04 Objections Overruled (Romans 3)

SPEAKER_00: We're in Romans chapter 3 today. And how many of you have ever tried a self-help program? A self-help kind of program. Yeah. They're really tempting. They have such good promises. Well, I tried a Google search on the phrase positive thinking just to see what I could come up with. And of course, you know, you can believe everything you see on the internet. So I just wanted to give you a sample of what I found. There's a website called instantInnerpower.com. You can look these up. These I'm not making this up. It promises to give you, quote, the ability to create positive mental states that you can summon instantly on command. So all you have to do is give them your credit card. And they'll give you their program. It says you can go from feeling afraid, hesitant, or depressed to confident, determined, and happy in an instant. Using a powerful tool called anchoring, you can now quickly summon your most enabling emotional state anytime you want. But they're not alone. Self-esteemforwomen.com, that's self-esteem in the number four, women.com, they say, well, yes, everybody appreciates positive thinking, but positive thinking alone is of limited value. Simply repeating positive affirmations such as I am a wonderful person with much to offer the world will not change your life unless you actively do something to reinforce that you're a wonderful person with much to offer the world. So they have a series of guests for$20 each, just these self-help books that you can download to your computer, print out, and they're e-workbooks, and it there you go. But this is another great one. This is affirmations for positive thinking.com. They say in five minutes a day you can easily create the life you want, guaranteed. Guaranteed, says right there on the website. And it went on and on and on. There are pages of these websites. And what struck me is comparing that with what we see in chapter three today, just think about the all the verses from the Old Testament that Paul quotes about none is righteous, no one understands, their lips are like venom, you know, that all that section in the middle of the chapter. Um his message is you're sinful and there's nothing you can do about it, apart from the grace of God. And I think the problem, he would say, is all these self-help programs are like trying, it's the problem trying to solve itself, and it's impossible. If whatever is in you is broken, the broken piece itself can't fix it. So we're gonna take a look. I mean, if you think about their language, it's pretty obvious. I mean, what in the world isn't your enabling emotional state? And how would you ever summon it? You know, I mean, it's just I don't, you know, some some of them are just you'd read them and they sound so incredible. Um in Romans, remember what Paul's been doing up to this point is he's arguing through the first four chapters that we can't be justified by keeping the law, we can only be justified by faith. So in chapter one, he argued that all of us rebelled, and that rebellion has two consequences. First, we experience sin and death, and death is not just the end of our life one day, but all the frustration and the anger and the bitterness and the broken hearts and the tragedies and all the muck and crud that comes from living in a fallen world with other fallen people. And the second consequence is that God in his wrath withdraws his offer for life. Remember, you see there's all that language about God abandoned them, God gave us over into the custody of sin and death. So in chapter two, he argues both the moral person, the person who may not uh say he believes in God but is aspiring for some high ethical standard, um, that person and the religious person also fall under this judgment. So the outward marks of religion don't save you, they're not enough alone to justify or to save you without an inward change of heart. Now he's gonna conclude that argument in chapter three. In the first uh twenty or so verses, he's basically gonna look at, okay, if what you say is true, here's all my objections to your argument. And then finally, in 21, he's gonna announce the good news. And one of my my favorite, my pastor mentors, his name is Brian Morgan. He like he used the analogy of a heart surgeon. And he's saying, What's going on here is Israel is like the surgeon general, and they've been given the scalpel of God's word to probe into the human heart, and what they find is your our hearts are so damaged by sin that nothing short of a heart transplant is gonna save us. But what Paul's claiming is Israel, as the as the doctor or the surgeon is not immune. They have the same disease and they need the same transplant. So all these other things we try, like all these instant innerpower.com sites, are really just putting a band-aid on cancer. It's not gonna solve the ultimate problem. Okay. So at this point in the argument, we're seeing what I think would be the objections. Jewish believers and Gentile believers, after reading this in Paul's letter, would say, now wait a minute, what about this? If what you're saying is true, it can't be true because of X, Y, and Z. And there's a series of objections. So we're going to look at those. So turn to chapter 3 if you haven't already. And we're just going to go through them pretty much one at a time. The first one then is in 3, 1, and 2. Then what advantage has the Jew, or what value, what is the value of circumcision? Much and every way, to begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. So remember at the end of chapter 2 last week, Paul defined a Jew not as one who was just physically circumcised, but one who was spiritually circumcised or had this change of heart. So the objection that comes at him is, well, if what you're saying is true, if it doesn't matter whether I'm physically Jewish, and what's more important