ROMANS UNWRAPPED 36

                   

                         THE WORLD ON TRIAL - THE EVIDENCE   Romans 3 v 10-12.

"God looked down from heaven, upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand........none......no not one"     Psalm 53 v 2-3.
The subject matter of these verses is the universality of sin, the all-seeing eye of an omniscient God has scanned the world, and concluded that we are all in the same state.   He uses six conclusions from the Old Testament, and they are as follows:

1. NONE RIGHTEOUS.

The Old Testament abounds with examples of those who were described "righteous".   In doing so God anticipated the work of redemption, because He always sees the end from the beginning, but, in essence, unregenerate man is unrighteous.   Righteousness is the state of moral perfection required by God to enter heaven.   God is always right, and always does what is right.   He is the standard by which all things moral in the universe is measured.   To say God is righteous, we are saying that He is, and always acts, true to His own character without the influence of any external source.   He is perfect, He cannot be improved, He cannot be detracted from, He is apart, He does not, cannot, take account of anything outside of Himself because He is perfection, and if He were any less He would cease to be God.   God is always right, and by His standard (His glory) there is none righteous.   We all fall far short of His standard.   I think we all agree that none of us are perfect.   The fallacy of believing that somehow we can reach that standard by our own efforts is impossible.  

    2.   NONE WHO UNDERSTAND.


This concept is taken from what are known as the "MASCHIL"  Psalms of which there are thirteen.
The word "Maschil" means "instruction" and when a Psalm is entitled so, it is indicating to the reader that this is instruction from God to be acted upon.   However, our intelligence of God has been thwarted, clouded over, we do not understand God, in modern parlance, when it comes to God we are thick; but it is worse than that, because we are deliberately so, we have decided to live with our own imperfections rather than seek the perfections of a God who makes us feel unworthy or small.   Instead, we make gods of own, lesser gods, and so we purposely choose to reduce God to the level of own minds.  

   3.   NONE THAT SEEK AFTER GOD.


We keep in mind, that this is God's estimate of us, and an all knowing God will know whether we are seeking after Him or not.   This does not say we cannot seek after God, it simply says there are none who do.   Ask yourself the question, what are you seeking in life, what is your goal in life, is it to find out more about the God who made the universe and  all His glory, or is it something else?   the reality is that this is why we were created "God that made the world and all things therein, seeing He is Lord of heaven and earth, dwells not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though He needed anything, seeing He gives to all life and breath and all things; and hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth and hath determined the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation; THAT THEY SHOULD SEEK THE LORD, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him, though He be not far from every one of us." Acts 17 v 24 - 27.  We are on this earth to seek the God who made us and who provides for us.  
Instead, we seek not the Creator but the creation and try to grab as much of it for ourselves as we can.  Jesus said in Matthew 6 v 25 - 34, referring to food and clothing and material things in general "AFTER ALL THESE THINGS DO THE NATIONS SEEK"   Later on Paul will say, describing those who live for themselves " for all seek their own and not the things which are Jesus Christ's" Philippians 2 v 21.

   4.   THEY ARE ALL GONE OUT OF THE WAY.


This is not a popular theme.   The Bible teaches that all humanity is LOST.   We took the wrong road, we turned aside, we veered away from the straight and narrow.   In the language of the prophet Isaiah "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way"  Isaiah 53 v 6  None of us will find it very complimentary being described as sheep, let alone lost sheep!   There are three fundamental words in the Bible for sin; there is sin, which means coming short, there is transgression which means going beyond and there is iniquity which means always going off the straight line, like the bias of a bowling ball.     In modern parlance we might say we are all bent, and I think that we all know it.   It is good to know that if we are not seeking God, God is seeking us and reading the subject matter of Luke chapter 15 we will understand God is describing our situation as "LOST."   We all accept that there are some human beings who are in this condition, God wants us to understand that in His estimation we are all lost and need to be found.

   5.   TOGETHER WE HAVE BECOME UNPROFITABLE.


The word "unprofitable" means useless, a very demeaning description of human beings.   There is a story in the Bible, that illustrates this. "a certain man had a fig tree, planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon and found none. Then he said to the dresser of his vineyard, "behold these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none; cut it down why cumbereth it the ground?" And he answering said unto him "Lord let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it, and if it bear fruit, well; and if not, then after shalt thou cut it down."   Luke 13 v 6 - 9
We have been placed on this earth to produce fruit for God, but have produced none!   It is only in the mercy of God that He allows us to remain here, because in fact we have become "useless" to Him.   If God were to act with us like gardeners would act with their plants, or anyone would act with possessions that are no longer useful, where would we be?  

   6.   NONE THAT DOETH GOOD NO NOT ONE.


Jesus said in   Matthew 19 v 17   "there is only one good, that is God."   Good is a relative term and we may consider ourselves good when compared to our fellow man but God's standard is far higher than that, and, in fact our idea of good is in His sight no good at all.   The Bible abounds with this  and to mention but one example "we are as an unclean thing and all our righteousness's are as filthy rags and we all do fade as a leaf and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away."   Isaiah 64 v 6

God says, Holy Scripture says that we, all of us without exception, are unfit for His presence and so something has to be done, that only He can supply.  

Tomorrow d.v. we consider the state of things that sin has brought amongst us.