Thankful for that, aren't you? If any man come unto me, I will
in no wise cast him out, not lose one of my sheep. We're going
to read right now from Romans chapter 4, if you would like
to turn with me there in your Bibles. Good evening. Good to
see you all tonight. Romans chapter 4. beginning in
verse 1. What shall we say then that Abraham,
our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found? For if Abraham were justified
by works, he hath whereof to glory, but not before God. Men that glory in their good
works are not glory before God, they're glory before men. They
love the praise of men more than the praise of God. For what sayeth
the Scriptures?" And that's the final question to be asked for
everything, isn't it? What does God say about it? Abraham
believed God. And it was, that word counted
is the same word imputed. It's the same word charged. It's what the Lord does when
He credits His people with the righteousness of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Abraham believed God, and it
was counted unto him for righteousness. Now to him that worketh is the
reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt." If we say to our
employer, thank you, when he hands us our check at the end
of the week, we're just being cordial. Let him not pay you
at the end of the week and see what your attitude is. He owes
you that, doesn't he? He owes you that. And so that's
what he's saying. He that worketh is the reward
not of grace, it's of debt. If you work for your salvation,
God owes it to you. But to him that worketh not,
but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly. Now that's the qualification
for being justified before God. We have to be ungodly, have no
righteousness of our own. To him that worketh not, but
believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted
for righteousness. Now we're going to look at Romans
chapter 3 tonight and consider this subject of faith. Our faith in Christ, looking
to Christ, resting in Christ, relying upon Christ. That's the
means by which God imparts His righteousness. Even as David also described
the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputeth righteousness. That's the same word. God's imputing
to us. Without works, without works,
saying, blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose
sins are covered." Oh, if our sins have been forgiven, they've
been covered, they've been put away, we've been blessed. We've
been blessed. There's no greater blessing,
no greater blessing that a person can have in this world than to
have their guilt taken away. blessed is the man to whom the
Lord will not impute sin. Cometh this blessedness upon
the circumcision only or upon the uncircumcision also? For we say that faith was reckoned
to Abraham for righteousness." And he goes on to say that Abraham
was imputed with righteousness before the law and before he
was circumcised. Let's ask the Lord to bless us
tonight. Our merciful Heavenly Father
where so thankful that we have a throne of grace to approach,
that we have an advocate with thee, one who is himself righteous
and who stands in our stead, represents us before you, one
in whom we are accepted and loved. We ask, Father, that you would
send your Spirit in power to enlighten the eyes of our understanding.
Pray that you would give to us saving faith and cause us to
find our hope and all our salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. We ask it in his name. Amen. Let's stand together again. That hymn is exactly the message
that I want to try to preach tonight. Grace is for sinners. It's for sinners. And it comes
through faith. The faith that God gives to His
people when they are enabled by His grace to trust Christ
for their salvation. The first passage we're going
to look at is in the book of Jonah, if you'd like to look
for that and join me in Jonah, the second chapter, Jonah chapter
two. The true child of God scarcely
knows that he has faith. Tricia and I were talking about
this on the way here tonight, and she was saying, you know,
for the first few years of my conversion, I was overconfident. And as I've
grown in grace and in the knowledge of Christ, I feel like I've left
my teenage years. You know, teenagers can be cocky,
think they know it all. And now I find myself more often
asking the question, Lord, is it I? And that's true in every
area of life. It's true in our natural life,
isn't it? The older we get, the more we
realize we don't know, and the less confident in ourselves we
are. Sometimes we wonder altogether
if our faith is even real. when we hear that passage of
scripture which I've quoted on several occasions from Matthew
chapter 7 when the Lord said there will be those stand before
him on the day of judgment that will say but Lord we prophesied
in thy name we cast out demons in thy name we did many wonderful
works in thy name and the Lord responds to them by saying depart
from me I never knew you, you workers of iniquity." And the
believer wonders when he hears that. Lord, is that me? As soon as we look to our faith,
we realize that it's filled with unbelief, don't we? The closer we inspect it, the
more we discern it to be wormy fruit. imperfect, full of the flesh,
so that we find ourselves crying with that man in the New Testament,
Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief. Yet, the believer does believe. He does believe. And when asked
by the Lord, believest thou this, the child of God readily and
willingly and joyfully responds by saying, yes Lord, I believe
thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. When our Lord questions us like
he questioned Peter and says, lovest thou me more than these,
As the Lord pointed to that, the nets and the fishing and
all the things that Peter was relying upon for his livelihood.
