Romans chapter 1. We're going
to be in verse 16 as a pickup because tonight we're going to
be preaching out of verse 17. For those of you who have not
been here, I would encourage you to please go and listen to
the other passages. Because the prologue, just like
we do on Sunday mornings, the prologue to these letters is
greatly important to the understanding of all the other teaching that
we find, all the other doctrine, which means teaching, that we
find throughout the rest of the letter. And so if you look in
Romans chapter 1, I won't recap everything because I have a lot
I want to talk about tonight based on this text, but Paul
is not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for
salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, then also to
the Greek. And in verse 17, let's look at what that says. For in
it, in what? In the gospel, the righteousness
of God is revealed from faith for faith. As it is written,
the righteous shall live by faith. Now let me give you some information
about this. If you know much about how a letter is written,
the introduction to a letter is pretty easy to spot, and the
ending is rather obvious. Well, beloved, the ending of
Paul's introduction is right there. For I'm not ashamed of
the gospel, and the righteous for it is the righteousness of
God, the righteous shall be led by faith." This is the end of
the prologue, the introduction to this letter. But it's not
just the close of a great introduction. It's not just the close of an
incredible outline that will carry us throughout the rest
of this writing. It actually is the outline for
the rest of this writing. It is a transition that brings
us to the stated arguments that Paul is going to absolutely show
the major themes of this letter throughout the rest of its continuity. And so the major themes expounded
and exposed later in the letter, such as the salvation for all
who believe. You'll see that over and over
and over again. So people that talk about God's
election and God's sovereignty and salvation in a negative way,
and they talk about how, well, you know, anybody can be saved. Well, that might be true in theory,
but only those who believe will be saved. Salvation is not universal. Salvation is not offered universally. Salvation is effectually granted
to all who believe. And so Paul expounds upon this
as he transitions now into some of the doctrinal teachings that
we'll see starting next week. Salvation for a whole belief.
We also know that he spends a lot of time, as he already has, for
the salvation for the, what, Jew first, and then also the
Gentile, or the Greek. And we will see in this letter,
especially when we get to chapter nine and 10, the expense, even
in chapter four, the expense that Paul exercises in showing
his readers, his Gentile readers, just how God has saved any Jew. Not all Jews, but any Jew. Any
Jew that has salvation, he has salvation because he has believed
in Jesus Christ. And so it's very clear that this
is going to be a theme that Paul deals with throughout. And it
is one of the matters that cause the occasion for this writing
to begin with. As we talked about Paul last week and the pride
that he had in the gospel. And I'm not talking about pride
as in haughtiness. Look at me, I've got the gospel, you don't.
No, it was the other way around. I have the gospel, you must have
it also. He says it with such a passion
in this letter, he says, I'm under obligation. I'm under obligation
to the foolish and to the wise. I'm under obligation to the Roman
and to the barbarian. I'm under obligation to all people
to preach the gospel. Why? Because it is the power
of God unto salvation. for all who believe." And so
as we transition into the latter part of this introduction, going
into this doctrinal statements that Paul starts to argue over
and over again at the end of chapter 1 and then in chapter
2 and then chapter 3 and so on, Do not forsake the teaching that
we've had now over these last seven Wednesdays. And if you
are behind, I would strongly encourage you, as I've already
said, to go back and listen to them again. Not because I want
you to hear me teach, and not because I think that my teaching
is so amazing and it's so thorough, but if there's a continuity for
you in this letter, It is going to come through understanding
this prologue. You may can skip a couple of
weeks in other areas, but if you have missed out on the teaching
of this prologue, you won't miss it because I'll teach it, but
you're going to miss the aha moments. You're going to go,
wow, I see that. I remember that Paul orchestrated
this outline and we're going to see these things. Wow, that's
what Paul was talking about. This is what the scripture is
supposed to be teaching us here. So let us just jump right in
it. I'm talking so fast today because I took a lot of B12 to
keep myself awake. So anyway, I don't know how much, just in
a little juice form. For I'm not ashamed of the gospel,
for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes,
to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For it is the righteousness
of God, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith
for faith. As it is written, the righteous
shall live by faith. Now, let's look then at the very
first phrase of verse 17. It says, for in it. Now, if you
are a student of higher criticism, and that means you like to hear
people argue about what the Bible does and does not say based on
all of their, I don't know, ineffable knowledge of language, then you
might find or have found somebody who would tell you that Paul
is pointing to something else other than the gospel. I don't
really get it. And quite honestly, I get bored
with the arguments because it just doesn't make any sense in
the context of even the phrasing that we see here and the actual
words that we have very well defined in English. But for it,
it, what is he talking about? For in it, in the gospel, the
righteousness of God is revealed. And that is the, oh gosh, the
magnum opus that teaches us about God and who He is and God and
what He's done. Now, it begs the question then,
what is the righteousness of God? Well, the righteousness
of God is revealed in the gospel. So if we look at the gospel,
we must ask ourselves then, what, as we looked last week, I talked
about what the gospel was very clearly, and I went back and
actually listened to my sermon earlier today so that I would
make sure that it wasn't the week before, but I very clearly articulated
what the gospel was last week. So, the gospel reveals the righteousness
of God, so now let's ask, what is the righteousness of God?
