This morning if you have your Bibles, we want to continue our study through the book of Romans. This morning if you would turn with me to Romans chapter 3. I’d like to begin at verse 9 to the end of the chapter.
Romans 3:9-31
9 What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin;10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:
11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
12 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.
13 Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:
14 Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:
15 Their feet are swift to shed blood:
16 Destruction and misery are in their ways:
17 And the way of peace have they not known:
18 There is no fear of God before their eyes.
19 Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.
20 Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
21 But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;
22 Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:
23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
24 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:
25 Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;
26 To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
27 Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith.
28 Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.
29 Is he the God of the Jews only? is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also:
30 Seeing it is one God, which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith.
31 Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.
Let’s just go to the Lord in prayer. Heavenly Fathers who come before you this morning, help us to understand the depth of the gift of salvation that is found in Jesus Christ our Lord, the horror of sin, and how that man can be so deceived that he can seek to walk in his own righteousness and think that somehow he can please you. But help us to see that the only way that we can please you is to come to you through your Son Jesus Christ and experience salvation by faith alone in the finished work of our Lord and Savior. Lord speak to us through your word this morning we pray in Jesus name. Amen.
Last week we were looking at the advantage that the Jew had and Paul said there was an advantage. The advantage was that God had given him and called him, called the Jewish people as a nation. He established them as a nation.
It’s the only nation in the world that was created and established by God. And he did it that he would work through them and in spite of them he would show the world his reality through what he would do in them and through them and the promises that would be given through them. We know that the law, the word of God was given to the Jewish people and they were entrusted with it that they would give it to the whole world and proclaim the reality of God’s existence to the world.
It was through the Jewish people that the prophets were given that would foretell how God would deal with the world in a world system that was in rebellion to him. And the prophets not only called the Jewish unbelievers to faith, but they showed the reality of the importance of all that would believe that the only way that they could be redeemed and saved was through faith in the promises and purposes of God and the way that God had established his means by which man could come unto him. The Jewish people were also given as we saw last week and entrusted with the lineage and the coming of the Lord, the Messiah, the Redeemer of the world.
And that all of this had been given to them and it was a great blessing as God worked through this nation. But it wasn’t that wasn’t enough to save them. They still had to believe and trust in him.
This morning in this adult Sunday school class, we were looking at the life of Rahab, a Canaanite woman who really should have had no place in the Jewish nation. Yet she had faith in God and trusted in God in spite of her upbringing in rebellion against God. And because of her faith, you will find that Rahab is in the lineage found in the lineage of Christ in Matthew chapter one.
And she is the great, great grandmother of David. And she is in the lineage of the Lord Jesus Christ, one of four women. And she was a Gentile woman, a Canaanite woman.
Yet by faith, she was placed in this special position. So God is saying then, through the Apostle Paul, what then are we better than the Jews? That’s really the question here. You know, one of the sad things is today in the church, there’s many people to believe that God has done with the Jewish people.
They look down on the Jews. They say that they’re really anti-Semitic in their views. And they really say that the Jews should be done with God’s finished with them.
We know that that’s not true. We look at the prophecies that are given in Scripture and the last days all hinge on what God and how God is going to deal with the Jewish nation. They are the timepiece that reveals to us where we are at the end times in biblical prophecy.
We know that what’s happening today in the world is pointing that the time is getting shorter, as Jesus said it would. So we shouldn’t be proud and arrogant and look down upon the Jewish people. I know that there are some people that claim to be Christians that say people who are of Jewish descent really aren’t Jews.
And that the church is the new Israel. That isn’t anywhere in Scripture either. The church isn’t Israel.
God isn’t done with Israel. And so Paul is telling us, what then, are we better than they, that is the Jews? No, in no wise. We have therefore proved, both Jews and Gentiles, that we are all under sin.
We all have the same problem. I want you to know, a lot of people think that they look at heritage and they think that they’re special somehow because of their heritage. And there is not only anti-Semitism, there’s also all kinds of prejudice in the world.
One group of people against another group of people because of skin color, because of heritage, because of lineage, because of education, because of financial standing. But I want to tell you, I just shared with a man this last week, and I’ve shared with you before, every person that’s ever come into this world shares really in, I said three things, but it’s ultimately four. Every person has been born physically.
