Dr. Kevin DeYoung | A Cross-Examination

Sunday Morning, May 31, 2026

Given by Dr. Kevin DeYoung | Senior Pastor, Christ Covenant Church

A Cross-Examination
Romans 2:17-24

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Let's pray one more time. 

Gracious heavenly Father, we come to this text and to this message, and we pray, we trust not simply out of habit or custom, but I come because I'm needy, I need your help. May I decrease? May Christ increase? Would you give me the words to say: strength, the feeling, the passion, the truth, and would you give to your dear people ears to hear, especially to those who may be wandering far from the truth, who may be deceived? Who may be dead in their sins and trespasses, would you, by your Holy Spirit working through your Word, convict and rebuke and arrest and then encourage and point us and lead us by the hand to Christ. In his name we pray. Amen. 

Believe it or not, we have a whole paragraph this morning from the book of Romans, chapter 2. Please turn there in your Bibles. Romans chapter 2. If you don't have a Bible, there's one in front of you. If you don't have a Bible in your home, you can feel free to take that one. If you're new to this church, you'll want to know that we go through verse by verse, chapter by chapter, and we're at the start of what seems to be a long series in the book of Romans. And this morning, we come to this paragraph as Paul continues this argument about the universality of sin, both to Gentiles and for Jews. 

Romans 2, verse 17 through 24. 

17 But if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast in God 18 and know his will and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed from the law; 19 and if you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, 20 an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth— 21 you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? 22 You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? 23 You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. 24 For, as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.”

Now, before we get into the specifics of these verses, I want to, you to notice how Paul is addressing his audience, because this is going to help us not only as we make our way through this long section, chapter 1:18 through chapter 3 verse 20, which is verse by verse, paragraph by paragraph, about the same theme of sin. But I think this might also be helpful, just how do you listen to sermons? Probably ought to do more teaching on how to listen to sermons because you listen to a lot of them. Hopefully, you're getting at minimum one a week. Come back in the evening, you get two a week. Maybe you have an app that you listen to and you get more than that, but you listen to a lot of sermons. 

So, how should we listen to sermons? In particular, sermons like this, which are week after week about sin. Well, to simplify it a bit, there's probably two different dangers in two opposite directions. So, one danger through sermons like this is you might think to yourself - Well, this is nice. I'm learning something about the way the world works and what people are like, but nothing here is directly about me because, after all, I'm a Christian. And Paul's talking about the wrath of God poured out on those who are not Christians, first the Gentiles and then these Jews. So, you might think that there's nothing here. I mean, this paragraph at the end of chapter 1 seems so extreme. And you might think to yourself, well, that's someone who's dead in their sins and trespasses. This is not about me. And there's certainly some truth in all of that. But, if that's your overriding way of listening to a sermon, sort of, I listen in for someone else. We ruin a lot of sermons by listening for someone else. Now, that's okay. You can later in the week go and, you know, text the link and say, oh, by the way, I was helped by this, and you needn't listen to it three times. We don't want to listen with a kind of presumption that this is just for other people. That's one danger. 

There's another danger in the opposite direction, and that's to think that you ought to find yourself guilty of every single thing in every single sermon. And I hope you've heard me say before, you have permission to be obedient, to find yourself not perfectly, but truly following Christ. There is a way to preach so that every person is meant to feel just absolute failure in every area of the Christian life. You don't pray enough. You don't give enough. You don't evangelize enough. You just make everyone feel maximally guilty for everything. Now, the danger in that, well, you got probably about half of you are like, yeah, I like to get out of church and feel like I got beat up a little bit. And then there's the other half that you didn't particularly like those coaches, and you come out, and you feel despondent. Well, the text ought to make you feel what the text wants you to feel. But there's a danger that a preacher can do that, and one of the dangers is everyone feels like they fail in everything, and when you get to the kind of sermon where someone really needs to have the alarm bells go off, like I may not be a Christian, they've just been taught that, well, we all fail in everything. So, there's two dangers in opposite directions, just sort of listening in like, well, I'm a Christian, this isn't me, or thinking I must find myself absolutely despicable in every area. The first leads to presumption; the second leads to despair. So how should we listen to sermons? 

