Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. 15. and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes.

Transcription

1 January 6, 2013 Romans 3:9-26 Pastor Larry Adams Remember His Grace Well, today we re gonna be talking about God s grace. Someone asked me the other day, actually about two weeks ago, there s a younger pastor who I have been mentoring who is not from this immediate area. He asks me each time we get together, What s God been teaching you? I said to him, One of the things God s been teaching me is that his grace is sufficient for every need. Every day God s grace is sufficient. We are more dependent upon God s grace than we realize. Paul the apostle was one who lived daily with his understanding of his need for God s grace in the little things and in the big things. So when he wrote to the Roman church, he reminded them that none of us have arrived yet that we can t be looking down our noses at others thinking they re worse than we are. We are all alike under sin. We re either saved by God s grace or we re not saved at all. So Paul writes to them to remind them that we are all alike in need of God s grace. This is the way he put it in Romans 3 beginning in verse 9: What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all! We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. 10 As it is written: There is no one righteous, not even one; 11 there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. 12 All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one. 13 Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. 14 Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. 15 Their feet are swift to shed blood; 16 ruin and misery mark their ways, 17 and the way of peace they do not know. 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, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. 20 Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin. 21 But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented him Page 1 of 8

2 as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished 26 he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. Let s pray for a moment. Father, some people have suggested that this may be the most important passage ever written. As we begin a new year, we are reminded that we ve lived this last one by grace and if we are ever, ever to live this new year out the way you want, it must also be lived by your grace. We live by grace every day whether we know it or not. Today as we gather at this table, God, I want you to impress upon us the depth of our need, the greatness of your love and forgiveness and a grace that has been lavished upon us with all wisdom and understanding that we would never again see ourselves with a distorted lens. We are precious creatures created in the image of God, fallen into sin, saved by an amazing grace. I pray today, God, you will help encourage all of our hearts as we live by this grace. We pray this in Jesus name, Amen. A few years ago in a book by Chuck Colson called A Dangerous Grace, I came across the story of Sheri Keele. Sheri was a lady who lived in Denver. As she was driving down Interstate 25 one day, she had no idea what was approaching her on the other side of the hill. There was a car barreling in the wrong lane of a four-lane highway. As a result of the collision, Sheri spent the next six months first in traction and then on crutches. The man driving the other car was a man named Stephen. A combination of prescription drugs and the.275 alcohol level in his bloodstream made his driving lethal. Stephen was taken into custody at the hospital, charged with four counts of vehicular assault, a possible 16 years in prison. Unable to pay the bail after pleading guilty, he sat in jail three months awaiting his sentencing. As soon as Sheri was released from the hospital, she visited Stephen. Seeing him frightened and embarrassed in his jail coveralls, she was filled with compassion. Sheri didn t want to see this young man imprisoned, but what could she do? She found out that in Colorado crime victims receive a Victim Impact Statement asking them to recommend punishment for the offender. You can imagine the kind of punishment that would normally be recommended, but Sheri suggested something different: Four years of probation, medical treatment, revocation of Stephen s driving license, and most important, 1,296 hours of community service in a hospital - the exact number of hours Sheri spent in the hospital for her healing and recovery. At the sentencing hearing, the judge gave Stephen the sentence Sheri had suggested. Her actions served as a witness to the judge of God s power. In fact, from the bench the judge said, I m overwhelmed by the forgiveness these people have shown. Sheri had never heard of restorative justice, Chuck Colson wrote, but she saw only two options: Prison, where Stephen would be untreated and allowed to grow bitter; or forgiveness and a chance to change. Sheri s compassion and a sympathetic judge gave Stephen another chance. Page 2 of 8

