Brethren, let's go back to Romans
chapter 5. We're just going to look at two verses.
Verse 1 and 2. Therefore, being justified by
faith, we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ,
by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein
we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. This passage begins, therefore. So let's go back a couple of
verses. Verse 25 of chapter 4 says, Christ
was delivered for our offenses. Christ was delivered for our
offenses. God the Father sent His only
begotten Son to be the substitute of His people. He sent His Son
to be the substitute of His people. for our young people to help
you understand what a substitute is here that we're talking about.
You watch a ball game and the quarterback's on the field and
he gets injured and the coach sends in a substitute. He sends in another player and
that player comes in and that player runs all the plays. He does all the work. And the
injured player is on the sideline. He does nothing. Another example,
you take a teacher. A teacher gets sick and they
call a substitute. And the substitute teacher comes
in. And the substitute teacher does
all the work. And that teacher who is sick
She's at home or at the doctor or wherever, she doesn't do the
work. The substitute does the work.
All the work. God the Father sent His Son,
the Son of God, into this world who was made of flesh like unto
His brethren that He might be the substitute for His people. The only two men in the world
who came into this world without sin was Adam, who God created
upright. He was the first head. He represented
all His people. And the last Adam is Christ,
the Son of God. And He is the head of all His
people. He's the one God sent to be the
substitute. And so Christ, the sinless substitute,
had no sin, did no sin, proven to be without sin and thought
word and deed. The sinless substitute gave himself
to bear the offenses of his people. And so whenever God found those
offenses on him, God poured out judgment on him instead of on
his people. And so our text says it was for
our offenses. For our offenses. For the offenses
of God's people. For those Christ died for. For
our offenses. Not just because of our guilt. Not just because of the punishment
that was owing to us. But for our crimes themselves. bearing our crimes themselves,
bearing our offenses themselves. He was delivered to judgment,
to justice for our offenses and suffered the fierce fury of God's
wrath in place of His people. And by doing that, He paid the
wages of sin. Scripture says the wages of sin
is death. You and I sin and what we earn
from that, the wage we earn from that is death, eternal death. Not just physical death, eternal
death. Christ Jesus by laying down His
life on the cross, by suffering unto death on the cross, He died
that eternal death for His people. so that the wages of sin that
justice demands has been paid in full by Christ. And so, satisfaction
is made. Satisfaction was made for every
sinner for whom Christ died. He made satisfaction. Hebrews
1.3 says, by Himself He purged our sin. Hebrews 9 says, He by
Himself accomplished redemption. Hebrews 10 says, by doing the
will of God, He sanctified His people. By one offering, He had
perfected forever them that are sanctified. Christ did it. He
did it. And so, then verse 25 says, Christ
was raised again for our justification. He was raised again to testify
to His people that He accomplished justifying His people. He rose
again testifying that the sin of His people has been put away,
that He's made us justified. We're made the righteousness
of God in Him. Go back to Romans 3 and look
at verse 26. Here's what His being raised
again testifies to us. Romans 3, 26. It declares, I
say at this time, God's righteousness, that He is just. That's why Christ died, that
He might be just, the law satisfied, justice had to be executed. Every sinner has got to die.
And we're either going to die in Christ, by God's grace, or
we're going to die under the judgment of God by our own rebellion. One of the two. But right here,
Christ died for His people, that God might be just, and that God
might be the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. God's
the justifier. Look at Romans 8. Look at Romans
8. Look at verse 33. Romans 8, 33. Who shall lay anything to the
charge of God's elect, it is God that justifieth. God did
the justifying. That was God on the cross justifying
His people. Look here, who is He that condemneth?
