Our text this morning is found
in Romans chapter 3. If you would turn there with
me in your Bible, please. Romans chapter 3. Last week,
we looked at Paul's explanation of what the gospel is from 1
Corinthians chapter 15. In that 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians,
Paul's talking about preaching. He said, I declare unto you the
gospel. That's preaching. The gospel
by which you were saved. That's the preaching of the gospel.
True preaching is preaching the gospel, the good news to sinners. The gospel is how sinners are
saved. By the foolishness of preaching. What the world calls
foolishness. Paul said, I delivered, I preached
unto you first of all that which I received. Paul received the
gospel of Christ and Him crucified. And that's what he preached.
I received that message. I heard that message from a gospel
preacher, and that's what I'm preaching. I'm preaching what
I received from the Lord. He received the message of Jesus
Christ and Him crucified. Friends, there's no other way
for a sinner to be saved. Then Paul tells us what the gospel
is there. He said how that Christ died
for our sins according to the Scriptures and that He was buried
and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.
Now listen to me closely. The gospel is not simply telling
sinners that Christ died and was buried and rose again the
third day according to the Scriptures. The gospel is how He died. That word how means in what manner. In what manner did he die? That
word how means by what means? By what means did he die? How
is the manner and the means that Christ died was buried and rose
again? Well, it was according to the
scriptures, meaning according to the will and purpose and word
of God. How did Christ die? By what means
did he die? It was by crucifixion. It was
according to the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of
God, God did it. And in what manner did Christ
die? Well, He died as a guilty criminal. He died as the most guilty sinner
that ever lived, not because He was a sinner. He knew no sin. Folks say, well
you can't preach Christ as a sinner. He wasn't a sinner. He knew no
sin. He did no sin. He thought no
sin. He was made sin. Made sin for His people. He was
made sin because His elect people were sinful. The holy, strict,
unbending, inflexible justice of God requires that sin's debt
be paid in full. How is that sin debt paid? Well,
you answer that and you've preached the gospel. The soul that sins
shall what? Die. The wages of sin is what? Debt. The gift of God is what? Eternal life through, through
Jesus Christ our Lord. That's what the gospel Good News
to Sinners is. Recently I saw an advertisement
for Dale Carnegie, you remember them. And they, the advertisement
said, making good men and women better. Well, how can that be
done when there's none good? To begin with, there's none good. And unfortunately, that's the
thinking of this religious world today. Because men and women,
lost sinners, don't understand what God in this book says. There's none that do it good.
That means not a one. He even adds that. No, not a
one. In case you don't understand
what none means. If you were to ask someone today
if they were a sinner, you would get many answers. No doubt about
it. Well, I used to be a sinner,
but I got saved. No, you didn't get saved. And
everything was something you did to get. I'm not perfect,
but I'm not all that bad. How about this one? I'm as good as
the next guy. Well, you just condemn yourself when you say
that, because the next guy's bad, too. There's none good,
no, not one. But one who confesses to be a
real, bonafide, genuine sinner has had their sin and their need
for a Savior revealed to them. And it was God that revealed
it. The gift of God It's a gift of God, not saved
by works or saved by grace through faith. It's a gift of God, not
a work so that any man should boast. Men and women have no
understanding of who and what they are apart from a divine
revelation. Now here in Romans chapter 3,
verse 9, Paul is speaking of the difference between Jew and
Gentile. For several chapters here, he
does. He lets us know that there is no difference between them,
naturally speaking. No difference between Jew, no
difference between Gentile, no difference between me and you. In verse 9, what then? Are we,
the Jews, better than they, the Gentiles? He says, no, in no
way, no shape or form. For we have before proved, both
Jews and Gentiles, that they're what? They're all under sin. As it is written, there is none
righteous. No, not one. There is none that
understandeth. And there is none that seeketh
after God. We're in a heap of trouble. Because
that's what God requires from all of us. Perfect righteousness. You know, the true believer has
been made to desire that which they can never obtain in and
of themselves. And that's to be free from sin. The religious unbeliever believes
that they can be free from sin by work of their own righteousness,
which they can never do unless God reveals to them their need.
