Why don't we turn our Bibles to Romans Chapter 2 and I'll read from verse 6 through verse 16. But our focus will be in verse 12 through 16 today. 11 through 16. Chapter 2 verse 6 through 16. Reading out of the ESV. "He will render each one according to his works to those who by patience and well-doing seek for glory, honor, and immortality.

He will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek. But glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek, for God shows no partiality.

For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified.

For when Gentiles who do not have the law by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written in their hearts while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them.

On that day, when according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus." Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we offer this time to you, asking Lord God that your word would be effective in our hearts, convicting us, shedding light, Lord God, not only of our external condition, but even in our hearts.

We pray, Father, that this time may be a true time of worship where you instruct your church that you disciple us, strengthen us, equip us for every good work. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Those of you guys who have Facebook or online, you probably read articles or maybe haven't seen it or even in the Gospel Coalition.

One of the biggest news that came out this week was that Time Magazine says that Playboy will no longer print nude pictures of young ladies. And this obviously in 1953 was a magazine that started and basically was challenging the moral standard of that generation. And for so many decades, they were kind of like the standard of, you know, of, you know, girly magazine or whatever you want to call it.

But the reason why they're getting rid of it is actually not for a good reason. It's not because they had some moral awakening and saying, you know, we're going to stop this. It's because they can't compete with the pornography on the internet. And so as a result of that, they say in the last decade, they probably lost about 70% of subscribers.

They're not making money off of this. And to for business purposes, they realized that their, their format of doing this is no longer working. And you know, as I was reading that, I was thinking, you know, this is exactly what God says in Romans chapter one, that they keep going to these sins and refuse to acknowledge God and God gives them over to their lust.

And so seeing again, those of you who remember what it was like before the internet came in now, you know, what, what, what all the internet, all the other stuff that has come in the dangers that, that every one of you is faced with, all of us is faced with because now this pornographic material is so readily available in your pocket all the time.

And so if we're not vigilant to stay sober and pure, it's not something that you choose to do. It just kind of drifts toward that direction. Again, this article and what we read this week, it just, to me, it was a reminder, exactly what God says when that door gets open, sin is never dormant.

You know, it always carries us to a place where we don't want to go. So we, we're not just kind of cold. Our Christian life is not something that we just coast along. We have to determine, you know, just like our theme in, uh, of our family camp in Joshua 24 for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.

And until that decision is made, until practical things are applied in our lives, the natural direction of our culture is going to go down that direction. And so those of us who have children, I know that we're, you know, all the more concerned because our children are going to be raised in that culture where, you know, 20, 30 years ago that, you know, Playboy magazine was what we were trying to avoid.

And now it's, it's just all over the place. And, and what is available on the internet, it's like, you can't even talk about it, you know, at church, it's inappropriate. Here's the danger though, as we see where the world is going, we can kind of get in our little huddle in our church and start to think, thank God we have a church.

Thank God we have a community where we can protect our kids from that. And as long as we don't do that, as long as that doesn't happen and we can point fingers and thinking that, well, hopefully that doesn't happen to us. The whole point of what Paul is saying in Romans chapter one, two, and three is to remind us that what we see happening in the world is in us.

That sin is not something that we step on and because we went to the wrong place and watched the wrong thing, that obviously it is sin. But Jesus says sin is much deeper than that. It is not what you put in. It is not what, what you allow yourself to go to, but not just that.

But ultimately sin is always a revelation of who we are. And so that's why Paul introduces the gospel in Romans chapter one, say it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes. And so he kind of hypes it up saying this gospel that saves mankind has been given to us through the prophets and it's not new.

God's been preparing us for this for generations. And then he says, so here it is, here's the gospel. And then the first thing he says is wrath of God is being revealed to all mankind because they suppress the truth by their wickedness. And so starting from verse 18 all the way to the middle of chapter three for two and a half chapters, he's going to be describing the sin of man.

And so for the last three to four weeks, we've been talking about that. I think we're going to be in it another three or three to four weeks on this subject and maybe we're already kind of tired. It's like, okay, you know, one message is enough. We should have just done one message from verse 18 chapter three to 20 and say, we're sin, we sin and Jesus loves us.

You know, we'd be great if we just passed over it like that. But there's a reason why Paul takes so much time to sit down and calculate and dig into the details and thoughts and condition of man so that when he introduces Christ, that we recognize Christ for who he is, what it is that we ought to have or what it is that we ought to recognize and lead us to worship.

