Lord Jesus Christ's death, the
work of the Lord Jesus Christ upon the cross, rightly and necessarily
is the focus of our spiritual life. We who have learned how
to properly discern and understand these things grasp something
of the fact that our conversion, our repentance, our belief, our
decision, these things which are part of our personal spiritual
experience are nevertheless not the essence of our relationship
with God, but those things which the Lord himself has done for
us. There are subjective experiences
that we all have, but these experiences are not in themselves dependable. They are feelings, and feelings
can be deceptive, and feelings can betray us. But the objective
work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the accomplishments, the achievements,
those great works, those deeds which he has done, these are
what draw and hold our attention. And it is these that we return
to. time after time after time. Let us this evening then, as
the Lord will enable, consider the great truths of the work
of the Lord Jesus Christ and bring these things once again
to the fore. Now I'm not going to have another
hymn at this stage. So I'm going to relieve the pianist
from her hard seat there and invite her to take a hard seat
at the back. Thank you, Barbara. The passage that we've read together
here from Romans chapter five speaks in the opening verses
of the experiences that we have based upon the objective work
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is the right order.
And I fear it's an order which has been inverted, wrongly inverted,
in the experience of so much religion in these days. But we
understand for the things that Christ has accomplished and achieved,
these blessings are ours. Look at the opening verse of
chapter 5. Being justified by faith, we
have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And so here
is a peace that has been forged, a peace, a reconciliation that
has been accomplished. And the consequence of the objective
accomplishment of that peace between God and man, between
God the Holy One and sinners by the The coming of the Lord
Jesus Christ and the sacrifice that he has made, that peace,
that reconciliation that has been accomplished and achieved
gives us the opportunity to experience peace in our lives. But it's the peace which he accomplished
which gives us the peace of the experience through faith and
understanding what he has done. And so it is, we read in verse
two, that we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand. So once again, in the experience
of the Lord's people, we discover that we have an entrance. We
discover that we have a door of approach. We discover that
there has been the extension, as it were, of that hand of fellowship
to us in our state, because of what the Lord Jesus Christ has
done. It is that objective work, it
is that work upon the cross, it is that fact of history that
has enabled and allowed and opened this way of access and the blessings
which come from that to us in our experience. wherein, says
verse 2, we stand and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Once again, we see that as sinners
before a holy God, there was and is a hopelessness. What can we do to remedy that
situation? What efforts, what changes, what
alterations can we make in our life that might bring us into
that place of acceptance with God, that might give us that
modicum of hope, that reason to hope that there might be some
help, some blessing, some forgiveness, some reconciliation between those
who were at enmity one with another. Wherein is our hope? Our hope
is based upon those things which the Lord Jesus Christ has done,
upon that work that transpired at Calvary, that death which
was the basis of our acceptance and entrance into life. We have
peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ. We have access
by faith through the Lord Jesus Christ. We have a hope through
the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's lovely to see the way
in which the Apostle Paul here in these opening verses of chapter
five speaks to us of the way in which the triune God is at
work in the lives of his people. that we are justified and have
peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ. And then in verse
five, and that hope that we have maketh not ashamed because the
love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost,
which is given unto us. Friends, we have such a blessed
position this night. I don't know what you've been
doing today. I don't know what the past few
days, a few weeks have contained for you. But I say this to you. You have such a blessed privilege
this night, if you are one of the Lord's people, to have the
triune God. How do I say it? Working for
our good. engaged in your blessing, seeking
and doing all things that are necessary for your well-being
right now. And I know we carry around so
many problems, so much trouble, so many difficulties that seem
to beset us. But with God, the Father, and
the Son, and the Holy Spirit, On our side, God the Father,
Son and Holy Spirit engaged together, committed together for the well-being
of His people. For God the Father, Son and Holy
Spirit securing this peace, granting this access, bestowing this hope. What a blessed privilege we have
tonight, above all men and women, to be possessors of such knowledge
as these great truths. We thank God, the Holy Spirit,
that he so used the Apostle Paul to bring us these words of comfort
and help in the face of our trials. We glory in our tribulation,
knowing that tribulation worketh patience. We are enabled to exercise
the grace of patience from the God of all consolation, from
the God of patience and consolation. He is able to help us even in
the face of our difficulties this night, this day. Through
these experiences, we learn to understand the true nature of
spiritual hope. And that hope shows us the source
of all the good and gracious blessings that God has given
us. His love towards us. Ah, the world talks about love.
The religious people talk about the love of God. But have we
experienced that love? Have we known it? Have we understood
it? Have we seen its origin, its
source? Have we seen its extent? Have
we seen its duration? Have we understood something
of the nature of that love? I want our thoughts this evening,
and I'm not going to take up too much of your time, but I
want our thoughts this evening to dwell for a little while upon
this love of God, and we will say just a few things about it. We'll say what the Apostle Paul
directs us to understand about this love that we have and that
we experience through God the Holy Spirit ministering to our
souls. Look at verse eight. God commended
his love towards us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died
for us. Much more then, being now justified
by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. We need to regularly and frequently
take our eyes away from our present circumstances and our day-to-day
experiences and, as it were, give ourselves a talking to and
remind ourselves to look beyond the moment, to look beyond the
experiences, these experiences which change which fluctuate,
which alter in the ebbs and flows of our circumstances day to day. And we've had a good day. We've
had a good day. The sun has shone. We haven't
had a pain. We didn't drop $10 in the street. Or we've had a bad day. and the
pipes burst, or the children were misbehaving, or the car
broke down. The troubles of our lives, the
trials that we face, the profound sorrows and sadnesses that come
into our lives, the challenges that we encounter, the opposition
that we face, whatever it might be, to whatever degree and extent
it might come to us, these things make our days good or bad. The old classical writers used
to talk about whether a man had had a good life or a bad life
by the number of stones that he collected and popped into
a bag and at the end of one's life you could undo this bag
and you could look at the number of stones in there and the white
stones were good days and the black stones were bad days and
your life was measured by the number of good days versus the
number of bad days. Well, We seek to look beyond
the experiences of our day and understand that there is something
more wonderful to lay our hope upon than the mere vagaries of
the circumstances of our day. And the trials and the problems
that we face, they will come and they will go. That's the
nature of our life. Someone once said that the trials
and the problems, they often pass too soon and we forget the
lessons that we've learned in them. But we seek to safeguard
ourselves. We seek to provide for ourselves
every comfort in this life. And sometimes the Lord just has
to take some of those comforts away in order for us to be reminded
that as we learn patience in the midst of our tribulation,
as we experience these things that come into our lives, so
our relationship with the Lord deepens and develops. We change,
therefore we cannot trust our feelings, but he changes not. He is the same. What he has secured,
what he has effected, what he has done and the promises that
he has made. These are the things that we
depend upon. These are the things that we
hold on to. Whether our life is good or bad
at a particular moment in our experience. We know that the
promises that God has made in Christ are those things which
give us joy, those things which hold us, which comfort us, which
encourage us, and which bless us day by day. Our dedication will fluctuate. Our service will be, to a greater
or lesser extent, meaningless and useless. Our motivations
in this life cannot be based on our strength, our efforts,
our commitment, our works. because these things will never
bring us peace. There will always be the doubt,
always the question. They will never bring us confidence
in our standing with God. They will never give us any certainty
because they're always mixed with doubt, always mixed with
fear as to whether we've done enough, whether we have been
dedicated enough, whether we've been sufficiently confident,
sufficiently faithful, sufficiently motivated. Did I do right in
that particular situation? Did I say the right thing or
not? Have I done enough? Was there
more that I could have done? And so many questions about the
way that we act and the things that we do. If we're looking
for any confidence, if we're looking for any peace in these
things which originate in our efforts, then we will always
be sadly disappointed. We don't look at the subjective
things in our own experience, but we look to the Lord. And
it is the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross. It is the fact
that what He has done, that was right. That's what's right. Did I do right in that particular
situation? Did I say the right thing? Did
I do the right thing? Who knows? Who knows? Maybe you did and maybe you didn't.