Lovest thou me more than these? Yea, Lord. Lovest thou me more
than these, Peter? Yea, Lord. Peter, the third time,
the scripture says, was grieved in his heart that the Lord ask
him. You remember what Peter said? Lord, thou knowest everything. You know how imperfect my love
is. You know the inconsistencies of my love. You know the hypocrisies
of my life. You know everything there is
about me. And yet, Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee." It is a conflict, isn't it? A contradiction, if you will,
that we have within us. war that exists between the flesh
and the spirit. True faith, in order to be faith,
must stand alone. True faith is where we find ourselves
to be when there's no place else to go, when all other options
are exhausted. The riches of God's grace can
only be enjoyed by those who have had their own accounts not
only depleted to zero, but in fact charged with a debt that
they cannot pay. We won't trust Christ for his
righteousness. until our own righteousness is
exposed for what it is, filthy rags. We won't be satisfied with
the finished work of Christ for our justification before God
until we see our own works for what they are, dead. Christ will not be all until
we are nothing. Truly the way up is the way down. Did Jonah believe God? Well, the Lord clearly told him
to go to Nineveh and in chapter 1 he went the opposite way. He
went the opposite way. Did God allow him to continue
in his rebellion against God? No, He didn't, did He? The Lord
stirred up a storm, didn't He? The Lord put Jonah in a hard
place. Look what happens. Jonah finds
himself in the belly of the fish three days and three nights in
verse 17 of chapter 1. Then, then Jonah prayed unto
the Lord his God out of the fish's belly. It's the only time we
pray, isn't it? Faith is what we're left with
when we've got nothing else. That's what faith is. Faith is
what we're left with when we've got nothing else. We've got no
place else to turn. And the only time we truly pray
in faith is when we're in the belly of the fish. And we're
desperate. We've got, look at verse two. And he said, I cried by reason
of mine afflictions unto the Lord, and he heard me. Out of
the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice. The Lord knows how to humble
His children, doesn't He? He knows how to put them where
they need to be in order to cause them to look to Him. He knows
how to bring us to the end of ourselves so that we've got nothing
left but faith. For thou hast cast me into the
deep and the midst of the seas, and the floods can pass me about.
All thy billows and thy waves passed over me. Lord, I'm desperate. I'm in trouble. Then I said, I am cast out of
thy sight, yet I will look again toward thy holy temple. I fear
that my sin has left me abandoned by the Lord. That's what Peter
thought. When Peter said, I go a fishing,
he said, what Peter was saying was, there's no way God's going
to be able to use me. Not after what I've done. I'll
just go back to my old profession and forget this discipleship
stuff. We'll just, you know, the Lord
had to use somebody else. I'm certainly not worthy. I'm
certainly not able. And the Lord, that's when the
Lord said, Peter, lovest thou me? Verse six, I went down to the
bottoms of the mountains. The earth's with bars were about
me forever. Yet hast thou brought up my life
from corruption, O Lord my God." Lord, you brought me to the bottom
in order to cause me to look up. When my soul fainted within me,
I remembered the Lord. That's the only time we remember
Him. When our sin becomes so overwhelming to us, we become
so wicked in our own eyes, we loathe ourselves, and that's
the only time we remember the Lord. The only time we remember
His righteousness is when ours is exposed for what it is. When my soul fainted within me,
I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came in unto Thee in Thine
holy temple. Now that temple is Christ, isn't
it? That's how we approach the Lord,
only in His temple. Isaiah went into the temple that
day, didn't he? The only way we're going to get
into God's presence, the only way we can approach the throne
of grace is through our advocate. We don't just say in Jesus' name
as a byline or a tag-on. We know that, Lord, we've got
no right to approach you except for Christ's sake. Verse 8, They that observe lying
vanities forsake their own mercy." Lord, those who have no love
for the truth, those who have no love for the righteousness
of Christ and for Christ and His glory, those who are boasting
in themselves, those who don't really know anything about faith, they've embraced a covenant with
death that they've made for themselves and the Lord's going to disannul
that covenant. I will sacrifice unto thee with
the voice of thanksgiving. I'll declare in thanksgiving,
Lord, that salvation is of the Lord. From election to redemption
to justification to regeneration to being kept in faith to glorification
or it's my sanctification everything all my salvation Lord it's up
to you it's up to you that's what faith is faith is trusting
God for your soul and the Lord spake unto the fish
and vomited out Jonah upon the dry land did Jonah have faith? he did didn't he Isaiah chapter
38, you don't have to turn with me, I'll just tell you the story.