Well, there's several ways in which we can look at that. There
are probably seven or eight ways in which the scripture defines
or illustrates the righteousness of God, but let's go over a few
of them, not all of them, in brief. God's righteousness is
revealed or visible or seen in the distribution of His justice.
What do I mean by that? Well, if you look at verse 18,
let's get a little sneak peek for next week. I'll preach on
this particularly. So right here, we see that God
is displaying his righteousness
in the distribution of his justice. Now, what is justice? Justice
is when you violate the law, you are caught and held accountable
and punished adequately. That's justice. Some people think
it's justice when someone's arrested and then gets off easy. Oh man, justice was served. Justice
is not served when someone robs someone and then gets off. That's
not justice. Justice is not served when someone
kills someone and gets away with it. It's not justice. It's not
justice when they go to prison for life. It's not justice. Justice,
according to the law of God, is that they die if they take
a life. It's mercy when justice is not administered. It's mercy. And mercy is, as we've been learning
on Tuesdays, an attribute of God that we also can share in
some way. minutely, enough said. But the
righteousness of God is revealed in God's justice on all of the
unrighteousness of men. Now, let's use that definition
and ask ourselves, is this what Paul means? For I'm not understanding
the gospel, for it's the power of God for salvation to everyone
who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in
it, the justice of God is revealed to the gospel. Is it? No, it's
not by faith that you receive God's justice, it's by justice
that you receive God's justice. And God's justice and God's righteousness
are interchangeable. They are the same thing. The
Bible shows us that God's justice is a display of God's righteousness.
And if you know what Romans 3 teaches, and you know what verse 21 teaches,
you'll say, but the righteousness of God was manifested apart from
the law, and I can't wait to get there, but we'll just have
to wait. Another way to explain God's righteousness that may
be what Paul is talking about here is that God's righteousness
is not only seen in the distribution of His justice, but God's righteousness
is also seen in His faithful covenant. And what is God's faithful
covenant? God is faithful in his covenant,
and God's covenant is his promises. So God promised to redeem a people. So the scripture shows us that God is faithfulness covenant.
Matter of fact, Paul asked rhetorically these questions. What if some
were unfaithful, he says? What if their unfaithfulness,
as it exists, does it nullify the promises of God? He says,
no, absolutely not. It cannot be. It doesn't nullify.
The very famous phrase, let God be true though everyone were
a liar. Let every man be a liar, let God be true. See, though
Israel failed, God was still faithful in His covenant. And God's faithful covenant is
a display of His righteousness, because His righteousness, His
covenant, is good, it's right, it's perfect. But people would
argue with Paul, he supposes they would argue and say, well, Most of Israel has turned away
from God. He's not faithful. But Paul uses himself as the
example, doesn't he? Even though in his judgments
against them, God is righteous. In his judicial blindness of
Israel, God is righteous. In his mercy to redeem some Israelites
or some Jews, God is righteous. And in his word, in order for
it to be true, Paul says, he was a Jew, and yet God had saved
him. You see, what we do when we hear
this type of thing, we say that Israel are God's chosen people.
We collectively administer God's choosing amongst all people.
