Brethren, if you will, open your
Bibles to Galatians chapter 2. Last week we looked at this whole
chapter, and I want to go back to just one verse. Today I'll
probably have a topical message. We might be turning quite a bit,
and I don't do that often. But bear with me, and I hope
the Lord will show us something. Justified by Christ is the title
of my message. Justification by faith is an
important part of the doctrine of free grace in Jesus Christ.
It's the theme of how God Almighty can be just to punish sin and
justify His people. I can be the just and the justifier. Now, this is important to know
about justification. It's necessary. If I could get
the ear of every person, man, woman, and child on this earth,
everyone in this state, if I could truly get your ears and mine,
I wish, I pray, I could truly understand that there is a time
appointed for me to die. There's a time appointed to every
person on the face of this earth to die. And at that time is the
judgment. You will stand before God Almighty.
And we'll either stand there attempting to be justified in
what we do, our righteousness, our ability, our works, or we'll
stand there looking at what Christ has done. We'll be justified
in His works, His righteousness. It'll be one of the two. Scripture
is clear on that. But I wish, I pray for you and
I pray for me that we understand how real that is. What we're
doing here this morning, this is real. and tremendously, eternally
important to us. So I want to look at what that
word means, justified. To justify. One of the writers put, the act
of God's free grace whereby he freely pardons the sinner, notwithstanding
his own unworthiness and transgression, delivering him from the guilt
of sin. That's not just, I feel guilty
over my sin, I feel bad about my sin. It's the actual guilt. The guilt of sin, the dominion
of sin, the power it has over me, and the punishment due to
sin. We're delivered from the actual
act of doing it. We were responsible and Christ
was accountable. For our guilt, He takes that
away. He takes away the power it has over us. And He takes
away, He bore that punishment that's due to the sin. It didn't
go away, but it's through Him. And because of that, we're accepted
in Christ. Romans 3.26 says, To declare,
I say, at this time His righteousness, Christ's righteousness, that
He might be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus." Let's look there at our text,
Galatians 2, we'll look in verse 16. Galatians 2.16 says, "...knowing
that a man is not justified by the works of the law." We know
this. Believers know for certainty We are not justified by the works
of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, not our faith,
Christ's faith. Our faith is given by him. It's
his gift to us, but it originated. He's the source from him of Christ. Even we have believed in Jesus
Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ and not
by the works of the law for by the works of the law shall no
flesh be justified. If you read that slow, that's
pretty clear. That answers what we looked at last week, that
answer to works. Am I responsible to do something
for my salvation, for my righteousness? It says there, knowing. It's
what believers know. We know a few things in this
earth with certainty, don't we? If the Lord's given you a new
spirit and a new heart in you to see who Christ is and what
we are, We know that we have a need to be justified. God the Father will have grace
and mercy on his people, but he will not let sin go unpunished. Many times in the scriptures
it said that God will be just, but he shows mercy. He punishes
sin, but he forgives iniquity. He has great wrath, but he's
slow to anger. That could be confusing, couldn't
it? Which one is it? Our God's wise, He shows us the
reality of the punishment that's due to us. And He shows us who
we are. He shows us what we deserve.
And then He shows us hope. And He shows us salvation. And
He shows us eternal life in His Son. We get to see both of those,
don't we? Turn to Exodus chapter 34. There in verse six, it says,
And the Lord passed by before him and proclaimed, The Lord,
the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in
goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity
and transgression and sin. And that will by no means clear
the guilty. visiting the iniquity of the
fathers upon the children and upon the children's children
unto the third and to the fourth generation. This Lord that comes
before us, proclaims His name as merciful and gracious and
long-suffering, keeping mercy for thousands. He will not pardon,
will not overlook sin. It will not go unpunished. Let's
turn to Nahum. Chapter 1, there at the end of
the Old Testament. You got Jonah, Micah, Nahum. Speaking of God's wrath against
Nineveh, Nahum 1 verse 2, God is jealous and the Lord revengeth. The Lord revengeth and is furious. The Lord will take vengeance
on his adversaries and he reserveth wrath for his enemies. Then immediately
it says, the Lord is slow to anger, great in power, and will
not acquit the wicked. These are two very different,
distinct types of people when it speaks of judgment, don't
it? Those that receive mercy and grace and long suffering
and that kindness from the Lord, and those that receive the wrath
and the anger and the fury. What's the difference? Who are
these enemies? Who are these guilty that both
of these texts speak of? We are all born in these bodies
wicked. God says that He loves righteousness
and hates wickedness. Psalm 14 says the Lord looked
down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there were any
that did understand and seek God and all They are all gone
aside. They are all together become
filthy. There is none that doeth good. No, not one. That sounds
like it includes me. I'm one of those wicked. I'm
one of those enemies of God. That's my heart, my natural heart
towards Him. I hate God. I was born that way
from a young child. It says a child comes from the
womb speaking lies. As soon as a child is born, the
first thing we listen to is a cry. You want to hear that child cry.
