Good morning, it's good to see
you all here today. The inspiration for today's message
began with my reading of an excellent bulletin article that was written
by a dear friend of ours, Pastor Gary Shepard. In fact, Jim put
that bulletin in today's article on the back page, and so look
at that and read that later if time permits. The title of the
article was, And He Was Speechless. And this is a direct quote from
our Lord in Matthew 22 as he related the parable of the marriage
feast. It describes the response of
a character in the parable, a man who was asked why he came to
the wedding not having a wedding garment. And in verse 12 of that
parable we read, and he was speechless. As the article set forth and
then as was further impressed upon me in my subsequent study
of the parable. It's a scriptural truth, I believe,
that sooner or later all shall be brought to that position of
standing before God speechless. That's not in question, but here
is a very important question, and that is, will you stand speechless
before God now or at the judgment? And that's the title of today's
message, now or at the judgment. So today we're going to consider
this parable, the parable of the marriage feast. It's recorded
for us in Matthew 22 verses 1 through 14. And we'll begin in verse
1 where we read, And Jesus answered and spake unto them again by
parables, and said, The kingdom of heaven is likened to a certain
king which made a marriage for his son. Notice Christ begins
the parable by making it clear what this parable, that is, it's
an earthly story that teaches a spiritual truth, that it pertains
to the kingdom of heaven. That's an eternal kingdom of
heaven, which saved sinners shall inherit and shall inhabit for
all eternity, and that due to their union with Christ. A union
that the scripture likens to a marriage between Christ, the
bridegroom, and his bride, the church. In Revelations chapter
19, verse 7, John writes of the voice that he heard saying, Let
us be glad and rejoice and give honor to him, for the marriage
of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. This is speaking of Christ, the
Lamb of God, as John the Baptist called him, the one who would,
just like those lambs, those bulls, those goats that were
sacrificed under the Old Covenant, who would come and offer himself
as the perfect, unblemished, sacrificial lamb to die to pay
the sin debt before God's justice on behalf of all those that were
given to him by God the Father, all those for whom he lived and
died. those that were seen united to Him, made one with Him by
God's elected grace. And then John writes further
in verse 9, and he said, and He saith unto me, Blessed are
they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb."
So, with that, we know what is being represented in this parable.
That's really not in doubt. We know that the king in the
parable is God the Father, which made a marriage for His Son,
God the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And notice from verse 2 how it
puts it. It says the marriage was made for His Son. That's what salvation is all
about. It's God making a marriage for His Son, so that His Son,
see, receives all the honor, all the glory. He has all the
preeminence. All things, including the eternal
salvation of sinners, you see, are to honor Him, the Lord Jesus
Christ. So, continuing now in the parable
in verse 3, we read, And sent forth, that is, the king sent
forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding,
and they would not come. His servants here refers to prophets
or preachers or teachers who issue forth the general call
of the gospel. That's the gospel that Christ
commissioned to his disciples to go out into all the world
to preach to every creature, every nation. But notice at the
end of verse 3, we see the problem really lies not in the deficiency
of this general call or command of sinners to believe. But it
lies in this, the truth that they would not come. Now, who's invited to come? In
Revelations 22 verse 17, we read, And the Spirit and the bride
say, Come, and let him that heareth say, Come, and let him that is
athirst come, and whosoever will let him take the water of life
freely. Recall our Lord said in the Sermon
on the Mount in Matthew 5-6, He said, blessed or blessed,
eternally blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness,
for they shall be filled. So what is the problem? Is the
problem that some will come and some will not come? Now the truth
is that by nature none of us will come. We must be The scripture
says, made willing in the day of his power. You see, by nature,
we're not thirsty for this water of life that we can have freely. We do not naturally hunger and
thirst after righteousness. We might hunger and thirst after
heaven. We want to live in eternal bliss
forever and ever. But by nature, we don't seek
that God's way. We don't hunger and thirst after
righteousness. Continuing with the parable then
in verse 4, we read, Again he sent forth other servants, saying,
Tell them which are bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner. My
oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready. Come unto the marriage. As I've
suggested, you see on this side of the cross, historically speaking,
this side of really Christ's incarnation, it can be said that
all without exception Both Jew and Gentile are among the invited. They're calling here the bidden
ones. But I believe in the context of this parable, this is more
specifically here speaking of what God calls in Isaiah 48,
12, Israel my called. And there he's speaking of the
nation Israel. The nation Israel who was chosen
by God for special favor and privileges under the terms of
the old covenant until Christ came and fulfilled all that was
pictured therein and abolished that covenant by way of fulfillment.
