Romans 2:17-29 It's Not Enough

Of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsek preaches his series in the Book of Romans, A Righteousness from God. Let's listen in.

Worshiping God with Heart, Not Mere Religious Performance

Well, good morning, Recast Church. I'm Don Filsek. I'm the lead pastor here, as Dave said. And we've gathered together to worship our great God. At least I hope that that's at least fundamentally the main reason that you're here.

We gather together to worship him by connecting with others in community. We worship him by singing songs of praise as he has told us to. And we come to hear from him by digging into his precious and holy word that he has given to us to really show us who he is.

His word is the very thing that we have access to by which he has made himself known to the world. And so, with those reasons in mind for this gathering this morning, we're gonna be continuing our study in the Book of Romans by wrapping up Romans chapter two.

We're gonna be, as we're marching through that, we're a few sermons into the Book of Romans here. And this section of the Book of Romans stretching from chapter one to chapter three is a pretty tough text.

I'm beginning to actually see some of the reasons why. I actually know two different pastors that started a sermon series in the Book of Romans and did not finish it. And I'm actually realizing that this is a pretty dense section of scripture.

It's also pretty tough in content because chapters one through three are one large argument against us highlighting our sin. And how many of you love to talk about sin? How many of you love to walk away from a message kind of feeling like, wow, I'm broken, I'm busted.

That's me.

And so it gets pretty heavy. It gets pretty, it can be some tough going. But it is here to tell us who we are apart from the righteousness of Christ.

We know the end of the story.

We know where it's all heading. There's a righteousness available in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that we could not muster on our own. And all of this text, chapters one through three, are highlighting that for us.

Our inability, lest you try to find a loophole to the law and to the rules and to God's holiness, he continues to batter us through the Apostle Paul so that there are no defenses left for our own self-righteousness.

You see, in our flesh, in ourselves, we are rebels against God. And that's what we've seen so far in our text. In chapters one through the beginning of chapter two, in chapter one, it was explained that we are prone to exchange the glory of God for the fleeting pleasures of this world.

We are quick to exchange the truth of God for convenient lies that make us feel better about ourselves. Further, in the text last week, we are competitive, judgmental people, according to that text at the end of, or at the beginning of chapter two.

And so now this week, Paul's gonna take on another aspect of the argument against us by explaining that even our religious expressions are faulty. Even our religious expressions are not enough. He's gonna take on Judaism as the model of the discussion, but I believe that through Judaism as the model, he's gonna show us that it's not enough to know stuff about God.

It's not enough to know about God. And further, he's gonna go on to let us know that external religious signs, external religious behaviors, and signs and symbols and actions are not enough. God has given us his word so that we might know him, and instead we discard the gift and play with the box.

Some of you know what I'm talking about. You've seen your kids do that at Christmastime. And so we become enamored with the words and not with the God who is revealed through the word. But knowing a lot of details about God, knowing a lot of details about his word cannot substitute for knowing God himself and experiencing God himself.

And further, God in his mercy gives us signs and symbols of our faith. He gives us some actions, some things to take on, some things to do. Like we're about to sing some worship songs, and we're gonna do some stuff this morning,.

And we're gonna read the word,.

And we're gonna do these things. And we begin to place all of our focus on the external actions, church attendance, singing songs, doing the right things, doing the right behaviors while neglecting and often sliding off the table when it comes to our heart engagement and love for our Savior and Lord.

So the bottom line you need to have in your minds as we are about to read this text is how we tend towards external things instead of inward heart things. How easy it is to slide away from the internal heart change into the externals of a life lived with God in love for him.

You see, I mean, I think that many of us are, would say this, give me a standard to conform to. Give me a checklist of things to accomplish. Give me outward signs that make me feel like I'm okay with God.

But what God wants, what God wants from us, Recast, God wants our hearts. He wants us to love him. He wants us to walk with him. He wants us to lean on him. He wants us to belong to him, heart and soul.

And some of us may be willing to take what scraps we get from the one we love. Some of, you know, we just had Valentine's Day, and so a day, a nice hallmark holiday to try to outdo one another in showing love to our significant other.

But, you know, sometimes it's, it might be in our, you know, relationship or whatever, we might be willing to put up with scraps or even just some external behavior or just a box of chocolate, but not God.

He will have your heart, or he will have none of you. You can pretend all life long that you are his, but if he doesn't have your affections, you have no part in him. It's a pretty heavy statement. But if he doesn't have your affections, you have no part in him.

And so let's open our Bibles to Romans 2, verses 17 through 29. Again, heavy stuff, but this gets down to the heart of the matter. It gets down into my heart, and I hope that it gets down into yours too, that God takes this and brings this home to each one of us.

