[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching from God's Word you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to Him. If you're ever in the Madison, Alabama area, we'd love for you to worship with us on Sundays at 8:30 or 10:30am if you have any other questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, find
[email protected] be sure to also check out our Bible study podcast, Madison Church of Christ Bible Studies. Thanks again for stopping by.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Every family has a rag doll. And that rag doll, maybe for some of you, was something that you had when you were younger. Maybe it's something that your kids have had or your parents had. And when I say rag doll, what I'm referring to is that one thing that maybe you were given when you were little, in the middle of the night, there was like a bad storm and they brought you a blanket.
And then once you held onto that blanket, you never let it go. And not only did you keep it at the house, but if you went out of town, that blanket went with you. Maybe for some of you, at your mom or your dad's baby shower, you got like a little teddy bear and they gave you that teddy bear, and that teddy bear continued to stay with you all through the night. That became your rag doll.
And maybe you've noticed in different TV shows or maybe even your own home that different people have had them in certain times. Maybe like Linus, I know for us we've had in our own home a blanket that eventually was called a blankie. And I don't know about your blankets that you've had in your home, if you've had one, but those things get really, really gross. And in fact, it's one of those things that you don't want to wash it with any other clothes. And if it does need to go to the washing machine, you, like, get a fork or something and you carry it out because you don't want your system, your immune system to get built up that much. And so you try to keep it away from you.
Or maybe you remember this show, mash, there was a guy named Radar that carried a teddy bear with him wherever he went.
And so that is that one thing that you love and that you see a lot of value in because of the comfort it gives you.
Now, I'm about to share with you guys something, and I Hope as I share this with you, you know, a few things. Number one, I hope that you know how much I love you, because I'm making myself very vulnerable right now by sharing with you guys two things when I was little that I kept by my side in the bed, okay?
And the first one was this guy, Peter Rabbit, or as I called him as a kid, B. He was one of my rag dolls. And the way mom and dad said I would hold him is I would grip onto both of his ears and I would sleep.
And I gripped onto those ears for so long that eventually his ears fell off and he looked like a squirrel, but I still would grab.
And that's B. And there was one time when I was growing up that mom and dad said that we were on a vacation. And I brought Bea on that vacation, left him in the hotel room. And what ended up happening was I realized, like, several miles and almost an hour down the road that Bea was back at the hotel.
And so dad turned the car around for that guy, and he went to that hotel, asked the manager if he could get into the room, got into the room, found the cleaning lady. The cleaning lady pointed him in the right direction, and. And he hunted down this thing to everybody else that they would have thrown out that you would have put by the curb. But to me, it brought value.
Now, I'm about to show you the next one. And this one has to have some prep, okay? It has to have prep because it may cause some bad dreams, but it also has to have a little bit of prep, because what I want you to know that he used to sleep with was not a doll. It was an action figure.
And his name was Matthew Blessings.
And Matthew Blessings was very, very unique in the fact that he would have a few, I guess, traits to him that made him special. One of those is he had Velcro hands, so you could put his hands together, but he also had Velcro on the back of his legs so he could bend his knees and do this and pray. And so at night, when we said our prayers, I would, like, fold Matthew up by the bed and we would say our prayers.
And one of the things you could do with Matthew is Matthew also came with his own set of prayers. And so you would press Matthew and he would start quoting a prayer, sometimes one that whoever made Matthew wrote or some of them were actually from Scripture. And that's great, but it is a little creepy in the middle of night when you roll over, and all of a sudden you hear, as I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. It's not as comforting then, you know, in the middle of the night. And so what happened with Matthew? One night, I was at my parents this past week, and one of the things that they said, they said they remembered when it was one of those nights I was trying to go to sleep and I couldn't find Matthew anywhere. And what happened was, is I had left Matthew at the church building.
And so dad asked, all right, well, where is he? And I said, he's under one of the pews.
Now, I don't know if y' all have looked under the pews for things before, but you don't just, like, look down and see it just by one glance. You have to go down every single aisle. So, like, at 9:30, 10:00 at night, dad goes to the church building, turns on the lights, gets on his hands and knees and looks for this guy, okay?
