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[0:00] As you guys sit down, I want you to open your Bibles to Romans chapter 3.

[0:18] We're going to be covering the first four verses of Romans chapter 3 this morning. We have been now, since the middle of May, walking through the book of Romans, and we've arrived at chapter 3 now.

[0:31] And if you haven't been with us through the last few months, there may be a few things that we will allude to and reference to that you may think. I don't remember. I'm not quite sure what he's talking about there.

[0:42] And I encourage you to go onto the website, backtrack through the sermons, because Erin and even Kay, while she's at home kind of recovering from surgery, they've still been faithful to post those sermons each week.

[0:53] You can go back and you can listen to those and catch up on the book of Romans and hear some things that you might have missed out on, because they inform the text that we're going to look at this morning, and I'll try to summarize some of that for you in a bit.

[1:04] But this morning we're in these first four verses of chapter 3, and I'd like you guys to stand in honor of God's Word as we read. The Apostle Paul writes, Then what advantage has the Jew?

[1:17] Or what is the value of circumcision? Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. What if some were unfaithful?

[1:28] Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means. Let God be true, though everyone were a liar, as it is written that you may be justified in your words and prevail when you are judged.

[1:44] Father, let your Spirit now give us understanding of your Word. We ask in Christ's name. Amen. Amen. If you have been with us over the last few weeks, particularly over the last four or five weeks, as we've been in Romans chapter 2, and as we've been walking through Paul's indictment of the Jewish people as sinners before God, something should have been bothering you throughout the last few weeks as we walk through that chapter, chapter 2 of Romans.

[2:13] Something should have been nagging you. Something should have been gnawing at the back of your mind if you are familiar with the Bible. If you're not familiar with the Bible, then it wouldn't have bothered you at all. And our goal is for you to become familiar with the Bible on Sunday mornings as we preach through, book by book and verse by verse.

[2:29] But if you are already familiar with much of God's Word, then there should have been a nagging question. Because in chapter 1, beginning in verse 18 down to the end of chapter 1, Paul really heavily indicts the Gentiles, the non-Jews, with being sinners and deserving God's wrath.

[2:46] And then in chapter 2, he turns his attention to the Jewish people and he shows that they also, the Jews also, are sinners and deserve God's wrath. And he comes to a conclusion towards the end of chapter 2 that we looked at last week that is almost shocking in how clearly he states it.

[3:03] Take a look in verse 25 of chapter 2. Paul says that circumcision, that is, the preeminent mark of what it means to be a Jew, so read this as Jewishness, circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law, but if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision.

[3:23] And then down in verse 27, He who is physically uncircumcised but keeps the law will condemn you who have the written code and circumcision but break the law. For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical, but a Jew is one inwardly.

[3:41] These are shocking statements for a Jewish apostle following a Jewish Messiah to make that your Jewishness, he says, of many people, of himself and of his Jewish kinsmen, on judgment day, that it will be of no benefit to you as God renders to each person according to what they've done, as God assesses the lives of every single individual, whether you were Jew or Gentile, will be of no help to you on that day.

[4:12] And if you know your Bible very well, or if you've read the Old Testament at all, the question should come into your mind, then what's the point of the entire Old Testament, Paul? I mean, what is the point of choosing Abraham and choosing Abraham's descendants and tracking with them throughout all of those centuries and blessing them and protecting them and guarding them and correcting them when they go astray?

[4:36] What is the point in all of that if on judgment day, Jewishness doesn't count for anything? This is a strange thing that you've been saying, Paul, because we have the Bible.

[4:47] We've read through the Bible and it's all about the Jews. So, if you're right, Paul, and if Jewishness is internal and non-external and it doesn't really ultimately matter whether you are a physical descendant of Abraham, if that's true, Paul, then what's the point of being a Jew?

[5:07] What's the advantage of Jewishness? What is the advantage of being able to say, Abraham is our father? What's the advantage of that, Paul? And Paul does not avoid that.

[5:18] He asks the question himself in chapter 3, verse 1, what advantage then has the Jew or what is the value of circumcision? That's a question that has to be answered in light of everything that he has said now in chapter 2.

