We are in Romans chapter 2 today, and I hope to finish this chapter. We begin in verse 17, picking out where we left off, and we will continue through verse 29. So let's hear God's word now as I read from Romans 2. 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 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. 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 that circumcision 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 and not in the letter, whose praise is not from men, but from God. Thus ends the reading of the inspired and inerrant word of the living God. Let us pray. We thank you, Lord, for this portion of your holy word. And we ask God that you make known to us the meaning of this text and the application in our lives. In Jesus' name, amen. When Paul wrote the letter of Romans, he was writing to the Roman church, the church at Rome. The church was still a relatively small and scattered group. and did not have the status of being a major world religion at that time as it would later have. By the Middle Ages, the church at Rome, under the name of what we know as the Roman Catholic Church, did become a very dominant and large force in this world. But sadly, at that time, by the time of the Middle Ages, the church had lost sight of the gospel of free grace, the gospel of Jesus Christ, and the church itself put itself in place of the Bible as the sole authority. It was not sola scriptura, but sola ecclesia for the Roman Catholic Church. The church alone was the ultimate authority. for matters of faith and practice. And so good works and sacraments were at that time made necessary for justification. Indulgences were sold that supposedly freed people from a supposed place called purgatory. Thankfully, God raised up a German monk who, though at one time believed all of those things that the church taught, thankfully God enlightened him, showed him the truth, and gave him the courage to oppose the false teaching of the Pope and of the Roman Catholic Church. And so Luther began to preach the gospel of justification by Christ alone through faith in him alone. So today is the day that we remember the Reformation. Remember what God did through men like Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Philip Melanchthon, many others, many reformers, those who came before them, we call them pre-Reformation reformers, if you will, men who translated the Bible into English and did great things and suffered much. Well, the church today is still in need of reformation. And there's a sense when every generation of the church is in need of reformation, the slogan that we are reformed and always reforming because the tendency is for us to drift away from the truths of God's word. And reformation is simply a return to the old paths, as Jeremiah put it, to the truths of the Bible, especially the central, the core truths relating to our salvation. But the church in our day is in a similar condition to the way the church, or at least the Jewish, people had been in Paul's day and in Jesus' day. And so many today have the outward form and the name and profession of Christian. But as Paul said in this passage, the ultimate goal of our lives is to have our praise be from God, our acceptance in Him. So how many today truly have their praise from God? Or are we seeking praise from men? There's a big difference in the two. And how many today truly understand and embrace the gospel of free grace in Jesus Christ alone, and then live lives that are in keeping with that gospel? Well, this morning from our passage in Romans, we'll take a look at two errors that the Jews made that that we tend to make today, that Christians make today. And these are errors relating to our acceptance with God, relating to whether our praise is from God or from men. And the first thing that Paul corrected is this idea that acceptance with God comes by resting in the law. Well, of course, that's not true. Acceptance with God does not come by resting in the law. In verses 17 to 20, He listed many of the privileges that the Jews had, that they had been blessed with, and certainly one of the great privileges that they had over the Gentiles was that God had given them His law, His written word. They had the Bible. They had the Old Testament. We have it too today, don't we? We have the Old and the New Testaments. But they had His written word, and in Romans 3, One and two, we'll look at next time. He said, what advantage has the Jew over the Gentile? Much in every way, chiefly because to them were committed the oracles of God, the written word of God. They had the Bible in their possession. And by comparison, the Gentiles were ignorant. They were in darkness, spiritually speaking, compared to the Jews. And so today, We have the completed Bible. We have Old and New Covenant written down for us. We have it in our possession. What a great blessing that is. We take it for granted, don't we? Because it's so common and it's so available in so many different forms for us today. However, there's a danger for us in having the Word of God. There's a danger in not having the Word of God, but there's a danger in having the Word of God, and that is that we will look at the Bible, look at the truth of the Bible as that which saves us. Now, Jesus made this point to the Jews one time, he said, you search the