Sin and People (Part C)

Some people think they're going to be rewarded by God for the little bit of good they do.

No, you don't. Stop looking for a reward. Look for the Savior. That's your reward.

My reward is with me, he said. For by the law is the knowledge of sin. Without God telling me, I wouldn't really know what offended God, but he has told me. Well, the only real world is the one the Bible describes. That's the only real world. Everything else is a lie without God. cross-reference radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Sin and People is the title of Pastor Rick's message, and today he will continue teaching verse by verse through Romans chapter 3.

The nation is not rigged. It is repeatedly offered. Make the choice.

Make the move. Luke chapter 19 verse 10. The Son of Man has not come to seek, it has come to seek and to save that which is lost of men. Back to the Garden of Eden.

Adam, where are you? God seeking to save that which was lost. So how can this be possible in view of the fact that there are so many false religions, so many pagans and idols? How is it that none are seeking God? What is Paul saying? Well, the Corinthian letter, he tells us another part of this.

He says the things the Gentiles sacrificed, they sacrificed to demons and not to God, and I do not want you to have fellowship with demons. Yeah, people seek false gods, they seek religion, but are they seeking the true God according to truth? Because behind the false beliefs, there is a God.

He is the God of this world, Satan the devil. Now, especially for you young believers, believing your believers, for you young attendees, when you come across all these names of the false idols in the Bible, one thing you should come away with is that Satan has many brands of delusion for you, various forms of idols from antiquity till now. You do not have to have a statue anymore, you can just make up things about God in your head.

That is a brand of idolatry, and it comes out of hell. 2 Corinthians 4, but even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the God of this age is blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel and the glory of Christ, who is in the image of God, pardon me, who is the image of God, should shine on them. There's power in mockery. Mockery is a useful tool, we have so much sarcasm from God in scripture.

Keep listening and not believing, keep on, noodle head. That says mockery. Your religion is vain, you draw near me with your mouth, but your heart is far from me. In vain you worship me, teaching the doctrines of men.

Well, there in 2 Corinthians, what I just read, lest they see the light of the gospel, there's mockery in that. When it comes to the choice that is given that matters most to a human being, it needs to side with God. John 6 29, Jesus answered and said to them, this is the work of God that you believe in him who he sent. Because there are those that tell you, well, you can't choose God because that's work, that's a work, then you're earning yourself. Oh, wait a minute, Jesus just said, this is the work of God that you believe in him whom he has sent. So he says, I'll take that work. The work that you can do is believe God. You want to play with words?

Fine, have at it. The bottom line is, I have come, are you willing? Man, I love preaching this stuff. Because I remember when I didn't have this, I remember when I didn't attend the church, and when God saved me, I said, Lord, I'll go to church if you make me the pastor. Of course not. That's so stupid. Like, Lord, that's pretty funny, but I'm kind of ashamed I even said it. I'm not really, it makes the point.

Anyway, you know, we could come up here and I want to remember the things that that which I first received, I shared with you, I want to remember these points, and there's a pressure to doing that, and so I look for these little pit stops, and I just had one. So, verse 12, they have all turned aside, they have together become unprofitable, there is none who does good, no not one. Now again, this is humanity without Christ, because when he says none seek God, well he seeks God, none understand God, well he understands, because he's saved now.

But before that Damascan Road experience, he was in this group. He never forgot it, and neither should you. A man turning aside from God in his rejection, and if he continues that way, he becomes irretrievable, unrecoverable. And yet, this is to me very powerful, putting it to myself this way, one outlaw went to heaven that day, the other went to hell that day. You see, it's immediate.

Death is the great equalizer, it just flattens everything out, and the only thing that either is sticking up or hanging down is one's confession or one's rejection. You know, it's more than metaphor, but metaphor nonetheless, the first animal named in the Bible was Leroy. No, it wasn't. It's another pit stop. The serpent is the first animal that is singled out. You know, God made the birds, he made the cattle, but then he comes to this reptile, it's the first one named.

