But Now (Romans Week 6) by Rich Nathan

The text for this week is Romans 3v21-26. After sharing that we all stand condemned before God, Paul radically pivots to the gospel in one of the greatest paragraphs ever written. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Good morning. You know, it just struck me, I I I love the fact that here I am, I'm a Jewish pastor meeting in a synagogue. We together as Christians are praying for a Muslim background missionary in Egypt to bear witness during the month of Ramadan. Wrap your head around that. Anyway, it's good to be with you and uh grateful that you all came out today. So if I were to ask you what your favorite movie is of all time, you don't have to yell it out. But what would that be? You know, they they they've surveyed, you know, thousands and thousands of people, and uh typically in the top ten, there's Godfather, Godfather one, Godfather two, they have um uh Lord of the Rings is up there. Do you know what the number one all-time favorite movie is, according to the internet uh movie database? Number one Shawshank Redemption. Oh really? No! Say it ain't so it is. And uh if you've not seen the movie and you plan to see it, I want to encourage you right now to run out of the room with your fingers in your ears, because I'm going to give a spoiler alert, okay? So so the movie, Shawshank Redemption, uh, is with Tim Robbins and uh uh uh Morgan Freeman. And Tim Robbins plays a guy named Andy Dufresne who was uh wrongly convicted of a double homicide, and uh he's in a terrible situation uh towards the end of the movie. He is facing life imprisonment without parole because he uh was betrayed by a warden who he's been helping. And so you see the prison guards going down to Andy's cell, about to grab him, they're going to uh lock him up forever. They get to the cell, Andy's not there, because there is a uh behind a poster in his cell, Andy has been secretly digging a tunnel out of the cell for decades. And uh just when they're about to arrest him, he makes his way through the tunnel, they see a hole in the wall, and then you see the police come and grab the warden because Andy has turned over all this evidence of the warden's corruption. At the end of the movie, Andy is on a beach with Morgan Freeman, they're free, and there's this massive turnaround. What a wonderful story of turnaround. I love stories of turnaround, don't you? Where you think there's gonna be disaster, and then all of a sudden uh there is just an amazing escape. The movie Dunkirk is like that, right? You know, we we have the British bottled up on the beach, they're about to be wiped out by the Nazis, and then all these boats come and uh deliver 330,000 Allied troops back to England to fight another day. Well, the greatest turnaround in history is not Shaw Shank and it's not Dunkirk, and we're gonna read about it in today's passage that one New Testament scholar said was the greatest paragraph ever written. And I don't know that that's an overstatement. If you want to have a key to understanding the entire Bible, literally, like if you want to understand the whole Bible, you can't do better than to really understand what's going on in the passage that I'm going to be speaking from today. It will open up everything. If you deeply understand what's happening here in Romans 3, 21 to 26, you'll understand basically the whole narrative of Scripture. And so today the paragraph begins with the word but now, and that's the title of my talk. But now. Let's invite the Lord's presence. Lord, we welcome you, and I pray that your Holy Spirit would be active through the preaching of your word. I pray that your spirit would open our hearts, and I do ask, Lord, that you'd um uh bless this message. I pray that it would be powerful and that we'd grasp the height and depth and breadth and width of the love of Christ for us. We welcome you in Jesus' name. Amen. So I'm looking at Romans 3, 21 to 26. Pastor Michael has encouraged us to bring our Bibles, so we'll just keep reminding you as you know, we'll move from 3% of you to five to 10, and pretty soon we'll be carrying Bibles in. But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the law and the prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of his blood to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished. He did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. So let me read verse 21 again. But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been made known to which the law and the prophets testify. Let's remember the argument in Romans up till now. Pastor Michael reminded us of this argument last week. But essentially, the Apostle Paul has been acting as a great prosecutor. And he has indicted the entire human race. And he's essentially argued that the whole human race has one single problem, and the problem is called sin. And so he's indicted the Gentiles for their failure to work out the implications of what creation has revealed and what their consciences have revealed. They rejected creation and they rejected conscience. And he also indicts the Jewish people for failing to obey the written law that was given through God's scriptures. So the whole human race is standing before God guilty. And the prosecution rests. And then the human race turns to its defense attorney and says, okay, now present a defense. And the defense attorney stands up and says, I have no defense, we rest. There's no alibi witnesses, there's no exculpatory evidence, there's nothing that will release us from this indictment. We are guilty before God, and we can say nothing in our defense. And the Apostle Paul underlines this in this text in Romans 3, 23. And to understand what it means to be guilty, let's read verse 23. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. What does it mean that we fall short of God's glory? Well, it could mean that we fail to live out God's intention for us. God intended for human beings to represent Him to the rest of creation. We are the image and glory of God. And we're to show to the rest of creation what God is like. But because of sin, we don't reflect God to the rest of creation. We're like broken mirrors. And when people see us, they don't say, Oh, now I know what God is like. God is just like you. I mean, if somebody came up to me and said that, you know, now I know what God is like. God must be just like you. I would go, no, no, no, no, don't think that. No, no. God is never self-pitying. He's never selfish. He's never irritable. He doesn't lose his cool. God is never unkind. God never shades the truth to his own advantage. He is always loving. He is always good. He is always just. It could be that falling short of the glory of God is that we have failed to live out God's intention for humanity. That is, that we don't reflect God well. It could be that falling short of the glory of God is that we simply fail to give God the glory that He is due. God deserves all our honor. He deserves gratitude. But how often is it that you look at yourself and say, I am so ungrateful for what God has done for me. I'm so ungrateful. I mean, how often do you find yourself complaining about such minor things that used to be called first world problems? I just can't believe that the heat in my car is not working the way it should. This is unbearable. I mean, I'm living like, you know, someone on the frontier. It's like it's just a little problem in your car. But we freak out. And then not only do we, you know, show ingratitude, but but we steal glory from God, right? I mean, God is the one who's blessed us and and and made us successful, and then we just like, well, it really wasn't me, after all, that made this thing work. I pulled myself up from by my own bootstraps. No, you didn't. No, you didn't. God did. But you know what I think falling short of the glory of God really means? The glory of God is the sum of God's perfections. And it is the standard by which we ought to measure ourselves. It's, you know, if we took all that God is in His holiness and beauty, in His goodness, that's the glory of God. And that's the standard by which we ought to measure our lives. But we don't measure our lives by the standard of God. How do we measure ourselves typically? By each other. How often do you say, well, I would never do what so and so did? I can't believe they treat people that way. I would never treat people that way. I would never say what they said. I would never do what they do. I'm so much better than them. We feel good by comparison. Because we compare ourselves to each other. We don't compare ourselves to the glory of God. Let me illustrate what I mean. Think of the worst person that you can, you know, like what person comes to mind? Don't shout it out. But just like a terrible person. And picture that person like down in a mine shaft, like the deepest mine shaft that's ever been dug on planet Earth, like thousands of feet below sea level. They're way down in this hole. And then take the best person that you can think of. And rather than being down in the hole, they're way as high as you can get, like they're on top of Mount Everest. And you go look at the distance between the worst person and the best person. They're like thousands of feet apart. But now have both of those people reach their hands up towards like a galaxy that's billions of light years away. Compared to the distance of both of those human beings to a galaxy billions of miles away, the distance between those people is infinitesimally small. The distance between us and the glory of God is mammoth compared to the distance between us and the worst person who ever lived. And yet we compare ourselves to each other. Falling short of the glory of God is the absolute standard by which we ought to be measuring our life is us compared to God. And by that standard we all fall short, we're all condemned. That's the argument in the first three chapters of the book of Romans. And then the Apostle Paul says this shockingly, when we have nothing to say in our defense, no alibis, and but then he tells us the result of the indictment summarized perfectly in verse 19. Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. We're standing there, nothing to say in our defense, no witness going, no, no, no, I've lived with him.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

He's perfect. I know her really, really well. She never does anything wrong. I've observed her for decades. Never, no stray word ever comes out of her mouth. Never.

