I especially remember the family
of Tommy Husky and Shannon Standing Deer. I continue to remember
Dee Parks and seek the Lord's help for those. I'm going through
some struggles. I remember Fred. He's been playing
doctor tag for a while, in between a heart doctor and a cancer doctor.
And so I can't seem to get either one of them to contact each other.
I guess maybe the telephones are out between Asheville and
Franklin. I don't know. But that's typical of today. It seems that
Debbie had a doctor. They promised to call her several
times and finally she just had to get another doctor because
they never did call her. But that's the state of things
as they are. So remember Fred, he's probably
going to start something this coming week, either cancer treatment
or a heart or one of the others. So remember him in your prayers
as well. And Julie's got a word on the
ortho on her cracked hip. Would you say possibly four weeks
from the next meeting with your doctor, you'll probably look
at a hip replacement for her, which would be good because she's
been wanting to get back in that car and drive around Cherokees. Oh yeah, they can do that on
her brain. If they find one, they'll be lucky. I love my Julie. Other than that,
I can't think of any prayer requests or anything. Yes? What? OK. Pray for those folks in Florida,
man. We got some friends down there.
Ed was just telling me that his brother in Titusville lives on
a golf course, and they got a pond there that you can wade across,
but now the water is standing at six feet. So that's six feet,
and some of those waves were 12 feet. That water rush was
12 feet high. I mean, right under the roofs
of people's houses is scary business. So continue to remember those
folks. They're going through some hard
times. I haven't talked with Greg Elmquist. I don't know what happened
to him, so we'll have to see. Let's begin our worship service
this morning, hymn number 185, Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken. Glorious things of thee are spoken,
Zion, city of our God, Whose word cannot be broken, formed
before his own abode, on the rock of ages found, What can
shake thy sure repose? With salvation's war surrounded,
Thou mayest smile at all thy foes. See the streams of living
waters Springing from eternal love Well supply thy sons and
daughters And all fear of watery moon Who can faint Such a river
ever flows that thirst to swage. Grace which, like the Lord, Thou
giv'rt never fails from age to age. Round each habitation a-hovering,
See the cloud and fire appear, For a glory and a covering, Showing
that the Lord is near. Zion, city of our God. His word cannot be broken. Form thee for his own abode. After scripture reading and prayer,
we'll sing hymn number 352, Jesus, lover of my soul. If you have
your Bibles, turn to Proverbs chapter 12. Book of Proverbs,
chapter 12, verse 28. In the way of righteousness is
life, and in the pathway thereof there is no death. Let us pray.
Our Father in heaven, we thank you for a sound and profound
statement that set things as the way they are, not as the
way people think they should be. We are thankful that you
declare what you declare, you mean what you mean, and you say
what you mean. We're thankful that we have your
word, a great tone that gives us entrance and access and understanding
in the way you do things. We know that your ways are past
finding out, and yet you have given us this revelation, this
law, this book, that we can understand what you have done and all the
things you have done for your people in the matter of saving
their souls. We thank you that we have a clear
understanding, and we know it's not because of our wisdom or
our intellect, but because you have given us faith to believe. what you have said, and we thank
you for that. We pray for those who are sick,
remember especially Fred as he's going through this, finally find
out what the doctors are going to do. We ask Lord you'd be with
him, pray you'd be with Julie as preparation there goes for
her procedures. Pray for Loretta, his eye situation
will be remedied here very soon. Pray for Dee Parks, Father, that
you bless him and strengthen him and his chemotherapy he's
going through. And for the others who are sick,
for those who've lost loved ones, we ask your help for them. Father,
we know that thou art God and there is none beside thee. There's
none like unto thee. We know you declare the end from
the beginning. You speak and it shall be done. You'll do all
your pleasure. You rule in this world. Among
the inhabitants of heaven and earth, you do your will. None can stay your hand or say
unto you, what doest thou? You do not give account of your
matters. We bow to your sovereignty. It is therefore we worship in
awe of your greatness. And what we cannot understand,
you have given us faith to believe. And we thank you for that. Pray
for those folks down in Florida as they try to recover from this
hurricane. We know that the Lord is in the
whirlwind. We know the clouds are the dust of his feet, the
thunder is his voice. Like I said, we don't always
understand providence, but we know it's good. We ask your grace
and mercy on those folks down there. Help us, Lord, to remember
each other in prayer, to call out each other's names before
heaven every day. Help us, Lord, now to worship
you in spirit and in truth, we pray in Christ's name. Amen.
