OK, we have a couple of announcements again. First of all, a reminder for the men about the event Saturday night to go hear Louis Zamperini at First Baptist Church for their men's ministry. And we will be meeting for dinner at 5 o'clock at the Good Company Seafood there on Katy Freeway between Campbell and Voss or Bingle. What did I say? See, I don't know what I say sometimes. Barbecue. Just wanted to check, make sure you're listening. Good Company Barbecue. And we will be meeting there at 5 o'clock, and then we'll go on over. For those who didn't get tickets, who would like to come, they have sold out, but they're going to have some overflow seating. Tickets are $5 a piece, and you can purchase them at the door on a first-come, first-served basis. Be prepared for that second announcement. If you didn't get it, the quarterly financial statements are out in the kitchen or foyer for everyone to pick up. And then also in terms of long-term planning, the church picnic October 15th. And then also be thinking if there's something you'd like to do to help out either as a position overseeing something in relation to the Night to Honor Israel or just to volunteer to usher or direct traffic or something else of that nature. Everybody's been talking about how hot it is here. What's the record heat for Houston? Anybody know? What's the hottest it's ever been here? Nope. I don't think it's been 109. I was here in 80, and it hit 107, and they said that was the record all-time high. And that's how high it's going to get Saturday. So it is going to be very hot. It's supposed to be 104 tomorrow and 107 on Saturday. So y'all stay cool. But if you want to know how hot it is, that tells you how hot it is. Now there may be some people who are looking at that and they don't know what that is exactly. And that is a corn feeder. And ranchers and others will put those out on the ranch or the farm filled with corn to feed the deer. So that's what that is. That is a corn feeder that got a little too hot. All right, before we get started this evening, we will take a few moments to make sure that we are in fellowship and ready to focus on the study of God's word this evening and give you an opportunity to make sure that you are spiritually prepared to study the word this evening and to focus on what God has to teach us this evening. Let's pray. Father, again, we're so grateful that we have your Word to go to in times of trouble, because it is your Word that gives us a certainty about life, because it is your Word that reveals to us the nature of reality. The reality isn't what we think it should be or what we think it ought to be, but reality is what you have described it to be. And only when we go to your Word can we have certainty in understanding the world around us and why things are the way they are. And Father, as we study your word, we often come up against ideas, concepts, doctrines that seem to run counter to things that are held to be true in a popular sense in our culture, things that we may have been taught in the past, but yet it is your word that is the measure of everything. And so we need to have our thinking conform to your word so that we can understand reality as it is. Father, we pray that God the Holy Spirit will help us to understand the things we study this evening and put these things together. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen. We are in Romans chapter 1, or 3 rather, Romans chapter 3. We are in verse 9. Now in the last couple of lessons, we have gone through and seen how Paul in a very logical manner is laying out the foundation for why and how man is justified and why it is necessary for man to be justified before God. He opens this section in the introductory verses or key verses in Romans 1, 16, and 17 And in Romans 1, 17, he states, for in it, and the it refers back to verse 16, which is the gospel, for in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. And this tells us that a major theme in Romans is going to be on understanding the righteousness of God and how man can be rightly related to God because of his righteousness, because God is righteous, because God is perfect. He cannot fellowship. He cannot have a relationship with those creatures that are sinful, that do not measure up to his righteousness. It's just impossible. But God in his grace has made a way for us to have a relationship with him, and he's provided a way to freely give us his righteousness. Now, verse 17 in chapter 1 lays out that principle of the revelation, the disclosure of the righteousness of God. And then in the first section, which began in verse 18, 118, Paul says, for the wrath of God, and we need to understand wrath maybe a little differently from what I taught it initially, just refining that understanding a little bit, that the wrath of God isn't a future judgment. It's not the future tribulation. The wrath of God is God's divine discipline or divine judgment within history, within our lives, and often that is displayed simply because we experience the natural negative consequences of our own bad actions and bad decisions. But sometimes God intensifies that for various reasons, and there are also times when God in His grace does not take us through the natural consequences of those actions or those decisions. And we read in verse 18, the wrath of God or the discipline or judgment of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. And that word that's translated unrighteousness there is the Greek noun or adjective dikia plus the prefix a. Adikia, and the ah is a negative. It's equivalent in English to our un. It negates the term. So we have this idea of unrighteousness of men who then suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Now I want you to remember that because the word righteousness as well as unrighteousness comes up in the section that we are studying in Chapter 3. Now as Paul developed his thinking, he points out that because of human sinfulness and the rejection of God, suppressing the truth in unrighteousness, that