We Need a Little Christmas | Week 2 | Daniel Goulding

two.

Romans two is where we will be this morning. We are continuing in our series a little bit of Christmas. And some of you are like, wait, it's Christmas. We're talking about Christmas. We haven't had Thanksgiving yet and you're already mad at me. Just know I wasn't part of the decision making process. So I'm just as upset as you are But

we're here now, so let's just continue on together. But full disclosure, essentially what we're doing is we're walking through the book of Romans as close to verse by verse as we can. That would take us like six years to do. But we're essentially going chapter by chapter.

And we're looking at what Paul says in arguably the most important book in the entirety of the New Testament, which is the book of Romans. If you look at the book of Romans, it's the first letter

that's actually listed in the New Testament. We have the four gospel accounts. We have the book of Acts, which is historically what happened right after Jesus left. And then you have the book of Romans next. It's not there because it was the first book written chronologically.

It's there because the early church fathers knew the importance and the theological implications of what Paul talks about in the book of Romans. If you look throughout church history, every single major reformation that has happened has come on the other end of some person studying the book of Romans

and realizing that this changes everything. Paul is going to in the first couple pages of this letter paint a pretty bleak picture for you and I as humans. This message, I will just warn you, it is not going to be a fun one.

When Bill said we should have called this message like Christmas edition of throat punch, he was not joking. Last week, Bill looked at Romans chapter one, which is, hey, if you're living these lawless, ungodly, immoral lives, you are storing up wrath for yourselves.

And Paul makes a really simple argument and he says, what you're doing if you live a life contrary to what God says is best for you, There's punishment waiting for you. And on this side of eternity, he says the punishment is God's actually just gonna give you over to that sin.

He's gonna say, you think this is gonna satisfy you? Fine. Have more of it. And the hope and the goal is that eventually that we run so far in this room and we run so far down this lane that we realize, man, this isn't what I thought it was going to be. And hopefully, eventually it will make us look for something else.

And in Romans one, he makes it really clear, lawless people are storing up wrath against themselves. And there's a lot of us that sit in church and go, man, it sounds it would be really bad to be those people. You're going to see this morning that Romans one is a setup to now go after all of the church people.

Romans two is where all of us get offended today if you were not offended last week in Bill's message. This is like the, hey, get your throat ready. We are all going to get punched squarely in the throat. But I promise, the last thirty seconds of this message is really encouraging.

It's the first

six hours or so that we're gonna have to get through this morning that's gonna be a little bit rough, okay? So let me kind of set up where we're going by just telling you a story real fast, okay? So in heart of Christmas, one of my favorite Christmas stories, my wife still debates whether or not this actually happened, but just think she has selective memory. So I'm telling the story because it's my truth and I'm sticking to it. So we were newly married. I got married when I was 21. My wife was 19. I don't know why nobody stopped us, but they did it, right? So we got married super young. I didn't always have what the Bible says is proof of my wisdom, all of this gray hair that I have now. But I was just a young kind of naive man believing that my wife would tell me what she was actually thinking. And when she told me what she felt that it was somehow related to the truth. I

had to learn that that was very far from the truth. But we were sitting there, there was like, I think it was our second, maybe third Christmas together. We'd gotten all the gifts for all of our friends and family. We're laying in bed and I was like, Hey, what do you want for Christmas?

She said something to the effect, and again, if she was here, she'd go, I never said that. But I swear this happened. She was like, I don't need a gift. Like, you're the only gift that I need. And I was like, hey, that makes sense to me. Like,

if I could give me to me, I would. Do you know what I mean? Like, I think I'm pretty awesome. And I'm sitting there like, yo, God, like I was praying for like a wife, and you brought me this one that like is attractive, and like I like her, and she spends time with me, and she doesn't want gifts like God, I hit the jackpot. You know what I mean? And in that moment, I was so dumb I believed her.

So Christmas morning comes rolling around and we're sitting there opening up gifts and everybody's

doing their thing. And she gives me her gift, I'm which sure was like socks or something like that. And then she's sitting there like when the whole thing is kind of over and she's looking at me and I'm like, why is she looking at me like she's expecting something right now?

And then it kind of hit me. I was like, oh, when she said she didn't wanna give, she was lying. I was like, man, wish I had realized that two weeks before this moment. And then at some point she says, you literally didn't get me anything?

I was like, what do you mean? Like I'm right here. Do you want me to like go in the other room and put a bow on my head and come back out and remind you of the gift that you have in me or did that all go away in the last two weeks?

