back to index2015-11-29 What Advantage is There for God's People?
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Okay, if you guys can turn your Bibles to Romans chapter 3. 00:00:08.000 |
Romans chapter 3. I'm going to be reading from verse 1 through 8. 00:00:12.000 |
We're going to be mainly focused on the first few verses, 00:00:23.000 |
Reading out of the ESV, it says, "Then what advantage has a Jew?" 00:00:29.000 |
"Or what is the value of circumcision, much in every way? 00:00:32.000 |
To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. 00:00:36.000 |
What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? 00:00:42.000 |
By no means. Let God be true, though everyone were a liar, as it is written, 00:00:46.000 |
that you may be justified in your words and prevail when you are judged. 00:00:50.000 |
But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, 00:00:54.000 |
what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? 00:00:58.000 |
I speak in a human way, by no means. For then how could God judge the world? 00:01:04.000 |
But if through my lie God's truth abounds to His glory, 00:01:10.000 |
And why not do evil that good may come, as some people slanderously charge us with saying, 00:01:18.000 |
Father, we pray for your blessing over this morning. 00:01:20.000 |
We pray, Lord God, that your authority and what you have ordained through the preaching of your Word, 00:01:26.000 |
that you will bring to fruition this morning. 00:01:28.000 |
We ask, Lord God, that your Word will go forth and will not return until it has accomplished its purpose. 00:01:37.000 |
What if I told you this morning that everything that you've been doing up to this point is absolutely useless? 00:01:44.000 |
That you coming to this morning to worship God, in the eyes of God, means absolutely nothing. 00:01:50.000 |
That all the offering that you've been giving up to this point, in God's eyes, meant absolutely nothing. 00:01:56.000 |
Some of you guys have maybe worked hard to sacrifice. 00:02:00.000 |
Maybe even been out to mission. Maybe even lived out in the mission field for a period. 00:02:04.000 |
And all the dedications, all the service to the Church, all the years that you've been coming to Church, 00:02:11.000 |
all the Scriptures that you've memorized, all the times that you labored in prayer, 00:02:14.000 |
that what if I told you this morning that all of that was for nothing? 00:02:18.000 |
That when you stand before God, that you're going to be judged like everybody else. 00:02:23.000 |
Well, some of you guys may hear that, and obviously I'm speaking hypothetically, 00:02:28.000 |
but some of you guys may hear that, and maybe if you believed what I was saying, 00:02:35.000 |
The first thing that may happen is some of you guys may say, "Well, who's this guy?" 00:02:44.000 |
And maybe you would attack me and nullify me, and if you nullify me, you would nullify what I'm saying. 00:02:50.000 |
Or maybe some of you guys listen and say, "You know, I go through the Scripture, and I look at passages, 00:02:56.000 |
and I show you where it says all of these things." 00:02:58.000 |
And you may sit there thinking, "Hmm, could that possibly be true?" 00:03:02.000 |
And if it is true, what does that mean for me? 00:03:05.000 |
You mean all this time that I've spent, all the years that I've been laboring in the Church, 00:03:10.000 |
all the money that you've given, all the Sunday football games that you've missed, 00:03:16.000 |
and you may be thinking about all of these things and saying, "All of that was for nothing?" 00:03:22.000 |
Well, if you look at Chapter 3, Paul is trying to answer that very question. 00:03:27.000 |
Because for two chapters, until he gets to Chapter 3, he was basically telling that to the Jews. 00:03:33.000 |
And to tell the Jews that all the law-keeping, all the sacrifices that you made, 00:03:41.000 |
all the things that you did at the Temple, your circumcision, all the Scripture that you memorized, 00:03:46.000 |
all the time you went to the Temple to pray, that all of that would mean nothing. 00:03:51.000 |
That when you die, you're no better off than the Gentiles, that you thought, 00:03:56.000 |
not only in your life, but your parents' life, but your grandparents' life, for generations to come, 00:04:02.000 |
you thought that because you were a Jew, that when you died, you were going to have a special place in the Kingdom. 00:04:07.000 |
But Jesus says, or Paul is saying in the Book of Romans, 00:04:12.000 |
is that those who have the law will be condemned by the law. 00:04:16.000 |
Those who don't have the law will be condemned without the law. 00:04:19.000 |
But all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. 00:04:21.000 |
There's not a single person that dies who's going to stand before God and say, 00:04:25.000 |
"You know what? Because I've been circumcised, because I was raised in a Jewish home, 00:04:30.000 |
and every single year we were really faithful with the Passover meal, 00:04:35.000 |
and we did all of that for generations to come." 00:04:39.000 |
Then Paul to come up and all of a sudden saying, "You know, the way of life is Christ, 00:04:48.000 |
You can imagine what kind of response you would have gotten. 00:04:50.000 |
They wouldn't have just laid over and said, "Oh, okay, that's great. What else you got?" 00:04:55.000 |
You could imagine the kind of response that they would get. 00:05:00.000 |
And so Paul, knowing that this is probably what they're thinking, 00:05:04.000 |
after he lays the foundation that all have sinned. 00:05:08.000 |
In fact, the next part that we're going to get to in verse 9, where he clearly spells out, 00:05:12.000 |