scriptures because you think in them you have eternal life. He says, but you've neglected the fact that the scriptures point to me. I am the source of eternal life. And that's true. If our trust and our faith is in the law of God, even in the written word of God, but not with a true heart faith in the person of Jesus Christ who the scriptures are all about, then we have missed the point. So I doubt anyone here today would say that merely possessing a Bible would get you into heaven. If that were true, everybody in America would be in heaven probably. And I doubt that anyone here today would say simply because I read the Bible, I must be accepted and must be right with God because I read the Bible. You wouldn't say that. And maybe you would say, well, what about someone who really studies the Bible, really knows the Bible inside and out? What about that person? Is that enough to bring them into a right relationship with God and save their souls? What if someone took that knowledge and began to spread it all around and did as much as they could to spread the teachings and truths of the Bible? Would that gain them approval from God? You say, of course not. None of those things can achieve acceptance with God. And yet, I believe that, well, certainly that's what many of the Jews were thinking. And it's also what many Christians today are also thinking is a far more subtle thing, I think, than we realize. Because we can drift over into the kind of thinking that Paul mentions in verse 17. He says, indeed, you're called a Jew, and you rest on the law, and you make your boast in God. You know his will. You approve the things that are excellent, being instructed out of the law. Well, these are good things. These are things we all encourage in this church to make our boast in God. That actually is what the Bible tells us to do, to know His will. We are encouraged to do that, and we should approve of all of these things. But consider, first of all, the fact that in verse 17, Paul, this is the first time he uses the word Jew in this book. In the previous verses in chapter 2, He really was speaking to them, but now he mentions them very directly. And there would be no confusion who he was talking about here. And the Jews were proud of that name. To be called a Jew to them meant a lot. It meant that they were chosen by God. It meant that they were in covenant with God, that they were descendants of Abraham, that they had all the ordinances, all of the oracles of God. Surely, surely they were approved, they were accepted by God. We see the Jews were wrong to to rest upon and rely upon The law, the truth of the scriptures, at least in a sense of an outward profession of faith in those scriptures. Now the law of God is perfect. It's a perfect standard of right and wrong. It shows it's our duty to him. And the law is good. Paul affirms that later in Romans 6, I believe it is, that the law is good and holy and righteous. We can never say that the law is bad. It's a reflection of God's character, after all. But the law can only save you if you keep it perfectly. So in one sense, we should boast that we, in God and in his law, But if we boast in that law thinking that by our imperfect keeping of it that somehow we must be right with God, then we have completely missed the point. Because you must keep it perfectly in order to be saved by it. So we can't rest in our keeping of the law. And I thank God that our church and our New Presbytery, we are committed to a high view of Scripture. We believe in its inerrancy, its authority over our lives, and we believe it's the Word of God. And I think everyone in this room would agree with those statements. But you can believe the Bible is true. You can believe it's inerrant. You can take a stand against those who deny it and say it is not the Word of God. That's not what makes you approved by God. You should believe it and you should defend it. And you may know the will of God. You may have amassed a lot of Bible knowledge, and that's a good thing to study, to know the truths of the Bible. You may have studied many good books, developed a deeper theological understanding than most. But Paul wants to know this. Do you actually do what God's word says? Has it made a difference in your life? Paul said the Jew approved the things are excellent. Well, you may agree with everything that the preacher preaches week in and week out. You may agree with everything that's stated in our confession of faith, but that is not what you are to rest in. This quote from Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones Presbyterian preacher of the 20th century from England, he said, he said, I will not glory even in my orthodoxy for even that can become a snare if I make a God of it. Let us rejoice in Christ in all his fullness and in him alone. And Paul went on to say in verse 21, you therefore who teach another, do you not teach yourself? If you have studied the Bible, if you have learned and grown in your knowledge of doctrine and of the Bible, you have probably started teaching others. No, not necessarily in a formal way in the classroom or in the pulpit, but let's say you find yourself in a conversation with another Christian and and something is said and you know your antenna, your biblical understanding is alerted to the fact that this is not really