Can we change God's faithfulness

So today we're going to be looking at Romans chapter 3, the first four verses. I'm going to be reading from the New American Standard. Then what advantage does the Jew have? Well, what is the benefit of circumcision? great in every respect. First, that they were entrusted with the actual words of God. What then?

If some did not believe, their unbelief will not nullify the faithfulness of God, will it? Far from it. Rather, God must prove to be true, though every person be found a liar, as it is written, so that you are justified in your words and prevail when you are judged. So, what we've been working through over the last several weeks and probably a couple more weeks to come, the goal of the Apostle Paul is to put every human being on the planet condemned.

And he's answering, as we've talked about so far, he's answering the questions of, well, what if I don't have the information? What if I'm a righteous person? And what if I'm a godly person where we are now? I'm a Jew. So, how can God condemn me because He's been so great to me?

His statement at the end of Romans 2, which we talked about last week, it laid down with irresistible force for the conscience that God will have reality rather than form. Let the Jew beware. The form we're talking about was circumcision. A Jew said, look, I was circumcised.

God isn't going to judge me. And we talked about, contemporarily, The ordinance of baptism, there are a lot of Christians that say, well, I'm baptized, so God isn't going to judge me. Well, the problem is, if you look at verse 25 and 29, which we talked about last week, for indeed, circumcision is of value if you practice the law. But if you are a transgressor of the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision. And then 29, Paul said, but he is a Jew who is one inwardly. And circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, and not by the letter, the letter of the law. And his praise is not from men, but from God.

So this gives us an opportunity to objections which are met in the earlier part of Romans 3 we'll see today. The Jew would read this and he'd say, wait a minute, I object to this. And so basically that's what we're going to talk about today. Then what advantage has the Jew? Does he really have one? Or what is the benefit of circumcision? There are two questions here. The first question is, is there An advantage does being a Jew give them? And what's the benefit of circumcision?

So the Jews are saying that Paul's argument was too severe. Because Paul had shown previously in chapter 2 that the mere possession of the law does not exempt a Jew from judgment. and that God requires fulfillment. He also showed that the circumcision in the flesh, which was a seal through which it was the covenant and the pledge of its promise, is only of value if it represents inward heart circumcision. So what has he done through this process? What did he do in the last four or five verses of chapter two? He reduced the Jewish position to equality with the Gentiles. He said, you and the Gentiles are the same, really, when it comes to judgment.

You're not going to escape judgment because you have what you think is a free pass. But the Jew could answer and say, well, even your Messiah said, salvation is of the Jews. It's a word of Christ himself, and that the apostle is obligated to meet this instinctive protest of the ancient people of God. Salvation is of the Jews. So in dealing with the sin nature in the heart of man, what do we find? Everybody's heart. Nobody is immune from this.

In Jeremiah 17.9, the heart is more deceitful than all else. It's desperately sick or wicked. Who can understand it? We're not looking at outward signs. We're looking at the heart of man. And there's always the tendency, as you read the Old Testament, to blame God for everything. in Genesis 3, 11 and 12.

And the Lord went looking for Adam and Eve after they sinned, and they're hiding. And he said to them, who told you? And he asked Adam where he was, and he said, well, I was naked, and I felt naked, and so I hid myself. And the Lord said, well, who told you that you were naked?

Have you eaten from the tree which I commanded you to eat? Not to eat? Listen to the answer. The woman you gave me to be with me, she gave me from the tree and I ate. Who did he blame? He blamed God. He didn't blame the woman, he blamed God. You gave her to her. It's your fault that I sinned. Gee, I've never done that. Have you ever blamed somebody else for your own sins? Oh, not in the last five minutes maybe.

So, Paul anticipates here that the same kind of argument, the same kind of thing is going to be happening with the Jews in their discussion here. If I were to paraphrase this verse, I would say, what preeminence then, if both Jewhood and circumcision are spiritual, then inward only, What preeminence has a Jew? Or what has the divine ordinance of circumcision amounted to? In other words, did the Jews really have an advantage, even if Paul reduces them to the status of Gentiles?

Verse 2 says, Their advantage is great in every respect. And he starts out by saying, first of all, and as you go through the verses, you'll find there's no second and third of all. There's only a first of all. First of all, they were entrusted with the oracles of God. Wow. This word advantage means that you are superior or you're in an advantageous, superior in quality position.

