Well, if you don’t have your Bible open or you would be willing to reach for one, please go back with me now to Romans 3 and open your Bible. Let me draw an arc from yesterday’s message, which probably most of you did not hear, to today’s message. The main purpose of God according to Romans, or according to Psalm 67 where we were yesterday, is that it is the purpose of God to be known and praised and enjoyed and feared among all the peoples of the world as the only true God — the just God, the sovereign God, and the gracious God. That was yesterday’s message. His purpose for creating the world and for all that he does in the world is to be known and praised and enjoyed and feared among all the peoples of the world.

The ultimate goal of the church is not missions. The ultimate goal of the church, therefore, is worship among the peoples, and missions exists because that worship doesn’t. Therefore, missions is created by this text, or at least the reality that this text is describing.

A Failure to Glorify God

This text, Romans 3:9–20, is all about the failure of the world to do that purpose. The purpose of God is to be known, to be praised, to be enjoyed, and to be feared among all the peoples, and this text says, “Everybody fails.” Let’s just get that in front of us.

What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin . . .

That is, everyone is a slave of sin and is marked by sin. They are not just doing sin but being sinners. And then, in Romans 3:10–18 he unpacks that with six Old Testament quotes. He begins it and ends it with a statement about how sin relates to God. Look at that in Romans 3:11:

No one understands; no one seeks for God.

And look at Romans 3:18:

There is no fear of God before their eyes.

In other words, sin is not mainly a problem of sex and killing and stealing and lying. That’s not the main problem in the world. The main problem in the world is people don’t love God, they don’t seek God, and they don’t know him as well as they know their computer software. They don’t praise him as much as they praise themselves. They don’t enjoy him as much as they enjoy food, sex, and leisure. And they don’t fear him as much as they fear the criticism of other people. We are all pagans to the core until grace comes and awakens knowledge and awakens praise and awakens joy and awakens fear.

All Are Under Sin

That’s what this text is about. It’s all about our failure to do what yesterday’s message called for the nations to do. We are all under sin and we are all without God until something happens: missions. It reached America and it reached you. You know how your heart should burn that you could be a means of reaching others, but before we move into Romans 3:19–20, where I want to spend most of our time, let me say one more thing about Romans 3:9–18, which are all about the indictment of our souls and the nations. Notice how universal it is. It says, “All.” I’m at Romans 3:9–10 again:

What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one . . .”

Now, think on that for a moment for the sake of the nations. Of course, we should take it to ourselves and say, “Well, that must mean me,” and that’s the place to start. It does mean you, apart from the grace of God through Jesus Christ. But think of it for missions. It means that the diagnosis of the Bible concerning the essential problem with which missions deals is an infallible diagnosis in every people group. There’s a lot of talk about being culturally attuned and aware and knowing all kinds of things so that missions works, and people say you should acclimate yourself there and be sure you know the language and know the culture. Sometimes I think missionaries feel absolutely overwhelmed that they’re going to be totally inadequate, and I want to say the main thing is absolutely clear and absolutely the same wherever you go.

No missionary, none of you, will ever go to any remotest people group anywhere where you do not know exactly the main problem. People may say, “There will be a peculiar problem in Japan. There will be a peculiar problem in Nicaragua or in China or in Indonesia or in Afghanistan.” There’s no peculiar problem. All the things that are peculiar to those cultures are not the issue. The issue is sin, and Christ came into the world to die for sin, so the diagnosis, the disease, and the cure are universal. The central thing that every missionary needs to know, he can know from this Bible. I say yes to all missiological studies, but no to paralysis of fear and insecurity that we’re not going to know the main thing.

Every Soul Accountable to God

Now, let’s go to Romans 3:19–20. This is a remarkable text. Let me read it to you again:

Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law . . .

Now those are Jews, those who are under the law. God gave the law to the Jewish people through Moses, and they had it. They were the guardians of the law. Read Romans 3:1. The oracles of God belong to the Jews first and then, later, to the world. But first, Paul continues:

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 (Romans 3:19).

