Romans chapter 3, we read this
morning in the closing moments of our worship service from verse
24. And we'll pick up there tonight.
Being justified freely by His grace, through the redemption
that's in Christ Jesus, whom God had set forth, whom God had
set forth, Christ Jesus, to be a propitiation through faith
in his blood, to declare his righteousness, his holiness,
his righteousness for the remission of sins that have 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. I have a strong and before God
sincere prayer, and I believe it's your prayer too, and I pray
that God may grant it. that as long as this building
shall stand, and as long as worshippers gather together in this place,
and as long as a man stands behind this pulpit, that this will always
and ever be the message that's preached here. Christ Jesus,
our mercy seat. Christ Jesus, our propitiation,
Christ Jesus and him crucified, the person and work of our great
Redeemer. Jesus Christ, Paul said, Son
of God, heir of all things, by whom he made the worlds, the
brightness of his glory, the exact image of his person, as
Thomas said, my Lord and my Jesus Christ, the Word of God, who
was made flesh and dwelt among us, who was made of a woman,
made under the law, that he might redeem us from the curse of the
law and make us the righteousness of God in him. Jesus Christ,
crucified, buried, risen, ascended to the right hand of God where
he ever lives to make intercession for us. who was wounded for our
transgressions, who was bruised for our iniquities, who bore
the chastisement of our peace by whose stripes we are healed.
Reconcile to God for the death of his Son. Jesus Christ, our
great High Priest, the one Advocate, the one Mediator, the one High
Priest for the proper sacrifice between God and the man Christ
Jesus. Jesus Christ, who shall descend
from heaven one day with a shout, with the voice of the archangel,
with the trumpet of God, and all who believe, who love him,
who trust him, shall be caught up together to meet our Lord
in the air, and so shall we ever be with and in the likeness of
and conform to the image of Jesus Christ. What a beautiful name,
Jesus Christ. Now why such prayer? Why such
commitment? Why such confidence? Why such
dedication to and for and in this person? One answer, verse
25, because God had set him forth. That's the reason. almighty maker
of heaven and earth, the one God, whose name is holy in reference,
he set him forth. What does that word mean, he
set him forth? Well, it means several things.
But first it means this, that God foreordained him. God almighty
predestinated him. God Almighty had now anointed
him. The Spirit of God is upon me,
he said, because God hath anointed me and sent me before time began
to be the Lamb's flame, the surety of the covenant, the Redeemer
of God's elect. God set him forth before the
world began. He's the surety of the everlasting
covenant. Christ be my first elect, God
said, Christ, and then chose our souls in Christ our head.
Before he gave the mountains birth or laid the foundations
of the earth, with Christ our Lord, we have a part in the everlasting
love of God's own heart. I have loved you with an everlasting
love, he said. God set him forth. before the
world began. That's his name, eternal God. That's his name, Lamb slain before
the foundation of the world. That's his name, surety of an
everlasting covenant. That's his name. God set him
forth. He said, I've set my King on my holy hill of Zion. I did it! That's how it is. He's worthy of all the glory. Second thing that means is this,
God has set him forth. That is, God put him in a, God
put him, placed him in a conspicuous manner in public view, and exhibited
Jesus Christ and his character, name, and work in a way that
cannot be doubted. God set him forth. Now let me
show you how. first in promise. Out there in
that awesome time when Adam and Eve had fallen, and darkness
and sin and death had come into God's world, He made an announcement. The seed of woman. He said to
the serpent, the seed of woman, will bruise your head. Now that
cannot refer to anyone, any creature, but one, the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the only seed of woman.
He's the only seed of woman. God set him forth right there.
In that time of darkness, he's the only light. In that time
of death, he's the only life. In that time of sin, he's the
only refuge. That's Christ Jesus. Secondly,
this announcement. Behold, the Lord himself will
give you a sign. A virgin shall conceive and bear
a son. Call his name, Immanuel. God with us. Pray tell me who
is that? Can't be anyone but Jesus Christ.