But we know that He did right. We know that He did right. And
it is that that we look to. We look beyond ourselves. He
did right because He did that which God asked Him to do. The Lord Jesus Christ did right
because He did that which God sought of Him. The death of the
Lord Jesus Christ, therein is the sufficiency for all that
we require. Not in our efforts, not in our
works, but in what he has done. The death of the Lord Jesus Christ
answered every demand. Did I do enough in that situation? We'll never know, but we know
that the Lord Jesus Christ did that which was needful. His Blood,
that substitutionary work, that atonement is the ultimate thing,
that which we look to. He has cleansed every sin, he
has blotted out every transgression, he has done all that is needful,
all that is required, and he has satisfied the demands of
the holy God. We look beyond ourselves and
we think on these things. We dwell on these things and
these things are what give us our comfort and our peace and
our hope and our consolation in this world. The Lord said
to Isaiah in chapter 44 verse 22, I have blotted out as a thick
cloud thy transgressions. As a cloud, thy sins return unto
me, for I have redeemed thee. There's no catalogue of failures
will stand against the Lord's people. For all our doubts and
uncertainties and questions, there is no catalogue to be read
out in the presence of God, for he has blotted out every shortcoming,
every transgression, every failure, has been taken away in the death
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Justification is the removal,
the taking away of our sin by the interposition of another,
a sin-bearing substitute. And we look to Christ as our
sin bearer. We look to Him as our representative. We look to Him as the one who
has stood surety for us, who has, as it were, stepped into
the gap, stepped into the place, moved us out and taken our place. Such that the death of the Lord
Jesus Christ and the taking of our sins and laying them upon
His account, on His shoulders, is that ground of hope that we
have, is that foundation of faith upon which our hope and peace
is built, is that basis of reconciliation that we have for acceptance with
God, not on what I've done, not on how I've been, not on what
I've felt, but upon His work alone. And we look to Him and
all He has achieved and accomplished with thankfulness, with awe,
with amazement, with a deep respect, and with an understanding that
He alone has secured our eternal salvation and our spiritual well-being. But I want to show you something
which is even, if it could be possible, more amazing than all
of that. And it is this, that there is
a tremendous connection between all that has been accomplished
for us by the Lord Jesus Christ there at Calvary and the source
and the origin that motivated that to take place. And that's
what Paul tells us here in verse eight. He said that God loves
us. The reason why the Lord Jesus
Christ came into the world is because God loves us. God loves us. God loves me and
God loves you. See, we've heard it so many times. We've heard it so many times
that it washes over us without us thinking about it. God who
created the universe, God who made the world, God who has put
everything in place, who's bigger and beyond and greater than all
our understanding, all our imaginations, who is in himself infinite, loves me. Loves me. Loves me. and loves you. What a wonderful God we have
that he should take in the midst of all of the great works of
his hand, intimate, personal knowledge of a worm like me. Not only that, but to place his
love upon me. And not only that, but to demonstrate
the nature of that love in such a way that one whom he loved,
who never could love him, is made to know his love. and is so changed and altered
and converted in the very depths of their being and nature as
to be able, in some small way, to love him back in return. God commendeth his love towards
us. in that while we were yet sinners,
Christ died for us. It was love that initiated the
work of salvation on the cross. The Lord God, God the Father,
the triune God sent the Son because He loved us. The Lord doesn't
love us because the Lord Jesus Christ died for us. The Lord Jesus Christ died for
us because God loves us. And it was in order to bring
us back into that relationship with him. It is in order, look
at verse 10. If while we were enemies, we
were reconciled to God. He's talking about the elect.