That's what happens in an Arminian gospel, in a freewill gospel,
that Jesus died for the whole world, and so we objectively
just define the world as every single individual, just like
the Roman Christians would identify Israel or Jews as every single
Jew. But God will save the world and
God will save Israel, not everyone. But the representation of all
the world will be in eternity. For God has the elect from every
nation, and every tongue, and every tribe, of which Abraham
was not any. Abraham was a pagan worshiping
a false god. But God plucked him out of the
ziggurat. and put him in the path of righteousness,
not of his own doing, but by faith, as we'll see. So God's
righteousness is seen in the giving or the distribution of
His justice against wickedness and unrighteousness. God's righteousness
is seen in the faithfulness of His covenant promises. And God's
righteousness is also seen in his redemption of the elect through
Jesus Christ, who, by the way, paid the penalty of sin. Thus,
those who believe on Christ are placed in right standing, the
word justified, meaning that we are in right standing before
God. So God's righteousness is seen
in that way as well. What about two more ways? Let's
think of these. God's righteousness is seen in the gift of his salvation.
and the gift of faith and the gift of justification itself,
the gift of intimacy, because we're atoned for. That means
we're at one with God. So there's an intimacy. We're
no longer far away, but we've been brought near, as Paul would
teach the church of Ephesus. Another way that God's righteousness
is seen, for example, in Abraham's place, in Romans chapter 4, Abraham
was credited righteousness because he what? Believed God. He believed
in God. God's righteousness is also seen
in the truth of eternal life, that he makes men who are the
elect, who are saved by faith, no longer slaves to the flesh
or slaves to sin, but they are slaves to what? Slaves to righteousness. So these are seven, eight, nine
ways in which God's righteousness is displayed in scripture. Which
one best fits the context of Paul's teaching? I would say
the third one. The third one. God's righteousness
is seen in the salvation of his people. Because is not the gospel
the good news of God's salvation? So let's read it this way if
we can. God's righteousness For I'm not ashamed of the good news
of Jesus. For the gospel, the good news,
is the power of God for salvation to all who believe, the Jew,
then also to the Greek. For in the gospel of Jesus Christ, in
the gospel of God, which is the salvation of his people, which
is the power of God, the righteousness of God is revealed. So that's
how we ought to read that. That's how we ought to understand
what Paul is saying here. It has nothing to do with justice.
It has nothing to do with covenant. It has nothing to do with intimacy
or the righteousness of God's gift of faith and all of these
other things. It has everything to do within
the context of this letter, in the context of these sentences,
the gospel of Jesus Christ. which is the power of God unto
salvation. And if you remember what we talked
about last week, is that it is God's gospel, it is God's power,
it is all of Christ, and that's what gives us a great understanding
of this very next phrase, from faith to faith, from faith for
faith. So, let's hear some scripture
about God's righteousness revealed in salvation. Psalm 98, listen. The Lord has made his salvation
known and revealed his righteousness to the nations. He has remembered
his love and his faithfulness to Israel. All the ends of the
earth has seen the salvation of our God. In Isaiah 46, 13,
I am bringing my righteousness near, God says, it is not far
away and my salvation will not be delayed. I will grant salvation
to Zion, my splendor to Israel. It's also seen in Isaiah 51. My righteousness draws near speedily,
God says. My salvation is on the way and
my arm will bring justice to the nations. The island will
look to me and wait in my hope for my arm. Here it is about
the arm of God gathering in his people. Salvation, redemption,
displaying the righteousness of God. Isaiah 63, 1 also says
this. He who is coming from Edom or
Bozrah with his garments stained crimson. Who is he? Who is this,
robed in splendor, striding forward in the greatness of His strength?