The nation Israel, you see, unlike any other nation, was uniquely
given the gospel in that day. They were given the gospel in
the law and in the prophets by picture and type. And Christ,
when he came on the scene, it was said he came unto his own.
He initially, see, came with the gospel to his fellow Jews,
but it says his own received him not. He came with the gospel. You see that it declares here
that everything they needed was provided. The blood here in the
parable had been shed. All things are ready. It's akin
to Christ on the cross saying, It is finished. I read in one
account, I couldn't corroborate this elsewhere, but I read that
in that day it was customary for even the garment that they
would wear at the wedding to be provided for them. And whether
that's so or not, we know it would be quite an insult, you
see, to come and try to bring your own provision or anything
that would contribute to the feast of the king. One didn't
dare add anything, see, to the king's provision. That would
be an insult as if it were insufficient. Think about that. How, by nature,
we all initially, we say, what can I do to be saved? What can
I offer as if the most precious blood of the Lamb of God was
somehow insufficient? No. As the parable says, all
things are ready. The gospel, see, sets forth all
that God requires and all that we need. And it declares it's
already been bought, paid for, provided, furnished, freely given
us in Christ. So they're commanded here in
the parable to come to this marriage, but notice their response in
verses five and six. It says, but they made light
of it and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise,
and the remnant, that is those who did not make light of it,
took his servants and entreated them spitefully and slew them."
I think we have here two ways in which Christ and his gospel
are commonly rejected. First, it's made light of. That would represent those who
hear this distinguishing message of grace. that's so contrary
to this world's religion. And they say, I don't know all
about that. I'm trusting in Jesus and I'm
busy. I don't have time to really look into that. I'm not going
to explore that objectively. I'm happy with what I have. Or
perhaps it's just the indifferent who are too busy about going
to farm or their merchandise. And Luke's account included,
they're busy with their family. You see, everything else would
take precedence over this distinguishing message of the gospel of God's
grace. And then in verse 6, we see an
example perhaps of those who take their religion a lot more
seriously. They're prone then as such to being offended when
someone comes along with something that doesn't coincide with their
preconceived notions concerning the gospel of how God saves sinners. And so what they do, they lash
out in opposition to the true gospel. In the immediate context
of the parable now, I think it's to be applied again to the religious
leaders of the nation Israel. In other words, the Pharisees,
the scribes, and the chief priests. You know, there were none supposedly
better who've ever lived, outwardly speaking, than Scribes and Pharisees,
and yet our Lord said, accept your righteousness, exceed theirs.
The scribes and the Pharisees, and I believe that means put
together, you shall in no case enter the kingdom of heaven.
Well, that was offensive. The gospel see of God's grace
in and by Christ alone who said he came to fulfill the law and
the prophets. You see, that was in stark opposition
to the religion of works. The religion whereby we imagine
that something that proceeds from us makes the ultimate difference.
We may say it's all Jesus, but the issue is reduced down to
what will you do with Jesus? And my friend, that's a way of
works. The gospel of grace was in stark
opposition to their religion of works. And so they, as we
read, they persecuted the prophets. They killed many of them. We
read of the apostles that were martyred. Well, the parable continues
in verse 7. There we read, But when the king
heard thereof, he was wroth, and he sent forth his armies,
and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city. Most
gospel commentators agree that this refers to the destruction
of Israel in A.D. 70 when God sent the Roman army
into Jerusalem and he destroyed both the city and the nation.