"Whether you are a Jew or Gentile, all have sinned. 00:05:15.000 |
There's not one who seeks God, not one righteous, no one understands. Nobody." 00:05:21.000 |
So he's been laying the foundation of that, so knowing the response that they would get, 00:05:25.000 |
that they would have. You mean all of this was for nothing? 00:05:32.000 |
And that's a rightful question because all through the Old Testament, 00:05:36.000 |
if you were raised a Jew, you were taught that you were God's chosen people. 00:05:42.000 |
I could give you a sample verse, but I could repeat this verse from almost every text in the Old Testament. 00:05:47.000 |
In Deuteronomy 14.2, "For you are a people holy to the Lord your God, 00:05:51.000 |
and the Lord has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, 00:05:55.000 |
out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth." 00:05:59.000 |
So again, I'm only giving you one verse, but I can find a verse like that, 00:06:03.000 |
that explains about special position that Israel had, 00:06:07.000 |
that special heart that Israel, God had for his people. 00:06:11.000 |
Out of all the nations, I have chosen you, and I have treasured you as my personal possession. 00:06:17.000 |
And then for Paul to come out and say, "You know what the Gospel says, 00:06:25.000 |
You are guilty as a Gentile, and you are guilty as a Jew. 00:06:29.000 |
Whether you are circumcised or uncircumcised, 00:06:37.000 |
Then again, what advantage is there, Jew? In fact, in verses, 00:06:41.000 |
chapter 3, verse 1 through 8, he has eight separate questions. 00:06:45.000 |
I'm not going to go through question by question, because some of these questions overlap. 00:06:49.000 |
I was trying to deal with two questions this morning, but I didn't get past the first one, 00:06:53.000 |
this first service, so I'm probably going to end up stopping at one. 00:06:57.000 |
Unless I forget a big chunk and then I just skip over it. 00:07:01.000 |
But the first and the most important question is, like we would have, 00:07:09.000 |
All of this, all of the going to church, all the 00:07:17.000 |
do mission work, all the sacrifices that we make in giving offering. 00:07:21.000 |
What is all of that? What was the advantage of being a Jew? 00:07:25.000 |
And so that is the question that he is trying to answer in the beginning. 00:07:29.000 |
And it is a relevant question. It is not only for the Jew. 00:07:33.000 |
It is basically, this is the same question that every Christian 00:07:37.000 |
who has been raised in the church, or maybe been in church for a while, and you've 00:07:45.000 |
every Christian ought to be asking the same question. What is the benefit 00:07:49.000 |
of all of this? What is the benefit of church? 00:07:53.000 |
What is the benefit of fellowship? What is the benefit of having a building to worship God? 00:07:57.000 |
What is the benefit of being in a covenant community? 00:08:05.000 |
Well, he says this. He doesn't waste any time. He asks the question, 00:08:09.000 |
what advantage is there for a Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? 00:08:13.000 |
Much in every way. Much in every way. To begin with, 00:08:17.000 |
and he is going to go, you have the oracles of God. If you turn your 00:08:21.000 |
Bibles with me to Romans chapter 9, 4-5. In fact, 00:08:25.000 |
if you've ever studied the book of Romans before, you'll know that Romans 00:08:29.000 |
chapter 9, 10, and 11, three chapters are dedicated 00:08:33.000 |
really to answer that question. Because Paul is going to come 00:08:37.000 |
down hard on the Jewish community. If there is any 00:08:41.000 |
thought or any inclination that somehow you are going to make it 00:08:45.000 |
because you were born into the right family, because you've been 00:08:49.000 |
doing the right rituals, that if there is any misconception 00:08:53.000 |
that you stand right before God because of your heritage 00:09:01.000 |
eight chapters destroying that. So the question that 00:09:05.000 |
obviously they would ask is the same question he asks here, but again he deals 00:09:09.000 |
with it more extensively. Chapter 9, 10, and 11. 00:09:17.000 |
Well he goes into a little bit more detail in Romans chapter 9, 4-5. 00:09:21.000 |
He says, here is the advantage of being a Jew. They are Israelites, and to them 00:09:29.000 |
you are not just like everybody else. You are not just a creation of God. 00:09:33.000 |
God chose you to be His own possession, to be His own children. 00:09:37.000 |
The glory. There is no other nation that was able 00:09:41.000 |
to see the glory of God like the nation of Israel. 00:09:45.000 |
You know the scripture says that God revealed Himself to the whole world, but to the nation of Israel 00:09:53.000 |
It was in the temple, even in the 40 years while they are being judged, the glory 00:09:57.000 |
of God was with them the whole time. He said to them, 00:10:01.000 |
you are the glory. You have the covenants. God may have made a general 00:10:05.000 |
covenant with the world, but with the nation of Israel. In Genesis 00:10:13.000 |
with the nation of Israel saying, you will be My people and I will be your God. 00:10:17.000 |
To them, they had the giving of the law, the worship, 00:10:21.000 |
all the promises. To them belong the patriarchs. 00:10:25.000 |
From their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ who is God over all. 00:10:29.000 |
Blessed forever, amen. In other words, Christ Himself was a Jew. 00:10:37.000 |
is there? Well, I mean, we can relate to that, right? 00:10:41.000 |
