Romans 2:17–24Scripture
Romans 2:17–20 says this: "But if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast in God and know his will and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed from the law; and if you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth—" Dash, and it ends there. Now, probably everybody that was in a small group or that you're going through this with us, as you read through that this week, I'm certain that many of you kept reading, because we don't want to end there at the dash. The dash implies there's something more to be said. And really, the conclusionary statement, I find, not only in verses 21 through 24 or 17 through 20, the conclusionary statement is sandwiched right in between there. In verse 21 he tells us what he really wants us to understand, and really what he wants the Jews to understand in that moment. But before we get there, I want to talk about some of the good things that are going on in this text. Now, here's the way I'm going to do this: I have three points today. I'm going to make them very clear and very plain. We're going to pull them out of the text that is there, because that is what good exegesis is, and we don't want to really add to anything. But before, I want to give two precursory statements that are important for us that will help us understand the context of what's going on here. The first one is this, you can write these in your notes: this is the idea that is running from verse 1 in chapter 1 all the way through verse 20 in chapter 3. This is the idea that he's talking about, and it makes its way into those who are pagans and those who are religious and everyone in between, and it is this:
The essence of evil is dishonoring God.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 2:09
Or you could say it this way: a person
Point 1The essence of evil is dishonoring God
Who dishonors God is evil. All right, it's the very essence of evil. Now, a lot of us could maybe indicate things that are sin, but a lot of times in the church we talk about the fruit of what happens of sinful desires, of sin, the fruit of that, without ever really getting down to the essence of what the problem is. And I believe that the essence of all sin, all rebellion against God, is to dishonor him, that we're dishonoring. Now think about that for a second. Think about that outside of the church and outside of our relationship with God: when we dishonor God, that is evil. There are evil things at work in our hearts and life. Now look in our society today and look at how hard it is for children and adults to show honor to those who are in authority. And if you think that doesn't affect your relationship with God, you're wrong, because really the reality is there are most of us today, 80 percent of us, a lot of us today in the church, maybe not our church, maybe we have a higher percentage, I don't know, but a lot of us in the church, we don't read the Bible every day of the week. So the only time we come and we are steeped in the kingdom things is for an hour on Sunday, or steeped in his Word is for 40 minutes on Sunday, and then the rest of your week is the culture speaking into your life. And the culture says, "Don't show honor to anyone. No one deserves it. Only you deserve to be honored." We dishonor our teachers, we dishonor our parents, we dishonor our God, we dishonor our President, we just dishonor those that are in government, we dishonor everyone.
We don't have the attitude. It's amazing, because we love to hear stories about David and how he was such a great man, he had a heart that was chasing after God. But very rarely do we talk about the fact that he didn't kill the king. He didn't kill Saul. He could have; Saul was chasing him down to kill him, but he did not. He didn't even let people talk bad about Saul in his presence. You know why? Because he understood honor. And it's amazing how we will look at characters, and we will idolize characters, not only in the Bible but in life, where we will pick and choose the parts of them we like and we'll discard the other parts that we don't want to be involved with, like honor. Today in our culture we have a problem with honor, and I want you to understand, because our culture has a problem with honor, we as believers in Christ have a problem with honor. It's unmistakable. We see it in the church.
We see it in marriage. We see it in marriage.
Guys, so I was going to pick on women, but I don't think I can just pick on women on this, right? That's what I was thinking. I was thinking how much do I want to get in trouble today. But I don't think I can just pick on women, because guys will go to the golf course and they'll make fun of their wives too, and it's never mean, it's always telling a joke. It's like we sandwich insults and jokes. Listen to me, guys: your wife is not the butt of your joke. And instead of trying to get a laugh, maybe you should be trying to show honor to your wife.
And some men in the church do this. We do this. I've been guilty of doing this, amen. My wife should not be the butt of my joke. I should honor her. I should honor her in times where we're casual, and I should honor her in times where we're formal. If you go to the golf course, you go there to play golf. You don't go there to make insults about your wife. Ladies, when you go to get coffee with other ladies, and you know what I'm talking about, because probably some of you did it this week, we get on there, we talk about our husband and we insult him and we talk about how he's a loser and all of that. Listen, that's dishonor.
