Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening and now
for today's program. Welcome to our program today.
I'm glad you could join us. And if you'd like to follow along
in your Bibles, I'll be preaching today from the Psalms. Psalm 32 is where I will begin. Psalm 32, verses one and two. And then I'll be going to Romans
chapter four. Psalm 32, if you want to kind
of get prepared. Psalm 32, which is a Psalm of
David. The Holy Spirit inspired David
to write this psalm, King David. And then Romans chapter four,
which was inspired by the Spirit, or the Spirit inspired Paul,
the Apostle Paul, to write that. And the title of the message
is this, No Charge Against Me. That's the title, No Charge Against
Me. Now, what we need to understand,
first of all, is that when it comes to the state of man and
woman here on this earth, that we stand before God in ourselves
based on our works as fallen, sinful, and depraved. And I know that might, you know,
I know people will say, well, I know we've all sinned, but
I'm not depraved. The Bible says we are, and it
gives us the evidence of these things, but I've often told you
in this program, you who have watched me over the weeks, months,
or years, that we talk about the three R's of salvation, ruined
by the fall, redeemed by the blood, and regenerated by the
Spirit. Those are the three R's of salvation.
I preached a whole message on that. But I preach on those things
every time I preach. But the ruin by the fall is the
fact that the Bible teaches that we all fell into sin and death
in Adam. Adam was the representative of
the whole human race. Sometimes we call it the whole
human family. And God appointed Adam to be
such. He was the representative. And
so when Adam fell, we all fell. And it's important that we understand
this, that when we fell in Adam, it wasn't just falling in a way
that we become potentially sinners. In other words, it wasn't just
that we are potentially sinners, but we were made sinners in Adam. In fact, the Bible says in Romans
5, And verse 12, for by one man, Adam, sin entered into the world,
and death by sin. And it says, and so death passed
upon all men, for that all have sinned, or literally, all sinned. And so, when Adam fell, we fell
into sin and death. And so, the truth of that issue
is this. that if there is going to be
salvation for any of us, a sinful people, all have sinned and come
short of the glory of God. There's none righteous, no not
one. None that doeth good. If there's
going to be salvation for any of us, it can only be by God's
grace. We cannot work our way out of
this mess of sin and death. We cannot work our way into righteousness. I quote all the time, and I'm
sure you're familiar with this verse, Ephesians 2, 8 and 9.
For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. And it goes on to say, it's the
gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. Salvation
is all of grace. It's not part grace and part
works. Now preachers today will tell
you that you have a spark of goodness, or what they call a
free will. And the way the Bible tells us
the truth of that matter is that if left to our own free will,
you know, when we talk about free will, you have the freedom
to choose whatever you want to choose. But the Bible teaches
that if we're left to ourselves, we will not choose right according
to God's standard of right. We will not choose God. We will
not choose Christ. You see, salvation is not conditioned
on your free will choice. Because if it were, you'd be
damned. One preacher put it this way, if God came down here and
brought the whole human race together and left them in our
fallen sinful state now, depraved, this is what depravity is. It
doesn't mean, when we say totally depraved, we're not talking about
everybody around here's a raving lunatic. anarchist, going around
robbing and killing, that's not what, depravity is shown in how
we naturally respond to the truth of the gospel of the cross. And
what does the Bible say in 1 Corinthians 2, 14? The natural man receiveth
not the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them,
they are spiritually discerned. That's depravity. So if any of
us are saved, we must be saved by grace. However, there comes
another obstacle here now. Salvation cannot be by works.