At the end of verse 11 chapter two, verse 11, he sums up what he's been saying before and he also sums up what he's going to say in this short statement for God chose no partiality. God chose no partiality. Now if you read that and if you know the Bible history, you may have a question that I had when I first encountered this.

God has no partiality. I mean, isn't the whole understanding of the gospel is that God chose a nation of Israel? I mean, he seemed like he was partial to the nation of Israel. In fact, even when he says, you know, the gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jews and then to the Gentiles.

Very beginning of the calling of the nation in Genesis chapter 12 verse 3, God tells Abraham and his descendants, "I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you I will curse." Again, in Deuteronomy 7, 6, "For you are a people holy to the Lord your God.

The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth." So when we read that, the first question is we may ask, well, that sounds like he's partial. Sounds like he's playing favoritism, right?

On the surface, we may see that. But I think one of the best evidence that we see of God's impartial judgment, we see from the very beginning, if there was any being that God would have shown favoritism or overlooked in their sin, it probably would have been Lucifer. You know, I know now we, when we say the word Lucifer, it kind of gives you, you know, chills.

It's like that's a representation of evil. But that's not the way that the Bible portrayed him in the beginning. It says in Ezekiel 28, 15 to 17, this is a description of Satan. Lucifer, he says, "You were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God.

You were an anointed guardian cherub. I placed you, you were on the holy mountain of God. In the midst of the stones of fire, you walked." And it goes on and on, description about his beauty, about his power, how he, God placed him above all the other creation. And so in essence, what the scripture says is of all the created things that God has personally created, the most beautiful, the most powerful, the highly exalted was Lucifer himself.

So if there was any being, any person that God could have showed favoritism to, it would have been Lucifer. But you know how the rest goes. In verse 17 it says, "Your heart was proud because of your beauty. You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor." In order to exalt yourself, you began to challenge God.

And as a result of God, the scripture says, "I cast you to the ground." If God was going to show any kind of favoritism, any kind of just look over their sin, it probably would have been Lucifer. But even Lucifer, when he challenged God and he wanted the glory for himself, he was judged.

What you and I need to remember is that the scripture makes it absolutely crystal clear that God is not a God who can say one thing and does something else. He is a God, what he says, he accomplishes. And Habakkuk 1.13 says, "You who are of pure eyes and to see evil and cannot look at wrong." When he says that, he's not just saying that about certain people.

He's not saying that there's some people that he can't stand when they sin, and then there's some people that sin and he says he's okay with. You know that all the Gentile nations, when they sin, God is angry with them, but when Israel sins, God is okay with. He never says that.

If you look at Israel's history, God is faithful to the nation of Israel. In fact, the reason why I believe the nation of Israel, even to this day, exists is because God made a covenant with Abraham that I will bless you and through you, all the other nations are going to be blessed.

So if you look at Old Testament history, even in the midst of sin, God doesn't forsake them as a whole, as a people. But the people who sin in Israel, are they judged? Consistently. Consistently. So when he says he's faithful and he chooses the nation of Israel, he is committed to the nation of Israel.

But he is impartial to those who sin. So if you look at the book of Numbers, and it's a story of how 600,000 men enter into the desert, when they come out, they have 600,000 people going into the promised land. But in between, it is a record of the sins of Israel.

Those who sin against God, their tribes actually diminish and they decrease because they're judged for their sins. And those who are faithful, they actually increase. So by the time they exit, they have the same number of people, but the number of the tribes either increases or decreases based upon their sins.

You look at the church. Jesus says, "I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it." He said that about the universal church. And the mistake that we make is that we think, "Well, we're the part of the church, so no matter what I do, God is not going to look at my sin because he said he's going to cover us." The way God deals with sin, he says he will be impartial.

What he says he will do, Psalm 5, 4-6, "For you are not a God who delights in wickedness. Evil may not dwell with you. The boastful shall not stand before your eyes. You hate all evils. You destroy those who speak lies. The Lord abhors and bloodthirsty and deceitful man." God is faithful to Israel.

God is faithful to the universal church of God. But God will judge all sins. And he will be impartial in the way that he judges sins. In fact, the word "impartial" itself literally means to "search face." Now if we translated that literally, you'd be like, "God is search face." You know what I mean?

What does that mean? God will search face. The word literally means that God is not going to be looking at the surface and your background and your heritage. And that's not the way that God judges. We see a perfect picture of that in 1 Samuel 16, 6-7, when God rejects Saul for his sin and he sends a prophet to go anoint David.