Why is it crying? Well, it was warm and comfortable
and hugged up good there, and now it's on a cold table, and
some guy's holding him up and shaking him. It's just upset
with the situation. Children lie to you. They don't
need a diaper. They don't need a bottle. They're
not hungry. They cry. They just want you to pick them
up. They're lying to you. That was me. I was conceived in sin.
But how are people like me, How are people made to be the ones
that the Lord is kind to? How do I go from being that thing
that I know that I am, the Lord showed me that I am, in part,
someone that despises the gospel, that wants my own glory, I want
to steal, I want to be a thief of His glory. How do I go from
that to being one that the Lord is long-suffering to and kind
to, merciful to? How is it that that guilt of
sin How can I, I am guilty. How could that go away? How could
that be removed? Is it by doing the things that
Moses told us to do by completing those laws? Just the 10 commandments,
not counting Levitical laws. There's so many in there. I think it's 613, I believe 600
and something. It's, and it's probably a law
that I need to know how many there are. I can't even list
them. I couldn't memorize them much.
Let's keep them. But when Adam fell, I fell in him. And the Lord was kind and long-suffering
and gracious enough to give me those laws as a mirror to my
heart, to show what's in it, to show my inability, to show
my wickedness, to show my sin. He gave that law. Deuteronomy
27, concerning giving the law, says, Cursed be he that confirmeth
not all the words of this law to do them. Of all the law that's
given, a man is cursed if he doesn't agree to, confirm, believe,
to do all the words that are in them. And that's just outwardly. Christ told us it's not what
goes into the mouth that defileth man, it's what comes out of the
mouth that defileth the man, right? Not just to physically not to
kill someone, but if we get angry with our neighbor, we've murdered
them. We've committed murder in our
hearts. So it's not just in the deed or in the word that comes
out, but in the heart and in the mind and the thoughts of
men. And to be in God's presence, we must be holy as He is holy. Leviticus 19 says, Speak unto
all the congregation of the children of Israel and say unto them,
Ye shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy. Turn
over to Let me find it. I think I wrote
this down wrong. You're still in Nahum. Further
left to Amos chapter three. Yeah. Okay. Amos chapter three, there
in verse one. To the left, just a couple of
books. Amos 3.1 says, hear this word. that the Lord has spoken
against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which
I brought up from the land of Egypt, saying, You only have
I known of all the families of the earth. Therefore, I will
punish you for all your iniquities. Can two walk together except
they be agreed? What's that mean? We know this
from another text, don't we? Can't be unequally yoked. Two
people can't walk together unless they agree. They have to be in
agreement. 2 Corinthians says, Be ye not
unequally yoked together with unbelievers, for what fellowship
hath righteousness with unrighteousness, and what communion hath light
with darkness? Many people hear that, and they
rub their hands together, and they get their shirts ready,
and they say, I don't partake with unbelievers. I only commune
with saints of God. And they're very proud of those
facts. That's true. We shouldn't be unequally yoked
in this world. We can't worship with people
that don't have the same God we have. We're not in accord.
We're not in communion. But what else does that mean?
We can't approach God the way we are. In our righteousness,
we have to have his righteousness to be in his presence. We can't
be unequally yoked. So that would mean if you have
a donkey and an ox together with the same piece of wood over it
to pull a plow, that's unequally yoked. It's two different things.
There's two different men inside of me. I have an old nature and
I have a new nature that the Lord's given me. I have to be
unequally yoked. I mean, I am unequally yoked,
but I have to be of one accord whenever I go into his presence.
I have to be holy as he is holy. And my trouble, which I'm in
often, is that I have that old man still with me on this earth.
And until I'm separated from this world, until the Lord harvests
me out from that seed that He's planted in me, I have to bear
it. I have to deal with that old
man. How can I be holy, though? We
cannot walk with God or be in His presence unless we're holy
like Him. But praise be to God. He makes
us holy. I can't clean this filthy cup. I can wash the outside of the
cup. The inside is still dirty. It's like taking a greasy, dirty
rag and trying to clean another rag. You're just going to smear
the grease around. I'm unable to do that. I see
that through His law and through the precepts of the New Testament.
Things I can't keep. But God justifies. He makes holy. He makes righteous. Genesis 17,
it says, When Abraham was ninety years old and nine, The Lord
appeared to Abram and said unto him, I am the mighty God. Walk
before me and be thou perfect. He made him perfect, didn't he?
