with me here this morning to
the book of Ephesians chapter 2 second chapter of the book of
Ephesians There's always a before and an after. Paul said one time,
he said, before I was a blasphemer. That's what he was prior to his
conversion. He was a hater of the Christ
of God. And he'd done his dead-level
best to incarcerate and to kill all
of those who were followers of the Lord Jesus. He said he once
was a blasphemer. But he said, But now I have obtained
mercy. There is before and there is
after. There is a conversion. There is a deliverance wrought. in the soul of the believer.
He has been quickened from his condition as a dead sinner. And he has been given the life
of God. He is a new creation in Christ
Jesus. And all old things have passed
away and all things become new. And Paul says here in the second
chapter in that twelfth verse, that at that time he was without
Christ. There was a time when we, who are the people of
God, were without Christ. aliens from the commonwealth
of Israel, and strangers from the covenant of promise, having
no hope and without Christ in the world. But God has told us that those who know Him are accepted in the Beloved. In this first chapter, it says
that we were chosen according as he hath chosen us
in him before the foundation of the
world. that we should be holy and without blame before Him
in love. And he says in verse 6, to the
praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath made us, that
is, the people of God, those that were chosen in Christ and
preserved in Christ before the world was. He is chosen in Christ before
the foundation of the world, and to the praise of the glory
of His grace, wherein He hath made them, or made us, accepted
in the Beloved. So God tells us here that His
people are accepted in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now back up to
that verse 4 where it says, He hath chosen us and Him before
the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without
blame before Him in love. Now we know, at least I think
we know, that we cannot be holy as God has And we cannot be in this lifetime
without blame before him in love. We just can't meet those conditions
or standards. We must be honest with ourselves. We are accepted in the Beloved.
We are chosen in the Beloved before the foundation of the
world. And our holiness and to be without blame before
Him in love is in Christ. Christ, who is our righteousness,
our perfect righteousness, He is holy and without blame before
Him in love. Now, I said that He told us here
that His people are accepted in Christ. Now, if we
are without Christ, then we have nothing that God will accept.
That makes sense, doesn't it? If we are without Christ, we
have nothing, absolutely nothing that God will accept because
he will only accept that which is perfect in His sight. And if we are without that perfection,
then we have nothing whatsoever. We have nothing that God will
accept. Why? Because His people are accepted in the Lord Jesus.
And if we don't have the Lord Jesus, then we have nothing that
God will accept. Now, that's plain as the nose
on your face. He said in another place, no
man, in an absolute sense, no man can come unto the Father
but by Jesus Christ. Now, if we are without Christ,
then we have no ground upon which we can approach God. If no man
can come to the Father but by Christ, but by me, he said, if we are without him, we have
no ground upon which we can approach God. He says, I am the way, and
he says, I am the truth, and I am the light. Now, if he is
the way, then there is no other way. And if he is the truth,
everything else is a lie. And if he is the light, then
everything apart from him is death. That makes sense, doesn't
it? If you're without Christ. So
if you're without Christ, we're out of the way. If we are ignorant of the truth,
then we're dead in trespasses and in sins. And in this first
chapter, or the second chapter of the book of Ephesians, chapter
2, It says, And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and
in sins. So, if we are without Christ,
we're out of the way, we're ignorant of the truth, and we're dead
in trespasses and in sins. So, if this is your condition
this morning here, if this is your case, without Christ, if
you are whatever you possess besides, you might feel like you've got
some qualities about you or some merit about you or in you that
you possess, you feel like Maybe you could come to God on those
feelings, but that will never do. You better consider that. And these things that come from
self-hope need to be laid aside and abandoned. And the quicker
you lay them aside and abandon them, the better off you'll be.
Because without Christ you have nothing that God will accept.