SPEAKER_01 15:23

We have no alibi witnesses like that. And so we're silent. And just when we're ready to hear the verdict of condemned, the apostle Paul says, but now. But now. And if you have a Bible, underline those two words. But now. They're two of the most important words in the Bible, but now. There's been a great turning point in human history. The Apostle Paul loves this phrase, but now. It runs through his letters. And uh the Apostle Paul is saying, We were condemned, but now God's faithfulness is broken in. We were without excuse, but now we experience God's grace. You know the old hymn, Amazing Grace? Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I'm found. Was blind, but now I see. Let me ask you a question, real simply. Have you ever had a but now moment in your life where you said, I was headed in the wrong direction. I was headed away from God. I wasn't paying attention to God, I was doing my own thing, I was living the way I thought life ought to be lived. And then Jesus broke in. But now I've turned around, I'm aiming my life at God. I'm not the same person I was. You know, so often people think that they evolve towards God. Well, I'll just continue on the same path, and over a period of time I'll bump into God. No, no, that's not the way it works. You don't evolve towards God. You turn around. There's got to be a but now turning point in our lives. So again, I just asked the simple question: have you ever had a but now moment? The difference between being a Christian and being a non-Christian is that a Christian has had a but now moment. Sometimes it's called being born again. You've changed. Something has changed in your life. And it doesn't matter if you've been raised in a Christian family or you've been baptized or you've taken communion, that doesn't mean you've had a but now moment. Difference between being a Christian and being a non-Christian is the Christian can say, but now. All of that was true of me, but now. And it's not just at the beginning of the Christian life that we can say, but now. Throughout life. My marriage wasn't doing well, but now Christ has broken in. I was sick, but now God healed me. I was struggling in this or that relationship, but now, can you say that now? Lord, I need a turning point. Not just at the beginning of the Christian life, I need a turning point now. There's something in my life that needs to change. There's a relationship that I want to change. And but now is not just a personal experience, but now speaks to history. There is a dividing point in all of history. The world was going to hell in a handbasket. But now God sent his son. And that's the dividing point in history. We measure history. BC, before Christ, before Messiah, AD, in the year of our Lord. Things have changed. The kingdom broke in. The age of forgiveness, the age of healing, the age of the Holy Spirit broke in through the coming of Jesus. And so, but now is not just personal in my heart, but now is what's going on in the world. And what happened? He says, but now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the law and the prophets testify. What does the righteousness of God mean? What is Paul talking about by the righteousness of God? Well, he's talking about God's covenant faithfulness. God is a righteous God who keeps his promises to the Jewish people and through the Jewish people to the world. There is a Greek word that we translate righteousness. It's the word deios, deios. And deios was borrowed from the Greek law courts. It's a legal term. If a person was adjudicated dechios, they were adjudicated just. His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. Now, to understand how precious this idea of being justified is, because I think most Christians don't understand what it means that you are justified through faith in Jesus. It's more than you are forgiven by Jesus. It means that, but it's much more than that. It's more than Jesus says you're not guilty. It means that, but it's more than being not guilty. It's more than just as if I never sinned. What it means to be justified is all of the negative is swept away in your life, and Christ puts into your account infinite positive blessings. Let me explain. Let's say you owed someone a million dollars. You had this great debt, great debt, and uh the person was incredibly merciful. So they said, you know what? I'm gonna tear up your debt. That's part of what it would mean to be justified. I don't owe anything anymore. But to be justified goes beyond that. The person says, not only am I gonna tear up your debt, but I'm gonna put an infinite amount of money in your account that you can draw on. That's what happened when Christ saved you. He put this infinite amount in your account. Or let me put it differently, for any of you who were students or your teachers, let's say you just screwed around all through high school, and you were just a total goof off, your teachers all hated you, the principal was just exhausted by you, and you just got zero after zero zero, F after F on your report card, tons of detentions, they put you on suspension, they didn't know what to do with you. What would it mean to be justified? Well, they would wipe away all the F's, they would remove all the zeros, they would remove all the suspensions, but in addition, they would declare you valedictorian of your class, you would graduate with highest honors and give the graduation speech. That's what it means to be justified. To be justified is to stand before God as if you were Christ. Because you're in Christ, you're clothed with his righteousness. Not only are you forgiven, not only are you acquitted, which is amazing, but now you are given all that Christ is. It's extraordinary. So how didn't justification come to us? The Apostle Paul really wants you to understand this idea of being justified. And he says, let me