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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.
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