God's only begotten son, born of the virgin. This announcement. Under us, a child is given. A child is born. Under us, a
son is given. The government will be on his
shoulders. The government of the universe will be on his shoulders.
His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the
Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Tell me who that is. It's Jesus Christ. God set him
forth. God said to Moses, I'll tell
the people I'll raise up a prophet, and I'll put my words in his
mouth, and he'll speak my words. And blessed is the man that hears
him, and cursed is the man that doesn't. Tell me who that is.
It's not Moses. Jesus Christ. And then in the
Old Testament, Abel brought a lamb. He came to worship God, these
two brothers. The first account we have, there
were sacrifices before that by Adam, I'm sure. The first account
we have of two men who came to worship God. And one man brought
her the fruit of the field, the labor of his own hands, and God
rejected his sacrifice. The other brought a lamb, shed
its blood, roasted it with fire, and offered unto God a blood
sacrifice. And the scripture plainly said,
God had respect to the man and to his offering. Who is that?
That's Christ Jesus, the Lamb of God. When God would lead Israel
out of Egypt, he told Moses, here's the last plague, nine
plagues and then this one. I'll pass through Israel this
night and I'm going to slay the firstborn in every home, from
the cattle on the hillside to the maiden by the well, to the
Pharaoh in his palace. Firstborn. Moses, I put a difference
between Israel and Egypt. You and your people take a lamb,
put it up for four days, a lamb without spot or blemish, observe
it, and at the end of the four days, slay it, and burn its body
with fire, and take the blood and put it on the lintel and
the two side posts, and enter your house and stay there. And
at midnight I'm coming through, and judgment will fall on this
whole country. And I'll smite the firstborn,
but when I see the blood, I'll pass over you." Who is that? That's Christ Jesus. The Passover. Christ, our Passover. The people
needed water. Out in the wilderness. A whole
nation of people. God. Moses prayed, Lord, they're
dying of thirst. All right, Moses. Go to this
place. Take the elders with you. I'll
stand on the rock. I'm on the rock. I'm in the rock.
You take your rod and smite that rock. And out of it will come
water, all you need. And that rock will follow you
your whole trip. Moses smoked the rock and the
water. Tell me who that is. That's Christ. It can't apply to anything or
anybody in this whole universe but Jesus Christ. Who? That rock
is Christ, Paul says. And he proved it later when they
needed water again, and God said, well Moses, speak to the rock.
And Moses acted like a human being. And he got angry with
the people. He took his rock and he smote
the rock. The water came out, but God called him aside and
he said, Moses, you didn't sanctify me before the people. You put
forth yourself. Besides that, I said, speak to
the Rock. Christ is not smitten but wants. One time. Moses, you violated
the picture. You violated the time. I'm going
to have to kill you. I'm going to have to kill you.
And he did. But Joshua took him into the Promised Land. Moses
couldn't take him in there no how. Moses is the law. The law can't take any man into
rest. The law can't take any man into glory. The law can't
take any man into the promised land. The law can't take you
anywhere. But Joshua can. You know what
his name is in the New Testament? Jesus. That's Joshua's name,
Jesus. That's the Old Testament name
for Jesus, Joshua. This book, God sent him forth. Melchizedek. Who's that? Christ.
Christ, the blazing serpent lifted up. Tell me who that is. You ever notice your doctor's
emblem with that pole in the air and the snake around it?
Look to it and be healed. That's where I think they got
that. That serpent lifted up on the pole. That's Christ. In
the New Testament, when the angel came to Mary and said, you'll
have a son. And she said, I can't have a
son, I don't know a man. He said, the Spirit of God will
come on you. The power of the highest will come upon you. And
that holy thing born in you will be the Son of God. That same
angel went to Joseph and said, now don't be afraid to marry
Mary. She's with child, but she's with child of the Holy Ghost.
