We've been going through the letter to the Romans for a little bit here and we're in chapter number two. This morning, picking up at verse number 17, Paul, as we know, or if you don't know, Paul in this letter is writing to the Christians in ancient Rome, and in the earlier part of the letter, that's the part we're still in, he's dealing with universal reality of our human sinfulness and why that's important for us, necessary for us to know so that we can know what it means to belong to Jesus and find redemption, forgiveness in him. So this morning, Romans 2, verses 17 through 24, the apostle says this, But if you call yourself a Jew, and rely on the law, and boast in God, and know his will, and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed from the law, and if you are sure 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 children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth. You then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast the law dishonor God by breaking the law. For it is written, the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you. And let's keep reading at verse 25 just so you can see where we're going to be going. For circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law. But if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision. If a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? Then he who is physically uncircumcised but keeps the law will condemn you who have the written code and circumcision, but break the law. For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, And circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man, but from God. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. Amen. If you've ever read Jane Austen's novel, Pride and Prejudice, She has two main characters in that story. Mr. Darcy, Mr. Darcy, he walks tall with pride. He's proud in his social status, he's prideful in his wealth, and he's very, very proud of his family name, Darcy. And this is why he looks down on the other character and her family, the Bennett family. Elizabeth Bennett is full of prejudice on the other hand. So Mr. Darcy is full of pride and Elizabeth Bennett is full of prejudice. She's quick to judge Darcy based on him being a little bit aloof, right? He's this rich guy with this big powerful name and so he's somewhat aloof and so she judges him for that in prejudice. She hears false reports about who he is and what he's like and so she has a quick judgment of him. But as the story goes, it's only when they both recognize and conquer their respective faults, pride and prejudice, that they can understand one another. And of course, as all good stories go, they fall in love and the end, right? They live happily ever after. Well, Paul knew something about pride and prejudice. These aren't just literary devices, but spiritual realities in every single human heart. Pride and prejudice. And we see something of that here, again, in Romans 1, verse 18, down to chapter 320. That's this little opening section where Paul is building his case that every single one of us, no matter if we are worldly pagans, the Gentile, or moralist critics like Gentiles, good Gentiles of the Roman Empire, or religious insiders like the Jews. No matter who we are, we all stand unrighteous in ourselves, in our sins, before God. No one can stand before God on their own and claim anything from God. And so that's what he's saying here. He's building this case. We all stand unrighteous before God, and therefore we must be clothed in a clothing that's not our own. We need a righteousness, meaning God is righteous. God is the standard of uprightness. He's the one who determines what is right and wrong. God operates, God exists as a righteous God. He always does what is right. He never does what is wrong. That's what it means to be righteous. We're the opposite of that. We're sinners. We are unrighteous. We don't do the good things that God commands us to do, and we like to do those things that God commands us not to do. That's what it means to be a sinner. And so because of that, we stand before God guilty. We stand before God full of blame, full of shame, clothed in rags, rags of righteousness, but we need a righteousness of another. We need Jesus, the Messiah of Israel, the Savior of the world, the one who stands in our place and does what is right, who is righteous and grants that to us through faith. And that's what Paul has been building up towards. That's what he's leading us to, to see this, that all the world is sinful. That's why Jesus came to bring salvation. In our passage here, verses 17 to 24, Paul turns the spotlight of God's righteous commands and God's righteous law, he turns the spotlight on to his very own people. Notice in verse 17, but if you call yourself a Jew, we've been assuming that he's been writing to the Jews here in that congregation. or to moral critics like good Gentiles, good Romans, good moral Stoics and so forth. But now he turns the light of God's law upon his own people, if you call yourself a Jew. And he exposes under the light of God's law their pride and prejudice towards the Gentiles. They're prideful in their laws and their prejudice towards those whom they look down their noses at. They see themselves here as spiritually superior. But Paul says, you are under the same righteous condemnation as those godless Gentiles that you're looking down upon, that you're pointing your fingers at. Every one of you is guilty as charged. And so having stripped the mask off the moralist in verses 1 to 16, the person that thought they were good, the person that said in comparison, I'm not as bad as them, Paul