If He just came out and just destroyed everything that you've been up to this point, He said all of that was for useless. 00:10:45.000 |
I mean, those of you who may have just joined the church and say, oh, okay, I'm glad 00:10:49.000 |
I didn't spend any time here. You know, I'm glad I found this out early 00:10:53.000 |
before I put in any more time. But those of you who've been here longer, 00:10:57.000 |
who's been walking with the Lord longer, it's going to disturb you even more. 00:11:05.000 |
He goes on and says, to begin with, the Jews were 00:11:09.000 |
entrusted with the oracles of God. NIV actually says 00:11:13.000 |
firstly, right? But the strange thing is, He says 00:11:17.000 |
to begin with, and then He never goes anywhere else. Right? 00:11:21.000 |
He says firstly, and then He never gets to the second, third point. 00:11:25.000 |
You know, it's the greatest blessing that you have, greatest advantage that you have, is you have the 00:11:29.000 |
word of God. And then He never goes into the second or third. 00:11:33.000 |
Well, the reason why He does that is, we need to properly understand, when He 00:11:37.000 |
says, to begin with, He's not saying, I'm going to begin with this, and then I'm going to 00:11:41.000 |
lead you to some other stuff. The word He uses here is 00:11:45.000 |
proton, or protos, where we get the word priority. And that's 00:11:49.000 |
the same word that's used in Revelation chapter 2, where Jesus speaks 00:11:53.000 |
to the Church of Ephesus and says, "You have forsaken your first love." 00:11:57.000 |
Protos agapem. And the word protos basically doesn't 00:12:01.000 |
mean first, second, third, fourth, or fifth. Meaning you've forsaken your first 00:12:05.000 |
love because now you are in your fourth love, and I need you to work back up to your first 00:12:09.000 |
love. The word proton basically means above everything 00:12:17.000 |
So again, when that word is used in Revelation it is referring to 00:12:21.000 |
that your love for Christ has cooled. That He is not the 00:12:25.000 |
most important thing in your life. He may be important. He may be something. 00:12:29.000 |
But He is not most important. That's the same 00:12:33.000 |
word that is used here to describe the advantage 00:12:41.000 |
advantage, think about all the advantages that you can think of as a Jew. We think of 00:12:45.000 |
it would have been awesome to be a part of that camp for 40 00:12:53.000 |
of God in the clouds. He gave specific instructions 00:12:57.000 |
where the glory of God you could visually see. Wouldn't it have been awesome 00:13:01.000 |
if you escaped from Egypt and you were walking in the middle of the Red 00:13:05.000 |
Sea. And you look at it, and I don't know about you, but 00:13:09.000 |
if I was walking through the split river, the Red Sea, I would have 00:13:13.000 |
wanted it. I would have splashed myself the whole way through. You know what I mean? Just enjoying 00:13:17.000 |
this. Look at this. Think about all the advantage of being a Jew. 00:13:21.000 |
Right? Think about all the miracles that they 00:13:29.000 |
Baal priests. Right? The miraculous food that they ate. 00:13:37.000 |
things. Well look at the advantage that you guys had. All of this. But He says above everything 00:13:41.000 |
that I can mention are the advantages. Your primary advantage 00:13:49.000 |
You know when we think about the advantage that we have as Americans 00:13:53.000 |
living in this generation, and we travel the world, 00:13:57.000 |
physically speaking, humanly speaking, our advantage is absolutely crystal clear. 00:14:01.000 |
Anybody who feels like, "Oh your life is hard, 00:14:05.000 |
and you don't make enough money." Travel a little bit. But don't 00:14:17.000 |
and travel, you're going to realize how filthy rich you are. You got 20 bucks in your pocket. 00:14:21.000 |
That's more than what 95% of the world has. Right? 00:14:25.000 |
And so when you go, you're going to come back and think, "Man, we are privileged." 00:14:29.000 |
Right? And it's not just money. The freedom that you have. 00:14:33.000 |
The fact that you can just turn in your passport and they stamp it and you can just go pretty much anywhere in the world. 00:14:37.000 |
The majority of the people in the world can't do that. 00:14:41.000 |
Some of you guys were going to India with us this winter. 00:14:45.000 |
There's 35 pastors, and we're going to probably run into maybe about a thousand 00:14:57.000 |
In fact, the pastor that we have contact with, the furthest he's ever been is Bangalore, which is 00:15:01.000 |
about a five hour distance. Beyond that, he's never been anywhere else. 00:15:05.000 |
The majority of the people that we meet there have never been outside their village. 00:15:09.000 |
They don't know what the rest of the world is like. So the fact that you and I can 00:15:17.000 |
The majority of the people, there's a lot of people in the world that just can't even gather like this. 00:15:25.000 |
So you can think of all kinds of advantages that you and I have. 00:15:33.000 |
the primary advantage is what Paul is saying to the Jews, what God is saying to 00:15:37.000 |
the nation of Israel. The primary benefit of being a 00:15:41.000 |
chosen people of God was that they had the Word of God. 00:15:45.000 |
And that's the primary advantage that you and I have. 00:15:49.000 |
That we live in a generation where the access to the Word of God 00:15:53.000 |
is more prevalent than any other time in human history. Ever. 00:16:05.000 |
of the Bible we should use. So we have the ESV people, we have the 00:16:09.000 |
NASB people, we have the NIV people, we have the King James people. 00:16:13.000 |
