Benefits and Drawbacks, Part 5

I didn’t plan it this way, but
that could not be a better introduction to the passage before us this
morning. The passage focused on being careful how we live our
lives, being careful to do good in the short life that we’ve
been given. We come again to Romans chapter
two, and I apologize, we need to jump immediately into the
text. I’ll give just a very brief review
and introduction. We have been studying Romans
chapter two for some weeks. Romans chapter two is essentially
a reply to maybe the exuberant Jew who thought that perhaps
he was exempt from God’s wrath after Paul gave such a scathing
indictment in chapter one of the Gentile. We perhaps can picture
in our mind as this letter was read, or perhaps as the letter
was read aloud, that the Jew was cheering, at least inwardly,
for the indictment that finally had come on the Gentile world. And perhaps the Jew in his self
congratulating heart thought truly that he was exempt. And
Paul begins almost immediately in chapter one to say that’s
not the case. It is not so. We have been studying
these past weeks on what I’ve referred to as benefits and drawbacks
to the Jew. There were indeed benefits for
the Jew and Paul will eventually get into them. But what blessings
the Jews had received, essentially they had turned into drawbacks
in their treatment of them. In beginning in verse one, we
saw the privilege and arrogance of the nation of Israel privileges
indeed, but privileges that had not wrought a humble spirit,
but rather had produced in them arrogance. In verse four, last
week, we saw the privileges and the oversight, the forgetfulness,
the casual, careless way that Israel had lived. And this morning
we see the privileges and the judgment that Israel faces. If you would. Read along with
me in verse beginning in verse one, we’ll carry all the way
down to verse 11. Where Paul writes, therefore,
you are without excuse every man of you who passes judgment
for in that you judge another, you condemn yourself for you
who judge practice the same things. We know that the judgment of
God rightly falls upon those who practice such things. And
do you suppose this, oh man, when you pass judgment upon those
who practice such things and do the same yourself, that you
will escape the judgment of God? Or do you think lightly of the
riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that
the kindness of God leads you to repentance? But because of
your stubbornness and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath
for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous
judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his
deeds. To those who, by perseverance
and doing good, seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal
life. But to those who are selfishly
ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness,
wrath and indignation. There will be tribulation and
distress for every soul of man who does evil of the Jew first
and also of the Greek. but glory and honor and peace
to every man who does good to the Jew first and also to the
Greek. For there is no partiality with
God. We have begun to look at this
lengthy chapter, this lengthy argument that Paul makes to the
Jew. The argument, as I’ve shared with you in weeks past, goes
all the way down to chapter 3, verse 20. What he is doing is
issuing a similar indictment to the Jewish nation. They have
no reason to be proud. They have no reason to think
that they are exempt from God’s judgment, that they too will
be judged essentially on the same standard. Paul has begun
in It’s essentially evaluating the status of the Jewish people.
Where do they stand in God’s economy? He will go on in chapter
three to begin a rebuttal of proposed arguments against this
indictment, and then he will provide in chapter three, verse
nine through 20, biblical support for that indictment. But to begin
with this morning, We come to the third section that Paul is
dealing with here in chapter two. We looked at the privileges
and arrogance of the Jewish nation. We looked at the privileges and
the oversight that they didn’t appropriate those things as they
ought. And now we look at the privileges and the resultant
judgment. On that nation. The privileges
and the judgment of the nation of Israel. What we come to first
is essentially a principle that is not so much stated as such
as we have to mine it out. And as we look even at the opening
sentence, when Paul says you are storing up wrath for yourself,
Paul is essentially ladling out a principle of God’s word that
is rightly applied to the Jewish nation. That little simple sentence
there in verse five, you are storing up wrath for yourself,
is the main thought of the entire rest of chapter two. Everything
else in chapter two hangs on that one statement. That’s the
principle of God’s impartial judgment declared. Look again. When Paul says in verse five,
but you because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart, you are
storing up wrath for yourself. This is an interesting image.
