Religion Not Enough

Let's take our Bibles and turn to Romans 2. That song is a beautiful musical tribute to the message of Romans: the good news that God provides for sinful people, a merit, a righteousness that is not our own. It belongs to the Lord Jesus, and it's perfect, and it's eternal, and it's ours through nothing good that we do or that we contribute, only by receiving it with empty hands of faith. That is the good news.

But before we can receive that good news and sing that song with our hearts, we have to hear and accept some bad news about ourselves: that we don't have any righteousness of our own. And that's what Paul is helping us to see in Romans 1-2.

And we're going to pick up Paul's presentation here in Romans 2:17. If you remember from the beginning of our study, we said that Paul would really love to come to Rome and preach the gospel there. But since he can't seem to work it out with his schedule to make it in person, he's writing down the gospel message that he wants to preach. And so he is taking us through really what we would have heard if we had been there with him in all the cities that he visits throughout the Book of Acts. And we pick up now in Romans 2:17.

Well, I listened to another spiritual classic this week to get my heart ready for worship this morning, not "Harper Valley PTA" this time, but "God's Gonna Get 'Cha For That," George Jones and Tammy Wynette, another classic from a bygone era in the 1970s. And it's a song that's kind of needling "Bible-belt" culture where everybody goes to church, everyone's kind of religious, everyone quotes Bible verses, and puts ichthuses on the back of their car, and wears Christian T-shirts, all that kind of thing. And in this song, George and Tammy are thinking about and really singing to the kinds of churchy religious people who know how to tell everybody else the things they need to change, how they need to get right, what they need to be doing, and even kind of warning them, "if you don't change your ways, God's gonna get you for that."

But what George and Tammy do in that song is they turn the spotlight on those people, on those religious people. And they say, "you know, the closer I look at your life, you who are always telling us that God's gonna get us for what we're doing, I'm starting to wonder if God's not gonna get you for some of the stuff that you're doing! Because when I look, I see that you're not really living up to all the things you're telling us we need to be living up to."

So my favorite verse from the song: Now old sister Bessie / she likes to testify / She says I'll always love the Lord / one day, I'm gonna fly / But the other night while driving by the local liquor store / I saw Sister Bessie flying out the door.

So church people who are really, really good at this public appearance, and are really good at telling other people what they need to be doing, but who don't always apply it in their own lives, who secretly may be living a different kind of life, it's always good for a laugh for those who are on the outside. That's why that song was really popular.

And I think if the Apostle Paul heard that song, as much as he might lament some of Sister Bessie's secret ways, I think that he might be able to get a little smile and maybe even laugh along with that song a little bit. And then he would turn us to Romans 2:17-29 because that is exactly the kind of message that Paul wants to present to us. That's exactly the group of people that Paul's wanting to target today: religious people. Because Paul has been sharing this good news, God's good news for the world, this good news that Paul calls "my gospel," because he carries it all over the Greco-Roman world and preaches it to all kinds of different people. He's been doing it for like 20 years now so that he can call it "my gospel."

And he's presenting that gospel now in written form in this letter to the Romans and to us. And he's explaining why it is such good news that the righteous God would make available for sinful people his righteousness, that they can just receive by faith alone through nothing that they contribute. But before he can explain why that's such good news, that God makes his righteousness freely available, he first has to explain why all the people listening to him don't have their own righteousness, why they need so much the free gift that God provides through Jesus Christ.

And so we can kind of imagine Paul preaching to one of the crowds that would gather in the marketplace in Corinth, or in Ephesus, or wherever he may be, and Paul singling out various groups. So first in chapter one, he talked to what we might call the "immoral, idol-worshiping gentiles." And it wasn't hard for Paul to show them that they don't have their own righteousness, that they have suppressed the knowledge of the creator God. They've turned instead to gods of their own making. And now they've turned upside down all of God's standards, even God's standards for basic things about human sexuality and human identity, all that kind of stuff we looked at in Romans 1.

