Jan. 29, 2017 In Defence Of God by Pastor Josh Sheldon

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Jan. 29, 2017 In Defence Of God Romans 3:1-20 Pastor Josh Sheldon

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to say. That's the whole world. He calls it the law.
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He cited psalms. He cited wisdom literature. He cited from the prophet. He's speaking of the whole scripture.
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This scripture from beginning to end must hold us under this one rubric.
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Under sin. Because that's what it says. That's what Psalm 51 was about. Every mouth might be stopped.
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The whole world might be held accountable to God. That's Jew. That's Greek. That's you. That's me.
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And note that he just cited from the psalms or from Proverbs and from wisdom literature and he calls it all the law.
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You are under that law. We've lost the distinction of the law written on the hearts and the law from Sinai.
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This is the law that the whole world must answer to. If we still don't get it, if we're still being stubborn, he says, for by the works of the law, no human being will be justified in God's sight.
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Since through the law comes knowledge of sin. Through the prophets, through the psalms, through the
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Proverbs, through Ecclesiastes, through Matthew, through Galatians, through Nahum, through Genesis, comes knowledge of sin.
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Now this is good news. I just can't wrap my mind around this idea that I have to preach you bad news and then give you good news.
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I think the whole thing is good news. It's good news if you will acknowledge yourself to be this one being described here by Paul.
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Because that's reality. Because God who is true, like God, let every man be a liar, but God be true, declares it.
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This is good news if you realize it as the truth, as God speaking to you.
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If the Holy Spirit might be working in you and stirring your soul to believe these things, that's the sovereign
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God working you and preparing your heart to acknowledge the truth. I say,
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I call that good news. I call it good news because it's God's truth. If you leave here this day, and even if you do not accept
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Jesus Christ as the Christ of the gospel that I've been proclaiming, even if you leave here and just say, well,
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God must consider me a complete and depraved sinner who needs something, and Lord willing, you'll fill in that something with Jesus Christ, that's good news because you've left here with the truth.
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The truth from God. With God, there's always hope.
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Our God is a God of hope. He's a God of comfort. I mean,
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Psalm 14 rains thunder down on the unrepentant sinner. But look there with me again, if you would, as we come to a close.
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Look again at Psalm 14. Look at verse 4 in Psalm 14.
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Have they no knowledge, all the evildoers who eat up my people as they eat bread and do not call upon the
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Lord? Those who eat up my people. Note those two words, my people.
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You see, there is a people who stand outside this swamp of sin and guilt. There's a people, even in Psalm 14, where God looks down from heaven and says, no, not one, none seeking good, none who knows anything about God or what is right or what is just.
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In the midst of that, there's a people that God calls my people.
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And after painting the whole world in such dark hues, this psalm ends with,
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Oh, that salvation for Israel will come out of Zion when the Lord restores the fortune of his people. Let Jacob rejoice.
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Let Israel be glad. His people.
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Psalm 5. The one that says their throat is an open grave, the one that Paul sided with that, their tongues are used for deceit.
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Flip back a few psalms. If you're still there at Psalm 14, go back to Psalm 5.
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Is your throat an open grave? Is your tongue all deceit? Is that the way God would look upon you?
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Well, let all who take refuge in you rejoice. Let them for sing forever, excuse me.
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Let them ever sing for joy and spread your protection over them that those who love your name may exalt in you.
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For you bless the righteous, O Lord. You cover him with favor as with a shield. Now Paul just said there's no unrighteous.
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No, not one. He did say that and he was correct. There is a people though.
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There is a group rescued from this desperation. And Paul even named them at the beginning of this letter.
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Who's this letter addressed to? Those who are loved by God and called to be saints. You see all of humanity can be divided between the haves and the have -nots.
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And I don't mean in terms of economics or wealth or worldly goods here. I speak of Jesus Christ.
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If we look at the world, those who have not Jesus, then Paul's citations fit them to a tee.
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That's the world. That's the ungodly. That's all outside of Jesus Christ and the salvation that we have in him.
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We think of the church, the redeemed of Christ. If we're describing those whose faith is in this gospel that Romans explains, then this other one applies.
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2 Corinthians 5 21, for example, says that by faith Christ's righteousness.
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There's no unrighteous. No, not one. Christ's righteousness though by faith according to the word of God, this reliable and true
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God, his righteousness credited to you. The fancy word for that is imputation.
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God imputes that righteousness to you. We don't change. We're not suddenly more righteous than we ever were.
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God sees us because he imputes what Christ did in his obedience to God throughout his life to you.
