How do I know I've sinned?

So we're getting close to the good news. We haven't got there yet. But from actually 118 all the way to where we are today has been the indictment of mankind. And so I'm going to review a little bit to sort of catch us up since last week was Resurrection Sunday. and talk about where we're going to go today. I only have two verses today, but really interesting ones.

In verse 9 through 20, what we're really looking at, if you look at Romans, the first part of Romans is a trial, and there are prosecutors. Paul the Apostle is a prosecutor. And this is really a summation or a synopsis of Paul's argument As a prosecutor, and as we've talked about, he's identified three men that are representative men of all humanity in terms of who they are and what their exposure is. The heathen man, the moral man, and the religious man.

And the way you get them in the category is that they all have suppressed the light that God gave them. And they didn't all get the same light, but he gave them enough. So when you start back in verse 9 and 10, Paul charges them with, what then? All of a sudden it's, whoa. What then? Are we better than they? religious Jews.

Not at all, not at all, for we have already charged that both Jews and Gentiles or Greeks are all under sin. As it is written, there's none righteous, not even one. So under sin talks about the guilt of sin. It also talks about the penalty to be paid because of sin, and then it also talks about the power of sin. All men are under all three. So, the indictment, as Roger so ably pointed out, came in three categories.

The first of verse 10 through 12, As it is written, there is none righteous, not a single one, for there is none that understands. There's none who seek for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become useless. There is none who does good, not even one." Imagine standing before God or the Apostle Paul and he says that about you. There's nothing about you that is savable. The second category was verses 13 through 17, which kind of talked about the depths of sin. Their throats were an open grave.

By their tongues they keep deceiving. If you haven't learned by now, you will learn before you get to be as old as I am, that everything you hear on any of the medias is deception. It's all deception. All of it. Tell me the last time you heard something, whatever it is, that wasn't deception. There's deception of some kind.

The poison of Asp was under their lips, and Asp was a snake in Egypt that was poisonous, whose mouth was full of cursing and bitterness. If you were in the Marine Corps like I was, bitterness and cursing was part of the deal. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their path, and the path of peace they have not known.

The third group, the source of sin, in verse 18, there is no fear of God before their eyes. Oh, wow. Fear, not afraid, hiding under a rock, but have no respect for God. They don't understand, or maybe they do understand, but they don't look as God as someone to be dealt with.

And I'll tell you where that really shows up in our society today. We're now in the third generation, as best I can tell, of families that do not teach their children ultimate authority. There is no ultimate authority. Like one of the guys on the tube I saw a week or so ago, he said, everybody thinks they're God today.

So they're the ones that get to decide what's truth and what isn't truth. What's reality? What isn't reality? And so you have kids growing up without an ultimate authority, and they're in the next generation, and the next generation, and what do they do? A lot of what we see today is the fact that there's no accepting of an ultimate authority of any kind.

I'm the ultimate authority. And as one man said, there's only one result or conclusion that you draw from if I'm the ultimate authority, and that's suicide. You know how that goes together? If I can't rely on me, I can't rely on you, I might as well check out of here because There's nothing here for me. There's no authority if I'm the one who gets to decide.

So in all of these things, we have now verse 19. Now we know that whatever the law says, oh, there's some authority. It speaks to those who are under the law. So that every mouth may be closed and all the world become accountable to God. So after the prosecution is done giving his case or her case, they sit down and now the defense gets to stand up. So now there's an opportunity for defense. What do they have to say? There isn't any defense. After God has laid out His accusations, there's nothing to say. Every mouth is the whole design of verse 118 till today is to get people to stop talking. They have no defense. You can't say, yeah, but. Or you can't raise your hand and say, well, I don't fit those categories. Yeah, I do. I fit that.