God set the bar so high with that law. So unattainable, so
perfect. When we look to the law, all
we can see is who we are and what we are, how low we are,
and we can't keep it. So we have to look for one that
can. And who can? We're forced always to look to
Christ. So sinners know that we are in need of justification. We know that we have a need to
have a new holiness and a true righteousness inside of us to
stand in God's presence. And we know we're not justified
by that law. Sinners that are given eyes to see Christ and
no longer face that wrath of God's judgment. Our warfare is
over. There's no condemnation between
the soul and Almighty God. It says there is therefore now
no condemnation. And Donnie Bell brought this
up yesterday. He said, 20 years ago when I read that, that was
now. And this morning when I got up
at six o'clock in the morning, that's now. Right now there's
no condemnation between God. Tonight, when I go home, if I
read that, it says now. It's always now. Ephesians 1.6 says, To the praise
of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath made us accepted in the
Beloved, in whom we have redemption through His blood, that's where
we've been purchased, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches
of His grace. Now that holiness that's given
to me, is that just a little bit? Do I get a starter kit and
then I have to grow it? We don't understand those things.
We don't fully grasp. I don't grasp how evil and wicked
I am. I don't grasp how glorious and
perfect Christ Almighty is. And I don't grasp fully what
He's done for me. How great He is, that's what's
been bestowed on me. In Ephesians 1-7 it says, according
to the riches of His grace. According to His riches, that's
how abundantly we've been blessed with a new spirit, with a new
nature. Can I know, can I know for certain that the blood of
that redemption was for me? Am I positive that I've been
accepted? I worry about these things. I see these things, I
read them, but is it truly me? Could the Lord really condescend
to my level and give me a new heart and a new nature and preserve
me forever? Can I be one of those people? Turn over to 1 Peter.
1 Peter chapter 1. 1 Peter 1 verse 18. For as much as ye know. These
are things that we know, we're confident in. For as much as
ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, such
as silver and gold, from your vain conversations received by
tradition from your fathers." This isn't some old tradition,
some old wives' tale that we've been bought and redeemed. This
isn't, as Bob was saying this morning, this isn't a good analogy. This isn't a good bedtime story.
We know these things. 1 Peter 1.19, we're redeemed,
but with the precious blood of Christ. as a lamb without blemish
and without spot, who verily was foreordained before the foundation
of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you."
Right now is those last times. Lord, if He enables me, and He
gives me the words that you need, and He makes it effectual in
your heart, He's manifesting that in you. Verse 21, "...who
by Him do believe in God that raised him up from the dead and
gave him glory, that your faith and hope might be in God. So
what's that hope that I have? Do I still look to me even though
I'm not looking to a law? No, that law doesn't bring any
justification. So now is it just something inside
of me? Do I just have to try real hard? No, it says that your
faith and my hope both might be in God. We know whose blood
bought us. We know who made Christ manifest
in us. We know by whom we believe. And we know where our hope and
our faith is. It's in God. He's the source of all things.
He's the source of all life. Turn over to 1 John 5. 1 John
5 verse 13. John writes, these things have
I written unto you that you believe on the name of the Son of God.
And he lists some reasons that you might, that you may know
that you have eternal life and that you may believe on the name
of the Son of God. He's written these things, this
whole book, that one, that we believe on the Son of God and
that we know that we have eternal life. If we believe on ourselves,
we believe on our works, we believe on the law that we see, there's
no life there. It's eternal damnation. If we
believe on Christ, we believe on God who sent him. That's where
our hope is, isn't it? So that's in verse, 1 John 5,
13. Look down at verse 20. And he
says, And we know that the Son of God has come and hath given
us an understanding that we may know him that is true. And we
are in Him that is true, even in the Son, Jesus Christ, that
is, this is the true God and eternal life. To know Him. He's the true God and to have
eternal life is to know Him. So I know that I'm in need of
justification. I know that law is not going
to help me out in it. And I know that I'm not going
to help me out in it. But I know who I have believed, and I'm
persuaded that He's able to keep me. And I'm persuaded He is atoned
for me. He has made at-one-ment between
me and God because of Christ's work and Christ's life. But I
need an atonement. I need to be justified. But I
also need to be righteous. creates that new life in me,
but I have to have a righteousness and a holiness that's unable
to sin. He didn't hit the reset button.
He didn't give us a clean slate and now it's up to you to hold
on to these things and to keep it forever. I need the water
and the blood. Ambrotter said, be of sin the
double cure, save from wrath and make me pure. That blood
bought me. The blood justified me, and that
water that came from his side, that's my righteousness. It's
his coat of righteousness that was put on me. I need to be justified
and no longer guilty before God, but I need to be made holy and
unable to sin. Philippians 3 says, Yea, doubtless,
and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge
of Jesus Christ, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss
of all things and do count them but done that I may win Christ
and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which
is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ,
the righteousness which is of God by faith. That's the righteousness
I need. Hawker wrote this, I read this
yesterday and I've shared it with anybody that listened. I wanted to text you all yesterday,
but I thought, well, you'll be here and you'll be in it anyway.
