Romans 2 17 29 Circumcision Of The Heart (1)

There we go. I would say the wonderful thing about a small church is we're kind of like a family, and sometimes if we have technical issues, or if I do something silly, then we tend to be very forgiving.

And that's a good thing. If you would, turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 2. We are continuing our walk through the book of Romans as we look at the second part of chapter 2. We're going to look at Romans chapter 2.

Before we begin, let's bow our heads in prayer. Our Father, we thank You for this day. We thank You that we gather in worship as we continue our worship. By looking at Your Word today, we pray, Father, that You would speak to our hearts and our minds in Your Word.

That You would change us from the inside out. That we would truly glorify You in all that we do, and that we would grow closer to You today. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Well, as we look at Romans chapter 2 today, I want to ask a question.

What's it mean to be a child of God? What's it mean to follow God? The world has a lot of different ideas about it. There's a lot of different thoughts on what it means to be a child of God, or how we become one.

Do we become a child of God when we're baptized? Do we say a prayer and become a child of God? Do we do anything to become a child of God? What does that mean? See, in the first century, the question that they were talking about, and you can tell by the title of the sermon here, the question of that was regarding circumcision.

The passage we're looking at today talks about this thing called circumcision. So let's jump in and see what the text has to say about it. Picking up on verse number 17, it says,. But if you call yourself a Jew, and rely on the law, and boast in God, and know His will, and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed from the law, and if you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth, you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself?

While you preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law.

For as it is written, the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you. For circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law. But if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision.

So if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? Then he who is physically uncircumcised but keeps the law will condemn you who have the written code and circumcision but break the law.

For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man, but from God.

Circumcision as the Covenant Sign in Abraham

So, as you can tell, there's a recurring theme throughout this passage. There's a recurring word that we see throughout this passage. And first things first, first thing we're going to talk about, it's in your insert there.

First thing we talk about is circumcision. That's the first reference, that's the most common thing throughout this passage. Seems like a strange thing, doesn't it? It's kind of a strange thing to be talking about in church on Sunday morning.

I suppose it's possible, I suppose it's possible here that someone here may not know what circumcision is. I'm not going to go into all the details and explain the medical procedure on it and all that stuff.

If you don't know that, ask somebody. Politely. Ask somebody after church. I'm sure they'll explain it to you with discretion. But why circumcision? Why circumcision? Why? We should ask, why is the Apostle Paul, as he's writing this letter to the church in Rome, why is he talking about this right here?

Why is this a thing? Why is this relevant? What's the issue that he mentions about 12 times in this passage? Well, circumcision is one of those recurring topics throughout Scripture. Going back to Genesis, it's a recurring issue.

As a matter of fact, it's first recorded way back in Genesis chapter 17. At that point, God had made a covenant, or was making a covenant with Abraham. Remember that? He promised Abraham, way back in Genesis 12, he called to Abraham and said, hey, come and move to a new area.

Come to this promised land, to Canaan. He said, I'm going to bless you and I'm going to make you into a great nation and I'm going to bless all peoples because of you. So Abraham did that. And through Abraham, well, Abraham was blessed.

The nation of Israel grew to be rather large. A powerful nation. Through Abraham, all nations have been blessed. We have the Messiah that came from his family line. It was through him and his descendants that Israel came about.

His grandson Jacob was renamed as Israel. And his 12 sons make up the 12 tribes of Israel. But when God made this covenant with Abraham, when he made this agreement with him of sorts, that a covenant is a very serious agreement, very serious, almost contract if you would, he sealed it with a sign.

God sealed it with a sign and said the sign of this covenant is circumcision. Abraham and all future males within the nation of Israel would be circumcised. And they were. They're circumcised on the 8th day.

Coincidentally, I've been told that there's a spike in vitamin K, if I'm not mistaken, in the baby on about the 8th day. And that helps with blood clotting, I believe. But the Bible doesn't really tell us why this particular thing was chosen.

Why did God say do this instead of, I don't know, bleaching their hair? Why did God say do this instead of piercing an ear? I don't know. We don't know for sure. I've got my theories, but we really don't know why God commanded this as the covenant sign.