There is a note of irony here, storing up wrath. We don’t often,
if ever, conceive of storing up anything unpleasant, do we? And particularly God’s wrath.
There are similar ironic statements in Scripture. Proverbs 118 says
they lie in wait for their own blood. That’s a strange thought.
It’s you’re waiting to kill yourself. Typically, in Scripture, when
we think of storing up, we think of storing up good things. Matthew
620, store up for yourselves treasures in heaven. Don’t store
them up here on Earth. Don’t store up earthly treasures.
Store up heavenly wealth. You don’t know this because you’re
a consumer. But the big box stores, they
control you like you’re a mindless robot. They have each spring
what they call a storage event. They tell you what you’re going
to buy. They buy mass quantities of these
great big totes and they park them everywhere throughout the
big box stores and they make you buy storage equipment. They make you buy these supplies
for storage whether it’s a little small tote or a great big tote
or a shed or a bigger shed. They make you play their game. They tell you what you’re going
to buy. You just thought you were so smart when you went in
there and you said, ah, I need a tote to store my stuff. There’s lots of different ways
to store things. You store food that you cook
in the fall in a mason jar. You store stuff and things in
storage containers and totes and sheds and garages. And now
they have these things called pods, these big, huge metal boxes
that you can store lots of stuff. If you run out of room there,
you can rent a warehouse and store all kinds of things that
no one ever conceived from the smallest to the largest vessel,
no one ever conceived storing up God’s wrath. It’s almost a sick thought. And yet, it’s man’s own act.
James echoes this thought when he says, your gold and your silver
have rusted. Their rust will be a witness
against you and it will consume your flesh like fire. It is in
the last days that you have stored up your treasure. His indictment
to the rich man. We don’t think of storing up
things that are evil. storing up things that are terrible
and dreadful, storing up things like the wrath of God. But Paul tells the nation of
Israel that even though the wrath of God hasn’t yet come, even
though it was absolutely destined for the Gentile world that was
wrapped up in their heathen and idolatrous practices, even though
they were going to get it, And even though it seemed that Israel
would escape, what it really pointed to is the fact that they
were keeping it up to themselves. They were gathering it up. One
commentator said to treasure up is to lay out little by little
and thus accumulate a store of anything, whether good or bad.
The abusers of God’s goodness accumulate a store of wrath for
themselves. They treasure up for themselves
wrath at that day when wrath shall be manifested. They shall
not escape. God’s standards are no different.
The wrath of God is that same wrath that we have considered
since chapter one, verse 18. The wrath of God is revealed
from heaven against all ungodliness. And in Paul’s case, he says that
includes The Jew who is ungodly. He goes on to point out that
it will take place on the day of wrath, as we’ll see in a moment.
But that wrath is the wrath of God, it’s God’s wrath, it’s God’s
anger expressed. And something which God alone
has the authority to exercise. What I hoped we could do this
morning is pause for a few moments and just glance at these passages
and review what I would say are four gripping features of God’s
impartial judgment. That as we look at these principles,
as we look at these features of God’s wrath and we know God
does not change, we know that we, too, Have every bit at a
cause to bow here this morning and to ponder our own lives,
lest we be seen as living as hypocrites, as is the indictment
against the Jews. First of all, the cause of God’s
wrath, the cause of God’s wrath is stubborn on repentance, and
the Jews don’t have the corner on the market on that. Stubborn
unrepentance is every bit an occupational hazard of the Christian.
We think that just because, just like the Jew, just because we
haven’t been judged yet, just because we haven’t been indicted
and called into question yet, that our actions are rubber stamped
by God as being OK. Stubborn unrepentance is not
just a mark of the Jewish nation. This word stubbornness is a fascinating
one. Paul says that it’s because of
your stubbornness and unrepentant heart, it’s a stubborn heart
and it’s an unrepentant heart. Both of those terms point to
the nature of the heart. Stubbornness, it’s an interesting
word, said one translates the word sclerotase, which literally
refers to hardness. We have it in our own day and
age. When we hear the word arteriosclerosis, it’s hardening of the arteries.