He goes to David's home and finds his older brother and he looks regal. He looks like a king that would fit a king. Tall, handsome, strong. This is a guy that the nation would follow. And this is what God says to him. "Surely the Lord's anointing is before him.

But the Lord said to Samuel, 'Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees, but man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.'" In other words, God is able to see beyond that and sees who they really are.

So God chose David because he was a man after God's own heart. He says God's judgment is perfect. The reason why you and I need to realize and recognize that is until we recognize that only God is able to make perfect judgment. You and I are not capable of being impartial in our judgment.

No matter how much you think you are being impartial. There's no human being who can be completely impartial. Every person that we judge, every situation we judge, we judge from our perspective, from our sins, from our selfishness, from our pride. And so every judgment that we make of another person, it is always coming through a filter of my own sins.

Well, I've been offended, so we tend to overreact. You know, I don't want you to think poorly of me, so I'm going to judge you, you know, I'm going to sweep it under the rug. Every single one of us, because we've been tainted with sin, our judgment is always going to be partial.

Only God is able to be completely impartial. Only God can know what is really in your heart. Only God, who is perfectly holy, can look at a situation and is able to judge this is right or this is wrong. So the scripture tells us that the beginning of wisdom comes from fear of the Lord.

And the fear of the Lord is the beginning when we recognize that God and God only is the one who can be perfectly just. Think about what's going on in the Middle East today. And one of the questions that constantly comes up is, "How come the United States just go in there and just, you know, like, you were supposed to be the superpower.

We have all this billions and trillions of dollars that are spent to build up the US military. Why don't we go there and just straighten it out?" The biggest problem with what's going on in the Middle East is we can't recognize who's doing right and who's doing wrong. You know, as soon as you come and bomb this group, and this group is bombing this group, you know what I mean, that's bombing you, you know what I mean, so if we bomb them, they're going to stop bombing the people who are bombing us.

And so it's a mess. It's hard to go and even recognize. So we have a nation, we have a world full of people who are absolutely convinced that their position is right. And so my point here is not to get political in saying we're right and they're wrong, right?

But even in human relationship, wars begin because we have a hard time deciphering what is just and what is not just, what is right and what is wrong. We can't even distinguish that even between husband and wife. Two people who live together, who talk to each other every single day, have problems understanding each other.

And why do you get into fights? You never get into a fight if the husband says, "I'm wrong." Fight over. Or the wife says, "I shouldn't have said that. I apologize." Fight over. You get into fights because wife thinks she's right and the husband thinks he's right. And you bicker to try to argue back and forth and whoever has the better argument wins.

And sometimes you win and you lose at the same time. You know exactly what I'm talking about, right? You can't win, right? We're talking about two people who are in a covenant relationship, talk to each other every single day, doing their best to understand each other, and come to a conclusion who is right and who is wrong.

How are we going to come to a conclusion with people that we run into every once in a while or people that we don't even know in a distant place, people who grew up in different cultures? So you and I have to first recognize, first and foremost, that you and I do not have the ability to judge right and wrong.

We don't. And the problem that we get into is a lot of times we are so proud of our judgment and our logic that we trace it all the way back and if God's logic doesn't fit my logic, what do we do? We judge Him. If God is just, He should do this.

It's not just for Him to do this. Why would He judge these people for these reasons? Because from my perspective, it doesn't seem right. So what do we do? We go back and we judge Him. So we either accept Him or don't accept Him. We look at situations and say, "Oh, God is gracious or He's not gracious," based upon my judgment from my perspective.

Speaking of all wisdom is when we learn, first and foremost, to fear God. When we recognize that He and He alone can be completely partial or impartial. Deuteronomy 32, verse 4 says, "The rock, His work is perfect for all His ways are just. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is He." He is perfect in His judgment.

So the point that Paul is trying to get at and why that statement is here is in order to convince us and convince a reader of Romans that the judgment that is coming upon mankind is a perfect judgment. There's not a single human being who will be judged before God unjustly.

There's no human being that's going to be judged for eternity who is going to be judged partially, that it was going to be unjust. You guys know the picture of, you know, if you see a statue of justice, what's the statue that you know? I was going to bring a video, but not video, but a slideshow, but I chose not to.

