Romans 10:5–8Scripture
Everybody open your Bibles to Romans 10 this morning. For some reason or another, I thought it was my assignment to preach on Romans 10:5–8. Evidently I was supposed to preach on Romans 10:5–10. So I'm going to preach on Romans 10:5–8, and then next week we'll loop in 9 and 10 and I will add that to my message. So that we can read that, Romans 10:5–8 says this. I really think I don't even feel like I can adequately extrapolate everything that's being said in these, what is it, 5 through 8, is four verses, right? Four verses. Anyway,
Point 1Righteousness by the law is impossible
So adding 9 and 10 just would have been too much for me. And so let's just do 5–8. "For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them." We all know what the law is, right? Now, just for clarification's sake, there are more than ten commandments. There are hundreds of them, and God gives specific instruction of what we should and should not do, and if you are sane, you can evaluate your life this morning and know that you are inadequate to live according to the law that God has put out there. That all of us have messed it up, or we have broken it, or we have failed in some part of the law. Jesus comes and he even breaks it down even more and says if you talk bad about your brother, that's murder. And so then he begins to even talk about our thought life and how our thought life can cause us to break the law, so it's impossible. So, "For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them." In other words, if you're going to live, if you're going to live your life hoping to be justified by the commandments, you have to do it in every part. That's impossible. "But the righteousness based on faith says, 'Do not say in your heart, "Who will ascend into heaven?"' (that is, to bring Christ down) 'or "Who will descend into the abyss?"' (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead)." There was a common saying for the Jews, just to kind of throw this out there, I don't want to spend a ton of time here, this seems to be the topic of conversation in a lot of our small groups and I think it's pertinent and we could talk about that, it's not exactly what I want to focus on today, but just generally speaking, the Jews would speak of things heavenward and they would speak of things lower, so low in fact, this word, literally translated "abyss," literally means so deep that no man could travel. That's literally what it means. In other words, it's speaking of unreachable places that you could not go in your own strength. Yet the Pharisees, or yet specifically the Jews, hoped to pull Christ down, or to go to heaven and pull Christ down by their righteous deeds, or search the depths. We read a few weeks ago, Paul, or actually David in Psalm, quoting, actually it was Job, right? So God begins to explain to Job, "Who are you to question me?" And he begins to talk about the expanses of the heavens and all the places that he's gone, and then he begins to speak about the expanses of the depths. So he talks about going to the deepest part of the oceans where the water springs up from the depths, standing in that spring, and he begins to talk about experiences of where men cannot go that God rests, right? And so it is important to kind of keep that in mind as we read this, because really there is this idea that the Jews could attain something that was only attained by God. They could be like God, they could go where God went by their deeds. This is insane language, and they would throw this around flippantly like it wasn't a big deal. Paul begins to use their words against them, and he begins to help them understand the expanse between them and God is so huge they will never be able to close the gap. "But the righteousness based on faith says, 'Do not say in your heart,'" you'll ascend. In other words, a righteousness by faith knows you cannot obtain that. That's what it says. "Or 'Who will descend into the abyss?' (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead)." Verse 8: "But
Point 2The word is near, so stop chasing
What does it say?" What does what say, the righteous, but the righteousness based on faith, what does it say? "The word is near you." It's come to you. You don't go to it with your good deeds.
He came to you and you missed him. He came to you while you're trying to get to him, and you missed him.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 5:46
You missed him. This is crazy talk. Yet I believe we come to church on Sundays hoping to find him and he's already with us. We hope to go to conferences to encounter him and to see him and to reach for him, or we go to camps hoping to encounter him or to reach him, and that's where we think he is, but he was already in your house before you got in the car to go there. He's right there with you. You don't get there by chasing conferences, you don't get there by listening to certain pastors, you get there because he came to you, not because you got in the car and went to him. Let's just talk about the most recent revival where thousands of people went to the city to encounter a God that was right in their homes. Yeah, right? And so much so that the population of the people chasing an encounter with God was greater than the population of the city, because we don't know he came to us. We don't go to him.
What are you chasing? Better yet, do you know who's chasing you?
