But now the righteousness of
God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law
and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God
through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. for there
is no distinction. For all have sinned and fall
short of the glory of God and are justified by His grace as
a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom
God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by
faith. This was to show God's righteousness
because in His divine forbearance He had passed over former sins.
It was to show His righteousness at the present time so that He
might be just and the justifier, the one who has faith in Jesus.
Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind
of law? By a law of works, no, but by
the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified
by faith apart from the works of the law. Or is God the God
of the Jews only? Is He not also the God of the
Gentiles? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one who will justify
the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith.
Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means. On the contrary, we uphold the
law. Let's pray. God, we thank you
above all things for your infinite mercy and love toward us, for
your word that writes us continually, not just with our eyes and ears,
but Father, on the pages of our heart, the letter of your affection
toward us through Christ Jesus, what you've done to secure our
righteousness, Everything, Father, that we are,
we owe to You. Our standing, our hearts, our
minds, our faith. It is all because of You and
what You've done. Father, never let us put confidence
in our flesh. Hold us, Father, in such a way
that we don't lose sight of what it means to be the church. And
Father, we pray that the enemy would not come against us to
our demise, because You have promised that we will never fall,
but that Your church will always live. And even when we are dead
in this body, we live forever with You. And we praise You,
Lord, that You are a gracious Father with a great love for
us, with great power, with great wisdom, and with great sovereignty. So Lord, we rest in You. We trust
in You. We pray for our brothers and
sisters who are ill tonight, those who have come down with
the flu, back issues, doctor's appointments and other things.
We pray for their healing. We pray You touch their bodies.
But we pray for the lost and the hungry that are amongst us. We pray for those in our communities
and our neighbors, Father, who do not know the Gospel. We pray
for those sheep of Yours, Father, who are flailing around with
no hope, looking to feed. Lord, that You would bring them
into the sheepfold of the local church. That You would take them
out of those false congregations. And Father, we ask that You continue
to provide for our needs, most importantly spiritually, emotionally,
physically, because You have everything in Your hands. Every
dollar belongs to You. Every molecule was created by
You and for You. And so we celebrate You. We worship
You. We rejoice in You. In Jesus'
name, Amen. Boasting. It's something that
we do very well in our culture. Never empty of boasts. Everywhere
you look throughout all of history, there are many records of boasting. People like to boast about what
they've done. People like to boast about what they've said.
I've recently come across several individuals, I don't know that
they're doing this because of pride, but they'll post something
on the internet, on a Facebook or a Twitter or some kind of
social media, and they'll put it in quotations and put their
name at the end of it. I don't get that. If I say something
out of my mouth, I don't need to say, and that was James Tippin
speaking. I don't know if it's just because they're Luddites
and they don't get that not everybody can see their little face, or
they're just making themselves quotable. I don't know what it
is, but either way, there is never a shortage of boasting. whether it be intentional or
not, ask somebody something about themselves, and they are glad
to offer you their mouth and fill up your ears. Now, there
are not... every time we boast, it's not
necessarily sinful. It's not always wrong to say,
you know what, I did a good job today, and I'm glad, and I worked
hard today, and I'm thankful. But when it comes to the gospel,
when it comes to the righteousness that belongs to Christ, we know
that there is no boast. There is no boast, because boasting,
by definition, means that we have something to say of ourselves,
something to say of what we've done. If we boast, we are telling
the world that our accomplishments are indeed our own. So in this
question that Paul relays, in these three questions actually,
he asks three, they are, then what becomes of our boasting?
And he says, then, what kind of law? And then he asks, by
a law of works? And he says, the answer to these
questions, there is no boasting, it is excluded. And he says,
by the law of faith is the kind of law, not the law of works.
