unto Abraham, saying, In thee
shall all nations be blessed. So then they which be of faith
are blessed with faithful Abraham. For as many as are under the
works of the law are under the curse, for it is written, Cursed
is everyone that continueth not in all things which are written
in the book of the law to do. But that no man is justified
by the law on the side of God is evident, for the just shall
live by faith. And the law is not of faith,
but the man that doeth it shall live in them. Christ hath redeemed
us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. For
it is written, cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree, that
the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through
Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through
faith. Let's bow and have a word of
prayer. Lord, we come to you now, once again, we ask for your
help this morning. We come together today by your
mercy and by your grace, by your sovereign will, you have gathered
these people together. And Father, we are here today
to worship you. We're here today, Lord, to lift
you up and to speak of what Christ has done for his people. And
Father, we pray now that as we open these scriptures and we
begin to discuss these things We pray for the Spirit to give
utterance, to help me to preach, to help those that are here to
hear and understand, Lord. We pray that you would be with
us and in our midst, helping us in our worship. Father, we
pray that Christ might be clearly seen in what is being preached
today, Lord. That's the purpose of preaching,
is to reveal Christ and to extol His goodness and His grace and
His mercy and His work that He has done that has justified us
before God. And so, Lord, we pray that in
these heavy things that we deal with now in terms of justification
and of Christ, Lord, we pray that by Your Spirit, You would
give us understanding of it. Father, we just are grateful
for the work that You have done on our behalf, for the forgiveness
of sins and for the redemption that is in Christ. And Father,
we're so blessed through it and Lord we just again want to say
thank you for what you have done and may you help us now in Jesus
name. Amen. Well as we talked last week we
looked at the blessing of justification. The blessing of justification
being we look back and seeing that it was the imputed righteousness
of Jesus Christ. Whenever we are justified We
are then blessed with the imputation of righteousness. Now, there
are way many more blessings that Christ has given us. I mean,
we spoke of a few the last couple weeks. We know that election
is a blessing of God. We know that sanctification is
a blessing of God. We know that the spirit, convicting
of sin, that the spirit in us, these are all blessings of God.
And glorification, one of these days we'll be glorified in our
bodies, right now our bodies are flesh and it can't do any
good, but that vessel of clay is gonna be put away one of these
days and we'll receive a new body from heaven that will in-house
this man that's in us right now. And that will surely be a great
blessing because we'll no longer know death, we'll no longer know
sorrow, we'll no longer know sickness, we'll no longer know
sin in those bodies. So those are certainly blessings
But whenever we're talking about the blessings here in our passage,
we're talking about being blessed with the righteousness of Jesus
Christ. That's what justification is
all about. That's why that's the heart of the gospel is that
without righteousness, no man is going to see God. Jesus said
that your righteousness is going to have to exceed the righteousness
of the Pharisees. Now, whenever Jesus said that,
what he was meaning is, is your righteousness is going to have
to be something more and above what even the greatest law keeper
could keep. Paul himself was a man who the
Bible, at least, gives credit to of keeping the law better
than just about any of the other Pharisees or religious leaders.
Yet even Paul himself, by the Holy Spirit, learned that he
was wretched, that he was vile, that he was no good, that he
was unworthy. All these things, Paul said, that I'm a wretched
man, that in me dwelleth no good thing. And so we find that a
righteousness has to exceed that which man in his adamic nature
can provide. So we need to have a righteousness
that is outside of us. So whenever Jesus says, be ye
holy, for I am holy, that's not telling you to get after working
out the law on your behalf. That is a statement of fact that
we are holy as He is holy. Be ye holy in your mind, reckon
yourselves dead to the law and alive unto Christ. In your minds,
reckon yourself as righteous before God because of what Christ
has done. Now, we're never to reckon ourselves
righteous because of anything that we have done. We reckon
ourselves righteous because of what Christ has done. And we
do that because God has reckoned us righteous. God has reckoned
us righteous just like Abraham. That's what was talked about.
Remember when we went back to Genesis 15, we've seen that Abraham
heard the gospel from the word of the Lord. And whenever he
heard that gospel, he had counted that seed which was to come,
Christ Jesus, as his righteousness. And the Bible tells us that God
reckoned that righteousness of Jesus Christ to Abraham. So is
all who are the children of God. God reckons that faith that looks
to Christ and sees Christ, that that right there is a sign of
or a showing of that the righteousness of Christ has been applied to
us, that it has been given to us. Christ has redeemed us and
therefore we have been given in the new birth, we have been
given faith that looks to Christ alone for our righteousness and
it doesn't look to our law keeping or our obedience, okay? And so
we've seen that that was the blessedness of justification
last week, that we are blessed with faithful Abraham to have
the righteousness of Christ imputed to us. And if you remember, I
mentioned last week that whenever we're talking about these things,
we see these opposites. We see that we are blessed or
we are cursed, as you've seen in our verses this morning. For
as many, in verse 10, for as many as are under the works of
the law are under the curse. So we're dealing with the opposites. The opposite of being blessed
is being cursed, right? We also see in our passages here
that the opposite of works is faith. They're completely opposite. We also see that here we see
that there is law and then there is grace. Law and grace are opposite. Faith and works are opposite. Blessing and curse are opposite. We also see that the word justified,
what we're dealing with here in justification, what's the
opposite of justification? Condemnation, right? Whenever
someone is justified, that means that they're no longer condemned
or they're not condemned. That's the opposites. And then
we see that there are one more opposite. There is righteous,
and then there is unrighteous. Or we could call self-righteous,
because self-righteous is unrighteousness, okay? So those are the opposites,
faith and works, blessing and cursing, justified, condemned,
and righteous and self-righteous. And because those are opposites,
that's why Paul, by the Holy Spirit, has made very clear that
if salvation and justification is a faith, it is no more of
works. It cannot be both. And remember,
that's what the Judaizers that had come to Galatia was teaching
and preaching after Paul had laid down the gospel to them.