Pastor Shawn Gray · 7:07
This is good. Oh man, it's good. At the same time it's convicting, because all of us have been guilty of trying to chase a God who has already come to us. The Israelites are ignorant. I named this sermon, I like it, I like the name of the sermon, "Ignorance Is Bliss," and I don't mean this in a derogatory fashion, but ignorance is darkness. It is just not knowing. It is not what we have turned it into today, where we call somebody ignorant to insult them. There are some people, all of us are ignorant of something. Specifically, Paul is speaking of the ignorance of the Jews and how crazy it is that the gentiles are not ignorant of Christ. And because of their ignorance, listen,
It's not okay to be ignorant, it's not okay to stay ignorant.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 8:25
Because of their ignorance, God begins, he did, he has, and he will continue to roll out his wrath on the Jewish people. "Well, I thought they were the blessed people." They are the blissful people, they're the ignorant people, but they are not blessed, they are judged. Are you with me? They're blessed in part, we'll talk about that another time, but let's talk about the judging part. Let's really read the Bible and let's see what he said, then, what the Jews experienced back then, what they experienced in the Old Testament and the New Testament, and what they're currently experiencing now. But let's just go to some Scripture, all right? I want to read some Scripture to you as I begin this morning, and I want you to listen very carefully to these. I'm going to give you Scripture, we're going to read them. These Scriptures spell out, if you will, the destiny of Israel. First of all, listen to the 26th chapter of Leviticus. Here's what it says: "But if you will not listen to me and will not do all these commandments, I will devastate the land, so that your enemies who settle in it shall be astonished at it. And I will scatter you among the nations, and I will unsheathe the sword after you, and your land shall be a desolation, and your cities shall be a waste." What a picture. What a picture of what happens in Israel, not just then but even now in our current situation, as we turn on the news, we really do see the unsheathing of a sword and a laying of desolation to a nation that has rejected Christ. It's crazy. Listen to the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy: "And you shall become a horror, a proverb, and a byword among all the peoples where the Lord will lead you away. And the Lord will scatter you among all the peoples from one end of the earth to the other, and there you shall serve other gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known. And among these nations you shall find no ease, and there shall be no resting place for the sole of your foot, but the Lord will give you there a trembling heart and failing eyes and a languishing soul. Your life shall hang in doubt before you.
Night and day you shall be in dread and have no assurance of your life. In the morning you shall say, 'If only it were evening!' and at evening you shall say, 'If only it were morning!' because of the dread that your heart shall fear, and the sights that your eyes shall see." Poor Jews. Listen to First Kings 9: "But if you turn aside from following me," who? Christ, God, "you or your children, and do not keep my commandments and my statutes that I have set before you." P.S., you can't. Who has,
The issue is not that you're not doing it good enough. The issue is you can never be justified by trying to do it good enough.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 12:21
The issue in and of itself, that you can't, makes you look outside of the law to find your hope, which is Christ. Yet they continue, even though the Bible repeatedly tells them you can't, they continue to try to do the law, but they break the law, and you know what it makes them do? It makes them enter into the judgment of God, not only one day but now. "I have set before you, and go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will cut off Israel from the land that I have given them, and the house that I have consecrated for my name I will cast out of my sight, and Israel will become a proverb and a byword among all peoples." So what is God doing with Israel? He is using Israel as an example of what happens to all men when they hope to be justified by following the law and not by trusting in Christ. This is your future. Now, some of you sit in here today, maybe all of you sit in here today, and say, "Well, thank goodness that's not me." Yet all of us at some point have asked the question, "Why do bad things happen to good people?"