So if you take a look at some of the key words here, the word knowledge means to have to know absolutely. It refers to a sure positive knowledge. What do I have knowledge about? About the law, absolute authority. And what does the law say? It expresses an act of the substance of what it says. You can do this and you can't do that. And all are under, all are under the law. And we'll get to who they all are here in a minute. It's here presented as a sphere of the law that is legally within its jurisdiction. How much jurisdiction? The Mosaic law was the Jews, but there were other laws.

The righteous man or the man who thought he was righteous had his own law. He's under that. The heathen man, he's under The basic law of honoring God is God and being thankful. So when you start looking at ultimate authority, you start to see that God has laid it out for all men. And they're all guilty. They're all under judgment or they're all put in another way. They're all accountable to God. So if I am accountable, then I'm subject to being arrested and having to go to trial.

Vincent made a comment, he said, rendering brought under judgment regards God as the judge. But God is rather to be regarded as the injured party here. Not God's judgment, but his rights are referred to here. He is, after all, creator. The better rendering is liable to pay a penalty to God. Interesting the way he puts that.

So in the next slide he talks about this many insist in the words the law in verse 19 is really a footnote from from Newell's Romans. And he said the law in verse 19 includes only all the quotations from scripture from verse 9 to verse 18. And they would apply only to the Jews as the only ones possessing the law, because the definite article is there. But here's an interesting point.

God, in verse 9, applies it to both Jew and Gentile. both Jew and Greek. He's written that all are under sin. Both Jew and Gentiles are under sin. Well, why is a Gentile under sin if he's not under the law? It's because he has a law unto himself. So what then? Are we better than they? No, we're not. Verse 19, we repeat, And not until then does Paul again bring the Jews back into the picture. And like he's been doing all along with the Jews, the Jews were famous for making excuses of why they didn't need to be judged. For a long time, the last time I was up here, we were talking about how the Jews thought Well, we're better than they are, so we aren't going to come under judgment. Do you think as a believer that you're going to come under judgment? You ever think about that? That you sin, are you going to be judged about it? Well, your sins have been paid for. The judgment has already been incurred, but there is a penalty. The penalty is loss of fellowship. It doesn't change your position or your location, but it does change your fellowship. There's a consequence.

So both Jew and Gentile, beginning in the ninth verse, every mouth is to be stopped, every single one. And the way you do that is you make the prosecution so complete that there's nothing for the defense to say. I mean, they can stand up and say guilty. But God is laying out this indictment so that every single person gets fenced in.

Maybe put it this way. When we started out, we got three men over here. There's a natural man or a heathen man, there's a self-righteous guy, and there's a Jewish religious man. Through the conversation, they've all been put over here behind bars. And they've all been looked at and saying, you're guilty. There's no escape. You're going to have to stand before God as a judge. So by the time man gets over here, which includes all men today too, they stop talking about their own goodness. and they stopped talking about someone else's badness, and they compare themselves.

I told you about the guy I had lunch with that was talking about Christ, and he said, well, I'm a good guy. Just sort of said it. And I thought, maybe out of quotes, no, I'm not going to do that. Anyway, here's a good example. In Luke 18, 9 through 14, It's a parable the Lord Jesus talked about. And He said also, He told a parable, that some people who trusted in themselves, that they were righteous and viewed others with contempt.

Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. We would say today, two men went up to pray. One was a clergyman and the other one was a politician. The Pharisee stood and was praying this, watch how it says this, he was praying this to himself. Not to God, he's praying to himself. God, I thank you that I'm not like those other people, adulterers, swindlers, unjust, even like this tax collector here. I'm not like him. I fast twice a week. I pay a tithe of all that I get.

But the tax collector, by the way, a tax collector in the Jewish economy or the Roman economy, was the most hated guy in town because he was the guy that was always knocking on your door, wanting his whatever, 20, 30 people, however much they wanted. That was his job, so you can tell. You know from that job alone, he wasn't very well liked. So the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven. but was beating his breast, saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner.

I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other man. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted. Anybody that wants to offer an excuse to God for their sinfulness is exalting themselves. They're saying to God, well, I'm not that bad. When God says, yeah, you are.

