What's Our Problem? (Sunday, September 12, 2021)

[Music] [Music] hi welcome to university covenant church my name is brian murphy and i am so glad that you're here today i'm excited to share with you we're in the beginning stages of a new sermon series that focuses on the book of romans and explores some of the foundations the book of romans lays out so today's your first day joining us don't worry it's definitely not too late to get caught up if you're watching our church service for the first time we'd be thrilled to welcome and connect with you however this is a video i can't see you or talk to you so we'd love to encourage you to text the word hello to the number on your screen so we can welcome you know your name learn your story and discover how we can best be supporting you now as the body of christ we love to share in praise and prayer so if you'd like to share praise for something god has done in your life of a prayer request you would like to share with our prayer team simply type you covered dot com forward slash prayer into your web browser write out a prayer request and our faithful and consistent prayer team will pray for you thank you once again for being with us today and before we move on will you join me in prayer god thank you for today thank you that you have brought us here from all our respective places of here pray that you had blessed us as we learn about you and about your word and about your world through romans god but you'd be with us as we move through this back to school change i have some folks going back to work in person for the first time in a while some people changing up schools and work and life all together god pray that you would be with us and go forward as we move and then hey everyone i'm tiffany and then wherever you're watching from today i just ask set everything aside any distractions that might be around you and let's just focus on god and let's just worship him and thank him for his goodness and what he's doing in all of our lives [Music] when you move darkness runs for cover and when you move no one's turned away because where you are fear turns into praises [Music] and where you are no hearts left unchanged [Music] lord lead us back to you and when you move the outcasts finds a family and when you move the orphan finds them [Music] lord here we are teach us to love mercy with humble hearts we bow down at your throat so come and move let's sing that again together [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] king of all generations let every tongue in nation [Music] let's sing that again king of all generations king of all generations [Applause] [Music] nations [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] our ship turned into revival [Music] is [Music] of all generations let's declare that again together come on [Music] nation surrender [Music] [Music] lord lead us back to you all back to [Music] well hello university covenant church pastor john here and we're continuing our series in romans um favorite bibles or your phones we'll be looking at romans chapter 2 1 through 16. before we get into that know that our podcast has been released and uh actually by the time this video comes out we'll have two episodes that's double what we had last week um so we are like we are expanding multiple fold right now it's been a lot of fun it's a chance for us to get to know people in our church at this point again you know me and david ding we'll have other people on board and uh go deeper into god's word answer some questions that are going on and hopefully just help us go deeper into god's word listen to him better live out the life he wants for us even better know who we are and him better so uh catch that um we'll post the link or or a qr code right here so you can listen to the podcast as well it will probably come out every friday is the is the goal all right so um we are in romans chapter two and really we are continuing a story so we just need to kind of uh make sure we know where we are in the story uh the story is that paul is writing to a group of christians who uh on paper look really good the demographics look great you know you pull up the demographics of uc davis's freshman class and you're wowed by the diversity the uh where people are from uh their ethnic backgrounds or educational backgrounds and so in the same way you look at this roman church and it looked really really good on paper but paul comes from a church in antioch where not only did it look good on paper but there were actual authentic relationships among people who were diverse and they loved each other really well in fact jesus says that that's the key to people knowing that we're his followers is how well we love one another as his followers and the problem in the roman church the problem in most churches including ours is that the division we see in our culture is being replicated in our own church so if you lean politically slightly right or left there's demonization if you believe x or y there's difference there's demonization and so this roman church had the looks of diverse church but their relationships were severed and paul's big message is if you want to love each other well we're not going to start by how to love each other well we're going to start by what god has done for us and our problem with god and how he has resolved that problem and that's the foundation and i think that would be true for our church that if we're going to see this love that surpasses all understanding for one another that is so counter-cultural to our city and our town and our county and our nation we can't just start with hey i like you you like me we're all the same we have to start with what is our position with god and what has he done for us and that's going to be our foundation and then what paul does is he gives us room to blame our culture and he asks us to look outside he just describes our brokenness of our world that we have suppressed what we know about god and we've exchanged the glory that goes to him for the things that he's created and it has ramifications there's wrath and his wrath looks like unleashing boundaries so we see sexual brokenness we see our brains and our minds and our thinking being depraved which results in relational chaos all this is broken and paul gives us permission which is such a relief to say our world is just broken we can grieve that but then he's really mean because right as we look at chapter two verse one which we're gonna start with he re he makes us realize that what we're looking at isn't just our broken culture but he's making us look that we're broken too the church is broken so he says in verse 1 you therefore have no excuse you who pass judgment on someone else for whatever point you judge another you are condemning yourself because