Well, notice flip the page back to chapter 1. Remember to whom Paul is writing. It's easy to lose sight with all of these sermons about sin that Paul says in chapter 1 verse 7, “To all those in Rome who are loved by God, called to be saints.” He's writing to Christians. It's not an evangelistic rally. And in fact, he's writing to Christians that he thinks, at least in general, are pretty exemplary Christians. Verse 8, “First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you because your faith is proclaimed in all the world.” He's writing all of these hard things about the wrath of God poured out and the futility of the Gentile way of life and the futility of depending upon their Jewishness. Remember, he's writing to Christians. 

So, you say, well, then how were they supposed to listen to this long discourse on sin and wrath? Part of it is he's teaching them who God is and what the world is like and the way the world is the way that it is, and he's helping to understand their own salvation. But more than that, I think we would do well to have a few questions in mind. That's probably what Paul wanted his listeners to have in mind. 

So, here's one question as you listen to these sermons. You're Christians, most of you. Have I fully grasped the holiness of God and the sinfulness of sin? One of the reasons why we can't just skip over all of this and do this all in one sermon, if you want to feel how amazing it is that you are justified by faith alone, you need to grasp this sin. If you want to come to the second half of chapter three, appreciating the problem that's in Paul's mind, how can this God be just and the justifier of the ungodly? Because almost no one in America is walking around feeling that as an internal moral dilemma. Oh, there's God, and he's so holy, and yet people are saved. How can that work? Nobody feels that. Paul felt it because he understood the holiness of God, and he understood the sinfulness of human beings. That's why we need to live in this text. 

Here's a second question. Have I misunderstood, as a saved Christian, how exactly I was saved and what makes me a Christian? That's sometimes what these things do. You do have a faith in Christ. You do trust in Christ. For some of you, Lord willing, when we get to Chapter 9, we hear about election. It may be for some of you, I didn't know that that's when my salvation began in eternity. Part of what Paul is doing is he's helping you to understand how you became a Christian and all that it took for you to become a Christian, teaching you things you maybe have sort of intuited but you didn't have categories for. 

The third question, are there sins here that I still struggle with as a justified Christian? So that's why Paul can write this to Christian people to understand the way the world works, to get a sense for God's holiness and sin. And also, as we go through here, certainly you have felt as I have felt week after week, I get convicted, you think, well, by God's grace, I am a Christian, but boy, that's still a struggle in my life. And I resonate a little bit too much with several of the items in that paragraph. 

And then a final question, and this is the most important question for you to be asking this morning. Is it possible I have deceived myself, and I have not really repented of my sin and cast myself upon the mercy of Christ? Is it possible? That's part of what Paul is doing. He's addressing a church. He hasn't been there, would have been read. And he says, you're loved by God, and in general, I hear about your faith in all the world, but there may be some there who are deceived. And so, this morning, there may be some of you, I don't know who you are, the Lord knows. You may be so deceived that you don't even know that you're deceived, and you have not truly repented. And this sermon, this paragraph, is meant to take the mask off so you can see yourself clearly.

Look at the text, verse 17. Paul makes clear what had been strongly implied up to this point, namely that he is addressing the Jews. Keep in mind, he's not speaking to a particular Jewish person. All right, this is my friend Levi or Samuel. No, he's not thinking of a specific Jewish person. This is a rhetorical strategy. And it's important to notice he's not claiming that everything he says is true of every single Jew. Paul was certainly not anti-Semitic, he was himself a Jew. He's not saying that the Jewish people are so much worse than everybody else. And he's not even saying that every single thing in these rhetorical questions at the end of the paragraph must be necessarily true of every single Jew. Commentators and many preachers get themselves tied up in knots because they get to the end of this paragraph, and they say, well, really? Was every Jew committing adultery? Was every Jew stealing? Was every Jew robbing temples? Well, surely, most of the Jews were not doing all of those things in a literal sense. So, Paul can talk about this as a rhetorical strategy, not to say every single Jew you meet is doing all of these sins, but to expose the hypocrisy. What he's wanting to do is drive home this point once again, even if this severe indictment is not true of every individual Jewish person that Paul has in mind, he's continuing the same point, namely that being a Jew will not save you. Being familiar with the law will not save you. Being around religious things will not save you. Being merely a religious person will not save you. That's the point. Jewish sinners are in the same predicament as Gentile sinners. Why are they in the same predicament? Because they are sinners. 

