Sunday Morning Service

Romans 2 (Click scripture reference for audio access)

"Don't Get Cocky!"  •  3.11.12  •  Sunday Morning Service, Calvary Christian Fellowship

Intro.

- We are in a section of scripture that documents the universal condemnation of mankind before God. At the end of chapter 1, Paul made the case for the condemnation of the immoral pagan!

- This is the blatant, public sinner with little regard for his own soul, guilty of ignoring creation and his own conscience, steamrolling over it with vile acts of unrighteousness.

- Many in Paul's time would have agreed with Paul's assessment. Rome was a cesspool, a moral vacuum that would have embarassed some of it's early sophisticated citizens.

- Paul's argument now turns to them. The religious or the non-immoral pagan is Paul's target. They stand condemned before God as well.

Text

•  Romans 2:1,2 :  "Therefore you are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are who judge, for in whatever you judge another you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things. But we know that the judgment of God is according to truth against those who practice such things." : The moral pagans stood without a defense in front of the Lord because they stood to judge others.

- He condemns them for knowing what is right but not holding themselves to the standard of their own judgment! They transgress their knowledge by practicing the same things. How?

- Paul may be referring to degree. Instead of debaucherous weekly parties, they only partied on "special occasions." They don't get drunk with beer. They get tipsy with the finest imported wines!

- Perhaps Paul has distinction in mind. The immoral pagan committed sins openly. Their sin was in attitude, which in their mind was not nearly as bad.

- The argument is that men put forth a standard that condemns others, while clearing themselves. This is a false standard of judgment that God does not employ, nor is He held to! 

- "We know," Paul asserting that it was common knowledge that God's judgment would be according to the truth and not be based on man's faulty opinion of himself.

- He will judge based on truth, against those who practice sin to any degree and by any distinction. God will not be grading on your curve either! But this brings up a twisted argument.

•  Romans 2:3,4 : "And do you think this, O man, you who judge those practicing such things, and doing the same, that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?" :  Paul anticipates the rebuttal: "If God was concerned, why doesn't He respond?"

- Many believe that God's arm is too short or He is unconcerned because His wrath is not immediately displayed. God's inaction is not indicative of His impotence. It's a sign of His patience!

- Their attitude would have been a sign of contempt. By their action of continuing in sinful attitudes or actions, they showed that they thought very little of God's character.

- They looked at the greatness of God's goodness or benevolence, His withholding and His patience with them and spit on it!

- Paul says, "Don't you know that God is intending for you to come to Him in repentance!? Do you really believe that God will overlook your sin?"

- If the Bible proves anything, it proves conclusively that the God of the Bible gives wicked men every possible chance to change their minds about Him and their sinful condition!

- Every day that the wicked person lives is another day of testimony to God's goodness!

- Every day is an invitation from the Lord to be right with Him, to receive His offer of forgiveness through His Son Jesus Christ and to be done with that which offends Him and hurts us.

- That patience is legendary, but for those who would presume upon His grace, judgement is just as much a reality.

- In fact, Paul tells them that instead of receiving forgiveness, they are incurring more debt!

•  Romans 2:5,6 : "But in accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who 'will render to each one according to his deeds':" : God keeps His hand at bay and gives time for repentance. What is their response? Instead of softening and repenting, the moralist hardens in his position.

- Instead of seeing God's goodness, he resents that God doesn't accept him the way that he is. Instead of receiving God's mercy, the moralist believes that God needs to lay off!

- God, instead of dealing with them in accordance with His goodness, must now deal with them in accordance with their hard, stubborn and impenitent, unwilling to change, hearts!

- Does this description fit you? Are you stubborn in your heart against God? Are you unwilling to change based on what you know that God's Word says about your condition? I pray not.

- For those in that condition, Paul tells us that a treasury is being established of God's wrath and God's action will be righteous, ie. deserved. God's judgment is always right!

- In Psalm 62:12, the Psalmist speaks of the promise of God's rewards that people receive from Him, rewards based on deeds.

- This does not mean that we can be saved by works, but our works prove our belief. The rewards for the deeds done in this life are hypothetically astounding!

•  Romans 2:7-9  :  "eternal life to those who by patient continuance in doing good seek for glory, honor, and immortality; but to those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness—indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, on every soul of man who does evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek; " : These are the stakes. This is what God would hypothetically render to each person. There is eternal life for one, indignation and wrath for another!