And I remember in that moment realizing that women have a bit of a code language, don't they? That when I I had to learn when I walked in the door at night and I'm like, yo girl, how's your day? And she's like, I'm fine. I'm like, yeah, girl, you are fine. You know what I mean? I had to learn that when she says I'm fine,

that means that I've done something really, really stupid that I don't realize and she's been stewing all day about it. And when she says she's fine, it means that she's actually really upset.

And all of us who've been married for any period of time, we've had to learn the nuances. I set it up mostly to be tongue in cheek, but as people who are very different, we have to learn how each other communicates. We have to figure out how to kind of decipher each other's code language.

And sometimes I wish in marriage counseling, could just sit with young couples and just go, hey, here's exactly how to do it. Here's the things to do. Here's the things to follow. And this will make all of this really easy, but it just isn't that easy or that simple.

If you read Romans chapter one and Romans chapter two, Paul is essentially saying that following God is not as simple as you and I will try to make it out to be. Our life would be so much easier if I get up on stage and go, hey guys, look, here's the seven things you have to do to have God be stoked with who you are.

But Paul says, you and I will forever be stuck in this tension of not being able to live these lives of complete lawlessness because it won't give us what we want. But on the other side of the coin, what we also can't do is believe that if we just fall into these religious patterns, these

patterns of self righteousness, that we can somehow make God pleased with us because of just the way we behave, the way that we give, the way that we serve, the way that we stop cussing, all of those things.

Essentially what Paul is going to say in the very beginning, what the big idea of this whole series is, if you're taking notes, is that what you and I are in desperate need of is a savior. The big idea is this, that we need a savior,

not a season. This is what Paul and Bill talked about last week in Romans one. What we're gonna see today is we're going to expand on this is that what he's going say in Romans two is even if that season is a season of self righteousness, you and I are just as in need of a savior. You and I cannot save ourselves.

Before we get to Romans two, I want you to flip over a couple of books to the book of Luke.

And I want to look at a parable to kind of set up and frame what Paul is going to show us in Romans two. So Luke chapter 18, if you have a Bible turn there now. If not, you can follow along on the big iPad Bible behind me. Luke 18 says this in verse nine, it says, Then Jesus

told this story to some who had great confidence in their own righteousness and scorned everyone else. Let me set up where we are in Luke 18. Jesus is making his final pursuit into the city of Jerusalem.

Jesus knows and he's been telling his disciples that this is the moment that we've all been waiting for. We're making our final march into Jerusalem and I'm going to hand myself over to the religious leaders that are there. Ultimately, they're going to arrest me. They will mock me. They will beat me. They will kill me.

And all the disciples heard was, okay, the kingdom of God is coming. Jesus keeps saying that this is the moment the kingdom of God is going to come, which means that we are about to become the middle management people for God. He's like, look, boys, this is our time. Let's look alive. Everybody make

sure you're dressed well because it's time to shine. And Jesus is like, man, you guys are completely missing what I'm talking about.

The disciples began to believe the thing that is so dangerous for you and I who spend time with Jesus and come to church regularly. You will be tempted to believe because of your proximity to Jesus that you somehow are higher up in the hierarchy of humanity. So Jesus, before he goes

back into Jerusalem to ultimately pay the sacrifice that the Bible says that needed to be paid for your and I sin, He gathers the disciples and another group of people that apparently were really self righteous. I don't know how he knew who they were, but he's like, Hey, you four, come here, you need to listen to this.

And he gathers them and he does what Jesus does so brilliantly. He takes what we're going to see in Romans two, which is this really deep theological truth. And he's going to tell a really simple practical story and make this thing really simple. He says, here's what happens.

He said in verse 10 that there was two men who went to the temple to pray. One was a Pharisee and the other was a despised tax collector.

Jesus says, okay, check this out. There's two guys that go to church one day. One's a Pharisee and one's a tax collector. I know for you and I, we've been in church for a little bit. We're like, okay. Pharisee, that's the bad guy. So that means the tax collector, that must be the good guy. Right?

You and I in church know that a Pharisee means a bad person. But in the audience that Jesus is speaking to, the first century Jew, a Pharisee would have represented the creme de la creme, the best of the best. To understand a Pharisee, you have to kind of get into the world of how they even qualified to become a Pharisee.

A Pharisee was a young Jewish boy who was so dedicated to studying and understanding God's word that he memorized the entirety of the first five books of the old testament.

I still, if you had to make me, I could barely remember the order. I think it's Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, it's either Deuteronomy and then Numbers or Numbers and Deuteronomy. But like, I don't even know the order. These guys had all five books committed to memory as a teenager. Every aspect of their life,

the way they got out of bed, the way they washed their hands, the way they walked down the street, the way that they dressed, what they wore, every part of who they were was dictated by the word of God. They lived a life of absolute dedication to the scripture and to God's standards.