this works itself out in human history in two ways. It produces two results. People either react to God in licentiousness, which means they think they just have a license to do whatever they want to do. Licentiousness means that they just think that they That there's no absolute morality. Everything is relative. You do things the way you think they ought to be done. I'll do things the way I think they ought to be done. And there's no system of ethics or morality that's any higher than each individual person. And the result of licentiousness is when you just think you can live any way you want to. And this is, the outworking of this is what is explained in verses 20 down through 32. And then the first five verses of chapter 2, we have the outworking of this on the moral person, the person who thinks that they can somehow measure up to God's perfection of righteousness by simply being moral. And then from there, he shifts to talking about those, especially the Jews, who think that they can do that through observance of the law. That's the background and he's driving this home into chapter 3 where he shows specifically on the basis of God's revelation in the Hebrew Scriptures that the Old Testament, the Torah, the Nevi'im, the Ketuvim, the three sections of the Hebrew Scriptures all attest to the fact that man cannot and never could live up to God's perfect standards. In fact, the Torah wasn't given to teach man how to gain righteousness, but to demonstrate that no one could keep it perfectly, and that it was designed to demonstrate that man could not measure up to God's righteousness, his righteous standard on his own, but that he had to be given that from God. And so when he comes down to verse Verse 9, he asks the rhetorical question, the last of his ten sets of questions, he says, what then, driving to his conclusion, that's the indication of this word, what then, what then, after having gone through the various steps and the points that he's made through his rhetorical questions, starting back in verse 1, he says, what then, what's the result of this? Are we better than they, we meaning the Jews? Are we better than they, meaning the Gentiles? He says, no, not at all. Meganoita, for we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin. So the Jews were in a privileged position because God gave them an unconditional, irreversible covenant with Abraham that God was going to bless them, He was going to give them the land, and then through them God was going to reveal the Scriptures and that they would be the custodians of the Scriptures. And there were many other ways in which the Jewish people were blessed by God and so they had information, they had knowledge, they had revelation that was not available to the rest of mankind but through them it would become available to all mankind which is why God told Abraham that through you all nations will be blessed. So though they had a privileged position it wasn't a position that gave them privilege in terms of being justified. It did not make them more righteous. And so he concludes here, are we better than they? No, not at all, for we have previously charged you both Jews and Greeks are under condemnation. They are all under sin. And the Greek word for sin is similar to the Hebrew word for sin, and it's a word, hamartia, where we get our word hamartiology for the study of the doctrine or the theology of sin, hamartia means to miss the mark. The same thing that the Hebrew word for sin, hatah, also means it is to miss the mark, to miss a standard. So all are under sin. Now starting at this point, as I showed last time, the Apostle Paul began to go to various scriptures All of these are from, almost all of them are from the Psalms. There are some also from Isaiah, but he's going to string these quotations together in order to emphasize his point that he's not making this up, that this is exactly what the testimony of the Torah is. And he says, as it is written, first of all, he states, there is none righteous, no, not one. Now, as I pointed out last time, that statement does not come or is not found anywhere in the Old Testament. This is a summary. I've reviewed the four basic ways in which the Old Testament Scriptures are quoted in the New Testament, and this is the fourth way, that of summation, where something that is taught in various ways in the Old Testament is just summed up in one phrase. And so he does that here. He says, there is none righteous, no, not one. And then in Romans 3.11 and Romans 3.12, he quotes from Psalm 14.1-3. Now, as I pointed out last time, Psalm 14.1-3 focuses on what the fool says. And the fool says what he says because the fool thinks this, that he's a fool. It's not that he's first a fool. He's not a moron. He doesn't have a single-digit IQ, and then because of that he says there's no God. It's because he rejects the existence of God that he's a fool. And then everything flows out from that. Remember in Romans 1, Paul said those that reject the evidence of God profess to be wise and become fools. So the rejection of God is what makes a person a fool. It doesn't matter how many PhDs they have, it doesn't matter how high their IQ is, it doesn't matter what their accomplishments are, if they reject the existence of God, they're a fool. So now Paul goes on to say, verse 11, there's none who understands, there is none who seeks after God. Now I pointed out last time when looking at this, that we have to be careful not to take this in an absolute sense. He's not saying that the unbeliever has no comprehension whatsoever of the existence of God. He's not saying that the unbeliever is constitutionally incapable of having any knowledge or understanding of God. Why do we say that? I point that out because this is the extreme form that you'll often see for the doctrine of total inability as expressed in High Calvinism. And this is just a misrepresentation. Going back again to Romans 1, 19, we read, because what may be known of God is manifest in them. So the unbeliever knows