Sunday, October 7, 2012

Sunday, October 7th

Today's passage from the Chronological Bible In a Year Reading Plan is Mark 2
Today's scripture focus is Romans 2:5-11

But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. God “will give to each person according to what he has done.” To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger.There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; 10 but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 11 For God does not show favoritism.

We saw in Romans 1:18-31 God's wrath of abandonment being leveled against the ungodly after they rejected Him.

Here in Romans 2:1-16 we see that God's wrath is also directed to the morally, externally righteous person - specifically in Paul's time, the self-righteous religious Jew.  God's wrath has already begun, but it is also being piled up and awaiting the day when it breaks, even on those who are moral and appear righteous, but who are not truly and inwardly righteous.

In his sermon, Principles of Judgment (Part 2), MacArthur says....
The moral majority, if I can borrow the term, is always eager to condemn the debased and the debauched people in society but not so eager to look at their own life and see if they in fact are any better off....the self-righteous people whose morality is only a facade and who are falsely secure who are outwardly attached to the right religion but do not have truth in their hearts, they need to know also that they're in line for God's wrath as much as the pagans and more.

God's judgment is based on several things, the first of which was knowledge.  In v1 we saw that if we can condemn others because we know the law of God, we are self-condemned by that same knowledge. when we do the same thing - maybe not as flagrantly, maybe in secret, maybe only in thought, but nonetheless we betray our sinfulness and our knowledge of that sinfulness.

He also judges on the basis of truth (v2-3).  the hope of the religious phony is that God will not judge on the truth but He will judge on the superficial profession
We can claim all we want that we've done things for the Lord, but God knows our hearts, God knows our motives, God knows the reality, the facts, the truth - and He will judge us based on the truth as it actually is, not on the truth as we profess it to be.  We cannot fool God, He will not be mocked.

He judges on the basis of true guilt (v4-5).  God has been so good to us.  He is a Holy God and therefore, cannot abide sin.  It would be utterly just if we would be destroyed immediately after we commit even just one sin.  Just one.  But in His mercy He withholds judgment.  It is all mercy that we don't die with every breath we take!  But we are unthankful for His mercy.  Not only are we unthankful, but we have become so used to mercy that we presume we will continue to get it forever.  He is patient, kind and long suffering in order to lead us into repentance. But when we don't allow God's goodness to lead us into repentance and instead we reject His goodness, abuse and despise His mercy, presume upon His grace, spurn His love and mock His kindness, we pile up guilt upon guilt that is inevitably going to come back on us in judgment.

Not only are we unthankful, but we have the nerve to question God's goodness (especially when we read about some of the wrathful judgments in the OT - Lot's wife being turned into a pillar of salt, the boys who mocked Elijah being killed by a bear, Uzzah being struck dead when he touched the ark to prevent it from falling, destroying virtually the entire world in a flood, etc) and it's because we're seeing history from the wrong perspective.  I've never thought of it this way before and I just loved MacArthur's explanation - truly I learned something huge today....


 Now listen, if you look, watch this, at the Old Testament with the New Testament in view, you're going to get confused because we live in an aura of the goodness and mercy and grace of God. And if you go back from that perspective, you're going to get all confused in the Old Testament. The problem is we feel that God is unjust because we are comparing His justice with His mercy, not His mercy with His law. Let me show you what I mean. We have to go back to creation. You cannot look at the Old Testament from the New Testament, you have to look at the Old Testament from the creation.
Now, God said this, "In the day you eat of the fruit of the tree you shall surely...what?...die." When God created He said, you sin--you die. The New Testament reiterates the wages of sin is...what?...death. The soul that sinneth, said Ezekiel, it shall die. You eat, you die. In creation, all sin was a capital offense. Any sin, God had a right to kill. Now think of it this way. God made man freely. Created man of His own choice freely. He made man to glorify Him. He made man to radiate His image. He made man to manifest His person. But man rebelled. R.C. Sproul says he committed cosmic treason.
Now if God freely made man and God freely gave man his life and God freely gave man the conditions to continue that life, and man chose to violate that, then God had every right in the world to take that life back, right? After all, He gave it freely. Whenever we sin we are striking a blow at God's sovereign character. We are misrepresenting His image and His intention for us. We are insulting God and does not He who freely gave life have the right to freely take it back if He gave the conditions and we violated them? Is that unfair? No...no, He gave the conditions, that would be just. He has every right to take back the life He gave when that life violates His conditions.
Okay, Adam and Eve ate. Let me ask you a question, did they die? No...no, they didn't die. Did they get justice? No, what did they get? Mercy. And at the moment that Adam and Eve sinned, God's mercy was activated and you know what else was activated? The plan of the cross because as soon as God was merciful to sinners, somebody had to take His justice, right? And the cross became a fixed reality. So originally every sin...now stay with me...every sin required death. Is it unjust by God's law to take the life of the rebel to whom God has been so good? No. But God didn't exercise His justice, He was merciful to Adam and Eve.
Now listen to me. By the time you come to the Mosaic law, you only have 30 to 35 capital offenses. That is not cruel and unusual punishment, that is an amazing reduction in the severity of God's judgment, isn't it? Because originally it was any sin and now it's just 30 to 35 of them. And who knows how many thousands there are. God is so merciful but by the time He gets to the Mosaic era He's reduced it to 30 to 35. And you know something else? Even in the case of those 30 to 35, there were times when God did not enact His justice. There were times when the people of Israel did all of those things and God spared their lives. He was merciful. Wherever there was adultery in a marriage, there was supposed to be death. But because they were so adulterous all the time, God permitted them to divorce as a gracious merciful alternative. And they were to die for idolatry but how many times did God forgive that idolatry? And how many times was He merciful? They were to die when they were committing fornication but how many times did God show His patience? They were to die when they murdered, but how many times did God seem to overlook it? He was so patient, so patient.
Now you see, beloved, that is the point. If you compare the Old Testament with the original created standard, the Old Testament is full of mercy...now listen to me...but we are so used to mercy, we are so used to grace, we are so accustomed to getting away with our sin, we are so used to not being punished, we are so accustomed to grace that we abuse it. And whenever God does do what is just, we think He's unjust. That's how confused we are. And that's how we despise the goodness of God. When God knocks down in death Ananias and Sapphira, we say, "Well, how can God be so cruel?" when the fact is, how can anybody else in that congregation stay alive, they were all sinners. You see, we so trade on God's mercy and we're so used to abusing God's grace that we are offended if God isn't merciful. And that's the truth. He chooses times not to be merciful.
You say, "Well, I still don't understand why He does it." Listen, I'll tell you why. Because it's so bad now and we trade so much on His mercy and abuse His grace so badly now that if He didn't give us those frequent examples of His justice, imagine how much more we would trade on His mercy without any fear of repercussion. The reason that God from time to time takes a life and comes down in severe judgment is because periodically throughout the flow of redemptive history He has to illustrate what should happen to bring us back to our senses because we are so accustomed to His mercy. If we didn't have examples of the consequence of sin, we would go on blissfully trading without a thought on His mercy....
So why are there throughout the Old Testament and even into the New, why are there those illustrations of God's instantaneous wrath? They're examples and God does those to show us what should happen to all of us and to build in our hearts attitudes of thanksgiving. Every day I live I should say, "Thank You, God, thank You for being so merciful and overlooking the sin today that should have caused my death and eternal judgment."
I'll tell you, we would never tolerate the insubordination that God tolerates. We tread on His mercy even with these examples, can you imagine if there weren't these examples what would happen?..
we are so used to mercy, so used to grace, that we think justice is unjust.

