Sunday Sermons: God's Righteous Demands (Romans 2:12-16)

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.

Romans 2 and the Need for a Savior

Well, good morning.

Good morning.

If you would open your Bible, please, to Romans chapter 2. We come back to our study in the book of Romans, Romans chapter 2. A reminder that last week, the very last line that we read was in verse 11, that God shows no partiality.

So we've been seeing this argument unfolding before us here, that whether Jew or Gentile, all have sinned, Paul bringing all men under condemnation, so that we see all having sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, the summing statement that's going to come up in Romans 3 .23.

We understand our sin and our need for a Savior, that Paul may present Christ as that Savior. What we see in our text today is that Christ is not only our Savior, but even our judge. The section that we're looking at is Romans 2, verses 12 -16.

In honor of the word of the King, would you please stand? This is Romans 2, beginning in verse 12. The Apostle Paul writing to the church in Rome, hear the word of the Lord. For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law.

For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. For when Gentiles, who do not have the law by nature, do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law.

They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them, on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Jesus Christ.

You may be seated as we pray. Heavenly Father, as we come to our text today, I pray that we are reminded once again that man is without excuse. None of us can stand before God and say, well, we didn't know which way was right and which way was wrong.

You didn't tell us, or we didn't have your Bible, or we didn't have your law. Whatever excuses that man may make to justify himself and his own sin. But, as we see demonstrated here, even the very work of the law is written upon our hearts.

Every person knows that there is a right and there is a wrong, though they may have their moral compass fixed in the wrong place. And so, as we are reminded of these things today, I pray that our attention is drawn all the more to Christ, who is that moral law giver.

He is that ultimate judge. But we also see that through Christ Jesus, He is our Savior. For all of us have broken that law. We've broken even our own law. And Christ is the one who has forgiven us our sin and repaired the distance that has been made between us and God because of our sin.

As I remember hearing sung by one songwriter, there is a cross to bridge the great divide. And the cross of Christ, being that place where we meet God, our sins are forgiven, and we are made right to fellowship with Him once again.

Be with us today as we come to this text. Burden and guide our hearts to your truth. It's in Jesus' name we pray, Amen. In Matthew 18, Jesus gives this parable to His disciples. Verse 23, He says, The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants.

When he began to settle, one servant was brought to him who owed him 10 ,000 talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold with his wife and his children and all that he had and payment to be made.

Now, as Jesus is telling this parable to His disciples, when He gets to 10 ,000 talents, I kind of imagine the disciples sitting there going, What? 10 ,000 talents? They're looking at each other going, 10 ,000 talents?

How does He even amass that amount of debt? Now, as I'm recalling that to you here, all excitable about it and everything, you're probably sitting there going, What is a talent? And why would the disciples be even so worked up about that?

Well, a single talent, one talent was worth 6 ,000 denarii. I know, you're all just amazed and stunned. 6 ,000 denarii, oh my goodness. What's a denarii? I'm glad you asked. A denarii was a single day's wage.

6 ,000 denarii is one talent, 6 ,000 days wages. So 10 ,000 talents, are you doing the math in your head? Is 60 million denarii, 60 million days wages, 127 ,000 years worth of work. How in the world did this guy amass that much debt, and how in the world could he possibly work all that off?

That's the point. That's why Jesus chose such an astronomical number. How could a guy repay so much debt? How could even selling himself and his wife and his kids and everything else, how could you get to the end of that debt?

So the servant, verse 26, fell on his knees, imploring him, have patience with me, and I will pay you everything. I'm not even putting into words enough how emphatic he probably would have been here. Hitting his knees and crying and saying, please give me some time, I'll repay you, right?

How in the world could you repay that much debt in whatever amount of time you were given? And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. And now the disciples are sitting there going, he just forgave him all that debt?

He doesn't just merely extend the deadline, he doesn't change or rewrite the terms in any way, he just simply says, you're forgiven, you don't owe any more, you're released. Now that in and of itself, if the parable only went that far, that would be a lesson in itself, right?

Of the great and incredible mercy of God. We owe a debt that we can't possibly repay, and he forgives us through Christ who pays our debt. Even here, the master has chosen to take the debt upon himself.

He takes the loss and just forgives the servant and lets him go. And what incredible grace of God we are given through Jesus Christ in that our debt, which we could not repay, has been paid for us in Christ Jesus.

But that's not the end of the parable. That's not even the point of the parable. Verse 28 goes on. When that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii.

A hundred.

So you're just talking three months worth of work. And what will be the first servant's reaction to this debt that he owes? Well, that servant goes up to him and seizes him and says to him,.

Pay what you owe me.