3 Meanwhile, Stephen has experienced God s healing. He went to work in a geriatric center where the gratitude of the people he served gave him a new confidence. Throughout his sentence he wrote to Sheri often, Thank you for giving me another chance. There is a word that describes what Sheri gave to Stephen, it s called grace. It s unmerited favor. It s the giving of something we don t deserve. And there is no one better at giving grace than God himself. Stephen s response to Sheri is the right response to grace. It s gratitude. It s a changed life. It s using our lives now for a different purpose because we realize where we would have been but where we are now because of what grace has given us. It s that same response that every forgiven sinner should be making to God: Gratitude and a changed life and making good on what God s grace has given us. Communion is the remembrance of what it cost God to give us that grace. Communion is a remembrance of the death of Jesus, a death we deserved by the way, but instead a death that he died in our place. This meal is a memorial. We ve said many times that eating this will not make you a Christian. This will not get your sins forgiven, and it won t earn you any grace. The only way for us to be forgiven for what sin has done is to receive God s grace by faith, to believe that the work that Jesus did on the cross his death, burial, and resurrection, was sufficient payment for all of our sin and that God would provide no other payment. We either come to God through Jesus or we don t come at all. It s his offer of grace to us who believe. Eating this meal will not do that for you, but eating this meal does help remind us of what sin has done to each of us and how incredible is the grace that God offers us in this rescue called his salvation. Communion reminds us that relationship with God is the gift of his grace. How does God justified giving guilty sinners this kind of grace? He justifies it on the basis of the sacrifice of Jesus. This is what Paul wrote in verse 21: But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished 26 he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. When I go out jogging in the morning, I encounter a lot of different people and a lot of different places. Sometimes it s not pleasant. I remember sharing a while ago about a guy I encountered at an intersection. I had stopped in my jogging to push the button to wait for the light to change, and apparently that upset the man sitting at the red light. He rolled down his window. He was a rather scruffy-looking guy driving an old beat-up car, and he was thoroughly annoyed. He was more than annoyed, he was angry. He started yelling out his window what he thought of me and my mother and my family who Page 3 of 8

4 he doesn t even know. He s using words so vile, I m thinking, What in the world is sparking this? He finally started screaming at me for pushing the button on the light changing thing. That s what he was angry about. I had a lot on my mind at the time, and I m out jogging to try to get my mind clear and commune with God, and I got this happening. I wasn t at a very good spot myself, so I said, Lord, how about a lightning bolt for this dude? I mean, if you re ever gonna send one, this would be a good time. You re not gonna be hurting his car any that s for sure. I even said, Why you let guys like this live? Isn t that horrible? That s what I said. I m telling you, no sooner was that out of me, then God said, Larry, you think your sin s any prettier? What? Do you think your sin s any prettier? You re no different. You re all alike with him under sin. All of humanity is in the same condition when it comes to God. Verse 22, There is no difference. The Jews used to think ill of the Gentiles, called them dogs. They are worse sinners than we are. The Gentiles thought the Jews were off-base. God said, There s no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. There s no difference. Oh, we try to make differences. We do it all the time. We don t use these words, but we think it, I am a good sinner. A guy like that is a bad sinner. I mean, his sin s worse than mine so, God, it must be nice to have somebody like me who doesn t sin as bad as that guy sins. God s thinking, What you re saying is worse than what he s doing. There is no difference. Sin is sin. It s all ugly. It s all deplorable, and it s just equally condemning. So whether you consider yourself a good sinner or a bad sinner, we re all sinners fallen short of his glory. The word fall short means to lack or to be cut off from. In other words we are not living out the righteousness of God. We don t reflect his glory all the time as we should. In fact, our sin damages that ability for God to reflect his glory through us. We all fall short of his glory. But most of humanity doesn t even know they re cut off for falling short. Many people are religious, so they think they re morally good; therefore, they must be right with God so they don t sense their need for a Savior. They certainly don t sense a need for grace. We re doing okay. We re religious. We believe. Others invent religions thinking they re spiritual, so they re okay with God. Spiritual somehow must be enough. Still others deny God s existence to make God go away thinking that they won t have to deal with him then, so they justify themselves by their own standards. No matter how you approach this thing or how you see yourself, all of us fall short of the glory of God. Even so, we continue to experience God s grace. The guy in the car that day was just as much a recipient of God s grace as I am because, you see, there s something theologians call a common grace that s absolutely essential or we couldn t survive. God by his common grace allows us to breathe his air, to drink his water, to eat his food, to wear his clothes, to live in his Page 4 of 8

