Verdict Guilty

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Now, here's today's podcast, From Pathway to Victory. God's Word with you every day on this Bible teaching program. On today's edition of Pathway to Victory, it's true there's nothing we can do to change our guilt before God, but there's everything God is willing to do if we'll allow Him to do it. See, we can't earn God's righteousness, but we can receive it as a gift.

But in a culture where some people seem to have everything they need, many fail to see their need for a Savior. Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress opens to Romans chapter 3 to explain the severity of man's sinful condition. Now, here's our Bible teacher to introduce today's message.

Dr. Jeffress? Thanks, David, and welcome again to Pathway to Victory. Many Americans are feeling a groundswell of enthusiasm about our future. Yes, we've been granted a four-year reprieve from the oppressive fight against Christian values and the blatant efforts to silence our voice.

But friends, let's be clear about two things. First, it's not our calling as Christians to save America. Our calling as Bible-believing followers of Christ is to bring the life-changing hope of Jesus Christ to every American.

If we really want to change America, we need to change the hearts of Americans, and only Jesus Christ can do that. In that spirit, would you join me in this all-out effort to shine the light of God's truth into the dark places of our world while there's still time? By giving generously to this nonprofit ministry, you become a missionary through Pathway to Victory. You see, your gift catapults the good news of Jesus Christ into households, into cars, and into cities, states, and countries where Pathway to Victory is heard, and we couldn't accomplish this without your help.

So, thank you for your financial gift today. I'm going to send you a Bible study tool that I found to be indispensable. It's an illustrated guide to the Apostle Paul. Through colorful illustrations and easy-to-read commentary, this guide will illuminate your understanding of Paul's ministry and how his missionary journeys impact your life today.

I'm going to say more about this illustrated guide and other resources later in the program, but right now it's time to get started with today's study in Romans chapter 3. I titled my message, Verdict Guilty. Today, people don't take the subject of sin seriously. Author John Ortberg notes that today the accusation you have sinned is usually said with a grin. It's usually said as an inside joke. Indeed, we tend to use the word sin in a frivolous way. For example, if you're trying to describe a hot vacation place, what do you say?

Come to Las Vegas, Sin City. Or sometimes we use the word sin to describe a highly choleric dessert on a menu. Absolutely what? Sinful. I was thinking this week, what if we changed words? To have some fun, instead of using the word sin, what if we use the word cancer? Come to Las Vegas, Cancer City.

How many people would sign up for that destination? Or if you were looking at a menu that said this dessert is absolutely cancerous, would you be tempted to order? No, cancer is no laughing matter. It is a serious disease.

It's certainly nothing to joke about. And neither is sin. Sin is a disease that destroys our quality of life in this world, but it also robs us of eternal life in the next world. And the bad news is, we've all contracted this deadly disease called sin. And that's why we need a divine remedy. That's the theme of the book of Romans. And today we're going to continue our study of the book of Romans by looking at Romans chapter three, beginning with verse nine, as Paul reminds us of the seriousness of the human condition.

He says, what then? Are we better than they? Not at all, for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin. Notice Paul has been talking about other people, the moralist, the pagan, the Jew without Christ, but then he adds that damning word, we.

Are we better than they? No. We have all contracted this deadly disease called sin. I've contracted it. The pope has contracted it.

You have contracted it. We are all under sin. That's what Paul is saying here. And so Paul spends these final verses of Romans three summarizing the fact that we stand guilty before God.

And it's interesting to me how he makes his case in this final summation. Paul has already said in chapter one, we're all under sin. But remember, Paul was writing primarily to Jews, Jews living in Rome. And they probably thought, well, Paul, we're not guilty. We're God's own people.

We don't need Christ. And so to show the guilt of all humanity in verses 10 through 18, Paul quotes from the Old Testament. He quotes mainly from the Psalms and then from Isaiah to show that even the Old Testament gives this negative diagnosis of the human heart. And that's why, look at your Bibles. In verses 10 through 18, you see those words either in all capital letters or in a quotation marks. These are quotations from the Old Testament that prove the fact we are guilty before God.

What is the stain? What is the evidence that is visible that we indeed are corrupt? Paul says, first of all, our sinfulness is seen by our corrupt desires.

