Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Romans.  Tonight is study #9 in Romans 3,  and we will be reading Romans 3:4-6:

God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged. But if our unrighteousness commend the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unrighteous who taketh vengeance? (I speak as a man) God forbid: for then how shall God judge the world?

I will stop reading there.  Last time, we were looking at verse 4, and the translation, “God forbid.”  And we saw that the words were the Greek words, “may,” and “ghin'-om-ahee,” which means “let it not be.”  The word “God” is not found there.

Then it went on to say in Romans 3:4:

… yea, let God be true, but every man a liar;

This is a factual statement.  God is true, and every man is a liar, as far as being a sinner.  The Bible indicates that mankind is born speaking lies.  Even though he cannot speak with words when we are born into the world, in his soul existence and in the dead heart of man he says, “There is no God.”  And that is a lie! 

So the Lord accounts that every sinner has a deceitful dead heart…and just think of the description in Jeremiah 17:9 regarding the heart (soul) of the sinner: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.”   To be deceitful means to lie, and that is the reason a baby is born speaking lies.   It is because the baby possesses a soul that is deceitful above all things.  As I mentioned, the Psalms tell us that man thinks in his heart that there is no God, and that is a lie.  There is a God, and He is the God of the Bible.

Anyway, in response to their question, “Shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect?,” the answer was, “Let it not be,” and then it said, “…let God be true.”  And of course He is true in His perfection – He is the essence of truth.  Pilot asked, “What is truth?”  And Truth was right before Him in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

It goes on to say in Romans 3:4:

… yea, let God be true, but every man a liar;

If we go to John 8, we will see why it is that every man is a liar.  Jesus asked in John 8:43-45:

Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not.

 Christ told the Jews that they were of their father the devil, and that was the reason why they did not understand His speech or hear His Word.  It was due to it being truth.  They were of the one who is a liar, the devil.  He is the father of lies.  They are children of the wicked one, the devil, and, therefore, their hearts and minds are in tune with the lie.  They will follow, believe, and trust in lies, and that is what Jesus said to them in John 8:45:

And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not.

You see, if he had spoken lies, then numbers of them would have believed.  But the truth seemed alien and strange to them, and it is definitely true that the truth is very rare in the world.  It is hardly found, so when people hear the truth it sounds so unusual to their ears that they think, “This must not be true.  It is just so outlandish.”

Just consider all the people in the world that have been indoctrinated in the schools at every grade level as they are taught that there was the “Big Bang,” and that is how the universe came into existence.  And then over billions and billions of years, slowly things began to form.  The earth formed, and then basic life forms emerged.  How?  They do not get into specifics because it is impossible to bring life from that which is not life.  But this is the tale they tell.  And then evolution finally took effect, and we are currently still in that process of evolution, but you cannot see it happening because it is such a slow process that takes billion and billions of years.  And all of these “tall tales” are told to children again, and again, and it is told as though it is absolute truth, but it is all a lie.   These people have been thoroughly instructed in errors and falsehoods that their parents, teachers, professors, and the society around them. 

So when these people finally come across the information from the Bible that says, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,”  they laugh.  How ridiculous and strange it sounds to their ears.   It goes contrary to everything they have been taught.  Can everyone in the world be wrong?  Can they all be telling us lies, and is this odd information about a God who creates be the truth?  No way!   No way!  And yet, that is actually the case.  The truth is that they have been taught and fed lies on this particular doctrine for their whole lives, and their indoctrination has been so thorough and complete, like references in children’s books, in cartoons, TV shows, and movies regarding the “Big Bang” and evolution.  And it is so overwhelming in the enormity of it that the weight of the lie makes them believe it is true.

Then comes the exception – this strange teaching that God spoke and created the world.  And on the surface, it appears to be wrong to them, and yet, it is the truth.  That is the real fact.  That is the real solution to the origin of the universe, the world, and where mankind came from, and where everything came from.  It was not from some “mindless matter” that is never fully described, as nobody ever says where this original atom (or whatever it was) came from that exploded at the beginning.  Where did that come from?  They will not admit it, but their theory of evolution and their theory of origins demand the existence of some eternal matter, because something cannot come from nothing, unless, of course, there is a God who is an eternal Being.  And those are the two options.  You either have an eternal God who is all powerful and all knowing, or you have some eternal matter that is powerless and mindless.  These are the two options, and the people of the world prefer the lie of the idea of eternal matter, and they will not even admit that it must be eternal. 