And to a lot of people, that wouldn't make sense, but to me, he was loved.
And I want you to think about that rag doll that you had growing up.
I want you to think about that ragdoll that's in your family.
And as you think about it, I want to ask you this question. Did you have a toy or toys that just value speaking, were worth way more than that ragdoll?
Well, absolutely, you did.
But what brought that ragdoll value was not that it was worth so much money. What brought that ragdoll value is that it's loved.
In fact, the reality is, over time, guess what happened with that rag doll? It became a little dirtier and nastier.
Less doll, more rag.
But you still loved it and you carried it around everywhere.
It's because some things in life are valuable because they're loved, while other things are loved just merely because they're valuable.
And the reason I mention that as we get in our text today, is that what Paul is telling the church in Rome, both the Jews and the Gentiles, and what he's really telling us is we're all a bunch of rag dolls that over time, what happens is we all just get a little bit dirtier, a little bit nasty.
But what makes us so valuable is not because God's looking down from heaven and saying, man, that Andrew guy, have you seen him?
No. He's looking down from heaven. He's like, what is he doing? He's doing it again.
What brings me value and what brings you value is exactly what brought Matthew and B Value to me is that we're loved.
And the text we're going to look at today, I would probably put in the category of like one of the top 10 most quoted, most well known passages in the Bible where Paul says this.
For we've all sinned and we've all fallen short of the glory of God and we need this gift that is Jesus Christ. He justifies us, he redeems us. And we know that verse, we love that verse. But one of the things I guess for years I just missed was the context of that verse.
The context of that verse is really interesting because what's happened, if you remember in week one of this series, Paul is writing to the church in Rome as they're divided and what was happening was for a while the Gentiles were running the church.
Then the Jews get to come back in. And so there's a lot of friction between the two of them.
The Gentiles are like, well these are a bunch of people that are just focused on their rules and their regulations. And then the Jews are like, well the Gentiles, they're a bunch of people that are just doing what they want to do and they're making this church into something that God doesn't want it to be. And then there's a lot of that going back and forth and like, well they're sinning and they're messing up and they're sinning and they're messing up. And so logic says that when you see the mess ups of somebody else, what do you say?
Well, write them off.
So logic says yes, write that person off.
But what's interesting is he's about to let them know, hey, Jews and Gentiles, turns out guys, you're not that much different.
You've all fallen short of the glory of God.
So knowing that this is an important unity issue that they need to unify together, overcome their differences, not be so focused on just their rules and their regulations and their traditions, why in the world would the answer to that be to let a bunch of people know that they've all sinned?
See, when we start to think that we are the center of our spiritual growth, we are the center of our own redemption, here's what starts to happen.
It breeds comparison.
And wherever there is comparison, we're going to come back to this later. It either makes us feel superior to people or inferior to people. And neither of those two things honor our God.
And so what he's doing here, he's like, you know, I got an answer for you.
What I want you to do is I want you to rally around this one Thing, you are not the answer, but Jesus Christ is.
And so in Romans, chapter three, as you turn there, I want us to notice in verse one, what Paul says right off the bat as he addresses the Jews. He says this. Well, what really is the advantage that a Jew has?
Are you saying that your advantage is the fact that you value circumcision much in every way? To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. Here's what he's saying.
Maybe you Jews, what you're doing is you're hanging your hat on the fact that, well, you were circumcised and you were a part of that ritual in that tradition at that time. And maybe you're also saying, you know, we had the words of God before everybody else, and even Paul was a guy that had most of it memorized, if not all the laws memorized. And so they're hanging their hat on what they did and what they know.
But if you notice in this verse what he goes on to say, he says, does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? What he's saying is this, that just because you know that stuff and just because you did that stuff, that does not nullify the fact that you all have a need. And his name is God.
So why would he bring up circumcision?
Well, do y' all remember in scripture, especially in the book of Joshua, as God is about to give them the promised land, he tells them to do something that sounds very odd and very oddly timed. He said, I want you all the men to circumcise yourselves with flint knives. Now, fun fact, not so fun fact. They had regular knives, okay?
