SPEAKER_01: If you want, you can open Romans two and it's from chapter one to eleven.
SPEAKER_01: And it's written Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself because you the judge practice the very same thing.
SPEAKER_01: We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things.
SPEAKER_01: Do you suppose, O man, you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God?
SPEAKER_01: Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and perseverance, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?
SPEAKER_01: But because of your heart and impenitent heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteousness, righteous judgment will be revealed.
SPEAKER_01: He will render to each one according to his works.
SPEAKER_01: To those who by patience well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life.
SPEAKER_01: But for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury.
SPEAKER_01: There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek.
SPEAKER_01: But glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek, for God shows no partiality.
SPEAKER_01: And so read God's word.
SPEAKER_02: Let me add my welcome to uh to Ben's.
SPEAKER_02: My name's Mark.
SPEAKER_02: Uh please uh have Romans 2 open in front of you if you can.
SPEAKER_02: And uh if you're looking it up on your phone, uh we're looking at the English Standard uh version of the Bible, it's just good to kind of track along with uh what we're what we're looking at.
SPEAKER_02: When I was uh in theological college in in London, uh there was this unofficial rule that when grades came out, uh exam grades, or you got a you got a paperback and you were looking at the the marking scheme to see how you did.
SPEAKER_02: There was this unofficial rule that we wouldn't tell one another how we did.
SPEAKER_02: We wouldn't share our exam results, we wouldn't share our essay grades.
SPEAKER_02: And there were some really good reasons uh for that.
SPEAKER_02: Didn't want people to feel unduly proud of themselves uh if they did comparatively well, nor did we want people to feel bad.
SPEAKER_02: We didn't want people to feel uh despairing if they uh didn't get the grade that they wanted in comparison to other people.
SPEAKER_02: And above all, we didn't really want grades to define us.
SPEAKER_02: Uh and so there was lots of good reasons for it.
SPEAKER_02: Uh but I'll be honest, it was a good rule, but I hated it.
SPEAKER_02: I hated it because I wanted to know what other people got.
SPEAKER_02: Because I wanted to know where I came.
SPEAKER_02: If I got a high mark and I knew that it was a reasonably high mark, I wanted somebody to ask me.
SPEAKER_02: Because I wanted to know where they came in the pecking order.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, what about you?
SPEAKER_02: Oh, well, you know, it's just it's just one of those things, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02: You want to know where you come.
SPEAKER_02: Fast forward 12 years, and I'm not free of that desire.
SPEAKER_02: It's my morning confession to you all.
SPEAKER_02: I still compare myself to others, and I suspect that you do too.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe like me, you look at your neighbors and their lifestyle, or the Teslas that they drive, and you compare yourself to them.
SPEAKER_02: Or you scroll on Instagram mindlessly at 11 o'clock at night, and you make a million little micro comparisons of how you're doing, how you're looking compared to those people.
SPEAKER_02: And maybe you even come in here and you think, well, I don't feel like I really fit in here because I kind of feel like those guys are more spiritual than I am.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, and I feel like I haven't really got my life together.
SPEAKER_02: They seem to be more outgoing, and I'm I'm shrinking back into the corner.
SPEAKER_02: You you come in and you kind of think, well, where do I stand in the kind of in the inner circle of city church?
SPEAKER_02: How what's your proximity to uh to the pastors?
SPEAKER_02: And this and you compare and you think, okay, where am I with regards to these other people?
SPEAKER_02: And then we also compare ourselves in order uh to make ourselves feel better.
SPEAKER_02: We compare in order to feel better about ourselves.
SPEAKER_02: Parents do this.
SPEAKER_02: Parents will never tell you that we do this, but uh we do.
SPEAKER_02: We look at other parents, and we look at other parents and how they parent.
SPEAKER_02: And then we secretly say in our heads, oh, well, at least I don't do that.
SPEAKER_02: Isn't that right, parents?
SPEAKER_02: No, no, see, nobody's willing to admit it.
SPEAKER_02: Each of us knows that we're not perfect.
SPEAKER_02: And so we read articles online about real sinners.
SPEAKER_02: You know, murderers, thieves, gang members, drug dealers, sex workers, and there's a little part of us, a little dark part that we don't really like to acknowledge in polite company that says, well, at least I'm not like them.