And as one pointed out, hardening of the arteries is nothing, that’s
a physical condition. Hardening of the spiritual heart,
that’s a much worse condition. That’s it. Hardening of the arteries
can kill you physically in this life. Hardening of the heart can bring about an eternal doom. This hardness of heart, this
hardening of the heart spoken of so many times in Scripture.
Also, obviously, of the nation of Israel. Deuteronomy, remember
your servants, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, do not look at the
stubbornness of the people of their wickedness or their sin. Ezekiel, the house of the Lord,
will be not willing to listen to you since they are not willing
to listen to me. Surely the whole house of Israel is stubborn and
obstinate. Speaking of that hardness of
heart, that tendency to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to
God, to stiffen their neck against his grace and favor. And it didn’t
stop there. Even when Christ had come. And
Christ began to preach and to attempt to woo the nation of
Israel to repentance. One of the recurring features
in the life of Christ was his. Rebuke of the nation, Matthew,
1980, said to them, because of the hardness of heart, Moses
permitted you to divorce your wives. This wasn’t part of God’s
plan. This wasn’t what God wanted.
God wanted rich, full marriages, the very fabric and foundation
of society. But because of the hardness of
their heart, God relented. In Acts 7.51, which verse we’ll
look at this very morning, Stephen’s speech, his first sermon, and
last, he said, You men who are stiff-necked and uncircumcised
in heart and ears are always resisting the Holy Spirit. You
are doing just as your fathers did. was characteristic of the
nation of Israel. They had a stubbornness of heart,
an absolute unwillingness to yield to God, not just a stubbornness,
not just a hardened heart, but an unrepentant heart. This tendency that they have
to unrepentant, rather a life of unrepentance, to continue
to refuse the grace that was offered them by God, to continue
to stand against God literally. And even when they had sinned,
to refuse to own it, to refuse to turn from it. Even when Christ
came, when Jesus came and called them to repentance, they refused
the repentance even after they crucified Christ. And others
came with the message of the gospel. They refused to turn
from it. And time and time again, we have
seen in the book of Acts how they refused repentance. They
refused to turn from what they had done to Christ. They refused
to acknowledge their own sin. And in doing so, they magnified
their guilt. God’s blessings, God’s goodness,
God’s mercy towards the nation, God’s long suffering towards
them, as we saw even last week, began to just pile up against
them. Point two. If we begin to contemplate the
gripping features of the impartial judgment of God, Not only do
we see the cause of God’s wrath, that stubborn unrepentance, sooner
or later, God is going to act if his standard is what it is
and it is. If God is not capricious, if
God is just, God will act, God will judge in time and he does. Then the cause of that wrath,
that stubborn unrepentance will not go unanswered, not by God.
Secondly, we see the moment of God’s wrath. What is referred to as the day
of wrath. Verse five. But because of your
stubbornness and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath
for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous
judgment of God. Now, we’ve seen the righteous
judgment of God even in recent weeks. We know what it means
that God is going to judge justly. God is going to do the right
thing. He’s going to judge correctly. He’s going to judge objectively.
There’s not going to be anybody to buy him off. We know what
it means. The righteous judgment of God.
What is this day of wrath? This day of wrath, this day of
the Lord, day of judgment is from beginning to end in Scripture.
There is a warning for all, not just Israel, but for a warning
for all. Amos declared it in the book
of Amos, he said, Alas, you who are longing for the day of the
Lord, that was the nation of Israel itself. They couldn’t
wait until the Gentiles got what was coming to them. We forget a lot of times, don’t
we? By God’s grace, I was reminded
of it on 9-11 and preached upon that very theme that following
weekend. That is, we all clamored for
God’s justice. We want to also clamor for mercy,
don’t we? We want to cry out for mercy. We forget to cry out
for mercy. We forget to ask God for mercy.
