Dr. Kevin DeYoung | Nothing to Say

Sunday Morning, August 16, 2026

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

Nothing to Say
Romans 3:19-20

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Transcript

Let's pray as we come to the preaching of God's Word. 

Oh Lord, we confess we are hard of hearing. Give us ears. We struggle to see your glory and see our sin, so give us eyes. We do not feel what we should feel. Give us a clean heart. We are easily distracted. We wander from your ways. Give us renewed wills. Help us now to receive your Word in humility and with faith. In the strong name of Jesus, we pray. Amen. 

There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. You may be familiar with the book in the Bible named after him. Some scholars think it's one of the very first books written, though it's there in the middle of the Old Testament. You may be familiar with the story. He was blameless and upright. He feared God. He turned away from evil. Job, we might say, was faithful and pious. He was also, by the standards of the day, in comparison to everyone else, fabulously wealthy, prosperous, happy, and blessed. One day Satan came before the Lord, and the Lord said, "Have you seen my servant Job? He is blameless and upright." Satan said, "Well, of course he is. That's what people are like when they have everything they could ever want and more. But if he loses those things, he will curse you to your face." So, the Lord gave Satan permission to test Job. First, Satan took away Job's property. Then, he harmed his children. Then, he attacked Job's health. There was no one anywhere who had been as rich as Job, and now there was no one anywhere who was experiencing more suffering than Job. And yet, Job did not curse God. He accepted that the Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. The Lord had given a test of prosperity, and he was giving a test of adversity. Those are just the first two chapters of the book. of Job. There's 42 chapters. 

For the next 35 chapters, Job and his friends – and we ought to put that in scare quotes, because they turn out to be not very good counselors or friends – they try to understand why Job is suffering. And they can really only come up with one explanation. It's the same thing that his wife said. Their only explanation is bad things happen to bad people. You've done something bad, Job. But Job hadn't. He maintained his integrity through it all. He said this is not the Lord's punishment for my sin. He kept his trust in God. But though he kept his trust in God, it was not without some faltering. We saw that already in the passage I read from Job 42 at the very end, that Job has to repent – not repent because he was being punished for his sins, but repent that in some of his questions, he crossed the line and made demands of God. He had to confess that. He had to repent of that. And so, when Job finished all of his speeches, and all of the so-called friends their speeches, God launched into a speech of his own. You see, Job wanted God to explain himself. God's answer to Job was to show Job that he was God, and Job was Job. That is – though unsatisfying to some of us – that was God's answer to the perennial problem of evil, at least one of the answers to Job. He didn't answer all the questions he had. He demonstrated to Job, “I'm God and you're not. There's some things you don't understand, and you couldn't understand, because you're not God.” And so, after all of the questions that Job was asking, God comes at Job with questions – no fewer than 41 questions, depending on how you count them. Questions like, "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?" "Have you walked in the recesses of the deep? Have you seen the gates of deep darkness? Can you send forth lightnings? Can you, Job, number the clouds?” At the end of this first speech, the Lord said to Job, "Shall a faultfinder" – because that's what Job was in danger of becoming – “Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? He who argues with God, let him answer it.” Then Job answered the Lord and said, "Behold, I am of small account. What shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth. I have spoken once, and I will not answer twice, but I will proceed no further." To be a Christian, a real Spirit-indwelt, born-again Christian, in this life is to be someone who has learned to put a hand over your mouth. A true Christian knows that before the judgment seat of Christ – and all of us will stand before the judgment seat of Christ – you and I, me as much as you, will have absolutely nothing to say in defense of ourselves. The only appropriate response in the presence of the judge of all peoples living and dead is silence. That's what we see in our text: Romans chapter 3, just two verses, 19 and 20. 

“Now, we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.” 

