with the announcements. Okay, if you can please turn your Bibles to Romans chapter 2. I'll be reading from verse 2 to verse 4. Okay. Romans chapter 2 verses 1 through 4. Okay. So those of you who are gone in the summer, those collegians, we've been preaching through the, or studying through the Book of Romans.

So we're only at chapter 2, so you didn't miss a whole lot. But again, Romans chapter 2 verses 1 through 4. Reading the ESV. "Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges, for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you the judge practice the very same things.

We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. Do you suppose, O man, you who judge those who practice such things, and yet do them yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you presume on the riches of His kindness, and forbearance, and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?" You know I forgot one thing, next Sunday we do have a members meeting.

That's what I forgot to tell you. So we have a members meeting after the Second Service next week. Okay, I won't read it again, but it's the next Sunday. And then we have some announcements to make about our church. I mentioned it in the First Service, but I didn't mention the Second Service last week.

We are an escrow with our new church facility. It is only about five minutes down the street over Red Hill, past Main, left turn. And so there is plenty of room for our children. Our main reason for purchasing, obviously we are starting to outgrow this facility, but our children have already outgrown the facility.

So they are busting at the seams over there. And so we found a location that we are an escrow. We found parking. Okay, I'm not going to get into detail. I'll tell you the details at the members meeting. But just to kind of give you a heads up, that's what's going on.

And if everything goes well, we're hoping at the latest by May or June next year that we'll be able to move into the new facility. Okay, so please keep that in your prayer. We'll give you updates as things are going along. But again, we are an escrow with that building, just to give you a heads up.

Now let's pray. Alright, so Romans chapter 2. Heavenly Father, we bless you and thank you Father for this morning. We ask Lord God that your word would truly speak to us. And everything that you've intended in these words through your Holy Spirit would open our eyes and cause us to hear from Christ.

That we would deeply fall in love with Him. That our worship to you may be simply a reasonable response considering your great mercy. So we ask Lord God that your Holy Spirit would guide and lead us, convict us, encourage and refresh us. In Jesus name we pray, Amen. You know this week I was reading an article from Wall Street Journal and something really caught my eye.

It was interesting, I think related to what we are talking about today. And instead of butchering it, I'm just going to read what they said. And please try to pay attention and I hope you grasp what they are saying. A recent study suggests that acetaminophen, okay I'm going to butcher that, acetaminophen found in Tylenol.

Did I miss something? What did I say? Alright. Oh really? Oh, so you guys know all this already. Acetaminophen. How do you guys know all this? So it's just common. Okay, I'm the fob. Alright. Acetaminophen. Alright. A recent study suggests that acetaminophen found in Tylenol, Excedrin and a host of other medications is an all purpose damper, stifling range of strong feelings.

Throbbing pain, the sting of rejection, paralyzing, indecision along with euphoria and delight all appear to be taken down a notch by the drug. Did you catch that? They said that the new study found that not only does it help in blocking certain kind of pain, but it also blocks certain kinds of euphoria and delight.

And I was reading this, I thought this was kind of interesting because that kind of describes our generation where everything, every decision that we make a lot of times is to kind of avoid any kind of discomfort or pain and as a result of that we don't experience the joy that comes with life either.

Everything has just kind of become mundane. That's true in life, but especially when we're talking about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If we take the bite out of the Gospel, where we make it palatable to as many people as possible, then you may have more and more people coming through the door, but at the end the punch of the Gospel, the power of the Gospel is taken out.

A Gospel that is preached that is more concerned about offending the offender than properly representing the one who has been offended, our Holy God is not the Gospel of the Bible. And it is not the Gospel that has the power to deliver us from our sins. A Gospel that only soothes, but it doesn't convict or cut, neither brings true joy or victory.

You know one of the greatest revivals that we see in the Old Testament, at least I personally perceive in the Old Testament, is not with the Israelites, it's with the Ninevites. Again, we can argue as to what was the greatest revival, but remember the story of Jonah. Jonah is a reluctant prophet of God, he runs away from Him, and God basically strikes him, he is swallowed by a whale, he comes back, he repents, and then sends him back into the city.