The oracles of God are defined by Denny as the contents of the revelation, having God as their author. At the time Paul was writing, this comprised the Old Testament. So even to the despising of nations that didn't have them, instead of ministering them to others, You remember we talked about the fact that what the Jews were to do with the oracles of God or the Old Testament, they were to use them to tell the Gentile world who God really was and how he operated and what he was about. But their ignorance, their appalling ignorance of the spiritual meaning of divine oracles, and the voice of the prophets, so they even killed the righteous one. So they didn't even recognize, even though they had the oracles, that when the righteous one, the Lord Jesus, showed up, they killed him. They killed him. So, what are the oracles of God?

There are several quotes I got from Old Testament theologians that spend time, I'll read a couple of them. No doubt in the first place the promises, Acts 7, and indeed especially those of the Messiah and the kingdom of God to which all others were related.

But the whole word of God is also indicated by this expression. The divine promises were confided to the Jews since in what follows is just the faithfulness, faithlessness of the Jews in the possession of these promises which are spoken of. The mention is made of divine faithfulness only in connection as it relates to faithlessness. Tholak, who is a theologian, described it this way. Oracles here are divine declarations, hence particular promises and prophecies. Alfred says, not only the law of Moses, but all the revelation of God previously made of himself directly, all of which had been entrusted to the Jews only.

And Meyer said, Paul means the Holy Scriptures, and especially the prophecies of Messiah and the Kingdom. These are not destroyed by the Jews, but they didn't believe them. Robertson says, Paul does not enumerate more privileges. He has given the chief advantage to the Jews enjoyed over the Gentiles.

In other words, imagine that. Of the whole earth, There's one tribe of people that are given God's Word. Now we don't understand that because God's Word has gone everywhere since in our time. But the Jews had God's Word and it was important that they knew and understood how favored they were being in possession of God's Word. The problem was that it demonstrated their failure more than their success. So Paul enumerates the various high honors of Israel.

In Philippians 3.3-3.7, here he specifies seven natural advantages of which circumcision is the first one mentioned. Zealous persecution of the church is the sixth one he'll mention. And outward legal blamelessness is the seventh.

So here's what Paul says. He starts out by saying, for we, believers, are the true circumcision who worship in the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and don't have any confidence in the flesh. Although I myself have might have confidence even in the flesh. If anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I the far more." Now watch how he lays this out.

Circumcised on the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, Hebrew of the Hebrews. As to the law of Pharisee, as to zeal as a persecutor of the church, and as to righteousness, which is in the law, I'm found blameless." So Paul says, that's my personal advantage being in Judaism. Yet before he says that, he says the church is the true circumcision.

So those were on the profit side, or on the asset side of the ledger that Paul lays out. But it's interesting, after he understands who he is in Christ and as a believer, some of these things could move over to the debit side. They're losses for him. These things were gains to me. These I have counted loss." For what? For the sake of Christ. Maybe you ask it another way.

Since God requires subjection of heart from the Jew, and at the same time honors a like subjection of the heart in the Gentiles, what value is there in the very institution in the system of Judaism? initiated, in fact, by God himself, is their value, was their value. Much in every respect, he makes it clear that, yeah, they had a huge advantage over anybody else. First and foremost, that the nation was given the oracles of God and they were entrusted to them.

If you look back in the Old Testament at Exodus 28.15, And the high priest wore this thing called a breastplate in connection with the service of the tabernacle. And on that breastplate, the word L-O-G-E-I-O-N, to describe the breastplate, it describes the oracles of God. So, that's from Vine's dictionary.

It's interesting that all of what God did with the Jews from God's perspective, had an entirely different purpose than what the Jews thought. They just thought they were told to do something. And they didn't really own the fact that God had said to them, you're my special people. And as my special people, this is how you should live. And let me show you what the criteria is. So inestimable eternal advantage despite their unfaithfulness, Newell says.

It put them into a unique position of being the only nation whom the will of God was made known. That had been kind of scary if you weren't a Jew. To whom his counsels and ways were made manifest in former times. As a result, he reminds them in Amos you only have I known of all the families of the earth." Deuteronomy 4, 7, and 8. For what nation is there so great who has God so near to them as the Lord our God is in all things that we call upon Him for? And what nation is there so great that has statutes and judgments so righteous in all this law?

