Let's open this morning's service
with the familiar hymn number 21 from your spiral hymn book,
number 21. Let's all stand together, the
covenant ordered and sure. ? On the Father and the Son ? And
the Spirit three in one ? In eternal ages past ? Made a covenant
sure and fast ? God my Father chose his own ? In the person
of his Son ? And ordained that I should be ? One with him eternally
? God the Son agreed to come ? In the flesh to bring me home
He would keep God's holy law and retrieve me from the fall. Christ in love so willingly Stood
as my great surety, For my price he offered blood, To appease
the wrath of God. ? God the spirit heavenly dove
? ? Promised to come down in love ? ? Bringing life and peace
and grace ? ? To the chosen purchased praise ? ? He seeks the lost,
heals the lame ? ? And he brings us to the Lamb ? By his mighty
sovereign call ? God's elect are gathered all ? This poor
sinner is secure ? For God's covenant will endure It is sealed
by God's own word, by His Spirit and His blood. Blessed Holy Covenant
God, I am yours by tithes of blood. Ties of grace and ties
of love hold me to my God above. Please be seated. Aren't you thankful to be able
to sing that hymn with a little bit of understanding? Just, I
mean, every word of that hymn is is so clear and simple and so hopeful. God the Father chose a particular
people before time ever was. God the Son in time came and
accomplished the redemption of God's elect. God the Holy Spirit
right now He's doing his work, calling out God's people, bringing
them into a loving relationship with Christ. And our hope this
morning is that he will do that. This poor sinner is secure, or
God's covenant is secure, is sure. If you can't find your Bible,
it's on the table in the back. So look there for it. And little musical pews going
on this morning. So hopefully you figure out where
to sit. We moved the front pew to the
back. We're gonna try that today and see how it works and may
move it back. You have your Bibles. We're going
to be in First Peter this morning. Chapter three. Let's pray together. Our merciful Heavenly Father, we find all the hope of our salvation in your sovereign will purpose, power. Lord, we find
great hope in knowing that that you're not looking to us for
anything. Any part of our salvation dependent
upon anything that we do. You look to your dear son and
you delight in him. You're pleased with him. Lord,
we pray that your Holy Spirit would cause us to do the same. We would find our affections
fixed on the Lord Jesus Christ, who is our savior, our substitute. Lord, we thank you for your word. We know that we must have Eyes
to see and hearts to believe. We must be given ears to hear
and we know that we can receive nothing except to be given to
us from heaven. And so father, we ask that you
be pleased this hour to do that. Glorify thyself. Lift up Christ,
bless your people. Call out your lost sheep. We ask it in Christ's name, amen. I've titled this message, The
Answer of a Good Conscience Toward God. The Answer of a Good Conscience
Toward God. Let's read these verses together.
And in order to understand the verses that we're going to be
looking at, we have to back up to verse 18, because verses 19
through the end of the chapter, the Lord is illustrating the
truth that we looked at last Sunday from verse 18. For Christ also hath once suffered
for sins, one time, the just one, the holy one, the righteous
one, dying and suffering for the unjust, the sinners, the
ones who cannot redeem themselves in order that he might bring
us to God. That's our need. Our need is
to be brought to God. Our need is for the Lord to take
us and bring us into the very presence of God and be able to
stand uncondemned the presence of a holy God. That is exactly
what the Lord Jesus Christ came to do. Being put to death in the flesh
but quickened by the Spirit. In his death he put away our
sin and by his resurrection he's proof that God satisfied with
what he did. The resurrection of the Lord
Jesus Christ is what these next verses are about. As I said,
these verses are illustrating this glorious truth from verse
18. By which, and there's much confusion
in these next couple of verses, but I hope the Lord will make
them simple and plain and clear to us this morning. by which
also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which
sometime were disobedient when once the long suffering of God
waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was at preparing, wherein
few, that is eight souls, were saved by water." They were saved
by water. We think of the flood as being
the the destruction of the world and it was, but that same water
that destroyed the world lifted up the ark. And in this, we see
the illustration of what the Lord Jesus did when he died in
the flesh and raised from the dead. the like figure where unto even
baptism doth also now save us, not the putting away of the filth
of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God. And so all of this has to do
with us being able to stand in the presence of God without a
guilty conscience. The answer of a good conscience
toward God by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who himself
has gone into heaven and is on the right hand of God, angels
and authorities and powers being made subject unto him. A good conscience. We know by
experience what that is. A good conscience is a conscience
that is absent of Fear and guilt. It's an innocent conscience.