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He credits it to you by faith. The very righteousness of Jesus Christ, his obedience to God's law, which was perfect, is as though it were your obedience.
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So when Paul looks down with the psalmist and says there's a non -righteous, no, not one.
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We need to understand. There are those who God will look upon as righteous. And that's by the miracle of this salvation, this gospel that Romans is all about.
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If you heard about being all under sin, that the law, the scripture from beginning to end, what is it there for?
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To show you your sin? If you look at this and say, yes, I am one of those unrighteous ones, and I cannot change the righteousness of God by that, but I am described here, that's good news.
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Brethren, that is good news because the other side of that same good news coin is the gospel.
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The gospel that this book begins and ends with, the gospel that the whole scripture begins and ends with. If you will believe that Jesus Christ died for your sins, that the cross he suffered was suffered for you, that he stood in your place, and God put your punishment upon him.
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If you will by faith believe that God attributes that righteousness of his beloved son, his obedience to God's law throughout his entire life as though it were your obedience.
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Now understand, you don't suddenly become perfect. You don't suddenly become something you weren't before in terms of your nature, your makeup.
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You are not suddenly righteous and perfected in this life. We're talking about the mercy of God in providing this gospel, and those who believe this gospel then seeing as though they had
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Christ's faithfulness, and obedience, and righteousness treated as though we were that.
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We're not that, but God will treat us as though, and that's what the gospel is. God does bless the righteous.
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So when Paul cites this powerful psalm and uses it so powerfully here in this book in chapter 3 of Romans, what is he saying?
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There's a division there. There are those who do not believe, there's no righteous, no, not one.
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There are those who do believe by the grace of God, by the faith he gives as a gift. Those who do believe, beloved of God, loved by him.
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They are not those whose effort is of their own doing. It is not those who by their own strength would gain merit by following the law, but those who have abandoned their own endeavors and have instead trusted in Christ and him alone.
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Amen. Heavenly Father, we give you thanks for the word that you've given us here and for the truth that it tells us, for the way it pulls no punches, which shows,
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Father, that we are all under this condemnation, that your condemnation is just.
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And we thank you, Father, that in this same word that so wonderfully shows us the truth of ourselves, we can also see your answer in the
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Lord Jesus Christ and the salvation that we have in him and the righteousness that he provides. I pray,
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Father, that we would all cling more closely to him and that this day sinners would be converted to him, that you,
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Father, by your spirit would bring them the salvation that we've been looking at so long in this book of Romans.
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I pray in Jesus' name. Amen. The text for this morning is
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Romans 3, 1 through 20, which was just read to you by William. What the
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Apostle Paul does here in these verses, he's sort of pounding the final nails in a coffin, in a coffin in which we would find, if we looked, any thought that we have that justification before God can come through any means other than the gospel that this book of Romans is about.
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What is in this coffin that he is finally putting to rest, Lord willing he is putting to rest, is any reliance we have on ourselves.
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Any thought we may have had, we go all the way back to chapter 1, verse 18, all the way through the verse that was read to you, chapter 3, verse 20 of this book.
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Can we put it together in one single point? I would have difficulty doing that, but something running through all of this, and Lord willing we will cap it off today, is to remove any hope of self -reliance.
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Any effort of the human towards the salvation that this book of Romans is about should be gone.
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It has to be gone. We talk about preaching the bad news before we get to the good news.
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And I would suggest to you this morning, and Lord willing we'll be able to make this point more than a couple of times, that this idea of having no self -reliance, of having no ability to accomplish anything towards salvation, having no part in what
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Jesus Christ did to bring this gospel to its finest, its final end, is good news.
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It's good news because it doesn't depend upon you. And as we work through these verses, we're going to see something else that our response to this gospel, our faithfulness or lack thereof, our righteousness or lack thereof, our obedience or lack thereof, has no bearing on the nature of God who is the author of this gospel.
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This is why I had William read to you from that prayer that Nehemiah prayed after that revival that Israel had had.
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Because at the end of that prayer, and it wasn't the end of the prayer where I had him stop, but it was verse 33. I'll read this to you again, then we will return to Romans.
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Yet you have been righteous in all that has come upon us, for you have dealt faithfully and we have dealt wickedly.
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Notice the juxtaposition. That God remains righteous despite the unfaithfulness of his people.
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That what his people did in disobeying the law and in bringing this judgment upon them that God acted justly and rightly in judging them the way he did as awful as it was, changes nothing in the attributes or the nature of God.
