back to index2015-09-27 Guilty, Inside and Out
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with the announcements. Okay, if you can please turn your Bibles to Romans chapter 2. 00:00:08.500 |
I'll be reading from verse 2 to verse 4. Okay. 00:00:18.000 |
So those of you who are gone in the summer, those collegians, we've been 00:00:22.000 |
preaching through the, or studying through the Book of Romans. 00:00:26.000 |
So we're only at chapter 2, so you didn't miss a whole lot. But again, 00:00:30.000 |
Romans chapter 2 verses 1 through 4. Reading the ESV. 00:00:34.000 |
"Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges, for in passing judgment 00:00:38.000 |
on another you condemn yourself, because you the judge practice the very 00:00:42.000 |
same things. We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who 00:00:46.000 |
practice such things. Do you suppose, O man, you who judge those who practice 00:00:50.000 |
such things, and yet do them yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God? 00:00:54.000 |
Or do you presume on the riches of His kindness, and forbearance, and 00:00:58.000 |
patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?" 00:01:02.000 |
You know I forgot one thing, next Sunday we do have a members meeting. That's what I forgot 00:01:06.000 |
to tell you. So we have a members meeting after the Second Service 00:01:10.000 |
next week. Okay, I won't read it again, but it's the next Sunday. 00:01:14.000 |
And then we have some announcements to make about our church. I mentioned it in the 00:01:18.000 |
First Service, but I didn't mention the Second Service last week. We are an escrow with our 00:01:22.000 |
new church facility. It is only about five minutes down the street over 00:01:26.000 |
Red Hill, past Main, left turn. And so there is plenty of room 00:01:30.000 |
for our children. Our main reason for purchasing, obviously 00:01:34.000 |
we are starting to outgrow this facility, but our children have already outgrown 00:01:38.000 |
the facility. So they are busting at the seams over there. And so we 00:01:42.000 |
found a location that we are an escrow. We found 00:01:46.000 |
parking. Okay, I'm not going to get into detail. I'll tell you the details 00:01:50.000 |
at the members meeting. But just to kind of give you a heads up, that's what's going on. And if everything 00:01:58.000 |
or June next year that we'll be able to move into the new facility. Okay, so 00:02:02.000 |
please keep that in your prayer. We'll give you updates as things are 00:02:06.000 |
going along. But again, we are an escrow with that building, just to give you a heads up. 00:02:10.000 |
Now let's pray. Alright, so Romans chapter 2. 00:02:14.000 |
Heavenly Father, we bless you and thank you Father for this morning. 00:02:18.000 |
We ask Lord God that your word would truly speak to us. 00:02:22.000 |
And everything that you've intended in these words through 00:02:26.000 |
your Holy Spirit would open our eyes and cause us 00:02:30.000 |
to hear from Christ. That we would deeply fall in love 00:02:34.000 |
with Him. That our worship to you may be simply a reasonable response 00:02:42.000 |
God that your Holy Spirit would guide and lead us, convict us, encourage 00:02:50.000 |
You know this week I was reading an article from Wall Street Journal 00:02:54.000 |
and something really caught my eye. It was interesting, I think related to what we are talking about today. 00:02:58.000 |
And instead of butchering it, I'm just going to read what they said. 00:03:02.000 |
And please try to pay attention and I hope you grasp 00:03:06.000 |
what they are saying. A recent study suggests that acetaminophen, 00:03:10.000 |
okay I'm going to butcher that, acetaminophen 00:03:34.000 |
So it's just common. Okay, I'm the fob. Alright. Acetaminophen. 00:03:38.000 |
Alright. A recent study suggests that acetaminophen 00:03:42.000 |
found in Tylenol, Excedrin and a host of other medications 00:03:46.000 |
is an all purpose damper, stifling range of strong feelings. 00:03:50.000 |
Throbbing pain, the sting of rejection, paralyzing, indecision 00:03:54.000 |
along with euphoria and delight all appear to be taken down a notch 00:03:58.000 |
by the drug. Did you catch that? They said that the 00:04:02.000 |
new study found that not only does it help in blocking certain 00:04:06.000 |
kind of pain, but it also blocks certain kinds of euphoria and delight. 00:04:18.000 |
describes our generation where everything, every decision that we make 00:04:22.000 |
a lot of times is to kind of avoid any kind of discomfort or pain and as a result 00:04:26.000 |
of that we don't experience the joy that comes with life either. Everything has just kind of 00:04:30.000 |
become mundane. That's true in life, but especially when we're talking 00:04:42.000 |
palatable to as many people as possible, then you may have more and more people 00:04:46.000 |
coming through the door, but at the end the punch of the Gospel, the power of the Gospel is taken 00:04:54.000 |
