Where Does the Law Lead?
Download MP3If you have a bible, I invite you to turn to Romans chapter 3. Romans chapter 3. We begin back in our series on Romans. It's been a while, and, we are going to look at what most scholars on Romans consider the most important paragraph, not just in Romans, but in the Bible. You actually have people saying this, commentators saying that over and over, and I would agree.
Joel Brooks:And if it's the most important book or paragraph in the Bible, that means it's the most important paragraph ever written. And in this paragraph we're about to look at, you find all of all of those Christian words, The ones you've grown up with your whole life. Righteousness, justification, redemption, propitiation, grace, faith, forgiveness. All those words are gonna be tightly packed together. It's a very dense paragraph, but but not in a negative sense.
Joel Brooks:It's it's more like, you know, when those really rich desserts you have. You you can't eat it fast. You have to eat it slowly, little bit, slice by slice. So we're actually gonna be in this one paragraph for several weeks. Now I know some of you have already probably checked out, because I said it was gonna be really dense, but I just want you to hang in there.
Joel Brooks:Alright? We're gonna shake off the cobwebs in just a little bit and bring you back up to speed in Romans. So we're gonna pick up where we left off. Romans chapter 3 beginning in verse 19. Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.
Joel Brooks:For by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God has been manifest apart from the law. Although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.
Joel Brooks:This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks, Jesus. Pray with me.
Joel Brooks:Father, I pray that you would give us open minds and hearts to receive what you would have for us. Lord, we want to hear you. Father, we wanna become more like your son, Jesus. So I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. Lord, may your words remain and may they change us.
Joel Brooks:We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. So this past week was a life changing, kinda momentous week, for the Brooks family for a couple of reasons. First, I took my oldest daughter down to Auburn, and I moved her into her dorm. And that was almost surreal experience for me.
Joel Brooks:I mean, she has lived under our roof for 18 years. And, and so to let her go, it had, as you would say, all the feels. Okay? There were there was all the feels. Of course excited, but it surprised me how much I've cried.
Joel Brooks:And I'm not a crier. I mean, I've given myself stitches on multiple occasions and not a tear. I dropped Caroline off at Auburn and I am just boohooing like crazy. And so we did that. Can I just briefly say thank you, church, for coming alongside Lauren and I and helping us raise Caroline?
Joel Brooks:Any parent will tell you that you don't raise your children alone. And when you're part of a church, you realize how much you need your church to come alongside you, and to encourage you as parents, and to help raise your kids. And so, thank you. I was talking to Caroline about just her childhood and about growing up in this church. And I love what she said.
Joel Brooks:She goes, dad, you know what my earliest memories of church are? I was like, what? She said, it was you coming to me and saying I needed to clean up the toys off the floor, and I needed to help you pull out chairs, so the church could gather at our house. And those are her first memories of church. She has never thought of church as a building you go to.
Joel Brooks:But, it was always a people who gathered together. Because, you know, Redeemer started in her house. And, she associated it with just hearing and seeing familiar faces coming into her home and singing songs. And then, she said, and Dad, you teaching really boring things, so I would go out and play. But but I love like that that was her early view.
Joel Brooks:Her formative views of church. And many of you, who were there in that living room during those times, have stayed a part of her life. And so, thank you. Caroline actually stopped by O'Henry's, Monday. I was working on the sermon.
Joel Brooks:She knew I'd be there. And she just wanted to talk for a little bit. And then, we start boohooing in front of everybody at O'Henry's. But I had this moment of clarity as I was talking to her. I'm getting ready to send her to Auburn.
Joel Brooks:In that moment, I couldn't care less what her major was. Couldn't care less. I I couldn't care less what she decided to do for a career. I couldn't care less if she decided to remain single or to ever get married. All I wanted as a parent was her for to to know Jesus.
Joel Brooks:That was it. As as you are releasing your child out there, that's really all you want for your child is for them to know Jesus. So, that was the first life changing moment I had this week. The second was this. Someone exposed Lauren and I, not to COVID, but they exposed us to the show alone.
