You see, the hypocrite does not want to be judged by the reality of what he is. He wants to hide behind, in the case of the Jew, his national identity, or his church affiliation, or his baptism, or his rule keeping, or his morality, or the fact that he's a quote-unquote good guy. Welcome to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. It's a fact nobody is perfect.
Everyone falls short of God's flawless standard, and God cannot let sin go unpunished.
So the question is: how can you have a right relationship with God if you don't always obey Him? Consider that today as John MacArthur continues his study titled Without Excuse. But before the lesson, wherever and whenever you hear grace to you, you can be sure that God, through His providence, has engineered that opportunity for you to hear biblical truth. I have an example of that. Here's a letter from a man named Resty.
He writes, I inherited a system of works religion from my parents, but at age 18, I started to question that system. This questioning led me on a journey of discovery, a journey that ultimately led me to a deeper understanding of faith and the Bible. Years later, someone told me to check out WDCX Radio 99. 9.5 FM in Buffalo, New York, and that led me to discover John MacArthur's verse-by-verse exposition, which in turn prompted me to start reading the Bible. Ultimately, this led me to purchase the MacArthur Study Bible, and after that, I bought the complete set of John's New Testament commentary series.
For 24 years, I have been driving for about an hour and 15 minutes to get to work every day. Despite the traffic, my co-workers noticed that I arrived to work relaxed. My reason has always been John MacArthur and the Grace to You Radio Ministry. Listening every morning not only teaches my soul, but also has the power to transform my day. I'm at peace knowing that our faithful Almighty God is watching over me and that gives me hope for the day ahead.
I pray that our God will continue to use you in spreading his word one verse at a time. and he signs it Resty.
Well, thank you, Rusty, for sharing your story of God's faithfulness in your life. And friend, I encourage you to join us in praying that God would continue using grace to you to reach people like Rusty across the globe, showing them how Scripture applies to their lives.
Now, to help you apply the truth of Romans 2 to your life, here is John to continue his study without excuse. The logic of our Lord is clear and convincing. You who condemn others Prove that you know the law. And in your knowledge of the law, you condemn yourselves because you are doing the same things. The conscience that makes you aware of wrong in others.
Write your own sentence. Pretty devastating, isn't it? to the self-righteous, religious, Jew, and the moralist. He says you're just as bad as everybody else. You're just covering it up on the outside.
And God will judge on the basis of knowledge.
So, the guy who comes along and says, Man, I'm certainly not in Romans 1, I don't do that. I'm a basically good guy. I don't live that kind of a Horrible life. I'm moral. I'm religious.
I go to church. I've been baptized. I'm in the class. And maybe for whatever reason or another, restraining, but in the inside. is unrestrained evil.
And you'll be judged for it. And you're not exempt. Because you're attached to Israel? and you're not exempt because you're attached to the church. Second principle of judgment.
This is the principle of truth. of truth. Verses two and three. But we are sure. Says Paul.
that the judgment of God is according to truth. against them who commit such things. The same things that are in verse 1, which are the same things that are in chapter 1. We are sure. Oida men, we know, and the word here, the Greek word for know means to know something that is commonly known, that is patently obvious, that is known by external facts.
I mean, it is an obvious, basic principle that judgment of God is going to be according to truth. Why? Because God cannot what? Lie! And God is of truth, that's his nature.
Shall not the judge of all the earth, says the Pentateuch, do right? It will be judged according to the truth. In chapter 3, verse 4. Let God be true, but every man a liar. God is true.
That is his nature to be true. And he will judge everything with truth. In 9:14, Paul said, Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. God never does anything that isn't right.
God never makes any evaluation that isn't correct. And if you go back into the Old Testament, again and again and again, the truthfulness of God's nature is. referred to In Psalm 9, there's a great statement in verse 4. For thou hast maintained my right in my cause, thou didst sit on the throne judging right. Verse 8, and he shall judge the world in righteousness.
There's also a great word in Psalm 96, verse 13. Rejoice before the Lord, for he cometh, for he cometh to judge the earth. He shall judge the world with righteousness and the peoples with his truth. God will judge according to the truth.
Now there may be distortion in our perception. But there is no distortion in God's perception. Nobody is exempt. God is going to look at it. God is going to see what is the truth, and God is going to judge on that basis.