[5:33] It's got to be answered. It's not one that you can put off. It's not one that you can pretend doesn't matter. You have to answer that question. Now, I know that those of us living in 2014, in general, we are not accustomed to asking these kinds of theological questions.

[5:52] The evangelical church, particularly in America in this day and age, is not particularly theologically oriented. So we might think, well, that question didn't pop in my head at all.

[6:04] I wasn't concerned about that at all. I mean, I heard what the Apostle Paul said and I think, well, okay, good. It's not about your outward characteristics. It's about what's inward and that sounds great and that's good because none of us are actually descended from Abraham.

[6:17] None of us are Jews so that's good news for us. So I'm not going to think about that and I'm not going to worry about that. But it is a question that must be asked and must be answered because if the Apostle Paul, in laboring throughout the book of Romans to present his Gospel to the Roman Christians, if he contradicts the entire Old Testament, if everything that Paul says runs contrary to God's Word, if the Gospel that Paul preaches contradicts the Word of God written, then Paul's Gospel is not a true Gospel and Paul approves himself to be a false apostle.

[6:53] We have to remember that in this letter, Paul is writing to a group of Christians in the city of Rome who by and large do not know him. There are a handful of believers who have traveled to Rome that know the Apostle Paul.

[7:07] But on the whole, the church in Rome has no personal relationship with this man who writes this letter. And so Paul, intending to go to Rome and then from Rome to travel elsewhere to Spain and more distant lands in order to preach the Gospel elsewhere, Paul must establish a good relationship with the Roman Christians if he's going to have a stopping off point, a place where he can receive help and supplies to move on in his missionary efforts.

[7:32] He must establish a strong, good relationship with the Romans and this is his attempt to do that. This letter is his attempt to explain to the Roman Christians this is who I am, this is what I preach.

[7:44] And if Paul falters here, if Paul shows himself to be at odds with God's written revelation, then Paul's not a true apostle.

[7:56] His Gospel is not the true Gospel. He will gain no support for further missionary efforts nor should he gain any support for further missionary efforts from the church in Rome. So he has to answer this question and we need him to answer this question because we need to know that it's not just portions of the Bible that are God's Word to us.

[8:14] We need to know that it's not just the Old Testament that's authoritative or just the Gospels that's authoritative or just Paul's writings that's authoritative. We need to know that this is a book, a unified whole and not just a collection that we can pick and choose from.

[8:29] We need to know that this whole thing fits together harmoniously. There is a temptation today oftentimes among Christians to pick and choose.

[8:43] And so oftentimes you will even hear people pit one portion of Scripture against another portion of Scripture. So you'll hear people say, well, I'm more of a red letter type of Christian. You know, I mean, I really, I try to live by the things that Jesus said.

[8:56] That's what I like to read. That's what I like to live by. And I find myself sometimes I don't really like some of the things that Paul says. I mean, Paul says things that just don't sit well with me and I don't think Paul's right all the time.

[9:08] We cherry pick oftentimes the parts of Scripture that we want to believe. Or oftentimes we will reject the Old Testament in its entirety or at least the law of Moses that we really don't like because it's got a lot of strange commandments and a lot of strange requirements for the people of Israel that don't make sense to us.

[9:24] Some of them that run completely counter to the morals of our age and so oftentimes we will want to set that aside in its entirety or at least the portions of it that we don't like and we will pick and choose.

[9:37] But Paul will not do that because Paul knows that God's Word stands or falls as one whole unit and he knows that his Gospel will be vindicated if his Gospel can be shown to proclaim the Word as it's already revealed.

[9:53] But if he contradicts, he's in trouble. And now he has been saying for a full chapter, all of chapter 2, that Jewishness has no advantage for you or anyone else on Judgment Day and he has to ask the question, then what is the advantage of being a Jew?

[10:11] The whole Hebrew Bible, they don't have the New Testament completed yet, so their Bible is what we call the Old Testament. So for them, the whole Bible is about Jewishness and the advantage of being a Jew and God's blessing upon the Jews and God's protection of the Jews.

[10:28] So Paul, show us please how this message that you're preaching to us as your Gospel and that you would commend to us as the truth, show us how it does not contradict the entire Bible that we possess.