And a huge revival breaks out because of his preaching. Now again, you have to remember that this was a reluctant prophet. I'm just going to read this passage for you, and hopefully you can catch my point. Jonah 3, 3-5, "Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days journey in breath." I wanted to highlight this, it takes three days to just even cross the city.

"Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey." Meaning he's only gone through a third of the city, when he begins to cry out, "Yet forty days Nineveh shall be overthrown." And the people of Nineveh believed God, they called for a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them to the least of them.

It says because of Jonah's preaching, again he didn't even go through the whole city, it says it was a three days journey, he goes through one third of it, and you would think that there would be an elaborate presentation of what Jonah said. What was it that he said that was so powerful that the whole city would come to repentance and fast, even the king would decree a fast for the whole city.

All it says is, he says, "Yet forty days Nineveh shall be overthrown." Man, that would be so easy. Right? You know, my job would be so easy if all you had to do is, you know, forty days. Can you imagine? Nineveh probably didn't even say this with that kind of excitement because he didn't want to be here.

He didn't even want them to hear this because he wanted judgment to come. And simply by warning them. Forty days, judgment is coming and everybody freaks out and they believe him and they end up repenting and revival breaks out, at least for that period. I've always wondered why. What was it about what he said and how he said it that brought this kind of revival?

Why did they take him so seriously? My guess is, ok this is not biblical, this is just my guess that maybe some of the people who were on that boat that saw him being thrown out, coming back spit out, and then you know like they saw all this miracle and said, "Man, your God is the real God." That some of these guys came to the city before him and they were telling the story about what this guy's God did and then all of a sudden he comes into town and is like, "Remember that story we were talking about?

That's the guy." And then he comes in and is like, "Forty days, you're going to die. Forty days, you're going to die." He's like, "Oh my gosh, he's serious. I've seen what happened with him." And revival breaks out as a result of that. We look in the book of Acts.

You know Peter's first preaching in front of the very same people who crucified Jesus. His message in a nutshell is, "You crucified Jesus, who was proven to you by God with signs and wonders, and yet you crucified the Author of life." You would think that people would get offended, "How dare you say this?

Do you not know what we did to this Jesus that we can do to you?" And I think Peter was expecting probably to be crucified. Why not? If they can crucify his Master, I mean who is he? I think he was fully ready to do this. But it says in Acts 2.37, it says, "Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, 'Brothers, what shall we do?' And Peter said to them, 'Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins.'" In our generation, the Gospel has been peddled and it's been passed out where people don't understand why it is that we desperately need Christ crucified.

Why we need to constantly remind people over and over again why justification can only be by faith. Because we made the Gospel so palatable to so many people that the bite, that the warning of the wrath of God is not understood. You know, in the previous section, Paul goes through details in verse 18 all the way to verse 32 about the sin and why the wrath of God is coming.

And so the group that he is talking to in chapter 2, are these groups of people that are looking at this and says, "Yeah, you know that's right, these people need judgment. They worship in idols. They are practicing all kinds of sexual immorality. You know, they are haters of parents, covetous, malice, murderers, deceitful people.

Of course they need the judgment of God." But what Paul is doing here in chapter 2 he is going further than that. Just like if you went to a hospital and you have a wound on your leg and you've kind of bandaged it up. You go to the doctor and the doctor takes a look at it, "Oh, it's just a superficial cut." But he looks at it and says, "This thing goes deeper than that.

There may be a broken bone underneath there." So he takes it into the x-ray and he sees not just the surface but deep within. And he needs to examine that to be able to properly assess what the problem is so that they may have to have surgery. They may have to get the bone fixed correctly.

That's exactly what he is doing in chapter 2. He is examining beyond the surface. Today he is going to be examining these self-righteous people. These are the people who read chapter 1 and it was in full agreement. Of course the judgment of God is coming. And God releases them to their own sins.