Our corrupt desires. Look at verse 10 of Romans three. For as it is written, now he goes to the Old Testament, there is none righteous, no, not even one. There is none who understands. There is none who seeks for God. For all have turned aside. Together they have become useless. There is none who does good.

There is not even one. In these three short verses, Paul uses the term no one, not even one six times to show the desperate condition of the human heart. Notice in these verses five statements that Paul makes about us. First of all, he says no one is righteous. Verse 10, no one is righteous. That word righteous means to be in a right standing with God. He says nobody is righteous. Now again, we have trouble with that belief.

And we say Paul has to be wrong here. There is a great difference between different people. There are good people and there are bad people. Not according to God's perspective. You see, the reason we say people are good and evil is we're judging them by our own righteousness. But God has a different perspective.

Let me illustrate it for you this way. Let's say you're walking down the sidewalk in a major city and you look up and you see a skyscraper more than 100 stories in the air. And next to that skyscraper, there's a two story McDonald's hamburger place. Now as you look from street level, you see a great difference between that skyscraper and that McDonald's. But if you were in outer space looking down from a spaceship on top of those two structures, they would look exactly the same height. It's all a matter of your perspective.

And it's the same way with us. We who are sinful human beings, we see a lot of difference between people, between the righteous and the unrighteous. But those differences are minuscule from God's perfect perspective of perfection. In our perspective, we see a great deal of difference between a Walt Disney who brought pleasure to millions of children and an Adolf Hitler who murdered millions of children.

But listen to me, from the perspective of a perfect God, there is no difference. We have all sinned. There's not one righteous among us.

No, not even one. Secondly, he says, no one understands. That is another evidence of our corrupt desires is nobody understands the truth that Christ came to die for us. Paul said it this way in 1 Corinthians 2.14, but a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually appraised.

By understanding, he's saying there is no one who apart from God understands to the point of salvation, who willingly confesses his sin and his need for Christ. Number three, he says in verse 11, there is no one who seeks for God. That is another evidence of man's corrupt desires that absolutely no one is searching for God.

Now, if ever there was an error in the Bible, here it is. Because we just know, we think that's just not true. There are millions of people around the world who are searching for and worshiping God. Listen to me, the fact that there are thousands of religions in the world today is not a testimony of man's godliness.

It's a testimony of man's ungodliness. That was Paul's argument in Romans chapter 1. He said every person on the planet has received a knowledge of the true God, but he has rejected that knowledge of the true God and replaced it with a God of his own making. And the fact that people are running around worshiping other gods is not a testimony to man's godliness, it's to his ungodliness. There's no one who searches for God. You say, well, if that's true, how does anybody ever find the true God? The answer is the only way you'll search for God is if God first does a work in your heart.

God has to be the initiator. Remember what Jesus said in John 644, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. Anyone who wants to is free, absolutely free to come to Christ. The problem is it's not in our nature to want to come to Christ.

God has to do a work, a change in our life before we will ever respond to the gospel. Number four, he said another evidence of our corrupt desires is that all have turned aside from God. This word translated turned aside is a military term. It means to desert, to turn your back on. That's what he says, we have all turned our back on God. Isaiah the prophet said it this way in Isaiah 53, for all we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one of us to our own way. And then he says as a climax to this section, we have become useless.

The natural person apart from God is absolutely useless. That word translated useless in Greek is a word that refers to milk that has become rancid or sour. I used to love chocolate milk when I was little, used to drink it all the time. Until one day when I was about 10 years old, I was down here at church. And before RAs or whatever it was, I went down to Komen Hall.

And Mark remember this, next to Komen Hall there was a room with some vending machines in it. And you'd go in there, I went in there and put my dime in to get some chocolate milk. It came down the little deal and I opened up the carton and I took a big gulp of it. That milk must have been there since the days of the ark. I mean it was awful.

I spewed it out of my mouth and I have never had chocolate milk since that time. I mean it was rancid, it was horrible, it was useless. Well that's exactly the word Paul uses to describe our good works before God. The Bible says the best you and I can do is like sour milk. It's like a filthy rag unto God. Our guiltiness before God is seen first of all through our corrupt desires. Secondly, the stain of our sin is evidenced by our corrupt discourse.