Or to put it in terms that resonate with us, he's talking about religious outsiders, those would be the Gentiles, and religious insiders, those would be the Jews. Most of us in this room probably are more in that conceptual category of the religious insider, so we have to take seriously what he's saying here, and it's likely to be convicting for us. Here's what he says. He starts out, “but if you call yourself a Jew.” Now, notice right away the language he uses. He says, “if you call yourself a Jew.” Why does he say that? Because the paragraph that we'll come to next week, he talks about what does it truly mean in an ultimate sense at the level of a heart, what does it mean to really be a Jew? Certainly, an ethnic category, now there's a national category of a Jew. But he's going to talk about what it means theologically to be Jewish. What it means spiritually to be a Jew. And so, he begins by saying, now if you call yourself a Jew, now he's leaving open the door he'll come back to to explain what does it mean fully, spiritually to be a Jew. And he's saying, you call yourself, meaning here is a religious label that you take great pride in. And you notice what Paul is doing here: this whole scene in chapter 2 has been a courtroom scene. And now, Paul is going to bring to bear the very sort of arguments he's likely heard from his Jewish friends and family and neighbors, and likely the same sort of arguments he would have made himself when he was a persecutor of the church and when he boasted that he was a Pharisee. So, it's very much a courtroom scene. And if you picture this, this is now the rhetorical Jewish person who's there in the stand, and Paul is going to recount, sort of put in his mouth, the defense, because we've had many verses and paragraphs of saying how the Jews are not doers of the law, and so they come under the condemnation of the law. But now he imagines that someone may stand up, and the judge says, all right, Jewish person, what do you have to say in defense of yourself? The person actually stands up straight and says, thank you, your honor. I actually have quite a lot to say in defense of myself. For starters, I'm a Jew. So that's an ethnic label, that's a religious label, that's a family label, that's a historic label. Maybe we would think to ourselves, yes, your honor, I'm a born-again Christian. I'm a member of a church. I'm an evangelical. I'm a conservative. Okay, so that's the first thing I want to say, your honor. I'm a Bible-believing, born-again, conservative Christian. 

And then Paul goes on in this courtroom imagery to give two sets of four characteristics. He has four characteristics that’s coming out of the mouth of this Jewish person to defend himself. Four characteristics related to the law, and then four characteristics related to other, and then each one has a summary statement. So just quickly, you can follow the logic. It's very simple. If you call yourself a Jew, and then what we have now are four characteristics that the Jewish person might say in his defense. They're all related to the law. 

So, number one, he says, your honor, I rely on the law. I was taught by my parents when I went to bed and when I woke up and when I walked along the way, just like Deuteronomy instructed us. I've been instructed in God's written revelation. You might say since I was a wee little youngster, I remember my parents praying with me, and they read Bible storybooks to me, brought me to vacation Bible school, so they could have a little vacation themselves during that week. I rely on the law. And I boast in God. 

Number two, I don't boast in myself. I'm a good religious person. Maybe this Jew is thinking of the Shema, hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one God. He knows this is my hope. It's God. I don't boast in myself. 