Of course they need this. And they are sitting there, "Yes, God, go get them." But he is exposing the inner sin of the self-righteous. And we are going to be looking at four different things that he says here. And again some of these points overlap but for the sake of clarity that we can kind of understand what he is saying.

He is revealing four separate things about the self-righteous. And why they are also under condemnation. So he begins by saying, "Therefore you have no excuse." Even though you may look at chapter 1 verse 18-32 and say, "You know what? That's not me." But he says, "But Paul is saying, 'Yes, it is you.'" Your sin may not look like the pagans of chapter 1, but your sins are just as hideous and you are in just as much need as these people.

So the first thing, a self-righteous person is always more concerned about the sins of others than their own. One, a self-righteous person is always concerned more about the sins of others than their own. Remember Luke chapter 18, 1-13, Jesus is giving this parable about this Pharisee and a tax collector who goes up.

And this is what the tax collector, this is what the Pharisee, how he prays. In verse 11, "The Pharisee standing by himself prayed thus, 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men.'" That's the first thing that the Pharisee says, "Thank you God that you didn't make me like these tax collectors, like these other sinners, that I am not like these other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, and even this tax collector.

I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I get." He looks at what he is doing externally and he feels justified before God. And a self-righteous person is always more concerned about the other person. Remember last week we talked about how we have a tendency to get bothered by other people's BO more than ours.

Let me change the illustration to bad breath. We are a young church so we are trying to get the illustrations to fit. I think as an illustrator, it may be crude but I think it will help us understand. A self-righteous person is like an individual who just has bad breath and it just stinks and every time you tongue it, like other people notice it but they don't know.

You know what I mean? But there is only one thing more worse than sitting in front of somebody who just has 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 crude." What's worse than that is somebody who has bad breath, they don't know it but they are disgusted with yours.

You know, they cringe every time you open your mouth and they let you know it. Your breath stinks! And he says, "Oh my gosh!" See, that's the self-righteous person who is absolutely convinced the problem is you. And that's what he says. He begins by saying, "Oh man, every one of you who judge, that you are constantly in judgment of other people and you are not aware of where you are with God." We have a tendency again, every time this type of person will always hear a sermon and they are always thinking, "That person needed to be here." You know?

"My wife needed to hear this. Thank you pastor for this sermon." You know? "Can you do it again next week when I bring my friend? Because they need to hear this." "They need to hear this." "The singles need to hear this." "My husband needs to hear this." It's an individual who is always hearing sermons for the purpose of other people.

This type of person is dangerous when they know the Bible. Because the Word of God, instead of being a lamp unto their feet, it becomes a flashlight. Where they are just constantly. The Word of God is to flash and show you what's wrong with you. So they know the Word of God, but it's always used not to judge the thoughts and intentions of their heart, but to judge the thoughts and intentions of your heart.

So he said, "First and foremost, a self-righteous person is always preoccupied with other people's sins. Secondly, a self-righteous person believes in the judgment of God. They just don't believe that this judgment is for them." In Romans chapter 2, verse 2, it says, "We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who do such things." So in other words, we're in agreement with this.

We believe in the judgment of God. Now I know that one of the reasons that when we go out and share the Gospel with people and they say, "How can I believe in a God who brings judgment and 9/11 and famine and all this stuff?" I've never met an individual who doesn't believe in justice.

Never. Let me give you an example. If you're driving a car and you're just driving under the speed limit. You're not doing anything crazy, but somebody's ticked off because you're not going fast enough. They come around and they give you the finger. Right? This finger, right? They give you the finger and they're ticked off and they cuss you out and they go speeding past you.

And then all of a sudden, because he's speeding, there's a cop up ahead and pulls him over. And as you're driving by, do you say, "Oh, I feel so bad for that guy." Is that your thought? Karma, right? You say judgment. Yes, he got what he deserved. Right? You don't come by and say, "I feel so bad for him." You know what I mean?

"I wonder, you know, he must have been having a hard day." That's not our natural inclination. Right? Something probably more serious than that. Some of you guys may or may not remember OJ Simpson. How many of you guys know who OJ Simpson is? Wow. Okay. I would think everybody would know.