They came back in and were subverting that gospel by preaching law
and grace, preaching faith and works. In that, therefore, the
people was beginning to fall away, as Paul said. You're being
soon removed from the gospel. You're being drawn away from
the gospel. And you're beginning to obey,
not the gospel, but you're beginning to listen to these men and walk
in these things. And if you do, if you look to
law, if you look to obedience, if you look to your works for
justification, All you're going to find is condemnation. It's
condemnation. So today we see in our scriptures
it says, for as many as are of the works of the law are under
the curse. As many as are of the works of
the law are under the curse. Now, notice if you would there,
it doesn't say those who are under the works of law. or under
law. Okay, so this isn't talking about
just the Jews. It's talking about Jew and Gentile. It says those who are of the
works of the law. What does that mean to be of
the works of the law? Well, that means those who seek
out to find righteousness or to find justification by law
keeping. Those are the people who think
that they have to keep a perfect obedience or a certain walk of
life, we are to walk righteously before God for Him to accept
us or for Him to justify us, okay? Those who are of that mindset,
those who think that it is by the law-keeping that they stay
right or they are made right with Christ or that they are
kept right in front of Christ by law-keeping, It says they
are under the curse. Now, what is the curse? Well,
let's read a few things. What is he saying here? Because
he says, for it is written. So whenever you see that in the
Bible, for it is written, then that means somewhere in the Bible
prior to this, it's been written, right? Don't take a seminarian
degree to understand that, does it? If something says it's written,
it's been written. Well, where was it written? Well,
let's turn to Deuteronomy chapter 27. This is what Paul was quoting
here. Deuteronomy 27. Fifth book in the Bible. And look with me if you would
down in verse 26. Deuteronomy 27 and verse 26. I like to hear the page ruffles.
Follow along. Back here, he's just kind of
ruffling pages. All right, verse 26, everybody
there? It says, Cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words
of this law to them. And all the people say, amen,
right? So God here says, cursed be he
that confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them, to do
them. Not just wanna do them, to do
them. So if you're looking to keep
the law, as your righteousness or acceptance, your perseverance
before God, then you're still under this curse. Now, we haven't
got to what the curse is, but this right here tells us that
you're cursed. If that's your hope, is keeping
law, then you're cursed. And notice there, now that word
confirmeth, that can be confusing with us, Whenever we say confirm,
a lot of times that means that it just proves something to be
true, right? But whenever the Bible here is
using cursive, it's he that confirmeth not all the words or stays in
or keeps all the words of this law. I'll show you that here. Look in Jeremiah chapter 11. Jeremiah chapter 11. Look with me if you would at
verse 3, Jeremiah 11, 3. It says, And say unto them, Thus
saith the Lord God of Israel, Cursed be the man that obeyeth
not the words of this covenant. So, cursed be the man that obeyeth
not the words of this covenant. Now remember, the old covenant
that God give them was the law, and in the law, they were to
keep it. If you do this, you'll live.
If you don't do this, you will die. And therefore, with that
covenant, he gave them the sacrifices, the offerings and the sacrifices,
as a type and foreshadow of what Christ would then come to do,
but he'd give them the sacrifices that would cover but not take
away their sin, okay? They would break the law, but
in breaking of the law, they would have to bring a sacrifice
or offering before the Lord, and in doing so, the Lord would
not hold that sin to them at that point, All of us have sinned
and all of them have sinned. Christ is their redemption as
well as ours. Christ justified them as well
as us. So the reason they didn't die
and go to hell, for those who were the elect of God, was because
Christ was standing in their stead even before he came and
died on the cross. He was standing as their surety
before all time, okay? But we see that that it was a
do or die situation. That was the thing. And without
that redemption being typified before them, that was it. I mean,
they were, and we've seen the law was heavy. God did not bend
at any point on that law. And so we see here once again
that cursed is the man that obeyeth not the words of this covenant. Turn with me over into Romans,
if you would. Want to continue in this thought,
Romans chapter three, familiar verse to all of us, Romans three. Look with me, if you would, at
verse 20. It says, therefore, by the deeds of the law, there
shall no flesh be justified in his sight. That's basically what
our verses today said, right? No one can be justified by God
by law keeping. For by the law is the knowledge
of sin, okay? For by the law is the knowledge
of sin, not the overcoming of sin. You see that? For the law was never given to
cause you to overcome your sin. But what's the mentality of modern
Christianity today? The mentality is, is you just
need to get into your Bible, you need to learn your Bible,
you need to obey those commands of God, and the more that you
obey, the less you'll sin. Now, I've said it to you guys
before, and you know, if you're honest with yourself, you know
that, you know, I still sin. I still struggle with sin. And
the more that I study God's Word, the more sinful I seem to be
because I realize, hey, there's more things here that I didn't
realize that I'm still not up to. But whenever you read God's
Word and see that the standard is Christ and His righteousness,
that the holiness is perfection, not one little bit of deviation
from the law, then you see that everything is sin for us. I mean, there is nothing that
we can do. And as the years go by, I don't see myself getting
holier and holier. I see my flesh the same today
as it was back then. Now, in my mind, yes, I've grown
in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus. I begin to see
more about Christ. I begin to love him more and
desire holiness more than I did in the past because of the work
of Christ in me. Just like Paul said, you know,
I serve the law of God in my inner man. But see, I don't see
my flesh. My flesh does not get any better.