What is the picture that you see? It's a picture of a lady. She's blindfolded and she has a scale, right? You ever wonder why the blindfold? Yeah, because if you're not blindfolded, the natural tendency is for us to be prejudiced. So we see and say, "Oh, that's my mother," or "Oh, I know this person, so I should be more just to that person," or "This person's rich," or "That person can benefit me," or "If I do this, how are they going to treat me?" So every human being is going to be partial based upon our selfish desire.

What are you going to think of me? Or you've offended me, so therefore you're going to deserve more justice. So in the criminal justice system, if somebody seems to be overly biased in some way, like there's a family member. So if you go to the court, you know, if you ever had jury duty, one of the questions that they ask you is, "Do you know one of the attorneys that work here?" Do you know what I mean?

And then, so you say yes, and then you're out. They don't want you in there, because they already assume that your judgment is not going to be clean, right? You're going to be biased toward them one way or the other, right? So again, even in our justice system, we recognize that bias is part of who we are.

So therefore, how do we determine what is right and what is wrong? How do we determine in our mind what should be and what should not be? What is right, what is wrong? What is good and what is bad? That judgment in and of itself is not coming from our culture, it's not your upbringing, it's not because you're a Democrat or a Republican, it's not because you're educated or uneducated, what culture you were brought up in, that everything that you and I know to be right or wrong has to be tested by the only being who can be perfectly impartial, which is our God, which is His Word.

So therefore, he says, God who is, the wrath of God is being revealed is completely impartial. Now, if I ended this here, we're in big trouble. Because the reason why Paul says this is to justify what he's been saying. Here comes the wrath of God. And those who have the law will be judged with the law.

Those who don't have the law will be judged without the law. But the end conclusion is, you will be judged. And the wrath of God is coming. And there's nobody who's going to stand under the wrath of God and say, this is not fair. Everything he does is going to be completely and perfectly fair, whether we see it or not.

See he goes on and he gets more specific. And he said, well, what about those Jews who've had the law and all their for centuries they were trying to obey the law. What about them? Well, he says, those who have the law will also perish with the law and who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law.

For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. So in other words, any of you who are proud because you have the law, he says, you're also in trouble. Remember in Matthew 3, 7 through 10, John the Baptist comes out and everybody recognizes him as a prophet from God, right?

Even the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the scribes were coming and they saw that he's not at the temple. He's dressed like an Old Testament prophet. He's acting and talking like an Old Testament prophet. So people are intrigued. Now John the Baptist, at least from what we see in the scriptures, didn't perform miracles.

They weren't coming out because he was feeding them. It was just he, everybody recognized that there was an authority about this person and they came and they were being baptized by him. And when he saw the Pharisee and the Sadducees come, he saw them, he said to them, you brood of vipers who warned you to flee from the wrath to come, bear fruit in keeping with repentance and do not presume to say to yourself, we have Abraham as our father, for I tell you God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.

Even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. He was indicting them, right? Now let me, before we jump on the Pharisees, okay, let me ask you a question. Did God want the nation of Israel to obey the law?

Don't say anything. I just want you to think for a minute. Did God intend the nation of Israel to obey the law? Absolutely. God wanted the nation of Israel to obey the law. So he rejoiced when they obeyed and he was saddened when they didn't obey. Who obeyed the law the best?

Okay, don't answer. I want you to think about it. If God wanted Israel to obey the law, who obeyed the law the best? The Pharisees did. You say, oh, the tax collector, you know, they're the ones that God favored and they did all of that. The tax collectors didn't obey the law.

These guys were traitors. They were cheating people. They were sinning against God, right? So we have a tendency to kind of like, because we've already stamped these people as bad people, you know, Pharisees, they obey the law, you know, but they, they were against God, but these tax collectors were better.

No, these guys were sinners. The fishermen, you know, maybe they were better off. Maybe that's why God saw some righteousness in the fishermen. And that's why they were favored by God. These fishermen, you know, they probably didn't go to the temple that often. They didn't take, they didn't know the Torah.

The Pharisees were the one who memorized scripture. They fasted, they prayed. They're the ones who gave to the temple. In fact, the scripture says that they would go far distances to make disciples. And yet he said, you did all of that. You prayed in public. You did all of that for a show.

You have to understand that the judgment that came upon, the reason why God pointed them out is not because the tax collectors and the fishermen and the common people were somehow more righteous before God. Then why were they judged? Why were they singled out? The Pharisees were the ones who were trying so hard to keep the law.