Joel Brooks:So if any of y'all, I don't know if you've ever seen Alone, but it rocks our world. I hate even the words binge watch. Hate it, to test. Never binge watching the I binge watched Alone, one of the seasons this week. I couldn't get enough of it.
Joel Brooks:The whole premise, if you haven't watched it, is, they drop some person just out in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness and just say, survive. And it's my dream world as an introvert. It's what I wanna be. And, and so, whoever survives the longest gets like $1,000,000 or something. But one of the reasons I loved watching the show is because after just a few weeks, people begin to get really introspective.
Joel Brooks:You know, they're always having to journal and to talk to the camera that they bring with them. And they start changing. After a few weeks, most of them couldn't care less about the money. They're like, you know, I went into this because I wanted to win a $1,000,000, but now I've just realized like that's not the important things in my life. And they began thinking about their family, began thinking about their faith.
Joel Brooks:A few more weeks go by, if they ever make it to like 50 days in, I mean, they're like looking at the camera going, who am I? What's the purpose in life? Why am I here? I mean, they're asking all of the really big questions. Questions that they have been drowning out through their busyness, but now they have all of this time to actually think deeply about what matters.
Joel Brooks:So with Caroline going off to college, that combined with this alone, I've I've begun to think, what actually matters? And it's one of the reasons I love Romans. I love it that we're getting back into Romans because that's what Paul's been doing. Paul is telling us what really matters and he has thought deeply about the things that he is about to present to us. Many many years, he's been thinking deeply about these things.
Joel Brooks:Who is God? Who are we? Are we responsible to live a certain way before God? What does sin look like? How do we get rid of sin?
Joel Brooks:Can't we like? All of these big, huge questions he's been thinking about. And his conclusion is similar to what I had with Caroline. He just wants us to love Jesus. He wants us to know Him and to love Him more.
Joel Brooks:Alright. So let me catch you up to where we are in Romans. It's been a while. The first couple of chapters of Romans, Paul's laying out an argument that there actually is a God. And basically his argument that there is a God is, you know it.
Joel Brooks:I know it. I mean, let's not fool ourselves. Everyone knows. It's like written in our DNA that there is a God. So he doesn't so much try to prove it as just state it as a fact that we all know, even though some suppress it.
Joel Brooks:And then he says, we also all know this. We have sinned against that God. So it doesn't matter if you've grown up in church and you've opened your Bible, where of course you can see how you've sinned against such a God. It doesn't matter if you've lived that way, or if you've never darkened the door of a church before. You've never opened up a page of scripture.
Joel Brooks:You also know you have sinned against such a God. It says, and you'll be held responsible. Now God is fair. He's not gonna judge you according to His Bible. He's gonna use your own words against you.
Joel Brooks:He's gonna say, have have you ever sinned against your own conscience? Have you ever done yourself what you have judged in others? And what we're gonna find is that we all stand condemned before this God who has created us. And so that brings us into chapter 3 to verse 19 when he says, now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God. And so, Paul here is using courtroom language.
Joel Brooks:He's saying, the evidence against humanity is so overwhelming, so devastating, so damning, that when it comes time to our defense, we have nothing to say. Our mouths are stopped. This isn't like one of those, you know, courtroom dramas or movies, in which it's time for the defense, and it looks like the person's about to be declared guilty, but then somebody bursts through the doors, hands a note to the judge, or says, I've got new evidence or a new witness comes forward. There's there's no nothing like that. It's time for us to stand before the judge and give our defense.
Joel Brooks:And there's no one coming to our defense. And we have no excuses. And we open our mouth and we're like, and we close it. And so, now, we are waiting for the verdict. We're waiting for the verdict.
Joel Brooks:That's where we left off in Romans. By works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight. And then, we went off to study the Ten Commandments. Do you remember that? Because we wanted to see if Paul was telling the truth.
