I have two places that I want
you to turn to. I want you to turn to the book
of Romans, and I want you to hold that book maybe somewhere
around the third chapter. The book of Romans, I want you
to hold that then and turn to Job chapter 25. Romans chapter 3 and then Job
chapter 25. I have a subject this morning. And it's the subject that the
Book of Romans deals very extensively with. It's the subject of justification. Justification. And I want to
title my message, I have a question to title my message this morning.
It's probably the most serious question that anyone could ever
ask himself or anyone else. How can man be just with God? How can man be justified with
God? And I ask that question because
it's a question that this man here asks himself and others. His name is Bildad in Job 25. He's a friend of Job. And look
how he says it. Verse 1. Vildad answered the
Shumite, he answered and said, Dominion and fear are with him,
with God, with the Lord. He makes peace in his high places. Is there any number of his armies? And upon whom doth his light
arise? How then can man be justified
with God? Or how can he be clean that is
born of a woman? Behold, even to the moon, and
it shines not. Yea, the stars are not pure in
his sight. How much less man that is a worm,
and the son of man that is a worm. How can man be justified with
God? Now, if you are here this morning,
And I know you are here with me. And you've got everybody
here, I trust, has a degree of character about you. And anybody
with any character wants to be justified in the society in which
they live. If you pass your neighbor's house
and he's standing out on the front porch and when you Pass
your house and you wave at him and he's standing there like
this. And you know that he knows that
you've lied to him. That you've brought false accusations
against him. That you've done him wrong. And
you know that before him, you're guilty. Don't that bother you? Wouldn't that bother you? If you had to go to court, if
you had been accused of a crime and you had to go to court, you're
going to get you a lawyer if you have to spend considerable
amount of money to argue your case, to try to bring off your
name from being smeared in the paper and saying Bruce Crabtree
was found guilty. And there it is splattering.
How are you going to feel about that? If you have any character,
that's going to bother you, isn't it? If you get a speeding ticket,
if you're running 75 in a 60 mile speeding zone and they catch
you, you know what you're going to do? You're going to go pay
that ticket. Because you know that's what the law requires. And you don't want to stand before
the law of this land and not be justified. You want to be
clear, don't you? Even before man, before our neighbors,
before society, we want to be justified. But we're not talking
this morning about being justified before man. As important as that
is to us, but the question here that Bill had asked was this,
how can How can a man be justified with God? And he asked this question because
he was concerned about two things. There were two things that he
was thinking about that brought this question. One was, he tells
us here, the nature, the character. The purity of God brought this
question. Isn't that what he says here
in chapter 25, in verse 4? How can man be just with God,
and how can he be clean that's born of a woman? He said, "...even
to the moon, and it shineth not. Yea, the stars are not pure in
his sight." He said, when I consider who God is, when I consider His
purity, and what is it that the Bible is so plain about every
place, and what is it that the honest conscience can never begin
to deny? It's this, the holiness of God. Holy, holy, Holy is the Lord
our Host. That's His nature. That's His
character. He's so different than you and
I are. The Bible says He is of two pure
eyes than to behold evil. He cannot look upon sin. He can never look upon sin to
be pleased with it, to justify it, to let it slip, to let it
go by. When He saw it in His angels,
what did He do? Cast them down, didn't He? When
He found it in our first parents, what did He do? He says, I can't
look on it. He brought judgment upon it and
drove them from the garden. Why? Because He's holy, holy,
holy. This man said, God is so pure. He is so glorious in His light. He is so glorious in His holiness
that if He revealed Himself, if He opened back heaven, the
moon would be darkened in the light of His glorious holiness. See what brought this question?
How can man be justified with God. But then he thinks of man. And this brought the question
also in verse 6. Look at his opinion of man. How
much less man, if the stars are not pure in his sight, how much
less man that is a worm, and the Son of Man that is a worm.