It can't get any better. And so he says, therefore, by
the deeds of the law, there shall no flesh be justified in his
sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. That's what
the law was given to us for, is to make sin manifest or to
show forth that we are sinners, that we cannot be like God, as
holy as God is. We never can be that. It says
in verse 22, even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus
Christ unto all and upon all them that believe, for there
is no difference. For, here it is, all have sinned
and come short of the glory of God. So all of us have sinned
and come short of the glory of God. But yet the law says, curses
everyone who does not continue in all of the things of the law.
Cursed is he who does not obey all of the covenant. So if we
are here, if the Bible is true, and I believe the Bible is true,
it says, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of
God. Now there may be some that says,
hey, I don't sin. I don't sin. I've become so great. Listen there, I know some folks
in a certain denomination that they believe before you can even
be a pastor in their church, you have to be what they call
fully sanctified or you have to attain to the place where
you no longer sin. That's crazy. The Bible says,
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And
as long as we are in this flesh, we will continue to sin. So if
the law says that you are cursed, if you do not keep every bit
of the law, and the Bible says that all of you have broken the
law, then that means that everyone who is under that law is cursed. Everyone who is trying to attain
to that righteousness through the law is cursed. It says, being
justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is
in Christ Jesus, whom God has set forth to be the propitiation
through faith in His blood to declare His righteousness for
the remissions of sin that are passed through the forbearance
of God. To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness,
that he might be just and a justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. Where is the boasting then? It
is excluded. By what law? Of works? Nay, but
by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a
man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. Okay, so
we are justified by the faith of Jesus Christ, not by the law. So we see this pile just getting
bigger and bigger to one side showing us that it is futile,
that it's just stupid for us to try to appease God by our
obedience and law keeping. Again, now I'm not saying that
we shouldn't strive for that. All of us, if we've been born
again, are gonna want to, desire, strive to do what Christ has
said, what God has said. But brethren, what Christ has
called us to do as far as obedience is to believe on Him, to trust
in Him, that He is our righteous, to look to Him. Whenever we're
down and we're doubting our salvation, it's not, We don't need to just
get up and start trying to do more works. It's look to Christ. And what does it say? Every time
we look to the cross, every time that we look to the cross, we
see it is finished, right? We see that Christ said it is
finished. It's done. I've justified them
by my righteous servant. Isaiah 53 says by my righteous
servant, he shall justify the many by what Christ did on the
cross. He justified all of his people. And so that's who we look to,
not the law. Look again, if you would, with
me, while you're there in Romans at chapter three. Oh, I'm sorry. We've already been there. James,
go to James chapter two. James chapter 2, and look with
me if you would at verse 10. It says, for whosoever
shall keep the whole law and yet offend in one point, he is
guilty of all. Whosoever shall keep the whole
law and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. It's often
easy for us in our human nature to think. And we see this all
the time. We see this on TV. This is the
mentality of the natural man. We see everybody comparing like
a set of scales, you know, that all my good deeds are going to
outweigh my bad deeds, or if my bad deeds outweigh my good
deed, you know, I'll go to hell. If my good deeds outweigh my
bad deeds, then I'm going to go to heaven. And so we try to
compare ourselves with our good deeds. How many good deeds have
we done? Well, I've kept all of it. I
just only broke it once. I've done everything there except
for this one. But yet the Bible holds a strict
standard. It says if you break it in one,
it doesn't matter because you're just as guilty as if you broke
them all. The law is one and a whole. It isn't little segments.
We don't start keeping the law like, okay, well, I kept this
one. Now I'm keeping this one. And as the years rolled by, all
600 and however many laws that God gave in the Old Testament
were now up to, you know, 600 and whatever, you know. I now
am keeping all the law. No, if you've broken one, you've
broken them all. And if you've broken them all
or even just one at any point, even if it's just one time and
never, ever again, You have now transgressed the law of God,
and you are, as the Bible says, for all have sinned and fall
short of the glory of God. You've fallen short of the glory
of God. And in doing so, the Bible says that the wages of
sin is death. So even if you did keep every
bit of the law, but only in one, break just that one, one more
time, break it, the wages of that sin is death. Now, the reason I'm going through
this, I know we've talked about this a lot, even in the first
two or three chapters, okay? But the reason I'm saying this
is to keep before you the futility, the impossibility, the inability
that we have of measuring up to be worthy in God's sight,
to be acceptable in God's sight by anything that we do. Our works
are futile. Our works are nothing. The only
thing that matters is the one who looks to Christ alone and
says, he is my right. That's what Abraham did. Abraham
didn't worry about anything that Abraham was gonna do. He looked
to Christ and said, his righteousness is counted for mine. I'm gonna
trust in that because I know that I can't do any righteous.
