A Higher Standard

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Transcript:

Well, from time to time, we’ll hear people say that morality, that right and wrong are just relative terms. And maybe you don’t hear people say it in exactly those words, but that’s what they mean when they say things like, well, that’s right for you, maybe that’s wrong for you, but not for me. Or that’s your truth, but not my truth. People say things like that, and it sounds good to some people.

It sounds like a working way of thinking to some people. But when you get right down to it, that’s not the way any of us really live. I mean, you take somebody who thinks morality is all relative, and then somebody steals their car.

Are they going to say, well, stealing cars is wrong according to my moral code, but the thief has a moral code of his own? Are they going to say that? Or are they going to call the police and try to report the person, try to get the car back, and prosecute if they find the person who did it.

Of course, they’re going to do the latter. Because moral relativism sounds good on the surface, but it doesn’t conform to reality. Even if we do let people get by with the idea that that’s not really wrong anymore because times have changed, or I don’t buy into that moral code, There are some things that are still nearly universally agreed to be morally wrong.

Everybody has a moral code of some sort. Even the people who say, well, it’s all relative, they have some moral code that they’re operating off of. And what we see is that on some really big issues, there’s a surprising amount of overlap with everybody’s moral code.

You know, people in most societies and civilizations throughout world history have agreed that murder is wrong. Right? They’ve agreed murder is wrong.

Now, some cultures may have a different definition of murder than ours. They may define murder differently. But we all just about agree that the taking of an innocent life, either on purpose or through recklessness, that that’s wrong.

That that’s something that society should punish. That’s why every country has laws against murder. We have, up until recently, recognized that adultery is wrong.

Most societies have traditionally had some kind of moral code that discourages adultery. We discourage lying. Again, up until recently, now we just elected.

Well, I’d say I’m teasing, but not necessarily. We have typically, as a society, discouraged lying. We recognize there’s something wrong.

When our child starts lying, we recognize, oh, that’s a problem. When they figure that out. By the way, we don’t have to sit down and teach them that either.

They just pick that up. That’s one of the arguments for the sin nature. I never set my children down and explain to them, this is how you lie.

They just figured that out all on their own. But we recognize that’s a problem. There are some things that nearly every society throughout history has discouraged.

And still, if we were to look at it, even people that today might say, well, the things about adultery, that’s outdated. Well, until it happens to them. Or they might say it’s still not ideal. Nothing should happen to you, but it’s not the ideal. See, we recognize that some behaviors are more moral than others because we have a moral code and we live by it.

You know, when somebody murders somebody, we’re outraged. Rightly so. We are rightly outraged.

Even in our morally relativistic society, where it seems like, I don’t know if it’s everybody or a vocal minority, but it just sounds like they’re all around us, where they just want to throw morality out the window. Even in that society, somebody murders somebody and we are rightly outraged. Well, I thought morality was all relative.

No, when it comes to murder, when somebody molests a child, we are rightly outraged. We are disgusted. We want retribution.

This was in the news this week. There’s another documentary that’s come out about Michael Jackson making the case that he probably did the things that they said he did back in the 90s. And it was Barbara Streisand came out and said, well, you know, his needs were his needs.

And people rightly raped her over the coals for that. Because even our sick society can look at things like molesting children and say that deserves the maximum punishment we can exact. There’s something horribly horribly wrong there.

We look around and we have a moral code. Whether we want to admit it or not, we have a moral code. There are some things that we know to be right and some things that we know to be wrong.

We don’t agree on all of them, but there’s an incredible amount of overlap among all the societies of the world. There’s an incredible consensus among human beings as to some of the things that are right and some of the things that are wrong. And this near universality, everybody having it, of some aspects of our moral code, points to something inherent in humanity.

That there’s something in us that tells us what’s right and wrong. And scientists and philosophers and theologians have argued where it comes from. Why is it that, you know, even before these civilizations had a way of contacting each other, separated by oceans before Columbus.

Why is it that the pre-Columbian Indians in America had rules about murder? And at the same time, tribes in Southeast Asia had rules about murder. And people in Europe had rules about murder.

Why is it that they all recognized murder was wrong? Is there something inherent in us? Like I said, scientists and philosophers and theologians have argued about where it comes from.

And some have said, well, it’s something evolutionary in us. It’s something that evolved. well my question is if it’s something that if our moral code is it is something that evolved why is it that other animals if if you believe we’re an animal that involved that evolved why is it that other animals didn’t evolve a moral code if it was beneficial to them if it made their species if it made our species fitter why didn’t it make theirs fitter okay and yet you can see animals killing their own kind all the time they don’t have a problem with it well maybe it’s something that our societies just agreed this is for our benefit.

