Always Faithful

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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Good morning, welcome to Recast Church, I'm Don Filsack, I'm the lead pastor here. We're gonna go ahead and get started.

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For some of you that was really abrupt because you're used to Dave giving you a few minutes to kind of get ready and he's up in the sound booth working out some technical difficulties with the words so that those are right this week.

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So, really glad that you're here, really glad that you've taken time out of your busy schedules to gather together as God's people.

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I'm always glad to see people, new faces and new visitors, people coming to check it out and I hope that you find this to be a place where you can connect to God by faith.

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I hope that you find Recast to be a community of people who love God and love each other well and I hope that that rubs off on you as well and so again just a special welcome to those of you that maybe this is your first time here.

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I want to just say that we're a church that stands for really our name is an acronym, it stands for Replication, Community, Authenticity, Simplicity and Truth, that's

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Recast. And the T, the truth, it really comes down to believing that God's word is the truth and I just want to say that without the truth of God we would be left to think all kinds of crazy thoughts about God.

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We would fashion, I believe most of us would fashion a God in our own image, we would go down a variety of wayward paths and eventually through our fall in reasoning and through our own thoughts and our own feelings we would end up justifying ourselves before the

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God of our own making without his word, without looking into the word to see what he has to say for ourselves.

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And I think one thing would remain pretty consistent for each of us were we to fashion a God after our own design, were we to go away from God's word, ignore it, pretend that it didn't matter,

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I believe that all of us left to our own thoughts would eventually invent a God that was okay with us, a

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God that was okay with us. He would be pretty lenient toward us. He would hate, certainly hate the sins of others, but he would be pretty understanding of our own weaknesses, right?

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Do you guys get what I'm saying? We would begin to fashion him in a way that he was a lot like us, liked the things that we like, hate the things that we hate, and that would be a dangerous place for us.

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So our text this morning is going to deal with this in a passage that has really been pretty confusing down through the ages.

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It may help if I give us a brief tour of the passage before we read it because Paul is going to use a total of eight questions, really kind of nine questions, one of them's a little bit more rhetorical, but really nine questions in the course of eight verses to get at his main point.

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And the reality is nine questions in eight verses can be a bit overwhelming to our minds to try to put together the different pieces of his argument.

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Why is he asking these questions? What is the nature of the questions? What are we trying to get to here at the bottom line? So in summary,

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Paul has been indicting, just to clarify where we've been so you kind of know when we come into this passage what he's all about,

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Paul has been indicting the human race in chapters one and two, really identifying the reality of the slide into sin of all of us.

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All of us have sin, all of us have credit, and all of us is building towards the gospel, the hope. But how many of you know that part of the good news is the bad news?

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Did you already know that? Part of the good news that God came to die for sinners requires that you believe the bad news that you are indeed a sinner.

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And so that's fundamental to the entire gospel and that's where we're at in it is really the organization of the book of Romans that we're going through is sin, salvation, sanctification, sovereignty, and service.

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And we're still in that section throughout the remainder of chapter three, we're starting chapter three today, throughout the remainder of chapter three we're going to be in that section still identifying our sinfulness and our brokenness.

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And so in chapters one and two he described our slide away from the God who created us.

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He described our broken tendency to try to win our way back to God with our own behavior and our own rules and trying to scrub the outside and make ourselves look great, but that's not enough to really handle the reality of what's going on inside of us, the brokenness, the crud, the tendency towards sin, the reality that we can be a temptation to ourselves and our own minds.

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And so last week he openly declared that knowing about God through the law and obeying outward religious signs cannot save us.

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You can't attend church enough, you can't do enough good deeds, you can't serve the poor enough, you can't give enough money to earn your way is what he's getting at.

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And now he's going to take a sidetrack this week into defending the righteousness of God. And he's going to answer one question that many of us are not asking and so when you come to this text and you read it, part of the issue is that you probably haven't asked this question and so because you haven't asked the question you don't really care for the answer, but the answer is of utmost importance to everyone, even those who have never asked it.

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And this is the question, it's a little complicated, but it's a very important question. If God would judge his

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Old Testament chosen people, he chose them in the Old Testament, he selected Abraham from among the nations and said,

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I'm going to bless you and I'm going to make a covenant with your people and I pledge to be a blessing to you if you will obey and keep my commandments.

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So if he pledged this to his old covenant people, if he would, on what basis would he now condemn them for not keeping the law?

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How is he still faithful in that? How is he still faithful if he is, in essence, forsaken his old covenant people?

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How can a God who judges those he has chosen remain righteous? And that is a fundamental question that we all have to ask ourselves.

