Alright, brethren, Ephesians
45. Now there in verse 23, the Lord makes
an important statement, a very important statement. He says
in verse 23, He says, I have sworn by myself, the word has
gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return that unto
me every knee shall bow and every tongue shall swear or shall confess. He says, I've sworn by myself.
Now you know when God made his covenant with Abraham, it says
because he could swear by no greater, he swore by himself.
When men are making an oath and entering into a covenant, they
confirm it by appealing to God or something of that nature.
If you're coming under oath in a court of law, well, Christ
is the greatest. He could swear by no greater.
And he did that and gave his word on his own name to make
his people know by two immutable things in which he cannot lie,
that we have a sure hope by his word. Now, listen. God's righteous,
so every word that He gives is sure and certain and shall come
to pass. That's what it means. It shall
not return. It means His word won't come back void. He's going
to accomplish this in everybody. In everybody. Look, I've sworn
by myself the word's going out of my mouth in righteousness
and shall not return. It shall come to pass that unto
me every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess."
Now, look with me real quickly, Philippians 2 and verse 9. And listen to what our Lord is
talking about here. You know, after Christ accomplished
redemption, it says in verse 9, Wherefore God also hath highly
exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name, that
at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, in heaven and in earth
and under the earth, and that every tongue shall confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Now, God tells
us in our text, this is a sure word. It's gone out of his mouth,
every knee shall bow, every tongue shall confess to God. Now, all
his people are gonna confess Christ in this life by God's
grace. But everybody, including his
people, are going to confess Christ in the day of judgment.
Everybody. And this confession is going
to be concerning what the heart is concerning Christ his son. what the heart is concerning
his son. Whether this confession is made now, by grace, or whether
it's made in that day, in the day of judgment, it's going to
be in regard to what the heart thinks about the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I want you to hear this,
because some of you sitting here today don't believe on Christ,
and I want you to hear it. And for you that do, I want you
to be assured by what he says here. There's going to be two
groups of people, two groups of people that is going to make
this confession. All are going to make this confession
that Christ is the Lord of glory. But there's going to be two groups
that's going to make this confession. God's judgment of his sentence
that he's going, his verdict and his sentence he's going to
be passed is going to be based on what the heart's thought is
toward the Lord Jesus Christ. The first is God's elect. All
God's people, they're going to bow and confess Christ in faith
in this life by His grace. And in the Day of Judgment, you
know, Scripture says we're all going to stand before God and
give account. We're going to give the same account in the
Day of Judgment that we're giving right now. Same confession. And this is it right here, verse
24. shall one say, the martyr says,
surely shall he say. That is this one that comes and
bows in grace. Surely shall one say, in the
Lord have our righteousness and strength. Even to him shall men
come. Now that's sure and certain.
That's gonna happen for all God's people, all His elect. The second
group are gonna pass through this life with enmity in their
heart against Christ. Here's what the enmity is. Here's
what it is. It's by looking to something
in themselves and trusting in something in themselves. Everybody
that does not believe on Christ does that. Everybody, religious
or irreligious, everybody's doing that same thing. Everybody got
something about themselves that they think's gonna make God receive
them. And here's what God says about that group. Verse 24, and
all that are incensed against Christ shall be ashamed. They're ashamed of Him right
now, won't confess Him right now, and in that day of judgment,
they're gonna bow and confess Him, but they shall be ashamed
in that day. And then God's going to hand down the verdict, and
He's going to hand down the sentence to all those that are found in
Christ. We'll see what the judgment and
the sentence will be to those that are shamed of Him. But right
here He says, then He's going to give the judgment and the
sentence. to all who are found in Christ. Verse 25, in the Lord shall all
the seed of Israel be justified and shall glory. All right, let's
look at these first two groups and then let's hear this judgment.
First of all, God declares what shall be the confession of each
one of God's elect And this will be the confession now in this
life by the grace of God, and this will be the same account
we're going to give in the Day of Judgment. God says in verse
24, surely shall one say. Now these are God's elect we're
talking about. He calls them in verse 25, all
the seed of Israel. All the seed of Israel. They're
not all Israel which are of Israel. We're not talking about that
political nation. Neither because they're the children
of Abraham are they all children. And Isaac shall that seed be
called. That's what the scripture says.