Romans 2, 17 through 29, you can turn over there in your scripture journal, your own Bible, your own device, navigate in an app, grab the Bible under the seat in front of you. But I would love for everybody to have your Bibles open to Romans 2, 17 through the end of the chapter.

Again, as I often say, recast God's precious, powerful, awesome, life-changing word that we're about to have the privilege of taking in. So listen in and follow along. And hear with the ears of your heart.

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 were 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 the knowledge of 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 is indeed of no 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.

Let's pray.

Father, I pray that you might move us all through this text in a way that would bring honor and glory to you in our lives. I pray that you would deal with us in this text more than just this morning, more than just for a conversation at lunchtime today, but Father, that you would implant this in our hearts.

The depth of our depravity knows no end and we can even corrupt religious expression, even our worship can be corrupted. Even our worship right now, as we have an opportunity to sing songs to you, if we believe for even a second that we're garnering your favor, that we're gaining brownie points for singing your praises, Father, even this text deals with those who would boast in you and not have a heart for you.

And so Father, I pray that that would be furthest from what is true of us here in this gathering this morning that Lord, we would lift up our voices as you're redeemed, as people who have had a genuine heart change.

As the text concludes,.

A genuine ownership of you in our hearts and Father, that you would own us and that you would ignite within us a love for you because you have redeemed us and you have saved us. You have given us a righteousness that we could not gain on our own, that no religious actions, no behaviors, no rituals, nothing could accomplish it in our lives except for the blood of Christ and faith in him.

And so Father, I pray that you would light us up this morning with enthusiasm, with joy, with delight because we are your redeemed and you have made a way where this text is painting a terrible picture of our religious situation.

But Father, in Christ we have hope, in Jesus' name, amen. Well, thanks a lot to Dave for leading us in worship and I just love it when the songs fit with the message.

And Dave does a good job.

He reads the sermon dutifully every week and then works to make that work together, so I love that. And I just encourage you to get comfortable. If at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee or juice or donuts, you're not gonna distract me.

If you need to get up or use the restrooms back there, they're out the double doors down the hall on the left. But keep your Bibles open or reopen your Bibles to Romans 2, 17 through 29. I just love it when you've got the Bible in front of you so you can see the things that I'm saying are coming from God's word.

They're not things that I'm just making up or going off on my own. And so I wanna start off by making a statement that I think is true and I think you'll see it as well. I believe that every person who has ever lived is a religious person.

We all have a drive to worship. Every person that has walked this planet has a drive to see something higher, something outside of themselves. Often though, in the worst, darkest of religions, we would be worshiping ourselves, but it is the desire to elevate and to offer something to something.

And so in our text, Paul is going to address the religious man that really has no heart for a relationship with God, is going to only seek to relate to God in terms of setting the parameters for ourselves.

He references in the text in verse 17, Jews in particular, but I believe it's fair for us this morning to see a more generalized conviction toward any and all who would focus on a religion of externals, an external religion that would lead us to no real heart change.

Paul's concern in writing this section of the letter is to indict even our religious expressions as not enough. Even the way that we would express ourselves in trying to draw closer to God is not enough.

Remember that all of this is an extended argument driving towards the need for a righteousness by faith that is given to us by God, not a faith that we can muster, I mean not a salvation that we can muster on our own, not a work that we can accomplish, not something that we can do, nothing external, but ultimately that's the whole argument from chapter one to three is setting us up to realize, oh my goodness, I need help.

I've gotta have a savior. If I don't have a savior, I have no hope of reconciling my relationship with God. It is thoroughly and completely busted. Even in my expressions towards God as an unbeliever, I was completely broken.

And so our outline is two major sections this morning. If you're taking notes, just two tidy little points here. The first is 17 through 24. Knowing about God is not enough. Knowing what he wants, knowing his rules, knowing his laws, knowing about God is not enough.

The second thing that is not enough is verses 25 through 29. Outward religious expressions are not enough. So that breaks it down. Knowing about God is not enough. Outward religious expressions are not enough.

So first off, Paul makes a case that the knowledge of God isn't sufficient to take care of our sin, the knowledge of him. Knowing him, knowing about him, is not sufficient to take care of our sin problem.

You see, even, I mean, I think we know this. Even the demons know about God. Satan knows a lot about God. I would even contend to you that Satan probably knows more about God than you do. He's been in his presence before.

He's, you know, there's, he used to serve him in, you know, close proximity. And so knowing about God and knowing stuff about God is not sufficient. Probably none of us in this room, by the way, you look at the text and you're going, Don, why are you talking to me about this?