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It's a significant question. If God is not faithful, if he is not righteous in his dealings with humanity, if he is not a keeper of his promises, then the reliability of the gospel itself is at stake and our hope becomes nothing more than wishful thinking.

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So open your Bibles if you're not already there, Romans 3, 1 through 8, and we're going to read this together.

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If you have one of those Bible journals, you can turn over in that or open an app or a device or whatever you have available to you.

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If you don't have a Bible or any way to navigate to the Bible, grab the Bible that's under the seat in front of you and you can follow along.

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Recast, this is a privilege we have every week to hear from God's word. The privilege isn't hearing me read it, the privilege is actually hearing the words, seeing the words and actually seeing that God has spoken to us.

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So follow along please, Romans 3, the first eight verses. Then what advantage has the

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Jew or what is the value of circumcision? Much in every way.

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To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. What is somewhere unfaithful?

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Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means. Let God be true, though everyone were a liar as it is written, that you may be justified in your words and prevail when you are judged.

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But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us?

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I speak in a human way. By no means. For then how could God judge the world? But if through my lie,

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God's truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner? And why not do evil that good may come?

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As some people slanderously charge us with saying, their condemnation is just.

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Let's pray before the band comes to lead us in worship this morning. Father, I just want to thank you so much for your grace, your mercy, your kindness.

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I thank you that you are a God who has revealed yourself through your word, that we have hope because of the cross of Jesus Christ, but we recognize that we also have hope because you are faithful.

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You are righteous. You are true. You are a God who keeps his promises. And Father, I thank you that you are a

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God who has protected us and shielded us from your condemnation through the blood of Jesus Christ.

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And so, Father, as a people who are shielded from that righteous, just condemnation that we all recognize we deserve, we all really do deserve it,

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I pray that we would sing this morning like people who have dodged a bullet. Sing like people who recognize how close we were to the very edge and the brink of hell.

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And Father, that we would delight all the more as we contemplate and consider how righteous you are to judge sinners and how you have poured that wrath that we deserved out on your son on the cross.

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And Father, I pray that that would light the way that we live, the way that we worship, the way that we sing this morning, the way that we relate to one another, the way that we follow your word and that we lovingly obey now as your people what we could not accomplish without your spirit.

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We can now obey because of your spirit that resides within us. And Father, I pray that that hope would be made clear through the message this morning and through the words of the songs that we sing and through everything that's done this morning.

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Father, that you would be continuing to delight our hearts in you, in Jesus' name, amen.

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Well yeah, you can go to be seated and get comfortable. Please do me a favor and keep your Bibles open or your apps open to Romans chapter three verses one through eight.

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We're going to be walking through those eight verses and if at any time during the message you need to get more coffee or juice or donuts, you're not going to distract me if you need to get up.

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Restrooms are out the barn doors down the hallway on the left and so our goal though is over the remainder of our time to keep our focus on God's word as much as possible and so I just routinely pray against distractions and that real communication from God actually occurs during this time.

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I want to start off by saying we live in a day and an age when everyone is eager to receive good from God. I think that's a given.

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I don't even need to see a show of hands if you want God to treat you well. Like I already know that. I mean, I know that you want that and even if you don't raise your hand it's because you didn't hear me because I know that that's a given for all of us.

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We cling to the fundamental hope that God is a God who will keep his promises. Amen?

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Are you glad for that? That he's a God who keeps his promises? We want that. We believe that he is righteous. We believe that he is true to his word.

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We believe that he's always faithful to do what he says he will do and so we expect good from his hand.

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We expect him to do good and we particularly expect him to do good for us. Let's try something right now.

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I know I don't do this very often but in your mind I want you to all honestly answer a question. It's a little bit of a setup.

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We're going to talk about the answer to this question later in the message but right now I want you to answer this question in your heart honestly with truth.

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What could God do in your life to prove to you his faithfulness?

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What could he do in your life to prove to you that he is a faithful God? How would you answer that?

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What could God do to prove to you that he is a God who keeps his promises? How could you tell that God is faithful?

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What could he do for you? I would guess that every single one of us to a person would express that in some terms that would prove to be beneficial to us.

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God could prove his faithfulness by healing my spouse. God could prove his faithfulness by healing me. He could prove his faithfulness by giving me a new job or maybe moving my boss onto a different job.

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That's a lot of nervous chuckle on that one. He could show his faithfulness by answering that prayer to bring my wayward son or daughter back to him or even to an initial faith in him.

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All different kinds of host of things that are potential for how you would answer that question. How could God show and prove his faithfulness in your life?

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And I'm suggesting to you we measure God's faithfulness in terms often of our own benefit.

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And Paul is going to attempt to broaden our understanding of what God's faithfulness, his righteousness and his true to his word personality really means and implies for all of us.

