The Hidden Danger of Self-Righteousness // Romans 9:25-10:4

Reflect, church is coming because by the grace of God, Two Cities Church is sending. Give yourselves a round of applause. Guys, listen, this, if you're new to our church, okay, you just gotta understand how crazy what we're doing is. In one year, we're planting three churches, okay? And we're not, yeah, it's exciting, okay? It's exciting, but it is painful, okay? Because what we're not doing is we're not just partnering to plant. Let me explain to you partnering to plant. We've done it, we'll do it again, we're not against it. Partnering to plant is, hey, everybody, meet Bob. Bob goes to a different church, Bob's on staff at a different church. We're gonna give Bob like $10,000 and Bob's gonna preach once and here's here for Bob. That's something different than what we're doing right now. We're parenting, which means all of our church planters, we're paying their salary, we're paying their benefits while they spend all of their time trying to get you to leave our church and go with them. It's kind of crazy. Now listen, Seth, excited about him, okay? Because he's planting with Austin Needham. So two of our staff are heading out at the same time. I'm glad you're excited, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're excited about that, okay? Good, you're excited about it or I'm excited about it. Look, and here's what's neat.

One of the secret sauces of Two Cities Church is that it's been built on a friendship, mine and Pastor Dave's friendship. I've known Pastor Dave since third grade. We've been super close friends since 10th grade. So Austin, I asked Austin and I asked Seth and they both say that they're each other's best friends. So that's good. Sometimes you think you're someone's best friend, you know what I'm saying, okay. So they're going out together. Now why Winston, okay, why? Because every city, including Winston-Salem, needs more gospel-centered churches and Seth and Austin are gonna be able to reach people we can't reach. I say this all the time and I believe it. It takes all types of churches to reach all types of people and they're specifically hoping, in part, to reach Winston-Salem State University, which we're super excited about. So what's your next step, okay? Well, if you're interested at all in being a part of Seth's launch team, text the word REFLECT, okay, that's the name of his church, to 39808. By the way, we have a podcast, if you don't know this, and every Monday we release a new episode and I got a chance to sit down with all three of our church planners, okay,

because I know it's confusing. We got three guys going to three different places and you saw one video and you wanna know more information. So tomorrow, I've got like close to an hour-long discussion where they talk about everything that they're gonna be doing from like basically right now to when they launch public services September of 2027, okay? So with that said, guys, also, can we welcome all of our college students? Yes. Don't worry, college students, I'm not gonna like make you stand and be like, look at them, you know, I'm not gonna do that, okay? Here's what I wanna let you know. College, you know, believe it or not, I went to college. I know it doesn't look like it, but I did, I went to college. And guys, college is a unique four-year window. For some of you, it was five or six years, but you know, it should be four-year window where guys, you are going, it's gonna have the opportunity to be a potential spiritual greenhouse. If you're new, you're a freshman, you just showed up, this is like first Sunday, Winston-Salem, Two-City Church, what's going on? I wanna just encourage and challenge you to give our church one year. And if you give our church one year, I think it will, you will find a community, you will find a mission, and you might find yourself

a year from now helping Seth to plant a church in Winston-Salem. And it may be one of the most significant things you do during your college experience. With that said, let's pray, and then we're gonna get to work in Romans 9. Lord, we have talked about so many deep things over the last few weeks, and I can feel it in my own community group. That you are taking us deeper into the scriptures, and there is a spirit of just expectation about what is your word going to say, and where is it going to show us something about you or something about ourselves that we don't know? And we definitely need to know. And so I pray you would use the end of Romans 9 and the beginning of Romans 10 to do what you always do, Lord, to glorify yourself, Lord, and to serve and help us. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Well, I read this interesting article. It's actually a few years old now. It came out in March of 2022, two years after COVID, okay? If you're new, I gotta mention COVID like every sermon just once. So there it is, it's done, okay? But it came two years after COVID, and the article was called The Rise of the UMS, U-M-M-S. Kind of that word you say when someone asks you a question, you don't know the answer, you go, um, you know?

It was interesting when I read the article. It talks about three different types of people who we don't find in church anymore. The nuns, not them, not N-U-N-S, okay? N-O-N-E-S, not Sister Act, okay? The nuns, okay? Okay? The dons and the ums. Now, you know the nuns, right? The nuns are like, they've never been to church, they're not even ever planning on coming to church. It'd be like, so if you grew up in some kind of Christian home, it's like someone asking you to go to a Mormon temple or a Jewish synagogue, right? Or a Muslim mosque. You're like, I don't care if the pastor's funny and the music's good and they got kids ministry. I'm not going there. Like maybe out of respect, I'll show up for a wedding or a funeral and that's it. And that's a lot of Americans. They're the nuns. And then there are the dons. And the dons used to go to church, right? But for some reason, you know, something in their life happened, you know, they deconstructed their faith. They had a bad experience at church. And they're not a nun because they used to go,