On the other hand, the Bible tells us the truth.  There is an eternal God, and God has a mind, a brilliant mind, and He also possesses the power necessary to create, to design and bring life into existence.  And the world did come from nothing, but only at the moving and power of God (who is living) making it so.  So we have an explanation for why the things all around us are so well designed, and the more scientists look into any part of this creation – an  insect, the molecule, or the cells of man – they see more and more of the complex design.  They see the handiwork and built-in design within the creature, whether it is man or an animal, or whatever it is they happen to look at, which testifies to the obvious – there is a designer.  When we look around our homes or offices, and we see computers, refrigerators, copy machines, or even the simple table and chair, we know it all had to be designed.  Everything had to be made, and it required thought and skill to make even the simplest thing. 

So when it comes to mankind and the vast array of creatures, scientists are now able to look microscopically at everything and see the design and handiwork, just like when we see computer programs that were designed to perform a function by their designers.  And that is how it is with people, animals, and everything in this world.  We are operating according to how we have been designed. 

So the idea of some mindless piece of matter existing in the very beginning, and then exploding to eventually (over billions of years) form all these well-designed creatures in the sea, or even in the insect world, is ridiculous.  To be honest, it is impossible for things to have haphazardly come together and form.  We see when things are left alone, they do not eventually start to form into some operating piece of equipment.  If you had a junkyard, over the course of time the junk would not come together and form a brand new car or an aircraft.  No – it just stays junk, and the junk rusts and corrupts, and it gets worse and worse.  If you leave a field alone, the field becomes overgrown, and it gets worse and worse.  That is what we observe in the world.  If you leave things alone over the course of time, there is no point at which you can leave it alone long enough, and then something better will come of it.  It is always something far worse.

Anyway, the truth of God over against the lie of man exemplifies the two kingdoms that exist.  There is the kingdom of darkness headed up by Satan, the father of lies, and the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Light and the Truth.  Light and truth go together.  Darkness and lies go together.

The warfare has always been there.  God came with His truth into the world.  He sent forth His Word.  “Thy word is truth.”  The Word went forth to seek the lost sheep of the house of Israel through the strength and power of the truth.  God sent it forth to the ones He had elected to receive and hear it, so they would come to know the voice of Christ, the voice of truth.  It would stand out, and it would be received, whereas for the people of the world were not elect of God, they were not given ears to hear God’s voice and to know that it was the truth.  You see, He guaranteed that certain ones would receive it and become saved.  Of course many others responded to the call, but only God’s elect, the few out of the many, became saved by the Word and developed a love for the word.

The others, like so many that entered into the churches and became only professed Christians, did not have a love for the truth, and they would try to alter the true and faithful doctrines they were hearing, on point after point, because they really did not like the truth.   You see, that is what happens when a natural-minded, unregenerate individual comes in contact with the truth, he tries to make it more to his liking and more adapted to his deceitful heart, so he will find a way to turn and twist the truth into a lie.  And when he does so, he will be convinced that the lie that he just formed out of his vain imagination is the truth, due to that same problem of unregenerate mankind, the inability to discern the truth.  They believe the lie over the truth.

But God’s true elect children were given ears to hear.  We can hear the Lord Jesus Christ’s voice of truth, and the voice of a stranger we will not follow.  This is how God protected His people.  Also, it is what came into play at the time of the end when judgment came upon the churches, and God called His people to come out of the churches.  It was the elect of God who understood this.  We recognized the truth of it, and we had to take action and respond in obedience by coming out of the churches and going out into the world, as the Bible taught.

We will have to pick this up again when we have our next Bible study.  At that time we will look more at the second part of Romans 3:4:

… That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged.

This appears to be a quote from Psalm 51:4.  Lord willing, we will look a little more carefully at this language in the second part of verse 4 in our next Bible study.