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And remember we're talking about sin. Remember we're talking about the part of the text of Romans that is battering us, that is beating us into submission, that is pushing us, pushing us, pushing us to see our own sinfulness and so you might already have a little bit of a hunch that by the end that's not going to all be pretty.

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But he is indeed faithful. In verse one we're presented with the first two, really the first two of eight questions that we're going to be covering in this text.

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The first two and that's going to be kind of the structure if you're taking notes. There's eight questions I'm going to highlight in this text and that's going to be the order, that's going to be the organization.

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These first two really go hand in hand. What advantage has the Jew? And the second question, what value is circumcision?

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Remembering that circumcision is an external sign. It's to the Jew what maybe like baptism or church attendance might be or saying a sinner's prayer or going down the aisle at a

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Billy Graham conference or something like that. It's kind of that picture of the initiation, the external thing that you do that makes you feel like you're in.

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Whether you're in or not, it's a thing that you might cling to and go, well I at least did that. Even if your life is all in shambles, you've got no proof, no evidence, you don't even love

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Jesus, you don't love his people, you're not doing hardly anything but you point to it and you say, that's the thing, I guess

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I'm okay with God and it's very thin. And so that's the question and I remember that he's speaking in terms of those really in the last, throughout the section, who had the law and approached

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God solely based on the law. That's the picture of what he's been kind of, where we've been in the book of Romans.

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And so in the previous text he told them that the law is insufficient to save. This is very vital and important as we're answering these questions.

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The question, what advantage has the Jew? What is the value of circumcision? What does it really even mean to be

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Jewish then? Is there any benefit to that at all is what Paul's asking. And the outward sign that marked a

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Jewish man as belonging to God's old covenant people was of no value, he said in our text last week, if they didn't also keep the law in its entirety.

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And so these two verses, two questions in verse one are addressed to, remember, a primarily

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Gentile church. We've got to keep that in mind all throughout this book. So every time he's talking about Jews, he's talking about Jews to non -Jewish people primarily.

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And so I think in part he recognizes that by saying circumcision, these outward signs, keeping the law, you can't even do it, he's saying that to Gentiles and I think they might look at the

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Jews and kind of be like, yeah, pour it on Paul, more of that. Let the Jews have it might have been the mindset of those

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Gentiles sitting in that Roman church. And so he's going to backtrack on that a little bit because Paul is going to say, yeah, indeed the

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Jews are no better than the Gentiles, but the Gentiles are no better off than the Jews. And that's where we're heading in this argument for sin.

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And in the end, we'll see it more come into focus next week in the text where it's very abundantly clear that no one is righteous, no one seeks after God.

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So Paul is making sure that the pendulum doesn't swing too far enough to make the Gentiles feel like they're the superior ones now.

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Oh yeah, let those Jews have it. I mean, they didn't really get it. They didn't have the gumption to keep the law and to obey and they disobeyed

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God and all this Old Testament history. So how many of you have ever, honestly, just in a practical sense, ever read the

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Old Testament and been like, who are these jokers? Honestly, I mean, has there ever, ever, ever been in your life an arrogance when you read these stories you go,

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I think I could have got it better. I mean, Jesus comes and makes and does all these miracles. I mean, I at least think

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I might've been one of his disciples, right? I mean, I might've followed him. I certainly wouldn't have been in that crowd shouting crucify him, would

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I? And then you kind of start to do the mental math and go, I think that sounds, it sounds like that could be me.

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And so Paul is encouraging us to have that kind of, that thinking process to say, wait, in humility, would you do any better Gentiles?

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Would you get this right? And so Paul is making sure that they don't, that the

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Gentiles have no room for arrogance. So he answers his first two questions in a surprising way, surprising to the

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Gentile audience. Then what benefit is it to be Jewish? What benefit is it to actually have these external signs?

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And they might've been ready, yeah, Paul's gonna say nothing. There is no benefit to being Jewish. Being Jewish is just a thing that was an

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Old Testament thing and there's no benefit to it at all. And they might've expected that. But after demolishing the idea that the law plays a role in salvation, which it doesn't, he now elevates the law to the level of value and importance.

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You see, the relationship of the law to God and to humanity is very important.

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And he says to you guys, the Jews were very important and they had an intense, amazing benefit.

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Now the law isn't able to save us, but he says that the greatest advantage of the Jews was that they were entrusted with the very oracles of God.

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Now I would guess that none of you used the word oracles this last week in common everyday speech. Oracle, that translation is a little bit archaic.

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I wish that it would be translated a little bit more directly into English. A word that we would, a phrase that we would use very often, the very words of God.

