SPEAKER_01: This is Romans three, verses one through eight.
SPEAKER_01: Then what advantage has the Jew?
SPEAKER_01: Or what is the value of circumcision?
SPEAKER_01: Much in every way.
SPEAKER_01: To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God.
SPEAKER_01: What if some were unfaithful?
SPEAKER_01: Does their faithfulness nullify the faithfulness of God?
SPEAKER_01: By no means.
SPEAKER_01: Let God be true, though everyone were a liar, as it is written, that you may be justified in your words and prevail when you are judged.
SPEAKER_01: But if your if if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say?
SPEAKER_01: That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us?
SPEAKER_01: I speak in a human way.
SPEAKER_01: By no means.
SPEAKER_01: For then how could God judge the world?
SPEAKER_01: But if through my lie God's truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner?
SPEAKER_01: And why not do evil that good may come?
SPEAKER_01: As some people slanderously charge us with saying, their condemnation is just.
SPEAKER_01: And so reads God's word.
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to you.
SPEAKER_02: If you joined us while we were singing, my name's Mark.
SPEAKER_02: I'm one of the leaders here at the church.
SPEAKER_02: You're very welcome with us.
SPEAKER_02: If you're new, you're visiting.
SPEAKER_02: Uh we're going to be looking at that uh short but dense passage that Grace uh read from us uh for us from Romans 3, uh just the first eight verses.
SPEAKER_02: So if you have a Bible, please uh have that open in front of you, or you can look it up on your phone.
SPEAKER_02: Even if you don't have a Bible app, you can just Google search uh Romans 3, 1 to 8, and then put in ESV for the English standard version of the Bible.
SPEAKER_02: That's the one that we're we're reading from.
SPEAKER_02: Uh there's a uh there's a book uh entitled uh The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert uh by a lady who just has a wonderful name.
SPEAKER_02: Uh her name is Rosaria Champagne Butterfield.
SPEAKER_02: Um and if you're if you're thinking of baby names, Champagne, uh that uh that might be one to go for.
SPEAKER_02: Rosaria Champagne Butterfield.
SPEAKER_02: She wrote a book called Secrets of an Unlikely Convert because uh before becoming a follower of Jesus, she was a uh a lecturer in uh in queer theory at Syracuse University in in New York.
SPEAKER_02: And she begins her book by saying, How can I describe my conversion to Christianity without making it sound like a train wreck or like an alien abduction?
SPEAKER_02: Uh she says, I did not swoon like some Victorian debutante gracefully into the arms of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: And at the end of uh one very moving chapter, she concludes simply with the words saying, I had lost everything except for the dog.
SPEAKER_02: Uh it was a process that caused her to question everything that she thought to be true, everything that she had built her life upon.
SPEAKER_02: And I think that all too often, in fact, uh the stories of people becoming a believer in Jesus has that very disorientating experience where you come to a point and you think, gosh, actually, I need to question everything that I thought was true about myself, uh, about the world, about my place in the world, and uh and what really mattered.
SPEAKER_02: And actually, our journey towards Jesus, our journey of faith, can be, at some points, just a very confusing, destabilizing, disorientating one.
SPEAKER_02: And some of you, I'm sure, have those sorts of stories.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm really glad that you're you're here and hopefully you're moving through that disorientation and coming to terms with what really is true.
SPEAKER_02: And this can also happen in religious homes, people who are brought up uh in a Christian home, a home uh of faith, maybe that's you as well, that actually as you as you grow up and as you begin to own your faith more yourself, perhaps you go to university and you face for the first time after that kind of sheltered Christian bubble, you face the uh the questions and comments uh of lecturers and classmates, that kind of uh kind of snide, sneering, backhanded, how could you possibly believe?
SPEAKER_02: Nobody really believes this anymore.
SPEAKER_02: That's basically the summary of the theology department in Trinity College.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, nobody really believes this anymore, but um uh or you and so you might think, oh gosh, what is really what is really true?
SPEAKER_02: And you feel disoriented, and you're you're reconstructing what faith is almost from from ground zero.
SPEAKER_02: And oftentimes then you can think, well, has God changed, or does my understanding of God need to change?
SPEAKER_02: Have I gone it wrong the whole time?
SPEAKER_02: And I think with that sort of mindset, we can maybe have a little bit of sympathy for some of the people that Paul's writing to.