It's Christ that died, gave rather that's risen again, who is even
at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for
us. And so our text begins this way,
Romans 5.1. And I want you to pay attention
now, this will help you understand how this should be read. Romans
5.1, Therefore, having been justified. Therefore, having been justified
by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And I want you to understand
this because we live in a time where People have taken the doctrine
of justification by faith and they've made it to sound like
sinners justify themselves by believing on Christ. Faith itself
does not justify us. Faith itself does not justify
us, brethren. It's through faith that we receive
the justification already accomplished by Christ. Friday I uprooted
a few plants in our front yard and I moved them to a different
place. And when I got finished, I took the water hose and I went
over and I watered the plants. We have a well. And from that
well, that water flowed through that hose to those plants. Christ Jesus is the well. Faith
is the water hose. Faith is the hose through which
justification already accomplished flows to His people and it comes
to us. And we have been given this justification
freely by God through faith. that He's given to us. So this
is what our text means. Therefore, having been justified,
this free justification flows to us by or through faith. And so we have peace with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ. We have peace with God through
our Lord Jesus Christ. Every believer here whose only
hope of salvation is Christ, he's your all in all. We're going
to come to his table as he commanded. And what did our Lord tell us
to do when we come to this table? He said, do this in remembrance
of me. Do this not thinking on yourself,
not looking to yourself, not looking to your brethren, not
looking to anything. But Christ, do this in remembrance
of me. We have a piece of unleavened
bread, unleavened bread, picturing our sinless Redeemer, in whom
was no leaven. And He said, this unleavened
bread pictures my broken body, which was broken for you, He
said to His apostles that He died for. And He says this to
all those for whom He died. This is my broken body, which
is broken for you. And then he took that wine, that
cup of wine, and he said, this is to remind you of my blood
that was poured out unto death for you. And he called it the
New Testament in my blood. I love that phrase, the New Testament
in my blood. It means that by his blood, Our
Lord Jesus Christ justified us so that all God's new covenant
promises, all the promises of God given to His people in the
new everlasting covenant of grace, every promise is yes and amen. It's sure. These promises are
sure. through Christ's blood. So as
we partake of this table, we are going to remember Christ.
We are going to remember His broken body which was broken
for us. We are going to remember His
shed blood which was poured out for us. We are going to remember
that He justified us from all things from which we could not
have been justified by the Law of Moses. We could not have,
by our works under the Law of Moses, justified ourselves. He did it. And this is what we're
remembering when we come to the table. Now, I want you to see
this in our passage today. Having been justified. Having
been justified. Having been given this free justification
through faith. Our text declares three blessings
that every believer has because of Christ. Three blessings. We have peace with God. Peace
with God. Number two, we have access into
this grace we stand. That's by Christ. And number
three, we have hope in the glory of God. Three blessings that
are by Christ. Now first of all, having been
justified by Christ, through faith we have peace with God. This is through our Lord Jesus
Christ. We have peace with God. Does anybody here want peace
with God? Do you want peace with God? This is a cherished thing by
every believer. We want peace with God. Now,
to understand the believer's peace, to understand what Christ
has given us here, we need to be sure to understand what it
is to be justified. You see, all these three blessings
are flowing to us from justification, having been justified before
the law of God. So what is justification? I'm
not going to give you a theologian's definition or a scholarly definition. I'm going to tell you what it
is. To be justified is to stand before God's all-knowing eye and have absolutely no record
of sin Past, present, or future. It's to be put in a place to
where you cannot even break God's law in the future. Now understand
what I just said. We're not talking about what
believers see in ourselves. We're not talking about before
our eye. Before our eye, my sins are ever before me. If we're
honest, all we are is sin and that's all we see in ourselves
is sin. When God's given you a new heart and given you eyes
to see, you know that in yourself dwells no good thing. That is,
in your flesh, there's nothing good in us by nature. We're talking
about how God sees His people in Christ. That's what we're
talking about here. In Christ, by His blood, God's
people have absolutely no record of ever transgressing God's law. No record. No record. If you go to prison, if you commit
a crime and you go to prison and you are pardoned somehow
by a governor or president, you're going to still have a record. If you paid out your sentence,
you served your time, you will still have a record. We are talking
about here having no record. No record whatsoever. Jeremiah
50 verse 20 says, In those days and in that time, saith the Lord,
the iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there shall
be none. And the sins of Judah, and they
shall not be found. Why not? Because I will pardon
them whom I reserve. He's blotted them out. The Scripture
speaks of God in its language we can understand. It speaks
of God having a book. And in that book, all the sins
are written down. And if you go through this life
and you're never brought to believe on Christ, and you say, I'm not
going to have Him, I'm not going to believe on Him, and you ignore
Him, and you won't confess Him, and you're ashamed of Christ,
when you meet God, He's going to have a record of every thought,
word, and deed that was ever against Him. Sins that you don't
even know that you've committed against Him will be brought up.