We're simply told that it is. But here's the thing. Growing up, every young Hebrew boy, every Hebrew was told that they were God's chosen people. They were told that they were special. They were told that God loved them more than anybody else in the world.

More than any other people groups. He's their God. Yahweh is their God. Nobody else. They are His people and nobody else. They thought that God would only talk to them. That they had special access to God.

And to be fair, they did have certain advantages. They had the temple where they could go and worship. The tabernacle starting in the desert and the wilderness. And then they had a temple where they could go and they could pray to God.

And God was said to reside in that temple. And they had the Mosaic Law, which is the set of commands that were given down to Moses. And all the commandments of him, the Ten Commandments. They had the priest that would make sacrifices.

They would literally kill a lamb or an animal and place the sins of the people on that animal. So they could be forgiven of their sins. And they reveled in that status. They reveled in the status of being God's people.

They were intensely proud of it. They celebrated it. They even looked down on people who were not Jewish. They would call the non-Jewish people, the Gentiles, they'd call them dogs. They hated them. Because they were special.

And because the main sign of the relationship to God was the sign of circumcision, it became the thing that they would use to reference their relationship to God. That's what Paul's using this word for.

That's why he mentions it here, is this physical cutting of the flesh then became synonymous with the name of the people that were of God. It became the word that was used to define what a Jew was. Circumcision is the phrase that was used to identify somebody or refer to somebody that identified as a faithful Jewish person living under the Mosaic Law.

Self-Righteousness Is Futile

So with that in mind, we're going to go back, we're going to re-read, starting again with verse number 17. But my second point here is we see this thing, well, we see it addressed, and that's that self-righteousness is futile.

Self-righteousness is futile. Let's read it again, picking up on 17 again. It says, But if you call yourself a Jew, and rely on the law, and boast in God, and know his will, and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed from the law, and if you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth, you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself?

While you preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law.

For the past couple of weeks, we've been walking through Romans. For the past couple of weeks, specifically, we've been talking through chapter 2. We've talked about the issue of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy.

And if we look at the passage that I read here, hypocrisy is when we criticize someone, when we find blame with somebody, when we look at somebody and say, You, you're not good. You're not right. You aren't as good as me.

You do this thing. But then if you look at verse 21, what's he say? You call somebody a thief, but then you steal. You do the very act that you tell them they're wrong for. Verse 22, he says, you call somebody an adulterer.

And if you notice, he doesn't deny that that's true, but he says you call them an adulterer. But then they go out and they commit adultery themselves. Or if we call somebody an adulterer and we commit adultery, we're hypocrites.

Verse 22, again, when we say someone else commits adultery, we throw this out there. You're an adulterer because you do this or this. Or maybe we say somebody's a bad Christian when we ourselves fail.

We criticize somebody for their faith walk or their lack of faith. And then we do the same things that they do. Or when a Christian isn't acting the way we think they should act, and then we do the same things.

Verse 23 sums it up and it says, they thought they were God's people. The Jewish people, they boasted in the law. They were proud. They boasted. They said, we have Moses. We are good because we have Moses because we can point back to Him.

They boasted in the things that they did to prove their piety. But they were no better than anybody else. They were no better than anybody else. They're hypocrites. The bigger issue is, well, my point number two talked about self-righteousness.

Have you ever stopped to think what is self-righteous? What does it mean to be self-righteous? What do I mean by self-righteousness? You may have heard somebody referred to as self-righteous. You may have been called self-righteous.

You may have called somebody else self-righteous. Usually it's an insult. Usually it's an insult. It's often used to describe somebody who's arrogant. Somebody who thinks they're the smartest person in the room.

Somebody who thinks they're always right. Somebody who thinks that they are better than somebody else or they're morally superior. They look down their nose and say, I would never do that. But let's parse it out.

What does it mean? Well, the first part of the word is self, right? It points to me, the person saying it. If I am going to be self-righteous, then me, that's the first part. So it's the person speaking or it's the person being referred to.

But then the second part of it is righteous or righteousness. If someone is righteous, it means that they're right. It means that they're correct. It means that their behavior is good. That it's just.

That they have no fault. It means that they're blameless or they can do or have done no wrong. It's not something we want to be. As Christians, we believe that our righteousness does not come from ourselves.

