Chapter 3: 1-20
You’re Not Okay and Neither Am I

“What advantage then has the Jew, or what is the profit of circumcision? ² Much in every way! Chiefly because to them were committed the oracles of God. ³ For what if some did not believe? Will their unbelief make the faithfulness of God without effect? ⁴ Certainly not! Indeed, let God be true but every man a liar. As it is written: ‘That You may be justified in Your words, and may overcome when You are judged.’ ⁵ But if our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unjust who inflicts wrath? (I speak as a man.) ⁶ Certainly not! For then how will God judge the world?

“⁷ For if the truth of God has increased through my lie to His glory, why am I also still judged as a sinner? ⁸And why not say, ‘Let us do evil that good may come”?—as we are slanderously reported and as some affirm that we say. Their condemnation is just. ⁹ What then? Are we better than they? Not at all. For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin.

“¹⁰ As it is written: ‘There is none righteous, no, not one; ¹¹ There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God. ¹² They have all turned aside; they have together become unprofitable; there is none who does good, no, not one.’¹³ ‘Their throat is an open tomb; with their tongues they have practiced deceit’; ‘The poison of asps is under their lips’;¹⁴ ‘Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.’¹⁵ ‘Their feet are swift to shed blood; ¹⁶ Destruction and misery are in their ways; ¹⁷ And the way of peace they have not known.’ ¹⁸ ‘There is no fear of God before their eyes.’

“¹⁹ Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. ²⁰ Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.“

We have this system here in Canada called the Amber Alert. I am sure this exists in other areas as well. Two nights ago, the alert went off multiple times, and my wife and I were awakened by our phones alarming with a very distinct sound. The cause of the alert was that a young lad, just 14 years old, had been abducted. He had not been seen since he left for school in the morning; and through a series of improper recording and alerting, his parents did not find out until later in the day that he, in fact, had not turned up to school. By the grace of God, this young man was found safely, even though he was a bit shaken.

Why was he abducted? The head of the Major Crimes Division in a press conference told the public that this young man was taken as a revenge for his step-brother stealing in the range of $4,000,000 in cocaine from a rival gang. This young man, just 14, had nothing to do with it, but he was abducted by the rival gang in a van on his way to school.

Over the past year, our Provincial government, State government, for those in the US, have been looking at the scourge of human trafficking here in Ontario. Sadly, we are one of the major areas for human trafficking in North America. Recently, we learned that some of the people actually setting up the abductions were High School kids who were befriending and selling their classmates. This is big business with each abducted person going for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Most of us are familiar with the movie Taken, where the abducted daughter was sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars because she was a virgin. Why, Sean, are you writing about this? Why bring up these heinous incidents? Because we need to get it into our thick skulls that mankind is intrinsically evil. There is nothing good about us. Were it not for the grace of God, it could be you and I out doing these crimes and seeing nothing wrong with them; just doing business would be our mentality.

1. Total Depravity, verse 10

You and I are not okay. You and I are evil to the core, and you and I are incapable of any goodness in and of ourselves. We are rotten to the core. The Bible calls us sinners; people who consistently miss the mark of God’s holiness.

I watched a critique of a sermon by a prominent preacher here a few weeks ago. The preacher was saying that we should not be defined by our mistakes. He used the analogy of a famous baseball player who had a great batting average, good fielding percentage and was an all-round star; but in a playoff game, he misfielded a ground ball that allowed the opposing team to get their momentum back and eventually win the series. He was known for this misfield even up the time that he was inducted into the Hall of Fame. It was sad that for all his accomplishments, he came to be known for this one mistake.

The implication is that we are all superstars on God’s team – we are good; good minds, good hearts and in general good people; but every now and then, we make mistakes; and this one thing or these few things should not define us. This is basically heresy; we are evil, sinners, rotten to the core.

The list of evils that proceed verse 10 is lengthy and horrible, and we can all find ourselves in the verses somewhere. Maybe we are not seeking after God; we just have a general indifference to Him and His ways. Maybe like verse 13, our very words are death, our mouth is a tomb, maybe our words are poison to those we say we love. At the very least, we are liars (verse 13). Maybe we curse God and man (verse 14), we are murderers (verse 15), and on and on we can go with the depth of our evil.

Murder has become normal here in the Toronto area. When I was a young man just moved here, gun violence was almost unheard of. But just a few evenings ago, a man was shot in a public bus in the sight of many witnesses; the shooter had no fear of being seen and arrested.

We are evil to the core.

I am a fan of police and FBI shows like Criminal Minds and the CSI shows. It was not until a few years ago that I came to understand that most, if not all of the shows, were based on actual events. The murders, the killings and the seemingly inhuman things that other humans do to others are jaw-dropping at times.

Paul, a former Pharisee, would have thought himself righteous before God. He kept the Law. He followed every little instruction; yet, now he understood that it all meant nothing. He lays this out in Philippians 3: 1-7:

“Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you, to me indeed is not grievous, but for you it is safe. Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision. For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh. Though I might also have confidence in the flesh. If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more: Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; Concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ.”