Now, why am I talking about that? Is the issue, "Shawn, are you trying to make an issue about how we treat each other?" No. I'm saying how we treat each other is an indicator of how we treat God. Because if you can't even honor the person that's right across the table from you, how will you ever honor a God you can't see, touch, feel or hear? And don't try to tell me that you do that with God but you don't do that. But you know what I mean. Don't do that, because it's just nonsense. So at the heart of the problem, when we see the pagans in chapter 1 and we see the religious people who are hypocrites in chapter 2, one of the things that we are seeing is the very essence of the problem with evil and the life in which we live is an attitude of dishonoring God. It's at work in us. In Romans 1:21, pagans dishonor God. He uses this word over and over again, they're dishonoring God. In Romans 2, verse 23, which we haven't read yet, but if you go, I know some of you read ahead, Jews dishonoring God. So the pagans in chapter 1 were dishonoring God, and the Jews, although they acted much different and although it looked like they were serving God a lot better, they were still dishonoring God. The heart of the issue of an evil heart is dishonoring God. That's the key. Evil is the feeling and thinking and acting that treats God as less than infinitely valuable and ultimately satisfying. Think about that for a second. Is he infinitely valuable and ultimately satisfying in your life? Ladies and gentlemen, when you turn to something else to be satisfied, you dishonor God, because he does not satisfy.
Oh, and be careful, because some of us are labeling things and thinking of people who you wish could hear that are addicted and have issues and do inappropriate things. But, ladies and gentlemen, sometimes even in the life of the church, and even in the midst of your service, and even in the midst of religious activity, we use those things to satisfy, and God is not enough. It's God plus this.
Either God is all you need or God is not enough. There is no in between.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 9:06
So Paul is trying to help us to understand we should not find our satisfaction in anything else but Christ, because when we do, it dishonors him. So when we get to Romans 3:23, and we will sometime, and Paul gives his own definition of sin, this is what he says, and this is kind of where I'm pulling it from, along with him using "dishonor," the essence. Here's what Paul says the essence of sin is, Romans 3:23: falling short of the glory of God. That is, not treating the glory of God for what it really is, the most valuable reality and the most satisfying treasure in the universe. In other words, evil is the feeling and acting that treats God as less than infinitely valuable and ultimately satisfying. And honestly, that's why we all need to be saved, because we don't. Our natural proclivity is not to that.
Our natural proclivity, particularly in our culture, is to look inside yourself for help for yourself, but you will never find the help you need in you.
You will only find the help you need outside you, because we're infinitely broken and bent towards bad and evil and sin, and it is outside of us.
It is in God that we find our hope. Ultimately, this is why we need the gift of righteousness, the gift of righteousness that is not our own doing, because only God could make us be ultimately satisfied in him. We have fallen short of God's glory, or as Romans 1:21 says it to remind us, we have not glorified him or thanked him as God. Or Romans 2:23, which we will read next week, but I might hit on it here today a little bit: through your breaking the law you dishonor God. A lot of us today have the law, but we don't honor God by having it, and we don't honor him by reading it. We honor him by obeying it. Oh, how we need to hear this today, because almost all the forces around us urge us to think of sin, if at all, as an offense against man. If I murder someone, it's against man. If I lie about someone, it's against man. If I gossip about somebody and they catch me, it's against that person. When we think of people sinning against us, it's about us. We make everything about us. Even we make sin about us.
Guys, you're not sinning against man. How can a filthy rotten sinner sin against a filthy rotten sinner? You can't.
How can a dirty pig make a dirty pig dirty? When you sin, it is really an act against God.
We say things like, "Evil is when I'm abused," not when God is dishonored. "Evil is when I'm threatened," not when God is dishonored. We need to hear Paul's unrelenting witness to the God-centered understanding of sin and righteousness. Only this will prepare us to understand and receive the gospel of the gift of God's righteousness.
Only when you realize there is no hope to be found in you will you turn to him. And Paul is going through painstaking steps to get our hearts to understand this reality in these first three chapters. Now we ask, how is God dishonored among the Jewish people?
I hope to answer that a little bit today, but mostly next week. Next week we'll ask, how can Paul really claim that the Jewish people were thieves and adulterers and temple plunderers when this was not their main reputation? I'll come back to that next week, but the ultimate thing at the heart of all of
Point 2Sour godliness is the devil's religion
That behavior is dishonoring God. The second precursory statement is this, that I see in this chapter 2 specifically. I see dishonor in both chapter 1 and chapter 2. I see in chapter 2 this reality that's important: sour godliness. Now, some of you, I think the younger you are, the more you like sour stuff, and the older you get, the more you hate it. And mainly old people hate it because they don't want to get more wrinkles on their face for making that face. We're just really trying to keep, you know, no more wrinkles need to be formed on my face. So we don't want sour stuff, no hot stuff, just mild. But there is a reality that when I say "sour" here, it is a flavor of Christianity that has corrupted the church.
Between me and my children and my wife, and I probably shouldn't say this from the pulpit, there is such a thing as a stank face Christian. Maybe that's old school. The teens would be like, "I don't even know what that is. What is that from? That's archaic. Like, what is that from, like the '20s?" You know, but "stank face," we are in the '20s actually. That's what my wife said: "That's not 1920s, but 2012."
