I began a survey of the Book of Romans last week. I'm attempting, I say, to cover this in eight sessions, and already I'm very, very frustrated, but to help you grasp what is going on, to get an overview of this most important book, I want to try to sort of step back, get the wide field telescope out and get the big picture. Let's begin reading in Romans 1, verse 18. We went through verse 17 last week. Let us begin in verse 18. Romans 1, verse 18. We read, For the wrath, wrath, it is the forgotten word. in the pulpits of America today. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness, because there is a reason for this wrath, because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God hath shown it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse." Because when they knew God, they glorified Him, laud His God. Neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, and oh my, what a commentary on the day and time in which we live. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. and changed, or literally in the Greek, exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man, birds, four-footed beasts, and creeping things. Oh, we don't worship those kinds of things. We're too sophisticated for that. We don't worship tigers, bulldogs, You get the picture. No, not us. Wherefore, God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves, who changed, or again, exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections, for even their woman did exchange, again the word is, the natural use for that which is against nature. And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another, men with men, working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meat." You know, it's amazing that we hear the homosexual community saying, God doesn't condemn homosexuality. I don't know how in the world you can read those words and not get it. Maybe we need somebody to explain elementary English. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which are not convenient, being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, sedition, deceit, malignity, whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful. Did I miss you? Pretty inclusive list, isn't it? who, knowing the judgment of God, that they who commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. We have seen in the first seventeen verses the reason for this epistle. Remember that Paul is the apostle to the Gentiles. Typically, he would be the first one into a city the first one to establish the truth in a general location out there in the Gentile world. We have some seven letters of Paul that he writes to churches—seven different churches, I should say, more letters than that—but he writes to seven churches, and of those seven, either he or one who has learned the gospel from him founds every one of them—six of the seven. The exception is the Roman church. He has never been to Rome, but he has heard of their faith most likely through Aquila and Priscilla. He has learned of a Christian community there in Rome, and his job as an apostle of Jesus Christ is to, as he will write to the Corinthian church, to lay the foundation. Now, there's a lot of different ways we can use this metaphor of a building, and of course you know that The body of Christ is sometimes looked at as a temple, Christ himself being the cornerstone, the apostles and prophets the foundation stones, and then we as living stones being built on that building, but this is a different use of that metaphor. In this case, Paul views coming and establishing a new church as coming and laying the foundation, just as you would go out here and lay a slab before you begin to build a building, so it was Paul's duty as an apostle to lay the foundation of doctrine for churches that he would establish, and most of the time the letters that we have of the Apostle Paul are Paul writing back to churches where he went and did that himself. Again, the exception is the Roman epistle. This time it is to a church where he did not lay the foundation, And the reason that Romans is so different from his other epistles is that it is in this letter he is doing what he would normally do in person, and that's the reason that the Book of Romans is a very orderly, illogical presentation of what we would call the gospel of Jesus Christ. He's doing with a letter what he would normally do in person, and I'm sure glad he did because that then gives us this foundational letter. As I mentioned, this is the epistle that shook up the world in the days of the Reformation. It was this epistle in Galatians that got a hold of Martin Luther and shook him to the core. And it has been, and I have read over the past week or so as I've studied this, life after life after life that were impacted and shaken by this particular epistle. We begin now with the first block. I mean, sooner or later, you step back, think about building the building. You can say, okay, here's the plan, here's what needs to be done. Sooner or later, you're going to lay the first block. And the first block that Paul will lay is what we have looked at in our text, and actually we'll be covering much more than this all the way up to the middle of chapter three today. Basically, the message is, something is wrong. Houston, we have a problem. Or could we say, Earth, we have a problem, and it's a big problem. Man, apart from God, never quite gets the problem right, let alone the solution. Man, apart from God, thinks that the problem is lack of education. we'd do better if we just knew better. Or, perhaps, it is our environment. If