So continuing in verse 8, we read that the king Then saith
he to his servants, The wedding is ready, but they which were
bidden were not worthy. What makes a sinner worthy? That's
a critical question that the gospel of God's grace answers. You see, those sinners that are
worthy, they're going to enter into the kingdom of God as the
bride of Christ. And these here in the parable
who are commanded to come but would not, they're declared that
they are not worthy. From the whole of Scripture,
do we imagine that they were not worthy because they would
not come? Or that those that did come were
worthy because of their coming? No, you see, that would deny
that salvation is by grace. The gospel and this parable itself
will teach us. The song of the saints even in
glory from Revelation we read is, worthy is the lamb, the lamb
that was slain. You see, the only worthiness
a sinner has, a sinner now, their only worthiness is in Christ
based on His provision, the things that He made ready in full. having the very merit, see, of
His finished work of righteousness, His perfect satisfaction to God's
law and justice accounted to them, made to be theirs in the
same way that their sins were accounted or made to be His,
as we're taught in 2 Corinthians 5.21. Well, we see in verses
9 and 10 of the parable that other guests were invited to
the feast. and all of that in accordance with God's eternal
design and purpose. The scripture tells us how it
was because of the Jews' rejection of him, God used that, that was
the mechanism that took the gospel on to the Gentiles. Verse 9 reads
that the king then commanded, go ye therefore into the highways
and as many as ye shall find bid to the marriage. So those
servants went out into the highways and they gathered together, all
as many as they found, both bad and good. And the wedding was
furnished with guests. Now that refers to the call of
the gospel going out to the Gentiles. There's a parallel passage to
this parable in Luke chapter 14. And there in verse 21 we
read, so that servant came and showed his Lord these things.
Then the master, which would be the king back in Matthew,
The master of the house, being angry, said to his servant, go
out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city and bring
in, and here he doesn't call them bad and good. He says, bring
in hither the poor and the maimed and the halt and the blind. And the servant said, Lord, it
is done as thou has commanded. And yet there is room. And the
Lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges,
and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled." I found
the description of these Gentiles to be interesting in both accounts,
Matthew and Luke. In Matthew, the Gentile believers
who were invited to the marriage were called both bad and good. Now we know from other scriptures,
Romans 3 in particular, The Scripture says there's none good, there's
none righteous, no not one, there's none that doeth good. So what
is meant here? I believe knowing that truth,
we're reduced to the truth of understanding this to mean it's
as they would appear unto men, outwardly. And so that's the
case with those that God calls unto himself. Some would be what
we might call good men. They may be moral, religious,
some of them very religious, sincere, who God stops along
their way and takes them off that way that seems right to
them and puts them on that narrow road that leads to eternal life,
a way of righteousness in Christ. And then others may be what we
call bad men. They may be immoral, they may
have been indifferent, irreligious, and the world may view them as
But there's a common denominator we see in Luke's version, and
I like that. See, whether they're bad or good,
here's what they are as they come to Christ. He calls them
the poor, the maimed, the halt, and the blind. You see, no matter
how good we may be esteemed in the eyes of the world, those
who come to thirst after Christ's righteousness are brought to
see their desperate need of it. You know, Christ said, the well
need not a physician, only those who see themselves as they are.
You know, all are spiritually bankrupt, poor. But blessed are
the poor in spirit. Not the spiritually poor, but
the poor in spirit. That is, those who have been
made aware of their spiritual poverty, their inability. You
see, they have nothing to offer. They become mercy beggars before
God. The crippled, those who see they
have no strength in themselves to save themselves. The halt,
those who faltered along the way. They may have strived. They
may have been religious, but they were halted. They faltered. They said, I just can't live
up to what is required of me. There must be something outside
of what I can produce. And then the blind. We know that
by nature all are blind. It says we're born in darkness,
born spiritually dead in trespasses and sin. But those who come to
the wedding, you see, they've been brought to understand the
darkness from which they're delivered. And then I love what it says
there in Luke's version in verse 23. The king's instructions was
to compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. Now back
in Verse 21, it was said, there's still room. But just as here
he says, compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. We know that once all of God's
sheep have been irresistibly drawn or compelled, there's not
going to be any vacancies left. There will be room for every
one of God's elect, but heaven will be filled. As our Lord said
in John 6, 37, He said, All that the Father giveth me. Now who
are those? Those are the ones that were
chosen from all eternity in Christ unto salvation. All that the
Father giveth me shall come to me. And him that cometh to me
I will in no wise cast out. So if you come to the Christ
of the Bible, you're not going to be cast out. Not if you come
to this Christ. Not a Christ of your imagination.