Hymn number 352, Jesus, lover of my soul. Jesus, lover of my soul, let
me to thy bosom fly, while the ne'er waters roll, while the
? Guide me, O my Savior, I ? ?
Till the storm of life is past ? ? Safe into the haven guide
? ? O receive my soul at last ? ? Other refuge have I none
? ? Hangs my helpless soul on Thee ? Leave, ah, leave me not
alone. Still support and comfort me. All my trust on thee I stay. All my help from thee I bring. Cover my defenseless head with
the shadow of thy wing. Thou, O Christ, art all I want,
more than all in thee I find. Raise the fallen, cheer the faint,
heal the sick, and lead the blind. Just and holy is thy name. I am all unrighteousness. False and full of sin I am. Thou art full of truth and grace. Plenteous grace with ease found. Grace to cover all my sin. I love that old hymn. I love the words of it. Steve, Stan, would you receive
y'all this morning, please? Let us pray. Father, again, we
approach in the name of Christ, our blessed Savior. The unspeakable
gift of Christ is by you that we receive all things in Him.
And let us return to these things that you have given us freely.
Let us do it freely and cheerfully with joy in our hearts. We pray
in Christ's name. Amen. so I invite your attention back
to Proverbs chapter 12 and verse 28. In the way of righteousness
is life, and in the pathway thereof there is no death. The title
of my message is A Precise Declaration, but it may also be entitled A
Statement of Fact. A Statement of Fact. something
that God says that is just how it is and there's no approaching
it any other way than just to bow to the fact that it is. The
gospel we preach is a wondrous thing. It is preached and heard
by sinners who in and of themselves are powerless to make it anything
other than a declaration. The preacher and the hearer,
because of what they are, because they are unworthy to even speak
of the things contained in the gospel. They can never be credited
with the effect that the gospel produces because there is nothing
to either one of them. They of themselves neither make
the gospel that they preach or hear to be effectual or ineffectual
in the saving of their soul. God has chosen sinful men and
appointed them to declare, to proclaim, and to herald the gospel
precisely, because the effect of the gospel must be seen to
abide in God alone. That's why he chose sinful men,
not upright and popular and good-looking and heroic people, but sinful,
wretched men. So if anybody is indeed saved
through the preaching of the gospel, It can never be attributed
to the vessel that God has used to preach that gospel. But no
matter the instrument that God uses to declare the truth, there
is enough wrong and sinful about the instrument. There is enough
pollution in the character of the instrument that only a divine
work of sovereign grace can account for the effect of what is preached.
If anything, any part of salvation can be attributed to men's talents.
or the persuasiveness or their ability to invent ways and means
to getting men and women to positively or negatively respond to the
message. If one does that, then they preach not the gospel of
the Lord Jesus Christ. It's that simple. The gospel
is the word of God's power by which the universe is upheld
and maintained. It is the power of God unto salvation
to everyone that believes. In the gospel, there is not one
iota of probability or possibility. There are no ifs in it. In the
gospel, there is no if. The gospel is not a declaration
of an unfinished business that you have to attend to. It is
the proclamation of a finished and utterly complete thing to
which nothing can be added and to which nothing can be removed,
changed, or defeated. God Almighty has done something,
something singular, something spectacular, something wonderful
and miraculous, and no matter the mind of men, what God has
done is set for all eternity. Whatever He has done, He has
done forever, it says in Ecclesiastes chapter 3. When we hear the Gospel,
when people hear the Gospel, they hear a precise and full
declaration of a thing accomplished and they always respond to it
negatively or positively. Debbie and I were talking about
this the other night. It's when men hear the gospel
and reject it. It's not because they don't understand
what it says. It's because they do. They do
understand what it says. I can't tell you the number of
times when I've preached the gospel, people have come up to
me angry and upset and said, well, you're saying I'm not saved.