you who pass judgment do the same things let's actually keep reading here now we know that god's judgment against those who do such things is based on truth what we learn here is that we do not have a right to look at our culture and blame them without noticing that we do some of the exact same things let me just tell you what paul's saying here have you ever looked at our culture and just been angry and depending on what you know how you're wired what matters to you there's a couple of ways you can go with what you're angry about you could be angry about moral issues how our nation views sexuality how our nation views the sanctity of life how our nation has forgotten god and you could be angry about those things and paul says how dare you judge our culture on that when you have those exact same things in your own life where you devalue god in your own life or you can look at our culture and be angry about justice issues how we don't value those who are poor or don't value those who are minorities or don't value those who are helpless and paul says how dare you judge our culture for that when you have that in your own life and see here's the thing at least outside culture they do what they know is wrong and they approve of others who do it we do what we know is wrong in god's eyes and we condem others who do the same thing and he says which is worth there's a hypocrisy that's going on so this kind of sexual impurity this depraved mind that leads to relational chaos we have that in our own life and we have this strange human condition where we have this tendency to be critical of everyone else except ourselves we are often harsh in judgment towards others but we are lenient on ourselves and paul's thing is do you think you're going to escape judgment that measure you use of judgment on outside culture that same measure god's going to use towards you and so the temptation will okay we won't judge at all and sometimes people will say well we are not to judge at all that's not christian that's not true either jesus says do not judge or you two will be judged but he also says to uh watch out for false prophets don't give your pearls to swine that paul another letter says we're not to judge those on the outside we're supposed to be judging each other in the church on our sins so this is not a thing of letting go of all critical thinking but what it is saying is whatever measure we use on culture we better be using that same measure on ourselves and if we don't want to be judged in some severe way but we want to be have have compassion and mercy and pastoring then we ought to do that with our own culture as well what paul is talking about here is the double standard and one of the things that if you ask culture what's something what do you think about christians or what do you think about the church one of the main things that will come up is that we're hypocritical and notice that what they don't say is hey they're not standing up for right things or not standing but they condem others while doing the same things at least in culture they do wrong but they approve of others who do wrong we do wrong and we condemn others who do wrong there's a hypocrisy in that and so paul is calling out that we're hypocrites we're hypocrites we can't condemn culture without looking at ourselves and let me just say this uh and i'll get into hot water here but oh well um just emailed dave so i used to have people email shumit and he's not here so email davidding at david uconn yougov.com if you have any issues with about what with what i'm about to say or you can email schuman at his new church i'm sure he'd appreciate that if you're just oriented and that's from god god is a god of justice and you say you care about the poor and you say you care about the minority and at the same time you've decided to move to davis so you have good education for your kids do you recognize that there's a hypocrisy there do you recognize that when we when we decide and i do this too to move to a certain town for good schools we remove our resources from those in harder school districts and we separate the rich among the poor even more and it's so much easier to ask the government to put in righteous justice policies and yet not live a life that jesus would say represents his justice when god illustrated justice through jesus jesus incarnate he became part of the mess and if you're not willing to let your kids and yourself be part of the mess of injustice and let injustice affect you so that your cu your call out for justice is not just altruism but you're actually living in the consequences of injustice so you are asking for justice because it affects you as well just like jesus did can you at least please name that hypocrisy it's irritating it's irritating to watch it's hypocritical if you care about lives of the unborn which i think is totally biblical but you are not willing to adopt to make room in your family for children who may not be wanted can you at least say there's some hypocrisy there you're putting standards on others but not willing to be part of the solution the point here is this so much of our anger at society needs to be anger that's directed towards self-reflection at least that's how god sees it in fact this is what god says in verse 4 he says or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness for god's kindness forbearance and patience not realizing that god's kindness is intended to lead you to repentance but because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of god's wrath when his righteous judgment will be revealed god will repay each person according to what they have done paul here is quoting from psalms 62 12 and quoting from jesus in matthew chapter 16 the idea that god repays each person for what they have done and what paul is addressing here that is sometimes as god followers we could say hey i'm not experiencing it of god's anger i'm not experienced in god's wrath so i must be doing okay and what paul is saying here is the reason that god is not showing you his wrath is out of kindness don't show contempt from that he is trying to show you that you know you're doing wrong you know that you're making mistakes and he is using kindness and response that you will humbly show your sorrow to him but don't see his lack of action and lack of consequence as something approving his lack of action is a forbearance is him saying i am showing you compassion but what you're doing instead you're saying hey look i'm not experiencing any of god's anger so i'm doing fine and paul is saying you're actually storing up wrath for a day of wrath from god here's what this means there is a wrath that god is showing right now that looks like a removal of boundaries listen to last week's sermon about this but there is going