Joel Brooks:I mean, can't we, by works of the law, be justified in his sight? So, we went through the Ten Commandments. How did you all fare in that? Are you justified in His sight? We started realizing, okay, none of us have kept the Ten Commandments.
Joel Brooks:And now, we're at the second half of verse twenty, which is where we left off. So this is all new. Everything before that review, This is our first new statement we've been looking at in Romans. Paul says, through the law comes knowledge of sin. Now the churchgoing religious people in Paul's day would have bristled against that statement.
Joel Brooks:They would not have liked it at all. They would have said, Paul. No. No. No.
Joel Brooks:No. Through the law comes knowledge of God. Through the law, we are taught how to please him. And if they had said that, they would have been 100% right because that is true. Through the law comes knowledge of God.
Joel Brooks:It's how we know him. Through the law is how we learn to live a life pleasing to them, to God. Paul wouldn't have argued against him in that, but Paul has been pondering a new purpose for the law. Is there an additional purpose? If you remember when we introduced the 10 Commandments, I said, that's not just the 10 Commandments, but there's actually 613 different laws that we have in the Old Testament.
Joel Brooks:613 laws that we find in the first five books of the Bible known as the Torah. And the way that these laws come to us are completely unique in human history. There was nothing like it at the time of Israel. There's nothing like it now. For instance, if you were to look at, you know, law documents now, look at the US Constitution, look at the Alabama Constitution, read those.
Joel Brooks:I spent a good bit of US Constitution, look at the Alabama Constitution, read those. I spent a good bit of time this week reading through through those. By good bit of time, I mean, I glanced at them. Okay? You know, I I just kinda Wikipedia ed them and glanced at them a little bit.
Joel Brooks:They're so boring. I mean, they read like a dictionary. It's just entry entry entry. It's just lit. Law law law law law, new heading.
Joel Brooks:Law law law law law, new heading. It's very systematic, Very, very boring. But it's exactly what you would expect when looking at a law document. There's a reason we pay lawyers so much is because they essentially just read a dictionary for a living. No one wants to do this.
Joel Brooks:The Torah, however, is completely different. It's not like that at all. For starters, you can't pick up the Bible. And and if I were to say, turn in your Bible to the section on parenting, where do you go? If I were to say, turn in your Bible to the section on how to live a godly single life, how to date, where do you turn?
Joel Brooks:There are no tabs in your Bible. There's no headers in which you turn to different sections. The Bible's not structured that way. The law's not structured that way. What we have are stories, Stories embedded in the law.
Joel Brooks:You don't find that in the US Constitution. You don't read things like, you know, when George Washington, he crossed the Delaware and after he crossed the Delaware, he had this new idea for a new law. You don't have any of that. But you know what we have in the Torah? 59 chapters of stories before we get to the very first commandment.
Joel Brooks:59 chapters of story after story before you get to the first laws. You don't get to Mount Sinai until Exodus chapter 19. So as far as a legal document when we call this the law, it's a pretty poor law book. It's actually a pretty terrible legal document as far as legal documents go, And Paul is pondering why. Why did God present us the law this way?
Joel Brooks:If the law is just about giving us rules to follow, he would've just done that. Rule, rule, rule, rule, rule. Why embed them in all of these stories? Why do we have to learn about Adam and Eve, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses? Why do we learn stories about the golden calf or Korah's rebellion or wandering around in the desert for 40 years?
Joel Brooks:What's the point of that? And what you begin to realize as you're reading through the law, you begin to see a pattern emerge. And I found that most Christians are actually pretty oblivious as to this pattern concerning the law in the Old Testament. Because most people, they kinda think of the law just kinda fell down from the sky in 1 chunk. You know, God's up there, he's like, catch Moses, and he throws him 613 laws, you know, down from heaven, and we get it all in one chunk.
Joel Brooks:But that's not how the law was given. The law was given over a span of 40 to 50 years. 40 to 50 years and what we would typically have is, God would give some law and then he'd have some story. Some time would go by. Years would go by.