Every Jew listening to Jesus in this moment would go, okay, this is the best of us. This is a Pharisee. And Jesus says, this guy walks into church one day with a tax collector. And the tax collector was much more than just somebody who collected the taxes. A tax collector was a Jew, one of them, one of their people

who became a representative of the oppressing nation that they were living under. He became a representative of the Roman government.

And when the Roman government told him to go to his friends and family and charge them $5 tax, he knew he could take $10 keep $5 for himself, give $5 to the Roman government and nobody could do anything about it because he was protected by the Roman government. Jesus is building incredible tension

in this message. He says, one day, two people walk into church. You have the best of the best of the best. And then you have the worst of the worst of the worst. Those two guys walk into church together. Look at what happens. It's an incredible story. Verse 11 says, The Pharisee stood by himself and he prays this prayer.

He says, I thank you God that I'm not like other people, the cheaters, the sinners, the adulterers. I'm certainly not like that tax collector. I fast twice a week, I give you a tenth of my income.

But the tax collector stood at a distance and he dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as prayed. Instead, he beat his chest in sorrow saying, oh God, be merciful to me for I'm a sinner.

Jesus said, imagine these two guys walking to church and the Pharisee gets into church and he starts to pray. He goes, God, I thank you that I'm pretty freaking awesome. I've been tithing for like a year straight now. I don't even notice it. It just comes out on auto debit. Like this

is awesome. God, I thank you. I'm not like these people. I do a lot of things really well. And like imagine for a moment, just for imagine that this is like your small group this week, right? You're sitting there like, God, before we begin, I just wanna thank you for my marriage.

It's awesome. Unlike Bill and Jan's, like I just thank you that we have nothing like theirs. And then my kids are awesome. And unlike Bob and Ted, what could you like you're not gonna get invited back to small group if that's how you open up in prayer.

And I know what you're thinking. I've never prayed a prayer like that. Hopefully you have not. But let's be honest. We've all had thoughts like that. It's so easy for you and I to go, man, I know I'm not perfect, but at least I'm doing better than that guy. At least I'm doing better than those people.

And Jesus says, this guy walks in and all he can talk about is all the things that he does. And then the tax collector, he comes in and goes, God, I've got nothing. He says he can't even look up to the heavens. He just pounds his chest and says, if there isn't mercy and grace for me, then I'm doomed.

And the next part of the verse is what would have freaked out every Jew that was listening. Again, you have to remember that greatest sin that the nation of Israel, the Jews always had, the greatest mistake they always fell into was believing that because God chose them, that it gave them some aura of superiority.

God chose the nation of Israel to be his people, to carry the law, to ultimately birth the savior of the world, not because they were awesome, but because they were such a nobody, nothing village that would tell the world a story of God using the people that everybody else discounts.

But the nation of Israel would fall into the same things I believe that you and I fall into as well, believing that it makes us awesome. Verse 14, the story concludes and he says, I tell you, the sinner, not the Pharisee, returned home justified before God.

For those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted. Jesus told the entire group of Jews, the Pharisee left that place in such a desperate position. The only person who was justified, the legal term for made right with God, was the sinner who did everything wrong except understand

his desperation that he has for a savior.

This, friends, is what Paul is going to expound on in Romans chapter two. You and I will never be able to live a life that is good enough to appease God.

I know you're like, man, this is the longest introduction ever to get to Romans chapter two and I feel it too. But a couple of things that we're gonna see. Take take if you're taking notes, write these two things down. Here's what I see that Paul's gonna expound on. The first one is that if we're the only comparison that you and I should ever enter into is to one with God, not others.

If you ever feel a propensity to compare yourself to somebody else, the old testament God was very clear and he told his people to be holy like he is holy. The only comparison that you and I are allowed to enter into as followers of God is not into other people, but it's in the God himself.

And God's standard is perfection. It's holiness. He says, okay, you want to be perfect? Be holy like I'm holy. So if we're going compare ourselves to anybody, let it be God. Here's the second thing that I see is that our only hope is for God's mercy and compassion, not in living a better life. Romans one,

Paul tells people who are out there living these lawless lives. He uses the example of homosexuality to illustrate outside going outside of God's natural orders. Those people are heaping punishment on themselves. There's a day of judgment and wrath coming.

But he says, if you're sitting here and you go, man, I'm just glad I'm not one of those guys. He's gonna go after us right now in Romans chapter two. Here's how Romans two starts. He says, you may think that you can condemn such people, but you are just as bad. And you have no excuse.

When you say that they are wicked and they should be punished, you are condemning yourself for you who judge others do these very same things. And we know that God in his justice will punish anyone who does such things.

