We‟re studying the book of Romans and at this point in this book we are about to confront sin. We are about to see what it‟s all about and we‟re about to see who are sinners.
And the question is, do you qualify? What would you do if I said to you: you are a sinner? Would you get mad or would you agree with that? What does God say? We‟ll look at it today.
What Paul is doing in the book of Romans in the first three chapters through chapter 3, verse 20 is he‟s trying to help everybody see man you are lost. Man you are a sinner.
But I‟ve got good news for you. I told you the good news at the beginning of my epistle, but I‟m about to explain it in full. But before I do, you just have to know, you just have to be convinced of the fact that whether you are a Jew or you are a Gentile, you‟re a sinner, because the message that I have is only for sinners.
Jesus Christ did not come to earth to call the righteous. He came to call sinners. He came to save sinners. He came to set people free.
I am a sinner that has been set free. And it is absolutely glorious. And I have no higher privilege in life than having the privilege of talking to you my friend and sharing with you the Word of God so that you can see truth for yourself.
Well, we‟re in that portion of Romans, chapter 2 where he‟s addressing the Jew and remember as he addresses the Jew, he says to the Jew,
“You bear the name Jew when you rely on the law and you boast in God.”
And then he goes through all these things that they‟re doing.
He says,
“But when you teach others, do you not teach yourself? When you say, you should not commit adultery; he says are you committing adultery?”
When he says,
“You should abhor idols and you abhor idols, he says do you rob temples?” Verse 23, “You who boast in the law, through breaking the law, do you dishonor God?”
He says listen, when you say that you believe the law and then you break the law, do you realize what you‟re doing? You‟re doing the same things that the Gentiles do. You‟re dishonoring God.
He says, “For the name of God …,” and he quotes the Old Testament. He says,
“For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you, just as it is written.”
Now when he says, just as it is written, he just quoted the Old Testament. He says,
“For indeed circumcision is of value if you practice the law. But if you are a transgressor of the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision.”
Now why is he saying this?
He‟s saying this because the Jews were taught that a man who was not circumcised will never go to heaven. They were taught if you are circumcised then heaven is guaranteed to you. It‟s like your circumcision is the ticket that gets you to heaven. So circumcision was very very important to them.
If we would go back to Genesis, chapter 17, what we would see is he says that if you are not circumcised, if any Jew is not circumcised or any Gentile that has come into live among that Jewish community is not circumcised then that uncircumcised man is to be cut off from the other people.
So to be uncircumcised was a disgrace.
It was to break the covenant because circumcision was sign of the covenant, that you belonged to God and that you were going to follow God and that you were part of that Abrahamic covenant. And so this is when Abraham gets circumcised is in Genesis, chapter 17.
This is when Ishmael, the father of the Arab nations gets circumcised. So this is how valuable circumcision was.
So he goes on to say, he says,
“If therefore the uncircumcised man keeps the requirements of the law ….,”
if he knows what God says about loving God with all your heart, keeping the Sabbath day holy, honoring your parents, not committing adultery, not worshipping idols, all the things that are in the Ten Commandments, not coveting, not swearing falsely, if you kept all those and you were uncircumcised, he says,
“… your uncircumcision will be regarded as circumcision.”
In other words, if your heart is to keep the law of God, then even though you‟re not circumcised as a man, God looks at you as if you are circumcised because it‟s not the external, it‟s the internal. All right? So the external was the circumcision, which was a picture or a sign of the covenant.
So he goes on to say,
"And will not he who is physically uncircumcised, if he keeps the law, will He not judge you who though having the letter of the law and having circumcision, are a transgressor of the law?”
In other words, listen to what he‟s saying. He‟s saying, okay, if this uncircumcised man is keeping the law, if he‟s holding on to the law, if he‟s seeking to honor God, that uncircumcised man with that heart for the law sits in judgment on this circumcised man who is not keeping the law, but who is resting in his circumcision. This is an eye opener. And this is especially an eye opener to the Jews.
Now listen to what he goes on to say.
“For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, neither is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh, but he is a Jew who is one inwardly. And circumcision is that which is of the heart.”
Now the Bible talks in the prophet Ezekiel about God circumcising their heart and he says,
“If your heart is not circumcised, if that old flesh is not removed, if it is not cut off, he says then your heart is not circumcised.”
And he says,
“You need a circumcised heart, a heart that is exposed and a heart that is tender towards God.”
So he says,
“But he is a Jew who is one outwardly and circumcision is that which is of the heart by the Spirit, not by the letter and his praise is not from men but from God.”
