Romans 2:4-29
False Security
Page 2
The moral person’s problem is they don’t realize
that just being a little better than the worst is not good enough. If you measure yourself by some drunk in the
gutter I guess you are pretty good, but measure yourself by God. OK? And
then you realize what I should be, when measured by Jesus Christ.
I’m not even on the scale. I need a savior. “Well,
does God save everybody the same way, Mark?”
Yeah, look at verse 11, “There’s no partiality with God.” The word “partiality” means, actually the Greek
word means “to regard the face”. And
the idea is to “Oh, you look better than this person over here, I’ll save you.”
“You’re prettier than she is, I’ll save you…” you know.
God doesn’t look at the outward, God looks at the heart.
And it’s interesting that, I don’t see the contradiction where it says
in verse 7, “those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor
and immortality’’—and they get eternal life.
I don’t think that that is a contradiction to salvation by faith alone.
What he’s saying is, there’s only one good thing you can do to get saved,
and he says what it is in verse 8. The only good thing you can do to get saved
is to obey the truth. Verse 8, “But unto them that are contentious,
and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath.”
That’s the good thing you can do to save you, obey the truth.
Well, what does that mean? Does
that mean go to church, change your lifestyle, get baptized, start giving financially?
No. That doesn’t mean obeying the truth, that’s
not what he means. Obeying the truth means believing on Jesus Christ. See, the command in the Bible is not “Work(!)
and thou shalt be saved.” The command
in the Bible is “Believe, and thou shalt be saved.” So the only “good thing” you could do that
would result in Eternal Life is “believe on Jesus Christ.” Look at Romans chapter 10 for a second, would
you. Romans 10:4 is where we’ll start.
It says, “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness for everyone
who believe.” [And we’re told in Romans 13:8-14, “Owe no man
any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled
the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit
adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false
witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is
briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as
thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour:
therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. And that, knowing the time, that now it is high
time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we [first]
believed. The night is far spent, the
day is at hand [Paul when writing this believed, as did the other apostles,
that the 2nd coming of Jesus was right around the corner]: let us
therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.
Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness,
not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying.
But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh,
to fulfill the lusts thereof.” Paul lists
here five of the Ten Commandments and brings the OT law to its spiritual intent
(which is the NT Law of Christ), and shows we are to keep the spiritual intent
of God’s law by--vs. 14--putting on Jesus Christ, which he also calls “putting
on the armour of light.” In the book
of James, written by the brother of Jesus Christ, James states in James 1:22-25,
“But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not
a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass [mirror]:
For he beholdth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway foretteth what manner
of man he was. But whoso looketh into
the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful
hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.” I.e. the Law of God is like a spiritual mirror.
A mirror can’t clean the dirt off a person who is using it.
It takes soap and water. Christ
dwells in true born-again Christians through the indwelling Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is often symbolized in the Bible
as streams of Living water. Putting on
Christ is to bring those very Rivers of Living water into our very being, giving
us the ability to wash the spiritual dirt off which is revealed by God’s mirror,
the Law—and this Law is the NT Law of Christ—which is the spiritual intent of
the OT Law of God [cf. Matthew 5:17-48].]
In other words, you
can stop trying to be good enough to get to heaven [into the kingdom of heaven
for some readers] if you’ll believe in Jesus Christ. You don’t have to be “good enough”, you can
accept the one who was absolutely good enough, Jesus Christ and all his goodness
will be placed to your account. It’s
like somebody mysteriously, anonymously dropping $10,000 into your savings account.
Wouldn’t that be a neat thing to have happen?…See that’s the way God’s
grace is, in your heavenly account, all the goodness of Jesus Christ, God-pleasingness
of Jesus Christ, all the righteousness of Jesus Christ has been deposited into
your heavenly account. And now you can
draw on that when you need it, it’s all the time to cover you, you can’t have
a bounced check with God, because you have millions and millions and millions
worth of righteousness, covering you. You
say, ‘Oh, I really made a terrible bouncing blunder’. Hey, it’s covered, covered by the grace of Jesus
Christ. That’s the gospel. Now that ought to change your life, gang.