So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him just as he did moments before. Have patience with me and I will pay you. And he refused and went and put him in prison until he could pay all that debt.

A hundred days worth of work. The servant said no and forced him into prison until he could pay it back. How in the world is he going to pay it back when he's in prison? When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed and they went and reported to the master all that had taken place.

Then his master summoned him and said to him, you wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should you not have had the same mercy on your fellow servant that I had on you?

And in anger, his master delivered him to the jailers until he could pay all his debt. And Jesus says, so also my heavenly father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.

Now, the point of this parable is, of course, about mercy. It is about forgiveness. If you are forgiven, you must forgive. If you don't forgive, you don't have the forgiveness of my father who is in heaven.

But it's interesting to me here that the master in Jesus' parable, when he throws his servant in prison, doesn't judge him based on the law. He doesn't say the law says this and you've done this, you've broken the law and now go to prison.

And Jesus likewise, at the final judgment, God wouldn't even have to throw the book at you to show that you have broken the law. You can't even meet your own standard of righteousness. And so how about you?

When it comes to that day when you stand before God, if God were to just lay out before you the standard that you imposed on everyone else, would you be innocent or guilty even by your own standard that you impose upon others?

As we come to this text today, Paul has made a reference to the work of the law that is on.

Our hearts.

Verse 14, when Gentiles who do not have the law by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written upon their hearts.

He doesn't say God's law is written upon their hearts, but rather that the work of the law itself, God has placed upon each and every person. We all inherently know there is a right and there is a wrong.

Though our moral compass may not be set in the right place, every person understands the concept of right and wrong. And so the idea of moral imperatives that you may have, whatever standard you have established, have you even been able to keep your own standard of righteousness?

As we come to the text that we're looking at here today, there are three points that we want to draw out of this. First of all, all who have sinned without the law will perish without the law. And all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law.

That's our first point. That's really just repeating what we have there in verse 12. A second point, when pagans or Gentiles do what the law requires, they prove that the work of the law is written upon their hearts.

And third, it is by the work of the law that God will judge the secrets of men. And all of this has been put into the hands of Jesus Christ, as said in verse 16. On that day, when according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.

Christ is the standard. He is the judge. But praise God, we come to understand also that He is our Savior. So let's come back to our text and look at it here as we go through this verse by verse. Verse 12, once again.

All who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law. And all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. Look at verse 13 coupled with that. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified.

And that goes back to the point that we were looking at last week in verses 6 through 11. Those who do the law will be justified before God. But of course, we come to understand none of us have properly kept the law.

And every single one of us have disobeyed. And all of us are therefore under judgment. If we could have kept the law, if we could have done it perfectly, then we would have been justified by our goodness.

But our disobedience to the law began with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Judgment is part of the gospel message that we proclaim. It is an understanding that we are all under judgment and therefore in need of a Savior.

And without that understanding, the gospel therefore doesn't become good news. It was several weeks ago when we were, I can't remember which sermon it was, but leading into that sermon from Acts 17, the message that the Apostle Paul preached to the Greeks at the Areopagus.

He said to the Greeks that the times of ignorance God has overlooked, but now he's commanding all people everywhere to repent because he is going to judge the world on a day that he has fixed. And he will judge the world in righteousness through the one whom he has raised from the.

Dead.

So from that very message that Paul is preaching to the Greeks, he doesn't start in the Garden.

Of Eden.

He doesn't start in Genesis. He doesn't start even in the law. He simply exposes to the Greeks, you're a religious people and you understand that there is a God who exists. They had that altar right there that said, to an unknown God.

Paul is saying, I say to you, that God is known. And that God is going to judge the world in righteousness. So he commands all people everywhere to repent. He doesn't make friends with them first. He doesn't make personal acquaintances with them.

He doesn't know their life story or their background. He just simply says to them, judgment is coming. And he speaks to them on a level that every single person there, though they had probably never even heard the name Jesus Christ before, would understand that there is a judgment that will come upon all men.

And we understand that inherently because every single one of us make judgments.

We all make judgments.

We all judge the attitudes and behaviors of other people. And so whenever we judge, it's as if we even testify that there is an ultimate lawgiver, an ultimate judge who will even judge the judgments that we have made against others.

God had given a simple law in the very beginning in the Garden of Eden to Adam and Eve. You shall eat of any tree that is in the garden, except the tree that is in the midst of the garden, which we know to have been named the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

For on the day that you eat of that tree, God said, you will surely die. Now, in our understanding of covenant theology, we refer to this as the covenant of works. There was a covenant that God made with Adam and then with every human being that would come from Adam, that if you can keep my law, if you keep my statutes, you will live.

