So what I want to look at by
the grace of God is, is there any real hope for real sinners? Now when we're talking about
a real sinner, as I said before, you're not a sinner because you
sin. You understand what I'm saying?
A sinner is who you really are by nature. You sin because of
who you really are. You know, by the grace of God,
we rejoice in Christ and strive to keep from sinning our desire
and our honor and our joys in Christ. And we want to serve
and honor and exalt Him, don't we? And we rejoice in the things
that are right and true, don't we? We rejoice in those things
by the Spirit of God. The new man does. He rejoices
in them. And his desire is unto the Lord.
His desire is to be a good representative of His people in honor to Him.
See what I'm saying? We want to represent Him. We
want to honor Him. That's our desire. That's our
joy. because of who He's made us to be in His Holy Spirit,
the new creation, that part. That is a joy, see? So is there
any real hope for real sinners? That's the only kind of hope
that they are, true hope. And someone isn't a real sinner,
he don't have no true hope. If a fellow says, well, I'm going
to straighten my life out and I'm going to start living and
I'm going to start doing these things, And because of who I
am and what I'm trying to do to the best of my knowledge before
God, He'll receive me. No, He will not receive you. The only way anybody can be accepted
is in the person of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. See what
I'm saying? God will not receive you if you try to be good enough
to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. You can't do that. We're accepted
only in the blood. The only real hope that we have
as real sinners is in the Lord Jesus Christ. There's no hope
outside of Christ. If God looks upon me for who
I am in the flesh, then I'm a goner. That's it. Men and women think
of themselves as good moral people, don't they? And this is the way
the religion is. They think themselves as good
moral people and in religious duty they say, well, I'm a pretty
good person. I haven't done this and I haven't
done that. And I do try. I try to serve
God. I try to go to church as much
as I can. And I try to witness. And I try to do all these things.
I keep my mind on the Lord as much as I can. And therefore,
because of this, maybe God will have mercy on me. No, God will
not have mercy on you because of something that you do. You
see what I am saying? So men and women, aughting in
themselves as good moral peoples, cannot justify themselves before
God in their own goodness. It's impossible. There is none
good. That's what I'm saying about
real sinners are real sinners. There's no good in them by nature. They're sinners inside out, through
and through, from top to bottom. Sin comes from the inside and
goes out. It doesn't start from the inside and go in. You see
what I'm saying? You're not a sinner because of
what you do. You're a sinner because of who you are. You do
what you do because of who you are. And except by the grace
of God, we'd do anything. Well, you say, I wouldn't do
this or I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't shoot nobody. I wouldn't
kill nobody. If God would withdraw to the natural man, His training
grace, that man would do anything. You see what I'm saying? And if God don't give me grace,
I know that by nature I would do anything. See that? I'm nothing
and nobody. I'm sinning inside out, through
and through. There's nothing I can be or do to justify myself. The only way I can be justified
is by the grace of God and in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's
the only way. I can't look upon what I've done for God. I look
to Christ. I rest in Christ. I trust Christ.
They look upon their good works in their religious devotion.
You see what people do? That's nature. That's only natural
for people to do. But when God reveals His grace
to you and you see who you are, you fall prostrate in a helpless
and hopeless offset. Then you believe in the Lord
Jesus Christ by the faith that He gives you and look to Christ
and rest in Him. You don't look back at what you've
done. Well, I went to church yesterday. I've done this and
I've done that. I had a real good day in the
Lord. And because of all these things that I've done, God is
favorable to me. No, God's not favorable to you
because of anything you've ever done. See what I'm saying? You
do what you do because of who you are. And that's what you
do by nature. And those who worship God in
spirit and in truth, they worship God because God has worked in
them by His grace to reveal who they are in His light and show
them Christ is their Lord and Savior and their heart is bowed
to Him. That's the difference. You see
that? God don't owe me anything in
that regard. God don't owe me. God ain't in
debt to me. You see what it is? God's not in debt to any man.
God's not going to justify any man because of their own goodness. Because they're sinners inside
out, through and through, from top to bottom. We're all self-righteous
by nature. And we look upon what we do by
nature. You see that? Because I didn't
do this, and I did do this, and therefore I'm a little better
off. No, not by nature you're not.
