A Rock of Offence

Sermons of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

4.8 • 603 Ratings

🗓️ 5 January 2026

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Romans 9:30-33 — Why is Jesus Christ a stumbling stone? In this sermon on Romans 9:30-33 titled “A Rock of Offence,” Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones explains what this statement means and how it impacts one’s life. The apostle Paul says that Jesus is a stumbling block to His fellow and beloved Jewish brethren. This is because many of them still seek to justify themselves by the law. Because they seek to justify themselves, they stumble at the teachings of Jesus when He says that He has fulfilled the law and that He is the only way to know God. One’s relationship to God is entirely dependent on whether they know God or not. What does all this mean for today? This teaches that it is only Jesus that saves and all other attempts to make one’s self right, whether it is through the works of the law or any other way, is hopeless. How then can humanity be saved? The answer is found in trusting Jesus Christ and believing that He has been sent from God and died for humanity’s sin. It is to believe that Jesus is the Son of God that has come to take away the sin of the world and that He is the only savior from God.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I call your attention this evening to the last two verses in the ninth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans,
0:09.0	verses 30 and 32 and 33. Wherefore, because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that
0:24.9	stumbling stone. As it is written, behold I lay in Zion, a chief a stumbling stone and rock of
0:33.5	offense, and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. Now I've stumbled in reading
0:41.0	that, so I'm going to read it again. Verses 32 and 33 in the ninth chapter of the
0:47.1	Epistle to the Romans. Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law.
0:56.0	For they stumbled at that stumbling stone, as it is written,
1:01.0	behold I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and rock of offense,
1:06.0	and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.
1:18.8	We come back to this statement once more because here the apostle is giving us the final explanation of the whole tragedy of the Jewish nation.
1:23.2	He is dealing here not with individual Jews, but with the Jews as a nation.
1:29.2	And the fact about them was that as a nation they are outside the church,
1:35.0	whereas the Gentiles, as nations and as peoples, have come into the church.
1:42.5	Thank God, as he told us in verse 24, there are some Jews who are in,
1:47.0	but they were a very small remnant, as he's told us later on.
1:51.0	As a nation, they were outside.
1:54.0	And the question he asks here is, why?
1:57.0	Why are they outside?
1:59.0	And he gives us here the answer to the question.
2:04.6	It is, he says, for two reasons.
2:07.6	And the first is this, which you may take if you like as a positive reason,
2:13.6	that they had sought righteousness with God in terms of attempting to keep the law.
	...

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