There we go. We're right here next. Uh-oh! What happened there? No, she's sitting there. Where'd you get that hat? Huh? Hey Connor, you got to go with him. What? You got to go with him. You got to go with him. I guess I'll just take it from them. They talk to him, but they won't come in. That's the same thing they're doing to me and Eli. They'll talk, but they won't come in. Talk all day. I'll have all those turkeys come up to my house. I only have 11. I only have 11. Much used to be a problem. I don't know what happened. What? What? I forgot too. It has to be more like that but just... I'm pretty sure... What? Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Were they down? We're going to take a little break here. We're going to take a little break here. It also needs sharpened. It also needs a new handle. Yeah, there's just a line at the coffee pot. This is actually the first time I've lost history. Oh good. If you don't look careful, Kristen's sister might like to be a dealer. We actually are. Sweet. Oh, thank you. Welcome to the worship of our Lord Jesus Christ this beautiful Lord's Day morning. As far as standing announcements go, we actually this week only have one of our stated ministries that is going to take place. The men's discipleship group on Tuesday at the pastoral apartment will take place. But the midweek Bible study will be on hiatus for a week, and the women's Bible study is on hiatus. So as far as announcements go, that's what I know. Is there anything else? I don't know if there's anything pertinent. The slides will run through for people to see. There's no psalm singing this week, since Lori is out of town. So that's just going to happen at the end of May. But otherwise, I think everything will spin through. OK. So does anybody have any announcements that need to be made before we begin worship? We're going to the Museum of Appalachia, right across the Tennessee border. It's about two hours away from here, just straight down the interstate. And we're going to meet there at 10 a.m. You pay for yourself when you get there. You get a group discount if you're with us. You get $18 if you're not part of the California Adult, which you're welcome. Honestly, it's $8 per student, $10 per child count. So it's like Ann got her kids referred to that discount with the most significantly discount. It was $20 for a human condition. Let me know all that and leave us a comment. So this is all a bunch of old people sitting in rockers, shaving apple and kind of speaking wisdom? I don't know. I've never been there, but apparently it's like hundreds of acres of land which we're not going to cover. Lots of museum buildings with exhibits and displays. When we first get there, they're going to perform for us a very authentic Appalachian music manifestation. Actually sounds fun. Yeah, I think it's going to be pretty cool. Well, that is a standing invitation, and anyone who is part of the church is invited. Is there anything else that needs to be announced at this time? If not, then please stand and let us gather together in worship, singing the song, We Gather Together. We gather together to ask the Lord He chastens and patients his will to make known. The wicked, oppressing, now sees his proper stressing. Sing praises to his name, he forgets not his own. Beside us to guide us, our God with us joining, ordaining, maintaining this kingdom we find. So from the beginning, the fight we were winning, the Lord was at our side. ♪ Glory be thine ♪ ♪ We all do extol thee ♪ ♪ Thou reaper triumphant ♪ ♪ And pray that thou still ♪ ♪ Our defender wilt be ♪ ♪ Let thy congregation ♪ ♪ Endure through tribulation ♪ Our reading of God's holy word this morning is from the book of Romans chapter 4 What then shall we say that Abraham our father has found according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace, but as debt. But to him who does not work, but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness. Just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works, blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin. Does this blessedness then come upon the circumcised only or upon the uncircumcised also? For we say that faith was accounted to Abraham for righteousness. How then was it accounted? While he was circumcised or uncircumcised? Not while circumcised, but while uncircumcised. And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while still uncircumcised, that he might be the father of all those who believed though they are uncircumcised, that righteousness might be imputed to them also, and the father of circumcision to those who not only are of the circumcision, but who also walk in the steps of the faith which our father Abraham had while still uncircumcised. For the promise that he would be heir of the world was not to Abraham or to his seed through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if those who are of the law are heirs, faith is made void, and the promise is made of no effect, because the law brings about wrath, for where there is no law there is no transgression. Therefore it is of faith that it might be according to grace, so that the promise might be sure to all the seed, not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham. who is the father of us all. As it is written, I have made you a father of many nations. In the presence of him whom he believed, God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which are not, that do not exist, as though they did, who, contrary to hope, in hope believed, so that he became the father of many nations, according to what was spoken so shall your descendants be." And not being weak in faith, he did not consider his own body already dead, since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah's womb. He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully convinced that what he had promised he was also able to perform. and therefore it was accounted to him for