And only then will they have a true desire to be saved and
made free. So the believer and the unbeliever
both, no difference, they're both shut up to the grace and
mercy of God alone. The believer, by God's grace,
sees by divine revelation that they are a sinner, and they look
to Christ to justify them. And if the unbeliever is ever
to believe and be saved, God must do the same thing for them.
And my point is this, neither the believer or the unbeliever
would ever be free from sin apart from the grace and mercy of God
in the Lord Jesus Christ. How useless and vain for any
to think that this freedom, this liberty of which I speak, can
be achieved by one who is sold under sin. and total bondage
to sin. Total bondage. You suppose that
Israel would have stayed in slavery and bondage to Egypt for over
400 years if they could have delivered themselves? Now come
on now. You think that they say, you
know, I think we can get out of this if we just do this and
do that. If they really thought so, would they have stayed in
that bondage for 400 years? No. No, they wouldn't have. The power that Egypt and Pharaoh
had over God's people is just a picture and a type of the bondage
that sin has over us. We can't deliver ourselves from
it. By nature, we have no power over
sin. Exodus 1.14, And the Egyptians
made the children of Israel to serve with rigor, and they made
their lives bitter with hard bondage in mortar and in brick
and in all manner of service in the field. And all their service
wherein they made them serve was with rigor. That word rigor
means severity. It means cruelty. They didn't
go, okay, now I need you to make some more bricks for me. No,
they snapped the whip and said, get to it. Severity, cruelty,
that's what sin does to those who are enslaved by it. With
cruelty and severity, sin makes us to bitterly serve with hard
bondage. Bondage is the state of being
for a slave. It means to be captive. It means
to be imprisoned, chained, shackled, fettered, unable to do what you
desire. In Romans chapter 7, that's what
Paul is saying. He said, sin has chained me. That which I would not do, that
I do. That which I hate, that's what
I do. It's sin within me that makes
it so. In my flesh dwells no good thing. I'm in bondage to it. I'm sewed
underneath it. I will to do what is right, for
the will is present with me. But how to perform that which
is good, I can't do it. I find not. Is that your experience? The
Holy Spirit revealed the purpose of God's law to me, and by grace,
I saw that I was sold under sin. I look at those Ten Commandments,
and if I'm honest with myself and you, I can't keep a one of
them. Not a single one. Especially
perfectly, and that's what God requires. The law was given to
show us that we could not keep it in order to be good. Not just
good, but perfect. The law was given to show us
that we needed a Savior, that we needed a substitute, that
we needed a sacrifice to provide for us what we could not provide
for ourselves. You cannot provide what God requires. You can't do it. Because you're
dead in trespasses and sin. We're in bondage to sin. We need one who can keep the
law for us. One who can satisfy God's holy justice in our place. Now, according to verse 12, every
sinner is gone out of the way. They are all together become
unprofitable. That means that All together
within themselves, they're unprofitable, and collectively all together,
they're unprofitable. All of us here this morning who
profess to believe in Christ, you wrap us all up together,
bundle us up together, and we're all together unprofitable. There's none that do us good.
That's what he said. Verse 12. No, not on one. Do you agree with God on this? Is this how you see yourself?
You can't make a good man better if there's none that do it good.
There's none righteous, no, not one. There's none that seek after
God. All have gone out of the way. How many of them? All of
them. All have become unprofitable. No man or woman can claim to
be good according to the bar of God's justice, God's holiness,
No, sir. We all fall short of the glory
of God. Now, when men compare themselves
to men, that's different. It's relative, we call it. We were talking in the men's
meeting back here. I remember Paul Hibbs asking
me one time how old I was, and I said, I'm 68. And he said,
that's young. And I said, well, it is to you
that it's 90. But it's not to my grandchildren.