SPEAKER_02: Paul's writing to a church in Rome, and it has a mixed congregation.
SPEAKER_02: Some are uh some are gentile, non-Jews, Greeks, and coming from that Greek philosophical worldview.
SPEAKER_02: But some of them are from a Jewish background.
SPEAKER_02: They'd grown up with the with the law, they'd grown up with the with the commandments, uh, they've grown up with the the food laws and with circumcision.
SPEAKER_02: They'd grown up going to church.
SPEAKER_02: Uh and Paul writes this letter, and they're finding it really quite destabilizing because they thought that they were God's chosen people no matter what.
SPEAKER_02: That circumcision, keeping the food laws, that all of that was their basis for their standing.
SPEAKER_02: That gave them an eternal benefit, a benefit in terms of salvation before God because of who they were and the things that they did.
SPEAKER_02: That's certainly what Paul thought growing up.
SPEAKER_02: He was an ultra-conservative Jewish man, a Pharisee.
SPEAKER_02: And he had assumed that no matter what, he was on God's inside track.
SPEAKER_02: That he was part of the chosen people, that outside of uh the nation of Israel, outside of the uh of ethnic Judaism, everybody else was just kindling for the for the fires of hell.
SPEAKER_02: That really they were the ones who had the advantage.
SPEAKER_02: But his encounter with Jesus, and you can read about that in the book in the early chapters of the book of Acts in Acts chapter 9, his encounter with Jesus changed all of that.
SPEAKER_02: He realized that salvation was for all, both Jew and Gentile.
SPEAKER_02: And what's worse, he realized that all, both Jew and Gentile, were rightly under the judgment of God because of their sin.
SPEAKER_02: That is our settled opposition and hostility towards God.
SPEAKER_02: That that thing in our heart that doesn't like the idea of giving up autonomy and control.
SPEAKER_02: That addiction that we have to me, myself, and and I.
SPEAKER_02: And he realizes that actually that exists, not just in the people over there.
SPEAKER_02: It's really easy to kind of point at, you go, oh, look at those guys over there.
SPEAKER_02: Aren't they?
SPEAKER_02: They're really sinners.
SPEAKER_02: He realizes, oh no, hold on a second.
SPEAKER_02: I'm also guilty of that.
SPEAKER_02: And so we're all under the right judgment of God.
SPEAKER_02: The Greek might be sinning in ignorance, but the Jew is sinning even though they know what God requires and demands, and so they both deserve judgment.
SPEAKER_02: And this is very destabilizing for Paul.
SPEAKER_02: It's a massive change for him, and he knows for his hearers, his Jewish background hearers in the church in Rome.
SPEAKER_02: And so he knows that as he's writing this letter, some of the people hearing it are going to be thinking, well, hold on a second.
SPEAKER_02: Is everything that I've believed a lie up until this point?
SPEAKER_02: Or has God changed?
SPEAKER_02: Have his promises failed?
SPEAKER_02: What does this mean for how I ought to live now?
SPEAKER_02: How do I rebuild my life and my understanding of the world and my faith on the basis of this new teaching being true?
SPEAKER_02: And that's what these eight verses, densely packed as they are, are all about.
SPEAKER_02: It's Paul is anticipating a number of questions that would come from his Jewish hearers about what they assume to be true, and he's seeking to answer them in order to dispel any confusion that they might have.
SPEAKER_02: Really, what he's doing is he's kind of clearing the decks so that when he gives the good news, which we get to finally at the end of chapter three, when he gives the good news, that the bad news and the questions surrounding it aren't still kind of clouding their thinking, and they're going, oh yeah, but what about this?
SPEAKER_02: And so he's answering some objections in order to clear the way for the good news that he's going to give them from 21 onwards.
SPEAKER_02: There's chiefly four questions here, and he deals with them to different extents.
SPEAKER_02: So some of the points will be longer, some of them, some of them will be shorter.
SPEAKER_02: But before we get into the questions, I want us to note something really important about what Paul is doing, because I think that it's I think that it's quite a good thing for us to realize for our own conversations with people who don't know Jesus or people who have questions about faith.
SPEAKER_02: That is that Paul here is meeting his hearers where they are.
SPEAKER_02: He knows that they have questions.
SPEAKER_02: He knows them well enough and has taken time to understand their experience and is seeking to speak into it.