is whether I'm spiritually Jewish or spiritually circumcised, what difference does it make that I'm Jewish? Why why is there any advantage to the Jew then? How can we be called God chosen people if it really doesn't make any difference? And Paul says, no, there are much advantage in every way because Jews were given the privilege of being the stewards of God's word. So they were given the law, they were given, to use my analogy, the scalpel, to s to diagnose the problem and see what, and see the problem of the human race that's sin, and then to share that with all the nations, so to bring forth that blessing to all the nations. And he's saying that's an incredible role to play. God didn't have to use you at all, but he did, and he gave you this job to play. So the first objective is, well, so what difference does it make if you're Jewish or not? And he says, Well, you've been given this special role. Then in three, he picks it up again. Well, what if some were unfaithful? Does their unfaithfulness does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? And then his answer, by no means, let God be true, though everyone were a liar, as it is written, that you may justify, be justified in your words and prevail when you are judged. So now the objection is, okay, all right, okay, we we understand the part about we have this role as Jews, but what if we're unfaithful? Doesn't that nullify God's promise? The idea being if God chose Israel to share this blessing with the world and they failed, then God's hands are tied because they didn't do their part. So now how is he going to fulfill his promises because the very people he was counting on to fulfill these promises proved faithless? So that's the objections. See what he's saying? So if if Jews ignored their calling and they didn't live out the law, and they weren't an example, and they weren't a light to the nations or a guide to the blind, and they proved faithless, then doesn't that overcome God's sovereignty or his choice? Because now they've messed up and he can't do anything about it. And Paul says, no, God is faithful even when men are faithless. If every single man on earth was found to be a liar, God would still bring about his purposes and still bring about his redemption. And if you read through the Old Testament, you see this over and over, because you'll see this pattern of the nation of Israel, you know, they hit this spiritual high and they say, Okay, God, we get it this time, we rededicate ourselves to you, we're gonna follow you now, we've got it, and what happens? They hit a spiritual level. Oops, we messed up, okay, we go back, we do it again, and it goes over and over. And what Paul's saying is God made a promise and he's gonna bring it about, and he can use even our faithlessness, even if every one of us is found to be a liar, he can still bring his good out of that. He quotes Psalm 51 in this passage, which is a Psalm of David, um, after he has committed horrible sins and has returned to God, and he says, Against you and you only have I sinned, that you might be vindicated when you judge. In other words, he's saying, Lord, I'm a failure. Anything you give me, I deserve, but you will be vindicated. Your righteousness, your justness, your character will be proven. God will remain faithful even and his promise will stand, and we can't mess them up no matter how faithless we are. All right. I'm gonna move pretty fast through these because we're gonna try to do the whole chapter. It's gonna be another long morning. Um so verse 5 then is the next one. But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? I speak in a human way. And his answer, by no means, for then how could God judge the world? So now there's their objection is, okay, if even when we're sinful, that shows how good God is, how can he be justified in judging me? Because if my sin is actually doing a good thing, it's serving to show how glorious God is. So if my sinfulness makes God's righteousness shine all the brighter, then how can he turn around and condemn me? Because I'm doing a good thing. My sinfulness is is serving a good purpose, like glorifying God. So how can he condemn me? That's not fair. And he says again, may it never be. Um God is just. If he wasn't just, he couldn't judge the world. If he had broken the rules, he would no longer be qualified to judge us. And basically his point is just because God can find a way to bring good out of our sin does not mean that sin is right. Sin is still wrong. And he's perfectly justified in calling it wrong, even though in his great mercy and compassion he can bring good out of it. All right. Then in seven, but if through my lie God's truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner? And why not do evil that good may come, as some people slanderously charge us with saying their condemnation is just. So this is kind of a follow-under the question. He's saying, okay, so if when I sin it shows God's glory and his mercy, why don't I just keep sinning? Because the more I sin, the more it will show his mercy and his justice, and that's a good thing, right? And we know that we wouldn't want that to happen. So he's they're trying to poke holes in his gospel. Um, let us do good that evil or let us do evil that good may come, is the idea, well, let's just keep sinning because that gives God more to forgive, and then God's glory is shown and his character is shown. And it's interesting at this point, Paul's answer is basically that argument is so devoid of logic, I'm not even gonna talk about it. He says their condemnation is just. He basically says, that's ridiculous. Now, he is gonna answer this question in chapter six. So we're gonna come back to it because he is gonna raise that very issue again, and this time he's gonna go into more detail. So you probably have a question about that, but it's coming in chapter six. Um for now he dismisses it. Now he's gonna conclude this section. What then? This is verse nine. Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all, for we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written, none is righteous, no not one. So here's his conclusion, and it's pretty much a conclusion to the whole first three chapters. What then? What's the conclusion of all this? Everyone is sinful, everyone's in the same boat, everyone is condemned by the disease of sin, and no one is better off than anyone else. So both Jews and Greeks are all under sin. And then to sum up his section, he quotes a series of verses from the Old Testament. And as we go through these, notice he's gonna hit almost every aspect of our lives, and he's gonna take it from the outside to the inside and say everything is tainted by sin. So both the doctors, to continue my earlier metaphor, both the doctor Israel and the patients, the Gentiles, are infected with the same disease. They both need the heart transplant. Okay, so in Beccentin, as it is written, none is righteous, no not one. No one understands, no one seeks for God. All have turned aside, together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one. Notice the repetition of not even one. And then these wonderful metaphors. And notice in these metaphors, he gives you a couplet where the first verse is a metaphor, and then the second verse is often the explanation of what he means by it. So it's this kind of poetic couplet of here's the metaphor, here's the reality behind it. Their throat is an open grave, they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips, their mouth is full of curses and bitterness, their feet are swift to shed blood, and their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know that whatever the loss well, let me skip nineteen for a minute. Let's go back to the metaphors in. Their throat is an open grave, with their tongues they keep deceiving. Here he's talking about their their throat, it's the vehicle of speech. So whatever we say is like an open casket or grave. It contains nothing but death, corruption, uncleanness, decay. And that reveals what's in our hearts. With our tongues we keep deceiving. Um what we speak bring forth this deception. Then the poison of asps is under their lips, with their whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Here he's saying, Okay, your speech is like deadly snake venom. It infects other people, it lashes out and and brings cursing and bitterness and infects other people. So all that complaining and whatever it reveals what's in our the corruption of our hearts. So he's moving from our speech now to our actions. Their feet are swift to shed blood, destruction and misery are their paths. So not only do we say it, we do it. Our feet run to evil to prey on the innocent, leaving behind this path of destruction. And the path of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. I think fearing God here is um, I think what he's got in mind in this verse is a reference to kind of the basic morality. This, you know how people can there's kind of a middle class morality that people feel like if I do that I'm good enough, and it's kind of the socially acceptable white lies are okay, you know, and and it's okay to speed and break the law on little things, but you know, there are lines we don't cross. So that kind of whatever societal code of moral behavior he's saying, they don't even have that, they've lost that. And his point through that is sin is running the course, it goes from the outside with the speech to the actions and and right into our inner hearts and the and our path. There's nothing there. And it looks, I mean, we got a pretty good example of this in New Orleans after the hurricane. I mean, when you removed the trappings of civilization, it was amazing how quickly the people that were there degenerated into lawlessness and chaos and anarchy. Um it just struck me reading this about how their feet are swift to shed blood, destruction, and misery are in their past. You take away kind of the trappings of society and we revert to this state. Now, remember Paul's writing to believers at this point. He's writing to the Roman church. So you can imagine them reading this and going, he's not talking about me. I mean, all these verses in the Old Testament, they're addressed to specific people. They have context. They're ones addressed to the fool, one's addressed to the wicked. They're often describing the enemies of God. So why would Paul quote that to me, a believer? And that's what the objection is then in 19. He's responding to what he assumes his readers are going to say of, well, yeah, that's true. There are people like that, but those are the wicked, the foolish, the people who turn their backs on God, not me, a good God-fearing Gentile or a Jew. So in 19, he picks up that argument. 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. By the works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. So in 19 and 20, the objection is, but wait a minute, you're you can't be talking about me. And he says, No, the law speaks to everyone. Those who are under the law, their mouths will be closed, and everyone else, the whole world will be accountable to God. Everyone is condemned by this. So there is and his point is there is no us in them. The um there is no, you know, those guys that God hates and these people that he loves in terms of our sinfulness, we're all sinful. Now there are some who are forgiven and some who are not, but at this point in Paul's argument, he's saying we are all stand condemned by the law. The law shows us our sin. I saw a show on uh the History Channel a while ago. It was actually a repeat. I think the show was done many years ago, but they ran it a few months back in the summer, and it was about the Holocaust. And in one