we could give people better economic opportunities, they would be better people. Or, in the Greek world of Jesus's day, it was matter, because we are human beings comprised of this evil stuff, said the Greek philosophers called matter, we do evil things. In other words, we don't even grasp the problem, let alone the solution. And until we see the problem and see it correctly, we will never, ever see the solution, or if the solution is told to us, we will never fully appreciate it. I remember having a physics professor that said, I want to show you the most beautiful thing that I have ever seen. the most beautiful, elegant thing that I have ever stumbled upon in my life. And he lifted up a cover over the blackboard and there was an equation, E equals MC squared. Marvelous. Amazing. Now most of you have heard of that formula, haven't you? You may even know that it expresses the relationship between energy and matter. But I dare say that very few of you would say it's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen in your life. And I would say that you say that because you never quite understand the problem. You know the solution, you've been told the solution, there it is, staring you in the face, isn't it magnificent? But you can't fully appreciate it until you know the problem. You see, you don't see the blackboards and blackboards filled with equations, filled with things that had to be canceled out and reduced to come to this one simple, elegant statement of the relationship between matter and energy. You can't glory in the solution until you understand the problem. And we will never glory in the solution of the gospel. We will never fully understand the good news, which is what gospel means, until we get a hold of the bad news. We'll never glory in the solution till we get a handle on the problem. And it is that problem that is being laid out before our eyes in our text today. The Apostle Paul says that the basic problem that we have is a God problem. We, man, the creature, is crossways, outsourced, out of fellowship with God, his Creator. His Creator is absolutely holy. We sang a moment ago, Be unto your name, that speaks over and over of holy, holy, Holy is the Lord God of hosts. When Isaiah and Isaiah 6 suddenly were transported into the presence of God, the one thing that overwhelmed him was not the love of God, but the holiness of God. The angel shouting one to another, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty. That God is so holy that he cannot look upon the least sin with the least degree of favor. Let me say that again. he cannot. It's not a matter of his choice, it is a matter of the demands of his nature. He, being a holy God, cannot look on the least sin with the least degree of favor. And man, you and me, Well, we read it in Psalm 51, didn't we? Behold, I was conceived in sin, says David. The Scriptures say that from our mother's womb we come forth speaking lies. We've been watching the development of my newest grandson, and he's just beginning to talk, but already he can't even hardly say the words, but he's already beginning to show signs of deception. Your little child, no sooner can he form the words than he'll look you right straight in the eye and lie like the devil. You say, well I, you must have taught him long and hard how to lie. No, you didn't have to. He knows it by nature. That is his nature. That we are steeped in sin. You say, well I just don't think I'm that bad. You don't ask a skunk how bad skunks smell. You're not an objective judge of the matter, and that is the problem that Paul is setting before us here in this passage, is that this infinitely holy God has a problem with man who is infinitely sinful. And God pours out, demonstrates, or to use Paul's word here in verse 18, reveals his wrath from heaven. You'll notice there is a revelation to be grasped here, and the first part of the revelation, before you'll ever understand the revelation of the gospel, you've got to understand this revelation, the revelation of the just and righteous wrath of God. Now, when I use the word wrath, and by the way, that word has completely fallen out of favor with us in modern times, while we're way too sophisticated to believe in a God who is a God of wrath. The God of modern age is a God completely of love, and he certainly does not have such a low emotion tied to him. I'm not talking about wrath like you and I have wrath, because we've been injured, because somebody hurt our feelings, and we're out of control, and we're angry. God's wrath stems from the fact that he is absolutely zealous for that which is right, and absolutely indignant towards that which is wrong. And you can't be one without the other. You say, I want a God that just loves right things, but he lets bad things slip and slide. No, it doesn't work that way. And to some degree, we can measure your degree of holiness, can't we, by the indignation by which you see sinful acts. You and I have heard of crimes that have literally turned our stomachs. We're free of crimes being committed against innocent people, sometimes entire families slaughtered, and there is a sense of indignation that wells up within us, and to some degree the strength of that is a measure of your holiness, because if you can just laugh it off, if it means nothing to you, ha ha ha, look what happened to them, no big deal, Would you say that's a righteous person? There's something wrong with a person like that. And may I say that God who is infinitely holy is infinitely disgusted with man's sin. Well, we may try to explain away the