You know, be that as it may, one thing's for certain, a day is coming, listen saints, a day, don't let anyone fool you, a day is coming in which that probability is gone.
This is part six of the Romans verse-by-verse study.
Last time we stopped here at Romans 2 verse 2, so we'll pick up here in verse 3.
We already established that the wrath in chapter 1 pertains directly to the wrath that has been revealed from heaven toward Israel.
It was because of her rebellion.
In the last verse of chapter 1, Paul summarized the reasons why God's wrath was brought upon Israel.
We also established that the context at the end of chapter 1 carries over to chapter 2.
In verses 1 and 2 is where Paul begins addressing someone that he refers to as old man.
He tells him that being critical toward others makes him a hypocrite.
And in verse 2, he says, the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things, referring to the things in chapter 1.
Why does he call this old man a hypocrite?
Verse 1, For thou that judges doeth the same things.
That's the very definition of hypocrisy.
Is Paul saying that judging turns you into a hypocrite?
No, but if you're doing the things that you're incessantly judging others for doing, then you're not qualified to judge them, unless you also be judged.
We have the scenario here of someone guilty of things worthy of death being judged and condemned by someone else who is also guilty of things that are worthy of death, pure hypocrisy.
So when we pose the question, old man, who art thou?
As already established in our previous studies, he's been talking about Israel's transgressions that brought about the wrath of God.
That's who's in the context here, not you or me or anyone you know.
Popular preaching confuses Paul's history lesson found here in Romans 1 with today's
current events.
It's a faulty conclusion reached by those who try to make certain passages fit the overall fallen condition of mankind.
But when we just understand these verses in the previous chapter, chapter 1, verses 18 through 32, remember, we studied about it.
But when we keep in mind that all those verses describe a specific group of people, Israel, and not the entire world, well, we have a better understanding of the but now time period that we live in.
In Romans 2, after given the chapter 1 history lesson, Paul immediately goes into calling this man a hypocrite for judging others, having been found guilty of the same things.
So according to the context, we can safely conclude that this old man is a Jew who carries with him the history of Israel's rebellion toward God.
Oh man, who art thou?
Well, some teach he's a Gentile, but he's a Jew.
And for Paul to be calling him out like this, evidently this old man was condemning Gentiles as being unworthy to be accepted by God.
This old man believed Gentiles could only be acceptable if they feared God, blessed
Israel, and obeyed the law of Moses.
Now with this in mind, verse 3 makes better sense.
And thinkest thou this, O man, that judgest them which do such things, and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God?
You see, often people who judge the behavior of others do so in order to cover up their own faults.
The pastor who gets up in front of the congregation fussing about how women dress, that's the ones that most often have a problem with lust.
The preacher condemning others who drink alcohol many times have an alcohol problem themselves.
Verse 4, Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness, and forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?
What Paul says here is outlined by the prophet Hosea.
Chapter 3 verses 1 through 5.
Go read it, even though the children of Israel looked to other gods for a season,
afterwards, they returned and sought the Lord their God and David their king.
It was God's riches, his goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering that led Israel to repentance.
Verse 5, But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasureth up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his deeds.
To them who by patience, continuance, and well-doing seek for glory, and honor, and
immortality, eternal life.
But unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation, and wrath.
Ouch!
Hey Paul, you're not really showing speech all the way with grace here, are you?
Point 1, Paul calls this guy a hypocrite and accuses him of being guilty of things that bring about the wrath of God, things worthy of death.
Point 2, he tells the man that he's ignoring the goodness of God in favor of judging hypocritically, and that he should see God's longsuffering as a cause for repentance instead of a tool to be used to condemn others.
Point 3, he says he has a hard and impenitent, unrepentant heart.
And finally, point 4, he warns the man that he's treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath and the righteous judgment of God.
Now, from point 1, it's apparent that this old man is from Israel, and he's ignoring
Israel's past so he can justify condemning Gentiles as not worthy of salvation.
And from point 2, we see that he's using his status as a citizen of Israel to claim a position of favor with God.
