Lord, we do pray for your mercy, what I know not will you teach me, what I have not will you give me, and what I am not will you make me for the glory of Jesus Christ. Amen. Well, I feel be good enough to have opened Romans 2 in front of you. That will be a big help to me as we look at this passage in our series in Romans together. We are considering some quite sober verses and sober themes in the last couple of weeks, and you may recall that last week I was trying to point out that there's a sense in which we need to hear the bad news in order to really welcome good news. We need to hear the accuracy of a right diagnosis so that we can take the treatment that God offers. At last week we were thinking in the end of chapter 1 about those obviously bad people which I think almost everybody would agree according to the list of things that are wrong. It's quite a sad commentary reading verses 18 to 32 on the nation and the land in which we live. There's a real temptation that as we read that list it's all those bad horrible people out there somewhere, not of course anybody respectable like you or me. And Paul I think anticipates the danger of a sense of perhaps a smugness as we read that list for he now turns the tables in chapter 2 on those who would like to think that they are better but actually are not and he particularly has in mind first of all the very religious person who might look down his nose it's all sorts of flavorant behaviour around but he also speaks to many people with a great degree of privilege like you and me. Here's particularly a pain to point out that knowing the right answer is not enough. If we to know what Christianity's all about we know what God's standards are but we don't live up to God's expectations then we will condemn ourselves and there's a real danger in any religious community of fostering and feeding a kind of sanctimoniousness that's the legitimate word in which we can perhaps look down our nose at those who don't apparently live up to our standards. And this passage is all about the problem of being good when good actually isn't enough but we don't live up to God's perfect standards and when in fact the fact that we may do something is right may actually work against us because it doesn't mean that we take seriously enough God's judgment upon sin and it is particularly the problem of religious people. Mark Twain as I mentioned a few weeks ago spoke about Christians as being truly good people in the worst sense of the word. We kind of know what he means about that don't we? There's sort of an idea of goody goody two shoes that we kind of find a little bit revolting. Australian evangelist Philip Jensen was speaking he's a very outspoken, quite controversial speaker and he was speaking at university mission once and he sent on ahead his sermon titles for the evangelistic mission to the printers and the topic that he wants to take for the week was why do good people go to hell? And the the form came back with a printing arrow which said quite understandably why do bad people go to hell? So he sent it back again and said no one likes to speak on why do good people go to hell? And for a second time it came back from the printers with the words why do good people go to heaven? And just the exchange going on there I think reflects the problem we're thinking about here is actually people who are good who will end up outside of God's failure because being good actually isn't the issue. Paul is speaking to people like you and me who have all the privileges of religious heritage and maybe have some outward behavior but actually can fail to realize that there is more to be a Christian than being good stories told of an old lady who been smoking 2-3 packets of cigarettes a day and a doctor eventually persuaded her that a very bad for her health and that she should give them up. She was eventually persuaded by the idea and she went through all the sort of different patches and nicotine free things and all the rest of it and she was warned by her friends that having smokes so much that she would find that she had become maybe nervous or irritable or short tempered as a result. A few weeks later she's talking to one of her friends and her friend was asking how she'd gone on and she said well actually you know I'm finding them doing quite well I'm managing to quit smoking and her friends said well do you find that this is affecting her at all you know are you become more irritable or short tempered at all and she said no I've stayed my same sweet old self however she had noticed that some of her friends had got much more disagreeable in the last few weeks and she could hardly stand their company. Well we're all familiar with that scenario and this illustrates for us another psychological term that's entered into our vocabulary and it's very interesting how Freud many many years later picked up some of the terms that I think are latent here in this passage. Last week we were thinking about a word Freud used called repression the idea of suppressing something burying the truth and it being manifested in other ways later and here I suppose you could think about another word he uses called projection just like that lady was doing projecting her own irritability onto others and also this is what they're doing here in verse 3 he says so when you a mere man pass judgment on them and yet do the same things do you think that you will escape God's judgment. It's easy to condemn things that we don't think that we do and the church speaks out quite rightly about the homosexual conduct that's spoken about here in these verses and so we should because God thinks this is a vomination but it's very easy to take a kind of sanctimonious higher ground view and to forget other sins in our own life like anger and lust or even the things that are listed here being disobedient to parents hardless or ruthless to project our own sinfulness onto others without realizing of actually we too for short of his perfect standards and indeed worse to take some sort of sanctimonious pleasure in the downfall of others thinking that somehow makes us look slightly better if there are worse people around us. So to that Paul has several things to say in this passage and there are just two that I want to highlight this morning and the first is to say that greater