No Christian should ever be accused of being self-righteous. No Christian can ever brag about being righteous based on what we are. We are not self-righteous. We believe that we are not in and of ourselves ever righteous.

The Bible tells us by nature we are sinners. Did you know that? We are born sinners. We crawl out of the womb. Sinners. By nature, we cannot do right. We cannot be right. We can't uphold the law on our own.

Just go down the list of the Ten Commandments. I guarantee you every single one of us is broken. Every single one of those in thought or in deed. We've all lied. We've all stolen. You may not have used God's name as a curse word, but we point to or we blaspheme God when we say that God desires this and we're wrong.

Or we use His name incorrectly. Folks, we can't please God based on our own righteousness. The only solution is we need Jesus. That's the only solution to being righteous. So we're not self-righteous.

We're not self-righteous. We're Jesus-righteous. That's what a Christian should be. Christians are not perfect, self-righteous, but we are forgiven through Jesus and His righteousness. So the term self-righteous cannot and should not ever apply to a Christian because we're not self-righteous.

We're anything but. But the Jewish people that were reading this, the Jewish people that were reading this, they probably did. They probably thought they were righteous or they did think they were righteous based on their own efforts.

They thought they had lived a morally superior life. They thought they were morally superior to the Gentiles because they had the law of Moses. They knew how to behave and what to do. They knew what God expected of them and they were proud of that because they think they did it.

They thought they had a righteousness that was of their own doing because they earned righteousness by keeping the law. But they were sadly mistaken. Their self-righteous attitudes only made things worse for them.

As a matter of fact, verse 24 in this passage says, for as it's written, the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you. The Jewish people were so self-righteous and they were so bound and determined and they were convinced in their own eyes that they were a gift to God that they blasphemed God by the way they lived, by the way they talked, by the way they acted.

Because the Gentiles watching them, the Gentiles watching them then thought God was that way or thought God was somehow evil or God was somehow wrong. So the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of their sinful behavior.

You want to know why it's so important that we live a holy life today? You want to know why it's so important that we should live a life that not only reflects God, it reflects what He did for us, it reflects our faith in Him.

The reason that we should live a life that points to Him is because people are watching. Did you know that? Think about it. People are watching. I used to have a friend that would tell me it's not fair that people would look at us and judge us in that way.

Well, it's not fair. It really isn't. But they're going to. They're going to. When we claim to be Christians, when we claim to be a follower of God and then we do the very things that God says don't do, that's what skeptics love to see.

The things that skeptics love to see, the thing that when I say skeptics, I mean somebody who may identify as an atheist, somebody that just wants a reason to criticize God, to try to poke holes in somebody else's belief in God.

Oh, they love to gloat. They love to make fun of religion when they see Christians acting badly. And it's amazing how often we do dumb stuff to let them do that, isn't it? In this case, when the claims of the Jews to have moral superiority didn't line up with their behavior, the Gentiles, they just thought God was worthless and they blasphemed God.

They thought God was no different than any other God. They thought God was no different than any one of the hundreds of Roman gods or Greek gods. And they blasphemed His name. And when we as Christians jump headlong into sin, when we say, I know what God commands, but I'm going to go out and do my thing because, well, that's what I want to do.

It makes the world laugh. They just laugh at us. They laugh at our God. When we claim the name of Christ, but we live like the devil, the world points fingers and says, I don't want to have anything to do with that Jesus.

Because it doesn't change that guy. Why would I want to follow him? When we claim to know God, but we do the very same things that the Bible says is wrong, it makes God look bad. You know, my first church, I remember, when I was a missionary pastor, I was in this little town of about 50 people down near the Kansas state line.

We didn't even have a, we didn't have a post office in town. We had a post office with a bunch of P .O. boxes, but there was nobody working there. So what would happen is, well, a lot of the area farmers, a lot of the area guys would, we would go and we'd sit at a table in the back room of this post office and we had a coffee maker there.

And we'd drink coffee in the morning. One friend of mine called it the adult education hour. A bunch of us guys would go and occasionally a woman would come. But usually it was a bunch of us guys. And we'd sit there and we'd just gossip.

Well, not the right word. I'll tell you the truth, sometimes it was gossip, which probably it wasn't right, but that's the case. But we'd sit there and talk and just shoot the breeze and talk about what's going on.