tell you how it didn't come to you. Verse 21, but now apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the law and the prophets testify. Apart from the law. I need something in my life. You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna give me religion. I'm gonna go to church and take communion and get baptized, and that's what God wants, and that will keep me safe. Or, put it this way: we're all as human beings facing forces that are too great for us. You know, we're we're diagnosed with a terrible sickness. Our family is falling apart, we're worried about one of our kids or grandkids, things aren't working out in our lives. What do I need to do to get protection, to be safe, to get God to answer my prayers? I know I'll be religious, and then God will show me favor. Paul says this righteousness didn't come through religion. Throughout the Bible, God's people had to learn this lesson: that God's favor doesn't come through religion. There's a story in 1 Samuel 4, the Israelites are fighting the Philistines, their historic enemy, and uh the Israelites are losing. And so what do they do? Well, we got to get God's favor. So they bring the Ark of the Covenant out into the battlefield. They say, if the Ark of the Covenant, it's the this box that contains the Torah, well, actually, it contained the Ten Commandments, and uh it supposedly carried the presence of God. We'll bring the Ark of the Covenant out into the battle, and that will guarantee us victory. And you know what happened? All the Israelites were slaughtered, and the ark was taken captive. Hmm, religion didn't work. And 500 years later, they still hadn't learned this lesson, so it's the days of Jeremiah. And the Babylonians are surrounding the city of Jerusalem, and the Israelites in Jerusalem are saying, we're safe, we're safe. And you know why? Because we got the temple of the Lord, and that's where God is. And God would never let anything happen to his temple, so we're safe. Even though we continue to be disobedient, we're okay because we got religion. And you know what happens? The Babylonians break in, they sack the temple, they burn it to the ground, they take the Israelites captive to Babylonian captivity. Fast forward 600 years. Jesus goes into a rebuilt temple. He sees the money changers in the temple. You know the story. He turns the tables over, he kicks the money changers out, and uh they're saying it's okay, because we got the temple of the Lord a generation later. Uh oh, and by the way, he says, remember, he quotes Jeremiah, the same text in which they were kicked out of the temple the first time, he quotes them and he says, My house should be a house of prayer, but you've made it a den of robbers. What does a den of robbers mean? A den of robbers is where the robbers run to be safe from the police. They hide in their den. They think the temple is going to keep them safe. But it doesn't. Because a generation later, the Romans come, sack the temple, they exile the Jewish people from the promised land for 1900 years. I tell you, we're just like that as Christians. Just like that. We think so long as I take communion, so long as I show up in church, so long as I tithe, so long as I've been baptized, so long as I go through the motions of religion, I am okay with God. Paul says righteousness doesn't come that way. You don't gain standing before God through the motions of religion, you gain it through faith in Jesus his son. But he goes on and he says this: while righteousness came apart from the law, but now apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been made known to which the law and the prophets testify. We need to understand that this message of salvation through faith in the Jewish Messiah Jesus is the message that the whole Bible speaks about. It's not like there was one way of salvation for the Jewish people in the Old Testament and a different way of salvation for Christians in the New Testament. There's only ever been one way that people have been saved by looking ahead to the Jewish Messiah and his sacrifice, or looking back to the Jewish Messiah and his sacrifice on the cross. I'm afraid that there has been a thing in Christianity called dispensationalism. Maybe some of you have heard about it, but it chops the Bible up and says, well, God had a plan, plan A. He planned to save the Jewish people by obedience to the law, but they couldn't do it. And so then he went to plan B. He said, it's got to be easier. All you need to do now is put your faith in Jesus and you'll be saved. Have any of you ever thought that or been taught that? Plan A, plan B, plan Z? No. There's only ever been one plan. One plan. The way to be saved is through trust in God's provision in Jesus his son. And for me as a Jewish person, that was the awakening moment. Because you see, the Old Testament, or what we Jewish people call the Hebrew Bible, the Hebrew Bible is like previews of coming attractions. You sit in the theater and they go, hey, you know what's coming? And then they show you this clip, and you're like, oh, that's a movie I might want to see, right? There was a moment in my life where I got a glimpse of the previews of coming attractions in the Hebrew Bible. I was at a Passover dinner, and suddenly the meaning of the Passover lamb, the blood shed, and the blood of this lamb put on the doorposts of the house in order to save the Israelites from the angel of death. I realized that was a preview of the coming attraction of the Jewish Messiah and his blood covering us. And then I saw another preview of coming attractions. The suffering servant of God in Isaiah 53. He was going to be wounded for us, bear our iniquities, carry away our sins. Preview of coming attractions. And so the righteousness of God has been made known apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it. Now, quickly, how did justification