biblical what they're saying and you want to reply to them and you want to help explain to them and hopefully you're gracious about it. Maybe not. I've not always been gracious in doing that kind of thing, but you try to correct the other person's views, and you may argue the finer points of theology with others, and if so, then you're attempting what Paul said in verse 20, to be an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes. Again, is there anything wrong with that? No, that's a good thing. to instruct the foolish and those who are immature in the faith, and to help them grow, is a good thing. But we may be teaching others, but Paul asks the question, are we teaching ourselves? Think of the area of biblical counseling. We believe in biblical counseling in this church, and some have been trained in biblical counseling. Really, if you know the Bible, you're trained. to help others, but You who counsel another do you not counsel yourself? And Calvin said this he said a strange counselor is he who consults the Bible not for his own good and Is wise only for the benefit of others. Okay, I can tell everybody else how to live but how am I doing? You know and of course obviously as a pastor as a preacher my job is to is to learn the scriptures and to feed the flock. But I must teach myself. I must live what I'm preaching. I must practice what I preach. Well, what did the Jews teach others, teach to others and yet fail to teach to themselves? He lists three obvious sins, adultery, stealing, and idolatry. Well, I think that adultery probably was seems to be kind of a common thing that occurred in Christ's day. You remember when they brought the woman caught in adultery and they were going to stone her and Jesus said, you who are without sin cast the first stone. Probably a lot of those men were guilty as well of adultery. And so none of them cast the stone. They all walked away because of their guilt. And then many self-righteous Jews They thought they had kept the commandments, at least outwardly so. Maybe they hadn't committed adultery or they hadn't literally stolen. But Jesus taught that you can commit adultery in your heart. And the Bible says, you shall not covet. That's essentially wanting to have what does not belong to you. And then he mentioned idolatry. The Jews prided themselves in not being idolatrous heathen and worshiping idols. And Paul says, you who abhor idols, robbed temples. And in past times, we read in the Old Testament, there were times when the Jews began to worship as the pagan nations did and to join in their idolatry. But it doesn't seem to have been an issue in Paul's day that they were not literally joining in or mixing idolatry into their worship. But there's more than one way to practice idolatry. than just worshiping directly as the pagans did, worshiping idols. And you think of the idea of sacrilege and violating the worship of God and polluting it and adding to it, bringing things into the worship of God that do not belong there. We think of the money changers, the money lenders, the tables that they set up at the place of worship. And Jesus turned those tables over And he disrupted all that they were doing. He said, my house should be called a house of prayer, but you've made it a den of thieves. What was their idol? It was money. They brought the idol of the dollar, so to speak, into the service. That happens today in churches. But idolatry occurs whenever we put anything ahead of God. or when we worship God in ways of human devising. In Colossians 3, Paul equates covetousness with idolatry. He says covetousness, which is idolatry. And so that's exactly what was going on when Jesus turned the tables over of the moneylenders. The bottom line in all of this says, Paul, is that you who make your boast in the law, do you dishonor God through breaking the law? If these Jews were honest, they knew that they had done that, that they had broken the law and thus dishonored God. And then Paul says, because of you, you boast in the law, but you don't keep it. The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you. He's quoting an Old Testament prophet here. He's only reminding them of what God had reminded them of ages before. And so the proud, the self-righteous Jew who didn't live out, didn't truly live out his faith. And the reality was, and the reality is for us, if you don't live out your faith, your faith is not real. It's not genuine. And because of that, Whether it be a self-righteous Jew or self-righteous Christian today, the name of God is blasphemed among Gentiles. In other words, people look at our lives and they may see hypocrisy. And how that affects their view of God. They equate our inconsistent lives and then they look at God and say, he must not be worthy of our worship. But you and I, if we call ourselves Christians, We certainly must seek to live a consistently Christian lifestyle. We must not settle for or boast in or rest in the law, but we should strive to keep it. We shouldn't rest on the Bible or having the right doctrine. But our faith is in Jesus Christ. The Bible says he is the end of the law for all who believe. But then, having trusted in Christ by his grace, we do want to keep his commandments. Because Jesus said, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. And you do so, not as the basis of