So from another Newell footnote, we regard the law in verse 19 then as stricter and more confined in a confined sense, as when the Lord said to the Jews, Did not Moses give you the law? Our Lord's general division was the law and the prophets, Luke 16 and 24. He speaks of things that are written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the sounds concerning me. In John 10, 34, he even refers to it as your law. It's your law. covering even the Psalms, and yet it's above the quotation in Psalm 14, 1-3. Listen to Psalm 14, 1-3.

The fool has said, Ms. Hart, there is no God. They are corrupt. They have committed abominable deeds. There is no one who does good. The Lord has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men, to see if there was any who understand, who seek after God, they have all turned aside. Together they have become corrupt. And there is no one who does good, not even one. So any type of law system, whether it's the law or personal law or a moral code, there's none that does good, not even one. It includes the entire human race, all of them.

And if it be argued that this psalm uses God's name as Jehovah, his special name for Israel, we reply that in the parallel psalm, the 53rd, the name used of God is Elohim, the creator of the whole earth. So, if we look at the moral history of mankind, we find that Romans is covered in chapter 1, 2, and 3, covered everybody. In chapter 1, is the heathen man. We've got no matter where they live on the planet, they're covered under this rule. The principle of God's judgment when considered neither man's high notions of himself or his religious professions as known and talked about in chapter 2. So we've got those guys covered. Then in chapter 3, the 14th sweeping statement of Scripture concerning the guilt of the whole human race, as Roger laid out.

Don't you sometimes cringe when you read verses like that? With the double conviction of the Jews as not only sinners, but also transgressors. You know what the difference between a transgressor and a sinner is? The transgressor has a violation of a law that he lives by. Everybody's a sinner, not everybody's a transgressor.

So, it's all designed to do one thing. It's all designed to stop me from talking and you from talking. And all men, it's designed to get them to be quiet. For they're all brought into the presence of the judge, and the sentence of guilty is upon them all.

Here's where it gets really interesting. Not that they are brought in to have their just penalty executed upon them. You ever notice in how God writes things like here, we go through this three chapters of indictment. Does it ever talk about the penalty incurred by those who are one of these three men that are over here in jail? Is that why God wants you to stop talking? Interesting. But they may be silent while their judge speaks. just so that they're quiet. They have nothing else to say.

It's like I worked with a guy one time when I was working in a mission and this guy had a case against him. And all the guys that knew him from the mission wrote letters saying this guy had come to Christ and he was totally, even though this was his third felony conviction, So I remember we went down the day of the sentencing, and all the people that thought he ought to go to prison had their say, and all the people that thought he was a changed man and he should get leniency from the court. And I remember the judge saying, are we all done? Everybody have said everything they want to say. Now it's my turn. You know what he said to this guy?

I sentence you to prison for the rest of your life and I suspend the sentence. He let him go because he thought he was a believer. Judge Flanagan, if you know who he was, he was known as the hanging judge. He was a black man. Because I went to see him later. I said, why did you let this guy go? He said, because I thought he was sincere. So he sentenced him, but then he let him off the hook.

I suspend the sentence. And Alfonso Nieto was this guy's name. Alfonso got up and told his two lawyers, I told you so. I thought, oh man, be quiet. So if If you don't have anything to say, if it's all been said and you're sitting there waiting for the judge to say what he has to say, then what does he say?

That he has himself already dealt with the sin of the world. That's what he says. He gets every man to shut his mouth so that he can tell him about the grace. He doesn't get him to shut his mouth so that he can condemn them. He wants every man to be quiet so he can tell them about the grace. That's really what he's after when he said that every mouse should be stopped. That's why. But when you start thinking about that, you think, oh my goodness, it fits who God is. It totally fits him. He's not in the condemning business. He's in the grace business.