Verse three says, Since you judge others for doing these things, why do you think you can avoid God's judgment when you do the exact same things? Paul says the same thing that my grandma told me as a kid my whole life. Anytime you're pointing a finger at somebody else, you've got three fingers pointing back at yourself.

Paul makes the same basic argument for anybody who would listen to Romans chapter one and go, you know what? That's right. Those people, man, they really need God. He says the very admission that you say that they need God is you owning and acknowledging the fact that there is a standard that's out there.

And he says, here's the difference between the Romans one people and the Romans two people. At least the Romans one people, they can claim ignorance. They're not aware of the standard. They're not aware of the law. But you who so easily point at their issues, what you're really doing is you are condemning yourself.

Paul goes further to say, don't you realize that you do the exact same thing? Here's what he's referring to.

When Jesus walked to this earth, he took what was the law. Right? Go read the book of Leviticus. The old testament lays out what used to be the law. And it was a list of all of the things that you and I had to do to be made right before God. But the purpose of the law was not for us to have a list of things to do or not do. It was to prove our inability to fulfill the law and ultimately prove that we need a savior to fulfill the law for us.

But humans didn't get it. We tried to turn it into a list of things to do or not do. So what Jesus did is He came and He says, Look, I know you guys think that adultery, it means that you go and you sleep with somebody other than your spouse. And all of you sit in this room and you go, I'm not an adulterer.

Jesus says, here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna take that and I'm gonna raise the standard 10 times higher. Now, if you even look at a person with lust in your heart, you've committed adultery. You're like, dang it. Okay. We're all guilty. That's the point.

What Paul is saying and what Jesus tried to say so many times is you and I cannot go around boasting that we're a good person. The church, our message has never been, Hey, come hang out with the group of good people.

We just gotta circle the wagons and get the circle big enough for all the good people to be here and protect our kids from all the people that are out there. Paul says there is no out there and in here, it's just here.

But the temptation that we will have when we've been in church for a while, when we've been in proximity to Jesus for a while, what will happen is your behavior will get better, or at least it should. Because the Holy Spirit does this thing that the Bible tells us is called sanctification.

It begins to make us more and more into the image of Jesus. You become regenerated. The things you used to desire, you don't desire anymore. And you do that for a while

and you fall out of relationship with God. And all of a sudden you will think that it's all those behavior modifications that you've made that make you right with God. And it's a really slippery slope that happens really quickly. What Paul is saying is that our hearts have this weird propensity to love rebellion,

to enjoy it and ride it as far as we can take it until we realize, okay, this isn't working. This isn't giving me what I thought it was gonna get me. And he said, but the same heart that is tricked by rebellion, it will fall for religion justice quickly. And it will be a really slippery slope to believe

that self righteousness is our path to having God be pleased with us.

Friends, we have to be really careful to remember what the message is that we as the church have. I'm gonna prove this point real quickly to you in a silly way. I've been teaching from a stage for almost fifteen years. I've had tattoos for that whole time.

I can't tell you how many times church people, really well intended church people will find me after service and go, Hey, I don't know if you know, but you've got tattoos all over your arms. I'm like, What? I do? Oh my gosh, would you look at that? Crazy. And the ones

that I've had the worst conversations about when they see that I had a new tattoo. Because they were like, Oh, I get it. You were like a really wild person. You got tattoos and then you got saved. And I'm like, No, actually 95% of my tattoos have gotten post salvation, post Jesus.

They're like, wait, I don't understand that. You can't get tattoos. The Bible says you can't get tattoos. I've had parents tell me that I'm a bad example for their kid as a youth pastor because I have tattoos.

And I'm like, look, I love the conversation. I'm not mad about the conversation, but let's actually go and see what the Bible says about it. Show me where the Bible says not to tattoo your body. Because friends, it is in there. It's in the Levitical law.

It says, Don't tattoo your bodies. But what I always love is my favorite part of the conversation. Would go, Could you read the next verse? Because the very next verse says, Don't shave your facial hair. And I'm like, Sir, I'm really offended that you shaved this morning.

Were you like not Christian and now you're Christian and that was before you were Christian? You shaved your facial hair. And please don't hear my heart. I'm not saying this to try to pick on people. But what we have to be really careful not to do is to take our natural prejudices, our natural

things that we don't like and read it into our Bible and then tell the world that's what God says. Because it's not true.

You wanna know the point of the law? The point of the Old Testament law was God was telling the nation of Israel, you are my people. You are supposed to be set apart. And so what did he do? He told them, you're living in captivity to the Egyptians.

They wear makeup. They tattoo your bodies. They shave their face. What I want you to do is I want the world to be able to look at you and go, there's something different about these people. So physically in the Old Testament, God's people looked different.