But OJ Simpson basically was a superstar football player of my generation. He was like the Michael Jordan of football. That's the best way to describe him. Right? And so, in 1994, in November, he was accused of murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown, and possibly her boyfriend, Ron Goldman. Both of them were brutally murdered.

And they thought, you know, they did some background check and found out that they thought OJ Simpson did it. And it was huge. And I was living in Irvine at that time, and his wife, Bronco, that they were chasing, they went past by 5 Freeway, and everybody went out on the bridge to watch him at that time.

Well, the trial went on for about a year. And again, you have to imagine, it's like watching Michael Jordan. Like, "Oh, he got accused of murder." And so the whole year, they were going through these things, and they found out, they found traces of his blood in the car.

They found the glove that had blood in the back of his house. They found a shoe that had the imprint on it. And they didn't find the shoe itself, but they found a picture of him wearing that shoe while he was interviewing somebody. And so, all this evidence, anybody who watched the trial, look at it and say, "How can this guy not be guilty?" But after the end, in October 3rd, 1995, they came out and said he was innocent.

Yeah, everybody was dumbfounded. How can that be innocent? Now, there was a lot of stuff going on at that time. It's kind of like the environment that is today, maybe even worse. That LAPD was found to have corruption. They were beating people. And there was this hatred toward the cops that was unfair in particular to the African American community.

And so, they were concerned that if they indict this guy, that there was going to be another riot, and it's going to go crazy and all this stuff. And there was a lot of political things behind it. But basically, he got away with murder. I don't remember anybody being interviewed saying, like, "We live in such a great country that even after you get murdered, you can live free.

This is a great country." Every single person, "How can a murderer be set free?" And there was a, again, everybody lost confidence in the justice system because the justice system was supposed to punish the wicked. I haven't met anybody who doesn't believe that justice needs to be carried out.

But the problem is, we don't see ourselves in that position. And that's what the self-righteous person is. He says, "You believe in the judgment of God." And rightly falls on people who are like this. But they don't believe that that's them. Do you remember John chapter 8, 4-7, where Jesus is standing there and a bunch of Jews bring this adulterous woman and basically put him in a trap.

She's an adulterous woman. According to Old Testament law, you're supposed to stone her. So here's this Jewish rabbi that everybody is praising. Maybe he's the Messiah. And they're going to say, "You know what? We're going to put him in a trap. If he says to kill her, he's going to be guilty of murder, according to the Roman law.

If he says don't kill her, he's going to be guilty of breaking the Mosaic law. So either way, he's going to be in trouble. But Jesus being Jesus, right? They didn't know who they were messing with, right? Jesus says, "He who has no sin, let him cast the first stone." You know what's interesting to me?

You know what happens. They all drop their stone and they walk away. That until that point, they didn't even think about it. Until Jesus called them out and says, "Are you in a position to be able to judge her?" And for the first time they turned around and said, "That's a good answer.

That's a good answer." That's the only way he could have gotten out of it. And they turn around and they disappear. See, the second thing that he says, a self-righteous person, that they demand justice. But it's not for them. It's for those people. Thirdly, a self-righteous person, ultimately Paul says, is a hypocrite.

Because they practice the same things that they condemn others. In verse 1, "In passing judgment on another, you condemn yourself because you the judge practice the very same things." He said, "You do these things." Again in verse 3, "Do you suppose O man, you who judge those who do such things, yet you do the same things that you will escape the judgment of God." Now this person is probably sitting here answering, "What are you talking about?

We do the same thing." These guys are idol worshipers. We never worshiped an idol. These guys are lustful people committing adultery, all kinds of immoral acts. That's not us. In fact, when Paul probably said this and they read this, they were probably thinking to themselves, "Thank God I'm not like these people." Like the tax collector.

"Thank God I'm not like these men." But Paul says, "No, you are exactly like them. You do what you accuse them of doing." He said, "By the same judgment that you judge them, you will also be judged." See if you can recognize the hypocrisy of this statement. And I've actually heard people say this and defend this.