Paul has been making the case, as the prosecuting attorney, against the whole human race – first dealing with the Gentiles, or sometimes they're called the Greeks, and then dealing with the Jews. Or you might say first dealing with the religious outsiders and then people like most of us, the religious insiders. And time and time again, he has proven the total spiritual inability of the whole human race. You see in verse 9, both Jews and Greeks, he has concluded, are under sin. Under sin. That means controlled by the power of sin, marred by the guilt of sin, and it's a sin and a sin nature that is completely comprehensive – that is, the breadth of sin. Every people, every person, there is no nation, there is no skin color, there's no sex, there's no age limit. Every person, every people – the breadth of sin. And Paul has been laying a case for the depth of sin: in your words, in your sight, in your actions, in your understanding, in your character, we are utterly besotted by sin. And he mounts up this litany of passages from the Old Testament to testify to us that our understanding apart from Christ is darkened. Our aspirations, the things you most want out of life, apart from Christ are misplaced. Our sense of direction is confused and aimless. Our actions are not truly good. Our words are so often ugly and deceptive. Our speech is vile and bitter. Our actions cut others down. Our pursuits lead to destruction. Our lives do not know lasting peace, and our eyes cannot see God as he really is. 

And so we come – this is very much a courtroom scene – we come to his closing arguments, to bring to a head this damning indictment that has run from chapter 1:18 – remember, what Paul does in verses 16 and 17 of chapter 1 is he tells us first about the solution, about the gospel, about the righteousness of God revealed from faith for faith, and then he tells us about the wrath of God that is revealed. Here is the problem for which we need the gospel as our only solution. From chapter 1:18 through the verses I just read, chapter 3:20, he has been making this mounting case, and so now he comes to the final concluding argument and it is so – in God's eye, which is really the only judge that counts – before the bar of God's judgment, it is an utterly damning indictment, such that that the defendant has nothing to say for himself or herself. I want you to notice, it's a very simple structure in these two verses and for this sermon. There's two verses, and each one has two clauses. So, there are four arguments that Paul makes, and they do form a kind of A, B, B prime, A prime, reverse – that is, you can see at the beginning of verse 19, he's talking about the law. At the end of verse 20, he is again talking about the law. And then in the middle, verse 19 second half, he talks about the world. And then verse 20, the first half, he talks about works. So, you can think of the argument as law, world, works, law. Or to put it a little more technically, that first part of the argument is the premise, and then the second half of verse 19 is really the conclusion, and then verse 20 gives two further reasons to support that conclusion. Hopefully that will make sense as we walk through, line by line, these four arguments in his concluding judgment. 

So, notice, first argument in 19a, the first half: the law that speaks. He says, "Now we know." So, that's important language. Now we know. This is concluding language. And the fact that he says “we know” indicates he's about to say something that he thinks is not controversial. “Now we know” – I am stating something. This is the premise that everyone ought to agree on. We all know this to be the case. And what is that? That whatever the law says, it speaks to those under the law. The word “law” can be narrow. It can be broad. Throughout Paul's letters and throughout the New Testament, it can mean everything from the Ten Commandments or the Mosaic covenant or the Pentateuch or the whole Old Testament canon. Here, the first use of “law” in verse 19 – “what the law says” – undoubtedly refers to Old Testament Scripture or Hebrew Scripture. Now, why do we know that? Because recall what came in the verses just preceding it, verses 10-18. There were six or seven, depending on how you count them, passages from the Old Testament, namely from the book of Psalms and from Isaiah. So, he is saying now we know that whatever the law – that is, whatever our Bible says, whatever the Jewish Scriptures say – that law, it says to those who are under the law. That's probably a broader use of the word law to refer to the Jewish people. He's saying we know that these Scriptures – which have presented this absolutely irrefutable case from their own Bible that the Jews were not righteous, they did not seek after God, they had wandered from his path, their lips were full of poison, their feet were quick to shed blood – he says, whatever the law says, it says to those under the law, that is to the Jews, those to whom the Word of God came. Remember that in chapter 3:2, what advantage has the Jew? Paul says, I got a bunch of them, and then he only mentions one, and then he kind of goes on to his next thing. He says, here's the one thing, the biggest advantage the Jews had: they had the Word of God. So, the law speaks, and it says to those under the law. This is for the Jewish people. We know that it's also true now for Gentiles, but he's making the point in his context. These Old Testament Scriptures we know were for the Jews. Okay? 

