Romans chapter 5. I want to read verses 1 down through
11. I don't want to look at verses
8 through 11, but I want to begin reading at verse 1 and say a
few things as we make our way down. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, we come to you now and
we thank you so much for Jesus Christ. And we thank you for
the life that we have in him. We thank you for the salvation
that he has brought to us. We thank you, Father, for the
forgiveness of sin, the justification before God. We thank you for
the fellowship that we have with each other, for the time together
that you've gathered us here. Lord, we pray that you would
be in our midst as you've promised. the Holy Spirit would help us
and enable us, not only just to lift up our voices as we just
did, but Lord, that he might also be with us as we listen
to the Word of God, that he might be our instructor, our teacher,
that he might give us understanding, a revelation of the things of
God found here in the Word. Lord, I pray that you'd help
me to speak and to minister this Word, even now and any of the
other brothers that might speak or say anything. Lord, we pray
that you would just guide them and direct them, that you would
keep us from error and that you would only give us the truth
here, Father, that we might speak it, and not speak of our own
wisdom and our own understanding, but we might lean upon Christ
and upon the Spirit of God to give us those things. Father,
we need you here without your presence, without your enabling,
without your option, Lord. We just speak things from our
own understanding and our own mind, and it doesn't profit anything.
So, Father, we just ask that today that you might glorify
your Son in our worship, and we just ask that now in Jesus'
name that we pray. Amen. Romans chapter 5 verse
1 says, Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with
God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, if you remember, and it
was a while since we've been here, but if you remember back,
we need to have context to that verse Chapters 3 and 4 give us
context of what is being talked about right here in verse 1 of
chapter 5. Now, of course, we all know the Bible, whenever
it was written, it wasn't written in chapters and verses. Those
were added for our understanding and quick reference and things
like that. But that wasn't how it was written.
This is a letter that was written to the Romans by Paul. And so
in that letter, it's written in a letter format. He's talking,
writing out his thoughts, Of course, we all know that all
that writing was the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Paul wasn't
just coming up with things to say on his own, and the Holy
Spirit made it sound good. No, the Holy Spirit was giving
him what he needed to write down. These are the very words of God.
The Bible says all Scripture is given by inspiration of God. That means it's breathed out
by God. So when those men wrote, they didn't just write because
God gave them knowledge, and they wrote from that knowledge.
God gave them the words to write. And they wrote down that word,
the Holy Spirit guided them in everything that was being written.
So therefore, in this first verse when we talk about therefore
being justified by faith, the Holy Spirit isn't going to talk
about one way of being justified after He has already, in chapters
3 and 4, talked about how we were actually justified. The
faith that is imbued here in verse 5 is not your believing
in Jesus Christ. We are not justified by believing
in Jesus Christ. We are justified by the faith
of Jesus Christ. We are justified by His faithfulness. It is His act of righteousness
that we were justified. And that's what Romans 3, Romans
4 was all in context about. That we are justified by the
faith of Christ. And a lot of people have taken
that and made that the faith of Christ that has been given
to me to exercise in Him, and therefore we are justified at
the time that we believe on Jesus Christ. And that's not what the
Bible teaches. That's not what the Bible teaches at all. Now,
that's what a lot of tradition has taught, but the Bible doesn't
teach that. The Bible teaches that we are
justified completely and solely by the faithful work and righteousness
of Jesus Christ. It was His obedience to the Father
that brought us the substitutionary obedience that we can't ever
keep. We can't obey God's law, right? So, therefore, we can't
ever be justified. The Bible says that no man will
be justified by the deeds of the law. No man can be justified. Why? Because none of us can keep
the law. I don't care how good you try to keep it, you can't
keep it. Because the righteous requirement
of the law is that every law be kept perfectly all the time.
Now, we can't keep that. So therefore, we need a substitute
to do that on our behalf. And Christ did that. Christ came
and lived perfectly to the law, fulfilling the law as your proxy,
as your substitute, in your place. So His obedience, God takes now
and He applies that to you. You now have completely obeyed
all the law of God because Christ did it for you. Okay? Now, his
obedience, that obedience, that faithfulness to God, that belief
that God would give him all the reward for what he did, that
is what justified us. See, we can't be justified by
anything that we do. Even our own belief in Jesus
Christ doesn't make us righteous before God. It doesn't make us
righteous before God. We account His faithfulness as
our righteousness. That's what Abraham did. Remember
back in Genesis 15 when Abraham believed God and it says, and
he accounted it for righteousness? What did he account it for? What
was the it? The it was the seed. The seed
was accounted. Abraham heard the Gospel that
there was one who would be who would be His righteousness, and
that in Him, that all His children would be made righteous. And
by Him, all His children would be made righteous. And so Abraham
saw that. Remember, the Bible says that
Abraham saw Him from afar off. Abraham saw Christ, and Abraham
believed in God and in what God said, because God cannot lie.