What we want is justice because we think we’ve arrived. And in
reality, what we all really need to cry out for is mercy. Amos said, Alas, 518, you are
longing for the day of the Lord. For what purpose would the day
of the Lord be to you? You think you’re going to escape? You think you have nothing to
answer for? It will be darkness and not light. And that’s the
tone that the entire rest of the scriptures take. Listen to
Isaiah, chapter two, for the Lord of hosts will have a day
of reckoning. Against everyone who is proud
and lofty, against everyone who is lifted up, that he may be
abased. Isaiah later 13, Isaiah 13, 6
says, Wail, cry, weep, cry out for the day of the Lord is near.
It will come as destruction from the Almighty. The hands will
fall limp. Every man’s heart will melt.
They will be terrified. Pains and anguish will take hold
of them. They will writhe like a woman
in labor. Later on in Isaiah, Isaiah 24,
21, so it will happen in that day, and sometimes it is so casually
referred to as that day. What day? It’s the day of the
Lord. It’s the day of judgment. It will happen in that day that
the Lord will punish the host of heaven on high and the kings
on the earth. No one will escape Jeremiah, chapter 46, verse 10. For that day belongs to the Lord
God of hosts, the day of vengeance to so as to avenge himself on
his foes and the sword will devour and be satiated and drink its
fill of their blood, for there will be slaughter for the Lord
God of hosts in the land of the north by the River Euphrates.
And there have been judgments in time. We talked about that
two weeks ago. There have been outpourings of
God’s wrath, but there still is a day. And it’s building and
some are storing up wrath for themselves in that day, Joel
chapter two. I hope you’re jotting some of
these down. You can look at them later. Joel chapter two, verse
one, blow a trumpet in Zion, sound an alarm on my holy mountain,
let all the inhabitants of the land tremble for the day of the
Lord is coming. Surely it is near a day of darkness
and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness. Zephaniah, there’s a book we
don’t read often, Zephaniah with a Z. Chapter one, verse seven,
be silent before the Lord God for the day of the Lord is near
for the Lord is prepared to sacrifice. He has consecrated his guests.
It will come about on that day that the Lord sacrifice. It will
punish the princes, the king’s sons and all who clothe themselves
with foreign garments. I will punish on that day all
who leave the temple threshold to fill the house of the Lord
with violence and deceit. God’s going to have a day. Verse fourteen of that same chapter
near is the great day of the Lord. Near and coming very quickly,
listen, the day of the Lord in it, the warrior cries out bitterly,
a day of wrath is that day, a day of trouble and distress, a day
of destruction and desolation, a day of darkness and gloom,
a day of clouds and thick darkness. God’s going to have a day. Ezekiel chapter seven. I will
shortly pour out my wrath on you and spend my anger against
you. Behold, the day, verse 10, behold,
it is coming. Later on in Ezekiel, in chapter
30, that day of the Lord is near. It will be a day of clouds, a
time of doom for the nations. Unless you Or unaware, the theme carries
through all the way down to the final book of Scripture, the
book of Revelation, Revelation 617. The great day of their wrath
has come. And who is able to stand? What all this points to is what
one pointed to is the great white throne judgment. where the wicked
of all times from all places will be cast into the lake of
fire, where they will join Satan and all of his other evil followers. Verse that is. So indicative
of this is Revelation 20, verse five, the devil who deceived
them was thrown into the lake of fire, great white throne and
him who stand upon it from whose presence earth and heaven fled
away. No place was found for them.