Number three, I know his will. That is, I know what obedience looks like. This doesn't mean, you know, the will of direction and what I should do with my life. It's just this, I know what it means to be obedient. Why? Because I've been given the law. I have God's supernatural revelation. Those Gentiles out there, remember, they had to sort of intuit. They had a sense of the divine within them, but it was murky, and it was suppressed. The Jew is saying, well, not me, your honor. I rely on the law from the hand of God himself, mediated by angels. I have the law. I boast in God. I know his will, for I approve what is excellent. I know right from wrong. I can tell the difference between pagan corruption and degradation. I know, and I love the good, the true, and the beautiful. I'm against evil. I'm for righteousness. And here's the bottom line. I am instructed from the law. You see that at the end of verse 18, because you are instructed from the law. This is the person who's saying before the judge, I'm well-taught. I've been to Bible studies. I know my doctrine. I've been to Christian school. I've been to Sunday School. I've been to youth group my whole life. I do personal Bible reading every morning. I am a well-taught Christian. 

Four characteristics related to the law, and then Paul gives four characteristics related to others, followed by a summary statement. So, these, sort of the banner is, I'm a Jew. I'm a religious, I'm a good religious person. Here are the four things about me related to the law, and now here are four things about me related to others. 

One, I'm a guide to the blind. Think of Psalm 115, “their idols have mouths but do not speak, ears but do not hear, noses but do not smell, hands but do not feel, feet but do not walk, eyes but do not see. And those who make them become like them, so do all who trust in them.” That's what the psalmist says about the gods of the nations. People make idols of wood and stone and gold and silver, and they're inert. They can't do anything. They don't see anything. And when you make an idol, you become like an idol. You become what you worship. And so, these people, just like the idols they worship, they don't have any spiritual eyes. And so, this Jewish person, in Paul's words, is saying, look, people out there are lost. They need the truth. I'm going out on O-Nights every other week. I'm showing them the way. I am a guide to the blind. 

Number two, I'm a light to those who are in darkness. I learned as a kid, “thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.” This Jewish person knows the prophecies about the Messiah, and to some degree embodied in the nation of Israel that they would be a light to the nations. They were supposed to be that light that beacon shining amidst a dark world that people might stream to it and say, tell us about your God. You have the truth. They say, I'm a light. I'm an instructor to the foolish. The fool says in his heart, there is no God. I'm no fool. I'm not an atheist. I'm not an agnostic. I know there's a God. Didn't we learn in Proverbs, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” I fear the Lord. And I want to help the fools out there to know the true God. I'm a teacher of children.

Number four, probably thinking literal and figurative, I teach my children. I'm praying for them when they were in the womb, and they came out. And I was putting, you know, on the belly, I was having them listen to Mozart and listen to Shakespeare. I was having them listen to R.C. Sproul sermons just to be safe, just coming out. I'm a teacher. I'm making sure my kids are okay. I'm giving them the absolute best. They're in the Word. We are just nailing it with family worship. And then figuratively, I teach people who don't know. I'm giving them good Bible doctrine. I'm giving them good theology. This is the testimony that this person is bringing. I have, you see the end of verse 20, “in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth.” There again is this summary statement. 

So, you have four characteristics related to the law, because he knows the law, and he's got four characteristics related to others. Again, because the law has truth and because he knows the law, he's able to teach others the law. I mean, this is quite the testimony that this witness that Paul imagines, he's brought before the judge, not feeling ashamed by all of the things that have come before in chapter 2. Then he finally says, well, what do you have to say for yourself? And he says, I have quite a lot to say for myself. I have the law, I'm instructed, and I boast in God only, and I help to teach other people. And he goes on and on. He's got some eight or ten or twelve things, depending on how you count it. And that might seem like quite an impressive defense that he's made, except the prosecution has not rested. 

There is a cross-examination, pun intended, a cross-examination. And notice, this is exactly what Paul is doing. You see it laid out very clearly. Here is the Jewish person at the witness stand. Here is the religious insider, like most of us, at the witness stand, testifying to his own knowledge and accomplishments. And then the prosecution says, well, before we release you, I have a few questions to ask. Four questions. Number one, you who teach others, do you not teach yourself? See that in verse 21? He's saying, you have such a keen eye for the problem of others. You can spot the immorality in the world. You never miss the way the world has gotten twisted and perverted. You always, you are just dialed in to the darkness of the world. You see it. You're not falling for it. You know how empty it is. You have eyes to see it, but can you see your own heart, Paul says? Would that you were as judgmental about your own sin as you are about your husband's sin or about your wife's sin. The first person you must preach to is yourself. The first person I must preach to is myself. Now, that doesn't mean that you have to conclude that you're the only sinner. No. You don't even have to conclude that you're necessarily the worst sinner. It's not that every time there's some sort of disagreement, it's always 50-50 or every marriage is just evenly split. Sometimes there are vastly greater problems on the other side. That happens in life. But here's what I mean, preach first to yourself. Are you most eager to see your sin or someone else's sin? What disappoints you more, their sin or your sin? Paul says, you're a teacher. Got it. Do you teach yourself? 