King Hezekiah, the prophet Isaiah approached King Hezekiah and
he told him, he said, set thy house in order. The scripture
says that King Hezekiah was sick on his bed unto death. And the
prophet was sent of God to tell the king that he was going to
die. And the scripture says that he turned his face toward the
wall and prayed unto the Lord. And I did mourn as a dove, and
my eyes failed with looking up. O Lord, I am oppressed. Deliver me, deliver me." God heard that prayer. The Lord
gave him the faith to pray it. Put him in the position he needed
to be in, in order to pray that prayer. And then he answered
the prayer. The Lord gave him everything.
He does the same for us, doesn't he? He puts us in the position,
then he gives us the prayer to pray, and then he answers the
prayer, and it was all of him from beginning to end. Absalom. The scripture says,
had stolen the hearts of the people of Israel with his conspiracy
and his treason against his father. And David in grief was forced
to flee the city. Can't imagine what that would
have been like. But the scripture tells us a
little bit about it. Turn with me to 2 Samuel chapter 15. 2
Samuel chapter 15. Verse 30, And David went up by
the ascent of Mount Olivet, and wept as he went up, and had his
head covered, and he went barefoot, and all the people that were
with him covered every man his head, and they went up, weeping
as they went up, fleeing from his own son. And one told David, saying, Ahithophel
is among the conspirators with Absalom. And David said, O Lord,
I pray thee, turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness.
And it came to pass that when David was come to the top of
the mount, where he worshipped God." Oh, what a grievous time
David was in. What a horrible experience King
David was having with the with the treason of his own son and
yet he prayed in faith and he worshipped God. He had been brought
by God to the end of himself. He had no place else to go. Faith is what we have when we
have nothing else. In another time in David's life,
he knew something of that experience when Nathan put his finger in
David's face and said to him, Thou art the man. David grieved over his sin with
Bathsheba and Uriah and all the other men that he was responsible
for having murdered. But he said, Against thee and
thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight, O God.
He saw his sin ever before him. as it was a violation against
God. And God gave him a broken and
contrite heart, which he did not despise. God didn't despise
it. Why? Because God gave it to him. The woman with the issue of blood
came crawling to the Lord Jesus Christ only after she had spent
everything that she had on physicians and was left worse in the end
than what she was in the beginning. The prodigal had to eat pig food
before having come to himself and before being brought in faith
back to his father. Isaiah could not say, Lord here
am I, send me until first God brought him to say, woe is me
for I am undone. I'm a man of unclean lips and
I live among a people of unclean lips. Here's the point. The Lord Jesus
Christ is everything only to those who have nothing. One thing I'm convinced of, if
a person has a problem with the gospel, it's because they've
not been made a sinner. I know that. It doesn't have
anything to do with with the doctrine of particular redemption,
or limited atonement, or perseverance of the saints, or irresistible
grace, has nothing to do with all those things that they want
to point to. It has everything to do with the fact that they've
not been made a sinner. Once a person's been made a sinner,
oh, the rest of it's easy, isn't it? Once they've been stripped of
all their righteousness, once they have no goodness whatsoever,
then the gospel not only makes sense, but it's good news. It's good news for sinners. Turn
with me to Romans chapter 3. In Romans chapter 1, The Lord
points out the depravity of man as it's being expressed in the
lives of the irreligious, the Gentile dogs, those people out
there in the world who have no regard whatsoever for God or
even a higher power, who are indulging themselves in all the
pleasures of the flesh, and the Lord identifies that as depravity. And as he comes to the conclusion
of chapter 1, the Jews are hearing this and saying, Amen, Paul,
give it to them. And so, at the end of chapter
1, he says in verse 32, who knowing
the judgment of God that they which commit such things are
worthy of death, They not only do the same, but they have pleasure
in them that do them. Verse 1 of chapter 2, Therefore
thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art, that judgest.
For wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself, for
thou that judgest doeth the same thing. And then the entire chapter
2 he points out how those who have been given the oracles of
God, those have been given the law of God are just as guilty
as are the Gentiles who don't have the word of God. So that
by the time he gets to chapter 3 his conclusion is that whether
Gentile or Jew all have sinned and come short of the glory of
God. Look at chapter 3 at verse 1.