Every person will die physically. The Scriptures tell us that. It’s appointed unto man once to die.
And then the judgment. And every person, between point A and point B, between birth and death, faces choices they make which are going to have eternal consequences. And those choices don’t matter because of how much money you have, or what position you’ve had, or what thing you’ve decided to do with your life as far as a career, or what silver spoon you were born with, or lack of silver spoon you were born with.
The choices that I’m talking about that have eternal consequences are how you view God, your Creator, the One who gave you life, and the One who ultimately will judge the life He gave you. And the fourth thing that every person will face is having to stand before the Lord. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re Jew or Gentile.
It doesn’t matter what nationality you are. One day you’ll have to give accountability to God. Well, you say, what about the believers? Well, believers have to give accountability to God as well.
We will stand because our names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life because of the decision we made to believe in the finished work of Jesus Christ. But many Christians do not look at the words that Paul shares with the Corinthians where he talks about the fact that they will one day stand before the Bema Seat of Christ. What is the Bema Seat of Christ? Well, the Greeks would know what a Bema Seat was because the Greeks were the first ones that had the Olympics and they would have games where one city would send their athletes to compete against another city and these athletes would compete and they’d compete for prizes.
And the prizes were awarded at the Bema Seat. The judge would stand and he’d give the prizes, much like is given in competitions today where they would give a medal for first place and a medal for second place and a medal for third place. So what’s the Bema Seat of Christ? Because Christians need to understand that one day we will stand before the Lord and give an account of our life as a Christian.
It won’t impact our salvation. Our salvation is realized by our faith in the finished work of Christ. But a lot of Christians don’t understand they stand accountable with what God has entrusted to them as believers.
God gives you certain spiritual gifts. God gives you certain opportunities. God gives you and places you in positions where you can be used by Him and He has placed you there for a specific purpose and that is to bring glory to His name and to proclaim the gospel.
You realize that everybody sitting here this morning has people in your life that I will never meet. I’ve got people in my life that you will never meet. But yet you and I stand accountable for the opportunities that God places in our lives in sharing with those who don’t know Him the gospel message.
And also sharing with those who are fellow believers encouraging words that we may be there to exhort them to good works, to encourage them to walk in faith, to make sure that they stay true to the path of faith. Paul is saying the Jews failed in their calling in the sense that they did not understand the vast majority of them, the significance of where God had placed them, what He called them to be and to do. He called them to be a special people unto Himself.
In the Old Testament it talks about the fact that the Jews were literally viewed by God as His wife. And what broke God’s heart was the fact that His wife would pursue other gods, which the Jewish people did. Jesus views the church as His bride.
And as His bride, He calls us to live a life of faithfulness and to live a life of submission to His purposes and will, which He has sacrificially given of Himself that we can accomplish. So Paul is saying if you want to look as a believer in Christ at the Jews and say, well, we’re better. No, we’re not better.
And if you’re an unbeliever and want to look at the Jews and be anti-Semitic, which there are many today. You have people like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens that are constantly coming on the airwaves proclaiming anti-Semitic views that Israel should be done away with, that Israel is the problem of the whole world. Israel is not the problem of the whole world.
The problem of the whole world is sin. And the problem of the whole world is found in Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens’ hearts that they don’t give their lives to Jesus. And that’s the problem of the world.
It’s the rebellion against the God who created us and sought to redeem us through His Son. So Paul goes on and he says, as it is written, there are none righteous, no not one. I want you to just stop and think on that thought.
There are none righteous, no not one. In and of ourselves there is no righteousness. A lot of people like to compare themselves against other people.
Because what we can do is we can always find somebody that we view as being more of a sinner than we are. If I don’t drink and I see somebody who’s an alcoholic, I see he’s got a real problem. I don’t have that problem.
That makes me better. No. I may have a problem that’s even worse than alcoholism.
I may have a problem of pride that will not allow me to bow the knee to Jesus Christ. A problem that is a horrible sin. And the thing is, Paul is saying here, you can’t look at the external without knowing the heart.
And the heart needs to be transformed. And if the heart’s not transformed, every man’s a sinner. It doesn’t matter whether you’re Jew or Greek, every man’s a sinner.
