WWUTT 112 You Condemn Yourself (Romans 2:1-3)

When we stand before God in judgment, those who did not believe in His Son will be sent to hell.

And no one will be able to say that they didn't hear or know God's Word. Based on our own judgment, we're all condemned when we understand the text.

This is when we understand the text, a daily study of God's Word, that we may be filled with the knowledge of His will.

Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. Romans 2 verses 1 -5, Therefore you have no excuse,

O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another, you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things.

We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. Do you suppose,

O man, you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God?

Or do you presume on the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

But because of your hard and impenitent heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when

God's righteous judgment will be revealed. Verses 4 and 5 we'll talk about a little bit more tomorrow, but there's something that Francis Schaeffer once wrote that I think will help us understand verses 1 -3 a little bit better.

In his book, The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century, Francis Schaeffer wrote this, If every little baby that was ever born anywhere in the world had a tape recorder hung about its neck, and if this tape recorder only recorded the moral judgments with which this child, as he grew, bound other men, the moral precepts might be much lower than the biblical law, but they would still be moral judgments.

Eventually each person comes to that great moment when he stands before God as judge.

Suppose then that God simply touched the tape recorder button, and each man heard played out in his own words all those statements by which he had bound other men in moral judgment.

He could hear it going on for years and years, thousands and thousands of moral judgments made against other men, not aesthetic judgments, but moral judgments.

Then God would simply say to the man, though he had never heard the Bible, Now where do you stand in light of your own moral judgments?

The Bible points out that every voice would be stilled, all men would have to acknowledge that they have deliberately done those things which they knew to be wrong.

Nobody could deny it. We sin two kinds of sin, Schaefer goes on, we sin one kind as though we trip off the curb and it overtakes us by surprise.

We sin a second kind of sin when we deliberately set ourselves up to fall, and no one can say that he does not sin in the latter sense.

Paul's comment is not just theoretical and abstract, but addressed to the individual.

Oh man, any man without the Bible as well as the man with the

Bible. God is completely just. A man is judged and found wanting on the same basis on which he has tried to bind others.

John 3 .16 says this to us, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

Now listen to verse 17, for God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Now why did God not send Jesus to condemn the world? The reason is because the world was condemned already.

We had condemned ourselves. But verse 18, whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already because he is not believed in the name of the only son of God.

There is salvation that has been given to us from the judgment that we befall by our own judgments.

And that salvation is only through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who has washed away your every sin by his atoning blood and sacrifice.

Repent of your sins and know confidently salvation in Christ alone.

Thank you for listening to When We Understand the Text. Pastor Gabe is the author of the book, 40 of the

Most Popular Bible Verses and What They Really Mean, available in paperback or for your Kindle. He's also authored a

Bible study through the book of 1 Corinthians. Both books can be found at our website at www .utt