It's like, "Nah, we're fighting for the right to have the right translation." 00:16:21.000 |
first home that we ever bought, we bought in La Mirada. And I shared this with you guys before. 00:16:25.000 |
We bought it because I would spend at least two to three days in the library preparing 00:16:29.000 |
for Bible studies and sermons. And this is before internet. So I had to go to the library, 00:16:33.000 |
find a big table at Biola, and then I had to get all the 00:16:37.000 |
reference books and lay it out. And I've got to claim it early in the morning so that the other 00:16:41.000 |
the tablet students don't get the books first. I've got to go there 00:16:45.000 |
and be selfish and sit at all the tables and claim it all for me. And I 00:16:49.000 |
need more than a little space because I've got all these books and spread it out. And so 00:16:53.000 |
if I'm studying I don't understand this. I've got to go find this reference book, go 00:16:57.000 |
look up the decimal system, John Dewey decimal system, go look it up 00:17:01.000 |
and then get that, get all these books. So it would take half a day 00:17:05.000 |
to sit there and just go through one passage. And so 00:17:09.000 |
with that, "Hey, you know, go to La Mirada." Then I could just drive to school and back and it would only be 00:17:13.000 |
a couple minute drive. And then, you know, soon after that the PC study Bible 00:17:17.000 |
came out. And then the internet came out. And then 00:17:21.000 |
after a while I didn't need to go to the library anymore. Right? But that's the privilege that we 00:17:25.000 |
have. We can have a question and all of a sudden you just ask a question and it pops up now. 00:17:29.000 |
Right? I don't have to go anywhere. I can sit and I can have a question sitting in the 00:17:33.000 |
middle of the park, nowhere, and I can just say, "Hey, what is this?" And then it'll pop 00:17:37.000 |
up. Right? No other generation ever has had the kind of 00:17:41.000 |
access to the Word of God that you and I have today. 00:17:53.000 |
It's safety, that we have American citizenship. 00:17:57.000 |
According to what the Word of God is saying, the 00:18:01.000 |
primary privilege of the nation of Israel and God's people 00:18:05.000 |
is that they had the oracles of God, first and foremost. 00:18:09.000 |
Right? And the reason why this was the tremendous blessing for them 00:18:13.000 |
is because, remember Paul said in chapter 1 that 00:18:17.000 |
all the nations, the Gentiles, they were given the 00:18:21.000 |
imprint of God in nature, in His creation, so that no 00:18:25.000 |
one is without excuse. Anybody can look at the creation of God and say, "God must be powerful. 00:18:29.000 |
There must be a being." And there was enough to lead them 00:18:33.000 |
to Christ. But to the nation of Israel, the Scripture says 00:18:41.000 |
that they can clearly see. In fact, Paul says in 2 Timothy 00:18:45.000 |
3.14 to Timothy, "To continue what you have learned 00:18:49.000 |
and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you have learned it, and how from 00:18:53.000 |
childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings." The sacred writings he is 00:18:57.000 |
talking about is the Old Testament. "How you have been acquainted 00:19:01.000 |
with the Old Testament, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith 00:19:05.000 |
in Christ Jesus." In other words he says, "You've been given the oracles of God 00:19:09.000 |
so that that would lead you to Christ." He says, "So pay very 00:19:21.000 |
the rest of the world has been given sparklers, basically. 00:19:25.000 |
And that sparkler is good enough. If you desired to find God, 00:19:29.000 |
that sparkler will light the path enough to get you to God. 00:19:33.000 |
But you, the nation of Israel, you were given a lamp. 00:19:37.000 |
And that lamp was to be used and it was clear. The path 00:19:41.000 |
to Christ was clear. But instead of using it as a 00:19:45.000 |
lamp to a path to Christ, what they did was they used it as a 00:19:49.000 |
spotlight. And used that lamp to spotlight themselves. "Look what I 00:19:57.000 |
pointing them to Christ, which will lead to life, all they did was become self-righteous. 00:20:13.000 |
wife, used to be a school teacher, third grade teacher. She used to 00:20:17.000 |
have this system where if the kids did great in school, or behaved well, she would pass out 00:20:21.000 |
rewards. And the reward was that once, I think 00:20:25.000 |
once every two weeks or once a month, the star student would be able to have 00:20:29.000 |
lunch with a teacher. And so there was a Carl's 00:20:33.000 |
Jr. next door and she would say, "Oh, you did great in school." 00:20:37.000 |
Or, "You had great behavior." And she said, "Well, 00:20:41.000 |
then that kid gets to have lunch with a teacher." And you know, it's just to 00:20:53.000 |
I can't remember a single time in my life where I thought spending time with a 00:21:01.000 |
work hard to spend time with them. In fact, if you were really good, if you were 00:21:05.000 |
really good, and you were beyond good, then you get to spend 00:21:13.000 |
The principal would take you out to lunch. And again, those of you guys 00:21:17.000 |
who know my testimony, I mean, I never did I ever think 00:21:21.000 |
spending time with the principal was a good thing. Right? 00:21:25.000 |
I've never received a notice from the principal and it was good news. Never. 00:21:33.000 |
was, obviously. And the reason why it was a reward is because 00:21:37.000 |
the teacher, who's a significant figure in the classroom, that they are able to have a 00:21:41.000 |