But you and I don't live under the covenant of the Old Testament Levitical law.

Jesus came as the fulfillment of the law. And the law now condemns all of us and shows us our need for a savior. I did that mostly to save your email to know, yes, I already have tattoos. Okay? Verse four, here's how Paul continues.

Don't you see how wonderfully kind, tolerant, and patient God is with you? Does this mean nothing to you? Can't you see that his kindness is intended to turn you from your sin? But because you're stubborn and you refuse to turn from your sin, you're storing up terrible punishment for yourself.

For a day of anger is coming when God's righteous judgment will be revealed. Paul is speaking to church people right here. This is not the people out there. He says, do you not realize that there's a day of judgment that's coming for you?

He says, because I know what you do when you're in church. Here's the reality of religious people if nobody's told you. All we do is we get better at hiding our sin. Our sin gets a lot less external and we just do a really good job of hiding it.

And I don't know why it is this way. I've talked about it with my kids. I've talked through it with my wife. But there's something about coming in to church, even coming here on Sundays when I come with my family. We all dress our best.

We make sure that our kids are like smiling even though the whole time on the way here they're fighting like, I don't wanna go to church. Church is boring. The guys that get up and talk, they're terrible. And I'm like, shut up. I'm a pastor. We have to go to church. And we fight the whole way and we're yelling. But the moment we get out of the car, we walk in, they're like, hey, how are you? And like, I'm blessed, brother. How are you?

Because I don't know why, but there's just something about it that makes me feel like when I walk in the door to church, I have to present myself as good. Which is crazy because when I walked in church fifteen years ago as a 19 year old man, I was a mess.

And I just walked in and beat my chest going, God, if you don't have mercy and grace for me, I'm hosed. Yet fifteen years later, a lot of behavior modification later, I now feel like I got to walk in the door and feel like I have everything together.

And I think this is how the church that's supposed to be the hope of the world starts to become an ineffective voting block. And we begin to believe, you know what? You know what makes us right? It's that we lean right and that we vote right.

Paul says, no, no, no, no. Do all of that stuff. I'm not saying that stuff is bad, but don't believe it justifies you with God. Because God knows what you do in the secret. He sees all of it. And you will have a temptation to believe that because when you do it, God doesn't immediately smack your hand and punish you,

that somehow God is okay with it. Let me give you a silly example. I don't know if you've ever done this, but maybe you've gone to Fry's and you go to like the self checkout line.

You're like, hey, it's been a tough month. You're like, God, I'm going to scan 100% of all the things in my cart and you do it and then nobody can I thought they would give me a gold star? Like, look, did it. I didn't steal anything. Go on and check my receipt. Know what mean? Like nothing, but all right. And then you go one time

And all of a sudden, you scan like 97% of the things in your bag and you walk out and you're like nervous. You're like, oh, man, they're gonna arrest me. You get in your car, nothing happens. So the next time you go, you're like, all right, 90% of this stuff I'll scan.

10% of this stuff I just I happen to forget. God, know my heart though. Like, you know what I mean? Like, was a tough month. And all of a sudden, it's like, wait, God is not like having me arrested. He must be okay with this. And then things keep

going well at work. What Paul is saying is that you and I will be tempted to believe that our quality of life will be a determiner of our quality of relationship with God. He makes a point here that friends, hope we hear. If you're taking notes, write this down. Don't confuse God's patience and mercy with God's approval.

Paul says that God sees all of it and there's a day that you will have to give an account for it. And what God's patience is with you is it's actually his long suffering, hoping that his kindness will lead you to repentance.

But just like my kids that run towards the street, I can yell and tell them, hey, stop going that way. I can do that five or six times, but eventually, eventually, if they don't listen and they don't heed my advice, I will, as a loving parent, have to intervene in their life.

And it will be a lot more uncomfortable for them if they had just turned around and listened to me the first time. That's what Paul is saying. He's saying just because you think you're getting away with it, don't believe you are.

You, just like the people in Romans one, are storing up wrath for yourselves because God is just. I told you upfront this is just not a fun message, right? So it doesn't get any better. I'll be honest. Here's the next verse. Here's what it says. Verse six says that God is going to judge everyone according to what they've done.

That is, or at least it should be, one of the most terrifying verses in the entire bible. And remember who he's speaking to. He's speaking to Jews who know God, who go to church, who tithe, who serve, who give, who are a part of building God's kingdom.

He says, even you are gonna have to give an account for everything that you've done. And you know what's terrifying for me as a communicator of God's words? It actually says that I will have to give an account for every single word that I've spoken.