And the point was that a flint knife, circumcision, the healing took longer.
And what he wanted them to do was to go back to their tents before they were going to take on what. What was next, which. There was going to be a lot of enemies. There was going to be a lot of opposition. He wanted them to have that time alone in that tent to heal, to have that time alone to focus and to think on God before they can attack. What's next? You see what he's doing? He's trying to create a dependence on God.
The Old Testament narratives that they knew so well, y' all, they held Moses and Abraham in such high esteem. Great people.
But Abraham tried to, you know, force his wife and lied about who she was to somebody else. You got Moses? Yes. He, Noah, he was a guy they also held in high esteem. Yeah, he built an ark. But what happened after that ark? He did some pretty bad stuff right after that. Moses had his own doubts about God and himself.
He's saying, yeah, all of those people that you hold in high esteem, the reason those were in the scriptures is again, to create a dependence on God.
That, yes, you know that, but that does not nullify the fact that you have a need for him.
And so these aren't about us trying to earn our place. God gave us all of those rituals, those rules, those wonderful laws and those Old Testament narratives for us to read and think. I need God just like Noah. I need God just like Moses. I need God just like Abraham. That's what it was to create inside of us. So that's why he says, so are the Jews any better off? Like, they have the rituals, they know the stories, and they were even circumcised? No, not at all.
He says, for we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, and by the way, Gentiles would not have liked this sentence. The Jews would not have liked the sentence because he's basically saying, turns out you're not much different than the guy in the pew beside you.
We're all under sin.
None is righteous.
No, not one.
By the way, he says that twice in this text.
And when I read that, I was like, nobody.
What about Grandma? You know, she's pretty awesome. Well, no, I'm saying even Grandma. Okay.
And what he's really trying to get at is if you really start to think about the heart and you let God open it, what you'll start to see that none of us are really in a good place. Now, this is a weird way to put this, but think about this for just a second.
Think about one of the best good deeds that you've done recently.
Think about one of the greatest acts of service in your mind that you've done recently.
Now, imagine for just a second as you were doing that good deed and that service, that somebody put, like, a monitor on your head and they could read your thoughts.
Even when doing that really good act of service and that really good deed, would you want everybody to see what you were really thinking?
That's what he's kind of trying to get at here, is that if we really go deep, which we're gonna also start to see, is that sometimes even in a good deed, our hearts are not in the right place. That's what he says. Again. Again. No one seeks God. All have turned aside together. They've become worthless. No one does good except one alone. So what he's getting at here is that, number one, it's from a place of motive that if you look through scripture and when it does talk about good deeds, what God really admires is the motive behind that good deed.
But the other part is, if you do think about that really good deed that I talked about earlier, that great act of service that you did recently, as awesome and as impactful as it was and is, it still does not measure up with what we all choose to do at one time or another. And it's this, make a job, make a person, make a thing.
That lowercase G God to replace his authority.
We all do that. We all have different idols in our life. And that's kind of what he's getting at.
And so what he's letting them know is the bias that you have with one another and is because of the bias that's in your heart, you think it's very you centered.
And so then he gets to this section of scripture, and I want you to notice in your Bibles how it's indented and it's got quotations.
And the reason that's important is what Paul did here is pretty genius. Knowing that there's like this dispute between the Gentiles and the Jews. He takes Old Testament scripture where God is condemning the Jews and puts it there, and then he takes some Old Testament scripture where God is condemning the Gentiles and puts it in there, and he mixes it all together because he's trying to show them, oh, turns out you guys are not that much different.
And so this is what he says. And I told the early crowd this would make a really, really good Hallmark card. Their throat is an open grave. They deceive with their tongues. Viper's venom is under their lips. Their mouth is full of cursing bitterness.
Now, that seems pretty strong. But what he's really trying to do is he said, you know, you're hanging your hat on your good deeds, but let's just consider your words for just a second.
So why don't we do that?
Why don't we have to do something that is not really maybe the most fun thing to do is just consider our words. This past week, when you were tired, when it was a time of disappointment, a time of frustration, what you said to your family, what you said to your friends, that's what he's saying. Like, even those that think that, you know, they're the best of the best, we all have moments where we say things we shouldn't.
