are in a place in Revelation.
If you'll go there, I'm going to look at a couple of things.
And then I thought to myself, I want to back up and deal topically
with something tonight before we move on. We've seen several
recapitulated, what does that mean, repeated, a re-picture
of the same thing. We've seen seven seals. We have seen now almost seven
trumpets. And we will see seven bowls in
the near future. And just as between the 6th and
7th seal, we saw a pause or an interlude, we are going to also
see an interlude between the 6th and 7th trumpet. And that
is at the beginning of chapter 10. And before I go there, I
want to back up and to reiterate something that we learned in
chapter 6 and 7, which is the identity of the sealed. And in some sense I want this
to be a lesson on a specific theological teaching, but at
the same time I want it to be an example of why we need to
read Revelation correctly, because I believe that if we in error
understand the apocalypse, then we are going to slide down a
slippery slope or bog down into a mud pit and damage core doctrines
like propitiation, like justification, which are at the heart of salvation.
So a lot of people would argue that it's not that important
to earn or to learn in times teaching. But maybe after tonight
you'll see why it's so vital. In Revelation, one of the things
that we've known throughout our history as, I will call, young
evangelicals, because the movement is only, what, 115 years old? Yeah, roughly. And so when you're
looking at, well, actually 130, And then when you look at where
we come from as evangelicals, that is those who call themselves
Protestants who believe in the sharing of the gospel as one
of the primary actions of the church, not necessarily purposes,
but actions of the church, we are really about 60 years old
in the way we act and what we do and what we believe. And believe
it or not, Lutherans are evangelical, Methodists are evangelical, so
it's not just like Baptists, but it is all Protestants. But
now the Roman Church has come along and said, well, we're sort
of evangelical. And everybody has claimed the term in their
own definition. And I'll say that the term shouldn't
exist to begin with. If you look through the writings
of historians and church historians just in the 19th, 20th centuries,
you see probably a good 15, 16 definitions of what it means
to be evangelical. But let's just take it from this
perspective that one of the main things that it means to be a
Protestant Christian in the Church of Jesus Christ in our day is
that we believe the gospel is the good news of God as unto
salvation, Romans 116, and that it is the only means of salvation
for the Jew and also the Gentile. That's what Romans 116 teaches.
First to the Jew, then to the Gentile. And what that does is
that eradicates a dispensational idea that many people live with
today that they never even think about. And what happens is that
we take the Bible and we divide it up into three places. Now
maybe more, but typically you'll see the Bible divided up in the
heart and minds of an evangelical Protestant in three ways. You've
got the Old Testament, you got the New Testament, and you got
End Times. And that's how it looks at it.
Oh, and there's some stuff in the New Testament, Matthew 24,
that's End Times, and stuff in the Old Testament, Daniel, that's
End Times, and we group all that together, and that's the continuity.
That's about as deep as the theological and academic argument of eschatology,
the study of last things, goes in most people's minds. And if
we look at what we've all believed, and I'm going to make a grand
assessment here to say that in some sense or form, all of us
here in this room have believed at one time, if we still do not
hold to a dispensational premillennial teaching of last days. That means
dispensation in that there's a different time in which God
worked in the Old Testament people. And then with the Jews and then
with the church and then we'll work later in the future different
times pre-millennial means that we believe in a literal thousand
years where Jesus is going to come back to earth and do some
stuff and then After that, he's gonna, I don't know, play Yahtzee
and shake it all out and then recreate it. I don't know how
that works. Y'all play Yahtzee? Y'all play Yahtzee? Okay, Yahtzee,
you know, you put it in the cup, you pour it out. Okay, I love
that game, y'all, it's good. But most of us have been taught
through osmosis and direct expression that dispensational premillennial
theology is accurate based on a whole bunch of connect the
dots, big charts and all sorts of things, and we have really
believed that as a people since the latter part of the 1800s.
Previously, that did not exist in any historical record. Why
is it important? Like I've told you, I don't really
sit on any of the standing theological positions of end times. I believe
you read Revelation as it is supposed to be read, and then
you suppose it and apply it as it comes. That's how we do it,
but I am more amillennial in the respect of the millennium.
It means no millennium. I think it's all in the context of the
writing, but I'm not an amillennial guy. I'm somewhat partial preterist
in that I see, as we've looked at over the last few weeks, is
that these things that we've been seeing are current from
the fall. To date, we see the current things
that are happening in the world, which is what? Evil, but evil
is not supreme. It's under the hand of Christ,
under the authority of God. Pain and suffering, the consequence
of sin, which is death and suffering in the world. And we've also
seen the continued redemption of God's people. But ask yourself,
what difference does that make if we believe in the popular
contemporary idea of last days. If we believe that, let me just
give you a rough sketch of what a lot of people believe about
the end times. That there will come a time in
the history of man when certain things have been met, and certain
obstacles have been overcome, and certain people groups have
been put in the right position, certain cows have been created,
and certain things have been done, and all these things come
to pass and it'll be real simple and that there will come a man
who will be risen up into a powerful world leadership position and
he will be the Antichrist, which will be the antithetical Replica
of the Christ and the world and it since then in the beginning
of this will have this day of Tribulation or this season of
tribulation which will be seven years and during the seven years
the first three and a half years there's going to be a big peace
treaty between Islam and Israel and all of a sudden everybody's
getting along and people love the Antichrist. He's going to
gain world domination, there's going to be one world currency,
there's going to be one world government, and everybody worships him. He's
going to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, and he's going to
take his place on the seat there, and people are going to offer
sacrifices to him. That is a literal thing that a lot of people believe,
and then after the three and a half years, all of a sudden
all of the church, who would refuse to bow down to the beast,
are going to be martyred and burned and beheaded and destroyed
and drawn and quartered and tarred and feathered and, I don't know,
chewing gum in the hair or whatever horrible thing we can think of.