Have you ever met a stank face Christian? Miserable, crotchety, nasty, unhappy, unloving, unjoyful, just brings the whole atmosphere down in the room. There's nothing worse than a stank-faced Christian coming into the room. I honestly believe that's what we have here in chapter 2: sour godliness. In my opinion, it is the devil's religion. There is no joy, there is no love, there is no peace, there is no patience, there is no long-suffering. It's just, "I'm godly because I have to be." That's not God.
It's the devil's religion parading as a godly thing, and it's not healthy. It does not owe its reputation to truly spiritual people. I suspect that sour godliness orients itself among unhappy, semi-religious people who have just enough religion to make them miserable but not enough to make them good. This is what one of the writers in the New Testament refers to as an appearance of godliness without the power of it.
Sour godliness is the behavior of people who have not been transformed. They just haven't been transformed.
All right, that's my precursory statements. Now let me jump into the Scripture here today and give you three points. Here's the third point. Number one, and Brook is going to love this, and she can play it on her recorder. She practiced this and she listened to the movie and sat in our living room and learned how to play us on recorder: "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." Now, when we read this, typically, as we navigate down through this in chapter 2, because most of the time we're reading through this in succession, we will get to verses 17 through 20, but we will also touch on 21–24, and sometimes, because we do that, and because the ultimate point is really, Paul, the Apostle Paul is not, we think he's pointing only to the negative aspects of what we read in 17–20. In other words, what he says in 21–24 causes us to not see the good in 17–20.
We only notice the bad and the ugly. The reason why this is broken up this way is because we need to pause and we need to see the good.
Point 3The good: the privilege of having God's law
Now, we need to see the good in light of the bad and the ugly, but let's start with the good. Romans 2:17–18 says this: "But if you call yourself a Jew," being a Jew is not a bad thing, okay? "If you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast in God," you rely on the law, you boast in God, that sounds good, "and know his will," that's good, it's good to know his will, "and approve what is excellent," that's good, that you approve what's excellent, "because you are instructed from the law." Isn't it good to be instructed from the law? Ladies and gentlemen, this is good. This is good.
Let's see it before ourselves the way Paul does. We just read it, chapter 2, verse 17 through 18. In this section he paints a remarkable picture of privileges of the Jewish nation, that they had the law of God, in their Scriptures. The Jewish nation was privileged. It was privileged by God, and they were given the law from God. This is good. I don't think he is entirely negative here. Actually, I don't think he's negative hardly at all here.
The Apostle Paul is a Jew, and the Apostle Paul counts this as a tremendous privilege. He says it all the time, he says it all the way through Romans, if you've read through Romans, he is talking about how much a privilege it is to be a Jew and for these things, what an advantage to have the law. Ladies and gentlemen, today in America you have the law. You have it. It's a privilege, and mind you, it's a privilege we take for granted. But it's not bad that we got it.
What's bad is we don't value it.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 20:58
That's what's bad. Are you kind of seeing what he's doing here? So he's reminding them of the privilege they have, of what they've been given, of how they've been established, of how he intends to use them. He is reminding them of all of that. And let me remind you today, for all who believe in him, you have been grafted in to salvation and you've been made new, and you have, listen, not only the law, the Old Testament, you have the entire thing, the story from the beginning to the end, how it begins and how it ends. You have it all. Some of you have multiple of them all around your house. There are parts of the world they don't even have the Bible in their own language. We are a privileged people, and that is good. It's not bad you have it. It's not bad you have an abundance. What's bad is you don't value it.
That's what's bad. Paul doesn't only know that he has it, he's grateful that he has it as a Jew, and he repeats this over and over again: "then what advantage has the Jew, or what is the benefit of circumcision? Great in every respect. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God." That's Romans 3:1–2. I'll read it again: "Then what advantage has the Jew, or what is the benefit of circumcision?
Great in every respect." Or, another word, the good. It's good, it's good in every respect. "First of all, that they were entrusted with the oracles of God."
That first, this is the great advantage, if the Jews understand these oracles and apply them to their lives. Listen: and apply them to their lives, and apply them to their lives. They had the oracles, but they didn't apply them. Notice the key here: application.
Information plus application equals transformation.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 23:19
What we see in the life of the church today is a bunch of untransformed people because they have the knowledge of something but not the application of it, and you can't be transformed until you apply what you've been told. And I'll just go ahead and let you know, all of this first initiates from faith, which is a gift from God. So those of you today who are sitting here going, "Okay, I got to get the information and I gotta do," listen, if God hasn't granted you faith, you can't even have the power to do that. So first of all, seek God, have faith in God. God grants faith that we might have knowledge, because, you know, if you don't have faith, when you read the Bible, it doesn't make sense to you. Now, that's what he says: he's hidden the mysteries in here, that he says something, but on those who don't have faith, they don't get it. It doesn't make sense to them. But when he grants faith, it begins to make sense to us, that we have knowledge that can call us to live a transformed life.