SPEAKER_02: He doesn't just have a kind of carbon copy, pull the tract out of the back pocket, bridge to life, well, just read this.
SPEAKER_02: He knows the kind of questions that they're going to ask, and so he's meeting them where they are, seeking to answer those objections that they might have.
SPEAKER_02: And what's even perhaps more surprising than that is that he's treating their questions as legitimate.
SPEAKER_02: He's going to disagree with their understanding in a whole bunch of ways, but he hasn't just dismissed their questions.
SPEAKER_02: How often does that happen in Christian circles where it's kind of well, no, just belief.
SPEAKER_02: Stop asking questions.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe that's what you assumed Christianity was about, that it was just a kind of blind faith, you can't question the priest, you can't question the minister.
SPEAKER_02: No, Paul thinks that actually, while he's going to disagree with them, that their objections are legitimate enough that need to be addressed.
SPEAKER_02: And so rather than just dismissing the people and telling them that they should believe without question, he takes some time to answer those objections.
SPEAKER_02: And so he states them, and he doesn't state them in a kind of, oh, I can't believe that you would believe this, but if you do, he states them in a way that they might ask.
SPEAKER_02: Again, it's a mark of respect, a mark that he understands where they're coming from.
SPEAKER_02: So imagine that you're with someone who doesn't know Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Think of that friend, that family member, who isn't yet a follower of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Do you know them under well enough to understand what their questions are?
SPEAKER_02: What is it that they would ask?
SPEAKER_02: What is it that they what objections would they put forward when it comes to wrestling with the news of Christianity?
SPEAKER_02: Could you articulate their objection back to them in a way that would cause them to say, yes, that's my question?
SPEAKER_02: And then have you gone to the scriptures to work out, well, actually, how does Christianity answer an objection like that?
SPEAKER_02: See, we we meet our hearers, we meet our our non-Christian classmates, our non-Christian family members or friends, we meet them where they're at.
SPEAKER_02: With the questions that they have, we legitimize them, we give them space to articulate them, even though we're going to disagree.
SPEAKER_02: We're receptive to the process of questioning, and then have done some of the work ourselves in the scriptures, figure out, okay, well, how how can I how can I answer that?
SPEAKER_02: Or maybe what ends up happening is that somebody fires a question at you and you haven't thought about it, and you're like, ooh, and you have no idea.
SPEAKER_02: Great answer when you don't know, don't try and make something up.
SPEAKER_02: Great answer is, do you know what?
SPEAKER_02: I actually don't know.
SPEAKER_02: There's something really powerful, I think, in in Christians saying, Do you know I don't know?
SPEAKER_02: Because people just assume that we go around believing that we have all the answers.
SPEAKER_02: But to go, I don't know right now, can I come back to you?
SPEAKER_02: And then you've left the door open.
SPEAKER_02: Do you know last week you answered you asked me that question?
SPEAKER_02: I've actually gone away and you know, I've I talked to my pastor, uh, I had a look in the Bible, right?
SPEAKER_02: Went on to gotquestions.org, and uh and I kind of figured some some stuff out.
SPEAKER_02: And can I share that with you now?
SPEAKER_02: But you've heard their questions, you've met them where they are, and you've begun to enter into that conversation.
SPEAKER_02: So that's just all method.
SPEAKER_02: Let's get into the four questions then that Paul asks.
SPEAKER_02: The first question that Paul is anticipating comes in verse one, if you have it in front of you, which is basically well, is there any advantage to being a Jew at all?
SPEAKER_02: Why should uh we be Jewish?
SPEAKER_02: And then see, the Jews thought that being a Jew, circumcised, keeping the food laws, uh that, as I said, that gave them an eternal advantage before God over everyone else, that doing so made them righteous before God, it saved them.
SPEAKER_02: So then the objection comes, well, I'm sorry, but Paul had demolished that just before by saying, well, if you if you are circumcised, sorry, this is all about circumcision, welcome to you if you're uh new.
SPEAKER_02: I'm just gonna talk about circumcision for the next 20 minutes or so.
SPEAKER_02: But he was saying, if you are circumcised, but actually you don't keep the law, then it it's kind of like your circumcision becomes uncircumcision.
SPEAKER_02: Because circumcision is a matter of the heart, not a matter of the flesh.
SPEAKER_02: And then the objection comes in the start of uh chapter three.