wrath of God, but it's difficult to read the Bible and not be hit right in the face with it. God putting the border around Mount Sinai so that those who came too close wouldn't die. We've seen it in our Sunday school class in Leviticus when Aaron's two sons struck dead for offering strange fire before the Lord. Moses tells Aaron and his boys, you can't quit what you're doing to attend to the funeral of your two sons, because if you do, the wrath of God will break forth upon the people. We've even in Numbers talked about the arrangement of the camp of Israel and the Levites surrounding the tabernacle. And go back and read in chapter 1 of Numbers, lest the wrath of God break out upon them. We have the idea that the Levites are sort of surrounding this camp where God dwells to protect Him, sort of the palace guard protecting from the enemy. Oh no, we've got the shotgun by the wrong end. It's the other way around. They are to be the buffer to protect the people from the wrath of God. Well, you say, well, that's just an Old Testament concept. We've got better things to talk about in the New Testament. Oh? Read John the Baptist. When the Pharisees came down from Jerusalem to his baptism, what's the first things out of his mouth? Oh, generation of vipers? You children of snakes? He's always buttering people up, you know, getting on their good side. Who warned you? Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? There is wrath coming. And as we have pointed out, our Lord taught more about hell than he did about heaven. Well, if you have two hands and one of fins, you cut it off. Two eyes and one of fins, you pluck it out. Better to go through this life maimed than to spend eternity in hell. Oh, well, surely John, the beloved, you know, the apostle of love, surely he didn't have those things to say. Read his vision in the book of Revelation, when the mighty men and the rich men of this world try to find a hole to crawl in. And what do they say? Hide us. They call to the mountains and hills to fall upon them. Hide them from the face of him that sits upon the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, the Lamb, Jesus. hide us from His wrath." And they go on to say, "'For the great day of His wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?' We get another glimpse in Revelation 19, Christ returning in the heavens, followed by the armies. The writer says, "'And He treadeth,' like one would tread in a winepress, "'He treadeth the fierceness and the wrath of Almighty God.'" Jonathan Edwards said, oh, if he had just said he treads the wrath of God, that would be enough. But he speaks of treading the fierceness, the fury of the wrath of God. In our text, in verse 18, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven. Look in chapter 2, Romans 2, verse 5. Paul says, After thy hardness and impenitent heart treasureth unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and the revelation of the righteous judgment of God. Now, it's not popular to hear what I'm telling you this morning, but it is absolutely essential. Man resists this revelation. With all his might, that's what Paul goes on to say in the last part of verse 18, they hold the truth in unrighteousness. Literally, in the Greek, they suppress the truth. It's like it jumps out like a jack-in-the-box, and as quickly as it does, they slam the lid, put it back in there. They do anything they possibly can to resist this revelation of the wrath of God towards man's sin. He may say that he's okay. I'm okay, you're okay. Or man may say, well, if I'm not okay, I'm just misunderstood. I'm just misguided. I'm just misinformed. But surely you cannot mean that I am absolutely under God's wrath, hopelessly and helplessly lost. That is precisely what I mean. Pelagius said man just has bad examples. Arminius said he just makes bad choices. The scriptures say that man is holy and completely sold under sin. When we were without strength, that means we didn't have any power to extricate ourselves from the situation. We were not injured, we're dead, says Paul, in trespasses and sins. We are absolutely hopelessly and helplessly lost. And man must receive this diagnosis that is revealed from God if ever he would be cured of his disease. Now I don't like hearing blow-my-blow details of people's sickness. I don't want to Here you tell what it looks like when you throw up. I don't want a doctor to say, let me tell you about this leper I saw. You should have seen the stumps where his fingers were. Can I describe to you the hole where his nose once was before it rotted off? Can I describe to you the pus that oozes from the sores all over his body? We're not going to eat for a while, so you don't have to worry about it, but do you understand what I'm saying? I don't want to hear it. I don't want to have the doctor describe to me the last phase of a person being consumed by cancer. I just avoid that description if I possibly can. But God is going to lay a diagnosis before our eyes. He's going to shove this under our nose, and He's going to say, here is the malady that you are suffering from. Here is your problem. To put it in Isaiah chapter 1, or as God puts it there, He says that you have a sore from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet. It's pretty all-inclusive. In fact, from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet, you're just one great, big, oozing sore. Disease throughout you. And so, if you will, even though this is gruesome and unpleasant, may I, in the next few minutes, give you a glimpse at how God sees sinful man. Paul