You know, hey, we’re better off. Maybe it’s just something we decided. We’d be better off if we had rules about not killing each other.

That’s great until you realize, hey, we can vote to change morality. If that’s the view on it, that it’s just something we all got together and decided by consensus, let me ask you this. If somebody murdered your child, but society had voted and said it’s okay and there’s some circumstance that made it okay, would you think it was okay?

No, because we still have something in us that says, no, this is wrong. And it doesn’t matter if the vote was 99 to 1. Doesn’t matter if the vote was 100 to 0.

We still recognize that some things are wrong. See, people argue about where that moral code comes from. And as Christians, we believe that the moral code, the moral law, comes from a moral law giver.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve started giving you some of the arguments for the existence of God. I gave you the cosmological argument from the existence of the universe, pointing to some cause. I gave you the teleological argument, complexity and design, indicating an intelligent designer behind the universe.

There are more arguments than these three, but I chose at the beginning of this series to give you three that I think are really compelling. What we’re going to look at today is the moral argument, which I’ve already begun to lay out for you, the moral argument. And again, this is not a silver bullet argument that is unassailable, that’s going to convince everybody at all times, in all places, every hardened skeptic, going to convince them of the existence of God.

It doesn’t work that way. My goal instead is to show you that there are reasons for what we believe. It’s not just a fairy tale.

It’s not just pie in the sky. There are legitimate reasons for what we believe. So if you’re sitting here today and you’re saying, I don’t believe this, hopefully, my goal is not to change your mind in one message.

My goal is to give you something to think about. If you’re sitting there saying, I believe, but I’m not sure why, I’d like to give you a reason. If you’re sitting there saying, my son, my granddaughter, my cousin, my neighbor, they’re asking me, why in the world do you believe in Christianity?

And you have no idea what to tell them. I’d like to give you some things that you can give you a starting point for that conversation. And ultimately, I’d like to point you to God as the one who has given us the moral law.

See, we have a moral law that we live by. And I don’t believe it happened by popular vote. I don’t believe it happened through evolution.

I believe, as the Bible teaches, that the moral law, this inherent knowledge, this inherent understanding we seem to have of right and wrong, whether we live by it or not, We seem to have the inherent understanding of right and wrong, and that points to somebody outside of us who said this is right and this is wrong. There is a higher moral standard that seems to transcend the opinions and the views and the preferences of man, and that points to the existence of a standard bearer. That’s the moral argument.

It’s basically the idea that a moral law requires a moral lawgiver. It’s a little more complex than that, but that’s the basic gist of the argument, that a moral law requires a moral lawgiver. And some people have stated it this way.

For an objective moral standard to exist, God must exist. An objective moral standard does exist, therefore God exists. And some are going to argue, again, that there’s no absolute moral standard. You can’t prove that.

Well, I don’t have to prove that. It fits with reality. okay there’s something a friend of mine used to call the philosopher’s playground where you can ask what if to anything in any kind of philosophical argument it’s hard it’s hard to talk about proof because somebody can say prove to me that you exist I can’t really prove myself to you I can prove to myself that I exist because for me to even say I don’t exist well who’s saying that for me to say I don’t exist it defeats my own argument I can’t prove to you I exist you can’t prove to yourself that you’re not just a brain and a bat seeing pictures around you, that you’re having a dream.

There’s the philosopher’s playground where we can get off into all kinds of what-if questions and all kinds of bizarre theories, but come back to reality for a minute, okay? And the idea that there’s no real morality, it’s all just made up.

It makes as much sense as the guy that’s trying to say we can’t prove we exist outside of some kind of brain and a bat that’s okay that sounds really compelling when you’re a freshman philosophy student it’s not how the real world works we look at the world around us and we know that there’s right and wrong we know it again I take you back to the example of the man getting his car stolen does he say oh well that’s his morality or does he try to nail the thief tries to nail the thief so if there’s a moral law and our conscience tells us that some things are right and some are wrong regardless of how others feel about it, regardless sometimes of how we feel about it, then there’s a moral standard. And where did that moral standard come from? I’ve already shared with you that the Bible says that moral standard was given to us by God.

That’s something God designed and that’s something that God put the knowledge of in us. And for that, I ask you to turn with me to Romans chapter 2, if you’ve not done so already. Romans chapter 2.

We’re going to look at about six verses this morning. Romans chapter 2, starting in verse 11, it says, for there is no partiality with God. Okay, Paul here is describing the relationship of the Jews and the Gentiles to God.