I've never said that, but they heard the gospel and it afflicted
them and they ran from it. The preacher of the gospel, whether
he is a pulpit ministry, whether he's declared the gospel to a
coworker or a family member or a friend, disdains any way of
inventing a way for men to exhibit a response. We do not look for
a response. We don't WANT a response, because
if it's a response, they'll probably be responding to us. And like
old B.B. Caldwell says, If I saved you,
then I'd have to keep you, and you're in trouble if that takes
place. The Gospel is a thing that is ALWAYS a thing. Now,
let me make this clear. The Gospel is ALWAYS a thing.
In every instance, that is disregarded or regarded. Always. There can be no other way. It
is done so by nature of its singularity and its completeness. If a thing
is complete, if it is singular, if it is an absolute, then a
person reacts to it. He cannot help it. He will either
accept it or reject it. He will believe it or he will
not believe it. But you cannot be indifferent about these things.
The gospel is a revelation. and it reveals
whether or not you're lost or saved. That's what it reveals,
whether you're a sheep or a goat, whether you're chosen or left
to yourself. This is what the gospel reveals, whether you're
in or out, whether you're alive or dead. The gospel, you see,
is yea, and yea, and nay, nay, and no, nothing else. Our Lord
said, Anything else cometh to evil. Anything else cometh to
evil. In the gospel, the righteousness
of God is revealed. That's what the scripture says.
For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to
faith. The righteousness Paul refers to in Romans 1 is a person. It is the Lord Jesus Christ who
is made to be righteousness to the elect, those chosen to salvation,
and is wrought by the person in the work of Christ Jesus and
the great phenomenal substitutionary justice satisfying death that
he accomplished at Jerusalem. All that happened is representative
in the teaching of the gospel in the righteousness declared
in our text. In the way of righteousness is
life and in the pathway thereof there is no death. Now people
have a lot of ideas about righteousness Is there such a thing as personal
righteousness? Yes, in comparative terms there
is. That is to say, if you are a person who is equitable, you
treat people fairly, you treat people equally, then one of the
meanings of righteousness or righteous is equity. And if you're compared to a person
who doesn't do any of those things, then you might be said that you're
righteous. But the righteousness spoken of in the gospel has nothing
to do with personal righteousness nothing whatsoever in fact the
Lord says that there is none righteous there is none righteous
so if you are in the way of righteousness then it can't be produced by
you it can't come from you it must somehow come from outside
yourself and be acclaimed or accounted to you. In this text,
in the way of righteousness is life, and in the pathway thereof
there is no death. Now, that's a positive and absolute
statement. Immediately we see that righteousness
is about something. Those things connected to righteousness
are life and death. That's what's connected to it.
There is no formula here set before us in this text by which
a person may attain to this righteousness, it's just a matter of fact, it's
a statement of fact. There is no simple plan of salvation,
there is no pressure brought to bear upon any sinner to DO
something in this text. This passage is a statement of
unalterable fact. When we speak of righteousness,
we're speaking of life and death. These things are attached to
them all the way through scripture. The gospel, since it is the revelation
of the righteousness of God, is a declaration of life and
death. The propitiatory substitutionary
work of Jesus Christ, since it is a declaration of the righteousness
of God, is a declaration of life and death. Preaching the gospel
or not, believing the gospel or not, trusting the merits of
Christ, the righteousness of Christ or not, is a declaration
of life and death. Our Lord says things like this
throughout Scripture. He that hath the Son hath life. He that
hath not the Son hath not seen life. John 3.36. John chapter
5, 9-12 says the same thing. This is the record that God has
given. This is the record. What is the record? Well, this
is what God has said. This is how it is. He that hath the Son
hath life, he that hath not the Son hath not life. That is what
God has said. If you do not believe it, it is because you are dead. Simple as that. If you believe
it, it is because you are alive. Life believes the Gospel. DEATH
DOES NOT. This is what this passage is
saying. Our text then cannot be reduced to a philosophy of
LIFE, a way to live, a system or means of obtaining righteousness
wherein resides LIFE. This is a statement of fact. In the way of righteousness is
LIFE, and therein there is no death. That is just a fact. It speaks to a state of being.