And then all of a sudden the church is going to vanish. Just
poof! Wow, that was powerful. Poof! That was cool. It's going
to vanish. And then all of a sudden the
world is going to go, what happened to the church? And all A.G. Double Hockey Sticks is going
to break loose, and the Antichrist is going to be revealed as the
devil, and the devil is going to rule the world, and everything
is going to be bad. And then two guys are going to come from
nowhere, and they're going to come into the streets of all
the major cities, and they're going to perform miracles, and
they're going to be killed, and they're going to raise back alive, and
they're going to be like... I had to do it one more time and all
this stuff and I mean light lasers gonna shoot out of their eyes
and fires gonna come out of their mouth and horns gonna come and then
there's a beast out of the sea with a woman riding on he's got
seven ten heads and all this kind of stuff and crowns and
he's gonna breathe fire he's gonna kill a third of your earth and
all this stuff's gonna I mean you get the point this is what
we've been taught to believe and then all of a sudden Jesus
is gonna come down say enough Here's this lion, oh, you wanna
fight me? You wanna fight me? Come on! And he's gonna fight,
and it's gonna be really bloody, and the blood's gonna run so
high in the valley of Megiddo that it's gonna be like to the
horse's bridle. And he's gonna be swimming around
in blood. Say, what's up, blood? I mean, and everything's gonna
be bad, and all of a sudden, Jesus is gonna have enough of
this, and all the angels are gonna defeat all the demons, but they're gonna
lock him up in a big pit for a thousand years. And then Jesus
is gonna walk into Jerusalem and say, this is my temple. And
he's going to get in there and he's going to sit on it and the
Jews are going to go, wow, our Messiah came back for us. And
they're going to start sacrificing lambs and sheep and goats again
and again and again and again and again to Jesus. And for a
thousand years, there's peace on earth. And after the thousand
years, Jesus is going to say, OK, that's enough. And boom,
day of judgment. And one by one, he casts everybody who's unbeliever
in the lake of fire while we have a big celebration. I mean,
that's pretty much end times theology. And it sounds like
a really bad series that you'd see on like Hallmark. Except
the Antichrist is a guy named Bob who beat his wife. I mean,
you know, that's what people have been taught to believe.
But there's a problem with all of that. There's a problem with all of
that in a lot of ways. One, it's not in scripture. It's not written there at all.
Two, it supposes a lot of things that are bigotry, that serves
as a catalyst or actually a commendation of bigotry and racism on God's
behalf, because God loves Jews more than anybody, that kind
of thing. And that's not what we see. It destroys the idea of propitiation
with Jesus Christ being the Lamb of God that takes away the sins
of the world. So He took away the sins of the
world. Why, pray tell, would He need to have any more sacrifices? We see that all the way through
Scripture. We see in Hebrews that there is no such reason
for sacrifice, nor was ever there a sacrifice that was effectual.
For the Bible says that the blood of goats and lambs you did not
desire. They were just a shadow that pointed to something. And
we also see the covenants of God, which are just infused at
the core with the nature of God and the decrees of God. And so
that which God decreed before the world began is played out.
And the end days is the fulfillment of that. The seventh seal, the
seventh trumpet, the seventh thunder, the seventh bowl. That
is the day that the Lord establishes the end of all history. So, What does God do during all
this time? What does He do? Oh, that didn't
work. Oh, that didn't work. That didn't work. That didn't
work. Is God the Zeus of Greece? Or is God a supreme being? effectually
secured the salvation of his people and effectually guaranteed
the wrath against wickedness. He has. And nobody disagrees
with that. And that's why we have to compartmentalize
end times teaching. Because if we take it and if
we lay that type of thing that I've just described over John's
gospel, you're like, uh-uh. That's not what Jesus was teaching. That's not what Jesus accomplished.