And then we look at Ephesians 2.12. It says, remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenant of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. That's where every one of us were before we were saved. Every single one of us.

So the Jews are going to ask questions now because they're going to challenge what Paul has to say. And the first question is, is what advantage or preeminence has a Jew in circumcision? And the answer is the nation that was entrusted to the oracles of God is something of inestimable, eternal advantage. Every writer in the Bible is, we believe, from this, believe from this, is an Israelite. You remember we talked last week about a Jew or an Israelite.

An Israelite was one who did have his heart circumcised. The Jewish faithlessness could not annul the faithfulness in carrying out these oracles whether a promise, prophecy, or judgment. What the Jews thought, what the Jews were thinking that, well, you know, if we're not faithful, then God is going to have to change his mind. He's going to have to be less faithful to what He said He would do because of our weakness. But we do that all the time. I mean, how many times in your mind, because I've done this, I think, well, I've really done it this time.

I've really made God mad because of what I've done. Yet God's Word says that He took out all His wrath on His Son. Well, how arrogant of me to think that I could sin so terribly that I would make God angry. So what I'm saying is that God has to change His mind because of my sinfulness.

The Jews are coming back at Him with this same argument. Well, God can't be as faithful, can He, because of our unbelief? Yet He says much in every way. Because I gave you the oracles of God. So can a Jewish behavior of unbelief change God's immutability? Answer, no. It's insinuated or insisted that if God's character as a righteous judge is to be maintained, as it must be, these admissions do not exempt the Jew from that liability to judgment which has just been demonstrated. In other words, you Jews, even though you're circumcised, even though you've been given the oracles of God, I have, as God, said that I'm going to judge all men based on their behavior and based on my tenets, no matter whether you're circumcised or not. So, but you have to admit that Jewish unbelief may act as to break God's faithfulness.

Sitting it in a more glorious support, but God never changes. He's always faithful to his word. Important point for us, because we should never forget that God is always faithful to his word. no matter how you feel about it. So Jewish faithfulness could not annul God's faithfulness in carrying out the oracles, whether promise, prophecy, or judgment. So what then? Another question. If some did not believe, their unbelief will not nullify the faithfulness of God, will it?

So Paul says that there's no distinction before God between Jew and Gentile as regards to being a sinner. But he will meet those objections which would arise based on the Jewish mindset of two things. The peculiar position and privilege given by God to Israel as a Jehovah separate people and the righteous character of God himself as conceived of by the Jew in his privileged position. What's interesting is that their objections were not true. They're daring, for sure, but they're blasphemous. And God is going to answer them.

He answers them right here. And what Paul's doing here, he's not saying, as he writes out the book of Romans, he's not saying, I'm answering a question that's already been asked me. I'm just anticipating what you're going to ask me after you've read this. That you're going to come back at me and say, well, What then?

If some didn't believe, their unbelief will not nullify your faithfulness. William Kelly says, here again, there is an anticipation of any argument founded, however unreasonable, on Jewish unmanageableness, which knew that the glory of God can never fail. I would suggest, however, that the question, beginning in this manner in verse 1, proceed to Paul's thinking-wise in verse 5, and we'll talk about 5 and 7 next week.

So just because one has a spiritual advantage, does it translate into a benefit? Well, Alfred said, because they have broken faith on their part, shall God break faith also on His? The Jew had an advantage of circumstances and environment and training. If he ignored all this, of course, he had only himself to blame for robbing himself of his soul's only hope.

There's no doubt that some did not believe. Verse 3, what then, if some did not believe, their unbelief will not nullify God's faithfulness. I think that's a really important point for us as believers. We had a good discussion on walking with the Lord this morning, and how important just believing His Word is, what He says, that it is perfect.

And because he's the author, it's perfect. It cannot be modified or changed in any way. And we as Christians are to believe him. The most important thing. Well, what was the most important thing that God wanted from the Jewish nation? He wanted them to believe him. Because he had everything in hand, if they would just believe him. God holds fast, I think, infallibility of His truth.

And men fail in faithfulness because they don't have the faith. We're insensible to sin. We trust ourselves rather than God's Word. And we don't have confidence in God. When it comes right down to it, the reason I don't walk by faith, is because I don't have confidence in God's Word.