And I saw the dead, the great and the small standing before
the throne. Books were open. Another book
was open, which the book of which was the book of life. The dead
were judged from the things which were written on the books according
to their deeds. And the sea gave up the dead
which were in it. Death and Hades gave up the dead
which were in them. And they were judged, every one
of them according to their deeds. God’s going to have a day. Paul says, because of your stubbornness,
Israel and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath for
yourself in the day of wrath and the revelation of the righteous
judgment of God. There’s a very real sense, as
we saw when we looked at the nation or the Gentile nations. There’s a very real sense that
that wrath is already being poured out. There’s a very real sense
where the histories have been punctuated by outbursts of God’s
wrath that there is coming a day like no other day. Where the revelation of the righteous
judgment of God will come in full. There will be no favoritism.
God will judge as only God can on the character and and the
nature of men’s hearts. One said it this way, there is
no wrath of God, except as the reaction of his justice and truth
against sin. And so there is no increment
of wrath, no addition to the pile of wrath stored up, except
as sin on the part of man provokes and evokes that wrath. In other
words, in the final analysis, men get what they deserve. They
get what’s coming to them. As we consider the gripping features
of God’s impartial judgment, we see the cause of God’s wrath
and his stubborn unrepentance. We see the moment of God’s wrath,
the day of wrath that is coming, and we see the standards. Thirdly,
the standards for God’s wrath. What does God consider? Is it
denomination? Is it ancestry? Is it some right? R.I.T.E. to which we have submitted
the standard of God’s wrath is deeds. What we’ve done, and that’s
why I said Ecclesiastes 3 was such an appropriate passage to
form the introduction to our time together this morning. Look
at verse five again as we bleed into her six. But because of
your stubbornness and unrepentant heart, you were storing up wrath
for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous
judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his
deeds. You said, well. But we’re not saved by works.
No, but we’re judged by works. Well, you’ve been teaching us
all this time about justification by faith. I’m saved by faith,
not by my works. God’s going to judge. Not because
of what we professed our faith in, not because of who we were
related to or maybe what family lineage we have or what denomination
we belong to. God’s going to judge based on
Or worse, God’s going to judge our works as well. There’s no
doubt that who is in focus here is the Jew, that God is going
to judge their works, but we can’t say that we’re exempt from
that, even if and especially if we have placed our faith in
the Lord Jesus Christ. Shouldn’t the same God who began
a work in us continue that work in us? If God led us to faith
in the Lord Jesus, shouldn’t we be manifesting that faith
in a godly life. So it doesn’t depend on the final
analysis, whether a man is a Jew or a Gentile, whether he’s part
of the chosen people of God or not. What did he do? How did he live? You say, well, this is a strange
thought to suddenly introduced to me, it isn’t a strange thought,
it’s not sudden, it’s not new. This, too, just like God’s judgment,
the day of the Lord is replete throughout Scripture. Psalm 62,
12, you recompense a man according to his work. So maybe he’s talking
about work in general, that one day we’re going to stand before
God, how did you do at work? Well, OK, well, here’s your reward.
That’s not it at all. It includes our work. I hope
that we’re working as Christians. I hope that we’re living out
our faith in our employment, but it goes much beyond just
our work for money. Proverbs 24, 12, if you say,
see, we did not know this. Did he not consider who weighs
the hearts? And does he not know who keeps
your soul? And will he not render to every
man according to his work? It’s a rhetorical question, you
know, he will. You know that we’re going to answer to God
one day. You know that God is going to ask us how we appropriated
the grace that was available in our lives. We know it. Isaiah,
chapter three, say to the righteous that it will go well with them,
for they will eat the fruit of their actions. Woe to the wicked,
it will go badly with him for what he deserves will be done
to him. Jeremiah 1710, I the Lord search
the heart, I test the mind even to give to each man according
to his ways. God’s not going to be tricked,
God’s not going to be mocked. God’s going to respond in time,
God is going to repay exactly to what a man deserves. So I. Just like the Jews, I am religious. I belong to a church. I do this. I go to church as often as I
can. One of the most frightening verses
in all of Scripture, Matthew 7.21, Not everyone who says to
me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who
does the will of my father who is in heaven. Matthew 6, 17,
16, 27, rather. The Lord, pardon me, the son
of man is going to come in glory of his father with his angels
and will then repay every man. Did anybody escape? Will repay
every man according to his deeds. You know, the lengthy passage
of Scripture, Matthew chapter 25, you know, when did we bring
you a drink or when did we not bring you a drink? Jesus retorts. In that you did it to the least
of these, you did it to me. God knows and God will repay
according to our deeds. John five Galatians six. Whatever a man sows, this he
will reap. Ephesians six, eight. Whatever
good thing each one does, this he will receive back from the
Lord. Colossians three twenty five. For he who does wrong will
receive the consequences of the wrong which he has done and that
without partiality. Second Timothy four fourteen.