5 houses, to have the ability to earn the money he gives us. It s all his. If don t think so just think of what you had when you came in the world and what you re gonna take with you when you leave. It s all left there because none of it belongs to us. It s all God s, and it s all given by grace or you don t have it period. We are all living by God s grace every day. As sinful people, we don t live according to God s laws. We don t seek God s way, and we don t seek God s person normally. That s why we need his saving grace. You see, sin in the world is why we die. It s one of the reasons Satan works so hard to get people not to believe the Genesis account of creation. Because if you believe the Genesis account of creation you understand that you were once made in the image of God, and through our sin we have fallen away, and through forgiveness we can come back to a relationship. That is the message Satan doesn t want you or anybody else to know. Just get people to believe that they re nothing more than time plus energy plus chance evolved randomly out of the primordial slime having no more value than a rock or a tree, and then you will be able to hold them into bondage because they don t need redemption. They are making their own way in this evolutionary process. It s a fabulous lie that people have believed. There s no scientific evidence to support it by the way. It s just a massive lie because Satan knows if people actually understood what Paul is saying, they would be saved. So, in sin, the law demands a soul that sins it shall die. The wages of sin is death. Not just physically dying, it s spiritual death. That s the condition sin creates. I lived in it for a long time. You don t feel any different. You just know things don t work. You can believe in God and go to church and do all kinds of things, but you have no relationship with God whatsoever because sin has broken that relationship. God is life. If you re separated from him because of sin, you are living in a state of death, spiritual death. If you die in that condition, you ll be put away from God forever. That s the gospel. But the other part of the gospel is God s grace has saved us from that. The harder we try to please God on our own, the harder we try to appease God or justify our own existence, the further from God we get. Paul said in verse 19: Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. There s nobody s gonna be able to say, I earned this. 20 Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin. The law s like a speed limit sign on the freeway. I was driving the other day. I had no idea what the speed limit was so I just drove along to what I thought would be the right speed. Then I saw a speed limit sign and realized I was 10 miles over without knowing it, so I just slowed down. You see, I wouldn t have known I was in violation had I not seen the sign. That s the purpose of the law. The law was given to make us aware that we are sinners in need of a Savior. The law was given so that we d be aware of what God s righteous standards are and then we become glaringly aware that we re not keeping them, in fact we re falling short of them Page 5 of 8

6 as humanity because that s what sin is. Because of that we re in violation of law and therefore guilty, and therefore deserving death because the wages of sin is death. The harder we try to get rid of our guilt on our own, the further away from God we get because we re trying to do it by law and good works. It will never happen. That s why Paul said, verse 21: But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. That s what they were there for, to point us to our need for a Savior. 22 This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. It s all by his grace. You see, that s why everywhere you look in the New Testament you ll find the writers writing about their need for grace because they understood it. Here in Romans 3, Paul sums up the good news of our forgiveness because of God s grace. In fact, Dr. Leon Morris, one of the great biblical commentators of our time has said that this is possibly the most important paragraph ever written. It tells how a holy God justifies giving mercy and grace to condemned sinners who by law deserve to die. Verse 24: They are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. Justified. It s a judicial term, a courtroom term. It means the judge has seen the penalty. He has seen the payment made and declared that the payment is sufficient and, therefore, he is now justified to declare us righteous in his sight because it is on the basis and merit of Jesus life and sacrifice not our own. We are justified freely. That phrase literally is as a gift. Justified as a gift is what he s saying. It s the same word used by Jesus in John 15 verse 25 when Jesus said, But this is to fulfill what is written in their Law: They hated me without reason. In other words, They hated me freely is the same word. They hated me without cause. They hated me without a reason. They hated me with no basis. They had no reason to do this but they did it anyway. That s what Jesus is saying. In that same word he s saying, We, who were sinners, were justified freely as a gift because God could find no basis in us on which to act. There was nothing in us that would ve warranted him offering us grace, so he found that basis in himself. We didn t deserve the grace. There was no reason for it, but he gave it to us anyway. He found the reason in himself. But grace cannot ignore justice. Sin has to be paid for. Sin demands our death or the death of a righteous substitute. That s why Paul said in verse 24: We are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented him (Jesus) as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he Page 6 of 8