[10:44] We need to know this and we need to see this and he does not avoid it. What advantage then is there in being a Jew and what is the value of circumcision? And you might, if you were only reading the book of Romans, if you were only reading this book and unaware of what Paul says elsewhere in his writings or unaware of the Old Testament in his entirety, if all you had to base your Christian theology upon was the book of Romans, you might, having read chapter 2 and reading this verse, expect him to answer, there is no advantage it doesn't matter as long as your heart is right before God.

[11:21] You might expect that kind of an answer from Paul, but that's not what he says at all. Notice what he says in verse 2. He says, much in every way.

[11:36] There are massive advantages, the Apostle Paul says, to being a Jew. It matters greatly. Now, Paul is beginning to make a distinction here that I think is really important for us to understand.

[11:51] And the distinction is between blessings and promises that God made to the people of Israel, that he fulfilled to the people of Israel, and salvation itself as a separate, distinct issue.

[12:08] So that there can be, in Paul's mind, there can be great advantages to Jewishness that nevertheless do not lead to your automatic salvation.

[12:20] Why do I say that? Because here he says there's great advantage in being a Jew, but then if you look down in verse 9 of chapter 3, Paul says, what then? Are we Jews any better off?

[12:34] No, not at all, he says. There's great advantage to being a Jew, and yet as a Jew, you're not any better off. What does that mean? It means that on one level, Jewishness does come, or has in the past come, with great blessings and privileges.

[12:53] But, when it comes to your standing before God as a sinner, it gives you no advantage on judgment day. That's the point that he's going to make in the paragraph that we're looking at now.

[13:06] There are advantages to being a Jew, but that does not contradict this verdict. Jews, too, stand guilty before God as sinners deserving His wrath.

[13:18] So, let's look a little more at what he says here in our paragraph that we're looking at. He says that there are great advantages much in every way. And then he says, to begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God.

[13:31] Now, I want us to pause right there because it sounds like he's about to list things, right? Well, to start off with, here's one thing, and then you're expecting a whole list of all sorts of privileges of being Jewish.

[13:43] At least, when I hear somebody say, well, first of all this, I'm expecting a second of all later on. If somebody says, well, number one, I expected number two at some point in time, and number three, and four, and five, and so forth.

[13:55] But all we get is the first of all here. First of all. Which may mean that Paul only intends to list for us now the most important advantage of being a Jew.

[14:05] This is of first importance. Not just first in the list, but first in importance. I think that's true, but there is a list to be had within the book of Romans of the privileges of being a descendant of Abraham.

[14:20] Hold your place in chapter three. I want you to see this in chapter nine because so much of what Paul says in this week's passage, and then especially next week's passage, anticipates what he's going to say in much greater detail in Romans chapter nine.

[14:35] And believe me, we will spend plenty of time in Romans chapter nine when we get there. But this statement, first of all, anticipates a list that doesn't actually happen until Romans chapter nine.

[14:48] Take a look at verse four where we see the list. Paul says, they are Israelites and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, the promises.

[15:01] To them belong the patriarchs and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen. Now, that's quite a list of privileges.

[15:12] They've been adopted by God. They have the glory and the covenants. They receive the law of God. They possess the right worship of God at the temple they did in the old covenant.

[15:24] They have the covenants with Abraham and Moses and David. Those were made with Jews. They have the law, the promises. They have the patriarchs and most important, Christ Himself, the Messiah, is born from their race.

[15:43] He is a Jew as well. So are there great privileges? Are there great blessings? And being a Jew? Sure. But preeminent among those blessings is the one that he lists here in chapter 3, the only one that he tells us about here.

[15:59] To begin with, first of all, and of first importance, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. Now, I think that he chooses this privilege not only because it is, in one sense, preeminent above the other privileges.

[16:14] So many of the other privileges are a result of being entrusted with the oracles of God. Right? I mean, they have a record of the covenants because they have the written Word of God. They have the instructions for proper worship because they have the written Word of God.