personal relationship with them. They're sitting down with them and talking to them and the 00:21:45.000 |
principal of the school, they get to draw near. So they were special. 00:21:49.000 |
That they didn't just sit in the classroom. That they were taken out of the classroom 00:21:53.000 |
and actually sat with a teacher. It was a big deal for them. 00:21:57.000 |
So in the same way, what Paul is saying, you are the children 00:22:01.000 |
of God. God particularly chose you to draw near to you. 00:22:09.000 |
That was the primary gift that He gave to the Jews. But instead of using that 00:22:13.000 |
to come to God, they became self-righteous and used it as a spotlight 00:22:29.000 |
tragedy of the nation of Israel. How they could have had 00:22:33.000 |
so much revelation about who Jesus is. Think about 00:22:37.000 |
the sacrifices. Think about the temple. All of that to teach them 00:22:41.000 |
that you cannot draw near to a holy God by your own merit. 00:22:45.000 |
Think about the cities of refuge. Think about 00:22:49.000 |
all the laws. Think about the sacrifice, the Day of Atonement. All of that. 00:22:53.000 |
The Passover meal. All of that is embedded into their 00:22:57.000 |
culture. You know, one of the benefits of being a US 00:23:01.000 |
citizen, we live in a post-Christian culture, but we have Christian things all 00:23:05.000 |
over in the things that we practice. We have it in Christmas, we have Easter, 00:23:09.000 |
Thanksgiving. And it's not hard to share the Gospel, teaching English 00:23:13.000 |
around the world, because all we have to say is, "We are going to learn American culture, and we are going 00:23:17.000 |
to teach you what Christmas is about. And then we'll teach them about Christmas, and then we share 00:23:21.000 |
the Gospel. Well, next day we are going to talk about Easter. Well, what is Easter about? 00:23:25.000 |
It's about the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and we share the Gospel. Talk about Thanksgiving. 00:23:29.000 |
These are major holidays in our culture. And even though they are trying 00:23:33.000 |
to minimize it, and kind of take Christ out of all of these things, the benefit 00:23:37.000 |
is that it's embedded in our culture. It's in our, the language is in our Constitution. 00:23:45.000 |
But think about the Jewish culture. Every part of 00:23:49.000 |
everything that they did was to prepare for the coming of Christ. 00:23:57.000 |
When they went to the Temple, the sacrifices. 00:24:01.000 |
And this was from generation to generation to generation to generation. 00:24:05.000 |
And then to have the Christ that the Scripture 00:24:09.000 |
talked about for hundreds and hundreds of years. 00:24:13.000 |
And then to completely miss Him. Now we would all 00:24:25.000 |
the same temptation, the same problem that you and I 00:24:37.000 |
people who really understand what the Word of God is. 00:24:41.000 |
You and I live in a generation where any kind of question that we have, any 00:24:45.000 |
theological question that we have, we can instantaneously look it up 00:24:49.000 |
on the Internet. And yet so few people with deep 00:24:53.000 |
affection for Christ. See in the book of Amos, 00:24:57.000 |
chapter 8, 11-12, God sends this prophet Amos saying that 00:25:01.000 |
because you disobeyed and you worshipped idols, God's going to bring judgment. 00:25:05.000 |
And at the end of the book of Amos, He says the final judgment 00:25:09.000 |
that's going to come to the nation of Israel is described this way. 00:25:13.000 |
Amos 8, 11-12, "Behold the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will send 00:25:17.000 |
a famine on the land. Not a famine of bread, nor a 00:25:21.000 |
thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. 00:25:25.000 |
They shall wander from sea to sea and from north to east. 00:25:29.000 |
They shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, but they shall 00:25:37.000 |
the people continue to ignore God over and over again, He says He's 00:25:41.000 |
going to withdraw Himself. And the way He's going to withdraw Himself, He's going to bring a famine 00:25:49.000 |
see what I see in our generation? Do you see, 00:25:53.000 |
and I believe most of you, if not all of you, to some extent 00:26:05.000 |
But where the Word of God is exalted and taught 00:26:13.000 |
He said there's going to be a famine of the Word of God. Now famine comes in two ways. 00:26:21.000 |
And there was a period in Israel's history where they neglected the Word of God so much 00:26:25.000 |
that when Josiah comes into power and he becomes a king, he has to 00:26:29.000 |
go look for it in the Temple. And a revival breaks out because they found 00:26:33.000 |
the Bible. They found the Torah. In other words 00:26:37.000 |
this whole nation that was built upon the foundation of His command 00:26:41.000 |
that they didn't read it for generations. They didn't know 00:26:45.000 |
where it was. And they go and they find it and then they read it for 00:26:49.000 |
the first time in hundreds of years and all of a sudden revival breaks out. 00:26:57.000 |
way where you just don't hear it. You look for it and you can't find it. But there's 00:27:01.000 |
another kind of famine that comes. And I think the best way to describe it is someone 00:27:09.000 |
Where you can be saturated with the Word of God. But you're 00:27:13.000 |
so sick you can't eat. You're dying of hunger 00:27:17.000 |
and there's a buffet everywhere around you but you can't eat because 00:27:25.000 |
You can smell the food but it's not attractive. You smell 00:27:29.000 |