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I think maybe the NIV has it that way or a couple of translations are gonna have it that way. And I think that's even better because it gives the force behind it of what the

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Greek would have read like. They were given the very words of the almighty

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God. That's a powerful thing. How many of you think that that's valuable, to have the words of God in writing for you to read, to study, to be able to go over?

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And so the law of God is a very important and useful thing. You see, we can't throw the baby out with the bathwater and be like, we don't live by law anymore.

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We live under grace. We live under a new covenant, so we'll just throw out the law. No, no, he's saying don't do that.

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It's a very, very important thing. It's the very words of God. You see, what we do is we use it wrong.

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We use it in a way that we think that if we obey the law, that we will become righteous, that we can demonstrate our own righteousness, our own goodness, and God will accept us if we'll keep the law.

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But you see, the law is extremely valuable, and it's extremely valuable in these things. In the law, our weakness is revealed.

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Through the law, we realize just how deeply our hearts have been severed from a genuine relationship with him.

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How many of you ever read the Old Testament law? Have you ever read it? I mean, it is just full of stuff I don't wanna do.

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It's full of stuff I can't keep. I mean, it would be a full -time job just to keep the

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Old Testament law, just to do the things that it says would be required for me to be holy before God.

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I can't do it. In the law, we see how far we truly are from holiness if we're honest about it, if we don't use the law like makeup to make the outside look better and know all the time that we're not keeping the law in our hearts.

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You see, that's often what religious people do is they use the law like just the external, just clean this up outside so I look better for all of you or better to all of you.

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How many of you know that that's the dumbest of all charades because who sees your heart? Who's the one that you ought to be desiring to please?

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Each other or the audience of one that we talked about at the end of last message?

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So, Paul is bringing the law back into the equation as a setup here in chapter three for his main argument that really has begun in the third and fourth questions that we find in verse three.

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So what if some were unfaithful? God gave them the law. They had the very words of God. What if some of them proved to be unfaithful?

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Their side of the covenant, remembering that the giving of the law was straight up part of the covenant like God saying, you obey these laws,

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I will bless you and I'm going to be your God and you will be my people and it's going to be for the nations to see.

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By the way, this was never only about Israel. Even the old covenant was not only about Israel.

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It was about the nations beholding the glory of God and what it looked like for a redeemed people moving forward.

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That's what they were supposed to be and that which they couldn't be and the law was all there to show them their failure and their inability.

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So what if some were unfaithful, the first question, really the third question and then the fourth question, does their faithlessness, does the faithlessness of the people of Israel, the

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Jews, nullify the faithfulness of God? And these two questions set up the main question that Paul is driving for in this text.

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The gospel rises and falls on the righteous and true faithfulness of our God. The value, the benefit, the hope of the gospel actually working and doing what it says it's going to do depends on whether or not

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God is a promise keeper. Does he keep his promises? If he is not righteous, if he is not true, if he is not faithful, then we have no grounds to trust him.

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If he is capricious and inconsistent in his promises, then maybe today he accepts the blood of Christ and maybe tomorrow he doesn't.

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And the best that we could hope for as a fallen humanity is that we would catch God on judgment day on a day that he's feeling good.

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We just hope that he has a good day on the day we stand there. And if God were proven to be faithless, then the only reasonable response for any of us would be utter and complete despair.

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No hope if he is faithless, if he is untrue to his promises, if he is not consistent in his righteousness, if he is not true.

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And so to his first century audience here in this letter, they were steeped in the setting of Jews versus Gentiles and there was this animosity between these two warring groups that were beginning to form the church.

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Some were challenging God's faithfulness, some were challenging his fairness, some were actually looking at the

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Old Testament and looking at the Jews and saying, well if they're no longer his people and he's instituting something new and he's bringing forward

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Christ, then is he even faithful? So to put these two questions in more simple terms, question three and four, if God is so quick to skip out on his promises to bless his people just simply because some of them sinned against him, doesn't that call his faithfulness into question?

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In other words, many Jews during this time were wanting desperately to still be special to God and they were saying, wait, wait, wait, wait, we are still, we're still in because of circumcision, we're still in because of the law, we're still in because of these things, right?

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We've likely never asked this question in these terms, right? I don't think you've ever formulated this question about the

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Old Testament, it's not probably been that nuanced for you. But we have, I would suggest to you, all asked similar questions in a similar spirit.

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It looks different, different context, different time, but the same spirit of the question. I have sought to live a good life and to honor

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Jesus, so why the diagnosis of cancer? I tried to lead my family in love and honor and God, why would my wife walk out on me or why would my children leave the faith?

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I thought God was supposed to be faithful and true, but I feel like I just can't get a break in life.