SPEAKER_02: Good.
SPEAKER_02: I'm not as bad as they are.
SPEAKER_02: Religious people do this really well.
SPEAKER_02: We have been well trained in comparing ourselves favorably to sinners.
SPEAKER_02: Because sinners are nasty, and we like to feel morally superior, don't we?
SPEAKER_02: We like to look down at other people, and religious people have always done this.
SPEAKER_02: The Pharisees did it in Jesus' day, comparing themselves to tax collectors.
SPEAKER_02: Why does your rabbi eat with tax collectors and sinners?
SPEAKER_02: Because we're better than them.
SPEAKER_02: Why would you hang out with the lowest of the low?
SPEAKER_02: When actually, if you push them down, you can push yourself up.
SPEAKER_02: And so they would pray five times a day, saying, Lord, I thank you that I am not a woman, that I am not a dog, and that I am not a Gentile, that I'm not a sinful person.
SPEAKER_02: Religious people love to compare in order to make themselves look better.
SPEAKER_02: Now it's not just religious people who is it.
SPEAKER_02: You can get the non-religious person who likes to think of themselves as somebody who is moral.
SPEAKER_02: They say, Well, I'm not particularly religious, but I I try to be good and I try to be better than most, and surely that's good enough.
SPEAKER_02: And in order to further that case, what they do is they point to other people and go, well, at least I'm not like that.
SPEAKER_02: At least I'm not as bad as they are.
SPEAKER_02: And in that view, you imagine you kind of getting to the end of the world, and you uh you stare at that last day into the uh into the pit of hell, and who's there?
SPEAKER_02: Well, it's only Hitler, Nazis, and paedophiles.
SPEAKER_02: And you kind of go, well, great, well, the rest of us are fine.
SPEAKER_02: Because it's easy to compare ourselves to people like that.
SPEAKER_02: But here's the sobering truth.
SPEAKER_02: Hell's gonna be full of religious people.
SPEAKER_02: Hell's gonna be full of moral people.
SPEAKER_02: You see, religious people, morally superior people, they judge others to try and justify themselves.
SPEAKER_02: We feel ourselves doing that, don't we?
SPEAKER_02: We feel ourselves judging others in order to justify what we have done.
SPEAKER_02: But God's judgment isn't like that.
SPEAKER_02: God's judgment is righteous, it's fair, and it's impartial.
SPEAKER_02: And that's really the two things that we're gonna look at this morning.
SPEAKER_02: First is that uh religious people, morally superior people, judge in order to justify themselves.
SPEAKER_02: Whereas God's judgment is righteous, fair, and impartial.
SPEAKER_02: This first half, verses one to five, deals with this idea that moral people, religious people, judge in order to justify themselves.
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes, uh every now and again when I'm driving, say I'm driving on uh on the motorway heading north, or I'm I'm driving along the around the M50, and uh I'm going along and somebody goes, zooms on past me, and I look down at my uh my speedometer on the motorway, and I see that actually I'm doing about 130, just from time to time.
SPEAKER_02: Not very often, but it has been known to happen by accident.
SPEAKER_02: And as they zoom on past, and I see that actually I'm well over the speed limit as well, I think to myself, well, at least I'm not going as fast as they are.
SPEAKER_02: Again, can I get an amen?
SPEAKER_02: And again, we what I do is I play the conversation through in my mind that I might have with the guard who stops me.
SPEAKER_02: You know, they pull me over five minutes later and he he comes up, he does that kind of slow guard a walk and he taps on the window and he says, Do you know how fast you've been going?
SPEAKER_02: And I said, Well, uh, I wasn't going as fast as that guy.
SPEAKER_02: If you'd been driving faster, you would have caught him.
SPEAKER_02: You think I'm breaking the law?
SPEAKER_02: You should have seen that guy.
SPEAKER_02: He was clearly doing 145, 150 kilometers an hour.
SPEAKER_02: What would the guard say to me?
SPEAKER_02: Ah, yeah, you're right.
SPEAKER_02: No, the guard would turn to me and say, Well, you've broken the law too, and you're the one in front of me, and you're the one that I'm writing the ticket for.
SPEAKER_02: But that's what we do.
SPEAKER_02: We do this all the time.