righteousness. Now it was not written for his sake alone that it was imputed to him, but also for us. It shall be imputed to us who believe in him, who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised because of our justification. This is the word of the Lord. As we move into the middle of this chapter, we begin to hear a lot about circumcision. And that would prompt the question, why are we hearing about that? Well, the answer seems to be that there were Jews in good number in the Roman Christian Church. There were not They were not the only people, the Jews, to practice circumcision. During their time, there were other people groups that were doing so. And even today, there are people groups who practice circumcision. Interestingly enough, Islam has a place for circumcision. But the Jewish people, as a people, identified themselves as the circumcision. They saw it as a sign from God to their particular group of people. And in that, they were not wrong. If you go back and you read the Old Testament account of where circumcision comes from, it shows up in chapter 17 of Genesis. It's given to Abraham. It is for his descendants. These descendants of Abraham are now in the Christian church. And they don't have in their minds a view that they have switched religions. Now today, when you talk about Judaism and Christianity, you assume you are talking about two different religions, and you most certainly are. The Christian is not a Jew, and the Jew is not a Christian. But the reason for that is yet to happen in time as far as the writing of our epistle. At the time that Paul writes to the Roman church, the average Jew is not thinking, I am in a religion separate from Christianity. He is thinking, if he is a Christian, I have received all the fulfillments of the promises that have been made to my fathers. I am very much a Jew. I am very much a son of Abraham. This Messiah which has come is the Jewish Messiah and I am fulfilled in my religion. Even if you are not a Christian at this moment in history, but you are Jewish, you are likely not to think of the Christians as different religionists from you. You probably think of them in terms of they are, quote, part of the sect of the Nazarenes, end quote. Judaism had already kind of broken into tributaries of thought. These sects were effectively like denominations. And during the time of the Book of Acts, if you ask the Jews about these Christians, they would say, well, yeah, this is another sect among us. It's kind of a strange one. You had this guy, Jesus of Nazareth, preaching. He had certain ideas, and he's got a bunch of followers. He was a Nazarene. Well, that's the sect of the Nazarenes. It would not be until A.D. 90 where you really had Judaism become a religion that was not attached to Christianity in any way. The city of Jerusalem was destroyed in A.D. 70 by the Romans. Our Lord Christ in the Olivet Discourse told us, now when you see the symbol that causes desolation, standing on the hilltops, get out of Jerusalem. Don't stay because wrath has come. I'm paraphrasing, but I mean, if you go back and read all the discourse, that's what's being said. And the early Christians identified the Roman eagle as that sign. They said, this is what our Lord was talking about. Christ said, don't try to defend the city. The Christians didn't. They fled Jerusalem. They generally fled to a place called Petra, And acting upon our Lord's warning, the Christians were actually spared. What happened to Jerusalem was horrific. It was a terrible moment in world history. Two out of three Jews were killed, many of them killed in terrible ways. And they were cantering too well to the sect of the Nazarene getting out of Dodge. You left us at a very important moment. You should have stood and fought beside us. What is wrong with you? You have betrayed us, and you have betrayed us because you are a follower of this Jesus of Nazareth, who you think is the Messiah. But we don't think he's the Messiah. The rest of Judaism, we don't identify him as a Messiah. You followed him. You abandoned us. Well, 20 years later, when the Jews are meeting at the town of Jammah, and they're basically trying to put their religion back together, Because now the temple's destroyed, the priesthood's destroyed, there's no way to practice the covenant of Moses, what are we going to do? At Jemma, there is a religion created by the Pharisees, who are the last sect standing, that is effectively a reaction to Jesus of Nazareth and Christianity. Everything that is forged at that point is forged to say, Jesus is not the Messiah. We are not Christians. We are totally opposed to that. We are going to have a religion that is completely opposite of Christianity and is going to live in hostility to it. And that is the foundation of modern-day Judaism. Now, that doesn't mean your Jewish neighbor is necessarily thinking like that and he's plotting to kill you in your sleep. That's not necessarily the case. But religiously, that's what's happening in Jamma. But as Paul writes to the Roman Church, the Jews in the Roman Church are not thinking that way at all. They consider themselves Christians. They might see themselves as part of the sect of the Nazarene. I'm not sure. But regardless, they believe the Jewish Messiah has come, and they have always been in this religion. This was the faith given to my father, given to his father, given to his father. Nothing has happened. except that God has now kept all of his promises in the Messiah, and I am in the Messiah. This is a religion that my family has followed for 2,000 years, and I am the inheritor of that religion. Now, there are other people in this church who are not Jewish, and I'm okay with that. The Lord Christ said the gates would be open to all the world, and that's happening. And I'm so glad that these Johnny-come-lately, pagan-until-yesterday people are in the church, and they are going to benefit from the fact that they now