[16:28] They know about the patriarchs because they have the written Word of God. The law is itself a part of the written Word of God. So many of the privileges listed in chapter 9 flow from this one privilege God has entrusted to the Jews and at this point in time, prior to the writing of the New Testament, to the Jews only, the oracles of God.

[16:48] That is, the written Word of God. They alone possess that throughout human history. There's not any other book outside of the Bible that can claim to be God's revelation in written form.

[17:02] There is not. Not the Koran. Not the Book of Mormon. There is no other book ever given to mankind that can be called the oracles of God.

[17:14] This book and this book alone. And when Paul was writing the book of Romans, the written revelation of God, the Old Testament, was entrusted to the Jews.

[17:26] And he wants to remind us, first off, only the Jews possess the oracles of God. That's one reason that he chooses that.

[17:40] Another reason, of course, is because his focus throughout chapter 2 has often been upon the written Word of God. On the giving of the Word of God. On the violation of the Word of God.

[17:50] In fact, 20 times from verse 12 all the way down to verse 29. 20 times he in one way or another refers to the written Word of God.

[18:02] Most frequently as the law. So verse 12. All who sinned without the law will also perish without the law. And all who sinned under the law will be judged by the law.

[18:13] You can see down in verse 18 that they have been instructed from the law. In verse 20, the Jews have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and the truth. He quotes from the Old Testament in verse 24.

[18:26] Quoting from the book of Isaiah. He refers to the law two more times in verse 25. He refers to the precepts of the law in verse 26. He refers to the written code in verse 27.

[18:37] Over and over, over 20 times in these verses he refers to the written Word of God. So it's in keeping with what Paul has been saying in chapter 2 in highlighting the importance of having the law and yet violating the law in chapter 2.

[18:51] It is in keeping with that that he would cite as the preeminent privilege of the Jewish people the fact that they and they alone throughout human history up until the time of the New Covenant were the recipients and were the ones entrusted with the Word of God written.

[19:06] The oracles of God. That's incredibly important and the Apostle Paul wants to make sure that we don't forget that. No privilege in being Jewish? No, there's great privilege. They have the Word of God.

[19:18] The problem, of course, is that the Word of God is not merely a collection of promises. Oh, it contains great promises. But the Word of God is also a collection of great warnings to go beside those promises.

[19:35] And the Jews, as the recipients of God's Word, were not only the recipients of great promises, but the recipients of great, great warnings. We saw that last week. We turned to the book of Deuteronomy.

[19:45] We won't do it again this morning, but we saw that in Deuteronomy. This list of blessings and then curses and then Moses, assuming that the people will incur the curses, talks to them about the day when those curses come upon you.

[20:03] It's a book that contains promises, blessings, warnings, and curses. And so Paul goes on to say, these who receive the oracles of God, what if some of them were unfaithful?

[20:17] Now he's being kind there when he says some because he knows the vast majority of the Jewish people at this time have rejected the very Messiah to whom the entire Hebrew Scriptures were pointing so that they all fall under the category of unfaithful now, the vast majority of them.

[20:35] He knows that. He's being kind here. He's less kind in chapter 9 where he talks about his great sorrow, his unceasing anguish for his kinsmen according to the flesh.

[20:47] He just sort of lumps them all together there. He recognizes that the vast majority of the Jewish people in his time have rejected the Messiah and therefore have disbelieved the Word of God about him contained within the Hebrew Scriptures and they can therefore be labeled unfaithful.

[21:06] But that's not the only reason that they're labeled unfaithful because throughout chapter 2 he has shown over and over that though the Jewish people received the Word of God, they were not throughout the majority of their history obedient to the Word of God.

[21:20] I mean, much of the historical books of the Old Testament are just a repetition of the cycle of God punishes Israel for disobedience to the law, they repent of their sin, a generation or so lives in obedience to God's law, the next generation is disobedient, so God punishes them and they repent and then they live in obedience and then they rebel and then He punishes.

[21:42] It is a cycle of disobedience and repentance in view of God's judgment upon them. And so just looking at the history of Israel, Paul could say the vast majority of Jewish people throughout history, though they possess the law and the oracles of God, were not obedient to that Word.