will describe the reason, starting in verse 19, for the wrath of God upon man. And the first reason he gives is, and I'll put it in my lingo because I've got to condense, that man's crime, and sin is a crime, that man's crime is a crime against God. First and foremost, It is a crime against God, and notice that Paul starts with where we usually end. We say, well, okay, sin is bad for me. I'll admit that. Gets me in trouble. Sin is bad for you, because when I go over and steal your TV, you don't have a TV anymore. And maybe, down the road, after admitting that sin might be bad for me and it might be bad for you, maybe I'll get around to saying, oh yeah, and God doesn't approve of it very much either. But, notice that Paul starts with sin in its relationship to God. What sin is in relation to God? It is a crime against the rule, the majesty, the government of our Sovereign, of our Creator, the One who has formed us for Himself. that every sin has as its root, as its core, a shaking of the fist in the face of the one who sits on the throne and says, you are not going to tell me what to do. Now, I don't say that every time we sin, that consciously enters our mind, but when you get right down to the heart and the core of it, that's what's going on. It is what we call today a high crime. You say a president is impeached for high crime. So, what do you mean by high crime? It is a crime that seeks the overthrow of a government, a legitimate government, or perhaps a crime that seeks the aid and comfort of an enemy of that government. And in that sense, our crime in when we sin against our God is that we are basically saying, God, you can be God, you can sit up there all day if you want to, but don't you dare tell me what to do. I'll let you be God of the sunshine and raindrops and the butterflies, but I will be God of me. Thank you very much. I don't need your help. I don't need your advice. I will decide for me what I will do, what is right and wrong. Just stay out of the way and don't hinder me. Basically you are committing deicide. I mean by that the attempted murder of God because basically you're saying I'll let you be God as long as you're not God. As long as you don't exercise your prerogatives as the God of this universe, I'll let you in my life and my universe, but the moment you start messing with me, God, you're out of here. You understand the enormity of this crime. Now, Paul goes on to say in the verses that we read earlier that all men have been given a glimpse We call it the light of nature, that through creation itself we have gotten a glimpse of the nature of God. We see in its order, in its design, the fact that there must be an orderer and a designer. It is interesting to me that as time has gone on, I could use to say the word as time has evolved, so have the evolutionists and their arguments against the fact of God being our creator. Back in the 1800s, when Darwin first postulated his ideas, they thought that life was basically just a bunch of inanimate chemicals thrown together in the right proportion, and bingo, you got life. Well, as time's gone on, we understand the situation is much, much more complex than that. In fact, it is so That every time we understand one mystery, it's like peeling back the skin of an onion. We just uncover many, many others. That the more we know, the more we realize what we don't know. And that rather than the problem of saying, what is life and how does it form, becoming easier and easier, it just gets more and more difficult to explain. It's certainly true in the field of physics, where we can't really explain why in the world do we have these some 20-some-odd constants out there in the universe. We don't know why they're set to the values that they are. All we know is they are. Sort of like the force of gravity. You say, well, I want to vote against that law. Let's change the law of gravity. Let's repeal it. One fellow said, gravity is not just a good idea, it's the law. You can't repeal it. The attraction of a negative and a positive particle clocks constant the speed of light. These are constants. You say, how did they get set like they are? I don't know. Neither does anybody else. All we know is they're set like that, and if they weren't set precisely where they are, you couldn't have life, you couldn't have chemistry, you couldn't have this universe. How did it happen? Who set those parameters? The problem just gets more and more complex and man just gets more and more fanciful with his answers the further he goes. And Paul says, below me. Every man knows better than that. I know that things don't just happen by chance. I know that left to themselves things fall apart. I got a house. I know how that works. Things left to themselves don't fall together, they fall apart unless somebody is making them fall together and work together. I have enough sense to realize that in the natural realm. So Paul will say that man is made in God's image, and what we mean by that is that he has the capability of seeing these things, of seeing the glory of God in creation itself. That he knows that God is an all-powerful God. That he's a great and glorious God. He sees it from the fingerprints of God as he finds them in this creation. And yet man rebels against that God. That is what Paul goes on to say. All this exchanging, you know, that we talked about when we read the text. That man suppresses this knowledge. He comes up with every other kind of explanation except the right one. for the way that creation is, and he defaces and mocks the image and the name of Almighty