It is I, proclaiming victory. And the word there literally
is translated, righteousness, mighty to save. So salvation
is God's display of His righteousness in the context of this introduction,
which is the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is effectual for
salvation. And we'll see that. But here
we now see this next phrase. It is revealed from faith for
faith. What is the revelation of righteousness
through the gospel? We talked about this a little
bit last week and the week before, but we didn't even realize we
were talking about the text that Paul would end this introduction
on. What is the revelation of God in his gospel? Who is it? His name is Jesus Christ. How
is it effectual for us this day through the word of God and through
the apostles? So when Paul wrote this letter
to the Roman church, he actually, in effect, was revealing the
righteousness of God perfectly. He was writing to them, and through
the writing of Paul, through the writing of James, through
the writing of John, through the writing of Luke, and through
the writing of Peter, and through the writing of the other apostles,
guess what? The righteousness of God unto
salvation is given and revealed through the letters that they
wrote. That is why Paul and others could emphatically charge their
writing with the ability to give grace and to seal the recipient
with grace. Think about that for a moment. See, we mystify the experience
of salvation to such a degree that we forget that God uses
a simple means to do supernatural things. No man, woman, or child
can come to salvation except by the Spirit of God, and the
Spirit of God will not open the ears or eyes of anyone except
they hear the words of Christ. except they hear the gospel of
grace, except they be told the proclamation of the good news
that God has revealed Himself in righteousness through the
salvation of His people. So here we know that the releasing
or the revealing of the righteousnesses of God from faith for faith is
that it's released through the preaching of the message, through
the writing of the message. Friends, people can pick up a
Bible in a hotel and read it and God can save them. People
can remember the words of Scripture that they heard as a child and
God can save them. People can be told the gospel
at the subway and God can save them. Someone can see you type
it in your Facebook post and God can save them. God saves
through the hearing of the Word. through the hearing of the words
of Christ. That is the gospel. That is the power of God revealing
His righteousness. Now, some people would argue
that with me because they want to intertwine this man's ability
to come to Christ, man's ability to believe apart from the work
of God at all. Some people would call the idea
of grace pervenient or the grace that goes before. salvation,
that God does some, and this is wrong, but it goes something
like this, that God would give some grace to some degree in
order that man's will not be broken through the depravity
of his nature. And then because of that, that
he would then have a choice to rightly receive salvation or
to reject salvation. Where does that come from? Dark
crevices. dark crevices of other orifices. So we'll leave it there. The
scripture teaches us that the revelation of God's righteousness
is through the preaching. In 1 Corinthians 2, Paul instructs
this crazy church. My message, my preaching, we're
not what? What does he say? We're not wise and persuasive. They were not there to, but,
but to, um, to show you my ability to preach and speak. But what
does he say? What does he say? But with the
demonstration of the power of the Holy spirit, I came and I
preach so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, that
your faith might not rest in your minds and, but on the power
of God. First Corinthians two, four and
five. I preached in weakness and frailty that the power of
God might be great among you and that your wisdom and your
faith would be in God, not in you. 1 Thessalonians 1, For we
know, brothers and sisters loved by God, that He has chosen you,
because our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also
in power with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction. So
the preaching of the word, the preaching of the gospel, the
sharing of the faith that God has saved us through Jesus Christ
is the effectual causing agent of salvation. It is the revelation
of God's righteousness through the salvation of His people,
and it is preached. We see that also in the second
chapter of 1 Thessalonians. And we also thank God continually
for you because when you receive the word of God, which you heard
from us, you accept it. What does Paul say? Not as merely
words from human words, but as it is the word of God, which
is indeed at work in you who believe. Peter would reiterate
such things when he'd say it. All that we need for life and
godliness is given to us through the God's divine power. How was
God's divine power given to us? through the Scriptures. Through
the Scriptures and through the reminding of each other, through
the encouragement. Do you realize that we can be
an encouragement? We don't have to get the Bible out and quote
verses all the time. It's fine if you do, but sometimes
we don't have it, sometimes we can't remember it, sometimes
we don't know where to go. But friends, if we can illustrate
with our mouths and with our lives the Word of God and the
truths contained therein, It does not have to be verbatim
in our English language. It does not have to be the King
James. It does not have to be the Cantonese. And it does not
have to be the Spanish. It does not have to be the perfect
iteration of the translation. Teach people that their hope
is in the Word of God, and that their hope is in the finished
work of Jesus Christ, and that He is the only way they have
eternal life, and that those who are the beloved, those who
are your brothers and sisters in Christ, when they fall and
seem frail and weak and unable to stand, we can come to them
and say, listen, Christ is your banner. Christ is your life.