And then there's this group over here and they're saying, "Mm hmm, tell him Paul! We've been thinking that about those people for a long time." And Paul says, "Great, I want to talk to you too. You moral people who are really good at judging the immoral people from chapter one, you don't have any righteousness either." And the way that Paul showed them that is by thinking very carefully about the big "Judgment Day," capital J, capital D, when each one of us will stand before the ultimate judge, the true judge, the Lord Jesus himself. And he will evaluate not only the things we do on the outside, but even the motives by which we did the things that we did. And in that light, we see that even the moral people, we don't have any righteousness of our own.

And now after all of that, there's one last group that Paul needs to address. They're probably standing at the back along the edges, just kind of quietly listening to Paul's presentation and agreeing with a whole lot of what he has to say, because they don't think any of those people he's been talking to are righteous either. This is the group of people that Paul would have known best, because he was one of them. And these are the religious people in that city, the people who went to church, the people who read their Bibles, the "God-people," specifically in our text, the Jewish people. And they would have agreed with a lot of what Paul had to say: that all of the people in that crowd are not righteous, that they're condemned, that they need something from the creator God.

But then Paul turns to them and says, "now let's talk about you. Because you may be surprised to hear it, but your religion doesn't make you righteous before God either."

Now, let's talk about it. And I want to look at it in three movements.

Paul talks to us about: 

In these opening verses, Paul takes us inside the mind of a religious person. Now, specifically, Paul's dealing with Jewish people here. But we could just as easily apply what Paul is saying to the Jews, to Christians, to evangelicals, to church goers in the Bible-Belt, people just like us who are in this room here today.

And it's almost like Paul asks these religious people, the "Evangelism Explosion" question. Some of y'all may be familiar with it. When I was sharing the gospel with people in college, we were taught to ask this diagnostic question to kind of find out where people are, and what they really think about themselves, and what they think about God. The question is this: "If you were to die tonight and God were to ask you, 'why should I let you into my heaven,' what would you say?" And their answer to that question reveals a lot about what they're resting in, what they're relying on. And it's kind of like Paul asked that question to those religious people standing at the back of the crowd that he's preaching to.

What makes you feel confident that you stand righteous before God now? And on the day of judgment? And I think the answer that they would have given would look a whole lot like verses 17-20. "Well, since you asked, I'll tell you why I think I'm righteous before God. 

First, I belong to the right group. That's verse 17: "You call yourself a Jew." Again, we could substitute the word 'Christian' here, or 'Baptist,' or 'I'm a member of Sharon Baptist Church.' In other words, I belong to the right group. I'm not in that group of rebellious sinners in Romans 1. I've moved into the right group.

OK. Second, I follow the right code. That's verse 17: "You rely on the law." We've already met a bunch of Gentiles who've thrown out all standards of morality, who do what's ever right in their own eyes, who congratulate other people who do wrong and who sin. And that's not this group of people. Religious people say, "No, we ought to follow God's standard. We ought to follow God's law. We ought to follow the Ten Commandments, and that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to do the right things and avoid the wrong things. I follow the right code."

Third, I praise the right God. It's verse 17: "you boast in God." Now, this is really important, because we met this kind of moral conservative person last week. But this guy that we're talking to today, they're not just moral, they don't just believe in good, hard work, and paying your taxes, and keeping the law, and that sort of thing, they actually believe in God. As a matter of fact, God is central to this person's life. This is someone who goes to church, and sings songs about God, and bows his head when people are talking to God, and listens to messages about God, like what you're doing right now. In his own life, he would pray before meals. When people would compliment about things, he would give credit to God and say, "well, that's just one of the blessings of God." And this is someone who would post things about God on his social media account. Everyone who knows this man or this lady would say, "yeah, that's a God person, that person loves God." So they praise the right God.

It's verse 18: "you know His will and approve what is excellent because you are instructed from the law." So this is another reason why the religious person feels pretty righteous before God. They know the truth. They know the Bible. They know what God has said. They read it. They hear it taught. If someone else in their workplace or at their school has a question about what the Bible says or what God thinks about XY or Z issue, they know who to come to. They come to this person because they know the Bible. They have the right truth. They are well-instructed. They know God what thinks--this is excellent. God thinks this is wicked. God says this is good. God says this is bad. They know these things because they have the right truth.