But by the Lord Jesus Christ, by His blood, all those sins
have been blotted out. And it's not just that they've
been covered up in there. If you could get the blood off,
you could see them underneath it. He's erased them. He's erased
them. He's purged them away so that
they don't exist before God. Before God. And that's what matters.
That's what matters, what God sees. We're talking about before
God. As far as the East is from the
West. Think about that statement. If
you travel west, you're never going to start going east, ever. You know why? Because the world's
round. You're going to keep going west. And if you go east, you know
what you're going to do? You're going to keep going east. As
far as the east is from the west, So far hath He removed our transgressions
from us. He's removed them. He's taken
them away. You know why God will not impute
sin to a believer? The reason God will not impute
sin to a believer is because by the blood of Christ which
justified us from all our sins before God, we have no sin to
impute. That's why. He will not. To be justified is to be viewed
by the all-knowing eye of God to have perfectly established
the law of God in righteousness. We're not talking about any ability
in us. As believers, you and I still
cannot keep God's law in righteousness. We can't do it of ourselves.
We can't. God didn't give the law for that
purpose. We covered that clearly in Romans 3. Why to give it? To declare us guilty. To declare
us guilty. If we go back to the law and
we start boasting that we've kept the law now and we can keep
the law now, that law is going to declare us guilty. But here's
what we're talking about. We're talking about before God,
before the judgment seat of God, we are We have established the
law. Whenever the Hebrew writer was
declaring that God's saints are no longer under old covenant
law, that we are under grace, the rule of life for a believer
is the same rule Abraham had 430 years before the law was
given at Mount Sinai. If we look at Abraham, that's
why Paul used him as an example in Romans 4. He didn't have what
most churches preach as the believer's rule of life. He didn't have
the Ten Commandments. How did he walk then? The believer's
rule of life is clearly declared throughout the book, especially
in Galatians. We walk by faith which worketh
by love. which works by the constraint
of Christ's love for us. That's our motivation. What He's
done for us. That's the rule we're under.
That's the rule we're under. And when He's telling that in
the Hebrew letter and He's declaring that, He illustrates this by
saying, He said, Levi paid tithes in Abraham, for he was yet in
the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him. Abraham
is Levi's great-great-great-great-great grandfather. And Abraham lived
a long time before Levi was born. But before God, when Abraham
paid tithes to Melchizedek, Levi was in Abraham. Because Levi
was going to be born from his father. And he was in Abraham's
loins. And so God said when Abraham
paid tithes, Levi paid tithes. And brethren, when Christ walked
this earth perfectly under the law of God and went to the cross
and laid down His life for God and His people, fulfilling the
love of the law, the righteousness of the law, all His people were
in Him. And we all perfectly established
that law in Him. Perfectly. Perfectly. So the
reason God imputes righteousness to the believer is because Christ
established the law in righteousness before God, and we establish
the law in Him. That's right. To be justified
is to be righteous. This sums it up. It's to be holy,
unblameable, and unreprovable in God's sight. In God's sight. So you see why believers have
peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ? When you're brought
to believe on Christ, Colossians 1.20 says, having made peace
through the blood of His cross by Him to reconcile all things. And that's talking about people.