None of us would call ourselves a Jew. And so we might miss the idea that Paul was addressing us, too, in this. And you say, you who call yourself, if you call yourself a Jew, I've never called myself a Jew, and so I guess he's not talking to me.

We could skip this passage. But you've gotta remember in context, he's writing this to a church. This is fundamentally what he wants us to know. And so we can't just dismiss it. Because the things he's gonna say about Jews could just as easily apply to any strictly religious individual who seeks to come to God based on rules and rituals.

And I would suggest to you that that often is the case among people in church. Paul begins to state four things about the religious Jew that applies broadly to anyone who thinks that they can earn God's favor.

There are four things to start off with in this first point. First he says that religious Jews rely on the law. Religious Jews rely on the law. The dependence of a religious person is placed on the knowledge of the law of God.

This person is likely a diligent student of God's word. Don't think, by the way, for even a second that he's speaking to lazy religious people here. This is speaking to those who cross their T's and dot their I's.

He is here addressing those who would take the law of God seriously. And there are many religious people sitting in churches this morning who are in effect, like the Jew here that he's addressing, relying on the law.

They're hoping that God likes them because they try not to lie. They don't cheat their employer. They don't cheat on their taxes. They're faithful to their spouse. They're otherwise pretty decent citizens.

They're the kind of people who might say, this should all, all this good that I do, shouldn't it count for something? So Paul's criticism is going to be towards those who would rely on the law. But look at the second description in verse 17.

A little bit more pointed, a little bit more harsh, a little bit more controversial what I'm gonna say about this. The second point, the religious Jew, it says, boasts in God. They boast in God. Another way of saying boast in God is to say worships God.

And you might just suddenly scratch your head and, are you saying that worshiping God is not enough? And yes, hear me carefully recast, this text is saying that worshiping God is not enough. You're not saved because you sang some songs.

You're not even saved because you acknowledged and you thought he was super awesome. Because you thought he was high. Because you thought he was powerful. Because you thought he was exalted. That doesn't save you.

You are not saved on the basis of your worship of God.

That's not enough.

Well, how could somebody be on the outs with God and talk him up and boast about him? And I wanna be clear that the word boast here in the text is actually a good word. Now, you can think in terms of boasting isn't boasting a sin.

Well, boasting about certain things is a sin. Boasting about yourself, boasting about your performance.

Or your actions or whatever.

Trash talking on the court, all that stuff, you know, there's not really a place for that. But boasting in God is not a negative thing in scripture. As a matter of fact, it's held up as a great idea. And so, to say that it's not enough doesn't mean that it's not a good thing.

Do you understand what I'm saying? It's just not enough. It's not gonna save you. It's still good behavior. Jeremiah 9, 23 through 24 says this. And I believe that Paul probably, as a student of the law, a student of the Old Testament, had some of this in his mind when he was writing this.

Jeremiah 9, 23 through 24, you can jot that down. You don't need to turn there. Thus says the Lord, God speaking, let not the wise man boast in his wisdom. Let not the mighty man boast in his might. Let not the rich man boast in his riches.

But let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me. God is saying, if you're gonna boast, boast about your connection with me. Boast about your knowledge of me. Well, we just said that knowledge isn't enough.

Boasting in God isn't enough. But the person who boasts in God likely has some truth about God.

Would you agree with me?

There's some truth to that.

You're getting closer. You're just skating right close to the truth that he is enough to save you. But it's not crossing the line. This person is not far away from the truth, but they still do not have enough.

Knowing that God is amazing doesn't save us. Believing that God is worthy of worship doesn't save anyone. It even says it earlier in chapter one of Romans, Paul wrote, everyone can perceive his awesome power and divine nature from what has been created.

And that general knowledge is not enough to save us. It might even move you to worship him, but it's still not enough to save you. The third thing about the religious Jew is that he knows God's will. How this person, the fully orbed picture, as this draws into focus who this religious person is, this is a person you wanna hang around.

This is a person that would appeal to you. This is a person who would be a good individual. They would pull you up would be the perspective of what we're seeing here.

They know God's will.

And I just wanna point out, it's possible to have the written will of God in hand and still not be saved. You see, the way that God refers to the will of, his will here in this context, the way that Paul writes about it, in the context of his law, should correct our trivial and weak understanding of what we think of when we think of the will of God.

I would suggest to you that many of us, when we think of the will of God, our mind turns towards where do I go to college? Who do I marry? Should I leave this job and start a new one? Should I start my own business?