they're a don. But he said, after COVID, there's the ums. And part of it is the online stuff and, you know, all the shutdowns and the shelters in place and all this stuff. But it basically said that nowadays, there's all these people and we're not sure what they believe. Because every time we ask, are you in church or do you believe in Jesus? Or, you know, are you reading your Bible? And they get a bunch of um, they don't really have an answer. And in Romans nine, Paul is dealing with Israel, which is the ultimate like um. It's like, they're not a nun, they were in. Are they a don? Are they an um? Or what are they? Well, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna read you, this is kind of, this passage today is deep in a different way because Paul has been telling us all these narrative stories, right? So he's been like Jacob, Esau, Abraham, Isaac, last week, I think Moses. So all these famous Old Testament stories, which at least we're somewhat familiar with. Today, he starts with prophecy. Okay, so let's, I'm gonna read all of it

and we'll dip briefly into chapter 10 as well and we'll pick up exactly there next week. So, all right, look at verse 25 of Romans nine. As indeed he says in Hosea. Okay, I'm not sure if you made it this far in your Bible reading plan. That's a book, it's a prophet in the Old Testament. Those who were not my people, I will call my people. And her who is not beloved, I will call beloved. And in the very place where it was said to them, you are not my people, they will be called sons of the living God. He's like, okay, Isaiah is a small book, but let me tell you about a big book that we all know about, Isaiah. And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved. Because by the way, what they're dealing with is why are so many Gentiles believing and so many Jewish people are not believing? For the Lord will carry out his sentence upon the earth fully and without delay. And as Isaiah predicted, if the Lord of hosts had not left us offspring, we would have been like Sodom and become like Gomorrah. What shall we say then? That the Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is a righteousness that is by faith,

but that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law? Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith. But as if it were based on works, they have stumbled over the stumbling stone. As it is written, behold, I'm laying in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. And whoever believes in him will not be put to shame. And then Paul shares his heart one last time. He did this at the beginning of Romans 9. Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. Okay. Big idea is Paul's like, God has a global mission. Because here's what they're trying to figure out. First of all, he spent, and if you're new, we've been walking through the book of Romans for a while, so if this doesn't make sense, you can go back and listen to sermons and read the rest of Romans 9. But Paul spent a lot of time in Romans 9

basically saying, not all Jewish people are believers. And now he's gonna open up something new that they weren't ever thinking before, which is, hey, and actually now God has chosen the Gentiles, which by the way, unless you're in here or at one of our campuses and you're a Messianic Jew, welcome if you are, we're probably all Gentiles here. So this isn't like a really big deal to us. We're kind of like, of course, like not many Jewish people believe and a lot of Gentile people believe. But you have to understand that like in, for example, in the book of Acts, in Acts chapter 15, the church has to hold a meeting to decide something. Nothing has ever changed, right? So they have to hold a meeting. Here was the big argument that you don't ever think about and you don't really care about, but just so you know, it was a big deal to the early church. Basically, they were asking this question. Do the Gentiles need to become Jewish before they can become Christian? I know you never even thought of that question, but they asked that question, okay? And Paul says, no, no, no. In fact, here's what's so. So, interesting, Paul says, and this is actually going to, in Romans, this is a little bit of an appetizer, because keep coming back, because in Romans 11, Paul deals with Israel again, and it's almost as deep

as Romans 9, if not deeper in some ways. But basically, in the church age, which is what we're in now, Paul goes, this is going to really shock you. In the church age, not many Jewish people are going to believe, and tons of Gentiles are going to believe. God has a global mission, and every type of people, and every type of place, some of them are going to believe, and if we go to the book of Revelation, at the end of time, there's this multitude that John sees, it says, he looks into heaven, looks into the future, and it says, I see a multitude, and they're from every tribe, and tongue, and people, and language. And so, basically, here's what Paul's saying. Guys, you shouldn't be surprised that a lot of Gentile people are believing, because this is what God said would happen in Hosea. Let me read it again, verse 25. We'll go back now and take each verse by itself. As indeed, he says in Hosea, Hosea, those who are not my people, I will call my people. And he who was not my beloved, I will call my beloved. And in the very place where it was said to them, you are not my people, they will be called sons of the living God. Okay, the story of Hosea, if you don't know your Bible very well, that's okay, welcome, we're glad you're here. The story of Hosea is one of the craziest stories in the entire Old Testament. Basically, what happens is God comes to Hosea,

and by the way, just read what he made Ezekiel do, and all these other guys do, okay? But he has sometimes, sometimes he wants his prophets to be a parable to the nation of Israel, okay? To be like a picture of everything. So he goes to Hosea, and he goes, Hosea, you need to find a wife. And Hosea was saying, he was like, all right, I need to find a wife. He goes, here's what I want you to do. I want you to take Gomer, which isn't the greatest name, by the way. If that's your name, welcome, you're welcome here. But Gomer's her name, okay? But that's not the bad part about her. The bad part about her is that she's a prostitute. He says, I want you, it's like, that messes with your theology. God tells Hosea to marry a prostitute. And then he says, have a bunch of kids with her, but by the way, she's gonna run around on you, because that's exactly what Israel does to me. He says, in fact, he goes, name this kid this, and name this kid this, and name this kid, and the third kid, he says, your youngest kid, the runt in the family, call him not my people. Could you imagine doing a roll call at kindergarten? Is not my people here? Here, you know? And he says, here's what I'm gonna do.