All right now, I want to stop for a minute, because remember we‟re marking our Bible, we‟re color-coding our Bible and I want us to mark the Spirit. And the reason I want us to mark the Spirit is because you need to develop a biblical understanding of what God teaches on the Holy Spirit.
You need to build a biblical doctrine on the person and the work of the Holy Spirit.
So when I mark God I use a triangle and then I color it yellow on the inside. When I mark the Holy Spirit I take one side of that triangle and then I add a cloud to it and I color it yellow and that way when I am looking at it I can see that here‟s the Holy Spirit, He‟s part of the triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
And you say, but I‟m a Jew and I don‟t believe that. Well I just challenge you to go back to Genesis, chapter 1, verse 26 when God said, “Let Us make man in our image,” and to go to Deuteronomy, chapter 6 and let me just take you there. But if you‟re a Jew you know that verse and you know what it says.
But if you‟re a Gentile, you may not know this, but this is the great Shamah. This is the testimony of faith of every single Jew and its Deuteronomy, chapter 6, verse 4. “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God. The Lord is one.” And it reads this way. “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our Elohim”. Elohim is a plural ending. And I think it shows the plurality of God.
You will see, “Let us go down and see what man is doing.” And you see this when they‟re building the tower of Babel and God comes down and confuses the languages. So what are we seeing here?
We‟re seeing that we need to mark the Spirit. And we‟re seeing that the true circumcision, is a circumcision of the heart, a heart that wants to keep the Word of God, a heart that wants to love God, a heart that wants to obey God.
So he‟s talking to the Jews now. And as he talks to the Jews, you know, I can‟t help but thinking so many times we get so caught up in our religion in our religious ways that we just become down right mean and ornery to people that don‟t agree with us or to people that we think are outside the inner circle or are outside the family of God.
And so too many times what you see is you see Christians being ugly to non-Christians. And listen that is sin.
And sometimes you see those that bare the name Christian being ugly to Jews and that is sin. I‟ve written a novel and it‟s called “Israel, My Beloved” and of all the books that I‟ve ever written I guess that book is the most special to me.
I lived the history of Israel. And it‟s a novel; it‟s a true story in novel form. And when I got to the period that dealt with the inquisition and the crusades, I was grieved at what was done to the Jews in the name of Christianity.
I mean they would stick crucifixes in their face and they would tell them that they were Christ killers and then they would put them to death. And they would just force them to be baptized and say if you‟re not baptized then we‟re going to kill you, as if baptism could save them.
And it‟s the same way circumcision cannot save a Jew.
It‟s a sign of a covenant. But if there‟s no heart that goes with that covenant then it doesn‟t matter.
And have you ever seen Jews persecute Christians?
I have.
As a matter of fact at the Bible Society on Jaffa Road in Jerusalem they had to put up iron bars on their windows. Why? Because some orthodox Jews were so angry that they were there, not only with an Old Testament, and the Old Testament they call the Old Testament the Bible or they call it the Tanak, but not only were they angry that they had the Tanak there, but that they were combining it with the New Testament.
It was blasphemous to them.
Now listen, they have a right to that opinion, but hey don‟t have a right to break the windows. I have more to say, because God‟s going to ask the question: what advantage then is it that you‟re a Jew? Do they have any advantage being a Jew? We‟ll talk about that when we come back.
You know there‟s a good lesson for all of us here and I don‟t want us to miss it because so many times in our religiosity when we think that we‟re keeping the law, when we think that we‟re pleasing God, when we look at people that are idolaters or immoral or liars, or disobedient to their parents and not honoring their parents and we just look down our nose at them and we just say, how awful, and yet how do we treat them?
Remember the law was more than just those commandments.
The law had a summary. What was the summary of the law? Because you see if you‟re a Jew and you‟re an orthodox Jew and you‟re being mean and you‟re throwing rocks at people that are not keeping your laws or violating and going down your streets on the Sabbath, what kind of a message are you giving them about God?
See, if you disdain others, if you look down your nose at the rest of mankind because they aren‟t like you, what kind of a message, you who profess to know God, are you giving about God?
When I thought about this passage and was praying about it, God brought to my mind Luke, chapter 10, verse 25 and I would suggest that you might want to write it in the margin of the Bible, but you mark it there.
You might want to mark it in pencil, but let‟s look at Luke, chapter 10, verse 25. It says,
“Behold a certain lawyer stood up and put Him to the test. He put Jesus to the test. And he said, „Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?‟ And He said to him, „What‟s written in the law?‟”
So now He‟s taking him back to the law.