He's talking there about those for whom Christ died. And this
shows us the inextricable link that there is between the love
of God and the death of Christ on the cross. I'm always amazed
that there are so many people who assume that the Lord Jesus
Christ died for everyone. But there are even those who
understand something of the distinction between the true work of Christ
in its limited, in its distinctive, in its particular and personal
way on the cross, and yet hold this idea of a universal love. when the Scriptures are explicit
that the commendation of God's love towards us is shown in the
death of the Lord Jesus Christ for us. And it is that death
which is then applied by God the Holy Spirit to us. There
is a consistency in this whole work. The love of God and the
death of Christ and the converting work of God the Holy Spirit is
directed to the same individuals because the Lord knoweth them
that are his. You know your own children and
he loves his people. And he came and he sought his
people out. And he secured the means of the
redemption of his people. And he sent his spirit to gather
in those people. This is not some nondescript,
indistinct work. This is the work of the triune
God accomplishing his eternal purpose, which is forged out
of a heart of love towards us. This particular love leads to
a particular redemption and it is manifested in a particular
salvation. The Lord appeared of old unto
me saying, I have loved thee with an everlasting love and
with loving kindness I have drawn thee. It is a particular people
who are the beneficiaries of these great works of our loving
God. It is the love of God that gave
the Lord Jesus Christ to die because God so loved the world
of His elect that He sent His wholly begotten Son into this
world in order to redeem us. And look at the state of those
that are loved. Those for whom Christ died as
a result of this love of God for us are a justified people. Not justified because of the
way that we've worked, not justified because of the things that we've
done. These things could never justify us, but the blood of
Christ, the death of Christ, the sacrifice of Christ, manifested
in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. This great transaction
that has been accomplished brings to our knowledge and understanding
what it is to be justified before God, brought into union with
him through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. united with holiness,
united with God. We were his enemies. He has loved
us from a time before time. He has loved us from eternity.
And while we were enemies, God sent his son into the world to
die for us. He died that we might be conformed
to the image of the Son. Paul speaks a little later in
Romans about the foreknowledge of God. That's not some knowledge
of what happens before it happens in some sort of prophetic, prescient
way. It is rather to understand that
God had a love, a love and a desire towards his people, which motivated
him, caused him to seek the means of their salvation and deliverance
and reuniting to him. And it's for that reason that
he elected and predestinated Paul speaks about this glorious
chain in Romans chapter 8. He says that those that he did
foreknow, whom he did foreknow, he did predestinate to be conformed
to the image of his Son. Whom he did predestinate, them
he also called. This speaks to us of the pattern
of God's unfolding of the plan of salvation. He loved us in
that foreknowledge of us. He predestinated us to be conformed
to Christ. He put in place that which would
be effectual in making us Christ-like. Christ-likeness isn't anything
to do with our talk. or our vocabulary, or our dress,
or our way of going about things, or about the nice sort of ways
in which we speak to one another and deal with one another. That's
not Christ-likeness. Christ-likeness isn't to do with
our personal demeanor or our kindnesses or our graciousness
one with the other. It is to do with being united
with Christ. In the presence of God, it is
to be made so indistinguishably united to Christ that you can't
tell us apart. That God looks on Christ and
he sees me. And he looks on me and he sees
Christ. Christ-like. What a wonderful God. who should
devise such a way of deliverance, who should conform me to look
like his son. Death has been much in our minds
in recent weeks and months and days. And many of us in our families
have been touched with the loss that we have encountered of friends
and family. And soon, undoubtedly, there
will be more of these experiences that we will have in our lives. And this ought to make us reflect
upon our own mortality. What does this teach us about
the way in which the Lord loves us? We see that there are outcomes
to this love of God that has been so revealed to us in the
death and the redemptive work and the ultimate salvation and
reconciliation and uniting of his people with himself. There
are outcomes to these things. which speak to us again of this
great river of love, this great flow of love that has come down
through the centuries and time itself in the gathering in of
the Church of God's people. Eternal life, eternal security,
the enjoyment of the privileges of God's blessings and grace,
the presence of God with us, the peace which God gives to
us. This flows to us out of the work
of the Lord Jesus Christ on our behalf. We are made fit for the
presence of God. We are made right and ready to
stand in the presence of God. He has made righteous that which
was sinful. The Word of God tells us that
as that love was commended to us in the death of the Lord Jesus
Christ, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for
us, so much more being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved
from wrath through Him. What is it that the wrath of
God or the wrath of God is? It's his displeasure, it's his
indignation against sin and against sinners. It is the demand that