get to hang out with me, because I have been in this religion since I was born. Invested with a certain wisdom and history that they don't have and it is so good for them to know me We heard about what it was like to be Jewish back in chapter 2 We might want to read that passage again with slightly new eyes Chapter 2 beginning at verse 17 Indeed, you are called a Jew, and rest on the law, and make your boast in God, and know his will, and approve the things that are excellent, being instructed out of the law, and are confident that you yourself are a guide to the blind. That's kind of neat. I'm a guide to the blind. A guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish for you. A teacher of the babes, having the form of knowledge and truth in the law, that's how Paul described Jews and said they needed Christ the Messiah. The Jews who are in the Roman church have the Messiah. You know, they're saved. Paul's writing to save people. But this is how they were thinking before salvation happened. I am a blessing to the world. God has given me to be a good person. I am a light to all those foolish people around me. Do I think that I am a gift from God? Absolutely. I mean, hey, I am an instructor of babes. And if you're not me, you're a babe. Now these people are converted and they are in the Church of Christ. They're converted. But they were thinking this way yesterday. I remember when the grace of God converted me. There was a change from night to day. When I think back upon the way I used to think, it now seems very alien to me. It's like being the head of somebody else. There really is a transformation that happens, and yet, Paradoxically, when I was converted to Christ, not all my sins disappeared. In fact, the set of sins I had before being converted carried over because Russ is one person. I was now totally different, and yet, paradoxically, there was a similarity. The sins I was likely to engage in before conversion are still the temptations I have afterwards. And so you have people who have been decidedly superior in their outlook, now converted to Christ, but what is the chance that they are looking around on their neighbor in the church and saying, it is so good for you that I am here? I should be the natural leader because I have the spiritual maturity. I have walked in this religion since birth. You have not. So stand aside from anything significant and watch and learn because you are the apprentice and I am the master. The chance is very good, actually. And if you are Jewish, you look at Paul and say, well, I'm not totally wrong. I was circumcised on the eighth day, and circumcision is the sign of the covenant, the sign of the Abrahamic covenant. When you go back and you find the giving of circumcision, it is long before Mount Sinai, when the covenant with Moses is cut. It is given to Abraham. It is the covenant of Abraham. I have received the sign of the covenant. Isn't that what signs do? I mean, don't we circumcise or baptize to set people apart? Doesn't the sign do that? Doesn't receiving circumcision actually make me what the sign talks about? So I've really been in this religion since birth. I really have been spiritually mature, right? I mean, I've been this since the eighth day, right? Well, Paul says no, actually. The covenant symbol is not the thing it symbolizes. And the covenant symbol doesn't give you the thing it symbolizes. Paul asks a very basic question. He asks, where did we read in Genesis that Abraham believed God And it was at that moment when he had faith in God, when he believed God, that it was credited to him for righteousness. Well, it's in chapter 15 of Genesis, which is about 20 years before chapter 17. So in 15, Abraham was an uncircumcised Gentile. I mean, that's how Gentile is being defined here in the first century. You are outside of the circumcision, which is a term they use for themselves. We are the circumcision. That's our people. Well, Abraham for 20 years was justified. That means that he had been reconciled to God. God had put aside his offenses. If you are justified before God, you have all the blessings of the covenant. On Judgment Day, God's going to look down at you and say, I don't know why you're here. All I see is Jesus Christ. You're pardoned. You're free to go. Abraham had that in chapter 15. Abraham had the promise of God for everything that he was going to be given in 15. And another 20 years go by, and then Abraham is given circumcision. So if the sign itself given to you is what makes you the thing, the Bible's wrong. Because it would have to read Abraham believed God and he was going to schedule a circumcision which he knew nothing about for 20 years But he would schedule a circumcision and at the moment of his circumcision. He would be justified But that's not what happens Abraham Has all the blessings of the covenant is a converted man You can't be justified without being converted You have to have the change in nature. You have to be born again. Nobody who is not born again is justified, but Abraham is justified in 15. So he is everything the covenant promises already. When he doesn't have circumcision. Now you are a Jew. You grew up in this religion. And Paul never Contradicts that he never says no. No, you know what you were enjoying was a real religion But he asked the question What were you like even when you were in this religion Again we have to go back to chapter 2 and view it with new eyes After describing their mentality you're a guide to the blind and that sort of thing what comes next is a You therefore who teach another, do you not teach yourself? You who preach that a man should not steal, do you steal? You who say do not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who make your boast in the law, Do you dishonor God through breaking the law? For, and then he quotes the Old Testament, and the Old Testament says this word for word in two places, for