If we lay that over Hebrews, we're like, wait a minute, it's
gone. Why would we actually come to
the place of saying this stuff's going to start back? If we lay
it over the book of James, we go, God is no respecter of persons. And so tonight I want to lay
that type of thinking, not necessarily in whole, but in part. And then
I also want to lay what we've learned thus far over the top
of the book of Romans. Because if we're going to ask
ourselves, where's the contrast? Is not revelation, some people
would ask, about how God's going to come back and redeem ethnic
Israel? No, it's not. It's not. You don't see that
anywhere. You don't see that anywhere in scripture. Yet, you're going
to always hear in the next few years, I mean, you know, you
look at what's going on right now. I mean, the Turkish, a Turkish
citizen assassinated a Russian ambassador. Remember, a pillow. in Syria
and they killed him. And what's happening in Apollo
in Syria? Genocide! Russia is killing people by the
thousands. Women and children and innocent
people. They're bombing them and burning them and shooting
them in the face. That's what's happening. And
I've already heard it this week. Oh, yeah, this is, this guy said,
dude, you're reading your Bible. It's happening. Man, it's been
happening. You see? And so now, back to
the evangelicals, evangelicals have made great money on purveying
the urgency of the good news of Jesus Christ in light of the
signs of the times. And many people have come, let
me look at this, quote, to faith because of the fear of the tribulation. Fear of the tribulation. But
we see in this apocalypse that we've been reading that there
is a sealed number. We remember that 6 is the number
for man, which is the number for evil. 7 is the number for
God, which is the number for perfection. 10 and 12 is the
number of completion. We understand those things in
picture, not only because of what John wrote, but because
of all of the Hebraic style or Semitic writing that we see throughout
the entire Old Testament, as well as in the history. of the
timeline in the 90s when John wrote this letter. During the
time when John wrote the letter of the apocalypse, people called
Rome Babylon. How do you know that? Because
we've got hundreds of other writings from that era where Rome was
called Babylon. They weren't called Babylon until
that period, 20 plus years after the destruction of the Temple
in Jerusalem. There's also indication of how
people, Christians, were being forced to worship the emperor,
who was called the Lord, which is a blasphemous thing to do.
Jesus is the Lord. And only time in history when
that happened is 15 to 20 years after the destruction of the
temple in Jerusalem. And you think, well, who cares? Well, I care because if Jesus
is going to come back to earth, and somewhat undo the very gospel
that I understand is true, where do I sit in this as an Anglo
pale-faced guy from Europe? There's no Jewish blood in me.
Where do I sit in this as someone who is wholeheartedly longing
for that day of redemption, for the day of judgment, for the
day of resurrection? I don't know about you, but do
you want to see that happen? You want to see the Lord come?
What happens in the sense then if all this situation, if the
situation that they portray is true about ethnic Israel, then
what happens to the church during the supposed Great Tribulation?
We're getting into that in this letter. But I want you to understand
that as we read it and I start to show you the pictures here,
you realize I'm not teaching theological positions as I teach
this letter. Why? Because they're not there
to be taught. The letter is teaching what it's supposed to teach.
And the text is teaching what it meant to teach, and we are
not supposed to apply it into a position. We're supposed to
read it and understand it and apply it in our lives today.
But one of the most heartbreaking realities about dispensationalism,
about some of these end-time views, is that it erodes the
reality of justification. And if you don't know what justification
is, you haven't been listening, because I teach it often. Justification
is a legal position whereby the believer stands before God righteously. He's judicially declared us righteous
because Jesus Christ has given us righteousness. So that when
God looks at the believer, He sees not the works of our flesh,
or the work of our mind, or the work of our mouth, or the work
of our eyes, hands, or feet, but He sees the finished work
of the person of Jesus Christ. Ergo, we are justified before
Him, though we have certain evidence that shows that we're guilty.
You see that? Just as in Adam, all die, the
contrast then, then in Christ, All are made righteous. Well,
I'm just imposing the, I'm assuming that everybody understands that
the all of humanity and the all of the righteous are not the
exact same all universally, right? We know that all people will
not be saved. Okay, it's not happening. But
all who are saved are made righteous by Christ. So in justification,
when you think about how a lot of people look at dispensational
doctrine and revelation, they come to the place where Israel
is really this pet. The Jewish people ethnically
are God's pet. I'm using that term lightly,
but that's the way you have to look at it. Here's Pet, he made
them from nothing, a Syrian, A Chaldean from Ur was nothing,
was not a man of God, was not looking for God, nor worshipping
God, nor longing for God, nor questioning where God might be.
He answered the question who God was and it was the moon.
That's what the Chaldeans believed and that's why they built those
ziggurats that still stand to this day. Five, six thousand
years old. That's crazy, isn't it? So here
we see this man named Abram, a Chaldean from Ur, had to answer
the question, oh, there's God, there He is, that round thing
in the sky. Worship Him, worship Him, worship Him. And the Holy
Spirit, God the Holy Spirit, spoke to the heart of Abram and
he believed in the one true God and obeyed Him. And Paul writes
the letter of Romans, to a people who understood that special place
of separation, sanctification that ethnic Israel had. And he
writes the letter to the Romans so that they could understand
how they too were Israel. That's the point of it. how they
were justified just as Israel was justified. And so to prove
the point, Paul begins by starting out Romans 1 by saying what?
God will pour out His wrath on all the Gentiles? Is that what
he said? Just the wickedness of the un-Israelites? No. He says God will pour out
His wrath on all unrighteousness, all works of iniquity, all sin,
all evil people. He will pour His judgment out
because they, instead of worshiping Him and giving thanks to Him,
though they know He is and that He exists, they worship the creation
rather than the Creator. And they suppress the truth by
their works of unrighteousness so that God then turns them over
to a reprobate mind to do that which is unnatural in as much
or for the purpose of bringing more and more recompense upon
their unbelief. And then sealing them for destruction.
He goes on to talk in chapter 2 of Romans, and you can turn
to Romans 4 because that's where I'm going to land. in chapter
2 of Romans about how the judgment of God is going to go against
those who even obey the law, that those who obey the law are
going to be judged by God, guilty of law-breaking for they cannot
obey the law in completeness because they were born sinners.