It's called privilege, entitlement.
From point 3, we see that this old man is a reprobate.
From point 4, we conclude that he's not saved.
And we know this because verse 5 says, this man is treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath and the righteous judgment of God.
Paul isn't talking about the rapture and judgment seat of Christ here.
All scripture is profitable, so to find out about this day of wrath, let's check in with the prophet Zephaniah.
Chapter 1, verse 14, The great day of the Lord is near. It is near and hasteth greatly. Even the voice of the day of the Lord, the mighty man, shall cry there bitterly. That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness. Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the Lord's wrath, but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his jealousy. For he shall make even a speedy riddance of all them that dwell in the land.
And the prophet Isaiah supports this in chapter 13, verse 9, Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel, both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate, and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.
Now, since we're inside this present but now time frame, a time when the world's sins are not even being imputed, obviously this is not our news.
The events described here, they occur outside of the grace dispensational parenthesis.
We have no part of this.
Don't let some mansplaining preacher put you under condemnation for these verses.
They're not about you.
Only those who find themselves on the other side of the parenthetical out there in time future will experience this day of the Lord.
From the perspective of Paul, who's addressing an unbelieving Jew here, he tells us in the book of Titus that one of the things that grace teaches us is to look for the glorious appearing of the great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Paul was looking for the body of Christ to be caught up in the air, 1 Thessalonians 4:17, ...to ever be with our Lord.
He knew what the fate of this old man here would be if he didn't believe his my gospel.
He'd be left out there to face tribulation.
Paul spoke of this Jewish man from the perspective of the events that this man knew, he knew would happen on the basis of Israel's end time prophecies.
Don't we do the same thing?
Don't we warn people of what will happen if they miss the catching away of the body of Christ?
Sure we do.
Christianity has a somewhat marred history of making merchandise of our blessed hope.
They make terribly written book series about it, movies with second-rate actors, and they still rake in the big bucks.
Oh, how we love our sensationalism.
We all remember the Left Behind series, Tim LaHaye and the gang.
They banked pretty well.
So here we have an example of Paul warning an unsaved man who believes he's part of God's chosen, and he's relying heavily on that and looking down on others, refusing Paul's gospel.
And he's engaging in a serious form of classism as far as who he thinks is qualified to be accepted of God.
Paul warns this guy.
He warns this old man of what's going to happen if he doesn't repent, change his mind, and believe the gospel that Paul presents to him and the rest of the quote, All who are in Rome.
Be saved according to my gospel.
Be ready for the catching away or get left behind to deal with the righteous judgment
and wrath from the day of the Lord.
Isn't that our message today?
One might, might say that the probability shows that we're most likely to incur physical death than be among the alive and remain.
And you know, be that as it may, one thing's for certain, a day is coming.
Listen, saints, a day is—don't let anyone fool you—a day is coming in which that probability is gone.
The catching away will be an experienced reality.
For the body of Christ, the reality will be that of forever being with the Lord.
For the unsaved, the reality will be that of tribulation, judgment, wrath.
Time is short, folks.
Today is the day of salvation.
Are you ministering reconciliation when given the opportunity?
Next verse, Romans chapter 2, verse 9, Tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first and also of the Gentile, but glory, honor, and peace to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile. For there is no respect of persons with God.
Folks, Romans chapter 2, verses 6 through 11 describes and lays out the judgment and
the wrath that Paul is warning this old man that he's warning him about.
And he makes a profound point in verses 9 through 11.
There is no difference.
Even in the end time tribulation with anguish, judgment, wrath, or glory, honor, and peace, God will not respect the status that this old man was apparently proud of, relying on, and resting in.
Paul's gospel is the only chance this old man had.
And Paul was meeting him right where he was in order to give it to him in a manner which he could understand and believe.
If he cannot convince this man that his God's chosen people status won't save him, then he won't be able to convince him that he needs to believe Paul's gospel for salvation.
In addition to that, Paul will have to deal with the effects of the Romans having a Judaizer in their midst, just like he did with the Galatians.