the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you, as it is written. So you're in the church and you believe that, having grown up in true religion outwardly, You should be deferred to you should be the leaders. You should set the culture of the church Because he's Johnny come lately's Didn't have real religion Well again Paul was describing what Judaism was like outside of Christ, but before the gospel came to these people they were outside Christ How are you doing religiously before you heard the gospel? You had the Ten Commandments were you keeping them? How'd that adultery thing work out for you? You doing okay with that? Or thou shalt not steal? You do any of that? And of course you can picture the Jews in the church, again, converted people, beginning to bow their heads in shame, saying, before the Lord Jesus Christ converted me internally, this very much is who I was. I had true religion. I had the outer form of it, without doubt. But I was not a converted person until last week, when these Gentiles who were converted was converted last week. In truth, religiously, I wasn't any better off than any pagan. And again, Paul has laid the foundation for this. As chapter two ends, he goes on to say, For circumcision is indeed profitable if you keep the law, but the verses before said you weren't doing that. But if you are a breaker of the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision. Therefore, if an uncircumcised man keeps the righteous requirements of the law, will not his uncircumcision be counted as circumcision? And will not the physically uncircumcised, if he fulfills the law, judge you, who even with your written code and circumcision are a transgressor of the law? For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh, but he who is a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart in the spirit, not in the letter, whose praise is from men, is not from men, but from God. That language should sound familiar to you as Reformed Christians, because we use it philosophically. We talk about the visible church and the invisible church. Here Paul is talking about being a Jew outwardly and being a Jew inwardly. The rest of Christendom doesn't like us talking about a visible church and an invisible church, partly because they don't know what we're talking about. We're using philosophical language, which is unfortunate. I really believe we ought to use biblical language for biblical things. But be that as it may, there is a long history of using this phrase, you can be in the visible church but not be in the invisible church. What this means is you can have a long history of being a religious person. You can be on the rolls of your church. You can have gone through your confirmation class. You can have, you know, said the right words. The minister can have looked you in the eye and said, you know, what's the right thing to say? And you parroted it back to him. You could know all about the sacraments and how the church works, and you're very comfortable coming in to the religious assembly because you've lived here for all your life. But that only makes you outwardly Christian. You can live in the community, you know all about it, but if you are not converted, if faith has not been given to you, you are not inwardly a Christian. And sadly, you may not be inwardly a Christian, but you may be a bishop in your denomination. There is no height that a person can rise to that guarantees you that he is a converted Christian. Well, Paul is basically saying this to the Jews. He is saying, when you were in right religion, were you converted? And the answer is clearly no. I had to hear the Gospel. I had to believe. Speaking of the Gospel, John the Apostle, Paul's colleague in ministry, would describe those who were rightly religious when Jesus came to earth in these words. He was in the world and the world was made through him. And the world did not know him. So Christ comes into his completely created order, and no human beings know him at all. The pagans don't recognize him. But he came to his own. So these are people who, in a sense, you can say, OK, they belong to him. He came to his own, and his own did not receive him. What would it be like if Jesus Christ walked into The average Protestant Church today Any Protestant Church, I mean any tributary of Protestantism, how would that go over? You have people who are religious who know what they're doing who go through the motions This is a part of their life and and it's it's really engrafted into who they are but if the real Jesus Christ were to walk in and start talking, the average Christian church might fall to pieces because it would be like matter and antimatter crashing together. Just because you are outwardly religious doesn't mean you're converted. And in fact, Paul has not gone there yet, but given the nature of the sermon, I kind of need to. He is laying a foundation saying, you have no right to any superiority complex. Why is that? Well, Paul's argument here is you haven't been a saved person as long as you think you have, but there is a whole other argument that he is going to build up later in Romans, and he builds up elsewhere many times, and that is, let's say you have been saved for a while, because you could be, John's description of the Jews, the description that Paul gives in Romans, it's a broad-brush description. I mean, all the way through history, there are people who are saved by faith, and he's already laid that foundation. So let's say you're one of those people. You're now in the Roman Church. You have been saved by faith for years. Does that give you a right to feel superior to all these Johnny-come-lately Well, no, because even if you've been saved for 20 years, Paul has this to say to you in chapter 2 of Ephesians. For by grace you have been saved, by God's grace alone. God did not look at you and say, I got to have that person. He didn't identify you as some sort of special jewel that was better than your neighbor. It's totally of God's grace. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." So where is any sort of foundation for feeling superior to anybody that's sitting in the pews beside you? If you have known God's grace, if you've truly been converted, well, it is totally, totally a gift of God. You are not a treasure. God has saved you according to the good purpose of his will. If you are spiritually mature over your neighbor, that simply is God's grace, and you would not be if he hadn't given it to you. So any sort of feeling of superiority to anybody in the Christian church is absolute nonsense. None. And part of the reason why Paul is writing to the Roman Church, he says, I'm going to come to Rome, I'm going to preach the gospel, and when I get there, I want to incorporate all of you into doing that. In fact, that's the biblical pattern. The biblical pattern is that every Christian is a gospel bearer. You don't have to be a professional evangelist for that to be true, Every Christian is called upon to share the gospel and Paul wants to get them all doing that But if you've got a division between Jew and Gentile because the Jew is so superior and you know Gentile needs to fall in line That's going to really really compromise Getting out there. And so he is having to bring them down and tell them there is That there is no high and low ground at the foot of the cross At the foot of the cross the ground is totally level we all stand on under our Lord Christ, and we are all totally equal. And so there's no room for highfalutin, no room for I'm better than you, no room for you really should just consider my words because I'm far better than somebody else. That doesn't exist. There is also, by the way, no room for any kind of doctrine that is like, say, baptismal regeneration. There is whole swaths of the Christian Church, literally over a billion people, when you add everything together, who will tell you that the sign conveys the reality, that you have to have the mark to be saved. The New Testament says that Baptism is the final form of circumcision and it says it in these words. I'm in Colossians chapter 2 verse 11 to 12 In him you were also circumcised So every last one of you is circumcised and this is written to the whole the Christian Church. So if you're female you're circumcised In him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands by the putting off of the body of the sins flesh by the circumcision of Christ. So this is talking to our incorporation into Christ. You are circumcised because you're in him. How does that work? Well, by the circumcision of Christ, buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. So the apostle there connects circumcision and baptism. He says, now, in baptism, two things happened, and exactly when did they happen, and what are they? Well, again, read the text, and you were buried with Christ in baptism, so when you're baptized, there's a cutting off for the world, because you're being put in the ground, right? I mean, you're dying for the world. But when do you raise back to life? Well, it's through faith in him. So the apostle says, you have a sign, it's baptism. It is the final form of circumcision. I mean, when you have a change in the priesthood, you have a change of the law. Circumcision was transformed into a washing with water. But if you're just baptized, if that's all that happens, you got buried, but you didn't come to life again. Anybody here want to just go through half this process? Take you out back, bury you in a hole, and just kind of leave you there? Anybody for that? You're dead as a doornail at that point. You have to be raised to life, and Paul there, through the Holy Spirit, says it's through faith. If you are Roman Catholic, or Eastern Orthodox, or Christian Church in Church of Christ, You'll be told, now, you don't understand, we have had the mark. And the mark is what makes us who we are. I have been baptized into Christ. I might have been baptized as a baby, or I might have been baptized as an adult. I might have had water sprinkled on me, or I may have been dunked, whatever. But it is having this sign that gives the reality. But the sign is the final form of circumcision, And what has Paul been saying about circumcision in our passage? You were in true religion. You had the form of true religion. Outwardly, you were a Jew. But you weren't one inwardly, and if you weren't one inwardly, you don't have any of the blessedness, to use the word that Paul uses. You just have the outer form. No, he is a Jew who is one inwardly. He is a Jew who has faith. the man who is justified is the one who has faith, it is right and normative for people to be baptized. I really want you to be baptized. If you've not been baptized, you ought to be. If your children haven't been baptized, they ought to be. But the mark is not designed to give you the thing. The mark is designed to testify to the thing. In circumcision, you saw that you were cut off from the world and put aside. It didn't do it, it showed it, it signed it, it sealed it. In baptism you die to the world as a sign, as a seal, but it doesn't do the thing. And so Paul's admonition to the Jews here is an admonition to us this very moment. Don't think because you have received the sacrament of baptism, or the Lord's Supper, or church membership, or whatever you want to put here, don't think because you have received these very good and beneficial things that that makes you a Christian. It doesn't. Not in any real way. Not in the way we use the term. You are only justified, you only have the blessedness of Abraham if you have the gift of faith. And if you have the gift of faith, you are equal to anyone else who has the gift of faith Because it is given from God on the basis of his own choice, you are as saved as anyone else. The foot at the cross is indeed level. Is there any catechism work that needs to be done at this time?