Like, that literally sends chills down my back that I will be held to a higher standard.

Now here's the thing when it comes to judgment. This is something I don't wanna go too far down the rabbit hole. But if you're here and you're not Christian, you can check out for just a second. For those of us who are here, they're like, yes, put my faith in Jesus. I believe that he is who he is. I believe that this life is temporary and there's an eternal kingdom coming. I wanna speak to you for just a second.

Because when we hear that there's judgment coming for us, we often think, okay, cool. As long as I have Jesus, I'm good. Yes, that's the first judgment. We will have to give an account at the first judgment to whether or not Jesus has become the Lord of our life. And that will be our golden ticket into eternity.

But what we often forget as Christians is for us, there's gonna be a second judgment. When we get to eternity, the golden ticket to heaven is through Jesus, not by what we did.

But But there will be a second judgment where God is going to ask you to give an account for everything that you did on this side of eternity to build the kingdom of God. And the Bible tells us that all of the things that we spend so much time chasing after, All of that's gonna burn.

And the part that breaks my heart is that there's a lot of us who love Jesus, but we've gotten so distracted by the demands of this life that what we're going to do when we get up to heaven and we have that moment of second judgment and God goes, What did you do? What did you do with what I entrusted you?

Your only response will be, Well, I bought a 1,200 square foot house and then I sold that and then we built an 1,800 square foot house and we bought low and then we like fixed it up a little bit and then we sold it high. And God, you're not going to believe this. We eventually got You've probably never even seen this. It was a 5,000

square foot house. God's like, You dummy. I made all of this by speaking. I spoke and it just showed up. And yet the totality of your life will be the house that you built, the cars that you drive, the clothes

that you have. I'm not saying that any of that is bad. We have to be providers. We have to eat food, right? Like that's part of what we do. But it is not who we are. This life is temporary. Yet so many of us are building a kingdom that will completely perish. And at the day of judgment, we're gonna sit before God going, man,

I wish I could have a do over. I promise on that day, none of us are gonna sit there and go, God, I wish I could have worked more hours. I wish I bought more cars and had more toys. I'm telling you, we have to have these moments where we go, what are we doing?

What are you doing with what God's given you? My job is to be faithful to what God has entrusted to me. And maybe you, he's given you more talents than he's given me, But what all he cares about at the end is what you're going to get him in return on that investment in you. What are you doing with it?

Do not believe the lie that you're going to get to heaven one day and the size of your house, the amount of money in your bank account will build you the stored up riches in heaven that we all want. Paul continues verse seven. He says, He's gonna give eternal life to those who keep on doing good,

seeking after the glory and honor and immortality that God offers. But he will pour out his judgment, Pour out his anger and wrath on those who live for themselves, who refuse to obey the truth and instead live lives of wickedness. There's gonna be trouble and calamity for everyone who keeps on doing what is evil.

For the Jew first and also for the Gentile, but there will be glory and honor and peace from God for all who do good. For the Jew first and also the Gentile. For God does not show favoritism.

When the Gentiles sin, they will be destroyed even though they never had God's written law. And the Jews who do have God's law will be judged by that law when they fail to obey it.

For merely listening to the law doesn't make us right with God. It is obeying the law that makes us right in his sight. This is one of those sections of scripture you're like, God, what are we talking about here? Paul, what is going on here?

Paul kind of goes into like this Ivy League version of Doctor. Seuss, where he starts to say the same thing over and over, but instead of like a fox in a box and a house and a mouse, I don't like green eggs and ham. He's like, if you're a Jew that has a law or a Gentile without the law, you're gonna be punished. There's gonna be calamity for the Gentiles. There's gonna be calamity for the Jews. He's saying Romans one, Romans two, doesn't matter who you are, good, bad, purple, green, yellow, all of us before a Holy God are

condemned. This is one of those verses that gets taken out of context with some major world religions around us that says, look, the Bible says right there that it is not by hearing the law that makes you right with God, it's actually obeying the law. That is proof that salvation,

being made right with God, comes as a combination of grace plus works get put together. That's how you're made right with God. That is not what Paul is saying. Paul is using really terrible Ivy League humor. Okay? You have to remember that Paul was essentially a Jewish legal scholar.

My dad was a lawyer. I worked for him for a summer and I remember I had a moment, I walked in his office and I started to understand the contracts I was looking at. I'm like, God, dad, why do you use such big words?