And yet God brings judgment upon them. He singles them out to rebuke them. What was he trying to do? Well, if you remember in Matthew 15, one through nine, he rebukes these Pharisees and scribes and says, you hypocrites, you, you have certain amount of money donated to temple. And then you use that as an excuse not to take care of your parents.

Remember what Jesus says? You should have done one without neglecting the other. He didn't say you should have done this and not done this. Right? So what he was saying is, here's what you're doing, but what you should have done was this. Now were the tax collectors even doing this?

No, they weren't even doing this. You get what I'm saying? Okay. The Pharisees at least was doing this. They were at least tithing, at least praying, at least giving, at least proselytizing, even though they were doing it wrong. They were doing this, but Jesus didn't say you did the wrong thing.

You should have been doing this. No, Jesus said you should have done this without neglecting this. Right? So the tax collectors weren't even doing this. He says again in Matthew 19 through nine, he says, when it comes to divorce, you follow Moses's law to give a certificate and then you would get divorced.

But I say to you that you should not be divorced in any reason other than infidelity. So he says you're doing this, but you should have done this. So in other words, his rebuke to them is that they weren't obeying the commandment enough. They weren't obeying the commandment enough.

Let me take it another step. Remember the rich young ruler, March 10, 17 to 22? Here's a rich man, rich young ruler that comes and respected by the society. This is not a Pharisees who's looking down on people. He just comes and asks an honest question. He says, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

Jesus said to him, why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. In other words, you don't know who I am. Right? He says, you're calling me good, but you don't realize who you're talking to. You know the commandments. Do not murder. Do not commit adultery.

Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Do not defraud. Honor your father and mother. Now, you know, Ray Comfort has a video series where he goes out and he interviews people for evangelism and it's, are you a sinner? He says, no, I'm not a sinner. And then he'll go through the 10 commandments and did you break this?

Did you break this? And almost always he says, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And then they'll say, so are you a lawbreaker? Yes. Are you a sinner? Yes. Right. And here's a problem with this man. Jesus basically does Ray Comfort, right? So Jesus was the Ray Comfort before Ray Comfort.

So he comes and asks him, here's the 10 commandments. And did you do this? This is this, this, this. And the man says, yes. And he meant it. He was a, he was a good man. He wasn't just faking it. He said, I did all of that. Right. But look at Jesus's response.

He says, the young man says to him, the teacher, all these I have kept from my youth. Now, before we harp on him, okay, before we harp on, he doesn't know his sin. He's lying. He's covering it up. He's self-righteous. Remember the way Paul described himself before he met Christ?

He said Hebrew of Hebrews. When it came to the law, what did he say? Perfect. This, this is exactly how Paul would have answered that question, because that's how Paul viewed himself. That's how he described himself before he met Christ. Right. So as to the law, he said, I done it.

But look at what Jesus says in verse 21. Jesus looking at him. And here's the part I want you to pay attention to. Jesus hears this and he's not angry with this man. Right. He doesn't say, are you self-righteous? You know, who do you think you are? He doesn't say that.

He says, you obey all these commands. If you want to inherit eternal life, do all of these things. He says, I did all of that ever since I was young. I always obeyed this. Right. And Jesus looking at him, loved him and said to him. Loved him and said to him, you know, maybe some of you guys have been reading this passage and you missed that part where you think that Jesus is shutting the door.

He said, oh, I want to go in. This is not the right door. Shut the door. Get out of here. That's not what Jesus does. It says, looking at him, loved him and said to him, you lack one thing. Sell all that you have and give to the poor and you will have treasures in heaven and come follow me.

It doesn't say in this passage, but in another passage it says Jesus does that because he knows he was rich. He knew he couldn't do this. And so he tells him, if you want to inherit eternal life, he says in love, he basically shuts the door. He says, this is not it.

Basically, what was Jesus saying? You can't enter this way. You can't enter knowing he couldn't do it. He puts it to him. And as a result, he says, disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful for he had great position possession. Now the response of the disciples of this was exactly what Jesus was trying to get at.

Not only with the disciples, with this man, they respond to him saying, if that man who was perfect in obedience to the law, at least part of that, and he couldn't get in, what about us? I mean, I used to cheat people in taxes. I'm a, I'm a fisherman.

You know, I didn't even consider the law until I met you. You know, I would have been guilty. I mean, if this man cannot enter, what about us? So they're in fear. And Jesus says, what man cannot do, God will do. What man cannot do, God will do. What was he saying?