about the existence of God. So there is a level of knowledge that the unbeliever has and a level of understanding that he has. And Romans 1 20 Paul says, For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. They are clearly seen. That means that the unbeliever has a measure of perception in relation to the existence of God. So there is a level of understanding But he's not going to take that level of understanding to its fulfillment because of negative volition. So from that, we understand that the unbeliever can exercise positive volition. At some point, as a child grows up, he looks around the world, and he asks the question, is there something greater than me? And he may decide, yes, it is, and it's that pile of rocks over there, and I'm going to worship that. Or he may look up at the sky and see the stars, and he's going to worship the astral plane. or he may look at the storms and worship a storm god, or he may decide there really has to be something even beyond the stars and even beyond the storm gods, and some being that is greater than everything that I see, and I want to find out about him. And he may not articulate it quite that precisely and clearly, but there is a sense in which he wants to know God, and that is what we call positive volition. There are others who just reject the idea Or sometimes they may be positive at some point, but then as they get more knowledge, they reject it. And so they turn away from God. So the unbeliever is capable of understanding some things about God and is also capable of seeking God to some degree. So that the second clause, there is none who seeks after God, is not an absolute, stating that there's no such thing as positive volition, and that no one can seek God whatsoever. And I pointed out a number of verses last time that emphasize seeking God. First of all, as we look at the first verse that talks about there's none that does good, They're corrupt. There's none that does good, not even one. This is clearly from the Old Testament as well in Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes is written by Solomon after he's gone through all of his search for God, after he rejected God and then searched for God and all these pagan religions came back to God. And he writes of his experience. And in Ecclesiastes 7, verse 20, Solomon says, For there is not a just man on earth who does good and does not sin." Not one. So, once again, the testimony of the Hebrew Scriptures is clear that everyone is under condemnation. Everyone is a sinner. Psalm 15, verses 1 through 3, states the same principle. The psalmist says, Lord, who may abide in your tabernacle? Lord, who may dwell in your holy hill? The answer in verse 2, he who walks uprightly and works righteousness and speaks the truth in his heart. He who does not backbite with his tongue nor does evil to his neighbor, nor does he take up reproach against his friend. But see, the problem is there's none that does that. So God has to provide the gift of righteousness. Now other passages I pointed out last time, and I'm not going to read them all, I'll just give you the references. Deuteronomy 4.29, from there you will seek the Lord your God. 1 Chronicles 16.11, command seek the Lord and his strength. Isaiah 55.6 and 7 is very important. Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way. and the unrighteous man his thoughts, let him return to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him, he will ultimately pardon." So the scriptures clearly attest to the fact that people can seek God. And that sense of positive volition, which is unmerited, it's non-meritorious, then they can seek God. Jeremiah 29, 12, and 13, then you will call upon me and go and pray to me and I will listen to you and you will seek me and find me. Hosea 5.15, Amos 5.4, and Amos 5.6. Zephaniah 2.3 are just some of the ones that I mentioned. Now, one question sometimes comes up at this point, especially if you have been influenced by Calvinistic teaching. Remember, the basic teachings of salvation and Calvinism are summarized in an acronym as TULIP. T-U-L-I-P. The T is for total inability. We would believe in total depravity, which means that man is affected by sin in all aspects. The totality of his being doesn't mean he's as bad as he could be. It just means that every aspect of our being has been impacted by sin and corruption. But in Five-Point or High Calvinism, total inability means that man can't do anything. He can't even exercise positive volition within a Calvinistic system, even positive volition is viewed as merit, meritorious. So T is total inability, U is unconditional election. That means that God chooses people without any condition. The question I always have is just because a condition isn't expressed in scripture doesn't mean there's no condition. Condition can be the fact that he's going to choose people on the basis of faith alone and Christ alone. And in his omniscience, he always knows who that will be. But in strict Calvinism, it's pure arbitrariness. God has no condition. He just chooses some for heaven and the rest are passed over. And whether you have an active or passive double predestination, it doesn't matter. Ultimately, it ends up the same way. The L is for limited atonement, since God only chose X number of people to save. Christ only died for those. The rest are just out of luck. The I, though, that's what we're getting to in this particular verse. The I stands for something called irresistible grace. Irresistible grace. And irresistible grace is taught as meaning that since you Under total inability, you can't do anything to get saved. You can't even exercise positive volition. And under unconditional election, you're either part of the elect or you're not. God just chose these few and no more. Then that means that since those that are chosen can't do anything to even express a desire to know God, then God has to reach out and draw them to himself and they can't resist it because since the elect have to end up expressing faith in Christ God has to do something to bring them to himself that they can't ultimately they can't resist they they will have to yield and that's called irresistible grace. Now the main text that people go to is John 644. Now, this relates to seeking. The High Calvinist position is you can't even seek. You can't have any kind of positive volition unless God first is drawing you, and that drawing is irresistible. It's from the Greek word that's translated draw is the verb ecluo. It's used about six or seven times in the Scripture, and in some cases it does indicate that somebody's being taken somewhere or it's used in a context where people are taken somewhere against their will. But that's not the semantic core meaning of the word. It simply means to take someone somewhere, just because in some instances the word is used where people don't really want to go where they're being taken. For example, Paul and Silas are being taken to the Philippian jail. They didn't really want to go there, but That's the point of the passage, is not that they're being taken against their will. I think that's reading something into the meaning of the word that's not part of the core semantic value. How's that for good linguistic ease? It's not part of the core semantic value of the word ecluo. But in John 6, 44, Jesus says, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. and I will raise him up at the last day." So there's clearly a promise of assurance there that if you come to Christ, he will raise you up at the last day. There's resurrection. But what's this first statement that unless the Father draws him, no one can come to him? How does the Father draw him? Now, I put verse 45 up there because every text has a context, and whenever you take the text out of the context, you're always left with a con job. And that's what the Calvinists do is they con people because they just go to John 6.44 and they ignore John 6.45. John 6.45 tells you how God draws you. There's no mention of the Holy Spirit anywhere in here. It doesn't say that God the Holy Spirit is going to reach down and irresistibly pull you into the lifeboat of salvation. John 6.45, Jesus explains what he just said. It is written in the prophets. So he's going to show and apply a passage from Isaiah. And they shall all be taught by God. Therefore everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Now to understand verse 44, we have to start with the end of verse 45. Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father, how do you learn from the Father? Just wake up one morning and, oh, I had a dream last night. Or you're just driving down the highway and zone out and you have a little prance going on and God speaks to you. Is that how it works? No. Contextually, they shall be taught by the Father. How were they taught by the Father? Well, Isaiah 54 13, all your children shall be taught by the Lord and great shall be the peace of your children. It's a teaching of the scripture. It is the proclamation of the word of God that is what draws people. So in John 6 45, the principle is laid down that that people are, everyone is taught by God. Whenever you hear the scripture, you're being taught by God. There may be a human instrument, an intermediary teaching the Word, but ultimately it is God that teaches you. And so anyone who has heard and learned Scripture is hearing and learning Scripture from the Father, and you hear the message and those come to you. It is through the Word of God that the Spirit of God draws us to the Father and to Christ. So it is not something that's apart from Scripture, And it is not something that is done apart from human volition and human will. So when we read in Romans 3, 10 and 11, there's none righteous, no, not one. That's confirmed clearly in the Old Testament. There's none who understands. There is none who seeks after God. This is a quotation that comes from Psalm chapter 14, 1 through 3, and then in verse 12, continues to quote from Psalm, Psalm 14, they have all turned aside. Who's that that's turned aside in context there? It's the fool that says in his heart there is no God. He's suppressing, this is just a poetic way of talking about suppressing truth and unrighteousness. They've all turned aside. They've together become unprofitable. How have they become unprofitable? Because they've rejected God. If God created the universe, then the universe is what God made it to be. So we're making an assumption here on the position of both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament. God created the heavens, the earth, and the seas, and all that is in them. So fish are fish because that's how God designed them to be. Birds are birds because that's the way God designed them to be. Cattle are cattle because that's the way God designed them to be. And human beings are human beings because God created them to be in His image and likeness. And we are what we are because that's the way God made us. God as the artist, God as the artisan, God as the craftsman made us to be what He wanted us to be according to His blueprint and according to His plan. Now, if that's your assumption, then everything in the universe is what it is because God made it that way. But if you reject that and you say there's no God, then you can just basically make up anything you want to about the nature of reality. You may say everything is the product of two gods, a god and a goddess coming together and having sex and out popped the universe. That's basically the Babylonian creation myth that was very popular in various forms in the ancient world. You can come along and say that there were atoms, there was essentially matter, or you can go with the pre-Socratics and say you have your four basic elements of earth and air and fire and water, and these just came together, and everything came out of that. That's the ancient Greek philosophical pre-scientific form of Darwinistic evolution. Or you can go with a modern view of science that everything came from some primordial Big Bang that took place. They