Righteousness is the source of life, not the result of life. Where there is no righteousness,
there is no life. There is only death. To put it another way, if you
are righteous, or in the way of righteousness, in the pathway
of righteousness, it is because you have life. You live. If you are not in the way of
righteousness, in the pathway of righteousness, you have death.
You're dead. That's the simplicity and the
plainness of this scripture. The life that is declared is
not and has nothing to do with natural life. Everybody born
of a woman, born in this world, has natural life. The human life
you received in conception is not the life of this text. The
life you possess at birth is void of anything spiritual. It
is temporal. It will end. It is fleeting and
it will culminate in physical as well as eternal death. If
you are now trusting Christ, if you are trusting Christ at
this moment, if you do now believe the gospel, the life that you
are experiencing is death on crutches if you do not believe
the gospel. You cannot rise above your condition.
You cannot beat death. You cannot be beat. You are going to die. I'm gonna
die. Realize that more than I used
to. When I was young, I didn't even consider the fact. But as
I get older, it becomes a thing I think about on occasion. Yeah, I cannot rise above this.
I cannot defeat this. You're incapable of grasping
anything about the life referred to in this text if you don't
know Christ. I'm speaking to folks who can
never grasp what I'm saying, even though they may naturally
disregard it or hate it, disbelieve it. The person born in this world
as he is born in this world has neither sensitivity or understanding
of that which is here written and declared by God. In the way
of righteousness is life and in the pathway thereof there
is no death. You have no spark of spiritual
life as you are born into this world, which might be fanned
by some religious bag of wind into a flame of fire. You are,
according to Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 1, dead. D-E-A-D. As old Donny Bell used to say,
graveyard dead. Twice dead and plucked up by
the roots, saith the scripture. You are dead. You are dead. Your natural capabilities do
not enter into this realm. You may embrace a plethora of
religious principles. You may endeavor to be moral
and upright, and I hope you will. But you do so as an ambulatory
rotting corpse, producing dead works always. You see, the Bible
says dead men can do nothing. That's right. and know nothing,
and their advancement and their death is a steady and hastening
cadence to the grave and eternal damnation. That's all you've
got. That's where you're headed unless God interrupts your existence.
This text tells the story. The fact that you are dead in
sin is a glaring, undeniable proof that you are not in the
way of righteousness. If you're dead in sin, if you
don't know Christ, you're not in the way of righteousness.
Therefore, you have no life, and you're in the pathway of
death. Religion says take Jesus into
your life. You don't have one. If he ain't
in your life and he is your life, then you don't have a life. You
have a mode of dying. Maybe you're saying to yourself
that you don't feel dead. Well, of course you don't. you're
dead. What do you expect to feel if
you're dead? God says you're dead and He doesn't lie. He doesn't
lie. Sadly we are conditioned from
birth to equate righteousness with moral behavior. Philanthropy,
good deeds, but none of these things are righteousness. Righteousness
is not doing something. It is being something. It is
true life. Goodness has to do with doing,
but carcasses are incapable of doing good. There is not a just
man on Earth that doeth good and sinneth not. There is none
good that doeth good, no, not one, saith the Scripture. Some
would add, you believe that you may apply to the law for righteousness.
But the law only declares your dead condition and publishes
aloud the sentence that you have incurred by your dead condition.
it does not say B, because when it is given, the sentence of
death had already been handed down. Not by jury of your peers,
but by the high and holy bar of God's divine justice. There
is no life in the law! None! None! And since there is no life in
the law, there is no righteousness in the law, because in the way
of righteousness is life. and in the pathway thereof there
is no death. The law has to do with sin and
death, always. It was added because of transgression. That's what scripture says. It
entered that sin and the understanding of sin may abound. That's why
it was added. It wasn't always, the law is
not eternal, it was added. It entered, so it must have come
in at some time, but it wasn't an eternal principle. The Law
was given at Sinai, and as we look at the book of Hebrews,
we understand that the Law was given at Sinai to REVEAL that
man, even if he is naturally chosen, NATURALLY chosen of God,
and given a priesthood, and given laws, and given sacrifices, and
given temples, and given all those things, cannot approach
God in a favorable manner. Hebrews teaches that law will
never make you better. In fact, it never made me better.