To reconcile all things unto Himself. By Him, I say, whether
they be His people in earth or His people in heaven. He's reconciled
them all the same way by His blood. And you that were sometime
alienated and enemies of God, This is why we need peace. This
is why we need to be reconciled. In our minds, in our corrupt,
fallen state, we considered God our enemy. We were children of
wrath, children of enmity against God, just like everybody else
in this world. The carnal mind's enmity against
God. Will not submit to the Word of
God and cannot submit to the Word of God. That was us. Yet
now, hath He reconciled us. in the body of His flesh through
death to present you holy and unblameable and unreprovable
in God's sight. In God's sight. 2 Corinthians 5.19 says, God
was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. The word
world means God has a people scattered all over the world
throughout the ages of time. He's always had a remnant in
every age and He has a remnant according to the election of
grace. And God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. Not imputing the trespasses unto
them. And He's committed unto us this
word of reconciliation. I know Paul there is speaking
about he's committed it to our trust to preach it, but when
he comes in saving power, he commits it unto you and I who
he accomplished this for. He commits it into our hearts
that we believe. Isaiah 32, 17 says, The work
of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness
shall be quietness and assurance forever. And my people shall
dwell in a peaceable habitation, and in sure dwellings, and in
quiet resting places. That's the result of what Christ
accomplished by His work of righteousness. John 14, 27 Christ said, My peace
I give unto you. Not as the world gives to you.
If you get anything that you want to call peace in this world,
I promise you, it's just going to be fleeting. It's just going
to be a momentary little gratification that you got. That's all. Christ
said, I'm not giving you that kind of peace. He said, My peace
I give unto you. This is what that means. The
mountains shall depart and the hills be removed, but My kindness
shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of My peace
be removed, said the Lord that had mercy on you. Nothing can
change this. Nothing can change this. When
the Lord came and He gave us faith to believe, we have no
more conscience of sin. No more because our guilt has
been answered and the wages have been paid and therefore there
is no condemnation now and so He makes us to see God is no
longer at war with us and we are not at war with God anymore. And He brings you into this reconciliation. So when you come here and you
remember Christ at His table, you remember Him at His table,
remember the peace we have with God is the peace that cost Christ
His blood and His broken body. It's peace He accomplished by
Himself between God and His people. Here's God and here's His people
and we were at odds. And the Mediator came and the
Mediator brought us together and brought us into peace. He
took away the middle wall. He took away that which was dividing
us which was His broken law. He fulfilled it. He established
it. So now God and His people can be one. We can be one. And the reason that this peace
will never be taken away now is everybody Christ died for,
He justifies. And God is just. He will not
pour out justice a second time. He will not do it. The law has
been satisfied. This is the peace we have. We
must be saved by Christ. Now secondly, let's go here secondly. Through our Lord Jesus Christ,
we have access into this grace wherein we stand. Look at Romans
5 verse 2. By whom also? The verse before
it, through our Lord Jesus Christ. This verse begins, By whom also
we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand. What grace are we talking about?
This grace we've been talking about. This grace we've been
talking about here. Free, complete, perfect justification
in Christ. Peace by Christ between us and
God the Father. He's brought us now into this
access of the free favor of God. We now have been brought into
it to experience this fountain of grace, God our Father and
His Son Christ Jesus. We now have been brought into
it by experience to experience it. We can now know it and we
know it because He's given us access into it. Believer, we
stand before God robed in Christ's righteousness. We stand before
God with no sin. We stand before God complete
in Christ. We stand before God accepted
in the Beloved. We stand before God reconciled
friends at peace with God and He with us. And not only is that
grace by Christ, it not only was accomplished by Christ, it's
also by Christ that we have access into this grace wherein we stand
so that we experience it. It's only by Him that we have
access by faith into this grace where we stand. What does that
mean? Scripture says Christ was raised
and given all power. That is, He was given all power
as the God-man. He had all power as the Son of
God. He was given all power as the God-man mediator. He was
given all glory as the God-man mediator to be the head over
the church so that He might receive the glory for filling all in
all. That's Ephesians, the last couple
of verses of Ephesians chapter 1. He raised Him and gave Him
all power over all things, that He might be the head over all
things to the church, that He might fill all in all His people. That's Christ's glory. That's
His glory. Now, Scripture says the pleasure
of the Lord shall prosper in Christ's hands. That's what the
Lord said in Isaiah 53. The pleasure of the Lord shall
prosper in His hand. Well, Scripture tells us it pleased
the Lord. This is the pleasure of the Lord.