to be a day in the future where the wrath of god looks like judgment and consequences for your sin and mine and what's happening right now is we're living this time where if you are ignoring your sin and thinking you're doing fine you're actually storing up wrath like a savings account that you will collect on in this final day of judgment one of my friends marbell we were talking about finances and good stewardship with money and and saving for the future and i guess when she was younger i think in her young uh young adult days she started a savings account that every month or every year money was automatically put into it she literally forgot about this account she moved on from a different bank she kind of lived life and now 20 years later she got something in the mail reminding her that she had this account and that money was going into this account every how often month or year and she looked at the balance of this account and it was huge she had forgotten about it and it had collected in a good way she's like oh my goodness i have just a monstrous savings account that's been untouched and i forgot about it now that's a positive example but what god is saying is that when you ignore sin you're actually making a deposit and you might have forgotten about it but there's going to be a day where god is going to show you the balance and there's a day of atonement or a day of judgment he goes on in verse 7 and says to those who persist by doing good sorry to those who by persistence and doing good seek glory honor and immortality he will give eternal life on that day that's the reward but for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil there will be wrath and anger there will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil first for the jew then for the gentile this is something we all have in common but glory honor and peace for everyone who does good first for the jew then for the gentile for god does not show favoritism what god is saying here is this not only not only is he talking about there's a day of wrath but there is something we all have in common in our church and with our world there is no favoritism here there's something we all have in common and often we'll say when we try to build peace among people hey we all have in common our humanity we all have in common god's image in us and all that's true but it seems like what paul is saying is one of our first bonds as we all have in common that we are headed for judgment from god that god's anger is being stored up because we willfully reject him we willfully sin we willfully suppress the truth of his existence we will fully give glory to things that he's created rather than him and whether you lean right or left whether you're black white asian egyptian middle eastern you name it one of the things that we all have in common is god's judgment on us and maybe that should be a bonding thing that we're all broken and that we all have sinned before god so the question comes up well are are some people less accountable to god based on what they know like like what are people held accountable accountable for and paul continues in verse 12 all who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law here's a different way of saying that you're accountable to what you know and what paul is saying here is there are some people for whom the bible is not a key part of what they know right and wrong is but they do have something in them from god that god talks about in chapter one that they're accountable to and there are some who know what scripture says and they're accountable to what scripture says but he says it's not those in verse 13 it's not those who hear the law who are righteous in god's sight but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous so here's a tough thing it's not how much we know about this book that makes us clean in god's eyes it's how much we're doing and obeying from this book that makes us righteous in god's eyes and then he goes on to those who don't have the word of god verse 14 indeed when gentiles who do not have the law do by nature things required by the law they are a law for themselves even though they do not have the law they show that the requirements of the law were written on their hearts their consciousness also bearing witness and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and other times even defending them this will take place on the day when god judges people's secrets through jesus christ as my daughter as my gospel declares we are held accountable to what we know and for even those who have no religious upbringing no inspired scripture god says he's put something in their own hearts a sense of morality right and wrong and they're held accountable to that and we who have scripture we're held to even more accountable not just by what we know by what we do and what paul's trying to get at is there's no one who's righteous here and you have something in common with someone who's on a different political spectrum than you you have something in common with someone who's a different ethnicity than you you have someone something in common with someone who is male or female or a different gender than you and all of us have this thing that we're held accountable by god to what we know and all of us all of us know more than we're actually doing the big verse here is god does not show favoritism it's so easy to point out the sin and the injustice in the other but when we're real we are just as guilty and god shows no favoritism dietrich bonhoeffer when he was in prison wrote this he says i don't think it is very christian to want to get to the new testament too soon or too directly no matter what makes the good news of jesus the good news is understanding what it's a good news for and paul says the good news is about god giving us righteousness making us right making us correcting bad behavior but you can't get to the good news unless you sit in the bad news and so often we don't want to talk about sin we don't want to talk about the consequences of sin we don't want to talk about god's anger towards in his righteous anger towards sin we want to get straight to the good news but the good news is not fully good news unless we understand what the bad news is until we understand our guilt before god until he's exposed and condemned our own sin we're not ready to hear the good news of righteousness we're not ready to hear the good news of christ's sacrifice on the cross so will you just take this week with me and just sit in are guilt you are sinful and so am i you know the right thing to do and you don't do it just like me this is not to adore the times we do what is right this is not to say we're all but what god is saying is what we know is right the level of that compared to what we do