If you believe salvation by works, and I'll put it to you this way,
I try to put it in such clear and plain terms that nobody can
misunderstand. If you believe that salvation
is conditioned on you, And my friend, salvation's impossible. Christ said in John 6, 44, no
man can come to me except the Father which hath sent me draw
him. And I'll raise him up again at
the last day. So that's the opposite. And when God draws his people,
he doesn't draw us against our will. What God does is he sovereignly,
powerfully, by the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the
truth of Christ, He changes our will. He gives us a heart. That's what Jeremiah said. I'll
give them a new heart. And that's the new birth. Christ
said you must be born again. But we must be saved by grace. Now, in order to be saved by
grace, in order for God to save any of us by grace, He must do
it upon a just and righteous ground. He cannot arbitrarily
just say, you're saved. God is a holy God. God is a just
God. He must be just when he justifies. So now how can that problem be
solved? Well, man has no answer. There's
no religion concocted by man which if it's concocted by man,
it's a false religion. There's no religion imagined
by man that can answer that question. How can God be just and justify
the ungodly? How can God be true to himself
as a just God and still save a sinner like me? He must do
so. He must be just when he justifies. That's the leading attribute
of God. when it comes to him revealing
himself in salvation. He must be just. He must be a
just judge, as well as a loving father, a righteous judge, a
truthful judge, as well as a merciful savior. Now, how can he be both? Well, the answer is found in
these verses that I'm going to talk to you about. And we look
at Psalm 32. Psalm 32, and look at verse one. It says, blessed is he whose
transgression is forgiven. Now that's what we need, the
forgiveness of sins, whose sin is covered. Now in the Old Testament,
you'll see the word atonement, and it refers to the covering
of sin by the blood of animals, things like that. Well, those
things were pictures of God covering the sins of his people and forgiving
them by the blood of Jesus Christ. And so when he says whose sin
is covered, he does not mean whose sins are hidden from view,
like in a cloak, you know. You can pull the covers up over
your head, but God still sees you. And you can try to fool
people, you can be hypocritical, you can hide your sins, but you
can't hide it from God. There is no covering over of
sin from the eyes of God as far as covering them over hidden
from view. The covering here means that
they have been atoned for. In the New Testament, it goes
even further to talk about reconciliation. In other words, these sins have
been justly put away. That's what the covering means.
You have a picture of that in the Old Testament tabernacle.
You had the ark in the very holy place where only the high priest
could go one time a year. You had the ark of the covenant,
and inside that ark, that box, it was made of chitim wood and
overlaid with gold. That speaks of the deity and
the humanity of Christ. And in that box was the broken
law. And it was covered over by the
mercy seat. And the high priest had to come
in one time a year and sprinkle the blood of the lamb from off
the brazen altar on that mercy seat. And that was a picture
of the bloody death of Christ in the place of his people, paying
the sin debt. So he says in verse one, Psalm
32, blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
Now look at verse two. Blessed is the man unto whom
the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is
no guile. Blessed is the man to whom the
Lord imputeth not iniquity. Now what is he talking about
there? Well, he's talking about the non-imputation of sins. And what does that mean? That
means no charge against him. Have you ever been accused of
something you didn't do? Well, that's somebody's imputed
a charge, a crime to you. You may have been in charge with
something you did do. Well, we are sinners. We are
sinners. But there are some sinners to
whom God does not impute or charge iniquity. Now, iniquity is one
of the many words in the Old Testament and the New Testament,
in the Greek form, in the New Testament, that describes sin
to us. Now, sin has many, there are
many words, especially in the New Testament, for sin. And the
most common word for sin means to miss the mark. Now, what is
the mark? Well, the mark is absolute perfection,
the perfection of the law. And it says no matter how good
we are or how good we try to be, How righteous we try to be,
we always fall short. We always miss the mark. We never
come up to the standard. We always are imbalanced. That's what iniquity is, inequity. We never measure up. You know,
in the book of Daniel, for example, you remember the story of Belshazzar
when he took the temple vessels that had been taken from Jerusalem
and he used them for unholy purposes, a drunken party. And God sent
a message in form of a hand that wrote on the wall. And it said,
you're weighed in the balance and you're found wanting. That's
inequity, iniquity. And what David is saying here
is blessed is the man to whom the Lord charges not with inequity. Now, here's the thing. If I'm
a sinner, and I am, I fell in Adam, I was born dead in trespasses
and sins, and I come forth from the womb speaking lies, we all
sin. You sin, I've sinned, we sin
every day. That's what we are. There's not
a just man on earth who sinneth not, scripture says. And that's
what we are by nature and by practice. And I am a sinner. How can God not charge me with
my sins and be just? Does he just, well, most people
today, sort of think it's like this, well, God is just too loving.
