Well, I appreciate the opportunity
to come and preach tonight. I hope this will be a blessing
to us all. I desperately need this message.
And I know it's it's something we've all heard before, but we're
just such forgetful people. We need to hear this again and
again. So I'm going to take my text from Hebrews, since we've
been in Hebrews over at our church. I could take it from a dozen
different places, but this is where I'll take it from. So turn
over to Hebrews chapter 10, verse 35, and I'll read through the
first verse of chapter 11. This may be in the New King James
Version. I can't remember. I'll try to
fix things, but I'm not sure if I fix this. It says in verse
35, Therefore, do not cast away your confidence, which has a
great reward. For you have need of endurance,
so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive
the promise. For yet a little while, and he
who is coming will come and will not tarry. Now the just shall
live by faith. But if anyone draws back, my
soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not those who draw
back to perdition, but those who believe to the saving of
the soul. Now, faith is the substance of
things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. So tonight
I want to preach on this statement that just shall live by faith.
And as I said, I can draw. I could take this message from
multiple different places as this is said. Many times over,
and honestly, we could make a case for another dozen or two dozen
places where it says essentially the same. This is the call for
the Christian. And we've got to look at these
terms like the just and the righteous and understand what they mean.
Otherwise, you get very confused. You ever talk to anybody who
acted as though, for example, Noah found grace in the eyes
of the Lord because he was a righteous man. You ever heard that? That
is not why Noah found grace in the eyes of God. Noah was in
Genesis 6, 5, along with the rest of us, that we're all wicked
in the heart, but he found grace because of God's grace that he
gave to him. A few chapters later, Noah's
dead drunk, isn't he? So it's definitely not of us,
but we also see this As we deal with people like Mary, as we
come into this season where we celebrate Christmas or the Day
of Emmanuel, whatever term you like to use, that Mary is called
righteous, Joseph is called righteous. We've got to be careful with
these terms, the just and the righteous, or we're going to
get our brains off into a wrong place. And this happens with
even those who thoroughly know the gospel. And your experience
has testified this to you. So we need to understand this
basic fact. Christian or not, we all are
still, if you're alive on this earth, dealing with depravity. Whether you're in Christ or not,
you are still dealing with depravity. The lost man has no hope of ever
recovering from this, from his going astray that is within himself. He's got no hope whatsoever. Yet they think very much that
they're righteous before God often. Having grown up in dad
works religion and Catholicism, I know this. And it's so hard
for them to see this. Matter of fact, impossible for
them to see this. But they think they're righteous
before God, many of them. And others pretend He doesn't
exist. But this is all because they are born, and you know this,
enemies of God by nature. And man is born with a dead spirit
to God. They have nothing to do with
God spiritually, even though He gives them breath. and gives
them life. We talk about rights all the
time. We're all up in arms about our rights. But when we consider
what our rights are, you don't have a right to breath. You don't
have a right to that next breath. So what are you going to do after
God takes away that that breath from you? You've got no rights
before him. Man is duty bound to come to
him. But if you turn over to Isaiah 64, I just want to read
a couple of a verse and a part a portion of one. This is one
of my favorite verses because it puts me right back in my place.
This is Isaiah speaking, and I heard a man say that this isn't
a Christian one time, and I stopped listening to that man. Nothing
was going to be right from there. He says, but we, in verse six,
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 his name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee.
This is the truth of all of us. All of us, there's nothing in
you that should ever, as a Christian, a mature Christian, you should
never, ever look at your good deeds. Yet we get caught doing
it far too often. And this is the shame of us.
We should never do this, but it's something that we have to
deal with. But for natural man, the natural man, according to
1 Corinthians 2, does not receive the things of the Spirit of God,
for they are foolishness to him. nor can he know them because
they are spiritually discerned." So for the natural man, the lost
man, there's no hope within himself, none whatsoever, to ever overcome
this thing unrighteousness, and especially with faith, as that
term is so perverted in our day. Any kind of faith saves, some
people will say. Well, that's ridiculous. That's
absolutely nonsense. If that were true, then our Christ
was crucified in vain. It was nothing. But we've got
to deal with us. The Christian, though we are
still dealing with depravity, Unlike the lost man, we are not
100% depraved. We are not totally depraved.