that is more concerned about offending the offender than properly 00:04:58.000 |
representing the one who has been offended, our Holy God 00:05:02.000 |
is not the Gospel of the Bible. And it is not the Gospel 00:05:06.000 |
that has the power to deliver us from our sins. 00:05:10.000 |
A Gospel that only soothes, but it doesn't convict or cut, 00:05:18.000 |
You know one of the greatest revivals that we see in the Old Testament, 00:05:22.000 |
at least I personally perceive in the Old Testament, 00:05:26.000 |
is not with the Israelites, it's with the Ninevites. Again, 00:05:30.000 |
we can argue as to what was the greatest revival, but remember the story of Jonah. 00:05:38.000 |
he runs away from Him, and God basically strikes him, he is swallowed by a 00:05:42.000 |
whale, he comes back, he repents, and then sends him back into the city. 00:05:46.000 |
And a huge revival breaks out because of his preaching. 00:05:50.000 |
Now again, you have to remember that this was a reluctant prophet. I'm just going 00:05:54.000 |
to read this passage for you, and hopefully you can catch my point. 00:05:58.000 |
Jonah 3, 3-5, "Now Nineveh was an exceedingly 00:06:06.000 |
I wanted to highlight this, it takes three days to just even cross the city. 00:06:10.000 |
"Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey." 00:06:14.000 |
Meaning he's only gone through a third of the city, when 00:06:18.000 |
he begins to cry out, "Yet forty days Nineveh shall be 00:06:22.000 |
overthrown." And the people of Nineveh believed God, they called for a fast 00:06:26.000 |
and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them to the least of them. 00:06:34.000 |
he didn't even go through the whole city, it says it was a three days journey, he goes through 00:06:38.000 |
one third of it, and you would think that there would be an elaborate 00:06:42.000 |
presentation of what Jonah said. What was it that he said that was so 00:06:46.000 |
powerful that the whole city would come to repentance and fast, even 00:06:50.000 |
the king would decree a fast for the whole city. All it 00:06:54.000 |
says is, he says, "Yet forty days Nineveh shall be overthrown." 00:07:02.000 |
You know, my job would be so easy if all you had to do is, you know, forty 00:07:06.000 |
days. Can you imagine? Nineveh probably didn't even say this 00:07:10.000 |
with that kind of excitement because he didn't want to be here. He didn't even want them to hear 00:07:14.000 |
this because he wanted judgment to come. And simply by warning 00:07:18.000 |
them. Forty days, judgment is coming and everybody 00:07:22.000 |
freaks out and they believe him and they end up repenting and revival breaks out, at least for that 00:07:26.000 |
period. I've always wondered why. What was it 00:07:30.000 |
about what he said and how he said it that brought this kind of revival? Why did they take 00:07:34.000 |
him so seriously? My guess is, ok this is not biblical, this is just my guess 00:07:38.000 |
that maybe some of the people who were on that boat 00:07:42.000 |
that saw him being thrown out, coming back spit out, and 00:07:46.000 |
then you know like they saw all this miracle and said, "Man, your God is the real God." 00:07:50.000 |
That some of these guys came to the city before him 00:07:54.000 |
and they were telling the story about what this guy's God did and then all of a sudden 00:07:58.000 |
he comes into town and is like, "Remember that story we were talking about? That's the guy." 00:08:02.000 |
And then he comes in and is like, "Forty days, you're going to die. Forty days, 00:08:06.000 |
you're going to die." He's like, "Oh my gosh, he's serious. I've seen what 00:08:10.000 |
happened with him." And revival breaks out as a 00:08:18.000 |
You know Peter's first preaching in front of the very same 00:08:22.000 |
people who crucified Jesus. His message in a nutshell 00:08:30.000 |
to you by God with signs and wonders, and yet you crucified 00:08:34.000 |
the Author of life." You would think that people would get offended, "How dare you 00:08:38.000 |
say this? Do you not know what we did to this Jesus that we can do to you?" 00:08:42.000 |
And I think Peter was expecting probably to be crucified. 00:08:46.000 |
Why not? If they can crucify his Master, I mean who is he? 00:08:58.000 |
"Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, 00:09:02.000 |
and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, 'Brothers, what shall we do?' And Peter said to them, 00:09:06.000 |
'Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness 00:09:10.000 |
of your sins.'" In our generation, the Gospel 00:09:14.000 |
has been peddled and it's been passed out where people don't understand 00:09:18.000 |
why it is that we desperately need Christ crucified. 00:09:22.000 |
Why we need to constantly remind people over and over again why justification 00:09:30.000 |
we made the Gospel so palatable to so many people 00:09:34.000 |
that the bite, that the warning of the wrath of God 00:09:42.000 |