SPEAKER_02: We know the law, but we compare ourselves to people who we deem to have broken it worse than we have in order to justify ourselves.
SPEAKER_02: Now, Paul in uh the second half of Romans 1, he's been talking about how God's wrath, that is, his settled opposition to sin and unrighteousness, is being revealed from heaven.
SPEAKER_02: And who's it being revealed from heaven against?
SPEAKER_02: Well, all sorts of people, not just those who practice homosexuality, though that is the example that he uses, but right towards the end of the passage, he's talking about people who are envious and jealous, who are angry, who are proud, who disobey their parents, who are greedy.
SPEAKER_02: All sorts of things.
SPEAKER_02: And you can imagine for a second the religious people kind of sneering and rubbing their hands together in the background, the morally superior people feeling good about themselves because at least they aren't as bad as those sinners.
SPEAKER_02: But in chapter 2, verse 1, Paul brings the hammer down on them.
SPEAKER_02: He won't let them away with it.
SPEAKER_02: Why?
SPEAKER_02: Because they do the things that they condemn others for.
SPEAKER_02: Therefore, he says, You have no excuse, O man.
SPEAKER_02: Every one of you who judges, for in passing judgment on another, you condemn yourself because you judge and practice, sorry, because you, the judge, practice the very same things.
SPEAKER_02: But this is what religious people do.
SPEAKER_02: This is what morally superior people do.
SPEAKER_02: We point the finger at others, we point the finger at other people's sins, and we hope and we pray that nobody will see that actually we practice the same things.
SPEAKER_02: The same things are going on in our heart.
SPEAKER_02: And you think back to um to Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, where he's talking to the, oh he's talking to the crowd and he's saying, you know, you've heard it said, you shall not murder.
SPEAKER_02: You know, all of the Pharisees are standing over there looking at the big ten and going, no murder, tick.
SPEAKER_02: And Jesus turns it on them and says, Well, if you've looked at your brother with anger in your heart, you've murdered them.
SPEAKER_02: And it's kind of that idea that Paul's picking up that actually the same besetting sins, the same things that Paul has brought out at the end of chapter one, the same things that he's been condemning, they exist in our hearts too.
SPEAKER_02: And so any idea of religious superiority, of moral superiority, it's totally inappropriate in the Christian church, in the Christian community.
SPEAKER_02: Then Paul says in verses two and three that religious people, they know what God demands.
SPEAKER_02: They know the judgment is coming on these things.
SPEAKER_02: And then he asks the question well, do you think that by knowing it, you'll escape the judgment of God?
SPEAKER_02: Have a look at verses two and three again.
SPEAKER_02: We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things.
SPEAKER_02: Do you suppose, O man, you who judge those who practice such things, yet do them yourself, that you'll escape the judgment of God?
SPEAKER_02: Surely the answer that Paul is expecting was, well, no.
SPEAKER_02: But many religious people, people who describe themselves as spiritual, moral people, they think, we think, that we get a jail, a get-out-of-jail free card from God.
SPEAKER_02: That because we know what He demands, that is, we've been around religious circles.
SPEAKER_02: We've been coming along on a Sunday morning.
SPEAKER_02: We're even involved in midweek community groups, that because we have the knowledge of what God requires, that God will give us a pass when we don't listen to him, when we don't obey him.
SPEAKER_02: We think that our our religious affiliation or our moral goodness will give us some sort of get out of jail free card.
SPEAKER_02: And Paul's saying that's not the case.
SPEAKER_02: See, the Jews thought that they were God's chosen people.
SPEAKER_02: And that meant that they knew the law, they knew what he required, what God required, and even though they struggled to keep it, they believe, well, we're God's chosen people.
SPEAKER_02: He's not gonna reject us.
SPEAKER_02: We're on the inside track.
SPEAKER_02: Paul's saying, you gotta be really careful.
SPEAKER_02: Do you think that you're really gonna escape the judgment of God by thinking along those sorts of lines?
SPEAKER_02: That just because you go to church on a Sunday morning, that you gotta you got a free past for the rest of the week?
SPEAKER_02: What a misguided way to conduct your life.
SPEAKER_02: What a misguided way to conduct your spirituality.
SPEAKER_02: This leads the religious person, the moral person, into a false sense of security.