And your center reference may have what mine does. A maggot. If the stars aren't
pure, and they're high, and they're glistening of beauty in our eyes,
if they're not pure in His sight, how much less man that is a contemptible,
low, corruptible maggot. Is there any way that you and
I could identify with a maggot? If you've ever pulled back, you've
smelt something, and you know it must be some kind of rotten
flesh, and you pull back the cover on something, and there
it is, that rotten piece of flesh, and it's full of maggots. Is
there any way that you and I could take those things to ourself,
and associate with them and be identified with them at all.
They're sickening things, aren't they? And when Bildad considered
what man is in his very nature, that he's so contemptible, that
he's something that you would crush or wash away with bleach
water. And he said, that's like man.
A maggot is like a man. Man is contemptible. What does
he feed on? What does his heart feed on?
But the corruption of sin. And he considered this, and he
says, in the light of God in His glorious purity, in the light
of man in his contemptible, natural, corrupt state, how is it possible
for man to be justified with God. Isn't that a question? Isn't
it a mysterious question? Isn't it a question that you
and I should seek to answer from the Scriptures? Martin Luther,
the great theologian of the 1500s, he said it's this truth that
the church either stands or falls by. The answer to this question,
as the church understands it and believes it and holds to
it, she either is wrong in the answer to this question, and
she falls in as useless, or she is right in this answer, and
therefore she stands. And she's not only a glory to
God, but a help to this earth. What's the answer to this question? How can man, who is likened to
a magnet, be justified with God, who is high and holy? That's
the question. In verse 4 here, he gives us
something of a definition of what he's talking about when
he says justified with God. Look how he says it again. In
verse 4, he says, how then can man be justified with God? Or he says, let me ask it this
way. Here's another way of asking
how can man be just with God? Or how can he be clean that is
born of a woman? What is it to be justified? It
means that you're pure. It means that when God looks
upon you, you're clean in His sight. Now, that adds more to
this mystery, doesn't it? How can you make a maggot clean
in your eyes? What can you do to a maggot that
would entice you to bring him up to yourself and delight in
him? and say, in my eyes, you are
clean. See why Bill Ledd asked the question?
And see why Luther said this was the greatest question that the
church could contemplate and be correct on? Now, miserable,
dead conscience. I can preach this this morning.
I can go ahead and preach what I'm going to preach. And a conscience
that's dead in sins can sleep while I talk about these things.
Because a conscience dead in sins has no interest in how a
man can be justified with God. But if you're here this morning
and some light has shined into your conscience? Boy, you're concerned about this
question, aren't you? If the Holy Spirit has pricked
your conscience, if He has touched it with His finger and made your
conscience tender, you're concerned about this question. How can
man be just with God? How can this go between God and
myself? be spanned. How in the world
can reconciliation between me and such a God be made? That's what I want to look at.
The Lord Jesus Christ, when He was upon this earth, you know
He took this subject up. The most wonderful, wonderful
Master, when He came to this earth, being willing to bind
up the wounded conscience and take away the grievous burden
of this question. He took this subject up Himself
because He said, I come to heal the broken heart. I come to bind
up their wound. What are they wounded about?
It concerns this question. How can I, being a hell-deserving
sinner, be justified with God? And the Lord Jesus took up this
subject this way. Here's the way He took it up.
He looked at the most religious men of His day, the most separated
men of His day, those who prayed on the street corners, those
who paid tithes of all that they possessed, those who looked so
clean and pure before men. And here's what He said to them.
And you are those who justify yourselves before men. You look so separated. You appear
so right and so holy. And men admire you. But your
chief concern is, how can I be justified before man? And you
have no concern with this question, how can man be justified? with
God. And here's the way he answered
them. You appear righteous to men. They can't find any fault with
you. They esteem you. But those things which are highly
esteemed among men are abomination with God. Now, isn't that amazing? He said that to the Pharisees. But he didn't stop there, thank
God. He didn't stop there. You talk about giving hope to
us here this morning that is concerned about this question.
And we want to know if there's any hope for me. Is there any
bond for my feeling conscience? Can I be just with God? And listen here how the Lord
Jesus explained being justified. He says there was a public, a
tax collector, a cheat. They were usually rich men. And
I bet you you could haul 99% of them before a just court and
they'd have been found guilty before then. But more than that,
they were guilty before God. He said this publican, this cheat,
he went up to the temple where they had set aside to worship
God. And he was so smitten and so
guilty and so vile in his own conscience, he wouldn't even
lift his head towards heaven. But he said, God, be merciful
to me, a sinner. Be perpetuous to me, a sinner. Be conciliatory to me, a sinner. Atone For me the sinner, God
be merciful to me the sinner." And you know what the Lord Jesus
Christ said about that man? You know what the One that we
call the true and faithful witness said about that man? He went
down to his house justified with God. Isn't that amazing? Does that
give you a little bit of hope this morning? You stand here
self-condemned. You've judged yourself as a maggot
when you compare yourself to God. Doesn't this give you some
hope that here the Master Himself said, who is it that can be justified
with God? The sinners. Sinners. Oh, I'm thrilled to talk about
this subject. I get thrilled just to talk about
it. It's as though I've never dealt with it before. It's as
though I was studying on this, and I was so anxious about it,
looking at it, it's as though I had never even studied it out
before. That's how important this subject
is. There's no more critical question
that you could ask yourself. Not only how man can be justified
with God, how can I? in the light of eternity to my
most precious soul, how can I be justified with God? I'll turn over to the book of
Romans quickly. I want to give you three quick things concerning
justification with God. How can man be justified with
God? Well, let's see these three things
right quickly. three aspects of being justified with God. I want you to look in Romans
chapter 3, and I want you to look in verse 19. The apostle
had just finished quoting some very unflattering scriptures
concerning man's depravity and his sins, beginning there in
verse 10. None righteous, none that understand,
none seek after God. They've all gone out of the way.
Their throat is an open sepulcher. And after saying all of that,
he comes here to verse 19, and look what he says. Now we know
that thanks whoever the law saith. It says to them who are unto
the law that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world
become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the
law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight." Now that's what
we're talking about here. Here Paul took up the very question
that Bildad had. Man is a magnet. He's a poor
sinner. He's born in sin. He lives in
sin, left to himself to figure out a way in and of himself to
be justified with God. He'll die in his sins and perish
forever. He's guilty before God. And listen,
there's nothing he can do about it. If a man was guilty before God,
and there's some work, some merit, some way to deliver himself,
there would be some hope. But in and of ourselves, we're
guilty before God, and there is no way to remedy our situation. Our situation is hopeless. That's what he's saying. That's
what he's saying. A maggot could no more raise
himself off of a rotten piece of meat and present himself to
you in a favorable way. then you can deliver yourself
from your guilt and your corrupt state by nature and your sins
and present yourself to God and have Him to say, You're clean
in my sight. That's where we stand. That's
where we stand. How then? Paul's going to tell us. He's
going to tell us. Look on in verse 23 and verse
24. In verse 23, he says, all have
sinned and come short of the glory of God. No exceptions.
Okay, look in verse 24. Being justified freely by His
grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Being
justified, oh, here is one of the sweetest words in all of
the English language. freely, being justified freely. This word is so sweet, it means
without cause. The cause of our being justified
is not found in us. God has never justified any man
apart from Jesus Christ. by looking upon him and seeing
in him any goodness or merit or anything else. If God ever justifies any man,
the cause is going to be found in him. And what is that cause? Grace. Grace. Being justified freely
by His Praise. Are you willing? Are you willing? Has He made you willing, first
of all, to own your guilt before Him and stand guilty before Him
and leave the cause in His heart, in His hands, whether or not
He justifies you? Are you content with that? Do
you see that's your only hope? Do you believe He owes you something?
