I guess you can. But Paul doesn't here. Jesus uses some of the Ten Commandments.

But I find it fascinating here. He uses everything practically but the Ten Commandments. The law shows God's standard. Whether that's found in the Old Testament or New Testament. Whether that's found in wisdom books, the Psalms, or the Pentateuch.

Verse 10. Okay, Jew, you want proof? As it stands written and always is written. That's the tense there in Romans 3 .10. None is righteous. That's the whole point. We need to look to a Savior because we have no righteousness.

None is righteous. No, not one. Quoting from Psalm 14. Some maybe think from Ecclesiastes. No one is righteous. Friends, you ought to believe in the doctrine of total depravity. Utter inability. Spiritual corruptness.

I like wholly depraved better than totally. We're not as bad as we could be. But every one of our faculties, our mind, our soul, our will, emotions. The fall has totally affected us. Wholly affected us.

Commend ourselves to God. Because there's not a righteous man on earth who continually does good and never sins. A Russian poet said something that helps me understand depravity better. He said this. I don't know what the heart of a bad man is like.

But I do know what the heart of a good man is like. When we fall, we sin all. He goes on. No one understands. Again, quoting the Old Testament, Psalm 14, Psalm 53. No one seeks for God. The word understand is a fascinating one.

It's nobody can figure out how to put the puzzle together to figure out how to save themselves. You have a big puzzle on the table. Probably now you play puzzles on your iPad, as far as I know. Move that piece over there for the kids.

How do you figure out the puzzle of getting rid of your sins? What would be one thing if you say, I made a resolution. I'll never sin again in the future. But there's hell to pay for the sins you've already committed.

How do I unsolve this puzzle? It's like the finger puzzle. When you try to pull yourself out, you can't get out. That's what it means. No one can understand. You see the text? No one seeks for God. Friends, listen very carefully.

False religions aren't trying to find God. They're trying to run from God. They're trying to escape God. They're trying to figure out a way that they can live with a conscience and see creation and say, you know what?

I can't live like this. So I need to have smoke and bells and whistles and things to do and religious things. It's an escape because no one seeks after God. No wonder Jesus says in John 6, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me what?

Draws you. People say, well, I'm going to take a comparative religion class. You might just call it this instead. This will be more truthful. I'm going to take a religious fugitive class. Because all these religions have one thing in common.

How do we flee from the wrath of God? How do we flee from the idea of God? Remember when Adam sinned? Adam, where are you? Genesis 3. Why do you say that? Because after you sin and you realize you're sinful and you know how holy God is, you don't seek after him.

You want to run from him. Where are you? And then religion is what? Just one more illustration of fig leaves. Trying to cover sin. That's why it's so brilliant and so wonderful. So great of God when you read then in Luke 19 of Jesus, the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.

That's why seeker-sensitive services are a big farce because people aren't seeking God. Only God seeks. That's why Ezekiel 34, speaking of God, says, behold, he's the great shepherd. I myself will search for my sheep and seek them out.

Our resume is the same as the Jews here in verse 12. All have turned aside, Romans 3. All have been so blinded by sin, they've turned aside. It's used of a camel getting off the caravan path, getting stuck down in some sand dune.

It's used of an arm that's been dislocated. It's been used of a soldier who says, I'm not going to follow you. I'm AWOL. Every person, do you know it? Not one. Not even one. All have turned aside. And then you ask me, do I believe in ecumenical ventures?

The answer is yes. Verse 12, together they have all become worthless. No one does good. Yeah, but maybe Mother Teresa, not even one. Maybe Billy Graham, not even one. Together they have become worthless.

That word worthless just means people have deliberately become what the Arabics have called sour milk. That's the word there. Useless, unprofitable. It's good for nothing. And if you know someone's heart by what comes out of their mouth, verse 13 says, their throat is an open grave.

Now just imagine yourself in the Middle East, and it's 110 degrees, and you put a dead body in a tomb. You seal it for the respect of the body, but you also seal it so the noxious gases don't come in.

You can tell people are sinful for lots of reasons, but one of the main reasons is because out of their mouths come putrid fumes revealing their heart. Howe said, emitting the noisome exhalations of a putrid heart.

And it's not just once in a while, sadly, these airborne pathogens just keep coming up. The text in the Greek is an imperfect text, tense. With their tongues they keep on deceiving over and over and over and over, and like a cobra that's got a piece, like a thing under it that has a container bag full of poison, so too do we.

Verse 14, their mouth is full of curses. That isn't four-letter words. That's the opposite of a blessing. I saw somebody yesterday said, God bless you. What comes out of the mouth of sinful people? God curse you.

And you know our society is full of this today, bitterness. The word for bitter in Greek is just what it sounds like. Just take a lemon when you get home, and don't even peel it. Just bite into it as hard as you can, and then watch your face, and it's picria.

