Let's go back now to Romans 10. Romans chapter 10. Now is there anybody here who
is interested in salvation? Anybody interested in salvation?
The answer to that question should be yes from everybody here because
Some of you sitting here do not believe on the Lord. And if you
were to die today, you would perish forever. You would be
cast out into outer darkness where there's gnashing of teeth
and that's where you'd be. Everyone here should be interested
in salvation. We're sinners and we need to
be saved. How are we saved? How can a sinner
obtain the righteousness of God so that God will accept us? That's
the question. Paul talks about two ways that
sinners attempt to come to him. Two ways sinners attempt to be
accepted of God. Two ways sinners expect to stand
before God in the day of judgment. The righteousness of the law.
That is, they go to the law and they attempt to keep the law
by their works. And then he talks about the righteousness
of faith. Those that believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ. Now, these two ways will be our
divisions. We'll look at each one of them.
See what the scripture says about each one of these ways that men
try to come to God. And I'll tell you this from the
outset. This is the message. You must have the righteousness
of God. You and I must have the righteousness
of God. And the only way to obtain the
righteousness of God is through faith in Christ. That's it. Now
first of all, what does What does Paul say here about the
righteousness of the law? Verse 5, he says, For Moses describeth
the righteousness which is of the law, that the man which doeth
those things shall live by them. Now this is simple, this is easy
to understand. The law tells you, if you decide
you want to try to be saved by the law, then you must do its
commands and you shall have life. You must do the commands of the
law and you shall have life. Now what does that mean? Well,
you know the Ten Commandments. You have to keep the Ten Commandments.
And we're going through the rest of the law in Scripture. There are 613 laws. You have
to keep every one of them perfectly. That includes if a person sins,
you have to kill them to keep the law. You have to stone them
to death. There's laws in there that you probably don't even
know about, that you've never even heard of. But you've got
to keep them. If you're going to come to God
in the law, you've got to keep them. Ignorance is no excuse.
And notice here, Moses didn't say, hear the commandments and
you shall live. Romans 2.13 says, not the hearers
of the law are justified, but the doers of the law. He didn't
just say, hear the law. Moses didn't say three strikes
and you're out. He didn't say you get three attempts
at it. James said, whosoever shall keep the whole law and
yet offend in one point, he's guilty of all. Moses didn't say
as long as you do your best, God will receive you. We just
read up in Romans 10 and verse 2, Paul said of the children
of Israel, I bear them record, I bear them witness, they have
a zeal of God, but it's not according to knowledge. Zeal won't save
you. You can be zealous for the law,
that won't save you. Everything God commands us in
the law, you must do. You must do it all with all your
heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. That is, with
all your will and understanding, with all your affections, you
can only have a heart and only have affection for God. You can't
have affection for anything else in this world to keep His law. For God only has to be perfect
affection, perfectly free from all hypocrisy. Now this is what
it takes to come to God in a law. You have to have a... Let's go
back now to birth. Let's go back to your mother's
womb. You got to have a perfect conception. You've got to be
conceived in your mother's womb perfectly. You can't be conceived
in sin and shaping in iniquity, as Scripture says of all of us.
And let's go to the birth, when you're born. You can't go astray
as soon as you be born speaking lies. You can't do it. You have to
be perfect. You have to begin without sin, continue without
sin, and end without sin. If you be saved by the Lord.
You remember that rich young ruler that came to our Lord Jesus
and our Lord Jesus told him, keep all these laws. And he said,
well, this I've done from my youth up. Now, is there anybody
here as foolish as that rich young ruler? Anybody here that's
so blind that you would say, well, I've kept the law from
my youth up? Well, I'll tell you what Christ said to that
man. He said, go sell everything you've
got. Sell it all. everything you own. Take all the money out of the
bank, put with it, and give it to the poor. Every last dime
you have. And follow Christ. And trust
Christ to provide everything for you. Can you do that? Can
you do that? You'll find out real quick. You're
covetous. So am I. We can't do that. We
can't do that. If we could do that, we God's church in this world would
be amply provided for. His preachers and His people.
There'd be no lacking of anything in this world. We can't live
like that. We won't. We got an old man of
sin with us that's covetous and just won't give everything for
God. Righteousness by the law is impossible. That's what I'm saying to you.