That idea in and of itself lets me know that all of us are guilty of hoping to be justified by our goodness. This is not just a Jew problem, this is also a you problem. It's a problem. There are no good people. "Why did that happen to me? Does God know I'm good?" No, he knows you're not good. You need to as well. And then he goes on: "And this house will become a heap of ruins. Everyone passing by it will be astonished and will hiss, and they will say, 'Why has the Lord done thus to this land and to this house?' Then they will say, 'Because they forsook the Lord their God who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt and laid hold on other gods and worshiped them and served them. Therefore the Lord has brought all this disaster on them.'" Who has? Well, the devil? Well, bad people? Well, people that are on the Lord's side? Well, my enemies? No. The Lord. The Lord brought this. The Lord did. And in the 21st chapter of Luke, we read this, in case you want to move out of the Old Testament to see if God still has this against Israel. It says this: "But when you see jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are in the midst of the city depart, and let not those who are out in the country enter it, for these are days of vengeance, to fulfill all that is written." Whose vengeance? Good question. There is a Scripture that says, "Vengeance is mine, says the Lord." This is God's business. This is God's business. Oh, isn't this a stressful sermon? It is for me to preach it in light of all that's happening in Israel. Stressful. It's nerve-wracking. Why is it important for you to understand this is God's business? Why is that important? Because you need to understand the gravity of rejecting him. Oh, listen to me, don't just flippantly sit in here today, be faced with the reality of your sin and God, and not take it seriously. This is serious business. I lost my spot. I should stop saying so much. It says, "Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing infants in those days! For there will be great distress upon the earth and wrath against this people. They will fall by the edge of the sword and be led captive among all nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled." That's New Testament. Now, whether you're reading the Old Testament or the New Testament, you hear these passages that promise tragedy to Israel, and in the lifetime of the Old Testament prophets and the people, these tragedies have already taken place, and in the lifetime of the New testament writers, while they lived, these tragedies came to pass. It was prophesied, it was told, and it happened, and it continues even in our time, that we see the devastation, the destruction, the lostness of the nation of Israel, and our hearts should be like paul's, and we should pray for the salvation of the Jews. And we ask ourselves this question: what happened? And that's the very question that Paul poses in this part of Romans. How is it that people of God have missed the blessings of God? How did this happen? How is it that the people of God have missed the blessings of God? You know, that struck me, because I asked the question, I asked the question because when we look at the Israelites, that's the microcosm of the macrocosm. The macrocosm, or we look in today, we see people in the life of the church that are missing it. They're missing it. God chooses them and they miss it. How is it that the nation of Israel, to whom were given the very covenants of God and the promises of God and the laws of God and the Holy Scriptures and the prophets, how is it, with all that information, they're still ignorant? How does that happen? How is it that they have been set aside for judgment and punishment?
Romans chapter 10 is written to answer the question, and basically this is what Romans 10 is answering, and you need to know this, because it helps you put everything in contextual, in the right contextual position where you can understand it rightly, and it is this: it's because of ignorant, of Israel's ignorant unbelief. That's what he's getting at, that's what he's talking about. And in the midst of their ignorant unbelief, they forfeit God's blessing, as all men and women do when they live in unbelief, and they brought upon themselves God's judgment. Israel was ignorant of the truth and they failed to believe. Oh, they believed in a lot of things, and they believed in things and attributed it to godliness, like we do today.
But just because you believe in something and attribute it to godliness doesn't mean it's so.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 20:21
There are many people who will stand before the Lord and say, "Well, but I believed in you and I attributed it to you," and he'll say, "I don't know you." And so a simple profession of your mouth is not enough, and that is important as we get into verses 9 and 10, when it says, "believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord." Boom, done, I'm healed. Boom, done, I'm saved. I believe, I confess that he's Lord, I must be saved. Well, the devil and the demons confess he's Lord, and they ain't saved, because in their heart he's not Lord, he's just Lord in their mouth. Are you with me? And who can know a man's heart? Because all we can judge is the profession of their mouth. Only God knows the heart. Oh man, come on.
Now, because if you were to evaluate the Jews and the way they live and the profession of their mouth, man, it looks good, and if you're just evaluating that, it looks better than many of you today. That's not what saves you. Christ saves you. Not what you do, not what you do. It's good. Israel was ignorant of the truth, failing to believe, and in chapter 10 it openly says this, it opens up with this, we know it: "Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer 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." You know, so what is it according to? If it's not according to knowledge, it's according to flesh. That's why a lot of our worship today is messed up, because we have sacrificed knowledge on the altar of our flesh, and so we have limp lyrics with inflated feelings, and you know what that does? It kills. It does not give life. It kills. You're like, "Yeah, you know, a bunch of fuddy-duddies in the church and a bunch of suit-wearing, you know, tightly wound people who just want to take all the fun out of worship." No, you can have fun in worship. David danced naked, not sure how appropriate that is, but I'm just saying. So he didn't even have a suit on, he had, no, he had a suit, he had his birthday suit on. He danced, but his dancing was birthed out of the knowledge of what he knew to be true about God. Some of us say, "Well, we have to encounter God, we have to really turn off our thinking so that we can encounter him." That's insane. That's insane. But you know what that's birthed out of? It's birthed out of a culture today that wants you to stop thinking.