scene, um, they were interviewing a Jewish man who had survived the Holocaust, and during the show he came face to face with Adolf Eichmann, who was the person responsible for his suffering. And as Eichmann walked into the courtroom, the man fainted. And later the newscaster asked him why he fainted. He said, you know, was the terror and the evil in Eichmann so overwhelming that you just you had you fainted. And the man replied, No, what I was expecting to see in Adolf Eichmann was an ugly monster. Instead, I saw a man just like me. That's really the point, Paul's point here. The same evil is in all of us. And God gave us the law so that we would see that we're all guilty. We all have the same disease and we need the same cure. So the law came that every mouth would be shut and no one would be justified by it. And we have to come face to face, I think, with that realization at some point that yes, I am too am sinful and a slave to sin. I have no excuse apart from radical heart surgery, there's no hope for me. Now the good news is we're finished with the bad news. At chapter 20, Paul ends that art that part of the argument. So he has placed all humanity on the on trial before the throne of God. He's found us all condemned. None of us can solve the problem of our own sin. God's justice is too great, our sin is too overwhelming. So now he's going to bring in another person into the trial, God himself in the person of Jesus. So Horus, the Roman poet, he was writing to people on how to do a good Greek tragedy. My daughter's been studying mythology, so she brought this up. I thought this was a great quote. He was advising them do not bring a God onto the stage unless the problem is one that deserves a God to solve it. So Paul's about to bring a God onto the stage because it takes God to solve this problem, God Himself. So, in chapter 3, are we doing on time? Good. 321, we're going to pick up now, this is the first time he's really announced there is an alternative. So let's do 321 to 26. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and prophets bear witness to it. The righteousness of God through faith in Christ Jesus 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 all 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. 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. So finally, he announces the gospel, namely, that apart from the law, there is a new way to gain the righteousness of God, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ. And notice this is not plan B because plan A failed. This is the plan as it always was. It was, as he says, it was witnessed by the law and the prophets. This is what they were looking forward to. In Leviticus, you can read all about the sacrificial system, and what's striking About that, is blood is required with a sacrifice. If you want to placate God's wrath over your sins, blood has to be shed. And you couldn't approach God in that system until a sacrifice had been made. So it started with the Mosaic Law, and then the prophets took it a step further. When you get to Isaiah and the servant songs, he they and other prophets they start prophesying that there will be a servant who will come and who will shed blood for our sins. In Isaiah 53, he was pierced through for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities. The chastising of our peace fell upon him, and by his scourging we are healed. So there's a servant coming, and his wounds are going to heal us, the blood he sheds. So the law and the prophet spoke of this Messiah who would come and would be the scapegoat and would be the sacrifice for us, and his blood would solve the problem, unlike the blood of the animals had done. And how do we lay hold of that? And his answer is faith. Even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe. And there's no distinction. Everyone who believes, whether you're Jewish or Gentile, whether you're of the line of Abraham or not, you all come to grace the same way. Now, just as an aside, I think this makes the transfiguration very significant. Because at the transfiguration, God declared Jesus was without sin. In other words, he was the only one who had completely kept the law and loved God as and with his whole heart. And the transfiguration showed that. And at that point, Jesus could have walked off into glory. But he came down the mountain and died for us. And that makes his sacrifice different than all the animals, because he had a choice. He chose to die for us. The animals, the goats, the rams, the bulls, whatever it was, the lambs that came through the sacrificial system, they didn't have a choice. They were brought. But Jesus had a choice. He he was proven worthy. He was proven holy and pure at the transfiguration. And he voluntarily chose to die in our place. That's the amazing part of the gospel, that he it was a choice and he chose to do it for us. Okay. So it's not our good works that save us, it's the reverse. Um we don't have any good works until after we've been saved and given a new heart. So we think, you know, we do these good things, and then God is obligated to bless us, or we do these good things to show God how worthy we are, and then he will bring about a blessing. But what Paul is going to go on to argue is no, God saves us, prepares these good works, and then we are now the people who can walk in them. So we do good works because he saved us and gave us a new heart, not because not the reverse. And what would happen is a third of the class would drop out each quarter. And they'd grade you on a curve. So you know, you'd get graded on the curve, and then the bottom third of the curve would drop out, and you'd come back, and now you're graded on the same curve, but it's a lot harder now. So you could get, you know, a 95, and that was a D because everybody else got above you. And then you'd get to spring, and it was like, okay, now