Like, why don't you just say this stuff simply? Because I charge people $400 an hour. If they could understand it, they wouldn't pay me $400 an hour. I was like, okay. What Paul's doing is he's saying in a very legal jargon theological way, there's no hope for us. All of us, Jew, Gentile, churchgoer, non churchgoer,

all of us have no shot because the standard is perfection. The standard is complete holiness. If you're taking notes, here's what Paul says. He says, You and I cannot believe

and fall for the lie that it's good people that go to heaven. Friends, it's not good people that go to heaven. It's forgiven people that go to heaven. Heaven is a place of complete 100% perfection.

And I don't wanna toot my own horn. I mean, I will a little bit, but I'm a pretty good person. You know what I mean? Like I'm like 90% awesome. Like

a lot of the major sins that I used to carry, they have fallen off my life. If you follow me around, you're gonna see me doing some things and saying some things to my kids. You're like, Are you sure you're a pastor? But for the most part, I'm a pretty good person. But here's the reality. You take 500,000,000

of me, put us in heaven, fast forward that whole dilemma thirty years, we're right back to Apache Junction in no time. I'm just kidding. Okay? It was a joke. Some of you are like, I love Apache Junction. I do too. We're back to Gilbert. Here's why I say this. What Paul is telling us,

Paul is showing us heaven is a place of complete perfection, not goodness. We have to remember that. We are just as condemned as those people. There's nothing we can do. Here's how Paul is going to conclude. I promise I'm getting close to wrapping up so we can go watch football. Verse 14, he says, Even Gentiles

who do not have God's lit and raw, they show that they know his law when they instinctively obey it. Even without having heard it, they demonstrate that God's law is written in their hearts. For their own conscious and thoughts either accuse them or tell them that they are doing good.

And this is the message that I proclaim, that the day is coming when God through Christ Jesus will judge everyone's secret life. Paul kind of throughout this entire theological manifesto, he weaves in and out these proofs that he sees for who God is. Again, remember the book of Romans

is a letter that he's writing to Rome that he knew would get to the masses. He knew that you and I some thousands of years later would be reading this. And in Romans one, he makes an argument that God is real because of creation. He says, if you look at the complexity of creation,

there's no way that you can think that all of this is just random. He said creation proves that there's something bigger. And in Romans two, in the middle of this theological manifesto, he ties in the fact that you and I as humans have to pause

and remember that we're the only species in this circle of life that have this moral compass written in our hearts. And he says, where does that come from? He says, even the Gentiles who've never been to church, who've never heard about the good news, who've never seen the law that the Jews have, they just inherently

know right and wrong. And he says, look at the way that the circle of life works outside of the human race. It's okay for a young lion to go and eat and kill an old lion so that he can mate with his wife. And then when she ultimately has cubs, it's okay for him to eat all the male cubs so that he has no competition.

He says, that's not cool for you and I as humans. At least it shouldn't be, right? Why is that? He says, because we're the only ones for some reason that inherently have morality. Now we might not all agree on exactly what good and bad is, but all of us has some moral compass built into us. Paul says, don't dismiss that.

It is proof that God is real. It is proof that God built you in his image. The only part of creation that is actually made in the image of God is you and the moral compass is proof of it. And then he concludes the first half of Romans chapter two, and he says, but remember friends,

there is a day that's coming where God through Jesus, he tells us the standard through Jesus. He's going to judge your secret lives. Paul doesn't even beat around the bush and goes, Okay, hypothetically, let's assume that you have a secret life. He just goes, Look, fool, I know you've been in church for a while.

You look like you have it all together, but I know what you do in the secret. And if we can just be honest, all of us do things in the secret that fall really far short of God's standards.

It might not be your actions, but it could be your thoughts. It could be your motives. It could be your intent. What Paul is saying is that God sees all of it. And if you're perfect, if you're great, you do everything a 100% to God's standards, you're good. You don't need this message. But he says, for the rest of us,

man, we have no hope. Paul is painting a really bleak picture in Romans one. In Romans two, he's making the bad news really bad. Why? So that he can set up the greatest news the world has ever heard.

He's telling us, it doesn't matter if you're unrighteous or you think you're pretty good because of the things that you do. All of us are condemned before a holy God. What do we do? I don't know. Come back next week. We'll look at Romans three. No. I'm just kidding. We'll peek in.

I wanna peek in. Here's what Paul says. This, friends, is where this message becomes a little bit hopeful. Romans three twenty three, Paul's gonna bring all this up. We'll dive more into this next week. But here's what Paul says.

He says, Everyone, the unrighteous, the righteous, the Romans one, the Romans two, everyone has sinned. We all fall short of God's glorious standard. Yet God freely and graciously declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty of our sins.

For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they simply believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and he did not punish those of us who sinned in times past.