in the previous section, Paul goes through details 00:09:46.000 |
in verse 18 all the way to verse 32 about the sin and why the wrath of God 00:09:50.000 |
is coming. And so the group that he is talking to in 00:09:54.000 |
chapter 2, are these groups of people that are looking at this and says, 00:09:58.000 |
"Yeah, you know that's right, these people need judgment. 00:10:02.000 |
They worship in idols. They are practicing all kinds of sexual immorality. 00:10:06.000 |
You know, they are haters of parents, covetous, malice, 00:10:10.000 |
murderers, deceitful people. Of course they need the judgment 00:10:14.000 |
of God." But what Paul is doing here in chapter 2 00:10:18.000 |
he is going further than that. Just like if you went to a hospital and 00:10:22.000 |
you have a wound on your leg and you've kind of bandaged it up. You go to the 00:10:26.000 |
doctor and the doctor takes a look at it, "Oh, it's just a superficial cut." 00:10:30.000 |
But he looks at it and says, "This thing goes deeper than that. There may be a broken 00:10:34.000 |
bone underneath there." So he takes it into the x-ray and he sees 00:10:38.000 |
not just the surface but deep within. And he needs to examine 00:10:42.000 |
that to be able to properly assess what the problem is so that they 00:10:46.000 |
may have to have surgery. They may have to get the bone fixed correctly. 00:10:50.000 |
That's exactly what he is doing in chapter 2. He is examining 00:10:54.000 |
beyond the surface. Today he is going to be examining 00:10:58.000 |
these self-righteous people. These are the people who 00:11:02.000 |
read chapter 1 and it was in full agreement. Of course the judgment 00:11:06.000 |
of God is coming. And God releases them to their own sins. Of course they 00:11:10.000 |
need this. And they are sitting there, "Yes, God, go get them." 00:11:14.000 |
But he is exposing the inner sin of the self-righteous. 00:11:18.000 |
And we are going to be looking at four different things that he says here. 00:11:22.000 |
And again some of these points overlap but for the sake of clarity 00:11:26.000 |
that we can kind of understand what he is saying. He is revealing four separate things 00:11:34.000 |
are also under condemnation. So he begins by saying, "Therefore 00:11:38.000 |
you have no excuse." Even though you may look at 00:11:42.000 |
chapter 1 verse 18-32 and say, "You know what? That's not me." But he says, 00:11:46.000 |
"But Paul is saying, 'Yes, it is you.'" Your sin may not look 00:11:50.000 |
like the pagans of chapter 1, but your sins are just 00:11:54.000 |
as hideous and you are in just as much need as these people. 00:12:02.000 |
is always more concerned about the sins of others than their own. 00:12:06.000 |
One, a self-righteous person is always concerned more about the sins 00:12:14.000 |
Luke chapter 18, 1-13, Jesus is giving this parable 00:12:18.000 |
about this Pharisee and a tax collector who goes up. And this 00:12:22.000 |
is what the tax collector, this is what the Pharisee, how he prays. 00:12:26.000 |
In verse 11, "The Pharisee standing by himself prayed thus, 'God, 00:12:34.000 |
That's the first thing that the Pharisee says, "Thank you God 00:12:38.000 |
that you didn't make me like these tax collectors, like these other sinners, 00:12:42.000 |
that I am not like these other men, extortioners, unjust, 00:12:54.000 |
that I get." He looks at what he is doing externally and he feels justified 00:13:02.000 |
always more concerned about the other person. Remember last week we talked 00:13:10.000 |
to get bothered by other people's BO more than ours. 00:13:14.000 |
Let me change the illustration to bad breath. 00:13:18.000 |
We are a young church so we are trying to get the illustrations to fit. 00:13:22.000 |
I think as an illustrator, it may be crude but I think it will help us understand. 00:13:26.000 |
A self-righteous person is like an individual who just has 00:13:30.000 |
bad breath and it just stinks and every time you tongue it, like other people notice it but they don't know. 00:13:38.000 |
only one thing more worse than sitting in front of somebody who just has 00:13:42.000 |
stinky breath and they don't know and every time they open their mouth they are like, "Oh, you want to say something but you don't want to be 00:13:46.000 |
crude." What's worse than that is somebody who has bad breath, 00:13:50.000 |
they don't know it but they are disgusted with yours. 00:13:54.000 |
You know, they cringe every time you open your mouth and they let you 00:14:06.000 |
the self-righteous person who is absolutely convinced the problem is 00:14:10.000 |
you. And that's what he says. He begins by saying, 00:14:14.000 |
"Oh man, every one of you who judge, that you are 00:14:18.000 |
constantly in judgment of other people and you are not aware of where you are 00:14:26.000 |
again, every time this type of person will always hear a sermon and they are always thinking, 00:14:30.000 |
"That person needed to be here." You know? "My wife 00:14:34.000 |