My, it's nice to be able to read through the book of Romans having a clear and correct premise to operate from, standing on a right foundation.
You can't stay in context until you first know the context.
Evangelism isn't a one-size-fits-all thing.
You have to meet people where they are, just like your apostle Paul did.
He did that right here with this old man, who believed his inherited status as a citizen of Israel would save him.
He believed he was above others because, oh, I'm not as bad a sinner as the Gentiles, you know.
And as we're going to see in our next study, he also thought that keeping the law was part of his salvation.
He's religious, self-righteous, judgmental.
These are the people that you have to get them lost before you can get them saved.
Now we don't recommend this as a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all approach, but hey, when dealing with the lost who don't know they're lost, the ones going about to establish their own righteousness, Romans chapter 10, this works pretty well.
There's no shortage of self-righteous, self-confident, lost people who are convinced they're saved.
They have no clue that Paul's gospel is their only hope.
And just a side note here, while I'm looking here at this email that came in, someone wrote us about a podcast that comes out of Florida.
The listener here says there's a teacher who thinks he's the grace police, a real judgy fellow who's always judging other grace preachers about how they sound and complains a lot about their tone of voice, even though he himself sounds arrogant and condescending.
Sounds like the Joel Osteen theology.
There are multiple passages of Jesus and Paul that I'm quite certain look a lot better on paper than they would have sounded if we had heard them being spoken.
Multiple verses.
Even here in the one we're dealing with today, it's evident that Paul isn't exactly mincing words to suit this old man.
By reading this, I don't think he cares of what this man thinks about him.
He just wants this man to understand his position, his status, is not what he thinks it is.
Paul was pretty rough with him, but he knew how to meet people where they are.
He become all things to all men so that he might win some.
And he's our pattern, right?
Some need to hear words spoken gently and meekly in order for them to receive what's
being said.
Others, they need to be spoken to directly, specifically, and matter-of-factly.
Some need to hear words spoken sharply, as Paul said in 2 Corinthians chapter 13, verse 10.
Neither of these are more or less loving than the other.
Neither of these is an example of one showing more grace than the other.
Paul isn't saying that soft speech and politeness equals speech alway with grace, seasoned with salt.
If that's the case, then Paul is condemning himself, and Jesus for that matter.
Anyone who's read Scripture, you'd think they'd know this.
When we meet others where they are, what we say and how we say it can be different from person to person.
It's not cookie-cutter evangelism.
One thing for certain, the snowflakers of the current grace movement, they wouldn't
be able to handle some of the grace teachers back 20 to 30 years ago.
They're more concerned about living their best grace life now.
To the point of compromising truth for the sake of unity.
You won't get that here.
We're here to lay it out just like Paul did, and some's going to receive it and some won't.
We just keep it moving.
And talk about an identifier.
Hey, just look at Facebook comments, YouTube comments.
You can tell right off whether or not the comment was made by a milk-fed compromiser
or a spiritual carnivore.
You can tell by their answers.
Here in Romans 2, Paul speaks pretty rough to this old man, and he's not a hypocrite.
Nowhere does Paul tell us to do as I say, not as I do.
Quite the opposite, actually.
He said, follow me as I follow Christ.
Be ye followers of me.
People need to get off the personality bandwagon and jump on the doctrinal bandwagon.
If you're listening to someone and they're speaking truth, they're speaking truth.
Stop worrying so much about how they say it, and be more concerned with what they're saying.
Okay, saints, go be strong in the Lord and stay fervent in spirit.
Next time, we're going to begin here with verse 12.
Anyone here today not certain about your salvation, the gospel is that, on the cross, God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself.
Jesus died for our sins, was buried, but rose.
He was made to be a substitutionary sacrifice, to appease the wrath of God.
He did it so that you and I might be made the righteousness of God in Him.
Praise God Almighty.
God the Son bore the punishment that we deserved.
Receive this truth.
Receive the free gift of salvation and rest in Him.
Just rest.
Grace and peace.
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