Paul had a lot to boast about as a Pharisee concerning his own self-righteousness and keeping the Law. But once he came face to face with Jesus, he saw that all of his righteousness was nothing. In another place, he calls it dung (Phil. 3: 8), poop in our modern terms. So great was his transformation that Paul claims that he was the ‘chief of sinners,’ the head sinner (1 Timothy 1:15). If there was a chapter for sinners, I, Paul says, would be head sinner. Paul saw himself as totally depraved, incapable of goodness at any level and in need of a Savior; Jesus is that Savior.

This seems to be a missing doctrine in many churches today. We are sinners. We are not doing okay and have just a few mess-ups along the way. Rather, we are evil to the core and, on occasion, we do some good. Many have never had to come face to face with the depth of their own sins; many never understand that they are the enemy of God because God cannot stand sin nor be in its presence. Many, myself included, do not appreciate the wonderful gift of salvation because we do not understand the depth of our depravity. We take for granted the grace of God. We take for granted the Mercy of God. We take for granted the kindness of God, and we take for granted the gift of eternal life. A gift that is offered freely to us, but a gift that cost God the precious life of His Son.

2. You cannot Save Yourself, verse 20

No one will be saved by keeping the Law. No one. In fact, if you were to be able to keep the entire law, you can’t, and neither can I; we would still die in our sinfulness. Why? Because we are born sinners by nature. We need to be born-again. All of our righteousness is not enough to erase our nature, that being evil. You will not win God’s favor or earn eternal life with good deeds. You must simply be born again; be born from Heaven with a new spirit in us, the Holy Spirit of God in us. 

If we consider the verses from Philippians 3, Paul was telling us that he’d had something to boast about. He was zealous, as were many of the Pharisees. They were devoted, committed, and all in as far they knew; and yet, all of his righteousness that he thought he had from the Law was not, and could never be enough.

Jesus’ righteousness is all that God the Father accepts when we are born-again; we become clothed in Jesus’ righteousness, and that covering is all we need. The prophet Isaiah says it this way, “I will rejoice greatly in the LORD, my soul will exult in my God; For He has clothed me with garments of salvation, He has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels” (Isaiah 61:10).

God hath clothed me with the clothes, the garments of salvation. I cannot save myself. You cannot save yourself. You and I need to be saved from our complete sinfulness, not just our actions but our very nature. This is the problem for a lot of people; we have lied to ourselves and, in many cases, to our church people that they are good people. They are not, neither are you, and I am not. God is good. Any goodness I have must come from Him. He is the one who can wash us clean and make us good.

The Psalmist in 51:2 and verse 7 says this: “Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, And cleanse me from my sin.”

“Purify me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.”

In the last days, many, the Bible says, will claim ‘righteous deeds’ as their ticket to salvation. Jesus will tell them that He never knew them. Oh my, what a sad day that will be!

I leave you with these words of hope from the Apostle Paul in Acts 16:31:

“So they said, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.’”

God bless you,

Pastor Sean Gooding

Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca

 

 

Chapter 2:17-29
Hypocrites and the Law

“Indeed you are called a Jew, and rest on the law, and make your boast in God, ¹⁸ and know His will, and approve the things that are excellent, being instructed out of the law, ¹⁹ and are confident that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, ²⁰ an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, having the form of knowledge and truth in the law. ²¹ You, therefore, who teach another, do you not teach yourself? You who preach that a man should not steal, do you steal? ²² You who say, ‘Do not commit adultery,’ do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? ²³ You who make your boast in the law, do you dishonor God through breaking the law?

“²⁴ For ‘the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you,’ as it is written. ²⁵ For circumcision is indeed profitable if you keep the law; but if you are a breaker of the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision. ²⁶ Therefore, if an uncircumcised man keeps the righteous requirements of the law, will not his uncircumcision be counted as circumcision? ²⁷ And will not the physically uncircumcised, if he fulfills the law, judge you who, even with your written code and circumcision, are a transgressor of the law? ²⁸ For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; ²⁹ but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not from men but from God.“

The book of Romans is raw and hits us (at least me) in the heart. The Holy Spirit, if we are listening, cuts right to the heart of the matter and convicts us. This is the whole point of the Law. It was never designed to save; rather it was designed to show us that we needed a Saviour. In Galatians 3:24-46, the Apostle Paul tells us this very thing:

“Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith has come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.”

There are still many who try to live by the Law. They don’t eat this, and think that only those who worship on Saturdays are saved. But if you follow the ministry of Jesus, you will see that He did a lot of healing on Sabbath days. He defied the conventional thinking about the Sabbath, yet He never sinned. There are some today who observe some of the Law but not all of it. The Bible says in James 2:10-11 this about the Law:

“Whoever keeps the whole law but stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. For He who said, ‘Do not commit adultery,’ also said, ‘Do not murder.’ If you do not commit adultery, but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.”

You cannot pick and choose which laws you want to keep and which ones you want to ignore. If you say that you want to live by the Law, then do them all is what the Bible says. Jewish men were not allowed to shave their faces; they had to wear blue tassels on their clothes to identify them as children of God in Israel. They could not wear clothing made of mixed fabrics; and on and on we can go. I dare say that many of the people who think they know the Law of Moses, don’t. One which is often overlooked is the law about travel. In Exodus 16:29-30 we see this command from Moses to the people, based on the law of God:

“‘See! For the Lord has given you the Sabbath; therefore, He gives you on the sixth day bread for two days. Let every man remain in his place; let no man go out of his place on the seventh day.’ So the people rested on the seventh day.”