Do you believe He's obligated to you? See, this cuts off human
merit, doesn't it? This leaves justification in
the hands of a gracious, loving, tender, merciful God. But he's free in that grace. Isn't this a wonderful thing?
You can almost have to imagine this. You've been a criminal. Your
life is nothing but killing and robbery and rape on society. And you have been hunted, and
they finally caught you, and they've arrested you, and they
found you guilty. And society wants rid of you,
and they've got you on the gurney because you've been sentenced
to death, and here the man stands with a syringe ready to inject
the poison into your body. And right at the last second,
the phone rings. And it's the governor. It's the
president. And he says, you let him go. I pardoned him. Why would you pardon a man like
this? Do you realize what this man
has done? He's not worthy of a pardon. I don't pardon him because he's
worthy. I'm pardoning him simply because it's in my heart to pardon
him. That's the way Paul said justification
took place. Why would God justify you? Because
he wants to. Because of his grace. Spurgeon
used to tell a story about this king. He was a famous king. And
he was a very compassionate man. Once every year, he would go
down to the prison. Prisons in those days were very
harsh. It's not like it is today. It was harsh in prison in those
days when the king ran. Spurgeon said once a year, this
king would go down and he'd go through there and talk to some
of the prisoners. And he'd pardon them. Set him free. Completely annihilate his record. A complete, thorough pardon. And just let him go. Because
he did that. That was the king. As Spurgeon
told about the king talking to the one prisoner, and he said,
well, I was framed. I'm not guilty. I shouldn't even
be in here. And he talked to another and
he said, well, if I get out of here, I'll change my life and
I'm going to clean myself up and I'm going to do better. And
he went on and he talked to the third man. And the third man
said, sir, listen, I'm in here because I deserve to be in here. I'm not in here without cause.
And if they let me out of here, I fear that I'll go right back
to my crime. I don't deserve anything but
what I'm getting. And when the king wrote the name
down of the man that he pardoned, he said, I found one guilty sinner
in you. I found one guilty man. I'm going
to pardon him. That's the way God does it. Here we stand guilty before Him. And He says, I freely, without
any cause in you. I justify you by my grace. You willing to be justified that
way? You're looking for a cause within yourself? If you find
it, you may not be justified, dear soul. And I tell you why. Because justification has to
do with God's grace. Not what He owes you. Not what
He's obligated to do. Well, I repented and I straightened
my life up and I'm going to church now and I don't live like I used
to. Okay, then you stand before Him and you tell Him that. And He'll deal with you. And
I'll tell you how He'll deal with you, just like He dealt
with those Pharisees. I came not to call the righteous. I
came not to justify the innocent, but the guilty. Look here right
on. along that same line in chapter
4 of Romans, right quickly. Look in chapter 4. Look here
how he says it in verse 4. Romans 4 and verse 4. Now to
him that worketh not, he worketh not. To him that worketh is the reward
not reckoned of grace, but of death. But to him that worketh
not, but believeth on him, Look at this, "...that justifieth
the ungodly." A guilty sinner. A guilty sinner. God justifies
him while he's standing there in his sins. Guilty. Does that give you some hope? Secondly, look in Romans chapter
5. That's the first thing about
how can man be just with God. He can be justified with God
if God justifies him freely by His grace. No other way. Look
here in chapter 5 of Romans. Look in verse 6. Look at this. In verse 6. When we were yet
without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous
man will one die. Yet preadventure, perhaps, for
a good man, some may even dare to die. But it's not that way
here. God commendeth His love toward
us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,
much more than being now justified by His blood. we shall be saved from wrath
through him. For if, when we were enemies,
we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more
being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life, justified
by His blood." How are we justified? By His blood. This is another aspect of justification. How can man be justified with
God? By the blood of God's dear Son. And Paul does here what Vildad
did. Vildad gave us a definition of
justification, didn't he? Being clean before God. What does it mean to be justified?
