Romans 2:1-16
How many of us would like to be judged by the standards we set for others?
It’s not hard to figure out how other people ought to be living. Infact, we’re quite good at defining the standards by which they should live. Actually it all seems simple and comes quite naturally to some of us. But for all the simplicity of seeing oh so clearly how everyone else should live and the rules THEY should live by, somehow it can be so hard to apply those same rules to our own lives. Somehow, we just can’t quite live up to those standards we demand from the people around us
When it comes to a test of our own personal integrity and sincerity, we get a real good measure of how we shape up by how we apply the principles we impose on others to our own lives. Do we live our lives based on the maxim do as I do or is it more a case of do as I say? And once we allow this double standard to become the norm the thing that gets destroyed very quickly is our Chriustian Unity
Romans 2:1-3 You may think you can condemn such people, but you are just as bad, and you have no excuse! When you say they are wicked and should be punished, you are condemning yourself, for you who judge others do these very same things. And we know that God, in his justice, will punish anyone who does such things.Since you judge others for doing these things, why do you think you can avoid God’s judgment when you do the same things?
The problem is that once you admit that there is a clear standard, once you accept that there are truths which are set in stone, and once you start to hold other people accountable to those truths - then you have to be willing to live by the same standard yourself. And that’s the one thing that every person with a judgmental spirit wants to avoid. But, shouting out long and loud about the imperfections we find in other people, does not in any sense alter the facts concerning our own lives. And so our high minded attitudes give birth to hypocrisy
The whole essence this passage in Romans 2 has to do with hypocrisy. This is not a lesson on how we should resist judging our fellowman. Nowhere in Romans 2 does Paul rebuke us for judging sin as sin. This is not a parallel teaching to the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus condemns critical unjustified judgment. The whole point of what’s Paul’s talking about is what happens when we fail to live up to what we recognize as true.
If we’re so capable of judging what is right and wrong in the lives of others, surely we’re competent to discern the difference between right living and wrong living in our own lives?
The Jews had no difficulty believing in one sovereign God. The Jews had the advantage in that they had a written code to live by.They prided themselves because they had the law. It had been preserved and passed down from one generation to the next. But here’s the problem: The Jews felt that just possessing the law made them righteous. But the trouble was, they’d rewritten the code to fit their chosen lifestyles.
Here’s the thing: the greater the knowledge - the greater the sin.
The end result of the Gentile and Jewish approach to living was identical. One was just as ungodly as the other. In reality, the Jews who possessed the law were actually worse because not only did they understand the sovereignty of God, they also had special written revelation in the Law that God gave to Moses. But the fact that they believed that God existed made them no different from those people who refused to believe in God. Both were without God and without hope.
So here’s the deal breaker: when you live your life without being obedient to God your life becomes pointless, hopeless and absolutely powerless.
Here’s the deal: when you live your life, judging others for the same stuff that YOU DO - IT MAKES YOU A HYPOCRITE. And hypocrisy is a dangerous thing because when your life’s falling apart all around you,y our hypocrisy is powerless to save you or to salvage your life from the gutter.
Hypocrisy is pretense. It's a form of godliness without power to change. Hypocrisy goes out of its way to resist change. It makes a big deal of looking for what's wrong in someone else in order to justify the wrong in us.
At the start of this message I asked this question: How many of us would like to be judged by the standards we set for others?
A more penetrating question is, How would you like to be judged by the standards you know are right and expect others to live up to, but you yourself are unwilling to adhere to?
See, bad judgment like that not only renders you ]powerless to salvage your lives.But it takes God out of the equation too. So you’re on your own….
There are only two ways in which we can experience the power of God in our lives.
One way is through obedience.
When we obey God, God's salvaging power through Jesus Christ is exerted in our lives.
The second way we experience God's power in our lives is through disobedience.
Disobedience brings God's power through discipline.
Romans 2:6-9 .
He will judge everyone according to what they have done.
He will give eternal life to those who keep on doing good, seeking after the glory and honor and immortality that God offers. But he will pour out his anger and wrath on those who live for themselves, who refuse to obey the truth and instead live lives of wickedness.
There will be trouble and calamity for everyone who keeps on doing what is evil—for the Jew first and also for the Gentile
Living one way brings good news. Living the other brings bad news. The power we find in each is the same power we see in the resurrection. We all have a choice. We all get to choose. Either we will experience God's power salvaging our lives, and lifting us up out of our mess - or we’ll experience the power of His wrath
The psalmist says in Psalm 62:11-12
"One thing God has spoken, two things have I heard: that you, O God, are strong, and that you, O Lord, are loving. Surely you will reward each person according to what he has done."