SPEAKER_02: Well, what's the point in being Jewish at all?
SPEAKER_02: Is there any advantage?
SPEAKER_02: And Paul's answer is yes.
SPEAKER_02: Much in every way, he says.
SPEAKER_02: He says much in every way, and then gives one way.
SPEAKER_02: Uh I think he got a little bit distracted, but he'll come back to it.
SPEAKER_02: Uh he comes back to it and devotes three chapters to it, uh, chapter 9, 10, and 11, where he talks about the advantages that the Jew has in some of the hardest chapters of the book of Romans, which we will get to next September.
SPEAKER_02: Um, because I need more time.
SPEAKER_02: Uh but he says much in every way, and he gives one way.
SPEAKER_02: He says it might not be a so it might not be a salvific advantage, that is, an advantage in terms of salvation, but it's still an advantage.
SPEAKER_02: And here it is.
SPEAKER_02: He says that the Jews, to begin with, this is verse 2, to begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God.
SPEAKER_02: That is, God spoke to them, not to anybody else.
SPEAKER_02: They had the revelation of the God of the universe, who he was, his character, his works in the world, his law.
SPEAKER_02: And they got to live for centuries and centuries under that law and had a society that was shaped by God's word, and that is inherently a good thing, whether or not you believe in the God who gives the law in the first place.
SPEAKER_02: That to live under that good rule, under God's good rule, is a good thing.
SPEAKER_02: So you were entrusted with the oracles of God is an honor and a blessing to them as a people.
SPEAKER_02: It was not just a blessing, it was also a responsibility, which they they took seriously.
SPEAKER_02: They sought to preserve the oracles of God and hand it down from generation to generation.
SPEAKER_02: So he's saying, Yes, God spoke to you, not to anybody else.
SPEAKER_02: What a blessing, what a benefit that you know the God of all creation.
SPEAKER_02: Let's rephrase the question and bring it into today.
SPEAKER_02: You might rephrase the question something like, Well, is there any advantage to being brought up in a Christian home?
SPEAKER_02: Is there any advantage to a Christian upbringing?
SPEAKER_02: And again, the answer is the same.
SPEAKER_02: The answer is much in every way.
SPEAKER_02: Being born into a Christian family certainly doesn't save you.
SPEAKER_02: Being baptized and being brought to church doesn't save you.
SPEAKER_02: It's not the basis of your righteousness, not the basis of your standing before God, but there are advantages to it.
SPEAKER_02: It is a blessing to be brought up in a house where Jesus is known and loved.
SPEAKER_02: That's not to say that Christian parents don't also make mistakes with their children.
SPEAKER_02: But if your testimony begins, if I sit down and you say, tell me your story of faith, tell me how you became a follower of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: And if your testimony begins with the words, Well, I grew up in a Christian home, you're speaking of a blessing.
SPEAKER_02: You're speaking of an advantage that you had growing up.
SPEAKER_02: An advantage over him.
SPEAKER_02: Well, an advantage over the rest of us.
SPEAKER_02: Some of us didn't grow up in a home where where the Bible was taught, where it was believed, where Jesus was was followed.
SPEAKER_02: And so it took us longer to figure these things out.
SPEAKER_02: But you were brought up from an early age.
SPEAKER_02: Well, as for me and my household, we we serve the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: We follow Him.
SPEAKER_02: I know Christians with Christian parents.
SPEAKER_02: Um, if you if you grew up in a Christian house, I know that there are ways in which your parents will have screwed you up.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: Right.
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to being a child with parents.
SPEAKER_02: It happens to all of us in some way or other.
SPEAKER_02: And so I'm not at all saying, well, you should just ignore all of the stuff that you're currently working through in therapy.
SPEAKER_02: But just to kind of throw the baby out with the bathwater and say, well, there was no advantage there at all, that's also wrong.
SPEAKER_02: To start your testimony with, I grew up in a home where Jesus was known and loved is an advantage.
SPEAKER_02: So maybe actually you should thank God for your parents.
SPEAKER_02: It doesn't excuse the other stuff, but there is an advantage.
SPEAKER_02: And maybe after you thank God for them, you might thank them.
SPEAKER_02: Just maybe.
SPEAKER_02: For those of us, and uh there are a few of us daughtered around the room, for those of us, myself included, who are convinced of the goodness of uh of baptism for infants, don't leave.