needed to hear this. Thank you pastor for this sermon." You know? 00:14:38.000 |
"Can you do it again next week when I bring my friend? Because they need to hear this." 00:14:42.000 |
"They need to hear this." "The singles need to hear this." "My husband needs 00:14:46.000 |
to hear this." It's an individual who is always hearing sermons 00:14:54.000 |
This type of person is dangerous when they know the Bible. 00:14:58.000 |
Because the Word of God, instead of being a lamp unto their feet, it becomes a flashlight. 00:15:02.000 |
Where they are just constantly. The Word of God is to flash and show 00:15:06.000 |
you what's wrong with you. So they know the Word of God, but it's always used 00:15:10.000 |
not to judge the thoughts and intentions of their heart, but to judge 00:15:14.000 |
the thoughts and intentions of your heart. So he said, "First and foremost, 00:15:18.000 |
a self-righteous person is always preoccupied with 00:15:26.000 |
self-righteous person believes in the judgment of God. 00:15:30.000 |
They just don't believe that this judgment is for them." 00:15:34.000 |
In Romans chapter 2, verse 2, it says, "We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those 00:15:38.000 |
who do such things." So in other words, we're in agreement with this. 00:15:42.000 |
We believe in the judgment of God. Now I know that 00:15:46.000 |
one of the reasons that when we go out and share the Gospel with people and they say, 00:15:50.000 |
"How can I believe in a God who brings judgment and 9/11 and famine 00:15:54.000 |
and all this stuff?" I've never met an individual who doesn't 00:16:02.000 |
Let me give you an example. If you're driving a car and you're just 00:16:06.000 |
driving under the speed limit. You're not doing 00:16:10.000 |
anything crazy, but somebody's ticked off because you're not going fast enough. They come 00:16:14.000 |
around and they give you the finger. Right? This finger, right? 00:16:18.000 |
They give you the finger and they're ticked off and they cuss you out and they go 00:16:22.000 |
speeding past you. And then all of a sudden, because he's speeding, there's a cop 00:16:26.000 |
up ahead and pulls him over. And as you're driving by, 00:16:30.000 |
do you say, "Oh, I feel so bad for that guy." Is that 00:16:34.000 |
your thought? Karma, right? You say judgment. 00:16:38.000 |
Yes, he got what he deserved. Right? You don't 00:16:42.000 |
come by and say, "I feel so bad for him." You know what I mean? "I wonder, 00:16:46.000 |
you know, he must have been having a hard day." That's not our natural 00:16:50.000 |
inclination. Right? Something probably more serious than that. Some of you guys 00:16:58.000 |
How many of you guys know who OJ Simpson is? Wow. 00:17:02.000 |
Okay. I would think everybody would know. But OJ Simpson basically 00:17:06.000 |
was a superstar football player of my generation. 00:17:10.000 |
He was like the Michael Jordan of football. That's the best way to describe him. Right? 00:17:18.000 |
in November, he was accused of murdering his ex-wife, Nicole 00:17:22.000 |
Brown, and possibly her boyfriend, Ron Goldman. Both of them were brutally 00:17:26.000 |
murdered. And they thought, you know, they did some 00:17:30.000 |
background check and found out that they thought OJ Simpson did it. And it was 00:17:34.000 |
huge. And I was living in Irvine at that time, and his wife, Bronco, 00:17:38.000 |
that they were chasing, they went past by 5 Freeway, and everybody went out on the 00:17:42.000 |
bridge to watch him at that time. Well, the trial went on 00:17:46.000 |
for about a year. And again, you have to imagine, it's like 00:17:50.000 |
watching Michael Jordan. Like, "Oh, he got accused of murder." 00:17:54.000 |
And so the whole year, they were going through these things, and they found out, they found 00:17:58.000 |
traces of his blood in the car. They found the glove 00:18:06.000 |
They found a shoe that had the imprint on it. 00:18:10.000 |
And they didn't find the shoe itself, but they found a picture of him wearing that shoe 00:18:14.000 |
while he was interviewing somebody. And so, all this evidence, anybody who watched 00:18:18.000 |
the trial, look at it and say, "How can this guy not be guilty?" 00:18:30.000 |
Yeah, everybody was dumbfounded. How can that be innocent? 00:18:34.000 |
Now, there was a lot of stuff going on at that time. It's kind of like the environment that is today, 00:18:38.000 |
maybe even worse. That LAPD was found to have corruption. 00:18:42.000 |
They were beating people. And there was this hatred toward the cops that was unfair 00:18:46.000 |
in particular to the African American community. And so, 00:18:50.000 |
they were concerned that if they indict this guy, that there was going to be 00:18:54.000 |
another riot, and it's going to go crazy and all this stuff. And there was a lot of political things behind it. 00:19:02.000 |
I don't remember anybody being interviewed saying, like, 00:19:06.000 |
"We live in such a great country that even after you get 00:19:10.000 |