Christ is your power. Christ is your courage. Christ
is the rock on which you should stand, because all of that is
found right in scripture. It doesn't necessarily have to
be a treatise or a Bible study. It can be something just that
quick, just that simple, because it is the truth of Christ. People
might not think that that's true, but friends, why are there power
in the words that we sing in the songs about the truth of
Jesus Christ? They're not copies of scripture,
but they're truths found within. The same power is there. But
no, we have relegated our encouragement to either we've got to be in
this big, drawn out study. And I'm not making fun of Bible
study. You know, I love it. We're not gonna be able to be equipped
if we're not there. Nine hours, how about nine seconds,
can give you some encouragement, if that's all you've got. If
you got nine hours, take it. If you got nine seconds, use
it. Where do we go? What do we do in the turmoil
of this life? Beloved, that's why the intimacy
of the church is so important. That's why Paul wrote this letter
to the Romans there, because they were about to experience
something they'd never experienced, shame. They're about to experience
shame. No longer could they stand on
the pride of their Roman heritage, the pride of their Roman citizenship,
the pride of the fact that they were part of any particular class
of Roman life. But now they were nothings. Now
they were stupid. Now they were foolish. Now they're
following after a myth and a child's fable. And Paul said, the power
of God unto salvation is theirs, and they should not be ashamed. How is this given then? How is
salvation actually established in our hearts. You know, if we're
not careful when we preach the gospel, when we preach salvation
from a point of view of instructing the church, we can, we can come
very close to admitting the very nature of how salvation has its
effect in us. Of course it's the power of God.
Of course God gifts it to us. Of course God snatches us out
in salvation and redemption, out of the life of sin, out of
the penalty of sin because of what Christ has done. But how
is that received for us? From faith for faith. From faith
for faith. So the righteousness of God and
the salvation of His people, which is His power, is revealed
from faith for faith. As it is written, the righteous
shall live by faith. Well, ask yourself what you think
about faith. What is faith? And we could really
just go into a big thing. We can go over to Hebrews and
say faith is what? What does it say? The substance
of things hoped for and not seen. Faith is what Paul would teach
the Corinthians in the second part, the second letter, the
fourth chapter. To look to that which is eternal,
not to that which is temporal. For the things of this earth
are passing away. It can be found, faith can be found in the writings
of John. The things are written that you
may believe that Jesus is the Christ and in so believing have
life in his name. Faith can be found in many different
places and illustrated in many different ways. But friends,
in our day, sometimes faith, people like to take and pit the
Apostle James against the Apostle Paul, where we'll see the righteous
shall live by faith, and where James would say in this very
context that faith without works is dead. Show me your faith without
works, and I'll show you my faith by my works, James says. And
we have to be very, very careful because what happens is we get
into this real sticky situation to where we believe that believing
on Christ is actually working for Christ. And then we believe
that believing by faith is actually operating in a specific way or
manner or lifestyle. That's not faith. It's faithful
living. But it's not faith unto salvation
for faith from faith. for faith, from faith, for faith. It is exactly the same type of
mindset that John had when he says, for we have all received
grace upon grace, upon grace, that salvation, the revelation
of God through the gospel is Jesus Christ, who is the one
true God, who sits at the Father's side or is embraced in the Father's
bosom. He makes himself known. He is
God. And He has given us grace and
truth. We no longer look at the shadow of the law that was given
through Moses, but we look at the truth who is Jesus Christ,
who is God come down from heaven, who knows the mind of God, who
knows the plan of God, and who is the eternal life. and the
resurrection, and the truth, and the way, and the living water,
and the bread of life, and everything else in between. Faith is one
of these crazy misunderstood applications rather than just
believing on the finished work of Jesus. Beloved, I am not here
to tell you that there is not grounds for us to evaluate our
lives. There's always opportunity for
us to evaluate our lives according to the scripture and according
to the commands of the apostles, according to the commands of
Jesus Christ, who says to love the Lord your God with all your
heart, mind, soul and strength. And if we were to take the score
of every thought in breath in a 40 hour week or 168 hour week, and we were to line them up and
check the ones that actually fulfilled that commandment. There
would be no check. There would be no check. It's
168 hours. If we did it for 60 years and
we lined it up and we walked down there and here's the banner
of loving the Lord God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength
and on the chart like an EKG, we want to see it jump up there.
