Sermon Tone Analysis

Our passage comes off the back of the statements made at the end of chapter 2, very provocative statements I might add.

Paul made a habit of preaching in Synagogues wherever he went.

And he probably had said something like this before.

Can you imagine saying something like this to a bunch of self-righteous Jews?

They were going to get a big surprise on the day of Judgement.

From what we read in the scriptures there are going to be a lot of surprises on the day of Judgement.

People who think that they are saved but are not.

People who didn’t believe in God but now will bow down on their knees and testify that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Jews who thought they would be judging the nations with God will be judged by those they thought they would judge.

In our passage this morning Paul uses a common technique used by ancient philosophers where he creates a dialogue between himself and a hypothetical opponent

So when Paul makes these bold statements like this in the earshot of Jews you can bet that he had some heated debates.

I suspect that this hypothetical opponent is bringing the very arguments that Paul would have heard many times in His preaching.

In other words, Paul is not creating straw men here but rather putting forward real arguments from learned Jews.

What is The Point of Being A Jew?

If the righteous Gentile will judge the Jew who doesn’t keep the Law then what is the advantage of being Jewish.

This is the objection.

Paul’s Answer

The NIV translates “chiefly” more literally in this case as “First of all” Which is interesting because it sounds like he’s going to give a list of things yet this is the only thing he mentions.

At least at this point.

He later picks this up again in Chapter 9 where he finishes the list.

But for now he sticks to firstly because unto them were committed the oracles of God.

And yet they didn’t get it.

They took the benifits of being a Jew and became prideful.

They saw themselves as superior to the rest of the world and became exclusive.

God never intended that.

God told Abraham that through his seed all families of the earth would be blessed.

The second objection

Will Our Unbelief Make God’s Promises Void?

They had the very Words of God and yet not all believed.

Does this nullify the promises of God?

Paul’s Answer

Absolutely not!

Let God be true but every man a liar.

What do we do when we find something in the Word of God that seems to contradict something else in God’s Word?

This is such an important question that we need to know the answer for because how we deal with these contradictions could have eternal effects.

When we read one truth in one place and another truth in another place sometimes our tendency, due to a desire to know and to be right, is to discard one of the truths.

Don’t let your lack of understanding cause you to reject God’s Word.

Rather let us say let God be true and every man a liar.

The Jews understood that they were God’s chosen people because they were Jews.

Yet Paul says just because you’re a Jew doesn’t mean that you are God’s people.

How can these two things be true.

It comes down to what make a Jew a Jew.

The children of the promise are the children of faith

But the Jews that Paul is having his hypothetical debate with missed this and rather that yielding to God and saying “You are true even if I don’t understand” they conclude that this truth which Paul preached was incompatible with the Scriptures as they understood them and therefore rejected the only truth that could make them God’s people indeed.

Paul then quotes from Ps 51

Not only is God true even when every man is a liar.

He is just when he judges sinners and righteous when he condemns liars.

Which brings the third objection.

If God is Glorified in my Sin How can He Judge Sinners?

Paul blushes to even repeat these words and immediately reminds us that these are not his own words but those of his objectionist.

Paul’s answer is two fold

1st How then will God judge the world?

This hypothetical Jewish opponent argument is that is if as a Jew my disobedience to the Law demonstrates Gods righteousness then surely God would not judge me, a Jew, because that would be unjust.

So Paul first response is that by that same argument God wouldn’t be able to judge the Gentiles for their sins either and we all know that God will judge the world.

His second answer is more personal.

If they thought that he was preaching a lie then based on their argument the truth of God increased through his lie so he would not be judged as a sinner for preaching a lie.

For that matter, why not just say what these report that we are teaching and let’s do evil that good may come?

These questions he put forward to demonstrate the absurdity of their argument.

But then he concludes this paragraph rather abruptly by simply stating that their damnation is just.

Who’s damnation is just.

These who twist words and manipulate the Word of God.

The Pharisees who were Jewish lawyers, spent so much time studying the scriptures but not to understand God or to know God but so that they could use the Law of God for their own profit.

Be very careful with how you handle the Word of God.

It is not to be used to support our own ideas or to promote our own agendas.

The Jews were given the oracles of God and yet many of them used the word to justify their own actions and condemn others rather than coming to know Jesus.

To these their damnation is just.

And if we find difficult passages that we don’t understand rather than forcing it to fit with what we believe or rejecting it because it contradicts our understanding of another passage, “Let God be true and every man a liar.”