Alba 7-18-2021
THE LAW WRITTEN ON HEARTS
Romans 2:12-16
There is a story about a little boy who had been attending Sunday school and had the same teacher for many years. She would finish every lesson by saying “And the moral of the story is…”
But after sometime, the little boy moved up to another Sunday school class. His mom asked him how he liked the new Sunday school teacher, and he said, “She’s alright, but she’s got no morals at all.”
Well that is a different kind of “morals” than what it sounds like. But there are objective moral values, moral values that are valid and binding independent of human opinion.
So, for example, to say that the Holocaust was objectively evil is to say that it was wrong, even though the Nazis who carried it out thought that it was right.
And it still would have been wrong even if the Nazis had won World War II and succeeded in exterminating or brainwashing everyone who disagreed with them.
As William Penn once put it, “Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.”
So where do morals come from? Where do we get this idea that some things are wrong (even evil), and others are good and right?
The main source for this is the Bible, God's Word. The law of God is a guiding force to help us see right from wrong.
The law is like a mirror that reflects the perfect righteousness, holiness, and goodness of God. And it reveals the infinite gulf that separates God and people.
The law reveals who and what we are. As Galatians 3:19 says, What purpose then does the law serve? It was added because of transgressions.
Many people think they will pass the “moral test” of getting into Heaven. But anyone who really thinks carefully about this realizes they will not pass the test.
Romans 2:12-13 says, 12 For as many as have sinned without law will also perish without law, and as many as have sinned in the law will be judged by the law 13 (for not the hearers of the law are just in the sight of God, but the doers of the law will be justified;
Paul addresses the Jewish saints that are in Rome. He speaks directly to the Jews about their relationship with God as a chosen nation, and their dependence upon being Jews for their assurance of salvation.
The Jews tended to believe that they had a lock on salvation because Law of Moses had been given to Israel alone many centuries before Christ.
They thought of themselves as privileged among all people, which they were in a way, but not to the point of salvation just because they were given the Law of Moses and knew what it said.
Paul has to teach them that just having and knowing the Law of Moses wasn’t enough. This alone could not justify the Jew as he stood before God in judgment.
The Jews didn’t just brag on the fact that they were the only ones to whom God sent His Law. They bragged because they had the Law, even when they didn’t live by it.
Lets put ourselves in the place of those Jews. We know the law, yet we do not keep it as we should. This week in VBS we will be studying the Ten Commandments.
Who of us can say we are not guilty of breaking at least some of them? Just look at the commandments and ask yourself, “Have I always loved God with all my heart?” That includes never having anything take His place, or having any idols of any kind.
Have you ever used His name in vain, or swore, or even violated the Sabbath? Have you always obeyed your parents all the time without fail? Have you ever been angry at anyone? Have you ever lusted in your heart? Have you ever stolen anything, even as a little child?
Have you ever said anything that wasn’t true about someone? And then finally, have you ever wanted something that belonged to someone else? Paul asks similar questions in verse 21 & following.
I don't think any of us can say we’ve kept the ten commandments without fail and attained spiritual and moral perfection.
Paul is saying to the Jews, “What are you bragging about? You have the Law, but you’re not obeying it. You are no better than the Gentiles who didn’t have the law and disobeyed it.
And he is saying, “There are no bragging rights for being in rebellion against the Law of God, whether you are a Jew or a Gentile. Both are wrong, and both will be judged for sin.”
Then in Romans 2:14-15 the apostle Paul deals with those who are not Jews saying, 14 for when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them.
The point here is that the Jews have no advantage over the Gentiles by having the law, because the Gentiles have their own form of it written on their hearts.
This means that even though the Gentiles did not have the Law of Moses, they did have an internal law, and it is evident by the way they lived.
They may not know God, but they have that inner sense that tells them when they are doing something wrong. Because of this internal sense of right and wrong, the Gentiles became a law unto themselves.
The Jews had laws written on stone tablets, but the Gentiles had the law written on a tablet made of flesh. They did not know the law that God had given to Moses. Yet they had knowledge of right and wrong.
And in spite of that knowledge, they rebelled against that which was right, and in so doing, they also rebelled against the law of God. And disobedience to the law of nature is still rebellion in the eyes of the Lord, and it will bring judgment on whoever breaks that law.
And if those who are ignorant of God’s law break even one of those laws that are known, then they are guilty of the sin of rebellion.
Ignorance of the law of God is not an acceptable excuse in the courtroom of Heaven. By nature, through a natural knowledge of good and evil that is given by God, we all have that innate understanding of what is right and what is not.
Most people in our culture who have no relationship with God whatsoever still at least occasionally, and sometimes quite frequently, do things that are consistent with God’s written Law.
They honor their parents, they care for their family, they feed the hungry, they tell the truth, they seek to do justice, and they pay their debts.
And even in very primitive cultures, almost everyone believes it is wrong to commit murder and those who do that are punished in some way.
Not only is that law written on our hearts, our conscience bears witness that we understand that some things are wrong and some things are good.
Remember how Jiminy Cricket responded in the 1940 classic, when Pinocchio asked, “What’s a conscience?” Jiminy Cricket said, “What’s a conscience!? I'll tell ya! A conscience is that still small voice that people won’t listen to. That's just the trouble with the world today...”