Second argument (19b, second half): “so that every mouth may be stopped.” So, you got to think. This is the tricky part in the argument. First half, pretty simple. Whatever the law says – the Bible – it says to the Jews, who received this Word. “So that” – now, you might think (that's a purpose clause), you might think that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law so that we conclude that the Jews are under judgment. That would make sense, because he's just talking about the Jews and the Word that they've received. But he doesn't make a comment now about the Jews. Curiously, he makes a comment now about every mouth and the whole world. So why does Paul think that stating something in the first half of verse 19 about the Jews, that premise leads to the conclusion in the second half of verse 19 about the damning condition of the entire planet? Well, here's the argument in Paul's mind. It is a simple argument from the lesser to the greater. What he has in his mind and would not have been lost, I think, on the church receiving it – Jews and Gentiles, perhaps mostly Jews – lesser to greater. He's saying if the Jewish people of all people – the ones who received the Word of God, the ones who had the sacrifices and the priests, the ones who had all the miracles – if the Jewish people, if the Old Testament nation of Israel for all of those centuries (remember, they got to see 10 plagues; they got Ten Commandments by the finger of God; they had the Red Sea part, they had miracle after miracle; they had prophets come and speak to them in my name; they had a temple; they had sacrifices), if the Jews had all of that, and they have failed, well then, what do you think are the chances for the whole world? 

Some of you may have seen a few weeks ago – I know you're into running – but you should have seen Josh Kerr break the world record in the mile. It was pretty amazing, in the 3:40s. I think we could have a two-lap head start, and I think he would come and pass most of us. That's an amazing record. It wasn't that long ago that to go a mile under four minutes was amazing. Now I'm going to go out on a limb and say we're not going to see the mile go under three minutes. Just going to go out on a limb. If we do, I'll be dead by then. But I don't think three minutes. Three minutes. He can train. He can get the super shoes. He can get the super suit. He can sleep 12 hours a day. He can eat all the things. He's not eating my diet. I'm sure of that. And not going to do it. And you could say all of the best, most gifted VO2 max Olympic athletes with all the special training, and they will not come close to running a mile under three minutes. Therefore, the whole world is not going to run a mile under three minutes. I think we would understand the argument. If they can't do it, we were just hoping to get around one lap in 3 minutes and 42 seconds. Some of us were looking for a bicycle to try to do it. So, we are not going to – that's the lesser to the greater. If the Jews failed to be righteous in God's sight, what was the story of Israel? You know your Old Testament. Yes, there's some heroes of the faith. Yes, there's some great “one shining moment,” but it's punctuated by more failures than successes and ultimately that they're led into captivity and then they're brought back, but the word has been prophesied that Jerusalem and the temple is going to be overthrown. They've rejected their Messiah. They have not been successful, even with all of their advantages. How will it fare for the rest of us? It is concerning in our day that we have seen and are seeing a rise of anti-Semitism. And people will sometimes from the Bible say, "Well, look at all of these negative statements about the Jewish people. Look at this spiritual judgment.” And indeed, there are many passages like that, but here's the conclusion we ought to reach: not “look at the Jewish people, how bad they were,” but imagine if they couldn't do it, what a mess all of us are in, because this – here's Paul's point – this is not a Jewish problem, this is a human problem. And so, he concludes from all of these Scripture passages – to those who were under the law, no one righteous – if they couldn't do it, then surely we know that every mouth, not just Jewish mouths, Gentile mouths will be stopped. 

Isn't that what we see so often in the Bible? When someone encounters the glory of God in a new, unveiled way, they don't know what to do. You think of the hapless disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration. There they end up talking a little bit too much. But John of Patmos in Revelation, he falls down as though dead at the sight of the risen Christ. Or Isaiah sees the Lord high and lifted up, just the train of his robe filling the temple. It's not like he's seeing the unvarnished face of God. There's just angels who are covering their eyes, and you just see the train of his robe to fill the temple, and you remember immediately, what does the angel have to do? Put a coal to his lips, as if to suggest you cannot speak in the presence of God Almighty until you're forgiven, until you're purified, because you live among a people of unclean lips, and your lips, even Isaiah, are unclean. This cross-examination from the Apostle Paul leaves the defendant, which is each one of us, utterly speechless. No answers. The case has been made. You have been found out, as if every thought and every errant eyeball and every nurtured grudge and every lustful thought and every vindictive attitude and every petty recrimination were somehow put on the screen for the witness stand, and you'd see it. And even as you thought about, "Yes, but I got my kids birthday presents, and I went to church." You would say, "I can't defend myself." Every mouth: the rich, the powerful, the beautiful, the admired. Doesn't matter how rich you are, doesn't matter how poor you are. Every mouth: Jeff Bezos, all his billions will not help him on that day. Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, AOC stand before God, and apart from Christ, they will have nothing they can say. Taylor Swift, even Nick Saban, you Crimson Tide, Michael Jordan, Tom Brady, Tom Holland, Zendaya, your favorite influencer, your favorite home decorator, your favorite author, even your favorite pastor – nothing. Every mouth. 