Now, if we close out this chapter in verse 31, he asks a fourth
question, and that question is, do we then overthrow the law
by this faith? For he says it is justified by
faith, not the works of the law, so that there is no reason for
us to boast. He says, by no means. On the
contrary, we uphold the law. So my prayer tonight is that
in the time that I have left, I would like to explain what
this means in the context of our justification, in the context
of the gospel, and in the context of our works. So let's begin
by reminding ourselves why we cannot boast. Well, what would
we be able to boast to God about? If we were to stand before God
this very moment and like a great-great-grandfather stood there looking fondly at
his great-great-grandchildren, what would we say to him if he
said, so what's my little great-great-grandchild been up to? What should we say? Well, let me read my Bible. I
was in service tonight when so many people skipped. I didn't
cuss out my neighbor today. I prayed. I tithed. I did this, and I mean,
what will we say? We, if we are honest, we know
there's nothing that we could say. We can't say even if we're
asked by our neighbor, what good deeds have you done today? How
dare we even boast to our neighbor? How odd would it feel in our
spirit if we as redeemed, as the redeemed came to our neighbor
and said, do you know what I've been up to today? I baked a hundred
cookies for the orphanage. I went and sang hymns for the
convalescent home. I went and dug ditches for whales
in India." And you just brag and boast about everything that
you've done for everybody else. Isn't that a boast? Isn't that
a brag? As a matter of fact, doesn't
the Scripture say, don't let your left hand know what your right hand
and vice versa are doing? Isn't it something that we should
remain silent that our crown and our glory is not from this
world, but always the crown of righteousness that is Jesus Christ
that we obtain because of His mercy and His grace, not because
of our works? I often find it odd, and even Brother Jesse,
he's not feeling well today, he had a headache, but we have
this conversation a lot, he being a missionary, and since, he gives
updates every month, and at the end of every month, he writes
sort of like a little report of what he's been doing, and
little stories about how he's interacted, and it makes him
feel so odd to talk about all the stuff that he's done, because
it feels, in his heart, like boasting. How horrible would
it be if he thought that that was righteousness? How horrible
would it be if everything we did that was glorious or biblical
or spiritual, we always posted it everywhere, look at me, look
at me. When the very idea of what the
Jews were doing and the Pharisees were doing in the days of Jesus
were just that. Look at who we are. We're wearing
the right regalia. We're holding the Word of God
in our heart and before our eyes. You realize that the Jews actually
wore garments and what they called phylacteries, little leather
pouches. They would roll up a little tiny piece of scroll of Scripture
and they would stick it inside the phylactery and they would
hang that phylactery a little bit forward so that it would
be in front of their eyes so that they could fulfill the law
of Scripture that says, have the Word of God always before
you. And then they would have another
one that would be stitched onto their breastplate of their garment
because the Scripture says to hide or hold the Word of God
close to your heart. And they would feel justified.
And they would feel as if they had done something that would
honor the Lord because they literally took the teaching of Scripture
to heart and to sight. What becomes of our boasting?
Paul says very clearly, it is excluded. It is excluded. Brothers and sisters, it is excluded
that we could even say, we believed. That is something that we have
a hard time understanding. Sometimes when people are young
in the faith, and I'm not talking about by age, and I'm not talking
about by years, but I'm talking about by growth, sometimes it's
very odd. Sometimes it's very different. to see someone who is seasoned
in life, who is immature in the faith, but that happens. God saves people in all walks
of life. God saves people sometimes even
in childhood and in their young adult years and they have been
abandoned by the true teaching of Scripture to the point that
they don't know what is right and what is wrong according to
the text of the book. And so as they begin to grow,
their language changes, and our language should change. When
we even answer the question that might be asked of us, how do
we know we have assurance of salvation? The answer to that
question is not anything that we've done. It is not because
I believe. It is not because I have faith.
It is not because I received Jesus. That's nowhere to be found
in the entirety, in the totality of any passage of Scripture,
anywhere in the text of the New Testament. Nowhere do we find
the confidence of our eternal life in what we've done, even
in our faith. But it is through faith by which
we have our confidence. But the faith has an object,
you see. The faith has an object. Faith
in itself is worthless. Oh, I just believe. In what?
That's like these morons that talk about on during Thanksgiving.
It's coming up. And I know that if you're like
us, we don't really watch television that streams on the airwaves
or the cable. We don't watch it. We don't see
commercials. If we want to watch something, we're streaming it.
We're Netflixing it. We're not really watching. You
can't binge if you've got to wait till next week to see the
next show you want to watch. So for the American family, Very
few people see the commercials. But during Thanksgiving, do yourself
a favor and go to a movie, if you so dare, or go and watch
a network television during prime time, about seven to nine, just
long enough to see about four sets of commercials, and you
will see celebrities or of some type, whether they be athletes,
or actors, or actresses, or politicians, or just stupid people that everybody
wants to watch, do nothing with their lives and call it reality
TV, or whatever it is, you know, reality TV. Whatever it might
be, there'll be some famous person who will come on there and talk
to you, and they'll say something like this, it is the season to
be thankful. Be thankful. Have gratitude. Well, what in the world is thankfulness? How can you be thankful? Is it
just an ambiguous feeling? No. The only real way to be thankful
is to actually have an object of your thankfulness. You have
to be thankful not just for something, you also have to be thankful
to someone for that something. So you can't say, well, I'm thankful
that I have my health. Are you thankful or are you just
glad? You see the difference? Because
you cannot be thankful if there's not someone receiving the gratitude.