and you know that you ought to eat this but you can't because you don't have 00:27:33.000 |
the appetite. And there's a famine that comes 00:27:37.000 |
again I think you and I are part of the second issue 00:27:41.000 |
problem. No other generation. I mean think about the Word of God. 00:27:49.000 |
period in church history where the church denied the Word of God to the people. 00:27:53.000 |
Said don't worry about what it says just trust what we say. And a 00:27:57.000 |
few corrupt men refused to give the Word of God to people. 00:28:01.000 |
So people actually gave their lives translating this 00:28:09.000 |
so that we can have the Word of God. This didn't 00:28:13.000 |
just come down to us. There was a period when the Word of 00:28:17.000 |
God again even in church history was so neglected. You and I 00:28:21.000 |
are part of the Protestant church. We are Protestants because 00:28:25.000 |
we protested that the church was not teaching the Word 00:28:29.000 |
of God. And so therefore people gave their lives 00:28:37.000 |
Our primary advantage in our generation what we have 00:28:41.000 |
is that we have free access to His living Word. 00:28:49.000 |
with all the temple worship completely missed Christ. 00:28:53.000 |
In Hosea chapter 4 verse 6 God says to the nation of Israel 00:28:57.000 |
my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. 00:29:01.000 |
He's not talking about lack of theology. He's not talking about lack of 00:29:05.000 |
understanding of right understanding of theology. He's talking about knowledge 00:29:13.000 |
they do not know Him. Because you have rejected knowledge. I reject you from being 00:29:17.000 |
a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God I also will forget 00:29:25.000 |
knowing God sometimes it's like we know. Like I know a lot about Barack Obama. 00:29:29.000 |
He's the President of the United States. I know his name, where he was born, 00:29:33.000 |
his wife, his children. I know his background. I know 00:29:37.000 |
about his ancestors. I know his hobby. I know a lot about him. 00:29:41.000 |
And that's the way a lot of people talk about Christ. 00:29:45.000 |
I know about Jesus. I know where he came from. I know 00:29:49.000 |
who his father is. I know who his disciples are. I know what he 00:29:53.000 |
did 2,000 years ago. I know he's the object of our 00:29:57.000 |
worship. We know him, about him. But do you know 00:30:05.000 |
Do you have a personal relationship with this Jesus? 00:30:09.000 |
You and I recognize you can come to church all your 00:30:13.000 |
life, week after week, month after month, give 00:30:17.000 |
tithe after tithe, and then come to the same point that the Jews 00:30:25.000 |
All of this was for nothing. All of this could be 00:30:29.000 |
for nothing. All the serving in the church, all the relationships 00:30:33.000 |
that you built, all the football games that you missed, 00:30:45.000 |
And I'm not talking about a superficial adherence, it's like, "Oh, you know, 00:30:49.000 |
one saved, always saved. You know, I made a confession. I went down the altar call." 00:30:53.000 |
I'm not talking about something superficial because you did some external ritual. 00:30:57.000 |
I'm talking about a regeneration of your heart. 00:31:01.000 |
A awakening of your eyes to see the glory of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 00:31:05.000 |
Where Christ becomes so precious. There's nothing in this life 00:31:09.000 |
more precious in light of the knowledge of knowing Jesus Christ. 00:31:13.000 |
The surpassing knowledge of knowing Jesus Christ where everything else becomes 00:31:17.000 |
rubbish. You can come to church all your life and 00:31:21.000 |
completely miss it. And even though we have this advantage, 00:31:25.000 |
we have even a greater advantage than the Jews. Because the 00:31:29.000 |
Jews had the shadow of the reality. We had the reality in 00:31:41.000 |
Everything about Him was the exact imprint of who God 00:31:53.000 |
month after month, and do all that we do, and to benefit 00:31:57.000 |
from all the superficial things that come along in being a part of a 00:32:01.000 |
Christian community, and then to miss Christ. 00:32:09.000 |
You know, George Varna did a survey of the literacy of 00:32:13.000 |
Biblical literacy in the country. The majority of the people in the United States, 00:32:17.000 |
over 80% of the people in the United States, say that they own a Bible 00:32:21.000 |
and they have very high regards of the Bible. Now there's different degrees of 00:32:25.000 |
that obviously. There are some people who believe in inerrancy, some people who don't believe in it. 00:32:33.000 |
superficial, nominal Christians believe is irrelevant. 00:32:37.000 |
But he has another survey that talks about Evangelical Christians, people who 00:32:41.000 |
claim to be born again. And so he did a survey to see 00:32:45.000 |
how much people knew about the Scripture. He says, 00:32:49.000 |
this is his finding, he says, "Fewer than half the adults can name 00:32:53.000 |
the four Gospels in the New Testament." I know some of you guys are already 00:32:57.000 |
thinking, like, "I can't remember how to name four Gospels. I can name 00:33:01.000 |
four Gospels, no problem. I passed that test." "60% of 00:33:05.000 |
Americans can't name five of the Ten Commandments." Some of you guys are getting nervous 00:33:13.000 |
"60% of Americans can't name five of the Ten Commandments." 00:33:17.000 |
"81% of these people believe that God helps those who help themselves." 00:33:21.000 |
Some of you are like, "That's not in the Bible." 00:33:25.000 |