Therefore, even the fact that they obey the law is a place
of sin for them because it is not done by faith. James reiterates
that. Anything that is not perceived
from faith is sin. Paul and James are not contradicting
each other when Paul says the righteous shall live by faith
and James says faith without works is dead. It's the same
issue. But both of them would say that
no one is justified by works. In Romans chapter 3 it even says
that. There is no one, no not one,
who is righteous. No one seeks after God. Who is
the context of this conversation in the eyes of the original recipients
of this letter? The Jews. Israel, these people
who walked with God and obeyed God and obeyed the law, and in
contrast, Rome, who did everything but follow what was moral and
what was righteous and what was holy. And they're asking the
question, how can I be justified before God when I am nowhere
near the state of righteousness of the Israelites, and yet I
hated them and killed them, and now God has seemingly condemned
them and their obedience. How can I, a Roman, be right? And then even worse, how can
God be right to forgive me? That's Romans 3. Romans 3 says
that It's righteousness through faith that God has established
forgiveness through Jesus Christ and He's established propitiation
through Jesus Christ. He put Him forth because the
righteousness of God was manifested, quote, apart from the law. Though
the prophets and the law bear witness to God, His righteousness
was manifested apart from the law in that He gave the Son,
He put forward the Son as propitiation to be received by faith. So that
then God is just and the justifier. So He's just because He can forgive
those who have believed on Christ, because the work of Christ is
effectual for their justification. And He is also the one who declares
us just, ergo He is the justifier, so that we now, because we live
in Christ Jesus, are made alive. Chapter 4. It begs the question,
well, what about Abraham? What about Abraham? Jews long
looked at Abraham as the pinnacle of obedience and being justified
by works. And that's what Israel would
teach itself. And that's what Israel would
teach Romans. That's what the Judaizers would
teach. There's an obedience that must
be had in addition to faith that secures you and sets you in the
place of justification before God. Because God, of course,
he would have not given us a law that didn't have effect. The
effect of the law was what? To teach us of our sin. And to
give us the ineffable glory of God and his holiness. To see
it. So the only man who's ever lived
in the world that actually is justified by his works is who?
Jesus Christ. What? Yes. Do you believe Jesus
Christ was completely man and completely God at the same time
and the divine nature and the human nature did not intertwine?
He wasn't a superhero man, he was a plain man. But he was also
God. And Jesus Christ was justified
by his obedience. You get that? venerated because of his obedience.
I am the righteous one of God. I'm a human being. I'm holy.
I'm righteous. I'm perfect. I've never fallen. I cannot,
I don't need to work, but I will show you what it looks like.
And in obedience Christ, if Christ ever sinned, then his sacrifice
was moot. So then we get to chapter four
and Paul teaches us this. Let's look at it. Romans chapter
four. What then shall we say was gained by Abraham? What was gained? What's he asking
there? He's asking a question based
on what he talked about in Romans chapter 3 in that what becomes
of our boasting? Nothing? It's excluded? What
kind of law is it that gets us right with the Lord? By law of
works? No, 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 alone? Is He not
the God of the Gentiles also? Yes. 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. What then shall we say was
gained by Abraham, our forefather? This is the question. What is
gained then by upholding the law? Why is this important? Because end times teaches us
that Jews are saved through a different means. Some of these end times
things, this dispensational premillennial theology teaches that Jews are
saved by the covenant of law keeping. It's not possible. And Paul tears that apart right
here. I've never heard anybody teach revelation through the
eyes of Romans, because they don't ever go to it. They go
to Daniel. They skip right over Romans, go all the way back to
Daniel. Or they take that small little phrase, rise to meet Him
in an air, at 1 Thessalonians. And then we've got all these
pictures we put together. It's like a jigsaw puzzle that doesn't go in the
right box, but the pieces fit. The picture's skewed. Our forefather,
according to flesh, What was gained by his obedience? That's
a question he answered. Four, if Abraham was justified
by works, he has something to boast about. Did you hear that? He has something to boast about,
but not before God. I mean, we saw that in Paul's
life, didn't we? Paul said, if I could boast in
the flesh, if anybody had to boast, I could boast in the flesh.
I'm a Jew of Jews. I'm born of the tribe of Benjamin.
My mom and dad, my mom and dad, they named me Saul for crying
out loud. I mean, you're talking about a Jew. I mean, we're Jewish
to the core. We eat off Jewish utensils. We
wear Jewish clothes. We have Jewish rugs. We have
Jewish furniture. We use Jewish toilet paper. We're
Jews all the way around. We don't lot a match. We don't
break wind on the Sabbath. We don't do anything wrong. He
says, according to the law, I'm blameless. But all this that
I had and all this that I gained is nothing compared to the prices
gained in knowing Christ. In other words, it has no effect. Paul
argues that about Abraham, who was the what? The father of Israel.
He's the first. So if it goes all the way back
to him, we know it doesn't apply to anybody after him. So whatever
applies to Abraham applies to all Jews that come after him.
Believe it or not, don't forget, Abraham was not a Jew. Abraham
was a Chaldean and God declared him Israel. You are mine. I found you worshiping
that that I created, Romans 1, and I made you mine and I put
in my heart, put in your heart, my law, my revelation, and now
I'm going to make you walk in my statues. This is salvation. God justified Abraham. Let's
keep on going. For what does scripture say?
