Romans chapter 3. Now every person here, this applies
to everybody here, from the youngest to the oldest, male and female,
every one of us here need to be justified before God. Do you know why you need to be
justified before God? And do you know what it is to
be justified before God? And do you know who it is that
justifies the sinner before God? Those are some questions I hope
we can answer tonight, and I'm going to go through the Scriptures,
and I want everybody here to take your Bible and turn with
me in these Scriptures. I want you to see these Scriptures.
I want you to look these things up. Now, if you know these things,
as Paul said, it's safe for you to have them repeated to you.
And you look at these things with us because very often God
shows you things that you never even saw before. In scripture
you thought you knew, you knew. So let's turn in these scriptures
together. Now my first question is this. Why do we need to be
justified? Why do we need to be justified?
Well look with me at Romans 3 verse 23. Romans 3 verse 23. He says, for all have sinned
and come short of the glory of God. Now, somebody will say,
well, I'm not as bad a sinner as this other person, or I don't
think quite like that other sinner thinks, or whatever, by which
we try to exalt ourselves. But have you measured up to the
glory of God? That's what it is to be a sinner.
All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Look up
at Romans 3 verse 10. He says there, as it is written,
there is none righteous, no not one. You mean there's not a righteous
person on the face of this earth, in themselves? He says, no, not
one. Now, that's God speaking. Paul
is quoting the Scripture, but it's God, the Holy Spirit, that
gave that Scripture. And God says there's none righteous,
no, not one. The Scripture says He looked
down to see if there was any that did understand, if there
was any that did work righteousness, and there was none. And he says
here, there's none righteous, no not one. Look at verse 19.
Now we know that what thing soever the law saith, it saith to them
who are under the law. Now that means who are under
the curse of the law. And I'm going to show you here
in a moment that means everybody outside of Christ. Everybody
that doesn't believe in Christ is under the curse of the law.
And the law speaks to those that are under the curse of the law.
That's who the law speaks to. And here's what it says, or here's
what it does, that every mouth may be stopped, no more justifying
ourselves, and all the world may become guilty before God. God gave the law to declare us
guilty before Him. That's what it is to need justification,
is to be guilty, is to be guilty, guilty of breaking God's law,
guilty before God. He says here, Therefore by the
deeds of the law, by you doing the law, by you trying to work
your way to heaven, there shall no flesh be justified in his
sight. For by the law is the knowledge
of sin. So the first reason we need to
be justified is sin. Now you just think about it.
If you break a law of the land, and you go before a judge and
you stand before a judge and you're guilty, you've broken
the law. If you try to stand before that judge by yourself
and defend yourself, you're going to get the stiffest sentence
that can be handed down. The best thing for you is to
have an advocate, that is to have somebody that knows the
law They're standing and speaking between you and that judge. They're
speaking to you on your behalf. That's what we need. That's what
we need. Now, imagine if you come before
God, the judge. Imagine if you stand before God,
who's holy, holy, holy. Now, Scripture says of Him, He
will by no means clear the guilty. You stand before an earthly judge,
you might get them to lessen the sentence a little bit. God
says he will by no means clear the guilty. It's cut and dry.
You come before God without a righteousness, you come before God under the
curse of the law, God will by no means clear the guilty. And
every one of us here, every one of us here must stand before
that just judge of heaven and earth. We're going to all stand
before him. Every one of us. For those who
don't believe on Christ, They're sitting here now. If you met
God right now, right now, God would declare you guilty. And
God would cast you into outer darkness and you will suffer
for eternity the just condemnation of God. I don't want that for
you. I don't want that for anybody
under the sound of my voice. I want you to know the truth. Now, this is your need. This
is my need. This is everybody here. This
is our need right here. Sin has caused us to come short
of the glory of God. The law declares us guilty. And
we can't be justified by the deeds of the law. And we've got
to stand before God. We must stand before God. And
He will not clear the guilty. Now, before anybody can see that
anybody can be saved, they got to know their need of being saved.
You don't go around saving folks that don't need to be saved.