Oh, mercy. Notice that after saying that they bear the name of Jew, he gives two lists of four claims that Jewish people were making. He gives two lists of four claims that Jewish people were making, and he shows after each of these lists that they are both rooted in the law. Here's the first list of four.
Okay, I'm gonna break them down for you, verses 17 and 18. You can see him there. Number one, you rely upon the law. Number two, and this is in these verses, you can find this, it's very easy, he breaks them down like this: number two, you boast in God. Number three, you know his will. Number four, you approve the things that are essential. Then Paul gives the basis for these four claims, and this is important. He gives the very basis for these four claims that they made, verse 18: being instructed out of the law.
In other words, since you are instructed out of the law, therefore you do these four things. Okay, notice that at the base of the pyramid of the four things that are mentioned is instruction from the law. Doing these four things without the instruction from the law is not the way this works. We are instructed, therefore we do these things. That's the basis. In other words, I could say this and you might just, the law does its work in us. It does its work in us. All these are traced back to what is called by theologians the privilege of being instructed in the law. It's a privilege. These Jews are people of the book, and Paul agrees with that. But there's clearly something wrong here. We feel it, we feel the tension going on. We know Paul is sarcastic, so he's setting them up. He just has a gift of setting people up and then clipping their legs out from underneath them. He's a punk that way. So, you know, if he's saying something to you that's good, there's going to be a bad and ugly. That's just the way he rolls, Paul. That's just the way he does it. So whenever you read an epistle from Paul, which is much of the New Testament, you need to understand he's always setting people up to clip them, not to be mean, but to help them identify with the fact that they will never find hope in themselves but only in Christ. It's what the gospel does. It's what it does.
And we who are Christian people of this book should be all ears and on the edge of our seat at this point to find out what went wrong. If there's so much good, what could possibly go wrong with so much good? There's so, this is important, there's so much good, but it all goes awry.
Have you ever heard somebody say, one person say, "Mo' money, mo' problems," and then the next person respond by, "I'd like to try having more money and see if it brings me more problems," right? Right? I mean, and so, you know, and I just want to say, so when you think, because there's lots of millionaires in the world today, lots of millionaires in the world today, lots of millionaires who you think would be happy and have joy and peace, but your happiness and your joy and your peace will not be found in money. Money is amoral, it's neither good or bad, it's about us.
The problem is we use money bad, because we're bad. And I want you to understand something today: there are a lot of wealthy people who are unhappy.
They have a lot of good. It seems good. It seems like their life should be good. It seems like, how could there be any problem? What could possibly go wrong with somebody who has so much money? You'd be amazed at how bad people can take good things and turn it to bad. Are you with me?
It's interesting. It's interesting. So today we're looking at this context and going, "I just don't understand how all this good, if it's so good, why does it go so wrong?" Listen, there is nothing wrong in itself with relying on the trustworthiness of God's law and boasting in God and knowing his will or approving these essentials. Nothing essentially wrong with those things. But evidently there is a way that all this can go wrong. All the good we see here in these four things, and the instruction of the law, can be a part of what shows a person to be a sinner. Number two, the bad. The bad.
Point 4The bad: teaching others but not yourself
I want to take, as we begin to explore the bad, I want to talk about a little more good, but I want to talk about these next four things and help you understand that the good thing shifted to a bad thing in a hurry. Here's the next four claims, in verses 19 through 20. Here it is: "You are confident that you yourself are a guide to the blind," number one; "a light," number two, "to those who are in darkness"; number three, "a corrector of the foolish"; and number four, "a teacher of the immature."
I'll say it again. You can see it in there if you underline it, 19–20: you are confident that you yourself are, one, a guide to the blind, two, a light to those who are in darkness. Don't you, I don't even remember the Scripture where we're to be a light to darkness. It's good, right? We're instructed to do that.
Number three, a corrector of the foolish, and number four, a teacher of the immature. How do you teach the immature? You know that they're immature. How do you know that they're immature? Use proper judgment. Okay, so in light of what Paul said earlier about "do not judge," he also says judge whether they're mature or not, and then the Jews were called to teach the immature. Okay, just, that's really important. Then again, Paul names the basis for these four claims, namely, here's the basis, here's the basis of these four claims: "having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth." So right in the middle, this thing is supporting all these eight claims. In other words, because you have in the law the form, or the embodiment, of the knowledge of truth, which I think Paul would agree with, therefore you claim to be a guide to the blind, a light to darkness, a corrector of the foolish, and a teacher to the immature.
All this is possible, Paul says, because you have in the law the embodiment of everything that is knowledge and truth. It equips you to do that.
They are equipped to do the four things by the truth of the Bible. Now listen to me, the Jews were called and privileged with the law. Let me make this simple: and then they were called and commissioned to teach the law.