Gratitude always has to have an object. Faith is the same
way. And I remember the first time I heard that little montage,
it was at a movie theater. I don't know what we were watching.
I probably slept. or got sick, I got sick one time
in a movie theater and stayed deathly ill with some food poisoning.
Not at the movie theater, but from hours before. And I'll never
forget watching this little montage of this famous person, and it's
so nice and done well, they all dress like Steve Jobs, you know,
with the same color shirt and the black brown, and be thankful,
be thankful, be thankful, be thankful, be thankful, be thankful,
be thankful. And I'm fighting the urge to
go, to who? Who are we going to be thankful
to? Who is going to receive that thankfulness? God must receive
that thankfulness. If I hand you a tissue and you
needed a tissue and you say, thank you, I'm thankful. All
right, guess what? I receive your gratitude. Why? Because I gave you something
you needed. If we have eternal life, We have faith. That faith must have an object,
just like our gratitude must have an object. It's not the
faith in itself that does anything. Faith does nothing. Faith must
have an object, and the object is everything. The object of
our faith is the one in whom we trust. So our faith is in
something, and here we don't boast. Why? Because our faith
is not in ourselves. Our hope is not in ourselves. Our justification, that means
standing right before the Lord, legally, that we are not guilty,
we are not condemned, we stand right before the Lord. Our justification
is not because of who we are. And it's not because of what
we've done. It's because of who God is and
what He's done and who He's put on the cross as our propitiation
to be received by what? Faith. So we say that our boasting is
excluded. We cannot stand there and say anything about what we've
done at all. So the answer to our justification, which is salvation,
we say, what is our security in salvation? How do we have
security? How do we have confidence? How
do we know that we can steal away from the silliness of our
day? How do we know that we know that
we know that we know we have eternal life? We say, because God, in
His mercy, saved me through the finished work of Jesus Christ,
who lived and died for me. See, our faith is explicit. It is expounded. It is revealed. Not that I just believe in Jesus,
but Jesus saved me. I trust in His salvation. I trust in His provision. If we owed the IRS millions of
dollars and someone wrote the check for us and paid them off,
we wouldn't say, well, I'm just so thankful that got paid. No,
we'd be thankful to the one who paid it. And when the lawyer
called and said, well, how do you know that you don't owe them
anything? You say, I just believe. I just have faith. In what? In whom? Have faith in the one who wrote
the check and paid it." See, the Scripture tells us who paid
what. It's a record of our account,
and it's a record of the account of the righteousness of God in
and through Jesus Christ, so therefore we trust in the work
of Christ. It's not hard, but because we watered it down so
much, it's like adding water to gasoline. Yeah, it'll burn
for a while, but there comes a point where the ratio just
doesn't work. the fire of the flammable fluid, the combustion
of fuel will be overpowered by the vapor of water, and eventually
it won't work, but just a little bit, a little bit, it'll run
roughshod, but it will run, because the flame could overcome the
water. Friends, if we look at the Gospel
that way, eventually it's going to be so watered down it's no
Gospel at all. It's another Gospel, which is what we've been talking
about on a few occasions already about what we would call the
free will Gospel, or the free offer Gospel, or for those of
you who understand history and church history and the heretics
of history, Arminian Gospel. which says that man is the center
of his own destiny, that man is the one who chooses God, that
man is the one who affects his own salvation, that man is justified
because of his own choices and actions. Friends, this is not
only so far out in left field from Scripture, it's absolutely
demonic. And I don't say this anymore
because it's theologically inaccurate, but for us old southerners, we
could say it's from the pit of hell. That teaching is wrong. Because it is a boast, it is
a boast in man. It is a boast in what man has
done to effect his salvation. How much security do you want?