They think I'm old. So age is relative. See what
I'm saying? And goodness is relative. When you compare men against
men, it may seem that some are good compared to others. But
comparing men and women to each other, it's kind of like comparing
one maggot to another. Now, I've told you this before,
and I don't mean to be gross, but a maggot is a disgusting
thing. Talking about those who deserve
the justification of God, we're asked the question in Job chapter
25, verse 6, how much less man that is a worm and the son of man, which is
a worm. Now the English word worm comes from the Hebrew word
tulah, which means maggot. Did that preacher just call me
a maggot? No. God did. And you know what? He calls me one too. I've said this before and I'm
not trying to be humorous. I want to get you to think. You
can put a tuxedo on a maggot, but it's still a maggot. It may
be a proud maggot because it looks better than the next maggot,
but it's still a maggot. Better than other maggots maybe,
but it's still a maggot. By nature, we're proud and vain
maggots. Now, if that offends you, then
you've yet to see. God's yet to show you who and
what you are in the eyes of a right, holy, just God. You have to see what verse 13
tells us, and that is that our throats are an open sepulcher. You know what a sepulcher is.
It's an open grave. full of dead men's bones. That's what the Lord called the
Pharisees. He said, you're like beautiful sepulchers, beautiful
on the outside, ornate on the outside. Oh, you dress up, you
stuff your phylacteries with prayers and scriptures, and everybody
says, oh, there goes a holy man. He said, but on the inside, you're
dead, dead man's bones. That's what we are. With our
tongues, we've used deceit, because out of the abundance of our hearts,
our mouth, our tongues speak. The poison of ash, serpents,
is under our lips. The venom of falsehood, deadly
as a serpent, flows from these lips like... I don't know. Like the serpent in the garden,
we're deceived with flattering words. The serpent was subtle
with deceit. That's why Eve was beguiled.
That word beguiled means charmed, enchanted, tricked in a deceptive
way. The serpent said, you shall not
surely die. No, God said, if we eat of this
fruit, we're gonna die. You're not, you won't die if
you eat of that fruit. Lies. God knows better than that. God's holding back the truth
from you. He's not telling you the whole story. You shall be
as gods, knowing good and evil. The serpent appealed to mankind's
glory. He's saying God's trying to keep
all the glory to Himself. What a lie! Not unto us, not
unto us, O Lord, but unto Thy name give glory, for Thy mercy
and for Thy truth say. God gets all the glory. to the
praise and the glory of His grace wherein He hath made us accepted
in the Beloved. And when the woman saw that the
tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes,
and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit
thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her,
and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were
opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig
leaves together and made themselves aprons. And you know what? That's
what fallen men and women have been doing ever since Adam's
fall. They have endeavored to cover
themselves by a work of their own hands. They've sowed big
leaves together and it can't be done because our big leaves
soon are going to dry up and fall away. We've got a little
tree right out in front of my study at home, right in the window
that's just thriving. It's not so little anymore. And
it's thriving so much that the branches are bright and green
and they were dragging the ground. And Teresa this week, unknown
to me until I later went out, had trimmed those long branches
and within a period of, I'm not kidding you, 24 hours, those
cut branches turned brown and dried up. I mean, they were as
brown as brown could be. That is what our self-righteousness
does. It dries up and withers away
because it's nothing but a fig leaf righteousness. It's separated
from the vine. Separated from the life of the
tree, that being Christ. I'm the vine, you're the branches.
Without me, Chris, you can do nothing. That's what our self-righteousness
does. Separated from Christ the vine,
we cannot live. As we read earlier, God looked
down out of heaven to see if there were any that had understanding. Were there any who were seeking
God? You read it with me, were there? If there had been, God
who sees everything would have seen them. And one old writer
said that man by nature is half beast and half devil. And then
he said, I'll leave it up to you to decide which one you're
the most like. I'm a whole lot like both of
them. Maybe more than half beast and more than half devil. But
today men are declared to be basically good. Basically good. Just having made a few mistakes
along the way. But that's not what God said.