I can't do righteous things. There is no way for me to do
righteous things. Now, why do people still try
to attain righteousness? Well, that's because that's part
of our human nature. We still want to perform some
kind of a righteousness so that we can boast about it, pat ourselves
on the back, so that we can say, hey, look what I did, you know,
whenever I'm at work. You know, if I go out on an x-ray
machine and I fix an x-ray machine, And I don't have to call tech
support or have somebody else help me. And I go out here and
I'll put this thing together, man. Hey, I'm like, hey, there,
man, I got it all done. You know, if I go install an
x-ray room, whenever I'm done, it looks all not neat and tidy.
Some of y'all that may not know, I'm a very obsessive person about
whenever I'm running all my cables at work, that they're like perfect.
They're not all messed up. Anyway, whenever I get away and
after I've installed something and I've done it all real good
and stuff, you know, hey, I'm taking pictures. Hey, look, here's
what I did, you know, and all that stuff. Why? Because I want
to get some credit, you know. I want to get credit for what
I did, you know. Or whatever hobby you got, you
know. Maybe it's target shooting. Maybe
it's woodworking. Whatever the case is, you know,
we want to have somebody pat us on the back and say, hey,
you did a great job. And I want to add something.
Yes, sir. Probably you want to read Isaiah
64 verse six. I guess we cannot compare our
words with the Holy Ghost, you know. 64. Oh, yeah. Yes, but we are all as an unclean
thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, and we all
do fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us
away, and there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth
up himself to take hold of thee, for thou hast hid thy face from
us and has consumed us because of our iniquities. That word there, but we are all
as unclean thing and all our righteousnesses are as filthy
rags. That word filthy rags in the
Hebrew, the word rags, it means a menstrual cloth. It means a
menstrual cloth, that's what that means. In our day and age,
we call that a tampon or a maxi pad, something like that. That's
how God views our righteousness. Something that is unclean. If
you remember in the Old Testament, any time a woman had their monthly
thing, you know, they would be put away from the camp. I mean,
they wasn't spoiled. They were considered unclean
during that time period. And then they had to have a purification
after that was over whenever they had their issue of blood.
And you remember, even in the New Testament, there was a woman
who had an issue of blood for many years. continued on and
on and on and on. And nobody wanted to be around
her because she was considered unclean, but yet she touched
him and touched Jesus. And to many, that was, you know,
that was not a good thing. Well, that dirtiness is how God
sees us. As Kevin's pointed out here,
all of our righteousnesses, and notice that it's plural there,
all of our righteousnesses, Everything that we do that we would think
to be righteous before God is an unclean thing before God.
If any of y'all have seen, I put on our church page on Facebook,
and I posted on my thing, that oftentimes whenever we talk about
ourselves, we call ourselves unworthy servants or unprofitable
servants. And to the religious person,
You know, and I have friends and relatives that have said
this to me. Why are you always calling yourself an unprofitable
servant or an unworthy person? You're a Christian now. You are
worthy. You were worthy. I mean, God
loved you enough. There was something special enough
that God loved you and saved you that he died for you. So
you obviously had to be some kind of worth. No, God died for
me in spite. The Bible says that while I was
yet a sinner, Christ died for me. There was nothing worthy
about me. There was nothing worthy about
any of us. There is nothing that any of
us is profitable in. And so the religious person,
they don't have that thought in their mind. They think that
they are worthy. They've been made worthy by their own law
keeping. That's how the Pharisees, remember the Pharisees walked
around and they thought they was above everybody else because
they spent all their time in the scriptures. They spent all
the time looking and thinking that they had eternal life because
of their law. What did Jesus say? He said, you search the
scriptures, and in them you think that you have eternal life. But
all them scriptures are talking about me. They're talking about
me. If you're to have eternal life,
you're to have me, not the law. So once again, we see that there
is a futility in our trying to keep the law for righteousness
before God. And brethren, I keep striving
this again, like I said, I keep striving this so that it might
be of some comfort to you. If the Lord would be so glad
to let us learn this, that I keep giving this to you so that whenever,
if you're like me, and I know you are because we're all from
Adam, we come to those times where we think that yes, we are
not worthy. And we think that we have fallen
or we failed, or we're not doing enough for the Lord, or we've
sinned in some area. And we believe that we've let
the Lord down and all like that. Remember, the Bible says, there
is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.
It says to us whenever we are in those times whenever we have
sinned, it tells us that we are not being charged, that there's,
who can lay any charge to God's elect? So keep those things in
mind. Yes, we should not just sin and
let sin be sin and go along our way. No, we should be confessing
those sins before the Lord and pray that the Spirit would help
us to stop doing those things. But brethren, there is never
a separation between you and the Lord. I used to think, I
used to think, well, man, if I'm sinned, then the Lord's turned
his back on me. You know, now he's not looking
at me. I'm back here doing all my sinning and the Lord is, well,
I can't have fellowship with you anymore because you're sinning.
Well, if that's true, I mean, there again, that's, that's the
common misconception of the natural man is they think that the only
way that God is going to be pleased and fellowship with me is if
I am without sin. But brethren, As we just read,
all of the things that we do that are of the best nature that
we can do in Adam are unrighteousness, filthy rags. So that means there
will never be, if God is looking for us to stay unsinning, if
God is looking for us to be sinless before he will have fellowship
with us, then we'll never have fellowship with him, right? We'll
never have fellowship with him because all you are is sin. And some people say, well, what
about the Christ that's in us, that's doing good works through
us? And they're thinking, again, that's not you. That's Christ.