So one of the questions we’re going to have to ask is, how is it that the laws addressed to Israel stop the mouths of the Chinese, or Koreans, or Americans, in every color and in every language? The mouth is stopped because of what the law said to the Jewish people. How does that happen? Romans 3:20 continues:

For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight (why not?), since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

Now, what I want to do is work backwards through that text. There are four levels in this argument. He’s arguing for one main point. The mouth of every human being on the face of the earth is stopped and no objection can be raised to judgment, and every soul is accountable to God. That’s his main point in Romans 3:19. He builds an argument for it, and I want to work through that argument with you and understand it so that we feel the weight and the force that, not only in this text are we all sinners, but when we get to judgment, our mouths will be closed.

So many people think that they have legitimate objections against God in this age. God is in the business, in the book of Romans and throughout the history of the world, of shutting people’s mouths, and this is one way. I’ll mention two other ways that you’ve already seen in your trek through Romans, but let’s deal with this one first. Let’s go first forward, then backward. I’ll just mention them. Step number one in the argument is the first part of Romans 3:19, which says, “What the law says, it says to those who are under the law of the Jews.” Step number two in the argument is the second half of Romans 3:19, which says, “So that every mouth will be closed and all the world accountable.” Step number three in the argument is the first half Romans 3:20, which says, “Because by works of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight.” And step number four in the argument, in the second half of Romans 3:20, answers that question, “For through the law comes the knowledge of sin.”

The Fourth Step: Through the Law Comes Knowledge of Sin

Now, let’s go backward because it’s good to understand arguments from the ground up. He ended it with a because clause. Let’s go backwards and arrive at the therefore clause. Step number four: what does he mean by “through the law comes the knowledge of sin”? Now, you might simply say, “Well, that’s plain as day. It means that when he gives the 10 Commandments, for example, it tells you what sin is. ‘Don’t lie and don’t steal and don’t kill and don’t commit adultery.’ We know right and wrong because we have the law.” I don’t think that’s what this means because if you say that’s what it means, the argument won’t work. Let’s try it.

Romans 3:20 would then say, “By the works of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight because the law teaches what is right and wrong.” That doesn’t work. It’s not clear at all why nobody can be justified because the law teaches right and wrong. Somebody would simply say, “Well, you do what’s right and you’ll be justified.” That argument won’t work. That’s wrong, and it won’t work.

Well, what does it mean? The best way to answer a question like that is not to bring your idea to the text, but to look around in the book of Romans for something just like this and see whether or not it helps, and there is a text very much like this in Romans 7:7–8. I’ll read it to you or you can look at it with me. You listen to how close it is:

What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead.

Now we get a different angle on what it means to “know sin”. Through the law comes the knowledge of sin. We’re trying to figure out what that means. Through the law comes the knowledge of sin. This is not, in Romans 7:7–8, simply an awareness of right and wrong. This is an arrival of a divine commandment in an unregenerate heart producing covetousness, and suddenly he knows covetousness not in his head from a page, but rising in his heart in rebellion against God. The law stirs up unknown sin in our lives and makes us know it — know it existentially and know it by experience.

Sin Comes to Life

Here’s an example, perhaps at the expense of teenagers. I do have five kids, by the way. You didn’t know this. We adopted a little girl five years ago, so we have four boys and one daughter. I still have three teenagers. At the expense of teenagers, suppose my Barnabas, who’s 17, goes to the mailbox and he brings in the mail and he flips through it to see if there’s anything for him, which there’s a lot these days because he’s planning to go to college. All the colleges in the world send letters to 17-year-olds, and he flips through it. He finds nothing for himself, he lays it down, turns away, and then it hits him at the top of one of the postcards that is says, “For parents only.”

He has this desire to read it, and that desire was not there before. That’s a bad desire, and that badness wasn’t obvious in his mind at all until he saw the law and the law awakened the badness in his heart. The badness wasn’t caused by that sentence. He’s bad. If he weren’t bad, that little sentence would be like water off a duck’s back. He wouldn’t feel the slightest desire to read that postcard. The meaning of that text, “Through the law comes the knowledge of sin,” is this: when the law comes to a person who’s unregenerate (without the Holy Spirit), and they are unsaved, its effect is not justification and its effect is not faith; its effect is an awakening of either legalistic strivings or lecherous rebellion. You can oppose the law one of two ways: legalistically or as a libertine. You can reject it or you can start climbing it to heaven. In either case, it’s exposing your rebellion against God.