And then he, what? What does he say there? He quotes.
Abraham believed God and it was counted or accredited to him
as righteousness. Now look at this, 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
Psalm 32, God, the blessing of the one whom God counts righteousness
apart from words. Blessed are those who lawless
deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is
the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin. So there's
a few things here at work that I believe is essential in understanding
the reading of Revelation when it regards justification, because
isn't that the point? How are we getting justification
out of Revelation? Guys, who shall stand? That's the question. Who shall stand? We see judgment
unfolding from two points of view already, right? We see the
consequence of sin in the world, and yet even the righteous are
suffering some of that. We die of cancer. We go bankrupt.
We see death. We have problems. We get sick. People hurt us and kill us. We're
not immune to it. But the wicked suffering the
same thing. The wicked is getting a small taste of what judgment
is not even like. It's like a precursor, like the
odor of what judgment could be. For the saint, it's preparation
for glory, an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.
It's progressively showing us sanctification. When we look and see what happens,
people run, people hide, people are always trying to hide from
God. People are praying that God, I mean, just like we looked
at Pharaoh last week. We looked at Pharaoh, where Pharaoh's
heart was hardened when God gave mercy. Pharaoh's heart was softened
when God gave judgment. Everybody has a jailhouse conversion. I think that's how I put it.
Uh-oh, I'm in trouble, I better find Jesus. Oh, everything's
cool, I don't need Jesus. And that's what's happening in
the world today. Calamity. I mean, even roller coasters.
Oh, dear God. I mean, you know, we cry out to God. The atheist
cries out to God when the plane goes down. Oh, God. I mean, you call. But if they've
survived, I don't believe that. It's just a point of emotion.
Probably was. That's all it was. But when we
look, And we see what's taught in the Apocalypse, that there
are those who stand against the judgment of God. They do not
suffer any judgment. Who are they? The Bible says,
and we're going to see it again over in a few chapters, chapter
12, I think. The Bible says that John heard
the number of the sealed. What was it? 144,000. And he
heard them. 12,000 from the tribe of this, from
the tribe of that, and 12,000 all the way through. And then
he looked and saw them, and it was a group innumerable, uncountable,
of every nation, of every tongue, and of every tribe. So in this
picture, who stands? Only those who are in Christ
Jesus are who stand. Only those who are sealed is
who stands. So if our eschatology, the study of end times, if our
last things puts Jesus in a place where he's actually saving another
people group in a different way, then the gospel is partially
true. But we know the gospel is not
partially true because it's very clear in many places in the New
Testament, but especially and explicitly right here in Romans
4, that the only justification that comes to a human being is
that God gifts him the grace of faith. Period. It's already said it
in chapter 3. I mean, look at verse 20. Is
it 25? Chapter 3? Verse 23? for all have sinned and fallen
short of the glory of God and are justified by His grace as
a gift through its possible and effectual, through the redemption
that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a satisfaction
of His wrath, propitiation by the spilling of His blood, come
thou fount of many blessings, to be received by faith. So it was to show his righteousness
at the present time so that he might be the just and the justifier
of the one who has faith in Jesus. What becomes of our boasting?
Then we're here. Abraham was justified by works? No. If he
was, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does scripture say?
Abraham believed. And see, here's the answer to
that. And it was counted to him as righteousness. Was his faith
righteousness? Yes or no? No. His faith was not righteousness. His faith did not buy his righteousness. His faith did not earn his righteousness. His faith was a gift of God's
grace. And because of God's gift of
grace, God accredited his faith as righteousness. You see that?
Who is the one making Abraham righteous? God made him righteous. God appointed him righteous.
God called him righteous. God made him righteous. Abraham
did nothing and God said, you're righteous. Abraham is counted righteous. He goes on, and the argument
here is absolutely impossible to destroy. Now, because you
can see all the, you know, if you've ever been on the street,
especially at a college campus, when I was at UC Berkeley, I
mean, you could see, I mean, you get into these conversations.
Well, then, what about this? Paul knew. Brilliant man, and
filled with the Spirit, and inspired by the Spirit in every breath,
Paul knew what was going to come up in that conversation. Well,
if Abraham believed, he believed freely and that free expression
of faith is a work of Abraham that earned him righteousness,
not according to verse four. Now, to the one who works, his
wages are not counted as a gift, but it's due. You see that? It's
not counted as a gift. If I work 10 hours on your job,
you owe me. And employers that don't pay
their employees go to jail. Well, maybe not anymore, but
it's a crime. If I work out my faith and get
it right, God owes me. If I do what's right by the precepts
of God and it's a causation, then God owes me. The one who works, his wages
are not counted as a gift, but as due. How about that parable that
Jesus teaches in the Gospels, where it says that there's those
who labor in the field all day long, and those who come in at
quitting time and get a full day's pay? See, that makes us
mad, don't it? It's like being, I've been in
this company 10 years, and that young guy comes in and gets more
money than I do. Oh, the company's sold, and he gets a million dollars,
and I get a million dollars. That's not fair, is it? It's not fair if you've worked
to earn it, but in the economy of grace, you can't earn it.
So we don't work unto our righteousness because that would be a wage.