That's Christ. But everything that you do in
this flesh, that's sin. So the only thing that we do
that, if we could even call it, say that we can do, it's still
Christ in us. It's the Holy Spirit giving us
faith. And that faith is not of ourselves.
It's a gift of God. but it's looking to Christ. Whenever
I think that I'm gonna make God happy by my obedience and everything,
that's where boasting comes in. And therefore I'm unrighteous.
So we do, we go through our lives and we work and we try to keep
what we understand the Bible to teach us and things like that. But again, none of that is what's
keeping us in fellowship with the Lord. Matter of fact, I've
mentioned this in a study that we did a long, long time ago.
But whenever we sin, what does the Bible say about the Lord
and his people? He says those whom the Lord loves,
he chastens. And whenever he chastens us,
whenever he gets on to us, whenever he scolds us or whenever he teaches
us something through hardships or whatever the case. Whenever
he chastens us, he does that because he loves us. He said
that he chastens us because he wants to show us that we are
his children and not bastard children, that we are his children. And so that is a show of God's
love whenever he chastens his people. And so that mentality
that I told you that I used to think where You know, here I
am, I'm fellowshipping with God, and I'm doing real good, but
then I start to get off into some sin, and now God has turned
his back on me, and he says, I can't fellowship with you until
you repent, until you pray and ask for forgiveness. Then where's
the chastisement gonna come? If God's gonna turn his back
on me and not have anything to do with me until I'm back to
being sinless again, quote unquote, then how's God gonna work in
love chasing me? No, the Bible says that in those
times whenever I'm disobedient or being a wayward son, what's
he doing? He's chasing me. He's coming
after me and he is scolding me. He is teaching me through whatever
it is that he's gonna take me through, however it is he's gonna
chase us, to chastise me. He's gonna take me through that.
But that's him showing his love towards me, disdain and his,
I'm not gonna fellowship with you. No, that's him showing his
love towards us. He is always pursuing us. We're
the ones who turn from him. Now, I will say this, from our
point of view, whenever we sin, we feel like the fellowship is
broken between us and God because we know that we're guilty. And
what happens usually whenever someone is guilty of something?
They wanna run and hide from the authorities, right? You know,
whenever a child disobeys, he kind of wants to stay hidden
away from mom or dad, especially if they find out, oh, they want
to run to a room or something like that. We want to hide out.
You know, if somebody breaks the law in society, what do they
want to do? They want to stay away from the police. They don't
want to be where the authority is. Well, as believers, whenever
we sin, there's this feeling of, oh, no, I better turn away
because God's going to be mad at me. And so from our perspective,
it feels like the fellowship is broken. And if it is broken,
which it's not as far as God's concerned, it is on our part. We have turned from God, but
God never turns from us. The Bible says that he will never
leave us nor forsake us. The Bible says that his face
will shine upon us, that he loves us and is pursuing us in love.
And in chastisement, he will bring us back himself and so
always keep that in mind whenever we're talking about the law and
we're talking about grace that even though we cannot keep the
law and we do break the law as the children of God God will
lovingly bring us back to himself are we going to be wayward yes
we may be wayward and sometimes we may be wayward for a while
But the Lord will always bring us back because the Bible says
that he will keep us from falling away. He will keep us from going
away and never coming back. He will always bring us back.
We see the story about the prodigal son and the father. That man was already a son of
the father, right? And he went wayward. And the
father let him go away for a period of time. And that man became
and realized What happened? The Bible said that he came to
his mind, he came to his senses. He came and thought, hey, wait
a minute. Why am I living like this when I had it good back
where I was at? Everything was good when I was
back there with my father. And so he repented of what he
thought was best for his life and went back to the father.
And there he found that that was the place that he needed
to be. Well, that's how every one of us are, brethren. The
Bible tells us that, and then what was there? The Father was
there waiting on him, looking at him. You know, God is always
there to forgive us whenever we have wronged him. Now, back
to what we were looking at, look back in Galatians. It says, but
that no man is justified by the law on the side of God is evident. So we know that's true. We've
just read a bunch of verses that's saying that. Law keeping doesn't
do anything for us, right? In acceptance or keeping with
God. But what does it do say? It says, for the just shall live
by faith. The just is going to live by
faith. How are we going to live? We are going to live by looking
to Christ alone for everything. Those who have been justified
by Christ have been given the faith of Christ And as we've
talked about plenty of times in these two or three chapters,
the faith of Christ given to us always looks to Christ for
righteousness. It doesn't look to ourselves.
Okay. When we start looking to ourselves,
that's not the faith of Christ in us, but that's our flesh boasting. Our flesh is boasting of something
they can do before the Lord. But the faith of Christ looks
to Christ alone. So the just, those who have been
born of God, are gonna live by faith, not by law-keeping. Remember,
we're looking at opposites here. Faith is opposite of works. If
we are living by faith or walking by faith, then that means we
are not walking by works. We're not walking by actions.