And this is the problem now. This is the number one issue
with sinners is, by nature, we just don't think we need to be
saved. Well, we need to be saved. We need to be justified. So,
the first thing is sin, sin, sin. Now, I know we trust the
sovereignty of God. God's got to reveal this in your
heart and only God can reveal this in your heart. I guarantee
you this though, every believer here, you know this is so. If
we had son or daughter or any loved one in a burning house,
I guarantee you there's going to be some urgency about us to
get them to safety. Paul said, knowing the terror
of the Lord, we persuade men. And I'm trying tonight, with
everything I've got, to persuade you. Now you take this Bible,
and you look into it with me, and you look at these scriptures
with me, and let's hear what God says, and believe on Him. Believe His Word, and approach
to Him, and ask mercy of Him, and seek Christ while He may
be found. All right, now, what does it mean to be justified?
Here's the second question. What does it mean to be justified? Now, I'm not speaking tonight
to entertain hair-splitters and debaters. That's not my point. I'm speaking tonight to sinners
bound for eternity. So, I want to look into God's
Word and just see what God says about it. And we'll forget about
what men want to debate about it. We're just going to see what
God says about it. We're not going to exhaust the
subject, we're just going to look at a few things here, a few scriptures.
Alright, first of all, turn with me to 1 Peter 1. 1 Peter chapter
1. To be justified is to be eternally
redeemed from all sin by the precious blood of Jesus Christ.
Now let's read 1 Peter 1.18, Forasmuch 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,
nor by any other tradition, no matter what men say, If it's
vain, if it's not right here in what God says, then it's unprofitable
for you. Here's what God said. But with
the precious blood of Christ. That's how we're justified. With
the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish
and without spot. Now watch this. Who verily was
foreordained before the foundation of the world. but was manifest
in these last times for you. Now, redeemed means to be purchased,
bought, means the price has been paid to the law that you owe. And that's done by the precious
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, by Him alone. And it says here,
He's that lamb without blemish and without spot. Anybody here
want to say that you have no spot, no blemish? Anybody here
want to say that we could come to God without spot, without
blemish? That's what it took for Christ to take the place
of his people. He had to be without spot and
without blemish. But now he tells us here that
our justification, that those that will be justified, this
was foreordained in Christ before the world was made. God put his
people in Christ and chose Christ to come forth and be our mediator,
to be our surety, to be our righteousness, to be our justification, to do
the work necessary to bring us to God. And so from eternity
God looked at his people in Christ and that's where he's always
viewed his people is in Christ. Now the problem is I don't know
who's in him. I know some who have professed
to believe Him and by God's grace believe Him, but I don't know
those yet who don't. I don't know, some of you who
don't may be somebody He put in Christ. But I want you to
see here, this thing is not, it's not going to happen just
after the fact or just helter-skelter. This was done before the foundation
of the world. God foreordained this. He foreordained
this and He foreordained Christ to do it. for a particular people. Now, secondly, look at Jude,
to your right there, to Jude, and let's look now at verse 24
of Jude. So first of all, to be justified
is to be eternally justified by the precious blood of Christ.
And then to be justified is to be presented to God without fault. Without fault. Now speaking of
those who believe on Christ, we read right here in verse 24,
Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, he's talking
to believers, he's able to keep you from falling, and to present
you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy. You remember we just read, we've
all sinned and come short of the glory of God. Now he says
here that he's able to present his people faultless before the
presence of his glory. Faultless before the presence
of his glory. You remember in his fig leaves,
we all by nature have our fig leaves. Something that we're
using to hide our nakedness. you know, when I was young, and
I would do something that I knew was wrong, I wasn't supposed
to do it. You know, the first thing I did was I hid it. I hid it. I didn't want mom and
dad didn't know about it. And if it was something really
bad, I wasn't supposed to do I hid it from the policeman.