Second question, while you preach against stealing, do you steal? You see the greed of the world. You're laser-focused. I know other people run their business. You hate the rich. You despise the elites. How do you make your money? 

You who say one must not commit adultery, here's the third question, do you commit adultery? Perhaps you're sitting there. Maybe I'm standing here thinking to ourselves, wow, what a messed-up world, especially on sex and gender, and you're thinking to yourself, man, how are people so blind on this trans issue? We've got boys in girls' locker rooms. Men who are winning medals in high school sports against other women standing on the podium. It's so wrong. As Christians, we've got to stand against this kind of sexual and gender confusion and perversion. Paul might say to you and to me, well, that's true. Let me see your browsing history on your phone. Let me see the wardrobe that you're hoping to strut around in this summer. Let me see what you're doing with your boyfriend or your girlfriend. You mind if I see what movies you're watching, the jokes you're laughing at, the banter you make about the hot guys or the hot girls? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? Now, people, this seems to be the most difficult one because you think, really? Were Jews really robbing temples? And so, some people understand this as, well, he's just talking about the failure to bring in the tithe, like Malachi said, or irreverent worship. But notice, it doesn't say the temple like the Jewish temple. It says temples, plural. He's obviously talking about pagan temples. And this was actually a frequently mentioned vice among moralists in the Roman world. And it makes sense. Temples were everywhere, and temples had sacred and valuable artifacts. And it would be easy enough to come in to do your oblation or have the ritual performed, and you just pinch one of those gold plates. You just take one of those silver incense boxes. In fact, in Acts 19:37, when there's this riot that's broken out in Ephesus because Paul is doing such damage to the idol-making trade, in Acts 19:37, the man who stands up and tries to give some sort of defense of Paul says, Paul was neither, now in the ESV it says sacrilegious. It's the word that is literally translated here as a temple robber. That's what the man said. Paul is not a temple robber or a blasphemer. Those are the same things that are mentioned here. We're going to get to blasphemy at the end of this paragraph. Temple robber. So, it was inevitably, it seems, a common enough sin that the man said about Paul, well, he's not a temple robber. So that may seem strange to us. Were people really robbing temples? But it seems it was a fairly common occurrence. And you might not be the ones who have stolen it, but perhaps you benefit from it. He's thinking of the Jew who might say, we cannot be tainted by this pagan idolatry, not in the slightest. We're Jews after all. And come over, and you'll never believe this amazing silver fork collection I found in the marketplace. Somebody stole that and sold it, and you're happy to enjoy it then. Deuteronomy 7: 25 and 26 explicitly prohibited bringing the silver or the gold from shrines and temples into your home as a Jew. And the rabbis had developed elaborate arguments to find exceptions to this commandment. So, Paul is talking about something that was a real sin. 

And the effect of these four questions was to lead to a stinging conclusion. A conclusion that was meant to hurt on both fronts. Remember, the first set of characteristics related to the law, and then the second set of characteristics related to other people as they teach them the law. Here's what Paul's driving at. You boast of your relationship to the law, but you dishonor God by breaking the law. You see that at the end of verse 23? The prosecuting attorneys, here are his closing arguments. You've made your case, the prosecution stands up, he asks four questions, and now he makes his concluding remarks. He says, well, you who have fancied yourself to be giving God such honor, you actually are dishonoring him because you're not really doing the law. And then the coup de grâce of this argument in verse 24, as if he hadn't hit them right between the eyes already. For, as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.” You have boasted in your role, in your high calling to be a light to the Gentiles. And that's right, you were to be a light to the Gentiles. You just think of him, you might say, you have heard so many mission sermons on the Great Commission that you were gonna go teach the nations, and you were gonna evangelize and witness and do missions and save people, and you have gloried in that high calling. And now he says, but the way you act and who you are when no one is looking, people hold the Christian God in disrepute because of you. He's quoting from Isaiah 52 verse 5. You thought of yourself as a light to the Gentiles, but you are living in such darkness. It's not causing people to come and stream to the living God. They're saying, well, if that's what the Christians are like, then I can obviously ignore everything they say. 