God said none seeketh. None good. None righteous. None understands. You know, that's a sure way to
tell the difference between those who are saved and those that
are still lost. A saved man or woman will be the first to tell
you that they're wretched, that they're corrupt, and anything
but good. They won't argue about their
corrupt nature. They'll agree with you on it.
They'll shake their head. You're a no-good sinner. They
may argue that they're more corrupt than you, but they will not argue
that they are corrupt. It doesn't matter how civilized,
how polished, how educated, how wealthy, how educated or illiterate,
I might add, all have been cast down into the depths of degradation
by God. All have sinned, all have sinned
and come short of the glory of God. You know, you can visit
the most remote parts of this, some would say civilized world,
I call it uncivilized world, and find men dwelling in dirt
huts and tribes who are no more wicked than what you'll find
in the White House and in your house. That's right, that's right. All we like sheep have gone astray.
We have turned everyone to his own way. Now some might dare
to say, well, how can we all be alike when some men are moral
and others are immoral? Well, Our Lord told the Pharisees,
woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites, for you're like
those whited sepulchres I spoke of, which indeed appear beautiful
outward, but within are full of dead man's bones and of all
uncleanness. Even so, ye also outwardly appear
righteous unto men, but within you're full of what? Hypocrisy. Iniquity. I have not committed adultery,
the moralist may say. Well, have you looked on a woman
to lust after her? I've never committed adultery,
says the self-proclaimed do-gooder. But have you been angry with
a brother without a cause? And as I've already said, by
the grace of God, I am what I am. I told a man that one time, and
he took issue with me on the matter. You really believe that? That you are what you are by
the grace of God? And I said, yes, and so are you.
And he said, well, how so? I said, well, what did you have
to do with being born in America? You could have been born anywhere
in the world. You didn't have any choice in
the matter. You could have been born in Haiti,
India. What did you have to do with
being born in America? You know what he said? Nothing.
I said, what did you have to do with being born to the parents
you had? He said, nothing. I asked him, what did you have
to do with the solid upbringing that your parents gave you in
this free country? And he again replied, nothing. So I said, see there? You are
what you are by the grace of God. You're not what you are
by your own doing. And you know what he said? I
never thought about that. And that's what I'm saying, because
he had no understanding of man's depravity and God's mercy and
grace. There's none that understand
it. There's none that seeketh after God. Those two statements
go hand in hand. They're parallel and explain
one another. If you never had this understanding,
you'll never have this understanding if you don't seek after God with
all your heart. And you'll never seek after God
with all your heart until you have an understanding of who
you are and who God is. And if you don't receive this
revelation, you'll miss the purpose of your existence. What is the
purpose of our existence? It was for God's pleasure that
you and I were created. Why would any of us allow a dog
to live in our house and treat him like a child? They bring us pleasure, right? I don't want to mention any names,
but Glenn Hansen cooks his dog breakfast. Sorry, Glenn. But I'm just as
bad. I don't cook our dog breakfast,
but I go to let her outside. Teresa, can you let her outside?
And I'm like, come on, go with Daddy. Let's go outside and go
to the bathroom. We're just fools when it comes
to dogs, aren't we? How do we, the dogs that we are,
bring our master pleasure? By worshiping, being appreciative,
by giving adoration to Him and Him alone, like our dogs do to
us. We kennel our dog in a crate
at night and when she sleeps and Teresa gets her out every
morning and takes her outside and then feeds her. And yesterday
she had a horrible migraine and asked me to let our dog out and
I did. And that little dog, she got
out of the cage, she went running through that house looking for
Teresa. Not to go outside, she was looking
for Teresa. Why? Because Teresa is her master. She's the one who feeds her,
she's the one who takes care of her, but none of us by nature
seek our master who takes care of us and feeds us. We can learn
a whole lot from little dogs. We sure can, because that's what
we are. The Lord called that Syrophoenician
woman a dog, and she said, yea, Lord, it's what I am. But even
the dogs eat the crumbs from the master's table. Friends, if you're without God,
you're but an impotent rebel against the goodness of his majesty.
