Father, I pray especially for those who just have no relationship with Jesus whatsoever. Some have grown up in the church and don't have that relationship, others have never been to church and don't have that relationship. Father, I pray that you would convince them that your son is real and I pray that they would meet him today. I pray in Jesus' name, Amen. When I was about ten years old, I got a new puppy. Now that doesn't mean anything to you, but I grew up in a country on a highway and which meant we never had a dog survive one summer. That was it. And every time a dog got ran over on that highway, my mother would say the exact same thing. We're never getting another dog. It's not worth it. You know, we don't even get attached to them and then they're gone and you cry, it's not worth it. And every year she would relent the next summer. She threatened to actually keep her threat and not get another one. And my brothers were like, oh, that rickie have a dog, so they built a pin and we got a puppy. But the puppy had to have a dog house. Okay, so you're wondering all the other dogs had lived under the house. Where did that kind of people? But since we had a pin for this one, this one had to have a dog house. Now that was my job. I had to build a dog house. Years old. I didn't have any tools. I didn't know what I was doing. What I did have were these 12-foot strips of press board sighting left over from building the shed. So I got a couple of those and I measured and measured and measured and I drew out a little plan. I figured out if I had five pieces, all equal length. I could have three sides and two on the top, bam, dog house. So I didn't have a power saw and my mother wouldn't have let me use a power saw at the age of 10. But I did have a bow saw, a pruning saw. Now a pruning saw has got a very thin blade, it's got a big bow on the top, and the teeth are all long. It's for cutting green limbs with bark of their soft. It is not for cutting press board. It's important that you know that. So I measured for days and I drew lines and I cut, and I cut, cut for two days. I cut. Finally got all the pieces. Nails don't go in that press board really easily. You know, you're supposed to have like a frame. Who knew? I didn't have a frame. So I got the hammer, the nail started and I would kind of push them up against the other piece of wood and get them in the edges and I held together and it worked and it worked. And I finally got them all and I found a piece of trim, a trim board and I carefully nailed it to the front and I painted princess on it and I stood back and I looked at the worst dog house that has ever been built. It would not keep out the wind, it would not keep out the rain and my dog wouldn't even go in it. I'm awful. And so after all these days of work, literally sweat and blood being shed over this doghouse, I was no closer to having what I needed than I was before I started. And there was one huge obstacle in between my puppy and a decent doghouse and that huge obstacle was all the work that I had put into this one. For her to get what she needed, I was going to have to throw away all the work that I had done and I just could not do it. I say all that to say this. In the time that Paul is writing his letters, there's a huge question on everybody's mind in the church and that's this. If Jesus is the Messiah that was prophesied about in the Old Testament, if he is the one that all the Jews have been looking forward to, all these centuries, why are they not all coming to him? Why are they not all worshipping him? Why are they not in the church celebrating him as the resurrected Messiah and King? And Paul's answer is this, the Jews are not doing that because their righteousness is in the way. Their goodness is in the way. For them to come to Jesus, they're going to have to look at all the stuff that they've done and say, all of that is useless. I need to trust him. They let being good keep them from Jesus. Fast forward 2,000 years, we're not asking the question so much anymore. Why aren't the Jews coming to the true Messiah? The question we're asking is, why is it so hard to pass Christianity on from generation to generation? Why is it that even though we are in a culture in Tulsa that's so overwhelmingly Christian, it's not particularly moral, it's not particularly godly, things are wrong with it. What's wrong? And our answer is much the same as Paul's, that people in the church have come to be good. They're coming to church because that's what good people do. And they're letting their goodness, their effort at being good keep them from Jesus. If you were to ask the first century Jew, how do you get right with God? His answer would be, you go to the temple, you make your sacrifice. You get your circumcision, you keep the wall, you don't have sex outside of marriage and that kind of thing. And you make sacrifices when you do the wrong thing and you eat the kosher foods. If you were to ask a 21st century evangelical, typical evangelical, how do you get right with God? They're going to say you go to church, keep the rules, you stay a virgin until you're married, get baptized, you do the things. And in both cases, we're letting all that stuff that we are doing keep us from Jesus. Paul says don't do it, don't do it, you will never find Jesus by the works of your flesh, you'll never find Jesus by doing the good stuff, you only find Him by faith. I know you are tired of sitting so let's all stand and hear the word of the Lord from Romans chapter 9 verses 30 through chapter 10 verse 4. What shall we say then that Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it? That is a righteousness that is by faith. But that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law, why not? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone, as it is written, behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense and whoever believes in Him will not be put to shame. Because my heart's desire and prayer to them to God for them is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. Why did the Jews miss it? Because they were seeking to establish their own righteousness. Please be seated. How do you get right with God? How do you make yourself right with Him? The overwhelming answer is you do it by being a good person, overwhelming answer. You don't smoke, you don't drink too much, you don't cuss in public. You go to church, you do the good things, the overwhelming answer. And Paul says that overwhelming answer is wrong. It doesn't work. All of that goodness, all of that being good simply gets in the way between us and God. It keeps us away from Jesus. And there's a variety of reasons for that and I just want to kind of talk through those with you. The first reason why the problem with the first problem with being good is a definition problem, a standard problem. Who gets to define what's good? I mean, think of the broad spectrum of good people in our world and our history and our culture, right? I mean, who is a good person, the pioneer woman, she's a good person, she's married, she has loads of children, she homeschools, she cooks her own bread, she's good, how else is good? Mother Teresa, never married, never had children, never had a home. You spend an entire life taking care of the poor. You can't get more different who's good, who's following the definition of what's good? Is being good, being conservative, like Ronald Reagan, he was good. Or is being good, being liberal like Jimmy Carter, he was good, who's good, is being good mean that we stay away from fame and stay away from the spotlight. I was introduced to a guy the other day, Alex Mayer, the pastor about a creek pulled me aside. He said, I want you to meet the guy who's my hero and he introduced me to this guy and said, you never heard of him, you've never heard of him, he's disciple dozens of people throughout Tulsa. Is that good? Is staying out of the spotlight or is bono good? Mr. Spotlight, everybody in the world knows him. These people are doing complete opposites, they're completely opposite. What's the standard of what's good and what's not? Who gets to tell us? And how good is good enough, that's a big problem. The Bible never comes along and says, and this is funny, people who've not read the Bible assume that it would, right? People who have not read the Bible assume that the Bible will tell us, this is how good you have to be to get in, to make the cut. This is how good you have to be to be right with God. But the Bible doesn't ever say that, all it says is be perfect as your father and heaven is perfect and that's not particularly helpful, because if you're not perfect, if you've already messed that one up, then you're always kind of wondering, am I good enough? You know, I mean, there's no standard. I'm running in the warrior dash next month, and they have a special starting time for people who want to be in the competitive division. And they tell you, how do you know if you're competitive, if you can run a 5K in less than 20 minutes for competitive, that's good, at least I know, I won't be signing up for that time. And at least I know, right? I mean, God should give, if being good is what matters, He should give us a standard. How good is good enough? He should send us a grade card every now and then, wouldn't that be nice? You know, get something in the mail and you didn't match up. Okay, oh, I just fell for the back. Ah, you know, we need something, but there's no standard of what's good and what's not. Everybody disagrees about it. We don't even know how we're doing. Being good has a standard problem. And that standard problem creates a people problem, because good people, people who have worked very hard to be good, don't like people who reject their definition of good. They don't. When I was growing up in high school, a friend of mine came from a big family. He was the youngest son. He was a very good boy, you know, president of the youth group, his dad was a pastor. And his brother, his oldest brother was coming home for Christmas. And his older brother was a narrator, well, that didn't always know where he was. He never had a job and he began to get mad about it as we talk more and more about his brother coming home for Christmas. And then he came in one day and he said, you know, this year, my parents said, oh, we're not going to spoil him this time. We're not going to give him, you know, anything special this time, because that never works. And I got up under the Christmas tree and he already has five presents. He has more presents than anybody else. How is he so mad? He was a brother, he's tried his whole life to be good and his brother doesn't even care about being good. And of course, he never asks himself the question, well, if you're so good, why aren't you counting presents? Isn't jealousy bad? He never bothers to ask that. All he knows is that he's good and his brother, he's not getting rewarded for it and it makes him mad at his brother. And we have that throughout the church, have it throughout our country. People who are good liberals hate good conservatives and not embracing each other. But I'm so glad that you're helping me see things from the other perspective. We're casting each other aside. People who are hipsters rejecting greed and society or whatever, they hate good businessmen. And good businessmen hate hipsters and they don't see churches a place where they can come