And she'll bear a son. And Joseph called his name Jesus
to save his people from their sins. God put a star over that
angel. God directed the wise men to
that manger. God brought the shepherds to
that manger after an angel announced the birth of Christ. The boys
from heaven said, one day, this is my beloved son. The works
that he did bear witness to him. Who is this man, Jesus Christ?
He's the Son of God. God set him forth in promise,
in prophecy, in picture, in person, and on a cross. And one day he
bore his cross willingly to Calvary's mountain, stretched forth his
hands, and died. And all Scripture was fulfilled
in that day. The Scripture says when they
took him down from the tree, when they fulfilled all that
was written of him, that's when they took him down from the tree
and put him in a tomb. But he didn't stay there. He
didn't stay there. Almighty God raised him from
the dead. And this same Jesus whom you crucified, God hath
raised from the dead and made him both Lord and Christ. And one day he took his disciples
out to the top of the mountain and stood there and told them,
now you go to Jerusalem and tell me there you'll be endued with
power from on high. And you'll be my witnesses in
Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the other most parts of the earth.
And I'll be with you always, even to the end of the earth.
And as they beheld him, a cloud took him up into heaven. He went
back to the Father. And the angels appeared to those
men. They were still standing there,
gawking, looking to the cloud that received him, in which he
disappeared. And the angels said, ye men of
Galilee, why do you stand looking up into heaven? This same Jesus
which is taken from you shall so come in like manner as you've
seen him go. Now go preach the gospel. Oh my. And God gave this witness
to the whole world that he's accepted Christ as our sin bearer,
substitute and sacrifice. Raised him from the dead. God
set him forth. That's what that set forth means.
God set him forth from before the foundation of the world.
God set him forth. Every page of this book he set
forth. And I tell you this, the faithful
preachers set him forth in the gospel. They never preach a message
that doesn't set him forth. Well, what God set him forth
to be, look at verse 25, to be a propitiation. Now, that word means several
things. It means, first of all, mercy-seek. That's what it means. A propitiation
is a mercy-seek. God set him forth to be a mercy-seek
through faith in his blood. What's a mercy-seek? Well, you
know, when Moses went up to the mountain and God gave him the
law, God wrote the law himself on two tables of stone. And Moses
came down from that mountain with those tables of stone, and
the people of Israel were sinning a great sin. And Moses got so
angry, he just dropped them and diced them to pieces. And you
know the things that took place then. But anyway, God said to
him again, I come up to the mountain, and I'm going to give you the
tables of the law again. I'm going to write them and give
them to you. And you build an ark, so big,
and you put those tables of stone in the ark. Take them out of
the hands of Moses and put them in the ark. And then you make
a mercy seat. That ark is a certain kind of
wood and a certain size, dimension. And you take a mercy seat of
pure gold, beaten gold, same size as that ark and put it on
top of it. A beautiful, pure gold mercy seat. And put the
cherubims on either side. their wings facing forward. And
you put that ark with that mercy seat and that broken law inside
and put it in the Holy of Holies. And put a veil separating it
from the holy place. Once a year, the great high priest
would slay a lamb, take its blood into that Holy of Holies and
give it the hyssop and sprinkle blood on that mercy seat. It's a covering. Covers our sins. Covers our transgression. Covers
our iniquities. Covers the broken heart. Sprinkle
it with the blood. And when I see the blood, I'll
pass over you. I'll justify you. I'll forgive you through the
blood. That's Christ, you see. He's
our mercy seat. God sent Him for us. We don't
have an ark. We don't have little tables of
stone. We don't have a literal mercy seat. We don't kill animals.
We don't do that. That's pictures. But we have him, who gave us
the bread and the wine. He said, this bread is my body
and this wine is my blood. My body broken for you, my blood
shed for you. And he meets us at our mercy
seat, who's Christ Jesus. Well, the mercy seat is a covering.