but the Christ who finished a work of salvation on the cross of
Calvary for his people. You won't be cast out. There's
room for all of those who come to him, robed, you see, in his
righteousness. So consistent with that truth,
we see there back in our parable, Matthew 22, at the end of verse
10, it said that the wedding was furnished with guests. The purpose of God, see, does
not depend upon man. Though the Jews, for the most
part, they rejected God's Son, as Romans 11, 5 put it, God had
a remnant among them according to the election of grace, a remnant
who gladly embraced Him. In verse 6, it goes on to say,
to describe that election of grace, it says, if it's by grace,
then it's no more of works. Otherwise grace is no more grace. It's emphasizing that those two
things, grace and works, you see, are mutually exclusive.
They can't coexist. It's like oil and water. They
won't mix. So salvation is not God made it possible through
the work of Christ if you then will add something that proceeds
from you. If you will receive him or if
you'll believe, no, that would be to add works and that's no
more of grace. These things can't coexist. By
nature, we presume that surely these that responded positively
to the call of the gospel, or maybe they're somehow better
as a result of their response, or that they're found more commendable
because they would come. But you know, that would be contrary
to the truth of salvation by grace. For grace speaks of an
unmerited favor in the believer, in the sinner, but that which
was merited for them by Christ. And so such notions, you see,
would have us imagining that there's something meritorious
done by me, a sinner that would find me recommended before a
holy God. Maybe it's my response because
I would believe. And listen, friends, no matter
what people call it, it can be called grace all day long. That
is the false religion of works, to imagine that salvation's at
least in some way contributed to are accomplished by virtue
of some requirement or condition that you add to the mix. As we
move now into verse 11 of the parable, the wedding has been
furnished with guests, but we read about an intruder present.
It reads, And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw
there a man which had not owned a wedding garment. And he saith
unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither? not having a
wedding garment, and he was speechless. Here we have really a wonderful
picture of what matters. You know, if you don't hear anything
else I say today, hear this. If you peel all the layers back,
all the clutter of religion, and you get down to what matters
here, we have the standard of final judgment set before us.
Here in the parable, and that's the only thing that's going to
matter at the Do you have this wedding garment? There was a
man here who didn't belong. He presumed to be included, but
he wasn't dressed properly. He lacked the wedding garment.
He was dressed, but not for this occasion. You know, when it comes
to wedding etiquette in our day, I'm not the sharpest tack on
the wall, but I have learned over the years Supposedly an
after 6 p.m. wedding you wear formal wear,
tuxedo and so forth, and before 6 I presume you wear a suit and
a coat and a tie and so forth. That rule of thumb seems, I get
confused, it seems to vary in different towns and different
areas and whether the invitation says it's a garden wedding or,
it goes on and on. And on occasions, I've gotten
confused about that, particularly if it's right at six. That always
messed me up. It wasn't an after-six wedding.
It wasn't a before-six wedding. So I have been embarrassed on
occasions by going either overdressed or underdressed and finding myself
in the minority. So I always figured it'd be better
to be overdressed than underdressed. Until one time, I went to a wedding.
I know this is an aside, but it's interesting to me. I went
to a wedding, a six o'clock wedding, and I was the only person there
in a tuxedo besides the groom and the wedding party. And I
had to listen to everybody come up and say, Wages, I didn't know
you were in the wedding. And I took all that. I wasn't scarred for life by
that. But I went to that wedding thinking I had the proper attire.