Never made me better. Does the speed limit make me
better? No, it makes me realize that
if I go over the speed limit, I'll be punished. You see, it
has no effect on me as long as I drive 54 in a 55. Has no effect
on me. It's not about me. What's that
about? What's that speed limit about?
It's about somebody who goes over 55. If you're not going
over 55, it has nothing to do with you. And the law is not
for the righteous man. That is to say, for a person
who is not breaking the law, the law has no say. Unfortunately
for natural men as they are born into the world, they are all
born SINNERS, and therefore the law CONDEMNS them. Why? Because
they have broken it. Now, if they weren't breaking
it, they wouldn't be sinners. But they broke the law, therefore
the law has to do with them. The law has to do with SIN. The
law has to do with DEAD, not RIGHTEOUSNESS and LIFE! It stands
to reason, then, and better yet, it is a clear declaration of
Scripture that our WORKS have NOTHING to do with obtaining
RIGHTEOUSNESS or SPIRITUAL LIFE! NOTHING! Do what you will! You try to be good enough to
get to God, more power to you! I'm not going to be mad at you
for trying to be a good person! And no right person in the right
mind will be mad at you for trying to be a good person. But don't
equate that to the righteousness that will satisfy God because
it is formed by dead people who are condemned under the law.
What then is this righteousness that is spoken of? It says here,
in the way of righteousness. Maybe that little word way has
something to do with what this is. Christ said in John chapter
14 and verse 6, I am the way. the truth and the life, and no
man come to the Father but by me. When it talked about those
people that hated the gospel preachers in the early days,
it said they hated that way. That way. What way is that? It
is the way of righteousness. It is Jesus Christ the Lord.
It is called the way of righteousness, and that is life. It takes no
EMPLOYMENT or of the IMAGINATION or INVENTION of some form to
LEARN this. It is not a PROCESS and it allows no PROGRESS. It
is an ACT of God. The FIRST WORD says it all. You
must be IN IT! IN the WAY of LIFE! How can you
be IN IT? How can you be IN IT? How can
this be? The WAY of righteousness is Jesus
Christ! We know that! The Name by which
He shall be called is the LORD, our Righteousness! And listen
very carefully! There is no other righteousness
that a child of God can have than this righteousness. You
cannot work up one of your own. It is a singular thing, and it
is a righteousness that you are made to be. That's what it says. He was made to be sin for us,
and we might be made to what? The righteousness of God. Does that say you're righteous?
No, it doesn't. It says you're righteousness.
When it talks about Christ being made to be our righteousness,
He says it's our righteousness. Of Him, of God, are you in Christ,
who of God is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification,
and redemption. Whatever righteousness is, that
righteousness that pleases God, which is Jesus Christ, if you
are in that, you have life if you are in it, and you get in
it because God put you in it before the foundation of the
world. The way of righteousness is Christ being made you a righteous
by an act of God. The way to receive the knowledge
and understanding of it is through hearing the gospel. And that
is what you hear when you hear the gospel. If people call the
gospel something that preachers do and give you a bunch of things
or some things to do in order to become righteous, that person
is a LIAR! No matter how sincere he is,
he is a LIAR! And he is going against scripture.
This is an act of God by which you are righteousness before
Him. You must hear the gospel. This
is once the easiest and the most difficult things of all. God
gives faith through the preaching of the gospel. How does it work?
I don't know. I've thought about it. I've been
preaching the gospel for 45, 48 years, something like that. I can't remember how many. And
I've thought about this thing. How does this thing work? Here
God raises up somebody like me, who was a paper boy, mowed yards
for a living, went into the grocery business when I was 14 years
old, I worked a produce manager, I worked a meat market manager,
owned my own business, was a butcher, making good money. Then God taught
me the gospel. I heard the preaching of the
gospel. It changed my life forever. God called me into the ministry.
How in the world? How in the world did that work?
I was perfectly intent to be a butcher. I like quittling meat.