No, that's not in the Bible. It said 81%. Don't know that. 00:33:29.000 |
"12% believe that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife." 00:33:41.000 |
that most of you know that these answers, you can answer 00:33:45.000 |
them correctly. "50% of high school seniors believe that Sodom and Gomorrah 00:33:49.000 |
were husband and wife." Okay. Everybody's smiling in here. 00:33:53.000 |
You already know the answer. Those of you guys looking at me like, "What the...?" 00:33:57.000 |
Alright. You're busted. Lastly, "Large portion 00:34:01.000 |
thought that the Sermon on the Mount was preached by Billy Graham." 00:34:09.000 |
stuff. You've probably listened to that. If you've been a Christian and attending church, a Bible 00:34:13.000 |
teaching church for a while, it's just kind of like, "Well, of course we know that. We're Bible 00:34:17.000 |
literate." But let me get a little bit more personal. 00:34:25.000 |
And maybe disturb you guys a little bit. Okay? 00:34:29.000 |
And don't say anything. I just want you to sit there and think about 00:34:33.000 |
this. How many of you can defend the doctrine of 00:34:37.000 |
Trinity with a Jehovah Witness? Don't raise your hand. Don't say anything. 00:34:41.000 |
I want you to think about it. How many of you can go 00:34:45.000 |
through the Scripture? Not bring them to me. Not give them literature. 00:34:49.000 |
But how many of you can defend the doctrine of Trinity to a Jehovah Witness? 00:34:57.000 |
cannot, my next question is, "How long have you been 00:35:05.000 |
confessed Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?" Is the doctrine of 00:35:13.000 |
If you don't know the doctrine of Trinity and you get that wrong, 00:35:21.000 |
be able to go to the Scripture and say, "This is why I believe 00:35:25.000 |
that Jesus Christ is not a God, but the God. And here is what the Scripture 00:35:41.000 |
and have so little interest in the fundamental 00:35:53.000 |
the doctrine of justification by faith from the Bible? 00:35:57.000 |
They say, "Oh, now he's getting theological. That's for pastors. 00:36:05.000 |
The doctrine of justification by faith is the Gospel. That's the 00:36:09.000 |
Gospel. We can just call it the Gospel. We can just say justification by faith, but it means 00:36:13.000 |
the same thing. Can you defend the doctrine of justification 00:36:17.000 |
by faith? Can you sit down with a Roman Catholic and have a 00:36:21.000 |
discussion with them about why salvation is by faith and by 00:36:33.000 |
have the Word of God. We confess that life is 00:36:37.000 |
from here. We confess that this is the truth. 00:36:41.000 |
And to have it and say, "You know, we bought it. We put it here and then we 00:36:45.000 |
go to the right church." And a lot of us, that's enough. 00:36:49.000 |
It's enough that we attend the right church. It's enough that we have a church 00:36:53.000 |
where we have the right doctrine, a seemingly right doctrine. That's enough. 00:37:09.000 |
clearly declared to be sin in Scripture? We're being challenged 00:37:13.000 |
and pulled left and right in our generation. And we have more and more 00:37:17.000 |
people saying that, "No, that's not what the Bible teaches." And so 00:37:21.000 |
few people in the church can actually open up the Scripture and say, "This is what the Scripture says." 00:37:33.000 |
Word of God, but so few people know what it says. 00:37:37.000 |
So we say, "Oh, thank God we have a pastor who can defend the faith." And that's 00:37:41.000 |
we just kind of defer. That's it. As long as they know, it doesn't matter if I know. 00:37:49.000 |
you've been at the church long enough. The knee-jerk reaction is, "No." 00:37:53.000 |
You can't lose your salvation. Why? Where did you get 00:37:57.000 |
that? What's that based on? What Scripture gives you 00:38:05.000 |
this Bible? I mean if you go out and share the Gospel with anybody, that's one of the first things that you 00:38:13.000 |
And it was given to us at the church, the Council of Carthage, 386 A.D. 00:38:17.000 |
So how do you know? This is just written by man. So the doctrines 00:38:21.000 |
of the Buddhists and the Muslims, they were given by man. So how can you say that 00:38:29.000 |
My point is not here to defend all of this. I'm asking you, how long have you been 00:38:33.000 |
a Christian and still don't know these fundamental things about 00:38:49.000 |
what kind of lottery draft they're going to have, than in the things that we 00:38:57.000 |
life and death and we know very little about it, other than we go to church. 00:39:05.000 |
Hosea says, "My people are judged because they lack knowledge." 00:39:13.000 |
can be guilty of the same thing. Is our confidence, 00:39:17.000 |
is the confidence that we have, is it coming from the Living Word 00:39:21.000 |
of God? Is it coming from your personal relationship with 00:39:25.000 |
Jesus Christ? Or is the confidence that you are at the right 00:39:29.000 |
church? That you happen to be in a church that has 00:39:33.000 |
a right doctrinal statement, or you just assume it's the right doctrinal statement? 00:39:37.000 |
It's because you've been doing the right things. You've been going to the right church and you've been raised in the right family. 00:39:53.000 |
Some of you guys who've ever tried to share the Gospel, that's probably something that you've been 00:39:57.000 |
thrown at your face. Right? As long as you're 00:40:01.000 |
in your Christian bubble and you spend all your life reaffirming each other, 00:40:05.000 |
"Hey, you know, we're saved. God loves you. It's the grace of God. 00:40:09.000 |