We have been born new. So this is the good news for
us. The good news for us is that
God at one point came and removed a heart of stone, gave us a heart
of flesh. These are just illustrative terms. They are meant to show
us that it was God's work that changed a central driving mechanism. There's a central driving mechanism
you were born in, which was get away from God. Honor yourself. Get away from God. He came in
and changed that to run to God. There is nothing good in you,
nothing whatsoever good in you. Run to God. And this has to happen. We call it regeneration. This
has to happen or no man will see the kingdom of heaven. It's
got to be the Spirit's work. And then at that point, They
go, the Lord will use the spirit to then begin to teach the law
of Moses to a person that reflecting mirror that shows the absolute
corruption down to the very core, the inner parts of every atom
is nothing but corrupt. And that's how the Lord does
it. He brings the law as a schoolmaster. Now, according to the text I
just read in first Corinthians, that has to take place. after
regeneration because the natural man will never receive the teaching
of the law. We got to understand that and
hold on to that, but not make it our main focus. And this is
why it's important to understand this. If the Christian does not
understand this truth about himself, he is going to struggle and really
stagger at the spiritual warfare. Such a Christian is unequipped
in the battle, the ongoing and ever-present hatred of God in
this world, and their own remaining flesh, which is soaked up the
world, constantly soaking up the world. We ought not to lie
to ourselves. We're not made to be in this
world so we can go hide from the world, but to tell the world
about the triumph we have in Christ Jesus. But see, the problem
is the remaining corrupt nature that we have, this carnality
which goes amongst the world to tell them about Christ, and
pretty soon, if we're not careful, it starts to soak in. And this
is just true about us. We've got to watch it. That's
why we've got to Withdrawal under the word, under meditation, and
like that, I use this illustration often, like that sponge you use
to clean your dishes with, you do not leave it unclean when
you're done. You rinse it out so that it's
ready for the next time you use it. That's what we are to do.
Every time we go into the world and all the carnality of the
world, we need to use these things. But see, the Christian who tries
to fight, And this happens to us all the time. The Christian
that tries to use their fleshly religious activity or otherwise
to fight the inner enemy and to fight against the world is
much like if there was a call of war like in the old days and
everybody came out of their home. All the men came out of their
home with their knives and guns and swords. And they came running
out with a pot on their head and a Nerf gun and a Nerf sword. They would just laugh at them.
You're not ready for war. But that's what a Christian's
like who tries to battle with their own religious activity.
It's foolishness. We see people, and this is an
example of this kind of battle, a foolish battle where you have
no clue. of how to battle. You bring in
a stick to a gunfight. This is it. If anybody says things
like this, examine yourself against the Mosaic Law for comfort and
assurance. Go see if you measure up to the
Mosaic Law. Isn't that true? Don't we know
people who tell you to go to the Mosaic Law as a reflection
to see how you're doing? There are many religions who
do this. Many who call themselves Christian who do this. And I'm
sad to say there's Christians who do this by mistake. They're
just not well equipped. They're not understanding. Or
putting money in the box in the back or putting in the basket.
to rather try to please God rather than doing it out of a grateful
heart. But lots of people do this. Most
of these giant mega-churches take advantage of that fact that
they can get people to give money in order for them to be sustained
while they please them with a lost, foolish, ridiculous religious
message that speaks nothing of Christ. Removing yourself. Here's another one that drove
me nuts when I used to be in these churches that I have great
disdain for today, removing yourself from the Lord, suffer because
of sin instead of confessing it to the Lord and believing
his promise as the songs were just saying the simple songs.
Believing the promise that he is just and faithful to forgive. I have been in churches where
they have told you not to partake in the Lord's Supper. If you
have such and such sin. Well, I don't think that preacher
should have partaken because he had the sin of arrogance.
He thought too highly of himself, but this is what's out there.