It's insane. Don't think the enemy is not using the tactic of social media to turn your kids' brains off. It's no wonder we can't encounter the Lord through the word. Your children are being turned off like a computer, and young people, I'm convinced, they don't think anymore, they feel. And if anything, we know that our heart, our feelings, lead us astray, and so if the enemy can get you to feel and not think, you become his slave. P.S., you were always his slave and you will always remain his slave if this is your path. And so they're ignorant. Why? Because they're fleshly, because they hope to be justified by the flesh, not by knowledge of Christ. They're ignorant, they don't know. Paul introduces thus the rest of the chapter, in which he outlines the elements of Israel's ignorance, and I'm going to give them to you. I'm going to try to talk about three really quickly and then the remaining two you can do on your own. You ask the question, why is it that this is the way it is with Israel today? Why is it so that Jerusalem had to be destroyed in 70 AD, like literally destroyed? Why is it that they have known the curse of God and the punishment of his justice? It is because of their ignorant unbelief. That's what Paul says. They were ignorantly unbelieving, not only in the Old Testament time, not only in regard to the prophets, but even in regards to their own Messiah, who came to them while they were trying to go to him. They missed him. It's like, it's like when you, it's like for me going to my parents' house while they're coming to mine, and I didn't even notice them on the road. I'm going to meet them at their destination, we pass and don't even notice each other. This is what happened when Jesus came to them and they were trying to ascend to him by their works. This happens in church today, ladies and gentlemen. This happens here.
It happens every Sunday, and we should be concerned. This is not a Jew problem, this is also a you problem potentially. And we need to evaluate now, what were they ignorant of? Here's your points. There are five things they were ignorant of, five things outlined in chapter 10 of Romans. I'm going to talk about three of them this morning. Five elements in the ignorance of Israel. Here they are: they were ignorant of the person of God. Number two, they were ignorant of the provision of God. Notice these are P's, because it's cool like that. They ignorant of the provision of Christ, not God. So they ignorant of the person of God, number one. Number two, they were ignorant of the provision of Christ.
Number three, they were ignorant of the place of faith. And then two more, which I'm not going to talk about today but we will talk in coming weeks: they were ignorant of the parameters of salvation. Number five, they were ignorant of the predictions of Scripture. That many prophecies were told
Point 3Ignorant of the person of God
Them, but they missed them all. They missed them all. Number one, Israel was ignorant of the person of God. Here's what verse 3 says. It kind of gives you scriptural context of where I'm extrapolating this from. Verse 3 says, "For, being ignorant of God's righteousness." Talking about the person of God. So what were they ignorant of? They were ignorant of God's righteousness. Let me give you a couple other things to write under that point. These are sub-points, or sub-dots, or sub- dashes, or sub-letters, depends on how you break it down in your Word file. Mine are sub-squares. I guess that's funny if you're in Word, but if you don't do Word, you just think I am a psychopath. So here we go. They were ignorant of God's righteousness, his personhood, who he was, his character. They didn't know just how righteous God was.
When you think you're righteous, it makes God not seem that righteous.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 28:43
Are you with me? There is this God is righteous and I am righteous, and so we bring God from heaven to our level. We are attempting by our righteousness to bring God closer to us. Okay, maybe we don't pull him down, but maybe we go to him. The audacity of a man to think that in his righteousness he could walk into heaven fully justified and stand face to face with God in confidence. Oh, we see this. We see this. We see this when people come to God, and they, or come to Christ, and they stand before Christ and they say, "What does it take to be saved?"
And the response is, "Well, that we obey the law," "But I've obeyed the law in every part," they say to Christ. This is insane. Insane language. It's insanity. It's ignorance. It is to see ourselves in equality with an almighty creator. This is insane talk. Is God your daddy? It is amazing, because your prayer tells you what you feel about him. Everybody wants to call him Papa, Daddy. "Well, that's in the Bible, Shawn." Yeah, we could talk about that, but your prayer is not a crowbar to bring God to your level. That's not what it is.
He may be your daddy, but he's a holy, righteous, sovereign God. Who do you think you are?