Paul said it means to be exempt from punishment. being justified
by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath." What does it mean
when God justifies a man? It means He frees him from all
the consequences of his guilt and his sin and punishment. Who shall lay anything to the
charge of God's elect? It's God who justifies. Who is
He that condemns? Who is He that can punish? Nobody. Why? Because Christ died. Justified
by His blood. What does this speak to here? Justified by His blood. You know
what this speaks about? This speaks about the evil of
our sins, doesn't it? See, we talked about the one
aspect of being justified with God, and that's by His grace.
But there has to be another aspect too, doesn't it? God is just,
and He can't just say, you're now justified before me. There's
got to be a meritorious cause. Sin has to be punished. The criminal,
the crime has to be paid for. That's what the blood speaks
to. It speaks to the horror of our sin. the blackness of it. Ye who think of sin but lightly,
nor suppose the evil great, here may view its nature rightly.
Here its guilt may estimate. Mark the sacrifice appointed. See who bears the awful load. Tis the Word, the Lord's anointed
Son of Man and Son of God. What's He doing upon the cross?
What is all of this darkness that surrounds him? Why is he
groaning? Why is his hands and feet bleeding?
Now why is the hole in his side? Why is all the blood poured from
his cell? The cause of our sin. That's
it, isn't it? That's it. We can't be justified
if our sins are not punished. God is just. and to be a justifier,
He must punish our sin. He must punish it in us, and
He's doing that. Why is hell enlarging itself? How many people do we suppose
this morning that God brought judgment upon, and their poor
souls woke up in torment, and hell has enlarged itself? What's
hell about? The punishment of sin. What's the cross about? The punishment
of sin. The blood. The blood. How can
God be just and justify the ungodly? The blood of His Son. He paid the debt. He atoned for
sin. He satisfied for sin. What a
wonderful, wonderful truth that is. This speaks of the inflexible
justice of God, justified by His blood. What did He tell Adam
back in the garden? The day that you eat, you will
die. Somebody is going to die for
sin. Justice must have its way. And Christ died. Look at the
cross. If we don't believe God is just,
look at the cross. If we don't believe He's unflexible
and He's just, look at the cross. But look here at the love. What does His blood speak to?
The love of God. God spared not His own Son. Why? Can you imagine? We often talk
about the Son and His sufferings and the Father hiding His face
and how the Lord Jesus must have felt. Can you imagine how the
Father felt? If your son was in trouble and
he was pleaded with you until his sweat became his great drops
of blood, how would you feel? If he said, Father, if there's
any other way, let this go, how would you feel? Upon the cross
and you forsook your son because you saw this glob of sin laid
upon him, how would you feel in forsaking your own son in
his hour of trouble? Brothers and sisters, let's not
make God some kind of a robot that has no feelings, that has
no affections. How did He feel when He spared
not His own Son? Why did He do it? He commended
His love toward us. Can you ever doubt it again?
Oh, in the love of Jesus Christ, what does this shedding of blood
speak to? Greater love hath no man than
this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. And if
it was a manifestation of his love to lay down his life for
his friends, how much more to lay down his life for his enemies.
Oh, the blood, the precious blood. They've tried for a long time
now to get away from the blood, haven't they? You fellas got
a bloody religion. Yes, we have. It's God's religion. It is bloody. But it's so precious
that we mention it when we're asking blessings over our food,
don't we? It's precious. It's atonement. Lastly and quickly is this. How can man be justified with
God? He can be if God will do it freely
by His grace. He can be justified with God
if he's justified through the blood, the atoning blood, the
cleansing blood of Jesus Christ the Lord. And thirdly, and just
as importantly, how can man be justified with God? Look back
in chapter 3 of Romans. Let me read it to you again. Look 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. All
have sinned and come short of the glory of God, being justified
freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation and atoning
victim through faith through faith in His blood, to declare
His righteousness for the remissions of sins that are past through
the forbearance of God, to declare, I say at this time, His righteousness,
that He might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth
in Jesus. Where is most in them? It's excluded
by what law of works, no, but by the law of faith. Therefore
we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of
the law. How can man be justified with
God? By believing God. By believing God. by believing
the record that God gave of His Son. By faith in the blood of
God's Son, by faith in the works of God's Son, by faith in the
Son of God and His work on behalf of sinners, men are justified
by faith. There's two errors that people
make, and we see it all the time, and boy, it's so easy to make.