There are Christians and I know it who go to these churches because
they have the 1689 or the they call themselves reformed. But
they're not hearing Christ. And I'm not picking on all reformed
people. I just don't do that. I think
there's a lot of brethren out there who just don't understand
these things. And they're not hearing the simple
message. So I've got a question. How are
we called to battle, to live that is, as Christians in this
broken, God-hating world? Well, the answer is this. The
just shall live by faith. So simple, and yet we mess it
up. We make quite a bit of damage
of this little, simple, but powerful phrase that really summarizes
the Christian life in a nutshell in these few short words. But
let's look at this first part. What is it to be called the just?
Here's what it says. in our Strong's definition, our
dictionary. This is to be judicially approved
by God, called correct by God, righteous by God, innocent in
the eyes of God. That's what it is to be the just.
You are justified before God. OK, now that's what it is to
be called that. Who are they? These are those
who have God has looked upon, God has declared them to be innocent
before His eyes, innocent before the courts of God, as I said
already, justified in the courts of heaven. But this word innocent
has to be taken as what it means. Do you notice in our court systems,
we don't normally hear, well, they've come back with an innocent
verdict. They don't say that. They say
not guilty. Innocent means this. There's
not a shred of evidence that you've ever done anything wrong.
That's what God does for us. Not guilty would mean the evidence
didn't match up to the standard. There was evidence, but it didn't
get high enough to find a guilty verdict. That's not what God
does for us. He has declared you innocent,
pure, perfect, righteous, holy before him. The God who knows
everything has declared this. That's what it is to be just.
The just are those who God has declared to be pure and perfect. So now, why? Here's a good question. Why? Well, it's not you. It wasn't because of the upbringing. Wasn't because of your Bible
reading. Wasn't because you attended to a Bible study and really thought
yourself through it really, really hard and got to the point where
you thought, well, I might need that Jesus. I might just go get
that Jesus because a lot of people are happy. I remember being down
in Louisville. Oh, the Lord put us, put me and
all my foolishness, but He used it greatly. I can look back on
it and see how foolish religion really is. We went to this Chinese
student for the Louisville University Bible study. And there was this
woman who was getting ready to go back to China. And there were
like five or six pastors of the church that I attended and me
sitting at this table. And she says, well, I'm thinking
about being a Christian. They said, oh, that's great.
That's great. You should really consider it. And then she said,
but I'm also thinking about being a Muslim. Well, they went around
telling her all the reasons she should come to Christ. And then
it got around to me. And I said flat out to her, you're
going to go to hell if you don't come to Christ. And they shot
a look at me like I wounded this poor little girl. She's getting
ready to go back to China and go to hell with her Muslim religion. It's a soul. And this is the
joke of religion and all those darn schools that people run
off to learn about Jesus. Did you ever notice the place
you bury dead people and the place they go to school are real
similar in name? That's not, we don't deal with
a God of coincidences. We ought to take a serious look
at that fact. What do we produce in this country?
A bunch of false teachers speaking dead works religion. Instead
of this, the just shall live by faith. Here's the purpose. Romans 9 11, the purpose of God,
according to elect that the purpose of God, according to election,
might stand not of works, but of him who calls. That's why. That's why the just shall live
by faith. It had nothing to do with you to begin with, but with
the purposes of electing grace that the almighty God through
the life, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ saved
his people and called them the just. It's salvation that is
outside of us, granted to us simply by grace. It's grace.
It's of no effort of any purpose or any person on the face of
the earth. It is his purpose to grant saving grace. It is
his purpose to justify the ungodly by granting them the gifts of
complete and total forgiveness of sins through the blood of
his son. And also this important fact,
a righteous record before God. Christ's light was your life. Every good deed he did takes
that verse in Isaiah 64 verse 6 and says, yes, you have righteousness
now. It's the righteousness of Christ.
That's what God sees. You have done really good work
because it's all been given to you as the gift. You're not just
forgiven, you are absolutely good in His eyes. Everything
Christ did has been imputed to you. That's amazing grace. How could such ungodly people
ever look at this and then turn to their own self-righteous ways?