They were given the law, they were called to teach the law, because they had the law of truth. Not relative truth.
Today there is an assault on truth, and we have begun to teach another gospel, and that's bad.
Matter of fact, you're not so much better, we are not so much better than the Jews of yesterday, because today we don't teach the truth, we teach relative truth, and we don't teach the gospel, we preach our own gospel. And as guilty as they were, to having everything that God privileged them with and to be instructed to take that and teach with it, they used it in such a way that would serve themselves over God, and that dishonored him. And that's the problem, really, isn't it?
Today, if you look at churches in America, it's a problem. It's a problem. I want to pause here for a second, and I'm going to ask possibly for the impossible to happen, and, Jesse, maybe you can help me. With Brook, I sent you that, I'm going to use this to end, I sent you that baptism thing, the picture. Can you ask them back there and tell them, what, can you get that to them somehow or another and then get that on there? Because it'll take you some time, and I just feel like I need to show that. So we have it. We have the truth, and I'm afraid that we have begun to not preach the truth but to preach relative truth, and it is a false gospel, and there will be people who will go to hell because of hearing this false gospel.
It dishonors God. He dishonors him. And notice the difference. I want to give you, guys, give you two claims. I give you two groups of four. Now this is important, and you can write this in your notes and think this through later, but notice the difference between these two groups of four claims. The first group, in verses 17 through 18, simply describes the Jews' own experience with the law. It doesn't, not how it affects the way they relate to others, but just how the law affects them. They rest in it, they boast in God, they know his will, and they recognize excellent things. But then, but in the second group, in verses 19 through 20, the entire focus switches and now is on what the Jews do with all this in relation to others.
You can see the same kind of summary when Jesus says, "Love God, love your neighbors." Why did God give the law? The law can be broken up into two sections: love God, love your neighbors. It is in essence Paul's version of love God, love your neighbors. They were given the law that they might love God, and they were given, and the law then formed in them the second group of four that would help them to love their neighbors. They, listen, they didn't get the first part wrong. They got the second part wrong. And I'll say this too, you know, and I don't know, I've been thinking about this, you know, I've been thinking about this a lot, and I don't fully understand the magnitude of this, but there is a version of loving God that might not be actually loving the one true God. In other words, if you love who God was in the Old Testament but you don't love who he is in the New Testament, it's the same God, and you've made an idol out of one of them. All right, and sometimes when we say "God," what we really think is the Father.
So when we say "God," we think the Father. We don't think the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You have to know they are one. So what we see Jesus doing comes from the heart of the Father and from the heart of the Spirit. What we see God doing, Jesus and the Holy Spirit aligned with and approved it. So if God is wrathful in the Old Testament, you need to understand Jesus will unroll the wrath through judgment in the end. Notice that it's important we see God's wrath in the Old Testament, we see Jesus' wrath unfolding on men, and then at the end times, it's crazy, like he releases and rolls out the punishment. So anybody who thinks that Jesus is way nicer than God, you just missed the whole point. I'm not sure what God you're worshiping, but it ain't the God of the Bible.
And honestly, and, well, we have it during worship, we have this thing up here that says "Jesus," and today I'm going, "I love that's so good."
Well, where's God and the Holy Spirit? I put it there, so it's me that did it. I'm not, you don't have to worry about people in the creative department, you know, I'm that. But it's interesting how when we want to engage with thanksgiving in our hearts, we put Jesus there and we leave the Holy Spirit and God out, because at the end of the day, God's just a little judgy and the Holy Spirit's just a little bossy and I just need me some Jesus today. That's good. Yes, that's funny. That's funny, but it's true. So we come and we need some Jesus. "Just give me Jesus, sweet Jesus, just give me Jesus." Listen, you don't get him and forsake God and the Holy Spirit. It don't work that way. It just don't work that way, okay?
So the entire focus is on what the Jews do with all of this in relation to others. They guide and shine and correct and teach. So the second group goes beyond the first group. The first group says we have, like, the second group says we shine the light, because we have the light, we shine the light. In other words, if you're not shining the light, you haven't found the light. Notice here that the command to shine springs forth from discovery. It does not spring forth from human will, human effort. It springs forth from discovery. When we discover the light, we then are equipped to shine the light. Notice that Moses, when he came down to talk to the people, didn't, like, hmm, "I'm gonna glow, I'm a glowworm," his face. It was his encounter with God in the high places, his communion with God in the high places, his seeking and finding and discovering the light in the high places caused him to be a light in the earth. That's the way it works, isn't it? That's the way it works.
When you discover the light, you shine the light. If you don't shine the light, you have not discovered it.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 40:55
Why does that matter, Shawn? Why does that matter? Why do you have to reverse it and do the negative? This is what they do in math. They go backwards and forwards to test what is true. I think it's important that we do that with the Word, to look at the negative aspects of that, the bad part of that. It's good when we find the light, but it's bad when we don't shine the light, because it is evidence that we never really truly found it. We just said we did.