I'm going to rename you. Here's, God's like, look, I'm going to, by the way, he's going to rename. He says, in that very place where you were said, not my people, I will call you my people. God can change you right where you are, right as you are. Now, this is the interesting thing. He says, I'm gonna give you a new name. Now, names are powerful, right? We only nickname the people that we love and the people that we hate. So you have a nickname for your spouse, and I personally don't want to know what it is, okay? Whatever it is, Smuggums or something like that, okay? So whatever your nickname is, okay? But we also, I bet you have a nickname for the boss you don't like. I bet you have a nickname, right, for the political candidate you don't like. I bet you have a nickname for the coworker, right? We have nicknames for people. Names are powerful because names can travel with you. I mean, even nickname kind of ideas, right? Some people, like, they call them self-schemas, like you're told in fourth grade that you're a troublemaker. And we're always trying to figure, oh, you're not the pretty one. Oh, you are the pretty one. Oh, you're the athletic one. Oh, you're not the athletic one.

You're the, you know, smart one. Oh, you're neither of those. Well, try to be funny because that's your only option left, right, you know? Okay, so he says, okay, so he says, you're not my people. I'm gonna call you my people. But then look at this. In Isaiah, and I'm only gonna talk about this for a minute. He's introducing these things. He's gonna come back to them. Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, that the number of the sons of Israel shall be of the sand of the sea, only a remnant will be saved. Now, listen, in Romans 11, Paul's gonna talk about the remnant. But here's what I want you to know. The remnant is, Paul is dealing with this whole idea that, wait a second, even though the vast majority of people who are going to believe are going to be Gentiles, God's going to keep a remnant of Jewish-believing people. And the idea that God keeps a remnant, a small group of people that believe in every place, okay, if you think about it, that's a big theme in the Bible, because how many were saved in the ark with Noah? Well, eight total. And of the two million people in the wilderness, how many made it into the promised land? Well, two, Caleb and Joshua. And doesn't Jesus say the way is hard

and there are few who find it? If I told you I got a few bucks on me, I mean, you might not even be able to buy a Starbucks drink with that, right? It's like two or three dollars. So he says, okay, there's a remnant. But then this is where Paul goes with the prophecies. As Isaiah predicted, if the Lord of hosts had not left us offspring, we, that's a key word, we would have become like Sodom and Gomorrah, okay? Now, unfortunately, a long time ago, I had to preach a whole sermon on Sodom and Gomorrah. That was not very fun. Okay, and I'm not going to go into detail right now. You can read the story. Just know it's like the most infamous place in the Old Testament. It was like debauchery, and chaos, and sexual perversion. It was a terrible place. And a lot goes there, and a lot's kind of interested. It's like the Las Vegas of the day, and he's lingering there. And basically, God ends up destroying that entire city. Now, you know what's interesting? Ruth Graham, who was married to Billy Graham, she said, if God doesn't judge America, he owes Sodom and Gomorrah an apology. She said that, not me, OK? But it makes you think for a second, because what does Paul say? We're going to get into this in a little bit.

But Paul goes, don't think you're better than anyone. Every once in a while, I'll make jokes about downtown Asheville, or Portland, Oregon, or San Francisco. Whenever someone moves here from California, I always say, welcome to America, that kind of stuff. But in all seriousness, when I'm thinking rightly, I'm thinking biblically. But Paul's like, guys, don't think you're any better than Sodom and Gomorrah. That if God were to take away his restraining grace from your life, you could easily have become that, and experienced the judgment of God. By the way, interesting historical archaeological fact, we don't know where Sodom and Gomorrah was. Like, a lot of the places, we're like, oh, there's some rubble here, and there's some rubble. You go to Ephesus, there's lots of rubble there. There's a debate of two or three locations, because basically, God so destroyed this place that we can't even find it. So Paul goes, all right, I need to give you some background that God's gonna work in the Gentiles. But this is where it really gets started. Verse 30, look here. In verse 30, Paul asks this question. What shall we say, then, that the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have attained it, that it is a righteousness that is by faith, but that Israel, who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness,

did not succeed in reaching that law? Paul goes, this is shocking, isn't it? This is like the total surprise that the Gentiles would believe, and the Jewish people wouldn't believe, that the outsiders would become insiders, that the strangers would become family. It's the exact opposite of what the Jewish people thought, even though the Bible said the Gentiles would come to believe. This is like the ultimate upset, right? And I started to think about, like, what is the ultimate sports upset? And that could've gone many places. But I thought about this picture. Some of you recognize this picture. Oh, yeah. That was when App State blocked a field goal from Michigan with just a few seconds left in the big house, considered by many to be the greatest upset in college football history. You can take the picture down. What I want you to know is Michigan was the Jewish people, and App State were the Gentiles in that one, okay? Nobody thought, nobody thought that the Gentiles would be included, even though the Bible said that they would. And so, here's the thing. Paul says, what shall we say, and now watch this.