He just feels so sorry for us that he'll just look over that
part. No, that is not the God of this
Bible. Don't think that. That's wrong. If you concoct in your mind a
God who's just too merciful and too loving to punish what he
knows you deserve, then my friend, you've got an idol. God must
be just. And the question is, how can
God look at me, a sinner, and not charge me with my sin and
still be righteous and holy and true to himself? If there is
a way that he can do that, what a blessing it is. That's why
David wrote, blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth not
iniquity. Now here's the bottom line now
on this. If you're among those people to whom God imputeth not
iniquity, then my friend, you are assured for heaven. That's
the ground of salvation. But now if you're among the multitudes
to whom God does impute iniquity, then you're doomed to perish.
Salvation is only for those to whom God does not charge with
sin. Not charged with sin, a person
not charged. Well, what does that mean? Now
that word impute now, again, what does it mean? It's used
as a legal term, like in a court of law, a charge is brought against
a person, they are charged with a crime, All right, if they're
exonerated, the charge is removed, the imputation not. All right,
it's also used as a mercantile term, like a business term. Somebody
runs up a debt. You run up a debt with a credit
card. Well, you say you run up a credit
card for $1,000. Well, $1,000 is imputed charge
to your account. Well, in Adam we fell and we've
sinned and we've run up a debt. The sin debt. In fact, one of
the words for sin in the Bible is debt. We talk about criminals,
and they get caught, and they go to court, and they get charged
with a crime, and they are pronounced guilty, and they go to prison
to do what? To pay their debt to society. Well, that's what it is. See,
when we sin, we run up a debt. And that's why sin is imputed. All right? How can God not charge
me with my sin? Not charged with sin. Well, the
non-imputation, the non-charging of sin has many implications,
all right? Well, first of all, we have to
understand this, that if God does not charge me with my sins,
he must charge them to somebody. and that somebody has to pay
the debt. If I owe a debt to a bank here
in town or on a credit card, either I've got to pay the debt
or somebody's got to pay it for me. And somebody says, well,
you can go bankrupt, but that's what we are, spiritually bankrupt.
That's what total depravity is. And that means to perish financially. It means you can't borrow any
money, all of that. If God is not going to charge
me with my sins, and he's going to be just to do so, he must
find somebody whom he judges to be able and willing to pay
it. Somebody who himself is able
and willing to pay it. He must charge those sins to
somebody. Well, I've got good news for
you. for the people of God. And I
want you to understand this because false gospels have corrupted
the minds of so many people today. But it's not for everybody, but
for the people of God, God's elect, those whom he chose before
the foundation of the world. If God has not imputed my sins
to me, who's he imputed them to? He's imputed them to the
Lord Jesus Christ. And the Bible's full of language
that teaches that. For example, you can look at
passages like Isaiah 53. He laid on him the iniquity of
us all. Who's the all there? That's his
people. Christ took the sins of his people. Second Corinthians
521, for he made him to be sin. How? By imputing the sins of
his people to Christ. And you say, well, isn't that
unfair for God to do that to Christ? No, and I'll tell you
why. Because Christ willingly, in the everlasting covenant of
grace before the foundation of the world, he willingly took
that task upon himself. God the Father, chose a people
and gave them to His Son and put all the responsibility of
their whole salvation upon Christ. And Christ willingly said, I'll
lay my life down on the cross to pay for their sins. and out
of his payment by his blood, his death, that's what he did,
he purged the sins of his people. He washed the sins of his sheep
away. The good shepherd giveth his
life for the sheep. That's all metaphorical language
showing how Christ paid the sin debt in full as it was imputed,
charged to him. God does not charge it to me,
he charged my sins to Christ. And when Christ died and paid
that debt, out of his death came righteousness that has been imputed,
charged to me. Now look at Romans chapter four.
