Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Romans.  Tonight is study #27 in Romans 3,  and we will read Romans 3:14-19:

Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: Their feet are swift to shed blood:  Destruction and misery are in their ways: And the way of peace have they not known: There is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.

I will stop reading there.  In verse 14 we read: “Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness,” and we understand that this applies to all people.  The only exception is when God intervenes and comes into the lives of the elect, who are the few out of the whole of mankind.  God changes their heart, and the things we are reading here would be remedied through the shed blood of Christ and the new spirit within them.  It does not mean that those people cannot sin; they can still sin in the flesh.  But as far as these statements are concerned, they have to do with the unregenerate, natural condition of fallen man.  His mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.

The word “cursing” is only used in this verse, but we do find a similar statement in the Old Testament, in Psalm 10:4-7:

The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts. His ways are always grievous; thy judgments are far above out of his sight: as for all his enemies, he puffeth at them. He hath said in his heart, I shall not be moved: for I shall never be in adversity. His mouth is full of cursing and deceit and fraud: under his tongue is mischief and vanity.

Here, we also see that this statement is concerning the wicked.  His mouth is full of cursing, and the Bible adds “deceit” and “fraud.”  There are no flattering words being used here.  God is describing man’s sinful condition, and there is nothing nice to say about it.  It is as simple as that.  There is nothing good in man’s fallen state and his rebellion against God.  This is spoken of throughout the entire Bible in these terms.  It is described as something as wicked, evil, and bad as possible.

We also read in Romans 3:14:

Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:

What does a mouth full of bitterness point to?  It points to someone who has bitterness in his heart and soul, and that would go along with the desperately wicked and deceitful heart that Jeremiah 17:9 tells us about.  We find a related word to this word “bitterness” in James 3:10-16:

Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be. Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter? Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries? either a vine, figs? so can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh. Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? let him shew out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom. But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth. This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish. For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.

If you have “bitter envying and strife” in your heart, you lie against the truth.  You have a serious sin-sick soul condition, which means you are unsaved.  And this is the problem with any individual who would send forth out of his mouth both “sweet water and bitter.”  That is, there is both blessing and cursing.  On the one hand, he claims to serve and love God, and everything is wonderful with God and him.  But on the other hand, He is speaking curses, and the sinful nature of his soul is rising and coming forth out of his mouth.  It will show itself.  It will reveal itself, and that is God’s point.  The sinner’s mouth is full of cursing and bitterness because both of these things reveal the true condition of his dead heart and the fact that he is dead in trespasses and sins.

Let us go back to Romans 3, and let us read Romans 3:15:

Their feet are swift to shed blood: 

Again, this is the condition of the unsaved.  Their feet are swift to shed blood, and the idea of being “swift” or “hasty” toward something indicates that one is eager or zealous to do the things that he is hasting to do.  And in this case, God says they are swift to “shed blood,” and this reminds us of what the Apostle Paul said concerning shedding blood, in Acts 22, when he was at one of his trials.  He was recounting his previous life as a Pharisee, and how zealous he was to uphold the laws and traditions of the Jews.  We read in Acts 22:17-20:

And it came to pass, that, when I was come again to Jerusalem, even while I prayed in the temple, I was in a trance; And saw him saying unto me, Make haste, and get thee quickly out of Jerusalem: for they will not receive thy testimony concerning me. And I said, Lord, they know that I imprisoned and beat in every synagogue them that believed on thee:  And when the blood of thy martyr Stephen was shed, I also was standing by, and consenting unto his death, and kept the raiment of them that slew him.

Apostle Paul was recounting the time when he was “Saul of Tarsus,” and Stephen was speaking forth the Word of God and declaring to the Jews what God had moved him to declare concerning their unfaithfulness to His Word.  If you read what Stephen was preaching, he was quoting Scripture and referring often to Israel’s continual rebellion against God and the prophets that God sent.  He called them hard-hearted and stiff-necked, and he accused them of always resisting the Holy Ghost.  It infuriated them, and they covered their ears and gnashed upon him with their teeth, running against him, and picking up stones.  They stoned him to death.  They shed his blood and murdered him.  And the Apostle Paul consented, and even held their coats for them while they threw the stones: “Here, let me hold your coat for you while you get that big rock.”  So while Saul himself did not throw the stones he, without question, contributed to the death of Stephen, an elect child of God.  You see, they were “swift.”  They ran to kill Stephen.  They were so zealous and eager because they thought he was a heretic who was saying things contrary to the Law of Moses and the God of the Bible.  Of course it was they themselves who were the contrary ones, and the fact that they murdered Stephen proves they were not of God, and that they were of another spirit.