What does that mean? It means they which are the children
of the flesh, they're not the children of God. It's the children
of the promise that are counted by God as the seed. That's God's
elect. And this is going to be the sure,
certain confession and it's going to all be due to God's grace.
All by God's power, grace, what God worked in His people. What's
the confession of those that are taught of God? What is it?
Surely shall one say in the Lord. Now stop right there a minute
and notice in both these verses he repeats it, repeats it twice. Surely shall one say in the Lord. And then he says in the Lord
shall all the seed of Israel be justified and show glory.
In the Lord. We confess right now by God's
grace that all our acceptance with God, everything we need
to be accepted of God, everything we'll ever need to be accepted
of God is in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not in us, it is in the
Lord Jesus Christ alone. In the Lord alone. What are we
going to confess we have in the Lord? What are we confessing
that we have in the Lord? Surely shall one say, in the
Lord have I righteousness. Now this is the critical thing
right here. One of the critical things. In the Lord shall one
say, in the Lord have I righteousness. Not any of God's elect. When
they're called by God's grace now, and when they stand before
Him in the day of judgment, not one of God's elect people, not
one of His saints are gonna stand there and say, in my obedience
to the law, I have righteousness. Not one of them's gonna say that.
Surely each one will say, in the Lord have I righteousness. Paul said, if there had been
a law given which could have given life, righteousness should
have been by the law. But God hath concluded all under
sin, me, you, and everybody, all under sin, that the promise,
salvation is by promise, it's by covenant, the promise that
He makes might be sure by the faith of Jesus Christ, by His
doing, by His obedience, and given to them that believe. Remember last week, we saw the
verse before, He said, look unto Me. That's who will have this
righteousness, those that look to Christ. And their confession
will be, surely in the Lord have I righteousness. If righteousness
could have been by the law, God wouldn't have sent His only begotten
Son into this world. If righteousness could have come
by our obedience to the law, He would not have sent His only
begotten Son into this world. But see, God's holy and He won't
receive anything but perfection. What most men call righteousness
or keeping the law is not keeping the law as God regards keeping
the law. He said this in Leviticus 22,
21. He said, Whosoever offers a sacrifice of peace offerings
unto the Lord to accomplish a vow or a freewill offering in beaves
or in sheep, it shall be perfect to be accepted. There shall be
no blemish therein. You and me have never offered
one offering to God that didn't have a blemish in it. I don't
care how splendid a work it was that you did and maybe you helped
somebody that was just broke down or whatever, it had a blemish
in it. That offering that is perfect
that God receives is Christ only. He's the only one that made an
offering to God that is perfect and without blemish, the Lord
Jesus Christ. But there's something else required
to fulfill God's law. Not just that your sacrifices
and your obedience have to be perfect. To fulfill God's law,
if you have one little deviation from the law, even in your thought,
you have to die. You have to die. And so, the
law does nothing to us but show us our sin, curse us, and if
we're found trusting in it, it will condemn us forever. That's
what the law will do for us. It's not the law's fault. The
law is holy, it's just, and it's good. It's that we're unholy,
unjust, and not good. That's the problem. But only
in the day of God's grace, only in the day of God's grace, when
the Spirit quickens us, and the commandment comes, only then
does sin revive. Only then do we see our sin,
and only then does our self-righteous self die. That's what Paul said
in Romans 7. Let me ask you a question. When
did that happen to Paul? He said, when the commandment
came, sin revived, and I died. When did that happen to Paul? Paul was persecuting Christ redeemed. He was persecuting Christ's church.
He was Saul of Tarsus, and he was persecuting the church. And
this was all part of his law obedience. He was casting out devils. He
wasn't going to receive anybody that didn't measure up to the
law. And he was persecuting his church. And he's on the road
to Damascus, and it was Christ the light that shined. And it
was Christ the Word that spoke. And what did he say? When the
commandment came, what was it? Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou
me? Saul was trying to keep the law. And Christ said, why are you
persecuting me? See, for one thing, only the
prophet, only Christ is the one that can make us hear the law.