If you look up to verse 14, if you have your old Bible, we are trying to study this book all together, okay? And it's hard to preach this week in and week out because the book was meant to be read all at once. But if you look up to verse 14, you'll notice Paul asks the exact same question. Do you see it? What shall we say then? And then he comes down to verse 30 and says, what shall we say then? So, and what is he asking? The idea that God chooses some and doesn't choose others, and we talked about that over the last few weeks. And his first answer is, well, why does God choose some and then not choose others? And we said, oh, the answer to that in verses 14 through 24 is that God has a sovereign plan. But now, the answer to that in verses 30 following is because people are prideful. So, it's really, really interesting. Both are true at the same time, okay? It's called an antinomy. An antinomy, it's a word meaning an apparent contradiction because our reason has reached its limits. So, this happens. Like, we just believe, I told you week one, if the Bible says two things that seem to contradict themselves, I just believe them both, okay?

Now, this actually happens. So, this is interesting. In physics, for example, physicists, and I'm not one of them, obviously, but physicists are surprised because sometimes light behaves as particles, and sometimes light behaves as waves. Now, if you're not into, and I'm not either, but if you're not a physicist, who cares? Well, supposedly, a physicist is like, that's impossible. It can't sometimes be waves and sometimes be particles, and guess what they said? I guess we don't know enough physics. I guess there are things in physics that we don't understand. It's like, well, that's exactly what happens in theology as well. Charles Spurgeon was a great preacher, and he was asked one time, how do you reconcile God's sovereignty and man's responsibility? And he said, I never reconcile friends. But here's what he's gonna do. He's going to spend, this is where we're gonna go today. Paul is going to spend the rest of the time telling us why people reject the gospel, and I think that's really, really important because we're all gonna have family members and friends and coworkers and classmates, and at one level, one of the answers is God's sovereign,

and another answer is they're prideful. Let me show you. I'll tell you this. So let's go on and look at verse 31. But that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law. So Israel was pursuing a law that they thought would lead to righteousness and their salvation. It says, why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. Okay. So here's what... So sometimes we read this and we're like, oh, those silly Israelites, those silly Jewish people a long time ago who thought that they could pursue something and it would bring them life and salvation. It's like, that's all we ever do. So here's how we do it. Let me explain this. And this is going to... Whether you're brand new and you're a college student and, you know, someone told you that there was going to be food afterwards and that's why you're here and you've never been in a church, okay, it doesn't matter. This is going to be for all of us. Watch this. Here's what all of us do. All of us create a functional hell, not the real hell of the Bible, eternal conscious torment, and we all create a functional heaven, okay, not the real heaven where Jesus is worshiped. And then whatever we think will get us out of hell and get into heaven, that is our Savior that we worship.

Now, you might go, that doesn't make sense. Let me explain it. For some people, being fat is their functional hell. And they're like, I don't want to be... I would never want to be fat. So what is their functional heaven? Being fit, being in shape, not having a dad bod, something like that, okay? So watch this. What do they worship? Whatever gets them out of their hell into heaven. Have you ever wondered, like, why some people are like so... they have almost religious devotion to CrossFit or burn boot camp or Orange Theory? You have to almost use religious language. Or how about people, some people view their functional hell, this is a lot of Americans, their functional hell is being poor and their functional heaven is being rich. And maybe they don't say rich, they just say, I just don't want to have to worry about money. That's the same thing as being rich, right? I don't want to worry about money. It's like, I want financial independence. That's all the same thing as being rich, okay? So here's what people do. So if their functional hell is being poor and their functional heaven is being rich, now you understand why they worship their college degree or why they worship their career or why they're a workaholic. It's very...you need religious language. For some people, being single for the rest of their life is hell. And marriage, especially, you grew up in a Christian home, right?