And finally, there's one more element of their righteousness here. It's in verses 19 and 20: 

"You are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor to the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth." Now, Paul is drawing all these descriptions straight out of the Old Testament. This is what God said his people were to be. This is what Israel was supposed to be to the rest of the world. You're not just someone who knows the truth about God for yourself, but you share it with others. You're meant to be a guide. You're meant to be a teacher. You're meant to be a missionary. You're someone who sees that the world really is a dark place. People are just kind of stumbling around doing what they think is best making their own way, and they need help. They need the light of God's truth. And I have that in this book, the Bible. And so I need to share it. And so this religious person would be someone who teaches, who shares his faith. He's trying to bring up his children in a religious way. He's inviting other people to join him at church, and learn more about these truths for themselves. This is someone who would go on mission trips and who would support missionaries. So he's got the right mission. He's got kind of an outward outlook.

And so you look at verses 17 through 20, and that's the kind of the resume of the religious person. We're gonna have a big old senior class at Sharon Baptist Church this upcoming year. Any seniors in the house? They're usually pretty excited about it. They're proud. Ok, so right now, a lot of seniors are polishing up those resumes because they're going to present them to someone in the workforce or to, you know, a college or university board or whatever. They're going to try to take this next step in their lives. And so they're compiling all these things that they've learned, and that they've done. and they've achieved, and what people have said about them. And that's kind of what verses 17-20 are for the religious person. This is my resume. This is what I slide across the desk to God to commend myself to him, to show that I'm righteous.

And if we look at verses 17-20, all the things that I just walked through, it's pretty impressive. Wouldn't you agree? There's not a single bad thing that we talked about. They're all really good things, that we approve of, that we want more of in our own lives, things that we're trying to pursue for ourselves. I have to say especially after meeting those gentiles in Romans 1, and then just the moral people who didn't necessarily have God at the center earlier in Romans 2, this religious person here, they've got to feel pretty good about their righteousness.

And that's why Paul hears all of that and looks at that resume very carefully, then closes the portfolio, and shocks them by saying, "sorry, that's just not good enough." And it would have been a bombshell. And so before we move forward, I would pose to you that same "Evangelism Explosion" question I mentioned earlier: "If you were to die tonight and God were to ask you, 'why should I let you into my heaven,' what would you say? What would be your resume? What would be your response? What is your righteousness? What are you relying on? What are you depending on?

Because I'm guessing there's more than one of us in this room who would say, "actually, I'm kind of relying on a lot of those things in verses 17-20." And so one of the most helpful elements of this passage today is it helps people avoid having a false assurance of why they're righteous before God. It helps people avoid leaning on a stick that will not support them on the final day. Because Paul says, "as great as all these things are, if that's all you've got, you don't have anything." So there's the religion that we display.

And some of us are thinking right now, how can that incredible resume not be enough? Paul's answer is actually really simple. As hard as some of these words and phrases are, the answer is really simple. As impressive as all those religious things are, they're all external. That means on the outside, right? It's something that other people can see. It's something that you can display to other people, and you can display it to yourself. And you can see, "I'm a religious person. I'm doing these religious things." But what Paul tells us here is that if those outward religious things which are fine and really very good, but if those outward religious things don't also reflect the reality of your heart, of who you really are on the inside before God, then they don't mean a thing! They don't help you at all. As a matter of fact, they put you in a worse condition than someone who doesn't have any of the external religious things.

That's what makes religion so dangerous. Because often what it does is wrap a heart that's still unrighteous and sinful and rebellious before God in this shiny, beautiful exterior. It'd be like if we took some clunker car that would not drive, that needs a new transmission, that couldn't get you 3 feet down the road, but we hired Design Team to wrap it with this beautiful, brilliant, shiny kind of a wrap. And we would all think, "man, that car looks great," until you try to get in and go somewhere.

And that's what religion can do. We can wrap ourselves in the appearance of righteousness when really our heart is just as unrighteous as that gentile who's in rebellion against God in chapter one. And God is not just after the appearance of righteousness, he's after the real thing.