So he says to the world, I put the sin, all your sin, of all the world on the one offering, Jesus Christ, who is my Son, whom we shall soon see. He set forth at the cross a righteous meeting ground between himself and all his holiness and all of his righteousness. And the sinner, whether he's Jew or Greek, is definitely guilty. Through a simple faith in the shed blood of the Redeemer, he gets a suspended sentence. He gets to walk free.

So we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth would be closed. And all the world would become accountable or guilty before God. Blessing, though humbling, is a moment in our history when first our mouths were stopped. I met the Lord at 35. I had to shut up. And I had to listen. Because I had all of the arguments like all of you have had about, well, I'm not as guilty as it may sound. only when we are prepared to listen undividedly to God, prepared to receive His blessing, so that the very object of the law was to close every mouth and to place all the world under judgment before God.

That's the reason for the law. That's what He did. And we'll see in the next verse, to make sin that is the knowledge of sin. So in verse 20, he says, because of the works of the law, no flesh will be declared righteous, not a single one before him. For through the law comes what? The knowledge of sin. Not the knowledge of righteousness, but the knowledge of sin.

Vincent explains not the Mosaic law in its ritual or ceremonial aspect, but the law in a deeper and more general sense as written both in the Decalogue and in the hearts of the Gentiles, and embracing the moral deeds of both Gentiles and Jews. The Mosaic Law may indeed be regarded as the primary reference, but as representing a universal legislation and including all the rest of mankind. Morrison said, it's the law of commandments which enjoins those outer acts and inner choices, and states which lie at the basis and constitute the essence of all true religion. In the background or focal point of these commandments he sees the Decalogue, which is often designated as the moral law, by way of preeminence, by the phrase of the work of the law, by the deeds described by the law, no man is declared righteous.

So if you want to look at some of the words here, the works of the law are just the response to the law. And it says no flesh, talking about man, no man can be justified or declared righteous It indicates that the act of process by which a man is brought into the right state as related to God, you can't do it through the law. And knowledge here is the word epinosis, which is a clear and exact knowledge.

You want to be under the law, learn it. I'm surprised at how many groups and how many people really are under law, and they don't really get it. They don't really get that what the law is designed to do is to show you your sinfulness. So, by the law comes a full knowledge of sin.

A favorite word of Paul, he uses it 15 times just in his epistles. This is its proper and indeed its exclusive function. So those who want to tell you that they're reformers and they're living under, they're involved by the Holy Spirit to keep the law, you might want to show them these verses.

Because what the law does is show you your sin. That's what it does. Because there's no law that's been given that gives life. And therefore, there are no works by law by which men can be justified. So the law has served its purpose when it has made men feel the full weight of how sinful they really are. And it brings them down to this point. It's not designed to lift you up. It's designed to bring you down to the point where you admit, yeah, I'm a sinner.

So because of the works of the law, no flesh shall be declared righteous, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin." So simply put maybe, what can the law do and what can it do? No one shall be declared righteous or justified by the law in the sight of God. That's what it can't do. The business of God's law is to make known men's sins. Pretty simple equation.

I mean, really, the whole reason for the law, if you want to be under the law, help yourself, but that's all you're going to be seeing is your sins. In this verse, though, we meet by far the most difficult divine statement for the human heart to yield to, that we have met in the entire epistle even so without law.

We don't like to say that, but we love being told what to do. It's not that we're going to reply and do it, but what do you want me to do? What should I do here? We want to be told. That doesn't mean we're going to comply, but that's why we love the law.

The old man loves the law. Just tell me what to do and I'll do it. Remember the guy we went to? Bible study one night, and the guy said to him, boy, it seems like you've got a great marriage. How does that work? He said, well, she tells me what to do and I do it. So we thought, we're probably not going back to that study.

So we find throughout history, so committed to their own ideas, the Gentiles, of what is right, and what will satisfy the demons that they worship, because that's who they do really worship, that they will desperately fight for their own convictions. Look at the anthropological history of, pick the society, pick the culture, and that's what you see. How much more difficult the task becomes in dealing with those who, as the Jews, know that they have had a direct revelation from God. They have gotten a full boatload of thou shalt and thou shalt not. And he that doest such things will live by them. That's what they've gotten a good dose of.