There would not be one nanosecond of our lives where we could say,
yeah, I got it right there. I did it there. I did it. No,
we cannot do it. We cannot do it. The righteousness
of God is manifested apart from the law. Though the law and the
prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God is displayed
in the giving and the killing of Jesus Christ. That's what
Paul's teaching. That's what he's about to ramp
up. He's about to show the whole world that they're guilty. He's
about to show every Greek that they're guilty. He's about to
show every Jew that they're guilty of violating the law of God,
even in their most pious moments, even in the great depths of the
emotions and the exaltation of their worship. It does not cut
to the standard of God's glory. It does not cut to the standard
of affection that God requires. But Jesus worshipped. purely. Jesus obeyed perfectly. Jesus loved the Lord God with
all of his heart and with all of his soul and with all of his
mind and with all of his strength. And Jesus Christ fulfilled every
command that we never could. Even Adam, immutable in the context
of his nature, sinned against God. It's crazy. Now I got something
to talk about Tuesday. from faith for faith. How do we really understand that?
Well, think of it like this. When someone says, I have gone
on a trip and I've gone from shore to shore or city to city. It's a continuation from the
beginning to the end. It's a fullness, it's an expression
that's very popular in Semitic writing. And actually, not Semitic
writing, but ancient writing, Greek writing. It's very popular
to see this type of thing that shows a beginning and an end,
which encompasses the fullness of it. It's for us to understand
that the righteousness of God is revealed, and the only way
it is seen and received is by faith alone. Justification is
by faith alone. That's what Paul is teaching
in this little sentence. That justification, being right
with God, is because God's righteousness has been revealed. And we see
it by believing on Christ. We see it. Why is the gospel
righteousness? Have you thought about that?
Many ways. One, because God does it, decreed
it, purposed it, effectually established it, brought it to
fruition, and brought it to the fullness of completion. God did
it. It's righteous. Everything God
does is righteous. Every word that He says, every
breath that He breathes, every gaze that He has, every judgment
that He makes is righteous. It's perfect. But it's also righteous
because a long, long time ago, before God said, let there be
light, God has established a covenant. God had decreed that he would
save a people for himself, a people who were not worthy of salvation,
for they would rebel against him and spit upon his face. And
in their darkness and their depravity, they would be turned over to
reprobation because that is righteous. God is righteous, as we've learned
already, injustice. But God is righteous in the killing
of Jesus Christ because as we see and as we will see in Romans
chapter three, that God forgave sinners long before Jesus died.
He forgave Adam and Eve. How can he do that? How can he
do that? How can you take a murderer who've
killed a thousand people and just say, no, don't worry about
it. How do you do that? The definition of evil, that's
the picture of it in the dictionary. letting people get away with
wickedness, evil. And then, because when you let
someone get away with evil, you have participated in evil, which
makes you evil. So God's righteousness is displayed
in the killing of Jesus Christ because it's satisfied as justice.
It's satisfied as righteousness. And the only way that is effectual
for us is like from shore to shore, city to city, from faith
for faith. The only effectual means of salvation
is faith. It's faith. We must believe that
God has satisfied His justice. We must believe that God has
propitiated the penalty of our sin, that His wrath is satisfied. There is no part of God's character
and no part of God's nature that sits there wishing, man, I sure
wish I could smite James. I sure wish I could smite Doug
or smite Trey or Levi or Mike or somebody. He's not sitting
there going, man, I'd love to... No, there is no judgment in the
heart of God against His people because He poured it out on Jesus
Christ who is the righteousness of God. And because Jesus as
a human being lived as we are supposed to live, because He
obeyed and epitomized holiness as a person, God was just and
righteous in putting Him on the cross so that He could take our
penalty. Do you understand this? And the
only way we are saved is to put all of our faith, all of our
trust in the work of Jesus as our object. It is always a gift. Faith is a gift through the hearing
of the Word. God gifts faith. How and why? We don't know. God
doesn't tell us that. But we know that faith is not
of our own doing. But that when the word comes
and the spirit opens our ears, we believe and we believe freely. God doesn't use us like marionettes
or puppets. We don't come to the to the throne