He believed what God said about his righteousness. His righteousness
wasn't in Abraham, It wasn't even in Abraham believing on
God. Abraham accounted or considered,
reckoned his righteousness to be the seed that was to come.
That's what Abraham reckoned to be his righteousness. And
so whenever Paul quotes that in Romans 3 or 4, whenever he
quotes that, he goes back to what Abraham did. Abraham looked
ahead and seen Christ as his righteousness And he didn't account
his trying to work for righteousness or his trying to believe for
righteousness. He accounted Christ for his righteousness. And so now, whenever one believes
upon Jesus Christ, we are justified in the sense that it makes manifest
that we are the children of God, that we are the children of righteousness.
Not that it makes us righteous with God. It is not a righteousness
of our own. Matter of fact, the Bible says
that all of our righteousnesses are as what? Filthy rags. So, again, I always like to make
that distinction. It says righteousnesses, not
our unrighteousnesses. So that means everything that
we do that we think is good or is in a righteous thing towards
God, God counts that as unrighteousness. Why? Because he doesn't accept
anything from this flesh. The only thing he accepts is
what? Christ. The only thing He accepts is
what Christ has done. Nothing that we do. Nothing in
my hands I bring, only to the cross I cling. On Christ is solid. Rock I stand. All other ground
is sinking sand. So if we look inwardly to whether
it is good works or whether it is even our faith, we are always
going to come up short. And you know why? Because I know
every one of you are just like me. My faith waivers. I don't have strong faith all
the time. I don't have perfect faith. I don't have faith, matter
of fact. The faith that I have is not
even mine. It's a gift that God has given to me. It's Him working
in me that faith. So I can't even claim that faith
to be mine. So there is no righteous works
that I do. The only righteous works that
has ever been done is Christ Jesus. justifies. His faithfulness justifies us. We are justified by His life. We are justified by His death.
We are justified by His resurrection. Look those up. Every place that
you find justification, it's going to be by the faith of Christ.
It's going to be by the blood of Christ. It's going to be by
the death of Christ, the resurrection of Christ, by the grace of God. We are justified by something
outside of anything that we do. So when we come to chapter 5
and verse 1, The context of 3 and 4 is screaming very loudly. Therefore, being justified by
Christ's faithfulness, we have peace with God through our Lord
Jesus Christ. See, me believing in Jesus Christ
doesn't bring peace with God. The only thing that brought peace
with God between me and God is through the mediator, because
there's only one mediator between God and man, and that's the man,
Jesus Christ. The only one that can mediate
or intercede for me on behalf of God so that it will make it
where I can have peace with God is Jesus Christ alone. Therefore,
being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our
Lord Jesus Christ. So justification, brethren, isn't
about your faith in Jesus. Justification is about Christ's
work on your behalf, justifying you before God, therefore making
peace with God. Peace was made by God, by Him
justifying you. And He did that through His life,
His death, His resurrection. And, as we'll see here in just
a minute, His ongoing continual life. Verse 2 says, By whom,
meaning Jesus Christ, by whom also we have access by faith
into this grace. Now that access by faith, I think
that goes right back to talking about the faith that we just
talked about. In context there, His faith, by whom also we have
access by His faithfulness. We have access to God by His
faithfulness. How is it that we approach God?
How is it that we can come boldly before the throne of God? Well,
it's only by grace and specifically only by the blood of Jesus Christ,
right? We can only come boldly before the throne of God by the
blood of Jesus Christ. And we can only come to God through
the intercessor, Jesus Christ. Listen, whether it was before
or whether it's after, whether it was in the Old Testament,
whether it's in the New Testament, whether it was before I became
knowledgeable of my salvation or after I became knowledgeable
of my salvation, While I'm alive or after I die, there's only
one way that God has any interaction with me, and that is through
the intercessor or the mediator, Jesus Christ. He is the only
way that we have any kind of access to God, and that's through
Jesus Christ. So here we see, by whom, Jesus
Christ, also we have access by His faithfulness into this grace
wherein we stand. Now take note of that, wherein
we stand. and rejoice in hope of the glory
of God. What does it mean to stand? To
me, now, and I might be wrong, and you brothers are welcome
to correct me on this if I'm looking at this incorrectly.