Should I sell this house and move? When's the right time? Looking for the, how many of you at some point looked for the will of God? Go ahead and raise your hand if you've at times.

Looked for the will of God.

And when the scriptures talk about the will of God, do you know what it's most often talking about? His moral direction for us. You see, what God is so much more concerned about us is our character, and he's much more concerned about our character than he is about where we live out that character.

We get caught up in the nuances of things, but he doesn't care whether you live for him in Florida or whether you live for him here. What he wants you to do is live for him.

Yeah, you got it.

And so, the will of God throughout scripture is not often tied to the everyday decisions, and it's tied more to the moral conformity to his standards. He wants our obedience, and the religious Jew knows that standard that is revealed in the law.

They're a student of the law. They're a student of knowing what God desires of his people. The problem is they misunderstand how to get there.

Do you hear that?

They know what the standard is, but then they pride themselves in thinking that they're good enough to keep it. That's where they err. That's where they falter. That's where they fall short, is not realizing that the law is meant to press them into a recognition of their inability.

Instead, they look at the law and they go, I got this. There's just a couple things I need to do here or there, and I can tweak this and that, and eventually I'll be acceptable to God. God wants our obedience, and the religious Jew knows that standard.

And so, that leads to the last description of the religious Jew in verse 18. They approve what is excellent. Another way of translating that is they approve what is best. Some of your translations say that.

What is excellent, what is best, and the standard that they hold out is not the problem. Ironically, many religious people have a good standard to live out because they have been instructed by the law of God.

Many people who would call themselves Christians, but really are just living by law and law and law, well, where would they go to find the laws that they're living by? They're going to the Word, right?

That's the point, is that they're going to the Bible. They're going here to try to find the laws that they think are going to save them, and Paul here is blowing that up. He's dispelling the notion that you can keep the law very directly.

They have a very good standard, but it's not in them to be able to keep it. And so, the religious person does indeed possess a good way to live life, but it isn't the best way because the best way is by trusting the Spirit to guide us by love into acts of obedience.

Without the Spirit, we will not do it out of love.

We will do it out of a four-letter word, duty.

It will only be duty, and there will be no love in it, especially if you think you're earning something from God. You're an employee at that point, and He's your employer,.

And you're expecting payday,.

And that's not the way that salvation works.

And so, when it comes to salvation,.

It is completely insufficient to, the law is completely insufficient to solve our sin problem. And He's gonna indict them here in a moment because they look so good on the outside. This person, he's painted.

How many of you think that this sounds like a good person, just at face value? It sounds like a good person. They look really good on the outside, but He's going to indict them because to a person, they are not the same on the inside, and they know it.

They're conveying to everybody that I've got it all together, I've got this plan, this foolproof plan to accomplish the law of God, and on the outside, I can look like I'm keeping it, but inside, they know that they're far from it.

In the dark, and in the secret, and alone, in isolation, they're breaking the law left and right. And so, the image of the religious Jew is a good person on the outside, a person who relies on the rules, who talks God up, who knows what he desires in legal terms, and encourages others in excellent living.

The image here is the really good churchgoer who has no relationship with Jesus Christ, and no love in their heart for the things of God, but only a desire to please others, or only a desire to look good in the eyes of others.

This is competition at its best, competition applied to the spiritual world. And we would do well at this point to pause and commit to answering the question of whether or not.

That is us, is that us?

I have to admit that I can't tell you if it's you or not. As a matter of fact, it all looks the same to me. It all looks the same to all of us. I cannot tell you if you're faking this. I can't tell you if you're pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, or you're relying on Christ, because in all honesty, what it looks like in your life is the same either way, but it's about your heart.

I can't see your heart, I can only see your actions, I can only see the externals. And did you know you can fake it? How many of you ever faked it? How many of you ever walked into church and faked it?

How many of you have just already this morning, don't raise your hand on this one, you've already this morning pretended you had a better week than you had? How many of you ever posted something on Facebook that was not the whole truth?

It was kind of like made to look a little better than it was? Social media's all about that, right? Only showing the good, only showing the good, unless you're that one person, that one friend who complains about everything.

I don't know, you guys know what I'm talking about,.

But we need to consider if this is us. You need to consider.

And I would suggest to you that if you're sitting here and you're going, man, God, I don't know. If at the end of this sermon you're like, I just am not sure, let me just encourage, I'm gonna encourage you, I say this every Sunday, almost nobody ever takes me up on it, take the bold step to come and talk with me.