He goes on and he says, there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. And that’s in and of our own strength. If we are left to our own devices, we will not seek after God.
We’ll make gods of our own making. We’ll transform even the God of the Bible. You’ll see that various religious systems who have at the basis of what they say their belief system is, is Christianity, have transformed this book and made it say something that it doesn’t say.
And yet they say they’re seeking God and trying to lead people to God. It’s interesting, the religions of the world today, just like the Pharisees during the time of Jesus, they hold to a belief system, but the belief system will never take them closer to God because they deny the author and the foundation of the creator of this world and the one who has established how we are to come to Him. Paul goes on and he says, they’re all gone out of the way.
They are together, become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good, no, not one. What about all those people, for example, what about the Shriners? Don’t they do good? They build these hospitals that help kids.
That’s good. But at the same time, they have a belief system that denies the authority of God and wants to transplant Him and make Satan or Lucifer God in His place when you begin to study their real belief system. They say the God of the Bible, Adonai, is the one that’s the false God and Lucifer, the light bearer, is the true God.
Are they really doing good? They may heal men’s bodies, but they destroy men’s souls with their false belief systems. You see, a lot of other people, if you do that, if you don’t have a foundation that’s based upon the word of God, the promises of God, and the way to come to God through Jesus Christ, you can have the appearance of doing good, but ultimately you are preventing someone, as I said, from making the choices in their life which will determine eternal destiny. Their throat is an open sepulcher.
With their tongues they have used deceit. The poison of asps is under their lips. We don’t understand the danger of proclaiming false belief systems.
Paul gives the example that it’s just like the poison of asps being on your lips. An asp is one of the most poisonous snakes in the world. If you’re bitten by it, there isn’t much hope.
When Moses was with the men and women in the wilderness, and they rose up in rebellion against God, God sent asps to bite them. Then he told Moses, as Moses interceded with the Lord, and called, will you not show mercy? The Lord told Moses to place an asp, a snake, on a stick, a bronze snake on a bronze stick, and hold it up, and anyone who looked on that stake would live. If they refused to look on that stake and believed that they could live, they would die.
That was the type of what Jesus did for us. We have all been bitten by a poisonous snake of which there is no cure except God’s cure. That poisonous snake is sin.
It’s rebellion. And Paul has said, every person has been bitten. Every person experiences it in his life and is a rebel against God if left to his own devices.
But what happens is God, in his mercy and grace, sent his Son, and he who was without son was placed on the cross, that he who would look upon him and believe that Jesus had become the propitiation for their sin, that is, he would take the place for them and they would not have to face the God in judgment,
but rather they would have redemption and experience fellowship with God and forgiveness. But we had to look. If we failed to look, if we said I don’t want to believe in that nonsense, I can do it on my own, death would come.
Just as certain as the death came to the Israelites in the desert under Moses, for those who didn’t look upon the brazen serpent and believe. Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness, and their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace have they not known.
The one who is an unbeliever and unwilling to give his heart to Christ, whether he’s Jew or Gentile, no matter what his position in this world, no matter what his nationality, no matter what his heritage. If he’s unwilling to give his heart to Christ, he will never know the peace of God in his heart. He will always be at war with God.
You’ve probably met people, known people, and you say, why are you so angry? And they’re angry about a lot of things. I remember I worked with a man one time, and he was angry about everything. Everything always made him angry.
And he had no problem cursing God about it. He had no problem living his life exactly what it says here, because that was evident because of the rebellion in his heart. And the thing is, he had no peace, and he could find no peace.
Today, the world is very interesting. People are turning to false religious systems to try and find peace. And what’s sad is the church is bringing some of these false religious systems into the church to try and help people find peace.
As you know, I’ve shared it to you before, and we have a book out there, Yoga and Christianity. Yoga is from Satan. It’s not from the Bible.
Yoga is the concept of yoking yourself with the demonic spirit, and that’s why you go into an altered state of consciousness, and you have a mantra that you say, and you empty your mind, and you sit in these positions that help you empty your mind and help you identify with your spirit guide. I’ll tell you that spirit guide is not from God, it’s from Satan. It’s a demon from hell.