Now, don't think that it's a moment of profound repentance. It's just a moment of profound realization. In fact, the sad reality is for those who go in having ignored God, hating God, in that moment of realization, there may be some regret, and it will lead to just further hatred toward God, because in that moment for you, for me, all of us, it will be clear in a nanosecond God was bigger than you thought. He was better than you thought. He was more patient with you than you thought. He gave you more chances than you thought. And it will also be clear that the sum total of your deeds, my deeds, your feelings, your thoughts, your actions were worse than you thought. It will be, for some, too late. It will be regret. It will be a realization. And it will be a realization in that moment that God is exactly what you cried out at some moment that he would be. “I want you to be fair!” And you find out he is fair. Everyone will be silenced in the presence of God, so the question is, will you be silent before God – put a hand over your mouth now – while there's still chance or later, when all hope is gone? Paul says every mouth will be stopped. Whatever you've rehearsed in your head: “Well, I got a few things to say to God. I got a few questions that he's going to have to answer before me. Oh, no, no. I got some note cards. I got some things to present before him, some things that weren't exactly fair on his part, some things that I've done that he's overlooked.” You won't say any of it. Everyone will be silenced. The whole world may be accountable to God – that is, the case will have been proven. We will be answerable to God, and we will be found, apart from Christ, guilty before God. And if you think, well, I will stand before God and say, "You didn't give me any chances.” Oh, really? Have you been following Paul's argument throughout these chapters? He's been proving that God has been revealing himself over and over to the human race. God revealed himself in nature. That's chapter 1:20-21. You had an awareness of divinity. You could see his glory and his majesty in the things that have been made. God even gave you proof in your judgment of others (chapter 1:32). You know when somebody cheats you that it's wrong. You know when someone speaks ill of you that it's wrong. You know if somebody were to have an affair with your spouse, it would be wrong. You know what's wrong in other people. Chapter 2:15, God gave you a conscience. God revealed himself in the Scriptures, to which you are accountable now. And we could say from verse 19, God even gave the real-life example of Israel, having failed at least for a time, to receive that which should have been theirs. Over and over, God says, “No, don't tell me that I didn't show you anything. I gave you creation. I gave you natural law. You suppressed it. I gave you a conscience. I gave you Scriptures. I gave you examples in providence and in history.” The whole world is accountable before God, and they will have nothing to say for themselves. That's the big point in these two verses. 

Now in verse 20, he supports that with two further arguments, reasons. So, one: works. He says those works will not suffice. He uses this phrase here “by works of the law.” This phrase has produced, especially in the last 30 years or so, mounds and mounds of scholarly articles and monographs and books. What did Paul mean by “works of the law”? Well, most immediately he is talking about obedience to the law of Moses. He is saying that the Jews could not earn their way to God. They could not because – no failure in the law of Moses; he's going to say later in Romans 7, it's good and holy and right – but the failure was in their human heart and their total inability to keep that law. So, it is in an immediate context about obedience to the law of Moses, but most of interpretive history and especially since the Reformation, it's been understood that this is even broader than that. It's talking about the human impulse in our hearts to want to present before God on the day of judgment our works of any kind. You only need to know about 90 seconds about this here, so bear with me, but everyone here who's a seminary student is going to learn something called the new perspective on Paul. I mentioned it before. There's an old perspective on Paul from Luther and Calvin. Go with that one. But there was something called the new perspective on Paul. It was a big deal when I was in seminary 25 years ago. Its star has sort of waned. Almost everyone who gets ordained in the PCA, somebody is going to ask at their ordination exams, what do you think about the new perspective on Paul? Just a little tip, start with “I don't like it.” Okay? And then, you know, make sure that's true, but just say that, and then give your reasons. So, this school of thought said, well, no, Paul is just talking about these ethnic boundary markers, specialized food laws, holy days, circumcision. He's just saying that, hey, Jews, you shouldn't make Gentiles become Jews, and it's just a narrow thing, and Luther and Calvin made too much of this, and they read in medieval Catholicism into the first century. Well, it's true. We want to keep always in mind the first century context. We don't want to import Luther's own context. 