He’s speaking primarily at this point of people with a Jewish background who might have thought they were closer to God because of the covenant relationship they’d been born into as a nation. And Paul’s arguing that just being born a Jew does not automatically make them a child of God in the sense of salvation. By the way, being a Jew does not automatically preclude you from being a child of God in terms of salvation.

He’s saying that when it comes to the moral law, there’s no partiality with God. Some of your Bibles may say God is no respecter of persons. And what that means is God doesn’t look at you and say, I just like you, you’re in.

Or, hey, you’ve got a lot of money, or you’ve got a lot of talent. you’re one of the important people you’re in that’s not how God looks at us God God is entirely impartial there’s no partiality with God for as many as of verse 12 for as many as have sinned without the law will also perish without the law and as many as have sinned in the law will be judged by the law okay he says there’s no partiality here there’s still judgment regardless of where you’ve come from there’s judgment if you’re a Jew there’s judgment if you’re a Gentile now he says the Gentiles who have not had the law, and he’s talking about the law of Moses, the Gentiles who did not have the benefit of learning from the Old Testament scriptures, they are still going to be judged, and they’re still going to perish without the law.

Although, you know, those who have never heard God’s truth will still be separated from him, God holds those of us who knew his truth and rejected it to a higher degree of accountability, and maybe the punishment is worse for those of us who heard and rejected than for those who never heard. Now, hell is still hell. A less punitive section of hell is still not a place I want to go to.

But he’s saying those who don’t have the law, as many as have sinned without the law, so you can sin even if you don’t know what God’s law is. Those who’ve sinned without the law will perish without the law. And as many as have sinned in the law will be judged by the law.

They’ll be held accountable for what they knew of God’s truth and reject it. And I understand if some of you are saying, wait a minute, there’s degrees of punishment? That doesn’t sound right.

It’s biblical. There’s another place where the Bible tells not many to desire to be masters or teachers. Don’t everybody go look to teach God’s word because he says ours is the greater condemnation. We’re going to be held accountable for all the stuff we taught and all the stuff we should have taught and all the stuff we knew and didn’t do.

Unless being one of the people in the pews, because God is going to hold us to a greater degree of accountability. There’s a degree of accountability there that says you knew better. You knew more than they did.

You’ve rejected more than they did. So he says, as many as have sinned without the law will also perish without the law. They will perish, and as many as have sinned in the law will be judged by the law.

Verse 13, for not the hearers of the law are just in the sight of God, but the doers of the law will be justified. Because he says it’s not enough just to have heard the law. And he’s talking about the people who have the law.

He’s talking about the Jews here. They had the law. And you know what?

They’re going to be judged by the law because it’s not enough just to hear the law. He says you’re required to do the law. Only those who can keep the law are going to be justified in the sight of God.

Now the problem for the Jews and the problem for us as well is that we cannot keep the law. The rest of the New Testament is clear that we can’t keep it. As a matter of fact, he goes on in the book of Romans to talk about how it’s impossible for us to keep it.

He says in the next chapter, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Some of the Jews at that time thought they were going to heaven because they were part of the nation of Israel. They were Jews by birth, and we’ve kept the law.

You’ve heard the stories of the Pharisees in their dealings with Jesus. They thought that they were okay with God because they were keeping all these outward rules and rituals and laws, and Jesus told them, you’ve missed the entire point of the law. You’ve missed the dealing of the law with the heart.

So while you may have kept things outwardly, inside you’re still as sinful as can be. And Jesus told his listeners that unless their righteousness exceeded that of the Pharisees, they would not get into heaven. It wasn’t enough just to be perfect by this word standard.

You had to be holy like God is. And not one of us lives up to that standard. He says, not those who just hear the law, speaking to the Jews, not those who hear the law, who have the law, who’ve been sitting under the teaching of the law, are going to be justified, but it’s those who do the law who will be justified.

And the conclusion that has to lead us to is that none of us are going to be justified. There’s right and there’s wrong, and these standards come from God, and not one of thus lives perfectly up to the standard of right and wrong that God has set in place. Verse 14, for when Gentiles who do not have the law by nature do the things that are in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves.

But what he’s saying is that sometimes the Gentiles do things that match up with God’s moral law. Sometimes the Gentiles do things that are right, even without having access to the written law. They don’t have the scriptures, and yet sometimes they do things that are in it.

What are those old saying, a stopped clock is right twice a day? Even a blind pig finds a truffle now and then? Sometimes even without access to the scriptures, the Gentiles can do right.

Sometimes even those who don’t know what God’s law says written down can do what it says, sometimes. Then, of course, there are all the times that they haven’t. But when a Gentile who doesn’t have access to God’s word says, no, no, murder is wrong, even though he doesn’t have access to Moses’ law, it says the Gentiles are a law unto themselves.