I didn't want him to know about But we all go about trying to
hide from God by nature, trying to put on our fig leaves and
act like there's something that we've done to make us righteous
and we're not that naked before God. But you remember Adam with
his fig leaves on, he couldn't even stand before the presence
of God. The voice of the Lord came walking in the garden and
he ran and hid in the trees. Imagine trying to stand before
the presence of His glory. the presence of His glory in
that great day. So to be justified is to be presented
faultless before the presence of His glory. Colossians 121,
if you want to look there, I can read some of these to you, but
I want you to see most of these. Look at Colossians 121. Again,
he says it here, but he adds something to it. Look here. He's
speaking to believers here. He says, you that were sometime
alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works. Now that's
what we all were when God found us. That's what you are sitting
here right now without Christ. You consider God to be your enemy
in your mind. And He is your enemy by wicked
works. Now look, yet now hath He reconciled. He did it, and he says, in the
body of his flesh, through death, now here's what justification
is, to present you holy and unblameable and unreprovable in his sight. Think of God's sight. Think of
God's sight. You know, this was the good thing
about my mom and dad, they could only see a little ways, just
a little bit. So it wasn't too hard to hide
from them. But God sees your imagination. He sees the thoughts
and intents behind your actions. You know, we do something outwardly
and somebody sees what we do and it may look like it's a good
work. But inwardly, we may be doing it for our own personal
gain or to hide, cover up something else or whatever. God sees the
thoughts and intents behind our actions. He sees the motive.
Not to mention the words and the deeds. God sees it all. Now,
can you imagine standing before God, a justified man, and God
not be able to see any fault in you? You stand there and God
looks you over and says, all I see is a holy man. All I see
is an unblameable man. All I see is an unapprovable
man in my sight. Now I don't care what others
see. You and I personally look at ourselves, you who believe,
we look at ourselves and we see a sinner. We see our deeds and
we don't see the half of it. We see the tip of the iceberg.
But the way I see myself is not the issue, and the way that you
see me is not the issue, nor the way I see you. It's how God
sees me. That's the issue. He's able to
present you holy, unblameable, unapprovable, faultless in His
sight. That's to be justified. And then
look at 2 Corinthians 5, verse 21. To be justified is to be made
the righteousness of God. If you're going to come into
God's presence, this is what you have to have. The righteousness
of your father. No. The righteousness of your
preacher. No. You've got to have the righteousness
of God. You've got to have the righteousness
of God. Now, look here, 2 Corinthians
5, verse 21. He hath made Christ sin for us. Again, he's speaking to believers
here. He made Christ sin for us who knew no sin, that we might
be made the righteousness of God in Him. To meet God and to
be accepted of God, you have to be the righteousness of God.
Now, does anybody imagine they've obtained to the righteousness
of God by their works? It's an impossibility. We saw
there in the Scripture, no man can be justified by the deeds
of the law. We cannot be made the righteousness of God. We
saw in Romans 9, remember that? God set before us the Gentiles
and He set before us the children of Israel. And He said, here
these Gentiles were, they didn't even have the law. They didn't
know anything about God or anything about righteousness or what it
was to be justified or they're even needing it to be justified.
And yet they attained to the righteousness of God. But those
in Israel that had the law of God and had His oracles didn't
attain to the righteousness of God. And He said, here's why.
They sought it by the works of the law. They sought it by the
works of the law. We've got to have the righteousness
of God. He made Him who knew no sin, sin for us that we might
be made the righteousness of God in Him. in Him. All right, now thirdly, let's
look at this question. First of all, we see our need
of sin. We've broken the law. We've broken the law. Let me
show you something. I didn't show you this. Go back
to Romans 5. I want you to see this. This is very important
for something we're about to see. Romans 5, and look at verse
12. This goes back to our first point
here. I've got to make this point,
though, because I want you to see this. Romans 512, as by one man, sin
entered into the world and death by sin. And so death passed upon
all men, for that are in Adam all have sinned. All have sinned. You see, God looked at one man
in the beginning. He looked at Adam. And Adam represented
everybody that would come from him, everybody that would be
born of him. And so when Adam sinned, Everybody born into this
world sinned in Adam, because he represented every one of us.
