Anything but Godly ... Anyone but God

Paul's point here is that there is not a single person who has ever lived apart from Christ whose innermost being could be characterized as righteous by God's standards. And to prevent some people from thinking that they might be the exception, that we just don't understand how good they are, they're not that bad, Paul adds that little phrase to that verse, not even one, as if to say, not even you, not even me. We bring to the table our sinfulness and then we look around and when you start looking for it, you see it everywhere. Have you ever met someone who felt like they were basically good and that God would let them into heaven because of that goodness?

Have you ever thought that way? Anyone who thinks that people at their core are basically good has never read Romans chapter 3. The Apostle Paul is about to reveal that inside even the sweetest lady, the kindest child, the gentlest man, and the most pious religious leader is a sinner.

That's hard to admit, but that's what the Bible teaches. Today, Stephen Davey takes you to Romans 3 with a lesson called, Anything but Godly, Anyone but God. In Thomas, Costain's history entitled The Three Edwards, he told the fascinating story of the life of Reinald III, a 14th century duke who ruled over a region now known as Belgium. Reinald was a very overweight man and called behind his back by his Latin nickname Crassus, which means heavy. He argued one day violently with his brother, his younger brother Edward, and Edward mounted a revolt against Reinald and it was successful and Edward's soldiers captured Reinald, but they did not kill him. At Edward's orders, they had a room in the new Kirk castle built around Reinald with a smaller doorway than normal, very slightly normal. Edward then promised his brother that he could regain his title and his property and his rule as soon as he was able to leave the room. That would not have been difficult for many people in these conditions. The room had several windows.

The door to the room was just a little bit smaller than normal, but not barred or locked. All Reinald had to do was lose weight and he would be freed. But Edward took advantage of what he knew of his brother's undisciplined appetites and every day he had brought to Reinald's chamber fresh platters of food, cheeses and meats and sweet foods and brought them tray after tray. Instead of gaining his freedom, Reinald only grew larger and larger. When Edward was eventually asked, as he was often, of cruelty toward his brother, he responded, my brother is not my prisoner. He is his own prisoner. As far as I'm concerned, he is free to leave whenever he so wills. Reinald stayed in that room for 10 years and wasn't released until after Edward died in battle.

However, by then his health was so ruined, he died within one year's time. A man, as it were, enslaved to his own appetite. So Paul will write that man is without excuse.

Chapter one, verse 20 and chapter two, verse one, without excuse again appears in the text. Now, the apostle Paul has been using as his key witnesses to prove the guilt of man. He's used creation. He's used conscience. He's used logic and reason. And he's used history. He uses all of these under the inspiring influence of the Spirit of God to reveal the fact that no man or woman will ever stand before God and say they deserve to get into heaven.

No one will ever say, hey, let me and I ought to be there. Why? He gives us the reasons why. But now I want you to notice at the beginning of verse 10, he brings another witness to the stand. He says at the beginning of the verse, as it is what?

As it is written. In other words, Paul will now add the argument of the Old Testament to his array of prosecution witnesses. He will now bring to the table the record of scripture, which reveals that man is indeed sinful and in deep trouble.

If mankind thought there would be a way to somehow justify his ignorance of creation or or that pounding conscience that he has learned to silence in his own mind and heart, he is about to discover there is absolutely no way in Paul's final argument as he moves toward the climax of his argument that all of mankind is sinful. No one can squirm out from underneath the heavy record of Old Testament sacred scripture. By the way, the apostle Paul uses the perfect tense when he says it is written.

Tenses are very important. The Greek language, it indicates the timelessness, the permanence of what was written. In other words, he is saying, in effect, the Bible was just as authoritative in the first century as it is now in the 21st century. The Bible was just as descriptive of human nature in the first century as it is descriptive of human nature now in the 21st century. It was descriptive of the Roman back then.

It is descriptive of the Englishman, the American now. In fact, the Bible will describe perfectly the human in any generation in any time without exception. Before we dive into these 14 indictments, I keep telling you we're going to get there and get your toe in the water. Let me give you an outline of these next 10 verses.

It may do nothing for you, but I spent a lot of time in it and now I'm going to make you listen to it. In fact, you might want to do what I have done and turn your Bible sideways and write into the margin some key words and you say, wait a second, write into the margin of my Bible, that'll mess it up. I don't want to wear my Bible out. My friend, a Bible that is coming apart usually belongs to somebody who isn't. A tattered Bible is a good evidence of a consecrated believer. So I encourage you to write in the margins, write in the fly leaves, different things that you want to study, different words that come to your heart, different quotes, underlined scripture.