Now, this doesn’t mean that the Gentiles make up the law themselves. It means the Gentiles have the law, which we’re going to see in just a minute. Even those who don’t have access to the written law, again, when he says law here, usually he’s referring back to the law of Moses, the Old Testament laws.

Thou shalt and thou shalt not. All of those. Even though the Gentiles didn’t have that.

Sometimes the Gentiles were capable of doing the things that it said to do and not doing the things that it said not to do because the Gentiles had the law of God in their hearts. Just as the Jews did, just as we do today. The law of God is in our hearts.

Because he says in verse 15, he says at the end of verse 14, they are a law to themselves. Again, not meaning they make up the law, but you read that along with verse 15. They are a law unto themselves who show the work of the law written in their hearts.

Where does our moral code come from? Where does our knowledge of right and wrong come from? Right here.

The Apostle Paul, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, says that the knowledge of right and wrong that we have in our hearts comes from God. It comes from God taking his law, his moral law. Again, in this instance, I don’t believe it’s talking about the law of Moses.

It’s talking about God’s standards, which Moses’ law were meant to reflect. God taking his standards and writing them on our hearts. Your heart was engraved with the law of God.

God put a knowledge. I don’t go looking for that on some kind of heart echo. You won’t see it physically written there.

Talking about the heart as the essence of who we are. the innermost part of our being. God slipped a knowledge of right and wrong, right in there, right into the core of who we are, because he wanted us to know.

Who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness. We also have a conscience. And it’s difficult to understand, let alone explain, the interaction of the Holy Spirit and the conscience and ourselves, but the conscience is that part of us that responds to what God has revealed.

and so when we know that God has said this is right and wrong the conscience is the little red light that goes off in our brains again I’m speaking metaphorically the little red light that goes off in our brains and says danger danger so you know when you sometimes they’ll sometimes in old cartoons you’ll see it described as a an angel and a demon sitting on your shoulder I would liken the conscience to that angel, except it’s somewhere inside of us saying, no, no, that’s not what you want to do. That’s the conscience. That’s a part of us that God has given us to respond to the truth that he’s revealed.

And because the law is in our hearts, it says in verse 15, their conscience also bearing witness. The conscience is right there bearing witness to what God has said, and between themselves, their thoughts, accusing or else excusing them. The conscience knows whether we’ve lived up to what we know of God’s truth or whether we have not.

I say what we know of God’s truth. Because you and I, you and I sitting here in the middle of Oklahoma in 2019, and probably on average we have about three Bibles in our houses, you can pull it up on your phone if you don’t have a Bible with you. You can pull it up on an iPad.

Bibles everywhere. Churches everywhere. Your phone.

There’s all sorts of podcasts of people preaching. You can have access to God’s word anytime you want it. We are very blessed in that regard.

I think we’re also going to be held very accountable for the truth that we know and don’t abide by. There’s a tremendous problem in America with biblical illiteracy. We have more access to God’s word than any group of people at any time in history, and yet we don’t read it.

But I think there’s an even bigger problem with biblical application. I think the bigger problem is not how much we don’t know, but how little we do with what we do know. And God holds us accountable.

And our conscience bears witness to whether or not we obey what we know that God wants. But you know what? There are people, there are still people in tribes, in forests, and on islands in this world that don’t have any contact with the outside world.

Sometime within the last six months, I don’t remember exactly when, there was a Christian missionary from the United States who was speared to death by a tribe on an island in the Indian Ocean for trying to go there. This tribe violently rejects contact with anybody from the outside world. And not only was he speared to death by this tribe, but he was speared to death by people in this country on the Internet who think it’s now one of the most hostile acts to try to go share the gospel with somebody.

This poor kid was just savaged even after death for the sacrifice that he made. What I’m telling you there is there are still groups of people in this world who have no idea who Jesus is because there are tribes in this world who have no contact with the outside world. They don’t even know what electricity is.

I don’t say that to put them down. They’ve just rejected all contact with the outside world. There are people even in the world that’s connected to the rest of the world who don’t know who Jesus is.

How will God hold them accountable? They don’t know as much of God’s truth as we do. They may not know that Jesus Christ came to die for our sins.

They may not have ever seen a copy of the scriptures. They may not know the full spectrum of what God has said is right and what God has said is wrong, but they still have that little bit of knowledge in their hearts where God has said there is a right and there is a wrong. And I’m going to tell you what some of it is.