It pleased the Lord by the foolishness of preaching to save them that
believe. So then how is God's people going
to be brought under the preaching of the Gospel? How is that going
to happen? Christ is the fulfiller of all
prophecy. He must fulfill all prophecy.
And in Jeremiah 3.15, The prophet said, he said through the prophet,
ìI will give you pastors according to my heart which shall feed
you with knowledge and understanding.î Theyíre going to preach to you
this book in spirit and in truth. Itís going to be true what they
preach. Theyíre going to preach manís words and theyíre going
to be awful little, theyíre going to preach this book in truth.
Ephesians 4.10 said, He that ascended is the same also that
ascended up far above all heavens that he might fill all things. And what is he talking about?
And he gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists
and some pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints,
for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body
of Christ, till we all come, that is, everyone He redeemed
is called to faith in Christ and to the knowledge of the Son
of God, so that when that's done, when all His elect are called
in to faith, we're going to make up a perfect man unto the measure
of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Christ is the head,
His church is His body, and when every elect member is called
in, the body is going to be complete. That's what it's saying. It's
going to be the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
The church is called in the last verse of Ephesians 1, it's called
His body, the fullness of Him. It's the fullness of Him. If
one person that he died for is missing out of that body, that
body won't be complete. Christ's body would not be complete.
Christ justified him. He's not going to let that happen.
You see, we don't preach that Christ did all this work and
then turn the work over to the hand of the people. We don't even turn the work over
to the hand of a seminary. It's Christ that's going to provide
His pastors. He's going to send them. And
he does because that's the pleasure of the Lord to save through the
preaching of the gospel. Then we're told that through
the gospel Christ gives the Holy Spirit. We have to be born again. We have to be born from above.
We're dead by nature. We're spiritually dead by nature.
We have no life. A dead man can't do a thing.
Ephesians, I mean 1 Corinthians chapter 2 says that the dead
man can't receive the things of God, or the Spirit of God.
Neither can he know them. They're spiritually discerned.
And by nature we're dead. We can't receive those things.
Well, Christ said you must be born again of the water, that's
the Word, the Gospel, and of the Holy Spirit. Have to be born
again. A new creature, a new man's got
to be created within us. Well, who's going to give that
Holy Spirit? On the day of Pentecost, Peter was preaching Christ. And
the Lord poured out the Holy Spirit and there was all these
people pricked in their heart. Over 3,000 people confessed Christ
that day. And when Peter was preaching,
he said, Therefore, being by the right hand of God exalted,
and have received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost,
He hath shed forth this which you now see and hear. Christ
did it. Christ did it. by whom we have
access into this grace wherein we stand. He sent the preacher,
He sent Peter, gave him the word to speak, so He preached him
in truth, and He poured out the Holy Spirit to give life. And
then thirdly, through the Spirit, Christ gives us faith and repentance. He gives it to each one He redeemed,
and that's through whom we receive forgiveness of sins. Acts 5.31
says, Him hath God exalted with His right hand to be a Prince
and a Savior for to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of
sins. You mean, you be turning to 1
Peter 1, I'm going to show you something. You mean, when we're
born of God, born of the Spirit of God, you mean it's not even
of us that we believe on God? We don't just produce faith.
Ephesians 2 says, By grace are you saved through faith, and
that not of yourselves, lest any man should boast. He gives
this grace. He gives faith. Look here with
me. I know you're familiar with 1
Peter, and I know you're familiar with This first part of this passage
in verse 18, For as much as you know that you were not redeemed
with corruptible things as silver and gold from your vain conversation
received by tradition from your fathers, but you were redeemed
with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish
and without spot, who verily was ordained before the foundation
of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you.