God. Much like if you have a picture on your shelf in your home, a loved one, a picture that you cherish, value, and I come over to visit you, and while you're not looking, I take a marks a lot, and I go draw a mustache and a beard. I deface the image of this wonderful picture, so it is that man defaces the image, the glorious image of God, creating their own God that looks a whole lot like them. You ever notice that? That most men's gods sort of look a lot like them. I mean by that that their god likes the things that they like, and their god doesn't like the things that they don't like. You know, amazingly, rather than man being made in God's image, they turn around and make They got in their image, one that looks like them. And Paul goes on to say, not only do they pervert and twist the image of God, but they also become very unthankful. And oh my, how ungrateful man is. We drink his water. We eat his cows. We're breathing his air. We're walking on his earth. And we never bother to even think. that our very existence, the life that we live this day is a gift from God's hand to us. We think He owes it to us. You say, well, I don't really believe that. You let Him try to take it away and see what you say. You go to griping and complaining whenever He begins to cut it off. I'm thinking as the old saying is, the hogs rooting for the acorns on the ground. They never bother to look up to the oak tree. that is the provider. And so it is that man lives his life like an animal, rooting for his next blade of grass, never bothering to think where are these blessings coming from. Paul goes on to show that this crime against God evolves into a crime against nature. We're familiar with crimes against nature, aren't we? Perverted, twisted things. And so it is that Paul describes sin that God finally gives man up. Now that's interesting because it implies that previous to this, God has been holding man back. But finally, God says, okay, if you want sin, I'll let you have it. I'll let you go. And he describes this perilous descent into all this perversion, sexual perversion, is primarily what he's discussing here in these next few words, and then evolving into every kind of sin that you can imagine. The light of nature that I've been talking about is not enough light to save your soul. It is enough light to damn your soul. Did you hear me? It's like testing for a little acidity with a piece of litmus paper. If that litmus paper turns colors, you know that's acidic. He said, well, but it's not all about a city. It needs to be a little more city, or let's get a bigger piece of litmus paper. No. God has given man a little light, and he has rejected and refused that light. God is not evil then to withhold man greater light. A little light is all it takes to learn that man loves darkness rather than light. Did you hear me? It just takes a little light. Just the light of nature will form a test of whether you love or hate life. Well, I must run on into chapter 2. He speaks of our sin being a crime not only against God, but against our conscience. Now, there are some who would say, well, maybe man's just ignorant. He doesn't know. You know, my dog doesn't seem to have much of a conscience. Chasing kills a rabbit, doesn't bother him at all. gets over it. Your cat kills mice? Does he weep and cry because he's a murderer? He just does what he does by nature. Man being just an animal, we're told. No, man is more than an animal. And one of the differences between you and me and an animal is that we are a moral creature. And again, that is part of being made in God's image. That God being a God of morality, a God to whom certain things are right and certain things are wrong, you and I being made in His image, we have that same right and wrong written on our very hearts. As Paul will go on to say here in Romans 2, by nature, there's a sense in which we know there's a right and there's a wrong. plus the fact that we have a conscience, sort of an internal moral compass that tells us, sits back in judgment on our actions, that tells us you either did right or you did wrong. And you say, well, I just don't believe that's the way we are. Well, the proof of it, and Paul speaks of this in the first verses of chapter two, is the fact that you and I not only have a conscience and are moral creatures, but we reveal that fact because we are judges. We're judges of others. You say, well, I don't ever condemn anybody. Oh, yes, you do. You know, people just don't believe in sin anymore. Oh, yes, they do. You let the thief get stolen from. Nobody believes adultery is wrong. Oh, no? Let somebody run off with his wife, see if he thinks it's wrong. Nobody believes that murder is wrong. Well, you let somebody try to murder him. You understand that the sin that we might excuse in ourselves, we are quick to condemn in another. And that is just the argument that Paul raises in chapter two, that we see that you're a moral person because you happen to know and you use the words should and ought. Anybody here ignorant of what those words mean? Should and ought. Anybody never use those words? I've never spoken those words. You see, the moment you say, now you shouldn't do that, you are revealing the fact that you're a moral creature. Or you ought to do this, or someone ought to do that. You are basically saying, I am sitting in judgment, I have a sense of right and wrong, and I am revealing that by the way I talk when I say that so-and-so should do this or should not do that. And so our sin, you see, is aggravated, as Paul will speak of it here, by the very