That's how we came to be sinned. So we have our need. We're sinners. We need to be justified before
God's law. We broke God's law when Adam broke God's law. And
then we're conceived in sin. We come forth speaking lies the
moment we're born. Secondly, justification. What
is it? It's to be made holy. It's to
be made faultless. It's to be made unreprovable,
unblameable. It's to be made the very righteousness
of God. It's to have this purposed and
all settled in eternity by God in Christ before the world was
even made. and then to have it brought forth by his precious
blood. This is to be justified. Now, who does the justifying? Who does the justifying? This
is the third question. Now, I was with some fellows
one time. You'd be turning to Romans 8.
I was with some fellows one time, and they spent, I don't know
how long, but they spent a long, long time debating back and forth
with, when is a man justified? And that was the question they
posed to me when we sat down. When is a man justified? And
before long, they got to arguing with each other over when is
a man justified. I didn't say anything. I just sat there. And
that's what all that debating and back and forth is good for.
It just creates division and makes men argue and try to exalt
their knowledge over another man's knowledge and all that
kind of stuff. But finally, one old fellow in the group was sitting
there, and he had been pretty quiet the whole night too. And
finally he turned and he said, you fellows have been talking
all night about when a man is justified and you haven't said
anything about who it is that does the justifying. That's what
I want to talk about. Who does the justifying? Who
does the justifying? God is the justifier. God does
the justifying. Look here in Romans 8 and verse
33. Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect, it's
God that justifieth." It is God that justifies. Now, men can
argue back and forth all they want to and debate all they want
to. This ought to end all argument
right here. It's God that does the justifying. Men will try to reach for some
last straw and want to add their little bit of effort to it and
their little bit of merit and their little bit of work to it.
This ends that, brethren. God does the justifying. God does the justifying. And
God justifies us by His grace. He justifies us by His grace
apart from any works that we've done. Look back at Romans 3 and
verse 24. being justified freely. Freely. Freely. Without a cause in you. Without
anything you've done. Freely. By His grace. By His grace. Nothing in us,
nothing done by us. By His grace. God the Father
chose His people freely. He didn't look and say, well
now let me see here. Who looks like they're going
to believe on me? I'll choose them. He didn't do
that. He didn't do that. That would be putting the cart
before the horse. He didn't do that. That would
be saying God moves according to what we do. God chose whom
He would freely by His grace. Remember? Jacob and Esau, the
two having done neither good or evil, that the purpose of
God according to election might stand. It was said unto their
mother, the elder shall serve the younger. Jacob have I loved,
Esau have I hated. And that's just what God meant
in that statement because the very next verse he says, is there
unrighteousness with God then? He wouldn't even pose that question
if he hadn't meant Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated. God chooses freely, freely, not
by any works of righteousness we've done, not based on any
good or evil in us. Freely, freely. And He sent forth
Christ freely to justify us, being justified freely by His
grace through the redemption that's in Christ Jesus. And God
the Holy Spirit regenerates us freely. So it's by God's grace,
freely, that we believe on Christ. It's freely. He does it freely. His grace is free. His grace
is sovereign. That means He can choose whom
He will and pass by whom He will. Read Romans 9. It means His grace
is irresistible. That means when He comes to make
you know He's been gracious to you, He's going to get the job
done. He's going to make sure you understand it. He's going
to give you life, understanding, faith, repentance, everything
needed. It's irresistible grace. His grace is preserving. He's
able to keep you from falling. You know when a man's fallen
from grace? Paul said, you that are justified
by the law, you've fallen from grace. How many times have you
heard this? Men will see some fellow fall
into sin of some kind. And somebody will say, oh, he's
fallen from grace. You know who? Between that man
that fell into sin and the man that made that statement, you
know who's fallen from grace? The man that made that statement.
If you're justified by the law, you've fallen from grace. His
grace is preserving grace though. He's able to keep you from falling
from grace. That means He's able to keep
you looking at Christ only. Christ only. And His grace is
victorious grace. Grace, that's how we're saved.