now pulls the mask off the religious insider as well, meaning the Jews. But if you call yourself a Jew, verse 17. And so our big idea is that religious pride and prejudice become spiritual peril when we boast in the law but break the law. Religious pride and prejudice become spiritual peril when we boast the law but break that very same law. Well, first of all, look in verses 17 to 20. We see here Israel's pride. Kids, what is pride? What is pride? Israel was proud. They were prideful. What is pride? The way I would describe pride is to think of yourself more than you should. Thinking more highly of yourself than others around you. And you brag about yourself. You like to make yourself look great, look better than everyone else. We all do this, kids. We all do this. Pastor Danny does this. You know, I was so good looking back in the day, I tell my kids. I was just, you know, I was the man in the basketball court. I was the top of my class. in school, right? We brag. We get a big head. And sometimes, though, what happens when your head gets so big, it's like a balloon, it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger, you can't fit through the door, your head's so big. No, you literally can, but spiritually speaking, our head gets so big that we can't fit through the door. Now, what happens, kids, when a balloon gets too overinflated? Too big. What happens to it? It pops, right? It pops. Israel's balloon of spiritual pride was enormous. Enormous. They boasted about themselves being righteous. We're better than everybody else. And look at how Paul does this. He lists out here six different things that the Israelites were boasting in. They were proudful of. They had pride in these things. Number one, their name. They boasted in being called Jews, a name that no other nation on earth enjoyed. Now the word Jew here that Paul uses, judaios, can just mean a Judean. And in ancient Israel, amongst the people of God, there was Judea in the south, that's where Jerusalem was. Then there was Samaria in sort of the middle of the promised land. And the top of that was Galilee. These were the three big regions of the promised land in the first century. So to be a Jew or a Judean, meant whether you were calling yourself a Jew versus the Gentiles or a Judean versus your fellow Jews who are half-breed Samaritans or those weird hicks up in the north who speak Galilean accent. They're boasting. No matter what Paul means here, it's a boast. It's a boast. And his point was that they were Jews in name only, not in deeds. And so they're very proud and they were very prideful in their name. Number two, their law. Notice again, their law. They relied on. And this verb can mean not just sort of resting on or reliance on, but finding comfort or finding rest in the law. It could be meaning that they were leaning on the law, right? Sort of relying on it as the ESV translates it or as they found rest in it, they found comfort. Why? Well, God gave his laws to the Israelites unlike any other nation. The law was theirs. And they presumed that possessing the law made them righteous. Moses told the Israelites as they were on the precipice of the promised land in Deuteronomy 4, verse 8, what great nation is there that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law? So they presume that just having possession of the law made them righteous. And this boast that they have the law, Paul is saying, yeah, but you don't actually obey it. You got it, but you don't obey it. But they found rest in their having the law. Third, they're God, notice, they boasted in God. The only true God, not the gods of the Egyptians of the Book of Exodus, or the Canaanites of the former promised land, or the Assyrians who came to invade, or the Babylonians who invaded, or the Greeks, or the Romans. They boasted in their God, the one true God. And what's called the Shema, the hero of Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, Deuteronomy 6-4. That wasn't just a creed that the Israelites were given to preserve and profess to the nations, but they used it as a prejudicial dividing line. We have one God, everybody else is a pagan. And instead of preserving this creed and this confession and then propagating it and sharing it and testifying of it to those pagans to bring them in, they use it as a dividing line, as a wall. As a wall. To separate themselves off from everybody else. They boasted in their knowledge, verse 18. They knew God's will because, again, they had God's word. Psalm 147 was a source of pride to them, not a source of praise. He declares his word to Jacob, his statutes and his rules to Israel. He's not dealt thus with any other nation. They do not know his rules. That's a psalm, that's a praise to God. And they were supposed to, as we're going to see, they were supposed to use that law and those commandments of God and God's name and their status as God's people to be a light to the Gentiles. Instead, they were proudful, they were boastful. Instead of using the laws of God to praise God and to propagate and to bring others in, they were proud and prideful in themselves. John Calvin, in his comments on this passage, says that they had the approval of judgment, not the approval of choice. In other words, they could analyze what was good and what was evil. They had an approval of judgment. They could see laws and they knew what laws were good and which laws were not good, but they could not actually do the things they said were good. Right, that's sort of theological speak for rules for thee, not for me, right? They boasted in their knowledge, knowing the will of God. Sure they knew it, but did they