[21:59] And he can look around in his own day as he does in chapter 2 and he accuses the Jewish people of being hypocrites, of having the law and expecting others to obey the law and yet failing to obey the law themselves.

[22:13] So he can look at history, he can look at their current disobedience, he can look at their rejection of the Messiah to whom the Hebrew Scriptures testify, and in every way the vast majority of the Jewish people are found to be unfaithful.

[22:27] That is, they did not trust the Word that was given to them. They didn't trust. In fact, there is actually a play on words here in this paragraph because the word unfaithful means to not trust and the word faithful means to be trustworthy.

[22:47] And so, if you read all the words that have the same root word, it sounds something like this. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. What if some of them did not trust?

[23:00] Does their lack of trust nullify the trustworthiness of God? So, there is a play on words here. Though God entrusted them with His Word, they did not in turn trust the God who had given the Word, proved themselves to be untrusting.

[23:15] But what of God? Does the fact that the majority of the Jewish people have proved to be unfaithful and untrusting of His Word, does that nullify God's own trustworthiness?

[23:28] Will God be true to His Word? That is a trickier question than you might think. Because God's Word says if the descendants of Abraham, if even the Jewish people themselves, if they break the covenant, the covenant curses will come upon them.

[23:45] So for God to be faithful and true to His Word, these Messiah-rejecting, law-disobeying Jews, descendants of Abraham, must receive the covenant promises.

[23:57] Otherwise, He thereby proves Himself to be untrustworthy. So the Jewish opponent of Paul's Gospel might say to Paul, Paul, you keep saying there's no advantage to Jewishness when it comes to Judgment Day.

[24:16] But God made us promises. And if on Judgment Day, those promises are not helpful to us, if they do not clear us of our guilt, then God's not faithful because He made us promises and He's not faithful.

[24:31] And Paul turns around and says, no, no, no, no. Read the whole thing. God is not faithful to His Word if He does not bring upon you the curses that He promised when you disobey His Word and disbelieve His Word.

[24:48] The faithfulness of God, the trustworthiness of God, the righteousness for God, for the Apostle Paul, cannot ever be diminished or challenged in any sort of way.

[25:00] And the very thing that might be thrown in Paul's face by his opponents, he would turn around on them and say, no, you've misunderstood the Word.

[25:12] God is only unfaithful to His Word if He does not punish you. And you, my kinsmen, my Jewish brother and sister, you, the wrath of God abides on you.

[25:32] What a dangerous thing for Paul to say, for a Jewish man to say to Jewish men and women. You recall that every time Paul came into a new city to preach the Gospel, the first place that he went to say things like this was always the synagogue.

[25:50] begins to help us to see why the leaders of the synagogue and say Corinth, for example, had him flogged and driven out of town. Explains why they would want to stone him, kill him, get rid of him.

[26:07] Because he takes the entire Word of God, not the parts they like, and he puts it before them like a mirror. And he shows that they stand guilty.

[26:18] they are sinners in desperate need of being saved from their own sins. And it is not a matter merely of them needing to find some way to escape that.

[26:32] Or in some way say, but we are the people of God because it is God Himself who poses a danger to them. Hell is not merely as some people teach.

[26:46] Hell is not merely the sort of natural outcome of our sinful ways. That's not what hell is. Hell is not like, well, it's happening over here and God doesn't really have anything to do with it.

[26:58] That's just the natural consequences of living a sinful life and rejecting God. That's not what it is. It is the active outpouring of God's wrath. And the problem that the Jews have is the same problem that the Gentiles have.

[27:10] We all have the same problem. And we cannot just slide out of the problem by saying, yeah, but God's God will protect me from what I deserve for my sins. Your problem is not merely some natural outcome.

[27:23] Our problem is God Himself who pours out His wrath upon sinners. And that's what Paul is telling the Jewish people. Your problem is the God who made you those promises because He said He would curse you for breaking them and you have broken them.

[27:39] And your lack of trust in God's Word does not diminish His faithfulness one bit. In fact, it goes further. He's going to take it a step further in verse 4.

[27:51] His answer is by no means. But then He says this, let God be true though everyone were a liar. So now He's broadened the scope.