Romans three twenty six is one of the greatest messages and greatest verses in the entire bible for he was looking ahead, including them in what he would do in this present time. God did this to demonstrate his righteousness for he himself is fair and just and he declares sinners to be right in his sight when they believe

in Jesus. Friends,

it's all we have. Romans three twenty three makes this whole thing simple. It's not about behaving. It's not about doing the right things. It's about believing in Jesus. God, as a just God, he has to punish sin.

He has to pay for the sin that we've entered into. And it's either us or somebody that stood in our place. And Paul's gonna say, that's what Jesus did. He didn't just come to be a good person. He came to be the good person to satisfy a righteous and holy judge

so that you and I don't have to stand in the place of condemnation anymore. But in that entire thing we'll see next week, it is not about what you do. It is about who and how you believe. Jesus is the only way any of us have a shot. Let me tell you one more Christmas story as I wrap this whole thing up.

I probably could have just shared this and we all could have left thirty minutes ago. But one of my favorite Christmas stories was a couple years ago with my dad. My dad is notorious

for, like, not buying gifts for anybody. My mom always, like, buys her own gifts that are from him, and then my dad's always surprised at, like, what he got her on Christmas morning. He's like, oh, that's awesome. I'm glad I got that for you. Well, there was one year my dad decided to get these gifts for my mom because she was kinda telling him, hey, we're just mean a lot. And so my dad goes and he shows up with these four gifts.

And we were like, man, this is like, this is not my dad. If you know my dad, he is not the shopper. Like, it's just not who he is. My mom's sitting there Christmas morning, and we're watching her unwrap the gifts. And the first one she opens up is a Starbucks gift card.

It's like you got mom a Starbucks gift card, but there was something weird about it because like, you know, when you get a Starbucks gift card, they give you like an envelope and you put like who it's from and who it's to. There was no envelope. It was just like a random Starbucks gift card wrapped up and given to my mom. We're like, okay, it is what it is. And then she proceeded to open up the next three gifts.

And it was like this little random waterfall thing that was like $6.

It was some other little trinket things. And the third one that my mom opened up, she looked at my dad and she's like, what's going on here? So what do mean what's going on here? She's like, I don't buy any of this. Where'd you get these? But he's like, I I went shopping. What are you talking about?

My mom's like, no. I know what's going on. And my dad finally just caved, he was like, alright. My secretary gave me a Starbucks gift card. I threw the envelope out. I just gave it to you. I was getting beer at CVS. I saw three things on the counter. I bought all three. I put them in this, you know, this thing. I wrapped them for you, and I called it good.

And in the moment I watched my dad's attempt to give my mom a gift with the completely wrong intent. And at the end of the whole thing, he was worse off than if he had just let my mom buy her own gift. Here's why I say that. What Paul is saying is that self righteousness for you and I

is thinking that because we brought God some gift even though we have the wrong motive, we have the wrong intent, we're doing it out of a religious heart and out of this thing of trying to be our own God.

He says, you're the one that's in the position of most danger. You're actually worse off than you were before you ever even entered into this whole saving faith with Jesus thing. What God does not need for us to do is bring him our terrible gifts and go, hey, aren't you pleased with me now?

He says, the only person I'm pleasing is my son Jesus. And if you accept him, you believe him, then I will see what he did in his fulfillment for you. Friends, this is our message. This is the only one that we have.

The world needs to know that they are condemned like we are condemned, but Jesus made a way so that all of us can be made right with God. Father, I thank you, Lord, for every single person that's here this morning. God, I pray that for those of us who are here this morning who have never had the moment

where we have made you the Lord of our life. And that we simply believed that we had a moment that the Bible says where the Holy Spirit in us awoke us to the truth of who you are. And that we would acknowledge that we would believe that you stepped out of heaven two thousand years ago.

You lived the life that we couldn't live. You died the death that the Bible says that we deserve to die because the penalty of our sin is death. It can either be our death or we can take Jesus's death and let it be the propitiation propitiation for for our our sin. Sin. Father, would we accept what you did as a sufficient

salvation gift? For those of us that are here this morning, that through just trying and striving, we've settled in to just this life of self righteousness. God, would you convict us? Would you remind us that we are just today in the same desperate position needing grace as we were when we first met you?

And the God that you would fuel us this holiday season to be your hope bearers, your kingdom advancers, reminding the world that there is a savior that loves them and that we need him just as much as they do.

Father, we need you desperately this morning. Do what you do. In the mighty name of Jesus, everybody said, amen and amen. Hey, you guys are awesome. We would love for you to stick around, hang out, grab some coffee. If not, we'll see you all next week. I hope you have a great rest of your weekend.

Thanks for joining us online this weekend. Let us know if we can help you in any way. Make sure to follow us on social media and connect with us on rockpoint.io for prayer and everything happening here at Rock Point.