Sin and People (Part A)

They don't care what he's saying, though.

They're not going to do any of it. Paul matches that in 2 Timothy. The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers. They'll shop around for a pastor that will say the things they like. That is not preaching the Word of God.

That is making oneself a fool for men. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Romans.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the book of Romans chapter 3 as he begins his message, Sin and People. Romans chapter 3 verses 10 and 11. What then? Are we better than they?

Not at all. For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin, as it is written, there is none righteous, no not one. I said verse 11, but that's good enough.

Even without context, it's enough said there to understand what the point is. Sin and People is the title of this morning's consideration. And God does not want to leave us somber. He wants to have us sober. There are times when we are somber and there are times we have reason to be.

We can also overdo that. I'd rather be sober-minded than somber. And when it comes to sin, having your head together really helps. These things were pressing on Paul when he wrote this letter to the Romans, things concerning sin and salvation and faith. He starts off, and I'm repeating myself on purpose from previous sessions, he starts off getting right to the point that people are dirty before a clean God.

That's not the whole story. We're not going to get to the good news until we get to the next paragraph, then it begins to come out of the clouds. But right now he is still hammering sin.

That's what it takes. He has anticipated objections mainly from the Jews concerning the Gentiles and salvation. Now maybe as we've been going through the book of Acts and beginning in Romans and you've been hearing me tell you from the Scriptures hopefully that the Jews were not doing their job as a people with the Scriptures. They were not taking it to the Gentiles.

We're getting this in Isaiah on Wednesdays. Well, where else in Scripture is this pronounced? Where in the Jewish writings are we clearly told that they had a problem taking the Gospel, the Old Testament Gospel of Yahweh to Gentiles? The book of Jonah. The entire book is about that.

God doesn't have to repeat it. He made his point in four chapters. One of my favorite books. A hard-headed prophet, a loving God, a sinful people, salvation.

It is a beautiful book. Jonah would not have cared less about the Gentiles. But Paul, his heart is for them. Heathen, Hebrew hypocrite, he wants them all to understand they are guilty of crimes against God, but God wants to forgive them and give them mercy and it is packed into this letter. Sin is not man's friend. It is the flesh, the flesh, that carnal nature, the natural man, those things about us without God. Well, that part of us loves sin.

But the spiritual man detests it every step of the way. And it doesn't take long for sin to have us turn against God and then against each other. This is the story from Adam and Eve. When they sinned, they hid from God. And then when God confronted them, they threw each other under the bus. Everybody they could. Adam. It was the woman.

I happen to agree. No. He should have just said, I'm guilty. I am guilty. But no, he has to go after Eve. Well, Eve, she throws Satan under the bus.

Well, he deserved to be there and backed over a few times. But the right answer was, I have sinned. But she said it was that serpent.

He deceived me. This is what sin does to us. It turns us against God and against each other and this is why it is harmful. Sin is not partial.

It is not racist. It gives equal opportunity to all to go to hell. And this is why the prophet, I won't say it was grating on him.

I will say he was pressing on him. There were people in Rome and they needed to hear these things and this has been the case to this very day. We need to hear these things. So now we look at the first verse as he continues dealing with sin in people. One more point I want to make. You know, if the pastor makes strong points about sinful behavior amongst churchgoers, most of the time everybody's on board with that until it's their turn to be wrong. Until they're doing that sin, now is a problem. And it shouldn't be that way. Verse 9, what then? Are we better than they?

Not at all. For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin. Well, he's anticipating objections to his statement in Romans 3, verse 1. What advantage has the Jew or what is the prophet of circumcision? What's the point in having scripture and all the things that go with it?

That is where he's picking up what then? Are we better than they? So he does acknowledge that they have the advantage as the Jewish people go, having the scriptures and the covenants. But this advantage does not exempt them from God's judgment on their personal behavior.

And one thing that irritated a lot of these Jews at this time is that Paul was saying, hey, the Gentiles can be right with God without the Sabbath, without the diet, without the circumcision. And so what, huh? They get in, they don't have to do all those things? They didn't process it like that.