fact that we will excuse in ourselves what we condemn. in others. Yeah, we may overlook it in us and notice the infraction is never quite as severe when we do it as when someone does it to us. You ever notice that? When somebody cuts me off in traffic, what a jerk! When I cut somebody off in traffic, well, I'm just in a hurry. You see? One thing when they do it to me, another when I do it to them. And so man is partial and skewed in his judgments, but not God, who renders to every man exactly according to his deeds. And then, as we go on in the last part of chapter 2 and into chapter 3, Paul speaks of our crime not only being against God and against conscience, but also against the law of God. And this raises the question, well, what about the Jew? You see, until now, he's been talking basically about Gentiles, and even Gentiles who have never heard of Moses. never heard of the law of God, has still a sense of right and wrong, and most cultures out there reflect that fact. But the Jew, in a particular sense, has this external objective standard of what God sees as right and wrong that God has revealed to the Jew through the law given at Mount Sinai how God sees sin, what God sees as righteous, and what he sees as evil. And so the Jew stands much more knowledgeable. Now, I said a moment ago that every man has an internal moral compass. We call it a conscience. But the problem is, is that our compass, our internal moral barometer, if you will, keeps getting off. I'm thinking about Fred flying a plane. You know, you have an altimeter, at least they used to teach me. I was thinking this week, this is two emergency landings. I've been involved with in my life. The first one I was flying, and this one turned out to be a whole lot better than that one, let's put it that way. I didn't realize I was taking a crash course when I was taking flying lessons. One of the things they taught us was that down at the end of the runway, they have a sign, the elevation of the field. Whenever you get ready to take off, you've got an altimeter inside the cockpit. That tells you the elevation. You always recalibrate that internal altimeter with what the sign is saying there on the field. In other words, in time, because of barometric pressures and so forth, the altimeter, the instrument in the plane, gets off. You have to constantly be recalibrating it. Well, the heathen man, and notice the sense in which I'm speaking here, that God has given to us a moral internal compass, but unless there's something objective out here for us to recalibrate it with, it just keeps getting off and off and off. And that's why you find cultures out there in the world that have some of the most bizarre practices you've ever imagined. Most of the time, the heathen man recognizes that certain things are right and wrong. Stealing is wrong in almost every culture. murder is wrong, adultery is wrong in almost every culture upon the face of the earth, not just Christian culture, not just Jewish culture. Oh yeah, there are a few that are so skewed up that they don't understand that, but most of the time they do. But the Jew had the sign at the end of the runway to recalibrate his inward moral compass. He had the objective revelation of the law of God. He knew. It wasn't, well, I feel like this is right and I feel like this is wrong. He has the Old Testament. He has the revelation objectively given by the mouth of God of what is right and wrong. And so the Jew was mad proud of himself. I know what's right and wrong. White Paul says you're a leader of the blind. Here these Gentiles just are stumbling in the dark searching for what's right and wrong. You know You've been given the key, you've been given the clue, you've been given the revelation that they lack. Aren't you special? Aren't you something? And then he hits them in chapter 2, verse 13, for not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. And he says, how about it, you Jews? Do you do this law? that has been revealed to you, you who teach another, Look in verse 21, "...you who teach another, teachest not thou thyself? Thou that preachest, a man should not steal? Dost thou steal? Thou that sayest, a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? Thou that abhors idols, dost thou commit sacrilege?" In other words, the fact is, and we don't have to dig far in the Old Testament to find this, that the Jew who had this knowledge revealed to him from God, of God's moral barometer, compass, if you will, live no more perfectly in harmony with that revelation than the Gentiles around him. You think you're going to somehow ace this exam because you know what's right and wrong, even though you don't do it. And so he ends in chapter two with the fact, do you think God's that stupid? Do you think that you can just put on the external cloak of being a Jew, the cloak of righteousness, when your heart is filthy and rotten to the court? Do you really think you're going to do a snow job on God? Get real. And so Paul will conclude in chapter 3, a verdict of how God views man, and the verdict is guilty. Number one, sin is universal. Look down in chapter 3, verse 10, and here he quotes from a number of the Psalms. Chapter 3, verse 10, as it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one. There is none that understandeth. There is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way. They are all together become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good, no, not one. Now, we speak in a relative fashion, I have a good neighbor, I know some good people. I speak that way, you speak