don't explain how the matter got there to begin with. There are many other flaws and problems with it. But just because you push something back to five billion years and go through an infinite regress of causes, you still have to have an original cause for that big bang. And these things can't be explained. But if you take that view, then you're left with a totally impersonal universe. And there's no basis for right or wrong. It's the only basis for right or wrong, whatever society thinks is best, or whatever you think is best. So if you want to go out on the street and help a elderly person get across the street in heavy traffic, then that's good. But why is that any better than going out there, looking at that poor person, and say, well, they're going to die pretty soon. Let me just push them in front of that semi-truck and end all their suffering. In pure existentialism, there's no difference. One's as good as the other. So there are differences. You start with the premise of no God, then you can define the world anywhere you want to. But if there is a God and you're defining the world and creation any way you want to, you're basically living on the basis of a fantasy. And the problem with living on the basis of fantasies is sooner or later the bubble pops and then we get into trouble. So, the way Paul talks about this is that they've all become unprofitable. There's no value If you live and operate with a bunch of people who are living divorced from reality, which is defined as what God said it is, then sooner or later you're going to run into some major problems because you're misdefining creation. Paul's conclusion, which is taken also from Psalm 14, three, there is none who does good, no, not one. Same conclusion Solomon came to in the ancient world. Then we come to the conclusion, there's none who does good. This word for good is the Greek word Christos. There are other words that Greek uses for good, but this is a word that has already been used by the Apostle Paul And his previous use was in Romans 2.4. In Romans 2.4, he talks about the attributes and character of God. Remember, the ultimate reference point in Romans for anything is the character of God. And in Romans 2.4, Paul said, or do you despise the riches of his goodness, forbearance and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance. Goodness there is Christotes. So Christotes is an attribute of God. We don't normally include that in our list of the attributes of God. God's goodness sort of combines elements of his righteousness, his mercy, and his love into the concept of goodness. So no one does good. That doesn't mean we don't do relative good. Jesus told his disciples, he said, you being evil know how to give good gifts to your children. So that's the difficulty that people have, is that they do a lot of good things, and there are many wonderful, wonderful people who do many kind and generous and thoughtful things for many people. But that kind of goodness is only relative. It doesn't measure up to the qualitative, intrinsic goodness of God, which is what Both David said in the Old Testament in Psalm 14, and Paul quotes here in Romans 3, is no human being is able to perform at the level of the goodness of God. Now from verse 12, we're going to go into another chain of references, beginning in verse 13, that quote from different passages in the Old Testament. Now what's interesting in this, as I pointed out before, is when you're dealing with Old Testament quotations in the New Testament, the writers of Scripture are usually quoting from the Bible that had the greatest use in the ancient world. And it wasn't a Hebrew text. It wasn't a Masoretic text. It was a Septuagint. It was the Greek translation that had been developed by The legend was that 70 rabbis in 70 days translated the Torah from Hebrew into Greek in Alexandria in Egypt. And so this was the common everyday Bible that you found among the Hellenistic community of Jews in the Diaspora. So when Paul quotes from the Old Testament, he is using a Septuagint, he's not using a Hebrew text, so the wording, sometimes if you take the time to look at these quotations in their original context, you'll say, boy, that's really different. The reason it's different is because they're quoting from the Septuagint. Now that raises another question that people have, and that is, well, wait a minute, if the Septuagint mistranslated the text, the original Hebrew, which is inspired. Well, only the original Hebrew was inspired by God, but if it's a mistranslation, it may not be stating something false, it's just not accurately translating what was there in the original. And so God the Holy Spirit still uses it and incorporates those verses under the process of inspiration into the New Testament. So at that point, it becomes, inspired, it becomes inerrant truth because God the Holy Spirit has given it His stamp of approval. He's not, I'm not saying He approved the translation, but that what is stated is accurate and without error. So we come to the first quote, which is the first part of Romans 3.13, which states, their throat is an open tomb. with their tongues. They have practiced deceit." Now this quote comes out of the Psalm chapter 5 verse 9. And what I've done in this series of slides that I'm setting up here is to set up the... in the left column you'll have the New King James Version translation in English. The middle column is the Septuagint, and the left-hand column is the New King James of the Psalm, and then the right-hand column is the New King James translation of the passage here that we have in Romans. And so Romans chapter 5, we're going to go through each of these, so you might want to turn just to look at Psalm 5 so we can pick up the context. It's always helpful to go back and look at these passages and see what is said in the original context. Again, let me remind you that when we go into various New Testament passages where they're quoting Hebrew Scripture, there are four ways in which they do it. And the