They had those rights too high up. But that's what it came down to. You don't have to do any of those things. You eat whatever you want. You don't have to go through the rite of circumcision physically, spiritually you do. And don't worry about the Sabbath, you just need to worship the Lord. That doesn't mean you don't come apart and rest, because if you don't come apart and rest, Jesus taught you will come apart. So Paul makes the point that the Jews have the advantage from receiving promises of God in verse 2, but that in verses 5 and 6 of Romans 3, that advantage does not prevent God from judging them for their crimes against God and people. And then verses 9 through 20, which we're looking at this morning, he points out to both Jew and Gentile that everybody is sinful, equally so. And then we'll get to this next session, Lord willing, that God provides salvation apart from the law of ritual, the law of grace in Jesus Christ. Are we then, he says here in verse 1, are we better than they?

Not at all. Again, that Jonah mindset, Jonah, we're better than them. They don't deserve salvation.

They deserve to go to hell. So with the question and answer, he's exposing the hearts. He knows he's hitting, if he's not hitting some of the Jewish Christians in the audience, he's getting their family members who are not in the audience, or in their community. The saved are no better than the lost, but we are better off, and it is because of scripture that we are better off.

That is his point. Jonah was fine with the slaughter of the Ninevites. Jonah 4, God's dealing with Jonah instead of smiting him.

He's so gentle with this mean prophet who he recovered, he comes out of it, but listen to what God says to him. Should I not pity Nineveh, that great city in which are more than 120,000 persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left and much livestock. You want me to wipe them out, Jonah? I don't want to kill everybody.

I don't want to even kill the animals in the city. You know, those who crucified the Lord were made up of two types of people. One who had Bibles and the other who did not. The Jews had the scriptures. It was the religious leaders who boasted in the scriptures that crucified their Messiah. It was the Roman authority that did not have the scripture that crucified the Savior, creator of the world. This should be eye-opening to us. Those who loved the Lord were another type of people present, and they loved the Lord because they had the scriptures.

There's no other way to do it. So it comes down to what do you do with what God has said. You are either in a knife fight against sin your entire life to the glory of God, looking to love people, to save people, to be useful to God, to bring glory to him, or you are not.

I think everything about that is fair, and I think everything about that is difficult. It won't be when I get to heaven, but right now it's the sweat of the brow for everything. Nothing yields itself easily and permanently in this life. Judas and Peter both sinned, but Peter came back.

That is the difference. Peter came back, and he received the grace of God. Judas did not come back.

He went to his own place, we're told in the Bible. Colossians 1, and you who were once alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now he has reconciled you. There he's really going at the Gentiles in the Colossian letter. The Jews do it. It applies as equal, you know, sin is equal opportunity, well so is salvation for those who come.

Opportunity. For we have previously, he says here in verse 9, charged both Jews and Greeks, that they are all under sin. The we there, for we being the Christians, the antecedent is in verse 8, he's talking about the message that we're preaching. Now most people outside of Christ will consent to personal imperfection, but are reluctant to own the guilt of sin against God. I'm not perfect, they'll tell you. Yeah, what about your sin?

Let's change the subject. The subtle thing is it not to go from imperfection, because that's a people thing. We're all imperfect, but sin? Now God is in the equation, and man would rather hide from God, as did Adam and Eve when they first sinned, hiding out in the garden. Adam, where are you? Most, again, will consent to imperfection, downplaying the ensuing judgment, the judgment to come, as he reasoned with him about self-control and sin and judgment to come. Felix, change the subject.

I'll hear you at another time when I got more time. He never did act on what he was being told by this man of God. As though he was going to survive death. You can survive death. The other side of death is what?

Either the land of judgment or the land of joy. God says, don't die that way. Don't die by downplaying the ensuing judgment, knowing, therefore, the judgment of God, we persuade all men. The judgment of the individual Jew and the judgment of the nation of Israel, they're two different things, but they're judgment nonetheless. Some Jews will go to heaven, some will go to hell.