And when you wear it out, shelve it, date it, and then get a new one. It is to be, as it were, worn out. Well, let me have you write a couple of words if you care to in the margin. You could write a bracket or draw a bracket from verse 10 through verse 12 and simply write evil condition. Paul will describe the evil condition of mankind. Verses 13 to 14, he will describe the evil communication of mankind. And then verses 15 through 18, he will describe the evil chaos of mankind.

The evil condition, the evil communication, and the evil chaos. Now in the first category, as Paul describes the evil condition of mankind, he will make six different statements that incriminate humanity. First of all, Paul declares that human beings, all of mankind, is totally degenerate. Look at verse 10. As it is written, there is none righteous, not even one.

And he will quote from Psalm 14 and Psalm 53. There is none righteous, not even one. The word righteous is the Greek word dikaios.

It will appear over 30 times in a variety of forms throughout this letter to the Roman believers. And you need to understand what the word righteous or righteousness means. The basic meaning of the term righteous means, and this is easy to remember, right with God. Righteousness is being right with God. Now when he says there's nobody righteous, immediately somebody would say, well, no, wait a second.

Everybody isn't that bad in the world. In fact, as one man writes, even the most vile person may occasionally do something commendable, right? But the apostle is not speaking of specific acts or even a general pattern of life or behavior. He is referring to man's inner character. Paul's point here is that there is not a single person who has ever lived apart from Christ, whose innermost being could be characterized as righteous by God's standards.

And to prevent some people from thinking that they might be the exception, that we just don't understand how good they are, they're not that bad, Paul adds that little phrase to that verse, not even one, as if to say, not even you, not even me. And so the truth is we are blind to our unrighteousness because we really don't want to see it. And we have learned to ignore it. We have learned how to overlook it, to pay no attention to it. But Paul comes along and here's the bad side of the good news. The bad side is we are all unrighteous.

All of us, no one is exempt from this indictment. We are in effect surrounded by unrighteousness. We bring to the table our sinfulness and then we look around and when you start looking for it, you see it everywhere. That's why humanity is given this indictment that there is nobody who is right with God. The second thing Paul says about the evil condition of mankind is that man is not only totally degenerate but he is spiritually dense. Not a very flattering thing to say, but Paul says in effect the same thing. There, verse 11, is none who understands.

There is none who understands. Now he's speaking in the context of spiritual issues and truth. The world will talk about spiritual things.

They'll talk about spiritual experiences and issues. They'll use the word spiritual. But he says the world outside of Christ does not understand spiritual things. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians, a natural man that is an unbeliever does not accept the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to him for he cannot understand them. They are spiritually discerned or appraised. In Ephesians, Paul wrote that unsaved individuals walk in the futility of their mind being darkened in their understanding. 2 Corinthians 4 says the God of this world, the enemy, the devil, the God of this world has blinded the minds of those who do not believe. Is there anybody outside of Christ who gets it? Is there anybody who understands it? Paul says nobody. Nobody catches on.

No one. No one can grasp spiritual truth apart from Jesus Christ. Now this doesn't mean, by the way, that an unbeliever can't have a rational understanding of Christianity. It doesn't mean that somebody who doesn't even know the Lord can't even teach the Bible. In one sense, a scholar can indeed understand and explain theological principles as well as any other area of human knowledge.

Why? Because theological truth is logical truth. Therefore, an unbelieving professor can discuss the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and miss the point. He can talk about it historically.

He can talk about the effects medically. He can talk about the historical Jesus, but he misses the point. James Montgomery Boice, who's now with the Lord, wrote of his days at Harvard University. James pastored for years in Philadelphia. He talked about at Harvard and the Divinity School where non-Christian professors presented the doctrines of Christianity so brilliantly that we Christians would marvel at their lectures and be edified by them, and even unbelieving students would rise to their feet and applaud.

But these professors did not believe what they were teaching, and if they had been asked their opinion of what they were so accurately presenting, they would have said, it's all utter nonsense. Yesterday I was running around doing a few errands and I bumped into a guy from our church and he told me about a friend of his who was entering Duke Divinity School. And he said, my friend is so amazed because he's discovered there are atheists on the faculty of the seminary. And I told him that's not unusual.