You're not supposed to have sex outside of marriage, all this stuff. So their functional heaven is marriage. So if you've ever met somebody who's, like, not dated for a really long time or they've never dated and they finally have a boyfriend or they finally have a girlfriend, and their commitment to them is almost religious, it's because that boyfriend is potentially the savior that's going to bring them out of their functional hell. Now, with Israel, we're told that they did two things wrong, okay? The first thing is they pursued the wrong thing. The second thing is they pursued the right thing the wrong way. It kind of hurts your head, but follow me. So it says in verse...if you want to look, we'll get there toward the end. In verse...we're told they were pursuing a righteousness. And then in chapter 10, verse 3, which I read to you at the beginning, it says they were pursuing a righteousness of their own. Okay, I want to talk to you about something very important, okay? And every time I get up here on a Sunday, there's always a part of the sermon that I'm like, this is really what I want to get to. I got to talk about a lot of things because they're in the Bible, but, like, this is the rhema. This is the word for our church right now. Well, that's the part of the sermon we're entering, okay? So buckle up. Buckle up, buttercup, as I say, okay? Here's what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about being self-righteous. I think it is the greatest sin in the church today. It's definitely one of the greatest sins. It leads to cancel culture and everything else. It's one of the greatest sins in the culture today.

Self-righteousness is any righteousness that leads to comparison instead of worship. Let me say that again. Self-righteousness is any righteousness that you have that leads to comparison, not to the worship of God. By the way, have you ever noticed self-righteousness is all about comparing yourself to other people? What's funny is in the church, I never hear anyone compare themselves to the missionary who was martyred. Have you noticed that? No one does that. They compare themselves to, like, their brother-in-law who occasionally goes to church and said he finds the Bible interesting. It's like, okay, you win. I want to talk about this because I think self-righteousness keeps more people out of heaven than unrighteousness. So unrighteousness, like, if you're unrighteous, you know... and we know it. Like, you know, and I actually think this is why Jesus... Remember when Jesus shows up, and everybody's confused because all of the religious people and the religious leaders who were self-righteous did not like Jesus. It was self-righteous people who killed Jesus. But then everyone's confused because, like, when he hangs out with the sinners and the tax collectors and the prostitutes, like, they're all, like, so eager to hang out with him. It's like, yeah, because he extended them grace because they knew they were sinners. So here's how this works. There is, and I'm going to just prepare your heart. I'm going to call you at the end to repent of self-righteousness,

which is hard to do because if I call you and you're self-righteous to come down to the altar, the very reason you need to come down to the altar is the very reason you won't. Because the self-righteous person starts saying, well, I've never seen so-and-so down at the altar, and what if so-and-so sees me down here? Self-righteous... Okay, here's how it works in the church. People are self-righteous as soon as they find out that somebody else did some type of sin. Please, guys, I'm trying to preach against a self-righteous spirit if you haven't noticed. Don't ever say you would never sin in that way, right? You remember all the people afterwards are like, yeah, you know, Tiger Woods, he slept with, like, 21 women. I'd never do that. I'm like, you would never have the chance ever. You're not a billionaire with a private jet. You wouldn't even have the chance. But this is what we do. It's like, well, actually, given the wrong situation at the wrong time, many of us are capable of doing horrible things, and that's a good thing to remember. People are in the church... Okay, here's another way that self-righteousness shows up in the church, thinking that you have perfect theology. I mean, I've been in churches where they're like, we only read Reformation trust books. I'm like, why? And I read Reformation trust books, but people are like, this is the podcast I listen to, and these are only the authors I listen to, and these are the only pastors

I listen to, and these are the only podcasts I listen to, and here's my stance on every secondary and tertiary issue, and if you don't believe it, you're wrong. That happens. Here's another huge way that this happens in churches. Self-righteousness is shown maybe most clearly, because we'll see at the end, it says that he does...they were unwilling to submit. Here's the thing. Self-righteousness shows itself in being unteachable. Some of you are incredible at taking sermon notes for other people. Oh, my wife, I hope she's listening. See what he said right there, right? Oh, we need to get my sister here because, you know, I can see some of you sending this sermon to, you know, to your aunt. Hey, this is on self-righteousness, I think it could help you, right? This is what we do. And then, guys, it's, you know, I want to start with the church, but then the culture is just, oh, my goodness. So, for example, I think, just personally, I think the most self-righteous thing is to put a yard sign in your front yard. If you have a yard sign in your front yard, I do not want to know about it. I mean, literally, I'm like, every time I see a yard sign, I'm like, somebody went to the store and bought that. Where do you even buy yard signs? And then they buy a yard sign, right? And then they walk in their front yard. Yeah, I believe this, and you should too. You know what I mean? And then you're reading, like, water is life, and humans are people, and I believe in science. What is this?

It is so self-righteous. It's like, here's a bunch of things I believe because I'm a good person, you know? People play the victim all the time. And I always have to say, there are real victims. But basically, playing the victim is self-righteous. Oh, so for someone like me, things should be going so much better than they are. Basically, self-righteousness shows up and, you know, you see it with your co-workers and your classmates, who we love, okay? We need to see self-righteousness in our hearts first. But basically, here's self-righteousness in a nutshell, the average person that lives here in the triad. They blame God for every bad thing that happens, and they take credit for every good thing that happens. And it is the polite... It's most of what you're going to experience in Lexington, in Davie County, in Winston-Salem is self-righteousness with a smile. I'm fine. I'm doing great. Basically, when you're self-righteous, here's what you do. You define what it means for you to be a good person, and you spend your life defending that. And Paul says, guys, that is the opposite because there's unrighteousness, that's sinful living. There's self-righteousness, and then there's the gift righteousness that Christ gives. But he says, not only that, let me show you this. Not only do they pursue the wrong thing, they pursue the right thing wrongly. Okay? Let me show you that.