that way. But looking at it from the absolute sense of God's holiness, there is none good, no, not one. None righteous. You say, well, wait a minute, I think that God looks down from heaven and he looks out on men and he sees some good ones and some bad ones and he said, okay, you good ones, I'm going to choose you to go to heaven. You bad ones, I'm going to choose you to go to hell. You go back and look where this verse comes from. It's a quote out of Psalm 14. The Lord looked down from heaven to see if there was any that were righteous, any that were good. And what did he find? Not one. If I can somehow say that this wall here represents the standard of God's holiness. Now, that wall is way too short to represent the standard of God's holiness, okay? But let's say, for the sake of example, and I'm saying that you and I have to stand here flat-footed and jump as high as we can and see if we can clear that wall. Now, some of us might be able to jump a little higher than others. Right, Sonny? Some of us, athletic types, can jump a little higher than some of the rest of you. And we might say, looking at one another, oh, he's a good jumper. But when it comes to the standard, the minimum standard that God requires for you and I to enter into His fellowship, we have all come short of the glory of God. There's not a one of us that can stand here flat-footed and jump over that wall. I remember one time a guy gave a swimming metaphor. He said, well, if I can swim to the other side of the pool, does that represent... No, it's like swimming the Pacific. That this absolute standard that God requires of man, we have all come short. Some of us come a little closer than others, but when we stand back and look at it, we've barely gotten off the ground. Sin is universal. We have all fallen short. Sin is total. Look at the description that Paul gives, Romans 3, verse 13. Their throat is like an open sepulcher. No wonder we spend so much time cleaning it out so it won't stink. It's like opening a hole, a door, into a grave where there's rotten bodies rotting. That's the picture. Their throat is like an open sepulcher. Their tongue have used to see. The poison of asp is under their lips. Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet and hands are swift to shed blood, destruction, miseries, and all their waste. You understand that the totality of man has been affected. Every part of man has been tainted by sin. And then finally, he ends with this diagnosis, verse 18, there is no fear of God before their eyes. It is systemic. It's in our blood. It's in our system. I have given you the most unflattering, the most repulsive, the most obnoxious description of you and me that I can possibly give you. Would you agree? If I've not, then I've come short of my goal, because that's exactly what I was intending to do. And my words do not do justice to the topic that is before us this morning. You say, man, you make us look pretty bad in the sight of God. Oh, I haven't even come close to the truth. My words fail me. Of all the filthy things I can possibly describe to you this morning, none of them come close to how filthy sin appears in the eyes of a thrice holy God. As indignant as you and I may be over some horrid, hideous crime that comes to our knowledge through the news or whatever, it does not come close to describing that God has his whole being, as it were, revolted at the filthiness, at the unrightness of man's sin. No, I have failed miserably. But I'm telling you this, if you get this right, if you grasp this, Everything else is going to fall into place. Everything else is going to make sense. Is it how dare God let that airliner fall out of the sky and kill all those people? My friend, the mystery is why it doesn't kill us all. It's like cockroaches complaining when we kill a few of them. When I call the fella out to my house to fumigate, I'm not asking him just to kill the most visible cockroaches, just a few of them, let the rest of them live. I'm asking him to wipe them all out, aren't you? And I think of the lowly cockroach, you know how, I can remember those big old tree cockroaches we had back in Houston, Melinda and I first got married, get up at night, walk to the bathroom and step on one of them in your bare feet. Oh my. Oh, horrible, you know, just filthy, disgusting things, critters. But do you realize that God is far, far higher than us, than we, the cockroach, or the ant, the fire ant? I do everything in my power to kill them all, and I still can't do it. I've tried my best to run them out of my yard, and I can't do it. pass, vile. I want you to realize, and I realize some of you may be saying, but wait a minute, where is the love of God in all of this? Isn't God a God of love? Where is God's love? It is in the revelation of His wrath. Because you see, when I get ready to step on that fire ant, I don't really give a hoot if he knows that he's offended me. I don't give a hoot whether he understands what he's done to me or how obnoxious he appears to me. I just don't like him. You understand what I'm saying? I don't stoop to reveal myself to the fire ant. I don't care what the fire ant thinks. Whether he thinks I'm just or unjust, whether the fire ant realizes why he's getting squished or not, that really doesn't even cross my mind. He's just a pest. I want rid of him. Do you understand the fact that God would stoop to reveal his wrath? Did you get that? That's where we started. The revelation of God's wrath is in itself an act of condescension, an act of compassion, an act of mercy, because you and I wouldn't