SPEAKER_02: Some of us baptize infants, and I want to explain why we do.
SPEAKER_02: We baptize the infants of Christian parents, and in part, this is what we're symbolizing.
SPEAKER_02: The baptism that a child goes through doesn't save the child any more than the baptism that an adult goes through saves the adult.
SPEAKER_02: The baptism doesn't save the child, but it does point symbolically to the fact that the child, having been born to Christian parents, has a particular blessing by virtue of their being in a Christian family.
SPEAKER_02: My kids have an advantage, a blessing of being part of my household over and against my neighbor who doesn't love Jesus and their children.
SPEAKER_02: Do you see?
SPEAKER_02: That's not to say that God can't also pursue them, we pray for them, but this is what Paul's talking about.
SPEAKER_02: Is there an advantage to being from a religious background?
SPEAKER_02: So, well, it doesn't.
SPEAKER_02: Don't save you, but yes, there is.
SPEAKER_02: Because it's a good thing to be brought up breathing in the air of the gospel.
SPEAKER_02: You see, that's what Paul is saying.
SPEAKER_02: Second question.
SPEAKER_02: So they say, Well, okay, so the Jews were given the oracles of God, and God promised to bless the world through them.
SPEAKER_02: But they didn't listen to God.
SPEAKER_02: They were faithless.
SPEAKER_02: They didn't keep their side of the bargain, as it were.
SPEAKER_02: Does their, and this is the second question, does their unfaithfulness mean that God will now not keep his promises?
SPEAKER_02: Does their faithlessness make God faithless?
SPEAKER_02: Or does their faithlessness nullify God's faithfulness?
SPEAKER_02: And again, Paul's answer here is by no means.
SPEAKER_02: It's very strong.
SPEAKER_02: It's basically, God forbid that that would be true.
SPEAKER_02: And Paul goes on to say, basically, that the answer is that if every Jew had been unfaithful, God would still remain faithful.
SPEAKER_02: That if every Jew had turned from God, God would still remain true to himself and to his promises.
SPEAKER_02: Let's simplify this by.
SPEAKER_02: What does all of that this mean?
SPEAKER_02: It basically means this human sin cannot thwart the promises of God.
SPEAKER_02: Human sin cannot thwart the promises of God.
SPEAKER_02: In fact, that sin goes to show the extent of God's faithfulness, his patience.
SPEAKER_02: We see his patience all the way through the Old Testament, in his working with people in spite of their faithlessness, is what we saw when we looked for uh for about three months there through the story of Abraham.
SPEAKER_02: That in those times when Abraham is faithless, think of Sarah and Hagar, or his dealings with Pharaoh, or his dealings with Abimelech.
SPEAKER_02: That when even when Abraham is faithless, that doesn't make God faithless.
SPEAKER_02: God remains faithful and true to his promises.
SPEAKER_02: It shows the extent of his faithfulness, it shows the extent of his righteousness.
SPEAKER_02: Now then he goes on, Paul goes on to quote a psalm.
SPEAKER_02: This is verse 4.
SPEAKER_02: And if you're looking at the Bible, you see that a little bit kind of is set out differently because it's part of a part of a poem, part of a Psalm.
SPEAKER_02: So verse 4 says, By no means let God be true, though everyone were a liar.
SPEAKER_02: That is, even if everyone were a liar, God would remain true.
SPEAKER_02: That's what he's saying there.
SPEAKER_02: And then he says, As it is written, that you may be justified in your words and prevail when you are judged.
SPEAKER_02: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_02: How does that fit?
SPEAKER_02: Paul here is quoting from Psalm 51.
SPEAKER_02: Psalm 51 is Psalm of David that was written after David's adultery with Bathsheba.
SPEAKER_02: If you don't know the story, if you're digging into the uh into your Sunday school memory, although I'm not sure that we teach David and Bathsheba in Sunday school, but that'd be a great Sunday school.
SPEAKER_02: David uh David should be leading his army into battle, and yet he doesn't.
SPEAKER_02: He's at home in his palace and he's walking on the roof and he sees a beautiful woman bathing, and he uses his power as the king to have her brought to him, and he sleeps with her.
SPEAKER_02: Um and uh she's a married woman, and so she realize and so he realizes oh, crumbs, we're gonna have to deal with this.