Well, what's the next one named? Sheep. Sheep are the next one. Sure, God, when he talks about Cain, the elder brother of Abel, he says Cain was a farmer, or he worked the field, but then he, right after that, he says Abel was a tender of sheep. The primary metaphor in the Bible for God's people is sheep.

Pastor, the word pastor comes from the Latin, it means shepherd. The lesson lies not in what sheep do, but in what sheep lack. Okay, what do I lack before God as one of his sheep? Well, sheep is an animal not known to be smart, not known to be swift, not known to be strong, and not known to be safe. It cannot protect itself.

That's me. Before God, standing before God, I'm not smart, nor am I swift and strong or safe without him. Sheep have no inclination nor power to seek the shepherd once they stray. When a sheep strays out the flock, he doesn't say, now where was I a minute ago?

How do I get back? Not, he doesn't look back, just keeps going to his own destruction. This is another blow to evolution of the species theory. The theory falls apart here. No sheep would survive without a shepherd. If evolution were true, there'd be no sheep.

They all would have died. Well, it's evolving into further era, but as we move forward, all we like sheep have gone astray. We followed our own paths. We'll be getting that in Isaiah 53, Lord willing, Wednesday. So the point that we're coming to, that I'm trying to make, is they have all turned aside, which is what sheep do if there's no shepherd. They have together become unprofitable, and there's none who does good, no, not one. And from God's perspective, we are like those sheep, but long as we stay under the care of the shepherd, we are strong, we are swift, we are sensible, and we are safe. And there lies the lesson from the metaphor.

They have together become unprofitable. Man in his natural state is depraved and really of little to no use to God whatsoever. I'm going to develop that in a minute. There is none who does good, no, not one. Again, without God. Okay, so you fix your neighbor's flat tire. How does God benefit from that? He doesn't have a car.

Okay, you invent a cure for a dreaded disease. How does God benefit from that? He doesn't get sick. God has not benefited from what men do directly.

But because of his love, it becomes an issue. Paul writes this to type us, not by works of righteousness, which we have done. That doesn't count. But according to his mercy, he saved us through the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit. Okay, so now everything is spiritual. Everything I do in the physical has a spiritual value, or I am in deficit. It matters how I treat my neighbor. It matters what I do for society.

It matters how I behave myself for the good of others. It matters to God. But it doesn't make God better off directly. So this equation then cancels out any thought that man is okay without God.

He's not. He's not about people. It's about the Creator. And if it's about the Creator, it will be about people.

And if it will be about people, it will be about me. This is the order of the universe, how it should be. And when that falls apart, angels are cast out of heaven and people are cast into the hell that was prepared for the angels cast out of heaven. The Bible tells us hell was not made for people. It was made for the fallen angels.

But God says rather than start a new dump site, we'll just lump you all in together. We're putting it in a language that maybe they'll understand. Verse 13, their throat is an open tomb. With their tongues, they have practiced deceit.

The poison of Asp is under their lips. So for Paul to be rattling off these scriptures, he must be giving segments of a sermon he's preached recently. He's got the verses there. These are probably points he was teaching in Corinth and said the Romans will benefit from this too. And I guess if you, you know, if you, if you, this is your vocation, you can see that.

And that's why I point it out. Now he comes to the wicked words of men, and he says their throat is an open grave. It's like a grave with the body in it just rotting.

You fall in that thing. What an expressive way of depicting the corruption of so much human speech. With their tongues, they have practiced deceit. Well, the tongue is the outlet of the heart. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speak, Jesus said. Jesus pointed out these things come from the heart.

The adulteries, the stealing, the lying, all these things that come out of the heart. You know, like the news media. They don't report the news. They invent it.

They shape it for themselves. The poison of Asp is under their tongue, killing their victims with that venomous character assassination. He's quoting Psalm 140 verses two and three incidentally. And you look at the New York Times or MSNBC or CNN or CBS or the Associated Press, Rolling Stone magazine.

We can just keep going. You look at Hamas, and you say, these serve Satan. Does it shock people to hear that the devil has family too?