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And that's something we need to have in our mind as we go through these verses. As we go through this final portion of this one argument that Paul's been making since chapter 1 verse 18 about our inability and God's complete constant consistency to his own nature and to his own word.
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He's reliable. The gospel which drives this entire letter to the
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Roman church to our church today is the sole means ordained by God by which justification, by which righteousness, by which salvation can be had.
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The thematic verse or verses we're all the way back in chapter 1 verses 16 and 17.
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You can read them again. For I'm not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the
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Jew first and also to the Greek for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.
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As it is written the righteous shall live by faith. Only by faith may we enter into this grace.
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Only by faith is this salvation possible. And by this we mean faith and faith exclusively.
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That means all God, none you. 100 %
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God, nothing of me. If one's saved by faith and faith alone, then it is necessary to destroy any hope that might be invested, be it ever so slightly, in any means other than or beyond faith and faith alone.
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The great call of the reformation. By faith alone. By means is meant the way of accomplishing something.
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The means of getting the thing done. In the case of the gospel, the means that is most often alloyed, alloyed, excuse me, alloyed with the unmerited grace of God and full dependence on the power of his spirit and the gift of faith that he gives, the thing we most often mix into it is, to put it very bluntly, me.
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And I don't mean me, Joshua Sheldon, the preacher this morning. I mean me. Point to yourself. That's what we want to put into it.
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Our pride gets in the way. Our wanting to have something to say about it. To set the standards.
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To make the rules ourselves. Make it a little bit easier for us. A little bit more conducive to the way we think.
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And by the time we get to chapter 3 and verse 20 in this book, before we get to what is sometimes called the good news, though I say that this other part is really good news as well.
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It's just another side of the same coin. Before we get there, we need to divest of all of us and put it all upon God.
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The end of this section that was read to you really says it all. And we'll come around to it again.
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For by the works of the law, no human being will be justified in God's sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
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You heard that in the prayer of Nehemiah in chapter 9 of that book that William just read to you.
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Your effort to keep God's law does no good unless, of course, you keep it all and always a condition about which very little more needs to be said.
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What does James say? If you keep the whole law, you must keep it all.
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And if you violate at one point, you violated the whole thing. Now, does he mean by that, that if you commit adultery, you're guilty also of murder?
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That's what he means. You could almost add in there and say, if you violate one part, you may as well have violated the whole.
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So it's impossible. You cannot do it. And that, brethren, is good news.
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Is good news, because we are not reliable. We are not consistent. We are not precious. We are not omnipotent.
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We are not omni -anything. But the God of this gospel is 100 % reliable.
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So let's take all the rest, any vestige we may have of ourselves that we put into this this formula of salvation, this gospel, all of us has to be gone.
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And then a lot of you are waiting anxiously for verse 21 of this chapter. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law and get to what we actually call the good news.
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There is often called the good news. Now, the good news started back in chapter 1, verse 18.
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The good news is it's none of you. It's all of God. And that means that this gospel that we're preaching is a gospel that can be counted upon.
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Now, Paul, having crushed any thought that anyone can keep the law, whether the law written on the hearts of men or the law handed down in writing from Sinai, he takes aim at some objections that undoubtedly he heard that in this 30 -something years of preaching the gospel so far.
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He's going to answer those objections. He's heard them over the time, and he's going to dismantle them.
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And this morning we're going to look at Paul's extended defense of God in the face of these objections, things that he's learned to expect.
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He knows they come to many people's minds, if not everybody's mind. But I think one way to summarize the argument that Paul makes is that God's nature is not changed by our compliance to his will.
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It's almost like he's saying, are you kidding? If we act this way, you're saying that that changes
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God's nature? It cannot be. This is what we must take away,
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I think, from Romans 3, 1 through 20. If we divide it up then first in the first four verses, verses 1 through 4,
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Paul defends God as faithful in the face of man's unfaithfulness. And then in verses 5 through 9,
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God's righteousness is preserved again against man's lack of the same. And the third point we'll make, the third section, if you will, with the longest catena of scriptures in the entire
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New Testament, verses 10 through 18, Paul makes it clear that the law, meaning the whole of scripture properly understood, leaves us mute before the bar of God's justice.
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No answer. And then finally, verses 19 through 20 will conclude the matter for us.
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The first objection that Paul answers is about Jewish privileges. Paul's learned that to expect these.
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Then what advantage has the Jew? What is the value of circumcision? What good is it to be Jewish or to be chosen if they're the same as the rest, if they're in the same boat as we are?