Do you want security in your confidence, in your established
victory? Do you want security in your
life? Do you want security in your works? Do you know why so
many people teach a works-based salvation today and don't even
know it, because they've taught a man-centered, free-will acceptance
of Jesus through a prayer in an aisle or a box or something
like that. And then every time you turn around, when someone
of that nature, someone of that position, that has confidence
in their eternal life based on what they did, is confronted
with the Word of God, the Spirit of God smashes against their
worldview, and smashes against the view of their own sanctification,
and their justification, and the salvation that they think
they have, and then they are troubled. Because they know who
they are deep in their soul, they know who they are absolutely,
and there is nothing that can satisfy their fear, except that
they begin to look in the mirror and say, okay, I'm not the person
I want to be, but I'm not the person I used to be. And then
they start feeling confident because they don't cuss their
neighbor out, or they do bake cookies, or they do come to church.
Friends, there's going to be a lot of loving, kind, benevolent,
Christian-like old ladies busting the gates of hell wide open in
the judgment, while the cantankerous, grumpy, fartheaded old fellas
who just could never be nice, God might save, are going to
be in glory. And we're going to be confused.
I think, wow. That person was mean and that
person was sweet. This doesn't make sense. Yes,
it does. God is a God of grace. God is a God of salvation. God
saves. We don't save ourselves and we
certainly don't have confidence in our works. It's very dangerous. It's very
dangerous, especially when we hear this type of teaching. And
it is the message of Romans. It is the message of Jesus in
John's Gospel. We cannot establish ourselves
before Him justified because of anything we do. And people
even say, well, we've got to believe. Yes, we've got to believe,
but we know what that belief is, and we know in whom it is,
and where it's placed, and we know that it is the work of God
that causes us to be born again. That very statement is said by
Peter in his first epistle. Blessed be God and Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ who has caused us to be born again to
a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Paul would say the same thing to the Ephesians in Ephesians
chapter 2 in different wording. Our boasting is excluded. But
why is it excluded? By what kind of law do we come
before God and are justified? By what kind of law? Is it the
law of works? See, this is the question. People
think, I mean, you may not get as much as I do because you may
not ask as many people as I do about their place in eternity
and about their faith and about the gospel. But if you were to
ask the question this week, if you were to ask the question
very simply, hey, how do you know or how do you think someone
has eternal life? Or you can use it even very lightheartedly,
how do you think a person gets to heaven? Because everybody
in our culture understands that. How do you think somebody gets
to heaven? All of them, without fail, all of them. I have yet
to find anybody on the street that gave me the right answer.
All of them. So we've just got to do right.
You gotta believe in Jesus, you gotta live a good life, you need
to be in church, I know I need to be in church, and then they'll
start making excuses, but God knows I'm upset, and I had a
church experience, or my wife, or my husband, or my children,
or whatever, that preacher preaches too long, and I got back problems.
That preacher is too loud and I got ear problems. There's a
little song when I was a kid. I don't know who sang it, but
I loved Southern Gospel when I was a child. I could sing like
third tenor when I was really young. There is such a thing. It's basically a male soprano. A song called Excuses. Excuses,
excuses, you'll hear them every day. The devil, he'll supply
them if from church you stay away. And when people come to
know the Lord, the devil always loses, so to keep them folks
away from church, he offers them excuses. He says, in the winter
it's too cold, in the summer it's too hot, in the winter it's
too cold. In the springtime, when the weather's just right,
you find someplace else to go. Whether it's up to the mountains or down to
the beach, or to visit some old friend, or to stay home and just
relax and hope some of the kinfolk start dropping in. Well, those
church pews are way too hard, and the choir sings way too loud.
You know how nervous you get when you're sitting in a great
big crowd. The doctor told you to watch those crowds because
they'll set you back, but you go to that old ball game because
it helps you to relax. Well, a headache Sunday morning
and a backache Sunday night, but by work time Monday morning,
you're feeling quite all right. One of the children has a cold,
pneumonia, do you suppose? Well, the whole family had to
stay home just to blow that poor kid's nose. I'll never forget
it. I can sing it to you right now,
all four parts. It's ridiculous. But everywhere
you go, that was a waste of 20 seconds, I know. But everywhere
you go, people have these excuses. And what it is, is a blindness.
And they say, well I know I've got to get back in church. What
it is, is a blindness for them to overpower the ignorance. They try to blind themselves
to say, OK, what am I going to do? OK, I know I'm not living
right. And so I'm going to say something and then make an excuse
for it. And that is evidence, is what I'm trying to say, of
a blindness that they don't understand the gospel. It's a picture of
blindness. Because they don't know that
they're justified by faith in the finished work of Jesus. They
think they're justified because of what they do. I need to get
right with God. What does that mean? How can
you get right with God? I need to get my life together.