Here the apostle Paul is giving us a commentary on David's words
in Psalm 32. Remember, David said, blessed
is the man to whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity. Well, Paul writes
here, look at Romans 4. He's talking about Abraham first,
and he said how Abraham was justified. Well, Abraham was justified before
God because God did not impute Abraham's sins to him, but he
imputed Christ's righteousness to Abraham. And look what Paul
says about David. He raises the issue of King David,
verse 6 of Romans 4. He said, even as David also describeth
the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth charges righteousness
without works. Now, when did David say that?
Verse seven, saying, blessed are they whose iniquities are
forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the
Lord will not impute sin. So how does God not impute charge
my sins to me and still be righteous in doing so? How does God impute
Christ's righteousness to me and still be righteous in doing
so? He imputed my sins to Christ and Christ paid my debt in full
and secured for me all the blessings and all the benefits of salvation.
Now, how do I know that this describes me, that I am a man
who is not charged with my sins? Well, you remember David over
in verse two of Psalm 32. Remember what he said? He said,
blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity
and in whose spirit there is no guile. Well, what is guile? Well, guile basically is dishonesty. Guile is hypocrisy. For example, a person who comes
to God as a sinner expecting God to save him, bless him, benefit
him, or receive him based on anything other than the righteousness
of Christ, that person's full of guile. That's a depraved person. He's like Cain. He comes before
God thinking that he made the difference, thinking that his
works will impress God and recommend him unto God. But that's not
the case. There's only one thing that'll
recommend a sinner unto God, and that's the blood of Jesus
Christ. That's His righteousness imputed. And so here's what it
is. The non-imputation of sin, God
not charging me with my sin, here's what it means. It means,
number one, God charged my sins to Christ, and Christ paid my
debt in full. It means, number two, that Christ's
righteousness has been imputed to me. I stand before God justified. I'm forgiven of all my sins on
a just ground, the blood of Jesus Christ. I'm righteous in God's
sight, not by anything I've done or decided, but totally by the
righteousness of Jesus Christ imputed to me. Now, how do I
know that that's my case? Well, if God does not impute
sins to you, And if God has imputed Christ's righteousness to you,
you know what's going to happen? At some point in time, the Spirit
of God is going to bring you under the preaching of the gospel,
the gospel you're hearing right now, and he's going to give you
life from above. New life, a new heart, you're
going to be born again, and you're going to believe in the Lord
Jesus Christ as your only way of salvation. You're going to
admit the guile of hypocrisy is going to be removed because
you're going to admit, you're going to confess your sins, yeah,
that's true. You're going to admit that if
God were to charge you with your sins, you'd be doomed forever. David said that in Psalm 130
verse three. He said, Lord, Lord, or when
he was talking about forgiveness there. And he said, if thou,
Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, who would stand? None of us. I'm telling you right now, if
God were to charge me with any sin that I've committed, I would
be doomed forever. My only hope is to the hope of
the blessed man. Blessed is the man to whom the
Lord imputeth not iniquity. And Paul writes of that in Romans
chapter 8 verse 33, he says, Who shall lay anything to the
charge of God's elect? See, this is for God's elect.
And who are the elect? They are they who come to believe
the gospel. He said it's God that justifies.
Who can condemn us? It's Christ that died and is
risen again. Why did Christ rise from the
dead? Because righteousness was established. And if righteousness
has been imputed to me, then I'll be brought by God through
the Spirit under the gospel to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ
and repent of my dead works and my former idolatry. That's the
guile that's not in my mouth anymore. Oh, I have problems
with sin, but I look to Christ for salvation. Hope you'll join
us next week for another message from God's Word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
a copy of today's program or to learn more about Reign of
Grace Media Ministries or Eager Avenue Grace Church, write us
at 1-1-0-2-3. Eager Drive, Albany, Georgia
31707. Contact us by phone at 229-432-6969
or email us through our website at www.theletterofgrace.com. Thank you again for listening
today and may the Lord be with you.