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It's like wave after wave after wave pounding me, where are you, God? And the bottom line question remains the same, when the

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God who says he is for his people doesn't show up for his people, doesn't that indicate that he lacks faithfulness?

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Doesn't that prove that he is not keeping his promises? Of course, we might recognize, and those of you that maybe are more informed and have listened to my preaching for a while, hopefully some of this has rubbed off on you, that we recognize that in this era of grace, we are not a prosperity gospel people, we do not expect everything to go our way in this life.

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We know that there will be difficulties, we know that there will be persecution, we know that there will be trials, we know that our

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Lord and Savior suffered and called us to take up our cross and follow him. So we maybe expect something different, because the promises that we have in Christ for healing, wholeness, completeness, are not.

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He will not fail at those promises, but they will be realized in a kingdom that is yet to come.

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But there are whole branches of Christianity that I've already alluded to, whole branches of Christianity, you could jump online and you could even grab a couple

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TV shows this morning that would promote a prosperity gospel that claims promises, remember we're talking about God is a promise keeper, so it matters what you consider to be the promise.

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What are your expectations of God? What do you believe that he promised to you? And many would promise abundance, healing, would say that those are their privilege in Christ right here and right now, and just name it and claim it and you will have your miracle, you will have your blessing, and the very nature of the problem in our passage here is a problem facing anyone who buys into the prosperity gospel.

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It is that God looks faithless, unrighteous, and untrue when the cancer doesn't go away.

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He looks like he goes back on his promises when you say that he promises health, wealth, and prosperity, and we actually receive illness, poverty, and loss.

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What do you believe he's promised to you, and what are you then placing your hope in?

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Do you see how vital that is? Do you see how important it is that we get down to what does the faithfulness of our

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God look like in the here and now? Because you will be sorely disappointed on the day that you breathe your last if you expect him to always heal you.

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You will always be thinking, what have I done wrong, or what is he if he's promised these things to me and I don't receive them?

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How many of you ever wanted something that God didn't give you? Go ahead and raise your hand, leave them up for a second.

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How many of you have prayed and asked for God, is he faithful? Look at all these hands testifying that God hasn't been good to you.

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I know that wasn't your spirit, I'm reading into that a bit, but I get to dictate that because I've got the microphone, just to accuse you all, but it's the same for me, right?

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I can raise my hand and say, yeah, there are things that I asked for that I perceive to be good, even things that I thought were good in his design, even things that I thought that he might desire.

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I had a friend in college who was praying desperately for revival on a campus up in Grand Rapids, and the revival never came, and he was actually rocked to the core for a couple of years on that one.

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How could God not want revival, he's down on his knees praying, God, send your spirit, do awesome things here,

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I want to see people come to faith in you, and it didn't transpire over his four years there. We have these good things that we want, and even things that seem to be apparently, things that we would just say, yeah,

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God, of course you want that. So what does that all mean, is

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God faithful? Paul emphatically answers two questions of verse three, with a strong Greek phrase, by no means, no way,

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Jose, there's no way that this is what is true, and he further negates these questions with the phrase, let

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God be true, though everyone else be proved a liar. In other words, God is the standard of truth, and he is trustworthy over and against the entire world.

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If the entire world votes and says this is true, but God says no, this is true, who wins the vote?

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Which one is true? Where God stands, that is always true, though the whole world lies,

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God is the place you go for what is true. It's really interesting how he uses a quote here,

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I love this, because the New Testament quotes the Old Testament in regular places, and this is a really, it's rich because we just studied 1

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Samuel, and we know some of David's history and some of his life, but he quotes from Psalm 51, just after David had been caught in his sin with Bathsheba, a very common story that probably many of us are familiar with, and in context, in Psalm 51,

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David is pouring out his heart before God in repentance, and is saying,

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I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, and please don't throw me away, please don't cast me away from your presence, hold me closer, forgive me, let me go, and so in that context,

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David is saying here in this quote that since his sin was ultimately against God, that makes

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God justified in his words against him, and true in his judgments, he says my sin was against you and against you only,

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God, that you, God, may be justified in your words, and prevail when you,

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God, are judged. In other words, David, who was caught in sin is saying, you're always right when you judge.

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I mean, how many of you have that attitude when you're caught, when you get pulled over by the cops, is that the first thing you say?

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I was speeding, you're just, give me a ticket. That's what David is saying here, in essence, he's like,

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I was in the wrong, and you prove yourself time and time again to always be consistently right when you judge mankind.

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And what David is saying, and what Paul is quoting, has a powerful word picture in it when we think about the righteousness and justice of God.

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He's basically saying, if you could find a courtroom big enough to put God on trial, and put him on defense, he would win every court case against him.