Joel Brooks:He'd give some more law. Some more years would go by. And he gives some more law. This is the pattern. Exodus 20.
Joel Brooks:God gives the 10 Commandments. The people receive it with joy. The people immediately go and break it by worshiping a golden calf. God punishes them. They think it's all over.
Joel Brooks:God says, it's not all over. I'll give you some more instruction. He gives them more law. To which the people respond by immediately breaking it. To which God punishes them.
Joel Brooks:And the people think it's all over. God says it's not over. I'm gonna give you some more instruction. To which the people gladly receive it. To which they break it almost immediately.
Joel Brooks:They think it's all over. God says, it's not over. I'll give you some more instruction. And this goes on over and over and over. Each time God's people after they break the law, they think, you know, what was wrong is we didn't quite have enough clarity.
Joel Brooks:If we just gotten a little bit more laws, then we could have figured this out and God's like, okay. Here's some more. And here's some more. Law, sin, judgment. Some more law.
Joel Brooks:Some more sin. Some more judgment. Some more law. Even more sin. Even more judgment.
Joel Brooks:Sometimes God's law that He gives the Israelites, it's a direct correlation to the sin that they had just done. For instance, at one point, they had just sinned. God sent a plague. He had killed thousands of people, so you have dead bodies everywhere. So you know what the next chunk of law God gives them is about?
Joel Brooks:Purification. What do you do when you touch dead bodies? How do you dispose of them? How do you bury them? How do you know if somebody's got a disease?
Joel Brooks:It follows very naturally with what was happening with them because of their consequence of sin. So this is the pattern that we find over and over. Instruction, sin, more instruction. More sin, even more instruction. And so with this in mind, what do you think the purpose of the law is?
Joel Brooks:Why is the law embedded in all of these stories of failure? It's to show you that you don't need more law. It's to show you that there's something horribly wrong with your heart. And it doesn't matter if God gave you 10,000 more rules. You would never obey them.
Joel Brooks:Because there is something deeply wrong in here. And what can fix it is not more instruction. You actually need a change of heart. And this is what Paul's been pondering here. Something has got to be done with our hearts.
Joel Brooks:We don't need more law. Even Moses understood this when he was giving out the law. At one point Moses gives out another chunk of law to them. He goes, are you guys gonna obey this? And they all go, yes, we will.
Joel Brooks:And Moses' response is, no, you won't. Niccolo senses fatigue with him. No, you're not gonna obey. I mean, we all know what's gonna happen. He actually says, your hearts are hard.
Joel Brooks:He uses the same language that's used to describe pharaoh's heart, and he uses it to describe the people of God. You have hard hearts. And you know why Moses knew that they would never keep the law? Because he couldn't keep the law. God gives him a commandment and he breaks it.
Joel Brooks:And Moses is thinking, guys, if I can't keep God's law, I know there's not a chance that you're gonna keep God's law. And it wasn't just Moses. We see this repeated on and on throughout Israel's history, even with the really good guys. You look at King David. I mean, David's described as a man after God's own heart.
Joel Brooks:Meaning that this is a man who wants to follow God, wants to obey him, wants to keep his law. David is the one who wrote the Psalms and in the Psalms, he says things like, Lord, I meditate on your Word day and night. It's always before me. And then David breaks all 10 Commandments. I mean, well I don't know if he broke the Sabbath or not.
Joel Brooks:But the other 9, just at a cursory glance, David broke them all. I mean, thou shalt not murder, Kills Uriah. Thou shalt not commit adultery? Sleeps with Bathsheba. Thou shalt not steal?
Joel Brooks:Well, he stole Uriah's wife. Thou shalt not covet. Well, he coveted after Bathsheba. He violates the entire second tablet. Thou shalt not lie.
Joel Brooks:Well he lied like crazy to cover up his sins. Even things like idolatry or graven images. You read in 1st Samuel that he had a household idol. I mean, it's almost like David took the 10 Commandments and he used it as a list to break. I broke that one, that one, that one.