That is what God is getting at in Romans 3:15 concerning the wicked.  Unsaved mankind are often caught up in some cause that is an evil cause, whether it be a secular cause or a religious cause.  They become convinced that they know the best and greatest thing, and it is the right thing.  History has shown – whether it be the history of the nations’ secular societies, or  the history of the churches or other religions – that they will come against you quickly.  They will shed your blood, and you will die, and they will think they are just in doing so: “Oh, this person was an infidel or heretic!”  The description changes according to the setting, but it is all the same evil and wickedness of man who is often fooled and deceived into murdering others, even for the cause of so-called “godly things.”  But that is never the case – that is not how God works.  And yet God has seen it all from above.   He has watched it play out throughout the course of history.

So this simple statement aptly sums it up: “Their feet are swift to shed blood.”  There are a couple of verses in Proverbs 1 that also refer to this.  It says in Proverbs 1:10-19:

If they say, Come with us, let us lay wait for blood, let us lurk privily for the innocent without cause: Let us swallow them up alive as the grave; and whole, as those that go down into the pit: We shall find all precious substance, we shall fill our houses with spoil: Cast in thy lot among us; let us all have one purse: My son, walk not thou in the way with them; refrain thy foot from their path: For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood. Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird. And they lay wait for their own blood; they lurk privily for their own lives. So are the ways of every one that is greedy of gain; which taketh away the life of the owners thereof.

The Lord is speaking to His children: “My son, walk not thou in the way with them; refrain thy foot from their path: For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood.”  That is exactly what they are running to, which is evil.  They will rush toward it headlong.  They will rush to support evil and to fight against others in support of their own evil cause.  So the Lord says, “For their feet run to evil, and make hast to shed blood.”  And that is precisely the idea the Lord is laying out in Romans 3:15:

Their feet are swift to shed blood: 

Now I have to mention something about one of the words in this verse.  It is the Greek word that is translated as “swift.”  It is a word that is found eight times in the New Testament, and seven out of the eight times, it is translated as “sharp.”  Only here is it translated as “swift,” and this word is the same word that is translated as “sharp” in relationship to swords and sickles.  They sent forth the sickle in a scene that the Lord shows us in Revelation 14.  It is a sharp sickle, and the word “sharp” is this same word. 

As far as “sword,” there is a very familiar verse that we have been going to again, and again, in this time of judgment, in Revelation 19:15, and this verse has our word which is translated here as “sharp.”  It says in Revelation 19:15:

And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron…

The sharp sword that comes out of the mouth of The Word, the Lord Jesus, is this word.  So we wonder why it is translated as “swift” in our verse, and not as “sharp.”  Actually, we can see the problem the translators had because if we translate it as “sharp,” it would say, “Their feet are sharp to shed blood.”  It just does not seem to fit.  With it used in reference to a “sharp sickle,” we get the idea that you sharpen the blade to cut.  But no one sharpens their feet, so how could it be translated as “sharp”?  More than likely they (the translators) saw that verse in Proverbs where “their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood.”  So the translators were impressed to translate it the way they did, especially since “sharp” does not seem to make sense in a plain or practical way.  And yet we can understand it when we realize that when God refers to “feet” in the Bible, what comes to mind?  It says in Romans 10:15:

And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!

How beautiful are the feet of that teach the true and faithful Gospel!  They are considered to have “beautiful feet” because their feet carry them to bring the Gospel.

I think that is the idea here.  Their feet carry them toward evil, and it can certainly identify with bringing a false gospel.  In that sense, the message they are bringing is one they have “sharpened,” but it is not like the Word of God that is a sharp, two edged sword that can cut to salvation as well as to death.  Their sword will only kill.  It will only shed blood.  I think that would be the only possible explanation for using this word “sharp” in this verse.

We will stop here at this time.  Lord willing, when we get together in our next Bible study, we will pick up where we left off in Romans 3.