What does that even... How many of you Christians by a show of
hands have your life together? Please come take my place and give us
that instruction. That's another lie that the devil teaches the
church that we all have our life together except for us. No, we
don't. What kind of law then do we stand
before God and boast? It must be some kind of law because
the law is required in the holiness of God and the economy of God's
justice and righteousness. There must be a law. Something
has to take place. What kind of law? Is it a law
of works? No, but the law of faith. See this play on words
here that Paul is approaching. He says in verse 28, it's a strong,
strong, strong statement. It's a reiteration over and over
and over and over again of what Paul has already argued in these
three chapters, but he says it very boldly so that we don't
have to worry about a misunderstanding. For he says, we hold that one
is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. That means
that faith alone in Jesus Christ is the only way a person can
have eternal life and be justified before God. That means that any
work or good deed that we do has no bearing on our salvation
or the confidence inside of us for our salvation. Now, I know
what some of us are thinking. It's the same thing I thought
too when I became a student of Scripture and began to see these
things peering very heavily through the pages. Some of us say, well, we've got
to obey. That's the fruit of our salvation.
No, it's not. It's not the fruit of our salvation. Can it be? Yeah. Absolutely. But a wicked, lost atheist can
do just like a Christian and walk in a manner in the same
sense. Matter of fact, I would suggest
that if we were to measure the works of our lives against the
works of the lost, we would be waning. Jesus said to His disciples that
it is Easier to thread a camel through
a sewing needle than it is for a rich man to get to heaven.
And they say, then who can be saved if this righteous doer
of the law could not be saved? And Jesus says, what is impossible
with man is possible with God. See, Jesus could thread a camel
through a needle. And Jesus can take a wicked person
and bring them into righteousness. When we think of the works of
the law, Paul has not said anything here about not doing good things.
Paul has not said anything here about the fact that we should
be able just to walk away and do whatever we want to do. That's
silly. That's not there. Why do these things have to be
convoluted? Why do these things have to be mixed up? Why does
how we live as the church, individually and corporately, have anything
to do with how we're saved? Why does it have to be tied together?
It doesn't. It's not supposed to be tied together. It's two
different things. We get married, and then we have
a whole nother set of responsibilities. We have a whole nother set of
covenants. We have a whole nother set of learning to grow in marriage. Then we have children, have a
whole nother set of things. It doesn't have anything to do
with our birth as a human being. It doesn't have anything to do
with our maturity and coming into adulthood with our bodies
and with our minds. But yet it brings on new responsibility.
It brings on new effects. It brings on new challenges.
The same thing is true with the new birth. It brings on new responsibility
and new challenges. And we know that all the things
that we do as Christians, if they are good, it is because
we do them through faith. We believe that they're good
because Christ is our righteousness, not these things. That's the
law of faith. Because He even says there, is
God the God of the Jews? No, He's the God of the Gentiles
also. So, since God is not divided, and since God is the God of all
people, then all those who are justified, He justifies them
the same. The circumcised, which is the
Jew, and the uncircumcised, which is the rest of the world, He
justifies them through faith. That they believe in His work
and in His doing, and that it's done. Do you trust that God has
done the work for you, that you have eternal life? Do you trust
that what the Bible teaches is that Jesus lived a life? Listen
to the Gospel again. The Gospel is that God created
the world and everything in it, and He is the ruler and the owner
of it all, and He created man, and by their own rebellion they
sinned against Him, and that God, before the foundation of
the world, purposed to save His people from the penalty of their
sin by becoming a man and sending His Son Jesus to be born from
the wound that He created, to come into this world as truly
human, as fully man, and live a life of obedience under the
law of God, and fulfill it. And then die on the cross to
satisfy God's wrath and anger toward His people so that He
could forgive us and still be righteous. The righteousness
of God is manifested apart from the law. And then God vindicated
Jesus Christ from the dead. He raised Him and proved to the
world, to the cosmos, to the powers of darkness, and to the
human race that He indeed was God and that all that He said
and all that He did was effectual. And He promised us also that
we not only would have eternal life spiritually, but that we'd
have eternal life physically. And if we believe by faith that
Jesus' work accomplished what it was intended to do, and it
is ours, we have life, you see. But it is the most absurd thing
that anyone could ever hear. It's actually farther out there
than some of the most amazing sci-fi that any human mind will
ever hear. So the natural mind hears that
story and they go, that's stupid. That's a child's myth. Zeus and
Artemis sound more realistic than that. Why would that? Who is God to tell me I need
saving, you see? So that hearing the Gospel, hearing
the teaching of the Word of God, through the words of Scripture,
God the Holy Spirit, He's a person, God the Holy Spirit, comes into
the heart and mind of a person who is lost and unable to understand,
and when they hear the Word, when the Spirit wishes, He brings
them to life, and after He has birthed them anew, they believe
by faith. And they are justified. Because
God has done the work. And then the question that Paul
closes with, he asks this question. Do we then overthrow the law
by this faith? So we're by faith alone. Well,
what would the world say? You know what? Easy-believism,
and easy-believism means a different thing to some people, but basically
easy-believism would be for me to close the service by asking
you all to close your eyes and bow your head and listen and
ask you to repeat a prayer and raise your hand. And if you raise
your hand, I declare you saved. That's easy-believism. Decisional
regeneration, where if you make the right choice tonight, you
can have eternal life. What if you die on the way home?