Look at verses 13 and 14. Their throat is an open grave and with their tongues they keep deceiving. The poison of asp is under their lips whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.

Our problem is with our mouth because what comes from our mouth? Our stinky speech evidences the corruption that is in our heart. Paul is saying the greatest evidence of a person's sin, his corruption, is his corrupt discourse. Paul has talked about our corrupt desires, our corrupt discourse. Thirdly, notice our sin is evidenced by our corrupt deeds. Look at verse 15. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their paths and in the path of peace they have not known. It's interesting how Paul is going through the different body parts to show we've all been infected with sin. Our tongue, our mouth, and now our feet. And one of the evidences of our guilt before God is our propensity toward violence. Our propensity to violence, the propensity of our culture to celebrate violence, to watch violence, to take its entertainment value from violence as a result and an evidence of our corruption. And we find the climax in verse 18.

The bottom line issue in all of this corruption is this. Look at verse 18. There is no fear of God before their eyes.

Ladies and gentlemen, that is the greatest evidence of our guilt before God is our lack of fear of God. I saw a great illustration of this several months ago. It was January and I was in New York and I was supposed to come home on a particular day, but we got snowed in and all the airplane flights were canceled. Nothing was moving in the city. So I found myself having to stay there an extra day.

I'd finished my assignments, there was nothing to do that night and nothing was moving out there. So a couple of blocks from my hotel, there was a Broadway play that was on. And it was a play that's won all kind of Tony awards. And it's a play everybody was telling me I needed to go see. So I went up to the box office, there was one ticket left. And it was in a box seat that overlooked both the stage and the audience.

And so the play began. Now those of you who know me, you know I'm not a prude, okay? I'm not easily offended. But what I saw that night was the most vile, offensive thing I have ever witnessed. And several times I almost got up and walked out like I have some movies before. But something told me I needed to stay. I knew I was going to be preaching this passage is one thing. And I wanted to see if this play was going to go the direction that I thought it was about to go.

And sure enough it did. At the climax of the program, there on stage were actors mocking, ridiculing the crucifixion of our Savior. Portraying Jesus in a way, and I'm not exaggerating, I can't say in a mixed audience what they did with Jesus. As I looked out at the audience, what was their response to that blasphemy of Jesus Christ? They were applauding, they were laughing, they were cheering uncontrollably. As I watched that mass of people applauding, cheering, laughing at the ridicule of our Savior, I thought perhaps this is how Paul felt. As he sat in that second story apartment in Corinth overlooking the city of Corinth and saying, all have sinned, all are under the judgment of God. That's the human condition. And it's not just reserved for people on Broadway laughing at the name of Christ.

It is all of us, Paul says, who are under the curse of sin. What's the solution? What can we do to change the human condition? Is it education? Is it reformation? Here's the whole point.

There's nothing we can do. Look at verse 19. Paul says, now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God. And Paul is saying there are no excuses.

There is nothing left to be said about man's condition except one word, guilty. And will you notice he says, at one day, one point, every mouth will be closed. Do you remember in Matthew 7, Jesus said on the judgment day that people will actually be talking. They'll be reasoning and bargaining with God. God, I don't deserve hell. Didn't I do this?

Didn't I do this in your name? At first, people will be talking and rationalizing and seeking to bargain with God. But the Bible says eventually when people see that the standard of our judgment is not other people, it is the perfection of Jesus himself.

Every mouth will be closed. Everyone will understand the truth that all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Look at verse 20. Because by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.

Listen to me. Keeping God's law is impossible. You say, well, if God knew the law is impossible to keep, why did he give it?

Listen to this verse again in the Phillips paraphrase. No man can justify himself before God by a perfect performance of the law's demands. Indeed, it is the straight edge of the law that shows us how crooked we are. That's why God gave the law, not that we could keep it.

But the law is like a ruler that shows us how crooked morally we are. Pastor, this is the most depressing message I have ever heard. I mean, you're offering us no hope. Are you saying there is no hope for the human condition?

Oh, no, I'm not saying that at all. What I'm saying is it's true there's nothing we can do to change our guilt before God. But there's everything God is willing to do if we'll allow him to do it. See, we can't earn God's righteousness, but we can receive it as a gift. And that's why the next major section of Romans begins in the next verse, verse 21, when Paul discusses God's provision for righteousness. He begins with these words, but apart from the law, apart from our works, God has offered us a way to be saved through faith in Christ.