That's what comes out of our mouths. Our lifestyle, verse 15, their feet are swift to shed blood. As one commentator said, at least animals, when they kill, they eat what they kill. We just like to kill.

And in their paths are, verse 16, ruin. The picture of Dorian Gray with Oscar Wilde, finally sin is seen. Where man goes, sin follows, because man is sinful. Verse 17, in the way of peace they have not known.

No, I read this week that in the last 4 ,000 years of human history, there have been but 286 years of peace, despite more than 8 ,000 peace treaties. No wonder, because Isaiah says there's no peace for the...

Well, those are all effects. You want to know what the cause is? Verse 18, here's the root cause of why people sin. There is no fear of God before their eyes, Psalm 36. Why does Paul go to these great lengths to talk like this?

We see the answer in verse 19. Now, we know that whatever the law says, he's speaking about all the Old Testament there, the things that he just quoted, says it speaks to those who are under the law what?

The purpose? So that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God. So that every mouth may be closed. When you evangelize, that is your goal. So the person on the other end says, I'm guilty.

I have no defense. What's true of my life? True in the Bible. What the Bible says, I am. I have no excuse. I'm not going to say it's a Twinkie defense. I spanked when I was a kid. There could be a thousand excuses people use now.

It's true. Everything that you say there, God, is true of me. And by the way, until you do that, you have no need to have a Savior. Kind of a buddy Jesus to come along with you. What you need to do is say, Sir, I'm completely guilty.

This language is, you're at the bar of justice in a courtroom, and God shows you who you are as it were, and you just have to say yes. When I get pulled over by the police, it doesn't happen that often, but when I do, I'm telling you what I do every single time.

Mark it well. Hands at the 10 and 2 position. Officer comes up, male or female, and roll down your window. Yes, sir or yes, ma 'am. Did you know you were going 49 in a 20 zone? Officer, I could give you all kinds of excuses, but I'm completely guilty.

They don't give me the ticket. Why? Because people don't say that today. I'm guilty. I did it all. I'm not going to say I was on the phone or this, that, or the other. I didn't know. I'm totally guilty.

That's why when you go to people, they don't know the gravity and the depth of their sin. It does no good to say, Come to Jesus and he'll fix your marriage. Come to Jesus and you'll have a wonderful life.

God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. No, when you hear the sound of silence, that's when you show them who Jesus is. That's what Paul's doing here. Martin Lloyd Jones says, you do not begin to be a Christian until your mouth is shut, is stopped, and you are speechless and have nothing to say.

You put up your arguments and produce all your righteousness. Then the law speaks and it withers to nothing. It becomes filthy rags and dung, and you have nothing to say. It reminds me of Job before God.

Behold, I am insignificant. What can I reply to you? I lay my hand on my mouth. Verse 24, by works of the law, no human being, not Jew, not Gentile, not boy, not girl, not man or woman, not anybody here will be justified, declared righteous before God's court in his sight.

Oh, you might be righteous in front of other people. You might not be as bad as your friends. You might not be as bad as people on Jerry Springer, but in God's sight, the one that accounts for, on that day you'll die and you surely will die.

Since through the law comes knowledge of sin, you try to do good things in the law, and the only thing that does you is to show you how far you fall short. It's not the purpose of the law to save anybody.

It's the purpose of God's law, whether it's love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength in the neighbor as yourself, or any other law of God so that you say, I'm corrupt, I'm defiled, I'm depraved, and I deserve to go to hell.

It's exactly what Paul is trying to get you to admit. And you know what? If God was only just, that's where it would end. For the angels, no plan B, no salvation. But now the very next word, it is an and, and God killed them all.

It isn't therefore, therefore God wiped them out. Flood or fire, we move to the next word, and it's a great word found in verse 21. Which gives us the third no, that I'd like to try to weld to your mind through Romans three.

No One but God Could Save Sinners

No objection holds water, no one keeps all of God's law. And number three, no one but God could save sinners. Finally, we have some good news here. We don't deserve it, but God's gracious, God's merciful.

I went to Warwick Castle in England. Anybody been to Warwick Castle in England? What do, at least a man with his young boy at the time, what do they want to do? We want to go down past the torture chamber.

They had one thing I thought was interesting. It's a big helmet that goes on your face, and it sticks a big thing in your tongue. And if you gossiped and slandered, you'd have to wear that for a few days.

Wow. And you go past all of these instruments of torture, and then you go to the dungeon. And I'm talking, it was a black dungeon, a dark dungeon. And you imagine the king could just say, put the person in the dungeon for the next 30 years.

They're never going to get out. It was scary. I thought I would freak out in there. But what must I think if I'm in the dungeon, and it's 20 years later, and all of a sudden the light cracks a little bit.

It's blinding my eyes because I'm not used to the light. And someone comes in and says, you're free. That's this kind of language. Christ does for sinful men and women what they can't do for themselves.