And we see in Romans 3, I just read it, or I didn't read it,
but it's there, the wages of sin is death. The contrast of that, Paul says,
but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus. There it is. It's effectual. I'm giving it to you. I'm putting
it on you. Nowhere do we see that the gospel
is something dangled in front of us. The gospel is not, please
come get it, the gospel is not the altar call that I was so
eloquently able to do. By the way, did y'all see that
on the program Sunday night? They had me down and I was giving
the altar call at the end of the program. I'm like, yeah, I'm just going
to keep preaching. And I did. The free gift of God is here.
Just come on down. Come on down. Please. Please. Oh, you don't, you can't be,
you can't be compelled through compassion. You're going to die
and go to hell forever. Oh, you don't believe that? Well, the
Bible says you're going to be beaten terribly by the Antichrist for
three and a half years. Yeah, that did it. There he comes,
there he comes, there he comes. What about, you never want to
see your grandma again? She's going to heaven, you're going
to hell. Oh, there he is. I knew that would get it. I mean, I'm making a joke of
this, but that's some things that I've employed through the
years. Not that crass, I mean very craftily. And thought it
was right. That's not what the Bible teaches. The gospel is not an offer to
be grasped. It's a hope to be held to. It's the decree of God
that he's done the work through Jesus Christ and he gifts it
to us. He puts it on us. He makes us righteous. What is
faith? Fully trusting in the things
that God has done. And it's a gift. What's that do to our evangelism?
Preach the gospel because God in that mysterious, amazing sovereignty
says the only way he's ever going to put righteousness in the heart
of a man is if somebody who has it says it out of his mouth. What happens if Paul says this,
but then end times teachers teach something differently? What happens
if we believe that there's an ethnic, let me just put it in
the negative, that there is a bigotry in the heart of God toward a
different race of people? Where's the bigotry? Against
me. Why is it that I'm saved differently
than Israel? Or maybe he's bigoted against Israel. Why is he saving
them a different way? Why is there something new for us or
something different for us? Why is there such a special place?
Why is it that if we believe about the rapture, why does the
Scripture teach that the 144,000 will not endure the suffering
of the judgment of God, but yet we see all these people saying
that there will be Christians who come to faith after that,
that will suffer the tribulation when the Scripture teaches that
we're not going to suffer the judgment of God. So the Gentile Christians, the
whites, the browns, the yellows, the pinks, the oranges, the chartreuse,
and the clear like me, I mean, we're the guys that are going
to suffer and God's going to take the Jews out of here? What kind of fairness is that?
Well, we don't question fair when it comes to God and do what
He wishes. But what about what Paul's teaching right here? Who
can stand? We will not be condemned by God
if we are in Christ Jesus. The one who works his wages are
not candid to give but to do. But verse 5, unto the one who
does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly. You see that? It doesn't say
believes in him so that he would be justified. We believe in Christ
who has justified us, the ungodly. His faith is counted, accredited
as righteousness. Now think about that word for
a moment, counted. I should have gotten the Greek New Testament
out and looked it up. It's been a while, I don't remember exactly
what it is. Here's what it means. Everything that I am, I have
earned judgment. Everything that I've said, every
good work that I've ever done, every sermon I've ever preached,
if I'm not in Christ Jesus, is more judgment that comes my way. See, that's something else that
we forget as believers. We forget that the righteous
or good works of unbelievers are actually wicked. They don't
work toward, oh, that really pleases me, God says. No. unbelieving
pastors preaching, though he may use an unbelieving wicked
mouth to preach the truth, it doesn't have any bearing against
my judgment. If I'm an unbeliever and I do
good things, it's not God's righteousness working in me, it's me. And I
don't get credit for it. It's sin, so it's just more judgment. The righteous works of men are
like filthy rags. That's why we're never measured
by how good we are. We're known by it. We're known
by the fruit of Christ, the fruit of the Spirit, not the fruit
of James Tiffins. Not the life of James or the kindness of James
or the love of James or the holiness of James or the zeal for Christ
of James. This is Christ in me. Put the
Bible down for six hours and see what kind of person I might
be. I can put it away and be fleshly. Can you? Oh, yeah. We can be
fleshly. I'm not saying that we turn this
into a brothel in a couple of days, but I mean, I'd probably
start hating on some people after a day of not reading the Bible. Being irritated, feeling superior,
doubtful, frustrated. See, these are sins. This is
fleshly. Worried, aggravated, constipated,
whatever other aid that we can come up with. I mean, we will
get in the flesh if we're not living in Christ. So, even in
our best of days, friends, even if we're still looking in the
mirror in the morning going, man, I tell you what, Lord, you're so good, and
I have just walked with you so well, and I thank you for it.
Isn't there a parable of that exact nature, where Jesus says,
I've got to stop doing that because that's like a Donald Trump thing,
but where Jesus says, where Jesus says, the publican and the Pharisee,
and the Pharisee says, I thank you, God. that I'm walking the
way I walk. And Jesus says, that man went
home condemned, but the man who tore his shirt and looked at
the ground, dared not look at his eyes to heaven, have mercy
on me, a sinner. So even as justified people, we do not put credit
on our works. For it is the works that have
been carried out in God, according to John 3. It is the works that
have been prepared beforehand that we should walk in, Ephesians
chapter 2. so that when we see righteousness and caring and
forgiveness and love and sacrifice, when we're able to give of ourselves
and our time in prayer for other people and not pray for our own
selfish needs. I mean, this is the work of God. This is the
Spirit of God in us. This is the counted of righteousness
that God has given us through Jesus Christ. This is not me.