The Third Step: By Works of the Law No Flesh Will Be Justified

That’s step four in the argument. Now, let’s build on it with step three. Romans 3:20 says, “By the works of the law no flesh will be justified in his sight, since through law comes the knowledge of sin.” Now the argument works. Do you see how it works? By the works of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight because all the law does is not produce faith unto justification, but rather provokes unregenerate people to rebellion against God, quickening their own awareness of their own sin, and so the argument holds. The law does not justify. It awakens rebellion against God. It exposes sin. It makes us know our sin in our lives.

The Second Step and the First Step: The Whole World Held Accountable to God

Now, steps one and two in the argument are as follows. Romans 3:19 says, “Whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law (the Jews), so that every mouth may be closed (stopped), and all the world may become accountable (guilty) before God.” Now here’s the question. Why does law, as we understand it now, being spoken to Jews, stop the mouth of everybody in the world who’s never even seen or heard of the law?

I think the answer goes something like this. The Jewish people were God’s chosen people for 2,000 years. He worked almost uniquely with them, and the law was one of his highest and most precious, good, holy, righteous gifts to them. If the people who were so honored by God in choosing them — so blessed with so many prophetic voices and so much revelation of his will in the law — cannot be justified by the law, but in fact have risen up against it through legalistic strivings or through idolatry, what hope is there for all the peoples of the world who have not been given this special treatment by God? Is there any reason to believe that anybody anywhere in the world, if they had been given the law, would respond any other way than the Jews have responded to the law and made shipwreck of their destiny by stumbling over the stumbling stone of the law and its end in Jesus Christ?

The answer to that is no, in Paul’s mind at least. There’s no reason to think anybody in the world anywhere would handle the law any better than the Jews and, therefore, every mouth is stopped because of the effect of the law on the most privileged people of all, namely, condemnation rather than justification. Every mouth is now stopped. That’s Paul’s argument. Every mouth is stopped.

God’s Three Lesson Books

The lesson book of Israel is placed alongside two other lesson books that you’ve seen in the book of Romans — lesson books that God has put before the nations in order to stop their mouths, remove excuses, and to make them accountable to him at the last day so that he will rise as judge and be justified and vindicated in his judgment. What are the other two books? One is found in Romans 1:20, and I’m sure Skip gave you this some months ago. It says:

For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

You could paraphrase that by saying, “So that their mouths will be stopped.” Lesson book number one is nature. “All over the world,” Paul says, “there is sufficient evidence in nature that people must thank and glorify God.” And he says, “All over the world (Romans 1:19) people suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” So every mouth is stopped and everyone is accountable before God.

Lesson book number two is the conscience. Romans 2:15 says:

They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them

All over the world, people have a conscience. The law of God isn’t just written in the sky. It’s not just written on stone. It’s not just written in the Bible. It is written in the heart. Everybody knows what God demands in essence, and they all know they fail. You can read that in Romans 1:32 as well, where we know what’s right and wrong and our consciences condemn us. There is not a person in the world with a clear conscience, though we can sear it pretty callously so as to deceive ourselves for a season. Alcohol helps a little bit. Drugs help a little bit. Being really busy at work helps. Playing around fast and loose with things helps — staying busy. There are ways to keep it from rising to the level of conviction, but everybody in this room has a guilty conscience, and everybody in the world has a conscience that cries out, “You are guilty. You’re in need of a redeemer.”

That is a second book that is given to the nations to make them accountable, and the third one today is the lesson book of Israel. They were given the law. They’re called “those who are under the law” — Israel. The law’s effect is not that it can justify because what it does when it meets a rebellious heart is stir up more opposition and bring sin to the surface instead of producing salvation through justification. Therefore, we learned from Israel that had we been in their case, we too would have responded in the same way.