Righteousness by the law is impossible. It's an impossibility. That's
what God says in His Word. God spoke by men that were inspired
of God to write what they wrote and He said it's an impossibility
to be justified by the law. That means when God gave the
law, He knew that. Men will go around saying, well,
God wouldn't give us a law we couldn't keep. Yeah, that's exactly
what He did. Because God said this in Galatians
3.10, As many as are of the works of the law are under a curse,
for it is written, Cursed is everyone that continueth not
in all things which are written in the book of the law to do
them. Cursed is everybody that is under the law. Because you
can't keep it. And no mixture of law and faith can justify
it. Some people say, Well, I believe on Christ, but I believe now
we have to add our Our works to it, well God's people are
going to be faithful to do good works by God's grace. But if
you're looking to those works, if you're trusting in those works,
if you need those works for holiness or for righteousness, then you're
looking to the law. You're trusting yourself. And
that won't save any attempt to mix law and grace. That's works
and that's law. and it will not justify you in
the sight of God. You see, you might could justify
yourselves before men. That's what most of this progressive
sanctification stuff is. Men are preaching this and they're
teaching sinners to act a certain way and people put on a good
show outwardly. And it's mainly to be seen of
men. It's mainly to appease the preacher
and his Gestapo, his henchmen that are going to come around
and whip you if you don't obey it. It's to impress them and
keep them looking at you and pleased with you. And you might
justify yourselves before men. They might look at you and say,
yes, you're righteous. You're righteous. But see, God's
looking on the heart. He's not looking on the outward
appearance. And what's going on in your heart?
What's going on in your thoughts? And I'll tell you this, you've
broken the law since you've been sitting here. You've broken the
law since I started preaching this message. You've sat here
and broken the law. Everybody, every one of us. No man is justified by the law
in the sight of God, it is evident. No man, Galatians 3.11, no man
is justified by the law in the sight of God. It's evident. For the just shall live by faith. That's the only way. The just
live by faith. And the law is not of faith. You can't go to the law and live
by faith. You can't. It's an impossibility.
The law is not of faith. The law says the man that doeth
the commandments shall live by them. You see, over and over
in Scripture, God says you're either going to have to be saved
by the law And that means you have to do the whole law or save
through the righteousness of faith, trust in Christ. But you
can't mix the two. You can't try a little of both
and no, no, no, no. Salvation is only through faith
in Christ. The law is not of faith. Faith
is not involved in doing the works of the law. There's no
faith in that. It's strictly what you do. You do and you live. You don't do, you die. No faith
involved in that. You have to do it all. Any addition
to faith, any addition to Christ, if you have to supplement Christ's
work with something, you do. Your goodness, your morality,
your church going, your baptism. If there's anything that a man
thinks he has to add to Christ, he's looking to the Lord. He's
looking to himself. He's trying to be justified by
his own works. God won't have it. God won't
have it. He said if you be circumcised,
and you can add anything you want to there, if you be baptized,
if you join the church, if you attend church services, anything
you want to add there, if you be circumcised, Christ shall
profit you nothing. You are a debtor to keep the
whole law of God. We want to be baptized, we want
to join the church, but we don't do it to be saved. If you are
doing it to be saved, Christ will profit you nothing. You
are debtor to keep the whole law. So we have to abandon all
hope of righteousness by the law. That ought to be cleared
from the scriptures. Every one of us have to abandon
any hope of being made righteous by the law. That is not going
to happen. That is not going to happen. If you try to supplement
Christ's righteousness with your works, God will reject you. He
will reject you. Now that is scripture. That's
scripture. That's the plain teaching of
scripture. If you reject what I'm telling
you, you're rejecting God because this is God's word. This is what
he said. You can't come. You're not good. You're not good. God said there's
none good. No, not one. There's none righteous. No, not one. And you got to have
a righteousness. And you can't work to obtain
it. Now, that's scripture. That's what God says. Here's
why, and I want you to get this now. Listen carefully. Christ
is God's righteousness. Christ is the only righteousness
God will receive. He's pleased with His Son. He's
pleased with what His Son has done. And He will not receive
anyone but those that come trusting His Son. That's the only way
God will receive a sinner. And He's sanctification for us
too. Righteousness and sanctification. Go over to 1 Corinthians chapter
1 and look at this. This is the first scripture I
can remember being able to hear whenever God gave me ears to
hear. Right here. 1 Corinthians 1 and verse 22,
29 says that no flesh should glory in His presence. Verse
29. But of Him, but of God are you in Christ Jesus. It says
if He's put you in Christ, it's of God that did it. Who of God
is made unto us. Christ is made unto us. Wisdom
and righteousness and sanctification. That's holiness. That right there
just puts a death blow to this notion of trying to come to God
by our progressive sanctification. Christ is our holiness. Christ
is that holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. That's
the Lord Jesus Christ. and redemption. That means when
Christ said, He that I have made free, He will be free indeed.