actually know it in real life? They boasted in their discernment. Again, verse 18. They approved what is excellent by being instructed from the law. Again, he's not saying that they were doing the laws, but they knew, they approved from afar what is excellent. Remember what we saw in verses 6 to 16 the last couple of Sundays. Paul was saying that most of the Jews heard the law, they knew the law, they received in synagogues the reading of the law. All the while, some Gentiles who never knew the laws of God, who never went to synagogues, who never heard the Torah read, were actually doing the things found in the law. So they approved what is excellent. They were instructed in the law, but they weren't actually doing it. And finally, their ministry. Notice verses 19 to 20. They were very confident in themselves, weren't they, as Paul describes here. And these are things that Paul is writing that they were describing themselves by. A guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children. Now, these four things here, blind, in darkness, foolish, children, this is how they labeled the Gentiles. They're blind. They don't know the one true God. They don't know His laws, His commandments. They're in darkness. They're in ignorance. They're fools. They're just mere children, Baloa. And their role was to be a guide, light, an instructor, and a teacher. And this wasn't wrong in and of itself. In fact, as I just alluded to, the prophet Isaiah, Isaiah 42 and 49, actually said that ancient Israel was to be a guide to the blind, a light to open blinded eyes of the Gentiles, to instruct them and to teach them in the ways of God. But the difference was, Paul says, they were wearing their status, they were wearing this role as a guide or as guides, as light, as instructors, as teachers. They were wearing the role, they didn't have the reality of it. They liked to be, as Jesus said, praised in synagogues, praised in streets. They liked to be told how much they knew. They liked to be fawned over for their prayers. all the while they weren't actually doing the things that God commanded. So just notice how external all this stuff is. They possessed the privileges, but didn't grasp their purpose. These blessings that God gave to them, they were called Jews, they had the one true God, they had his law, so on and so forth. These are meant to humble them, not make them haughty. to lead them to the Savior, not themselves. But they were relying, again verse 17, they relied, they rested upon the law. They leaned upon just having a copy of the commandments in every synagogue. And as long as we have that stuff, that good stuff, that right stuff, as long as we have it, as long as our church has it, the right confessions of faith, and the right liturgy, and so forth. As long as we got all that, we're good. That's what Paul's saying. And as we think about what Paul is saying about the first century Jews, how does this apply to us? Brothers and sisters, let me just speak personally about this, and this applies to all of us. This applies to all of us, this pride. This pride that Paul's describing the ancient Israelites and they're having this outward possession of these external blessings of God, and they rested merely on that outward stuff, they never actually internalized it. I have the same pride, beloved. I, I, and I would say we, have a tendency to boast in the name of Calvinists, Reforms, as if wearing this badge that I am Reformed, gets me backstage access to God, right? We have to confront our own idol as a church. We can be boastful and prideful. I, too, can rely upon tradition, just having our confessions, our church order, our liturgy, all the structural stuff that makes our church awesome, right? But forget that all these things are meant to lead me back to their source, which is the Word, which is Scripture. I boast that I know God. I know who he is because I've read a mountain of theology. But mountains don't save. Mountains don't save. I boast that I know his will because my theology, as it's often said, Calvinism is the gospel. Calvinism is the most consistent theology on the market. And I got that theology, I'm good. I boast in my discernment because I was taught the Heidelberg Catechism. I boast that I'm a guide to the theologically blind, a light to those in ecclesiastical darkness, an instructor of the biblically foolish, a teacher of the spiritually young. And in all that pride, beloved, I can say, I must say, I must confess, I'm wrong in that. If you ever hear me say these sorts of things, pastor, don't forget what you preached. Practice what you preach. Now, with all these privileges of our tradition, we like the tradition that we're in, it's a helpful tradition. We have wonderful confessions of faith that we believe help guide us in the word and confess what the Bible says. We have a church order, a governance structure that helps us to realize that the multitude of counselors has much wisdom. It helps us not to lord our offices over our people. We have lots of wonderful things. But let me just say to us here as OURC, I think I can say this for 25 years. Is it okay if I say this? Well, I'm gonna say it anyway, so. You kept me this long, so I guess I can say it and you'll keep me at least for one more year. With all these privileges that we have, and I think they're privileges, they're wonderful things. Our tradition, our confessions, our church order, our liturgy, all the things that we do. You and I need a heart that's just as big as our head, if I can put it that way. We need a heart that is just as big as our head. We need to be known for having a big heart. And if we believe