God will not hear your cry or your plea without Christ, without
the reconciler and the mediator who lived and died and rose again
and ever lives to make intercession for his people. If you're without
him, your case Now, if there be any here this
morning, any poor, rooted-up, broken-hearted sinner who feels
that he is ruined and guilty and filthy and is too vile and
too base that God will not receive him as he knows, the sinner knows,
he's such a vile and nasty person, God will not receive me. Well, I tell you this, a sinner
was never received since the world began, but on the basis
or on the ground of the Lord Jesus Christ and his righteousness. Regardless of how poor and broken-hearted
and base and vile and filthy you feel, rather than that being
against you, your felt sinfulness and vileness and wretchedness
Instead of that being against you, that's a plea more than
anything else. That's a plea that you should
fall flat on the Lord Jesus Christ as your all-sufficient Savior. Now, if we are without Christ,
we are without holiness. For God said that he hath made
unto us, that he has made unto us sanctification, which is holiness. Now, the child of God, one that
has been quickened, one that has been redeemed, one that has
come to know God in Jesus Christ, that child of God has a holiness,
and His holiness is in the Lord Jesus Christ, that we should
be holy and without blame before Him in love. And I've already
told you that God says in the book of I Corinthians, I believe
it is, that He has made unto us sanctification. He's made
unto us holiness so the child of God He has a holiness that
even Satan cannot destroy, a holiness that will stand the test amidst
all of the noise and confusion in this religious world that
surrounds us. Without Christ, all the rest
will leave us when we come to die, but having Christ, We will
be able to stand the test. We will be able to efface this
world when this world is on fire. Well, we will be able to say,
Who shall condemn us? Who shall bring any charge against
us? It is Christ that died, rather
than rose again. He was delivered. for our offenses
and raised again for our justification. Again, if we have Christ, we
have his blood for pardon. We have his righteousness for
justification. We have his fullness to supply
all of our needs. We have his strength to support
us. We have his wisdom to guide us. in all truth and in all of our
ways. We have him in all of his offices,
prophet and priest and king and mediator. We have him as a prophet
to teach us. We have him as a priest to atone
for us and to plead for us. And we have him as a king to
rule over us and to rule in us. We have him as our shepherd,
our captain, our bread of life, our water of life, and we have
the wine of God to cheer us on. And we also have this endearing
relationship with God as our elder brother. And even more
than that, we have him as our husband. He is the bridegroom
and we are the bride. Now, I think I mentioned this
once before, but I'll mention it again. That relationship that
is a closer relationship than even having him as an elder brother,
the relationship as the bride to the bridegroom is a higher
and a greater relationship than the elder brother. Because when
we take our brides, when we're married, we take our bride and
the bride or the groom, the bridegroom takes the bride and the bride
takes the bridegroom for better or for worse. But the Lord Jesus
Christ, He took us, not for the better. He took us knowing that
it would only come to the worst. What a daring, endearing relationship
that we have. So if you take away Christ, then
you are lost forever. You must sink down forever and
forever if you have not Christ. Without Christ, How can you face
the law of God? Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart, and all thy strength, and all thy might,
and all thy soul. How are you going to face that
law if you have not got Christ? If you haven't got Him, how are
you going to face it? What are you going to say? What
are you going to do? What plea will you make if you have not
Christ? Well, can you face the justice
of God? The justice of God says if you
violate the least of these commandments, violate just one of them, you're
guilty of breaking them all. Now, how are you going to face
that charge against you at the judgment? What are you going
to say? What are you going to do? How can you face justice? How without Christ? What about your obedience? Why,
the very best that you can do and the very best that I can
do is nothing but filthy rags. As a matter of fact, your best
and your worst and my best and my worst is nothing but filthy
rags. The best thing, the best thought
you ever had is an abomination in the sight of God. It's impure,
it's dark, it's black, it's vile, it's filthy. Pure, holy God cannot look upon
it. Without Him, can you or I present
a spotless obedience and perfect righteousness as our acquittal
or acquittance before God? Can we produce that? There is nothing wanting. in
the Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing warning in His perfect
obedience, and there is nothing warning in His perfect righteousness. I used to wonder what that word
impute means, and I think I've got some Scripture here that
makes it very If you will turn with me to the second book of
Corinthians, chapter 5, the word impute means this, verse 18. All things are of God. He is speaking of the new creation
here. Verse 17 says, If any man be
in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things are passed away. Behold,
all things are of new, and all things are of God. Who hath reconciled
us to himself? by Jesus Christ and hath given
to us the ministry of reconciliation. How is a man reconciled unto
God? On the basis of the perfect obedience and the perfect righteousness
of the Lord Jesus Christ. But how am I involved with that? That is Jesus Christ. Well, to with that God was in
Christ reconciling the world unto himself. Here is that word imputing or
impute. What does that mean? Well, God was in Christ reconciling
the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them. Impute means a divine transferal,
the transferring of our sins on Him and the transferring His
righteousness upon us. Now it says, Now then, we are
ambassadors for Christ. and what is the ministry of those
who are ambassadors to Christ? Well, he has already told us
that he has committed unto us, the people of God, the ministry
of reconciliation. So to be reconciled, there must
be this imputation. There must be this divine transfer
of our sins on Him and His righteousness on us. Now, he says, we are ambassadors
for Christ as though God did beseech you by us. We pray you
in Christ's stead, be you reconciled to God. How can you be reconciled
to God? Only on the ground of the righteousness
and the obedience and the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now
here is the definition of imputation. It's the divine transfer. For
he hath made him, God hath made Christ, the sinless one, the
pure one, the blameless one, the blessed Lamb of God, God
hath made Christ, For he hath made him to be sin for us. That is, he took our sins. How did he do it? I don't know
how he did it. No problem with God. Everything's
possible with God. I mean, he's God. No limit to
God in his infallible wisdom, this great immensity
of knowledge and wisdom and power. He gathered all of our sins up,
sins that we didn't know about, sins that we did know about.