[Romans 10:4-9, “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to
every one that believeth. For Moses describeth the righteousness which
is of the law, That the man which doeth those things shall live by them. But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh
on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is,
to bring Christ down from above:) Or, Who shall
descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.)
But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and
in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the
Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the
dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the
heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made
unto salvation.”] Once you get a grasp
of God’s acceptance of you and his love of you.
Verse 9 [of Romans 10] says “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus
is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall
be saved, for with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness,
and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation” (Romans 10:9-10). It’s so easy to lead someone to Christ. God will lead them around to the point where
they see their need [Romans chapters1-2, and don’t forget it is God who does
this leading and showing, cf. John 6:44]. I’ll
tell you, the easiest question to ask somebody is, ‘Hey, if you were to die
tonight, are you sure you’d go to heaven?’ I mean, that is such an open question. All you have to do is ‘Are you sure you’d go
to heaven if you were to die tonight?’ Most
people are going to say ‘No.’ Some people
might say ‘Yes.’ Well, ‘Why?’
What makes you so sure. ‘Well,
I’ve been a good guy, never stepped out on my wife, never cheated on my taxes.’ ‘Really? Do
you know that the Bible says God requires perfection to be saved [by works]?
And the Bible says that we all have sinned.’
You see, [with the knowledge we’ve just gained in Romans] you can lead
them right into the gospel. You can do
it. You don’t have to have a professional do it
for you. You can do it. And there’s people God’s got all around you
just waiting for you to ask the question. Now
what’s the worst thing that they could do? You could say, “If you were to die tonight,
are you certain you’d go to heaven?” They
could say, “Ah, shut up!”, and you’d shut up and realize ‘I shouldn’t have asked
that person [chuckle]. But you know,
most people can’t believe that you’d care enough to ask.
I mean, you’ve got a wide open door.
You see, God demands perfection [if you’re
gonna try to gain salvation by works], but there are people who will try to
be spiritual Evil Keneval’s—‘We’re gonna jump across the Grand Canyon’, but
let’s see somebody do it? Now let’s say
you can jump 10 feet further than I can. That’s
awesome. It’s not going to get you across
the canyon. The best we can do isn’t
good enough, it won’t, it isn’t far enough. And so God, there’s a gulf between him and us
and so he has bridged that gulf and the cross of Jesus Christ becomes a bridge
upon which we can cross from our side over to God’s side. But it’s the only way from hell to heaven.
The only way to get from sin to God’s perfection is thorugh Jesus Christ.
That’s why he said “I’m the door, and you can only come through me.”
He says “I’m the Way, the Truth and the Life, and no one can come to
the Father but by me.”
Let’s go back to chapter 2. So everybody’s saved the same way. Billy Graham has been saved the same way I have
been saved. Salvation to God is all the
same. God isn’t partial in how he uses
us, Billy Graham has been used a lot more than you or I have been used. But I mean, so what. He’s God’s vessel, and if he wants to make one
vessel of gold and another vessel of silver, who are we to complain? That’s his business, not ours. But as far as becoming children of God, there’s
no partiality. God saves everybody the
same way. That’s why we (in the Calvary
Chapels) don’t have degrees or doctorates and all this status-blatis-smatis
stuff, you know. Who cares what pile
of junk you drive? Who cares what heap
of junk you live in? It’s all going to
burn [at the end of God’s plan for mankind, cf. Rev. 20:14-15;21:1]. I mean, there is no status at the cross. ‘Oh, I’m a businessman, I have a six figure
income’, so what. Were you saved differently
than someone with a three figure, four figure income?--unimportant.
Was more blood shed for you than somebody else?
No, and you see, the natural man sort of likes status.
The flesh loves it, craves it. And
we even sometimes get into that in the church, where we want titles, and we
want position. WE want to be known.
Look, the ground is level at the cross.
We’re all saved the same way, we’re all worth the infiite blood of Jesus
Christ and we all have tremendous value in Christ.