One time there was a man preaching at a meeting and he had preached
four or five days at this meeting and he was just begging sinners,
let God save you, just let God save you and try it every way,
came at it from every angle, just you ought to open your heart,
let God in. He's begging, he's knocking at
the door, just let God have his way, let God save you. Take the
first step, he'll take the next step, all this stuff, you know.
And nobody came forward. So finally, by the end of the
night, the preacher stood up and he said, well, nobody let
God save them. So God's going to send you all
to hell now. And one old fellow, he said, no he won't. He said,
if I could prevent him from saving me, I'm going to stop him from
sending me to hell. That kind of God is worthless. This God
I'm telling you about He gets the job done. He saves His people. He doesn't ask permission. He
rudely interrupts us on our way to hell. I hope He does that.
I hope He does that for somebody here. Alright, now look. We're justified by the Lord Jesus
Christ, the Son of God. Romans 5 verse 9. Romans 5 verse
9. He says, being now justified
by His blood, by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through
Him. Now, what does that mean, by
His blood we're justified? Let me try to put this as simply
as I can. You see, the wages of sin, that
which we earn by sin is death. The man that sins has got to
die. We got to die. Now that means we all have to
die. And now we're not just talking about that first death. We're
talking about eternal, everlasting condemnation in hell. We're talking about that just
condemnation of God. The soul that sinned has got
to die. So, when it says here, through His blood, it's telling
us that Christ came and He took the place of all His people and
went to that cross and by Him bearing that just condemnation,
by Him bearing that just, those just wages that we owe to divine
justice, He justified His people. He justified His people. The
law looks at His people now and says, I've got nothing else to
say to them. They're dead. They're dead. They're dead. The best thing
that this this just hit me like, like a bolt of lightning one
time, Tim James gave us illustration. He said, Remember, Lee Harvey
Oswald assassinated the president. Or so we think. And and Everybody
at that point was just holding their breath, waiting, because
they wanted him to be caught. They wanted to see the law executed
upon him. They wanted to see justice brought,
because he assassinated the President of our United States of America.
And when Jack Ruby stepped out and shot him and killed him,
that was it. The law couldn't say anything
else to him. He was dead. When Christ laid down His life
by His blood, when He said, it is finished, and He gave up the
ghost, and He died, all His people died in Him. You
see, just like Adam, when Adam sinned in the garden, he represented
everybody that would come from him. And so God just looked to
Adam. When Christ laid down His life on Calvary's tree, God just
looked to Him. And when He had satisfied justice,
God said, of all that will come from Christ, justice is satisfied. It's done. They're justified.
So the law looks at them and says, I got nothing to say to
them. They're dead. They're dead. Read Romans 6 and 7. That's exactly
what he tells us, brethren. We die. Look here at Romans 5,
19. Let me back up what I said here. This is how Adam was a type of
Christ. As by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by
the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. Now, if you
think God's unfair for doing that, the only thing Scripture
says is, is who are you to reply against God? I don't want to
be, I don't want to stand in another man and say I sinned
because I stood in him. We got plenty of our own, don't
worry about that. But if we're going to be justified,
we're going to have to stand in another. Christ Jesus alone. That's the only way. The only
way, he shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied. God saw what Christ did on Calvary's
tree and all his travail and God is satisfied. Justice is
satisfied. And Christ shall be satisfied
because he brought forth, he justified everybody he died for
when he died. And the scripture says, because
he bore their iniquities. How do I enter into this? How
do I receive, have given to me this free justification, this
free righteousness? How is it made mine? Alright? It's made ours through the gift
of faith. Through the gift of faith. Turn
with me now in your Bible to Romans 3 and verse 26. We're going to read quite a lengthy
passage here over in the verse 4, in chapter 4, but I want you
to see this. Romans 3.26 says, To declare,
I say at this time, his righteousness. This whole thing is about God's
righteousness. It's to manifest God's righteousness.