knowledge means greater accountability. Knowledge of the Lord in other words God's standards of rights and wrong doesn't actually in itself help us and in fact we saw last week that our problem is not lack of knowledge about God the heavens declaring it all the time and so in a moment we'll see is our conscience. The problem isn't lack of knowledge but lack of acknowledgement. They're giving God praise and living in the light of what we know. So Paul says if we know but don't act any different then we're actually in a worse state than if we didn't know before. God shows no favoritism and even those with such a great heritage like the USP from Paul Day, Paul's Day or you and I living in a country with a privileged Christian heritage needs to realise that the more we know the more accountable in a sense we've become. I remember back to when I was working for the bank and I had only been serving on the counter for a few weeks and it was in those days when I was less gracious and humbled than I'm proud to say that I am now and on one occasion the former bank manager came in to the till where I was serving and he with a little bit of a flare and a flurry shoved the check underneath the counter for me to cash and I've been well trained. I know that if you have a check even if it's on your own the bank then and it hasn't been signed in your presence then you need to get the person to resign it so I am Julia passed the set the check back to him and asked him to sign the back in my presence and he did do so and with this slightly quizzical, slightly cheeky look in his eyes he says don't you know who I am to which I responded yes but I'm just doing what I'm told and he could not do against that and I did truly cash it for him. I must say there was a certain amount of pleasure and having right on my side and illustrates perhaps quite well the problem of Romans 2 but also it was very bad for him to think that he was above the letter of the law how could he gain me in the banking knowledge if he was going to do something that would cause me to do something wrong anyway it's very easy to think that the law is good the law of the land is good but there is certain circumstances that it doesn't apply to me the 30 mile an hour limit is for all those idiots who might be doing 95 down the road and to not come from there's ever crossing off but doesn't reapply to me those double yellow lines are just a bit of pretty paintwork on the road doesn't apply to me and it's part of our natural tendency to think that the law is good but there are certain ways and instances when it doesn't apply to me whether you be my former bank manager or somebody with a religious background we can easily be inclined to think that we're above the law the Jews thought it and actually we can do so to see how many notice are the person who's always sighing and shouting at other drivers on the road to imply that it's all the other idiots fault always pulling out in front of them always driving too fast and so carelessly it's actually usually not a very good driver partly because they're distracting themselves all the time with telling everybody else off and very often they're doing the very things that they condemn but of course excusing their own foibles well we're not at liberty to do that we're all under the law and knowing the law isn't enough and indeed the more we know the more accounts will we become because God will judge us on the basis of what we've done with what we know and so that leads me secondly to say that the issue is not knowing the law anyway but actually doing it the issue has never been knowledge but performance look at our paragraph verses 5 to 11 now there's some quite tricky verses in here because Paul seems to be implying that our works are what save us the things that we do where as we know that the book of Romans tells us that we're justified by faith which is a free gift of God so it's important we just spend the moments or two unpacking what this paragraph is about we ask this Paul and the Bible is consistent justified by faith we are made right by God on the basis of something Jesus has done for us and given to us as a gift righteousness and we stand in Christ righteousness but we are judged by works by the things that we do now it's interesting to notice that Jesus's main criticisms were reserved not for the pagan worlds around but actually for the religious people in his midst those who didn't live up to what they said they believed and actually I would say that it's been true for me and the ten years have been ordained that the main opposition that I've had from people is from not from the outside world around but for those of some religious backgrounds who aren't living in the light of it Paul says the person who knows less than you may be judged less severely if they responded rightly to what they do understand now don't just understand Paul because he is moving towards a clear conclusion in these verses he's going to be saying in chapter 3 verse 20 that there is no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law rather through the law we become conscious of sin but he is also saying that our performance matters what we do in the light of God's gift to us is important now I've quoted several times Martin Luther who understood this most clearly and brought about some started to bring about the reformation and the gospel was given back to the church in a sense that's very interesting that Martin Luther loves Romans and he loves Galatians because it spoke most clearly about justification but he hated James in fact he called James an epistle of straw and partly because James says a lot of things about being justified by our deeds not by faith alone but actually that's very similar to what Paul says in this paragraph I think Martin Luther this understood what James was on about for God is interested in good behavior look at verse 7 those who by persistence and doing good see glory honor and immortality he will give eternal life he is also concerned that we appreciate that none of us is actually as good as we like to think and that God is continuing to work in us we need to be dependent upon in order to do good and right things now remember when she that there are actually two ways to get to heaven one is the way of goodness if we were perfect in