Whenever I see wherein we stand, I look at being preserved. I
look at preservation. We stand in the faith. We stand in the doctrines. How is it that we stand in doctrine
whenever the world is full of all these flaky doctrines out
there? Whenever we are bombarded by
so-called Christians who have every wind of doctrine out there?
How is it that the Lord's people, His true churches, stand in doctrine? Well, it's because He preserves
them. He keeps them from falling. He keeps them from apostatizing.
He keeps them from going away. He secures them by the Holy Spirit
who continuously preserves them in the faith, keeps them from
falling away. So whenever I see that phrase,
by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein
we stand, I think of preservation. I think of Christ's ongoing work
on our behalf. What He did on the cross is a
finished work. Now, don't get me wrong, whenever
I say an ongoing work of Jesus, I'm not saying that there is
a legality thing that still needs to be done. Now, until I'm convinced
otherwise, I believe when we talk about salvation, we have
a legal aspect to salvation, and then we have an experiential
aspect to salvation. We have legally what needed to
be done for our salvation, and Jesus did every bit of that.
Jesus accomplished everything legally that had to be done to
satisfy God's justice, to satisfy God's righteousness, so that
we as sinners could be saved, that we could be with God, that
we could be His people, that God could love us, that God could
bless us, whatever you want to say. It was the fact that Jesus
did all that, that legally made it right for God. to justify
us. See, God can't justify sinners.
God can't justify the wicked. But His people have been justified
because of someone who substituted for them. So that right there
satisfied all the law and the justice of God on our behalf. But whenever we are experientially
saved. That's how that salvation that
Christ secured legally is experienced by us. Now, what do I mean by
that? Well, what I mean by that is at the time whenever God brings
us into understanding of our salvation, whenever we're converted,
whenever He gives us spiritual understanding, when He opens
our eyes and opens up our ears and opens up our heart to be
able to understand the gospel, to be able to believe, He grants
us repentance. He grants us faith. And we are
able to take what we see and hear and we believe that that
is ours. We have, as it says here, we
have a hope. We've been given a hope. Well,
that's all supernatural. That's all done by God. It's
not done by us. It's not something that we work
up. It's not something that we build up. It's not something
we can study over and over and over again and learn it. This
is something that is implanted in us. by the Holy Spirit of
God that is formed to us that we cannot do because we have
an inability to be able to do spiritual things. The natural
man cannot understand or know or perceive or enjoy the spiritual
things of God because he's natural. He's not spiritual. He has to
be made spiritual. He has to be a spiritual man.
Therefore, that's why we have to be born from above. We have
to be born again. But we see this experiential. So we have
a legal aspect, we have an experiential. We come to know our salvation.
We begin to enjoy our salvation. We begin to grow in the grace
and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. But the Bible says
we're also preserved, right? We're kept from falling away.
I know growing up as Baptists and everything, we've all heard
the phrase, you know, once saved, always saved, and everything. Is there truth behind that? Yes.
If you're once saved, you're always saved. The connotation
of that to most people is, oh well, just once I'm saved, I
can live however I want. Now that doesn't, I've never
heard one Baptist ever preach that, by the way. Nor think that. But anyway, so we have this idea
of once saved, always saved, or eternal security, or security
of the believer, all these different phrases that we might use for
this. What does that mean? Well, it means that whenever
we're saved, there is no way that we can fall away. Now, back
before I come to know the sovereignty of God and election and predestination
and all that kind of stuff, before the Lord taught those things
to me as an Arminian, I believed that we had a free will to choose
salvation if we wanted it. But once we were saved, we could
never leave that. So I believe that God didn't
have the power to make me be saved, but he had the power to
keep me from going away from being saved. And see, that don't
make any sense. If God can have control over
my will after I become a Christian, how come he can't have control
over my will? See, that's the fallacy, the inconsistencies
of those unbiblical theological systems, right? That's the natural
man's thing. So the reason that we cannot
fall away is because salvation in all of its aspects, whether
it's legally or experientially, all of salvation is outside of
our grasp. All of salvation has nothing
to do with what we do. See, my legal salvation had everything
to do with Jesus Christ, but so has my experiential salvation.
Everything of my experience of salvation, my believing, my receiving,
my coming, my repenting, my being kept in the faith, my growing
in understanding of the Scriptures, every bit of that is also by
the sovereign hand of God. He keeps us. He gives us the
measure of faith. He grants to us repentance. He
keeps us from falling. All these things are done by
God. So therefore, all of salvation, whether it's the legal aspect
or the experiential aspect, is all of Christ. That's why the
Bible says salvation is of the Lord. So sometimes the Bible,
when it uses the word salvation, speaks of that legal aspect.
Sometimes when the Bible uses the word saved or salvation,
it speaks of it in an experiential way, of a deliverance. Are we
continually being delivered? Yes. So whenever I said a while
ago that Christ and His intercession is this ongoing work of salvation,
I'm not referring to that salvation wasn't finished at the cross,
because legally it was finished. But experientially, it continues
to go on until the day that we go to be with Him. And the reason
I say that is because of this very passage that we're looking
at. Verse 3, And not only so, but we glory in tribulations,
also knowing that tribulation worketh patience. patience, experience,
and experience hope. And hope maketh not ashamed,
because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy
Ghost, which is given to us. For when we were yet without
strength in due time, Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely
for a righteous man will one die, yet peradventure for a good
man some would even dare to die. But God commended His love towards
us, or exampled His love towards us, or showed His love towards
us, or confirmed His love. God confirmed His love towards
us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. So God didn't die for us when
we were in our best state possible. No, God died for us as we are. Not as we were, as we are. Because, brethren, in the flesh
we still are as we were. If you allow me that. Becoming
a Christian, being born again, doesn't change my flesh any.
My flesh doesn't become righteous. It doesn't grow holy. It doesn't
get no better. It is what it is. The flesh is
just flesh that can never please God. However, there is a new
creation that the Lord has put inside of us. There's two men.
There is the natural man. There's the spiritual man. There
is the man of the flesh. There is the man of the Spirit.
There is that which is born from earth and is earthy, and there
is that man that is born from heaven and is heavenly. So see,
we have two men in us. We have the flesh, which is all
unrighteousness, and then we have the Spirit. We have the
inward man that is created in righteousness and true holiness.
And he says here that while we were yet sinners. So while I
was at the very worst of worst and still am at the very worst
of worst, Christ not only did He die for me, but He continually
lives for me. He doesn't let me fall away. The pressing onwardness of this
salvation wasn't just at the cross, but the experience of
it. The graciousness of God is that I might experience, not
just hear about and learn about a salvation, but I might truly
experience that salvation by the hope that God gives us. See,
God gives us a hope. That's an ongoing work of salvation. Part of the salvation that Christ
secured for us legally is to experientially be able to have
that hope that's in us to know the Holy Spirit bears witness
with my spirit that I'm His. What He did on the cross, He
did for me. That if He says that I will not die, I take that to
mean that I will not die. If He says that He's going to
give me life, I take that to mean that He's giving me life.
If He says that I'm not going to fall away, I trust Him and
His promise that I will not fall away. I've been given a hope
that He said that He's going to come back and receive me to
Himself that he's coming back to receive Mike Smith. Not just
some, you know, nameless, faceless cloud of people, but he's coming
back to get me. He's given me a hope. Now, that
hope isn't based on anything else. Again, my hope is built
on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. My hope isn't
built on how much I read the Bible, how much I pray, how much
I love you as brethren. My hope isn't built on how many
good deeds that I do. how much I give or how much I
serve or how much I preach or how much I understand. My hope
isn't built on any of that. So my preservation is not coming
from anything without. Our hope, our preservation comes
from within because it's from the Holy Spirit. And that is
a work of God that He has ordained for us to walk in. A work of
God that He has done. He has given us faith. He has given us hope. He has
given us love. Those three things God has given
us. It's a spiritual gift. It's an
inward work. It's not nothing that I can view
outwardly. I can't look at you and say,
I know that you're His because of this. Because all of us can
mimic that, right? I mean, I can be really nice
to Kevin I can be really loving towards Kevin, but whenever he
leaves, I say, man, I'll tell you what, I'm glad that guy is
gone. Right? I can look like it on
the outside. I don't really think that way. I can think that way. You know
what? I can memorize Scripture and
I can seem to be very, very astute in God's Word and very theological. But one thing that I cannot mimic
is to have a true hope. One thing that I cannot mimic
is to have true faith. One thing I cannot mimic is to
have a true love for God and the brethren. You can't mimic
that. That's something that's given on the inside. And so here
he says that he gives us this thing and it's part of this work
of Jesus Christ. And he says, "...and hope maketh
not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad." For while,
when we were yet without strength in due time, Christ died for
the ungodly. I'll go back down to verse 9,
I'm sorry, I'm going back over the ones that I read. Much more
then, being now justified by his blood. There again, see our
justification wasn't in what we believed, but in what Christ
did, his justification by his blood. It says, we shall be saved
from wrath through him. For when we were enemies, we
were reconciled." Pay close attention to that word, reconciled. For
when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death
of His Son, much more being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. See, there was a salvation in
reconciliation. See, we were reconciled by Christ
in His death. But brethren, there is also an
ongoing experiential part of salvation that is a shall be. We shall be saved, or we shall
be. That word saved there, that word
saved there means to be preserved. We shall be preserved by His
life. See, He saved us legally in our
standing before God, but experientially, we also by His life not the life
that He lived. The life that He lived is what
legally saved us, but the life that He is living now in the
present is what preserves us. Let's keep reading. We'll find
out why. For when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by
the death of His Son. Now remember, if we're reconciled,
that means there's no more enmity, right? That means there's peace.
God's made Christ has made peace with us in God. There's no more
enmity. There's no more division there.
There's no more separation between us because God has reconciled
us through the death of His Son. But being reconciled, the fact
that there's no division, there's no separation, there's nothing
there that keeps God from not being able to bless and love
and accept and us to be able to come to Him. There's nothing
there. we shall be saved or preserved
by His life. And not only so, but we also
join God through our Lord Jesus Christ by whom we have now received
the atonement. Now that word atonement there
also is reconciliation. That's what the word atonement
means. It's reconciliation. Now, I'm going to make a confession
here. I have for a long time used this
word atonement and I still, just because it's ingrained in my
mind from years and years of saying it and thinking it and
all like this. Whenever we say atonement, we
always think of Christ's death. That it's his death. And we're
specifically, or whenever we say like limited atonement, we
mean that Christ's death was only for... But the word atonement
actually isn't speaking of the actual dying part, but the actual
accomplishment after the dying. The atonement is what the dying
brought. His dying... See, the atonement
isn't the crucifixion. The atonement is what happened
after the crucifixion. The atonement is what happened.
If we go back, there was two things that the priest did in
their service. Number one, they made a sacrifice. They were part of the work or
the service of the priest was to make the sacrifice, to make
the oblation, right? But the second part of that was
intercession for the people. The priest not only made the
sacrifice, but he made intercession. You remember when Moses, whenever
he received the commandments from God, and he came down and
he gave those commandments to the people and everything, and
then he made a sacrifice, an animal sacrifice, and then after
he made that sacrifice, he took the blood, and the Bible says
that he took the blood and he sprinkled it on the people. So
there was a shedding of blood, but then there was the application
of the blood to the people. The blood was shed, but because
that blood was shed, it had to be applied to those for whom
it was shed. The applying of the blood is
what makes atonement. Whenever the priest would go
in and everything was cleansed with blood, they would sprinkle
blood around all the altar, and they would put it on the horns
and everything there, and they would put it on the altar. The
atonement was made right there on the mercy seat, which is a
picture of our Lord Jesus Christ, by the way, when you look at
the Ark of the Covenant. That gold lid that covered the Ark
That was called the mercy seat and that's where the blood was
poured out and the blood there was where God came down and He
accepted that sacrifice. So see, we're accepted with God
by the blood of Jesus Christ and that is atonement. Reconciliation
is only through the blood. But the blood has to be shed
first. The priest has to make the oblation But then there has
to be intercession. Now, what does it say here? It
says, and not only so, but we also, or excuse me, verse 10,
for if when we were enemies were reconciled to God by the death
of His Son, much more being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. This is the intercessory work
of Jesus Christ. Look if you would with me at
Hebrews 7. Hebrews 7. I'm going to start
reading that verse 23. It says, And they truly were many
priests, because they were not suffered to continue by reason
of death. But this man, speaking of Christ,
because he continueth forever hath an unchangeable priesthood. Wherefore, he is able also to
save them, or deliver them, preserve them, that word there is also
in Greek, preserve them to the uttermost, that come unto God
by him, seeing, or the reason that he can do this, seeing he
ever limith to make intercession for them. Jesus ever liveth. The reason that He rose from
the dead and He still is in body form, sitting at the right hand
of God, is because He ever lives to make intercession for them. He is making intercession for
us. Now, how is He interceding for us? He is interceding by
preserving us. Now, I don't know about you,
but I've had these same thoughts which you have and probably have
heard, Jesus is up there praying for us. That's His intercession.
Brethren, He prayed once. In John chapter 17, He prayed
once for His people. Does He have to continue to pray
for us? No, He doesn't have to continue
to pray. God heard His prayer. Everything that Jesus prayed
in John 17, He prayed, and we know that He's going to give
everything that He prayed for on that, because He prayed the
will of God. This is the will of God, that
all these things take place. The intercession that Jesus makes
isn't up there. He has to keep going up and saying,
showing God, hey, you can't do nothing to them, here's my blood.
You can't do nothing to them, here's my blood. Or whenever
the devil comes and tries to accuse them, he says, can't accuse
them, here's my blood. He doesn't have to keep doing
anything. The fact that Jesus is there is proof enough that
God has accepted everything on behalf of what He did. Everything
that Jesus did, God raised Him from the dead. The resurrection
is proof that God and all of His justice and all of His salvation
was in Christ Jesus and He secured all that. That's what Jesus said.
It's finished. There's nothing else to do. There's nothing else
to secure. Everything for my people is done. He has made unto
us wisdom. He has made unto us righteousness.
He has made unto us sanctification. Everything that we have need
of, Jesus was for us. And therefore God was pleased
with that. He was satisfied with that. He
raised Christ from the dead. The fact that Christ ever liveth
means that God heard His intercessory prayer and now on behalf of what
Christ did, that intercession is being made. He ever lives
to preserve us. Why are we being preserved? Because
of what Christ already did, and what Christ did justified the
intercession, and the intercession itself is in the very efficacy
of the sacrifice. See, I can no longer make an
intercession. If I intercede to God, if Christ
is interceding for me, That intercession is only as good as the fact that
I become the perfect sacrifice and accomplish all that God requires.
See, if I intercede for Kevin, it's not going to do anything.
Why? Because I can't do anything that would legally cause God,
in a righteousness, to save Kevin. So my intercession doesn't mean
anything because there's no efficacy in anything that I do, even if
I died for Kevin. If somebody strung me up on that
tree out there and crucified me and even put a sign over my
head, you know, King of the Joplinites, you know, and put me to death
out there, and as I'm dying, I say, I love you, Kevin, and
I'm doing this for you so you don't have to die. Guess what?
That ain't gonna get him into heaven. Why? Because there's
no efficacy in me. There's no efficacy in me. The
efficacy of Christ's death is what qualified His intercession.
The fact that He lived perfectly to the law. The fact that He
lived and died perfectly in accordance to the law without sin. He became
sin for us, but He didn't become sinful. He became sin for us. That was the efficacy. That was
what qualified Him to be able to pray the prayer, I pray that
all those that you have given Me, I want them to be with Me. Where I am, I want them to be
with Me. I want them to be one as we are one. The justification of that prayer
came from the efficacy of His death. And just the opposite. He couldn't have prayed that
prayer if that death never would have happened. He couldn't have
said, I want all these people to be here with me and one as
me and you are one if He never did fulfill all the law and die
that death that he died. That prayer would have meant
nothing. We'd still be in our sins and our faith would be in
vain if Christ would not have done that. So see, it takes the
oblation and it takes the intercession to be a perfect high priest.
And to be that, Jesus has not only secured our legal salvation,
but He has secured our experiential salvation. our continuance in
the faith, our faithfulness, our adherence to the doctrine
of Christ, our keeping from apostasy and falling away, He is preserving
us. Why? Because He ever lives to
intercede. He is able to save them through
the uttermost, not just save them legally, but to bring them
not only in that aspect, but to bring them from the cross
all the way to His throne. He's able to do that. Why? Because
He ever lives to intercede. But He's not up there begging
God to keep saving us, keep saving us, keep saving us. He's not
begging God for nothing. No, He's up there as a sign, as a
symbol, as the substance of everything. The fact that I'm sitting here
on the throne is the intercession. Because I have went to the grave
and ascended to the throne, My people and everything that was
promised to my people are going to be given to them. Why? Because
I ever lived to intercede for them. I'm the proof that God
has accepted everything on their behalf. And if we weren't all that, we'd
all be shouting amen, right? We'd all be shouting amen because
it is because of that that we have been and are being and will
be saved. Suppose that, brother. It's not
because Mike's a good guy. It's not because Mike keeps up
a good rapport with God. It's not because of that. It's
because Jesus ever lives to intercede. Now, with that being said, this
right here shows us that this notion that Jesus died for everybody
can't be possible. Because everyone for whom the
priest made sacrifice for, the priest sprinkled the blood on.
Everyone for whom the priest made sacrifice for, he took and
interceded for them and they received all the benefits, all
the application of that salvation to them. So whoever Jesus dies
for, He is interceded for. And all those that He intercedes
for, He ever lives to intercede for. Therefore, everything that
is part of salvation, they will receive. And that includes your
faith, your repentance, your long-suffering, your meekness,
your temperance, your whatever the spiritual gifts that God's
given you. But it also includes your preservation, your continuance
until the end. So see, we can't say Jesus died
for everybody because not everybody falls into those categories. This isn't us being pride and
boastful because we're the elect of God. This should be a very
humbling thing that while we were yet sinners like everybody
else, Christ died for us. It is before the boys had done
anything good or bad so that the purpose of God according
to election might stand. He chose Jacob and not Esau.
I have loved you with an everlasting love. Where in have you loved
us? Did not I choose Jacob and not Esau? See, whenever we come
to these doctrines, it isn't to boast. It isn't to say, well,
Jesus did that for me, but He didn't do that for you. And we
don't preach Jesus didn't die for everybody just so that we
can say we're better than everybody else. We preach that because
it's the truth of Scripture. And we preach that not as a boasting
point, but we preach that to say that this salvation is not
for everybody because it isn't applied to everybody. If it was
applied to everybody, everybody would be getting it. Everybody
would be believing. Everybody would be understanding
the scriptures. Everybody would be preserving
into the end. And everybody would be in heaven
whenever we get there. Listen, I have a lot more respect
for the universalist who says that Jesus died for everybody
and everybody's going to be in heaven. I have more respect for
them. I think they're wrong. But I
have more respect for them. At least they're consistent.
They understand that if Jesus dies for somebody, then that
person is going to be saved. Then for the Pelagian, for the
semi-Pelagian, for the Armenian, who says that Jesus died for
everybody, but there's going to be people in hell. That means that Jesus poured
out His blood on somebody in vain. That means Jesus was not
a Savior. He did not accomplish all that
the Father sent Him to do whenever He said, I came to save my people
from their sins. So brethren, we have a lot to
rejoice for today. Not only that we are included in those people,
but that Christ, in everything that He did on our behalf, secured
not only our legality before God, but our experiential aspect,
the experiential salvation in this world, so that we might
know. And that we might give glory to God for it. That we
might not be disheartened. That we might not fall away. He's done everything. He's provided
everything for us. That's a good shepherd, right?
That's a good Savior. That's a Savior. A Savior that
doesn't fulfill all that is not a good Savior. It's another Jesus. Well, that's all the thoughts
I have on all that. Do you all have any comments
or anything that you'd like to speak on or add to? Well, in
the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, to serve to justify many, not
all. That's right. For he should bear
their iniquities. Therefore, while dividing a portion
of the grave, he should divide the spoil of the strong, because
he had poured out his soul unto death. And he was numbered with
the transgressors, and bear the sin of many, and made intercession
for the transgressors. Jackson. Anything else you want
to add? I've actually come across the
line of this talking while ago, and I've got to go in another direction
to get back to it. Isaiah 53 is one of my favorite
chapters in all of Scripture. Isaiah is one of my favorite
books. It's the Romans of the Old Testament. But wonderful, wonderful. He shall see the travail of his
soul and be satisfied. If there's any that Christ died
for that is lost, he is not seeing the travail of his soul. He's
not being satisfied. I'm not talking about satisfaction
is like whenever I eat a full meal and I sit down in my refinery
and I'm like, Oh, that's it. I can't eat no more. I'm not
talking about that. When we're talking about satisfaction
here, that means that God not only is pleased with the outcome,
but it means that everything that was required of God has
been fulfilled. Therefore, everything's been
satisfied. If you take out a loan or something to a bank and you
pay that loan back, Whenever you make that last payment, you
have now satisfied your debt. It no longer exists, right? You've
satisfied everything that was required of you. You said that
I would pay this much until this much is paid. I've done that.
That debt is now satisfied. That's what we're talking about.
That's how satisfaction we're talking about. God, we owed a
debt because of our sin, and that debt has been satisfied.
God had a righteousness and a justice that was looming And because of sin, that sin
was going to condemn us. But praise the Lord, we were
elect in Christ Jesus. And before the foundation of
the world, God set His affection and love upon us and that He
put us in Christ Jesus. Christ stood as our mediator.
Therefore, before the foundation of the world, we were never appointed
under wrath. Before the foundation of the
world, God saw us justified. Why? Because of the work of Christ
Jesus that would come on our behalf. He saw those things that
were not as though they were. We were before the foundation
of the world, the Bible says, blessed because the Lord imputed
not sin unto us. He had not beheld iniquity in
Jacob, nor hath he seen perverseness in Israel. Brethren, what a blessed
thought that is, because we're truly sinners, right? We really
sinned. We have sinned, but praise the
Lord, because of the intercessor, because of the mediator, because
of Christ Jesus, God was satisfied. He was satisfied before the cross,
even. I know some people don't like
that. They don't like that doctrine. They don't like that teaching.
They think that it couldn't have happened before Christ died.
Brethren, the Bible says that he stood as the Lamb slain. That
means that God viewed his people as if Christ had already been
slain. He doesn't need to wait for something in time to happen
to be able to declare it to be so. He declared the end from
the beginning, right? So the end is declared. He doesn't
have to wait for the end to declare what it's going to be. He didn't
have to declare, Mike, just whenever I believed. He declared that
before the foundation of the world. You didn't have to wait
until Jesus died on the cross to know that Jesus would be faithful
to go die on the cross. He knew that his son would be
faithful. I got an email today from a fellow
that used to be involved in the Roman Catholic Church. And he
was going through some memos, mementos, from the past. And
he sent me a copy of this in a PDF form. He says, Larry, I
can't believe I found this. And it's called the Sacrament by the father of the Catholic
Church. And he said, can you believe
that one time, you know, 25 years ago, I had the Spirit confirmed
on me and I wasn't even a believer. You know, I didn't even, I hadn't
even come to saving knowledge of Christ. And I just emailed
him back and it was Mike Orr and I said, Mike, I said, no
priest can confer the Holy Spirit on anybody. It's basically a
sacrament of confirmation of sealing the Holy Spirit. Well, in that fact, a priest
can't do it, but neither can a Baptist preacher. Neither can
a Baptist church. A lot of times people think just
because we lay on hands, we're all of a sudden conferring the
Holy Spirit on somebody. No, it's just a symbology. It's like the Lord's Supper and
baptism. It doesn't confer any grace. That's why we don't want
to call them sacraments. We don't call them sacraments.
And it's been unfortunate that there have been some Baptists
down through the ages that have used that term because of their
influence from the Protestant Reformation stuff. That has been
called sacraments. That comes straight out of Catholicism.
A sacrament is a means of grace or is a conferring of grace.
Baptism, laying on of hands, you know, any of that stuff doesn't
confer grace. There's only one thing that can
We're in grace to you. That's the work of Christ on
your behalf and the working of the Holy Spirit inside of you.
And that doesn't come by outward thing. But whatever we do, whatever
we lay on hands of people, all that is is just a symbolic thing
that we're trusting in the Lord, what He has already confirmed.
We don't confirm anything. I can't confirm dilly-squat.
You know, what are we doing? We're confirming what the Lord
has already confirmed. Good word. Anybody else? Brothers, you got
anything you'd like to add or comment? Want to get up here
and preach? Get up here and preach. All right. Nobody has anything? I don't
have a word for you. Brother Larry, would you like
to dismiss? I'm glad that you're immutable,
unchangeable, and forever the same.