He frees you from the law because He makes you see He has redeemed
you. To redeem us from the law, He had to pay the law everything
the law demanded of us. He had to give the law due obedience
and due justice and give the law everything the law demanded
of us. Give it death. And by that, He
bought His people out from under the law. Do you see what a slap
in the face it would be if God permitted one of His children
to then turn around and go back to the law? And go back to our
works after what Christ did for His people? So God won't allow
that. Christ is the only righteousness
of His people. Christ hath redeemed us from
the curse of the law being made a curse for us. This is what
He did for all God's elect. Christ has redeemed us from the
curse of the law, being made a curse for us. For it is written,
Cursed is everyone that hangeth on the tree. And He did it that
the blessings of Abraham might come on us Gentiles. That we
might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith through
Jesus Christ. Everybody Christ died for, He
is saying this. Everybody He died for, they are
going to be brought the Gospel. And they're going to be given
the Holy Spirit. And they're going to be born again. And they're
going to be given faith by God. And they're going to cast all
their care on the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's how God gives
you freely the righteousness of Christ through faith in Him.
This is why Christ died. When it says that the blessing
of Abraham might come on us through Jesus Christ. That we might receive
the promise of the Holy Spirit through faith. What he's saying
is the purpose for which Christ died and so his people will be
born again. Born anew. You have to be because
that old nature has to be cast down and a new nature has to
be created in us. That's the new man in whom we
believe has to be a new man created. The message we preach is not
due. That's the message the world
is preaching. The world wants to hear the message that says
to you, do this, don't do the other. And so today they're standing
up preaching that message. They're preaching it as morality.
Telling you what's right to do and what's wrong to do. But that's not salvation. We
don't preach do. We preach done. It's already
done. Christ did it all. And that's
how we're saved. That's the message of the gospel,
brethren. Is the law then against the promises of God? Paul asked
this question in Galatians. Is the law then against the promises
of God? God forbid. For if there had
been a law which could have given life, verily righteousness should
have been by the law. See, there was no law that could
give life. God didn't give it to us to give life. There's no
law that could give life. You see how blind men are that
these scriptures are given to us over and over and over that
say God never gave the law to earn a righteousness by it. God
never gave the law for you to earn life by it. And yet men
still say, well the law has other purposes too. The law was given
as a code of conduct. No, the law is one thing. It's administration of death.
It's to condemn you and pronounce you dead. It's so that when the
commandment comes, by the grace of God, that old man that you
thought was righteous by his deeds, like Paul said, when the
commandment came, sin revived and I died. That's what it's
for. To kill you. To kill all your
hope of righteousness by your works. If there had been a law which
could have given life, verily righteousness should have been
by the law, but the Scripture hath concluded all under sin,
that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to
them that believe in Jesus Christ. Now secondly, that's the righteousness
of the law. If you still want to try to come
to God by the righteousness of the law, well, I'm free from
your blood because I've told you the truth. I wouldn't do
that if I was you. You're going to perish. But now
let's talk about the righteousness which is of faith. It says all
is done so that you may live. You may have life freely. That's
what the righteousness of faith is. Listen, verse 6. but the
righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise. Say not
in thine heart who shall ascend into heaven, that is to bring
Christ down from above, or who shall descend into the deep,
that is to bring up Christ again from the dead. But what saith
it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart,
that is the word of faith which we preach. We are sinners so
we can't keep the law, but every sinner who has ever been saved
From the very beginning until now, every sinner who has ever
been saved has been saved the same way. Every single one. And that's through faith in the
Lord Jesus Christ. Preacher, you mean even back
then in Moses' day when he gave the law, when God used Moses
to give the law and Moses, we've been seeing in Exodus how Moses
is teaching the law, you mean even in those days, Sinners were
saved by the free grace of God and through faith in Christ?