everything that we did all the time never did anything wrong never thought anything wrong never fails to do anything good that was put before us then we'll be justified made right before God on the basis of our works of the good that we had done that justification is theoretical apart from of course in the case of one person Jesus Christ who was justified before God on the basis of his conduct for the rest of us the way in which we are made right before God is through the gift of righteousness that he gives this in his son the goodness of Jesus being imputed to us and standing in an hour account an awful lot's priest has once asked father do you believe that we're saved by faith or by works and he wisely replied neither but by the mercy of God is God's mercy that he gives us the gift of righteousness and God's mercy then makes us respond by doing good and God is a patient God Paul tells us and he says in verse 4 will you show contempt for the riches of his kindness tolerance and patience not realizing that God's kindness leads you towards repentance God won't wait forever for us to respond to his grace he will so speak to come back one day as judge and so he is calling us to respond rightly to his grace by faith and by works that follow on for us which is evidence that we have really believed but it's very easy for us to think rather like the evict does that we can give up doing wrong whenever we like and we live in the past of the world where social drinking can be a real problem for some people where the consumption of alcohol becomes part of our way of life and where we can be inclined to think well we will just cut down or give it up whenever we want but anybody who has had a problem with alcohol is well aware that one reaches the point where actually it's not possible to give up even if you wanted to do so because the thing has got a grip and a hold on you the world around us is thinking well it's okay I can stop doing wrong whenever I like but we can't do it where slaves to sin we have the addict's problem we can't give it up unless God intervenes and makes us right with him and gives us the strength to live and act differently the question that is being asked in this passage is what have I done with what I know and verses 12 to 16 talk about the future judgments of God one day we will stand before God and he will open the books and he will call us to account and on that day God will bring forward a number of witnesses first of all he'll bring creation and say look the heavens declared my glory and that was enough you to realize that there is a God and Paul thought he about a second witness and that's the witness of our consciences that our consciences will stand up and condemn us
do many cricket songs always let your conscience be your guide and of course sometimes our conscience is on good guides because they speak wrongly to us because we fed them the wrong food but they will be enough to stand up because all of us have lonely done things that we shouldn't have done and they'll condemn us so we will be without excuse on the day of judgment because we have all knowingly said no to God on a number of occasions our only hope is to call upon his kindness and we do well to remember as Paul thought to remind his fellow countrymen the God's patience is not an invitation to sin it's not an invitation to indifference to how he behaves that we're to respond rightly to his patience and his kindness and his goodness to not take lightly his words
as a 13-year-old I was having some trouble with all the other boys in the class around me who have been badly behaved towards me well so I thought and I eventually went to speak to the school counselor who was the art teacher in the school and she was actually very helpful she said that it could just possibly be that it isn't all the other lads in the class who are against you but it could just be that you were doing some things they're irritating, aggravating towards them I'm sure I was and she was very wise and gracious and she helped me see how I could fit in better by maybe conforming just a little bit more in the playing of the games and not being at twerve and I soon did and I soon ended up being the class idiot along with the rest of them and messed about just as much as they did and I fitted in very well and I can remember on one occasion and the horror of it still sticks in my mind where we were in the art class and we were doing some modelling with clay and we started messing about and throwing lumps of clay at each other and so I joined in the fray and I threw a well-aimed piece of lump at another student who had the good foresight to duck and the piece of clay landed on the art room teachers face on the side with a smack she was marking some books at the desk and she looked up the whole classroom and completely silent and she turned bright red and steams started coming out of her ears and even now as I tell you the story I can remember this look of sternness on her face how angry she was and I can remember the reason she was such a sweet lady she'd been so nice to me and I can remember the sense of shame that I abused her kindness and let her down but actually you see that serves as a very good illustration of precisely what Paul is talking about here that was not the right way to respond to her kindness and I knew it but the pressure to conform with my new friends had been just too great and we can be the same with God we can abuse his gracious benevolence assuming that we can just make it up to him somehow at the end not really think about how we behave or how we act in the light of his grace we can't there is urgency to this appeal that the apostle Paul I can't approach him whenever I want I can't kick the habit whenever I want I must do it today to get right with him so Paul would say to us and I say to you on his behalf so now you know now you know a bit more about God's standards and God's expectation so what are you going to do about it it isn't just a matter of head knowing the right things it isn't just a matter of heart feeling and believing the right things it is also a matter of actions and will to responding rightly to his grace for his Jesus said we love the Lord our God with all our heart with all our soul with all our minds with all our strength and love our neighbors else out