- In the original language, this whole sentence is reversed and eternal life is the end, the emphasis being on the character of the one receiving eternal life, so we'll take it in that order.

- This person that Paul describes is one who is characterized by having a steadfast spirit.

˚  "In the New Testament, the characteristic of a man who is not swerved from his deliberate purpose and his loyalty to faith and piety by even the greatest trials and sufferings."    BLB

- God would render eternal life, not to those who have a once-in-a-while fling with these things but that made this their habit, their practice, their passion!

- No matter what comes their way, this person is fixed on doing something honorable and excellent, not for their own glory, but for the reputation of God, for the honor of His name.

- They live for that which is incorruptible. They invest in that which is eternal. They desire to make an impact for the Kingdom of God. To that person God promises eternal life!

- This is life without end. It is translated "eternal" or "everlasting." You pick! If eternal life is what they would live for, eternal life is what they would receive!

- That is what is rendered to the righteous. For the wicked, there is another option.

- These are described as self-seeking, which is a word related to political electioneering. This person is seeking to be elected at the expense of another. This person is wrapped up in themselves!

- They do not obey the truth or allow themselves to be persuaded regarding the Lord. They do however obey unrighteousness and make themselves slaves to those dictates.

- For these, there is indignation. This refers to God's anger. God is angry with those who refuse His grace and all that is left is the natural release of that anger in wrath!

- The divine side is wrath, expressed in time, discerned by humans, as pressures, distresses and extreme affliction of soul. This is for all who do evil, who make a practice of it.

- In the same way that salvation is for the Jews first, judgment will come to the unbelieving and moral Jews, the people of God first. Why? Because they have had the greatest privilege.

- They have the law. They had the prophets. They had K-WAVE! The religious, the house of God, those who have trusted in their relationship with God, will be the first to receive retribution.

- This will go to the Greeks as well, but Paul is telling the religious person that he can only trust that God will be righteous toward him, rendering to each according to their deeds, not their creeds!

•  Romans 2:10,11 : "but glory, honor, and peace to everyone who works what is good, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For there is no partiality with God." What a great promise: Paul moves back to the glory of God's promise to those who prove their belief by what they did. The Jew first and the Greek would also receive!

- They are on the same plane. There is equal blessing. God will not be partial to one over the other, but will reward each equally, without respect to a person.

- Now, having said all of this understand Paul's argument. These are rewards that He would give to those who live this life. But the sad reality is that none of them do live that life!

- We'll see this more clearly next week in our examination of chapter 3: Paul tells us that nobody acts this way and therefore, God's impartial reward system is also God's impartial judgment!

•  Romans 2:12-16  :  "For as many as have sinned without law will also perish without law, and as many as have sinned in the law will be judged by the law (for not the hearers of the law are just in the sight of God, but the doers of the law will be justified; for when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them) in the day when God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel."  :  There is no partiality with God. One who has the law will perish as will the one who does not have the law, though each will be judged fairly.

- The immoral pagan world has been judged based on the revelation that they had been given, ie. conscience and creation.

- Those who have never had the specific revelation of God have enough to be condemned apart from it. and those with the law are going to be judged on that basis.

- The end of Paul's thought comes in verse 16, where he states that this judgment of the immoral pagan and the moral pagan/ unbelieving Jewish/ pagan person, will come on the same day.

- God will judge the secrets, that which is concealed in a krypt, of men, by Jesus Christ, the standard and according to Paul's gospel, the method. This is Paul's full thought.

- God's judgment is according to truth and is comprehensive. Every secret is revealed!

- Now, let's take a look at this parenthesis. How is that God can judge them both on the same day and with virtually the same methodology?

- Paull asserts that those who are justified, saved, are thus so because they have been doers of the law, and not simply hearers.

- Incidently, for those who have sought to divide Paul and James on this issue, note that they say the same thing here! James says this in James 1:22-25.

- I believe that Paul begins to transition here in his thought from strictly moral pagans to Jewish people, with his reference to the law.

- The Gentiles were not given the law, but there were those who performed God's law, to some degree without knowing that this was God's law! Herein is a further condemnation: Their conduct!

- At some level, they were able to behave righteously, but did not continue to live up to that.

- This brings us to their conscience, again, a knowledge within, guiding them to right choices. "Should I steal time from my employer?" Who tells them that is right or wrong? Their conscience.