And I think sometimes the Lord, when we start thinking, oh, we're
going so good, He's like, Boom! Okay, you hit your toe. I'm going
to let you, I'm going to come back. But it's like he gives
us just enough rope to show us we're not righteous apart from
Christ. We will be, and we're getting
better. But even at the most, even at
the pinnacle of our righteousness in the flesh, we are still far
from the glory of God in reality. So we must be made new. Though
we have a new mind and a new heart and the Spirit of God indwells
us and we're sealed and secured and we can stand in the judgment
of God, we are not perfect by any stretch of the imagination.
But one day, when the coming of the Lord comes, And the twinkling
of an eye will be made like Christ. As Paul would say to the Philippian
church, when we see Him, we shall be like Him. And if we misunderstand
in times, we're looking at that in a different light. We screw
up justification when we follow man's provision for the coming
of Christ. We screw up sanctification. That's why preterists can live
like they want to. How's that? Remember when we
talked about preterism? Just a brief moment. People who are
full preterists believe that the resurrection of the dead
and the second coming of Jesus Christ came at 70 AD. They believe
that Revelation was written in an early day, before the temple. And the temple was that pinnacle.
Jesus came back, destroyed the temple, and brought a bunch of
saints who were martyred with him, and that there is a separate
kingdom of heavenly kingdom. And this heavenly kingdom is
in existence perpetually forever, so shall the earth be. But the
very laws of nature that we see God has established, the very
idea of entropy does not compute with that. But that's not the
argument. We're not going to give an apologetic
on that based on science. We just teach what the scripture
teaches. I believe that Jesus was very clear and focused when
he said that there will be a day when all the dead will be raised
from life in John chapter 5. All the dead will be raised to
life. Some unto everlasting life and some unto everlasting judgment.
All the dead. I don't think that happened in
70 A.D. So if I'm a full preterist, then I have nothing to worry
about because I'm secured and I can ignore Romans because I
like to look at that through that lens because it appeals
to my flesh if I'm a preterist. And the preterist can say, well,
you know what? Some of them, there's a bunch of camps, but
there's two separate things. Well, if all is settled, this
life is mine to enjoy now for God, for Jesus says, I come that
you may have life and have it more abundantly. So that means
that I can enjoy my partying, I can have girlfriends, I can
do this, I can build an empire, sort of like Mormonism. Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow
we die, that's a quote that's being rebuked, not a statement. Just like all things are permissible,
it's a quote that's being rebuked. We are not to live this life in sin,
as Christians. We are to live this life for
the glory of Christ. We are to live this life by faith. We are
to live this life to His honor. We are to live this life as a
reflection. We are to suffer in this life for doing good,
not bad. You see all that in the New Testament? Why would we even have the New
Testament if it was already over? Why worry about it? We want to live the way we ought
to live because Christ is alive with us. We've been justified.
We believe in him who justifies the ungodly and our faith is
accredited, is counted. I mean, OK, God sees everything
that we do and none of it is worthy of righteousness. That's
the point I was getting to. But because of the work of Christ,
God, God can say you're righteous. You see that? And Scripture teaches that David
speaks also of the blessing to the one whom God counts righteousness
apart from works. Blessed are those whose lawless
deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is
the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin. We're not going to have our sin
counted then. Because do we have it? Yes. Where did it go? What's
going to happen to it? See, that's one of the, that's
one of the most frustrating things that I do when I'm talking to
people in public about the gospel. So you're a pretty good guy.
Have you ever sinned? What's going to happen to that sin?
How is that sin going to bring, or what is God going to do and
say about that sin? We have sins. If we had a large
number of people here tonight, several thousand people, and
if I asked this question, how many of you in the last week
have not sinned, I'd have five people raise their hands. It's
always the case. To which I used to go, really? I don't do that anymore because
it's condescending. That might be what you think,
but what about the sins? Have you never sinned in a year? I think I've had one person raise
their hand in that. in 20 years, 25 years. I said,
how about 10 years? How many of you have never sinned
in 10 years? And eventually, usually a few days or a week,
somebody says, I haven't sinned today, I haven't sinned this
week, because they're thinking, I haven't got drunk, or I haven't screamed
at my parents, or I haven't cussed at my wife, or I haven't wanted
to murder the guy behind me on the freeway, or I haven't wished
my boss would explode, or whatever. And that's what they're thinking.
I haven't committed a sin. But eventually, you get everybody
to where nobody is raising their hands. So everybody in here then,
at one time or another, has sinned. Raise your hand. Everybody's
hands are up. What is God going to say about those sins? How are you going to stand before
God with those sins that you have committed? How much more
non-sinning is there going to be in your life before you can
be justified before God? Guess what? Even if you never
sin again, those sins that you have committed have to be brought
under a guilty verdict and there's judgment that has to be given
to them. What's going to happen to the sins that we have in our
lives? Justification says they will
not count against us. It will not count against us.