But then he moves to certain actions. He says they're also, at times, we're kind of swift to shed blood, to ruin and wretchedness that's in our paths, in the path of peace, they don't know. It's the idea that when things don't go our way, when sometimes people or something stands in the way of what we want.
Instead of being our natural inclination being that of grace or love, it's, well, I got to get them back, or I got to get what I want, or I should get what I deserve. It's me, myself and I.
And he says that's really at the root, if you look at it, what we all struggle with.
And so we all have that kind of natural reaction to get back. And so that's why he says this, here's the point of the law. And by the way, he's not saying that the laws don't have their point. They do.
Laws are very important. Laws remind us of the fact that we need grace.
But they were hanging their hat on the fact that they completed all the things, that they checked the list, that they knew the laws and they had them memorized. But he says this. By the works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes the knowledge of sin. What he's saying is the whole point of the law is not to save you, but to identify what needs saving.
We'll kind of think of it like an X ray.
Like if you break a bone and you go to the doctor and he X rays, that broken leg or that broken ribbon healed after the X ray, right?
Well, no, it's not healed until whatever is dealt with is dealt with. The X ray identifies what's wrong. He's saying that's what the law does.
The law is something that identifies what's wrong. It doesn't fix you.
And this may be a weird way to put this, but we've all had that one thing of Tupperware in the very back of our refrigerators that we forgot that existed.
It was behind those milk cartons.
And we noticed that there's that chicken in there from a few weeks ago. And we grab it and we open it up. And when we smell it and then wake up four hours later, we realized that it had been there for a really, really long time. And so what we do, right, is when we see that chicken, we start to put some seasoning on it and some barbecue sauce on it. And then it tastes really good, right?
Well, yeah, it'll taste good. But the problem is what's going to happen.
It might taste good, it might smell way better, but the reality is it's going to make us sick. That's what he's getting at.
If you are at the center, as much as you try to dress it up, make it look better or do better, whatever it is, if it's you centered, it is going to make you sick.
It's what we talked about a few weeks ago, that we can know all the rules, but if we don't have a relationship with Jesus Christ, those rules without a relationship will always lead to rebellion every time.
And so let's just think about the ten Commandments for a second, the ones they know. And we could probably a lot of them quote.
Let's do what James says. He says that when you look into God's word, you're actually not supposed to just look at it. It's supposed to look back at you.
That's what's so awesome about the Bible, by the way. The Bible is not just a book that's meant to be merely read.
It's meant to read you.
And here's what happens when you let it read you. It'll kill your pride, it'll kill your selfishness, whatever it is, if we let it.
And so let's just think about two of the ten Commandments for a second, all right? You look in that mirror and you see that one commandment about thou shalt not lie.
Now I'm tempted to look in the mirror and say, you know, this past week I didn't really lie that much. Or even today I didn't lie.
Is that what God really wants? No, he wants me to look in the mirror and to not just say, well, I haven't lied today.
He wants me to look in the mirror and say, I love honesty so much that I wouldn't even want to consider lying. Or I might look in the mirror and I would say, you know what? Today I haven't coveted.
But what he really wants me to look in the mirror and say is, Andrew was there a few times this week or today that you weren't satisfied with what you had and you were trusting in yourself.
That's what he's getting at, is to see it that way. He's saying that the whole point of the law is to bring about the knowledge of our sin. And so he wants us to be at a place where we are so Christ centered that we don't even need laws.
We wouldn't even need rules.
We love him so much. And it's not just the fact that we love His Word, but we love where His Word and the discipline of it leads.
And so two questions I want us to ask ourselves. Question number one.
What laws do you think we might be keeping but our hearts are not changing?
What law might we be keeping but our hearts have not been changing?
As you think about that one, here's the second question.
Do you think that the answer to mankind's problems is more laws?
When I do a study with somebody, we show the connectivity of the Bible. And in that, we go to the garden and we talk about in the garden where God gave Adam and Eve a very simple way to do life.
Love me, love each other, and don't write, eat of that tree.