Because I just rattled off some of their addresses. Satan has his family too. But sin has so blinded, man, he can't see that he's living in the house of the devil. You know, if you marry a child of the devil, you're going to have Satan as a father-in-law. You think, look at it that way. That's pretty scary.

How about this? Naboth, when Cahab wanted his field and wicked Jezebel said, I have a plan. She had a scheme. She found men who had tongues like serpents. First Kings, verse 13, the plan was get Naboth to come to this big event in the village.

We'll make him the keynote or the, you know, the one everybody's coming for. And then we'll get him killed according to the scriptures. And two men scoundrels came in and sat before him, that's Naboth. And the scoundrels witnessed against him, against Naboth, in the presence of the people saying, Naboth has blasphemed God the king and the king. Then they took him outside the city and stoned him with stones, so he died. And Naboth likely woke up in heaven and said, I'm glad to be here.

And I went, those two guys. Anyway, their throat is an open tomb with their tongues they have practiced to see. The poison of Asp is under their lips. And there's a biblical example, verse 14, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.

Psalm 10 there, he's quoting verse 7 of Psalm 10. You know, it's too bad a Christian will come up and say, why can't I just, you know, say anything I want to say to people? Well, they might punch you in the nose.

One reason why, but the other reason why is God doesn't, he doesn't want the coarse jesting. Everybody, if they're at the water cooler telling dirty jokes, you can tell them what I preached on Sunday. You say, okay, my turn. Equal time. I got to hear you blabber about all this stuff. Now you're going to get it.

I chuckle, but that's what I used to do, and it was very successful. They either stopped talking dirty around me or they got the gospel. Verse 15, their feet are swift to shed blood from words to violence, always scanning for victims these type. Psalm 36 is what he's quoting here, and it merits reading. And also Isaiah 59 7.

I won't take the time to read Isaiah, but I'll take the one in Psalm, Psalm 36 verse 4. Speaking of the wicked, he devises wickedness on his bed. He sets himself in a way not good. He does not abhor evil. Paul will say, abhor evil.

Cling to what is good when we get into the latter sections of Romans, but this character is on his bed scheming how he can hurt people for his own benefit. He does not hate evil. You, the Christian that is agonizing, am I saved? Well, I mean, the very question is you hate evil.

You hate your sin. The one who's not saved will never ask that question. Only the saved people can fret over righteous things. We're not encouraged to fret.

I think that Psalm 37 is the fret psalm. Verse 16, destruction and misery are in their ways. If you've ever been around a dark person, a person that's evil, that they're just not right, you know they are.

You can feel them scanning, looking for an opportunity to steal something, to do something wrong. It is a bad feeling. Then you get around somebody good, and by contrast, it's stark. Anyway, the great swindle of sin is that the prodigal is unnecessary, the wasteful life. The prodigal is the wasteful one.

He received his inheritance, and he blew it on sin. And it is harmful. Mean people enjoying making other people miserable, even if they're not miserable, even if for a moment. Is there right now, listening to this, a mean teen? Maybe there's a mean woman that's here. Maybe there's a mean man. You know, someone that causes other people misery just because. Or maybe there's a mean churchgoer. We're all susceptible to this.

Now, someone might accuse you of being mean when you're not because you haven't met their standards, but I mean, someone is actively doing something to make you feel small or bad or hurt. There are a lot of people like this in the world. As a pastor, there's been times that people have walked away with parting shots in the cafe, and I can't say, oh hey, what did you say?

You know, because everybody would look at me. That's the pastor? Yeah, it is. I don't care that she's a lady. So what? She's 90. She shouldn't have said it.

You're going down, grandma. But it has happened. It hasn't happened a lot, but over the years, I could see their faces.

I have their addresses. See, that's why we don't know when the rapture is, because I'd go over that house, get even, repent, and wait for the rapture. It's diabolical. Verse 17, and the way of peace is not, they have not known. This is a free rendering of Isaiah 57.

He's all over scripture again. So the face of hate and evil personified in 1 Kings chapter 3, 26, the other woman, the one that lost her child and the other woman that, fine, cut the child in half. Neither one of us, that's mean.