A guilty conscience is a horrible thing. We all have experienced
it. Surely it is the cause of much
anxiety. It is the cause of much fear.
It is the cause of much trouble in this world, a guilty conscience. A guilty conscience is the means
by which Satan, the accuser of the brethren, would take us away
from our hope in Christ. He would cause us to look to
our lives and look to the law of God and try to use guilt and
shame to draw us away from Christ. A guilty conscience is the means
by which men try to control one another. They use fear and intimidation
and guilt and shame. It's a horrible thing to have
a guilty conscience. I hope that we can have a good
conscience toward one another. I hope that we will live our
lives before one another without offense and that when we do offend
one another that we'll be humble enough to apologize, that our
conscience might be made clear through a sincere apology for
that offense. But a good conscience toward
God? The God who sees everything,
the God who knows our thoughts before we think them, the God
whose light reveals everything about our hearts, how can we
stand in the presence of God and have a good conscience, a
conscience without guilt, without shame before we To answer that question,
I think it would be helpful for us to look at verses 19 and 20
just for some explanation. As I said, much confusion has
been imagined in the opinions of men who don't use scripture
to compare scripture. will rest the scriptures and
they will take verses out of context and they will come to
conclusions that are contrary to everything else we know to
be true. You can read the opinions of unenlightened men when it
comes to these verses that would suggest that maybe the Lord Jesus
Christ, when he, during those three days in the grave, that
he went down into hell itself and preached to the devils in
order to try to recover them. That's not, that's not what the
Lord's saying here. That's not possible. It's not
of any, when the devils fell into hell, that was an eternal
fall. We don't serve a God who's trying to convince them of their
of their need to come back. So that's surely not what the
Lord means. Some have suggested that what
this means is the Lord went into that place of death and preached
the gospel to those Old Testament saints that were living in darkness
and bringing them out of the grave. No, that's not what the
Lord's saying here. Some have even suggested that
perhaps what's being said here is that Noah was in the darkness
of the ark preaching the gospel to his family. No, that's contrary
to everything the ark represents. The ark, even in this text, is
the means of life. And we know that that ark is
a picture of Christ. We know that Noah's a picture
of Christ. Noah's name translated means rest and our rest is in
Christ. And these eight souls that were
in the ark to which God closed the door to and was raised above
the destruction of the world by the very water that destroyed
the earth. I'm sure they were worshiping
and and delighting in the Lord's mercy in that arc, but that's
not what this is talking about. Turn with me to chapter one of
this same book and look with me at verse 10. And here we understand scripture
by scripture. Scripture is its own commentary. Scripture sheds light on itself. And so we compare the spiritual
to the spiritual. And here the Lord tells us in
verse 10 of 1 Peter chapter one, of which salvation the prophets
have inquired and searched diligently. who prophesied of the grace of
God that should come unto you, searching, or what manner of
time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify when
it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that
should follow." So what the Lord is telling us is all the Old
Testament prophets who preached the gospel of which Noah was
one of, they were moved by the Spirit
of God. They did not speak of their own
opinions. They did not come to their own
conclusions. They were inspired by the Spirit
of God and the Spirit of Christ. So we see here that the Lord
Jesus Christ was in his prophets, preaching through his prophets
before his incarnation, before He came in the flesh, in the
body of a man, born of a woman, born under the law, in order
to be able to redeem us who are cursed by the law, the Lord Jesus
Christ, in his pre-incarnate state, came in the power of the
Spirit, and preached to souls that were in darkness. That's
what Noah was doing during those, the scripture's not clear on
how long exactly it took Noah to build the ark, Some suggest
75 years, 100 years, a long time. Long time. It's hard to put the
timetable together when we just look at scripture. But all the
time that he's building the ark, he's preaching in the spirit
of Christ to darkened souls, telling them about the judgment
that was to come. And that's exactly what we're
doing now. We preach in the spirit of Christ, warning men, for we
know that as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the
coming of the Son of Man. There's going to be destruction
of this world. The difference will be that it
won't be by water next time, it'll be by fire. And our Lord
himself said, when I return, will I find faith on the earth?