And yet, that narrow understanding of works of the law will not work. For one thing, if you go back to chapter 2:15, they show that the work of the law is written in their hearts, and there it's talking about Gentiles. So, you can also talk about not just circumcision and food laws, but just the sense of right and wrong that God puts on the human heart. This phrase in the plural, “works of the law,” also appears later in verse 28. And then it appears several times in Galatians 2:16 (there three times), and then in Galatians 3, verse 2, verse 5, and verse 10. And what's important about Galatians is the contrast there in Paul's argument is with Abraham who is justified by faith, and he's going to come to that here in Romans 4 as well, and not by works of the law when, remember, Abraham lived before the Mosaic law. So, Paul cannot be talking simply about these ethnic boundary markers for the Jewish people that came in the Mosaic law. He's talking about law even broader than that – that principle of works. And though it's true that the Old Testament is a gracious expression of the one covenant of grace – we don't want to think otherwise – it's also true that the Jewish people did not always live as well and as graciously as their theology on paper would have them. And this is part of the human predicament. We can have one thing on the church website about salvation by grace and faith in Christ and alone, alone, alone, and then we can have in the human heart this continual instinct to stand before God with something we have done and to boast before others about some kind of works. No, the force in this concluding argument would make no sense if Paul is now retreating to some small point just about the Jews. He's making a big point about Jews and Gentiles and about the whole world, and you see there in verse 20 about no human being or human flesh. So, the works of the law here are representative of every effort to make our obedience the ground of our acceptance before God. Paul has in mind works of any kind. We are dealing not just with a Jewish problem but with a human problem. The indictment is not just against Jewish self-confidence. It is against every attempt at self-salvation. I’ve given this line before – one of my favorites from George Whitefield – to paraphrase one of his sermons. He said, "Works, works! You'd sooner climb to the moon on a rope of sand than stand before God in your works." It doesn't work. All efforts at self-justification will fail, and they have failed already. 

What is the internet but so often everyone's very public, often vile, petty attempt at self-justification, at self-salvation, to prove to the world, to themselves, to someone out there that they're righteous and everyone else is not? This was the instinct from the very first sin in the garden. You remember what Adam and Eve did? What did they do? They realize they're naked, which is an expression of their now impurity. They realize it's a sense of shame. Now they realize because of sin, I'm embarrassed to stand before God. And their first instinct, which is the instinct in every human heart, is I got to cover myself. And they get fig leaves, and they sew these fig leaves together. But you remember what God does by the end of Genesis chapter 3? He has to give them clothes, and you remember where he gets the clothes? He said he made them from animal skins to tell them, if they could receive it, “No, no, no. Your efforts at self-salvation will not work. Your meager efforts to grab the first thing you can, whatever fig leaves you can, to put in front of your shame before me will not work. Only by the shedding of blood can you be covered. Not a leaf. An animal's going to have to die. You're going to need a skin. Blood will have to be shed for your sin to be covered, and you can't get it by grasping at the first thing you see to try to cover yourself and present yourself.” Only God can give you the clothes to cover your nakedness. And this final argument you see at the end of verse 20 is that through the law comes knowledge of sin, and we'll come back to this throughout Romans. 