But if you've been found in Christ, then you are His child, His heir,
and a partaker of His divine nature. You're preserved by His
grace and power. You're indwelt by His Holy Spirit. You're predestined to immortality. You're being conformed to Christ's
perfect image. And if I understand that my God
is in control of every single thing that transpires in my life,
then what troubles I should be able to bear. What sorrows I
should be able to endure? What hopes that I can rest and
indulge in? What joys I can obtain? Is this
something that interests you? If it does, then God's already
begun a work of grace in you. Let me spend the remainder of
my time endeavoring to show you how we are made free from sin. Freedom, that's a beautiful word.
You know who's beautiful too? One who's in bondage. One that
has no liberty. One that has no freedom. And
that's the problem today. Men and women just don't know
they're in bondage. Our sins are ever before us.
Our sins have separated us from God. Our sins are our trouble. And our sins is the problem. There wouldn't be any trouble,
wouldn't be any problems if it wasn't for sin. There'd be no
death, no sorrow, no punishment. Sin is the reason for all those
things. All the trouble between us and
God is because of sin. David and Paul both wrote about
this. They wrote the same thing. They
said, blessed, twice happy is what the word means, is the man
whose iniquities are forgiven. He is a happy man, the man whose
iniquities are forgiven, forgiven by God. How do we receive this
freedom from our bondage? How do we obtain this blessed
liberty? God said, there are sins and
iniquities I will remember no more. Or you might say, well,
God can't forget anything. He can't. But the blood of Christ
is so effectual and so sufficient and so strong that even the holy
eyes of an all-seeing God cannot see sin that's been eradicated,
removed, and blotted out by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what John the Beloved
said of the Lord. He wrote, The blood of Jesus
Christ, God's Son, cleanseth us from all sin. How much sin? All of it. How horrific is our sin? It took
the blood of God to cleanse it from us. All sin. That don't mean much to you if
you see your sin as little. That won't mean much to you if
you think that you're basically good. But that'll mean everything,
everything to you if you are the chief of sinners Whichever
sinner believes, they are. Now we've established from Romans
chapter 3 that we're sinners. Each one cheap in their own mind.
Turn over a page or two to Romans chapter 6. And I'll hurry. Romans
chapter 6. And look at verse 7. It says, For he that is dead,
is freed, justified from sin. Now that's talking about being
dead with Christ. Being crucified with Christ,
buried and raised with Him. Sin has no dominion over a dead
man. Sin has no control, no demand,
and no claim on one that's dead. Why? Because he's dead. You can't
extract justice from a dead man. It's like when a man is convicted
to die on death row for murder and his life is taken. He's at
that moment free from sin. He's free from his crime. The
law has no more claim on him. You can't punish him anymore.
He's dead. The law has nothing else that it can do to him. He's
free from the law. Look at verse 18. Being then
made free from sin, delivered from sin, delivered from sin's
bondage, you became the servants of righteousness. Look at verse
22. But now, being made free from
sin and becoming the servants of God, you have your fruit unto
holiness and the end, life everlasting. Paul said it best in Galatians
2 verse 20, he said, I'm crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live,
yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, and the life which I now
live in the flesh, I live by faith of the Son of God. Not
by my faith in, but by the faith of the Son of God, who loved
me and gave himself for me. I'm not living under the bondage
of trying to do or not do something in order for me to be saved.
Are you? If you are, stop it. It's not
going to do any good. Christ has freed me from that.
I've been delivered from the bondage of corruption into the
glorious liberty of the children of God, Romans 8. The life that
I now live, I live by faith in Him, in Christ, who loved me
and died for me. Christ shed His blood to put
my sin away. He really did give Himself for
us. Free from sin does not mean that
I'm free from the presence of sin. Sin remains. As a matter of fact, it's not
far from any one of us. It can reveal itself with your
next word, your next thought. But it doesn't reign over me.