SPEAKER_02: And Paul's saying, look, don't be fooled.
SPEAKER_02: Moreover, we fool ourselves into thinking that because we haven't been caught, that God's okay with it.
SPEAKER_02: That's what Paul's saying in verse 4.
SPEAKER_02: Says, or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that his kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?
SPEAKER_02: The religious person, the morally superior person who persists in living against God's good rule, design, and law, and thinks, well, I haven't been smited with a thunderbolt from heaven.
SPEAKER_02: So God must be okay with it, is fooling themselves.
SPEAKER_02: Paul saying, No, no, no, the slowness is not God's approval, the slowness is God's patience waiting for you to acknowledge your foolishness and to repent of your religious hypocrisy, your moral hypocrisy.
SPEAKER_02: See, people often think that the second half of chapter one is the hard one to hear when it talks about you know sexual sins and murder and wickedness.
SPEAKER_02: But for all of us who are nice people, chapter two is way harder.
SPEAKER_02: Because these verses don't allow the moral person or the religious person to breathe a sigh of relief.
SPEAKER_02: We're not allowed to push other people down.
SPEAKER_02: The people of Romans chapter 1, we're not allowed to push them down in order to push ourselves up, because Paul says the same sin lives in your heart.
SPEAKER_02: You even do the same things, and you just try and cover it with your veneer of Christian niceness.
SPEAKER_02: You must be very, very careful.
SPEAKER_02: You will not escape the judgment of God, Paul says.
SPEAKER_02: We love to judge in order to justify ourselves, to do dine in order to feel better about ourselves, but that's not how God judges.
SPEAKER_02: It's very good news that that's not how God judges.
SPEAKER_02: And that leads us to our second point that we might judge others in order to justify ourselves.
SPEAKER_02: But God's judgment is righteous, it's fair, and it's impartial.
SPEAKER_02: One of the ways uh that we try to elevate our standing, or one of the ways that we know that we're trying to elevate our standing or our sense of moral superiority, our sense of goodness, is that we don't tend to compare ourselves uh to people who are better than us.
SPEAKER_02: Have you noticed that?
SPEAKER_02: We don't tend to compare ourselves uh to great people, to great examples of moral virtue and goodness.
SPEAKER_02: We don't tend uh to admire some moral scent and say, well, how do I compare to them?
SPEAKER_02: No, we look down, we look down the slope of moral superiority and go, well, ignore those guys, like ignore Gandhi and you know everybody else who society thinks is kind of on up here.
SPEAKER_02: Ignore those guys.
SPEAKER_02: I'm looking down here.
SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, there's Hitler and there's Stalin and there's whoever else, and at least I'm better than them.
SPEAKER_02: Just ignore those guys.
SPEAKER_02: We don't compare upwards.
SPEAKER_02: That's how we know that we're judging in order to justify ourselves.
SPEAKER_02: Still less do we look at the very top of the slope.
SPEAKER_02: We don't look at God's perfect standard and ask, well, how do I measure up against that?
SPEAKER_02: Because we know deep down, don't we?
SPEAKER_02: We know, well, there's there's no point.
SPEAKER_02: It's actually just going to show up our badness more.
SPEAKER_02: We've already seen that God's judgment is fair where ours is not.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 2.
SPEAKER_02: We know that the judge that the judgment of God rightly falls on all those who practice such things.
SPEAKER_02: God doesn't play favorites the way we do.
SPEAKER_02: He doesn't play favorites, he doesn't have an inside track.
SPEAKER_02: This is especially bad news for religious people who think that they're on God's good side.
SPEAKER_02: The chosen people, the inner circle.
SPEAKER_02: And so twice in verses 9 and 10, Paul says, No, the judgment of God is coming on who?
SPEAKER_02: The Jew first.
SPEAKER_02: The Jew thought he was last.
SPEAKER_02: Well, sorry, what, Paul?
SPEAKER_02: You're gonna God's gonna judge us, you're gonna judge us first?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: You don't escape it.
SPEAKER_02: God's judgment's gonna come on the Jew first, and then also the Greek.
SPEAKER_02: And then again in verse 10.
SPEAKER_02: The Jew first, and then also the Greek.
SPEAKER_02: For God, verse 11 shows no partiality.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, one of the surest signs of a society that is becoming corrupt is when the law is not evenly applied.