And there are people in the church, I'll be afraid, ladies and gentlemen, there'll be people in the church that will stand before the Lord one day and realize that they never really found the light. They emulated what other people did when they shined the light.
It concerns me deeply. Romans 2:21, I feel like it's important for us to see how all this went so bad. It was so good.
Shawn, if it was so good, how did it go so bad? Romans 2:21, I feel like, summarizes it perfectly. And I know it's not in your reading, but I'm going to read it anyway. Twenty-one says, "you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself?" So notice 17 through 20 is good. It's all good. It's good, it's good that they have the law, and it's good that they, it's good. The problem was their hearts. Their hearts. Some of you think that God's going to judge your actions. No, he's going to judge your hearts, because you can do good actions and have a bad heart, which makes your actions bad no matter how good the world thinks they are. The motivation of your heart, listen, your speech actually lies, which actually tells on you what's truly in your heart.
"Let no corrupt talk come out of your mouths." Do not engage yourself in coarse talk and foul language. Don't do that. Don't do that and call yourself a Christian. Don't do that. Understand that if it's coming out of your mouth, it's evidence of what's in your heart. These don't disconnect. Or, listen, the reality is that our heart is like a field, and there are some things that have been sown in our heart that are not good. But the goal should not be that we leave the bad things in there.
We pray that God would help us with our heart, that prayers like this: "Lord, purify my heart. Purify my heart."
Some of us are proud of our coarse talk. That dishonors God, and dishonors God.
You then teach others how to talk? You talk inappropriately around your house? Are you with me? That's good. I mean, that's good, I like it. I mean, ain't gonna get any shouts, but I like it. Now, that is not bad in itself. If you have light, you ought to shine the light, and the law was a precious gift from God to Israel, and she should have shown the light of it to the nations. God wanted them to do that. If Paul were criticizing them for being the light, then you could say, "Well, Paul, you're doing the same thing. You're claiming to know God and have his Word and preach it for others to see and believe it." It's not a sinful thing to have the Word of God. It's not a sinful thing to be enlightened by the Word of God, and it's not a sinful thing to teach the Word of God, and it's not a sinful thing to shed the light of God. So what's the problem? The problem is in verse 21: "You, therefore, who teach another, do you not teach yourself?" This is rampant in the church. I have, for years in the church, seen people be Sunday school teachers, board members, and pastors teach people one thing, and when you play it out with them on the golf course, they do another.
We should hit pause on our teaching until we're willing to teach ourselves.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 45:59
That's it. That's simple, because we ruin our witness when we say one thing and do another.
We ruin our witness. And I want you to know, I want you to know the people, let me encourage you here, it's my position, you don't have to agree with this is not theological, I can't back this is not substantiated, it's just a feeling I have: the people who struggle the most with this, I think, could be most effective for God if they would just get their heart right. But the problem is, I've seen in people with gifts to be able to draw in the masses who don't know God, teach them things, and then undermine everything they taught with their life through the week.
So although they have brought in thousands to hear the gospel, they've sent out thousands to preach a false gospel with their lives.
So the damage they cause for the kingdom is way worse than someone who doesn't reach a soul, because they become the people who hear one thing in the gospel and see another. They are indoctrinated into that, and they become people who go preach the anti-gospel and do the bidding of Satan without even knowing it.
I don't know how else to put it, but, ladies and gentlemen, if you're in the room today and that's you, listen, God loves you. He sent his Son for you. And if you kind of feel like that's you, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, and he needs you, he wants you, he's calling you to do different than the world. We know from verses 23 and 24, you have all this revelation and all this light and all this knowledge and all this truth, and you don't get it. You teach a form of it to others, but you don't go to the heart of it and the root of it.
You just don't get what the law really is all about. I think that's what Paul means in verse 21: "You, therefore, who teach others, do you not teach yourself?" And the upshot of this is that the law itself becomes a means of boasting rather than love. Don't, listen, don't check out on me yet. They use the law as a means of boasting rather than an effort of love. That's what's bad.
Love uses truth to bless others. Sin uses truth to exalt ourselves.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 48:46
Both use truth. Both can use the Bible. You remember when Satan, listen, Satan knows the Bible way more than you, and he'll quote it and he'll use it. And much like preachers today, and you got to be careful, preachers today, I just talk about God preachers, I want to talk about you, there are preachers today across America, in the world, who are using the Scripture just like Satan did to glorify and lift yourself up.
It's, listen, it's not hard to misquote the Bible. Just do one sentence, do one Scripture and don't lay out context. "Well, God said, if you throw yourself off here, he'll send angels to catch you so you don't dash yourself against a rock." And Jesus said, "But he also said." Are you with me today?