- But then comes the final test of their condemnation. The contemplate or consider their situation. They reason within themselves and their conscience accuses or excuses them.

- In this section, Paul tells us that this is why they perish before God. Even without having a law, the law that they do have in conduct, conscience and consideration, they have failed to live up to!

- This naturally brings Paul to the subject of the Jews, people who had the law.

•  Romans 2:17-19  :  "Indeed you are called a Jew, and rest on the law, and make your boast in God, and know His will, and approve the things that are excellent, being instructed out of the law, and are confident that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, having the form of knowledge and truth in the law." : You have the name of God's chosen people. You are called a Jew, one whose praise comes from God. You identify yourself that way. The Jew was settled upon the law. They gloried in God.

- They had experienced His will and had tested, proved and examined the things of excellence.

- The law gave them their identity and their mission in the world. They were to be helpful in drawing others to the law, thinking of themselves as guides for the blind, a teacher of the ignorant.

- They were to give light to those in darkness and instruct those without God. They were to look at the world of Gentiles as infants spiritually and themselves as the teachers.

- They had a sketch or a framework for the truth of the law and were in the best position to teach and bring others to the knowledge of the law.

•  Romans 2:20-24  :  "You, therefore, who teach another, do you not teach yourself? You who preach that a man should not steal, do you steal? You who say, 'Do not commit adultery,' do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who make your boast in the law, do you dishonor God through breaking the law? For 'the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you,' as it is written." : The problem is that despite their knowledge, they did not allow the word to govern their own lives!

- They did not allow the law's standard to apply to themselves. They were professional listeners, but never let the mirror of the Word expose their deeds!

- They stole from those in their temple with unjust prices. They committed adultery by embracing the most liberal standards for divorce.

- They committed sacrilege by making the temple of God a den of thieves, or literally, a cave where theives hide themselves from the law!

- Paul quotes from Isaiah 52:5, a passage that speaks of Israel's fall to the Assyrians, which caused people to insult the name of God. That is the real sin.

- People don't look at your hypocrisy and judge you. They look at your hypocrisy and insult the name of the living God, that you claim to represent!

•  Romans 2:25-29 : "For circumcision is indeed profitable if you keep the law; but if you are a breaker of the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision. Therefore, if an uncircumcised man keeps the righteous requirements of the law, will not his uncircumcision be counted as circumcision? And will not the physically uncircumcised, if he fulfills the law, judge you who, even with your written code and circumcision, are a transgressor of the law? For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not from men but from God." : That is the judgment upon the Jews of that time or any time: Their conformity to circumcision and the law was only superficial and sacramental! They trusted in outer works and rituals.

- Circumcision was given to the Jews as a direct result of Abraham's fleshly plan to generate a son from one of Sarah's Egyptian maids. After that plan "worked," God met with Abraham.

- His promise would still reside, but He would not bless the work of Abraham's flesh.

- The covenant of circumcision then was an outward sign of an inward reality, rejecting all strength of the flesh and resigning oneself to trusting in God to fulfill His promise.

- That was what made a Jewish person a Jew: One who had trusted God completely!

- In the mind of the Jewish person, their faith was not placed in God, but in the ritual that God gave! This was the final Jewish stronghold! They had a covenant with God and this was the sign!

- It had been given to their Father Abraham and each had entered into that covenant.

˚  "There was a Rabbinic saying to the effect that 'circumcision is equivalent to all the commandments of the law.'"    Quoted in Vaughn

- On the other hand, one who does the law is one who is agreeing with the Spirit of the law and has been circumcised in their hearts!

- Sadly, there is a very real correlation to us today, especially here. There are some who believe that they are saved because their family is saved. Wrong!

- They believe they are saved because they raised their hand once at a crusade. Wrong!

- They believe that they are saved because they got baptized by a great Pastor. Wrong! We are saved when we die to our flesh and live to our God!

- We are saved when we trust God enough to say "no" to that which would tempt us away from Him or tempt us to trust in anything other than Him!

Conclusion

- God's judgment is according to truth, completely righteous, fair and impartial, comprehensive and not moved by religious privilege.

- In these two weeks, Paul has sought to make sure that we all know one thing for sure: We do not have a leg to stand on before God! What must we do now?

- Get off of our leg and get on our knees, bowing before the Lord of mercy, who is rich in mercy and wanting to draw you and I to belief and a life repentance!

- Let it never be said that we ignored that call, but let us be first to respond!