SPEAKER_02: When people break the same law but are treated differently because of their wealth, their influence, their social standing.
SPEAKER_02: God hates that.
SPEAKER_02: God hates partiality of judging people differently because of some standing that they might have in the community.
SPEAKER_02: And so Paul is reassuring us that God will judge actually in the way that we want judgment to happen.
SPEAKER_02: But how will he judge?
SPEAKER_02: Well, Paul tells us in verses 68.
SPEAKER_02: He will render each one according to his works.
SPEAKER_02: Sorry, what?
SPEAKER_02: He will render each one according to his works.
SPEAKER_02: To those who by patience and well doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life.
SPEAKER_02: But for those who are Self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey on righteousness, there will be wrath and fury.
SPEAKER_02: How will God judge?
SPEAKER_02: God will judge a person on his or her works.
SPEAKER_02: What?
SPEAKER_02: Have we, Paul, have you lost your mind?
SPEAKER_02: No, hold on.
SPEAKER_02: Christianity is the whole Christianity is always about it's not about what you do.
SPEAKER_02: It's about faith and faith alone.
SPEAKER_02: Apparently not.
SPEAKER_02: God will render each one according to his works.
SPEAKER_02: Has Paul lost his mind?
SPEAKER_02: He's just said, 20 verses up that salvation, the righteousness of God that is gifted to us because of Jesus, 1 verse 17, is from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.
SPEAKER_02: And then 20 verses later, he says, God will judge according to your works.
SPEAKER_02: What on earth is going on here?
SPEAKER_02: First, let's give Paul a little bit of credit that he hasn't just lost his mind, and that he hasn't just written one thing and then five minutes later directly contradicted himself.
SPEAKER_02: And so we've got to work out, well, how do we hold both of these things in tension?
SPEAKER_02: What is going on here?
SPEAKER_02: The second thing that we need to note or we need to ask is well, what are the works that God judges?
SPEAKER_02: What does he mean when he says, verse 6, he will render each according to his works?
SPEAKER_02: And in order to answer that question, one of the things that we need to realize is that Paul is quoting something.
SPEAKER_02: Paul is quoting Psalm 62.
SPEAKER_02: It actually comes up in Proverbs as well, but Psalm 62 is really helpful.
SPEAKER_02: He's quoting the very last verse, verse 12 of Psalm 62, which says, For you will render to a man according to his work.
SPEAKER_02: So then we ask ourselves, well, in the context of the Psalm, what's the work that God is judging?
SPEAKER_02: What's going on in the Psalm?
SPEAKER_02: And so you read the rest of the Psalm.
SPEAKER_02: And one of the things that you do when you read the rest of the Psalm is you realize that David, who wrote the Psalm, is writing about two different types of people.
SPEAKER_02: He's writing on one hand about people who say one thing and do another, who bless with their mouths, but their hearts are full of cursing.
SPEAKER_02: That's a quote from the Psalm.
SPEAKER_02: And then on the other side, there is another person who casts himself on the mercy of God, who makes God his refuge, who rests on him for salvation and for and for deliverance.
SPEAKER_02: So it's two different types of people.
SPEAKER_02: And then he says, You will render each according to their works.
SPEAKER_02: So what are the works that God judges?
SPEAKER_02: Well, it's the it's the work of faith, or the work of disobedience, of unfaith.
SPEAKER_02: You see, rather than contradicting himself, Paul is reinforcing this idea that it is those who run to God for refuge and strength, who run to God for salvation, relying and resting on him alone, they are the ones who will be able to stand under the judgment of God.
SPEAKER_02: He is reinforcing, therefore, the need for repentance and faith in order to bear God's holy judgment on that last day.
SPEAKER_02: However, there is another thing that is going on.
SPEAKER_02: Paul, of course, is not saying that works don't matter.
SPEAKER_02: So the question then is, well, what purpose do they serve?
SPEAKER_02: Why should you do good things as a Christian?
SPEAKER_02: Why shouldn't you just, and this is one of the questions that is dealt with later on in Romans, why shouldn't you just send it up in order for God's grace to extend more abundantly to you?
SPEAKER_02: What purpose does our moral goodness serve?