Here's what one commentator says about this passage. He says, “we have described here an angel arrayed in human form.” He's talking about the many defenses he gives for himself. An angel arrayed in human form, a star detached from the firmament and brought near to enlighten the earth. But observe what is concealed under the mask. He says, this man to himself look like a very angel from heaven, boasting in God, glorying in the law, teaching other people, instructing children. And then the mask is taken off. That's what hypocrisy is. To be a hypocrite is to wear a mask. Sometimes people get confused, and they think, well, hypocrisy is when I do something that I don't feel like doing. No, that's called maturity. That's called being an adult. Pastor, I don't feel like worshiping a lot of times. I don't want to be a hypocrite, so I can't come to church. I don't think my heart's in giving, so I can't give. God loves a cheerful giver. Well, keep giving until you're happy then. No, that's not...don't think hypocrisy is I'm doing something, and I don't quite feel it. You're never going to be a mature Christian if you're just so...you can't do the right thing when you don't feel it. No, hypocrisy, the hypocrite is someone who pretends to be one thing in public when they are something entirely different in private. That's hypocrisy. I know how to be one thing in public, and I'm something else in private. Or I seem to myself to be one sort of person when the truth is I'm very much a different sort of person. That's what Paul is doing. He's not necessarily saying that every single Jewish person was like this and this bad, but he's exposing the hypocrisy, the dependence upon Judaism as such. And the rituals, and in particular the law, that someone might have confidence before the judge because they are acquainted with the law, and they know the law, and they teach the law, but here's what's missing. They do not do the law. That's the problem. 

This is quite an indictment against the Jews, and we can see the argument at work. You've probably felt a little convicted already. Let's try to feel the force of it even more, shall we? For your sake and mine, because, yeah, we feel it, but it's a little bit safe, it's a little bit distant. Okay, the Jews, most of us aren't Jews. The law, that's not what most of us are going through in life, and just the Mosaic law. Temples, well, this all puts us in the first century, far enough away to feel safe. What might Paul say today to a self-assured, self-deceived religious insider? Maybe it sounds like this. But if you call yourself a conservative Christian and read your Bible and praise Jesus and know the difference between right and wrong, and you stand against wokeness because you're well-taught in the Scriptures. And if you are sure that you can point out the errors of the liberals and are a light to those living in the darkness of sexual sin, and you hold seminars to defend a biblical worldview, and you teach the truth about God on your website and in your home and in your school, you then who teach others about the Word of God, do you not teach yourself? 

While you preach against tolerance in the culture, do you tolerate your own sins? When you lambast the other political party for being godless and depraved, do you turn a blind eye to the debauchery and vanity and moral compromise in your own party? When you speak against the sexual immorality of Pride Month, do you stream garbage on your TV, look at porn on your phone, flirt with your coworkers? Look forward to showing as much skin as possible in the summer months? You who abhor progressivism, snowflakes, sissies, do you excuse your own failings because supposedly society is against you? You who fancy yourself a tough man, do you run out of every relationship when someone dares to challenge you? You who boast about your devotion to the Word of God, do you dishonor God by disobeying that Word? As it is written, the name of God is tarnished among the secular people of the world because they see through conservative hypocrisy. Now that stings a little. 