That made Paul hear. The commandment came, and he
saw his sin. We only hear the spirit of the
law by the spirit of Christ. That's the only way. Till then,
I don't care if you look in, when we say law, we're talking
about the old covenant law, we're talking about the prophets, we're
talking about the Psalms, we're talking about the new covenant
and everything in it. Until the spirit of Christ makes
us hear this book, we only understand this book in the letter. Only
in the letter. We can't hear it in spirit. This
book is spirit. The law is spiritual. And it's
got to be revealed in spirit and it's only Christ that does
it. He said, the flesh profits nothing, the words I speak, their
spirit and their life. Christ makes us know that the
law not only declares us guilty in word and deed. He makes you know that you're
guilty in word, you're guilty in your deeds, but not just there. He makes you to know that you're
guilty in your thoughts and even your very nature is sin. This is what He said. This is
what God said, Christ said when He gave the law. This is what
He said when He walked this earth. This is what the law requires.
If you want to fulfill the law in perfect righteousness, it
requires perfect love. Here it is. Thou shalt love the
Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with
all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and your neighbor as
yourself. Not the sweet little late grandma
neighbor that brings you cookies. I'm talking about the one that
dumps trash on your yard, and spins through your yard, and
runs over your mailbox, and cusses you the whole time they're doing
it. That one. Gotta love them perfect. Christ said, Saul, Saul,
all your religious works that you're doing, they are not love
to God. They are not love to me. They're
hatred against me. They're enmity against me. You're
trying to kill me. You're trying to trod my blood
underfoot. That's what it all is. That's
when the commandment came. He says, this is what's required,
thou shalt not covet in the heart. I shall not covet in the heart.
You can't ever drive down the road and see some young person,
you're a young person, you see some pretty new, the latest sports
car, and you can't ever in your heart think, man, I wish I had
that. Guilty. Can't drive by a house
and look at a beautiful home and say, oh, I'd like to have
that. But it's far worse than that. It's far worse than that. When the Lord spoke to Saul and
said, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? Here's what he was saying
to him. Saul, Saul, why are you coveting the glory that belongs
to me by trying to keep the law yourself and come to me by your
righteousness and your holiness and your works of the law? You're
trying to steal what belongs to me. Here's what he was telling Saul.
This is what he told the Pharisees in the Sermon on the Mount. And
this is what he's going to teach every one of his people in the
heart when he's made us to hear what the law says. He says, stop
working. Stop coming and going through
the charade of worship. Stop it. Christ says, I'm the brother
that has aught against you. You stop trying to worship, stop
trying to offer sacrifice, stop trying to give gifts, and you
first, you first agree with thine adversary. Be reconciled to your
brother while you're in the way with him. In this day of grace
right now, come to Christ and fall down on his feet and confess
you're the sinner and ask for mercy right now while you're
in the way with him, lest at any time the adversary, Christ
who is the righteous judge, deliver you to the judge and the judge
deliver you to the officer and they cast you into prison. And
by Christ's light, that's what he did to Saul on the road to
Damascus, and by that light and by that word, that's when we
see he's the righteousness we gotta have. That's when the commandment
comes. That's when the commandment comes.
When he makes you see, he makes you hear how you're breaking
the law by trying to keep the law and it's all enmity against
him. because He's the only one that
can keep it. He makes you see the true love in loving God with
all your heart, soul, mind, and strength in your neighbor as
yourself. It's this right here. It manifests in Christ's perfect
love and being in all points made like unto His brethren.
That's what perfect love is. Made of a woman. Do you know
what a great sacrifice that was to go from glory and having everything
as the spotless holy God of heaven and earth and come down to this
hell hole that we live in and be made of flesh like to His
brethren. And then to be made under the
law, the law He gave, He came and was made under that law because
His people were under that law and He came to redeem us out
from under the curse and condemnation of it. And then, in order to
do this in justice and righteousness and show that God will by no
means clear the guilty and God will by no means condemn an innocent
man, God would not do one thing to Christ until the spotless
Lamb of God, in perfect love to the Father and perfect love
to His Son, presented Himself as the just, spotless, holy Lamb
of God and willingly submitted Himself to be made sin for us
who knew no sin. All our shame and all our sin
put on Him. Him made to bear it. And then
it gets even worse. It gets even worse. Because He's
bearing the sin of His people. Because He's made the sin we
are. Now, He's made a curse for His people. God pours out all
the hell that His people deserve on the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
That's the perfect love that is the righteousness of the law.
And that's the righteousness of everybody he saves. Christ
Jesus alone. Christ is the love who is perfect
righteousness. Christ is the righteousness.