Some Gentiles, same thing. The inescapable debt of the individual man to an individual God, to a personal God, I'll put it that way, that debt has to be paid. Somebody's got to deal with sin. God is not going to hide the dirt.

He's going to deal with it. An attending church will not in and of itself save a single soul belonging to Christ's will. I wish I had time to read Ezekiel 33, verses 33, because there he tells, God says, they're going to come to you. They want to say, oh, you've got to come hear this guy preach. They don't care what he's saying, though.

They're not going to do any of it. Paul matches that in 2 Timothy. The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers. They'll shop around for a pastor that will say the things they like. That is not preaching the Word of God. That is making oneself a fool for men. Much to say about that, but I've been saying things about that for 30 years, trying to find some new fresh ways to say the same things.

You won't know I'm saying the same thing. Boy, that was deep. Anyway, verse 10, as it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one. Now, he's using the Old Testament, and by doing so, he is declaring that the Old Testament got it right and is not obsolete in its charges against sin and its holding up of righteousness. More than 14 times in this little paragraph, he's quoting scripture.

He's saying, I'm not making this up. This is, I'm not, you know, this Christianity did not originate with people. It comes from God. All the other religions of the world, their origin is a human being. Islam, oh, they tout Muhammad. It all comes from him. Christianity with 66 different documents compiled into a single book. These are different people over thousands of years, all moving in the same direction, all rowing the same way. You cannot say, well, a man wrote the Bible.

No, there were many men who scribed it. God is the author and the finisher, and you don't have a better plan. We don't have to take the lies and the stupidity of Satan that he gushes out of unbelievers in their charge against the Christ. They are wrong, and they are wrong to death, and we are not friends with wrong beliefs. We can be, certainly, we are to be kind and hospitable and blameless before the Lord in men. We're not looking to be enemies of lost people.

We want to reach them. Now, some, of course, are so far out there, there's nothing you can do, but mostly in a civilized environment, hostilities are not necessary from the Christian. We are unrighteous, and without Christ, that's how we will stay, but with Christ, we will, he will give that righteousness to us. This is Psalm 14 that he is quoting here in verse 10.

Now, some Jews objected to the claims that the Gentiles were of equal standing. I covered that, and so that's why he's taking them to their own Bible. We're all guilty.

You, too. You Jewish believers with Scripture, you claim to love God, and maybe you do, but you're guilty as a sinner, nonetheless, and that is what the temple in the wilderness, when a Jew woke up, when the Jews were in the wilderness, and the temple was up and running, and that morning sacrifice that you could smell out in the wilderness, you knew something was cooking. Your sin was cooking.

That animal should have been you. The innocent animal didn't do anything to be slain for Adam and Eve to have their nudity covered. The guilt is on the man. God has made a way, and so Paul affirms that the Old Testament already says what it needs to say about human behavior before God, and our fallen nature makes it impossible to always obey God. Ecclesiastes 7, verse 24, there is not a just man on earth who does good and does not sin. Even the just sin, even the good people by people's standards, even by God's standards. Job was a good man by the standard of God.

He boasted about him. None like him. He hates evil.

He loves good. He's still a sinner. All of us are. The Bible is stacked against the sins of man, against yours and mine, and so what is our subject? It's more our topic. People and sin. You know it like the back of your hand if you've been walking with Christ, but do you forget to point that out when given the chance? I wish that all Christians would pray for more opportunity to preach Christ to ignorant people. I mean ignorant people comes to God's ways, not overall ignorant. No, that too.

We wouldn't want to leave them out, but that's not how I meant it. John, chapter 3, verse 7, do you marvel that I said to you, you must be born again? Are you blown away by me telling you you're so messed up, we've got to redo you? That's what that means. Standing before God, you're a train wreck, and if he doesn't get his hands on you, you're going to die that way regardless of what the human accomplishments you are able to achieve. To be righteous, one must overcome life in Christ. It must overcome living without Christ.