Do not go out of your home. Over the years there came to be known the phrase “a Sabbath’s day’s journey.” This was the allowed distance to be traveled on the Sabbath day; the priest’s homes and the synagogues would have been a Sabbath day’s journey from the homes in the town. We see this phrase used in Acts 1:12, where Jesus took His disciples out about a Sabbath day’s journey before He was taken up before their eyes. There was to be no travel beyond this distance on the Sabbath. So people who pretend that they follow the Law, yet travel more than 2,000 cubits or about 3,000 feet, are breaking all of the Law. If you want to truly keep the Law, stay home.

1. Hypocrites, verses 17-25

We are all hypocrites. Some less and some more, but all hypocrites nonetheless. Why? Because we do things that we tell people not to do, and we often make ourselves out to be more than we truly are. We put on an air of piety, and as people get to know us, they realize that we have a lot of chinks in our armour. Read the Gospels and pay close attention to the followers of Jesus; these men were fraught with doubts, they had internal fighting about who would be the greatest, they had unbelief and they had issues with faith. While we pick on Peter for denying Jesus that fateful night on His arrest, ALL of the disciples fled; they all forsook Jesus; only John and Peter followed Him.

One of the best parts of the New Testament is that we find the apostles and the disciples to be real people. They had real issues. Peter and Barnabas were challenged face to face by Paul about their Jewish hypocrisy:

Galatians 2:11-13 “Now when Peter had come to Antioch, I withstood him to his face, because he was to be blamed; for before certain men came from James, he would eat with the Gentiles; but when they came, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing those who were of the circumcision. And the rest of the Jews also played the hypocrite with him, so that even Barnabas was carried away with their hypocrisy.”

To some degree, this is the very heart of the challenge of Christianity. The fight between the old man and the new man is real and at times dirty. The gap between what we should be and what we all feel is like an uncrossable divide. The Apostle Paul has a remedy for that; and all through the epistles, he reminds us that he was and is a great sinner. The most famous of these declarations is in 1 Timothy 1:15:

“This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.”

Paul called himself the head, the chief of all sinners. Notice that he is addressing a young preacher named Timothy, and he is showing him how he should present himself: as a sinner, and not just a sinner but the chief of sinners. The Apostle John would tell us in his letter that if we say we are not sinners, we are liars; rather we are to confess our sins to God. We are to confess our sins one to another as well. While we are to teach that one is to be obedient to the Lord and that one should flee sinful actions and lusts, the fact of the matter is, we will sin and, sadly, sin often.

We are not to present ourselves as someone who has arrived, but rather as someone on the journey who was and is in need of more grace than anyone else on the journey. But, man, do we like to make ourselves out to be more than we are! We love the accolades of men, but sin is at the door, and it will raise its ugly head.

We do almost irreparable damage to the Lord’s churches when we make ourselves out to be something we are not. We set up people to get hurt and to be very angry with God, all because we put on some holier than thou attitude that was just a façade. This was the very hypocrisy that Jesus called out with the Pharisees. The self-righteousness that created a class structure in the local church. We all get to heaven the same way, clothed and covered in Jesus’s righteousness, not our own. No one has arrived in Heaven to fanfare for their own personal righteousness.

2. The Law was Designed to Make you a Sinner, verses 25-29

No one has ever been saved by keeping the Law, no one. In Romans 7:7, Paul writes this:  

“What then shall we say? Is the Law sin? Absolutely not! Indeed, I would not have been mindful of sin if not for the Law. For I would not have been aware of coveting if the Law had not said, ‘Do not covet.'”

The Law told me what sin was, and showed me that I was incapable of keeping the whole Law. As such, I am guilty of the whole law, and the penalty for breaking the Law is death. We needed someone to come and fulfill, obey the Law in its entirety; and that is where Jesus came in. Hebrews 4: 14-18 tells us this:

“Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

Jesus never sinned, not even once, even though He was tempted in ALL points like we are. He satisfied the need to be perfect for all of us, and it is in Him only that we can be saved. No one will be saved by keeping the Law; no one will go to Heaven because they only worshiped on the Sabbath; no one will go to heaven by not eating pork or shrimp or not wearing mixed clothing. In Galatians 2:20-21 Paul writes this:

“I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. I do not set aside the grace of God. For if righteousness comes through the Law, Christ died for nothing.”

If righteousness came by the Law, then Jesus died for nothing. To say that you can get to Heaven by the Law is to negate the death of Jesus, to diminish what He did on the cross and make His bloodshed nothing more than a show, to say that we really do not need Him. But righteousness cannot come through the Law; it is only in Christ that we can become righteous.

Repent of your self-righteousness and fall on the grace and mercy of the Living God.

Ephesians 2:8-10 “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”

God bless you,

Pastor Sean Gooding

Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

Missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca