I'm going to turn back to the
book of Hebrews. I want to focus a lot of our attention here on
verses 12 through 14 today. Verses 12 through 14 of Hebrews
chapter 9. There are a number of things
I want to say at the outset here to help introduce the importance
and the subject matter as well as the object here of what's
being said in these verses. I would say this, that all of
man's religion in this world is designed to solve the problem
of human sin. And yet, all of man's religion
does it by pointing the solution to man himself. And in this chapter,
you can see that God points, He doesn't mention our participation
at all. Jesus Christ is the high priest
in the Old Testament, which was a figure. of the true. In the Old Testament, only the
high priest could enter into the tabernacle to perform that
once a year offering of the blood on the mercy seat. And when the
high priest did that, atonement was made. There was no maybe
about it. It was done that day. And the
people were all without. They were told to stay outside
and to simply wait. The high priest accomplished
the whole work. And so here we see in this chapter that Jesus
Christ accomplished the entire work of our salvation by himself. This is absolutely necessary.
First, because God required it. Second, because we could not,
we had already failed and do fail now. We're entirely sinners. There's nothing good in us, scripture
says. There's none good, no, not one.
There's none righteous, no, not one. None that understands. We've
all gone out of the way and we are guilty before God. That's
the conclusion of God's law. And so therefore we couldn't
do it. We couldn't even help do it. Anything we tried to do
would have been a sinful contribution. So that's the first thing we
see here is that the problem of human sin could only be solved
by the one against whom we've sinned, God himself. And he did
that at the highest cost. He bore the full cost and paid
the full cost when he gave his son. And Jesus Christ gave himself,
offered himself to God for our sins. And so the message here is about
Jesus Christ and him crucified. It's not about what we did. It's not about what we ought
to do. It directs us entirely to him. But I say this at the
outset because of two things. First of all, this is the truth
that explains all of Scripture. In fact, this is the truth all
of Scripture is given to teach. When you pick up the Bible and
read it, you look at it, it's daunting, it's intimidating.
You'd be lucky, or I say lucky, you'd be doing well if you could
actually read through all of the Bible. And then after you've
read it, You're just swimming in a sea of information. You don't know how to put it
together. This is the truth that ties it all together. This is
the clarifying truth of all of scripture. This is the whole
purpose of the revelation of scripture. God is going to glorify
his son by the work his son did to save his people from their
sins. But not only is it the clarifying
truth, the revelation of all of scripture, but it's something
else too. It's the one truth that silences all of false religion. Both of these things are set
side by side. So not only when throughout scripture when Jesus
would preach, he would hold up the truth, but he would also
speak against the error. And so here we have to deal with
that as well. We're going to see here in this simple text
of scripture here what's all important in our salvation, what's
all important to God, what's all of our worship and all of
our living is about, it's about trusting the Lord Jesus Christ
as all of our cleansing from sin and all of our righteousness
before God, all of our merit and all that we inherit from
God is in Jesus Christ. alone. Period. End of discussion. That's it. We contribute nothing
except our sin. God does everything by his Son.
But in saying this, Scripture not only holds forth this light,
but that is actually a sword that puts to death everything
that would oppose the glory of God in Jesus Christ and the salvation
of his people. And so I want to hold these two
things in contrast as we go through this today. First of all, I want
to hold in contrast the outside of me work of Jesus Christ. When did he live? long before
we were born, over 2,000 years ago. What did he do? Whatever
he did, we weren't there to do it. Why did he do it? Because we were sinners. Though
we weren't born yet, we were going to be sinners. We were
sinners in Adam, and we were sinners in practice when we were
born, proved ourselves to be sinners. Everything we do, everything
we think, all of our motives, our words, our actions, is full
of sin. And so he had to do something. God had to do something by another. But these things that the Lord
Jesus Christ did were outside of our history. Religion wants
to make your experience in life the whole issue. If I could summarize,
and the Bible does this, but if I could summarize, there's
two things held up in the Bible, the truth and error. And two
people are always contrasted. There's Cain and there's Abel.
There's the Pharisee, there's the publican, and so on down
the line. There's the Pharisees and the
woman taking in adultery. There's Jesus Christ and all
of man's attempts to come to God another way. And so what God does here, he
holds up to us the history of his son in our nature as our
high priest to accomplish our salvation as the Lamb of God,
the one who sacrificed himself. And that's all in contrast to
our own personal experience, which is full of sin. And the
best we do in religion is to try to be spiritual. And we focus
on our own thoughts. We focus on our own activities.
I'm going to read the Bible. I'm going to go to church. I'm
going to turn from my sins. I'm going to believe. I'm going
to accept Jesus. I'm going to ask Jesus into my
heart. I'm going to make a decision. I'm going to go down the aisle.
I'm going to get baptized. I'm going to give some money.
All those things are what we do. None of those things count
one thing towards our salvation. In fact, they're full of sin.
God has to reject all of them. Our faith itself is never going
to be perfect in this life. Repentance is never complete.
It's never perfect. You cannot trust that. You can't
trust your dedication or your commitment or your devotion or
your worship or your prayers or your tears or your sorrows
or your sincerity. As soon as you start looking
within, then you do a couple of things. You expect to find
something within that God can accept, which he never will.
But you also take away the focus that God has put on his son as
the only one who is righteous. And so the message of this text
of scripture and all of scripture is always pointing us outside
of ourselves to Jesus Christ and what he did as all of our
salvation and then telling us to look to Him. Look away from
all that you are as a sinner and all that you think that you
are as in your good works and find your all in Christ. And
that's done here in two places. In verse 12, notice this. I'll
read verse 11. But Christ, being common high
priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect
tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building,
neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood,
he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal
redemption for us. Jesus Christ, gave himself as
a sacrifice, laying his life down, shedding his own blood,
because that was the punishment our sins deserved. When he cried
from the cross, My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me? He
was enduring the wrath of God that was due to us for our sins.
You want to understand what hell is? That's what hell is. It's
the forsaking of God and bringing upon us that isolation from God
and forsaking of God and that torture of conscience knowing
we're guilty before God with no escape. That's what Jesus
Christ experienced for his people. He endured the wrath of God for
them. That's why his blood was shed. He gave all of himself. He held back nothing, and he
didn't do it for himself, but for them, for God, to glorify
God, to save us from our sins. So he did this once because only
once was necessary. He gave all of himself. What
could he give more? And God accepted it, so everything
God required was done then. When Jesus Christ died on the
cross, all that God required for our eternal redemption was
paid. The price, the ransom of Himself
was given to God and we were set free. That's what redemption
means, being set free from a debt, being let go from a prison, released
from all bondage to liberty. Christ's blood obtained it. You
see here, He obtained eternal redemption when he offered his
blood. So what does that say about the
work? It says you didn't do it. It says it was done in history.
The gospel is a historical account. It's not a present day experience.
It's the historical account of what Christ did and what God
thinks or thought about it then and continues to think about
it. And the gospel is preached to us so that we take the same
attitude towards it as God does. We view it in the light of what
God has said about it. And we're persuaded of it and
live according to what God has said. We don't look for some
kind of a miracle within. We look to Christ. And the work
of the Spirit of God in us points us to Christ outside of us and
for us. And that's what the next verse
is gonna say here. Look at verse 13. For if the
blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling
the unclean, sanctifyeth, or cleanses, or makes holy, to the
purifying of the flesh, only their outward bodies were cleansed
by those animal sacrifices. And it was only sufficient for
them to do that typical, that shadowy, figurative work that
looked forward to what Christ would actually do. It wasn't
holy in itself, it was holy because it looked forward to what Christ
would actually do. And so those animal sacrifices
only made them clean to do that work. that shadow of things to
come. But look at verse 14, very significant. If those things only cleansed
or did clean, cleaned them up so that they could do that service,
that earthly service in a tabernacle on earth, how much more, verse
14, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal
spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience
from dead works to serve the living God. His blood, meaning his life given,
in substitution he took the place of his people, and God poured
out upon him the justice his law demanded for their sins,
and his blood was shed. And then he, by the Spirit of
God, by his divine nature, Entered heaven itself and offered that
blood to God and God accepted it So he says how much more shall
the blood of Christ who through the eternal spirit offered himself
without spot. He had no sin Without spot to
God it had to be perfect and he was perfect Purge or clean
your conscience from dead works to serve the Living God What
are dead works? anything done by us with a view
to gaining acceptance from God by what we do. Anything we do
is full of sin. God can't accept it. Only Christ's
work is acceptable to God. And his work was a submission
in obedience to the will of God that he bear our sins and suffer
for them. His work was a complete offering
of himself in sacrifice to God. It cost him his life, cost him
his suffering, cost him his prayers, his tears, his sorrows. Everything
that we think that we can provide to God, he did. because we could
never do anything. But because he did this, notice
what he says, it will purge your conscience from dead works to
serve the living God. You see, what Jesus did obtained
our eternal redemption for us, but that redemption, that freedom,
from sin, that freedom from God's law, that freedom from the condemnation
of God's law, that comes to us when the Spirit of God takes
what the Lord Jesus Christ obtained and He gives it to us. And how
does He do that? How does God give us what Christ
accomplished? He gives us faith. Faith sees
it as a fact. Faith sees it as the thing God
has said. And faith sees that all of my
sin and all of my obedience that God requires in his law was fully,
my sin was fully put away, and my obedience was fully fulfilled
in what Jesus Christ did completely outside of my own personal experience. Faith looks away from itself
to Christ alone, and faith sees God's acceptance of him, and
in his acceptance, sees my own acceptance. That's the way the
Spirit of God does this. He persuades us, he causes us
to understand and persuades us that Christ for me, outside of
me, is all of my righteousness before God. So perfectly holy
and righteous I am that God looks upon me in his Son and sees his
perfections for me. That's what faith does. That's
incredible grace, isn't it? And so I say, again, this truth
explains all of scripture. And this truth silences all of
man's religion. It discovers and it exposes and
uncovers all of the errors of man's religion. And the failure
to preach and believe this truth as the central and all important
truth of scripture, that failure has led to every error in this
world in religion. any departure from this and clinging
to something that adds to it or elevates itself above it or
in comparison to it. Anything that does that is detracting
from Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And in the experience of the
believer's life, all of our trials Under all of the trouble of sickness
and sorrow and tears and our own guilt and condemnation, all
are intended by God to serve this purpose, to bring us to
recognize ourselves to be sinners and having only one hope, that
God would receive me for Christ's sake alone. That's the purging
of our conscience. It's the application of what
Christ did in heaven to my own mind and conscience. So that
in my conscience, I can say with confidence, God has accepted
his son. And it was God's will to lay
upon him the iniquity of us all, and to obtain from Him the obedience
we could never render. And in washing our sins from
us, and in fulfilling our righteousness for us in His Son, He can now
bless us with everlasting life, because He has received from
us, through Christ, an everlasting righteousness. Because of His
righteousness we are given life, and His righteousness is everlasting,
therefore our life, because of Him, is eternal. And all the
blessings God gave to His Son, He gives to us because of Him.
That's what's called here the eternal inheritance. Now, I want
to just go through some of the errors, or actually some of the
truth of Scripture that this clarifies so that you can see
what I'm saying about this. This is the revelation of Scripture,
and also it is the exposure of all the error. It's so important
here. This is why we preach what? Jesus
Christ and Him crucified. That's the Apostle Paul said,
I determine not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ
and Him crucified. He says, I have no boast but
in the cross of Jesus Christ my Lord by whom the world is
crucified to me and I and to the world. So, The first thing
we want to understand here is that in the Old Testament, all
of the Old Testament history taught this lesson. All of the
history of the Old Testament was given to teach us this lesson.
How God justifies sinners for Christ's righteousness. Let me
say that again. It's how God... Think about this. You were doing... Your mom and
dad told you, don't do that. You did it. And then you appear
before them, and you're standing there, and you're trying to come
up with something to excuse yourself, or something to give a reason
why you acted the way you did. I didn't really mean to do it.
Or, well, I had a better motive in mind. You could think of a
number of reasons, and we're really good at doing what? Justifying
ourselves. We want to give a defense for
ourselves. We want to give an evidence of why we should be
cleared or why we deserve the blessing. We're good at this. But no one can be justified in
the presence of God by what they do, by what they think, by what
they say. No one can. None of our works can justify
us. All of our works will condemn us. But, and here's the glorious
truth of Scripture, what Jesus Christ did actually does justify
all those for whom he did it. He does justify us. And so, this
truth of the justification of God's people because of the righteousness,
the blood and righteousness of his Son, is the truth of all
of Scripture. Now, consider these. In the Old
Testament, Adam and Eve fell into sin. What was the first
thing that happened? The devil was the one who tempted
Eve and the devil was the arch enemy. He tried to murder the
entire human race. What did God do? He spoke to
the devil and he says, the seed of the woman is gonna bruise
the head of the serpent. What was he referring to? He
was referring to the cross. Jesus Christ in his human nature
would be put to death. That's the bruising of his heel.
But the head of the serpent, Satan himself, would be destroyed
in his death. That was the first promise of
God concerning Christ. And then what happened? Adam
and Eve had a son named Cain, followed by another son named
Abel. Cain brought to God in worship the labor of his hands,
the sweat of his brow. He brought from the earth the
fruit of the ground. God rejected it. No, I'm not going to accept
that. Abel brought the lamb slain from
his flock. God accepted Abel because of
the lamb. What was God teaching? that all
of our works, no matter how much we work and sweat and toil, no
matter whether our goal is to do it just for our own food or
to worship God, all of it counts for nothing. Only the blood of
the Lamb makes us acceptable in the sight of God. So there's
Cain and Abel, two people. And this is all of people, this
is all of religion. First came false religion and
what we are naturally. We try to come to God by what
we do. We try to get God to consider how sincere we are or consider,
you know, people will say, you ask somebody, how are you gonna
stand before God? How is God gonna accept? Well,
he'll have to consider my good works and I hope that my good
works will outweigh my bad works. You will go to hell for that.
because you're trying to mix your work with something else. And that will never work. God
can only accept his son, the blood of the lamb. That's the
obedience God required. That's the sacrifice God required
to satisfy his justice for his people. And so you go through
all the Old Testament, it's like this. Remember how God delivered
Noah and his family from the flood? He put them in the ark. The ark is the Lord Jesus Christ.
The pitch on the ark is his atoning blood. And God saved all in the
ark. Everyone outside the ark was
destroyed because only in Christ can we be saved. And Lot, remember
Abraham's nephew, Lot? He was saved out of Sodom and
Gomorrah, a sinful place. What does this mean? It means
that God saves his people, even though they're sinful, out of
a sinful world. He saved all the Israelites out
of Egypt. All the ones God set His love
on, He saved them out of Egypt. This is showing how God saves
His elect people out of this world from sin. And how did He
do it? By the blood of the Passover
lamb. And we could just go on and on through Scripture. Everything
Scripture teaches is pointing to the blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ. The righteousness of God by which
He blesses and saves His people. And in our teaching and preaching,
we try to set up these things called doctrines. Here's the
important doctrines. We're going to talk about the
Trinity. We're going to talk about human depravity and the
law of God. We're going to talk about election.
We're going to talk about the human nature and the divine nature
of Christ. And we're going to talk about
the end times and final judgment. So we put this list together,
and there's maybe half a dozen items on the list. And we look
at that, this is what we believe. But all of it comes down, all
of it is explained in this one truth. What God did in Christ. You see, think about this one
first, the Trinity. The Trinity, you've heard about
it. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, the three
in one, the one in three. Right, one God in three persons.
And those three are one, and it's true. But notice, Turn with
me to Romans, and you can do this through many places in Scripture,
but look at this verse here in Romans, chapter 3. In Romans,
chapter 3, and verse 24, it says this, and I want you to see the
Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit,
in the truth of Jesus Christ and Him crucified as our eternal
salvation. Notice. Romans chapter 3 verse
23 says, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
There we are. We're all sinners. No one can
raise himself up above the other. No one can say, I know I'm a
worm, but I'm a better worm than that slimy beast over there.
Right? We can't do that. Why? Because
we're not compared to worms. We're compared to God. Notice
in verse 24. Remember justification. What
does it mean? It means that God clears us.
It means that God declares us to be righteous in his sight.
Notice, how do we become justified? How are we gonna stand before
God in judgment and God will clear us? That's the big question,
isn't it? Isn't that the burning question in your conscience?
How am I gonna stand before God? What answer can I possibly give
God so that he will not damn me, but accept me into heaven,
into glory? This is what you hear at every
graveside review of a man's life. Well, he was a good guy. I mean,
look how he treated his children, or his wife, or his neighbors.
He was a good man in his job, and all these things. And they
preach up the man's goodness. And they say, therefore, I know
he's looking down on us now. He's a really great guy, and
we're glad to have him looking down on us. I'm sure that he
approves of everything we're doing. It's just a bunch of religion. It has no basis in the truth.
Here's the truth. This is what God says. And this
is the problem with religion. There's two things that happen
with religion. We take the objective, revealed word of God, and we
set it aside. And then we take what Christ
has done, and our only righteousness in Him, and we consider that
not as important as what's happening on the inside of us. Notice here,
this is the issue, verse 24, being justified, that means declared
righteous by God himself, clear of all sin, having fulfilled
all of God's law. That's what righteousness is.
He's perfect in my sight. That's what righteousness is.
Being justified, how? Freely, without any cause found
in us. That's what freely means. No
cause found in us. Being justified freely by His
grace. Whose grace? The grace of God
the Father. Why does He justify us? Freely,
because He is gracious. He did it out of His own uninfluenced,
unchanging, eternal purpose. His will, not ours, being justified
freely by His grace, God the Father, through the redemption
that is in Christ Jesus, God the Son, there's His blood shed,
and our redemption, our freedom, our liberty, our release, our
remission, our forgiveness, all obtained in His blood, being
justified out of God's grace, through or on the basis of the
redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God has set forth
to be a propitiation, notice, through faith in his blood. Where does that come from? What
is it? Faith in his blood means I, as
a sinner, finding myself guilty and condemned before God and
having no hope to do one thing about it, I hear what God says
concerning what Christ did, and I'm fully persuaded that is all
my salvation. And I gladly embrace and venture
my eternal destiny on what He did. Horatius Bonar said this,
upon a life I did not live, upon a death I did not die, another's
life. Another's death, I stake my whole
eternity. That's what faith is. And where
does that faith come from? It does not come from ourselves.
It is the gift of God. God gives us. He explains the
gospel to us so that we understand it. Christ for me, a substitute. God provided. God found him.
God accepted him. And he is all my salvation. We
not only understand it, we're persuaded. This is the truth
for me as a sinner. And I run into God's presence,
holding to the truth He revealed that Christ has done it all for
me. And I lay, even though I'm a sinful person, even though
in my life I see sin in everything I do, I don't lose hope because
God accepts Christ for me and blesses me for his sake alone.
That's what faith is. It looks away from myself to
see all done in Christ. He obtained eternal redemption
for us. Now my conscience is clear because
of what he did, not because of what I can do or will be someday. Not by my cesareity, not my baptism,
not my faithful church attendance, not my giving, not my witnessing,
nothing from me. I look away to Christ and Him
only. So to summarize it down to what
it's been condensed to from this verse, it's by grace alone, the
grace of the Father, through Christ alone, the blood of the
Son, through faith alone, without any contribution from me, finding
my all in Christ by God-given faith through the Spirit of God.
God the Father, God the, so here we see the Trinity, don't we?
In our salvation. Justification by the blood of
Christ, given to us through God-given faith, That's the explaining
truth of all of scripture. It explains the Trinity. What
does it say about our sin? Well, what could it say more
about our sin than that the price necessary for God to accept us
and to bless us was the blood of his own son? What does that
say about God's holiness? And what does that say about
the evil of my own heart, that God would require the death of
his son for us? Grace alone means to be accepted
in spite of being unacceptable. Grace and mercy, mercy means
that God withholds from me the judgment I deserve and grace
means he gives to me the life I don't deserve. Mercy means he withholds from
me the judgment I deserve because he brought that judgment on his
son and grace means that he gives to me not what I deserve, but
the righteousness that Christ deserves. And all of this was
done by God the Father. It came from his own idea. I
didn't influence him, didn't motivate, didn't coerce him.
And I don't do anything to meet the condition for it. He did
it all. Christ alone. So grace means
to be accepted in spite of my being unacceptable. And Christ
alone means that we have absolutely no righteousness before God but
Jesus Christ himself. And faith alone means that we
confess the only thing that we have is Christ. All of our goodness
is found in him. You see, here we have the Trinity
and we have human depravity laid out. It cost God a sacrifice
so great that the sacrifice contained all of the accumulated treasure
of eternity. He gave his son over to the murderer's
hand. And this is the only context,
the only biblical context, in which we can understand and deal
with the condition of our own heart, what God had to pay to
release us from His justice, to reconcile us to Himself, to
remove our offense, the blood of His own Son. When we were
yet enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son,
being justified by His blood. Romans 8, chapter 5, verse 9
and 10. And we could go on. Notice how
the justifying work of Christ's blood and righteousness explains
the end times as well. You wonder, how could that possibly
be? Well, because it explains what's gonna happen at the end.
In Romans chapter five and verse 21, it says this, as sin has
reigned unto death, that's what sin does. Sin, like a tyrant,
brings us to death. Sin causes God to pay us back
with death. As sin has reigned to death,
Romans 5.21, even so might grace reign like a king, how? Through righteousness unto what? Eternal life, how? By Jesus Christ
our Lord. It was the righteousness of Jesus
Christ our Lord that God in grace causes us to live with everlasting
life because of his obedience. and His blood. And sin is dethroned,
and God's grace is set on the throne, and the basis of His
justice is Christ's blood. And the reward we're given is
the reward Christ earned for us. He did it. We didn't. So the final judgment
is what? That the one who believes Christ
shall live. That's the final judgment. The
one who was raised because of our justification and who ascended
to glory at God's right hand because of Him, we are given
a clear view of what's going to happen at the end. What's
going to happen? This is what's going to happen.
There is therefore now no condemnation for those which are in Christ
Jesus. Romans 8, chapter 8, verse 1.
And it says this, that the saints shall be glorified together with
Christ. That's what's going to happen. While it also says that he who
believes is justified unto eternal life, it says this, that he who
does not believe is condemned already. and that God's wrath
abides on him. So we understand what's going
to happen at the end, don't we? God is going to save his people
to the uttermost by Jesus Christ. He's going to present them to
himself without fault, without blame, perfect in the presence
of his glory, with exceeding joy. He gave them faith. They look to Christ. They're
completely aligned. They're in total agreement. This
is all that matters. But to all who in their own self-righteousness
and pride continue on in unbelief, well, they get what they wanted.
They get justice. They get justice. They get to
stand before God with the defense their own minds can produce or
their own lives can try to make. So you see these things. Now
there's many false religions in the world, and we could go
through and catalog them and address each one, which we don't
have time to do right now. That's like somebody said, it's
like an octopus that have many legs, many tentacles on their
legs, but there's only one thing that will actually kill the octopus,
and it's Christ and him crucified. It's the righteousness imputed
by God out of his pure grace, the righteousness Christ Jesus
worked out and given to us. But let me try to summarize all
of false religion. Because all religion, if you've
experienced it, drives you to look at yourself. You're always
looking to yourself, have I done enough? Did I do the right thing? Let me answer that for you right
away. No. You didn't, you failed. We're
all gonna stand before God if we stand in ourselves as guilty. And anything you try to find
in yourself, did I do enough? If you're honest, you're always
gonna either come up short or if you're dishonest, you're gonna
say, well, you know, in the bigger scheme of things, I didn't do
too bad here. I didn't do as well as this other person. Maybe
I didn't do perfectly. God knows I'm just a man or a
woman. and I'm subject to the same sins as others, but I have
done pretty good. I tried. No, you didn't. You're always looking out for
yourself. You didn't ever worship God. You never did one thing
of all that God requires. Let's be honest here. If we don't
find sin in everything we do, then we're not being honest.
But false religion is always looking for something that I
have done or something that I can present to God that will ultimately
bring God to clear me. Let me give you an example. Look
at Matthew chapter 7. I'm going to take you through
a couple of these. Matthew chapter 7, because some
of these are more familiar. But they're also used by many
in religion today to try to say, no, you're not justified by what
Christ did alone, you're justified by what you do. But here in Matthew
7, verse 15, Jesus is warning against the false prophets, those
who preach something other than Christ and Him crucified. Verse
15, beware of false prophets, he says, which come to you in
sheep's clothing They pretend to be Christ's people, but they're
not. But inwardly, they're ravening
wolves. You shall know them by their
fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?
Even so, every good tree brings forth good fruit, but a corrupt
tree brings forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth
evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.
Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down
and cast into the fire. Wherefore, by their fruit you
shall know them." And right away we think, okay, so we're only
known by what we do, whether we're good or bad. But notice,
he's gonna give a very concrete example here in the next few
verses. Here, let me explain this to
you. In other words, not everyone that says to me, Lord, Lord,
or Jesus is Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but
he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven." And
so right away, men say, well see, it's not what you believe,
it's what you do that makes a difference. That's not true, but I'm gonna
explain that here. Verse 22, many will say to me
in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name?
We were preachers, we were teachers, we were in the church, and we
did it all in Jesus' name. And in thy name have cast out
devils who could do anything greater than that. We were opposed
to the kingdom of Satan, and we did it in your name. And in
thy name did many wonderful works. In thy name have done many wonderful
works. They're talking to the judge of all. They're trying
to give a defense. They're trying to clear themselves.
They're trying to justify themselves. And what do they refer to? Well,
they talk about everything they've done. They make no mention of
God's Son No mention of the high priest. No mention of the sacrifice. No mention of his resurrection
by which God justified him and us. None of that. They talk nothing
about a substitute or a surety of eternal righteousness. They're
completely ignorant of the gospel. They only think how to defend
themselves in terms of what they've done. Notice what Jesus says,
then I will profess to them, I never knew you. It's not like
I knew you once and don't know you now. I never knew you. Depart
from me, you that work iniquity. You are trying to take a legal
system, whatever you make it out to be, and make that the
basis of your acceptance with God, what you did. I'm a preacher. I'm a caster out of devils. I did many wonderful works."
Well, good luck with that, because Jesus will say to them, I never
knew you. Depart, you workers of iniquity,
because you tried to use the law unlawfully. You see? So this is the summation of false
religion here. False religion is always looking
to itself. And if we find ourselves trusting
in ourselves and our own performance, we know right away we're on the
wrong track. We're naturally inclined to do
this. I know I am. Every false religion,
everything that you can find in false religion, I have found
in myself. And you know what the gospel
says? Look away, look to Christ, and find in him your all. So
when the Lord tells us about what Jesus has done as our high
priest, and what he has done as the one offered for us, he
says, this is the cleansing of your conscience. When God, the
Holy Spirit, applies the truth of this to you, and he gives
you faith in Christ alone, then you find all of your acceptance
with God in him, and your conscience is clear. What did he fail at? Not one thing. He did everything
right. He was perfect. He offered himself
without spot to God, you see. We have to hold to this. We have
to cling to the Lord Jesus Christ and not let go of this, this
truth God has revealed in His Son, that my salvation is entirely
in the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is the way we live our
lives. This is the result of all trouble. Romans chapter 5,
verse 5, it says, the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts
through the Holy Ghost which is given to us. Out of the context
of our troubles comes this work of the Holy Spirit that causes
us to consider that when we were yet sinners, without strength,
Christ died for us. Though a man wouldn't die for
a righteous man, Christ died for his enemies. He died for
those who were unrighteous. God had grace on us when we deserved
justice, and he gave to us the blessings of Christ's righteousness. And if we hold to this, we will
not go off track. If we leave this, we're already
in the ditch. Many places in scripture says
essentially this. In 1 John 2.20, it says, you
know all things. In Hebrews 8, chapter 8, verse
10 through 12, it says, and they shall all know the Lord. God
is teaching us the truth here. The wisdom of God is in Jesus
Christ and Him crucified. The power of God is in Jesus
Christ and Him crucified. The righteousness of God is in
Jesus Christ and Him crucified. The holiness for His people is
in Jesus Christ and Him crucified. The redemption of His people
is in Jesus Christ and Him crucified. The glory of God is revealed
in Jesus Christ and Him crucified. The work of God, the eternal
purpose of God, the everlasting covenant of God, all of our eternal
inheritance is in what God has done in His Son. And God, the
Holy Spirit, from the Word of God, bringing this message to
us under the hearing of it, blesses us with this firm persuasion
as a sinner, God, look upon me for Christ's sake alone and receive
me for his sake alone. And this becomes the subject
of our prayers, the object of our hope and expectation, all
of our confidence before God. In fact, we find it in our own
heart, we confess this, this is all my hope. And we fellowship
around this, this is all our delight. You see, the one truth
that explains all of scripture, the one truth scripture explains. and the one dagger that stabs
the heart of all false religion, Jesus Christ and him crucified
for the eternal redemption of his people and faith given to
us to see it so that our conscience is clear before God and we can
worship God, being fully persuaded that what Christ did is all my
acceptance and justification. What a blessing. Every error
in the world is opposed to this. They hate it. They hate Jesus
Christ. Let's pray. Lord, we pray that you would
exalt your Son in our eyes, considering what he did, what he obtained,
and how you've declared it to us to direct us in every aspect
of our lives to consider him and by him come to you and worship
you for his sake. Help us to teach this to our
children. Help us to learn this ourselves. Help us to teach this
and to explain this to our loved ones, our friends. Help us to
declare your glory and what you've done in your son. And Lord, we
pray you'd receive us, considering only what Jesus Christ has done,
who he is for us as our high priest, as the Lamb of God. We
pray, we beseech, we beg you, Lord, give us this faith in him
alone. Take away this hard, hard of unbelief and cause us to melt
before his grace and love and see the glory of your justice
and righteousness fulfilled in him too and your eternal purpose
all accomplished, our eternal inheritance in him. In Jesus'
name we pray, amen.