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Every time that he has ever judged, every time he has made a decision, every time he has ever weighed out things, he always gets it right.

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In other words, David, who had been caught in sin, is testifying to God's right and righteous judgment.

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He says, in repentance before God, you get it right every single time.

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And I just have to challenge all of us, do you live that way? Do you believe that? Do you believe

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God is getting it right in your life? Do you believe that God is just and right in all that he brings to you? Do we respect his judgments as just and true?

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Now in verse five, Paul continues the questions, building off of the previous ones. Because there's always someone who's willing to take things too far, right?

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Last week, Paul was attacking the legalist, who seeks to keep the law by crossing every T and dotting every

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I, and acting externally like they're keeping the law, even while internally they know that they're not. But in the remainder of these questions, he challenges anyone who may be tempted to swing the pendulum the other way and see a redeeming quality in sin.

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The question is kind of strange. Doesn't our sin show his grace more? The more we sin, the more forgiving he looks, the more gracious, the more kind he looks.

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In other words, it's kind of like paint, the argument might be here in an artistic term, paint the backdrop super black so that the light shines out more.

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So shouldn't we put more black paint on the painting so that it's very, very stark when there's light there?

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That's the question that is kind of being posed here. Doesn't our sin show his grace more?

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Doesn't our unrighteousness accentuate his glorious holiness? Someone would be tempted to think that sin has a vital role to play in making

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God look better. So in the fifth and sixth questions, he anticipates the pendulum swinging that direction.

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And even, he was receiving some of that, we'll see that by the last two questions. But in question number five, if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, then what shall we say?

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In question six, that God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? To summarize the meaning of these two questions, it would be good to roll them up into one question, one little bit more complicated question, but it's this.

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If our unrighteousness accentuates God's righteousness, then why apply his wrath?

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Why even judge us? Because doesn't it ultimately rebound towards his glory?

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Doesn't it ultimately make him shine brighter and look better is the question? And this question presupposes something that's vitally dangerous.

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It presupposes that sin has some intrinsic, useful value to God. And that would be deeply flawed and very dangerous thinking.

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To presume that our sin is of no consequence because God shines brighter is to live a life of lawless rebellion against our creator.

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Once again, I think it's a stretch that anyone in this room has formulated this dangerous thought in those terms.

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Oh, you know what? I think I'm going to go sin more this week so that God gets more glory. I doubt that you've rationalized it that way, but I think, again, that the thought is alive in the practice of many of us.

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Anytime we willfully sin with the anticipation that, oh, I'll just do this and I'll repent later. Or even just sin because we know that, okay,

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God's grace is sufficient. God will cover that. I'll do this today and ask for forgiveness tomorrow.

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When we do that, we are dangerously close to the logic of Paul's question here. When I sin, and I'm just confessing before you, when

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I sin, I can assure you that I don't sin with the anticipation of the righteous and just judgment of God against my behavior and my rebellion.

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His judgment is far from my mind. I justify it by thoughts of getting cut free, right?

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Do you ever sin and go, you know, I think I'm going to be judged for this, but I'm going to do this anyways? Usually, you're justifying it by saying, somehow

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I'm going to get through a legal loophole on this one. When we sin like that, we're pretending that He would not be righteous to inflict wrath on us, when

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He would. He would be righteous, just. His goodness applied to the sinner is

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His judgment. And the deeper problem for us is simply that we often sin like this without a mind toward the wrath of the

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Father poured out on His Son for us. That's where it really comes down to.

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Those who are in Christ are actually right to believe that there is therefore now no condemnation for us, but it is simply because the

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Son of God has taken the wrath that we deserved, and He took it on Himself for us.

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So it is wrong thinking to assume that our sin results in more glory for God. Instead, we ought to think that when we sin, we're causing more suffering for our

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Lord, our King, our Savior, Jesus Christ. Sin is not cheap.

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It is costly. The price has been paid, yes, but what a gruesome and devastating price it was that was paid for my sin and yours.

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And again in verse 6, Paul answers emphatically against the notion that sin serves any higher purpose.

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By no means, no way. If sin aided His glory, then

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God would not be the rightful judge of the world. But His judgment is a given all throughout

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Scripture. In Genesis 18 -25, one of the earliest mentions of judgment that is there in Scripture, when

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Abraham was wrestling with God over the city of Sodom, He said, far be it from you to do such a thing.

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This is Abraham speaking to God and remember he's trying to wrestle it down and say, would you spare the city for even five righteous people?

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If we could find five righteous people in the city? And of course He's not going to find them. But this is part of the argument.

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Far be it from you, God, to do such a thing, to put the righteous to death with the wicked, so that the righteous fare the same as the wicked.