So God is unfaithful. Back to Romans three. God is
not unfaithful for he has taken the sin of, and I'm going to
use the word because it's what Paul says, the elect. And I'm,
and he takes the sin of the elect and he places it on Jesus Christ,
the righteous and the righteous becomes sin. And the righteousness
of the one who became sin becomes the righteousness of the sinner. Great exchange. We've exchanged
the glory of God for a lie and worshiped the creature. And Jesus
exchanged the glory of righteousness, became sin, that we might be
the righteousness of God. And it's the work of God. He
does it. He applies it and he establishes it effectually. Before
the world began, God had established the effectual salvation of the
sealed. The full number. God does not
have an ambiguous number of people who will come to faith. He's
not sitting there with a turnstile going, man, just a couple of
more, a couple of more, a couple of more. Yes! One millionth customer. Balloons fall down. This is not
what evangelism is. This is not what the evangel
is, rather. This is not the good news. The good news is that God
has secured our salvation through Jesus Christ. And when we teach
that message, we teach that message, it is a message of mercy and
hope, not a message of fear. Because believe it or not, no
man's heart has ever been transformed and been made alive because of
the fear of judgment. As a matter of fact, it is a
proven fact. It is a proven fact throughout
all of history, especially scripture, everywhere God brings judgment,
it brings a worldly repentance. But when God gives mercy to those
who have a heart to see him for what he's doing, they love him
and they stop and repent. We repent, we change our mind
about sin because God was loving and kind toward us and opened
our hearts to receive the gospel of Jesus Christ by faith. We
are the product of God's everlasting decree. And we're not just, and
I've said this numerous times in the last few weeks, we are
not objects to be collected, we are objects of divine affection. We are loved. And if we don't
read in times theology correct, In other words, if we don't,
especially in justification, if we don't read the revelation
with justification on our minds, we're missing the point. Why? Because all of history is for
the purpose of what? God justifying his people. So
the culmination, the end of all history is the culmination of
the justification of God's people. It is the crux of life. Justification
is the point of Christianity. We are justified. Justification
is the message of Scripture to the end of what? It's a means,
but what's the end of it? God's glory. I mean, this is
a love letter to humanity, but more than that, it's a glorious
revelation of God's majesty through whom we have the greatest affection
and we receive the greatest affection, and we are full of affection
for Him. This is an establishment of God's
self-glorification that He is worth receiving, and we are the
objects of this love. So as we look in the weeks to
come at Revelation 10 and we start to see this mighty angel
and we start to see these little scrolls and we start to see all
this stuff and we see this judgment unfold and it's going to get
fairly rapid and all of a sudden it's going to change gears and
start looking at the destruction of the wicked and the destruction
of the world and the destruction of kingdoms. I don't want us to forget that
justification is the glue that holds it all together because
If we compartmentalize this apart from the gospel of Jesus Christ,
we're going to read into it whatever we're told to read into it. And
we misunderstand it. And I'm not to the point yet,
beloved, and listen to me, I'm not to the point yet where I
think people who have a wrong view of end times are heretics. But I will tell you that someone
who reads through and purveys it as truth and then someone
shows them differently and they continue to try to preach and
teach that which is untrue because it fits the culture and it fits
the short timeline of a baby history and they don't want to
be the odd man out. That's a heresy. Like I used
to believe and I have preached in the pulpit. I was 22 years
old last time I said this. Might be 23. I said this, if
you could have been born and never sinned, you could be justified
before God. That was before I understood depravity in the fullness. Because
I still held to an age of accountability and the fact that, you know,
people will come to a place of sinning deliberately. No, we
sin subconsciously as babies, as infants. I mean, I'm not talking
about like Lucas. He's a sinner. But before he's
eight months old, he's going to cry when somebody takes something
he likes. And he's not even going to know. That's the sin nature. The only hope anybody has is
Christ. What about if he dies as infants?
I've answered that question four times in the last two years.
It is God's goodness and God's mystery. We don't know and so
we don't question. But it's right. I know what our
confession says. Elect infants who die, go to
heaven. It stays at that. How do we know? Because the Bible teaches us
that all whom God has called, he has justified. John the Baptist was born of
God in the womb of his mother. It said, the baby in his mother's
womb, who was filled with the Holy Spirit, leapt inside of
her. Wow. I just got chills running up
the back of my head when I said that. Uh-oh. I feel the Spirit coming. Anyway,
we'll stop there and pick up next week. Let's pray. We thank
you, Lord, for this opportunity just to reflect on the truth
of your love for us, justification, how you've made us right before
you. And Lord, this this little sermon is not enough to even
scratch the surface of what that is teaching. That is weeks and
weeks of teaching there in that text. And Father, I have omitted
a lot of things, but hit some key points that were important
for us as we continue in Revelation. And I pray, Father, that as we
discuss these things with people, right now in history, you have
purpose to shake up the political platform of our nation. And you
purpose to shake the foundations of what we call normative. And
people are looking to find hope in men. And so, Father, the conversation
of hope for tomorrow and the future and these last days are
on a lot of people's lips and minds. Lord, empower us with
the right answer. Not to know every jot and tittle
of every mystery and allegory and every picture and image that
we see in all these apocalyptic writings, but Lord, help us to
have this, the explicit answer of the good news of Jesus Christ
who justifies sinners without their work. Who justifies us because of his
great love for us. and who's called us to go out
and preach the same good news to a lost and dead and dying
world that we might show them the light of your glory through
Jesus Christ. And Father, we thank you so much
that we are able to be together tonight. In Jesus' name, amen.