He said, what you cannot accomplish by your own own will, God will do. And obviously he was referring to the cross, the very reason why he came. And so he lovingly tells him, he says, yes, he doesn't, he doesn't rebuke him for obeying the law. You're obeying the law, but you don't realize that this law cannot save you.

Right? God wants you to obey the law because it's good for you. God wants you to be a man of the law, but this law cannot save you. It may guide you, it may direct you, it may be a light onto your path, but it cannot save you. No man by his own doing can stand before this perfect, holy, holy God and think that somehow he's going to be declared righteous.

So he shuts the door on him because that door was never opened in the first place. And to redirect him to the cross. See that's what he's saying to the Jew. If you rely on the law, you will be judged by the law. If you're relying on your discipline, if you're relying on your experience and how much scripture you memorize and how much prayer that you give and how much money that you give, if you rely on that for your righteousness, you will be judged by that because you will never be perfect enough.

You will never pray enough, you will never give enough, you will never sacrifice enough to be declared righteous before God. So what is he doing? He's taking this man and humbling him because only by humbling him can he see the glory of the cross. And that's what he's doing throughout this whole three chapters is he's turning the light off.

Every single one of them. Just like we turn the lights off so that we can see the screen better, he's turning the lights off. They're making sure that they recognize that what you see out there is not just them. It's in here. It's in all of us. Whether you are a church hander, whether you've been at church all your life and been Sunday school, never missed a day of church on Sunday, no matter what your background is, whatever it is that you have achieved, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

But it's not just the Jews. He goes on to the Gentiles. And here's a question that comes up all the time. Well, what about the people who've never heard the gospel? What about the, how will they be judged? I can see that the law will judge the Jews, but what about those people who've never heard the gospel?

You know, years ago when I was in seminary, one of our assignments, project was that we would have to attend this evangelical theological society, ETS. And we were basically sitting in the back and watching these PhDs. Some of them had been studying the Bible for 40, 50 years. And I was in a room filled with about 500 men, all white hair, probably in their 70s, 75.

And what they do is they get into a big room and then they would have two, three key people present papers. Now, everything, I was just a first year, you know, seminary student. So even though I was an undergrad Bible major, I didn't know enough Greek and Hebrew to understand the discussion they were having.

And so we're listening and I'm just all by, by just the room, you know, this room was filled with people that all the names that you see on commentaries are all gathered in that room, about 500 of them. I'm sitting in the back. I'm like, wow. You know, for me, it's like, you know, these are my celebrities that I'm looking at.

Everybody that I, I've been reading about and talking about, writing papers about, they're all sitting in this room. Well, a guy named Dr. Pinnock comes up and he presents a paper. And I had no idea what he was talking about. I mean, it was just going over my head, you know, I was like, that sounds good.

And I was just like, yeah, all right. You know, awesome. But after he finished this paper, they have a Q and A session afterward and they had two mics set up in a large room. And as soon as it was over, you could see that there was, everybody was getting up and getting into this line.

It's like maybe about 30, 40 in this line, 30, 40 in this line. And everybody wanted to get a crack at him. And that's when I knew something was going on. So initially I thought, oh, maybe this is just the way it is. Maybe that's just, they just have lively discussion and they say, oh, this is really cool.

And then I heard what was happening and basically they were attacking him. You know, Dr. Pinnock, you know, if you do this and basically his, his thesis was addressing this issue. If God is fair, if he is a loving God that we say he is, it would not be just for him to judge people who've never heard the gospel.

And so basically just like what we're talking about, God being impartial. So he took what he thought was just and right and good and loving, and he applied it to God and God didn't fit, at least the way that he's, that the traditional theology that we have. So therefore he said, since I can't say that God is not just, in order to be just, he has to give an opportunity for all people to hear the gospel.

So his, his thesis was God, he's taken a path in 1st Timothy, 1st Peter, chapter 3, 18, that when people who've never heard the gospel, they die, that Jesus goes to this place and he preaches the gospel to them. And so people who are alive will be judged by rejecting the gospel when they're alive.

But the people who died, didn't hear the gospel will be judged based upon the gospel they heard from Jesus. Now right away you can see a problem with that. Okay. Then we should stop preaching the gospel. Because if Jesus could have preached the gospel, wouldn't you want Jesus to preach the gospel?