The law reveals sin in at least three ways. Number one, it informs. That's the most obvious. You can read through the Ten Commandments, and it tells you don't steal. It tells you don't commit adultery. So, it puts it in black and white. It informs, but it also convicts so that you read the law, and you understand how you fall short. You can't read through the Sermon on the Mount. You can't read through the fruit of the Spirit, let alone the Ten Commandments, without immediately feeling and knowing, “I'm not doing this perfectly.” So, it reveals, it informs, it convicts. It's like the officer said, did you know how fast you were going? I didn't. Did you know that this was 35 miles per hour, and you were going 80? I know now. So, the law informs; the law convicts. But here's what Paul is later going to make the argument in Romans 7: more than that, even, the law excites you to sin. He'll say when the law said do not covet, it's not just that it convicted me and it informed me, it also made me want to covet. You ever have that experience? Someone tells you what not to do, and you think immediately that's what I'm going to do. This is not a true story from the DeYoung household, but if you were to drop off your 13-year-old daughter and her 13-year-old friends at the movie theater and they said, "Oh, yeah. We're really excited. I think we're going to see Toy Story 5." And you drop them off, and then you pull away, and you get home. You text her, and you say, "Absolutely no PG-13 movies. Definitely don't sneak into rated-R movies. Just PG. Toy Story 5 is good. Maybe the Minions movie, or I think the new Paw Patrol looks really cute." Now, what is that 13-year-old, especially if her friends see the text come in – you may have even thought that you wanted to see Toy Story 5; now, when you get those rules, you say, "Where's The Odyssey? Do I look 17? Can I get in here?" Here's the point. When the law of God meets the sinful human heart, the law, which is good and holy and righteous, does not awaken faith. It awakens resistance. When God's holy law meets the fallen human heart, it doesn't awaken faith. It awakens resistance. So, you got Paul's argument here, working from the outside in: the Jews couldn't keep the law (that's the beginning of verse 19). The end of verse 20, you can't keep the law. It reveals your sin. It informs. It convicts. It excites. So that's the end. Work your way in. That's why works are not going to get you anywhere. You cannot stand before God based on your works. That will be utterly fruitless and a failure, which is why the whole world is guilty before God. The whole world. 

One of the implications here is don't be overawed with anyone. Don't be that kind of people pleaser. Be friendly, gentle, kind. Don't be overawed by anyone, no matter how much money they have, no matter how fancy their life, no matter how beautiful and attractive they look online. Don't be overawed by anyone. Their mouth will be stopped. Another implication though is don't be too harsh with others either, because your mouth, apart from Christ, will be stopped, too. And don't get nervous if someone says to you at some point, "Hey, convince me to become a Christian. Why don't you convince me why I should become a Christian?” Now, there's a lot of good things you could say, and you may want to talk about the reliability of the Bible or the empty tomb. And you got lots of good apologetics things that you could say, but here's one of the things you absolutely ought to say. Hmm, convince me to become a Christian. Well, friend, that's the work of the Holy Spirit, and I really can't convince you. I can give you some good arguments. Only the Holy Spirit can convince you. But here's what I can tell you from God's Word. What it says about your heart, what it says about my heart, and what it says it will be like for you and me to stand before the judgment seat of God one day. That's not what the person's expecting. But you don't have to give them what they want to hear. You tell them what the Bible knows they need to hear. This book, we've been saying all along, knows you better than you know yourself. Knows me better than I know myself. It is a mirror, and it is a scary mirror because it doesn't flatter. I like mirrors that flatter. Somebody can make those mirrors. Sell a bunch of them. But this book will not do it. Sometimes giving up is terrible. And you hear that at graduation speeches, don't give up. Usually giving up is the wrong thing to do. Spiritually, sometimes, if you're fighting to prove yourself to God, giving up is the only way to victory. Will you accept the Bible's verdict about your fallen human heart? Will you stop trying to justify yourself? Will you put away all the rehearsed speeches, all of the things you'd like to say before God, all of the aces you supposedly have up your sleeve? Put them all away. 

We're going to sing in just a moment this hymn. Now, we think of it, especially if you're of a certain age, you think of it as a Billy Graham revival hymn. The buses will wait, and you got to sing an endless number of verses. We're not having an altar call. There are no buses. 15-passenger vans, no buses. But this is the right response. And remember, Paul is writing this book of Romans to a church, to Christians. Yes, this is certainly for non-Christians. But don't just think, "Well, pastor, that was really good. That was a great evangelistic message." He's writing to Christians, because you and I need to sing this hymn from the bottom of our hearts: “Just as I am, without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me and that thou bid’st me come to thee. O Lamb of God, I come.” No pleas, no defense. Silence before the judgment seat of Christ. To be a Christian is to know when to stop talking and when to start listening. Because isn't this a good word? Now, verse 19, now we know that the whole world may be stopped. The whole world may be held accountable. This judgment day is coming. It's coming. But Lord willing, we're going to get to verse 21 next week. That's then, but now. Now. That day hasn't been fully revealed yet. That's later. But now. Now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. That judgment seat, verses 19 and 20 – verse 21 is the opportunity now. God's grace has not run dry, and your time has not run out. Let's pray. 

Father in heaven, we give thanks for your holy Word, and we come. We come without any plea, but that your blood was shed for each one of us who believe. In Jesus we pray. Amen.