[28:05] It's not just that some Jews, read that, the vast majority of Jews, it's not just that some Jews have proven to be unfaithful. Paul says if every man, if every single human being on the planet shows themselves to be unfaithful, refuses to trust in the Word of God, God is still true.

[28:26] God's faithfulness and trustworthiness and God's truth itself is never diminished. If all of humanity rejects God and therefore God sends every human being He has ever created to hell and pours out His wrath on them, He is no less true and glorious than if He did not do that.

[28:47] Paul wants us to understand, he wants us to see and be clear on this. God is absolutely 100% of the time true to His Word, be that promise or warning, blessing or curse.

[29:03] And if we all reject it, He is no less God. He is no less the sovereign Creator of all things and ruler of all things and true and holy and righteous and good, even if He were to punish all of us.

[29:21] And what's His proof for making these statements? What is the Apostle Paul's proof for saying that the Jewish people and everyone else ultimately stands under the wrath that God promised in His Word?

[29:39] Well, He cites one text from the Old Testament in verse 4. He says, As it is written, that you may be justified in your words and prevail when you are judged.

[29:50] Now, that is a quotation from Psalm 51. And the quotation by itself is a little confusing here. Okay, so God is true even if He has to judge everybody because it's written in the Bible that you may be justified in your words and prevail when you're judged.

[30:09] And you might think, I don't understand that quotation. I don't get that. Like, how does that prove the point that you're trying to make? It only proves the point if you know the context. Like, turn back to Psalm 51.

[30:21] I want you to turn there. The Apostle Paul wants us to recall the context in which this was originally spoken.

[30:33] And let me chase the rabbit really quickly before I get back to Psalm 51. I want you to think for just a moment on what Paul expects of his readers. Consider this for a moment.

[30:46] I don't think Paul is unaware that the quotation there in verse 4, all by itself, just that little snippet from Psalm 51, I don't think he's unaware that that doesn't make sense by itself.

[30:59] I think that Paul expects his readers to be able to recall that that verse comes from Psalm 51 and to know a little bit about Psalm 51.

[31:10] Paul has very high expectations of his readers. He just does. Which has implications for us. It means that as we read the Bible and as we increase in our knowledge of the Bible, we ought to gain in our understanding of other parts of Scripture.

[31:31] It also means that we have a responsibility as Christians to not skim the Bible, to not just read the Bible casually. It means that we must really sink our teeth in.

[31:43] Following this is not all that difficult for you and I. Because most of us, a lot of you have, I can just tell by how thick your Bibles are. Tom's Bible is deadly thick. And it's a hardback.

[31:54] It's dangerous. You all have studied Bibles, right? And so they've got little notes down at the bottom. Some of them, I was reading in a study Bible the other day, and the actual text of the Bible was this big and the notes were all the rest of the page, two-thirds of the page, okay?

[32:06] So we have studied Bibles a lot of us. Even this little Bible that I preach out of has a few little references down on the bottom there. It's easy for us. I mean, as I'm reading in Romans chapter 3 here, there are little quotation marks around the quote in verse 4 and it's kind of tabbed over, it's kind of set aside in the type face, so it's the Roman Christians.

[32:32] For one thing, when the book of Romans was originally written, there weren't even spaces between words, okay? There were no quotation marks, there was no punctuation whatsoever, all right?

[32:44] So as the text is being read to them, even if they're reading it themselves, which most of them would not be able to do because they didn't possess a copy of it, they would simply come, they would come to the Sunday gathering of the assembly of the church and the reader would read, say, the entire book of Romans to them in one sitting, that would be a reading.

[33:03] And just by hearing it, they're supposed to be able to pick out and know as it is written, okay, here's a quotation, boom, I know that one, that's from the Psalms, David wrote that, here's what happened, I know all the context, right? That's sort of what he expects in order for us to fully understand that verse in Romans chapter 3.

[33:19] This is a high threshold here for the Apostle Paul's readers, which means that you and I need to be good Bible readers. That's my rabbit, I'm back, let's go, Psalm 51, alright?