God loves you. He died for you. Grace of God." And all we're doing in this little Christian bubble 00:40:17.000 |
"Yeah, it's true. This is right." And that's what fellowship is. Fellowship is a bunch of Christians 00:40:21.000 |
getting together, reaffirming any kind of insecurities that we may have 00:40:25.000 |
of life. And so I affirm you, you affirm me, and that's what we look for 00:40:29.000 |
in a church. A church that affirms one another. But when you step out of this 00:40:41.000 |
billions of people, not just in this generation, previous 00:40:45.000 |
generation, and the generations to come, that all of them will be 00:40:53.000 |
say such a thing? How are you different than the terrorists? 00:41:01.000 |
because we never thought about it and looked into it deep enough, that's enough to shake us 00:41:09.000 |
Instead of looking into it, what does the Scripture say? How do I defend the faith and strengthening 00:41:13.000 |
our faith? What we do is we kind of get in our little bubble 00:41:17.000 |
and any kind of insecurities we have, we just kind of, "No, you're okay, don't worry 00:41:21.000 |
about it, you're okay." And we never grow. We never mature. 00:41:29.000 |
The primary benefit that you and I have is His Word. 00:41:37.000 |
this morning, let me disturb your peace this morning. 00:41:41.000 |
Where does this Word stand in your life? And I'm not talking theologically, I'm not talking about on paper. 00:41:45.000 |
I'm talking about on your daily life with God. Do you truly 00:41:53.000 |
believe that? And if you do, what does this life look like 00:41:57.000 |
in your life? Not today, this morning. I'm not talking about this morning. Because I'm doing 00:42:05.000 |
I'm talking about when you go home. Where does this stand in you? 00:42:17.000 |
He says, "In much and every way, and first and 00:42:21.000 |
foremost, above everything that God has given you, you've been entrusted 00:42:29.000 |
Our primary blessing that you and I have is that we have 00:42:33.000 |
access to the Word of God like no other generation. 00:42:37.000 |
You're able to know God, His thoughts, His plan 00:42:41.000 |
like no other generation. Not only is it in your language, it's in the palm 00:42:49.000 |
that you have, you don't need to ask a pastor. You don't need to go to a seminary. You can just ask. 00:43:05.000 |
other generation that has ever existed. Right? 00:43:13.000 |
It's useful for training, for correcting. Right? 00:43:17.000 |
That man or God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. So you and I should be more 00:43:21.000 |
equipped than any other generation that have ever existed before us. 00:43:29.000 |
Because it is serious. Right? It's not just about this 00:43:37.000 |
that I have that disturbs me more than anything else. 00:43:41.000 |
And it disturbed me when I was a young Christian. It disturbs me to this day. 00:43:45.000 |
That at the end, Jesus said, "Many will come to Me 00:43:49.000 |
and say, 'Lord, Lord.'" He said, "But I never knew 00:43:57.000 |
that you have done had nothing to do with Me." It was about you. 00:44:01.000 |
It wasn't about finding life in Christ. It wasn't 00:44:09.000 |
It was about peace in your life. It was about living a 00:44:13.000 |
better life, a better marriage, a better future, a better hope. 00:44:21.000 |
The tragedy of the Jews that Paul was trying to get 00:44:25.000 |
through. And why he spent so much time saying the same thing 00:44:29.000 |
over and over and over and over and over again is until their peace is 00:44:45.000 |
and I recognize that all that we have built and all that we are 00:44:49.000 |
building outside of Christ is rubbish. Christ will 00:44:53.000 |
not mean anything. So I pray with all of my heart that this 00:44:57.000 |
tragedy would not be what you and I experience. 00:45:01.000 |
That every person in this room would come to a saving knowledge of Jesus 00:45:05.000 |
Christ. And I'm not just talking about come to church every week, become a member 00:45:09.000 |
and give and participate. I'm talking about knowing Christ. 00:45:13.000 |
That every single person in this room would come to a saving knowledge of 00:45:17.000 |
Jesus Christ. If you can take a minute to pray with me as I 00:45:21.000 |
ask the praise team to come up. And as they prepare, I'm going to ask you 00:45:29.000 |
And I'm not going to assume that in this room that all of you guys are born again 00:45:37.000 |
you know what the Word of God says. My question is 00:45:41.000 |
where is your confidence? Is it something that 00:45:45.000 |
your pastor said? Is it from the church that you grew up in? Or just your paradigm 00:45:49.000 |
of how you determine what is right and wrong? Or did the Word of God convict you? 00:45:53.000 |
Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ? 00:46:01.000 |
deeply. And if you do, pray for the people around you. 00:46:05.000 |
The greatest tragedy would be to be in a church 00:46:09.000 |
where the Word of God is taught and then to completely miss Christ. 00:46:17.000 |
in Christ, then pray for the people around you. That we do not simply look at the 00:46:21.000 |
church and say, "Hey, thank God we're at a church and we have the right 00:46:25.000 |
doctrine." Because the people next to you may not be Christians. So pray 00:46:33.000 |
plentiful and the workers are few, that God would raise more laborers for His Kingdom. 00:46:37.000 |
So let's take a few minutes to pray before God and ask the Lord to 00:46:41.000 |
convict us, strengthen us, that the church that we are building is a 00:46:45.000 |
true church that will worship God in spirit and in truth. So let's take some time...