Robert Hawker wrote this, Christ alone is the righteousness of
his people. It is high treason to talk of
any other, to talk of any other righteousness. and it is equally
high treason to talk of any comparative statement between man and man
concerning righteousness." Hawkers understood these things so deeply.
He was saying if we have any righteousness to God that's not
Christ, it's high treason. I wish we spoke in terms like
that nowadays. That's high treason. We're going against the command,
aren't we? We're going against the government.
God's wholly high command if we come to Him with a righteousness
that's not Christ. And he says, It's high treason
also to be compared between man and man. To think I'm more righteous
than another. Or that one's more righteous
than me. We're humbled and we see our brethren higher than
ourselves. But if Christ died for you, and Christ died for
me, we have the same holiness. We have the same spirit. The
same righteousness in us, don't we? Jeremiah 23. Verse 6 says, in
his days Judah shall be saved and Israel shall dwell safely
and this is his name where he shall be called the Lord our
righteousness. That's my only hope. We see three things there in
Romans I look forward to getting to on our Wednesday night studies. We are justified by God. That's
the source of our justification. Romans 8.33 says, Who shall lay
anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justify. That's the source of our justification
to be able to stand in that day. We are justified freely. Romans
3.24 says being justified freely by his grace through the redemption
that is in Christ Jesus. It's the source of God and it's
free. It's nothing in me, nothing I've done, nothing I merit, nothing
that I am. God didn't come down and say,
look how he's doing pretty good. He's trying real hard. No. He freely gave me that through
Christ. And we're going to see that we are justified by Christ's
blood. That was the payment. Romans
5 says, but God commendeth his love towards us in that While
we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more than being
now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through
Him. Men and women and children understood
that this life will end either here in 20 minutes or in 20 years
or some people 75, 80 years, however long. We're going to
face God Almighty, you want to face judgment. And if you want
to be saved from that wrath, it's going to be through Christ.
If you go, I would like to warn anybody that listened to me,
don't show up to judgment in your own flesh, in your own works,
thinking that God owes you something. You will be sorely disappointed
for eternity. And he'll show, every knee will
bow and every tongue confess that Christ is Lord. That means
everybody's going to know him. That's hell. That's eternal damnation,
is knowing Christ's understanding. It says every knee will bow,
every tongue confess that he's Lord. To know him fully, to know
who he is and what he accomplished, and to never be with him, to
be separated. That's what Christ bore for us
on that cross. If we are justified by his blood,
we're given his holiness, that coat of righteousness from Christ,
that's his. The payment for that was He was, Almighty God turned
His back on Almighty God. He fully knew the Father, fully
trusted the Father, sought His will above His own, and God turned
His back on Him. That's what was supposed to happen
to me. He did that in my place and in your place. And I look
forward to the day that we see all these things in part. I understand
what I am in part. I understand Christ's glory in
part. Someday that last sinner that he died for will hear this.
And somehow point him to look to Christ, don't look to yourself.
And he'll say, I believe him. I don't just believe in him.
I believe what he said. I believe God. And the Lord will wrap this place
up and it's over. And then we won't have this horrible
sinful body no more. We won't have any fear. of that
wrath standing before God's judgment. That's what Christ did. And then
we'll see Him face to face, won't we? And we'll know Him and be
made like Him. Won't that be precious? I hope
that's a blessing to you all. Let's pray and then we'll sing
a hymn. I'll have refreshments and stuff. There's coffee and
donuts back there. I'm going to sit around and visit
some. Father, forgive us. Lord, we're so sinful and unable. I'm wretched, Lord. Forgive me. When you look to me, don't look
at what I am. Look to Christ. I need His salvation. I need His atonement. I have no righteousness of my
own, Lord. It's filthy rags. We need the
knowledge and comfort of Christ's righteousness. That's the only
way sinners are saved, Lord, is through Him. Give us a heart
to worship Him. Give us a heart to be thankful
for Him. Allow us to profess Him to others and profess Him
to our family, our loved ones, whoever that has life in them,
Lord. Let them tell this good news
story of Christ's redemptive work. Keep us always pointed
towards Him, Lord. Allow us to fellowship together
with our brethren and enjoy that knowledge that We have a Savior. Let us rejoice, Lord. Let us
lift up our voices and be with our brethren everywhere as they
gather and comfort them and keep them to the end as you promised
you will. We're so thankful. We have so much to be thankful
for. It's in Christ's name that we ask it. Amen.