your salvation, but as part of the profession. You see, the lifestyle of the Christian is a huge part of his witness, of our witness. And so by the grace of God, as those who are saved by that grace, we start living consistently with our profession so that unbelievers cannot have an opportunity to bad mouth the Lord. Well, the second mistake, and this is a little bit shorter this time, but the second mistake the Jews made, and Paul corrected, he taught them that acceptance with God is not based upon or achieved by religious rituals or ceremonies. It's not achieved acceptance. It's not achieved by relying on religious symbols, ceremonies, or rituals. Now the Jews had been given the law. The nations didn't have that. And God established a covenant with Israel. And they were also given special signs and symbols of that covenant. The major mark of the covenant as God made it with Abraham was circumcision, a sign of circumcision, sign of the covenant. And so when God made that covenant with Abraham, go back to Genesis, before Israel was a nation, he commanded Abraham to be circumcised, to circumcise his servants and his sons. And this was important. It was so important. Because a Jew who didn't have the sign of circumcision, a Jewish male, that was evidence that he had broken the covenant and was not pleasing to God. God almost put Moses to death because he had been derelict in his duty to have his sons circumcised. And though circumcision was very important, its significance was often misunderstood by the Jews. Instead of trusting in what circumcision represented, they trusted in the sign itself. You see a sacrament or a sign of the covenant. We have baptism, we have the Lord's Supper. It's a sign of a spiritual reality. and truth, but we don't trust in the sign, we trust in what it is pointing to. So they thought that as long as they had the outward sign, that they were safe. Now, if they neglected the sign, they were sinning. It was wrong. But if they boasted in that and rested in the outward sign alone and not what it represented, then they were also sinning. Paul indicated in verse 25, circumcision is indeed profitable, if you keep the law. But if you're a breaker of the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision. It's just like the person today who has been baptized, they've joined the church, they've made a profession of faith, but you look at their life and they're not living as Christians. Well, what does their baptism mean at that point? It becomes meaningless. Well, Romans 4.11 tells us that circumcision was a sign of salvation. Romans 411, it says, Abraham received the sign of circumcision, quote, as a seal of the righteousness of faith. Abraham, the Bible says, believed God and was credited to him as righteousness. He was saved just like you and I are by faith alone. And interesting, Abraham received the sign of circumcision after he believed. Believer's circumcision, if you want to call it that. We talk about believer's baptism. But all his sons were circumcised before they were saved. It tells us that the son itself is not the critical thing. The critical thing is to have the reality of faith and the obedience that follows. You see, Abraham's heart was right with God. Abraham's life, therefore, was right in the sight of God. And Paul might have had on his mind, as he continued, a quote from Deuteronomy 30, verses 5 and 6, where it says, And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your seed, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live." Circumcision was a sign of what God would do in the hearts and lives of those who trusted in him, that he would remove sin, just as a portion of flesh was removed from the body. And Paul said that those who had the sign, you see, without the reality, without a changed heart, and a changed life that results from that changed heart, then for them the sign was meaningless. In verse 26, he posed the opposite possibility. Suppose an uncircumcised man keeps the righteous requirements of the law. Will not his uncircumcision be counted as circumcision? This is a rebuke to the Jews. He's not saying that Gentiles can be saved by keeping the righteous requirements of the law. They can be saved that way. Neither could the Jews. But his point was that, you know, here's the Jews boasting in the law, but Some of these Gentiles were better. They lived better lives than the Jews. And so how can the Jew think, well, I must be accepted by God simply because I have these things. But here's the Gentile who's telling me by his life that really I'm not accepted by God because my life is not even up to their level. So these are indicators, you see. of whether a person knows the Lord or not, whether they are accepted by God or not. So a Jew could not fall back upon the sign of circumcision in order to help him out. No, having the sign and not living up to it even adds, it only adds to the guilt of the Jew. The same is true for us as Christians. Verses 28 and 29, he explains what a true Jew is and what he is not. For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly. This truth, and what that means is not merely outwardly. The outward part is part of what it means to be a Jew. But he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, not merely so. This truth is taught throughout the Bible, Jesus taught