in a big God, and we like to say salvation of the Lord, and we're Calvinists here, right? And we like to say that ultimately God makes all things new. He redeems and restores the universe. It's a big theology. We have a big God. Well, if we actually believe that stuff, then we have to have a big heart for those who are lost. For those who are lost. And by lost, I don't mean people, our brothers and sisters in Calvary Chapel, okay? All right? It's not our job to evangelize our Baptist brothers and sisters, right? It's our job to evangelize the lost. Amen? Men, so we got to remember this stuff. This is not just Paul pointing the finger at these bad guys back then. It's like, man, Paul really gave them a zinger there. Paul really roasted these guys back in the first century. And I believe what Paul says. Let me go on Twitter and let me roast these Armenians. Let me roast these dispensationalists. Let me roast these Baptists. I have a lot of Baptist friends. I like to talk to my Baptist friends a lot. just for fun, but we've got to remember it's all, all that has to be in Christian fun. If you love someone, you can do that. When I had my fun debate on YouTube with my Baptist brother, Keith Foskey, it was fun, but it was, we understood each other. We were lighthearted and we love each other, but we should have a heart for the lost. If we believe in God, if we believe in all these things that we say are such a blessing to us, we've got to internalize them and pop the bubble of our head so that our heart gets inflated more than our head. Don't rest on your laurels, O-U-R-C. Paul lists Israel's privileges because these were gifts of God, not meant to be grounds of pride and boasting. Anything God gives to us, any good thing, whether it's our tradition, our denomination, whatever, these are meant to humble us, not to harden us. Because in and of themselves, nothing, nothing that we do, the liturgy, the hymnal, right, how we do communion, whatever, none of this stuff is sufficient to make you and I righteous before God. Only Jesus Christ can do that. Only Jesus Christ can do that. And so Israel boasted in their privilege. And now Paul shows us a little bit of how far they fell. So as their pride comes before their fall, we see their fall there in verses 21 to 24. And Paul's reciting back to ancient Israel, to the first century Jews there in Rome, these six boasts that led to their fall. And then he, as he's trying to do here, he drops the hammer, as it were, of the law upon them to humble them to seek refuge, not in themselves or the law, but in Jesus. You who teach others, do you not teach yourself? The instructors needed to be instructed, is what Paul says. The instructors were uninstructed. Do you not teach yourself? You preach against stealing, do you steal? You say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who have whore idols, do you rob temples? Paul's point is not to say that every single first century Jew committed every single one of these sins outwardly. That's not his point. His point, notice, is to say that there's something about the law that judges what's in the heart as much as what is done by our hands. By doing this, asking these rhetorical questions, he's applying the internal spiritual power of the commands of God just like Jesus did in Matthew chapter 5. You heard that it was said, but I say to you, You may not steal with your hands, is what Paul is saying, but you covet in your hearts. That's what Jesus did in Matthew 5. You may not have committed adultery physically, but you lust in your hearts. And he's telling them, you may not actually bow down to idols like your Roman neighbors, but you've either robbed God by withholding what belongs to him, as the prophet Malachi said, Or perhaps you've literally robbed pagan temples and thus become unclean, all the while saying you have the temple as your refuge. Or possibly what Paul means by saying that they robbed temples is that they've benefited in the marketplaces because the Roman soldiers would go out and they would plunder the nations that they destroyed, take all their gods with them, all their gold, all their temples, bring it all back and sell it on the marketplace. And so he's saying, in a sense, you've either done this literally or you've done it in your hearts. Or you just are a hypocrite. You preach against idolatry and somehow or another you rob quote-unquote temples. Paul followed Jesus in teaching that sin isn't just what you do, it's what you desire. It's not just what you do, but what you desire. It's a matter of your heart. And that's why he brings this devastating summary. You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. In doing this, they continue to do what the prophet Ezekiel once rebuked in the ancient Israelites as they were going into exile to Babylon In Ezekiel 36 we read this phrase, The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles, the nations, because of you. Their hypocrisy didn't simply condemn them, it defamed God. And what's interesting here is just the irony that Paul is using. This is Rabbi Saul, he's a Jew, he knows what he's talking about. This was him, this was him back in the day. But the irony here is that the Jews, who were so zealous, and still today, to protect the name of God on their lips, they don't even use the name God. He is Hashem, the name. They don't speak His name. In Exodus, Yahweh, they call Him, what? They call Him Adonai. So zealous to protect the name of God, just in case they would speak blasphemously of Him. All the while, Paul says, you're profaning him by your deeds. You can never say God's name with your lips and say that