And again, this is not to offend you. And I want you to be able to catch the hypocrisy in this, in this generation. All white people are racist. So you're like, "Oh, I hope you caught it. All white people are racist." What's wrong with that statement? Your school just started this week, so this is a test.

All right? All white people are racist. What's wrong with that statement? That statement itself is racist. By saying that, you indict yourself. That's a racist statement that you make. I hate judgmental people. Okay, now you're getting it. All right. I can't tolerate anyone who's intolerant. Okay, you may chuckle, but that's the mantra of our generation, especially the young generation.

Intolerance will not be tolerated. The hypocrisy in that statement itself. See, a self-righteous person doesn't recognize the hypocrisy in himself. He can make these statements, do these things, accuse other sinners of their sin while being completely blind of their own. See, Jesus in Matthew chapter 5 is describing what the character of the Kingdom of God, the people of the Kingdom of God is like.

And He tells His disciples that your righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees. And this is, I'm not going to read all of it, but this is some of the things that He says. Matthew chapter 5, 21-22, "You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.' But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.

Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council, and whoever says, 'You fool,' will be liable to the hell of fire." Now if you were paying attention to that very closely you would have said, "Wait a second. You're equating me with a murderer because I had hatred toward my brother?" That's exactly what He says.

That's exactly what He says. In fact, He goes further than that. Matthew 5, 27-28, "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart." You're talking about an individual who remained faithful to his wife for years and years and years, but because he had lust in his heart that he is guilty of adultery as well?

Now how is that fair? What kind of a kingdom would that be fair? A murderer and somebody who hates his brother, an adulterer who cheats on his wife, and somebody who looks at a woman with lustful thoughts, he says, "Just as guilty as an adulterer." How can that possibly be fair?

What Jesus says later on in Matthew 15, He says, "Hear and understand this. It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth that defiles a person." In other words, what is He saying? Defilement is not something that you just did or do.

Defilement is who you are. And because you are defiled, defiled things will happen. You will proceed to do and act out things that are defiled because that's who you are. That's what Jesus was saying. That our sins go much deeper than what you see on the surface. Adultery is a lot deeper than just the act.

Murder goes a lot deeper than just the act of carrying it out. It is our own corruption. And that's why in Matthew 23, Jesus says, "Woe to you, scribes and pharisees, you hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness.

These you ought to have done without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out the gnat and swallowing a camel." See a self-righteous person is always putting on display what they are doing. This is what I've done and why aren't you doing it? This is what I did in the past and how come you're not doing it?

A self-righteous person is very aware of the sins of other people, but they don't understand how hypocritical they are and how deeply this sin is embedded in all of us. Until we are broken over our sins, Christ will mean little. You may love the church. You may love things of the church.

You may love activity of the church, but you will not love Christ until you recognize our brokenness before a holy, holy, holy God. Isaiah in the Old Testament among the Jews arguably, and people can argue, who was the greatest prophet? Say Elijah was the greatest prophet. Some may say Jeremiah.

Some may say Elisha. And some may say Isaiah. Whether you agree with that or not, Isaiah is definitely on the top of the list. And yet Isaiah in order for God to prepare him for ministry reveals to him his glory. And when he is in the presence of his glory, what happens to Isaiah?

He recognizes his wretched sin. And he falls to the ground. "Woe is me. Woe is me." And that is the first character of an individual who is walking in the presence of God. He is very aware of his own sins. He is terrified and he says, "Woe is me.

Woe is me. I am a man of unclean lips. From a people of unclean lips. How can I possibly be in the presence of this holy God?" An individual who is meeting with God cannot be proud. Because when you are in the presence of this glory, all of a sudden every single person who thought he was clean recognizes his uncleanness.

And then he no longer is worried about other people. Because he is concerned about himself. "Woe is me. Woe is me." See, a self-righteous person is not aware of his guilt before God. Or if he is aware of it, it is very superficial. It is something that happened in the past.