SPEAKER_02: Not only that, but she becomes pregnant because of this, and and so he corrupts basically the whole army uh to bring uh to bring Bathsheba's husband, a guy called Uriah, back to Jerusalem, away from the front lines, in order to say, Well, you've done really well in the battle, come back and have a breather.
SPEAKER_02: Why don't you go and your wife will cook you a steak and maybe you know see what else happens that evening since you're home and Uriah doesn't go for it?
SPEAKER_02: He's like, Well, how can I, how can I eat steak and sleep with my wife when when all of my brothers are on the front line?
SPEAKER_02: It would be disrespectful to them.
SPEAKER_02: So I'm just gonna sleep outside.
SPEAKER_02: I'm not even gonna see my wife.
SPEAKER_02: And David is thinking, oh, this is a disaster.
SPEAKER_02: And so instead, what he does is he writes a note uh to the general, basically saying, see that Uriah is killed, put him where the fighting is most faith, folds it up, hands it to Uriah, and says, Give that to the general back in the field.
SPEAKER_02: And Uriah is killed.
SPEAKER_02: So David's an adulterer, but now he's a murderer.
SPEAKER_02: And he's corrupt.
SPEAKER_02: He's corrupted the whole political system, he's corrupted his own power as king.
SPEAKER_02: Finally, the prophet Nathan comes to him, and uh, and God, in his graciousness, just brings David to brokenness and repentance.
SPEAKER_02: And it is in that spirit of brokenness and repentance that David writes Psalm 51.
SPEAKER_02: And in Psalm 51, he says some just remarkable things.
SPEAKER_02: Psalm 51, verse uh verse 4, which is just before what Paul quotes, he says this.
SPEAKER_02: David says, Against you, he's talking to God, against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and prevail in your judgment.
SPEAKER_02: Against you, you only have I sinned.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, who's David trying to kid?
SPEAKER_02: There's hardly a person in Jerusalem that David hasn't sinned against.
SPEAKER_02: He sinned against Bathsheba, he sinned against Uriah, certainly, by having him bumped off.
SPEAKER_02: He sinned against the general by corrupting the uh the ranks of the army.
SPEAKER_02: And yet he realizes something profoundly true.
SPEAKER_02: That sin is ultimately an offense against God, that he is ultimately the offended party.
SPEAKER_02: And so it is right that God would judge him.
SPEAKER_02: And so when Paul quotes this, what essentially he's saying is David has realized that it wouldn't be right for God to let him off just because he's a Jew, just because he's the king.
SPEAKER_02: In fact, God is right to judge the sins of Jews as well as Gentiles, because in his not turning a blind eye, it shows how righteous he is.
SPEAKER_02: Imagine that.
SPEAKER_02: Imagine if there was a whole group of people that God just let them do whatever they want, and God just turned a blind eye to all of their actions.
SPEAKER_02: Wouldn't the rest of the world go, well, how just are you?
SPEAKER_02: You're judging me for what I've done for my adultery, but here's David over here, and he's done the very same thing, and you're letting him off.
SPEAKER_02: Do you see David saying, no, no, God's right to apply the same standard across the board?
SPEAKER_02: That my being part of uh the chosen people ethnically doesn't let me off the hook.
SPEAKER_02: You're right to judge me, David says.
SPEAKER_02: Let's see if we can rephrase this a couple of different ways and try and try and bring it home a little bit for each of us.
SPEAKER_02: I think the first way that we can rephrase it is this.
SPEAKER_02: Does the presence of bad Christians make Christianity bad?
SPEAKER_02: Do you know this is what people say?
SPEAKER_02: That you know, people have done horrendous things in the name of the the church, in the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: They've done awful things calling themselves a Christian.
SPEAKER_02: And so the question is: does the presence of bad Christians or bad people who claim the name of Christian, does that mean that Christianity is bad?
SPEAKER_02: And David and Paul would say, no.
SPEAKER_02: Do faithless Christians mean that Jesus is faithless?
SPEAKER_02: No, God remains true despite our actions.
SPEAKER_02: So if you're you're here this morning, maybe that's one of the things you wrestle with, is actually Christians don't look particularly moral, and sometimes we don't.
SPEAKER_02: Really sorry about that.