But do you know this next part? who by Him do believe in God. It's by Him also that you have
access by faith into this grace wherein you stand. It's by Christ
that you do believe in God that raised Him up from the dead and
gave Him this glory to bring you to faith that your faith
and hope might be in God. See? This is not a minor issue
here. This is the glory of the risen
God-man. God gave him this glory to fill
all in all his people, all his church. And since he's God's
exalted prince, that means that there's a man at God's right
hand who is God and he's man. As much man as if he was not
God, as much God as if he was not man. He's the God-man. and he's a prince. That means
he's sovereign over all. He's sovereign over all. Let
me read Ephesians to you. I've been all over it so let
me just read it to you. And I'll show you how much power
he's got. Listen to this. God raised him from the dead
and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places.
Now listen to this power. Far above all principality and
power and might, and dominion, and every name that is named,
not only in this world, but also in that which is to come. And
has put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be the
head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness
of Him that filleth all in all." So Christ as a Prince has all
power. He is our sovereign God-man Savior. That means we can't question
Him. We can't say unto Him, what are
you doing? He's going to work His will in heaven and in the
earth and do whatsoever He pleases. He's working all things after
the counsel of His own will. So, He does not have a problem
getting one of His redeemed people under the sound of the gospel.
Not a problem. Not a problem whatsoever. He
can... If he has a people that's on
a deserted island somewhere, and they're out there all by
themselves and nobody knows they exist, he can send a hurricane
just like he sent Heraclitan, and he can shipwreck Paul on
that island, and Paul can get off that boat and preach the
gospel to them, and he can call them by his grace. If He has somebody that's out
on the back side of the desert somewhere and they're not even
on the main road, they're taking the old road. They're not even
taking the new bypass. They're out on the old road,
out on the back roads. And they're on their way back
home from Jerusalem and they're looking at the Bible and trying
to understand what it says. They never heard any truth up
there at Jerusalem while I was there. If he's got one that he
redeemed out there, you know what he's going to do? He's going
to send a Philip out there that's just going to so happen to cross
paths with that man, and Philip's going to be given a heart to
say, do you understand what you're reading? And that man's going
to be given a heart to say, how can I except some man guide me? and that Philip is going to preach
the gospel to him and Christ is going to send the Spirit and
give him faith and repentance and he is going to have access
into this grace wherein we stand. If he has got a woman who is
a merchandiser and she is a seller of purple and she is out by the
river and it is just her and a handful of women because there
is nobody preaching the gospel around them, He'll take His preacher
and His preachers want to go one place and Christ will send
the Spirit to them and tell them, no, you're not going to that
place. You're going to go out here to this riverside where
these women are by this river and preach the Gospel to them.
And that's where His preacher will go. And He'll preach the
Gospel right there. And Christ will send forth the
Spirit and He'll give them faith and repentance and give them
access into this grace wherein we stand. Preacher, you sound
like you're saying that God doesn't leave anything to chance, He
doesn't leave anything up to us. That's the true God. That's
right, He doesn't. He does not. He works all things
after the counsel of His own will. That's right. So it's by Him, brethren, He's
a Prince, absolutely sovereign, and He's the Savior. So He sends
the Gospel, He sends the Holy Spirit, He gives life and faith
and repentance, and it's by Him that we have access into this
grace wherein we stand. And here's one more thing about
that. Christ our God and our Savior, who gives poor sinners
access into this grace, also keeps us in this state of grace. He keeps us here. He keeps us
here. Our standing in grace doesn't
depend upon our faithfulness to God. If it did, it wouldn't
be called grace. It's grace. It's free favor from
God. And it doesn't depend upon our
faithfulness. It depends upon God's faithfulness
to us. That's right. Both the present
peace and the permanent standing of God's elect are secure. Secure
as Christ Himself. Scripture says, Faithful is He
that calleth you who will also do it. That's right. It's by
Him working His will in us that we both will and do of His good
pleasure. Will and do of His good pleasure.