Are you ready to go see Jesus? We're thinking, my goodness,
I've got a long way to drive and I'm a little tired, I might die. Yeah, I'll
raise my hand. I'll check that. And you're sincere.
Sincerity doesn't save. We can sincerely go to hell.
We can sincerely die in our sins. But some people, because they've
been given this lie of easy-believism, without even hearing the true
gospel, they're just hearing, you want to go to heaven. It's
not even the gospel. It's not even the good news of
what God did to get them to heaven. It's just, hey, you want to go
there? It's like, hey, you want to go to Chuck E. Cheese? Hey, kids, anybody want to go
to Chuck E. Cheese? Yeah, every kid in here is like, yay! If
I had a bag of candy and I started holding it up, there would be
100% attendance and participation in following the preacher tonight. Because everybody would want
that piece of candy. So if we hold up heaven as a piece of
candy, you want to die and go to hell or you want to go to heaven?
Well, think about it. Well, I'm dead. It wouldn't matter. I'll just go to heaven. How's
that sound? You really? Do you mean it? Did you mean
it? Did you surely mean it? Well, you're saved. That's a lie. And I know
that it seems like I'm being rather heartless to make fun
of it. What else am I supposed to do?
It's ridiculous. I should curse it and call it
what it is, demonic. and people who put their trust
in the decisions they've made. Now listen, most everyone in
the room came to faith through some type of means like that.
God saved me, I came to faith, and some months later, this stuff
was pushed on me. Well, you've got to nail it down.
You know who nailed it down? Jesus nailed it down in His body. He nailed my sin to Himself.
That's what nailed down my salvation, not what I said and not what
I did. I believe today in the finished work of Jesus Christ,
and before I go home I may doubt, but I'll believe again before
I go to bed, and I'll believe tomorrow, and I will continue
to believe, because the Holy Spirit of God has given me life
eternal through His mercy by the finished work of Jesus Christ,
and no one can snatch the truth of the gospel from me. and no
one can take me away from Jesus Christ. And beloved, if you are
not confident in the reality that God has saved you through
the finished work of Christ, I beg of you this day to cry
out to God, to give you the faith that you've all longed for. and
stop falling prey to this sad and manipulative gospel that
has plagued the world for too long, that I believe that the
church of Jesus Christ should stand up and cry, blasphemy,
this is blasphemy, and you're a heretic, quit teaching demonic
things to the people and to the sheep of Christ. Because there
are a lot of people who have been saved and then mistakenly
and wrongfully engaged in this type of stuff. It's why the church
in our culture gets more participation in good deeds stuff, and good
deed programs, and good fellowship functions than they do in exposition
and the teaching of the Word of God, and prayer, and fellowship,
and crying, and weeping, and longing to see each other have
joy. I know two or three churches
that still do a traditional prayer meeting. I've been to one since
I've been back here, or two, and it's sad. But I know when those things
used to really be the real deal, people actually got together
because they wanted to pray for one another. Now it seems the
only prayer that you hear is the prayer for the sick, and
the prayer for the president, prayer for the world, and prayer
for the gays. And that's about the end of it, and praise God
for the Second Amendment, hoorah! What a waste of time! God has saved us by His mercy. We do not overthrow the law of
God by this faith. Paul says, by no means, on the
contrary, we uphold the law. And friends, there's a lot to
say there, and there's a lot of things that we need to deal
with, but for our time's sake, we will continue to see what
that means in chapter 4. But when we look at the things
we do in life, listen very carefully, and we say to ourselves, you
know what, I'm walking with the Lord. We thank Him for it. You hear
me? That's why I started out with
that. We thank Him for it. Thank you, God. Not like the
Pharisee that said, thank you, God, I'm not like that. Thank
you, God, that you've held me in this. Thank you, God, that
you've produced me in this. And listen, because tomorrow
we may not walk in it. We may be the kindest, I may
be the kindest husband, and this is all hypothetical, baby. I
may be the kindest husband that ever walked the earth for a day
or two. and then I can come in and see
milk on the couch, or be in a bad day, or just decide I just want
to be a butthole. Do you ever decide you just want
to be that guy? Well, you know, for you guys, yeah, sometimes
we just feel like being ugly. Why? Because our flesh is at
war. And we have the power in Christ
to put it to death, but even when we put it to death, it does
not make us more righteous, it does not make us more justified,
it does not put us in a better standing with God. We are in
the right standing with God, and when we see that there's
a work that God has been working out in us as we learn this past