But then you get to the book of Leviticus and you see over 600 commands, and you're like, whoa, what in the world happened? You know, it was just a simple two or three. Now we're at 600.
And then you get to Jesus when he was pressed, and they said, hey, what is the greatest command? And he said, well, hold on a second. It's going to take me a few hours. I got 600 to quote. That's not what he said. What did he say? He's like, well, let me take you back to the garden to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind. And to what? Love your neighbor as yourself?
He actually went back to the simplicity of it.
And even, like right now, we look in our world and I don't know how many laws I should look that up, how many laws we have in our country right now. It's a lot.
And let me ask you, do you think what would fix everything in America that frustrates us, everything in the world that frustrates us if today we just added a bunch of laws?
No, it's not a new law we need. He's saying it's a new heart we need.
And when the heart is in the right place, we're going to start to see others in the right way. So what he's letting them know is what most People classify verse 21 as a transition verse.
He's getting ready to tell them that they're not that different.
And so he says, but now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been revealed, attested by the law prophets.
And then he gets to that verse.
And what I love about this verse is, if you would have asked me, and maybe y' all feel this way, too, if you would have asked me, Andrew, what's so important about Jesus Christ, I probably would have quoted to you John 14:6. And not that that's wrong, but I would have said, well, you know, Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, which is true.
But what I also love about this text, it doesn't just say, you know, that he's the way, the truth and life. I love these verses because it says why he is the way, the truth and the life. And here's why. Number one, we've all sinned.
Jews, guys, you've sinned, Gentiles, you've sinned.
And that phrase, that idea of falling short is a archery term that was used. He's like, you've missed the mark.
In fact, it was viewed so bad that you've missed the mark, that you missed it so bad that we had to move the targets and then you still missed the mark. He's like, that's where we all are.
And then he says this, that we are justified by his grace.
And it was a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation, which is, as some translations say, in place of by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.
You see what he's saying, guys, you're all a bunch of ragdolls.
And what brings you value is the fact that he is doing the justifying, he's doing the redeeming, and he's the one that's dying in your place.
That word justification and justified is a word that shows up a lot in this text. And it's a court term. One of the ways we use to define it sometimes is it's just as if I had not sinned. And I like that.
But the way I don't know if your mind works like mine is if somebody says, andrew, I've forgiven you.
I know they forgive me, but sometimes if it was like a real serious thing, I feel like I've got to work about like nine months to kind of really earn my place back, you know. And so we'll say we forgive, but then we also know, right, there's a long road to recovery. And here's why that's the case. We're humans.
Like the idea that God can take my sin and cast into the sea and remember it no more and separate it as far as the east is from the west blows my mind.
Like I can remember something somebody said 20 years ago, but he has that ability.
The idea of justification is what they call an all at once forgiveness.
It's not like you go to court and they say, hey, you're free, you're innocent, but I still want you to serve nine months. That's not justification. Justification is you are free and you are saved.
That's what it is. One of the graphics I had in one of my classes at Faulkner was similar to this. It's not perfect, but it's the idea that over time, we started to get some sin on us, right?
And because of that sin that is on us, we needed that rescue. That is that justification. So justification is what has happened before, and we're going to see these terms in the coming weeks, that sanctification is this ongoing spiritual growth process and all leading up one day into that glorification. But he also mentions this term, redeemed.
The term redeem means to purchase or to buy back.
It's like if you got in the mail a coupon for a free Honey baked ham, you would take that thing down to honey baked ham and you would redeem right, that coupon.
And when you would give that to them, the guy at Honey Baked Ham would then give you a ham, and you walked away with what you thought was a free ham. Turns out it's not free. Why? Because it costs honeybake ham something. But you know what? It costs the pig even more, right?
That's the idea of redemption.
He's like, yes, I want you to know, yes, this is free to anybody, and they have the opportunity for it. But I still want you to understand something. It costs something.
It cost everybody involved something. That's the way the sin works.
And so knowing our sin has that kind of ripple effect. He's saying, listen, he still died in place of you.
I mean, we say this a lot, but, like, if you really start to think about the phrase that sometimes we use with communion, that it should have been us and not him.
For real, though, it should have been us, but it was him.