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Far be that from you, shall not the judge of all the earth do what is just?

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God's role as the judge of the earth, as the just judge of the earth is well established all throughout

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Scripture. Notice that Paul's question in verse 5, those two questions were so distasteful to him, so painful for him to even utter that he qualifies it with, by the way,

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I'm just speaking in human terms. By the way, at this point, I'm just kind of going off my rocker in the way that I'm talking about these things, because there's no spiritual redeeming quality of these questions that are being asked.

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In verses 7 -8, he personalizes the issue with a specific example. He says, if I lie, question number 7, if I lie, doesn't that glorify

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God as the truth teller, as the ultimate one of truth? And so why would

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He condemn someone who is bringing glory to His name? The same type of question is in 5 and 6. And more generally, then, why not do evil, that good may come?

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This is basically repeating those previous two questions, but it shows that Paul was dealing with a real issue in his life, because the nature of the gospel of grace is open to abuse, and so he says that many were accusing and many were charging

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Paul with the accusation that one could follow Christ, ask for His forgiveness, and then do whatever they wanted under grace, and he's disagreeing with that patently.

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Paul concludes this by not even entertaining a further answer. He doesn't even answer the foolish question, why not do evil, that good may come?

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Instead, he just jumps to the seriousness of any line of thinking that even comes close to giving sin a beneficial role.

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He says sternly, their condemnation is just.

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Anyone who wants to play around with sin, anybody who wants to play around with sin in a heart that says it is not a dangerous thing, is completely on the wrong side of God's grace.

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Now, don't hear me saying that anybody who sins is on the wrong side of grace, but anybody who sins repeatedly and routinely, and plays around with sin, and determines in their heart that it is not a dangerous thing, that it is a trivial thing, that it is a minor thing,

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I'm saying that such a one is on the wrong side of grace. We do not live by law.

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Praise God we don't live by law, but we also do not live on the other extreme, giving ourselves room to be friendly with sin.

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On the tour of this text, by the way, we're here at the end and we haven't really resolved the most pressing question yet.

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The text kind of has gone there, but the questions need to be explained a little bit more like I was doing, and then we can get down to this fundamental question, is

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God faithful? Is he righteous, is he true, is he trustworthy? He who has judged his

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Old Testament covenant people for not keeping the law, has he kept up his side of the covenant?

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And the answer is an emphatic, yes. Yes he has. You see the reason that the text shifts from a discussion of God's faithfulness to a discussion of sin in verse five is the reality that he remains faithful, he does remain faithful.

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Faithful, faithful, and completely faithful to his covenant. And we misunderstand fundamentally what his faithfulness looks like in the context of a sin -cursed, sin -entrapped people.

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His faithfulness, his faithfulness applied to sinful humanity is to condemn and judge.

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He is faithful to condemn. We did an exercise earlier in the message where I asked you to think about what

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God could do to show you his faithfulness, and probably none of us considered that he could give you a disease or illness to demonstrate his faithfulness to call out your foolish heart and call it back to a deeper dependence on him.

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Did that cross your mind? I don't think any of us thought of his faithfulness in those terms. None of us considered that he could bring us through a season of unemployment to lead us out of a wicked dependence on our affluence and our self -sufficiency.

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Was that on your mind? Or was it just the good that you perceived as his faithfulness?

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Do we live like he owes us? Do we perceive that the only thing that could demonstrate

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God's faithfulness is for him to do something really, really whopping good in my life? All of these questions in this text centered on a man -centered view of God's faithfulness.

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He's here to serve me. He's here to serve us. But no,

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God is faithful. Crazy faithful to keep his promises. And in the old covenant was the very clear statement in Deuteronomy that if they would not keep his law, he would remove his blessing.

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He would send them into exile. He would severely judge his people. Read some of the minor prophets and you're going to get some sentences and some verses in there that are extremely uncomfortable about the kinds of things that his people in exile would, in siege, would eat.

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It's a terrifying thought. Real judgment that comes from the faithfulness of God. So what is the faithfulness of your

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God made out of? It is made of his promises. And the same God that promises new life to anyone who believes in his son is the same

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God who promises wrath and judgment to any who reject his way of salvation. He is consistent.

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He is faithful. He is a true keeper of his promises. And so we come to communion to cling to the one promise that outshines all of those promises for those who have found it.

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It is the basis upon which we can be moved to joy in the context of being sin -cursed people. Of being those who are indeed waging a knock -down, drag -out battle with sin.

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It's expressed in many words, this promise, all throughout the New Testament. Many ways of coming at this promise, but God laid one on my heart as I prepared for this message, and maybe this is going to speak to someone here, but John 1 .12

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says this, and this is the promise. Listen to the promise here. But to all who did receive him, that's

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Jesus, to all who received Jesus, to all who believed in his name, that's Jesus' name, he gave the right to become children of God.