is so awful it deserves judgment and it's easy for us to want that for other people but god says we have to understand that we're hypocrites if we don't realize that we have that for ourselves as well there is something freeing about grieving about our sin there is something freeing about not needing to hide and justify and be defensive for us just to mourn and say we're broken so much healing that comes from god needs to start with the acknowledgement of sin and brokenness and if you are one to defend to cover up to say there's nothing wrong you are harming yourself and god is doing us a favor through his word showing us that we are people who sin and who are broken here's the other thing to watch out for we cheapen the good news of jesus christ if we make it only about salvation and rescue from unhappiness from from our worries or guilt or any kind of felt needs certainly the gospel addresses all of that but the core of the good news doesn't address those things the core of the good news is a rescue from the current wrath of god by releasing boundaries and the coming wrath of god a day of judgment where we will be accountable for what we have done christians are not exempt from judgment on our actions from god now we'll talk about what else we get but all of us will be judged by what we do and so i have no good news right here i just have this is our reality perhaps the good news is this that something about confession is extremely extremely helpful there's a psalm about that let me read it psalm 32 says this if you have your bibles you can turn to it this is blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven whose sins are covered catch this blessed is the one whose sin the lord does not count against them in whose spirit there is no deceit here it is when i kept silent my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long for day and night your hand was heavy on me my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer then i acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity i said i will confess my transgressions to the lord and you forgave the guilt of my sin we haven't talked about forgiveness yet but i want you to catch the psalmist here instead and that when he tried to deny his own sin and culpability when he kept blaming those on the outside didn't see that same sin in him he says his bones wasted away and he felt the heaviness of god upon him his strength was sapped as in the heat of summer hey there's an illustration for you go outside today huh but the freedom that came when he acknowledged his sin to god and did not cover up i will confess my transgressions to the lord brothers and sisters if i had good news today it's that the precursor to god's good news is just realizing you and i are sinful and there is anger of god towards that sin just join me for that today [Music] jesus is calling [Music] [Applause] [Music] jesus is calling [Music] open [Music] jesus [Music] leave behind your regrets and mistakes come today there's no reason to wait jesus is [Music] is [Music] [Music] jesus christ [Music] foreign [Music] we come to you jesus we sing hallelujah oh what a savior he's in here [Music] hallelujah [Music] christ is [Music] hallelujah [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Music] oh come to the altar the father's arms are open forgiveness was blowing jesus christ [Music] wide forgiveness [Music] [Music] we praise you [Music] tell the world [Music] thank you so much for worshipping with us today before we go i have a few quick announcements to share with you because i always have quick announcements to share if you are encouraged by today's service and would like to share this video with someone text share to our number we can help you do that and if you'd like additional information about all the events going on here at ucc you can text news to this number as well we have a lot of life stage ministries starting back up now that fall is approaching these ministries include confirmation for our teens our college and young adult fall launch as well as sparks if you'd like to find out more you can find details for these ministries on our website if you aren't already i strongly encourage you to be part of one of these ministries or the many other ministries we have here at ucc i'm also delighted yes delighted to share with you we're going to have another all church prayer walk on saturday september 18th at 1pm this is a really fantastic opportunity to get together as the body of christ and pray over our beautiful city of davis please check out the announcement page for all the details for this event or visit youcov.com forward slash prayer walk page because the meeting locations may have changed finally the next event is something i'm very excited about that's our fall worship night woo yes i'm excited join us for the night of extended worship on friday october 1st at 6 pm outside on our lawn that's where we used to do our outdoor services it will be a time of extended worship a short devotion from pastor john some time to receive prayer from our prayer team so let's come together as a church family and praise the lord for who he is and his goodness and remember that he deserves all the glory be sure to bring your chairs and blankets to sit on lyrics we provided online to access from your phones or your tablets whatever you have once you're socially distant from other families you can take off your mask but please put it back on if you go to receive prayer from one of our team members we really hope to see you there also we're currently in the process of preparing for the fall and uc davis's starting back up as college students are preparing to return to school for in-person learning for the first time since the start of pandemic way back in march 2020 we're brainstorming new ways we can best reach them through our college ministry catalyst but to do that we could really use your support through giving if you'd like to give to ucc please text the word give to the number on your screen for more information on the various ways you can give to the ministry admission of our church if you haven't already done so you can make your giving automatic by visiting youcuff.comgive and set up a recurring donation again i really am so glad you're able to join us today we'll see you next week for another great sunday now church please receive this benediction from wherever you are ucc therefore my beloved brothers and sisters be steadfast immovable always abounding in the work of the lord knowing that in the lord your labor is not in vain go in peace [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: University Covenant Church

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Length: 40min 58sec (2458 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 11 2021