So Paul goes to Athens. The interesting thing about Athens is that there were statues of all You name it, every God imaginable. And they also had a statue to the unnamed God, who didn't have a name. So Paul acknowledges to them, you're really religious around here. The city indeed being filled with idols and that they were ignorant of God, the creator, who had raised up from the dead, the one whom would be the judge of righteousness.

So when he lays that story on them, you know what they did? They mocked him. Others said, well, here's what you have to say concerning this again. So we say that if men are brought off only with great difficulty from the follies of their idolatry, and when you think about it, You ever heard the saying that we found the enemy within the camp? Guess who it is? It's me. I'm an idol unto myself. And that's what makes it really hard for those who aren't believers to come to Christ, because they've got to give up that idol. And it's them.

But when they find out from God's Word, that it's not good works which men have done, as the good works they persuade themselves that sometimes they will do. When my friend said, I'm a good guy, what is he saying? Well, I've done some good stuff in my life, and I'm going to probably do some more good things. And all my hope is in the fact that I'm a good guy. For almost all know themselves to have failed in being a good guy. Yet they promise themselves that they will be better. And the thought of being declared righteous by a work altogether outside of themselves never comes into their mind. The responsibility is theirs.

So we've really been answering three questions according to Newell. And keeping God's law benefits me nothing for the righteousness in His sight. Why did He give it? If I don't get anything from it, then why did He do it? We already know the answer. The difficulty becomes even greater the more the quality of the law is discovered. Our judgment seems, for our judgment, sees these things in the law to be holy, righteous, and good. We do see that. And we know if we're honest that God spoke all of these words in the law.

Not that I would recommend you spend a lot of time, but if you read Deuteronomy, Exodus and Deuteronomy in the Old Testament, you know, I get about a half a page in there and I have to put it down because I can't go any farther. I'm already so guilty I don't want to read anymore. So the knowledge comes through the law of sin.

It reveals what God approved in man and what God disapproved and prohibited. It caused men to undertake the exercise of obedience. And it condemned him for not living up to that, not being able to obey. Now, it's apparent that to bring men off from false hopes in their law of obedience, three things are evident to them.

One is that the law, once broken, can only condemn. You know, you've heard the or the metaphor where the law is like a tempered glass. You know how tempered glass breaks? You break it and it breaks into a thousand pieces. And if you want to avoid or get back from the condemnation of breaking the law, you've got to put all those pieces back together perfectly and be able to look through.

So a man under the law has broken the commandments and he can't do anything to fix the ones he's broken. The second thing is that even were men able now to begin perfectly keeping any law of God, it would not make up for the past disobedience or remove their present guilt. And lastly, that keeping the law is not God's way of salvation or a blessing. That's probably the most important one. It's not the way God designed it.

So therefore, the heart's only relief to hear God's own word concerning seven questions, all of which will be covered as we go forward. And I'm only going to deal with two, three, and four, and I'm not going to read them all to you. But they're really interesting that what nation to give the law, why to give the law, what was the law's ministry, how is it set aside or annulled, etc. And as we go through the rest of Romans, these are all being answered. There are a total of seven, and the coming chapters in Romans will talk about them. So let's look for a moment at two, three, and four.

Question two, why did God give the law? Call attention now is elsewhere the fact that in dealing with Abraham, think about Abraham. And in fact, in all the ways with the patriarchs, there was not a law. He didn't give Abraham a law. He gave him a promise.

We plainly see in Romans 5.14 that they were not under law. They walked by simple faith.

Which is, of course, the only principle according to which God has saving relations with man since he became a sinner. But God must show man that he is a sinner. And this could not have been done by his revealing God's holiness and righteousness and asking man to conform to that life in ways that the holy and righteous rule. God knew he would not and could not do this. But man didn't know it. And it must be discovered through man's failure. Therefore, and thereupon did God give the law by the laws and knowledge of sin.