It says this, but that Israel who pursued... back in verse 31, that would lead to righteousness, did not succeed in reaching that law. Why? Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. Basically, here's what...you can't do religious activities, going to church, going to community group, reading your Bible, whatever it is, praying, sharing your faith, serving others, you can't do them to earn anything from God. Basically, I forget who first said this, it might have been Tim Keller, it might have been Jerry Bridges. There's nothing you can do, if you're in Christ, there's nothing you can do to make God love you anymore, and there's nothing you can do to make God love you any less. Here's how works in the Christian life, like good works, good deeds, reading your Bible, praying, serving one another, being generous, whatever it is, you do them not to earn salvation. This is a whole paradigm shift, you do them to enjoy your salvation. That's a whole different reason to have your quiet time, or memorize your scripture, or share your faith, or worship. It's like, I'm not doing this to earn my salvation, I'm doing this so I can more deeply enjoy my salvation. Well, Paul says that basically, it's interesting, he uses the language of pursuing, but then look, in verse 32 continued, they have stumbled over the stumbling stone, as it is written, behold, I'm laying in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame. So basically, the stumbling stone is Christ. And I love this because what do you stumble over? You only stumble over something solid. Nobody stumbles over like vague, new age spirituality because it's a fog. People just walk right through it. Here, it says, hey, listen, people...why do you stumble, by the way? Well, you stumble because you didn't see it. That's what Paul's getting at. They were pursuing something completely different, and then they stumble over it, right? And Paul talks about this in other places, all the different reasons that people stumble over Christ. It's not intellectual enough, but basically, the main reason that we

stumble over the gospel is because it offends us. Because it not only tells us you're more loved than you could ever be loved or ever know, but that you're also more sinful than you could ever know. So Paul basically says, look, the people are prideful and self-righteous, and that's why they're not coming to Christ. But look what he says in verse 1. He says, but this doesn't mean I don't pray for them. He says, brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they might be saved. I love this. Paul...the opposite, by the way, I think we'll try to get here at the end, the opposite of self-righteousness, part of it. Like, how do you get rid of the self-righteousness in your life? One way would be to pray for other people, especially lost people. Paul doesn't look down on the lost. He kneels down for the lost. So here's the thing. We need to pray for the lost. I looked it up this week. Guess what people pray for? The average American Christian, favorite thing to pray for is body parts. And I'm not...again, we pray for the sick, we pray for people who have cancer, we pray for people who have tumors. These are really serious things. But the average Christian's entire prayer list is, like, Tommy's tummy, and Sally's stomach, and Billy's belly, right? You've ever been in a Bible study or community before where, like, it's like, hey, guys, any prayer requests? And guess what everyone does? They think, do I know anybody sick? And then we spend an enormous amount of time praying for God to keep Christians out of heaven, which is really strange. Pray for my...you know, let's pray for my 98-year-old grandmother who's known the Lord for 70 years and has pneumonia. It's like, let her go. When you visit her in hospice, she's like, let me go. It's ridiculous. We spend an enormous amount of time praying for old, old, old Christians to not go to heaven. And we spend almost no time praying for lost people to go to heaven. So he says, guys, we got to pray for it. So number one thing people pray for, body parts. Number two thing that Christians pray for,

for life to go well for them and the people they love. Number three thing Christians pray for, help them and the people they love when things go bad. Okay? I looked it up. Least likely thing for Christians to pray for. Two most least likely things that the Bible tells us to pray for that we pray for. Number one, government officials. There's actually biblical texts that tell us to pray for governing officials. Most Christians never do it. Secondly, praying for the lost. And Paul goes, somehow, God's sovereign and people are prideful, but God uses my prayers. You know, I haven't told this story in a while, but basically, you know, Dave and I go back to third grade, fourth grade. And, you know, it's hard to believe this, but in elementary school, I was kind of cool. Okay? I don't want to brag. I was kind of popular. I was always been talkative, all that kind of stuff. So I'm in like, this is like fourth or fifth grade. Dave's in my... class, and I start making fun of Dave. Because I found out that Dave's dad was a pastor, and I grew up as a casual Catholic, and so I'm like, oh my goodness, your dad's a pastor, which I thought meant a priest, so I thought he wore a dress and lived at the church. And I was like, you know, I have to make fun of this guy. So I would make fun of Dave in front of other people, and Dave would go home and tell his parents. You know, and if you're a parent, and someone like did something to your kid, you're like, well, I hope I'm a soccer coach, because he'll never play, ha ha ha, you know. That's how you think. I mean, just be honest, that's your sinful heart,