He gathered all those sins, little sins, big sins, sin, sin, gathered
them all up individually. my black, dark, secret sins,
known and unknown. He gathered mine up and laid
them on Christ. And if you are a believer, he
gathered your sins up and he laid them on Christ. And Christ
paid what law and justice demands. He was punished. for our sins. While we were yet
enemies, Christ died for our sins. How did he do it? By imputation. Our sins were charged to him
and his righteousness is charged to us. Now, God cannot receive
any sinner apart from the Lord Jesus Christ. So if you are without
Christ, then you have nothing. If you are without Christ, you
cannot be accepted by God. So it's imperative that a man
have Christ. But Christ is the way. All other ways are lies. He's
the way. He's the truth. And if you're
ignorant of truth, what are you going to do? You're shut up. to this man Christ
Jesus, I'm shut up to him and you're shut up to him. If we're
ever to enjoy God and his salvation, we must come to the Lord Jesus
Christ and lay hold of him and his cleansing blood and his righteousness
freely imputed. for he hath made him to be sin
for us who knew no sin, that we might
be made the righteousness of God in him." So that is how I
come to understand what this word impute means. Blessed is
the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin to. He will not
charge sin to the man that is in the Lord Jesus Christ because
he already transferred that man's sins and charged the Lord Jesus
Christ with them. And what my sins owed by way
of punishment, the Lord Jesus Christ was punished in my stead.
And that's what it means. While we were yet in a mission,
Christ died for sinners. And that's the truth. So help
me, God. Oh, there's nothing wanting in the doing and the dying. of
the Lord Jesus Christ. Every need in the vilest wretch,
every need in the most corrupt and polluted sinner that has
ever walked the face of the earth is met in the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, if you are without Christ,
all your Self-hope, your self-confidence, self-duty has got to be rooted
up. For no sinner that is really
taught by God his lost and ruined condition can ever fall back
upon self for help, in whole or in part. lead him to place all hope and
dependence in the Lord Jesus Christ alone. Here he drops his
anchor and here he rests in Christ crucified. And hope, he mentions something about
hope here in the book of Ephesians. Let me read that. He says in this twelfth verse,
he said that at that time you were without Christ, before you
were converted, before Christ found you. I heard somebody on
the radio this morning talk, she said that she loved the song
that she sang there because she said was through this song, I
Found Christ. Well, in a sense she did, but
the truth of the matter is, if she was found, it was Christ
that found her. She just thought that she found
Christ. I thought I found Him. But when
the truth is known, He found me. I was that lost sheep of
the 99 Ninety-nine was in the pole and
one was out there. And I wasn't looking for him.
I wasn't looking for him. But he was looking for me. And
he found me to the praise and the honor and the glory of his
great name. Well, the man drops his anchor there.
Hope, hope, hope. Where is hope? Well, hope is
this. This is one definition of it. It may help you, I don't know.