That's evil mean, and it is senseless. Some 75 million people died in World War II. Over 40 million of them civilians, non-combatants. They died through deliberate genocide, through massacre, mass bombings, disease, starvation, torture, battlefields, and not to mention those maimed. And between 1933 and 1945, 60 percent, 60 percent of the Jews in Nazi-dominated Europe were murdered.

That's 6 million of them. In just that short period of time, other peoples have experienced persecutions over centuries, and their numbers still don't stack up to just this short period of time. The atrocities of an enlightened, cultured, advanced nation. We're talking about the way of peace is not known by them. We're saying people sin, and the atrocities that Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan put on people, these were cultured, enlightened, advanced nations. You see, Keynes' religion was too refined to slay a lamb.

He had no problem killing his brother. Where does that come from? Where does that illogic come from? The leftists that we see that went around their little doofus arguments, where is that stuff coming from?

You can tell them, listen, you're not that smart to come up with such stupid stuff. This is a devil in you, and you can't see it, because he's blinding you, and you won't listen to me. It hurts to see, you know, you raise a child, you love them, and then they stray. Well, as a pastor, there are people that, as a teen, they love me, right? Amen.

Then they go off to the university, and that's when they find out that, you know what, everybody here is smarter than him. Well, that might be, but they're not more anointed than me. They may be as, but they're not more, and that would be true of any Christian. Anyway, coming back to this, and the way, verse 17, of peace they have not known.

Don't go boasting to me about humanity or mankind, because man is a sinner. And verse 18, there is no fear of God before their eyes. Well, that explains it all.

That explains it. No comment necessary. No fear and no love of God, only defiance and hate. Verse 19, now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Paul is saying the Bible called you out on this, and it's right. The scriptures have pointed out the defect, the major defect in humanity, and it is sin.

You are exposed. And he, again, using 14 biblical statements in this passage to back it up. Verse 20, therefore by the deeds of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. Now, the word for law, he's talking about the Bible, the Old Testament scriptures, its commandments, its statutes, its ordinances, all of it together. We tend to get a little mixed up with that as Christians because, you know, law has many meanings to us, but how he's using it, he's saying the scripture has pointed these things out. Doing good pleases God, but it does not remove sin or the punishment that's coming because of sin. And sin makes men not only guilty before God, but unclean, which is why they're guilty. Job 14, 4, Job asked this rhetorical question, who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Well, then he answers it, but that's why it's rhetorical.

No one. You need a savior. You can't you can't clean yourself up good enough to face God, and that's what we're trying to tell lost souls.

The law shows man's case as hopeless, but it doesn't give a remedy. There's no remedy in the Old Testament for sin. There's just the covering of sin, and God was very forthright about that. The kophar, the coverings of sin, and not till Christ are sins taken away, which explains why Abraham is in the underworld, and now he's in heaven. His sins have been taken away, and the Lord has set the captives free when he was crucified, and he gave up the spirit.

Remember, he gave up the spirit because no man could kill him because of who he is. Galatians 2 20, almost done. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing. If righteousness comes through me earning salvation, then God is mean to have allowed his son to leave heaven to come here and to suffer that. But God is not mean. It is not vain. That's why when Jesus is in the garden, he said, if it is possible, let this cup pass. It couldn't pass. He knew that.

It was written for our edification. The flesh hates to be little. It hates it.

That's going to be proven when you drive out of here. The other guy doesn't want you going faster than them, doesn't want you passing them. I know because I get in the flesh when they do it. It's their fault because my flesh doesn't want to be guilty. The flesh hates to be little.

The flesh hates to be little. Vanity, that's what it's all about. Ephesians chapter 2, not of works that anyone should boast. No one's going to brag on God. Man needs a savior to deliver him from sin and not a reward for the little good that he does.

Because some people think they're going to be rewarded by God for the little bit of good they do. No, you don't. Stop looking for a reward. Look for the savior. That's your reward. My reward is with me, he said, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

Without God telling me, I wouldn't really know what offended God, but he has told me. Well, the only real world is the one the Bible describes. That's the only real world.

Everything else is a lie without God. 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.