But of course, as we know the story, Eve was tempted by the serpent. She ate the fruit, gave it to Adam who was with her, and he ate. And the two of them, their eyes were opened and they realized something.

What did they suddenly come into the knowledge of? The text tells us they realized they were naked, certainly. But eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, what was the knowledge that they came to?

They now suddenly were personally acquainted with evil. And they now had the knowledge that we have done wrong. And that's the knowledge that eating of that tree gave them. There are things that I have done in my past and in my life that I am personally acquainted with because I have done those sins.

And there are sins that I have done that I pray my children will never know. It was because of my foolishness, my selfish pride, my fleshly desires that I went after those things and those appetites. I knew they were wrong when I did them, but I wanted them in my flesh.

And every once in a while, the memory of those sins will come back to me because I have been personally acquainted with that sin. In some horribly dark moments, I will even fantasize about those sins.

What if I could have that again? And taking those thoughts captive and making them obedient to Christ. But it's because I've had a personal acquaintance with those sins that the familiarity with that thing will come back to me.

And that's one of the reasons why I pray that my children won't ever have to know them. So that you don't have to wrestle with that for the rest of your life, that continued struggle of the knowledge of something that you will one day wish that you never had.

I wish that I had never even stepped over that line and ventured into that territory and experienced that sin so the memory of that doesn't come back. At the same time, I will say that it also becomes a reminder to me of the grace of God, that He has atoned for that sin and forgiven me of that, that I may cling to Christ all the more.

But as Paul will illustrate when we get to Romans chapter 6, that's no excuse to do the.

Sin.

Shall I not just continue in sin so that God's grace may abound?

No.

My genoita in the Greek, no. A thousand times no. May we know the righteous way and walk in that way and not entertain the desires for the sins thinking that, hey, I'm just going to make God's grace greater.

No, you will make sin all the more abundant in your life. When our acquaintance, when our affection is for the sin, our affection is not for God. When our knowledge is of our sin, knowledge in that biblical way of knowing, we become intimate with our sin, then our intimacy is not with God, it's with our flesh and our own fleshly desires.

Those who are the hearers of the law are not those who are righteous before God. It is those who are the doers of the law who will be justified. For all who have sinned without the law will perish. You will still perish and come into judgment without the law.

All who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. Now, of course, as I've made the distinction in previous weeks, who we're talking about here primarily in Romans chapter 2, the target or the specificity to which Paul directs these arguments is the Jew that is sitting in the congregation.

You who claim to have had the law and you think you're better because you've had this law, well, that doesn't matter. You've heard the law and you didn't do it. So you are just as guilty. The judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things.

You judge and you yourself are guilty of the things that you are judging. So you can claim that you're better, but you're going to perish under the law. It's not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified.

Now, even in our modern day today, we can see the directness of what Paul says here. It could very well be directed to the modern American Christian sitting in his pew with his Bible in his lap, with his Bible on his smartphone.

You have no excuse to say, I didn't know, because you have God's instructions right there in the palm of your hand. In the history of the church, there has never been a time, an age of the church that is as blessed, as fortunate as we are now.

I mean, we can sit in this room and not fear the government that's going to come upon us or some sort of faction or terrorist group that might come in here and want to take us hostage or murder us. That's not the reality that we live in here in the United States of America, where those things are regularly going on.

Meanwhile, there are parts of the world right now, this morning, that are gathering together for worship and putting their lives at risk doing so. As has been the case for most of church history. Every once in a while, I will have in my news feed, whether it comes by email or on social media or otherwise, I will see pictures of a new group of people somewhere in the world who are able to hold Bibles in their hands in their language for the very first time.

And you will see the pictures of the crates and the boxes that come in and they get opened up and the Bibles get distributed and that town will have a group picture. Every single person in the town will be gathered there with their Bibles, smiling and holding God's word in their language in their hands.

And what a reminder to me of the privilege that I have to open God's word, how convicting it will be to me also that I didn't do it yet today. The average American, you've heard this statistic, you've heard it for decades.

The average American has three Bibles in their home. Probably something like 3 .2 Bibles in their home. They have a little New Testament sitting somewhere. That's the extra decimal point. But Americans are not picking up their Bibles and reading them.

You can do a simple graphic search for a Bible on Google, an image search, just type in Bible. I promise you on that first page, without scrolling down, one of the first images that you will get is a dusty Bible where somebody has written the words, read me into the dust.

That's one of the search results that comes up when you search for an image of a Bible. And it's a testament to the fact that we have them and don't read them. We might have multiple copies of it, but we don't pick it up and read it.