and how right and just and holy God is. You know what one reason
this doesn't have an impact on us today? There's not any justice
in our land. That's one reason. It's common
to us to have somebody tell you something and not do what they
tell you they're going to do. It's common for a politician to get
up during election season, make all these promises, and then
go to the White House and just do the opposite of what he said
he'd do. That's commonplace. It's common to see the rich get
let off in court and the poor man have to pay. It's common
to see justice frustrated in this land. And so, when we think
about here He's showing us, I'm showing you how righteous I am,
God says. I'm showing you that I'll do
right. I'm showing you that I'll do what's just. I'm showing you
that I'm somebody you can depend on and count on that He's going
to do right. That ought to make us say, I
want that one. I want that one who's going to
be righteous. That's the one I want. Here's
how He declared His righteousness. That He might be just. His law's
got to be satisfied. That penalty's got to be carried
out. And the justifier. Now who's he this for? Of him
which believeth in Jesus. You mean, all I have to do is
believe on Christ? I wish it was as easy to do as
it is to say. I wish it was as easy to do as
it is to say. The one thing sinners can't do
is empty out our hands and do absolutely nothing and come to
God and depend on God to do it all. We can't do that unless
God make us know this message in our heart and reveal His righteousness
in us. But now look, that's who it's
for, him that believeth in Jesus. Where's boasting then? Here's
why. Where's boasting then? Who's
going to boast then? It's excluded. You can't boast
if you come to God and say through faith, you can't boast. Because
it's just the opposite of anything that gives you any glory to boast
in. God gives it. It's the gift of God. Not of
our works, lest any man should boast. So we can't boast that,
well, it's my faith that saved me. No, no. Not the believer. He don't say that. And the man
with true faith don't say that. God gave it. How can I boast
about faith? I went long enough not believing
and hating God to know that I couldn't have believed Him without this
gift. It's excluded. By what law? By the law of works? By the principle of works? No,
that wouldn't exclude boasting, would it? But by the law of faith. The principle of faith excludes
all boasting. Therefore we conclude that a
man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. That's
the whole point of this third chapter of Romans. A man is justified
by faith as opposed to the deeds of the law. Without the deeds
of the law. Is he the God of the Jews only?
Is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also. What
he's bringing up here is, so is God going to save the... He
gave the Jews the law. And he's telling us we're going
to be saved by faith. So does that mean he saved Jews
one way and saves us another way? No. Remember why he gave
the law? To declare us all guilty. The
Jews and the Gentiles. To declare us all guilty. Because
we all know that curse from Adam. He declares us all guilty. Look
here what it says, seeing it's one God which shall justify the
circumcision the Jew by faith and uncircumcision the Gentile
by faith. That word by and through, don't
let that fool you, it just means the same thing. He's going to
save the Jew by faith and he's going to save the Gentile by
faith. Do we then make void the law through faith? All this talk,
men will say, oh, if I preach that Christ fulfilled the law
and He's justified His people and this thing was done from
eternity and Christ did it by His blood and it's settled, it's
done, we owe the law nothing else, we don't owe the law any
works, we don't owe anything anymore. Men will say, if you
do that, you're making void the law. That's what they accuse
Christ of doing. That's what they accuse Paul
of doing. That's what they accuse us of doing. You're antinomian.
You're against the law. You're making void of the law.
No. Look at this. God forbid. Yea, we establish the law. The
only way you can establish the law in perfect righteousness
is cast all your care on the Lord Jesus Christ. And I'll show
you that's what he meant. Keep reading. We usually stop
here. The chapters were added. Just keep reading. Keep reading.
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 the glory, but not before God. Because
you can't glory before God. For what saith the Scripture?
Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. Now go back and think about it.
Did Abraham make void the law? Well, first of all, Abraham didn't
even have it. He didn't even have it. Well,
how on earth did he establish it then? through faith. Same
way he didn't make it void through faith. Now look down at verse
23. Now it was not written for his
sake alone that it was imputed to him, but for us also to whom
it shall be imputed if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our
Lord from the dead, who was delivered for our offenses and was raised
again for our justification. Why do I preach? Why have I sat
here and told you all this, and why do I study and try to bring
a message, get a message from God for you? Why do I do that? Number one, I do it so that you
can open this book and see what God says. Because man's word,
it don't matter. I want to see what God says.