And when their conscience goes off, when their conscience says, you know, that’s wrong, and they do it anyway, or when their conscience says, this is what you’re supposed to do, and they don’t do it, in every instance, they have disobeyed God. And they’ll be held accountable for that as well. They’ll be held accountable for sinning against God, be held accountable for what they know.

We will be held accountable for what we know and have sinned against God. And the wages of sin, regardless, is death. The wages of sin is separation from God in hell.

And yet we have so much more to answer for. The destination is the same, but the accountability on our side is much greater. Because there’s so much more that we know that we’ve done nothing with.

So he says our conscience excuses or accuses us. And ultimately our conscience accuses all of us that we’ve fallen short of this moral standard that God has revealed to us. Verse 16, he says, In the day when God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel, there will come a day when everybody will give an answer to God for the things that they’ve done or not done, that we will be judged, even the secret things, even the things that we think nobody knows, we will all give an account by Jesus Christ and according to his gospel.

And his gospel is simply the fact that we’ve all sinned against a holy God, whether we knew a little and sinned a little, or whether we knew a lot and sinned a lot, we all had some knowledge of God’s standard of holiness. We all had some knowledge of God’s standard of holiness, and we all chose sin instead. So there’s a moral law, and whether we knew one piece of the moral law or whether we knew the whole thing, we’ve all violated God’s moral law, and we’ll be held accountable according to his gospel that we’ve all sinned, that we’ve all fallen short of the glory of God, that we’re all destined to be separated from him, not only in this life, but in eternity to come, we’ll be separated from him, but that God made one way out.

And again, some people that like to think of the world in relative terms say, it’s so narrow-minded to think that God would only make one way. But when you look at the fact that we’ve sinned, we’ve rejected him, and he didn’t owe us anything except death and separation and hell. When you look at what we did and how little he owes us, It’s not that it’s narrow-minded to think that God would only make one way of salvation.

It’s incredibly gracious to think that God would even make one way of salvation because we don’t deserve salvation. And yet God has made this one way of escape. You and I could never pay for our sins.

We could never do anything to make ourselves holy. We could never do anything to get those sins forgiven where we could live up to God’s standard of absolute holiness. So he sent his son, Jesus Christ, to shed his blood.

and die on the cross to pay for our sins in full. We couldn’t pay for them. He paid for them in our place.

He took responsibility for our sins on himself and was punished in our place. And so while he received the weight of our sins, we in turn receive his holiness credited to our account. Where we could never be holy enough to live up to God’s standards, Jesus, through his death on the cross and through his resurrection, he wipes the slate clean for us.

And the resurrection proves that he was able to do it. He wipes the slate clean for us, and he wraps us in his righteousness to make us acceptable to a holy God. See, God has placed a knowledge of right and wrong in each of us.

Anytime we don’t live up to God’s standard of right and wrong, anytime we fall short of the holiness of God, it’s sin. And even a little bit of sin is enough to condemn us and separate us. But Jesus Christ and the blood he shed on the cross was enough to make a way for all of us to be reconciled to God.

See, our understanding of right and wrong points to the fact that there is a God. Our understanding of right and wrong and our unwillingness to follow through on it tells us everything we need to know about our separation from God. And yet God, who’s infinitely holy, looked at sinners, looked at you and me, and just because he’s that loving and he’s that gracious, he made a way for us to be forgiven.

This morning, if you’ve never trusted Christ before as your Savior, I’d invite you to do so. There will come a day when we’re all held accountable for what we knew, for what we knew of God’s holiness and rejected, for where we sinned, and we all have. The Bible says all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

And the Bible says the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. If you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior this morning, I’d invite you to do so. I’d invite, folks, you’ve got to realize that you’ve sinned against God.

You’ve got to realize that that sin separates you from him and that the only way to be reconciled to God is through Jesus Christ. The only way to make up for where we’ve broken his moral law and fallen short of his standards is for us to throw ourselves on his mercy through Jesus Christ. Jesus paid for your sins in full. And this morning, if you realize that you’ve sinned against him, if you realize that that sin separates you, if you realize that you need a Savior and you can’t save yourself, then I’d ask you to believe that Jesus Christ died to pay for your sins in full. That’s not my opinion.

That’s what he said he came to do. That Jesus Christ died to pay for your sins in full. That he rose again from the dead three days later to prove it.

And that he now offers you forgiveness, complete forgiveness, complete pardon, eternal life in a relationship with the Father. If you’ll simply put your trust completely in him. Stop trying to trust in your ability to live up to the moral law.

Stop trying to trust in your ability to be good. Stop trusting in the fact that you’ve gone to church. Stop trusting in the fact that you’ve given money or been a nice person.

That does nothing to get us any closer to God. Simply trust that Jesus Christ paid for your sins in full.