Wow.  It seems so obvious that I cannot believe I haven't seen or understood the truth of that before.    We are so used to mercy, we are so used to grace, that when we see examples of justice in action we think God is unjust.  Our perspective is so skewed.

Anyway, to quickly wrap up today's passage....

God judges on the basis of our deeds (v6-11).  In Part 3 of the same sermon series, MacArthur says...
You cannot be saved by works but you will be saved unto works... if you are truly saved you will be His workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has before ordained that you walk in them....A person's deeds, a person's works reveal whether he has been saved and they are the absolute infallible indicator. So an unbeliever will be judged by his works, his deeds and they will reveal his unbelief. They will reveal the absence of God in his life because all of his works will be unrighteous. And even when he tries to be righteous, it will turn out to be filthy rags.

So all God has to do is look at the works. If He sees works that are manifestations of righteousness, He knows there is a regenerated person. If He sees no such manifestation of righteousness, He knows there is an unregenerate person. Therefore judgment in the end can be rendered on the basis of works....

I want you to understand one very important thing. Paul is not talking about salvation here, so get that out of your mind or you'll be confused....He is simply dealing with one of the elements of judgment. He doesn't say how the righteous people got righteous or he doesn't say why the unrighteous people were unrighteous, he just says you can judge them by their works. A true Christian is known by his righteous deeds. A non-Christian is known by the absence of righteous deeds.
Now what does that say to you? Simple thought. If there's nothing in your life to indicate righteousness, then there's no righteousness there....If there's no manifestation, there can be no salvation. There may be periods of time when we walk in disobedience and the flesh. But there cannot be a life that is barren of righteous deeds that can still claim to be redeemed.
A true believer seeks to glorify God, seeks to reflect God's glory, to receive the honour that God gives as a result of reflecting His glory, to seek transformation into Christlikeness, to seek the incorruption and perfection of eternal life forever with the One we love.

In contrast, an unrighteousness person is completely self-absorbed, rejects God's truth in a spirit of rebellion, and lives a life disobedient to God's will.


The road to hell is basically a spirit of antagonism toward the lordship of Christ. You will not respond, you will rebel. You will not obey, you will disobey. Now listen carefully here, I want you to get this point, if the road to hell is a spirit of antagonism toward the lordship of Christ then the road to heaven must be the opposite...it must be an attitude of submission to the lordship of Christ. And that is precisely what it is saying.
God wants you to seek for glory and honor and incorruption. God wants the heart to seek heavenward, Godward, above. And even though we don't always attain, there is that seeking heart. And when we fail there is that brokenness. If an unregenerate person is one who rebels against the Lordship of Christ, then a Christian has to be the opposite of that by character. That is clearly the message of this text. Eternal life belongs to those who show the work of God in their hearts by living under the obedience of the lordship of Christ. Those who refuse to do so are the unregenerate and those who receive wrath.


Tomorrow's scripture focus: Romans 2:12-16
Tomorrow's Bible In a Year Passage passage: John 5

1 comment:

Miriam said...

"we are so used to mercy, so used to grace, that we think justice is unjust."

So true, and it breaks my heart.