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If they're as disobedient to the law as has been revealed to them, as Gentiles are to the law that was revealed to them in the way it was revealed to them, what good is all this?
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We don't see any advantage. Why should I then want to be one of God's people through this gospel that you're preaching if I'm looking at these others?
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And they seem to be in such trouble all the time for having violated this law. What advantage is there to it?
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Well, Paul's first response is sort of a question of his own. And you'll recognize it from what
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I said at the very outset. What if some were unfaithfulness? Excuse me. What if some were unfaithful?
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Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? That's what
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I was saying at the beginning. Does what we do, can what we do change
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God? Now certainly it reflects upon God and we'll talk about that later.
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It reflects more upon us rather I should say. We don't change Him. The fact that we act a certain way does not affect the nature of the
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God. Can the behavior of man make void the nature of God? And that's where Paul says, by no means may it never be.
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This cannot happen. And it seems if Paul has an interlocutor here, if he's still in this diatribe, having this theoretical dialogue partner, that being
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God's people is of no use, of no advantage. They break the code written on stone, no less than the rest break the code written on hearts.
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So what good is any of this? And I think the question really is, and I get this from the way
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Paul answers it, the saint does not the behavior of this chosen people reflect on God.
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That is, if he really were a great God, wouldn't his people obey him? Yet he condemns them no less than he does everyone else.
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Why should I follow this God? So Paul's answer is a defense of the gospel.
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It really is a defense of God. Now it's true that God's people are or should be a reflection of Him.
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Think of Galatians 5 .22, the fruit of the spirit, where he describes the everyday common ordinary
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Christian. If there could be anything everyday or common or ordinary about a Christian, meaning one in whom
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Christ dwells by his spirit, but if you spend much time pondering those attributes in Galatians 5 .22
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as just one example, you're going to see what that really is. It's just a picture of Jesus Christ, a picture of that to which we must aspire.
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But when we don't, what does that say? If I lead a life without love or joy or peace, if I show no longsuffering, kindness, goodness, if I'm devoid of faithfulness, gentleness, self -control, whose fault is that?
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Is that mine or is that God's? Well, clearly it's mine. And does that change the quality of the word that God gave us to follow?
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I think that's what Paul's saying there in Romans 3. He says, by no means, may it never be.
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No, it couldn't be. Deuteronomy chapter 4 verses 6 through 7 says this about God's precepts.
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It says to Israel, Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.
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For what great nation is there that has a God so near to it as the Lord our God is to us whenever we call upon him?
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See, this is what he means when he asks. This is what Paul means when he asks. What is someone unfaithful? Does their unfaithfulness nullify
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God's faithfulness? Does our failure mean that God has failed? I think sometimes the gravity of the question that Paul asks and the way he asks it here is minimized.
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He's not so much arguing for or against the status of this particular people. He's arguing for the gospel itself.
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You remember back when we did, when we preached through the opening chapter. He says,
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I'm not ashamed of the gospel. And that phrase, I'm not ashamed of it, means I have not put my reliance in the wrong thing.
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I've not trusted something that is unreliable, but rather I've trusted something completely reliable.
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This is what Paul is saying here. This is one of the arguments Paul is trying to drive home to us, is the absolute reliability of God's word and this gospel this whole book is about.
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What does it say about God's faithfulness, about his reliability, about his power to actually save when his chosen people are such a poor representation of him?
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Imagine a set of parents. Let's just make up in our mind a couple, a man and a woman, and they're the best parents in the world.
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They're the best parents in recorded history. I don't know who they would be. Don't look to your left or right.
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They're not here in this church. But these are the best. He loves his wife as Christ loves the church, better than any man ever did.
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And she respects and obeys her husband as a church should Jesus Christ, better than any woman ever did.
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They raise their children in the fear, the admonition of the Lord. Their discipline is immediate. It's biblical. It's corrective.
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It's loving. In every way you can imagine, they're simply the best. And now imagine one of their children going astray.
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And we know you raise a child in the fear and the admonition of the Lord. He shall not depart from it.
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That's a general principle. It's not an absolute promise. This one goes astray.
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He becomes the embodiment of the prodigal son in Jesus' parable. You might look at such a one, if we saw them from the outside, and say, well,
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I wonder how he was raised. I want to find out what his parents did, because I need to avoid that.
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Wouldn't we do that? Don't we normally think that way? What's the expression we have? The apple didn't fall very far from the tree.
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That sort of thing. But the question is, does his behavior reflect on him or his parents?