And the meaning of that is that there will be few that will believe
in that final day of judgment. I certainly want to be a part
of that few. So the Lord is using this Old
Testament example of Noah's Ark and how appropriate an example
it is. Not only were men just like they
are today, living in darkness without God and without hope
in this world, engaged in just marrying and giving in marriage
and eating and drinking, the scripture says, and just indulging
in the pleasures of their own flesh and without any thoughts
for the things of God. And then Noah, the first time
the word grace is used is found in Genesis chapter six. The first
time we find the word grace in the Bible, Noah found grace in
the eyes of the Lord. Noah was just like the rest of
everybody. And you and I are just like the rest of the world.
If the Lord left us to ourselves, there's no difference that we
would have no concern for our souls whatsoever. We must be found in God's grace. The Lord has to do something
for us. He has to arrest us. He has to call us out of darkness
into his marvelous light. He has to make his grace irresistible
to us, and he does that in spite of us. The Lord's not looking
to find someone who's spiritual and then blessing them. No. Saul of Tarsus calls himself
a pattern for salvation. And he was of all men in the
Bible, he was at enmity with God. He was, he was breathing
out threatenings. He was a blasphemer. He was,
he hated Christ. He hated the gospel and the Lord
arrested him, stopped him in his tracks. And there's what
God did to Noah, and that's what he's still doing. So by the spirit
of Christ, the gospel is being preached to souls who are in
darkness, that those who find grace in God's sight. And the very first time the word
covenant is used in the Bible is also found in Genesis chapter
six, and how important the covenant is, the promise of God. The hope
of our salvation is not determined by our promises to God. That's a free will works gospel. Men think, well, I've made a
covenant with death, and with hell, I'm in agreement. And God
says, I'll disannul your covenant. Your promises don't work. Why? Because we're not faithful to
them. We're not faithful to our promises. God said to Noah, I'll
make a covenant with you. And there's our hope. What the
Lord's doing is he's using the illustration of Noah and the
ark and the preaching of the gospel by the Spirit of God and
the judgment that came upon the earth and the raising up of the
ark of God's elect and saving them in Christ, which ark was
pitched. And that word pitched means covering,
which is the same word for atonement. And so we have an atonement,
we have a covering so that the water that comes down from heaven
and ultimately the fire of God's wrath cannot come to us. You know, it always amuses me
to see men trying to portray Noah in the ark and he spends
all of his time trying to plug up holes. I heard that that arc that they
built up there in Kentucky, I think it's in Kentucky or Ohio right
there on the border somewhere, that the people that made that
thing filed an insurance claim against their insurance company
for some damages that were done and the water was getting in
the arc. Not a single drop of water came
into that arc that Noah was in. Not one drop of water. And not
one drop of water will come against those who are in Christ. Not
one ounce of God's wrath, the Lord Jesus Christ consumed all
of that himself on Calvary's cross. So that's what these verses,
it's not talking about what the Lord did during his death and
going down into hell or Sheol and preaching to devils or to
lost men. He's talking about what Noah
did in the spirit of Christ when he preached the gospel before
the judgment of God. And saying that this same truth,
this same judgment is coming again. And the hope that we have
is that God will make a covenant with us. His promises are sure. His promises are steadfast. He's
faithful to his promises. He cannot lie. We have a strong
consolation and a good hope. We have an anchor for our soul
in the Lord Jesus Christ who went into the veil. He went into
the holies of holies. He ascended at the That's what,
look at the last verse that we're considering here in verse 22.