murdered, you can live free. This is a great country." 00:19:22.000 |
everybody lost confidence in the justice system because the justice system was 00:19:30.000 |
met anybody who doesn't believe that justice needs to be carried out. 00:19:38.000 |
ourselves in that position. And that's what the self-righteous 00:19:42.000 |
person is. He says, "You believe in the judgment of God." And rightly 00:19:50.000 |
But they don't believe that that's them. Do you remember John chapter 00:19:54.000 |
8, 4-7, where Jesus is standing there and a bunch 00:19:58.000 |
of Jews bring this adulterous woman and basically 00:20:02.000 |
put him in a trap. She's an adulterous woman. According to 00:20:06.000 |
Old Testament law, you're supposed to stone her. So here's this Jewish rabbi 00:20:10.000 |
that everybody is praising. Maybe he's the Messiah. And they're going to say, "You know what? 00:20:14.000 |
We're going to put him in a trap. If he says to kill her, he's going to be guilty of murder, according 00:20:18.000 |
to the Roman law. If he says don't kill her, he's going to be 00:20:22.000 |
guilty of breaking the Mosaic law. So either way, 00:20:30.000 |
being Jesus, right? They didn't know who they were messing with, right? 00:20:38.000 |
cast the first stone." You know what's interesting 00:20:42.000 |
to me? You know what happens. They all drop their stone and they walk away. That until 00:20:50.000 |
Until Jesus called them out and says, "Are you in a position 00:20:58.000 |
And for the first time they turned around and said, 00:21:02.000 |
"That's a good answer. That's a good answer." That's the only way he could have gotten 00:21:06.000 |
out of it. And they turn around and they disappear. See, 00:21:10.000 |
the second thing that he says, a self-righteous person, that they demand justice. 00:21:14.000 |
But it's not for them. It's for those people. 00:21:18.000 |
Thirdly, a self-righteous person, ultimately Paul says, is a hypocrite. 00:21:22.000 |
Because they practice the same things that they condemn others. 00:21:26.000 |
In verse 1, "In passing judgment on another, you condemn yourself 00:21:30.000 |
because you the judge practice the very same things." He said, "You do 00:21:34.000 |
these things." Again in verse 3, "Do you suppose O man, you who judge those 00:21:38.000 |
who do such things, yet you do the same things that you will escape 00:21:46.000 |
is probably sitting here answering, "What are you talking about? We do the same thing." 00:21:50.000 |
These guys are idol worshipers. We never worshiped an idol. 00:21:54.000 |
These guys are lustful people committing adultery, all kinds of immoral acts. 00:21:58.000 |
That's not us. In fact, when Paul probably said this 00:22:02.000 |
and they read this, they were probably thinking to themselves, "Thank God I'm not like these people." Like the tax 00:22:06.000 |
collector. "Thank God I'm not like these men." But Paul says, "No, you are 00:22:10.000 |
exactly like them. You do what you accuse them of doing." 00:22:14.000 |
He said, "By the same judgment that you judge them, you will also 00:22:26.000 |
actually heard people say this and defend this. 00:22:30.000 |
And again, this is not to offend you. And I want you to be able to catch 00:22:46.000 |
I hope you caught it. All white people are racist." 00:22:54.000 |
Your school just started this week, so this is a test. 00:23:02.000 |
are racist. What's wrong with that statement? That statement 00:23:10.000 |
you indict yourself. That's a racist statement that you 00:23:30.000 |
the mantra of our generation, especially the young generation. 00:23:42.000 |
See, a self-righteous person doesn't recognize the hypocrisy in himself. 00:23:46.000 |
He can make these statements, do these things, accuse 00:23:50.000 |
other sinners of their sin while being completely blind 00:23:58.000 |
in Matthew chapter 5 is describing what the character of the 00:24:02.000 |
Kingdom of God, the people of the Kingdom of God is like. And He 00:24:06.000 |
tells His disciples that your righteousness must exceed that of the 00:24:10.000 |
Pharisees. And this is, I'm not going to read all of it, but this is some of the things that 00:24:14.000 |
He says. Matthew chapter 5, 21-22, "You have heard that 00:24:18.000 |
it was said to those of old, 'You shall not murder, and whoever 00:24:22.000 |
murders will be liable to judgment.' But I say to you that everyone who 00:24:26.000 |
is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. Whoever insults 00:24:30.000 |
his brother will be liable to the council, and whoever says, 'You fool,' 00:24:38.000 |
Now if you were paying attention to that very closely you would have said, "Wait a second. 00:24:42.000 |
You're equating me with a murderer because I had hatred toward my brother?" 00:24:46.000 |
That's exactly what He says. That's exactly what He says. 00:24:50.000 |
In fact, He goes further than that. Matthew 5, 27-28, "You have heard that it was said, 00:24:54.000 |
'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that everyone 00:24:58.000 |