What‟s written into the law? How does it read to you? And he, the lawyer, now this is a Jewish lawyer, this is a scribe. This is a guy that knows the law and knows how to interpret it to people and say, you‟re breaking it or you‟re keeping it. This is one that has the Mishnah. This is the one that has all the laws and the Talmud and everything.
This is the one that is the expert on the law.
“And he answered and He said, „You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength and …,‟” and don‟t miss the and, “„… and your neighbor as yourself.‟ And Jesus said to him, „You have answered correctly. Now you go and do likewise.‟”
But you know what?
The lawyer wasn‟t really satisfied because the lawyer really wanted to get Jesus.
“So wishing to justify himself he said to Jesus, „And who is my neighbor?‟”
And then Jesus tells that famous famous parable, the parable of the Good Samaritan, the story of the Good Samaritan. He tells about a man that is an enemy to the Jews. The Jews hated the Samaritans. And this is what He says.
“And Jesus said, „A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and he fell among robbers and they stripped him and beat him and went off leaving him half dead. And by chance a certain priest was going down the road and when he saw him he passed by on the other side.‟”
Here is a priest of the tribe of Levi and he crosses the road to go on the other side because he sees this man beaten and laying there as a bloody pulp along side the road. And he doesn‟t want to have to deal with it. And it says,
“„And likewise a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.‟”
Now the priest is of the house of Aaron. The Levite is from the same tribe and so he‟s a Levite. I mean he‟s from this special group of people that take care of the temple. So he goes around on the other side and then he says this;
“„But a certain Samaritan …,‟” now these are the Gentile, these are the dogs, these are the half-breeds, these are Jews and Gentiles that the Jews can‟t stand.
“„But a certain Samaritan who was on a journey came upon him and when he saw him he felt compassion and he came to him and he bandaged up his wounds and pouring oil on them. And he put him on his own beast and brought him to an inn to take care of him and on the next day he took out two denari, that‟s two days wages and gave them to the innkeeper and said, take care of him, and whatever more you spend, when I return I will repay you.
‟ And Jesus looks at the man …,” this lawyer that‟s trying to justify himself, “… and he says, „Which of these three prove to be his neighbor, to the man who fell into the robber‟s hands?‟ And he said, „The one who showed mercy to him.‟
And Jesus said to him,
„Go and do the same.‟”
Just remember my friend, that the law is summed up in the fact that you‟re going to love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength and your neighbor as yourself, because you can take every one of those Ten Commandments, and they will categorize themselves either under loving God or loving your neighbor.
Well, Romans, chapter 3, “What then advantage does the Jew have?” So you want to mark Jew again. Or what is the benefit of circumcision? And then he says, “Great in every respect.”
Now, what is happening at this point in the book of Romans? Well we have a diatribe. You think, oh, what is a diatribe? Well, we think of a diatribe today when mother gets on our case and she starts yelling and going around the house and yelling at everybody or daddy comes home angry or one of the kids just lets loose. We think of that as a diatribe.
But when you go to the setting of this book, a diatribe was a discussion. It was a critical dissertation. It was a discourse and Romans, is a diatribe, a critical discussion, a discourse on the gospel. And he‟s going to explain the gospel from one end to the other.
Now what he does is he lays out the tenants of this gospel and he brings questions up, questions that are critical to this discussion, that are imperative if you‟re going to understand this discourse.
So watch what he does in chapter 3, verse 1, “What advantage has the Jew?” You‟re going to put a Star of David there, remember.
“Or what is the benefit of circumcision? Great in every respect. First of all that they were entrusted, that the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God.”
And then the question comes, all right?
And he‟s going to give a question and then he‟s going to give an answer. All right, so the question is,
“What then, if some did not believe, their unbelief will not rule out the faithfulness of God will it? Will God‟s unfaithfulness be ruled out because they did not believe?”
Did not believe what? Did not believe the oracles of God. Now what were the oracles of God? Well the oracles of God were those prophecies that were revealed to Israel through the prophets about the Messiah. So what advantage does a Jew have? A Jew has the advantage of knowing that they own, in the Tanak, in Genesis through Malachi, that they possess these special oracles of God that tell them about he Messiah.
You say, but most of the Jews didn‟t believe in the Messiah. The Messiah came, some of you don‟t think He did, but He did. Anyway you‟ll find out at the end that the Messiah is Yeshua-hamashea.
Jesus is our Messiah.
And that will be discovered at one time or another.
So as we look at this what I want you to see is this, that they, the Jews were entrusted with these oracles, but they didn‟t believe them.
So if they do not embrace God, if they do not believe these things then does that nullify what God says? Does that nullify all those things?
Oh no, Beloved, it doesn‟t. They only haven‟t believed because of sin.
Sin is unbelief.