He asks the question, if these Jews who have been given the
law are just as guilty before God as are the Gentiles who had
no law, then what advantage is there to being a Jew? What advantage
is there? What benefit is there to being
a Jew if we're just as bad off as they are? Well, what profit
is there of circumcision? Verse 2, much in every way chiefly
because that unto them were committed the oracles of God. They've got
the message of salvation in the word of God. Now this word oracle
is the same as the word word. The word became flesh and dwelt
among us. You know, it's the word logos.
It's a representative of the Lord Jesus Christ, the living
word, and the written word. And he's saying it's of great
value. It's of great value to our children
that they grow up hearing the message of Christ. The only hope
they have of being saved is if they hear about Christ. For what if some who heard did
not believe? What if some that heard the gospel
didn't believe the gospel? Shall their unbelief make the
faith of God without effect? Has God failed? Has God attempted
to save somebody that wasn't saved because they did not believe? God gave them the message of
salvation. God wanted them to be saved.
He wanted them to believe, but he couldn't force their will.
That's the question that he's asking. God forbid. God forbid. Perish the thought. This is very strong language
that Paul uses several times, you know, in his writings. And
he's saying that this thought ought not to even enter. It's
blasphemous to think this. That God would be trying to do
something that he couldn't accomplish? What kind of God is that? Anybody
that would entertain such a thought doesn't know God. Yea, let God be true, but every
man a liar, as it is written, that thou mayest be justified
in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged.
That's from Psalm 51, isn't it? You know everything, and whatever
you do is right. You're justified in condemning
me as guilty. But if our unrighteousness commend
the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unrighteous who taketh
vengeance? If our sin, our unrighteousness,
sheds light on the righteousness of God, is God unrighteous who taketh
vengeance. And here's another thought that
ought to be perished. He's saying that if our sin gives,
if where sin abounds, grace is much more bound. If our sin gives
the righteousness of God more glory, then let's just go, let's
just sin all the more. And how can God, how can God
hold me responsible for my sin? I speak as a man. Is God unrighteous
if he takes vengeance against an unbeliever? If their unbelief
is only shedding more light on his glory and on his righteousness,
then why would he take vengeance on an unbeliever? God forbid. For then how shall God judge
the world? For if the truth of God hath
more abounded through my lie unto his glory, why yet am I
also judged as a sinner?" Now, the argument that the Apostle
Paul is making now has to do with what we have called antinomianism. The word nomos is the word for
law, and antinomian means against the law. Nothing wrong with the
law of God. And look what he says in the
next verse. And not rather, as we slanderously, as we be slanderously
reported, and as some affirm that we say, let us do evil that
good may come, whose damnation is just. Now here's the truth. And I've seen it happen. I can't
tell you how many times. Heard it this past week. What you all are saying is true,
then that'll just lead people to license and libertine life. It'll just be a, it'll just be
a license to sin. It's antinomianism. Now here's
the truth. You've not preached the gospel
until you've been accused by the lawmongers as being antinomian. Are we antinomian? No. He said
we're being slanderously reported as being antinomian. We're not
encouraging people to live licentious lives. Not in the least. Does grace abound where sin abounds?
Yes. Yes. But it would just be human
reason to make that leap to conclude that therefore we just sin all
the more that we might get more grace. Those who say we are advocating
lawless living are threatened by free grace because it threatens
the very hope of their salvation, which is their presumed law-keeping. One thing I know about preaching
the gospel, you can't preach it free enough. And if you preach it free, as
it is, Then those who are holding on to their own righteousness,
those who are holding on to their own good works as the hope of
their salvation will be stripped of that hope and will make the
accusation, well you're just an antinomian. That's exactly
what Paul was being accused of. Every faithful gospel preacher's
been accused of it. Every believer's been accused
of it. You've been accused of it if you've shared your faith
with religious folk. Look what he says in verse 9.
What then? Are we better than they? He's
talking about the Jews and the Gentiles. Here's faith is when
we're left with nothing else. Faith is what Jonah had in the
belly of the fish. Faith is what Paul had. Faith
is what Peter had. Faith is what Mary had, or Martha
had, when the Lord said, Believest thou this? Yea, Lord, I believe. I believe that thou art the Christ. What then, are we better than
they? No, in no wise, for we have before proved, both Jew
and Gentile, that they are all under sin." Christ is everything only to
those who have nothing. only to those who have nothing. As it is written, there is none
righteous. None. None? No, not one. Not a single one. There is none that understandeth.
There is none that seeketh after God. Not apart from the grace
of God. Not apart from His saving work.