And Paul helps us see this as he walks through chapter 2 in two ways. There are two primary ways that religious people can deceive themselves into thinking that they're righteous before God. Religious People often have:

Verse 21: "You then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal?" And he continues. Paul says, "religious people can tell everyone else what they need to know, they can tell everyone else how they ought to live, but if you look closely at their lives, very often they don't practice what they preach, just like George and Tammy sing about." "So religious person," Paul says, "do you apply the same standard to yourself that you apply to all these people around you.

Sometimes it's the case that religious people are secretly doing the very things that they're condemning other people for in public, like Sister Bessie in the song. Other times, Christians, religious people, Jewish people, whatever, they can be super hard and critical on other people as they're evaluating them, but they're super lenient and soft on themselves. There's always a reason why they do the things that they do or don't do the things that they don't do. We can boast in God's law in an external way. Paul refuses that language. We can boast in how we keep the law on the outside while all the while we're breaking God's law at the heart level.

And I think that's the main point that Paul is getting at in verses 21 & 22. I think he's doing the same thing that Jesus was doing in the Sermon on the Mount. You know, when Jesus comes and walks among us, he is exposing the unrighteousness of everyone around him just like Paul is, and some of those people are openly sinful, openly rebellious. Those people need to repent and believe and be saved. But Jesus actually has to spend a whole lot more time, and work a whole lot harder showing the religious people that they're not righteous, that they need to be saved, that they need to repent. It's just so much harder for them to see it.

And so Jesus does that in the Sermon on the Mount when he explains to people who feel really good about how they're keeping the law, who are really good at teaching other people that they need to keep the law. Jesus shows them that they're actually breaking the law at the heart level. So for instance, Jesus will say, "look, you really pride yourself on the fact that you've never committed murder. And you read the newspaper at these killings and stabbings and shootings and all this kind of thing, and you say, 'oh, isn't that awful?' And yet if you look at your life, there are people who you hate and you have nursed a bitter grudge against them for years. And every time something good happens to them, you seethe. And every time something bad happens to them, you cheer. 

And there are other people who you treat as if they were worthless, like they weren't a person, not worth your time or consideration for a moment. Now, you're telling me that you're honoring the law of God, you shall not murder? I mean murder is just the full grown tree of the seed that's already in your heart. And all the way down the line, through all the Ten Commandments, Jesus applies the true spiritual meaning of the law. And by the time he's done, if you have got an active brain cell, you realize, "I'm not keeping the law. I've broken it!" And that's what Paul is doing here. I may look down on all these adulterers and pride myself that I've kept my wedding vows. But if my mind and heart are given over to impurity, I am breaking God's law just like anyone else.

I may invite all these people to come to church. I may scold these people out mowing their grass instead of coming to church. But if my heart is crammed full of the idols of money and position and praise, I am not offering God the worship that he deserves. And so it is very often the case that religious people have the rules, but without the reality.

A second way that Paul exposes this in verses 25 to 27 he says, religious people often have:

Now, the Jewish people had all kinds of rituals that they performed that showed they belong to God, that they were a part of his people. Maybe the basic, the most fundamental ritual that they had was circumcision. Circumcision is a medical procedure that male Jews had performed on them. Typically when they were babies, when they're eight days old, (sorry to be indelicate), but it's the removal of the foreskin from the male's reproductive member. And that's the sign that God gave to Abraham and to his descendants to show that they were in "covenant" with him, to show that they believed that through child-bearing throughout generations, that's the connection with the sign that God would save and that he would send him a deliverer, a messiah who would be faithful to his promises through every generation. You with me?

And so that becomes the central sign that you belong to God's people, that you are in covenant with him. And the Jewish people were super proud of that. As a matter of fact, they would use the term "uncircumcision" as like a put down. David came on the battlefield with Goliath and said, "who is this 'uncircumcised' Philistine defying the armies of the living God?" But that's what determines who's in and who's out. If you're circumcised, you're one of God's people. If you're uncircumcised, you are not one of God's people. Are we all clear on that?

And so Paul looks at these Jewish people who are in their audience. And one of the reasons that they feel quite confident in their righteousness before God is that they've done the ceremony. They've done the ritual. Either they're circumcised or they make sure they had their baby boys circumcised. You understand? And Paul says, "The problem though is you've got the ritual without the reality. 