and think that you somehow have not blasphemed God, you've not cursed God, but by your actions, you're doing the very same thing. Your lips are supposed to praise God, but instead, your actions have caused many mouths to curse him. The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you. In our terms, what Paul is saying is don't sit around all day debating theology on social media, discussion boards, lecturing others on the glories of the Reformed view of whatever it might be, only to break the ninth commandment over and over and over again in your tone, your accusations, your uncharitable assumptions. The world, Paul is saying the world may not understand anything about covenant theology, but it understands hypocrisy. And when God's people don't resemble God, his reputation suffers. The name of God is blasphemed because of you. So, these are very religious people that he's writing to. Very religious people. if religious people are failures. Think about this. If these religious people that Paul's writing to and against and trying to persuade, if religious people are failures to uphold God's standard of God's commands, not just with their lips, but in their lives, their thoughts, their words, their deeds. And if we who know better don't do better, What hope is there? If religious people like us fail, what hope is there? Because if we fail, how much more so the world? And so as we think about what Paul says to these first century Jews, and he just absolutely lays into them with the law here, the question for us to consider is, what are you resting in today? Again, verse 17, they were relying, resting in the law. What are you resting in today? Your works or Christ's? That's the dilemma that Paul is going to set up for us in Romans 2 and 3. Your works are Christ's. Martin Luther said that Paul's purpose here in Romans 2 is to humble the proud. To bring them to a full knowledge of their evil condition. To teach them that they need grace. To destroy their own righteousness. So that in deep humility they seek after Christ and confess their sins and so accept grace and be saved. Are you humbled today by seeing your pride and your prejudice in your very own heart? Do you see why you need to earnestly and passionately seek Christ's righteousness, not your own? Not your own. Again, John Calvin said this on our passage. No one who is seriously touched or moved by the fear of God will ever dare to raise up his eyes to heaven, since the more he strives to attain true righteousness, the clearer he will discern how far he is from it. the more you strive to attain true righteousness, meaning Jesus Christ, the more you realize in yourself you're nowhere near it, you're on your own. The law doesn't just expose our sin. It exposes even our self-deceptions that we're doing pretty good. You're not. You're not. The law exposes us so that the gospel can embrace us. Your righteousness will never save you. Christ always will. And the only safe place for proud, prejudiced hearts is kneeling at the cross, where our sins were done away with. And so Paul's purpose here is not to crush you, and my job is not to crush you and just leave you in the dust this morning. but to awaken you and me from spiritual death. Paul's not seeking to shame you, but to shepherd you. Paul doesn't want to leave you hopeless, but to drive you to the only hope. And that only hope is Jesus Christ, amen? The Lord invites you and me as sinners to rest in him, to rest in him. There's a lot of promises in the world of rest, and only in Jesus Christ are we gonna find true, lasting rest for our souls. And the one place where the prideful and the prejudiced, just like you and me, the one place we find pardon for that pride and for that prejudice, again, is at the cross, where the righteous Savior was crucified on your behalf. You deserved it. You still deserve it. But He has taken your shame and all of your guilt and that burden and that weight that you can never get rid of and He has crucified it, nullified it, rendered it ineffectual forever. He's put to death your eternal death that you might have everlasting life, amen? Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for even texts that are meant to bring us to our knees and to humble us, to open our eyes to the true nature of who we are. These are all meant to lead us to you. Lord, as we meditate again upon this section then of Romans that is full of law and full of condemnation and bad news Leaving us, Lord, leaving us humbled from our pride and our prejudice, we pray that you would use these to stir us up to seek Jesus, to find life in him alone. And Lord, as we come to Jesus, as we find life in him, stir us up, Lord, not to hide that light that you've given to us under the lampstand, but to share it. You've called us to be a light to the world. because Jesus is that light. And so enable us to share the light of the gospel, to live out with our lips and with our lives this week, honest and humble lives that confess sin, so that people would see that and they would know that there is a remedy, that someone has an answer to the predicament that I find myself in. And we pray that that would be us this week with someone that we know. to lead them to know who Jesus is, to bring them here to hear the Gospel, to join with him in his body in this particular place. And so, Lord, we pray that you would strengthen our faith this morning as we hear the word, as we receive the Lord's Supper. Encourage us in the Gospel, stir us up to love and good deeds, and send us out in the joy of the Lord, which is our strength. And we ask all this in Jesus' name, and all of God's people say, Amen.