Christ is the love of righteousness. Christ is the one whose obedience
is imputed to people. It's not the imputed righteousness
that's a doctrine that men want to argue and splice and dice
over. It's Christ our righteousness. He's the one who saves His people.
It's His righteousness. He applies it. He worked it out
and He applies it. And it's in Him we want to be
found alone. I pray He make us know this right
now. The love of Christ in laying
down His holy sinless life to bear the sin and curse to justify
His people is the righteousness of the law. And you can't ever
do that and you won't ever do that. None of us will. It's only the
blood of Christ that's going to purge our conscience. It's
Him coming and speaking His commandment in power and purging our conscience
and making us see what He accomplished by His blood that's going to
make us see every work we've ever done, including everything
we are, is nothing but wickedness. I tell you, you know, you might
think you got a white wall, and then you take a really, really,
really pure white and put beside it, and that other wall looks
like it's just dingy yellow. Well, that's about like, when
you put our so-called best righteousness, the righteousness of the scribes
and the Pharisees besides Christ, one is muddy water, and one's
crystal spring clear water. Christ is a crystal clear perfect
string. Not only this, that's not all
we're going to confess. In the Lord have I righteousness.
It's not in me and you, brethren. Now get that. It's not in us. It's in the Lord. But here's
something else His people are going to confess. He said they
surely are going to confess in the Lord have I strength. Now
righteousness takes in our standing before the law of God. Strength takes in our sanctification,
our preservation, our glorification. It takes in everything from here
to glory. Those that are truly sanctified
in the heart, I mean truly made holy in the heart. Christ has
entered in. You've heard the commandment come. He's spoken
this right now. And in that day, we're gonna
know it far more in that day, but right now, we bow and we
confess, in the Lord have our strength. In the Lord. Now, it's
true. This is true. I'm gonna tell
you some things that are true, some things I told you this morning.
This is true. And we confess this is true.
I had no part in making myself be born again. I had no part
in making myself willing to come to Christ. I had no part in it
whatsoever. My strength was the Lord. He's
the one that created me anew. He's the one that gave me a willingness
in the day of His power. He's the one that drew me to
Him. Same with all His saints. It's true, I didn't muster up
faith. I didn't lift me up out of unbelief. I didn't lift me up out of depression
and despondency at any point that I've ever been in it. Have
I ever lifted myself out of it? Christ is my strength. He's the
only one. The only reason my faith didn't
fail is because Christ said, I prayed for you that your faith
fail not. He's the perfect faith of my
faith. The life I now live, I live by the faithfulness of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Him sustaining me. It was not
me. It wasn't me who had strength
to put down one sinful lust. This is what all his people confess
now, and this is what they're gonna confess in that day. It
wasn't me that had the strength to put down one sinful lust. I've proven over and over and
over to myself that I can't do it. My strength is in the Lord. My
flesh was mortified, and I was turned to Him alone each and
every time by Him, and I can't boast that I did it one time.
Not one time. It was not me who had strength
to do one good work. If I did any good work from the
time He called me to the end of my life, if I did any good
work whatsoever, the Lord worked it in me. And most of probably, this is
what we confess to, most of what we thought was a good work wasn't,
because we thought it was. I didn't even recognize the good
ones. But if I did one, he did it. And you confess that, that's
what his people confessed. I didn't have strength to keep
myself. I didn't have strength to preserve myself in faith.
I didn't have strength to raise myself from the grave. The Lord
is my strength. He did it all. Now, all that's
true. All that's true. But this means
a whole lot more than that. A whole lot more than that. Now, right now, and in that day,
when you stand before God, when you stand before the Lord, we're
going to confess that none of those things, though Christ made
us do those things, to some degree or another, we're going to confess
none of those things are our perfection before God. None of
them. In the Lord, in the Lord, in
the Lord have our righteousness and strength. He's my strength
for acceptance with God. He's my strength to represent
me as my intercessor with God. He's my strength for which God
receives me and accepts me. He's my strength who called me
and raised me and brought me to there. He's my strength. He's
the one who's the advocate who will do all the talking. He's
the one that'll represent me. He's my strength and he's my
righteousness. He has always been my perfect
holiness alone and He is my perfect righteousness alone in the Lord. I know that won't go with all
the doctrinal men that want to tell you what sanctification
is. I don't much care about that anymore. This is the truth of
the matter. Christ is my sanctification and
He is my righteousness. And that's what God's people
confess. In the Lord have our righteousness,
and in the Lord have our strength. Even to Him shall men come. The
Lord said, surely, even to Him shall men come. By God's grace
right now, every one of those Christ redeemed shall be drawn
to Christ by the Father, by the Spirit, by the Lord Jesus. They'll
all be brought to Christ, and they'll all be granted faith
to believe Him, and they'll be kept to the end. They'll all
come to Him. But He's talking about today a judgment, brethren.