I think that's what Paul is getting at, that many of us know the Word, we understand the Word, but we don't use the Word to love people.
We use the Word for self-glorification. Let me tell you, let me tell you, when he gets to hot topic issues in here, what do you guess the hot topic issues in here, and we use the Word in such a way that allows that stuff to happen in people's lives. We create permissory statements, organizations that permit sin, and we don't call that out in people's lives. That's not love. That's self-glorification. That's, that's no, that's no better than the media just being on board with whatever new agenda there is so they can make sales. The reality is many churches have prostituted themselves, and many Christians have prostituted themselves out for the sake of benefiting off of the gospel. Here's the attitude of somebody who uses the gospel to glorify themselves.
Here it is: law for you, grace for me.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 51:09
That's the heart of it. You know someone's using the gospel wrong when it's law for you, grace for me.
Let me put it in modern-day vernacular, let me put it in modern-day language, or speak. Here it is, I already forgot, hold on, here it is: "I love for you," grace for me. "I'll judge you by what you do. I'll judge me by my intention." Listen to your arguments in your marriage or your relationship with your family or friends. Listen to your arguments, and listen to him: "That's not what I meant." "That's what you did." "But that's not what I meant." "Well, you're angry." "No, I'm not angry." "Well, you're being mean." "Well, I didn't mean to be mean." So here's a person trying to say this, trying to say it's all about my intention. I can act like a crazy person and stab you in the face as long as I didn't mean to stab you in the face. I can be, I can be angry, or here's this, I can be angry and yell at you and freak out on you because I had a bad day. Because I had a bad day, I can do all that. I have permission, and you should just be okay with me insulting you and yelling at you. You should be okay with that because I really had a bad day. We excuse ourselves. Are you with me today? It's law for you're not allowed to do that. Grace for me, because my heart is really, here's one thing that I hate nowadays. I hate it. I hate it. I don't even think it's biblical. Well, this person has a good heart. No, they don't, because out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks and the fruit comes. So I'm just sick of it. If you have somebody acting like a crazy fool and they're doing crazy things and they're doing sinful things and they're being mean and they're gossiping and they're being hateful and they're being destructive, don't tell me that they have a good heart. They don't, because, you know why? If you're a tree that bears fruit, you will bear proper fruit. If somebody, and I'm not talking about once off, right, because, so Paul talks about that. I'm not saying, "Oh, this person gossips." They normally don't gossip, they normally don't practice that, they just slipped and they accidentally gossiped that time. Does that mean you have a bad heart? No, it means you're still a sinner saved by grace, and we should confess that before the Lord, repent, not, but we should, we've already repented, we should confess that before the Lord and turn and not do that anymore. You're going to make mistakes, but if you're always gossiping and you're always talking about people and you're always murdering people and you don't care, don't tell me that person has a good heart, because out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. That's what the Bible says. So here's the question: when we get to moments like that, do we get to trust the Bible, or do we get to trust the way that you teach the Bible?
That's what's going on with the Pharisees: law for you, grace for me. The difference between a mirror, using the law as a mirror or using the law as binoculars. See,
Every time you use the law, it should be you first.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 54:40
Every time you look at the Bible, it should be you first. Every time you come hear a sermon on Sunday morning, it should be you first. Not, "Oh man, I really wish so-and-so would be here." You know what, when you go, "I wish someone chose to be here," and every one of you have done that, all of us have done that. If you really do that, you're using the law as binoculars, and that's what the Pharisees did, constantly looking out to see who's wrong, who's messing up. But
God didn't design the law to be used as binoculars. He designed it to be a mirror where we could see our depravity first.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 55:12
Yeah, you know where long-suffering comes from, using the law right? Well, listen to me, listen, this is interesting. If you're not someone who's patient, can can endure and as long can be long-suffering, you use the law as binoculars but not as a mirror, because it is amazing how easy it is to give grace when you see your own problems first because of the law. Come on now, are you with me? So if you find yourself not having grace for people, if you're like, "I've had enough of people, I mean, people are just, I just need to go up on a mountain," here's some things that i've said: "I just need to become a hermit. I just need to go up on a mountain. I need to get away from people. Everyone's crazy. I'm not sure there's one good in the whole world." I'm using the law as binoculars. Now, I've done that. Here's what should happen when we do it, and here's what happens now: my sons will correct me when I do this. They'll say, "But what about you?" And so that's the key, isn't it? When we open this, we should see our brokenness, and through our brokenness we have patience and grace for others.
Brokenness, people's brokenness, should not send us away from people, but it should send us towards them
Pastor Shawn Gray · 56:56
that we might love them in the midst of it. But it's all about how you deal with his law. If you're like the Pharisees and you look at, you use the law as binoculars, you will live a miserable, sour Christian kind of life. Sour. It'll make you sour.