Who himself, the Lord Jesus Christ, has gone into heaven and is at
the right hand of God, angels and authorities and powers being
made subject unto him. Here's the hope of having a good
conscience toward God. We have an advocate with the
Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous one. so that we are in him unblameable,
unreprovable in the sight of God. You say, well, my conscience
convicts me all that, I feel like I live with a guilty conscience. Here's the only thing that's
going to enable us to come into the very presence of God with
boldness, to come before the throne of grace with boldness
is to believe the gospel. is to believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ, who himself consumed all the wrath of God and put
away our sin. Speaks of baptism here. Not talking
about water baptism. By the way, we're, Lord willing,
going to observe water baptism next Sunday. Billy Argaropoulos
from St. Petersburg, is coming over and
bringing the congregation from there, and I'm gonna baptize
him. And we're gonna have lunch together
after service and enjoy that fellowship together, along with
the congregation in Lakeland, in Mulberry, Florida. They're
gonna come with their pastor. So y'all be sure to be here next
Sunday. It's gonna be a very special
time. But when the Lord's talking about baptism, he's saying that
baptism was prefigured by the flood. The washing up of the
water. God sent this flood to cleanse
the earth. And the same flood that cleansed
the earth lifted up the ark. The same wrath of God that fell
upon the Lord Jesus Christ lifted up those in Christ. He's talking
about being buried with Christ in baptism and being raised to
walk a new life in Christ Jesus. Talking about spiritual baptism
here. The children going through the
Red Sea is spoken of in the scriptures as baptism. And so again, the
Lord's using these things to speak of our deliverance and
our union in Christ. That's what these verses are
about. And you and I cannot have a good conscience toward God
without understanding what's being said here and illustrated
here by the flood. What the Lord Jesus Christ accomplished
in verse 18 was all foreshadowed in the preaching of the gospel
by Noah and the destruction of the world and the saving of the
elect in the ark. What is the conscience? Have
a good conscience toward God. If we're gonna have a good conscience
toward God, we need to understand something about, we all know
by experience what the conscience is. Turn to me to Romans chapter
two. Romans chapter two. We've been falsely accused and
we've, We've comforted ourselves in having a clear conscience,
though accusations are false. I hope that'll be the case when
the accuser of the brethren falsely accuses us of not keeping God's
word, of not keeping his law, that our conscience will be made
clear by the spirit of God through the understanding that I have
kept God's law. I have kept God's law. I'm not
guilty of the charge that you're making against me. I've kept
it perfectly. Look at Romans chapter two at
verse 14. For when the Gentiles, and the
difference between the Gentiles and the Jews is that the Gentiles
had no revelation of truth given unto them. They were born in
darkness, they lived in darkness. The law of God and the word of
God only came through the Jews and only came to Israel. So here
the Lord's illustrating those who have no understanding whatsoever
of the things of God. They've never been exposed to
the 10 commandments. They've never been exposed to
the prophets, to Moses, to any of the revelations that are made
in all of scripture. They have no concept of God's
word. When the Gentiles, which have
not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law,
these having not the law, are a law unto themselves, which
show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience
also bearing witness, and their thoughts, the meanwhile, accusing
or excusing one another." Now, what the Lord's saying is that
You don't have to know anything about the Bible to have the law
of God written on your heart. All men come into this world
with that law written on their hearts. You know the difference
between right and wrong. You have a conscience that tells
you. The Lord tells us in 1 Peter
4 that we can sear our conscience as with a hot iron. And just
like a wound that's a terrible burn might not ever recover its
feeling in that area. The nerves are destroyed and
there's no feeling there anymore. And that's what the Lord's illustrating
our conscience. You call evil good and you call
good evil. You can sear your conscience
so that it loses its ability to work. It no longer has any
feeling to it. And he's talking about the unbeliever
there. And certainly we see a national
searing of the conscience in men calling good evil and evil
good and losing their their understanding of and their ability to feel
any sense of shame for having done wrong. That's not possible
for the child of God. You can't see your conscience.
Now, the Lord's going to make sure. That's the work of the
Spirit of God. Do we violate our conscience?
Every time we sin, we do. And the Spirit of God renews
that conscience and causes us to know the difference between
right and wrong. He convicts us of our sin and
of our unbelief and our righteousness before God in Christ. That's the work of the Spirit
of God. It's expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not
away, the Comforter will not come. But when he comes, he will
convict the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment,
of sin because they believe not on me. And so, child of God,
every time you violate your conscience, the Spirit of God makes you know
that that's your unbelief. And... of righteousness, every
time we have a proud, self-righteous thought, and every time we hear
the gospel, and every time the Spirit of God brings us back
to see that we had no righteousness outside of Christ, of righteousness
because I go to my Father. And yet in Him, we have a righteousness
before God, a righteous Savior, a righteous substitute, My little children, I write these
things unto you that you sin not. Our Lord has given us much
encouragement and admonition in his word to flee these things. But if any man sin, we have an
advocate with the father, Jesus Christ, the righteous one. We
have a perfect righteousness, a perfect substitute who has
bore our sins in his body and put them away. How are we gonna
come before God in Christ? How are we gonna have a clear
conscience before God in Christ? Turn with me to Hebrews chapter
nine, Hebrews chapter nine. When the accuser of the brethren
takes you back to the law and brings to your conscience, you're
violating God's law. You just say to him, it's a whole
lot worse than you're accusing me of. It's a whole lot worse. But, but I have an advocate with
the Father. I can come boldly, not confident
in my own righteousness, but in his. Not confident in my own
ability, but in his. I can have a good conscience
before God by the resurrection. No, go back. Hold your finger
there in Hebrews 9 and go back with me to our text. In verse 21, but the answer,
here's the answer. We answer these accusations.