In Proverbs 24:12 Solomon wrote,
"If you say, 'But we knew nothing about this,' does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay each person according to what he has done?
Galatians 6:6-8 Anyone who receives instruction in the word must share all good things with his instructor. Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.
Now, we can’t just overlook another important fact that people who choose not to live righ, people who know the truth but choose to ignore it, those people are not just going to suffer eternally. The fact is that those who choose to do evil have to go through a boat load of trouble and stress in this life
Paul writes in 1:18-19, But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness. They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them.
So God, being the gentleman that he is does something special for all those who choose to reject Him. He gives them over to their own self-destructive ways and lets them have at it and the result is that they invariably run headlong after their own selfish desires. If you don’t believe me, just look at God's temporal judgment against the Jews all throughout Old Testament history.
I will always remember years ago, I was camping with three friends. It was 1977 – and we’d all just graduated High School. So we took off for a couple of weeks to go have some fun
The weather was bad and our clothes were wet an the sleeping bags were wet. So we went down to the local Laundromat to dry some stuff. So there was me, at the laundry drying the stuff. A lady had a roll of coins lying on the laundry table. She walked off and left them there, as she got on with doing her laundry.
When she came back, I said, "You must be a trusting soul to leave your money like that.”
I will never forget her reply: She said "No, I know God will punish whoever steals my money three times over."
Now she may have been a bit humerous but her basic concept about God is right.
We pay for our wrongdoing. Some believe that you pay seven times over. Of course, there is really no way to measur the distress and trouble we receive because of our wrongdoing. It is as immeasurable as is the power of God.
The problem with disobedience is that God punishes us in the present. If we refuse to allow God's discipline to persuade us to repent we will store up God's wrath against us for his righteous judgment in that final day.
So, Why is this punishment brought upon the disobedient? Simply because they know better!
The Gentiles knew God yet deliberately denied him. The Jews had special advantage in that they had special revelation from God and lived no different. Both refused to obey God's law written on their hearts.
A few years ago a man drowned off Clearwater beach. The tide was going out and the current was strong
He got caught up in the rip current and was actually pulled away from shore. He began trying to swim against the tide to get back to shore. He soon became tired and drowned. Experts said that he should have relaxed and floated out with the tide and waited to be rescued.
The sovereignty of God is moving this world toward a final destination. If we refuse to go with him it’s like swimming against the current. The power of the God, which is intended to save us, will drown us.
Now, the world may persuade you to think that swimming against the current is the way to live but you will drown. The world may even make it look like the easiest way to live. But it will leave you powerless to salvage your lives. You may stay afloat, but you’ll lose ground fast. You may even invent some ingenious ways to stay afloat, but God's grace is your only hope.
You may even try to convince yourselves that you’re going in the right way. Or than He can rescue you at anytime you click your fingers. Look at the warning Timothy gave: 1 Timothy 6:8-10
But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many grief’s.
Now I'm giving you the bad news. What I’m talking about is not the most popular aspect of God's grace.
I thought I’d tell you the bad news first.
Could a God full of grace allow us to run headlong into destructive living without making an effort to discipline us for the purpose of salvaging our lives? Wouldn’t His purposes be better served by not letting us to reap what we sow?
I have saved the good news to last because I want to impress upon you the availability of God's power to salvage lives.
What do we do, what can we do when we reach a point in life where we know that we just don’t have the power to make it on our own?
How about discovering God's power for living?
When the mantle of leadership fell to Joshua after the death of Moses, Joshua was faced with the responsibility of leading the children of Israel across Jordan to the promise land. Forty years in the wilderness of S-I-N had taken its toll. The Sinai dessert may have been harsh, but at least it seemed familiar and safe. Look how God reassured Joshua
5 No one will be able to stand against you as long as you live. For I will be with you as I was with Moses. I will not fail you or abandon you.
6 “Be strong and courageous, for you are the one who will lead these people to possess all the land I swore to their ancestors I would give them. 7 Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the instructions Moses gave you. Do not deviate from them, turning either to the right or to the left. Then you will be successful in everything you do.
8 Study this Book of Instruction continually. Meditate on it day and night so you will be sure to obey everything written in it. Only then will you prosper and succeed in all you do.