I lived without him and by the grace of God, that has been overcome. This offends the humanistic man because it reveals defects which they're unwilling to accept. I'm not so bad. Maybe you've heard that.

I'm really not so bad. Oh yeah, by who? According to who? So in verse 10, none are righteous, no not one. In verse 11, no one understands. No one gets this, not without Christ, not without Yahweh in the Old Testament revealing it from his scripture or his prophets. In verse 11, he also says, none seek after God. And then in verse 12, he says, none who does good, no not one.

People and sin, that's what he's dealing with. Otherwise, who needs Christ? Who needs a gospel if I'm not so bad?

It'll work out. Hell's packed with people that had that approach. Verse 11, there is none who understands. There is none who seeks after God. Again, quoting scripture. The disinterested in Christ are disinterested in God and therefore they are lost. They don't believe that. Well, what are you going to do about that?

Well, the first thing I can do is be ready. The first call of the Christian is not to preach the gospel. It's to know the gospel. Because what can you preach if you don't know what you're talking about? It'll be heresy.

It'll be lies and falsities. To learn the scripture than to be used. That God would flow through me, that his love would flow through me according to truth. With God, truth comes first, then love. Because what love could there be without truth?

It'd be a flawed love. First Corinthians, the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God. Why not? They're foolishness to him.

Nor can he know them. Because they're spiritually discerned. Well, how do I get that spiritual discernment? Well, you must be born again.

How do you get people to be interested in their lost state? I wish it was simple enough to just say, well, I'll give you five points to do that, or one, or two. But it's a lot of work. Just be ready. That's the advice I would give because, you know, you can have this wonderful chance to share the Christ with somebody and they remain nonresponsive to their own detriment, including the STS 315. God requires an account of what is past.

That's what we teach. Every idle word of man will be dealt with. Well, it's either going to be dealt with with the blood of Christ, or it's going to be dealt with at the great white throne of judgment, and by then it will be too late.

The choice is yours. Christ's man is unreasonable in his attitudes toward God. He doesn't understand that human intellect must be enlightened by God.

We have the age of enlightenment, and it's, you know, the man coming out of the dark ages. Oblivious to what God is doing in many, most of it. When Jesus walked on the road to Emmaus with the two disciples, he opened their understanding. They loved him. They were his people, and he still didn't get it.

Not enough to love him. He's got to open the understanding. And he breathed on them and said, receive you the Spirit of God. These things have to happen, or else you haven't made much progress, if any. There is none who seeks after God.

In the natural state. No one says, you know what, I'm going to start looking for God. Unless God has already been working in them. John chapter 6 verse 44, no man can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. He didn't say captures him.

He says draw him. I believe no one comes to a Bible teaching church unless God is drawing them. Even if they're obnoxious and it doesn't do anything that God drew them and gave them a chance. I also believe no one goes to an anti-Bible, I don't want to use the word church, assembly in the name of Christ without the devil drawing them. The devil draws people. Come to this church. The Bible's not here.

You'll love this. Oh, we use a snippet here too, like partially on a plate, but come here. Adam and Eve hid from God after their sin, and God sought them, and that's what Jesus is even pointing, that includes in his statement, no one comes to me unless the Father draws him. So, you know, wait a minute, what do you mean coming to you? Are you God?

Yeah, as a matter of fact. When someone says, well Jesus never said he's God, he didn't verbalize it according to your script, but the fact remains he said it. Thanks for joining us for today's teaching on Cross-Reference Radio. This is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia.

We're currently going through the book of Romans. If you're in need of hearing this message again or want to listen to others like it, head over to crossreferenceradio.com. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast too, so you'll never miss another edition. Just go to your favorite podcast app to subscribe. On our website, you'll be able to learn a little more about the ministry of Cross-Reference Radio, so make a note of it, crossreferenceradio.com. That's all we have time for today, but thanks so much for listening. Pastor Rick will be back next time in the book of Romans here on Cross-Reference Radio.