together. It's difficult. We have a real hard time coming together with people who've rejected what we define as our righteousness. When I was a campus minister, I would see this all the time. There would be, it seemed like every other year, there was always inevitably a girl who had been sexually immoral throughout high school or the first couple of years of college, she would get converted. And that girl was always the first one to get engaged. And all the sweet girls who had protected their virginity throughout high school and college hated her for it. How dare you get a husband and they wouldn't say that, right? They would say things like they literally would say things like, you know, the only reason he likes you is because you're pretty, which I don't get. But yeah, I was always in, but just the meanness, the things that would come out and they're aimed at the girl but they were really intended toward God. How dare you give him a husband? How dare you? I've tried so hard. Good people have a people problem and that problem is rooted in this. Being good, trying to be good enough, trying to be a good person, at root, it often has a selfish motivation. I want people to like me. I want my mom's approval, I want my teacher's approval, I want to succeed, I want a good job, I want God to give me stuff. And ultimately it's a selfish desire and God's not into that. There's a God problem with being good. If our desire is always looking back at ourself, if our intention is to always kind of improve ourself so that we feel good about ourself, then all of that goodness is only bringing us away from Jesus. It only brings us away from Him. And that's why the Apostle Paul says the Jews have missed are not coming to faith. The Jews are not saved because they have stumbled over the stumbling block. They stumbled over these stumbling block. What does he say? As in his written, I have laid and Zion a stone of stumbling in a rock of offense and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame. He says the problem with all these people who have spent their whole life doing the things that good people do, the problem with them is they don't know Jesus. And Jesus comes to them saying, drop everything and come to me and they say no. I'm doing everything right. I don't have to do that. And being good ends up keeping us away from Jesus because God doesn't want you to build a resume. God defines sin a lot different than we do. We define sin as bad things, you know, alcohol, pornography, bad things you shouldn't do. God defines sins like this, selfishness, being more concerned with yourself than you are with people around you, being more concerned with yourself than with him. Now, ultimately those two things end up looking a lot alike because if you love your neighbor, you're not going to beat them up or kill them or steal from them. But again, we look at the actions so that we can be proud of ourselves and he looks at the heart and he says, you want to build something on your own. You want to establish your own resume and that resume is keeping you away from me. And look, look at what Paul prays here. He doesn't, he says in verse 1 and chapter 10, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be freed from their legalistic Christian. No, he says my heart's desire for them is that they would come to enjoy the goodness that is there that they're just not, they're missing out on it. Christianity religion is a lot more fun than they think it is. No, he says my heart's desire and prayer for them is that they would be saved, they would be saved. They are completely missing it, worshiping being good, making being a good person, the ultimate high end goal of your religion is completely missing it. It says it's about Jesus, they don't know him, they've rejected him and because they've rejected him, because they're not pursuing him, they've missed the whole thing. Jesus told us that was going to happen, he says in the sermon on the mount, there will be many, there will be many who come to me and say, you remember me? I've done good things, I've prophesied in your name, I've cast out demons in your name, I've healed in your name, I've done good things. And I will say to them, depart from me, you workers of iniquity, I never knew you, I never knew you. And those words strike some of our hearts very closely because some of us have grown up in the church and we've grown up striving to be a good person, we were always good, we did what our moms told us to do, we did what our dads told us to do, we did what our teachers told us to do, we did what our youth ministers told us to do, we have tried so hard our entire life to be good. And we don't know Jesus and it bugs us, makes some of us mad, we look around and we see people who have a personal relationship with Jesus and we think, why don't I? Why doesn't Easter fill my heart? Why am I not filled with grace? What am I missing? It makes some of us cynical, we just assumed that since we've never had a personal experience, since we've never really met the resurrected Lord, since we don't have that deep relationship that we honestly don't think anybody else does either.
And whenever we see someone getting emotional and worship or talking about sweet times of communion and prayer or talking about this relationship, we just assumed they're lying, it's fake, we don't have it, so you don't either. Make some of us come to a point of despair. What do I have to do? What do I have to do? I've done everything right. Not everything right. And it's so hard to understand that the reason why you're missing Jesus because you honestly believe you've done everything right. And doing everything right has been one long pursuit in your life to never have to get down on your knees and say, God, I have messed it up. I am broken. And you confess your sins because you're not a good person if you don't confess your sins. You confess, right? We don't. We all confess, Lord. I have a lust problem. Lord, I'm jealous of my sister. We don't really dig down and say, God, I haven't forgiven my dad because I hate him.