We answer these fears. We answer this guilt. We answer
the shame of our sin, which we have continually. Isaiah put
it like this, he said, we have sinned and in this is continuance
and we shall be saved. So here we come, an answer, we
answer of a good conscience toward God by the resurrection of Jesus
Christ. The positive proof. that our sin's been put away
once and for all. It's been buried, it's been covered
by the blood. God says, I've separated your
sin from you, it is no more. You're justified in the Lord
Jesus Christ. That word justified means to
be without sin. So here's our answer of a good
conscience toward God by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ is the evidence,
it is the proof that God has given us that what the Lord Jesus
Christ accomplished on Calvary's cross was successful. What did
he accomplish? He accomplished the putting away
of our sin by the sacrifice of himself once and for all. This
is the only way to have an answer of a good conscience toward God
by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And here's the picture
of the ark being raised up by the very waters, saved by water. Saved by water. You have your Bibles open to
Hebrews chapter nine, look with me. at verse 12. Neither by the blood of goats
and calves, but by his own blood, he entered in once into the holy
place, having obtained, past tense, eternal redemption for
us. Now the covenant is an eternal
covenant. Salvation is eternal life. That means it never had
a beginning, but it had to be obtained, and it was obtained
through the sacrifice that the Lord Jesus made on Calvary's
cross. For if the blood of bulls and
goats and the ashes of heifers sprinkled the unclean sanctifyeth
to the purifying of the flesh, he's going back to the Old Testament
rituals now where the water was sprinkled And the blood was sprinkled
of these animals on the elements that were used in worship and
on the people, the cleansing, the putting away of sin, all
being symbolized in these things, all being foreshadowed in these
things. How much more shall the blood
of Christ, who through the eternal spirit, this is the same spirit
that we just read of, that went with Noah and preached to those
spirits in darkness. the spirits in prison, who through the eternal spirit
offered himself without spot to God. He didn't offer himself
to us, he offered himself to God. The gospel is not an offering
made to sinners to be rejected or accepted. The work that the
Lord Jesus Christ did on Calvary's cross, he was offering himself
to God as the sacrifice for sin. And God saw the travail of his
soul and God said, I'm satisfied. I'm satisfied. Sin's been put
away. There's how we come before God.
with a good conscience, a good conscience. Lord, you know my sin a lot better
than I do. And Satan would know it and use
it against me. But here's my hope. I have an
advocate with the father. I have a sin bearer. I have a
substitute. I have one who has obtained eternal
redemption for me. Who's offered himself without
spot. Notice the rest of verse 14.
Purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God. What is a dead work? A dead work
is a work that we do in order to try to atone for our own sin. That's what men do all over the
world. It's man-made religion, works
religion, free will religion. And there's a dead work Pharisee
in every believer. And as soon as your conscience
feels the pain of your sin, one of the first things that we try
to do is atone for our own sins. We have those thoughts. These
are the dead works that the conscience has. And the more we try to atone
for ourselves, the worse it gets. It doesn't relieve the conscience. Did I do it right? Did I do enough?
Maybe I wasn't sincere enough. Maybe I need to do more. How can I make up for? this shame and fear and guilt
that my conscience has convicted me of. We can only have a good conscience
toward God by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And here by
the eternal spirit, he offered himself without spot, without
sin, perfect Lamb of God who went to the cross bearing our
sins in his body in order to put them away but himself was
a perfect sacrifice. God made him sin who knew no
sin that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
Here's the only way that we can have a good conscience toward
God. And we think we're gonna have a good conscience toward
God by somehow, well, if I just, ought we to pray more? Certainly
we ought to pray a whole lot more than we do. Ought we to
read God's word more? Certainly. Ought we to be better?
Certainly. We ought to do everything better
than we do. But the thought that somehow
if I can just do better, I can salve my conscience. only aggravates the conscience
of faith. He went without spot to God and
he alone can purge. We're not talking about salving
our conscience, we're talking about purging our conscience
of all those dead works, all those things that we thought
that we could do. to try to make up for our sin. They've been taken away by the
resurrection of Jesus Christ, by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. We have this hope of being justified
before God. Justified. And that word means a whole lot
more than just if I'd never done it. In Christ, you never done it. That's what justified means.