Justification is something that happened one time. But now look at me. See, justification by faith is not just past. It is present and it is future. That every single day, if I am not under the mercy of God, I can't even come to him in prayer. I won't even understand his word.

My flesh will naturally take me to the world. It is only because he has been merciful to me that I can hear his word and understand. An individual who does not recognize the corruption in his own heart will live the rest of his life frustrated. Frustrated with other people.

Only if they change. Only if the church changes. Only if we did this this way and that way. But he has never broken over his own sins. Or it is very superficial. So that is why finally he says in verse 4, "Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience?" Not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance.

A self-righteous person doesn't realize his desperateness and what the gift of God really is. Gift of God is the ability to be able to repent and for God to forgive. That's his gift. That he opened this door that we can come to him in confidence. Again, you and I live in a generation where if something is preached and you feel guilty about it, that that's not, that can't be from God.

Because God is about getting rid of guilt. Any kind of burden. And that's why we preach a gospel where we almost skip the guilt and go to forgiveness. We talk about, hey this is who we are, we need forgiveness, and boom we are over here. Remember Paul, those of you who have been studying through 2 Corinthians with us?

He writes this very harsh letter to the Corinthians and he just unleashes on them. He writes 2 Corinthians as a follow up because so many of them got hurt from his letter. They were deeply hurt because Paul didn't hold back. I mean again he was like a doctor on revealing their wound.

And they are pumping it up and he said, "Wow, this disease is much deeper and it's spread much further than I thought." And so the whole 1 Corinthians he's taking the bandages off and he's showing them this is your problem. And so they were deeply hurt. Some of them were actually fighting back.

Maybe he's not an apostle, you know. He's impressive in his letters but his appearance is nothing. Paul writes this letter in 2 Corinthians he says, "You know what when I wrote this letter and I saw how it hurt you I regretted it for a little bit. But now I don't regret it.

And the reason why I don't regret it is because it led you to repentance." This is what he says, 1 Corinthians 7, 9, 11. "As it is I rejoice not because you were grieved but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief so that you suffered no loss through us.

For godly grief produces repentance that leads to salvation without regret. Whereas worldly grief produces death. For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you but also what eagerness to clear yourself, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment." He says, "He brought this guilt upon you to reveal to you where you stand before God that it would lead you to repentance." He says, "Do you not know the fact that the reason why I'm revealing this sin to you and why I'm calling you a hypocrite and why I'm telling you all of this is because God's kindness will lead you to repentance." Remember David?

Man after God's own heart. I mean he's, up till his sin, I mean David was the man, he was the man, God's handpicked chosen leader of his people. But when you think of the sin that David commits it's beyond comprehension. Because the man he kills and his wife that he ends up committing adultery and taking her for himself.

This is a man that the Bible describes as one of the great men who were so loyal to David he was willing to take a knife for him. He was one of those men who ran around protecting David when King Saul was after him. He was loyal to him.

He was willing to die for David and it was that guy and it was his wife that he committed adultery and it was that guy he ended up killing. And it's beyond comprehension. But in Psalm 32, 3-5 you see the mercy of God on David and this is how David describes, "For when I kept silent my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.

For day and night your hand was heavy upon me, my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer." In other words, God put his finger on David because of his sin. He said, "My bones were wasting away." He felt the pressure of his sin. Night and day it was heavy upon me.

Your strength, my strength dried up as the heat of summer. And what Paul is saying here is do you not recognize that that's God's kindness. The person that we ought to be worried about is somebody who is living in sin and compromise and feels no guilt. And just I'm ok, you know God is so gracious and He is loving.

He says, "No, it's God's kindness that leads you to repentance." As a result of that he says, "I acknowledge my sin to you and I did not cover up my iniquity. I said I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and you forgave the iniquity of my sin." If we just superficially just kind of sweep it under the rug and we live the rest of our lives and we don't recognize the gift that we have in Christ is that the real gift of Christ is that He forgives us.

He leads us to repentance. And repentance leads to life. In Psalm 51, 1-5 when David finally confesses and repents and is forgiven this is what he says, "Have mercy on me O God according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin for I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me." Now I want you to look at what he says.