Well, as I say, that had no lasting repercussions on me, but we're
talking about something far more serious here. We're talking about
that which has eternal implications as represented by this parable.
It's representative, see, of a marriage between Christ and
His church. And that wedding garment is descriptive
of what is necessary for acceptance before a holy God. And we must
not just be clothes then in the attire of our choice as we might
presume it to be, as we might presume to be appropriate, I
should say, but we must have furnished for us a wedding garment
if we're going to stand accepted in the presence of a holy and
a righteous God. And you know, the good news is
we don't have to wonder at all about or speculate about what
is meant here. Other scripture makes it crystal
clear to us what sort of wedding garment we must have. I'm going
to read to you just two passages that shed some light on this.
There are others. In Isaiah 61 10, we read, I will
greatly rejoice in the Lord. My soul shall be joyful in my
God. for he hath clothed me with the
garments of salvation. He hath covered me with the robe
of righteousness. As a bridegroom, decketh herself
with ornaments, and as a bride, adorneth herself with her jewels.
I read Revelations 19 verses 7 and 9. I'd left out verse 8,
so I want to read that again and include verse 8 now in reading
it in continuity. It says, let us be glad and rejoice
and give honor to him, for the marriage of the Lamb is come,
and his wife hath made herself ready." Now look at verse 8,
"...and to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine
linen, clean and white." You know, tradition has it that the
bride wears white as a symbol of purity. But this bride, you
see, it's been granted to her that she be arrayed in this this
fine linen, clean and white, pure. A sinner? Pure. As the Bible says, holy, unblameable
before a holy God. For the fine linen is the righteousness
of saints. Now is that something they produce?
Now you see, a saint is a sinner saved by grace. They're tainted
in and of themselves, but they've been sanctified. They've been
set apart. They were set apart by God's
electing love. They were set apart by Christ
coming and taking their sins as God imputed or laid them to
His charge that He might bear the penalty before God's justice.
And He made them to be righteous just as He made Christ to be
sin, 2 Corinthians 5. No, the righteousness of saints
is the righteousness of God in Christ. And he, verse 9, saith
unto me, right, blessed are they which are called unto the marriage
supper of the Lamb. You know, most weddings I go
dressed in one of two ways. As I say, I wear a tux or I wear
a suit or a coat and tie. And that has no bearing here
other than perhaps it'll help you remember that coincidentally
I believe every sinner approaches the judgment of God dressed in
one of two ways. Like me it might be a suit or
it might be a coat and tie, but that one way you see is the way
that we all approach initially by nature. It's like the man
who didn't belong in this parable.
We all by nature initially will dare to stand before a thrice
holy God dressed in our own self-righteousness. And sadly, most will persist
therein and plunge headlong into judgment, thinking they're dressed
just fine, that they're going to be okay. And I know when I
speak of this robe of self-righteousness that most who are so dressed,
they fail to see it that way. May God open their eyes. Make
no mistake about it. If what you imagine distinguishes
you from those who will perish, distinguishes you as acceptable
before God as anything other than or in addition to this wedding
garment, this one righteousness of God in Christ, and that made
yours not because of something you did to appropriate it to
yourself, but by God's free and gracious imputation of it to
you. In other words, he is accounting
it to you in the same way that he accounted your sins to Christ.
Know then that apart from that you will not be accepted. I think
that's the clear teaching of this parable. In Romans 10, when
Paul was praying for his fellow lost Israelites, as he called
them, he prayed that they might be saved, we read in verse 1.