So what is the appointed ministry of the law? What was the appointed ministry to the law? But the matter needs to be further emphasized God names the law administration of condemnation and death and not of righteousness. As Paul says in chapter seven, sin that it might be shown to be sin wrought death in me through that which was good. So as we see now, question four, the loss was set aside or disannulled We have God often repeated and most emphatic assertion that this has been done in Hebrews 7, 18. He says, for on the one hand, there's a setting aside of the formal commandments because of its weakness and uselessness for the law made nothing perfect. And on the other hand, there is a bringing in of a better hope through which we draw near to God.

We repeat over and over again, and I've done a lot of repeating this morning, but I was listening to Chester McCauley a couple of months ago, and he said, well, the three principles of teaching are this. Number one is repetition. Number two is repetition. And number three is repetition. Well, Newell says Now, the sayings of this over and over again, the old German educator, I don't think Macaulay knew about the German educator because that's the thing he said to the first principle of teaching is repetition. So we've been repeating a lot this morning. Paul asserts and reasserts these great facts, knowing man's self-righteousness, will hardly suffer the law to be taken away. They love it.

Now, it is not that God changed his plan, though to the thoughtlessness, to the thoughtless mind, he might seem to have done so. But by beginning with man on the faith principle, and where did that start? It started with Adam and went to Abel. and down the line. He started with the faith principle. Conditioning of Israel's relationship and blessing upon their legal obedience and then changing back again since the cross to a simple way of faith apart from the law.

It's always been about faith. Always. So we can rest assured that God hasn't changed. But man is always trying to change. With God and man has always been an issue of faith. Neither was the law a thing additional to faith to secure God's favor. He didn't add the law so that it would enhance your faith. It did exactly the opposite. Nor was God disannulling the foregoing commandment, evidence that he had been seeking and expecting righteousness in man by the law, that now such a law had failed, he had to resort to grace. Apart from works, not at all. Grace was always the issue. Faith was always the issue. The law came in simply that the trespass might abound. That's the whole reason it's there.

That is, that by breaking it, man might discover his guilt. and sinfulness. How did Adam discover his guilt? God gave him one law, and when he broke it, he knew he was guilty. He went and hid. And man must learn his helpfulness to release himself from being a lawbreaker.

Moses had prophesied in Leviticus and Deuteronomy that Israel would utterly fail, and that they would be provoked to jealousy by God bringing in the Gentiles. A foolish nation, he called them. And that the remnant of Israel, finally, its whole legal hope cut off, would be restored by God in sovereign mercy. And when we get to Romans chapter 11, we'll see that.

So, at the risk of being over repetitive, stay away from the law. I mean, if you want to spend all Sunday afternoon looking at your sins, get out the law. But if you want to rest in Christ's provision for you, then find out what He's already done in grace.

Starting next week, in 321, the grace comes in. And everything we've done so far was to set us up so that when God began to talk about grace, we would really appreciate what we see. And from now on, all the way through Romans, it's going to be grace.

Grace, grace, grace. You're going to get sick and tired. No, you're not. Grace is the thing. And God has always been that way. If you closely look at the Old Testament, Exodus and Deuteronomy, you see in the middle of all of that, God's grace is working all the way through, all the way through. He's a gracious God. That's His character. He's not a condemner at all. He doesn't give the law to man to see, well, I guess they're not going to do too well with that, or gee, they're doing great. No, He has a purpose, and it's important to know what the purpose is.

The most important thing is that we understand we do live under God's grace, and He wants us just to believe Him, just to live by faith. So let's close. Father, how we thank you for all that you've done. You've made it so clear to us that we do deal with you on the grace basis, because that's the way you deal with us. We should respond in kind that we may continue to grow in the knowledge and grace of our precious Savior. We pray in his name. Amen.