He said, you'll never be ashamed. You'll never be ashamed. You
ever picture that day when you see Christ as He is? You ever
picture that day and think you're going to be afraid and coward
and all of that? Well, you're not going to be
proud and puffed up. But you're not going to be ashamed.
You're not going to be ashamed. This is what the Lord is saying
right here. And that day, by His grace, we're going to come
to Him. We're going to come to Him. And we're not going to be ashamed
to say, in Him, in Him, all my righteousness
and all my strength's in Him. You're not going to be ashamed
to say that that day. Surely we shall confess in the
Lord have our righteousness and strength, even to Him shall men
come." But now listen, listen. It's going to be different right
now and it will be different in that day for those that try
to look at something in themselves and trust something in themselves.
Verse 24, all that are incensed against Him shall be ashamed.
All, there are no exceptions here. All that are incensed against
him shall be ashamed. This word incensed means enmity.
That's what it means. Anger, enmity, hatred. Do you
remember Ephesians 2? It tells us what Christ accomplished,
how He abolished the enmity for His elect. Do you remember that?
Listen to this from Ephesians 2.15. Christ came and abolished
in His flesh the enmity, us being incensed. He abolished
it. Even the law of commandments
contained in ordinances to make of two One new man, so making
peace. He made all his people one by
making peace for us, by fulfilling the law for us completely. And
that's how he destroyed the enmity between us. We were using the
law, we hated God, we hated one another, and he was using the
law to exalt ourselves above everybody, including the Lord.
In his Sermon on the Mount, Christ declared the Pharisees were breaking
the law, and they were teaching others to break the law, by teaching
men they could keep the law. That's exactly what he was saying.
That whole sermon is a bit of a parable, and men don't understand
it, and you can listen to them tell they don't understand it.
But the Lord in that parable is given a spiritual meaning
of the law. He used the ceremony and spiritualized
it. He's the brother who has the
heart against us. But he told them He said to everybody
he was preaching to, you have to have a righteousness that
exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees.
They thought they were the most righteous men in the world because
they thought they were keeping the law. And then he declared
this. He declared the first law he taught in spirit was the law
of murder. He said, they say that it's just
an outward act. He said, I say to you, if you've
got an angry thought in your heart without a cause, you're
guilty. And he was talking to the Pharisees.
He was talking to all of us, but he was talking to the Pharisees.
In all their boasts of obedience, they manifest their hearts for
enmity against Christ. In all their law keeping, it
was being incensed against Christ. In all thinking they're righteous,
it's enmity against Christ. He's saying, I don't need Christ
to make me righteous. I can do it. I don't need Him
to make me holy. I can do it. Look at me. Look
how good I am. I can do it. I don't need Him.