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All who believe in his name, he brought you into his family. Bathed you, clothed you, got refrigerator rights in God's house.

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Based on Christ. Who invited you? The son of the guy who owns the house.

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And he says, you know what? Any friend of my son is welcome here any time. Welcome home.

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You're adopted. The promise. You see, the picture that scripture's trying to paint here for us is how dire you've got to get to the edge and look over.

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You've got to stand there and look and see the fires of hell licking at your toes, and know that that's what you deserve before you're going to be moved to exalt, to be lifted up into the heavenlies with rejoicing and gladness for the salvation that has been brought to you in Christ.

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Adopted into his family? Me? You see, I'm afraid that many of us still believe that he got a bargain with us, and we're talking about the blood of his son shed for us.

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That's not a bargain. Not for me. He went to the cheap section and paid the highest price for me.

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But we're not worth that. He is for his glory and for his honor. That's why he's done it.

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Do you see it, church? Do you feel it, church? Do you realize the condemnation that you were under?

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And the condemnation, hear me carefully, the condemnation that your sin today deserves.

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I'm not talking about the sin before you became a Christian. I'm talking about the sin you committed this morning is worthy of condemnation.

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Do you get it? So that we wage a knock -down, drag -out battle by the spirit with sin in our lives.

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Why? Because he's loved us. He's invited us into his family, and we know that the very sins that we commit are the things that hung his son on the cross on our behalf.

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Do you get it? Man, this is vital. And so as we come to communion, that's the hope.

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That's why we can take the cup and the cracker with joy and delight.

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That's why we can go out from here. Because I don't know about you, but without the cross, I would be immobilized. Without the hope that comes from that,

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I would just have an ongoing guilt thing going on. I couldn't lift my head.

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I couldn't lift my eyes. And in those seasons where I think it's back on my shoulders, where I take back those sins and I put them back here and I say, oh,

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I've got to do better. I've got to keep the law. I've got to obey. Do you know the first thing that goes out the door in my life?

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Joy. How can you feel joy when you're carrying that burden that he wants to carry for you, he has carried for you?

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Don't take it back on yourself. But equally, in the strength that he provides and supplies and the conviction, pray for conviction over the areas of sin where you know that things are going bad for you.

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And I know that that's for each and every one of us. Our God is faithful to place all who come to him through his

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Son into his family. He's faithful, righteous, and true. He has removed condemnation for those who have been given eternal life in his

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Son. And so during the next song, we're going to take a few minutes to reflect on the faithfulness of God.

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I'd encourage you just, I know that we get in those lines, we jump right up and get in line, and I'm not judging anybody for doing that, but I would ask you to just take a minute to reflect on your own faithlessness.

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Reflect on your own faithlessness. And then take a moment to repent and turn from that. In your heart, just confess it to God and say,

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I have broken this past week, and I want to launch forward into this next week with hope, and I don't want to do those same sins again.

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And then commit to put to death, in prayer to God, commit to put to death your pet sins.

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And then come to the table and take the cup that reminds us of the awful, devastating, glorious blood of God's Son, shed as the price for our sins.

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And take the cracker to remember his body, which was torn and shredded and pierced for us. And only come to these tables if you truly believe.

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Let me encourage all of us to leave this place with a deeper faith in the God who is faithful, who is true to keep his promises.

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Promises that include wrath towards sin, promises that equally include eternal life for those who are sheltered by the blood of his

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Son. We dodged a bullet by God's grace. And he's given that to us in his

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Son, Jesus. Father, I thank you. I thank you for your grace, for your mercy.

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I thank you for texts like this that are faithful to point out the dire condition of our own hearts.

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That you are indeed righteous and we are furthest from that, that you are faithful and we are faithless. And that without Christ we would be hopeless and devastatingly lost in our sin, but in Christ we've been granted riches untold.

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We've been adopted into your family and brought into your household with all the resources that you have at your disposal shared with us.

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And so Father, I pray that you would help us to launch out with joy into this next week as the people who are redeemed, that you would make us contagious among those who do not know these things.

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That it would not just be merely trying to shoehorn a gospel presentation into some conversation in uncomfortable ways around the water cooler at work, but Father, that we would just be so bright and effusive in our joy that people would say, what's up with you?

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I pray that it would come naturally to us to share this glorious truth of the hope that we have in Christ. I thank you because without that we would be joyless, dark, just devastated people who would go about with our faces down, not really knowing which way to go.

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Thank you for hope in Jesus. Thank you for his bloodshed for us, his body broken in our place, in Jesus' name.