We're not walking by law-keeping. We're walking by faith, trust,
a reliance upon, a looking to and entrusting upon Christ for
our righteousness. It says, verse 12, and the law
is not of faith. The law is not of faith. If you're
walking by faith, then you're not walking by the law. And if
you're walking by the law, if you're trying to walk by the
law, I guess I should say, You're not walking by faith. They're
polar opposites. And so for those who try to mix
law and grace and say, yes, we are to walk by faith, but we
are also to keep all these words so that we can be righteous before
God or stay righteous before God, then they are confusing,
or as Paul used the term, I am not frustrating the grace of
God. That's frustrating the grace
of God. That's confusing the grace of God whenever you say
that. He says, the law is not of faith, but the man that doeth
them shall live in them. If you say that you're living
by the law, then you are to walk by the law and you're to live
in them. You're continuing them without stopping, without ever
missing. but we know that we can't do
that, right? Now, look at verse 13, though.
It says, Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law. Now, what is the curse of the
law? What does the law demand? It demands perfection, right?
And the Bible says that if we don't keep that perfection, the
soul that sinneth, it shall surely die, or that for all have sinned
and fallen short of the glory of God, if you have sinned, that
the wages of that sin is death. So the curse of the law is condemnation. We are condemned to die. We are
condemned in our disobedience, okay? Remember, those were the
offices. To be justified is the opposite
of being condemned. If we are justified, that means
that we're not guilty. To be condemned, that means that
we are the sentence of guilty is laid over our head. And if
we are guilty, then we must suffer the penalty for that guilt, which
is death. If we are justified, then that
condemnation or that death sentence is taken away. Justified means
not guilty, and if I am not guilty, then that means there is no wrath.
And if there is no wrath, then that means there is no death,
right? See how they're just polar opposites?
And why it is so crucial for us in the preaching of the gospel
not to mix the two together? Because God has made them polar
opposites to show us that everything that there is in Christ is blessing. Everything that there is in Christ
is an inheritance. Everything that's in Christ is
truth and life and light. But everything that is of the
law of our flesh and of sin, it's all sin, it's death, it's
darkness, it's not good over here. And to mix those two is
to mix, how do you know you're doing enough good works? If you
want to be a law keeper and the wages of breaking that law is
sin, how do you know if you're keeping the law good enough or
great enough to stay right with God? How do you know if what
you've done has been enough to be accepted by God? How do we
know? Well, we don't. We don't know. Do we? Do we know? Yes, we do. We just
read it a while ago. If anybody breaks it in one point,
you broke them all. And everybody in here, if I ask
you, how many of y'all have ever told a lie? Everybody has to
raise their hand. Every one of us has told a lie
before, right? Okay, if we've told a lie, then
we have broken God's law. God hates all liars. So, you know, not to mention
the Bible says that we drink iniquity like water. We love
iniquity. We do wrong. So it's futile. But the Bible here says that
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law. The condemnation
that would be over us had it not been for Christ standing
for us, the condemnation would be death. The condemnation for
us would have been death if Christ had not stood as our surety. But because of Christ standing
as our surety, we are not under the wrath of God. We are not
under that sentence of death. There is no condemnation for
those who are in Christ Jesus. Let me ask you, when was you
made in or put into Christ Jesus? When were you united with Christ? Well, there's a few different
viewpoints on that, okay? There is one group of people
that believes that you are united with Jesus Christ when you are
baptized. There are some that believe that
you are united with Jesus whenever you believe. Whenever you first
believe, then you are united with Christ Jesus. Now, I will
say that there is some teaching to be done on both of those things,
that there is a certain way that we, whenever we are baptized,
we are united to Christ. That is, the Bible teaches that
by the great commission that we are to make disciples, that
we are to baptize them, and then once we baptize them, then we
are to bring them into the membership of the local church that was
there doing the disciple making, right? That we are to bring them
into the church, and now they are united to this body of Christ. this local assembly, this group
of people here, right? So we are united to Christ in
that aspect, but it's not talking about our vital union or our
spiritual union to Christ, okay? Our spiritual union to Christ
didn't come when we were born again. Some people think that,
well, it's whenever you were born again, but is that true? No, it's not true. The Bible
says, because you are sons, God has sent forth His Spirit into
you. We were already sons united to Christ and made sons before
the Spirit ever came into us. OK, so we were already sons,
so there was a uniting to Christ in a spiritual way, even before
we were born from above. When was that union? Well, that
union was before the foundation of the world. We were united
with him before the foundation of the world. And we read that,
as we have read many times, in Ephesians chapter 1, verse 3. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in heavenly places in Christ, according as he hath
chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should
be holy and without blame before him in love, having predestinated
us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according
to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of
his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved."
You see that? He has made us accepted. Remember
when we went through Ephesians a while back and we talked about
being accepted in the beloved? The mentality of Christianity
today is you need to accept Jesus Christ. as your Lord and Savior,
but the Bible says that's just the opposite. The Bible says
that we are to be accepted of Him, not we accept Jesus. No, it's Jesus who accepts us.
We are made accepted in the beloved. That means if we are made accepted,
then that means that we have been made to the place where
God can accept us. How can God accept a sinner?
How can God have someone who is full of sin? Every one of
us is full of sin. How can God receive to Himself
and accept a sinner to Himself? How can He be made accepted?
How can God accept that whenever the Bible says that He is holy,
that He hates sin, that He is not going to acquit the guilty,
that He's not going to justify the sinner? How is it that He's
going to let that go? He's not going to bypass, He's
not going to look over it, He's not going to wink at it, okay?