Father, I have, I said something snippy and hurtful to my sister because I hate her because she gets all the attention that I think I deserve. And I'm mad at her. And I can't not be that way. And we've lived our whole lives, never getting in this position, live our whole life so that we would never have to get in this position. And the problem is, Jesus only comes to us in this position. This is when he comes meets you. He comes to meet you when you're beating on your breast saying, be merciful to me, a sinner. And that's a pretty much it. Unless he plans on making you an apostle when he meets you in the desert and body slams you, but that's not going to happen to you. This is where he'll meet you. And he's not going to meet you anywhere else. We don't want it hurts to get down there. And so we live our lives to avoid it. It's just easier to be good. And we honestly believe that we're good. We honestly believe it. We miss it. And I don't want you to miss it anymore. And the way to not miss it is you have to let go of all that stuff you're proud of. All the stuff you're so proud of, you have to put it down last weekend was Easter. And every, you know, we had the Easter egg hunt and every time I see an Easter egg hunt, I remember the first time I took my kids to one. One of my boys is very little. And I think I don't think it was. He had to been over one because it wasn't quite walking. I think he's just started walking. I think he's like 16 months. And, you know, there wasn't a whole lot of kids out there and the Easter eggs were all real pretty and decorated. And he gave him a basket and he didn't want to do with that. He put it on his arm. And he went to the first tree Streg and he picked it up. Loved it. He went to the second Easter egg and he picked it up and he loved it. He went to the 30 Streg and that's where it ended. Because his hands had all the Easter eggs. He could hold. And he wasn't putting them down. Putting them in that basket was not going to happen. And mom and dad are out there going, but you're not doing it right. Come on. You're going to lose Easter egg hunt. And he just won't put them down. In some office, in some of us, it's hard for us to come to this Lord's table and take up the body of Christ and the blood of Christ because we have so much of our own that we just won't put down. I mean, I worked hard to be a self-made man and it's hard to kneel next to somebody who just had everything given to them. And they don't even see the value of what I've done. And God wants me to put that down. And I don't want to put it down. It's important to me. And if I don't empty my hands, I can't receive his grace. And so I have to ask him to open my eyes and let me really see what's going on. Let me really see who I am. Let me really see the sin that this taken root, the ugly stuff that's in here. I mean, I see the obvious stuff. You know, my kids won't see the ugly stuff. They're not fulfilling my idols and being what I want them to be and justifying my existence and making me look good. And I got to get to that stuff. Let it down. I have to ask him to open my hands. And then as he opens them. And as I dump all that junk out, I receive his grace. And you receive the opposite of what you expect or expecting condemnation. You expect if you ever get to that level that God's going to terrify you and be mean to you and cast you away. And what you find is that he's smiling at you and he's gracious to you and that he loves you. And you're not surprising him. He knew all that. And he gave his son for you. And whenever it is that you've brought to him that you're so proud of, he likes that too. Because he likes you, not because it's actually any good. When I, when we finally got to the point where our kids were all enough to leave them and go on dates. That was a great, you know, I made dates cheaper. You don't have to pay babysitters and go to nicer restaurants. It was great. And what I found out though was it didn't matter how nice the restaurant was or how romantic the date was. Because the second we always, you know, parked in the garage. And the second we walked back to the kitchen. My wife went from wife mode to mommy mode. Because it was filled with dishes. It was dirty. And it's in whatever button is required to push that you can walk through a kitchen without putting dishes in. I got two of those and she's gotten none. So she became very important to me that we could come home from a date and not go back into mommy mode. And so I started bribing my children. I will pay you to clean the kitchen. And they did. They cleaned it. They wiped all the crumbs off the table onto the floor. All the food that we were going to eat for leftovers the next day. They threw away all the dishes that were caked with food. They needed to be rinsed. We're already in the dishwasher. They hadn't helped. They had made work. They hadn't taken it away. I was so glad. I was so glad they had tried. That's the way the father smiles at us. He's just so glad that you tried. He's glad that you care. He's thankful. You really care. You're trying to be a good parent. That matters. But it's not worth holding in your hands and missing Jesus. Don't hold those Easter eggs in your hand and miss the true prize. Throw away what you work so hard for and receive what you can never earn. Please pray with me.