It’s not value like men see value and women see value, but it’s value
based on what God sees. And so the church should be the one place where
we have this equality and this common ground. You lose your doctorate here, you lose your
position here. You lose your financial
status here, we’re all one in Christ. God
may raise up some more than he raises up others [for the sake of serving others,
but remember Jesus’ description of what a spiritual leader is, he’s a servant
of all whom he serves], that’s the way God does things. Some may receive more honor than others because
of the way God uses them. But that’s
God’s business, not ours. The church
has failed when the church begins to think that maybe somehow some people are
saved a little differently than others. No way, not on your life.
Romans
2:17-19, “Behold, thou art called a Jew, and restest in the law, and makest
thy boast of God, and knowest his will, and approvest the things that are more
excellent, being instructed out of the law; and art confident that thou thyself
art a guide of the blind, a light of them which are in darkness, an instructor
of the foolish, a teacher of babes, which hast the form of knowledge and of
the truth in the law.” Now I told
you the title of the message was ‘false security.’
So let’s talk about false security, and that really brings us to the
next section here in Romans, where he says in verse 17, he talks about the religious
person now. Now religion could classically
be defined as ‘man’s attempt to try to reach God--building towers, walking on
coals of fire, laying on beds of nails, doing pennance, going to temples, wearing
these undergarments that are considered Holy’--all of these things are works
that men do to try to get God to change his mind about them, trying to reach
God. And that [trying to approach God]
is a hopeless situation. It’s like trying
to climb a flagpole that’s been greased on a rainly day.
You can try and try and try and try, but you’re going to take two grabs
and slide down three feet, go two feet and slide down three feet, go two feet
and slide down another three feet--you know, it’s just an impossibility.
Christianity is so different from any other religion. Christianity declares that God has not told
us to climb up to Him, God has come down to where we are. God sees our need, and God has reached down
to were we are, and he has lifted us up. It’s
all his work. He’s put us on
an escalator, not a ladder! OK?
So that’s the difference. Now religious people have a big problem, they’re
probably the hardest people to reach for Christ. Pagan people are easy, they know they got a
problem. Moral people are a little more
tough, but even a good moral person is honest enough to see he needs a savior.
But religious people, oh you can pull your hair out dealing with the
religious, can’t you? Some ethnic groups are very religious, Hispanics,
Italians [not that we’re singling out any particular ethnic group here], you
deal with a lot of religious relatives in these groups. Don’t you? And
they’ve got problems. And you don’t have
to be of those two ethnic groups, that’s not my point. But they have a false sense of security. The best way I can describe this. I’m a real safety sort of nut, like when my
family is at home, even during the day I keep the doors locked. I lock the back door, I lock the gates, lock
the front door. You know, when you live
in the Bareo like I do and the gangs have moved in, I feel like a pioneer, I
just need my shotgun out my window, you know.
But I want them to be safe and secure.
So every night I have my little ritual checking all the doors that I
already know are locked. And OK, now
I can go to bed. And one of these nights
about a month or two ago we’re awakened in the middle of the night, Ely had
a problem and we had to dial 911 and the guys arrived, fire engine and all the
paramedics all arrived. All the commotion
is going on and they’re packing her up and got all this equipment in there and
they’re getting ready to take her in the ambulance to the hospital.
And just about the time we’re getting ready to leave, one of the firemen
says, “Mr. Martin, ah, don’t you think maybe you’ll need these?”
I had left my whole bunch of keys on the outside of the door in the lock. And here I’d gone to bed, I’m so secure, I’ve
locked my doors, I can go to sleep now. I
mean, I might as well have a sign out there “Rob me, I’ve got a key in the door,
no problem, won’t make any noise, I’ll even show you where the jewels are, you
can steal all our paper plates and everything else we have (if you don’t break
your neck on a baby toy!).” But, you
know that false security? I thought,
‘man I wasn’t as secure as I thought I was.’ I was trusting in something that was very insecure.
And religious people have that problem.
I don’t know, you could be religious here and not even realize it today.
Religious people have certain characteristics.