of grace. We don't come to the cross unwillingly. Do you hear that, beloved? Because
God has birthed us anew and made us His own. And we see and behold
with pure, open, spiritual eyes and minds. And we will believe. We do believe. Faith is the outcome
of regeneration. Faith is the outcome of redemption. Faith is the outcome of God's
effectual election. And you have been saved, beloved,
because you have believed on Jesus. And you have believed
on Jesus because God has been merciful to you. Both the Jews and the Greeks
are justified by faith alone in Jesus Christ. And faith is
always in opposition to the works of the law. Always. That's why Paul parenthetically
puts to the Jew first and also to the Greek. That it is from
faith, for faith, through which any Israelite, any Jew, will
ever be saved. They must believe on Jesus Christ,
none of their righteousness, none of their works, none of
their following, none of their prayers, and most importantly,
none of their sacrifices. For millennia have ever warranted
forgiveness. Ever. As Paul says, as it is written,
the righteous shall live by faith. We'll close with this. The righteous
shall live by faith. Where is that found in the Old
Testament? It's found in Habakkuk chapter
two, verse four. Behold, his soul is puffed up. It is not upright within him,
but the righteous shall live by faith. Now it would be a little
convoluted if Paul just said it here. alluding to Habakkuk. And we would have to dig, and
we'd have to put on our Semitic eyes, and we'd have to go into
some Old Testament thought, and we'd start to think, what is
Paul trying to say? But Paul has clearly identified
exactly what he means here in the book of Hebrews. And we can
argue that later. Paul wrote Hebrews, according
to my understanding, in Hebrews 10.38, my righteous one will
live by faith. But most importantly and most explicitly in Galatians
3, verse 11, Paul says those words, the righteous will live,
shall live by faith. And so what Paul's doing here
as he alludes, I mean, he looks back to, he looks back to Habakkuk
chapter two, verse four, and he says here, he's undergirding
the gospel of justification by faith alone, which is a gift
of God, which is the power of God unto salvation, which is
the righteousness of God displayed so that we can see and know God
intimately in that way. I hear first John echoing in
my eye, in my ears right now. Paul undergirds the doctrine
of the gospel in the Old Testament. He's showing those who might
say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Jews aren't saved by faith
alone. He said, man, God already spoke to the prophet Habakkuk.
It is by faith alone. It's always been by faith alone.
Never has there been another covenant that was salvific. Is
there another covenant? Yes, there's a covenant of works.
There's all sorts of little temporal covenants that God made with
Israel. They weren't internal. The only internal covenant God
made was the covenant he made with Abraham. That was a duplication
of the covenant he made with Adam, which says that the seat
of the woman will crush the head of the serpent and that through
you, Abraham and your seed shall the whole of the world be blessed. That all nations shall be blessed. That is the covenant of grace. and is the only effectual covenant
that ever comes to an end of salvation. In Galatians 3.1,
Paul points to Abraham. He points to Abraham as one who
had righteousness accredited to him. That means he was justified. Abraham was not righteous. He
was not holy. He was not perfect. He was worthy of condemnation.
He was worthy of wrath. And God plucked him out of all of that
wickedness, and he set a foot following after God because he
believed in God, because God had ordered him someplace, and
God had established in him the ability to see and believe. He
regenerated Abraham. And Abraham left Ur. and went
into other lands and he sinned every time he went somewhere.
He lied, he deceived, he took matters into his own hands, he
had an affair with his concubine, I mean with his slave, and that
brought about Ishmael. What a mess that's been. It's
in the news now. But God justified Abraham. Scripture says that The Scripture says, or Scripture
foresees, that God would justify the Gentiles also by faith, just
like He justified Abraham by faith. When God said, all the nations
shall be blessed through you, this was a prophecy of the Gospel. By the way, of contrast, Paul
then here says that those, and in Galatians 11, he says those
are the works of the law are under a curse. under a curse. And he says very
clearly, no one is justified before God because of the law,
because the righteous shall live by faith so that Paul says it
there. It's the same meaning he has
here. And that's what he's about to
show us. And all the good and all of the bad. Can you imagine
that? You imagine going to a courtroom
and being called as a juror and having lived a life of perfect
obedience to the law of the land. And they're doing jury selection.
There's like, what, usually like 175, 200 people in the jury selection.