The Lord will repay him according to his deeds. First Peter one
seventeen. Speaking of the father who impartially
judges according to each One’s work. Revelations 622 23, I will give
to each of you according to your works, Revelation 20, according
to their deeds, according to their deeds, Revelation 22 22. Behold, I am coming quickly.
My reward is with me to render to every man according to what
he has done. Wow, I didn’t know that was in
there. You’ve been telling me about
justification by faith, I place my faith in Christ and now you’re
telling me that it’s according to works. One pastor said God does not
judge on the basis of religious profession, religious relationships,
what church you belong to or religious heritage, what church
your parents belong to, what denominational history you have.
But among other standards, he judges on the basis of the products
of a person’s life at issue on the day of judgment will not
be whether a person is a Jew or a Gentile, whether he’s heathen,
heathen or Orthodox, whether he’s religious or irreligious
or whether he attends church or not. An issue will be whether
or not his life manifested obedience to God on that day, quoting Romans
14, 12. Each one of us shall give account
of himself to God. And when God judges, God looks
at the nature of the heart, God looks at the totality of the
person, God looks in such a way as no one sees or can see. We
can fool a lot of people, we can never fool God. What principle is stated here,
sometimes we think is antithetical to the whole idea of justification
by faith, but justification is a past act. God has already declared
us righteous and we stand before God. If we are truly in Christ,
we stand before God righteous. But it’s completely appropriate. But that’s the beginning of the
Christian life. And that works become an evidence
of faith that works begin to flow out of a life of faith. As one said, how is this to be
reconciled with the apostles doctrine that no man is justified
by works, but by faith and through grace? Notwithstanding the doctrine
of gratuitous justification and perfect consistency with it,
the apostles still teaches that the retribution of eternity are
according to our works. What he points to is that, look,
you can place your faith in Christ. That is how you’re saved. And
if you’re saved, you are going to, by God’s grace, live a life
that manifests The grace of God that is allegedly at work in
your life. That’s not new. That’s Ephesians 2, 8, right?
For by grace, you’ve been saved through faith. See there, Pastor,
you got it right, finally. And that, not of yourselves,
that is the gift of God, not as a result of works that no
one should boast. Fine, end the sermon here. Not
so fast. For we are His workmanship. God started this work created
in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand
that we should walk in them. One of my favorite passages in
all of Scripture, and I know I say that a lot, but one of
them. Titus two on the gospel, this is the gospel. The grace
of God has appeared, Titus 2.11, bringing salvation to all men,
instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live
sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for
the blessed hope in the appearing of the glory of our great God
and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem
us from every lawless deed and to purify for himself a people
for his own possession. Zealous for good deeds. Don’t tell me that God, after
he saves us, doesn’t care how we live. James says it even more bluntly.