Pastor Shawn Gray · 30:35
It's important that we keep it in balance. Amen. We tend to hyperfocus and lean into language and vernacular that make God less. It's dangerous. And we do this because we're ignorant of his righteousness and we're ignorant of our unrighteousness, just like the Jews. So they didn't know God, how righteous God was. They wouldn't accept what the Old Testament said about the holiness and the righteousness of God. They rejected it, they just flat rejected it. They wouldn't accept what the Messiah said about the holiness and the righteousness of God. They thought God was more tolerant of sin than he really was. Woo, baby, woo, that one hits. That one hits in our context. They thought God was more tolerant of sin than he actually was. That makes sense today, amen. You know how many people are trying to make sin okay? Sound familiar? They thought God was more accepting of them than he really was. I just got personal. They thought they could be good enough for God's low standard, and they didn't realize he had an infinitely high standard to which they could never achieve. And because they didn't know how holy God was, they went about, it says in verse 3, to establish their own righteousness, and they refused to submit to the righteousness of God. That's what it says in 3. They pulled down God to their level and then said, "We're okay, because this is all God really requires," and they didn't know the infinite holy standard of God. Guys, this is not just a Jew problem,
Point 4Ignorant of the provision of Christ
This is also a you problem today. Number two, they were ignorant of the provision of Christ. Verse 4 says this: "For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness." Notice it does not say Christ is the end of the law. Track with me here. "Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes." You see, the only one who could provide righteousness was Christ, and they rejected him. Back in chapter 9:32 it says this: they sought righteousness "not by faith but as if it were based on works." How many of you are guilty of doing that? And therefore, because they had brought God down and thought they could attain his level by their own works, when Christ came they stumbled over the very one who was righteous enough to save them. That rock, which is referred to in the Bible, laid in Zion, verse 33, that rock, who is the Messiah, Christ, became to them a rock of offense and a stumbling stone. Why? Why did they stumble over him? Because they thought the answer was their righteousness, not him. Shawn, why have we been talking, and why is Paul talking so extensively all the way through chapter 9 and now here in chapter 10, why is he talking about this being God's business? Why is justification by faith alone in Christ alone, not by works, and why are we wrestling with this and why is Paul continuing to talk about this? Because many of us, much like the Jews, have the same mindset in the church today. We think this is about us. Only Christ is good enough, and let me tell you something: you will never look to be saved. You will never look and fix your gaze on a Messiah if you think you're good enough. That's why, when you proclaim the gospel, you don't start with "God loves you." You start with "God hates you, he's coming to kill you. You have sinned, you have sinned against a righteous and holy God, and he comes with swift justice to destroy those who are out of line with him." That's the problem. Then God gave a law for sinful people to try to obey, and they keep messing up. Where is our hope? Where does our hope come from? Oh, good question. Not from you, from him.
He is your hope. And check this, you don't have to get to him. He came to you. That's the gospel.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 36:10
Well, it's part of it. It's part of it, but notice where it starts. It starts with you're jacked up from the floor up. That's where it starts. That's where it starts. They didn't understand the provision of Christ. He offended them. He offended them. He came and he condemned their self-righteousness. That's offensive. Oh yeah, here comes the Messiah, and then he condemns them for their self-righteousness. That makes you want to just hang out with a brother. Some of you can't get critiqued at your job. No wonder you can't take critique from God. Some of you try to avoid your annual review. Why would you be okay with God's? He offended them. He came to them and he said they're self-righteous, and he, as he does every man today who thinks he can attain God. Here's what he said to some of them, here's what he says to many of us. He condemned their works system as a way to earn salvation. He condemned it. He said all of your effort is in vain. It will never save. That's offensive. When you commit your whole life to something and someone tells you everything you have committed your whole life to is a waste, that's offensive, because no one wants to see their life as a waste, their efforts as wasted. This was offensive. But
Your hope is not in what you do. Contrary to what we feel, your hope is always in what he did and is doing.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 38:03
This is not, it's not about you. He blasted away at their paraded holiness and called it unholiness. Their long, exorbitant prayers, polished prayers, he called unholy because they paraded it arrogantly in the streets. He shot down their self-righteousness and called it unrighteousness. It's offensive. The gospel is offensive. The Word is offensive. You know what we do today? We create sermons that make people feel good about themselves.
When you feel good about yourself, you'll never trust Jesus.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 39:07
I don't feel good about myself. I feel good that I found the one who I can hope in, because I've learned that I cannot hope in me. If I trust in me, I'll mess this up in the next hour. You're like, "But Shawn, you're preaching right now." Yep. Cannot trust in us. In fact, in Matthew 5, in the Sermon on the Mount, here's what Jesus said to people: "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." Because their righteousness was inadequate, because they dropped the standard and didn't understand the person of God. They didn't realize they needed the Savior anymore, because they had invented a righteous God whose righteous standard they could live up to, so they did not need a Savior. In fact, Matthew 9, I'm almost done, 12–13, it says this. Jesus said something that is very important when the Pharisees came and condemned him for hanging around sinners. He said this: "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.' For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." What does this mean? What did he mean by that? They that are well don't need a physician. That's right. He said he came to sick people. What is the thing that is required here? That you know that you're sick. That's why I have a problem. Listen, this is talking about salvation specifically. Let's just put this in the temporal, shall we? Isn't it interesting that when we talk about healing in the church, because God heals, amen, we know he does, but when we talk about the Word of Faith movement and the healing in the church, there is this idea of denying their sickness, and they say the path of being well is to deny the very sickness they live in. And so you will have people in certain movements in the church cough and play it off and say, "I'm not sick, I'm well, I'm okay, I'm healthy in Christ." Well, that's interesting, because God only delivers by mercy those who say they're sick. And if this happens in the spiritual sense, how much more will it then happen in the temporal one? It is this idea of "I have ascended to such spiritual status, in such oneness with the Spirit, that my verbal declaration makes me a god who can push sickness away on my own strength and profession." It's ridiculous, but it's just like the Jews. We have fashioned a new doctrine, a new belief system that says by my will I will push sickness away from myself. It's crazy.