Because the ritual of circumcision was meant to represent something powerful that was a spiritual reality in your life. It was meant to represent the cutting away of that which is unclean about you, and the separation of your entire life for God. And so if you have the visible sign of circumcision, but in your heart and in your life, you are not separated for God, and you're wallowing in uncleanness, then that physical sign of circumcision is not doing you any good! Paul says, "As a matter of fact, the uncircumcised gentile who's actually loving God and honoring him, they are in a better position before God than you who've been circumcised." And those are fighting words for Jewish folks. That's when they all pick up the rocks to stone Paul in the book of Acts.

But, I hope you understand the point that he's making. It's so easy for religious people to substitute some outward sign, some outward ritual, some outward form for the inward reality. You say, "we don't have to worry about this circumcision stuff." No, but we have our own rituals, don't we? We could say, "hey, I walked down the aisle, and came to the altar, and knelt there and prayed with the pastor," or "I got baptized, I went under the water and came out again," or "I take the Lord's supper on the last Sunday of every month at Sharon Baptist Church." All of those are beautiful, powerful rituals and symbols, but they're meant to represent a reality. They're meant to teach us who we are as the people of God, a people surrendered to the Lord, "I left it all at the foot of the cross," a people who need to be cleansed and who are trusting in Jesus to make us clean in baptism, a people who are in fellowship and communion with the Lord Jesus Christ, trusting in his broken body and his shed blood. We've forsaken communion with the devil. And we now sit at the table of Jesus. That's where all that stuff is supposed to represent.

But if we've got all the rituals, all the forms, all the signs, if we do all the stuff, but our hearts are not yielded to the Lord. Paul would say those are empty rituals. They're not doing you any good. As a matter of fact, those rituals are gonna stand up and condemn you on the day of judgment, because you had all of this wealth of teaching material all around you! And it did not teach you to repent and give your life to the Lord truly.

And so one of the other dangers that Paul exposes about religion is not only that you can replace rules for reality, but you can replace rituals for reality. And what's the end result of this? We find it in verses 23-24: "You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. For as it is written, the name of God is blasphemed among the gentiles because of you."

So two things happen when religious people have outward religion with rules and rituals without the inner heart reality, given to the Lord:

#1- God is dishonored.
God does not like it, and is not impressed when religious people can tell everybody else what they need to be doing when they are in rebellion against him in their own hearts. God does not like it when religious people come together, and take the Lord's supper, and sit through sermons, and stand for the reading of the word of God when they are not honoring him in their hearts and in their lives.

In one of the prophets in Isaiah, God says to the people of Israel, "I hate your feasts. I despise it when y'all get together for church, because it's completely disconnected from who you really are. So God's dishonored.

#2- The world laughs.
That's what he's quoting when he says, "the name of God is blasphemed among the gentiles because of religious people who don't live it out, whose hearts aren't yielded to the Lord." What does the world think? What do those Romans 1 gentiles who were so quick to condemn, what do they think about God when they see religious churchy people whose hearts aren't really given to the Lord? They see that it's fake, that it's empty. They write songs like "God's Gonna Get 'Cha For That!" And they use it as a convenient excuse for them to stand back from God.

Do you think that's happening in Hardin County today? You know it's happening everywhere. There is no doubt in my mind that there are people who are assuring their consciences today that it's fine that they're not walking with the Lord, they're not going to church with all those hypocrites because of some ungodly something they've seen a member of Sharon Baptist church do. I'm sure it's true. Now that's between them and the Lord to work out. But it's also for us and the Lord to work out, isn't it?

And so Paul shows us the reality that God demands. What can be done about this? What can be done about it is verses 28 & 29. And that is:

I hope you're ready to hear about Jesus at this point. I sure am.

What Paul says as he walks through all of this really searing indictment of religious people who don't truly love and walk with the Lord, he shows them that religion is not sufficient to make you righteous. It's not enough. It may make you look good to other people. It may make you look good to yourself. But God sees your heart and that's what God cares about. And if you really wanna be righteous before God now and on the last day, you're gonna need a lot more than that resume of all the external stuff that you do. You're going to need something that only God can do. And that is an inside job on your heart.