He's not going to turn a blind eye to it. He will judge that
sin. And so how can we be accepted
in the beloved? How can we be made accepted?
Well, the only way that we can be made accepted is for all the
qualifications that needs to be met according to God's justice
to be met for us. That's what justification is
all about. That's what Christ's surety and substitution is all
about, is Christ made us accepted by His life of obedience, by
His death upon the cross, and by His resurrection proved that
we were justified before God. God raised Him up for our justification. We have been justified before
God, and if we are justified before God, that means that we
are not guilty, we are not condemned, we are not under the curse, we
are not held responsible or anything for those sins, that we have
someone who did that for us, There is no condemnation. That's
what we see here in our passage. Christ has redeemed us from that
curse and has made us acceptable to God. Accepted in the beloved. Not on our works. Not on our
merit. Nothing that we have done has
made us accepted. Christ has made us accepted. And all that union was done before
the foundation of the world. We were chosen in Christ before
the foundation of the world. Now, with that being said, just
a side note. If we were chosen in Christ before
the foundation of the world, on what basis did God choose
us? Did He look down and see how
good we were going to be? No. He did that by His own purpose
and grace. He chose us by His own purpose and by His own grace. It's by his own sovereign will
that he chose us. Before anybody had been born,
before anybody had done any good or bad, God, according to election,
that is purpose, according to election might stand, he chose
one, and he didn't choose others. So if God did the choosing, and
it wasn't based upon anything about you, and he put you into
Christ, and made you accepted in the beloved in Christ, you're
accepted because of who Christ is, then how can we boast? We can't boast, can we? Matter
of fact, we can't even say that salvation is dependent upon anything
that we do. It was already done in eternity.
The works were finished from eternity. As far as the declaration of
it, as far as the reckoning of it, that's how God saw us. See
this, there's my redneck coming out. He saw us that way, okay? Yes, Christ came. He had to die.
That was the foundation for all that God would do on our behalf.
Christ had to come in flesh. He had to die. He had to live
the life of obedience for us. All that is what we needed. In
his flesh, he condemned sin. It had to happen. And he did,
and he redeemed us from the curse of the law. And it says, Christ
hath redeemed us from the curse of the law. How? By being made a curse for us.
Now, brother, I don't know about you, but that is something that
is hard for me to fathom. It's hard for me to understand
how a holy Christ can be a curse. But the Bible says that he became
a curse for us. He became a curse for us. For it is written, cursed is
everyone that hangeth upon a tree. In 2 Corinthians chapter 5, we
see a parallel verse of this, 2 Corinthians chapter 5, and look with me if you would
at verse 18. It says, And all things are of God
who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given
us the ministry of reconciliation. to wit that God was in Christ
reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses
unto them, and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then, we are ambassadors
for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us, we pray you,
and Christ said, be ye reconciled to God. Now, a lot of people say, well,
that's us going out and preaching, and we preach the reconciliation.
So we, through our preaching, we are reconciling people to
God. Now, if you look up there in verse 18, it said that it
is God who has reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ and
has given us the ministry of reconciliation. The ministry
of reconciliation isn't us going out and telling people and causing
them to reconcile back to God. No, God's the one that's doing
the reconciling. He's given us the ministry of
preaching that reconciliation. That's what that means. The ministry
of reconciliation isn't us going out and getting people to reconcile
with God. It is us preaching the declaration that God, through
Jesus Christ, has reconciled all of his elect, who the Bible
said was at enmity with God, who were enemies of God, who
was wrathful towards God, that by the blood of Jesus Christ,
that he has reconciled all those enemies to himself. He's brought
them in. He's caused them to be his, and
he's done the work for them, and he has reconciled them to
God, and we are preaching the ministry. Christ is the minister
of reconciliation. Isn't that what that says? Look
at verse 18. Again, who is the minister of reconciliation? All
things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus. Jesus is the minister of reconciliation,
not us. We are the ambassadors who proclaim
the work of the minister, Christ. Christ is the minister of reconciliation. How did he do that though? How
did he minister reconciliation to all of his enemies? Verse
21, for he hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin that
we might be the righteousness of God in Him. The reason that
Jesus did the work of reconciliation by becoming a curse or being
made sin for us is so that we might be the righteousness of
God in Christ Jesus. What was making us separate from
God? It was sin, right? It was sin. It was unrighteousness. We were
unrighteous Our sin was unrighteous. But because of Jesus Christ,
we have been reconciled to God and that sin is not seen anymore.
The curse of condemnation isn't on our head. And so we now are
made the righteous. We are seen as righteous before
God. That's how Christ reconciled
us by causing us to be righteous as he is righteous. He substituted
for us Therefore God considers his righteousness as our righteousness,
and so therefore God can reconcile those people back to himself.
See, we were people that didn't want God. We would never have
went back to God. We would never have gone to God.
The Bible says that we were children of wrath just like everybody
else. We were wrathful towards God. The Bible says that we were
at enmity with Him. That enmity, it means a struggle
against. It means to hate. It means to
be an enemy of. The Bible even says we were enemies
of God. Not God looking at us and saying,
ooh, they're our enemies. He reconciled the enemies of
God. And he did that by becoming sin
for us or becoming a curse for us. He was cursed for us. And that curse was condemnation.
