The Book of Romans XVI, When Right Is Wrong

Tonight was not what I was really expecting and it's so appropriate for the message that I just want to get quickly into this and I Did mention was going to be abbreviated Because in Romans 10 One of my commentaries that I read this week titled this chapter a summons to evangelism I Didn't had appropriate for what we've heard Shared tonight in so many fronts got your Bible. We have the outlines very quickly ushers They're already out everyone hasn't I need one Okay, I'd like to have one here Everyone already has one. Well, I'll get equipped here and be ready to go. Thank you very much Want you to do something turn your outline over or get a blank sheet of paper answer this question When you get to the point of sharing with someone why they should receive Christ assuming that sometime in your experience that happens What is their normal response Say it again when you get to the point in a relationship conversation whether it's you know with a person on the street or a Brother that you've known for 40 years But the conversation comes around to why he or she should receive Christ as their own personal Savior In your experience whether it's once or a hundred times. What is their normal response to that? What do they usually say yeah, I mean and I'm assuming they say no Yeah, what do they say well you write it down, okay write it down in the back seat, what do they say? I'm not ready yet. I don't Want to just you know paraphrase it. What do they say? Basically? Well, I got to think about it. Go ahead When you get to that place of sharing your testimony sharing the gospel, what is the normal response? Okay, everyone should just take a minute. I'm gonna ask you what you wrote here in a second So, well, I haven't shared the gospel anyone so I don't know what they'll say well be encouraged from tonight. All right Chris you have an answer for me. What do they normally say? Later want to put it off not ready yet Sam It's good for you. It's whatever. You know, that's whatever is fine for you. Okay, that's good someone else Okay Good. Yeah, me and God have an understanding already Real good real good, but I'm not good enough yet. I don't really break there yet. Uh-huh Good Thank You doors. I believe religion is a private affair between Person and God. All right, Norma. I go to church. I lead a good life. All right We're on a roll here now How many of this would assent to knowing? non-christian people who live morally upright and Good lives that if you were to evaluate their lives as a family person or as a hard-working individual You just have to describe them as being wonderful people. Anyone know someone like that? They're not Christians I mean they they would not profess any active faith in because they might have a church membership way back But they're not really an active Christian by their own mission, but they're good people good wonderful people and You know I've found and discovered in my own life. There's nice wonderful good people everywhere Have you ever find yourself in a conversation? Let me give you another little thought here following the death of someone You're at the funeral you know, this person was really out to lunch when I came to their relationship with God had no interest in God and the grieving friend or family member comes and says I Know that such-and-such really, you know didn't believe all that stuff that you believe but boy they were so good And you find yourself in that position Where there's a subtle pause and they want you to say to them what? Hey, well God's Hey, God's fair. I see and they want that word of assurance and comfort What happens in Romans chapter 10 is that Paul goes back to the very basic theme of This issue of what does it take to to be saved? What does it take to have an eternal relationship with God? Is it enough Just to be a wonderful person. In fact, he begins by talking about His brethren the Jews and he not only talks about people who are morally upright and so on But people who have a zeal for God Add to the fact that they maybe were just nice people. These people had a zeal They had a they had a fervency in serving God. They wanted to do wonderful things for him these were people who Had a heart to serve along with being righteous and moral and everything in their best abilities You have to ask yourself the question Is God just narrow-minded when it comes to this thing about being saved? This is it just is he really just kind of weeding everyone out because he's Real tight about heaven and about who's gonna be with him Now it doesn't take Paul long to answer this question. Look at Romans 10 in verse 9 That if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead. Let's all say it you will be saved For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved He says not only must you believe and receive if you're a for real Christian, you have to be able to tell somebody it's not enough to be a Christian that hides in the closet and you know Puts it all behind him when you go out the door if you believe it You got to stand up here and say it in other words or say it to another person And he goes on it says verse 12 and 13 Listen there's not even any difference between the Jews and the Gentiles. Can you imagine that thought in the Jews mind? Who I mean no difference between a Jew and a Gentile incredibly Uproarious kind of a statement on his part. It says for everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved now Doesn't matter what you've done doesn't matter How many works you've done doesn't matter how zealous you've been what kind of service you did doesn't matter about your pedigree Where you went to church who your parents were it doesn't matter about any of that stuff But whoever calls in the name of the Lord will be saved Just for a couple of minutes tonight I want to I just want to touch on as so many have testified tonight on this matter of The gospel as it relates to non-believers Why is it that we have such a hard time with that person who says well, it's okay for you or you know, I Have my own arrangement with God Why is it that we kind of? Shrink back then and don't know what to say. I want to share with you tonight what to say To the person who has his own arrangement with God. All right, first of all The reason why we struggle with this is because so many people Compare their righteousness to God's and they don't I Should say man's sinfulness needs to be compared to God's