Lord's Day out of John 3, we praise Him for it. And when we
see ourselves fail, we praise Him for His mercy. But we should long to walk in
a manner worthy of the gospel. We are subject to the Word of
God as the church and the New Testament was written to us.
So when we see what's taught here, when we see the instructions
and when we see the commands to love our brother and to give
to those in need who are part of our church and this, that,
and the other, we can do it because God has equipped us to do it.
But that's not even evidence that we're born again. The evidence
in our hearts that we're born again is that Jesus took our
sin. and gave us life. Jesus paid
it all. That's the evidence. Now when
we look at each other, if you look at me, and you see me walking
in a manner not following after the path of Christ, you can say,
man, that's a stinky, stinky lifestyle there. Discipline,
rebuke, correction, training and instruction in righteousness.
You see? But my confidence, for my faith,
is not in me, or my works, or the fruit of my faith, or the
evidence of God's Holy Spirit. And my confidence, your confidence,
must not be in that either. But the evidence of our salvation
should be obvious to each other. It should be. And we'll see what
Abraham's confidence, let's listen to it and then we'll close. Verse
1 of chapter 4, What then shall we say was gained by Abraham?
You notice the question he says, he asks a question, so should
we just throw the law away because of faith? Oh no, on the contrary. And Paul will reiterate this
sucker again over there in chapter 7. On the contrary, we uphold the law. What shall we
say then was gained by Abraham? That means what did he get? What
did he earn? Because we earn what we work
for, don't we? That's called a what? Wage. Paul just said in verse 23 of
this chapter, the wages of... No, that's chapter 6, isn't it?
Yeah. He will say the wages of sin
is death. I'm ahead of myself. But what is our wage? Our wage
is death. We don't get rewarded. Yay! It's like I was talking
with the kids today or yesterday about not talking so much and
to so much length to the smallest one in our home about everything
in dialogue, because just like a little puppy, sometimes it
just needs to be potty trained. And we train the puppy, and,
oh, so cute, give it a treat. We do the same thing with children.
They poop in the potty for the first time, and it's a parade.
Oh my gosh, there's a turd! You know, a year later they come
walking out, look, I pooped! And we go, that's nasty, go in
there and wipe your butt! That's gross! And they go in
there and cry, what happened? I'm not cute anymore, what's
going on? No, because you don't get rewarded for doing what you
were supposed to do. Even though there's a reward
sometimes with the learning of it and the training of it. Positive
reinforcement, nothing wrong with that. I'm not saying we
frown at our children here. Stinky poop. I mean, you know. But the same way God's not going
to go, wow, look at James being sweet. Woo-hoo, my big boy. No. It's about time you did what
you were supposed to do. And guess what? You've not done
what you're supposed to do your entire life perfectly every second
of all your created existence. So guess what? You're guilty
of a lawbreaker. You're a lawbreaker. So you're
going to get the wage. If I'm going to wage, if I'm
going to get what I deserve for doing what's right and good and
pleasant, then it's going to be death. If I'm going to get
what I don't deserve because of what Jesus did, which was
right and good and pleasant and serving and sacrificial and effectual,
then that's life. See, that's what the word grace
means. By grace you have been saved through faith. In other
words, you believe it. So it's effectual for you because
you know it. It's yours. But God did the work. What did
Abraham gain? What wage did he receive? Our forefather, talking about
the Jews, according to the flesh, because he is the father of the
Jews. For if Abraham was justified
by works, then he's got something to boast about. But not before
God. Not before God. For what does
the Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it
was counted to him as righteousness. You think I'm making up that
thing about wages? Look at verse 4. Now to the one who works, his wages
are not counted as a gift, but as due. And to the one who does
not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his
faith is counted as righteousness, just as David also speaks of
the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart
from works. Blessed are those, verse 7, whose lawless deeds
are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man against
whom the Lord will not count his sins. And that's what we'll
look at next week. But friends, that is the joy
of it. And I'll tell you what, this world absolutely could take
a hike. I hate it. I hate the world and
everything in it. But we love each other, and we
love the church, and we love the Lord, and He's put us in
the world, and we have to maintain it. Why does Paul, I'll leave
us with this, why does Paul command the church to do all things without
grumbling and complaining? And children, listen to this.