SPEAKER_02: Well, the answer is that our works as Christians are not the basis of our salvation, but the evidence of our salvation.
SPEAKER_02: Let me say that again.
SPEAKER_02: Our works as a Christian are not the basis of our salvation, but the evidence of it.
SPEAKER_02: Imagine an orange tree.
SPEAKER_02: When the oranges appear on the tree, they prove that the tree is alive.
SPEAKER_02: They do not provide the tree with life.
SPEAKER_02: Rooted and established in the ground, nourished by the soil.
SPEAKER_02: Fruit is the evidence of life, not the basis of it.
SPEAKER_02: That's what Paul is saying here.
SPEAKER_02: That's how we integrate what he says in chapter 1, verse 17, and what he says here.
SPEAKER_02: The righteousness of God is received from faith for faith.
SPEAKER_02: That's our basis.
SPEAKER_02: That's where our roots are going down.
SPEAKER_02: We are established in Christ by our faith in him.
SPEAKER_02: Psalm 62, that we are the ones who run to God, who make him our refuge, who rely on him for rest and for salvation.
SPEAKER_02: Those are our roots.
SPEAKER_02: And then Paul says, well, one of the ways that you will know that a person is rooted in Christ, is trusting in him, saved by faith, is by the fruit that they will bear.
SPEAKER_02: That's what Jesus says, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02: By your fruit, you by their fruit you will know them.
SPEAKER_02: The fruit is not the basis of life, it's the evidence of it.
SPEAKER_02: Do you see?
SPEAKER_02: And so Paul is saying in the same way, our good works are evidence of a life that has been transformed by faith in Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: They're not the basis of our life with Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Faith is always the root which nourishes fruitfulness.
SPEAKER_02: We know that these works are evidence and not basis because of what Paul goes on to say about them.
SPEAKER_02: First, he says, it's by those who, by patience in well-doing, that's an odd phrase.
SPEAKER_02: What does that phrase mean?
SPEAKER_02: That is that there is a persistent, consistent direction and desire of a person's life to do what is right, even though they might not succeed every day.
SPEAKER_02: That's the Christian life.
SPEAKER_02: The Christian life is not perfection.
SPEAKER_02: Some people might think, well, as soon as I become a Christian or as soon as I'm baptized, I must never sin again.
SPEAKER_02: That is not the case.
SPEAKER_02: And that's not what Paul is saying here.
SPEAKER_02: Perfection is, well, it's not possible, this side of heaven, and it's not required.
SPEAKER_02: But what Paul is talking about is he's talking about a direction of a person's life.
SPEAKER_02: You're persistent in well-being.
SPEAKER_02: It's the direction of your life, even though there is a there's an up and down as it goes on day by day, good days and bad days, days where you succeed and days where you fail, but it's the direction one of pursuing trying to please God.
SPEAKER_02: That is, in Paul's language, to seek glory and honor and immortality.
SPEAKER_02: That glory and honor and immortality is not for ourselves.
SPEAKER_02: In the context, it's to seek God's glory.
SPEAKER_02: What is to seek God's glory?
SPEAKER_02: To seek God's glory is to seek the manifestation of his presence in your life.
SPEAKER_02: Is God becoming more real in your heart?
SPEAKER_02: You see him showing up in how you think and how you make decisions.
SPEAKER_02: Can you see his fingerprints across your life?
SPEAKER_02: Or the honor of his reward, his well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your master.
SPEAKER_02: An immortality to seek that is to seek life in his eternal presence.
SPEAKER_02: Is that the direction of our life?
SPEAKER_02: That's what Paul's saying.
SPEAKER_02: Paul's saying that for the person who seeks those things, that person is a crit, he's a Christian, she's a Christian, rooted and established in Christ, bearing fruit in every good work, and they will stand on the last day under the judgment of God.
SPEAKER_02: It's only possible for the person whose heart has been made alive by faith.
SPEAKER_02: By contrast, the heart that is rejecting God, that is hard and unrepentant, verse 5, that heart never seeks for the glory of God.
SPEAKER_02: Rather, Paul says that person is self-seeking.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 8.
SPEAKER_02: But for those who are self-seeking, who do not obey the truth but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury.
SPEAKER_02: If you realize that you do not seek or live for God, or that you are trying to justify yourself by comparing yourselves to others, then you are being here, you're being here this morning listening to this in person or online.