If you've done anything right by the grace of God, it's because
God showed His grace upon you. And if you've done it by grace,
there's still so much sin in it that God has sent you to hell
many times over, except our Mediator take it and represent it through
Himself and in Himself in the right, holy before God. So we're totally dependent upon
the Lord Jesus Christ, aren't we? You know, some people are highly
offended when they're told the plain truth about themselves. About ourselves. That's who I
am. I'm not speaking to you alone. I'm speaking to myself. But they
get offended because you tell them that they're sinners by
nature. They can't be or do anything before God to get God to receive
them. All they can do is condemn themselves
before God. If a man thinks himself to be
any good in Him, he is blind. You see that? He doesn't have
the Spirit of God in him. You have people that are opposed
to righteous deeds they do. But even when our deeds are done
by the grace of God in our hearts, they are unrighteous as they
are. Unrighteous. They're counted, if left alone,
as filthy rags in the sight of God. Our righteousness, the best
thing we've ever done in our life. I mean, as Christians,
apart from Jesus Christ, would be filthy rags before God. Enough to send us to hell millions
of times over. Our righteousness, the best deeds,
of the right attitude, by the grace of God, because of this
flesh, is filthy. Our righteousness. And even our
prayers and the word we preach. You know, I said we have ministering
angels. We do. But it's got to be taken
to Christ. Christ has to take it to God.
He has to represent it. You see? In the right attitude.
The right spirit. To make it perfect. But of and
in ourselves it is abominable in the sight of God. Do you see
that? But in Christ, in Christ He takes what we by the grace
of God proclaim and declare and try to administer to you by His
grace and He makes it perfect. His Son does in Himself. David said in Psalm 42, 5, Why
art thou cast down, O my soul? Why art thou disquieted in me? Hope thou in the Lord, I shall
yet praise Him for the help of His countenance. See, David,
often in himself, he knew who he was. He's cast down. He's disquieted in himself. He's
shut up to himself. He's not bragging on himself. Hope thou in God. He has given
me a good hope, a good hope. He has placed His Spirit in me.
He has placed the truth in my heart. He has given me a hope
in the Lord Jesus Christ. I hope not in myself, nor in
anybody else as far as that, but I hope only in the Lord Jesus
Christ. In Psalm 42.11 it says, Why art
thou cast down, O my soul? Why art thou disquieted within
me? Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise Him. It's good for
us to be cast down. We get to feel them too high
sometimes, don't we? We get to do them things on our
own accord. And we have to be cast down to
show us again who we really are. Who is the health of my countenance?
The Lord Jesus Christ and my God. Isaiah 57, 10 says, Thou art
worthy in the greatness of Thy way, yet saidst Thou not, There
is no hope. Thou hast found the life of Thine
hand, therefore Thou wast not grieved. There is no hope in
this. See? No hope. No hope for the natural man.
No hope for that. No hope in me. No hope in you. If there is any true hope, it
is found in the Lord Jesus Christ. Hope thou in the Lord. Thou hast
found the life of thy hand. If life is to be found by a dead
sinner, it must be by the grace of God and only in Him who is
life. Christ, see? Matthew 19, verse
7, Christ said, Why callest thou me good? There is none good.
But one, and that is God, for thou wilt enter into life. Keep
His commandments. Keep the commandments. That rich
young ruler called Him good. He knew that rich young ruler
didn't know what he was talking about. He is good because of
who He is. He's God, ain't He? He's God
in human flesh. He is good. But that rich young
ruler didn't know that, did he? Why do you call me good? Not with the right attitude and
the right heart. You don't know me. You don't know me. In Ephesians 2.9 it says, Not
by works of righteous. Not of works, lest any man should
boast. If man counts anything in himself
in his service to God, it's of works. See that? Yeah, I went
to church today. I heard a good lesson. I heard
the gospel. Why did I do that? Oh, because
I wanted to and because I, you know, got it riled up and I wanted
to go to church. No. If it's when in the right
attitude and the right mind, it's because God brought you
here. And God spoke to you by His ministering angels through
His Word. See what I'm saying? Romans 9.11 says, For the children
being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the
purpose of God according to election might stand not of works, but
of him that calleth. Jacob and Esau. They were not
yet born. Was Esau any better than Jacob? Or Jacob any better than Esau
by nature? No. It was only by the grace
of God. That's all it is. By the grace
of God. No good or evil? According to
the purpose of God that election might stand. God elected a people
in Christ because of those people? What He saw and knew? No, because
of Himself. I can't understand that, can
you? But He did it because of His own self. There is none righteous. No, not one. There is none that
understand that. But God was rich in mercy to Usward. Why
was He rich in mercy to me? Because it pleased Him? I don't
know. God would have been just if He condemned me to hell. I'm
telling you the truth. That's why it's all to His praise
and glory. When He shows grace to a hell-deserving
creature, sinner, then He's going to receive the glory for it,
ain't He? Not men. Not men. They see themselves.