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Who's it really a picture of? The son's dereliction proved his disloyalty. The parents' qualities, you see, remain intact.
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I made up a picture of the best parents in the world. They're still the best parents in the world. And that's the point.
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That's Paul's point. He asks whether it could be that man's dereliction means that God himself is unreliable.
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The answer couldn't be more emphatic. The apostle almost recoils at the thought. He says, by no means.
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In the New English translation, absolutely not. If every man lied every time he spoke,
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God is still true. If every movement of our lips was falsehood, it remains impossible for God to lie.
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The question's huge. If God's reliability is no better than the faithfulness of his people, and all mankind has been brought under the sweep of God's righteous judgment throughout these opening chapters, then the gospel itself is put into question.
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In fact, it is the very fact of our sin that proves God's truth and his reliability.
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The very fact of our sin proves that God speaks truly, and he is reliable.
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Now Paul cites one line from Psalm 51 to begin to prove this.
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And he's in Psalm 51 and verse 4. And in fact, he only cites the second half of that one verse.
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Now I want you to turn there for a moment, because I'm going to read a little bit more of that Psalm. It's on page 474 in your pew
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Bible, if you want to look at that. I'll read verses 3 through 6.
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For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Verse 4.
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This is Paul's verse from Romans chapter 3. Against you, you only have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight.
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And now, here's his citation. So that you may be justified in your words, and blameless in your judgment.
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Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother did conceive me. Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.
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Now this, of course, is written by King David after he was confronted for his sin with Bathsheba.
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And far from demonstrating any tolerance for sin, God's response was very severe. David lost the son that he had with Bathsheba.
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And then he nearly lost his kingdom. And in nearly losing his kingdom, he nearly lost his life. And he nearly lost his life from the attack of his eldest son
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Absalom, who he lost. Now God didn't tolerate this sin.
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He judged it very severely. And Paul reminds us of all this with just a few words from this psalm that he cited.
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What's the point? Our lack of faithfulness, David's lack of faithfulness there, does not nullify
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God's faithfulness. In fact, it proves it. If you, if you, a mere mortal sitting here this morning, if you don't believe this gospel that's been preached here, if you don't believe this gospel that starts in Genesis chapter 1 and ends at the end of the book of Revelation, that's all through this, if you don't believe that gospel, does that mean that the gospel is not true?
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Does that mean that God who gave us this gospel and declared it in his word is unreliable?
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No. It means that you don't believe the gospel. It means that you don't believe the gospel.
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And take it no further than that. God is still true. If you don't believe the gospel, you don't believe the truth.
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It doesn't change God. It speaks only to you. Just as David sinned.
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At the end of it, verse 6, what I just read, you delight in truth in the inward being.
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This is God. His nature remains the same. The next question
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Paul deals with is given much more attention in chapter 6, and so we'll give it more attention when we get to chapter 6.
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I want to read again what William just read to you, verses 5 through 8 in Romans 3. But if our righteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say?
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That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? Again, you see that question? Is God unjust?
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Does our unrighteousness, does our lack of faithfulness to his word change him?
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Does it impinge upon his nature? He says, I speak in a human way, by no means, for then how could
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God judge the world? But if through my lie God's truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner?
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And why not do evil that good may come, as some people slanderously charge us with saying their condemnation is just?
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You hear the questions being asked here? The question that Paul has come to expect is like this.
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It's like, isn't it a good thing for my badness to amplify God's goodness? I mean, the worse
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I am, the better he looks, and if that's the case, he ought to stop condemning and judging me. He ought to be grateful to me.
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Because every time I do something bad, I prove his whole word true, and I make him out to look better and better and better.
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Now, it's absurd, isn't it? But that's the argument that Paul knows comes from many people.
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It's crazy. Maybe like this.
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Johnny, why did you punch your sister? And Johnny answers and says something.
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Well, you know how good dad is, and dad is never violent in the house. It would never ever strike mom.
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He's always gentle. He's always loving. He's always kind to her. He's a wonderful example to me. But I just want everybody to see how wonderful dad is, by showing how bad
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I can be. And so dad ought to be grateful, because it shows what a wonderful dad he is. It's a crazy argument, isn't it?
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But this is the argument that Paul is dealing with. If my bad behavior, by which
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I mean, of course, my lack of faithfulness to God's word, God's word from Sinai, God's word in your heart, we've covered all that.
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If my disobedience shows how good God is, why isn't he grateful?
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Why does he still condemn me? But this is just as crazy as it sounds, that's the argument that Paul's encountered before.