fourth way we already mentioned, which is summary. But the third way is they're not changing the original meaning of the text, but they're taking something out of the original text and they're applying it within the context of their current passage. So it's not that Paul is saying that what he's using it to mean is what David was using it to mean in the original context. He's not changing the meaning, he's just applying it under divine inspiration to the current setup. We can't do that. We don't have the divine inspiration to do that. So this is similar to what Bob Thomas calls the inspired use of the Old Testament passage. I've just broken it down into some other categories. So we look at Psalm 5. I'll leave that off for a second. Psalm 5 is a lament psalm. A lament psalm means that there are a number of psalms where the author of the psalm, usually David, but sometimes we don't know who the author is and sometimes it's somebody else, is in a extremely difficult set of circumstances. They're under adversity. Many times they are under attack from their enemies. And that there are people who are always against you, especially if you think of yourself as a Christian within the context of what the Bible describes as a warfare, a cosmic warfare between the forces of the fallen angels against God and the elect angels, we are in this spiritual warfare. There is an unseen or invisible war going on around us. And in that context, we can expect opposition. And the great thing about it is that the Bible reveals this to us, and these Psalms teach us how to pray in the midst of adversity and different kinds of adversity And what these Psalms tell us is that we need to stop thinking about the adversity and the circumstances and start thinking about the God who is over the circumstances, the God who is able to control the circumstances, and the God who is able to give us aid and strength in the midst of those circumstances. So Psalm chapter 5 is a lament psalm where David begins in a position of adversity and opposition where he is under assault from numerous enemies who are ridiculing him, reviling him, slandering him. They are gossiping about him. He is the brunt of their jokes, and he is under verbal assault from people who truly do wish him harm and wish to destroy him. Now, we don't know what the circumstances were. You look at the beginning of the psalm where you have the introduction. It simply says to the chief musician with flutes. So there's indications, there's instructions to how it was to be originally played musically. And it's attributed to David as a psalm of David. We don't know if this occurred early in David's life, He went through a period of intense opposition as a young man after Samuel anointed him to be the king of Israel. God did not install him to be king of Israel yet. Saul was still on the throne, and Saul hated David. God had rejected Saul, removed his spirit from Saul, and Saul was jealous, hateful toward David, and vindictive. At times Saul personally tried to kill David. He threw a spear at him a couple of times and David was able to escape. Saul in chasing David was so vindictive that when David was given aid, given bread by Abimelech and by the priests at Nob that when Saul found out he massacred, he slaughtered all of the priests at Nob. He was a mean, vindictive, violent, man, and so David was under assault. There were other times later in David's life, especially during the time of when his son Absalom led a revolt against David, and David and his closest advisors, his cabinet as it were, had to flee from Jerusalem, they had to flee across the Jordan, and once again David was on the run. And there were also other minor times throughout his reign when he was under attack from people who opposed him. Many times in our life we feel like we're in the same kind of situation. We are under assault, we are under attack, our circumstances overwhelm us. So these lament psalms are psalms that have a tremendous amount of meaning for us and I encourage you to read these and to think of them in terms of your own circumstances and notice the methodology. In the first three verses, we have, as typical in a lament psalm, an address to God and an appeal to God to listen. And he's almost screaming out here, listen to me, God. And we have to have some passion in this. He's not just saying, give ear to me, God, like most people read things in the scripture. No, he's saying, listen to my words, O Lord. Pay attention. Consider my meditation. Focus on not just what I'm saying, but you understand what's going behind the words in terms of what I'm thinking. Give heed to the voice of my cry. In other words, answer my prayer. And he recognizes that he's not dictating to God, this isn't some health and wealth, name it, claim it, charismatic prosperity gospel thing where you dictate to God what he's going to do. He is expressing his orientation to God's authority. He says, my king and my God. He is appealing to God on the basis of the fact that he is, God is the king of Israel and he is the God. And this is a statement of David's allegiance to God. He says, for to you, I will pray. I will bring my request, in other words. My voice, verse three, my voice you shall hear in the morning. This was a morning prayer. There were morning prayers and evening prayers at the tabernacle. Remember, this is David. He's prior to the temple. The temple is built by Solomon. And my voice you shall hear in the morning, O Lord. In the morning, I will direct it to you and I will look up. And then starting in verse four, we have a focus on God and his attributes. Now notice the order in there. Think about this in terms of your own prayer life. First of all, there is a focus on God. God's in charge, I'm not. And there is an appeal to God to solve our problem. That doesn't mean God's going to take the problem away. A lot of times the problem stays, but God fortifies us. He gives us the strength, the resources to handle the problem. And that comes through the focus of verses 4 through 