And then secondly, the mercy seat is an expiation. And that
simply means this, that full, complete satisfaction is made
for sin through the blood of Christ. Expiated. Expiation. Our sins are gone. He casts them into the depths
of the sea, behind his back, far from us as east is from the
west, to be remembered no more. The Lord Jesus Christ, by his
blood, made satisfaction to the law, to justice. The Lord Jesus
Christ, by his blood, made an atonement, A-T-O-N-E-M-E-N-T,
atonement with God. We're at one. That's what atonement
amends. He made amends. He made amends
for guilt. He satisfied the justice and
law of God for all of our transgressions. He bore them and paid the debt,
paid it in full, expiated it. His blood cleanses us from all
sin. Into this sinful world he came,
God's messenger of grace. On a bloody cross he died, our
Savior and our place. transgressors with the greatest
sins, in him salvation found. His blood removes the foulest
guilt, his Spirit heals our minds. Oh, let our debts be what they
may. However great or small, when
we had nothing at all to pay, Jesus paid it all." That's expiation. That reconciliation, that God
sent him forth from before the world, promised, pictured, prophesied
in person to be a propitiation, a mercy seeker, a reconciler,
an atonement, an expiation through faith in his blood. Through faith
in his blood, not through your works, not through your baptism,
not through your church membership. Now here's what God's declaring. I know all the preachers tonight,
most places are saying at the cross God's declaring His love.
Well, they're right. At the cross God's declaring
His mercy. You're right. You can't underestimate
His love and His mercy, but I tell you, Almighty God is declaring
something else too, His wrath against sin. If God spared not
his own son, don't think he'll spare us. Jesus Christ died on
the cross to declare that God's angry with the wicked. God's
wrath and judgment is upon the unbeliever. But I'll tell you
something else that his cross declares. His cross declares
his righteousness. God must be just. He must be righteous. If he deals
with us in mercy, he's got to have satisfaction. If he deals
with us in love, he's got to have an atonement. If he deals
with us in grace, he's got to have an expiation. And that's
what Christ did at the cross. He enabled God to be just and
justified. He enabled God to be God and
pardon our sins. He declared that God's righteous.
God's righteous. He declared it. And listen, he
declared God's righteousness for the remission of sins that
were past. Christ died on the cross 2,000
years ago. Here's the year of 34 A.D., in
the year of our Lord, 34. And we come on down to 2002.
That's the future. But the past, when Christ hung
on the cross back here, Back here is Malachi, and Haggai,
and Isaiah, and Solomon, and David, and Eli, and Samuel, and
Moses, and Joseph, and Joshua, and Abraham. How they say it? Almighty God's long suffering
waiting till Christ came. And when Christ died, He declared,
God's righteousness for them. God's mercy for them. God's forgiveness
for them. See, every offering, sin offering
that they brought, every lamb, those lambs didn't take away
sin. Those sacrifices didn't take away sin. God's long suffering
and patience awaited the coming of Him who did take away their
sins. See that? He's declaring His
righteousness. for sins of the past. Oh, look at the next verse. To declare, I say, at this time. Now Paul is writing about 65
A.D., about 30 years after Christ died. And all those old timers
lived about, Martin Luther about 1500, Spurgeon about 1800, and
Gill about 1600, But those fellows, he declares
at this time, we're living now at this time, his righteousness. He declared that at the cross.
For all time, from able, righteous able, all the way to the last
one that will believe, God's righteousness. That's the only
way you can save the sinner. He has to be looked just and
justified of them that believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. His
death on the cross declares God's righteousness for us, which Christ
provided. So verse 27, now where is your
boasting? Where is your boasting then?
It's excluded. By what law of works? Nay, by
the law of faith. Faith excludes boasting. A man
who is saved by looking to Christ has nothing to boast about except
Christ. Got nothing to glory in but Christ.
You see, someone said this. Here are four things that I picked
up somewhere. Where is boasting? Well, it's excluded. And what
excludes it? The way we're saved. Faith. Number
one. Faith gives nothing. Faith receives. Now, love gives. Obedience works. Repentance weeps, patience waits,
but faith receives. Faith doesn't give anything.