They don't look to themselves. And they see God. They see Christ
in the light of God. We are accepted in Him. How does
God accept us in Him? In His own righteousness. In
His own self. What did He do for God to receive
me in and through and by Him? He stood as a Lamb slain before
the foundation of the world. He come forth in time as my representative
and substitute. He suffered the penalty of God's
wrath against me at God's appointed time and He satisfied the wrath
of God. And there is no more wrath. So when we speak to men and women,
we speak to men and women who know themselves to be sinners.
and to be only justified in the blood and righteousness of the
Lord Jesus Christ alone. See that? We know who we are by nature.
We know that. We don't look to ourselves. We
don't rest in ourselves. We, by God's grace, only by God's
grace and God's power, rest in the Lord Jesus Christ. We have
no good deeds to boast about. Even our righteousness, as I
said, is filthy rags. Our life is vile in our heart
by nature. Our life is vile. Even as I read
to you, when we try to do good, evil is always there. That's
us. That evil is by nature. But in
Christ Jesus, in Christ Jesus, beloved of God, accepted of the
Father, can you imagine that? that warfare, that spirit within
us, Christ in us, the hope of glory, the only hope, our rest,
our trust. But by nature we are so abominably
evil, we can't stand ourselves. Hardly can we. That's who we
are. We are guilty by nature before
a thrice holy God, aren't we? But in Christ we are accepted
If we had what we deserve, it would be eternal condemnation.
You see that? But Christ took our just dessert. He took our just dessert and
He is our reward. That's right. We look, rest,
trust, honor, worship God in Christ. He is our only hope. My only hope, my only plea, is
that when He died, He died for me. That's my only hope. I have
nothing here to hope in. You see what I'm saying? We cannot,
cannot, knowing who we are, hope in ourselves. We cannot rest
in ourselves, knowing who we are in the light of God. We have
tried religion, haven't we? We've all tried religion. We
tried to serve God in a self-righteous attitude to be as good as we
could be and do as much as we could do for God in that regard,
that God might receive us, but we had no representative, no
substitute, see? We're only seeing. That's all
we are when we do that. That's all we are. We don't have
the light of God in us. We don't know who we are when
we're doing that, do we? When we try to justify ourselves
before God by our own goodness, we don't know who we really are.
We're sinners inside out, through and through, from top to bottom.
We've tried religion. We've tried reformation. We've
tried to reform ourselves before God. But these things cannot
atone for sin. The blood of Jesus Christ, His
Son, cleanses us from all unrighteousness. There's no cleansing apart from
Christ. These things can't silence our
guilty consciences when we try to justify ourselves and to represent
ourselves before God. You know, so-called preachers
tell you, straighten up and live a good life and join a church
and start serving God. How is a sinner going to serve
God that don't even know who He is? Can you tell me that? Don't even know who He is. He's
nothing but sin. And everything He does to try to commend Himself
only condemns Him before God. Every good deed is evil. You
see what I'm saying? Because of the attitude of who
He is. It's His heart. Why did He do
it? What did He do? What is He going
to receive from it? See that? Why do you worship God? Because
God has shown you who He is. You worship Him for who He is
by the Spirit of God, which He gives you. You can't say, well,
I worship God, but I do it in a way that I'm pleased with.
If I want to go to church, I get out and go to church and I do
this and I do certain things to honor God and I worship Him
this way. No, you don't. The only way we can worship God
is in and through and by the Lord Jesus Christ with the heart
that He gives. And when He gives it, you won't
trust in anything else. You won't rest in anything else.
You'll look to Christ as your all. We cannot do anything before
God to get God to receive us. See, if we're doing it in that
attitude, we're doing it in the wrong attitude to start with.
And we can't be received if we don't have the Spirit in us if
we're doing it in that attitude. We're doing it in the flesh. But God has to work in you both
to will and to do of His good pleasure. See that? It's God
that worketh in you. All honor and glory and everything
goes to God who is all. We may join the church and we
may get real religious and we may do all these things, but
yet, if we have any conscience at all of who we really are,
our conscience will haunt us in what we are trying to do.