7. He says, for you are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness. So in these sections he's not only going to focus on God's attributes, but he is also going to give a rationale, start laying the foundation for a rationale for his appeal to God to give him aid. He says, you're not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness. Nor shall evil dwell with you. And I want you to notice the words that he uses here, the synonyms he uses to describe sin. For you are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness. That's the Hebrew word rasha. Nor shall evil dwell with you. That's the standard Hebrew word for evil, ra. Nor shall evil dwell with you. See, this is the point that Paul's been making. If you've got a righteous God, He can't have fellowship. He can't have partnership. He can't have any kind of relationship with something that is evil. Now, you may not think of yourself as evil, but the disciples didn't think of themselves as evil either. And Jesus said, you being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children. Evil is not defined in Scripture as being as bad as you can be. When you look up the word evil in a Bible dictionary, I'm being facetious here, The picture next to it is a sweet little child. It's not Adolf Hitler. It's not Ahmadinejad. I'm a nut job. It's a picture of a sweet little child. Because the essence of evil in Scripture is not defined by the precision of what is done or the specifics of what is done. It's defined in terms of rejecting the authority of God. That's what makes evil evil. A lot of good things, wonderful things are done in rebellion against God. God says they're evil. So David says, You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness, nor shall evil dwell with you. The boastful, there's a third term for sin, the boastful shall not stand in your sight. You hate Now, when you have these words love and hate for God in context like this, it's not, these are not words that talk about emotion. These are idioms that are used to express acceptance and rejection. So God, he says, you hate all workers of iniquity. God is not sitting up in heaven exercising personal hatred for people. God is righteous. Personal hatred doesn't fit with righteousness. Think about that. God, but God rejects that. God, who is perfect light, cannot have any darkness dwelling in him. You hate all workers of iniquity. You shall destroy those who speak falsehood. The Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man." So we have a whole series of sinful acts here that define the person who is hostile to God, because ultimately in David's thinking you're either submissive to God, which comes under the category of being righteous, not because you're righteous in yourself, we'll get to that in a moment, or you're hostile to God and you're wicked, boastful, evil, dealing in falsehood, etc. Then in verse 7 he says, and in verse 7 he expresses his own position, he says, but as for me, I will come into your house in the multitude of your mercy." See, David's not saying, I'm coming into your house because I'm righteous. And the word house there in some translations is translated temple. And the word there for temple is the Hebrew word hekal, which is also used, for example, in 1 Samuel 1.9 and 3.3 to refer to the house of God as the tabernacle. So hekal is the word that is normally used of the temple. But the temple's not built until Solomon. David writes this long before the temple is built. So this is a reference to the tabernacle. But as for me, David says, I will come into your house in the multitude of your mercy. We come into God's presence not on the basis of who and what we are. That's being boastful. That's being arrogant. That's being proud. We come into God's presence because we know that there's nothing we can do that's going to give us credit with God. So how do we get the kind of righteousness that God can have a relationship with? Well, this is what Abraham did, Genesis 15, 6. Abraham believed God and it was credited to him or imputed to him as righteousness. How do we get the kind of righteousness needed to come into God's presence? By trusting in the promise of God to provide us salvation. And after Jesus came, that is focused on Jesus Christ. But as for me, I come into your house in the multitude of your mercy in fear of you I will worship toward your holy temple. The second word temple there is the word I got carried away. Hekal is the word translated temple there. House in the previous phrase is just the normal word house for by. But hekal also means house, but it's the big house. It's like the White House. It's a term that refers to a special kind of house and is used to describe both the tabernacle and as well as the temple. And then in verse 6, David says, Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness or by your righteousness, because of my enemies. Make your way straight before my face." So he's asking for God to deal with the situation and handle the circumstances and lead him forward in the midst of the opposition that he faces. Verse 9, now this is the verse that is quoted by the Apostle Paul. Verse 9 focuses on the characteristic of the unrighteous, the one who opposes David. For there is no faithfulness in their mouth. Their inward part is destruction. Their throat is an open tomb. They flatter with their tongue." So this is the verse that I have on the left up on the screen. There's no faithfulness in their mouth. Their inward part is destruction. But the part that Paul quotes is just the last part. Their throat is an open tomb. They flatter with their tongue. The Septuagint translation translates it, their throat is an open sepulchre, tomb, sepulchre, synonyms. With their tongues they have used deceit. And you can see that in the Romans 3.13, their throat is an open tomb. With their tongues they have practiced deceit. So you can see that Romans 3.13 follows the Septuagint there. Now, like all poetry, figures of speech are used in in poetry. We have to