when someone hurts your kids. But the Vogels were godly, they were mature, and so they said, let's pray for Kyle. And I think, genuinely, in God's providence, that one of the main things God used to bring me to salvation, I didn't know it, I didn't find out they were praying for me, until after I became a Christian, six, seven years later. And then his family ends up discipling me, it's like a biblical story, it's really beautiful. But God used our prayers. Listen, look at what Spurgeon said. Can we put the Spurgeon quote up on the screen? Charles Spurgeon said this. By the way, this, just so you know, my office is behind the stage, and this hangs on the right side of the door, this exact picture, every time I walk out. If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our dead bodies. And if they perish, let them perish with our arms wrapped around their knees, imploring them to stay. If hell must be filled, let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go unwarned and unprayed for. Wow. That should be our heart, we should be praying for lost people, and asking God to do a great work. And if that's possible, then we're not gonna be,

we're not gonna be self-righteous at all if we're praying like that. In fact, Paul ends talking about the other struggle of Israel, which I think is also a big struggle for Americans, look. For I bear them witness they have zeal for God. By the way, isn't that amazing? Paul's not self-righteous, he can actually see the good in people who are wrong, and he can see the good in people who've hurt him. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, that's really good, but not according to knowledge. For being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. Let me talk about zeal for a second. Zeal is passion. Zeal is energy. The word zeal literally means to boil or to become hot. So think of fire, right? Fire is great in the fireplace, fire on your curtains will bring your whole house down. And he says you need zeal and you need knowledge. Now, the Jewish people were so zealous, it's hard to even put it into words how religiously zealous they were. So in the Old Testament, there's 613 laws, but the leaders of the day were worried that people were gonna break the 613 laws. So they built a fence, I mean, metaphorically speaking,

a fence around the Torah where they made a bunch of rules about the rules, which is what religious people love to do. So when you're reading your Bible, you're like, why is it saying that Jesus went a Sabbath day's journey? Because in that culture, they told people you could only walk so far on the Sabbath. Well, it's like, well, that's not in the Bible, but they don't want you to work on the Sabbath. And they said, well, if you walk more than basically three fourths of a mile, you're working. So on the Sabbath, you can walk, but not that far. This is what religious people do. Paul was a zealous, okay? I mean, he was a persecutor of the church. If you know his story, the guy who wrote this before he came to Christ. But I started to think about Americans. And I thought, okay, Americans are definitely self-righteous, definitely. And then I thought, man, does zeal without knowledge, isn't that the perfect, that describes, you know the Greek word for zeal without knowledge is? Twitter. I'm kidding, okay? That's where everybody puts on their, all their thoughts and passions about everything. Here's the thing. People have so much zeal for politics, correct? Studies have shown the average American could not pass a citizenship test.

In other words, most Americans do not know the first thing about politics. They do not understand how it works. They've never read, you know, the Declaration of Independence. They don't understand the different branches of government. They don't, but man, are they passionate. Here's another one, AI. You can always tell somebody has zeal without knowledge because you'll have evangelists and prophets at the same time. So have you noticed that we have, for AI, the evangelist Elon Musk? And he's saying, don't worry, have you seen this? Don't save for retirement, we're gonna have sustainable abundance. And then you have, on the other side, all these doomsday prophets saying AI is gonna take over the whole world. And then there's, okay, here's another area of zeal. Creativity. Creativity. Creativity. Creativity. Creativity. Cryptocurrency. Creativity. Creativity. Creativity. I remember back when Doge was really big,

Creativity. Creativity. Creativity. because I'm going to lose some of you on this, Creativity. Creativity. Creativity. but there was a cryptocurrency called Doge. Creativity. Creativity. Creativity. And I bought it at just the right time. And it started going up, going up. I called my dad, who's in wealth management and all this kind of stuff. I called him up, and I was like, Dad, I'm making a lot of money on Doge. He's like, sell! I'm like, I can't sell. I can't sell. He said, do you understand how cryptocurrency works? I said, no. He said, that's literally the first rule of investing. You don't invest in something you don't understand. Zeal without knowledge. Or here's the main one in our culture today, health. We are back in the Old Testament in some ways. We now, again, have dietary laws. A lot of people read the Old Testament. That's so weird, all these dietary laws.