And I said what I said at the front about listening to a sermon so that you can be discerning to know some of that, a little of that, or all of that applies to you. The Jews were right about their blessings. We're going to come to chapter 3 later because you can see the question building up. Well, was it pointless to be a Jew? Did the Jews get everything wrong? Are you saying that they were wrong to care about the law? Paul's going to say, no, no, no, the Jews had many advantages. Just like he might say to us, oh, there's a lot of good things. about being a conservative Christian. You've had lots of advantages. And he's going to say, number one, you have the Word of God. So, they were right about many of their blessings. The Jews were right about their calling. They were also right about the importance of the law. They were, however, wrong about one very important thing: themselves. They didn't know themselves. 

I can think of three responses to this sermon. There's the person listening about whom some things here are somewhat true. And you have the Spirit at work in your life, and you feel convicted for some of the things and you say, oh, I'm a Christian and by God's grace, I don't think that's all true of me. I don't think I'm a hypocrite, but boy, there's some things here that I need to deal with. And Jesus, thank you for your mercy. I throw myself on your mercy. Jesus, help me to grow in godliness. That's one response. That would be a good response, a healthy response for a Christian. 

Here's another way someone might respond, and that's no response at all. I'm thinking about the person for whom this indictment from Paul, from the Spirit, this indictment is largely true. You're wearing a mask, and you feel nothing. There's nothing that I can do. There's nothing your parents can do. There's nothing anyone can do except pray and trust the Word to take off that mask because it has to finally be a work of the Spirit. Because if someone is self-deceived, if someone is hardened, they will always, always have an excuse for sin. You cannot argue your way to conviction. It will always be someone else's fault. It will always be your fault, or the church's fault, or their parents' fault, or the preacher's fault. What do you expect when someone can't see? The hypocrite is always confident, always pleased with himself or herself, always content with merely an intellectual faith or a ritual faith, not a living faith. That's another kind of response, no response. 

And then third. That's what I said at the beginning, in particular the question I want us to be asking. Lord, is it possible that I might be wearing this mask, that I might be this sort of person who comes with my tenfold statement of defense, thinking that I'm someone who can stand before God, and when the prosecution comes, right now you're feeling, woe is me. If that's you, there's two very simple steps you ought to take in your heart. The first one is to acknowledge before God, this is true. That's where it starts. This is true about me. I fancy myself a Bible Christian, a conservative Christian, and I'm seeing this morning I'm a fake, and I have seen everyone's sin so clearly except my own, and I have taught everyone the truth except I've not taught myself. And so, you say to God, you're right. I have not kept the law that I've instructed others in. That's the first step, and here's the second step. If you take that first step, the second is very simple. After you say, that's true of me, and I have not kept the law, then you need to find for yourself someone who has. You need to find a law keeper. You need to find that rock on which you can stand. You need to find that anchor that is steadfast for the soul. You need to find the Lord Jesus Christ, who alone through faith in him, God can therefore be just and the justifier. He can acquit you. He can declare you innocent. He can count you as righteous as his son for the sake of his son's life and death and sacrifice and resurrection and coming again. I hope as you listen to sermons, you've heard me say this before, this is the most privileged and one of the most dangerous places you can ever be is in a Bible-believing church where the preacher, I hope this preacher, is preaching the Word of God. It's an immense privilege. I think the greatest, almost the greatest privilege that you can have to have the Words of God, and here's the danger, that you become inoculated against them. That you have to stand before God, not just for your sins, but for all of the light in all of the sermons you heard that never penetrated your heart. So if you need a quiet place later, if you need to find a time after your family meal this afternoon and go on a walk and do business with God to say this is true of me, I don't want to be a hypocrite, I don't want to be a fake, and I need Jesus. And you'll find him because if you pray that, you've already been found. Let's pray. 

Our gracious heavenly Father, thank you for your Word. We pray that by your spirit you would instruct us, not that we would be these hypocrites boasting in our knowledge of the Bible, our studies and our theology. We praise you for all of it, but not if it makes us mere religious hypocrites. So, do a work that only you can do. No preacher by himself can do it. No parent can do it. No Christian book can do it. Only you can do it. And so, we ask that you would now by your Word, in Jesus' name. Amen.