And if that cannot unite a bunch of people to see that humility, he's like, I don't know what else can.
And so I want to show you this video in just a second.
And I love this video because this past week, as I was getting ready for this text, one of the things that kept popping in my mind was baseball.
Baseball is a very unique game because it is a game that gives a lot of grace.
It's a sport that's very unique because in most sports, if you bat 300 or you're 30% in anything, it's not that good. Like, with your job, if you did good with your job, 30% of the time, you're probably fired. Okay?
Baseball is one of those very unique sports. In fact, I noticed a stat from one of our high schools recently that they won a game where they had, like, five or six more errors and five or six less hits, but they still won the game. And the reason they won the game is they had way more timely hits.
And so you're about to see a video of a guy named Bob Brinley. This is in 1986. I was, I think, three months old when this game was being played.
And so I don't remember it, but I love old Braves history. And this guy, as a fun fact, set the record for the most errors in an inning by any major League baseball player. Bob Brinley was playing third base against the Atlanta Braves.
Four errors in one inning.
So let's look what happens.
There's error number one. I'm excited about this. I've always wanted to commentate sports. So here it is.
And error number two.
Now three, same inning. And by the way, we need to bring those Braves jerseys back, don't we? Those are awesome. Someone said amen.
And here is error number four.
All right, Game's tied. Very into the game. Most coaches would have taken that guy out, up to plate. Bam.
Wins the baseball game.
And the reason I give you that as an illustration. Baseball, of course, is a game of grace. But I think it's a good reminder of us, too, that life is a series of highs and lows, isn't it?
We have a lot of really good successes, but then we have a lot of failures. It's a mixture of those hits and those errors.
And so logic says, let's write each other off.
But what God says through Paul is, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And so then he says, then why are you boasting?
And why are we boasting?
Is it by some kind of law?
By law of works, no.
But by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law I love. He also says this.
You guys need to be one, because guess who is one?
Because God is one.
I mentioned at the very beginning that Paul decides of all methods to unite people was to talk about that we've all sinned.
And I guess for years I just kind of missed that context, because if you would tell me to get up here on a Sunday and talk about how we can be unified behind the mission of God, I would probably think of, like, four strategies or something that we could do.
But what's interesting here, he knows that in order to Unite a group of people.
They need to be reminded that we're not much different than the people that we share a pew with.
And what makes us so similar is that we all have a desperate need and it's Jesus Christ.
And so if you're thinking about the relationship problem that you have right now with somebody, whatever it is that you're not seeing eye to eye with that person, it's only going to be solved when we see ourselves in light of the Gospel.
But I also think about this morning that as we think about how we're all rag dolls, that what brings all of us value is again, not because God looks down and says, man, they're so awesome, but they are loved. And that's what brings us value. So maybe you're here today and you're struggling with your identity.
I think we all go after some pursuit of identity about our purpose, our place. And you've been trying to find your purpose and your place in a job, in a relationship, in a status, in the way people perceive you or whatever it might be.
I think about what happened with Solomon when he tried to find his status and his identity and everything under the sun. You know what he called it?
He called it Hevel.
It's the idea, like it looks like something, but if you grab hold of it, it's smoke. It's nothing of meaning.
So maybe you're here today and you want that real value. It's in Jesus Christ.
Maybe you're here today and you've never given your life to him.
And it's hard to even comprehend the fact that God could unite and rally and bring together such a group of people. But so is the church.
And it isn't awesome to know that we all come in here with our own unique deficiencies, flaws, differences of background, differences of opinion. But what unites us is Jesus Christ.
And so if you're here today and you've never given your life to him, I pray you will make that decision.
Heaven is waiting to celebrate with you.
Maybe you need to make that decision to put on Christ in baptism, to have his spirit living within you, washing your sins away, justifying you, sanctifying you, eventually glorifying you. Maybe you're here today and you're dealing with a relationship problem and you need to be reminded, we all need to be reminded, that we've all fallen short. So whatever it is, I pray that you'll come forward. Maybe walk down to the back if you don't want to walk up to the front, find one of the shepherds and let them pray with you there or down here While we stand and we sing this song together.