And that curse led to death. Jesus took that death for us. Christ hath redeemed us from
the curse of the law, the condemnation that would have been on us, being
made a curse for us in our place, in our stead, as a substitute,
for it is written, cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree. Again, that goes back to Deuteronomy,
talks about those who are cursed that are hanging on a tree. But
look at verse 14, and we'll stop here. that the blessing of Abraham,
the reason that he did that again. Remember, we talked last week.
What was the blessing of Abraham? It was imputed righteousness,
right? It was imputed righteousness.
Well, what did I just say here? Why did Christ become sin for
us? Why did he become a curse to us so that we might be made
the righteousness of God in Christ that we might be made accepted?
We can't be made accepted as sinners. We only can be accepted
as righteous. that the blessing of Abraham
might come upon the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, that we
might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. What
is the promise or what is the blessing of Abraham? It's imputed
righteousness of Jesus Christ. So he was cursed and hung on
a tree so that the blessing or so that the imputed righteousness
of Christ might come not on just the Jews, but on us Gentiles. through Jesus Christ, so that
we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
Isn't that wonderful? You don't have to work for that
righteousness. It was given to you freely. Come
unto me, all ye who labor, who do works, and are heavy laden
when you see that your works is not enough, It's always failing. It's always stopping. It's always
off and on. Come unto me, all you who are
weary and heavy laden. And what? He said, I will give
you rest. You know what rest is? Having
faith in Christ alone. That's what rest is. Whenever
you rest, according to the biblical term of rest, it is to trust
in Christ. And I pray, brethren, as we read
these things, that the Holy Spirit will teach us to more and more
look to Christ whenever our sin tries to condemn us, whenever
the world tries to condemn us, whenever Satan tries to condemn
us, listen, whenever other Christians try to condemn us because we're
not living up to their standard. Let us remember that we have
been made accepted in the beloved and that he was made a curse
for us so that we might be the rock You are the righteous, if
you're a child of grace, you are the righteousness of God
in Christ. A brand new creation that you did not earn, or was
worthy of, or worked for. Now, we'll stop right there.
We'll probably pick up with the last part of verse 14, Lord willing,
the next time. And I'm not for sure exactly
when the next time is gonna be, brethren. great possibility that
I'll be having surgery. Those that have been here and
have been listening and watching for a while, three years ago
I ruptured my bicep tendon and had to have arm surgery. Well,
I did it again to this arm Friday, so I'm more than likely going
to be having surgery on this thing at the end of this week.
I'm supposed to meet an orthopedic doctor tomorrow and then I'll
have to get an MRI. If it's like the last arm, it
was like real quick, like within two or three days. So they'll
probably be doing surgery, I mean, at the end of this week. If that's
the case, then they'll probably not have services next Sunday
and probably the Sunday after that. But anyway, we'll kind
of keep everybody informed as far as how that goes. But as
of right now, we'll, you know, If I don't have surgery this
week, we'll still have services next Sunday. But if I have surgery,
if it looks like what's gonna happen, it'll be at the end of
this week. But we will confirm that with everybody as soon as
I know something tomorrow or the next day. So remember me
in your prayer also while you're at that. But we may not be having
service for the next couple weeks. Anyway, does anybody have any
questions or any comments, anything? related to the message or not
related to the message, I guess is fine too. Any praises or prayer
requests? It's good to see you guys today.
It's good to be with you. I truly enjoy our times together
and I pray the Lord has edified you through the word of God today.
Let's bow and have a word of prayer and we'll also ask a blessing
on the food before we eat. Father, we thank you once again
for all that you've done for us, for Jesus Christ. Lord, the
message of salvation and your justification through Christ
Jesus, it just never gets old to us. We love it, we enjoy it,
it's like bread to us. Lord, we truly do thank you for
all that you've done for us in your body, broken and shed, blood
shed for us. Father, we are so thankful that
we have been deemed not guilty before God. Lord, we know that
we are not worthy of that. We know that we do not do anything
to merit your good grace and mercy and salvation. But Lord,
we are truly thankful for that. Just as we conclude this morning
of our worship, we just pray, Lord, that you've been pleasing,
been pleased with the message and pleased with the fellowship
And we know that you can only be pleased if you have been among
us and helped us in that. And we trust that you have. Lord,
we look to you for all that we have need of. Lord, we look to
you for our country and the state that it's in, Lord. We know that
revival of your people will not happen unless you come first
and change our hearts. Lord, that you put up leaders
and you take down leaders. that even the corrupt leaders
that we have now, Lord, are there by your sovereign will. And so,
Lord, we just pray that if you would be so kind and gracious
to once again give us leaders who want to honor God and to
not be corrupt, Lord, we would love to see that. But we know
that it's not as we will, but as you will. And that this judgment
that has come upon our country is well deserved because how
We have turned our backs upon you and that Lord, we see all
these things that are coming to us or become as a result of
sin. So Lord, we just pray that you
would revive this country again. We pray that you'd keep us as
we leave this place this week, that you might help us to be
testifiers of your grace and mercy. Lord, we just thank you
for the food and the fellowship that we're about to have now.
May you nourish our bodies by the food, and may you encourage
our spirits, Lord, through the fellowship together. And once
again, we say thank you, and we ask it all in Christ's precious
and holy name. Amen.