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In verse 6, he asked another question. He says, if that were the case, how could
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God judge the world? If he needed this sort of help from us, how could he judge as the gospel says he does?
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If sin works to his benefit, to his benefit, then his wrath against it is wrong.
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No, God does not benefit from sin in that way. It almost sounds like these people are saying to Paul, or have said in the past to Paul, that he should be thankful to us, because it amplifies his beauty and his goodness.
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Why am I still condemned as a sinner? You see, the assumption is all wrong.
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God doesn't need us to lie to prove that he's true, any more than our faithlessness or faithfulness, spotty as it is, spotty as it might be, proves the same.
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God is true. Why? He's true because he's true. And his nature as the very embodiment of truth is not dependent on you or me, on anything or anyone else.
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The next question he goes to is whether Jews are any better off than the others. There are privileges, there are advantages that Jews had.
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But here, Paul's dealing with the pervasive and all -condemning sphere of sin. He says, are we
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Jews better off? Not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin.
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Its bondage has control of you. It dominates. Its passions are your yearnings.
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You follow its leadings. Even with the law in your heart and a working conscience to warn you, you willingly plumb the depths of sin.
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Jews and Greeks, all the world, it's all the same. It's one encompassing, ubiquitous, accurate paradigm that it's all under sin.
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To prove it, he cites a number of scriptures. He's culling mostly from the Psalms, but also from Proverbs, from Isaiah, from Ecclesiastes.
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Now, William read to you all of them before we started, and I don't want to go into a lot of detail on each of them and take them all apart because I think they stand pretty well on their own.
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And they unmistakably make Paul's point, which is the final nail in the coffin of any self -reliance that we may have of confidence in anything or anyone other than the gospel of God, which he accomplished in his son
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Jesus. The word of God, whose faithfulness depends on nothing, the word from God that is only and always true, this word by which
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God is justified and prevails when he judges because he is right, says that all of us,
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Jew and Greek, which easily expands to mean man, woman, slave, free, child, adult, all are under sin.
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Verses 10 to 12, he cites Psalm 14. That's where God looks down upon men to find even one who is righteous, even one who does good, even one who seeks after God.
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Think about this in context of, for example, Genesis 18. When Abraham entreats the
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Lord for restraint on Sodom. Now, we don't know the population of that city.
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We do know that it was one of the notable cities of the land. And as Abraham and God go back and forth,
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God says, for the sake of ten righteous men, he would not destroy the city. He would withhold his righteous judgment.
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But he destroyed it, didn't he? How many did he find in Sodom? We know he didn't find nine.
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Because God is not a God who would say, okay, you're short by one. I only found nine. I didn't find ten, so I'm going to wipe them all out.
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That's not God. That's not the point of that passage. As it is written, none is righteous.
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No, not one. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside from him. No one does good, not even one.
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The first part of verse 13 in Romans 3, cites from Psalm 140.
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Now, Psalm 14 says that men are unrighteous. This shows what they actually do. The whole verse says they make their tongue sharp as a serpent's, and under their lips is the venom of asps.
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When they speak, they mean harm, is what he's saying. Psalm 10, verse 7, which comes next in Paul's litany, says much the same.
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Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Romans 3, 16 to 18.
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They're all from the prophet Isaiah. Their feet are swift to shed blood.
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And in Old Testament poetic and metaphorical language, we have sins of the mouth, making plans, and then the feet finding a way to bring those plans into reality.
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And what does that reality bring when you finally get to implement the plan that you put together where your feet are going?
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In their paths are ruin and misery, the way of peace they have not known. And the final salvo comes from Psalm 36.
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There is no fear of God before their eyes. No fear of God. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
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Without it, we can't even proceed. Without that fear, there is no wisdom.
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There is no sense. We're worse than insane. We're worse than brutes. The next verse,
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Paul says that whatever the law says, it speaks to those under the law. Whatever the law says, it speaks to those under the law.
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Well, who is under the law? Who is Paul speaking of here? Well, back in verse 9, before this list of scriptures from the
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Psalms and the prophets, he said, all are under sin. And now he says these convicting verses are for those under the law.
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Those under the law. Now, if you just breathed a sigh of relief because you think that doesn't include you, you need to bring that breath back to yourself.
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He's not speaking just of the Jews here. The law speaks so that every mouth might be stopped and the whole world might be held accountable to God.
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What does it mean for your mouth to be stopped? This is judicial language. You're standing before the judge.
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He's heard all your arguments. There's nothing left to say. You put your hand over your mouth.