To paraphrase the Blue Fairy’s follow-up, your conscience is what allows you to differentiate between right and wrong, good and evil, moral and immoral.
The problem is the conscience doesn’t work like a “thermometer” it works like a “thermostat.” And while the two are related to one another, there’s a huge difference between the two!
Thermostats don’t define “hot” and “cold” they only set the temperature. And in the case of our actions, “good” and “bad”, our conscience just sets the level that we believe is appropriate.
Our conscience doesn’t tell us we’re violating God’s standards, it tells us we’re violating our own. And our conscience isn’t static, it resets over time, and is influenced by our family, education, worldview, and for Christians the church, and the Word of God.
Follow your conscience only if it leads you to Jesus, because Jesus is the one who needs to control your conscience so that it works well.
Your conscience can only be a compass. A compass is not a destination. A compass is something that guides you to a destination, and so, let it guide you to Jesus.
There are stories of how God has prepared people ahead of time to hear and respond to the gospel. It was already written on their hearts.
For example, in 1862, a bearded Norwegian missionary named Lars Skrefsrud and his Danish colleague, Hans Borreson, found two and a half million people called the Santal living in a region north of Calcutta, India.
They were waiting to be reconciled with Thakir Jiu, the “Genuine God” since their ancestors had sinned.
Lars and Hans proclaimed that Jesus, the Son of the Genuine God, had reconciled them. 100,000 immediately came to salvation and were baptized!
And in Ethiopia, several million quite different tribes shared common belief in Magano – the omnipotent Creator of all that is. The Gedeo tribe actually prayed to Magano.
One leader, Warrasa Wange, saw a vision of two white-skinned strangers under a large Sycamore tree and he heard a voice that said, “These men will bring you a message from Magano. Wait for them.”
In December, 1948 Canadians Albert Brant and Glen Cain arrived at the village in their truck and pulled under a large Sycamore tree and parked. Many thousands of Gedeo promptly accepted Jesus!
For centuries, the Lahu of Burma have had a tradition which said that Gui’sha – Creator of all things – had given their forefathers his written law, but they’d lost it. They couldn’t obey their Creator perfectly until they regained His laws.
The Lahu had “prophets of Gui’sha” to keep the expectation of Gui’sha alive in their hearts. And the tradition, “Gui’sha himself will send us a white brother with a white book containing the white laws of Gui’sha lost by our forefathers so long ago!”
They wore wristbands to remind themselves of their need. It is said that when missionaries arrived it was like the Book of Acts!
There are more stories just like this. God has written His law upon the hearts of people in all times.
But as Hebrews 1:1-4 says, 1 God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, 2 has in these last days spoken to us by His Son,
whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; 3 who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
4 having become so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.
You see, it is Jesus who saves us. In verse 16 of our text, Paul refers to the day when God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel.
When all people stand before God on that Great Judgment Day, they will be judged according to their acceptance of Jesus Christ and the gospel that Paul preached and salvation will be based upon that alone.
Notice that Paul doesn't say “the gospel”. He says “my gospel”. It is not that Paul had something that no one else had. It is that the good news of salvation in Jesus was very personal to him.
Someone has said, “Unless the gospel is my gospel it is really no gospel at all.” The Law of God must lead us to faith in what Jesus did on the Cross. Otherwise, the Law will condemn us for failing to learn its lessons.
God’s requirement is NOT hearing the word–BUT obeying the word.
When a person makes the gospel their own by genuinely placing their faith in Jesus alone and receives God’s grace into their life, God transforms that person into a “doer of the law”.
That certainly doesn’t mean that they will obey God’s law perfectly, but it does mean that they will desire to obey God’s Word and that obedience will characterize their life.
What Paul has said in verse 13 is that our works will be the evidence of whether or not our faith in Jesus is genuine.
And therefore when God judges us based on those works, what He is actually doing is judging whether or not we have genuinely made the gospel our gospel personally.
What counts both now and for eternity is not only whether we have God’s law in our hearts as evidenced by our conscience, or how much we have read or listened to God’s Word, or even by what we know about the gospel.
But rather by whether we have actually conducted our life in a manner consistent with the light we have received.
Ultimately, our salvation is based on Jesus Christ and the blood He shed on Calvary.
CONCLUSION:
A philosophy professor began each new term by asking his class, "Do you believe it can be shown that there are absolute values like justice?"
The free-thinking students all argued that everything is relative and no single law can be applied universally. Before the end of the semester, the professor devoted one class period to debate the issue.
At the end, he concluded, "Regardless of what you think, I want you to know that absolute values can be demonstrated. And if you don't accept what I say, I'll flunk you!"
One angry student got up and insisted, "That's not fair!"
"You've just proved my point," replied the professor. "You've appealed to a higher standard of fairness."
God has given everyone a conscience to tell right from wrong, and His moral standards are written in the Bible. Every time we use the words good and bad, we imply a standard by which we make such judgments.
Biblical values are true for any age, because they originate with an eternal, unchanging God. And only God has the right to define what's wrong. [Dennis De Haan- Our Daily Bread]
He also defines what is right. He can take the wrongs of our life and make us right. Let the Lord write on your heart His law of love and forgiveness. He is ready to do that today.