In Psalm 145, 17, it says, The Lord is righteous in all his ways and holy in all his works. And that has to do with his works of judgment as well as any other works. I was just thinking of a verse in Isaiah. If I can find the right one. Yes, 45, 19.
I have not spoken in secret in a dark place of the earth. I said not unto the seed of Jacob, Seek ye me in vain. I, the Lord, speak righteousness, and I declare things that are right. See, God doesn't do anything wrong. He doesn't make any wrong evaluations.
There is distortion in the human world, not in God's. See? As I said earlier, there is something in us that wants to tend to exonerate us all the time, right? Oh, God would never do that. Oh, I'm basically a good person.
Oh, it'll all be all right in the end, it'll all work out. You listen to me. We are so used to mercy. that we trade on it. We are so used to God not killing us when we sin that we expect not to be killed.
Yet the Bible says the wages of sin is what? Death. Every time you sin, God has a perfect right to snuff your life out. But we are so used to mercy. That instead of seeing it for what it is, we abuse it, you see.
He's not going to kill me for that. It'll be alright. And he is so gracious. But instead of us out of love being grateful for his graciousness, We tend as human beings to trade on it. and distort the perspective.
Look at 1 Corinthians chapter 4, and I think Paul gives us a good word. In verse 3, I'm going to say more about what I just said, too, either tonight or next time. I got a feeling it'll be next time. But in verse three of chapter four of First Corinthians. Paul says, with me it is a very small thing.
That I should be judged by you. or by man's judgment. I don't even judge myself.
Now that is a marvelous admission. Paul is saying, look. It is not even an issue with me to be judged by men. Because I am well aware that man's judgment is hopelessly distorted. That he cannot properly make an evaluation.
That he does not make the right judgment because man lacks the knowledge of the truth. He does not perceive truly other people, and he does not even perceive himself. Paul even says, I don't judge myself. For when I know nothing against myself, in verse 4, when I can't even find anything wrong with me, that doesn't justify me. It just shows my inability.
To see the truth, it is God who judges me. Therefore, I judge nothing before the time when the Lord will come and bring to light the hidden things of darkness and make manifest the counsels of the heart. Man's judgment does not square with the facts. But God does. And the problem with the moralist, you see, is the moralist thinks he is okay because, as Paul said to the Corinthians later, he is judging himself by himself.
Listen to Hebrews. Chapter 4.
Okay. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight. Listen to this one. But all things are naked and opened under the eyes of him with whom we have to do. Oh man.
Does that put us in a vulnerable place? Every sin you have ever committed, you might as well have committed on a full-size screen in front of God. Every evil thought we have ever thought, every evil word we have ever spoken, every evil deed we have ever done has been done in full presence of God's awareness. And you know what he thinks about sin? He hates it.
And we keep doing it right in front of him. Seeing then that we have a great high priest. Jesus, the Son of God. Then he goes on to say, let's come boldly. In other words, if we know we're exposed to God, then we better run to the one who can mediate between us and God, right?
The Lord Jesus. God's judgment is not predicated on outward appearance. It is not predicated on. profession, it is predicated on the real truth. Frankly, and this might give you a little insight.
The hope of a hypocrite. The hope of a hypocrite is that God will judge him by something else besides the truth. That is the hypocrite's hope. If you're sitting in this church and you've never really given your heart to God and you've never come to Christ, but you're just kind of playing the religious game and you want to act religious and make people think you're religious and you're a part of the whole system, your basic hope is that you're not ever going to be judged on the truth, but that you're going to be judged on the lie you're living. But you won't.
You see, the hypocrite does not want to be judged by the reality of what he is. He wants to hide behind, in the case of the Jew, his national identity or his church affiliation, or his baptism, or his rule keeping, or his morality, or the fact that he's a quote-unquote good guy. But man looks on the outward appearance. 1 Samuel 16:7 says, and God looks on the Heart. And he judges by knowledge.
And if he does, then verse three follows. If God judges on the proper Basis of Knowledge and truth. Thinkest thou this, O man? That judgest them who do such things and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God? You think you're gonna get away?