We're committing tremendous sin by sending missionaries out to the remotest part of the world. Even John Piper, John MacArthur, all the Johns, if they all got together and, and decided to be missionaries in a country, they can't come even close that Jesus himself preaching the gospel to the dead people.

So we should stop preaching the gospel. We should stop planting churches. We should stop having small groups. We should stop it. If that's the case, but that was his presentation. I mean, it was a broad, and even to this day, it was like what, 27, 28 years ago, even to this day, they talk about that particular event, you know, Dr.

Pinnock did this and, and that created this whole openness of God theology. Again, I'm not going to get into all of that. That's where it was sparked. Again, it's because he was projecting his sense of justice to God. He was twisting the scripture to say, to make it fit what he thinks is just.

What Paul says here, again, you know, whenever we come to a passage like this, and if you, if you've ever, you know, studied through this, he mentions the word law about 20, you know, 20 some times. So you may, you may get lost in these laws. You know, it's a law, law, law, law, law, law, law, law, boast, law, law, law, boast, law, law, law, law, boast, circumcision, uncircumcision, law, circumcision, law, uncircumcision, law.

That's probably what you may remember from this passage, right? Because it's confusing. Because some of these, some of these profound questions are found in these passages. It may be difficult to understand, but what does Paul say? Well, he dealt with the Jews who had the law, but the second part in verse 14, he says, "For when Gentiles who do not have the law by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves." So in other words, the Gentiles have, they don't have the written law, but they do have the law.

And how do you see that? Because they're able to determine what is right and what is wrong. They're able to determine that. And that's why when we look at all the religions, like some people say, and they listen to Christianity superficially, it's like, "Oh yeah, you know, the Buddhists and Christians and, you know, Mormons and Hindus and Muslims, they're all the same because they teach the same moral law." Right?

Superficially. And the reason why the moral law sounds the same from religion to religion is because there is one lawgiver who created all of us. And the difference is we may have the special revelation from God's word in the gospel, but it's a general revelation. He says, "The same creator who created you, created them and created people out there." So he says, "There is a law that every human being, that they have in their hearts, that and they say, they show that the works of the law is written on their hearts while their conscience also bears witness." Right?

Because it bothers their conscience when they're wrong. So every single culture, I've never seen a culture with all the different places that I've been to where murdering is considered good, where lying is completely acceptable, where dishonoring your mother and father is seen as a good thing. There's a universal law that no matter what religion, no matter what your background, no matter what age, that every human being has.

And so therefore he says, "And their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them." I know that you probably heard this argument that we should not legislate morality. It is not possible. It is not possible to not legislate morality. Every law is based upon some moral thought that somebody has.

So whether it's a Christian view or Muslim view or somebody, there is some morality based in that. So he says, "How do you determine right or wrong? How do you determine if what they're doing is wrong and this is right and this is wrong?" He says, "That in and of itself tells us that the law giver is a universal giver that governs all of us." Whenever you've gotten to get into an argument or discussion with a non-Christian about the existence of God, there's several arguments that you may get into.

Thomas Aquinas is probably the father of modern day apologetics. And I'm not going to go through all of them, but he has the cause and effect argument. He has the ontological argument. He has the divine designer argument. He has the moved and unmoved argument. So he has a bunch of arguments.

But one of the arguments that I tend to, it seems like this discussion since it always kind of leads to, is the moral argument. The universal moral. How do you determine what is right or what is wrong without a universal standard that we all agree on? A typical answer that you'll get is, "Well, morality comes from majority of the culture.

So at that generation, that's what they believe and so that's what they do, but morality changes." Well, if that's the case, how are we to judge the people over there in the Middle East? How do we judge that? Because we're not talking about a few people living in caves.

We're talking about millions of people who completely differ with some of the things that we believe. In fact, during the Holocaust, we all say, "Oh, Hitler killed six million people." Hitler could not kill six million people. One person killed six million people. The Nazis killed six million people. Nazis couldn't do it themselves either.

It was because there was hatred toward the Jews all over the world. And they tapped into that hatred. So yes, Hitler was the most culpable, and the Nazis, and the German people, but it wasn't just a few people who killed six million people. It was a majority of people in that generation who was convinced and they gave into their fear, they gave into their hatred, and that's what happened.

In fact, if you look at human history, in every part of human history, whether it's 10,000 years ago or modern history, there is some form of genocide. There's some form of genocide. How do we determine if that's right or wrong, if there is no universal rule that governs all of us?