It no longer controls me. It doesn't have dominion over
me. How good do we have to be to
be accepted of God? We've got to be perfect. I cannot
in myself be perfect, but I can be perfect in Christ. The life
that I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God. His
faithfulness, not mine. He, Christ, hath perfected forever
them that are sanctified. By one offering, He hath perfected
us forever. He did! None of us have ever
lived a day without sinning. And we never will. So to be free
from sin does not mean that we're free from the presence of sin.
Secondly, to be free from sin does not mean that we're free
from the awareness of sin. God has made us aware of ourselves
and our sin if we belong to Him. He's shown you what you are.
As one old preacher said, He's given you a whip of yourself. There's still a constant war
going on within us. A constant struggle between our
flesh and our spirit. The flesh lusteth against the
spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, so that you cannot
do the things that you will. That's bondage. But again, the
Apostle Paul said, Christ came into the world to save sinners.
If we confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive
us our sins. The Scripture says, He that covereth
his sins will not prosper. We can no longer try to cover
what we don't have. Don't miss that. Freedom from
sin does not mean that we're free from the effects of sin.
We're not. The effects of sin are going
to stay with us until we die. We're not free from the presence
of sin. We're not free from the awareness
of sin. And we're certainly not free
from the effects of sin. How do I know? Well, do you ever
get depressed? Do you ever have sorrow? Do you
ever feel pain? Do you get sick? Do you get sad? Do you get mad? Do you get afraid? Well, if we live long enough,
we all get old. And we all die. These are the
effects of sin. Then how are we free from sin?
Well, we're free from sin's condemnation. There is therefore now no condemnation
to them that are in Christ Jesus. That's how. There's no judgment,
no wrath, no charge. Christ has freed us from the
curse of the law. How? Being made a curse for us.
We go right back to that. Christ and Him crucified. Do
you know why there's no condemnation against the believer? Because
Christ took His people's condemnation on Himself. Payment, God's justice,
cannot twice demand. First in my bleeding surety's
hand, and then again in mine. You know what that means? That
means no one pays a debt twice. If it's paid, it's stamped paid
in full. And Christ stamped my charges
paid in full and read each in His own blood. That word justified means to
be without sin. Who can lay anything to the charge
of God's elect? It's God that justifies. It's
God who makes us without sin. Who is he that condemneth? Christ
is died, yea, rather is risen again, who is even at the right
hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. He that
believeth shall not come into condemnation. To be free from
sin is to be free from guilt. You can only be free from guilt
if you're not guilty. No one in the world may know
of a sin that you've committed. But you feel guilty because of
it. Because you know. You know. And God knows. Oh, my, my. This is so wonderful
to be free from sin, free from guilt. What do you have to do with a
man if he's not found guilty? You've got to let him go. He's not chargeable or punishable.
You gotta let him go out of his bondage, out of prison, out of
his slavery. You gotta let him go. Pardon
doesn't mean that the person's not guilty. Parode doesn't mean
that the man is not guilty. Forgiven doesn't mean that one
is guilty. It means that he is guilty, but
he's pardoned. It means that he's guilty, but
he's paroded. It means that he's guilty, but
he's forgiven. But the word justified means
that we have no guilt because we have no sin. We have no guilt
because we have no sin. God's law is honored, and His
justice is satisfied, and there's no charge against us. Our salvation
is finished. That's what our Lord said. What
does it mean to be free from sin? It means to be free from
sin's penalty. Oh, I like that. Because His
penalty is eternal death and separation from God. It's to
be free from sin's punishment. That's what we are in Christ.
So what think ye of Christ? That's why that's the most important
question that's ever been asked. What do you think of Christ?
What do you think of Him as a matter of life and death? So, I'm done,
but I've got to ask you. Are you good, or are you a sinner? Sinners are who Christ came to
save. Christ is the only one that can make a sinner better.
We certainly can't make ourselves better, but He can. He not only
can make us better, Steve, He can make us perfect. That's good
news, isn't it? That God enabled us to tell others
that good news.