One guy in particular, his name was Jay. Jay loved to push buttons. I'm sure Linda can remember who Jay was. Jay was an equal opportunity button pusher, if you would. He liked to offend the preacher in town, as well as anybody else.

He knew I was a preacher. He knew I was the only pastor that lived in town. And he liked to say things just to try to get my goat. Now, he wasn't particularly crass, and he didn't use terrible language, but he would try to pick on religion in general.

Now, in that area there was a decent population of Mennonites. A lot of Mennonites in that area. Well, Mennonites aren't exactly known for being big drinkers. Are they? They're not known for being big drinkers.

But one of the things that Jay liked to joke about, and I remember him using the line several times, was that a Mennonite would never recognize another Mennonite if they were standing in a liquor store.

If they were in a liquor store. See, he had seen Christians that made a big production of how they were better than him, how they wouldn't dare do this behavior or that behavior, and then he saw those that claimed to be Christians, and they did the very same things that they claimed they would never do.

Did you know that pornography use is among the highest used, or among the most used right in the Bible Belt? Did you know that? It's amazing how in the Bible Belt where people say, oh, we'd never do that, that's where Internet pornography tends to be the biggest.

Now, I got along with Jay okay, but you know what, as many times as I tried to talk to him about the Gospel, as many times as I tried to talk to him about, hey Jay, are you going to come to church this week?

Hey Jay, what are you doing this week? He never once set foot in our church. Why? Because he thought Christians were just a bunch of self-righteous hypocrites. He didn't see any reason for it. It didn't change anybody else's behavior, it didn't change their attitude, their heart, so why should he bother?

Self-righteousness, or a morally superior attitude, is futile, and it does not please God. It doesn't please God to try to be righteous on our own. My third point today is that obedience is only worth something if you actually obey.

Obedience Without a Changed Heart Is Worthless

Obedience is only worth something if you actually obey. Someone I know has, on more than one occasion, this person has told me that he plans to get to heaven by working his way there. He actually used that phrase.

He says, I'm going to work my way to heaven. On several occasions he's told me of times when he believed that God put this particular situation in his path so that he could help somebody, and he could then get to heaven, hopefully, by doing that sort of thing.

He reasons that it's up to him to do enough good somehow so that somehow his good, if it was put on a scale, his good deeds would outweigh his bad deeds, and that he would somehow pass that low mark of what's needed when he stands before God someday, or he says St. Peter, when he stands before Peter someday to gain entrance into heaven.

I've tried to explain on multiple occasions that it's really not about what we do. We can never do enough to earn our way to heaven. We can never do enough to work our way to heaven, and we're never going to do enough so our good outweighs our bad because, well, that's just the way it is.

And I've tried to explain what Jesus did for us, but he really just doesn't care to hear about that. He thinks he's going to earn his way to heaven by working and being good. And that brings to mind what we see in the next passage here, or in the rest of the last part of this passage.

And that's verse 25. It says, for circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law. But if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision. So if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law but will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision, that will tickle my throat.

There we go. Then he who is physically uncircumcised but keeps the law will condemn you who have the written code and circumcision, but break the law. For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical.

It starts out on verse 25, talking about this circumcision. Remember what I said it refers to? It's a reference to being a Jew, to being God's chosen people. It references the fact that they adhere to this law that they call the Mosaic Law and all the things that come with it.

But the thing is, if a ritual of circumcision is what's being counted on, if you're going to point to that thing that happened on the 8th day of your life and say, that's what matters and that's how I am a Jewish person and I'm God's person, and then you go on and violate the commandments that come along with it, where do you go from there?

Where do you go from there? What's going to save you after you go and continue to violate God's commands? It doesn't matter if one is circumcised, if one is a full-blooded Jew, if one has all the trappings of the religious life, if one violates the commandments of God, if you're going to count on those things and rituals and good behavior to get you to heaven, then you better not mess up by misbehaving, right?

But what about the guy that's not a Jew outwardly? He's not gone through the rituals, he's not participated in all the temple sacrifices, he's not gone through all the stuff that a good Jew does, but that same man has lived a life of faith, depending on God, trusting in God, and the same man has lived a pious life.