And if you go to India, gurus will tell you, yes, yoga is to unite with the spirit guide. Yet today in the church, people are having people come in and do yoga to try and empty their minds so they can find peace. What’s wrong with the gospel? What’s wrong with coming to Christ and asking forgiveness for my sin and rebellion, and then He’ll give me peace? If I don’t come to Christ and ask and seek, what happens is I live in a constant state of rebellion, and all these things, I will never find peace.
It’s interesting. Why is the church so ineffective today? In speaking out to a world that is seeking answers and seeking peace, because we’re going to the world for answers ourselves instead of going to the gospel of Christ. It’s interesting, it says here, also Paul continues, and he says, there is no fear of God before their eyes.
The unbeliever has no fear of God. This is very disturbing. Do people in the church today fear the Lord? When I say fear the Lord, I’m saying God has forgiven us our sins, we don’t longer have to fear condemnation and spiritual death.
But do we really look at God as who God is? The One who is the awesome Being that is the Creator of all, that knows all, that has all power, that knows my very thoughts and intents? Do I really fear and understand what it is if I claim to be His child and yet I don’t walk in obedience to Him? What does that mean? I say that people say, well, I’m better than the Jews, look at how they, and they blame the Jews for crucifying Jesus. You’ve probably heard that, right? First of all, it was the Jewish leaders that turned Him over to Pontius Pilate. It was the Jewish leaders that encouraged Pilate to put Him to death because they legally couldn’t do it under the Roman system.
Even though on more than one occasion the Jewish leaders picked up stones and were going to stone Him, they were going to shove Him off a cliff, they were going to put Him to death prematurely, but they could not because Jesus could only die one way at one time, at one moment in fulfillment of the prophecies that God had given about the coming Messiah that would take away the sins of the world. But I want to break some news. The Jews didn’t kill Jesus.
We all did. Every man, woman, and child, our sins are what placed Him on the cross. And it doesn’t matter whether you were Jew, Gentile, whether you were a man or a woman, whether you were a slave or free, your sin resulted in Him having to go to that cross to buy you back.
And the amazing thing is the Scriptures tell us, in spite of what much of the church is teaching today, that Jesus didn’t go to the cross for everybody, but He only went for the elect. But Jesus said that He went to the cross so that the whole world’s sins could be forgiven. In other words, there wasn’t one person in the world that could not come to Him and say, I will accept the gift of salvation, cover my sin with your righteousness, pay for my sin with your blood.
But they had to come in the book of Revelation. One of the status accounts in the book is the church at Laodicea. The church at Laodicea, if you go to Laodicea, it sits between the couple of different rivers, water sources.
One is hot, one is cold, but the water in Laodicea is lukewarm. Jesus used Laodicea as an example of the spiritual condition of the church in the last days. Jesus is at the church in Laodicea and He is standing on the outside knocking, wanting to come in.
There was a picture that I saw one time, and I’m really not into pictures of Jesus, but it was to illustrate this point. And the artist had shown Jesus standing outside the door knocking, but there was no door handle or lock on the outside. You had to be let in from the inside.
The church at Laodicea had failed to let Christ in. And Jesus said, I’d rather that you were hot or cold, but you’re lukewarm, and I’ll spit you out of my mouth. I’d rather that you were on fire for God, or that you didn’t understand what was going on so that I could help you, but you think that you’re so spiritual, but you don’t want me there.
And there are people today that think that they’re so spiritual, they look down on the Jewish people. And Paul is saying, are you any better than them? Are you any better than the Jewish people that have rejected Jesus? I want to tell you something that’s happening in Israel today, and this is really exciting. Jesus said that in the last days, the nation of Israel, the people of Israel would bring and blow new spiritual light into them as a people.
And what you’re seeing happening in Israel today is amazing. There are people that are seeking Bibles in Israel. Not just what we refer to as the Old Testament or the Jewish Bible, but the New Testament as well, the complete works.
There are people that are going on websites to talk about Jesus so they can see who Jesus really is. Is He our Messiah? There are people, young people in Israel, giving their hearts to Christ. And then we have the adaptive to say God is done with Israel, or Christians do.
Poison of lips, of the ass was on the lips of those that would say that. And they need to examine their own heart. I don’t know hearts, but Jesus said, by their fruit you shall know them.