9 This is my command—be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid or discouraged. For the LORD your God is with you wherever you go
Amazingly, God's kindness, tolerance and patience had sustained them for forty years as he disciplined and punished them for their sin. Now God's power is ready to lead them into the promise land. The power of his kindness was astonishing. And its that nature of Gods power that makes it all the more attractive Lets go back to Romans 2:
4-6 Don’t you see how wonderfully kind, tolerant, and patient God is with you? Does this mean nothing to you? Can’t you see that his kindness is intended to turn you from your sin? 5 But because you are stubborn and refuse to turn from your sin, you are storing up terrible punishment for yourself. For a day of anger is coming, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. 6 He will judge everyone according to what they have done.
When we stubbornly refuse to repent of our hypocrisy we show contempt for both God and his grace. God’s kindness, tolerance and patience had been spurned. Those were the very things that should have led them to repent. The gospel of Christ is the power of God which leads us to salvation. Although contempt was shown for his grace, we should realize how God wishes to exert his power in our lives. Can’t you see that his kindness is intended to turn you from your sin?
The kindness of God's power is designed to lead us to repentance. But you cant hold God's kindness in contempt. God will never tolerate our indulgence with sin. Job says, 4
Don’t you see how wonderfully kind, tolerant, and patient God is with you? Does this mean nothing to you? Can’t you see that his kindness is intended to turn you from your sin?
The reason why God is showing us his grace, and not judging us immediately, is not because he approves of our sin. It’s because he understands the nature of our struggles.
If there was no struggle, there would not be any need for patience or tolerance. God’s really patience in dealing with our weakness, but he will not tolerate hypocrisy.
Jeremiah lived in difficult times when he wrote,
Lamentations 3: 25 The LORD is good to those who depend on him, to those who search for him.So it is good to wait quietly for salvation from the LORD
Hebrews 6:11-12 11 Our great desire is that you will keep on loving others as long as life lasts, in order to make certain that what you hope for will come true. Then you will not become spiritually dull and indifferent. Instead, you will follow the example of those who are going to inherit God’s promises because of their faith and endurance.
The kindness, the tolerance and the patience of God's power has one aim and that’s to lead you and I along the pathway to repentance.
Romans 2:6-8 He will judge everyone according to what they have done. He will give eternal life to those who keep on doing good, seeking after the glory and honor and immortality that God offers. But he will pour out his anger and wrath on those who live for themselves, who refuse to obey the truth and instead live lives of wickedness.
The power of God is not a quick fix , neither is it an easy fix for all the world's problems or even for all the church's problems, or even for all my problems. But it is an encouragement for those who are struggling. In Matthew 28:20, this is what Jesus said
Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
When someone gives their heart to the Lord, they’re entering strange, new, unfamiliar territory. The past seems safer and well known, but up ahead the future is very much unknown and it’s intimidating to look into an unpredictable future. But the good news of the gospel is that we don't have to face the unfamiliar all alone. We face it in the power of God.
Two lifestyles are paralleled in Romans 2.
One way may seem very unfamiliar as we think about living up to the standards we recognize as right.
The other way may seem like the quick fix we’ve been looking for to solve all our problems. It says, just accept yourself as you are, but expect the world to live up to your standards of right.The quick fix has to do with the way we want others to live, while ignoring the way we live.
One way will leave us abandoned by God. The other way promises us the presence and power of God.
Justice - When you get what you deserve
Mercy - When you don't get what you deserve
Grace - When you get what you don't deserve
God gives us what we don't deserve.
It is the power to overcome the harshness of our own hypocrisy.
Hypocrites are people who profess one thing but live another.People who claim to be God's people, but who really don’t serve God
See, God doesn’t want to see what you’ve done in His name. He wants YOU to be in His name. His name on you means you are his property. On the day of judgement Gods going say to some people
I never knew YOU.
I know what you DID
I know what you said
I know about those miracles
But you missed the point - All I I wanted was to know YOU
In Matthew, Jesus pointed to the people and told them to DEPART from Him. If we dont choose to walk away from the sin in our lives we’re choosing to walk away from Him. He knows those who are truly His people.
If you profess His name, if you call yourself a Christian, then that needs to be borne out in your life. You need to be walking the walk, not just talking the talk
You are not Jesus' Name people if there’s SIN in your life.
He does not want all your good deeds.
He wants you.
What is the real you?
No comments:
Post a Comment