And we might think of ourselves as being holier or righteous than thou because I've got 3 .2 Bibles sitting on my shelf. I've got leather-bound Bibles. I've got Bibles that cost the equivalent of a car payment sitting on my shelf.

So look how holier than that I am because I invest so much in my Bible. Paul says, it's not the hearers of the word that are going to be justified before God. It's the doers of the word who will be justified.

We hear it, but don't do it. We have it, but don't read it. We possess it, but it does not possess us. All who have sinned without the law will perish without the law. And all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law.

That word that we said we had, that we boasted in having, but we did not read, will ultimately be our judge in the end. As Jesus even said, the words that I have said will be his judge. So in the second part, we have in verse 14, when Gentiles who do not have the law by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law, they show that the work of the law is written on their hearts.

Such a wonderfully eloquent way to put that by the Apostle Paul, who of course is under the influence, under the administration of the Holy Spirit. He doesn't simply say here, God's law is written on their hearts because that's not the point, but that the work of the law is written on their hearts.

When Gentiles, when pagans, when those who do not have the law by nature do what the law requires, what does that mean? Those who do not have the law, they haven't heard the law of Moses. They don't have the stone tablets that were given to Israel.

They don't have the scriptures that were written down in the pages. A modern application of that, they don't have a Bible in their own home. Never even read it before. They'll make all sorts of judgments and comments and criticisms about the Bible, but they've never actually read it.

They just saw some memes online that an atheist made, and they were convinced, Oh, see, this atheist made this, so the Bible is not true. And they'll repeat the talking points, but they've never actually read the word for themselves.

But yet, though they may hate God and God's truth, God's law, yet you can find moral pagans out there. And people that we might otherwise say, that's a good man, or that's a good woman. Somebody who is kind to others, somebody who even donates charitably or gives of their time for the betterment and the uplifting of other people.

They're not just internet keyboard warriors. They actually get out in the public and do things and help to benefit others. And when these who do not know God's word behave in this way, they don't have God's word, but they by nature do what God would require in his instructions.

They love their neighbor. They aren't going out murdering others. They may even be pagans who are faithful to their spouse. And they demonstrate in their lives that the work of the law is written on their hearts.

The work of the law. The concept that there is a right and a wrong. The very fact that we reflect having been made in the image of a moral God. One who has established there is a right way to do things and a wrong way to do things.

And though they may not know God's standard or even accept God's standard if it was given to them, yet they still demonstrate in their lives a moral understanding that, you know, you shouldn't just go out and kill people.

It's not a good thing to cheat on your spouse. It's not a good thing to take what doesn't belong to you. It's good to always tell the truth. They may demonstrate those things in their lives, though they themselves couldn't care at all for the Ten Commandments.

I remember years ago when Tiger Woods had cheated on his wife. I don't know if you remember this story and the way that it hit the news. But his wife is chasing him out of the house with a golf club, appropriately enough, and smashes the back window of his SUV.

This ends up on the news. And Woods, trying to flee from his own wife, ends up crashing the SUV. And there's helicopters overhead that are showing the SUV and reporting on all this. And whatever it was my dad and I were watching that day, which I want to say was most likely college football, is now being interrupted by these reports of whatever Tiger Woods was doing in his own personal life.

More things began to unfold as the days went on. And it turned out that Woods had a totally separate phone from his main phone in which he was keeping the names and addresses and contacts and text messages and escapades that he was having with all of his other mistresses.

And suddenly, in the eyes of the public, Tiger Woods was a dirtbag. And even pagans look at this situation. How could a guy treat his wife like that? You would hardly find anybody that was cheering him on.

Everybody just seemed to kind of have an understanding that you don't do that to your spouse. And when people who don't have God's law demonstrate that kind of moral behavior, even if that's a cultural perspective, they demonstrate from their hearts that the work of the law has been written upon their lives.

Some of you may be aware that Gene Hackman, the famous actor, was found dead in his home. He and his wife both earlier this week, just a few days ago. And when it was discovered, and there's still an ongoing investigation, it turns out they were probably dead for a couple of weeks in their home.

And this has the attention of a lot of people. What in the world could have happened? What nefarious thing could have taken place that two people died at the same time and then were not found for a couple of different weeks?

So it'll be interesting to see how that story unfolds. Since his death, of course, this tends to happen whenever somebody famous dies, there'll be different clips of that actor or famous person that will begin to circulate on social media.

And one that was immediately found regarding Gene Hackman was an interview that he did on a program called The Actor's Studio. It was actually a program I used to watch quite a bit when I thought I was going to become an actor one day.