He's not just confessing and act. He's not just confessing what he did. He said, "My sins are ever before me against you and you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment." And then verse 5 look what he says, "Behold I was brought forth iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me." It looks like wait is he blaming his mom?

Is he blaming his parents, his grandparents for his sins? No. David recognizes how deep his sin goes. He wasn't just a sinner when he committed the act. He said he was born into this. He was born as a sinner. In fact he came even in the womb and he goes even further than that.

And how deeply corrupt we are in our hearts that even in our righteousness it becomes ugly because it becomes self-righteousness. And until a sinner is in the presence of a holy God and recognizes our desperate position the gospel loses its power. It just becomes a doctrinal statement. It just becomes something to recite something to memorize, something to repeat.

But it doesn't have the power to change us. To cause us to come and worship God in reasonable response. Because we have treated our sins lightly. That we just kind of covered over it. Of course I'm not perfect. Of course we're not. Where do you draw the line? How do you live perfectly?

At least I'm not like them. And as a result of that our repentance was shallow and superficial. And that's why Paul, I mean his whole goal is to bring them to justification by faith. But in order to properly get us to justification by faith we need to realize why it was the only door.

Why it is the only option for a sinner. Why this is the only way. And as long as we are pointing fingers at other people. As long as we feel righteous and compared to the other sinners. As far as long as we don't recognize a corruption in our own hearts we won't recognize His kindness that has opened a door.

And is inviting us to come in. Come to the throne of grace with confidence. Come in. So every time we have a communion. Like we have communion next week. That we recognize that every single one of us comes as a broken sinner. Now if there's one thing that I've learned in the 30 some years that I've been a Christian.

I thought when I became a Christian I mean you know I know some people say, "Oh you know I don't know exactly when I got saved and it took a while." And mine was unlike that. I know exactly when I got saved because my life got flipped upside down.

And I was so passionate I was so eager. I wanted to live for Christ and even if I die early that's okay with me because I wanted to live for Christ. I wanted to do all this. I'm going to make my scripture. Make disciples. Plant churches. And do all of this.

But after 30 some years of walking with God. If there's one constant thing that I learned over and over and over again is just how incapable I am without God. That this sin that He forgave me 30 some years ago. Just how deep this sin goes. That it wasn't just an act.

And that the only way the only way that I would have any hope is that the Son of God would cover me. That He would cover me from the wrath of God. I pray that as we continue to study through the book of Romans if there's anything in these chapters, three chapters, I want to ask you a practical question.

When was the last time that you were really broken for your sins? You know we spend a lot of time talking about frustration why other people are not repenting. Why other people are not doing the right thing. Why other people should be doing this and this. And why church would be so much better if they did this and if we did this.

But when was the last time you were broken over your sin? Or is it typically I know I'm not perfect but at least I'm doing this. I know I'm not perfect but I'm not like that. And as a result we don't really understand the preciousness of what we have in Christ.

Let me ask you guys to take a minute to pray with us. And as I ask the praise team to come up. Take some time to pray but this morning I'm going to ask you not to pray for anything else but yourself. Not to ask anything else. Are there sins that you swept under the rug?

Maybe you don't really recognize the desperate need that we have of Christ. Not to pay bills, not to have a good family, but just to live. That I'm desperately in need of Christ this morning. Whether you've done well or bad or whether you've lusted or didn't or whether you did quiet time or didn't every single one of us stands condemned before God without the blood of Christ.

So I want to ask you this morning to honestly come before God and say this prayer, "Lord, search me and know me. See if there's any hurtful ways in me. What is it in me that I will not allow His kindness to lead me to repentance? That I've allowed my own logic, my own self-righteousness to justify my own sins?" To come before the Lord and ask Him, "Lord, I pray that Your Word would judge the thoughts and intentions of my heart." So let's take some time to pray and pray for nothing else but to come before God and convict me of my sins.

That I may see the glory of what Christ has done for me. Let's take some time to pray as our worship team leads us.