Yes. That's what Moses preached. Moses was a preacher of the righteousness
of faith. Let me show you that. Go to Deuteronomy.
First look there, look at Romans 10 and see what that says. It says, the righteousness of
faith speaks. It doesn't say, say not in thine
heart who shall ascend into heaven or who shall descend into the
deep. It says the words near thee in thy mouth and in thy
heart, the word of faith we preach. Go to Deuteronomy 30 and look
at what Moses preached. Look here. Deuteronomy chapter
30. Listen to this. He says in verse
6, verse 6, The Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart and
the heart of thy seed And here be the result, to love the Lord
thy God with all thine heart, with all thy soul, that thou
mayest live. He said this to the children of Israel. After
you've committed transgression against God, you've broken this
law and God's cast off Israel. Then God's going to come and
to His elect Israel, He's going to circumcise you in the heart
and give you a new heart so that you have life now. And then look
down at verse 8. And thou shalt return and obey
the voice of the Lord and do all His commandments. Plural. You are going to do all the commandments.
Plural. Which I command thee this day.
How would they do all these commandments? You just said we couldn't do
the commandments. I just preached to you that you can't keep the
law. How are they going to keep all these laws? Look at verse
11. For this commandment. Not plural. Singular. This commandment. this commandment whereby you
obey His voice. Which I command thee this day,
it's not hidden from thee, neither is it far off. It's not in heaven
that thou shalt say who shall go up for us to heaven and bring
it unto us that we may hear it and do it. Paul said that is
to bring Christ down from above. This law is not saying oh there's
still something to do, Christ's got to come down. No, this message
says Christ has already come. Neither is it beyond the sea
that thou shouldst say who shall go over the sea for us and bring
it unto us that we may hear it and do it. Paul said that's to
try to bring Christ up from the deep again. He's already arisen. But the Word, the command, this
is the command by which we keep all God's commandments. There's
one command by which we keep all the commandments of God.
Here it is. But the Word is very nigh unto
thee in thy mouth and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it. Go back to Romans 10. Listen
to this. Romans 10, and he says there, verse 8 at the end, he says,
That is the word of faith which we preach. That's how we do all
the commandments of God. We trust Christ to have done
them for us. We believe Christ has done all
the commandments for us. Look at verse 9. That if thou
shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, confess Him as
your Lord, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath
raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the
heart man believeth unto righteousness. You don't work unto righteousness.
You don't work for righteousness. You believe on Christ unto righteousness. mouth, with the mouth confession
is made unto salvation. Because the Scripture says, Whosoever
believeth on him will not be ashamed. And this goes for Jew
and Gentile. There's no difference. We've
all sinned and come short of the glory of God. Whether we're
Jew or Gentile, you've got to be saved the same way, through
faith. Whosoever shall call upon the
name of the Lord shall be saved. That's the only way to be saved.
The righteousness of faith He believes Christ has already come
down. We're not grasping for something else to be done. He's
come down. He's fulfilled the whole law.
And we're not looking for Him to come up from the deep again.
He's arisen and He's at the right hand of God. And there we're
seated in Him. Fully justified. Fully accepted
of God. Complete in Him, Paul said. This is what the righteousness
of faith believes. There's nothing else to be done.
It's all done. He fulfilled all the obedience
necessary by His righteous life and by His righteous death. Christ
fulfilled the law perfectly. And faith rested all on Christ
and trust Him alone. And with the heart you believe.
With the heart you believe. You believe unto righteousness.
That's how we obtain righteousness. Believing in the heart. We obtain
salvation by confessing Him, not being ashamed of Him, not
being ashamed to confess Him in water baptism, but not being
ashamed to bear witness of Him before men when they ask you
the hope that's in you. We're not ashamed of Him anymore.