What he says in verse 28 is that God never intended when he called the Jewish people to just have this group of people in the world who honor Him with all these external signs and rituals, but who don't honor him in their hearts. That that's not the point. He doesn't want just a bunch of circumcised people, a bunch of baptized people, a bunch of church people. He didn't want that. He wants something more.

Look at verse 28: For no one is a Jew, no one is really God's people who's merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. That's not why God gave you that symbol. Verse 29: But a Jew, if you're really God's people, you are one inwardly. And circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man, but from God. Here's where Paul is getting down to the heart of it.

So look, what you need more than anything religious person is the same thing that that moral person in chapter 2 needed. And it's the same thing that immoral person in chapter 1 needed. You need God to change your heart. You need for God to do what only he can do by the power of his Holy Spirit, showing you that you don't have any righteousness, showing you that you're in the same position before the Lord as everybody else, showing you that you have empty hands before God.

If you are in that place, then you are in a place where you can reach out and receive the righteousness of Jesus. And that's exactly where Paul is trying to take you. That's exactly where the Lord is trying to take you! If this is showing you that all this outward stuff I do is often in conflict with who I really am before God in my heart, then that is just what it's supposed to do. It should show you that you need God to supernaturally change your heart. "God break me over my sin, give me a heart that wants to honor you from the inside out, make me totally devoted to you, make me completely surrendered to you, because I'm not on my own, and I can't do it on my own! God. I need you to change me!"

And Paul says, when you get to that place, that's the righteousness that Jesus delivers. That's what Jesus can provide for you. He can make you new from the inside. He won't make you perfect on the outside. As a matter of fact, you could be a genuine born-again spirit-transformed Christian who's still stumbling around in all kinds of ways on the outside that we can all see. But the difference is, your heart is low and it's humble before the Lord. It is grateful for Jesus. It's rejoicing and boasting in him alone and not in what you do.

Paul says, "you can know that you've got the righteousness that Jesus delivers by these signs:

#1- It's a matter of the inside and not just the outside.
#2- It's a work done by the spirit, not a work done by you or by the letter coming at you from the outside.
#3- Your praise now is coming from God and not from man.

You can know that you have experienced this new birth, this transformation, this circumcision of the heart, what's unclean about you, what's dead about you, that all of that has been cut away, and now you live before God, you can know that's happening when you stop seeking the praise of men by what you present and by what you do. And now you're just seeking the praise of God who has saved you at the cost of the life of his son.

Well, Paul's almost done with his big presentation. He really hasn't even gotten to the good news yet. He's still trying to convince every one of us of the bad news that we're not righteous. Do you believe that yet? By myself, all that I do, it's not enough before God. But what Jesus has done for me, it is enough.

That's where he wants to take you. Because then you can get a whole new life from God. And you can have that perfect righteousness that never fades, never fails, that is eternally secure before the Lord. That's where he wants to take you. That's the good news that God sends Paul out into the world to preach. And that's the good news that we're gonna proclaim at this table.

The Lord's table is not a place for perfect people. It's a place for unrighteous people who know it, and who have now reached out for the righteousness of Jesus by faith alone. And if that's you, then it's for you.

But it is also a place of decision. Even after we are born again and God gives us that new circumcised heart, would you agree that as Christian believers our heart can get out of step with our outside practice? Would you agree that genuine Christians can still go through all kinds of religious motions while our heart is being given over to something besides the Lord? Absolutely. Well, this monthly Lord's Supper time, part of what it's supposed to do, is be a place of decision to say "no more."

Maybe for the last 29 days, I've been living a divided life. Well, that ends today. "Lord, I'm coming back to you. Lord, help me come back to you. Unite my heart to fear your name. I want to be genuine from the inside-out, humble before you, receiving your grace. God help me!"

If you pray that prayer before you come to this table, I can't think of anything that would delight the Father's heart more than that. It's not for perfect people. It's for people who need the righteousness of Jesus.

Let's call on him now, even as we prepare to partake. Let's pray.

Sermon by Eric Smith
Senior Pastor, Sharon Baptist Church