Last week, we explored God’s patience with us as sinners. We can think, ‘hey, we are not as bad as that guy or those people,’ but the truth is ALL sin ends in death. One of the hardest things for people to come to grips with in our world today is who they are. Men want to be women, women want to be men, the older people wish they had their youth, the youth wish they were older, and on and on we go. In this passage in Romans 3, Paul clearly states what and who we all are. We are sinners, every single one of us is a sinner.

Beginning in verse 10, Paul lays out the depth of the sinner that we all are. IN verse 11, no one seeks God. In fact, it is God who comes seeking us.

In verse 12, we are all ‘unprofitable’; we have no value. It may surprise you to know that God does not need us. We do not add value to God when we are saved, and we do not remove value from God if we reject His grace. God is sufficient without us. Our very mouths are evil; our mouths are full of evil and filled with threats.

In verses 16-17, our feet are swift to do evil. In verse 16, we destroy all that we come into contact with.

In verse 18, there is no fear, no ‘respect’ for God in our eyes. Paul concludes that ALL are sinners and fall short of God’s glory.

We live in a world, even in the ‘church’ world that no longer calls out sin, no longer acknowledges that we are all sinners, evil to the core, and have no value at all. We have broken all of God’s laws, and we have done so without remorse and without even the slightest hint of hesitation. Yet, in churches all around us, sin is no longer called out; rather, it is affirmed. Sexual perversion is called ‘love,’ laziness is called all manner of disorders, and we make excuses for people to steal from others and from stores. We reclassify what God calls sin and rebrand it to appease people. But we are sinners, and without Jesus, we are all going to Hell.

Jesus will not judge from an updated, progressive writing of the Books when we stand at the judgment. Oh yeah, I forgot; people don’t fear judgment anymore because we have told them that God is okay with their sin now; He has learned a few things over the millennia. If that is the case, then Jesus was a fool, and His death was for nothing. God negated His sacrifice by reclassifying sin. Sorry, Son, times change.

BUT we know the truth; sin is sin. It was sin 4,000 years ago in the Old Testament, and it is still sin now. Stealing is sin, lying is sin, murder is sin, rebellion towards parents is sin, adultery, making false accusations against your neighbor, and on and on. Yes, you got it; all of it is sin. To sin is to fall short of God’s perfection. That is us; you and I.

Even as saved people, we are sinners. However, in Jesus, we have hope. In Jesus, we can be saved from the penalty of sin, saved from God’s judgment, and restored to right relation with God. Jesus’ perfection makes us perfect, and He welcomes us as His family. This was then and still is the only solution for sin and the sin nature that plagues us.

Take an honest look at yourself and see the sinfulness in your own life, even as a child of God. Let us never grow weary of thanking God for redeeming us, for saving us, and for sending His beloved Son to pay for our sin.

For a brief moment in history, Jesus looked like us, sinful, unable to meet the perfection of God, and then it was completed. But because of that brief moment in history, you and I can look like Jesus for eternity and be perfect and have loving, joyful, friendship-based relationships with God. Sin is our problem, and Jesus is still the only solution.

seangooding@yahoo.ca

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church
70 Victoria Street, Elora, Ontario

Last week, we looked at the fact that God’s judgment on the world has begun. He has taken off a lot of the restraints that hold evil back, and we can see that there has been an exponential growth of evil over the past 30-40 years. Things that were never allowed in public, or things that were never considered normal are now normal in many places.

One of the ways that God judges a nation – you can go back into the Old Testament and read about this with Israel – was to let pagan invaders come in and take over their land. Fundamentally enslaving them in their own land. The Philistines did it in the Judges, as did the Midianites, as did the Romans in Jesus’ era. And today, the Muslims have invaded the Promised Land and are a thorn in the side of Israel.

Well, guess what? The Muslims are doing a slow invasion of us here in North America. They have conquered Europe for the most part, and soon the UK and the EU will be predominantly Muslim strongholds. In Canada, the Muslims know that somewhere around 2050, they will have out-birthed us, they will take over, and they are not ashamed, nor are they shy to say it. This is a part of the judgment of God on a nation or on nations that turn their backs on Him.

One of the other ways of judgment is that more and more women get into leadership roles like the Government and eventually churches, like churches calling women as their pastors. In Isaiah 3:12, God, in the context, is pronouncing judgment on Judah and Jerusalem. In verse 12, He says that this will happen when a nation is apart from God.

“Youths oppress my people, women rule over them. My people, your guides lead you astray; they turn you from the path.”

In verse 4, we see this verse: “I will make mere youths their officials; children will rule over them.”

I am astonished at how many youths with no real work experience are elected to public office. We see people like the new Mayor of New York, who had no real experience doing anything. The new Mayor of Seattle is an unskilled woman with no understanding of how businesses work because she has no experience in life. The judgment of God is on us. What we think is progress is actually God’s judgment.

Now, it is easy for us to become arrogant and think ‘we are not like them’; we are saved, good people. And as such, we forget that we, too, are simply sinners saved by grace.

In Romans chapter 2, we are reminded of God’s wealth of kindness towards us in not giving us what we deserve. The reality is that even as saved people, we can at times commit the same sins as lost people. We cannot lose salvation, BUT the payment for sin is death. In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul reminded that some of the people in that church slept [died] because they took the Lord’s Supper disrespectfully. Paul tells us that we are not to take the grace of God towards ourselves lightly (Romans 2:3-4, AMP).

“But do you think this, O man, when you judge and condemn those who practice such things, and yet do the same yourself, that you will escape God’s judgment and elude His verdict? Or do you have no regard for the wealth of His kindness and tolerance and patience [in withholding His wrath]? Are you [actually] unaware or ignorant [of the fact] that God’s kindness leads you to repentance [that is, to change your inner self, your old way of thinking—seek His purpose for your life]?”

We are told to regard the ‘wealth’ of God’s patience because He does not deal with us as we deserve. In Psalm 103:10, we are reminded that God does not deal with us as we deserve. Thank Him for that daily, hourly.

Even as His children, our sins are grievous to God, and while they cannot ‘unsave’ us, they can disrupt fellowship and God’s direction and plans for our lives. Paul tells us that God is tolerant and patient as He withholds His wrath that our sin deserves. It is God’s kindness that leads us to repentance and drives us, like David, to confession of our sinful state and to recall often God’s loving, kind and patient forgiveness – and not only forgiveness BUT His restoration.

One day God’s righteous judgment will fall on the whole world. Those in Christ will be judged at the Bema Seat judgment spoken of in 2 Corinthians 5:10, and the unrepentant masses will be judged at the Great White Throne judgment described for us in Revelation 20:11-15. These are set historical events that will happen in the future. There will be God’s wrath at both; to the saved, the wrath is about lost rewards and lost work in the Millennial Kingdom. And to the lost, the wrath will be eternal separation from God.

Therefore, let us be constantly judging ourselves, constantly looking in the mirror, constantly removing the plank from our own eyes, and constantly repenting of the sins we know we did, and the ones we are not sure we did.

In Psalm 19:12, David asks that God forgive him for hidden sins; these are not hidden like he is covering them up (David is in the process of confession, so he is not hiding them); rather, he is talking of the sins he did but that he cannot remember. He is asking God to forgive the sins that are hidden from his memory. Here we have another reason to rejoice and to repent even more. God will forgive even the sins we cannot remember if we faithfully confess what we can recall.

seangooding@yahoo.ca

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church
70 Victoria Street, Elora, Ontario