We believe in our heart He's all our salvation. When you believe
He is your salvation, you won't be ashamed of Him anymore. That's
what the righteousness of faith declares. It's in the heart. It's in the heart. God said a
new heart also will I give you and a new spirit will I put in
you and I'll take away the stony heart out of your flesh and I'll
give you a heart of flesh. I'll give you a heart that will
obey God and bow to God. I'll put my spirit within you,
God said. I'll cause you to walk in my
statutes and you'll keep my judgments and you'll do them. And the way
we keep His statutes and His judgments is He brings us to
bow to Christ and obey Christ. And from then on, we're not going
back to the law, we're not turning back to Moses, we're following
Christ now. And we're looking to Christ.
We learn how to live by how Christ lived. And we learn how to treat
our brethren by how Christ treated the brethren. We learn what to
preach by what Christ preached. Christ just preached Christ.
That's all He preached. We learn everything by looking
at Christ. We don't go back to the law. And when we do go and
preach the law, we're looking at Christ in it and what Christ
did. We just went there and read Moses
and we saw Moses preach the same message Paul preached in Romans
10. And Paul is telling us in Romans
10, this is what Moses was preaching. This is why he said that you
don't go try to go up you know, to heaven, because that's to
bring Christ down. Paul is just giving us a commentary
on what Moses preached. Moses preached the righteousness
of faith. After he gave that law, and those men sat there
and looked at that law, and they began to realize, we can't keep
this. We can't keep this law. Then Moses preached faith to
them. He told them, he said, you're going to break this law,
and you're going to fall into the curse, and you're going to be, this
nation is going to be destroyed. But afterwards, God's going to
come and some of the natural sons of Abraham, God chose them
before the world was made, and He's going to circumcise you
in the heart. And you're going to believe on
Christ. And that's what He has to do to us Gentiles. He has
to circumcise us in the heart. This is a true Jew, Paul said
in Romans 2. Not one that's circumcised outwardly
in the flesh, but one that's circumcised in the heart, in
spirit. That's a true Jew. That's a true
Israel of God. And that's how He does it. And
we're not ashamed of him anymore when he does it. Now, let me
end by giving you this. Go to Acts 13. I want to end
with this. I've set before you today the
two ways that men try to come to God. The righteousness of
the law. Scripture says, God says plainly,
no flesh shall be justified by the law. No man can earn life
by the law. The law is too high, is too wide,
is too tall. It reaches to your heart. And
besides that, we've already broken it. We broke it from our mother's
womb. We come forth guilty and we can't
fulfill the law. You've heard it. You've heard
this. You can't come to God in the law. And then I've set before
you the righteousness of faith. I've told you Christ earned the
righteousness that God's pleased with. Christ is the righteousness
Himself of His people. He's the righteousness God has
provided for His people. He's the righteousness to whom
God is going to bring His people to believe on. And that's the
only way we're made righteous. When you believe on Christ, God
freely imputes the righteousness of Christ to you. And God's not
just treating you as if you're righteous. Christ made his people
righteous by his obedience. So when God imputes righteousness
to you, it's because that's what you really are in Christ by what
he did. And that's why he imputes that
righteousness to the believer. Christ made him righteous. So
look here now. You have these two ways. Which
way are you going to try to go? If you say, well, I'm just neutral. I don't care about all that.
Nope. You're going in the works of
the law. There's no neutrality in this. If you say I'm not going
to take a stand for Christ, you just took a stand against him.
That's right. There's no neutrality. You're
either coming to God hoping it will all be alright because I'm
good inside. I don't know. Christ, our Lord
said, from the top of the head to the sole of the foot is wounds
and bruises and putrefying sword. They have not been bound up,
neither mollified with ointment. God will not receive us. But
this way of faith, brethren, you believe on Him. Look what
it says. Acts 13 verse 38. Be it known
unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man, Christ
Jesus the Lord, is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins. And by Him, by Him alone, all
that believe That's all you do. You don't do anything else but
trust Christ. All that believe are justified
from all things from which you could not be justified by the
law of Moses. That's it. That's salvation.
And I pray God will bless it to your heart and cause us all
to come by faith alone. Trust Christ alone. Amen.