One is going to the extreme and saying faith is our Savior. They almost make a God out of
faith. They make a work out of faith. Their faith is in their
faith. Don't we hear people talk about
faith all the time? Boy, if my faith hadn't been
as strong as it was. Faith, faith, faith, faith, faith.
And that's all they talk about. They never talk about the object.
Who's your faith in? Is it in Jesus Christ, His person? Is it in His blood? Is it in
His death? They make a God out of that.
But then, on the other hand, what do we have? We have those
on the other side. See, you can get off in the ditch
on the right or you can get off in the ditch on the left. And
you've got those on the other side. That they make nothing
of faith whatsoever. They stop at being justified
by His blood. We looked at that, didn't we?
And we saw that is essential. That's one aspect of justification. Here's the other aspect of justification. It's by faith. By believing. They both are essential. But
they're both different aspects. The blood of Christ atoned for
sin. The blood of Christ purged the
sin. The blood of Christ cleansed
us maggots. And in the eyes of God, in the
sight of our Father, we're clean, even as His Son is clean. That's that aspect of it. But
here's this aspect of it. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. And why is that important? Why
is that critical? God don't justify without it,
does he? Could I quit this message right
now and come to you and say, how are we justified? And you
say, well, we're justified freely by His grace. We're justified
by the blood of Christ. But really, it doesn't matter
if you believe Him or not. Could you say that? We can't
say that, can we? Why is faith so important? God's
ordained it. That's the medium by which Jesus
Christ comes to the heart. This is the medium. This is the
means by which the heart goes to Christ. Without faith, it's impossible
to please God. God is determined to have our
hearts. Son, give me your heart. Give
me your heart and I've got you. Give me your heart and I've got
your wallet. Give me your heart and I've got everything else.
It's your heart. And how does He get our hearts? Faith. Faith. Men are justified by believing
God concerning His Paul said, don't say in your heart, who
can bring Christ up from the dead? He's already been brought
up from the dead. And don't say, who's going to
send up into heaven so we can see Him and put our hands in
the prints of His nails. That's not faith. The word of
faith speaks on this life. It's near you, even in your heart
and in your lips, that if you shall confess with your mouth
the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God raised Him
from the dead. See, we can do many things trying
to justify ourselves. But when God has our hearts,
it's when our hearts say, I believe. Lord, I believe you. I believe
you. That's when He's got our hearts.
And you'll never be justified. You'll never be saved apart from
faith. I know faith is a gift of God.
I know it's an operation of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. You're
not born with it. You'll never have it until He
gives it. But He'll never save you without it. Son, be of good
cheer. Your faith has made you whole. Go your way in peace. Your faith
has saved you. Did faith die for me? Did faith
suffer for me? No, but faith lays hold of him
who did. Faith is the eyes of the soul
that sees the blood. Faith is the ears of the soul
that hears the Savior be of good cheer. Faith is the feet of the
soul that runs to Jesus. Faith is the arms of the soul
that embraces Jesus. And without it, it's impossible
to please. Are you content then this morning,
you poor maggots? That don't offend you, does it? To sit here and be still, and
to admire, to wonder, to glory that you and God have been reconciled. And you know the way you know
it? And you know why you rejoice in it? And you know why you have
the assurance of it? You believe Him. You believe
Him. And you can have the assurance
that it's taken place until you believe Him. Not until you feel
it, until you believe it. But I tell you when you believe
it, you'll feel it. There'll be such joy in your
conscience. You can't help but feel it in
your soul. Oh, I'm justified with God through
the Lord Jesus Christ. God bless His word. Let's pray.