who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery 00:25:02.000 |
with her in his heart." You're talking about an individual who remained faithful 00:25:06.000 |
to his wife for years and years and years, but because he had lust 00:25:10.000 |
in his heart that he is guilty of adultery as well? 00:25:18.000 |
kingdom would that be fair? A murderer and somebody who hates 00:25:22.000 |
his brother, an adulterer who cheats on his wife, and somebody 00:25:26.000 |
who looks at a woman with lustful thoughts, he says, "Just as guilty as an 00:25:34.000 |
What Jesus says later on in Matthew 15, He says, "Hear and 00:25:38.000 |
understand this. It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles 00:25:42.000 |
a person, but what comes out of the mouth that defiles a person." 00:25:46.000 |
In other words, what is He saying? Defilement is not something 00:25:50.000 |
that you just did or do. Defilement is who you 00:25:58.000 |
defiled things will happen. You will proceed to do and act out 00:26:02.000 |
things that are defiled because that's who you are. That's what Jesus was saying. 00:26:10.000 |
see on the surface. Adultery is a lot deeper than 00:26:22.000 |
our own corruption. And that's why in Matthew 23, 00:26:26.000 |
Jesus says, "Woe to you, scribes and pharisees, you hypocrites! 00:26:30.000 |
For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the 00:26:34.000 |
weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness. These 00:26:38.000 |
you ought to have done without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining 00:26:46.000 |
See a self-righteous person is always putting on display what they are 00:26:50.000 |
doing. This is what I've done and why aren't you doing 00:26:54.000 |
it? This is what I did in the past and how come you're not doing it? 00:26:58.000 |
A self-righteous person is very aware of the sins of other people, 00:27:02.000 |
but they don't understand how hypocritical they are and 00:27:06.000 |
how deeply this sin is embedded in all of us. 00:27:14.000 |
Christ will mean little. You may love the church. 00:27:18.000 |
You may love things of the church. You may love activity of the church, but you 00:27:22.000 |
will not love Christ until you recognize our brokenness 00:27:34.000 |
arguably, and people can argue, who was the greatest prophet? Say Elijah was the greatest prophet. 00:27:38.000 |
Some may say Jeremiah. Some may say Elisha. And some may say 00:27:42.000 |
Isaiah. Whether you agree with that or not, Isaiah is definitely 00:27:50.000 |
in order for God to prepare him for ministry reveals 00:27:54.000 |
to him his glory. And when he is in the presence of his glory, what happens 00:28:10.000 |
of an individual who is walking in the presence of God. He is very 00:28:18.000 |
and he says, "Woe is me. Woe is me. I am a man of unclean lips. 00:28:22.000 |
From a people of unclean lips. How can I possibly 00:28:26.000 |
be in the presence of this holy God?" An individual who is 00:28:34.000 |
Because when you are in the presence of this glory, all of a sudden 00:28:38.000 |
every single person who thought he was clean recognizes his 00:28:42.000 |
uncleanness. And then he no longer is worried about other people. 00:28:54.000 |
See, a self-righteous person is not aware of his guilt before God. 00:28:58.000 |
Or if he is aware of it, it is very superficial. It is something that happened in the past. 00:29:02.000 |
Justification is something that happened one time. But now 00:29:10.000 |
is not just past. It is present and it is future. 00:29:14.000 |
That every single day, if I am not under the mercy of God, 00:29:26.000 |
My flesh will naturally take me to the world. It is only 00:29:30.000 |
because he has been merciful to me that I can hear his word and understand. 00:29:38.000 |
who does not recognize the corruption in his own heart 00:29:46.000 |
Frustrated with other people. Only if they change. Only if the church 00:29:50.000 |
changes. Only if we did this this way and that way. But he has never 00:29:54.000 |
broken over his own sins. Or it is very superficial. 00:29:58.000 |
So that is why finally he says in verse 4, "Or do you presume 00:30:02.000 |
on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience?" Not knowing that 00:30:06.000 |
God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance. A self-righteous 00:30:10.000 |
person doesn't realize his desperateness and what the gift of God 00:30:18.000 |
is the ability to be able to repent and for God to forgive. That's his gift. 00:30:22.000 |
That he opened this door that we can come to him in confidence. 00:30:26.000 |
Again, you and I live in a generation where if something is 00:30:30.000 |
preached and you feel guilty about it, that that's not, that can't be from 00:30:34.000 |
God. Because God is about getting rid of guilt. Any kind of 00:30:38.000 |
burden. And that's why we preach a gospel where we almost skip the guilt 00:30:46.000 |
this is who we are, we need forgiveness, and boom we are over here. Remember 00:30:50.000 |