It's like, you're the one who talks about eating clean food. You have your own saints. They're called influencers. And they have nice abs on social media. We have our own evangelist. Have you ever met the guy that went to CrossFit? Don't worry, he'll meet you. He'll find you. He's an evangelist. So guys, I mean, this is like, we have zeal, but we don't have knowledge. Zeal is the energy. Knowledge is the direction. And Paul says, man, what I want them to know so badly is God's Word. And here's what's sad about being in America today. We have so much zeal. I just mentioned it. We have so little knowledge. We live in the most biblically illiterate America, even though the average person has more Bibles in their home than we're accessed to whole communities for most of human history. And so here's how Paul ends. Paul ends in verse 4. Here's what he says. He says, for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness. So he's been dealing with self-righteousness in people. And he says, for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

He basically says, guys, what I'm so frustrated with, with religiously lost people, he said, and particularly with the Jewish people, he said, is that they don't understand that Christ is what the law was pointing to. Like, he was the goal. He was the substance. He was the end of it. And you know what? This is going to sound really silly, but whenever I think of this verse for myself, and this will make more sense in one second, I think of Buckies. Can you just raise your hand if you just love Buckies? I just love. I don't see enough hands, so we should all love Buckies. So they're building one in Mebane, and I can't wait, OK? It's going to be great. It won't be ready for, like, two years, but that's OK. So here's what happens. Whenever we're going down to Florida, OK? When we go down to Florida, there's always a Buckies. And I get excited the very first time I see a Bucky sign. And they show up really early. They'll show up, like, 150 miles before Buckies. And it's like, hey, Buckies, you know, in 150 miles. And then I'll reorient my whole life and the life of my family. I'm like, we're not getting gas, you know? We're going to have to make it, you know? No one's peeing for 150 miles, you know?

We were going to eat a Chick-fil-A, but we're eating at 2 PM at Buckies, you know what I mean? And here's why I tell you that. It's really silly, but if you think about it this way, why do I love the Bucky signs? Because I love Buckies. It's like, it would be so silly if every time I saw a Buckies sign, I just grabbed my family. I said, we got to get right, come over here. We're stopping at the sign. We get pictures. We camp out in front of the Buckies sign. It's like, the sign is, the whole point of the sign is to point you to Buckies. And when you get, I'm most grateful for the signs when I'm standing in Buckies eating their three meat sandwich, OK? In the same way, it's like, guys, the whole point of the Old Testament, everything was anticipating it. Everything was pointing toward him and preparing for him. And guys, the only way that we're going to have a righteousness, the only way that we can have a righteousness, OK, that doesn't lead to comparison and a righteousness that leads to worship, is to realize that the righteousness that we have, as the old theologians would say, is an alien righteousness. It's a gift righteousness, because Jesus

lived a sinless life. He died a substitutionary death, and he rose victoriously. And anybody who would ever believe can have that righteousness. So here's how I want to end. I want to end with just a time of repentance. A time, that's how we really, we should probably end every service anyway, just a time of repentance, but to repent of self-righteousness. Now, the hard thing about self-righteousness is self-righteous people are always the last people to know they're self-righteous. And so just a minute, I'm going to ask you to come forward. Just maybe you've realized, man, there's some self-righteousness in my life, and that's actually the reason I don't pray for non-Christians. There's some self-righteousness in my life, and that's the reason I can't tell anyone what I'm struggling with. There's some self-righteousness in my life, and that's why I'm not getting in community. Listen, there was a story I read years ago, a true story of a college ministry, and they really wanted to reach their campus. And so they did something strange. I'm not recommending this. This is descriptive, not prescriptive. But they put a confessional booth on the front of their student lawn. Kind of old-school Catholic in some ways. They put a confessional booth on the lawn. But here's the trick.

It was the Christian students that would be in the confessional booth, and anyone who came by, they would confess their sins to them. Can you imagine what that must have been like? Some kids walking to class, all these goofy Christians, stupid Christians, dumb Christians. Hey, come here, man, I need to tell you something. Here's a couple of things I struggle with. And the guy tells a story. He says, it broke out like a little renewal, a little revival on the campus because, man, there's nothing that will... The two things that will tear away self-righteousness in your heart is going to be praying for lost people and confessing your sin. So just in a minute, I'll meet you down here, but here's what I want to do. I want to come forward, I want us to come forward for the self-righteousness that's in our heart, but just in general, the self-righteousness that is in the city of Davie, the communities of Davie, and Lexington, and Winston, that end... Guys, we end up being stumbling blocks that don't need to be stumbling blocks. We want to be the most humble, joyful, Christ-centered people. And here's the thing, we want to look like Jesus, but before we can look like Jesus, sometimes we've got to look like people who need him. Let's pray. Lord, across all of our campuses, I pray just to come forward in a time of repentance where we don't want to be self-righteous. Self-righteousness destroys marriages because it creates an us versus them. It creates victim mentalities. Lord, self-righteousness destroys parenting because we're so concerned about how our kids look because of how it makes us look. Self-righteousness destroys evangelism because we care so much about what other people think, or we're so judgmental of their sin that we don't have a heart to pray and share with them.

Lord, and would you break our hearts for what breaks yours? Would we, like the Apostle Paul, be able to say, my heart's desire and prayer to God is that they might be saved? Lord, would you, in our church and in the church plants that are going out from here, Lord, would you destroy the self-righteous spirit and put a grace-centered spirit in us, Lord, where we all know we are sinners who need the grace of God, and we relate to each other as sinners who need the grace of God. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Please stand. Please come forward.