come to us? The Apostle Paul says two ways. The reason why God can say you're right before him is first of all, in verse 24, all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. Redemption is an important word in the Bible. Redemption means to set slaves free. The Israelites were redeemed from Egyptian bondage. And we are redeemed by the payment of a ransom. Let me tell you a story. There was a woman who was a slave in Bermuda back in the late 1700s, early 1800s. Her name was Mary Prince, and she was treated horribly. And she was sold from one master to another and abused. And then one of her slave masters carried her to England. And there were some Christians in England that learned about Mary Prince and her bondage to this slave master. And they decided to put money together, and they bought Mary Prince out of slavery. She was redeemed. And Mary Prince wrote her story. It's called The History of Mary Prince, and it was the first autobiography by a black woman in human history. She wrote her story down. And her story turned the tide of the English abolition movement, where finally slavery was wiped out in the English-speaking world. The history of Mary Prince. Why are we justified? Because by the blood of Jesus he ransomed us from slavery to sin and Satan and death. And how else are we justified? The Apostle Paul says God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of his blood or a propitiation. A propitiation through the shedding of his blood. The Greek word is hilosterion. Here's what it means: we have a problem before God. We are sinners. And sin stains us. And it also incurs God's wrath. And the stain of sin on your soul doesn't just go away with the passage of time. Well, you know, I know I did that five years ago, but God has probably forgotten. Well, I know that, you know, I've tried to do better. That'll wash my soul. And by the way, God is not really angry. We learned as we've been reading through the first three chapters that God's wrath rests against sinners. How do we wash our souls and deal with the wrath of God? Christ died to propitiate God's wrath, to appease it, to wash it away by his blood. Let me tell you a story and we're going to wrap it up. There was a terrorist attack that took place in the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, India, back in 2008. And these Islamic terrorists went through the hotel with automatic weapons, murdering the patrons at this hotel. And they went into a dining room and they just shot all of the people who were eating in there. One man survived this brutal killing. And reporters came to him and they said, How is it that you survived? And he said, When the gunfire began, a man pulled me under the table. And they said, Well, but everybody was shot. How did you survive? He said, I think I survived because I was covered by someone else's blood. How do we survive the wrath of God? We're covered by someone else's blood. The blood of Jesus Christ. He saves us. He redeems us. And we can stand justified before him. So how do we receive that justification? Last text. All are justified freely by his grace. Through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus, God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of his blood to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished. He did it to demonstrate his righteousness, at the present time, so as to be just in the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. How do we receive justification? Let me summarize that long text. We receive justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. I want you to turn to your neighbor and say, I have been justified by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Turn to your neighbor. I have been justified by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Now turn the other way and say, you are justified by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. That's how this whole thing works. Not by religion, not by religious ritual. We stand right before God by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. So let me ask you, friend, I've been speaking from what might be the most important paragraph ever written. It lays out the way of salvation for us. Clearly. And the Apostle Paul says that we need a butt-now moment in our lives. We need to turn around. We need to change. So I just ask you, do you need a butt now moment? There are some of you who are listening to me who would say, you know what? I have never completely surrendered my life to Jesus. I've never opened up my heart completely to him and said, Lord, I want to be saved. I need a change. I don't know that I am right with God. But I would like that. I would like to be right with God. I know I need God in my life. And so at a moment, what I'm going to ask you to do for the all of you is to bow your head and just, if you're here and you say, I think I need a turnaround. I don't like where my life is headed. Maybe it's my life is fine, but I just feel unfulfilled. I feel like something's missing. I don't like what I'm doing. I need to turnaround. I'm going to lead you in a prayer. For some of you, you've never had a real turnaround in your life. And you can just ask the Lord, Lord, I want you in my life. For others of you, maybe you experience Christ sometime in the past. But you feel a million miles away from him this morning. I'm going to ask you to open up your heart. So wherever you're at, just would you please just bow your head and we're just going to pray, Lord Jesus. Thank you for what you did in coming into this world and changing things. But Lord, I need you in my life. And I'm just going to make a simple decision this morning. To open my heart and to surrender. And just say, Lord, I need you. I want to put my trust in you. And I pray that I might be right before you. I pray that you fill me with your voice.