It's a Jewish idea. It is, "I will ascend into such levels of gnosticism that sickness cannot even touch me anymore," yet many who profess it die of illnesses that they could not push away. Are you with me today? Why is this important, Shawn? Why are you picking on the Word of Faith movement today? Because it is a stepchild of a Jewish ideal that says in my ascent I can be like God on earth. It's insane. It's blissful ignorance, and it is not okay, and it is literally taking the Lord's name in vain. What did he mean by all of this? In other words, "I came to people who knew they had a problem that they can't solve. I came to people who know they need me. I came, and I'm not called to call the righteous but those who know they're sinners. That's who I came for." What he's saying was sarcastic. He was saying to them, as long as you think you're righteous and as long as you think you're well, I won't help you.
It's not until you know you're sick and unrighteous and unholy, and as long as you've got God down here where you can attain his level, you think you're well. It's not until you see God in his full holiness can you see your unholiness, know that you're sick, and come to the physician. And so it was really an abhorrent theology that led to the abhorrent christology. They were ignorant, then, of the provision of Christ. They didn't understand that they needed a Savior who could pay the penalty of sin. You see,
You can only convince people they need the righteousness of Christ if they know their own righteousness is inadequate.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 45:02
So the message is always a message of sin, a message of judgment, a message of inadequacy before it's a message of hope and salvation, and no preacher can preach the gospel who doesn't preach the inadequacy of human
Point 5Ignorant of the place of faith
Righteousness. They missed it. They were ignorant of it. Last one, and I'm closing, I can't see, so I feel like I'm on time. Number three, last one, they were ignorant of the place of faith. I mean that they were just ignorant of all the basic stuff, like who God was, what Christ did, and how you are saved. The place of faith.
Faith was the issue. Notice this in verse 5: "For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law." First of all, he's going to show that Moses talked about law of righteousness, then he's going to show that Moses talks about the faith of righteousness. So first, Moses describes the righteousness which is of the law, that the man who does these things shall live by them. Moses talked about righteousness by the law, and he makes reference here to these verses, Leviticus 18:5, and then another few verses in leviticus 18:5, so you can find them in there. Okay, so what does Leviticus 18:5 say? Basically what it says at the end of the verse 5 is this: "The man who does these things shall live by them." Now that's what Moses said about the righteousness of the law. That's a simple, direct statement, pushed to its limit, means this: if you are going to think you attain righteousness by doing these things, then you are bound to live by them, and you were bound to be judged by them. Are you with me today? If you hope to live by the law, you were bound to live by them, and you were bound to be judged by them. Oh man, that ain't me, man. I mean, no thank you, please. No, oh, thank you, please. And you know, those religious Jews were so confused in their mind and had lowered the standard so much that in Matthew 19, when Jesus confronted their rich young ruler and said you have to keep the law of God, that guy actually said this, and I quote: "All these I have kept." That's the insanity of hoping to be justified by your own righteousness. It is insanity to think you can achieve it.
It's insanity. "Everything you've told me to do, I've done it." That's unbelievable. That's ignorance. It's ignorance. And just for a recap, just for a recap, it's ignorance of the person of God, it's ignorant of the provision of Christ, and it's ignorant to the place of faith. Do not be like the Jews in this sense and think you are good and that you have followed everything God wants, because that is crazy talk. You need a Savior, and his name is Jesus Christ. He is the only way to salvation. There is no other way. And in the words of John, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." In other words, he has come as close as your right hand.
It is not about ascension, it is not about descension to the uttermost. He has come to you.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 49:15
Don't, like the Jews, miss him when he's standing right here. Repent. He's right here.
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