the bottom two-thirds have dropped the class, and you're still being forced into this curve. So you'd get through that and you'd think, I'm I'm just I'm never gonna make it through this class. So what the analogy of grace is if the professor came to you at fall quarter and said, You're going to get an A, I'm going to make you the kind of person that's going to get an A. Guaranteed. You will get it. That's grace. God doesn't say, okay, I've saved you now, start living up to the life I'm giving you. Um, it is now you are saved. I'm going to make you the person I want you to be. You're going to pass the class, you're going to get an A, you're going to become holy and righteous, and you don't have to earn it. I'm going to make it happen. I'm going to make you that kind of person. Now, the bad news is it's going to hurt. It involves suffering and it involves trials and tribulations, but you're going to make it. So imagine the difference in your attitude if you walked into class knowing you were going to make the grain. What a relief. You don't have that's the peace of God. You don't have to struggle. You don't have to be worried. Am I good enough? Because you're not good enough, but God is going to make you good enough. So before we leave this section, I just want to make sure you understand all the religious vocabulary he he throws in here. The first one in verse 24, redemption. That word was part of the slave vocabulary. So it was the term used to buy a slave out of slavery. So in the Greek and the Roman wars, when they would, whoever was victorious would round up all the captors or the losers of the war and take them back to their country as slaves. So if some prominent citizen was captured as a slave, then their relatives could offer money to buy them back out of that slavery, and that's redemption. That's what that word meant. It was buying you back out of slavery. So Paul told us in Romans 1 that God gave us over into the custody of sin and death, and that's another legal term to be sold into slavery or to be put into slavery. And now he's telling us in 24, you have been bought back. Jesus Christ is your redemption. Now, this is not, you know, Daddy Warbucks writing a little small check out of his vast riches to free uh orphan annie from the orphanage. This is the God of the universe bankrupting himself, offering his only son as our redemption. So it's an enormous cost to buy us out of slavery. And the only part we contributed was our sin. He took the initiative to solve the problem. Okay, the other one, propitiation in verse 25, just make sure you understand that. That's another legal term, and it refers to satisfying your debt to justice. So when you break the law, now you may say, Oh, I'm sorry, but you've still broken the law, and there's a debt to justice that must be paid. Propitiation means that debt is paid. So it's the satisfying of God's wrath. If you remember my hand analogy, of we turn our back on God, God in his wrath turns his back on us. It's satisfying this problem. It satisfies our debt to justice so that God can turn back to us and then draw us to him. So that's um propitiation. So God is holy. He can't allow people to break the law without a punishment, and propitiation is the satisfying of that punishment. So what else? Uh justification then. I think uh this was to demonstrate his righteousness in is that 25 or 26? Well, he uses it again. I think at this point in the text, when he's talking about righteousness, he means his justness or his holiness, his um upholding of the standard. So it is an aspect of his character, but I think because all the other terms he's using are legal terms, he's got that aspect of his upholding justice in mind. Because he goes on then to say that he might be both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. So he's shown to be just, to be uphold his standard, to be completely and utterly fair, if you will, in his wrath, in his response to our sin, but in his mercy, he also justifies us. So he is both just and holy. He will uphold his standard, but he is so profoundly merciful that he will also be the justifier, the one who solves the problem. So he won't take sin lightly, but neither will he leave us there. And of course, all of this is made possible by the sacrificial death of Jesus, which was a voluntary choice. Okay, let's finish out the pastor and the the past the passage then. Verse 27. Then what becomes of our boasting? Is it excluded? By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by a law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith, apart from works of the law. Or is God a God of the Jews only? Is he not the God of the Gentiles also? Yes, of the Gentiles also. Since God is one, he will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means. On the contrary, we uphold the law. So he's going to wrap up the session and section and say, well, what then? How should we respond to this? Do we have a reason to boast? Do the Jews, because they've been given this special role as the as a surgeon general with the scalpel of God's word, do they have a reason to boast? Um or the fact that God chose us to be saved, do we have a reason to boast? And he says, no. It should eliminate our pride. Because part of faith is realizing that we can't save ourselves. It's realizing there is no us in them. We're all condemned, we're all in the same boat. Um so if we're still arrogant, if we see see ourselves somehow as well, I could never commit that sin, or I would never stoop that long, we haven't properly understood the gospel. The same evil that causes murder causes hate. The same evil that causes adultery causes lust, and it's in all of us. So we may not have acted on it, but the the sin is still there. Then all people approach God on the same basis, is really the other way he wraps this up, by saying it should eliminate our