When God judges on the basis of the truth and on the basis of your knowledge, and you show your knowledge because you judge others. And God knows you do the same thing you judge others for doing. You think you're going to escape when they're not? Guess again.
Now that's preaching to the conscience folks. That's to the quick. That's a direct hit personal application. Because the moralists and the Jews think they're going to escape. And there are people today who go to the church, they may go to a Lutheran church or a Presbyterian church or a Baptist church or a Catholic church or an Episcopalian church or whatever kind of church, and they think they're going to escape.
Then they may sit in judgment on an immoral world while in their heart they're just filled with the same stuff. They're like whited sepulchers on the outside, inside full of dead men's bones. And then he says, Do you think, and he uses the word Legidzemai, do you? Estimate, or are you of the opinion, or are you calculating that you're going to get away? When it's obvious to God that you must know the rules because you're condemning them in others, and here you are doing the same thing?
It's kind of interesting if the intensity of that verse is lost in the English. Dr. Barnhouse was commenting on this verse, and I thought he made a marvelous. Commentary, he said. This is my translation.
You dummy. Do you really figure that you have doped out an angle that will let you go up against God and get away with it? You don't have a ghost of a chance. There's no escape. Do you understand that?
No escape. This means you, the respectable person, sitting in judgment on others and remaining unrepentant yourself for the evil in your heart. You dummy. You will not escape. That last little phrase, you will not escape.
Tells us about the moralist. Number one, he cannot avoid being judged. Number two, when he's judged, he will not be able to avoid being condemned. And number three, when he's condemned, he will not be able to avoid being executed. In 1 John 3:20, and I'm going to.
Just close with this. point we won't go on to the third one although It's tremendous. But 1 John 3.20. Says what I just said. Listen to this.
Beloved. If our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart and knoweth what? All things I mean, if our conscience is self-condemning, can you imagine how condemning God must be with an infinitely holy knowledge of everything? You know, God is building us a conscience. Conscience is like pain.
Pain. Calls you to a halt when your body is being injured, and conscience calls you to a halt when your soul is being injured. Conscience does the same thing pain does in the spiritual dimension. And if our conscience. Let's us know that we're evil if our conscience condemns us and our conscience is a part of our fallenness.
Can you imagine how God must condemn us? who is unfallen and eternally and infinitely holy. And so, what he's saying in verse 3 is: do you think? You, of all people who know God's law and condemn it in others, do you think you can break it and miss judgment? Look at Hebrews chapter 12, and I'll close with this passage.
Hebrews twelve twenty five. And really, we've talked about hypocrisy tonight, haven't we? See that you refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spoke on earth. Much more shall not we escape.
If we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven. whose voice then shook the earth. But now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more, I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word yet once more signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Wherefore, receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear, for our God is a.
Consuming fire.
Now what is he talking about? The comparison is with Israel. At Mount Sinai, And he says They didn't escape when they refused to hear him who spoke on earth. When they refused to hear the voice of God that thundered out of the mountain of Sinai. They didn't escape.
That whole nation died in the wilderness. And if they didn't escape when God spoke from earth, when God speaks the gospel from heaven, do you think you'll escape? When you don't accept it? How much greater judgment when God speaks from a heavenly throne than when he spoke from an earthly mountain. Our God will judge, for he's a consuming fire.
In chapter 2, he says. If the word spoken by angels was steadfast, and that refers to the Mosaic law given at Sinai, if the law of Moses given by the angels Was steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just judgment. In other words, if God judged those people on the old Testament level, who received the law. How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation, which was spoken by the Lord? I mean, if they were judged.
Who denied a law spoken by angels, how much more will we be judged who deny a law spoken by Christ Himself, who is greater than angels? That's A very important question. Only Those things which are true. About us. are known to God.
People around us don't know them. They know some of them, not all of them. You don't even know. all of your innermost Motives. For we're so biased in our own favor that we tend even to make good things out of bad things.
But God knows. And you will be judged on the basis of the truth about you. And on the basis of your knowledge. God will judge the moralist. on those two bases.
That's just two out of six, folks. We haven't got you yet. For sure, we'll get you by the time we're done. You say, well, John, what do you do? If I look into my heart, And I see in my heart that I'm not right with God.