care. I've told you time and again, you'd better be glad I'm not God. I'd have sent a whole bunch of you to hell a long time ago, and you'd have done the same with me. But God in His love This is like, how do you draw nigh in love to that which is revolting to your nature? How do you come close, how do you get close to a porcupine? How do you come down and dwell with skunks? You understand? That God wants you and I to understand something here. that He is holy, and that we are sinful, and we ought to understand just from that fact that that reveals His love towards us, because any other person wouldn't care. I just would have to see the bottom of the sole of a foot coming down on me, with no explanation why. But God is revealing His righteous and holy character to us. He is revealing our problem. He's revealing the diagnosis of our disease. And that ought to be the clue that the reason He's doing that is not that we'd be destroyed, but that we'd be saved. It's like the cancer doctor having to give you the bad news and to tell you, here's what you're looking at. But he's not telling you that because he wants to see you destroyed and die. He wants to see you live. But you need to know where you stand. Because if you don't understand where you stand, you'll never see the cure. You'll never see the remedy. You'll never get the good news if you don't understand this bad news. Oh my, we proud and arrogant sinners, because we are, aren't we, must be brought to our knees, our mouths stopped, if all will end this section, stopped from making excuses. But it's my mama's fault, the way she potty trained me. It's my environment. I was born in Islam. Well, it's this, it's that. No, it's me. I am the problem. And only when we will see that are we then ready for the gospel of Jesus Christ. And Paul concludes this in verses 19 and 20 of chapter 3, that the purpose of the law was not that we be justified, But by the law is the knowledge of sin. We must know this is the prerequisite. This is the fundamental lesson that we must learn if we are able then to grasp the good news in Jesus Christ. I look forward to sharing that with you next week. But if I can leave you with this as a little foretaste of it, I found this studying William Hendrickson's writings. He quoted this poem. It's anonymous as best I can tell. But this fellow depicts his attempt to go up these stairs to reach God. Here's what he says. Oh, long and dark the stairs I trod with trembling feet to find my God. gaining a foothold bit by bit, then slipping back and losing it, never progressing, striving still with weakening grasp and faltering will, bleeding to climb to God while He serenely smiled, not noting me. Then came a certain time when I loosened my hold and fell thereby, down to the lowest step, my fall, as if I had not climbed at all. Now when I lay despairing there, listen, a footfall on the stair, on that same stair where I afraid faltered and fell and lay dismayed and lo, when hope had ceased to be, My God came down the stairs to me. Did you get that? And lo, when hope had ceased to be, my God came down the stairs to me. I don't preach this to you today with no end, no purpose. I will seek to bring you to utter hopelessness in yourself, that you might cast your hope upon God. I seek to strip you naked of your filthy rags that you're trusting in, to commend you before the throne of God, that you might be clothed with the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ. I proclaim to you the seriousness of your disease, that I might drive you to its cure. Because until you understand the depth of your depravity, of your sickness, you will never ever glory as you should in the provision that God has given to us in His Son, Jesus Christ. May I leave you here today and shut you up. I don't mean put a zipper on it, although to some degree that's true. To shut you up from making excuses. To ask God by His Spirit to open your eyes to see yourself as God sees you. To drive you to that point of falling to the bottom of those steps lying there without a leg to stand on, because it is only in that position that you will ever lay hold of the gospel of Jesus Christ. May God bless you. May He teach you what only He can teach. Let us bow our heads for prayer. Father, I struggle to enunciate what is found here in Your Word the horror of our sin, the indignity of it, the hideousness of it. My words cannot properly paint the picture. The awfulness of your wrath and of the judgment that is sure to come, Father, I can't grasp. All I know is that there is a holy God in heaven with whom we have to do. And there is a great obstacle, a great gulf. And Father, that we cannot bridge it in our own efforts, in our own works. That our only hope is that this God that we have offended will pity us, will come in mercy and approach us when there is no reason, when there is nothing to commend us in spite of us, that our God extends his hand in our direction to save us out of the misery from which we cannot save ourselves, to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, to provide for us what we cannot possibly provide for ourselves. and to do it freely through His grace in Jesus Christ. Oh, may the enormity of our sins strike us so that the enormity of Christ's righteousness might be precious. May the hideousness of our disease and the lawsome of it, Lord, may that be ever present with us so that we understand the beauty of the remedy, the preciousness of Jesus, Thank you that you loved us, not because of us, but in spite of us. Teach us in the name of Jesus, we pray.