And let's just say it's something like a state court, DUIs and
speeding tickets. And there's a guy up there that's
his third DUI, and he hit and he hurt somebody really bad,
and he's gonna, the sentence could be 25 years in prison and
a $500,000 fine. And he's guilty, but he wants
a jury trial. And you have obeyed your entire
life, you've never sped, you've always worn your seatbelt, you
always pay your taxes early, you take the pencils back to
the bank, you pick up the trash that flies out of your window
at the gas station, out of your car, you know, you don't litter,
nothing, you've never broken the law, And as they're selecting
the jury and they're cutting people, as you walk out and say,
okay, you're free to go, you're free to go. And as you walk out,
the bailiff grabs you and says, I'm sorry, you're going to jail.
Why? Because all your good works are
not good enough. You're guilty. He puts you in
jail. And one by one, until the 12
are left, all of those selected to be in jury selection are incarcerated
because they're guilty. And we would go, that's not fair.
That's how the Jews felt when Jesus came on the scene and saved
Paul and Paul said, the righteous shall live by faith. And they're
thinking all these years of following your law. And God said, it's
not working for me. And what does he mean? It never
was righteousness. that following the law of God
and obedience and being guilty of a crime. Just punishment is
equal. Because neither of them, one
of them, of course, deserves recompense. But friends, following
the rules is a requirement. Of which we have already broken
all of. Because we're born. And there's a problem because
a lot of people don't want to go there. I'm not guilty of sin
until I sin. No, yes you are. You're guilty
of sin in conception. In Psalm 51, David actually even
says, in my mother's womb, I was conceived in sin. My iniquities
are forever before me. Every human being is guilty of
sin because we are of a sinful people. Isaiah 6. Here's Isaiah, the prophet of
God. What does he say when he sees the glory of God lifted
up and the glory of God filling the temple? He says, woe is me,
not look at me, man. I'm hanging with God. I'm glad
I'm a prophet and I'm pretty righteous, selected to be part
of this entourage. He says, woe is me. I'm undone. I'm undone. I'm a man of unclean
lips amongst a people of unclean lips. Get the picture. And then
I'm through. Isaiah said he was like the pagan
devil worshipers of false God worship who worship false God
with their lips. And the imagery there of when
God reached down into the coals and touched Isaiah's lip with
the coal was the same thing that the idol worshipers would do
with their God when they would bronze or burn or sear their
small little idols, they would take a coal from the fire of
offering from the main God, and they would sear the lips of their
idols, so that when they took their idol home, it would have
the same essence of worship and deity as the false god that it
came from. And Isaiah said in all of his
worship of Jehovah, he was in the same boat as those people
who worship a tree carved into the image of man. and beast and
creeping things and crawly things. And God gave them over to reprobation. Friends, do not ignore this truth
about the gospel of Jesus. We are justified by faith in
the work of Christ and any hope and our actions, our obedience,
our law-abiding, our self-righteousness, our morality, our ethics, our
sanctification, our growth, our maturity, any of it is damnable
every time, all the time, and we will not escape God's justice
if our hope is in any of those things. Our hope must be in the
righteousness of God, which is revealed in Jesus Christ, because
that's his name and that's who he is. And he saves his people. Let's pray. Thank you so much, Father. Lord, in the frailty of our beings,
the frailty of our thoughts, the frailty of our lungs, Lord,
the frailty of our bodies, the incapacity to believe and
see and walk in a manner worthy of Your grace and gospel and
righteousness and holiness. No possible way that we would
ever be able to come before You and even look upon You without
death, except that Jesus Christ paid our way, stood in our place,
took your judgment, rose from the dead and promised us eternal
life. We hope fully in him. Lord, oh, what a mighty God you
are. What a saving God you are. What salvation you have given
to your people. Father, let our joy be full in
the knowledge of your mercy and glory and righteousness. And
we praise you for your word. And oh, God, as we look at these
next texts, as we see coming in the next weeks, your justice
and your wrath and your vengeance and your recompense. Oh, let
us shudder knowing that it's what we deserved. But father,
in your mercy and wisdom, you put it upon your son instead. Thank you, father. Thank you,
father, for your grace. What a glorious, what a glorious
truth. Let that be the air in our lungs. Let that be the wings of our
feet. Lord, the eyes of our soul. Let it be those as Moses hands
were lifted by his people. Father, let that be that which
lifts us up and carries us along in the mire of this world, even
in the frailty of our person. Lord, let us stand strong because
Jesus is our rock of salvation. And it's in his name we pray.
Amen. Amen.