SPEAKER_02: What I'd ask you to do is not to judge Christianity on us, on our successes or on our failings, but to judge Christianity on the character of Christ, on who he is, not on how faithful or faithless his followers are.
SPEAKER_02: Another way perhaps to uh to think about this and to rephrase it is to think, well, would God just let me off because I'm a Christian?
SPEAKER_02: You know, I'm I'm I'm sinning right now.
SPEAKER_02: There's stuff that I haven't repented of in my life, and and God hasn't judged me yet.
SPEAKER_02: So maybe he's actually okay with it.
SPEAKER_02: But David would say, but be very careful.
SPEAKER_02: God applies the same standard to everyone.
SPEAKER_02: That just because you come to church and just because you're committed and you give and you go to community group and you've signed up for the weekend away and and all these things, that you have some sort of inside track, some sort of get out of jail free card.
SPEAKER_02: Well, that's not the case.
SPEAKER_02: He'd be right to judge us.
SPEAKER_02: You'd be right to judge us because our sin is ultimately against him.
SPEAKER_02: Question three.
SPEAKER_02: These questions get shorter now.
SPEAKER_02: Question three is, well, this is verse five.
SPEAKER_02: If our sin, that is our unrighteousness, serves to show how righteous God is, then wouldn't it be wrong for him to judge us?
SPEAKER_02: You why is he punishing me if I'm kind of doing him a favor?
SPEAKER_02: Why is he punishing me if my sin benefits him in showing his righteousness all the more?
SPEAKER_02: And again, Paul's answer is by no means.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 6, God forbid.
SPEAKER_02: Why?
SPEAKER_02: Because if sinners sinning did God a favor, well, that means that he wouldn't judge anyone because everyone is sinful.
SPEAKER_02: We've all been faithless towards him.
SPEAKER_02: This is what he means by first six, where he says, by no means.
SPEAKER_02: For then how could God judge the world?
SPEAKER_02: So here's the thing: we want a God who is committed to justice.
SPEAKER_02: There are things in our world that we look at and we point to and we say, those people shouldn't get away with that.
SPEAKER_02: God ought to punish what has happened there.
SPEAKER_02: God ought to punish the perpetrators.
SPEAKER_02: We want a God who is committed to justice.
SPEAKER_02: We look at the world and think that those who have acted wickedly, justice demands that they're punished.
SPEAKER_02: But if God is wrong to judge because of our unrighteousness showing how great he is, showing his righteousness, then he wouldn't judge anyone.
SPEAKER_02: That's what Paul is saying.
SPEAKER_02: He said, No, no, no, you want a God of justice.
SPEAKER_02: And so if you're saying, well, why is he wrong to judge me if my sin shows how great he is?
SPEAKER_02: Well, Paul's like, well, what you're asking for is for God to let everybody off, and that's what you don't want.
SPEAKER_02: Just because sin deserves, or sorry, just because sin serves a divine purpose of showing his righteousness, the righteousness of God, it doesn't mean that we don't still deserve punishment.
SPEAKER_02: It doesn't mean that we still aren't to blame for it.
SPEAKER_02: This question gets rephrased uh oftentimes into what do I, you know, poor old poor old Judas.
SPEAKER_02: What about poor old Judas?
SPEAKER_02: He's just he's just doing what was what was foreordained for him to do.
SPEAKER_02: He's just following the plan?
SPEAKER_02: And he gets punished?
SPEAKER_02: How's that fair?
SPEAKER_02: Well, Judas was one of the disciples, and as we've just seen, insiders don't get out of jail free cards with God.
SPEAKER_02: But what's more, his actions, while they might have served in God's larger purpose, they do not excuse him from culpability.
SPEAKER_02: He chose to do those actions willingly.
SPEAKER_02: He voluntarily chose to betray.
SPEAKER_02: And so two things can be true at once.
SPEAKER_02: Judas can willingly, voluntarily, choose to be treacherous towards his Lord, and God can use that for his higher glory.
SPEAKER_02: It's the same thing that happens at the end of the book, uh at the end of the book of Genesis.
SPEAKER_02: Remember Joseph of Technicolor Dreamcoat fame?
SPEAKER_02: He becomes the second in command in Egypt.
SPEAKER_02: He's the prime minister under Pharaoh.
SPEAKER_02: After his brothers had left him for dead, sold him into slavery, told their father Jacob that he was dead, acted wickedly against Joseph, sells him into slavery into Egypt, and he rises through the ranks and becomes one of the most powerful people in the land, such that he administrates things so that lives are saved during a famine.