Joel Brooks:I've almost got, I got a 90. I just need to break one more Sabbath. This is one of the good guys. And he can't keep it. And so Paul is thinking, David can't keep it.
Joel Brooks:Moses can't keep it. And the way the laws come to us, law, sin, more law, more sin. What exactly is the purpose of the law? I made a mistake a couple of years ago. I gave my daughters for Christmas, just one of the presents, was one of those little, those little makeup mirrors.
Joel Brooks:You know, those little circular concave mirrors that magnify every flaw. So, we all share one bathroom at our house, which means it's there, which means I look at it way more than they do. Okay? And so, you know, you look at yourself in the mirror and you're like, I don't look bad. And then, you look at yourself in that, you're like, oh my gosh.
Joel Brooks:I mean, you're like, you're looking and you see every single Impulsing, this is the law. It's what the law did. Impulse, and this is the law. It's what the law did. The flaws were always there.
Joel Brooks:And, but when we looked at the rest of the world, we kinda thought, hey, we're okay. And then then God holds up the law to us and we look out and we're like, oh my gosh. We see every flaw. It's what the law does. So that brings us back to Romans here.
Joel Brooks:Paul lays out this airtight case that none are righteous, no not one, all stand guilty before a holy and just God. When it comes time to our defense, we have none. We just have to shut our mouths. And now it's time to await the sentencing. What were the verdict?
Joel Brooks:We know the verdict's guilty. What's what's our sentence? And once again, we could go to the old testament and find the pattern and know what our sentencing is. I mean, you see it first in the garden. Adam and Eve, they're given a commandment.
Joel Brooks:They break it. What does God do to them? What is their punishment? Little feedback here. What happens to Adam and Eve?
Joel Brooks:They die spiritually dead and they're exiled from the garden. God removes them from the garden, banishes them from His presence. So then, you see the same situation unfold with Adam and Eve's descendants, with all of Israel. God gives them much more law than over the course of 100 and 100 of years, they keep breaking and breaking and breaking these law. So what does God do to them?
Joel Brooks:Exile. He sends in the Assyrians, sends in the Babylonians, destroys them, carries them out to exile. The temple is destroyed, and they're banished from the promised land. Adam and Eve, sin, exile. Ancient Israel, sins, exile.
Joel Brooks:Now it's you and me. We're given God's law. We haven't kept it. We're guilty. What's the sentence?
Joel Brooks:Exile. We are to be banished and sent away from his presence forever. The law has never saved anyone. All it's done is expose us and shown the evil that's in our hearts. This is why Paul says, for by works of the law, no human being will be justified in God's sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
Joel Brooks:And now, we get to that glorious paragraph in Romans. Now, we get to verse 21. So get back in your bibles. Look at verse 21. But, We're gonna stop there.
Joel Brooks:That's all I'm getting. Alright. We're gonna do one word. One word of verse 21. But.
Joel Brooks:But I don't have time to do more words than that. I mean, when you look you look forward on that and you see all those big words, the sanctification, redemption, the atonement, propitiation, all that, we don't have time to get into that right now. But just know that with that one word, but, Paul is saying that everything before is about to change. So far, all you have gotten is bad news, but you're about to get the most glorious news. Paul's gonna take time in this next paragraph to explain the gospel.
Joel Brooks:You've been told the gospel before, but he is going to actually explain how it all works together. He's going to talk about how salvation happens, how forgiveness actually happens, how God can remain just and still forgive. He's gonna spell all of that out for us as to how we can be forgiven of our sins. But I don't have time to go into all of that. We're gonna look in that next week, but I can't leave you without hope.
Joel Brooks:You need to feel the but. There is hope and you don't have to know what all of those words mean in order to know that hope. I know that some of you, some of you in here have have come at a nominal exposure to the church, Christianity. You've been kind of in and out of church, Southern Christianity your whole life. And honestly, you would say when you walk into a church, you're just intimidated because you hear those words.