Sometimes, you look at the people of Israel walking through the wilderness, for example, and God brings manna down and them. And 24 hours later, they’re grumbling. He gives the water from a rock, and 24 hours later they’re grumbling. He brings quail in from the sea, and 24 hours later, they’re grumbling. You say, “Well, I’m sure if I’d seen a miracle like quail or a miracle like manna or a miracle like water, I wouldn’t grumble,” and two minutes later you’re grumbling about some providence in your life which God rules, and that’s just pure treason. Philippians 2:14 says, “Let all things be done without grumbling and disputing.” So we’re all guilty. We all learn from Israel, from conscience, and from nature that we are lost.

A Letter of Missionary Support

This is not in my text, I can’t stop though. You wouldn’t want me to stop here, would you? Thank you. I’m sure he’ll pick it up with Romans 3:21, but I’m going to jump and preempt three or five minutes of his message in the coming weeks.

Let’s go to verse Romans 3:21–22. You need to know the remedy of this condition, this universal indictment, these mouth-stopping books of nature, of conscience, of Israel and law, these indictments of the world that are meant to hold men accountable, are not the last word of God. It’s not the main word of God. Romans is a great book. I can’t believe how fast you’re going, but you have to choose different places. We’re in chapter six, and we’ve been in the book for almost three years, and I told my people it’ll take me at least eight years to get through this book. I waited 18 years, which is way too long, to get to it.

The book of Romans is written to a people for one main reason: where’s Paul going? He’s going to Spain, and he wants to stop in Rome and be sent from Park Cities to Spain, and so he sends them a letter preached through Skip Ryan so that people will rise up and go to Spain. That’s what the book of Romans is all about. He’s heading for Spain, and so the question is now, as he probably sits in Corinth and writes this book, “What do you need to know at Park Cities and Rome to get behind my mission as I go to Spain?” That’s what this book is. He’s asking, “What do you need to know about missions, about the lostness of people in Spain, and about the missionary enterprise and what they’re to say and what they’re to do? What do you need to know?” And he writes Romans. It’s all about missions.

They asked me over at Dallas Seminary, whenever I was there, yesterday or the day before, “What would you say about a missions class here about missions?” And I say, “Every class is missions if it’s done right.” Every book of the Bible is about missions because it’s about God, it’s about sin, and it’s about the creation of the tension there and the need for missions. Every sermon is a missions sermon. Every Sunday morning worship service is a recruitment time for missions.

The Remedy to Our Common Plight

Let me just close by reading this glorious remedy. Would you hear it? If you’re a lost sinner this morning and don’t have any peace with God because of this indictment I’ve just given you, or if you are somebody that God has been loosening your roots and saying, “Maybe I should be outside America doing my job somewhere else as a tentmaker. Maybe I should be a missionary,” perhaps God will take this indictment of the world and this glorious universal remedy and, right now, in this service, in this moment, get you ready to make that move. Romans 3:21 says:

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law . . .

That’s a glorious word, isn’t it? The righteousness of God, that’s what we need. We don’t have our own. We don’t have our own. He says:

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it . . .

Yes, that was a pointer and a testimony. Paul, what are you talking about when you say “the righteousness of God”? Is it going to indict me? Is it going to crush me? Is it going to kill me? Then Romans 3:22 says:

. . . The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

There’s an “all” to correspond with the “all” of Romans 3:9–10. Yes, the burden of my message has been that the indictment applies to all the world and the diagnosis and the disease is universal, and none of these missionaries and none of you will ever find a person or a people group where you do not know what the main problem is — it’s alienation from God. We don’t know him. We don’t praise him. We don’t enjoy him. We don’t fear him and, therefore, we’re lost and doomed to hell, and God sent Jesus Christ into the world to live a new righteousness, to die for those sins, to rise again, and then he created missions for us to have the privilege and the glory and the honor of taking the glorious news of an alien righteousness, God’s own righteousness given as a gift to all, to every single people group who will believe.

I’ll tell you it is the most glorious thing in the world to partner with God in displaying the glory of Christ as our righteousness among the nations. I commend it to you. Be a sender or be a goer, because your only other alternative is to be disobedient.