That's really why. And I have a lot of confidence in myself. But then in verse 3 it says that God must be found true and every man be false to whatever God entrusts to him. So what then? If some didn't believe, the faith of God, will it change God? What then means, where do we stand now? In other words, the question is, where do you Jews stand now?

If you didn't believe, you didn't exercise faith, that word pastuo with an A in front of it means that you didn't exercise faith. It negates the word. And what effect does it make? It makes a negative effect rather to make insufficient rather than to make without effect.

The faith of God could be better rendered the faithfulness of God. I love that because you and I walk by faith. We really walk by faithfulness. We trust God that what He tells us He means. He's serious about it. And he plans, if he hasn't already done it, he's going to implement it into your life. He's faithful. That's what walking by faith, I think, really is.

Vincent quotes a couple of men, Dr. Mort Morrison, who I don't know anything about, accurately observes that it's negative the idea of agency of operation rather than the results are in effect. In other words, he's rather to make insufficient rather than to make one of no effect. In other words, the faithfulness of God is sufficient. It's not insufficient.

So if you ask the question, is this going to nullify the faithfulness of God, causing him to refrain from fulfilling his promises because he's going to judge them, the Jew did not think he would be judged because his covenant relationship with God. What's the answer to that question? The answer is it underscores the veracity and the immutability of God. Immutability means he cannot and will not change no matter what.

The fact that it's impossible for God to lie, Hebrews 6.18, Titus 1.2, God can never go back on His promises. And when we get to chapter 9, 10, and 11 in our study of Romans, we're going to find a really interesting argument based on the premise that, well, if God has made all these promises to the Jews, And God is faithful. Then if he's doubled down on Christians and given us promises and facts that are supersede anything he promised the Jews, does that mean he's going to just Move the Jews off the scene? No. 9, 10, and 11 are going to go through very carefully and explain that everything that God promised the Jews, He will fulfill, no matter how unfaithful they were, or no matter how important this space is where God is calling out a bride for His Son, Christian.

So, answer. May it never be. Rather, let God be found true, or let God be true, though every man be found a liar, as it is written, that you may be justified in your words and prevail when you are judged, from Psalm 51.4. God forbid is a really cool phrase if we were to talk about it today in present vernacular, we would say, no way. No way. It's not going to happen. In other words, don't even entertain the thought because it isn't going to happen.

And then let letting God be true. What are we talking about? God, I don't like the word found there because we don't discover that God is true. He is true. The phrase is used in reference to men's apprehension. Let God turn out to be true or found to be true by his creatures. Something that we discovered that was a mystery? No. He's always been true. And to be justified suggests that we acknowledge His righteousness.

Overcome or prevail, in other words, is the gain in the case. When we are judged, when you come into judgment, we all are going to put it this way. We all are going to be judged. It's interesting, you and I, have been judged by God on the cross. Were we found guilty? Yeah, we were. Did we violate every and all of God's tenets? Yeah, we did. Was the price paid? Yeah. Was the law inflicted upon you in the cross of Christ? Yes, it was. You were found guilty, I was found guilty, and we died. So the judgment we come into is a place of rewards.

It isn't like what's going to happen at the great white throne. So a paraphrase of this verse is, Far be the thought, yea, let God be true in every man, Gentile and Jew found false as it is written, and that by King David himself confessing blood guiltness that you might be justified in your words and might prevail when you are judged by sinful men as to justice in your ways. Whose ways? So from the word study of Kenneth Wiest, he says, well, then, if this is the case, certain ones did not exercise faith, their unbelief will not render the faithfulness of God insufficient, will it?

And his answer is, may such a thing never occur. Let God be found voracious and in every man a liar, even if it is stands written to the end that you may be acknowledged, righteous in your words and may come out victor when brought to trial. A loving man is going to bring God to trial. So nothing to us, this insistence of God upon moral reality before Him of all, including the Jews themselves.

It seems pretty simple. But it's not so simple to those to whom it seemed to strip of all their special and divinely bestowed privileges." Newell says that, and I thought, you know, that's right. The Jews are reading what Paul's writing, and they're thinking, well, this isn't so simple. Boy, I've been betting my life on some of these things, and maybe that's all going to go away. No one will ever be allowed to plead special privilege or light as exempting him from judgment. But he will spiritually, of course, not actually escape the general sentence of verse 19, where all the world is brought under the judgment of God.