The natural man, and the child of God knows that. He knows that
he never would have sought the Lord had the Lord not sought
him. He never would have loved Christ if the Lord had not first
loved him. They are all gone out of the
way. They are together become unprofitable. There is none that
doeth good. No, not one. Not one. Their throat is an open sepulcher,
with their tongues they have used deceit. The poison of asp
is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.
Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery
are in their way, and the way of peace have they not known."
They've not known it. He's talking about Jew and Gentile.
He's talking about everybody. He's talking about those who
have the law and those who don't have the law. Those who have outward appearances
of morality and those who have none. He's speaking of the condition
of the heart of sinners. This is where God ministers the
gospel, doesn't He? He ministers it to our hearts.
And He shows us the evil of our hearts. At least in part. There's no fear of God before
their eyes. Until the Lord was pleased to make Himself known,
there's no fear of God. no fear we were indifferent to
the gospel indifferent to the things of
of truth we we or we may have we may have had some sort of
religious habits that we had built or some sort of self-righteous
works that we had that we had established but we had no interest
in the in the gospel now we know that what things
so ever the law sayeth, it sayeth to them who are under the law,
that every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become
guilty before God." There's the purpose of the law. The law makes
us guilty. The law offers us no hope. It
offers us no comfort whatsoever. The law stands over us in judgment
and declares us to be guilty. It is our schoolmaster. It shows
us our need for Christ. Therefore, by the deeds of the
law, there shall no flesh be justified not in His sight. Not in His sight. Men justify
themselves. They justify themselves to themselves.
They compare themselves to themselves. They compare themselves to one
another. Oh, we're really good at justifying ourselves, aren't
we? But not before God. God knows the truth. He knows
the heart. He knows what we are. And He
makes it known to us what we are. So that we're stripped of
our righteousness, left with nothing, and forced by the hand
of God to believe God and trust Christ. By the deeds of the law there
shall no flesh be justified in his sight, for by the law is
the knowledge of sin." That's all the law does. The law just exposes us, doesn't
it? When we read our Lord's summary
of the law, You're to love the Lord your God with all of your
heart and all of your mind and all of your soul. And we look
at our love for Him and we think, Lord, Your law just exposes me for
what I am. Lord, I love You. I believe You.
I want to love You more. But my love is so imperfect.
It's so full of flesh. My faith is so full of unbelief. But now, but now, the righteousness
of God without the law. He goes on later to say that
the Jews have a zeal for God, but it's without knowledge. They
go about trying to establish their own righteousness through
their law keeping. But now he says the righteousness
of God without the law. without your keeping of the law.
God has established a righteousness without the law and he's made
it known, he's manifested it. He manifested it by the witness
of the law and the prophets. Everything in the scriptures
points to Christ, doesn't it? In the volume of the book it
is written of me. Don't you love that story in
Luke chapter 24 when our Lord is revealing himself very mercifully
to those disciples that are going back to Emmaus, dragging their
feet, thinking that all had been lost. What are you so downcast about?
Have you not heard? The one that we thought was the
Messiah, the one we thought was the prophet has been crucified.
He's gone. our hopes are dashed and the Lord began to reason
with them in the scriptures and beginning with Moses the Psalms
the prophets expounded unto them those things concerning himself
until they got to their home and it was late in the day and
it was dinner time and they persuaded him to stay he the scripture
says he acted as if he would have gone on he would have But He had already stirred their
hearts. They said later, did our hearts not burn within us
when He spake with us along the way? And He had already stirred
their hearts, but He put it into them to ask Him to stay. Lord, they begged Him. They begged Him to stay for dinner.
Oh, I'm going to go. Oh, please, please. Isn't that what the Lord does
for us? He puts it in our hearts to beg Him. And in the breaking of bread,
He revealed Himself to them. And as soon as they saw Him for
who He was, He disappeared. And what did they do immediately?
They went all the way back to Jerusalem to tell the apostles
what they had seen. The righteousness of God, that's
Christ, has been made manifest, has been
made known by the Law and the Prophets, everything in the Scriptures. What sayeth the Scriptures? It
speaks of Christ from beginning to end. Even the righteousness of God,
which is by faith of Jesus Christ, There's the righteousness of
God. Now He imputes it to us through faith. For by grace are
you saved through faith. He gives us faith. He puts it
in our hearts to cry out to Him to save us. But it's the righteousness
of God by the faith of Jesus Christ that established that
righteousness. Our faith is not the cause of
our salvation, it's the result of it. The faith of Christ is
the cause of it. Unto all and upon all them that
believe for there is no difference. The moral or the immoral, the
religious or the irreligious are all in the same boat. They're
all in the same boat. They don't have anything. The
law condemns them all. They're dead in their trespasses
and sins. They have no righteousness. They
have no means to save themselves. They have no hope before God. He saves every one of us the
same way. For all have sinned. and come short of the glory of
God. Now there's a good definition of sin. Men just naturally think
of sin as a behavioral problem. They think of it as the bad habits
they have and the things they feel guilty about and all that
sort of thing. And that is. You ought to feel
bad if you do something wrong. Hopefully you've got a conscience.