exists in the holiness of God. I was thinking about this the
other day. The fact that the law of God,
the law of God that men hate, The law of God that men seek
to overthrow. The law of God that so many say
that they respect and they endeavor to uphold and they endeavor to
maintain. That law, I tell you, it's only
the true believer that loves the law of God. because only
the true believer understands the importance of the law of
God. I love the law of God because it makes things right. It makes
things just. It makes things fair. And for
all the little babies that have been abused by wicked men over
the centuries, and all of the vulnerable women that have been
hurt and misused, and all of the wickedness that has been
perpetrated man on man, and all of the wicked schemes that have
emanated out of the corruption of man's heart, there will be
a reckoning. And it is the law of God that
demands it. And it is the law of God that
will see that it is effected. Don't be deceived, God is not
mocked and the wrath of God will be vented against the wickedness
of men and the law of God will demand it and it will stand and
it will condemn until every last ounce of that wrath of God has
been spent upon the wickedness of man. Yeah, I love the law
of God. because it speaks of the holiness
of God and it speaks of the rightness of God and it speaks of the propriety
of the way in which he is dealing with sin. And if this world could
live unanswerable and unjudged, then what value would anything
be? But there will be a day of reckoning
and the wrath of God will be vented against sin. But friends,
what a blessing it is to know that the wrath of God against
us has been taken away. What a wonderful thing it is
to know that when the Lord Jesus Christ cried out on the cross,
why hast thou forsaken me, my God? That there the wrath of
God against my sin was being poured out in judgment into the
very soul of his dearly beloved son. being justified by his blood,
we shall be saved from wrath through him. Yes, there is an
awful vengeance and the judgments of God will be executed in this
world. It is happening in time and it
will continue in eternity. It is happening in time, it is
happening now and it will continue. into eternity. And there will
be an everlasting displeasure of God upon sinners. There is
wrath in this world and there is wrath to come in another world. And sinners are deserving of
that wrath. And we are the children of wrath.
We are the children of wrath. just as others. There's nothing
different about us except the love of God for us and the death
of Christ on our behalf and the work of God the Holy Spirit in
drawing us to himself. It's all of grace. It's all of
mercy. It's all of love. The wrath of
God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and righteousness
of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness. After thy hardness
and impenitent heart, you treasure up for yourself wrath against
the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of
God, who will render to every man according to his deeds. unto
them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey
unrighteousness, indignation, and wrath. Because the law worketh
wrath, for where no law is, there is no transgression. The believer
faces much wrath in this life, and we live amongst the wrathful
children of this world. We are saved from the fear of
that wrath. We are saved from the fear of
that wrath in time and for eternity. You know, I guess that one of
the blessings that we have as the Lord's people is that we
don't see all of the Persecution that the devil would
want to lay against the church. He goes around like a roaring
lion seeking whom he might devour. Who'd be first out the door tonight
if there was a cougar sitting at the doorstep? Who'd leave
first? Which one of you would go first? roaring lion. I think the Lord
preserves us from that. He preserves us from... He sends
defences. He sets up barricades. He builds
up fortresses around us. He comforts us in the midst of
the troubles of this world. And we might fear some dictator
on the other side of the world who's now got the capacity to
send a bomb across an ocean. And we might fear somebody else
who can put a few computers together and cause our little society to crack at the
seams and show itself to be less complete than we thought, more
vulnerable than we hoped. And we might have lots of things
that we can't put our hands in our pockets and insure ourselves
against. But at the end of the day, the
Lord preserves his people. And he saves us from wrath in
this world. He saves us from wrath, the wrath
of the world, the wrath of the wicked man, the wrath of the
devil, the wrath of those who would do down the church. He
saves us from that. And he saves us from fearing
it every day. Because we go out to our work,
and we go out to the school, and we go out to do our business.
Because if we really saw what it was like out there, I don't
think we would want to leave our house in the morning. He
saves us from wrath, and he saves us from wrath to come in the
eternal realm. For the blood of Christ preserves
us. so that we may boldly say, the
Lord is my helper. I will not fear what man shall
do unto me. And we may lay hold upon the
promise of the Lord Jesus Christ. Little flock, fear not. It is your father's good pleasure
to give you the kingdom. what privileges we have as His
people, what privileges are ours, what blessings are ours to be
those that He loves, those that He has saved and redeemed by
His death upon the cross, those who have been called through
the preaching of the gospel, those who have been given the
right of fearlessness amidst the trials of this world, and
for the judgment that is to come. Praise the Lord, O my soul, and
be thankful unto Him. Amen. Let's take our hymn books and
sing together in hymn number 40, hymn number 40.