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Title: Turning to the Jews: Part One: The Law
Now Paul’s apology, his defense and explanation of the Christian belief turns toward the Jews as a primary audience, and in the next two passages he will address two very specific arguments: The Law, and Circumcision. Today we will look at the first of these argument, the Law of the Jews and how has no power to save the Jew, only condemn them.
V17 “Make your boast in God.”
The problem here is not that they are boasting in God. (For we read of a flat out arrogance of Elijah during his confrontation with the prophets of Baal in the O.T.) but rather that they “boast in God” while “resting on the Law.”
For us the same principle can be applied today. It would be wrong for us to boast in God and tell others how we found Him, how we, through our carefully planned works and dedication earned His favor and salvation. Woe be to that Christian. But on the contrary, to boast in God for what He has done for us, for His grace saving us despite ourselves. That is an earned glory of our God, and one that is good for us to boast in.
Let me put it another way: A very safe practice for the Biblical Christian is to refer all praise and Glory to the Lord that delivered us. If someone compliments you thank them, and remind them to thank God.
V18 “approve of the things that are excellent”
(read) Look, the Jews that read the Law, know the Law, they know what pleases God, that’s not the issue, the issue comes in verses 21-24 when Paul calls these Jews hypocrites, for they know what pleases God, they know what displeases God, and they are practicing the latter!
V19/20 “you yourselves are a guide to the blind”
(read) These people are confident they have the answers. They are confident that if they are given a captive audience and the people obey their instruction, they will learn how to live holy lives. And they are right. The problem is, as we will see in a minute, these people don’t live those kinds of lives themselves!
Point: Don’t be the Christian that others look at and remark, “Do as he says, not as he does.” Why do you think that there are so many records of Jesus Christ’s harsh words against the particular sin of hypocrisy in his short three years of ministry?
Why is the Lord so intolerant of the sin of hypocrisy in the O.T.?
No other sin is quite as damaging to the name of God or the effort of evangelism as hypocrisy.
Look how Paul puts this truth:
v21-24 (read)
And how does Paul tie all of this together? In verse 24 he quotes
Ezekiel 36:22
I do this not for you sake, O house of Israel, but for My holy name’s sake, which you have profaned among the nations wherever you went.
Did everybody here catch that. Let me read it again because the implications of Paul quoting this particular verse cannot be underestimated, nor can they afford to be misunderstood.
God no longer cares about the outward appearance of the Jews. They have become to him a hypocritical whitewashed wall. His concern, and the reason for Paul’s stern rebuke, is not so that the Jews will repent and come to their senses, rather this rebuke is given because God will no longer tolerate his so called chosen nation blaspheming His name among who???
Among the Gentiles.
The theological implications of this passage are so great that I must check my own emotion at this point and speak to you as frankly as possible.
God tells Paul to tell the Jews, “STOP. Your hypocrisy is ruining MY HOLY NAME among the people that I am reaching out to, the gentiles. I am using your best laypeople, Peter, James, John, and you best Pharisees and teachers like Paul and Timothy to reach out to those who don’t even know my Law, but keep it better than you, you hypocritical, ungrateful, presumptuous, spoiled, children. You time has passed, you did not know my son when he was with you, you blaspheme Him and those that follow him after he has left. You time has passed, their time is now.”
What pain, what anguish must have been in Paul’s heart to say these things against his own people. What a hypocrite Paul himself must have felt like knowing that these very accusations: stealing, boasting, were the very same things Paul himself was delivered from on the road to Damascus.
Paul is turning on his own people. His father, his father’s father, his children. He is leaving them, he is casting them into judgement by his own words, he is no longer affiliated with them.
And Paul knows, that it is God, in all his Sovereignty, that is commissioning Paul of all people, the king of Hypocrites to tell his own people they are doomed without Christ.
Yet we today, followers of the same Way, shy away from religious talk at family reunions. We walk the other way when talk of God or politics breaks out in the workplace. We think if we invite our neighbor to church we’ve filled our evangelism quota.
If we are quiet about Christ and what He has done for us, WE are the hypocrites!
It is no wonder that Christ told us that he who does not hate his family for my sake has no place with me.