SPEAKER_02: Paul would have you see that this is an example of the patience of God, the kindness of God.
SPEAKER_02: If you realize here this morning that actually, oh gosh, I I don't seek for gl for the glory, honor, and immortality that God is and gives.
SPEAKER_02: I am trying to justify myself.
SPEAKER_02: Well, Paul would say, you're in verse 4.
SPEAKER_02: God's showing you his patience and kindness in bringing you here, in allowing you to hear this.
SPEAKER_02: Why?
SPEAKER_02: So that you might turn in repentance and faith and come to him.
SPEAKER_02: Do not think that your good try is good enough.
SPEAKER_02: It's only a life of repentance and faith that will mean that we can stand up under the judgment of God.
SPEAKER_02: Billy cuts my hair every six weeks or so.
SPEAKER_02: I've just had it done.
SPEAKER_02: I know you noticed, but it's just not the good context to say, lovely, ah, thank you.
SPEAKER_02: Hang out.
SPEAKER_02: He cuts my hair every six weeks or so.
SPEAKER_02: Over in Beards and Barnets, head over there to Temple Bar and say hello to Billy.
SPEAKER_02: Now imagine after he's finished with me and I get up, the next client sits down.
SPEAKER_02: And instead of my walking over to pay, I grab the scissors and I stand behind the next guy and I begin to cut his hair.
SPEAKER_02: What would Billy say to me?
SPEAKER_02: Well, I probably can't repeat what Billy might say to me.
SPEAKER_02: But he would he would say, in a sense, what on earth are you doing?
SPEAKER_02: Now I imagine I turned to him and I said, Well, what's your problem?
SPEAKER_02: I'll do my best.
SPEAKER_02: What would Billy's response to me be?
SPEAKER_02: It would be, well, your best isn't good enough for my client.
SPEAKER_02: You think our best isn't good enough for our God.
SPEAKER_02: We cannot justify ourselves by our moral superiority, by our religious devotion, by our pushing other people down in order to elevate ourselves.
SPEAKER_02: I'll try my best.
SPEAKER_02: Well, it's just not good enough.
SPEAKER_02: Rather, we must be those who in Psalm 62 are running to God, casting ourselves on his mercy, seeking him for refuge and strength, depending on him only for that gift of righteousness that is given to us by faith, and then evidencing it to the world by our fruitfulness.
SPEAKER_02: God's judgment is righteous.
SPEAKER_02: It is a question of whether you are resting on him or relying upon your own strength.
SPEAKER_02: It is fair.
SPEAKER_02: He will say, in effect, let's look at the evidence of your life as a sign of the state of your heart.
SPEAKER_02: And his judgment is impartial.
SPEAKER_02: You know, you could be here this morning and you could feel like the most wretched sinner in the building, crushed with shame and feeling like you do not fit in.
SPEAKER_02: Or you could be here and feel proud of your moral successes and goodness and glad that you are not as bad as other people.
SPEAKER_02: The judgment of God falls equally on all, and all are welcome to come and to find rest in him.
SPEAKER_02: You cannot fool him.
SPEAKER_02: You cannot justify yourself.
SPEAKER_02: Placing our faith in him is the only way to escape what he describes in verse 8 as wrath and fury.
SPEAKER_02: So are you comparing?
SPEAKER_02: You're trying to justify yourself by comparing yourself to others that you deem to be worse than you?
SPEAKER_02: Or are you resting in the God who judges justly?
SPEAKER_02: Does your life show the evidence of faith?
SPEAKER_02: If not, there is still time.
SPEAKER_02: Do not lose heart.
SPEAKER_02: Turn to him in repentance.
SPEAKER_02: That is, acknowledging what you have done, acknowledging your moral superiority, acknowledging your religious conceitedness, and casting yourself afresh on his mercy and saying, forgive me.
SPEAKER_02: Say, please help me by this power of your spirit to live for you alone.
SPEAKER_02: There is still time.
SPEAKER_02: His patience has lingered for you so that you could be here today.
SPEAKER_02: Turn to him and pursue the faith that comes from life with him.
SPEAKER_00: If you found this helpful or want to know more about City Church Dublin, please visit our website found in Dublin below.