It happens. It happens all the time. This
is what our Lord said in Ephesians 1, if you want to turn and read
with me. Again, I can't remember where I copied this from, but
this could be the King James. It could be the new King James,
but don't worry too much about that. When did God work this
purpose? Ephesians 1 verse 3 says, Blessed
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed
us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Just as He chose us in Him before
the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without
blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as
sons by Jesus Christ to Himself according to the good pleasure
of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which
He made us accepted in the Beloved." Every time I read that, I find
something I've never preached on. That verse 6 says, "...to
the praise of the glory of His grace." That's where our praise
should go. Our praise should go to the glory
of His grace. It should never go to our works,
to the good deeds we've done, to our Bible reading. You know
we've turned that into an idol, haven't we? Got so many Bibles
out there, so many wicked versions out there, and people are reading
through them, reading through them in a year, and then they
won a trophy. Man, I'll tell you what, if my
little kid came to me, the littlest one back there, and wanted a
star for every time he went out and worked in the yard, I'm going
to give him a star. It's going to make him feel good.
Me, trying to make my little boy happy. God's not doing that. He's not giving you special notice
because you read through the Bible. What did you learn? I
like to tell people to slow down. Read. Take your time. I've stormed through this, Ephesians
1, too many times. To the praise and the glory of
His grace. It is His purpose as well. brothers and sisters, to grant
another gift to his elect people. And this is the second gift. Faith. Not only declaring you
just, remember what we just read, took place even before the foundation
of the world. I don't care if you don't like
that. That's what it says. These things were done even before
the world ever was made that Jesus Christ was called the Lamb's
Flame before the foundation of the world. Hallelujah. Just read
it and accept what it says. But when God comes to you individually
and deals with you individually, He leaves you with this gift. Faith. Faith. The second chapter
of Ephesians says this, for by grace you have been saved through
faith and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of
works, lest any man should boast. He purposes to give every elect
person this gift of faith. You will come to Christ. I've
heard men say that you don't have to believe in order to be
part of the elect. I've heard men say this. I've
talked to people who said it. And at the end of my short conversation,
I had to conclude that this man was a false teacher. Nowhere
in Scripture does it say that God doesn't call. Now, I know
there's some exceptions to it of little children and that sort
of thing. But I'm talking about this. You've got to come to faith.
But if you're part of this elect, you will believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ. Absolutely. But that brings me
to the second part of our statement tonight, that the just shall
live by faith. What is faith? Well, we've got
a wonderful definition in the first verse of chapter 11 of
Hebrews. Is the substance of things hoped
for the evidence of things not seen. So let's break this down.
This word substance is a monumental word. It's a giant word. It's
a huge word. You can study this word for a
long time. It is a thought pondering, thought
provoking word. When you look this up in the
Strong's Dictionary or whatever, The meaning, this definition
just is so wonderful. It is a legal standing based
upon a guaranteed and particular agreement. It is entitling someone
to what is guaranteed under that agreement. And if you just take
the definition and put it right in there and say now faith is
the legal standing based upon a guaranteed and particular agreement,
That opens up that word substance, doesn't it? It's a huge word. It's got to deal with an agreement,
an oath, a covenant of which you are basically a beneficiary
of. That covenant between God and
God. Between God the Father, God the
Son, involving the Holy Spirit. And that covenant could never,
ever be broken. Never, or our God is not a God.
He's not a God who will take back this word. He's not a God
who will rescind this covenant. This covenant was based solely
upon the work of Christ Jesus being benefited to us. His blood
and His righteousness. This is the promise. You know, man's promises are
worthless. We know this from history. Man's
promises are worthless. They won't get you anywhere eternally. This is the promise, and that's
the substance that you are to hope for. We have a legitimate
claim and a legal standing entitling us to the guaranteed promise. And this is a much, much better
promise than anyone could ever give to any person at any time. This is, again, the promise. But we got the second word in
that definition. It says now faith is the substance
of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. There's this
word evidence. Now, I'm going to separate that
for a moment because we need to do this. We need to be able
to separate this because not one of you came to Christ innocent. Not one of you came to Christ
as a good little boy or girl. Good people go to hell, don't
they? God only saves scoundrels, rotten
sinners. He does not save anybody who's
righteous. We need to deal with evidence.
This word evidence means the same thing you would use in a
court today. It's facts that are gathered.
In this particular sense, it's the evidence that testifies to
the soul of man, which brings me back to my opening point.
There's still remaining depravity. You started out this life in
depravity. You sinned against God. He gave
you over to the sin for a time being and brought you back by
His grace. Isn't that true? Because if that's
not your testimony, you're not in Christ. He saves sinners and
that's it. That's it. It's the same evidence. I want you to listen to this.
It's the same evidence that caused Paul in Romans 7 to declare,
Oh, wretched man that I am. It's the same evidence that Brother
Job, and I love this, Job, the most, maybe the most misunderstood
book in the Bible, Job, the perfect man in verse one. But what's
he say about himself in the 40th chapter? I believe it is. He
says of himself, 42nd, I am vile. But in the 40th chapter, he said
this, I believe, unless I've mixed my notes up here, that
I abhor myself. He says he repents in dust and
ashes. I had to look that word abhor
up as it's used. It means this, to reject. Job
says, I reject myself. That's a good thing for you to
do. What about you? I reject myself. Christ is my only hope. And I know that by just looking
at myself. If I try to examine myself, I
have to agree with Brother Paul. Oh, wretched man that I am. The same evidence was used in
Revelation 3 when Jesus dealt with Christians, Christians in
that chapter in which he told them Christians, remember, who
were lukewarm. Why? Because they were more than
likely, if it's been the same as my experience, looking at
themselves and not finding too much wrong. You know, lukewarm. I worked
with homeless people many times over my past religious life and
then as I came into Christ, I have nothing wrong with taking care
of people on the streets. I think it's nothing good to
do. But they warned them every winter that if they ever stayed
outside, because a lot of them rejected the authority of those
places they can go into. They just didn't want to mess
with all the rules. They said, if you stay outside
and it's brutally cold, if you ever get very warm, You get inside
because you are about to die. Christ is addressing people who
are about to die. Now, I know He's sovereign over
everything that happens. I know He knows His people. I
know none will get out of His hand, but yet He talked this
way. And why? Because of this, this fact. You're
wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked without Christ. That's our reality. Without Christ. And thanks be to God, he brought
us through that schoolmaster. It's the same evidence, if you
think about this. that the Holy Spirit says that
you, if you're in knowledge of this, you are spiritual. In Galatians
6, he says, Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass,
you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness,
considering yourself lest you are also tempted, bear one another's
burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks
himself to be something when he is nothing, He deceives himself. That's what it is to be spiritual. Our definition, though, deals
with this word unseen. We're not called to be those
who continually run and look at our wretchedness, because
if we stay there, you will drive yourself to misery. They say
A.W. Pink would have nothing to do
with anybody late in his life. Whether that was true or not,
I read that, that he separated himself from people. He was just,
and I don't know why, but that's painful to hear. We're not called
to do that. Only a person who sees himself
as better as somebody else would separate themselves from brothers
and sisters in Christ. These facts, brothers and sisters,
These facts about our condition, the fact that we are wretches,
that we are vile, that we are to reject ourselves, these are
recalibrating tools. You know what they do with recalibrating?
Like if a scale is way off, you have to recalibrate it to get
back in line. You're out of line sometimes. I'm out of line sometimes. We
need to look at the reality of these seen facts, this seen evidence
that you know very well about yourself in order to recalibrate
yourself back to the truth. It's a way of priming the pump.
Anybody ever live with a well? You got a well, don't you? Man,
I'll tell you, we had a well that you had to prime about every
two months. And that thing would run and
run and run and run. You had to go down, put a little
water in it till it would pick up from the well. And I'll tell
you, that's what we've got to do. We've got to keep at some
point when you start to stray, you run back to these evidences
and reject yourself. You run back to the evidence
that apart from Christ, you are a naked, miserable, hell-deserving
sinner. But just get the pump primed. And get away from that. Because
that will make you miserable and you're not called to live
by that. You're called to live by the unseen evidence. The just
shall live by faith. You need to live by the unseen
evidence. His work in the flesh was and
is righteous before God, and he has given this work to us
so that we are declared righteous in the eyes of God. Were you
there when he was alive? Unseen. This is unseen. By faith you believe this. His
death on the cross has taken our sins and caused them to be
remembered no more by the God who sees everything. As far as
the East is from the West, he sees these and remembers them
no more. You have to receive that by faith.