Why does the Bible command us to do all things without grumbling
and complaining? Because grumbling is the opposite of thankfulness. And when we grumble because of
the circumstances we're in, we're a whiny child pitching a tantrum
and telling God that his gifts are not good. When we complain
about our problems and, whoa, nobody understands me, we all
do it. I'm not picking on anybody. I
do it. I've done it today. Why? Why? Why? Shut up, James. Why not? Bring it on, let's suffer
well, and let's do it in a way that honors the Lord together.
Because we're here not for the walls and the lights and the
building and the stuff. We're here for the sake of the
glory of God. We're here not for the name on
the window, but to be a people after God's own glory by the
power of His grace. We're here to establish the reality that
God has saved a people in Evans County and the surrounding areas.
And we're here for the sake of growing. We're not here for our
future. We're not here for our family.
We're not here for our treasures. We're not here for retirement.
We're not here in this world as Christians for any name, for
ourselves. The greatest people that have
ever lived in this world will never be named by name. They
are the name. They point to the name of Jesus.
And that's actually where we are in John's Gospel, where John
the Baptist begins to get these fussy, complaining, whiny parts
who say, See? They are. They're going to Jesus. Look,
you're baptizing them now. They're going to Jesus. Man,
our church is shrinking. And John says, I must decrease
that he may increase. The bridegroom gets the bride.
And do you know what God did before the world began? He purposed
and decreed that Herod through his wife would be told with his
big old boasting mouth, I'll do anything for you, whatever
you ask. She says, I want the head of John the Baptist on a
plate, and I want it in front of me right now. And he goes
into the cell, and he cuts the man's head off, and he sticks
it on a plate, and he brings it to his wife, because God decreed
to take John the Baptist out so that Jesus would be the better
bygroom and the one to whom he pointed as a voice crying out
in the wilderness. Just like those two men in Acts
chapter 7 who were unnamed and they picked up with great lamentations
the body of Stephen at the cost of their own lives. They died
that day. They died that day because they
touched a body that had been condemned to death. And you'll
never know their names. Because Christ gets the glory.
Let's let Christ be Christ. And I'm not saying that in a
way we give Him permission. I'm just saying, let's keep ourselves
out of the picture and be the church that God has saved by
His mercy and through His powerless pray. Father, there's so many
things. There's so many things that can
burden us and hold us down, Father. The pain of illness, and the
pain of relational strife, and the pain of a sick world, and
the pain of finances, and the pain of worry, and the pain of
fear, and the temptation that comes along with all of that.
Lord, we pray desperately that You would work in us a way to
have joy and thankfulness in the midst of it all. Father,
that we would not lose sight of what is great and perfect,
that we would not fall into a place of despair, but we would stand
firm. We thank You for Your Word, Lord,
it is so true. We're grateful that we can hear
not only the words that You teach us, but the message of the cross
that is effectual on our behalf. Father, that through Your Word,
Your Holy Spirit comforts us. We are comforted tonight and
we are secure in our eternity because Your Spirit gives us
that peace. We know that You are Your children
because we know that we are believing in Christ. And so as we leave
tonight, Lord, let us be on each other's minds and we pray for
each other as we labor to find joy as we take time away from
all the stuff that's before us to get into Your Word. Help us
not to forsake Your Word that we might not starve and walk
around with nothing in us. And we pray these things in the
saving name of Jesus.