7 had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished 26 he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. Who put Jesus on the cross? I did. I put Jesus on the cross. I can t ever look at it again and be the same. I can t, because I deserve to be there, but he took my place. Now, God said, I did this to demonstrate my justice. Yes, I m forgiving you, Larry, but the full demands of the law must be met, and they will be in the death of my son. He dies so you can live. Now you die, so he can live in you. That s what it means to be a Christian. How do people cut off from God appropriate this gift? By faith, verse 22: This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference. You know, even though this saving grace has been offered, there s people who still die because they miss the grace of God. There are some who still die because they receive it in vain. They believe it for a season, but they don t really live it. It s why Paul told the Philippian church in Philippians 2 that we need to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. In other words, make it operational just like Stephen did with the grace that Sheri gave him. He made it operational. He made good with it. I was reading a story this last week from a book by Lee Strobel and Gary Poole. It was called Experiencing the Passion of Jesus. In the book he said: An acquaintance called with what he said was an embarrassing request. His little girl had been caught shoplifting from our church bookstore - parent s nightmare. He wanted to know if I would represent the church so she could come and apologize. He said he wanted use this incident as a teaching moment, and I agreed, but I had a much bigger lesson in mind. The next day the parents and their eight-year-old daughter trooped into my office and sat down. Tell me what happened, I said to the little girl as gently as I could. Well, she said as she started to sniffle, I saw a book that I really wanted, but I didn t have any money. Now tears formed in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. I handed her a tissue. She went on, So I put the book under my coat took it. I knew it was wrong. I knew I shouldn t do it but I did, and I m sorry. I ll never do it again, honest. Oh I m so glad you re willing to admit what you did and say that you re sorry, I told her. That s very brave, and it s the right thing to do. What do you think an appropriate punishment would be? She shrugged. I thought for a moment before saying, I understand the book cost $5. I think it would be fair if you paid the bookstore $5 plus three times that amount which would make the total $20. Do you think that would be fair? Page 7 of 8

8 She nodded sadly, Yes. She could see the fairness in it, but now there was fear in her eyes. Twenty dollars is a mountain of money for an eight-year-old. Where would she ever be able to come up with the cash to pay a debt like that? I wanted to use this moment to teach her something about Jesus, so I opened my desk drawer, removed my checkbook, and wrote out a check for $20 from my personal account. I tore the check off, and I held it out to her. Her mouth dropped open. I m gonna pay your penalty so you don t have to. Someone has to. Do you know why I d do that? Bewildered she shook her head. Because I love you. Because I care about you. Because you re valuable to me. And please remember this, that s how Jesus feels about you too except even more. At that moment she reached up and accepted my gift. I wish I could find the words to describe the look of absolute relief and joy and wonder that blossomed on her face. Grace had found its place. Has God s grace found his place in your life? Are you living as though you are someone given a second chance? Are you living with gratitude over all that God has given? This bread is my body, Jesus said, given for you. This cup is my blood. It s poured out for you. Therefore, as often as you eat it remember me, the one who died so that God would be fully justified to give you grace and save you from your sin. Father, it s this perspective that we need as we begin the new year. People want messages of hope and self-esteem and New Year s resolutions. They won t get one better than this. If we re looking for self-esteem, we ll never find it anywhere better than that we are made in the image of a holy God, created to be like you, loved by you, cared for by you. And now we re reminded that when we were lost and cut off from that glory, you saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of your mercy, a mercy extended to us because of an amazing grace, a second chance, a chance to know life the way it was meant to be; a chance to know forgiveness; a chance to be separated from the world and not be separated from God; a chance to live in holiness and in truth; a chance today to come back to that place of true life in connection with you and to live with you forever, to get back to sharing that glory we were created to share. This is all offered to us if by faith we will believe and receive it, if in gratitude we will live by your strength, your power, and grace in the person of your Holy Spirit. So, Lord, as we begin this new year, help us to remember we finished the last one by grace, and we will live this one by that same grace. May you be honored as together we remember this sacrifice, and we thank you for it. In Jesus name, Amen. Page 8 of 8