You don't see it by faith. His resurrection was pronounced
to the world as victory over death. He is this assurance is
to be given to everyone who believes that the Lord is coming again
and giving us life everlasting. And this has to be believed.
You did not see it, but you believe it, that he rose from the grave
and that he is coming back. You believe by faith alone that
He is right now interceding on your behalf, even in this moment
when some of us in here might be struggling. Maybe you did
something today you ought not to do. Well, I'd say that's all
of us. Maybe you played with it too
long. Maybe you played in your mind
with it and it came out your hands, your mouth, your feet. Happens to me. My wife, I could
have her stand up and give a testimony. They tell me to sit down. She's
too kind to me though. He's interceding on our behalf.
You've got to believe that. He is the one we are to call
upon in our need of forgiveness and strength. He is your advocate. He indeed right now is sitting
at the right hand of the Father. You don't see it. You believe
it. He's reigning over you right now by faith. It's faith that
He has given to you. It is a tremendous gift. Do you
believe that? Isn't that a wonderful gift that
He's given to these fallen creatures still on this miserable earth
who are so susceptible to their inner sins and giving over to
them, yet he says, come to me, confess your sins, because I
am just to forgive you and faithful to forgive you. All these facts
of evidence are not seen, yet you have them all by faith. It's his continual work of preserving
those who are persevering by faith alone. You're called to
persevere, but he's doing the work. He's the root doing the
work. But you are cold to persevere. And you're doing it right now.
You've got your Bible open. You're in church. You're listening
to the Gospel that rips you to shreds. That puts you down in
the dust. Because you are nothing apart
from Him. And it's elevating Christ as
our only hope. We cannot continue in this life
with remaining to depravity that can so easily overtake us without
this fact, the just shall live by faith. But this lesson is
so old. It's the very same lesson. It's
not a New Testament lesson. It's the same lesson the Lord
said in Isaiah 45, one of my favorite verses, Charles Spurgeon
said it. This one cut him in two, said,
look to me. all the ends of the earth and
be saved, for I am God and there is no other." He told people
to look to Him. The invisible God said, look
to Me. How do you do that? Faith. Faith. It takes the eyes of faith, not
the eyes of sight. And man is so overwhelmed with
what they have to see, they'll never see Him apart from grace.
We are called to live by faith and faith alone in our Lord Jesus
Christ. Let me finish with this. 2 Corinthians
4 if you want to turn there. There's so many verses. So many
things that happen in our daily life that should remind us life
is so short. How many days ago were we looking
at all those beautiful fall colors and saying, How beautiful. It's
my favorite time of the year. How beautiful. Well, the guy
came by and sucked them all up out of the street today. They're beautiful one day and
a nuisance for the next. Get them out of the yard. Such
is life. Second Corinthians four, verse
16 says, therefore, We do not lose heart, even though our outward
man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day
for our light affliction, which is but for a moment is working
for us a far more exceeding and external weight of glory. While
we do not look at the things which are seen, but all the things
which are not seen. For the things which are seen
are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal. Amen. This is our call. Look
to Christ, who is the author and finisher of our faith. Look
to him. And that's the simplicity of
our Christian message, which is impossible for the world to
get apart from God's grace. Amen. Well, let's go ahead and
pray and we'll be dismissed. Father in heaven, we thank you
for your Wonderful, glorious work, Lord. You are so mighty. You're so gracious and kind and
tender to us, Lord. Such sinners as we are, Lord,
hell deserving sinners. So capable of corruption, Lord. But we come to you and plead
our case. And once again, every day you
forgive us. You give us confidence and assurance
that we can come boldly to you, Lord, knowing this, that Christ
is our only hope. And the life we live now, we
live by this, the faith of the Son of God who loved us and died
for us. Please help us in this battle
against this temporary time, Lord, when life is going to end
soon. And we who believe will go on
into eternal glory, Lord. We praise you tonight and ask
you to help us. In Christ's name, amen. You're welcome. God bless.