Paul, those of you who have been studying through 2 Corinthians with us? He writes 00:30:54.000 |
this very harsh letter to the Corinthians and he just unleashes on 00:30:58.000 |
them. He writes 2 Corinthians as a follow up because so many of them got 00:31:02.000 |
hurt from his letter. They were deeply hurt because 00:31:06.000 |
Paul didn't hold back. I mean again he was like a doctor 00:31:10.000 |
on revealing their wound. And they are pumping 00:31:14.000 |
it up and he said, "Wow, this disease is much deeper and it's 00:31:18.000 |
spread much further than I thought." And so the whole 1 Corinthians he's 00:31:22.000 |
taking the bandages off and he's showing them this is your problem. 00:31:26.000 |
And so they were deeply hurt. Some of them were actually 00:31:30.000 |
fighting back. Maybe he's not an apostle, you know. He's 00:31:34.000 |
impressive in his letters but his appearance is nothing. 00:31:38.000 |
Paul writes this letter in 2 Corinthians he says, "You know what when I wrote this letter and I saw 00:31:42.000 |
how it hurt you I regretted it for a little bit. But 00:31:46.000 |
now I don't regret it. And the reason why I don't regret it is because it led you to 00:31:50.000 |
repentance." This is what he says, 1 Corinthians 7, 9, 11. 00:31:54.000 |
"As it is I rejoice not because you were grieved but because you were 00:31:58.000 |
grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief so that 00:32:02.000 |
you suffered no loss through us. For godly grief produces repentance 00:32:06.000 |
that leads to salvation without regret. Whereas worldly 00:32:10.000 |
grief produces death. For see what earnestness this godly 00:32:14.000 |
grief has produced in you but also what eagerness to clear yourself, what 00:32:18.000 |
indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment." 00:32:26.000 |
you to reveal to you where you stand before God that it would lead you to 00:32:30.000 |
repentance." He says, "Do you not know the fact that the reason why 00:32:34.000 |
I'm revealing this sin to you and why I'm calling you a hypocrite and why I'm 00:32:38.000 |
telling you all of this is because God's kindness will lead you to 00:32:46.000 |
Man after God's own heart. I mean he's, up till 00:32:50.000 |
his sin, I mean David was the man, he was the man, God's handpicked 00:32:58.000 |
But when you think of the sin that David commits 00:33:02.000 |
it's beyond comprehension. Because the man he 00:33:06.000 |
kills and his wife that he ends up committing adultery and 00:33:10.000 |
taking her for himself. This is a man that the Bible describes 00:33:14.000 |
as one of the great men who were so loyal to David he was willing to 00:33:18.000 |
take a knife for him. He was one of those men who ran around protecting David 00:33:22.000 |
when King Saul was after him. He was loyal to him. He was willing to die for 00:33:26.000 |
David and it was that guy and it was his wife that he committed 00:33:30.000 |
adultery and it was that guy he ended up killing. 00:33:38.000 |
But in Psalm 32, 3-5 you see the mercy of God on David 00:33:42.000 |
and this is how David describes, "For when I kept 00:33:46.000 |
silent my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. 00:33:50.000 |
For day and night your hand was heavy upon me, my strength 00:33:54.000 |
was dried up as by the heat of summer." In other words, 00:33:58.000 |
God put his finger on David because of his sin. 00:34:06.000 |
He felt the pressure of his sin. Night and day it was heavy upon me. 00:34:10.000 |
Your strength, my strength dried up as the heat of 00:34:14.000 |
summer. And what Paul is saying here is do you 00:34:18.000 |
not recognize that that's God's kindness. The person 00:34:22.000 |
that we ought to be worried about is somebody who is living in sin and compromise and 00:34:30.000 |
I'm ok, you know God is so gracious and He is loving. He says, 00:34:34.000 |
"No, it's God's kindness that leads you to repentance." 00:34:38.000 |
As a result of that he says, "I acknowledge my sin to you and I did not 00:34:42.000 |
cover up my iniquity. I said I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and you 00:34:46.000 |
forgave the iniquity of my sin." If we just superficially 00:34:50.000 |
just kind of sweep it under the rug and we live the rest of our 00:34:54.000 |
lives and we don't recognize the gift that we have in Christ is that the real gift of 00:34:58.000 |
Christ is that He forgives us. He leads us to repentance. 00:35:06.000 |
In Psalm 51, 1-5 when David finally confesses 00:35:10.000 |
and repents and is forgiven this is what he says, "Have mercy 00:35:14.000 |
on me O God according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy 00:35:18.000 |
blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my 00:35:22.000 |
iniquity and cleanse me from my sin for I know my transgressions and my 00:35:30.000 |
look at what he says. He's not just confessing and act. 00:35:38.000 |
He said, "My sins are ever before me against you and you only have I sinned and done what is 00:35:42.000 |