holiness and not to his own standards. Okay, you see in our minds It's very easy to rank ourselves as being pretty close to be except being acceptable just you know Kind of as we go through life, let's say that man's righteousness Was a perfect ten. All right, if being a holy upright pure 100% perfect person was ten. What do you think? Most people see themselves as what do most people see themselves as? Yeah, I think most people out there I mean I could be wrong don't see themselves as a minus five There might be a couple out there who really feel bad about themselves most people think most people I deal with think They're up there. Hey, you know, they're up there pretty high when it gets right down to Eight some even a nine Some even a nine point five But the Bible tells us and the reason I'm going to get to that a minute why they do that The Bible tells us that that's not the case that no man is perfect in the sight of God In fact, the Bible says that our deeds of righteousness are as what? filthy rags Compared to the holiness of God. I wanted to bring a big white sheet out here Scott And it crossed the old dirty grease rag from a garage somewhere and just let you see in your mind This is God's holiness. And this is our best shot right here This is our righteousness Unfortunately, most people don't compare Their righteousness with God's holiness they compare it with somebody else's You see and herein lies the problem You see instead of looking at God and saying what is God required now look very carefully at verse 3 backing up now Since they talking about the Jews did not know the righteousness righteousness that comes from God They sought to establish their own Underline that phrase they sought to establish their own Do you hear that? God and I have our own arrangement. There it is right there. They sought to establish their own See, that was the problem with the Jews They believed that they could muster up enough righteousness to make themselves completely acceptable before God on their own without Christ sacrifice for his for their sins and dear ones It is very easy for us to slip into that same kind of mentality that hey basically I'm okay And as long as I don't compare myself with God I look around I say I'm okay Now here's an illustration to use with a person that's kind of made their own arrangement with God He thinks it looking at their life. They're pretty acceptable recently in India I Was warned above everything else in terms of staying healthy. Don't drink the water Don't drink now More than one time. I would sit at a restaurant And The waiters would come out with a glass of water Just you know, and it was pretty warm over there sort of a tropical climate that water looks so good I mean that water was clear. That glass was clean. I Was thirsty it looked great and in the back of my mind. I kept hearing what? drink Don't drink Inside that clean glass clear water That looked absolutely no different than the water I take out of my just my pure water bottle and put another glass right beside it You know, we we carry along purified water those two glasses of water look identical. I switched them. I wouldn't know which was which But guess what was inside Invisible to the naked eye inside that glass of the water that the waiter had brought to me. Ooh Crawly little creepy, right? I mean amoebas and stuff that only a microscope would reveal But I know for certain had I drank a glass of that water. What would have happened? bad news very bad news You see and what you can tell a person is And He didn't even take a glass of water some men got sick because they brush their teeth with the spigot water Doesn't take a glass just takes how big are those amoebas? How many of them can fit on the head of a toothbrush? Enough And so you see what happens is you tell a person that inside of what appears to be on the outside and clean vessel Inside under God's microscope, there's all kinds of crud. There's all kinds of sediment in there. There's all kinds of bacteria There's all kinds of filth if you will of the fallen nature And it's not good enough to look at that glass of water of our lives and say hey we're okay because God dear one Is gonna put under his microscope? and on that day The only acceptable life will be the one that passes the test of the microscope The Bible says that every deed every thought will be revealed You say well who's gonna make it then no one on their own righteousness who's gonna make it only those who've received Christ's righteousness And claim it as their own Roman numeral two Men make the terrible mistake of comparing their Sinfulness to someone else's you know It's a terrible mistake They look and say well my life is as good as so-and-so, you know Let's think of it this way. It's the rating scale of zero to ten ten being perfectly righteous Being a human being gives you a one point on the scale. So everyone has one point but then let's just say that out there are the you know, the muggers that the drug czars the murderers the hitmen and If they're a one or 1.5, then we've got to be at least a what? Yeah, four or five something in that category, I mean just because we're fairly decent people now We also have this big category of people that we all know out there who are basically Connivers, you know basically people lousers who are looking to kind of stick it to someone morally or ethically and they're ahead of the the drug czars anyhow, but they're still Losers in a lot of respects, but they've got to be a six or a you know any often rather if they're like Coming in there at three or four then that gives us another point or two and gets us up to seven Then add to that some of the good things that we do like, you know Hey, I support public TV I buy Girl Scout cookies. I keep my yard clean, you know I'm nice to the neighbor's dog all that stuff that gives you another point to get you up to an eight Then add to that, you know past the admirable qualities come the spiritual qualities many people that you and I know think that if they Go to church on occasion Give a little bit when the offering plate goes by, you know do a good deed here and there Maybe even put their name on the roll and join the church Maybe even have a Christian book in their library and maybe even a tape of praise in their car Under the seat But that's got to get them up there in the nines and you know If they come on Wednesday night that puts him up at nine point five or so And when you compare