And He said that He would bless those who blessed Abraham and curse those who cursed Abraham. And then that same blessing and cursing passed down through Isaac and Jacob and the descendants of Jacob. And somehow their church wants to believe that Jesus is going to fulfill His word in delivering us from our sin and He’s not going to renege on it.
Yet we’re saying all the promises that He made to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and the descendants of Jacob, they don’t make any difference today that God changed His mind. What does that make His promises to you and me? My Bible tells me God is immutable. He does not change.
He’s the same yesterday, today, and forever. When He says something, He delivers on His word. In that same account this morning in the adult Sunday school class, they were looking at the two spies that came in to Jericho.
And they went to the house of Rahab, a temple prostitute, to find sanctuary while they scoped out the city of Jericho for Joshua. And as they did that, Rahab, as I mentioned earlier in the message, believed. She believed in the God of the Bible.
She believed because she had heard what God had done. He delivered His people at the Red Sea. He had destroyed Sihon and Og, two Amorite kings, on the east side of the Jordan.
And He had said that this land, the land of the Canaanites, He was giving to the Israelites. Stop and think about that because people today think that it’s not for the Jewish people. God didn’t renege on His promise.
But as she believed that, she believed in the God of the Bible. And she helped those two spies. And in return, she asked that they would deliver her and her family from the coming judgment upon Jericho.
And she made them promise they would. And when they promised her, they did it in the name of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And they said, the only way that this will be denied is if you deny us and tell the people in the city that we were here and what we were here for.
But if you have your family come and wait where we tell you in the manner we tell you, and that you drop a red cord or a red rope out your window, you and your family and your possessions will be saved. She did that. I noticed it for the first time this morning in the lesson.
It said, as they left and she sent them on their way securely and safely, she immediately went and put the red cord in their window. She didn’t wait until the Israelites got there and started marching around the city. She immediately went to the window and put the red cord in.
She wasn’t going to miss it. How many Christians today have that type of faith? They come to Christ and immediately they want to do what God calls them to do. And they believe what God says.
And when God says, I’m not done with Israel, they believe it. And when God says, you need to walk in righteousness, holiness, and purity, they believe it. And you need to separate yourself from the world and its systems, they believe it.
But how many of them instead, oh, God’s done with Israel, we can bring yoga into the church. Why not have rock and roll? Why not have all the systems that the world has to try and promote the gospel? It’ll help reach the lost. You know what helped reach the lost in Jericho? The one woman that had faith was when she heard about the character of God and that He delivered on His Word and that He was true.
You know what’s going to help people today? When you tell them that God is true and He delivers on His Word and His character is real. Paul goes on, and we’re not going to get through the whole passage this morning. We’ll get through probably verse 20.
There’s no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before God. What was the law given for? Was the law given to save? The answer is no.
The law can save no one. Paul tells us the law is that which is a schoolmaster. What did your teachers in school, and I apologize if there’s any younger people because a lot of teachers don’t do this anymore, but when I grew up teachers were there to instruct us.
They were there to teach us so that we could learn math, so that we could learn English, so that we could learn about history. So, and we’d be able to use those in our life, but we had to take that which we learned and apply it. Paul tells us the law is a schoolmaster.
It teaches you something. Well, what does the law teach us? The law reveals to us we’ve got a problem. The law is summarized in the Ten Commandments.
The Bible tells us if we’ve broken one of the Ten Commandments, we’ve broken them all. It’s interesting. The first commandment is to also have no other gods before me.
And how many of us as Christians place other things before God? The law was given as a schoolmaster to reveal to us our need of a savior. The law was given to us as a schoolmaster so that we could understand the condition of our soul and what happens between point of birth and point of death and the decisions we have to make that are so important. When the law convicts, we understand our condition is hopeless, because we can’t fulfill the law.
One of the problems that the Pharisees had is they were filled with pride. They thought they could fulfill the law until Jesus would confront them and until they would ask questions of Jesus and He’d give them answers that they couldn’t deal with. A prime example of that occurred when they were going to trap Jesus.
They loved to try and trap Jesus because they wanted to make Him look bad to the people, because the people were beginning to believe maybe this is the Messiah. So they were going to trap Jesus on one occasion and they brought to Him a woman that they said they caught in the act of adultery. Remember that account? Well, first of all, my question is where’s the man because it takes two to commit adultery.