It's not out of the ordinary. It's true in seminaries across the land. I have heard atheists preach before and do a great job communicating. I have read some of the most moving discourses on the life of Christ that did indeed edify me by men who denied his deity, men who today are in hell, but they could explain the facts and describe it brilliantly, but they did not have faith in Christ. I believe that I'm preaching to people today who know the facts, but have never exercised faith in Jesus Christ in a personal way. 2 Timothy 3 says, but realize this, Timothy, Paul writes to him, men are lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, unholy, ungrateful, unloving.

This is the part that I like. He says, so descriptive of what Paul is saying in Romans 3, he says, they hold to a form of godliness, but they have denied the power. You know what that means? It means they have the form of religion. They have the form of society. They have the vocabulary. They have the language. They have the activity.

They have the services. They have the candles, the prayers and all those things, but they deny the source of power for that which is truly godly. And then this phrase in verse 7, they are always learning. They're always learning and yet never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. It's about as clear as it can get.

They know the facts. They do not have faith. Paul writes next as he continues to describe the evil condition of mankind, that mankind is not only degenerate and dense spiritually, he is thirdly, spiritually disconnected. He writes in verse 11, there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God. This is probably one of the most condemning statements he can make of man. What does it mean, no one seeks for God?

Well, let's begin to answer that by answering the flip side of that question. What does it mean to seek for God? When you seek the kingdom of God, first is a priority. When you are seeking God in his righteousness, God becomes the focus of everything. God becomes the source of everything.

He is the beginning and the end of everything. To truly seek for God is to respect his commandments. It is to adore and worship his sovereign majesty. It is to feed on the truth of his word which you love. It is to obey him.

It is to speak to him in prayer. It is to live consciously in the presence of this true and living God and nobody in the natural unbelieving world can do that. Therefore, no one outside of Christ seeks after God. In fact, Paul wrote in Philippians 2 21, the natural inclination of man is to seek after their own interests, not after Jesus Christ. No one seeks after God unless they are sons and daughters of God. Thus the world at large is not seeking after God. But wait, didn't the prophet Jeremiah say that if you seek me with your heart, you'll find me?

Sounds like a contradiction to Romans chapter three, not unless you compare scripture with scripture with other scripture and then with other scripture until you discover the person who is seeking after God is the one whom God has already found. We love God because he first loved us. You saw it after Jesus Christ because Jesus Christ came to seek and to save that which was lost, Luke 19 10. Who loved first? God. Who sought first? God.

Who initiates salvation? God. You know how big that makes us? That's not quite small enough. Do you know how big and merciful and gracious and loving that makes God?

It is impossible to understand. Jesus Christ said, no man can come to me except the father draws him. Jesus said, all that the father has given me will come to me. And the one who comes to me, I'll not cast out. Jesus Christ has to draw you and the father has to draw you and the spirit has to draw you.

I'm not here today, by the way, to convince anybody. I can't draw you to God the father. I can only be the messenger of God that delivers what Paul said in Romans 10, the message whereby people can exercise faith then in the truth of that message. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by what? The word of God. How shall they believe in one that never heard?

How shall they hear unless there is a messenger, a preacher? But I don't draw you. In fact, you can't even draw yourself. And if you're here and you're an unbeliever, I submit to you that you need to go home or maybe even now in your heart begin to plead that God the father will draw you. We've lost the sense of urgency and salvation that was present 150 years ago and beyond. We have trivialized God and we have magnified ourselves. Why can't you draw yourself?

Why can't I draw you? Well, because the Bible makes it very clear that outside of Jesus Christ, a person is dead. In Ephesians chapter 2 verse 1, we're told that we're dead in sin and trespasses. Your spirit apart from the quickening of Jesus Christ is dead.

It isn't sick. It's dead. It isn't unconscious. It's dead.

It isn't in a coma. It's dead. Though the world speaks of their spiritual experiences, they have no spirit that's alive to have any experience.

They speak of emotion and attribute that to the word spirit. But the spirit of the world is dead. It's a corpse, as it were.

What can a corpse do? Bring a plate of food before him. He isn't interested. Why? He isn't hungry. Why? He's dead.

Show him large glossy pictures of a ski resort in the Swiss Alps and he won't be interested in skiing. Why? Because he's dead.