Number two, it's because I'm urging you to believe God. to believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ, not to just sit there and think, well, if I can just
get through this night, if I can just get through the next meeting,
if I can just get through the next year, if I can just get
to the point where I can get out of the house, I won't have
to come anymore. It's for you to believe now. Now. God may have your day to meet
judgment settled tomorrow. Now is the day of salvation.
I realize what I'm calling on you to do is foolish to your
friends, it's foolish to anybody in your family that doesn't believe
God. I know it's foolish. Over in Jeremiah 32, the Lord
sent a word and He told them, He said, Jerusalem is surrounded
by Babylon. And He said, I've given Jerusalem
into the hand of the King of Babylon. and he's going to take
the king of Judah captive, he's going to carry him down to Babylon,
and he's going to be there, and it's going to be useless to fight
against him. And then God shut Jeremiah up in prison. When Zedekiah
heard that from Jeremiah, Zedekiah said, how dare you say such a
thing to me, and he threw Jeremiah in prison. That's where you need
to be. That's where I need to be. It
was prison in the King of Judah's house. And we need to be put
in prison in King Jesus' house because He's the King of Judah.
And when He shuts you up in the prison in His house and makes
you to hear His Word, this is what He told Jeremiah. Jeremiah,
this whole land is destroyed. This whole land is going to be
conquered by the enemy. It's going to be besieged by
the enemy. I've given it into the hand of the enemy. Now you
go over here about three miles from Jerusalem to Anatole and
you buy a piece of land over there. You just told me the enemy is
going to take this land and you want me to go buy a piece of
land here? You want me to go buy a piece of land in this place?
That's the most foolish thing I ever heard. You know why that
land was given into the hand of the King of Babylon? Because
the sins of God's people was in that land. You know why Christ
gave Himself into the hand of the devil? Because He bore the
sins of His people. That's why. And you know what
God says to you now? Now you go buy that land. You
go believe on Him and trust Him. And men look at you, your friends
look at you, just like they looked at Jeremiah. That's the most
foolish thing I ever heard. Buy a piece of land in a country
that's conquered. Believe on a Jesus that died
on a cross? That's foolish. It is to them
that perish, but to us who are saved is the power of God and
the wisdom of God. That's how God can justify me
freely by His grace and be just in doing it and be the justifier
at the same time and get all the glory and me get none. And
that's just how I want it. That's how I want it. Now let
me give you one last thing. And I want you to be sure to
get this, because this is where men get sidetracked. Men get
to talk about when, and who, and if, and all these different
things about justification. Here's what they miss. Christ
Himself is the believer's justification. Christ Himself is our righteousness. In Isaiah 45, 24, Surely shall
one say, In the Lord have I righteousness. and strength. Even to him shall
men come, and all that are incensed against him shall be ashamed."
If you were drowning, if you were drowning, and somebody saved
you, and you try to put yourself in that place, you were drowning,
you were just this close to dying, and somebody pulled you to safety,
saved you, are you going to be overly concerned about, you know,
where they learned how to swim, or about what color trunks they
were wearing, or about what kind of flotation device they were
using. Now, you want to know that person, don't you? I want
to know them. They saved me. Well, that's why
believers come and hear the gospel over and over. I want to know
Christ. I want to know Him. I want to know Him more. I want
to know Him more. I want to go to heaven so I can
know Him as He knows me and know Him for all eternity. That's
heaven to the believer. And here's why. This is the record. God has given to us eternal life. That's what righteousness is.
I know God's given us all these different terms to try to understand
it. If you've got righteousness, you have life. Because righteousness
is life. Sin is death. God's given to
us eternal life, and this life's in His Son. He that hath the
Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. I pray God to make you believe
on Christ today. Believe on Him. Amen. All right, Eric.