Listen, age should make you sweeter in the kingdom, not more sour.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 57:33
And if age has made you more sour because of the hardships and the difficulties in your life, it is first, foremost, and solely because the Word and the law has been mishandled, and it has not been used as a mirror, but it has been used as binoculars to indict other people who are worse than you, and that makes any person miserable. Trust me, man, trust me. I'm going to say this, on pause right here, and say, I don't know, I'm so overtime, I'm so sorry, but listen to me. My grandfather, Robert Gray, Herschel Gray, robert the second, Herschel, I mean, I don't even know, they called him Robert, but as Herschel Gray, Herschel's something Gray, and they called him a Robert, I don't even know how does Robert and Herschel go together? I don't even understand that. His name was Herschel and he went by Robert. And I remember he retired.
I was saved in his church when I was young, five, six years old. I entered into ministry right after college, wasn't even totally complete with college. I went into youth ministry and was doing school while I was in ministry. I remember him being broken when he turned 70. I remember sitting in the house, I'd go to breakfast with him when we kind of moved in the area and we were doing ministry in the area. I remember going to breakfast with him, sharing, like, a McDonald's biscuit, like every other morning, with some group of men that he met there, and they would pray and he would talk to them, and none of them really went to church. He just was building relationships with people. It was amazing. Then he would come home, he'd come home and he'd sit on his couch and he would lament.
He would lament. He was broken. He was hurt by the way churches had treated him. I remember as a young man sitting there going, "Never. I never want ministry to do this to my heart." The moments where I feel those kind of urges, and it's not just in ministry, it's everything, guys, it's in everything, it's attitude. There are people who have been treated wrong by a man and now they hate every man. Listen, if you use the law as a mirror, it's going to be hard to hate every man, because you got problems too. It's using it wrong. My grandfather was a wonderful man. He was a believer, he was saved to the core, he loved God, committed his life to God, and it wasn't an act or a show. But he was broken because oftentimes, and through his life, I believe he used this as binoculars, and it makes us miserable, guys. That's why, that's why Paul says in another letter, he says, before you take the plank out of your neighbor's eye, take the speck out of yours. In other words, stop using the law as binoculars and first use it as a mirror. In other words, he gets to the end of this and Paul tells the Pharisees, he says, you're teaching others, you're using all those binoculars, but you're not teaching yourself. You refuse to use the law as I intended, which is a mirror,
Point 5The ugly: robbing God of faith
And that's bad. It's good they had it. It's good they were teaching it. It's bad the way that they use the law. Here's the ugly, and I'm done, and I gotta just, quick, because I'm way over time here. It is the ugly. I'm going to say it real quick: robbing God. So they robbed God of the one main, of the one main thing that the law demanded: faith. Faith was not a part of their message. The one thing that honors and glorifies God, Romans 4:20, they kept for themselves, which is faith. They seem to have knowledge of the law at one level, but they did not have knowledge of the law at the essential level. You see this again in Romans 10:1–3. I don't have time, I just got to go through here, I can't have time to read them: "Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is for their salvation. 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." So they knew the law of righteousness at one level but not at another. They took the commandments and made them into means of self-righteousness instead of seeing them as the description of the life of faith, or instead of using the law as a means to know we could not do this on our own but we must look outside of ourselves. The mirror helps us go, "I'm broken, I'm not good, I've got problems, I have continual problems, I don't even see anything good in me," that we turn to God. They used it as binoculars, and they began to try to live self-righteously instead of seeing themselves as a description of the life of faith. So they robbed God of the faith and trust that he demands, and in robbing God they committed adultery by giving their hearts and their faith to another, to themselves, or religious ritual, or moral striving, or praise of men.
And in doing that they embraced the same idols that the world embraces. They dressed it up different, but it was the same, and thus they plundered the temples of the world. Now here is the warning and the gospel invitation, mainly for me but also for you. Here it is: let us be careful today, so watchful and so careful, all of us lovers of the Bible, beware lest we rest in the Word and boast in God and know his will and approve what is excellent and guide the blind and correct the foolish and teach the immature, but do not teach ourselves. Beware lest the Word become a formal thing, an external thing, if it does not break us, if it does not humble us, if it does not lead us to a sweet, childlike trust in free grace, if it does not lead us to the gospel of justification by grace through faith in Christ and not ourselves. It is not the gospel of Jesus Christ.
We're not yet taught by the Word of God and are not fit to teach others. Woe to me, woe to you, teachers and preachers, lovers of the Book, who have in the Word of God the embodiment of knowledge and truth but only know the letter of the law and not the spirit of it, who only know the form of righteousness and not the righteousness that comes by faith alone. That is my hope, that everyone would consider that even now, by the Spirit, the difference between establishing our own righteousness and receiving the righteousness as a gift through faith in Christ.
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