Maybe put it this way. Here's all mankind over here. And here's the jail over here. So God has taken Now he's working on the third group of men. He took the first man and he put him over there and he said he's going to be condemned because he didn't believe the light that he had. Then he took the righteous guy, self-righteous guy, legal guy, and put him over there because he was standing over God's shoulder saying, yeah, that first group of guys are bad. But I've never done that. And God looks at him and says, oh really? And He shows him, yes, you go over here too. And the third group are the religious people. And who better to use than the Jewish nation at this point? So He puts them over there.

So by the time we get to verse 19, all the world is guilty before God. You and I are guilty before God. And that's where we're headed up to verse 19. What's interesting about that is that you can't escape. None of us can escape, or no man can escape. We have already escaped because of our position in Christ. So may it never be, rather let God be found true, though every man be a liar.

Man's reception or rejection of the truth has no bearing whatever upon truth itself. What you believe it is or isn't has no bearing. And you know, the society we live in today is subjective. And truth is what I say it is. There's no such thing as objective, Ruth.

Well, then you've got a big problem because Man's reception or rejection of the truth has no bearing on whether upon the truth itself it remains in its solemn, solitary grandeur, unalterable, invincible, and irrevocable. While man's most violent opposition is merely his self-destruction against immovable rock, God is true. And it matters not that man opposes his truth. The man is false.

That's from Newell. The faithfulness here, faithlessness here of the Jew is not his failure to believe God's oracles. What there is before us is the Jewish attitude towards the great primary privilege and responsibility that the nation as a depository of divine truths. In other words, what's going on here is God deals with, and we talk about this a lot, God deals with the nation of Israel as a nation, not individuals. He deals with us individually. It wasn't the fact that the nation didn't believe, because some did, but they had a responsibility because of the oracles that were given to him and deposited with them, to use them to show the whole world, the whole Gentile world, what God was really all about.

If a man thinks he escapes in spirit from God's pronouncement of guilty, He will never truly rely upon the shed blood of the guilt-bearing Christ. That's true. The very first thing that has to happen to lead someone to Christ is they have to know they're lost. They have to know that they're in trouble when it comes to God's judgment.

Paul points out Psalm 51 for against you and you only I have sinned. This is David. And done what is evil in your sight so that you are justified when you speak and blameless when you judge. Paul, he uses David's most humble confession and acknowledgement of righteousness to God after David's own great sin had shown David himself faithless to the royal covenant Jehovah had committed to him. He's king. He has a wife. He commits adultery with Bathsheba and he kills Bathsheba's husband, has Bathsheba's husband murdered. So he goes before the Lord and confesses his guilt.

Confession, one might say, is the secret of blessing for the sinner. Because confession is a willingness to own my ruined state, God operates in the heart by the revelation of His own grace, and our sins justify His words. So it's interesting that Paul would use David's situation here. David's most humble confession and acknowledgement of the righteousness of God after his great sin, he shows himself faithless. William Kelly says that there is any, that there is any, the smallest failure on God's part He furiously repudiates, insists that God at least be vindicated to man's shame and confession of his own evil, even as David found his only resource and acknowledges sin to God, clearing him at all costs to himself.

Isn't that something? against you and you only have I sinned. I want to close with Colossians 2, 6 and 7, which is applicable to you and I as believers in the Lord Jesus. Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him. having been fully rooted and being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed and overflowing with gratitude. We had such a great discussion in Sunday School this morning about walking in the Spirit, and it's a work of the Holy Spirit to one, show us our need to walk in the Spirit, and two, to reveal Christ to us through His Word and to create in us a heart that wants to walk there, that wants to be there. and that He alone firmly roots us in Christ. And He alone, the Spirit of God, builds us up in Him. And He alone establishes us in our faith.

And we have been instructed, and because of all of those things, the very last thing that Paul says in Colossians 2.7 is, We are overflowing with gratitude. Let's pray.

Dear Father, how we thank you for your word. We thank you how careful you are to show us that you're unchangeable and that nothing gets swept under the carpet. Every single human being, all of your creatures, really come to recognize that you have taken care of the sin issue, no matter what our view is, and that you have, for those who believe, showered us with blessings that are just untold, can't describe them. They're so magnificent. And as we look towards the future, it even gets greater. So Father, we all desire to know your Son and to rest in all the provision that you've provided for us in Him. And we pray in your Son's precious name, Amen.