We might not see ourselves too clearly, but when we was trying
to justify ourselves by our religious duties, I always had a problem. There's something wrong. Something
wrong. I can't serve God. Every time
I start to do something right, there's something inside of me
that attracts my attention, points me to things that's awful. Well,
that's who I am. I didn't know it, you see. That's
who I am. I wasn't serving God. I didn't know God. I didn't even
know who I was to any depth at all. But by the grace of God,
Paul said, I am what I am. By the grace of God. Yeah, I
was religious. I joined a church and so on and
so forth. I started working with both hands
and feet trying to appease God. But there was something wrong.
I had no peace. No rest. No true trust. No faith. I was looking to myself. In my righteousness, even the
good deeds that I'd done, this old evil heart polluted everything
I'd done. It was evil. It was evil. I had
no peace with God. Real sinners are the only kind
of people that there's any real hope for. Yes, blessed be to God, there
is hope for sinners, ain't there? For sinners. Only for sinners,
though. There's no hope as long as a man is self-righteous or
a woman. There's no hope whatsoever. See what I'm saying? If you're going to try to appear
before God in your own goodness, there's no hope. There's no hope
for me or you, either one, in that regard. The only hope there
is for is sinners. who are not worthy of God's grace,
who are worthy of the eternal wrath of God, worthy of condemnation,
hope, that they hope by the grace of God for reasons not only to
God, in the Lord Jesus Christ. He has given them a heart. He
revealed in His light who they were. They see Christ as their
all. They rejoice in Him. They're
not forced to praise and honor and glorify and to live toward and for. That's
their desire. You see what I'm saying? That's
their desire because they have life in Christ. They have love
for Christ. They look to Christ. He became
us, He who is holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners.
He had no sin of His own. He came to this earth to be the
friend of sinners. He came to be the sinner's substitute
to represent them in His life. And in His death, suffer their
penalty. As the sinner's substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ lived in
this world. He accomplished their perfect
righteousness before God by His perfect obedience on their behalf
by His life. See that? And He put away their
sin and made them righteous in Himself when He suffered the
penalty of the just and holy God against them. The penalty that's equivalent
to their eternity, never-ending. He suffered that. And we're made righteous in Him.
And this is the only righteousness that God will accept. He willingly
laid down His life in the room instead, in the place of the
sinner at Calvary, didn't He? He willingly. As the substitute
for those who are guilty, He represents. Substituted. Took
their place. Suffered their penalty. He took
their sins upon Himself. See that? He made Him to be sin. God did. Who knew no sin that
we might be made the righteousness of God because we believe in
Him. No, in Him. In Him. In His death He paid the penalty
that was just and due to us through eternity. See that? All who believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ. shall have everlasting life.
He that hath the Son hath life. He that hath not the Son hath
not life, but the wrath of God abideth on him. See that? He
that believeth on the Son of God hath everlasting life. He
that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of
God abideth on him. So if we are guilty sinners,
if we as guilty sinners believe on the Lord Jesus Christ as our
only Savior, He alone is my Savior. He saved me. I didn't have anything
to do with it. He did it. I rest in Him, but
I couldn't even rest except it be given to me to rest. I'd be
trying to, with both hands and feet, serve God. Do something
for God. To get God to receive me. But in Christ Jesus, I have peace. I can't explain it. Peace. So
peaceful that I know there's nothing between me and God to
condemn me. Ain't that peace? That's the
only peace. Of and in myself I am condemned
already, but in Christ Jesus I am accepted. I will be made
like Him. There is nothing between me and
God to condemn me. There is no condemnation to them
which are in Christ. He is our Savior. He put away
sin. He saved us. See that? If He
is your Savior, He saved you. It is not something for you to
do before God. To get God to receive you? No. You do what you are because you
have faith in and you love Christ, but not to be justified because
you love Christ. Your faith is in Christ. Not
to be justified. We are justified in the Beloved. See that? We have peace with
God through our Lord Jesus Christ. and only through our Lord Jesus
Christ. He is our righteousness before God. He is our wisdom,
our righteousness, our sanctification, our redemption. Our sin has been
put away once and for all. Our sin has been pardoned before
God. We are sinners by nature, aren't we? Still yet, in this
flesh, we are worn against it right now. But we have been pardoned. We
shall be given a new body to go with our spirit. I can't explain
that. Be like Him and be able to honor
Him to the point that there will be nothing, nothing that is not
honorable to Him. Can you imagine that? Everything
we do to try to honor God, He takes it and presents it to God. But then we can honor Him perfectly. He is our righteousness. We are
pardoned in Him. made righteous in Him, and we
shall be made like unto Him in God's time and for God's own
glory.