understand figures of speech. I've got a new little app. Now, we can't call them programs anymore. You've got an iPad, so you've got to call them apps. So we're looking for apps, and I've got a new app, and it's a dictionary, and it gives me a new word for the day every day. Aren't you all going to have fun? Trope. T-R-O-P-E. That's a synonym for a figure of speech. And it means it's a synonym for a simile, a metaphor. Any simile, metaphor, any kind of figure of speech is a trope. So that's what we have here. Their throat is an open tomb. This is a trope. And specifically, this is a figure of speech, according to Bullinger's figures of speech used in the Bible, that is a metonymy of the cause for what it does. Now, that just means that what the writer does is he uses one word that is the cause for something else. What he's talking about is something else, but he puts the cause for the effect. And in this case, he puts the organ for what it produces. The organ is the throat, and what it produces is words, language, slander, malice, bitterness comes out of the mouth. And so this is where the organ is put for what it produces, and it's much more vivid to say, you know, that their throat is an open grave or an open sepulcher than it is to say they speak live. It's just so much more vivid and dramatic there. You know, you go out to a graveyard sometime and look down in a grave, and that's what he's saying, that what it produces is death. It doesn't produce life, it produces death, slander, malice, hatred, all these things that spew forth from people's minds, gossip, all of this is destructive. And then he says they flatter, or as it comes across through the Septuagint, with their tongues they practice deceit. And their tongues, again, is the same kind of metonymy of cause, the organ of speech, put forth what it produces, which are lies and deceit. So From this first quote in Romans 3, 13, David is focusing on sins of the tongue. Not only has he said there's none righteous, there's none that does good, not even one. Now he's going to give specifics and he points out that everybody has committed sins of the tongue. We've lied. We've deceived. We have condemned other people verbally. We have judged other people. We have committed slander. Now he expands on this in the next quote in Psalm 140 verse 3. In Psalm 140 verse 3. So if you wish, you can turn with me over to Psalm 140 and we'll take a look at the context here. It's always helpful to take a look at the context. Psalm 140. And again, this is a lament. It is a cry. It begins with this cry from David, Deliver me, O Lord, from evil men. And once again, I want you to notice the words that are used here to describe the unrighteous, evil, violent. They plan evil things in their hearts. It's not just a matter of overt sin, it's a matter of mental attitude sin. They plan evil things in their hearts. They continually gather together for war. They're violent, they're destructive. Verse 3, they sharpen their tongues like a serpent. Isn't that a picturesque way of saying it? They sharpen their tongues. The idea there is you stab people with your words like a serpent. Where's the first place that we see a serpent mentioned in Scripture? Genesis chapter 3. And what does the serpent do? The serpent deceives Eve. So when David says they sharpen their tongues, That's preparation. You sharpen an instrument of war in order to do damage. And that's what he's doing. They sharpen their tongues like a serpent. Because what? They're going to be deceptive just as Satan was. And then he says the poison of asps is under their lips. It's that what comes forth is going to have the destructive, death-producing quality of an asp. An asp in the ancient world This comes from the Greek word aspis, which is found as well in the septuagint, which usually referred to any variety of venomous snakes and serpents in the Middle East, but usually referred to the Egyptian cobra, although it could refer to something else. And when an Egyptian cobra bites you, you barely have enough time to register the fact that you've been bitten before you're You're dead. You're not going to last very long, maybe a few seconds. And so the picture that he is painting here is that it's the destructiveness of this language. Now, this is what he quotes when we come to Psalm 313. Now, the Septuagint numbers the Psalms a little differently than the English or Hebrew text. So this is the 139th Psalm in the Septuagint. And again, it's sharpen their tongues as the tongue of a servant. The poison of Asp is under their lips. That's the section that Paul quotes in Romans 3.13. We haven't gotten very far, but the focal point here is on sins of the tongue. Nobody does good, at least not the good that qualifies as absolute virtue good that God has in His character. And he's going to give examples. One example is we all commit sins of the tongue. We destroy other people with the things that we say. And then next time we'll come back and he expands on this in the next verse, continuing to talk about what is produced by the mouth. So we'll pick it up next time in Romans 3.14. Father, thank you for this opportunity to study these things, to recognize again as we study through These descriptions of sin, we all recognize that we're all guilty of many different kinds and degrees of sin, but any sin disqualifies us from fellowship with you. It disqualifies us from a relationship with you, and there's nothing we can do on our part that can overcome that deficit. We cannot pay it off in any way, that the only way it can be paid is if somebody who has perfect righteousness pays it for us. And that is what occurred at the cross, that Jesus paid the penalty for us, and his perfect righteousness is given as a gift to us, just as your righteousness was imputed to Abraham in the first book of the Torah, in Genesis chapter 14, verse 6. Father, we pray that you would help us to understand, or Genesis 15, 6, that you would help us to understand these things and apply them. In Christ's name, amen.