SPEAKER_02: And he looks at his brothers at the end of the book of Genesis and says, What you intended for evil, God intended for good and for the saving of many lives.
SPEAKER_02: But two things can be true at once.
SPEAKER_02: His brothers intended evil, voluntarily, willfully sold their brother into slavery, and God intended it for good and for the saving of many lives.
SPEAKER_02: So poor old Judas doesn't get off.
SPEAKER_02: A question doesn't wash.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm not going to preempt what Paul says there.
SPEAKER_02: His question is essentially well, why not sin more?
SPEAKER_02: Verse 7.
SPEAKER_02: But if through my lie, that is, through my sin, if through my lie God's truth abounds for his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner?
SPEAKER_02: Why not do evil that good may come?
SPEAKER_02: That the good there being the glory of God?
SPEAKER_02: Why not do evil if it shows how glorious God's grace is?
SPEAKER_02: So why not go on doing evil that God may be glorified by showing how forgiving He is?
SPEAKER_02: Paul here, and he will expand on it in a couple of chapters, time, simply says that that is such a mistake.
SPEAKER_02: That is that's such a wrong-headed way of thinking about Christianity.
SPEAKER_02: To say that you believe in Jesus for your ticket to heaven and then live however you want.
SPEAKER_02: Because you think it's simply God's job to forgive you.
SPEAKER_02: To think that the more that you sin, the more amazing his forgiveness will look.
SPEAKER_02: Paul says that that is a wicked way to think.
SPEAKER_02: That's what he means by their condemnation is just.
SPEAKER_02: It shows that really they haven't understood the gospel at all.
SPEAKER_02: It's a wicked way to think, to sin so that God's glory might abound.
SPEAKER_02: Why is it a wicked way to think?
SPEAKER_02: Well, he tells us that God is never glorified by evil.
SPEAKER_02: That's why their condemnation is just God is never glorified by our sin.
SPEAKER_02: You see, in the end, all of these questions, all of these objections that are being raised in anticipation, all of these questions center around the character of God.
SPEAKER_02: Do I know who God is?
SPEAKER_02: Is God the God that I thought was true?
SPEAKER_02: Remember where we started?
SPEAKER_02: With that feeling of, how do I know what's really right?
SPEAKER_02: How do I know what's really true?
SPEAKER_02: Is the God that I thought I knew really the God who is there?
SPEAKER_02: Essentially, Paul's answer in all of these questions is yes.
SPEAKER_02: God remains faithful to his promises.
SPEAKER_02: God continues to be God, God continues to be true, he continues to be committed to justice.
SPEAKER_02: He says, in essence, to the to the Jew, you might have thought that you benefited from your faithfulness by your own religious observance, when in fact it's only faith alone that saves you.
SPEAKER_02: But your misunderstanding of God does not mean that God has changed.
SPEAKER_02: Rather, your understanding of him must come in line with who he is.
SPEAKER_02: He remains true, true to himself, true to his promises.
SPEAKER_02: What's more, God is right to judge sin.
SPEAKER_02: And neither our morality or our or our ethnicity gives us a pass.
SPEAKER_02: David saw that.
SPEAKER_02: And our God has not changed.
SPEAKER_02: Finally, Paul would say, but just because the darkness of our sin makes the diamonds of God's mercy shine the brighter, doesn't excuse the wrongness of our sin.
SPEAKER_02: God is not glorified in our wickedness, but by his justice and his mercy.
SPEAKER_02: See, Paul, in a sense, is taking away all of those religious and moral props that a human being might lean on or seek to hold on to, our goodness, our background, our excuses for our sin.
SPEAKER_02: He's taking them all away.
SPEAKER_02: But as he strips them all away in place, what he's beginning to show us is the unchanging, perfect, enduring character of God.
SPEAKER_02: A God who is forever true, a God who is forever just, a God who is forever merciful.
SPEAKER_02: And so in those moments when you find yourself not knowing what's true anymore, we run into those unchanging arms.
SPEAKER_02: We ask him to teach us, to conform our understanding of ourselves, of the world, of him, to who he is, to what he has said, to live not relying on ourselves, but on him alone.
SPEAKER_02: The one who is always faithful to his promises.