it. You don't rest in the outward aspects of the faith. So it's not participation in ceremonies or rituals that makes a person acceptable to God. The sign of the new covenant, it's no longer circumcision, it's baptism. And it's not your baptism, though, that makes you a true Christian. Believers' baptism doesn't do it. Infant baptism doesn't do it. Baptism by sprinkling doesn't do it. Baptism by immersion won't do it. Yet people trust in their baptism is that which guarantees salvation. Now there's a nuance here to understand that baptism is in one sense a guarantee of your salvation. It's a visible guarantee that what God has promised in His Word and what is demonstrated in this sign, if you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you will be cleansed of your sins. The washing away of your sins is a promise. It is guaranteed by baptism. But it's not guaranteed to the person who doesn't have true faith in Jesus Christ. It's only a guarantee to the person who's truly received Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Does that make sense? I hope it does. And so Paul goes on and He says, you know, if you have the sign without the reality, you see, without a changed heart that results in a changed life, then the sign is meaningless. It's meaningless. Have you been baptized? You should be if you're a believer. Maybe you were baptized as an infant. That's OK. That's good. You don't need to be baptized again. It's a sign. You've got the sign. Were you baptized by a merchant after you believed? That's good. That's fine. But that baptism with water is a sign. It's not the reality. Don't trust in it. And the question is, I've been baptized, but have I been saved? Have I been changed? Am I living like one who's been cleansed of sin, which is what baptism represents? Some people trust in the sacrament of communion. Some people trust in being confirmed by a bishop in the church as their hope of salvation. We don't do that as Presbyterians, but I grew up in the Episcopal church and went through a process called confirmation. They do that in the Catholic church. And supposedly that kind of seals the deal. So we trust in our confirmation. But in some churches, another ceremony has arisen. Fairly recent, a little over 100 years ago, this began. It's called the altar call. Some people are trusting the fact that they raised their hand, walked an aisle, and went forward at a meeting. That may have been the occasion of their salvation. Certainly possible. Many people get saved at a meeting, and they go forward, and they put their faith in Jesus Christ and make their profession of faith. But so many people have gone forward at an invitation. And their lives were never changed. There was no saving faith, no saving grace, no new birth. So if you're trusting in the fact that you went forward at a church service, And yet there was no change in your heart and life. Then the prayer that you pray, the aisle that you walked, didn't do anything for you. You need to go back and revisit where your true faith and your heart are. Well, Paul said he's a true Jew who's one inwardly. And circumcision is that of the heart in the spirit, not in the letter. And could have just as easily said, you know, he is a true Christian who is one inwardly. And baptism is not the outward washing of the water, but it's the true baptism of the spirit and not the water. So what Paul is saying, what Jesus said, what the prophets of the Old Testament said, is that it's the inner reality that counts. The outward part is there. God has given us these signs. We'll talk more about that in a couple of weeks. And we should not put these things down. We should not belittle the sign, but we should exalt the fact that what Jesus said to Nicodemus, an upstanding Jew and teacher in that day, he says, Nicodemus, You must be born again. That's the one vital ingredient that must be there. Is that true of you in your own life? Have you that work of grace in your heart? Have you been born again of the Spirit of God, a changed heart that's led to a changed life, never a perfect life, not in this world, but a changed life. If not, then all the the rituals you've gone through, being baptized, growing up in the church, participating in sacraments, whatever it is. All these external things will be worthless to you if you do not know Jesus Christ and have not been born of his spirit. On the other hand, if you have turned from your sin and put your trust in Jesus Christ and he's given you a new heart, then your praise is from God because God himself has done it. Paul says it's from God, not men. The Bible says man looks at the outward appearance, but what does God look at? The heart. The heart. So don't be satisfied until you know with certainty that your heart is right with God. And how can that happen? You fully surrender your soul to Jesus Christ and put your faith in Him. You ask Him to give you a new heart and a new birth. And then, Not only are you saved by grace through faith, but you also continue. We walk by faith, not by sight. We're not looking at the outward things. We have them. We know that they're signs that God's given us, but our walk is by faith and continuing to trust in him and walk with him in our daily lives. And then, and only then can we say that our praise is from God. Let's pray. Oh Lord our God.