And that's what Paul is saying. So let me conclude what he's saying. Basically what Paul is saying is, you are not judged because you rejected Christ. All men and all women are judged based upon his own personal sins. Whether you had the law, whether you didn't have the law, whether you were born a thousand years ago, whether you were born today, whether you are rich or whether you are poor, whether you are a moral person or you consider yourself an immoral person, the perfect judge judges all of us impartially, perfectly.

And that's the point that Paul is getting at. Whether you heard the gospel or didn't hear the gospel, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. There is not a single person who will receive eternal judgment unfairly before God. Every judgment that you and I will face will be perfectly fair because God sees who we are.

God sees what we have done in secret. Even all the violations, all the evil thoughts, all the hurtful things that we've said, all the people that we've hated, every time we lusted, every time we gave in to our hatred, every time we exaggerated, every time we lied, every time we dishonored our parents, all of that before a holy judge will be revealed.

So when we stand before this holy judge, there's not a single person who will stand innocent. Now if I had ended the sermon here, I mean, that'd be great, right? Let's go play some, you know, go to sports day, we'll have some fun, eat some El Anel, awesome, right?

But the point of what he's saying here is not to just bring you down to the ground and it's like, all right, let's go, right? Because because we're studying the passage from piece to piece, you know, we're, this is what we're studying, so we're there. But we have to understand what is his whole point?

What is, what is the goal of Paul and why does he say it? He's saying what he's saying in order to get to, get us to the same place that Paul gets to in Romans chapter 7, 24. Remember that passage in 7, 24 where you see a man just wrestling with his sin, what I want to do, I don't do, what I don't want to do, I keep doing.

And then what does he say in conclusion with this wrestling with his sin, it takes him to a place in verse 24, it says, "Oh, what a wretched man I am. Who will deliver me from this body of death? Oh, what a wretched man I am." That's the point that Paul is trying to get to in Romans chapter 1, 2, and 3.

See that's the beginning of salvation. Beginning of salvation is not, God is wonderful, he's so loving, I want some of that. The beginning of salvation is when we recognize the same thing Paul recognizes in Romans chapter 7, "Oh, what a wretched man that I am. If I was to stand before God today by my own merit, oh, what a wretched man that I am.

I am a man of unclean lips from a people of unclean lips. I am undone, I am ruined." And when we see, basically what God is doing, He's examining our hearts, examining who we are, examining what we deserve, and He gives a long list of, "Here's your sins." And you come to the realization, "How can I possibly make up for this?

How can I possibly take this before a judge and think that somehow I'm going to find leniency? Oh, what a wretched man that I am." And when we're at that point, that's when Paul says in chapter 8 verse 1, "Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord for what the law of the spirit of life set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death, that our God will no longer judge us based upon what we deserve." And that's why he says in the gospel, "Righteousness of God is revealed.

Your righteousness, my righteousness, looks like what we just saw." This is what our righteousness will look like in the presence of God. Those who have the law, those who do not have the law. Those who are privileged, those who are not privileged. Those who have good grades, those who have bad grades.

Those who are moral, and those who think that they're immoral. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Every single one of us, when we recognize who God truly is, in light of who He is and we recognize who we are, God brings us to a point of humility.

And that's the beginning of salvation. That's the beginning. Is when we see Christ in light of our sins, and we come to the cross not as an option, but the only way that I can live. And that's when the gospel becomes powerful. That's when in light of this great mercy, we offer our lives as a living sacrifice.

So again, as Paul continues to remind us, and we're not done yet, right? We're right in the thick of things, and we're going to keep pounding through his message of what the law means and how it indicts us. And again, as we're studying all this, let's always keep in mind why he's saying this.

Why he said, why Jesus said what he said to this rich young man. He says, "Because he loved him." He said, "If you think this the way, you keep going. See where this leads you, so that he may turn to Christ." That we would recognize this in the same way.

This is God's loving revelation for us. To humble us, so that we would recognize who He is. Let's take a few minutes to pray as we ask our team to come up. As they lead us in a time of worship, again, I encourage you to take some time to pray.

Before you pray for your circumstance, before you pray for other people, let's take some time to come before the Lord and pray. And then maybe we don't recognize our sin the way that it really is in the presence of God. That you come before the Lord and say, "God, open my eyes, that I may see who I am as I really am.

And then, so that I can see how I am to you." And so take some time to pray. Let's pray for our own hearts, pray for our own revelation, and that we will be true worshipers as these things are revealed to us. So let's take some time to pray.