He says of them in verse 2, for I bear them record, they have
a zeal of God. They're religious, but not according
to knowledge. What do they lack? For they being
ignorant of God's righteousness and going about to establish
their own righteousness, therefore have not submitted themselves
unto the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the
law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. The sense here
is that to be ignorant or not submitted to the perfect satisfaction
that Christ rendered to God's justice and that he alone rendered
by his perfect obedience. See, a just God requires perfect
obedience and yet he did this for sinners and so A just God
requires that the penalty be extracted. The penalty being
death, and it took the death, the infinitely valuable bloody
death of the God-man. You see, whatever distinguishes you, whatever
makes your difference. If it's not Christ and His righteousness,
and that's yours by virtue of God's free imputation of it to
you, you're not going to be accepted. Christ alone, as it says there,
is the end or the finishing of the law to everyone that believeth. So being unaware, unsubmitted
to that righteousness, or ignorant of what is required, means that
you're not compelled to come to Him, not for all of your salvation. And so by default, what do we
do? By nature, we go about trying to establish a righteousness
of our own. That is, we try to do whatever our particular religious
teaching tells us is prescribed. Meet this condition or that.
But just believe, just say this prayer, just walk this aisle,
just be baptized, just come to church regularly, just pray.
Some of those, some of them put together, all of them, It matters
not. It's that which proceeds from
you, the sinner, and if you don't find your fitness solely in Christ
and his finished work of righteousness, then you may think you're dressed
up just fine, but as Romans 10.4 teaches us, that is not the faith
of everyone that believeth God's gospel, his way of salvation. Their faith sees Christ as the
end, the finishing of the law for their righteousness. So we
can be dressed up in our Sunday's best, so to speak, but hear what
God says about our attire. In Isaiah 64 6, he says, all
our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. And to approach God so
attired is to be cast out from his presence for all eternity
as we're going to see in verse 13. We must have a wedding garment
we can't buy, we can't earn, we can't furnish, we can't acquire
it for ourselves. And that garment is nothing other
than the righteousness of God that our Lord and Savior established
for his wedding guest on the cross, his bride. It's the merit
of his obedience unto death that God graciously imputes to these,
the objects of his everlasting love and mercy and grace, his
bride. Now notice in verse 12 of our
text that the king turns to the intruder and in essence he says,
Friend, why did you come here without a wedding garment? I
get the sense from that it's like someone hosting a party
and there's a party crasher, an uninvited guest there. And
he turned sarcastically to him almost as if to say, excuse me,
uninvited guest or invited guest, friend, what are you doing here? And notice the response. He was
speechless. I'll come back to that in just
a moment, but let's consider how the parable ends here in
verse 13. It says, then said the king to the servants, bind
him hand and foot and take him away and cast him into outer
darkness. There shall be weeping and gnashing
of teeth for many are called, but few are chosen. You know,
verse 14 makes it clear that the general call of the gospel
goes out to many. So many are called in that sense.
But few are chosen. Now, you can't get away from
that. And the truth of God's electing
grace then makes a difference. They are a chosen people. And
if you're among the many who have a real problem with that,
as so many do in our day, of confessing this truth that God's
just not sovereign in overall things, but He's sovereign in
salvation. In other words, the truth that
there's nothing you can do to save yourself, that it is all
of God, that it's not conditioned on you the sinner in any way
to any degree, then I pray God will help you just consider the
clear and obvious implication of such thinking. You see, salvation
is not truly all of God's doing for his people. If it's not a
product solely of his mercy and grace in Christ, you may say
you believe in Jesus all day long, But if, as I once believed,
he does no more for those in heaven than he did for those
in hell, as in he died for all men without exception, what's
left for you to plead? If it's not all of God, it has
to be some difference, something found within you that proceeds
from you. And that's to dare to enter into
the wedding feast of the king of kings with your own provision. clothed in the unacceptable,
filthy rags of your own self-righteousness, bringing your provision to emplace
of or to add to that of the king's?" Well, as the end of verse 12
puts it, at the judgment, such will be speechless. We know that
men, they They approach the judgment like those in that parable in
Matthew 7, where our Lord spoke of those. It says, many in that
day will come unto me and say, Lord, Lord, have I not prophesied
in thy name? And in thy name done many wonderful
works. And it goes on, cast out demons
in thy name, in the name of Christ. They would call themselves Christians,
you see. And our Lord said unto them in
verse 23, I never knew you. Depart from me, ye that work
iniquity. He called what they call good
sin. In other words, they were banking
on something that was inequitable. In other words, it was not equal
to the one perfect righteousness that a holy and a just God requires. You know, like me, some of you
may have heard this hypothetical question posed, and it's a good
thought-provoking question. It says, if God asks you, why
should I let you into my heaven, what would be your reply? Well,
sadly, countless self-righteous sinners will leave this short
lifetime saying, I believed, or I repented, and they imagine
that is the determining factor or difference. And so they think
they're dressed just fine, only to discover too late that what
they think qualifies them for heaven falls tragically short
of the one perfect righteousness that God makes clear in Acts
chapter 17 is the standard by which all shall be judged. When
he says he's called on men everywhere to repent because he's going
to judge the world, what does he say there? In righteousness.