yourself with the guy next door who you know, and you can describe him Just zero yells constantly at his kids Screams at his wife comes home drunk. There's all those things you start comparing yourself My dear ones what happens to people like that they become convinced Listen that they don't need One of the obstacles that I fight In my evangelistic role and you fight in your personal evangelistic role is people don't believe they need to say I'm sorry. I hate to say it. They really don't believe that they need to say They believe that they're going to make it on some righteousness of their own And this is a scary proposition because they're comparing themselves with other people you know, my dad's here tonight and I Think of a few times that we've gone to these car shows that he has some antique cars that he's built over the years And I remember on more than one occasion Remember the one of the first times I went out and he brought his car and drove it up, you know really just great and he just beautifully done over the one of those Chrysler airflow convertibles, you know what you guys know what that is with the woody sides and Some of you used to have those I know I Mean this was a great car and And people, you know would come and look at this thing and I look at that say, but that's got to win first place This is the neatest thing I'd walk around and I'd see you know, like one little piece that you know Just need to be twisted one way or there was one loose little Piece of rubber padding that wasn't exactly the way, you know perfectly should be one little tiny thing Well, what I discovered was over time that someone else would come in and they'd be pulling their car in on a trailer and The very fact that my father drove his car at all Disqualified it to be in what they consider to be, you know top of the world class If you drive it at all it automatically puts it one run lower because the pipes are gonna get hot You know and that makes the thing less than perfect And I began to realize that there's this whole system out there I didn't even you know, I didn't have no concept of and even though I looked at it said man This thing is really great compared to all these other cars. This is the best car there and then I realized that there's a whole nother category out there that I didn't even have a Handle a clue as to how technical it was you see and that's what we have to convince people about God. You see my point They had this whole system out there. I'm as good as you might you know on my boys and dear ones There's a whole nother thing out there. It's called God's holiness People need to know this now my time is going to be gone here in a minute But I have to share something with you You see, I think there needs to come a time in every life When you see yourself as God sees you and you see God as he really is. I am increasingly of the conviction that That there is in every life a necessity of brokenness Until the moment comes when you in fact see your sinfulness and See God's holiness. I doubt that you really Truly Will fully appreciate what God's done. I Want to go one step further and say I don't believe that heaven will be populated with anyone Who has not had that experience our greatest challenge In bearing the good news to our generation Is to cause people to know their condition as it truly is and how many you know, no one wants to hear bad news No one wants to hear that if you come in insensitively you come in accusingly we're not talking about that We want to come alongside people and help them to see That they're really a class three Specimen not a class one How do you do that? How do you do that See the role of an evangelist is to let people know where they are as well as to let them know as to where they're Where they're gonna be it's just marvelous that these evangelists came up today and kind of shared that And it's one thing to do with a stranger that you may never see again It's a whole nother thing to do with the person you're gonna see every day because you you know You fly with them you drive with them you work with them you sit beside And I'm wondering tonight if we look at Paul's summons here In Romans chapter 10, do we see What he is saying to us how beautiful verse 15 are the feet of those Who bring good news how beautiful are the feet I Suppose that you think Someone else will bring it But my experience is that we have to be the one you will go places where no one else will ever be You will touch people that I'll never touch And you need to see that God's giving you a role of helping those folks to see Their true spiritual condition that establishing their own righteousness does not work now hear this, please Many of you have as one of the folks mentioned loved ones. You think you're a little dippy You think this church is a little wacky and you're too much and all that But you know and I know that they are simply they've created their own Standard of righteousness, you know it and I want to exhort you tonight Don't be fooled. Don't slip your head and heart into a gear that says well, it doesn't really matter in the end It does matter just come to God and say Lord show me how I can help them to see give me a word picture You know the glass of water or the white sheet, whatever something to help them to see how Before Almighty God their righteousness Is his filthy rats their own system won't happen those of you who are evangelists need to be faithful To keep spreading the message and encouraging the rest of us. How many of you tonight were encouraged by these testimonies? Yeah I was encouraged to get out there a little bit more risk it some Those who are teachers need to remind us to do that. And here's the final word because I like you Believe there's a tremendous reward for those You know when Eric looked over to her and said her Shall we father? I thank you tonight for the good news messengers that are here And Lord, we worship you for the reports that have come in today that you've been using your servants behind the scenes And I want to ask you right now Heavenly Father to make up for that which maybe some of us Feel that's lacking in us. Thank you that the Holy Spirit's been given to us tonight to cause us to enable us to have a measure of Power in every circumstance Lord. I do pray that we'd not shrink backward For how will they know? If no one tells them I pray God that you empower Every one of us here to see that we have a part in bringing the good news.