Perfect, sinless. In Christ, there's our hope. Is not a guilty conscience the
root cause of Fear, instability, conflict,
anxieties. Here's the only way to have your
conscience purged. The only way to have a good conscience
toward God is through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I have a perfect
standing before God. I can come boldly into the throne
of grace confident I have an anchor from my soul. Justified, eternally justified. Now, contentious men who want
to argue over words will, and I'm speaking from my own experience,
because I know I'm going to get some responses from what I'm
about to say right now. They want to argue theology. They listen to preachers. They
want to teach preachers. They want to correct preachers.
They want to rebuke preachers. They want to justify. And I want
to say to them, do you believe that you can justify yourself
before God? They would immediately say, oh,
no, we can't do that. I said, well, why are you trying
to justify yourself to me then? But that's what most of these
arguments are all about. Men trying to justify themselves
over this topic of justification. And some say, well, we're justified
at the time that we believe. And others say we're justified
at the cross. Our justification first is eternal. It's eternal. were justified
in the lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world.
In other words, we were seen in Christ by God and loved eternally
in him, never having sinned. Justified perfectly without sin
in the person of our substitute from eternity past. That justification
had to be fulfilled in time. And that's what the Lord Jesus
Christ did when he bowed his head on Calvary's cross and said,
it is finished. That justification can only be
experienced through faith. And that justification, once
experienced through faith, has to be renewed as we walk by faith
every day. And that justification is not
going to be fully realized and fully experienced until we stand
in his presence literally without sin, in a perfect body. Now that's what the Bible says
about justification. Men want to argue about it, let
them argue. I'm justified in Christ eternally
and in time. Let me show you that, Romans
chapter three. Verse 26, to declare, I say at
this time, his righteousness, that he might be just and the
justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. There's no salvation outside
of faith. There's no hope of being justified
apart from faith in Christ. Where is boasting then? It is
excluded. By what law? Of works? Nay, by
the law of faith. The law of faith. Therefore,
we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of
the law. Now, free will works religion,
man-made religion, makes a work out of faith. Faith is what you
bring to make what Christ did work for you. It's your contribution. You're not completely justified
until you add your two cents worth. And they make a work out
of faith. They make faith a decision. They
make faith a work. And in that, they completely
misunderstand the whole nature of faith. Faith is just the opposite
of work. We just read that. By what law? The law of works? Nay, but by
the law of faith. The law of faith is the opposite
of law of works. In other words, faith is coming
into the presence of God. I have no work. I have no understanding. I have
no light. I have no hope. I have no truth. Lord, I cast all my hope on Christ. Faith is the opposite of work.
Faith is not a decision. Faith is not what we bring. So
to say that we're justified by faith is not that I'm adding
my faith to the work of Christ for my justification. It is the
confession that the work of Christ is all my justification. Do you
see that? That's what the essence of faith
is. Faith is the absence of all works, the absence of all knowledge. It is the complete hope and rest
in Christ alone. And so men who will argue over
what God has clearly said here, we conclude that a man is justified
by faith without the deeds of the law. And they say, oh, you're
adding faith to the work of Christ for your justification. No. I'm
saying the work of Christ cannot be believed. It cannot be effectual,
it cannot be. Faith is the empty hand that
receives the gift of God. It's the, you see, the very essence
that there's, where is boasting then? There's no boasting in
faith. We have our conscience purged
from dead works. Dead works is what men do in
order to try to atone for themselves. And one of the things that men
do to atone for themselves is to present their commitments
and their faith and their dedication and their loyalty to God as the
hope of their justification. And to argue against that by
saying, oh no, we're justified at the cross when Christ bowed
his head. He was offered up for our offenses
and raised again for our justification. Being justified, Romans chapter
five, verse one, by faith we have peace with God through the
Lord Jesus Christ. You can't make faith part of
justification. because that adds a work to justification. No, it doesn't. Faith by its
very nature is the complete absence of all work. That's what faith
is. And it's a work of grace in the
heart. It's a gift from God to bring a man to the place to where
he has no hope in anything he's ever done or any work he's ever
tried to perform. He has no hope outside of Christ.
And Christ is all of his justification before God. Where is boasting
in that? Where is boasting in that? We're
not boasting in faith like the freewheeler is. We're saying
that faith is the absence of boasting. It's the taking away
of any hope outside of the accomplished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so by his resurrection and
by his ascension into glory and by his sovereign control, we
can come before God, before God who knows everything about us
and have a good conscience, not guilty. No fear, no shame. All right, let's take a break.