by that man and he goes on to describe his son, the Lord Jesus
Christ. Now with that said, this parable
teaches there's going to be a time, a final judgment, where even
these who will approach judgment saying, well, I'll be saved because
of this that I did, or this that was done in me, or this that
proceeds to me, they're going to be brought to recognize their
tragic and sinful and stubborn and rebellious mistake The same
mistake we all make apart from God's grace, the same way we
all initially approach God, in having place something they do,
some decision they make, their faith, their repentance, their
baptism, whatever, in addition to or in the place of, and that
is to put it in rivalry with, that which it actually took.
the precious blood of the Savior, the provision of the King, and
God will not share His glory. As I noted earlier in my study,
I was impressed by the truth that all men, sooner or later,
are brought to this state speechless. The question is, will you be
rendered speechless now, in this lifetime, or at the judgment? The final judgment will not determine
anyone's destination. There won't be an opportunity
there for you to change your mind as you see the awfulness
of the position you're in if you're among those who fail to
flee to Christ in this lifetime. It's a declarative judgment.
It only declares what is so. Those God saves, see, He renders
speechless in their respective lifetimes. They're speechless
in this sense. They cease from speaking of that
which proceeds from them as contributing even one iota to the ground of
their acceptance before God. Their mouths are stopped, as
we read in Romans 3. In verse 19 we read there, now
we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them
who are under the law that every mouth may be stopped. That's what the requirements
of the perfection of the law should do to us. Speechless. And all the world may become
guilty before God. We need to be justified. We need someone to redeem us. We need someone to do for us
what we can't do for ourselves as guilty, hell-deserving sinners.
Therefore, by the deeds of the law, that is, by our obedience,
by our trying to meet a condition or requirement for our salvation,
there shall no flesh be justified in his sight. None will be declared
not guilty before him on that basis, for by the law is the
knowledge of sin. The righteousness of God, without
the law, without your obedience to the law, without your meeting
a condition or a requirement, is manifested, being witnessed
by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God,
which is by faith, and I believe that's the faithfulness of Jesus
Christ, but the righteousness of faith is that which looks
to the righteousness of Christ, however you interpret that. the
righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto
all and upon all them that believe." It's preached to all. Many are
called, but it's put upon all them that believe. You see, they
believe because Christ purchased that faith for them. It is the
gift of God. Well, as the aforementioned bulletin
article puts it, to use Gary's words there, true believers are
rendered speechless at the realization that there's no way in which
they can, in their own strength, produce this righteousness which
is necessary. So all their laboring, all their
religious activities, all their ceremonies and rituals, all their
good works and morality, none will produce this righteousness
for they are all defiled with sin, they're sinners. So we are
left speechless because God has provided a perfect righteousness
in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a free gift of the grace
of God. God gives it and He will accept
it and that alone. This covering, a robe of righteousness,
which is illustrated by the wedding garment, is received by genuine
God-given faith. Hebrews 9.27 reminds us it's
pointed unto men once to die. but after this, the judgment.
Well, how about you? Will you be rendered speechless
now, in this lifetime, or at the judgment? As Gary's article
stated, let me be speechless now, trusting my advocate, the
Lord Jesus Christ, to plead His righteousness on my behalf, both
now and then.