You roll in front of him your big screen TV and replay the last 60 seconds of the Super Bowl when the Patriots got lucky. Just trying to divide my audience to know where my friends are. You're not going to hear one cheer. Why?

He didn't care why. He's dead. Ladies and gentlemen, the world is spiritually dead. You say, but look at all the religions in the world. Look at all the mentioning of God. Look at all the praying and all the ceremony. My friends, that's simply proof that people are running not to him but from him and they are hiding behind the fig leaves of their religiosity like Adam who sinned and hid from God until he wove together this apron and then he thought that he could present himself and God took that away and brought to him the skin of an animal that died as a picture of the need for sacrifice.

People are simply putting makeup on a corpse in their religious efforts to look better and to seem alive. Yes, they are searching. They are searching. They are seeking, but they are seeking anyone but God.

Paul says, there's none who seeks for God. A few days ago, I was picking up a book for my daughter at Borders Bookstore and before I ever got in, they had this table out there stacked with books, you know, 50% off. That table is there for people like me and so I looked a little bit and in light of what I had been studying, I just sort of scanned for some author who reveals the wandering heart of man who wants anything but godliness, who wants anyone but God.

And it wasn't hard. There were more than I wanted to buy. But I found a couple of these as people go to other sources to find meaning in life. This one is called When Planets Promise Love. Your Romantic Destiny Through Astrology.

On the back, it says, are you searching for a successful romantic partnership? This book presents proven celestial matchmaking methods. Identify what you want and need in a partner and the most favorable times to meet him or her when romantic Venus or passionate Mars are in your houses of love. Discover which planetary ties are absolutely essential for ensuring compatible temperaments, lasting attraction and appreciation of each other.

Let your love planet reveal how to find a romance that is truly cosmic. It's kind of scary, I think, but anyhow, in other words, really, let me just summarize the premise this way. Rather than seek wisdom from the creator of all things, seek it from something that's been created.

Seek anyone but God. This one here, I'm afraid, is a wider audience written by a best-selling author. His best-selling on the New York Times list, James Von Prague, is Talking to Heaven. He has followed that up with his book Reaching to Heaven.

I read most of it in the last few days. In it, he details conversations with his spirit guides. I believe he does have spirit guides.

I believe they're demonic. And because Paul wrote in Galatians chapter one that if someone comes, even if it's an angelic being delivering a gospel to you that's different than what you've already received, let him be accursed. I have no doubt that he hears the whisperings of these guides that he thanks, guides that I believe will not only deceive him, but many others. He talks about heaven in this book, which everybody's interested in, no matter who it is out there in the street. Ask them about heaven, they're going to believe in that. Ask them about hell, they're going to probably disagree about that, but they're going to believe in some sort of heaven. He says here, his spirit guides have informed him that you will have a chance to create your own home on the astral level, which is his synonym for heaven. Perhaps you would like to have a small cottage with your own garden surrounded by a babbling brook somewhere in the countryside.

You will be able to conceive of and create your home with your own thoughts. Once, he writes, when I was doing a television interview, I did a reading for a young lady in the audience. That's where he serves as a medium from some departed spirit. During the reading, he claims, her father came through to me, which I believe would be demonic influence, not this one, according to scripture.

He is in torment now, if he doesn't know Christ. But anyhow, he says, her father came to me and she asked me what her father had been doing. So I asked her father and he said that he was having a great time at the races, betting on the horses. The host of the show glanced over me with an odd look and said, oh, come on, you mean to tell me there is horse racing in heaven? I told him, well, for this man, that is heaven to him. He enjoys it. The girl turned to me and gleefully declared, that is my father.

He went to the track every Saturday. So the spirit guides are saying that heaven is whatever you want it to be. How tragic. When I read this, I thought, how tragic that even in heaven, we don't escape our selfishness and our self-centeredness.

Heaven is just an expression, an opportunity for me to be as selfish as I can possibly be and create an eternity just for me. You know what I'm looking forward to being delivered from? Me. How about you? Not me, you. Got to make sure that comes out right.

I'm looking forward to being delivered from Stephen Davey. Selfish, centered me. But the world wants anything but godliness. It wants anyone but God. Paul said it this way, however, and this is the record of scripture. He writes, there is none righteous, not even one. There is none who understands.

There is none who seeks for God. Thank you for joining us. This is Wisdom for the Heart, the Bible teaching ministry of Stephen Davey.

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