If you're saying, I think, I think that it's possible that maybe I'm just living this based on my parents' faith, based on a religion that I was raised in and I've just been attending church and I kind of thought of myself as just a fairly good person and going to church is part of being a good person and so I just do that, that's you, come and talk with me.

And about getting your heart engaged, that's what it's about, about getting your heart engaged in this whole thing with Christ. And we're gonna see that by the end of the text,.

That at the end of the day,.

It's about what the Spirit wants to do with your heart, not about externals and all of this stuff. So Paul goes on to describe the religious Jew as a person who sees themselves as a teacher for others.

It's kind of ironic, but they would consider themselves, I mean, everything here is mildly pejorative, mildly derogatory, subtly annoying, okay? The types of phrases that they would ascribe to themselves.

Think about it, guide for the blind. Well, that's really kind of you, to guide all of us blind people, right?

Like at the end of the day,.

Everything has a little bit of a negative twist. It's like, I'm doing good for those poor people. Guide for the blind, a light for those who are in darkness. I have the light, you're in darkness. Instructor, are you ready for it?

Instructor of the foolish. All those fools out there need the wisdom that I can bring. A teacher, it even gets worse, a teacher of children. Those who are just young and immature in their faith, and I'm gonna come in with my robust teaching of the law, and I'm gonna bring everybody along, I'm gonna bring everybody up.

And they believe that they have the embodiment of knowledge and truth in the law, and therefore they teach that to others, and lead others to the same legalism that they are steeped in, the same law. I cannot overemphasize, by the way, how Paul is expressing the religious person as a person who is primarily viewed as a good person.

He is not here painting a dire picture of a wolf in sheep's clothing, who is intentionally running around to harm people. Just happens to be that, you know, I mean, some people are like law people, right?

Some people like rules, some people like checklists. I just happen to be one of them. That would be the excuse. I just, you know, some people tend towards and lean towards grace. I believe that my teaching, God has anointed my ministry to teach more about law.

I'm more of a law guy, more of a law lady. You know, it just depends on, you know, personality and stuff like that, and that's not it at all. They would consider themselves to be a teacher for others, and he's not painting a dire picture.

It just happens to be that they love to teach rules to others, and they believe that rules are a way to God,.

And they're wrong.

Paul is emphatically saying that the law can get you to knowing about God, but it cannot provide a saving relationship with God. That's gonna be a major theme throughout the letter of Romans. It's gonna be a major theme, this dichotomy between faith and law, works and faith.

But for now, he is just showing the way that the knowledge of God through the law lacks the power to save, because he goes on to question the integrity of those who believe that they are God's gift to the uninformed, foolish children who do not know the law as well as they do.

Because his description ends, and his indictment begins in verse 21. So far, he's been describing these religious, zealous individuals, but now in verse 21, he's gonna turn a corner, and he's gonna begin to indict them.

He says, you who set laws on others and teach them to obey, do you teach yourself? Are you indeed, he's in essence saying, are you indeed obedient to the law that you're strapping on others? You who would preach against stealing, against adultery, against idolatry, do you avoid stealing, do you avoid adultery?

Do you avoid robbing temples, he says? The question is rhetorical, but it would bring to the mind of any religious Jew back to the very central laws of the Ten Commandments. These three things that he mentions are three of the Ten Commandments.

No graven images, no stealing, no adultery. And you might kind of go, well, what in the world is this about robbing temples? It's just a minor side note on that is that what was happening current in this time, it wasn't that they were going in and breaking into pagan temples and the Jews were stealing their idols.

What they were doing is others were doing that, and then they were buying the gold or the silver. They were buying, they were literally in the market for idols to get the gold for themselves. And so religious leaders were doing that during this time, and Paul's indicting them based on even that practice of going to the market, going to the black market and buying idols, Jewish leaders doing this.

And that was current during that time, and there's historical context for that and all of that. And so he follows up the specific indictments with the blanket indictment. You know, you might not get into all the nuances of, well, I've never stolen, I've never committed adultery, and I've never robbed a temple, so I'm okay.

But now he's gonna just cover all of it with the indictment in verse 23. You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. In other words, every legalist that has ever lived, anybody who has ever sought to approve themselves in God's eyes by the law has never succeeded.

No one has ever succeeded at that. Everyone has broken his law, and that's the point that he's driving towards. He's gonna get there in chapter three, a thorough indictment of us. By the time we get there, it's almost gonna crescendo into no one is good, no one has sought after God.

No one is righteous, no not one. He's building towards that in all of this argumentation. This is a fact of fallen human nature. By the way, we don't need Paul to tell us this in order to know it is true, but we need Paul to snap us into reality about it because we're more prideful than we ought to be.