Joel Brooks:You hear people talking about justification. You hear people talking about the blood. Talking about redemption and and those words just intimidate you because you really don't even know what they mean. And so, you kinda check out and you leave and you feel like an outsider. I want you to know that you don't have to know what those words mean in order to be saved.
Joel Brooks:Recently, one of my favorite pastors, Alistair Begg, he taught on the Gospel and really boiling down the basics of the Gospel. And he used just a very simple illustration to point this out, that's always stuck with me. It actually just came out just a few months ago. He said, Imagine, if you will, the thief on the Cross. So if you're the thief on the cross, and Jesus looks at you and says, today you will be with me in paradise.
Joel Brooks:Now, imagine that thief dying. Now, use your little holy imagination here. So that thief dies, you know, he goes up to the pearly gates, he's talking to Saint Peter. By the way, none of this is scriptural. Okay.
Joel Brooks:I don't don't I don't want your emails. Okay. I realize this is holy imagination here. We're just playing, teasing this out. So he walks up to the pearly gates, and Peter says, hey, how can I help you?
Joel Brooks:He goes, what? I'd like to get into paradise. And Peter says, great. So, you do understand like that you are saved by grace through faith. And, this thief is like, what are you talking about?
Joel Brooks:I have no idea what you're talking about. Here he goes, Okay. Well, you at least understand what justification means. You've been justified, right? And the guy's like, justification?
Joel Brooks:I don't, not only do I not know what it means, if you were to ask me to spell it, like, I couldn't do that either. Peter's like, what about propitiation, Atonement? Do you know any of those things? He's like, no. At least tell me you know what the blood of Jesus accomplishes.
Joel Brooks:I have no idea, sir, what the blood of Jesus accomplishes. Alright. Just hold on one second. I had to go get my supervisor. You know, so Peter goes, and fictional once again, and then, like, he he gets he gets Michael the archangel.
Joel Brooks:You know, they come back and he's like, hey, there's a guy who wants again in heaven. Like, he doesn't know these things. I I know what to do. I I know what to do. So, are are you wanna you wanna get into Heaven?
Joel Brooks:And the thief is like, yes. It's like, great. That's that's wonderful. Did you grow up in church, open a Bible? I'm like, I don't know.
Joel Brooks:None of those things. Like, Okay. You at least know about the virgin birth. Right? What?
Joel Brooks:There's a virgin birth? That's amazing. But I'd never heard about it. Alright. Final question.
Joel Brooks:Please tell me you at least know about the Trinity. You gotta know who God is. He exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And the thief is like, can you explain that to me again? It's 1 person, 1 God, 3 no.
Joel Brooks:That doesn't really even make much sense to me right now. Peter, Michael, I'm you can ask these questions all day, and I will not be able to give you an answer. But you know what? The guy on the middle cross said I could come. And Peter says, Oh, we'll come in.
Joel Brooks:That's the gospel. You don't actually have to know all of those big words. You don't have to pull out the Christian dictionary to like know all these things. It's that simple. The guy on the middle cross said you could come.
Joel Brooks:If I could sum up the gospel in a nutshell, it's just two words. Jesus saves. And if you trust Him, He will save you. You don't have to know all of the mechanics. Something just has to be stirring in your heart toward whatever faith is there.
Joel Brooks:You just say, Jesus, save me. Because Jesus has said you could come. If you would, pray with me, church. Lord Jesus, I pray that those who have not ever heard your invitation would so clearly now in this moment through your Holy Spirit hear you calling them. You have invited them to a life eternal, and I pray they would trust you for that.
Joel Brooks:For those who are so intimidated by church and all the Christian lingo, Lord, I pray those things would just blow away right now. And they would clearly see you, Jesus, and hear you calling them. We thank you for the glory of your gospel, that you have not left us in your sin in our sins, but you have reached out and you have saved us. We pray this all in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.