And in that interview with Gene Hackman, it was said of him, I read somewhere that your father left you when you were really young. And Gene said, yeah, I would have been about 13 years old. And he said, I understand it was like an unusual circumstance, like your father just waved to you, and that was it?

He just left? And Gene recalled, and he said, yeah, I was playing with some friends down the street. My dad left the house, got in the car, and as he's driving by, he just waved. And that was it, and he drove off.

And the interviewer is going on to the next question, but Gene has to stop and collect himself. And he apologizes, says, I'm sorry, as he's obviously fighting back tears. And when the interviewer goes to the next question, the actor laughs, and he says, it's only been 65 years ago.

And the audience kind of chuckles along with him and applauds. But we could all sympathize with Hackman in that clip. Whether we've grown up in a broken home or a solid home. I'm someone who's known my dad my whole life.

My dad's coming for a visit in a couple of weeks. You'll get to meet him, as a matter of fact. I've always had a good relationship with my dad, and he's always said of me how proud he is of me. And yet, I sympathize with Gene in that clip.

Why?

Because I know what kind of impact my father has had in my life. I know how important fathers are. So to hear the hurt and the pain in his voice in that clip makes a lot of sense to a lot of people. Because we all seem to inherently understand the importance of fathers in the upbringing of a child.

And when the entire public is reacting that way to that clip as it's circulating, people who are not even believers in God, who don't even understand, or probably would not even articulate with their own mouths, that God created the family to be a husband and a wife, and to have children together.

And those children deserve to be brought up in a home with a mother and a father. Though they probably wouldn't even articulate that. They still see that. They feel that hurt in Hackman's voice and relate to it, and sympathize with it.

Because deep down, we all understand the law that has been written on our hearts. As I said in the very beginning, drawing from that parable that Jesus told in Matthew chapter 18, if you were judged by your own standard of righteousness, would you pass?

Take God's law out of it. Just the way that you judge other people. Can you meet your own standard of righteousness that you impose upon others? When teaching on this very passage, Francis Schaeffer, back in the 70s, gave this illustration.

He said, imagine that every child is born with a tape recorder around their neck. Now he used tape recorder,.

Because this was the 70s.

And back then, there weren't even yet personal Walkman. So you're talking like a huge tape deck hanging from this child's neck. But we're gonna bring some modern technology into it. Just imagine it's just a little invisible recorder around the neck of the child.

And as the child grows up and begins to make moral judgments, everything that comes out of that child's mouth gets recorded on the recorder. The child grows up to be a teenager, comes into adulthood, and every time a moral judgment is made about someone else, it's recorded on that recorder.

Not aesthetic judgments. Not judgments like, that sweater looks stupid, why are you wearing it? You know, not things like that. But actual moral judgments, making statements about someone else's behavior or calling attention to a way that they should not act and repudiating them or hating them.

It might even be something that they just said to themselves one day. They didn't even repeat it to somebody else or say it to the person that offended them. They're just making a moral judgment. And that recorder is grabbing it and recording it throughout that person's life until they die and they stand before God in judgment.

All God would have to do is take that recorder from around your neck and hit play. And you would hear judgment after judgment after judgment. Thousands upon thousands of moral statements that you made about another person.

And you would realize in hearing your own statements that you made about others, I didn't meet up to that standard either. The things and the judgments that I made about other people, I am guilty of my own standards.

It's amazing when you picture that and you think of it, that God would not even have to lay down His own law to declare you guilty. He could go by your law and you wouldn't be able to pass that standard either.

We know by what is said here, again, because of what's said in verse 12, that all who sin without the law still perish. They perish without the law. All who have sinned under the law, they're going to be judged by the law.

But when we demonstrate that the work of the law is written upon our hearts, when we make these moral judgments about others, we would come to find that we don't even meet our own standard that we place upon other people.

And we could be judged by that alone. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. You could also say all have sinned and fallen short of their own judgments. And so as it goes on to say there in verse 15, the work of the law is written on their hearts while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them.

You've probably seen the cartoons with a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other, right? It's like the cartoon demonstration of the conscience. At this wrestling with my bad side and my good side, my good side's telling me to do the right thing.

My bad side's telling me, ah, it's all right if you do this other thing and enjoy that for a little while. Nobody's going to know. And try to reason in your own mind why doing this thing that you know that you should not do is actually okay for you to do.

You're probably familiar with the Disney movie, The Emperor's New Groove. And there's a character in that film named Kronk. And he's got a little shoulder devil and a shoulder angel that are telling him what to do.

The shoulder devil says, he's going to try to lead you down the path of righteousness. I'm going to lead you down the path that rocks. And now after the sermon is done today, all you're going to remember is that I did an imitation of that cartoon.