Look! Believe! It doesn't give anything. It doesn't produce anything.
Just look. Secondly, faith has nothing to
offer. It comes to no market but grace. Our Lord said, come and buy with
no money, that included me. With no price, that included
me. I don't have anything with which
to shop. Faith does not speak of wages
or reward. Faith just has its handout for
a gift, the gift of God. Faith looks and faith receives. It gives nothing. That's nothing
to give. Thirdly, faith will address no
throne but a throne of grace. Faith fears a throne of judgment.
Faith fears a throne of justice. These people are talking about
standing before the throne of judgment. They must not have
any faith because faith doesn't look forward to that. No, sir.
Faith fears God's throne of justice like Like Israel feared Sinai,
they turned and ran. When they saw the law given and
the smoking mountain and the fire, they skedaddled out of
there. And that's the way faith is.
Faith wants nothing to do with any judgment, justice, or righteousness. Grace. Come boldly before the
throne of grace. That's the only place faith will
come. Faith finds nothing in which
to glory. Nothing I've ever done in the
75 years that I've lived gives me any satisfaction where God's
concerned. Can you say that? We can't, we're
honest. Not in labor. Old Paul said,
I labored, I labored more abundantly than they all, but it wasn't
me, it was Christ in me. Not in the life I've lived, I
live, the life I live in the flesh, I live by the faith of
the Son of God, who gave himself for me. I don't produce anything. I live on manna and water from
the rock, bread from heaven. Not in our perseverance, because
we're not kept by our faith, we're kept by the power of God
through faith. Even in glory. Faith will find
nothing in which to boast. It won't be like those fellows
at the judgment who said, Lord, we preached in your name and
cast out devils and we did some pretty wonderful things. I never
knew you. But faith finds nothing in which to glory. Faith expects
no reward except the one. I am thy reward. And faith says
unto him who loved us and washed us from our sins, in his own
blood unto him be all the glory and all the praise. Now, where
is your boasting? It's excluded. No boasting, no
bragging. Now, what law? Works? No. Faith. What faith is, excludes
boasting. Therefore we conclude, Paul says
in verse 28, here is my conclusion to you. We conclude, here's my
subject, a man, a man, you and me, a man, son of Adam, human
being, flesh and bone and blood, a man, is justified. What's that mean? Reconciled,
not guilty, before God, righteous, a man. is righteous and justified
by faith. That's the means, only by faith. By looking to Christ, by believing
on Christ, by hearing his word and believing it, bowing to him,
without, here's the conditions, without the deeds of the law,
totally without anything. Our baptism, our Our diligence
and study, our giving, those are all things because we're
saved. They don't help us, help God, help our conditioning before
God. Don't justify a man. A man is
justified by faith without the deeds of the law. Someone said
this, I think this is a good statement. When Paul says a man
is justified by faith without the deeds of the law, It's the
same as saying God alone is to be worshipped. God alone is to
be worshipped. Without angels, without idols,
without images, without reminders, without symbols, without anything,
God alone is to be worshipped. And faith stands on the same
pinnacle, and that's justified by faith. God is to be worshipped without
anything added to it. Is he the God of the Jews only? No. Is he not also the God of
the Gentiles? Yes, he is the God of the Gentiles.
Seeing that it is one God which shall justify the circumcision
of the Jew by faith and the uncircumcision through faith, do we make void
the law through faith? to establish it. Actually, when you talk about
God's law and God's holiness and God's righteousness, nothing
more establishes the law, nothing more establishes the law than
the fact that to redeem a people under God, he had to give his
son in death. Now there's nothing in the world
that establishes the law even more clearly than that. That's
right, you come to the cross, and I'll tell you this, God is
righteous, God is holy, God will punish sin, and God's law is
serious business. Because for us to be saved, it
took that to do it. That establishes the law.