[33:31] Psalm 51, in case you don't know, is a psalm that David wrote after he fell into sin with Bathsheba. You may be aware of that story where David saw Bathsheba and he was attracted to her and he wanted her and she was a married woman, so that presented a problem for him and so I won't give you all the details, but in any event he arranges for her husband to be sent to the front lines, her husband is killed because David has had an affair with her.

[33:55] So now David's guilty of murder and adultery. He's confronted by the prophet Nathan about that and he repents. And this psalm is David's expression of his own repentance for those great sins.

[34:10] Now listen to what he says in verse 1. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love. According to your abundant! mercy, blot out my transgressions.

[34:21] Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me against you. You only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight so that here it is, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.

[34:42] This is King David. This is the preeminent king of all the kings of Israel. This is one of whom the Messiah would come.

[34:53] In fact, when you read through the New Testament, Jesus is not referred to as the son of very many people, to highlight his relationship with him. Of course, Joseph and Mary, that's natural.

[35:05] Joseph is his adopted father, Mary is his mother. He's referred to, of course, as the son of God, because he is. But then, there are two other people that he's referred to as the son of. Abraham and David.

[35:18] David, the preeminent king of all the kings of Israel, better even than his great wise son Solomon. This is David here, the beginning of the dynasty, the one to whom all the messianic prophecies were given.

[35:32] And David, such a one, in his sin, recognizes, because of my sin, you are justified if you condemn me.

[35:47] you, God, are shown to be righteous and good and holy and true and faithful to your own word if you judge me, even the king of Israel.

[36:01] If you pour out your wrath on me, if you condemn me, you are just in all your dealings with me because I am a guilty sinner. So the apostle Paul, in order to prove his point, that God is faithful to his word, and remains righteous and holy in his judgment of the Jewish people, says, if this applies to King David, if David himself recognized that his sin, despite his status as a Jew and as the king of the Jews, despite that status, his sin deserves God's judgment and if he receives it, God is just to give it.

[36:40] If David can recognize that, should not, Paul says, all my Jewish kinsmen recognize, that they stand guilty deserving the wrath of God?

[36:51] The answer is absolutely yes. There can be no escape for the sinner except for Jesus Christ.

[37:03] There can be no appeal to your attempts to be good. There can be no appeal to your ethnic status. There can be no appeal to your family background.

[37:14] There can be no appeal to your church attendance. There can be no appeal to your knowledge of God's Word. There is no appeal that you and I can make except for faith in Jesus alone that will rescue us on Judgment Day.

[37:30] If that is true of David, if that is true of Israel, how much more true is it of you and I? Gentiles, according to the flesh, cut off and separated from God and all of His promises apart from Jesus.

[37:45] It is absolutely true. I suppose that in reference to the sermons that I have been preaching over the last several weeks where I have been trying to connect the futility of claiming Jewish privilege on Judgment Day, where I have been connecting that with the futility of claiming a Christian heritage on Judgment Day, I suppose someone could say, then what is the value of going to church?

[38:11] Right? What's the point of reading your Bible and living the Christian lifestyle and doing all of those things? What's the point?

[38:22] What's the advantage of it all if it doesn't help you on Judgment Day? To which I think the Apostle Paul might respond much in every way. First of all, you were entrusted with the oracles of God.

[38:36] Because the church, Paul says, is the pillar. And buttress of the truth. Much in every way is there privilege in being the recipients of God's word.

[38:50] And as the people of God in the new covenant, as the church, we have great privilege and great responsibility for having this book entrusted to us.

[39:02] It will not help you on Judgment Day to memorize it from cover to cover. It will not help you on Judgment Day to have been here every Sunday. It will not help you. But what a privilege it is to have this.

[39:15] And then, in addition to having this word, to believe this word, and to trust this word, and to trust in the Savior and Messiah of whom it speaks, and know not only do I have the privilege of having and passing on the oracles of God, I now have the security of knowing because I have trusted in that word, and I have trusted in the Christ of that word who gave himself for me, I also have the security of knowing that on Judgment Day, though possession of the oracles of God is no value to me on Judgment Day, I can simply claim I trusted in the one to whom this word points.

[40:00] And all judgment and all wrath is immediately turned away and spent upon him in your stead.

[40:12]  Let's pray.