evil in your sight so that you may be justified in your words and blameless 00:35:46.000 |
in your judgment." And then verse 5 look what he says, "Behold 00:35:50.000 |
I was brought forth iniquity and in sin did my mother 00:35:54.000 |
conceive me." It looks like wait is he blaming 00:35:58.000 |
his mom? Is he blaming his parents, his grandparents 00:36:10.000 |
He wasn't just a sinner when he committed the act. He said he was 00:36:18.000 |
In fact he came even in the womb and he goes even further than that. 00:36:26.000 |
that even in our righteousness it becomes ugly because it becomes 00:36:30.000 |
self-righteousness. And until a sinner is in the presence 00:36:34.000 |
of a holy God and recognizes our desperate position 00:36:46.000 |
a doctrinal statement. It just becomes something to recite 00:36:50.000 |
something to memorize, something to repeat. But it doesn't have the power 00:36:54.000 |
to change us. To cause us to come and worship God 00:37:02.000 |
treated our sins lightly. That we just kind of covered 00:37:10.000 |
Of course we're not. Where do you draw the line? How do you live perfectly? At least 00:37:14.000 |
I'm not like them. And as a result of that our 00:37:22.000 |
And that's why Paul, I mean his whole goal is to bring 00:37:26.000 |
them to justification by faith. But in order to properly 00:37:30.000 |
get us to justification by faith we need to realize why 00:37:34.000 |
it was the only door. Why it is the only option 00:37:42.000 |
as long as we are pointing fingers at other people. As long 00:37:46.000 |
as we feel righteous and compared to the other sinners. As far 00:37:50.000 |
as long as we don't recognize a corruption in our own hearts 00:38:10.000 |
So every time we have a communion. Like we have communion 00:38:18.000 |
every single one of us comes as a broken sinner. 00:38:22.000 |
Now if there's one thing that I've learned in the 30 some years that I've 00:38:26.000 |
been a Christian. I thought when I became a Christian 00:38:30.000 |
I mean you know I know some people say, "Oh you know I don't know exactly when I got saved and it 00:38:34.000 |
took a while." And mine was unlike that. I know exactly when I got saved because my life 00:38:38.000 |
got flipped upside down. And I was so passionate 00:38:42.000 |
I was so eager. I wanted to live for Christ and 00:38:46.000 |
even if I die early that's okay with me because I wanted to live for Christ. I wanted to do all this. 00:38:50.000 |
I'm going to make my scripture. Make disciples. Plant churches. And do all of this. 00:38:54.000 |
But after 30 some years of walking with God. If there's one 00:38:58.000 |
constant thing that I learned over and over and over again 00:39:30.000 |
That He would cover me from the wrath of God. 00:39:34.000 |
I pray that as we continue to study through the book of Romans if there's anything 00:39:38.000 |
in these chapters, three chapters, I want to ask you a practical question. 00:39:42.000 |
When was the last time that you were really broken 00:39:46.000 |
for your sins? You know we spend a lot of time talking about 00:39:50.000 |
frustration why other people are not repenting. Why other people are 00:39:54.000 |
not doing the right thing. Why other people should be doing this and this. 00:39:58.000 |
And why church would be so much better if they did this and if we 00:40:02.000 |
did this. But when was the last time you were broken over your sin? 00:40:14.000 |
I'm doing this. I know I'm not perfect but I'm not 00:40:22.000 |
we don't really understand the preciousness of what 00:40:26.000 |
we have in Christ. Let me ask you guys to take a minute to pray 00:40:30.000 |
with us. And as I ask the praise team to come up. Take some time to pray but this morning 00:40:34.000 |
I'm going to ask you not to pray for anything else but yourself. 00:40:38.000 |
Not to ask anything else. Are there sins that you swept under the rug? 00:40:42.000 |
Maybe you don't really recognize the desperate need 00:40:46.000 |
that we have of Christ. Not to pay bills, not to 00:40:58.000 |
of Christ this morning. Whether you've done well 00:41:02.000 |
or bad or whether you've lusted or didn't or whether you did quiet time or didn't 00:41:06.000 |
every single one of us stands condemned before God without the blood of Christ. 00:41:14.000 |
to honestly come before God and say this prayer, "Lord, 00:41:18.000 |
search me and know me. See if there's any hurtful ways in me. What is it in me 00:41:22.000 |
that I will not allow His kindness to lead me to repentance? 00:41:26.000 |
That I've allowed my own logic, my own self-righteousness 00:41:34.000 |
To come before the Lord and ask Him, "Lord, I pray that 00:41:38.000 |
Your Word would judge the thoughts and intentions of my heart." So let's take some time to pray 00:41:42.000 |
and pray for nothing else but to come before God and convict me 00:41:50.000 |
the glory of what Christ has done for me. Let's take some time to pray as our worship team leads us.