And we're gonna look at that in the weeks ahead. But for those of you right now who may be feeling despondent, discouraged about the condition of your heart, I wanna offer this word of hope. Many years ago, there was an instructor for the Arthur Murray School of Dance. Do you all remember the Arthur Murray School of Dance?

I think there's still one here in Dallas. But anyway, there was a dance instructor who worked for Arthur Murray. And one Saturday night, he came back to his hotel room. He was drunk, fell into bed after a night of partying. And all of a sudden, in the middle of the night, the clock radio went off in the room. The previous guest had said it, and this guy didn't know it. The clock radio goes off, this guy bolts up into bed, and he hears a voice on the radio.

It's a radio preacher. And the preacher said this, If some great disaster were to befall you and you were to die, and you stood before God and he were to ask you, Why should I let you into heaven? What would you have to say to him? And this man sitting on the edge of his bed realized he didn't have anything to say to God. So he kept listening. And as he kept listening, he heard that radio preacher, Dr. Donald Gray Barnhouse, explain how a person could receive God's righteousness by faith in Jesus Christ. And in those early morning hours of that Sunday, that man sitting on the edge of his bed prayed and received Christ as his savior. That Arthur Murray dance instructor was named D. James Kennedy. And of course, he went on to become the famed pastor of the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church.

He's the man who began that evangelism explosion program that has reached millions of people with the gospel of Jesus Christ, and that whole program is built around that question that he heard on the radio in that hotel room. If you were to stand before God and he were to ask you, Why should I let you into heaven? What would you say? By the way, what would you say? What is your answer to that question? There's only one answer. The only reason any of us will be entering into heaven is not because of our goodness.

We have none of it. Because we have received the righteousness of God through Christ that comes through faith. It's no mistake that you're listening to Pathway to Victory right now. God appointed this moment so that you could hear the gospel presented clearly. Let me pose the same question Dr. Kennedy heard on that lonely night long ago. If you were to stand before God and he were to ask you, Why should I let you into heaven?

How would you respond? At Pathway to Victory, we're praying that your answer is that you have trusted in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Well, it's such a privilege to share the truth of Romans with you today, and we've prepared several resources to help deepen your understanding of Paul's liberating message. The first is a one-of-a-kind book called An Illustrated Guide to the Apostle Paul. This colorful book will open your eyes to the political and religious tensions fighting against Paul's efforts in the first century world. As you thumb through the pages, you'll find that Paul's opposition is not so much different than the adversaries who stand in our way these days. Even in a hostile environment, Paul ignited a revolution that continues to this day.

And that's our inspiration right now. You and I together can link arms and tell the world about the freedom that's found in a genuine relationship with Jesus Christ. And when you fuel Pathway to Victory with your generous gift today, I'll say thanks by providing An Illustrated Guide to the Apostle Paul. Although our culture is divided, we are fighting a winnable war because of God's amazing grace. Thanks so much for reaching out with your generous gift today. We couldn't do this without you, David. And when your gift is $75 or more, you'll also receive the Grace-Powered Living Teaching Series on audio and video discs, highlighting chapters 1 through 8 of the Book of Romans.

This teaching series features the complete uncut messages perfect for listening to in the car or watching in your small group Bible study. To request the teaching set, call 866-999-2965 or visit online at ptv.org. You could send your donation by mail right to P.O. Box 223609, Dallas, Texas, 75222. Again, that's P.O. Box 223609, Dallas, Texas, 75222.

I'm David J. Mullins. Many Christians wrestle with wanting to be good enough to deserve God's forgiveness. But no good work could ever stand up to God's righteousness. Be encouraged by the heart of the gospel Thursday on Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. You made it to the end of today's podcast from Pathway to Victory, and we're so glad you're here. Pathway to Victory relies on the generosity of loyal listeners like you to make this podcast possible. One of the most impactful ways you can give is by becoming a Pathway partner. Your monthly gift will empower Pathway to Victory to share the gospel of Jesus Christ and help others become rooted more firmly in His Word. To become a Pathway partner, go to ptv.org slash donate or follow the link in our show notes. We hope you've been blessed by today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.