But the man wasn’t there because they just brought the woman. So they bring the woman to Jesus and they said we caught this woman in the very act of adultery. What do you say should be done with her? Now the Bible, the law said that if you were caught in the act of adultery, you should be stoned.
So they thought they had Him. Because if He said pick up stones and stone her, they’d say where’s your mercy, where’s your grace? You say you’re from God and the people would look on Him. If they say just let her go, they’d say where’s your justice? The Bible tells us, the law tells us that that’s against the law.
What did He do? The Scriptures do not tell us what He wrote, but it says that He bent down and began to write in the dirt with His finger. And it says the Pharisees began to leave one at a time until there was no one left. I don’t know what He wrote in the dirt.
He may have written the laws that they had broken and the things that convicted them that they realized their shield of pride was being punctured by His words that He wrote. And they walked away. Then He turned to the woman and He says, woman, where are your accusers? He said they’re not here.
Now what did Jesus do? He did an amazing thing. He didn’t let her off the hook. He told her, go and sin no more.
I’ve shown you mercy and grace. Live in my mercy and grace. Don’t live in your rebellion and sin.
That’s the message He gave her. Paul is telling us we need to hear that message. We don’t need to live in our own pride and think that we’re better than the Jewish people.
We don’t need to live in our own pride as if you’re Jewish and think you’re better than the Gentiles. You don’t need to live in your own pride and think that if you’re in a religious system that stands against the Bible that somehow you are better. You need to examine and allow the law to be the schoolmaker that convicts you and you need to come to Christ and repent.
Now we know that what the things soever the law saith, it saith to them that are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped and that all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore. Now the question is why is therefore, therefore? He’s made a pretty powerful statement here about the condition of all mankind, both Jews and Gentiles.
And He says therefore by the deeds of the law, there shall no flesh be justified in his sight for by the law is the knowledge of sin. So the law cannot save us. And in the part that we’re going to look at next week, Paul reveals what can.
And Paul is talking to the church at Rome and to the Christians there. A couple of things are happening. Rome is putting pressure on Jews.
If you look at when Paul lived, the Roman government was beginning to put pressure on Jews and was beginning to put pressure on Christians. Yet the Roman government was so corrupt and vile and wicked in the Roman culture. It was like our culture today.
And so saying, where do we turn? Well, you need to understand everybody’s under the law. I want you to understand our government officials are under the condemnation of the law. They will not get by with what they’re doing.
They may for a period of time. And you may say, what can I do? Well, I can’t do anything, but they will one day stand accountable to God. And the thing is, unless they understand and allow the law to convict them of their need of a savior, they will stand judged by their own actions and own words.
Going back to the beginning of the message, I said, well, what about Christians that are saved? Well, the beam of seat of Christ, and I’ll close with this, the beam of seat of Christ, Jesus holds us accountable for what he entrusted to us as Christians. He’s given everyone that’s sitting here as a believer in Christ this morning, spiritual gifts. Are you using those for God? Are you using them for his glory? You take advantage of opportunities he places before you.
He says, I’ll reward those who are faithful and true. But it also says that there will be some that stand before the beam of seat of Christ. And it says they will not lose their salvation, but they will receive no crowns because they were not faithful in using what God had entrusted to them as Christians.
I don’t know the hearts of people that are promoting worldly activities in churches. I think some of them aren’t believers at all. I think there’s others that are believers that have been deceived and duped into thinking somehow we can reach people without the truth, but instead with lies.
We need to understand there’s only one way that people can be reached and that they can experience the power of Jesus in their life and that they can know the truth. That is to be revealed the fact that they need to come to Christ as a sinner and be saved by his grace. And it’s for the whole world that that message has been given, not for select few that God is going to send to heaven and the rest are going to hell.
Men will choose to go on the hell of their own volition with what they do between the point of birth and the point of death. But Jesus made it possible for everyone to go to heaven if they just would receive the gift of salvation that is found in him. Let’s just close in prayer.
Lord I pray that you just help us understand this. Lord help us see that we’re no better than anybody, but it’s the power of your spirit through the blood of your son that transforms us and makes us a new creature. And help us to walk in that power we pray in Jesus’ name.
Amen.