That's why if you come here on Sunday, I'm going to talk about Jesus. And if you're bored with that and you want stories, I don't know what to tell you. It's like Adoniram Judson. After 30 years being in the jungle, he came back to a church to speak for 20 minutes.

And they said, we want to hear about snakes and lizards and other stories. He said, I have one thing to tell you. Here's who Jesus is. Verse 21, finally God to the rescue. Like when Wilberforce said, God, deliver me from myself.

God's merciful. God's gracious. There's help in time of need. But now the righteousness of God, see, we're unrighteous, has been manifested apart from the law. Can't do it earning it yourself. But it's right there in the Old Testament, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it.

I hear that God just doesn't say like a grandma or grandpa, no big deal that you sinned. God keeps His holy law. He doesn't lower the demands of His righteousness at the expense of justice because of what Jesus did.

This next section Leon Morris calls possibly the most important single paragraph ever written. One man called this the desert. Island passage. Luther said, this is the chief point and the very central place of the epistle and of the whole Bible.

Stott said, there was no ray of light, no flicker of hope, no prospect of rescue. I know something about every unbeliever and I hope there are no unbelievers here, but if you are, I know something about you.

You have a personal relationship with God right now and it's one of mortal enemy. Say, I'm not mad at God. Well, He's mad at you because of your sin and because of who you are. He created you and He expects you to honor Him and to obey Him.

So how do we go from an enemy to a friend? And how can God do that with just keeping His laws here? I mean, I can just tell you, I forgive you if you sin against me, but God can't do that because He has laws.

Now, I love the song, Jesus loves me, this I know for the Bible tells me so. These next verses parse that exact song out. You wanna know how exactly Jesus loves you? It's gonna be good. And I like to think of this as a Polaroid camera.

Sorry, you young people maybe don't know what they are. You have digital cameras and you can take pictures of everything at any time. But Polaroids, weren't they good? All the gray-haired people are like, yes.

Because at the time when we had Polaroids or before Polaroids, you have to take a picture and then go give it to the guy to see what it was like or the lady there at the shop and then wait, you know, two weeks.

Then they had like overnight stuff that you had to pay for. But the Polaroid, you take the picture and out would come this piece of white paper and it was just white paper. Develop over time, filling in and do all these things to speed it up.

Come on, I gotta go. So here, with Romans, you get like one hue in this verse, it gets a little darker and by the time you get to the end of Romans 3, you're like, here's who the Lord is. Even though I was that bad.

You might save your wife from a bridge and pull her out of the car like my grandfather did. But I don't know if you're gonna pull out somebody who murdered your own kid. What must God do? Because we can't do anything.

We deserve wrath, but now? We deserve doom, but now? We deserve the lake of fire, but now? We deserve execution, but now? And we can't give the antidote to ourselves because we're dead. God has expected us to perfectly obey Him.

Do this and live. And we can't perfectly do it. We need somebody to perfectly live the law for us. This is all driving to what Jesus did on the cross, we don't contribute anything to. When Jesus says it is finished, we don't say, yeah, you did 90 and my faith's worth 10.

You did 80 and my baptism's worth 20. You did like 70%, 99 of me coming to church and reading my Bible and do all these other things. My dad's a pastor. No, when Jesus says it is finished, it's finished.

Because all our works are tainted like filthy rags. You can't add anything to the work of God. You can't get to heaven by keeping the law because the law's purpose was to condemn. But it's in the Old Testament, verse 21 says, the law and the prophets testified of that.

Even David said in Psalm 32, how blessed is he whose transgression is covered, are forgiven. And how do you get it? You know you're guilty. You know you'll stand before God and you have no righteousness, but you want righteousness.

How do you get it? What does the text say, verse 22? The righteousness of God through faith. Mark that. It's not because of faith. It's not on account of faith. It's through faith in, not Buddha, not Allah, not in yourself, not in psychology, not in the pastor, not in the pope, in Jesus Christ.

Through faith. That means to say what Jesus did in his life and his death confirmed by the resurrection. I just take God at his word. I wasn't there 2000 years ago. I don't have eyewitness accounts of it that I personally know who are alive today.

I mean, we have eyewitness accounts in scripture. And I'm just going to take God at his word. I take God at his word that I offer nothing to salvation except my sin. Through faith in Christ Jesus. Christ was the one faithful to the law.

I'm not. And I'm just going to believe God. I'm going to trust in that. And it's open to anyone, by the way. I don't care what your religious background is. I don't care if you're circumcised, uncircumcised.

You're from this country or not. What does the text say? For there's no distinction. For all have sinned, point in time, probably referring to Adam's transgression, and continually fall short of the glory of God.

There is no difference in the sight of God between Hitler and you. Find yourself an abortion doctor murderer and find yourself the most sophisticated Harvard professor. They're both sinners. When your goal is to get to Pluto by jumping, I don't care if you're standing on Everest or standing on the Dead Sea bottom, you fall short.