Don't tell me I need Him. I hate that message. That's what
they were saying. And later on he told them that
plainly. In John 8.40 he said, Now you seek to kill me. A man
has told you the truth. He said, and I heard that truth
of God. He said, if God were your father, you'd love me. You
wouldn't be hating me, you wouldn't be incensed against me, you wouldn't
be trying to kill me, you'd love me. And he said, you can't understand
my speech because you can't hear my word because my word has no
place in you. He hadn't been born of me, that's
what he told him. But he told him this, he said, you have your
father the devil, and the lust of your father will do. He was
a murderer from the beginning, a murderer, and you're sitting
here trying to kill me. By all your whitewashed law keeping. And he said, he abode not in
the truth. When he heard Christ was gonna
get all the glory as a God man, he would not have it, and God
cast him out of glory. And when he speaketh a lie, listen
now, he speaketh of his own, that's important. When he speaks
a lie, he speaks of his own. Of course he's speaking, he's
not getting the word from God, of course, he's speaking of his
own. But he speaks of his own, he boasts of himself. If you
hear a man boasting of his righteousness, and his sanctification, and his
works, and his abilities, and his power, that's a devilish
spirit. He's speaking of himself. He's
speaking about himself. He's exalting himself. That's
what the devil does. That's what he makes men to do. And he said, because I tell you
the truth, you believe me not. You believe that lie. If it's
telling you you can be holy and righteous by your works, you'll
believe that lie. But when I tell you I'm the only righteous in
the area, you won't believe me. Which of you convinces me of
sin? He said in the Sermon on the Mount, you're angry with
a brother without a cause. He said, which of you convinces
me of sin? What do you have to be angry
about? That's what he said. He said, and if I say the truth,
why don't you believe me? And what did they answer? They
showed him right then exactly what had been in their heart
the whole time. They answered the Jews and said, say we not,
well, you're a Samaritan and you have a devil. He brought it out of their heart,
didn't he? The word is the discerner of the thoughts and intents of
the heart. And by simply declaring the truth to them, he made them
confess, we hate you. And we think you're a godless,
reprobate fool. That's what they were saying.
And in that Sermon on the Mount, he said, and if you call a man
a fool, call him a godless, hell-deserving fool. He said, you're in danger
of hell. And he was speaking about himself
and what they were thinking in their hearts about him. That's
exactly what he was saying. You mean that's really what men
think that are trying to come to God by their works? Listen,
the preaching of the cross is to them that perish. What? Foolishness. Why is the gospel of Christ to
him crucified being the only righteousness, the only strength,
holiness, everything these people need? Why is that foolishness
to them? Because they're looking at the one on that cross and
saying, he has a devil. He's a fool. That's what the
Pharisees said. And that's what men have said
in their heart. Men will say, well, I never hated God like
that. You might not have ever vented it like that. But I guarantee
you, if you're trying to come to God and trust in anything
you're doing, it's just that vow. That's how he sees it. This is what he said through
Paul. Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth
to be wise in this world, if he thinks he's wise, if he thinks
he can do this work himself and bring himself to God himself
and do all this himself, he said, let him become a fool. That's
the same word the Lord used in the Sermon on the Mount. What's
the Lord teaching you? You want to be wise? You hit
your face before Christ and you confess, I'm the one that's ungodly. I need mercy. Rather than calling Him, just
that, and confessing yourself to be wise. And that day of judgment,
I'm out of time, I'm gonna just hurry, but in that day of judgment,
he said, all that are incensed against him should be ashamed. They're incensed against him
right now. They're angry at him right now. They don't look like
it. They're saying Jesus this and
Jesus that, and they're going about washing their white outward
exterior. But in their heart is full of
dead men's bones, full of hatred, incest against Christ. You tell them what Christ told
them and you'll find out that's so. He can bring it out. His Word brings it out. But in
that day, meeting Christ, they're going to be ashamed of their
idols. He said, they shall be ashamed. And in fact, he said
in Isaiah, the loftiness of man is going to be bowed down, the
haughtiness of man is going to be made low, and the Lord alone
is going to be exalted in that day. And in that day a man is
going to cast his idols of silver and gold which he made for himself
to worship, he is going to cast them to the moles and to the
bats. This is what the sad thing is,
he is still trying to save himself. He's still trying to appear like
he never worshipped an idol. He's going to try to get rid
of them so God don't see them. And not only that, he's going
to go into the clefts of the rocks and the ragged rocks for
fear of the Lord for the glory of His majesty when the Lord
arises to shake terribly the earth. He's going to try to take
refuge in the mountain and beg rocks to fall on him. He's still
trying to save himself from the majesty of the Lord. Why is he so ashamed? Remember
when after Adam's sin and God found him in the trees and he
called him to himself? And he said, why are you hiding
in these trees, Adam? And Adam said, I heard your voice
in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked. And I hid
myself. You'd imagine if right now, in
front of the whole world, just all of a sudden out of the blue,
boom! You were just butt naked in front of everybody. Well, in that day, God's going
to open the books. Remember the books? Every thought,
every word, every dig is going to be brought forth and it's
all going to be sin and man's not going to have a covering
because he don't have Christ's righteousness. He did not believe
Christ and he's going to be ashamed. And then God's going to put him
to real shame. God's going to speak the verdict,
going to declare him guilty, and going to sentence him to
a life, a living eternal death in hell, cast out forever. All because he was trying to
come to God by the works of the law. Well, I don't do that, preacher.