And I know the truth. And I'm playing the religious game and I may be condemning the sin in others. And knowing that it's all boiling within me, and I've restrained it for the sake of my self-righteousness. And I know that God knows it all, and when God sees it all, He'll send me to hell. What do I do?
How do I escape? There's only one place. And that's to run to Jesus Christ. Because the Lord Jesus Christ has already. Paid the penalty, hasn't he?
He's already receive the judgment of God. Fred Barshaw gave me a story. I want to share it with you as we prepare for communion. When tribes roamed Russia. much as the Indian tribes roamed the Americas.
The tribes which controlled the best hunting and the choicest natural resources were the tribes which had the strongest and wisest leaders. The single tribe which controlled the very best of the territory was the tribe with the most powerful and the most wise leader. One particular tribe maintained its control of the choice land because its leader was not only the most physically powerful, but the most wise of all. And the success of the tribe was due to the fairness and the equity and the wisdom of the laws this great leader gave and enforced upon his people. His word was law, and among his greatest laws were that parents must be loved and honored.
He also said that murder was punishable by death, and stealing was to be severely punished. The tribe was prospering greatly when suddenly a disturbing thing began to happen.
Someone in the tribe was stealing. It was reported to the great leader that this was going on, and he sent out the proclamation that if the thief was caught, he would receive that severe punishment: ten lashes. from the tribal whip master. Stealing continued despite the warning, so he raised it to 20 lashes. It went on, so he raised it to 30 lashes, and finally he raised it to 40 lashes and knew there was only one person in the whole tribe that could survive that lashing, and that was him.
Because he was superior in strength. Finally, the thief was caught. To the horror of everyone, it was his own mother. The tribe was in shock. What was the leader going to do?
His law was that in everything Parents were to be loved and honored. But thieves were to be whipped. Great arguments arose on the day of judgment as it approached. Was he going to satisfy his love and save his mother? Or was he going to satisfy his law and have her die under the whip?
Because she could never endure that.
Soon, tribal members were divided and even making wagers on what he would do, and finally, the judgment day came. The tribe was gathered around a great compound in the center of which a large post was driven into the ground. The leader's great throne sat in the place of prominence, and with great pomp and ceremony, the leader entered, took his place on the throne, and the silence was deafening.
Soon as frail little mother was brought in between two towering warriors, they tied her to the post. The crowd murmured in debate: Will he satisfy his love at the expense of his law, or his law at the expense of his love? The tribal whipmaster entered, a powerful man with bulging muscles, a great leather whip in his hand. As he approached the little lady, the warriors ripped her shirt off her, exposing her frail little back to the cruelty of the lash. Everyone gasped.
Was the leader really going to let her die? He sat staring without moving. Every eye was darting from him to the whip master and back again. The whipmaster took his stance. His great arm cracked the whip in the air as he prepared to bring the first lash upon her.
In every heart was the question, would he allow his love to be violated or his law? Just as the whipmaster started to bring his powerful arm forward with the first cutting stroke on that frail little back, the leader held up his hand to halt the punishment. A great sigh went up from the tribe. His love was going to be satisfied. But what about his law?
They watched him rise from his throne and he strode toward his mother. As he walked, he was removing his own shirt. He threw it aside and proceeded to wrap his great arms around his little mother, exposing that huge, muscular back to the whipmaster, and then breaking the heavy silence, he commanded, proceed with the punishment. Thus, both his law and his love were satisfied. The Bible says the wages of sin is what?
Yeah. And the Bible says Jesus died. for our sins. He satisfied his love. He died in our place.
He satisfied his law. He died for sin. And if you come to Christ. The judgment you should receive. Christ takes in your behalf.
What a gift. You're listening to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. John's current study is called Without Excuse.
Well, friend, before the lesson, I read a letter from a man who has benefited greatly from grace to you, in particular from the MacArthur Study Bible. Everything in the study Bible, the cross-references, the maps, the charts, and especially the 25,000 study notes written by John, all of it is there to help you better understand Scripture and apply it to your life.
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Our web address, one more time, GTY. And now for the entire Grace to U staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Be back tomorrow as John MacArthur continues his study titled Without Excuse. With a hard look at God's judgment and what's required to be spared from it. It's another half hour of Unleashing God's Truth one verse at a time on Grace to You.