Somebody said, preacher, you sound like you're making a believer
out to be just like a computer. And the preacher said, no, computers
got moving parts. We're just dead by nature. And
everything that God does in the salvation of His people is by
the grace and power of God. Now, do we believe Him? Yeah.
Because He said, He told Christ, your people will be made willing
in the day of your power. Yeah, we believe Him. We actively
believe Him. We don't praise ourselves for
it because it's only by His grace that we do it. We actively got
up, came here this morning. Why? Because Christ said, where
two or three are gathered. Have you ever looked at the word
gathered? It means where Christ has put His hand on them. and
assembled them together. Christ said, I'll be there in
their midst. That's why we came here. He gave us a heart to want
to do it. And He brought us here. Everything
is to the praise of the glory of His grace. By Him, we have
all these spiritual blessings that He's given us. And the only
way we know about them, and the only way that we have access
into His grace, is by Christ Himself. By Christ Himself. By Christ we rejoice in the hope
of the glory of God. He says there, and, and you could
put by whom in front of that because it's what he's saying,
by whom we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Now what's
the hope of the glory of God? It's the hope we have of one
day entering into heaven and beholding Christ in His glory,
the triune God in Christ, the fullness of the Godhead in a
body and dwelling with Him forever. That's our hope. That's what
we have been promised by God, and that's what we're going to
have. Because Christ justified us, making us righteous, just
as righteous as He is before God, so that we're in peace with
God. And He's come and He's given us this access into this grace
where we stand, brought us to believe on Him, we trust Him,
and He's given us this hope in our heart. This hope that He
gives. Remember what Paul called it?
He called it, Christ in you, the hope of glory. This hope,
we have this hope when Christ has done all this work we've
been talking about and He's formed in us. It's pictured in the fact
when the Lord of the Holy Ghost was formed in the womb of the
Virgin. He's formed in His children. Not in a physical form, in a
spiritual form. He's in His people. Romans 8.23
says, We have the first fruits of the Spirit, that is the foretaste
of heaven divine, so that we grow within ourselves waiting
for the adoption. And right there He means the
redemption of our bodies. We are waiting for that day we
are going to be with Christ in glory. And because He is in us
and we behold Him by faith, when Christ arose, we behold we arose
in Him so that we have a living hope. It's alive. He says, Blessed
be the Godfather of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to His
abundant mercy, has begotten us again unto a living hope by
the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance,
incorruptible, undefiled, that fadeth not away, reserved in
heaven for you who are kept by the power of God. Our hope is
Christ. We have a hope as an anchor of
the soul, sure and steadfast, that enters into the veil where
the forerunner is for us entered. Christ Jesus made a high priest
after the order of Melchizedek. Our hope enters in to where Christ
sits at God's right hand. And here's what we behold. Christ
is there as our high priest. And here's what His prayer is.
Listen to this. John 17, 24. Father, I will that they also
whom thou hast given me be with me where I am that they may behold
my glory which thou hast given me for thou lovest me before
the foundation of the world. You know what that means? We're
going to be there. We're going to all be there with
Him. because He justified us. He has
given us a new spirit in which to worship Him, where we have
access into this grace where we stand and He has given us
this hope. And He is not going to disappoint
us. He is going to bring us into His presence. I tell you this, this message
now doesn't make a man want to live in sin. I give you this
and I want you to remember this. Sinners aren't brought to do
good works by preaching good works to them. It's by preaching Christ and
Him crucified. That's right. It's this message. Every man that hath this hope
in him purifieth himself even as he is pure. If I'm going to
be constrained to no longer walk in sin and obey my Lord and try
to honor Him in this world, it's going to be by hearing about
Him who has given me this hope. That's right. Wherefore gird
up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end. For
the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of
Jesus Christ. Don't quit. Alright, let's remember
Him now at His table. Brother Kevin,