I don't even know what the law says. I'm not trying to come
by you still doing the same thing because you're trusting something
about yourself if you hadn't believed on Christ. That's all
there is to it. Now, what I want you to see in
that, God's righteous. God does everything righteous.
God's election of grace, His predestination of His people,
it's done in righteousness, not based on any works in us, but
it is based on the righteousness of Christ. And so it is when
God damns a man, God does it based on that man's own unrighteous
works and condemns him. The wages of sin, the wages of
sin that men earn is death. God does not save anybody arbitrarily
and He doesn't damn anybody arbitrarily. He does everything in righteousness.
And when you discern this word, you discern it that way. What's
righteous? What gives Him the glory of being
righteous? That's how you can discern it.
An earthly judge that judged arbitrarily, and he condemned
innocent men, and he cleared guilty murderers. We'd all say,
that's an unjust judge. Well, God doesn't do that. He
does it all in righteousness. And if you're saved, it's going
to be by grace, by the righteousness of Christ alone, the strength
of Christ alone. And if you're condemned, it's
going to be because you tried to come to God and them splendid
whitewashed holy works that God said are nothing but wicked vile
sin. Now lastly, for you that He brings
to Him and you trust Christ, He's going to give the verdict.
Now let me say this to you before I get to this part. Before you
hear this, you sitting here and don't know God, bow to Him today. You say, well, I can't do anything
without Him. You're saying that I have to
have Him or nothing else. I tell you the best thing to
do, do what He said. Become the fool. Hit your face
before Him and confess, I'm the guilty ungodly sinner and I must
be found in you or I can't be saved. I guarantee you what you'll
find if you do that, mercy and free forgiveness. No doubt about
it. He never turned anybody away
that came to him confessing themselves to be the fool. But anybody that
comes trying to say they're the wise, uh-uh. But now for you that he's given
faith to trust Christ, to confess you're the sinner and you have
to have Christ, in that day, God says, here's the verdict.
I'm going to hand down the verdict, the judgment. In the Lord shall
all the seed of Israel be justified. Everybody, that God's going to
open the one book, the Lamb's Book of Life, and He's going
to look there, and all He's going to see is all the perfect, righteous,
holy works Christ did, His Son did, and He's going to see that
you did everything, and He's going to look at you, and He
said, here's my verdict. You have done everything perfect
and thought, word, and deed. You was holy in the womb. You
was holy all your life. You was holy all the way to me. You've been perfect and righteous
and holy and all. Justified. All because Christ did it. And
here's the sentence. He gonna give the unjust man
a sentence, but here's the sentence he's gonna give for his child.
Verse 25 at the end, and in the Lord shall all the seed of Israel
glory. He's going to pass down the verdict,
justify it, and he's going to say, now I sentence you to an
eternity of glory with my son. And you know what you're going
to do? for all eternity, you're going to glory in the Lord. That's what all these people... We're glorying in Him now, we're
going to glory in Him when we give account in that day, and
we're going to glory in Him all our days. Because He did it all.
He did it all. Now this is the sure, certain
Word of God. He said this is... His Word's
gone out of my mouth in righteousness, it won't return to me, it's come
in the past. Every knee's going to bow and
every tongue's going to confess. which camp you are going to be
in. This is a day of grace. It will
be too late then. And I am telling you something,
it could be today. But at some point, you go home
tonight and you read, let me see where that is set. You read
Revelation 6, 12 through 17. He said one day the heavens are
going to roll back like a scroll and the mountains are going to
shake, everything is going to be shaken out of its place and everybody
is coming out. Men that died hundreds of years
ago, all coming before the bar judgment, we're going to all
stand before him. You don't want to wait till that
day. Trust him today. Trust him today. You'll find
mercy. You'll find grace. And you that
believe Him, don't stop looking. And you won't. Here's what He
said. They shall be ashamed and confounded, all of them that
shall go to confusion together that are makers of idols. But
Israel, look at verse 17. Israel shall be saved in the
Lord with an everlasting salvation. You shall not be ashamed nor
confounded, world, without Him. That's good. That's my hope. That's all my hope. Alright,
Brother Greg. Thank you.