What use is it, brethren, if somebody says he has faith that
has no works? Can that faith save him? Faith, if it has no works, is
dead by itself. Salvation is absolutely by grace
through faith, but that same faith that saves us is going
to energize us into a life of service and growth and grace
and godliness. Goodness, as Ecclesiastes said
it, a life of good deeds, a life of works befitting the name of
a child of God. Point four, as I close. As we
consider these gripping features of God’s impartial judgment,
not only the cause of God’s wrath, the moment of God’s wrath, the
standards of God’s wrath, but the recipients of God’s wrath. Who are these people? Paul does
both. He tells us who they are and
then he tells us who they are. We’ll come back in weeks to come
and look at verse seven as we begin to look at the Gentiles
who just instinctively do the right things. Paul says you’re
storing up wrath in verse five, and he says he will render verse
six to every man according to his deeds, to those who, by perseverance
and doing good, seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal
life. That hopefully is the Christian.
That’s what we’re shooting for, right? We’re looking for glory. We’re looking to be glorified
by God. We’re looking to spend an eternity
in heaven with God in glory. We’re looking for honor. Not
honor as men would honor us, but honor as only God can. Well
done, thou good and faithful servant. And we’re looking for
immortality, aren’t we? Aren’t we looking forward to
those bodies that won’t ever wear out? Aren’t we looking forward
to being with God for eternity? That’s what we’re pursuing. And
the gift to those who are pursuing that is eternal life. But there’s
another group, and that’s the group that’s in focus. And that
group is in verse eight. Who are the recipients of God’s
wrath? They are those who are selfishly
ambitious, disobedient, unrighteous. To those who, by perseverance
and doing good, but to those who are selfishly ambitious and
do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath and indignation. It’s not going to go well. For
those who want to live like they want to live, that selfishly
ambitious, that word there, it literally means to work as it
were for higher. That your heart’s not really
in it. Ultimately, it referred to kind of a political sense
of partisan mentality or self-seeking. What’s in it for me? And finally, it referred to a
disregard of service. regardless of whether it was
even God that you were serving. Even in the service of God, these
people were ultimately in it only for themselves. Selfishly
ambitious, self-seeking, the very opposite of that single
minded, unquestioning obedience that the child of God is called
to. Not only that, they do not obey,
but ultimately they obey unrighteousness. They do what they want to do.
They live like they want to live. This person who only seeks and
lives his own way, obviously, naturally resists even God’s
way. This person does what they want
to do, and in the end for them, there is nothing but wrath and
indignation. God pours it out in full measure. So we shouldn’t be deluded. That
it doesn’t matter how we live. That we made a profession of
faith low these many months ago or years ago. And that, yes,
I had a time of growth initially, immediately following. And yet
now it’s tailed off, but I know because I trust it doesn’t matter
how I live. Oh, yes, it does. And we have
the opportunity here as we come before the Lord’s table to examine
our hearts, to purge those areas of our life that are unclean
and ungodly. And to cry out for the same grace
and mercy that we did in those moments of repentance when we
first came to Christ. Let’s humble ourselves before
him. Gracious God, we thank you for
this reminder by way of the life of the Jewish nation. That you
do care how we live. You do care about our deeds.
You do care about our works. You have called us for that very
purpose in Christ. Grant us, Father, to examine
our hearts and our lives with great scrutiny. We invite your
own spirit to examine our lives and to point up those areas that
we have need to confess and to eradicate. Grant us that grace,
Father. It’s in Jesus’ name that we pray. Amen. What a great message to lead
us into the Lord’s table this morning. This is a table of remembrance. Remembering what Christ did for
us. We have short memories. We tend
to live our lives in a way that is forgetful of the price that
was paid. This morning as we come, we’ll pass out the elements.
We would ask that you would hold the elements and we could all
take them together. This morning, if you are a follower of Jesus
Christ, you’re commanded to take communion. You’re commanded to
take the Lord’s table. But you’re commanded to do this
in a worthy way. We need to be examining our hearts and examining
our lives, and see if there’s sin that we need to confess.
We shouldn’t come to this table, which will cure you of all the
sin in our lives. Unrepentant sin. So this morning,
as we’re passing out the ale, let’s take some time to examine
your hearts.