He's not violated God's commandments. Which one of those guys is really, really following God? Is it the one that got circumcised on the eighth day way back when and now he's in his forties and he's a liar and a cheater and a schemer and an adulterer and a blasphemer and everything?

Is that guy the one that's truly honored God? Or is it Brother Joe over here who has honestly lived a life of faith, even though he may not have those outward signs that the Jew does? Let's put this in terms that we might understand a little bit more, might understand a little clearer.

I did, I know we're not supposed to alter God's Word, but I'm going to throw this out here right away, and I'm going to say, instead of circumcision, let's use a different word, and let's see how the passage reads.

Beginning with verse 25. For baptism is indeed of value if you obey the law, but if you break the law, your, ah, I missed one, your baptism becomes unbaptism. So if a man who is unbaptized keeps the precepts of the law, will not his baptism be regarded as unbaptism?

Then he who is physically baptized but keeps the law will condemn you who have the written code and unbaptism and break the law. For no one is a Christian who is merely one outwardly, nor is baptism outward and physical.

See, back in the first century, the debate was over whether or not one should be circumcised. Today, that's not really the issue, is it? Nobody questions if we're circumcised. Nobody's checking on that.

Nobody's wondering that. But today, it's baptism. There's a lot of folks that say, I was baptized as an eight-day-old infant. I was baptized at a week old. I was baptized maybe later on in your life.

I was baptized when I was 19. There's a lot of churches that teach that if one is baptized, that they're going to go to heaven. I've got a pastor friend of mine in a different denomination, and he loves to tell me that baptism saves.

But the problem is, he will then tell me that if we go on and we sin from there, we can lose our salvation. So in his mind, baptism doesn't really save us, does it? It just puts us on the footing so we can lose it by the next time we sin.

Folks will even call baptism the New Testament version of circumcision. And the reasoning is that as a baby, we're born with the stain of original sin, so we baptize the baby, and they're washed clean, and then we are to live a Christian life from there.

We are to grow up knowing God, praising God, and so on. But the problem is when we don't. If we think baptism saves, but we ignore the commands of God, then are we really thinking that's good enough? Is that really good enough?

If the guy that was baptized at eight days old then goes on and commits all sorts of horrible, dastardly crimes, or just simply lives his entire life and has no reason to ever praise God, do we really think that's good enough?

Or on the converse, if a person is not baptized, but we live a life of faith, we trust in Christ, we depend on God, we look to Him for everything, we know that He is our Savior, we know that He gives us everything, which one do you believe is truly saved?

Which one do you truly believe is going to be in heaven someday? Baptism, just like circumcision, is a ritual, whether we want to say it is or not. It's something we do. It's an act. If we think it qualifies us for heaven, if we think it makes us righteous in God's eyes, and that's what we're counting on, well then good luck.

We better live a perfect life after that. And good luck with that. I mean it, really. I really do. None of us are going to live a perfect life. Best of luck trying it, if that's what you want to do. No one ever has, except for Jesus.

Personally, I'd rather just trust in what Jesus did. It's a whole lot easier, and it's definitely a better bet. And that's where the last verse comes in. It's a question of where your heart is. It's a question of what your faith is in.

If you're counting on your baptism to save you, but you have no faith whatsoever in Jesus, then all you did was get wet. If you're counting on Jesus plus anything else to save you, then you've got nothing.

Jesus plus anything equals nothing. Because it was the late John MacArthur that said, if I was able to throw away my salvation and to lose it, you better believe I'm going to. And that's true for everybody.

I'm not good enough to earn my salvation, and I'm not good enough to keep my salvation. The only hope I have is to trust entirely in Jesus. Jesus is the only hope I have. And that's what it means when we say that, well, that's what it refers to when it talks about circumcision of the heart.

It talks about, then, he who is, I'm losing the verse here, but it actually refers to circumcision of the heart. The heart is being circumcised. And I would suggest that it's, baptism is not, when it talks about baptism in the Bible, it's not the outward, physical baptism, but it's the baptism of the heart.

When God changes us from the inside out, when our heart is changed from the inside out, that's what matters. That's what saves. So I'm going to wrap it up here with this thought, and that God says,.