prejudice. So there should be no pride in terms of an us and them, or we're somehow better, and there should also be no prejudice because if it works vertically to destroy our self-righteousness or standing before God, it should work horizontally so that we don't judge and condemn others but realize we're all in the same boat, or as the little Jewish man in the documentary saw said, I saw a man just like me. I think that's his point behind asking, is God a God of the Jews only? How can we see ourselves as better than anyone else? Because we're all condemned on the same basis, we're saved on the same basis, we get invited into the kingdom on the same basis. So what then is saving faith? I would define it as four things based on what we've learned so far. The first one is what he's just said here, knowing that I'm sinful. I have before I can take those first steps to God, I have to know that I'm sinful. I have to want to be righteous, which is kind of the flip side of that. Some people sin and they don't care, but it's okay. But what happens when you're saved, and he's going to go on to argue this in chapter six, is now when you sin you grieve over it instead of excusing it or justifying it, now it becomes a source of grief. So knowing I'm sinful and wanting to be righteous, knowing that God owes me nothing. I have done nothing to deserve his grace. I haven't earned it in any way. It's all a part of his gift. Then the third thing, knowing I can't make myself righteous, again, that's a those are kind of a flip side. God owes me nothing and I can't do it on my own. And then the final piece is trusting that God will make me righteous because of Jesus' death and resurrection. So I want to be righteous and I know I'm sinful. I know that God owes me nothing, and that I can't make myself righteous, and that I'm trusting that God will in fact make me righteous because of the blood of Jesus Christ. Now, that I think is kind of the classic definition of saving faith. There are other, you may we might talk about ordinary faith or faith that gets you through the day, but that I think is what saves us, knowing we're sinful, knowing we can't do it on our own, that God owes me nothing, and that he will save me because of the blood of Jesus. So that raises the question: what are we trusting in? Everyone here trusts in something, and we're either seeking uh righteousness on our own, trying to establish it through these self-help programs, or harnessing our personal power, or what was that other summoning or enabling emotional states. Never worked for me, or we are trusting that God will do it. And that's the truly good news. Because what he's saying in is you will get there because God loves you and he's promised it. And that I think is the main difference between Christianity and all the other religions. When my son was about, I guess he was in fifth or sixth grade, he went through the first of several periods of questioning Christianity, and we were talking one day, and he was asking all these questions, and I'd done all this research about, you know, looking into what the different religions are and belief systems, and I was all ready to go through my spiel, and we were sitting on the floor, I think he was helping me fold laundry, and he said, So, Mom, what made the difference for you? And I said, Well, kind of without thinking. He said, You know, I'm a failed perfectionist. And every other religion said, try harder, and it didn't work. Christianity is the only religion that says you don't have to try harder, God's gonna do it for you. He was like, Oh, okay. And that was the end of that. He was fine. He stopped, that was the end of that questioning period. And I thought, why did I do all that research? Sometimes the simple answers are best. But that is, I think, from for my story, that was what made the difference. You know, everyone, every other religion, if you look at it, whether it's finding peace or your karma or becoming one with the universe or whatever, it's all basically boils down to try harder. You know, work yourself up tighter, screw yourself up harder, just try harder, and you will get there. And Christianity comes along and says, it won't work. That's putting a band-aid on the cancer. There is no instant inner power.com that will solve your problem. But God will solve it. And all you have to do is trust him, and you can rest in that. That's, I think, the incredible good news. Now he's gonna go on next week, and we're gonna in chapter four, and the what's gonna happen at this point is the Jews are gonna say, Well, wait a minute, what about Abraham? If anyone was testified by keeping the law, it must be Abraham. Um, and how can you say that? Because look at him, and Paul's gonna turn that example around and say, No, Abraham is is in fact an example of faith. So that's what's coming. And then in five, which is my favorite chapter, one of my favorite chapters in the book, he's gonna say, Therefore, you have a reason to rejoice and really hit the good news. So let me stop there and uh pray to close us and then we'll have some questions. Lord, thank you that you are both just and the justifier, that you don't leave us in our sin, but in your profound mercy you step down from your throne to take the ultimate sacrifice on our behalf. And we pray that as we go through these hard chapters, that you would be writing them in our heart, rooting out the pride or the selfishness or the arrogance or just the fear that keeps us in our sins, and keeping us instead replacing that with the faith and the trust and the rest and knowing that you love us and that um you have done for us what we could never do for ourselves. And pray that as we go into the groups that you would be writing these laws on our hearts, helping us learn and grow together in prayer and fellowship and in studying your word. In Jesus' name. Amen.