What is hope? Well, it's a feeling that what
is wanted will happen. That's what hope is. A feeling
of that which is wanted will happen. Well, these people having
no hope, having no feeling whatsoever, to want and to expect. They had no want and they had
no expect. It was hoping against hope. It's to go on hoping, though
it sounds baseless or groundless to do so. They were without hope. Are you without hope? Has the God of all grace and
all glory open the door of hope to your poor soul. Do you know
that he that is dead is freed from sin? That's the partially
open door of hope is when you find out, when the Spirit of
God teaches you that when you come to the Lord Jesus Christ,
you are dead to sin. He that is dead to sin is freed from sin. Did you know that? Do you know
anything at all about this death? Has God ever killed you? Well, if it's the will of God,
I hope this morning that he'll kill somebody here. If it's the
will of God, I hope God will kill you. If God is pleased to kill you,
I don't want you to be unfavorable towards me or be mad at me. God will but kill you to self
and to self-hope if God will kill you from that hope that
you entertain in your soul of being saved by something that
you do or something that you have. If God will kill that hope,
in you, the door of hope then will be
open to you. But he'll have to kill that hope. He'll have to root up and tear
out. He'll have to slaughter that
hope. And if he kills you to self and
to self-hope and leads you to know that you must be slaughtered
to it all and have your soul bathed in the blood and the love
of Emmanuel, God with us, the Lord Jesus Christ, and there
drop your anchor and find your rest in him and him alone. Then if he brings you to see
yourself and to see your death to your self-interest and your
so-called refinement, your so-called good
works. If it brings you to this place,
you'll see that you can't enjoy anything but
the gospel of substitution that the Lord Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity,
condescended to become a man and as a man stood accountable
for all the charges against you. And then when you see that, when
you see that Christ is a man, is your obedience. He's the giver
of the law, and he's the keeper of the law, and he kept the law
in your behalf. The law of God must be kept,
and you can't keep it, and you haven't even tried to keep it,
neither have I. That is, prior to conversion.
But when you find out that God requires you to keep that law,
and you haven't kept it and can't keep it, and you realize you're
guilty of the charge, and you've got nothing to plead but guilty
before God, when He brings you to that point, and He brings
you to see that the God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ, become
a man, and as a man, He's your sponsor. He's your surety. He stands accountable. God in
him struck hands and he guaranteed God all that's required of them. Amen. And all your sins were laid on
him and he paid the penalty. He was punished in your place.
And he freely imputed to you his righteousness. And you're
in Christ, and his righteousness is your hope. Well, if he brings
you or me to this death, and I think he brought me to that
sometime in the past, brought me to that place where I died, And I found out
that I was crucified with him, and nevertheless I live. Oh, listen to you. You can't
enjoy the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ until this is brought
to your conscience. That sin's gone. It's not there
no more. God made an end of it in Christ,
paid for it, clothed you with his righteousness, made you accepted
in Christ. Then you can enjoy the gospel.
But until that, you can't enjoy the gospel. You don't know what
the gospel is. And when you find out that in
this business of God's salvation, he's to have all the praise and
all the glory, all of it, from the beginning to the end.
And when that happens, that will be a death blow to your free
will, and the sooner the better that that death happens, that
you die to yourself and have a good hope. At that time, you was without
Christ. Without Christ, you've got nothing. You can't pray. How can you pray? You've got
no mediator. all your wailings and all your
pleas and in your words. It's nothing but confusion. God
doesn't hear it. He won't hear it. He can't hear
it. Unless you've got this Mediator. Unless you've got this One that
stands between you and God. One that can One that can touch
the heart of God and touch your heart and bring the two together.
And the only one that can do that is the God-man. So you've
got to face up to this. You can't enjoy the salvation
of God until you're slaughtered, until you're cut, until you bleed,
until you're hurt, until all self-hope is poured out and you
can find nothing. Put your finger on it, if that's
of any value. And that everything that you
said done in your lifetime is nothing but filthy rags in the
sight of God. When that takes place, death
blow, then you come to know something about it. You'll no longer be
strangers then. Having no hope, now you've got
hope. Now you expect what you want. having no hope without God in
this world. But now, in Christ Jesus, ye
who sometimes were far off, every sinner, every sinner, a sinner is a sacred thing. God
has made him so. If God makes you To know you're
a sinner, you're a sacred thing. You're sometimes far off. But
if He makes you to know you're a sinner, He'll go where you
are and bring you back in His loving arms. And now in Christ
Jesus, ye who sometimes were far off, now is made nigh. How? By the cleansing blood of
the Lord Jesus Christ. Who is our peace? Who hath made
both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition
between us, having abolished in his flesh, as a man, our humanity,
even the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in
ordinance, for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making
peace. that he might reconcile both
unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby,
came and preached peace to you which were far off unto them
that were nigh. Now therefore ye are no more
foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with the saints
and the household of God, and are built upon the foundation
of the apostles and prophets Jesus Christ himself being the
chief cornerstone, in whom all the building fitly framed together
groweth up unto a holy temple in the Lord, in whom ye also
are built together for habitation through the Spirit. Well, I want
to know, are you one of his? Be ye reconciled
unto God. through Jesus Christ. We'll meet
again this evening.