But that's just the manifestation of sin, isn't it? We commit sins
because we are sinners. What is the essence of sin? It's everything in your life
and in my life that falls short of the glory of God. Everything. And what is that? Everything.
That's why he said, there's none that doeth good, no not one.
No, not one. Everything in our lives falls
short of the glory of God. And God is holy. He's pure and perfect. He demands
absolute perfection, doesn't He? So how are we going to be justified?
Well, freely. Look at the next verse. Being
justified before God and to be justified means You're without sin. Without sin. Never have sinned. Never have sinned. Justified
never done it. I mean, that's pretty good, isn't
it? How are we going to be justified
before God? He sees everything freely. Not by anything we bring
to the table. He's going to give it to us freely
by His grace. Being justified freely by His
grace through the redeeming work of the Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary's
cross. God's going to use the shed blood
of the Lord Jesus Christ as a covering for the sins of those for whom
He died. What do we have to do with that?
Nothing. Nothing. justified freely by
His grace. We're not justified by the law.
We're not justified by our good works. We're not justified by
our intentions. And the self-righteous will say,
you can't tell folks that. Oh, yes, you can. If you want
to be free, you can. If you want to be free in Christ,
you want to love God, they've got to know that all their salvation
is of the Lord. every bit of it. Whom God whom God hath set forth to be
a propitiation through faith in his blood. Now you know what
that word propitiation means. For God to be made propitious
means that all of his anger all of his wrath All the fire of
his judgment has been put out. It's been quenched. He's got
nothing left in his heart for his children but love and mercy. Through faith in his blood to
declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are
passed through the forbearance of God. All our sins. to declare, I say, at this time,
His righteousness, that He might be just. How's God going to be
just? How's God going to forgive me?
He's going to be just by causing the Lord Jesus Christ to bear
the full burden of our guilt and then punish the Lord Jesus
Christ for that sin. satisfying his justice and extinguishing
his wrath so that he might be just and the justifier. He's the one that did the justifying
and he remains just. Of him which believeth in...
Where's boasting then? Where's boasting? Don't you love
being around God's people? I mean, I listen to people, watch
people. Religious folks especially, they
can just be so offensive, can't they? So self-righteous. They try to hide it, but you
see it. You see it. Where's boasting then? It's excluded. By what law? By what law? Of works? Nay, but by the law
of faith. By the law of faith. Faith is
what you've got when all else is lost. When you've got nothing
left. Nothing else. If the Lord makes you to be a
sinner, that's where you'll be. Relying on Christ alone for everything. Therefore we conclude Here's
the conclusion of the matter, that a man is justified before
God by faith without the deeds of the law. None of our deeds
of the law have added to our justification. Is he the God of the Jews only?
Is this just for the moral, for the religious? No, he is not
also, is he not also the God of the Gentiles? Yes, the Gentiles
also, the dogs. Seen, it is one God which shall
justify the circumcision by faith and the uncircumcision through
faith." The same faith. Do we make void the law through
faith? Nay. God forbid. We establish the law. Through faith in the Lord Jesus
Christ, we are declaring that God's law is holy, just and good.
It's right. It's perfect. And I'm not able
to keep it. Never have kept it one time.
It's so perfect. I don't have the ability. I do
not have the ability to satisfy one bit of it. And that's why
I'm trusting Christ for all my hope before God. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we thank you
that there is an advocate with thee, Jesus Christ the righteous
one. and that he himself is the end
of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. We pray that you would stir in
our hearts the miracle of faith, that we would trust Christ and
him alone. We ask it in his name. Amen. All right, let's stand together
for the time. Number 74 on the sawback tempo. Pass me not, O gracious Father,
Sinful, wretched though I be, Though you might in truth condemn
me, Let your mercy fall on me, Love of God so everlasting, Blood
of Christ so rich and free, Grace of God so strong and saving,
Magnify them all in me.