Most people who are butchers love to do it. It's a very fascinating
job. How did it happen? How did that
gospel come to me? I heard it, but I'd heard other
people talk about it. First time I heard it, I thought,
well that can't be right because I'd heard something else all
my life. Then God told me it was right.
How does that work? God gave me the gospel. And through
hearing that, He gave me faith to believe. He gave me faith
and my faith believed Him. And it's still a wonder to me,
as I stand up here all these years and still do that, it's
a wonder to me that folks have come up to me over the years
and say, I want to confess Christ in baptism. Why? Because God
has given me faith to believe his gospel. How'd it happen? Through the gospel that was preached. The way to receive knowledge
and understanding of it is through hearing the gospel. It's at once
the easiest and the most profound thing. Faith. is impossible to
produce. That great missionary to the
Native Americans up in New York, David, I can't think of his name. When you get old you forget names.
But he would go on horseback through the snow and he wasn't
trying to convert people, he was telling them the truth about
God. They named a town after him up there in New Jersey. He had tuberculosis. Wanted to
marry Jonathan Edwards' daughter. Jonathan Edwards said, no, she'll
mess up your ministry. And it was true. Had tuberculosis. They say you could follow his
trail as he was going on his little pony back into the area
to teach the Algonquins and other native troops, native people,
the gospel by the blood spit. that he would cough up and spit
on the ground and you could follow his trail. He lived to be the
rival of the age of 29 years old. And he said four things, if I
can remember them all, I probably won't. He says, four things I
found out when I heard the gospel. God requires faith and I can't
produce it. God requires righteousness and I can't produce it. God requires me to love, and
I can't produce it. Whatever God has required of
me, I can't produce it. I rely wholly upon Him. God gave
him faith to believe, and he died preaching the gospel at
29 years old. What a wondrous thing. Faith
comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. By grace
you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it's
a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. So
I've come down to this in the matter of preaching the gospel.
And after I preach the gospel, or sometime during the preaching
of the gospel, I usually inquire. Does this interest you? Do you desire it? Because, I
mean, you know. It mean anything to you? I can't make it mean something
to you, so I ask you. Isn't that what Isaiah was saying
after he preached Isaiah 52-7 when he said, Thy God reigneth,
tell them that. It goes all the way through Isaiah 53 through
the substitutionary vicarious victorious death of Christ. Isaiah
54 which he sets forth all things that God has done for his people.
And then in chapter 55 he has this little word HO. What that word means is you're
at the point. I've told you everything I can
tell you. You're at the point. Ho! Anybody out there thirsty? Come! Take of the water of life. I've told you about the letter
that Uche Ukara wrote me many years ago. He actually called
me and I couldn't understand his accent. He was an African
man. So we started emailing each other and he said, I want to
be saved by God's sovereign grace. He said, how can I? I said, well,
you have to trust Christ. And we went on for a while. I
said, well, let me ask you this about this. Would you naturally,
as you're a born of woman with a sinful nature that hates God,
have desires toward God? And of course, the answer is
no. I said, if you have true desires
toward God, God's already working with you, already working on
you, because no man has that by nature. So I ask this question
many times as I preach the gospel, is this anything to you? Because
it is to God's people. It is to the elect. Do you desire
it? Then you have it. Because in the way of righteousness
is life. Only those who believe desire
Christ. Only those who believe. You say,
well, that seems like you're putting the cart before the horse.
No, God put it that way. I didn't. Whosoever shall call
upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Well, how then shall
they call on Him in whom they've not believed? And how shall they
believe on Him in whom they've not heard? And how shall they
hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach except they
be sent? So faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.
believers have a life in the way of righteousness is
life in the pathway they're in there
is no death that's a wonder statement too in this pathway of life and
righteousness there is no death well I know physically I'm going
to die If God don't come, if Christ don't come and call me
out of this place, I'm gonna go to the deep six. No death. I think about that.
Laying down and going to sleep and waking up somewhere else.
Much better. Where righteousness is, this
righteousness, there is no death. Why? Because the reason for death
doesn't exist. That's simple. Death is the just
and right penalty for sin. And if you are righteousness
before God, you have no sin. Scripture says the soul that
sinneth, it shall die. But in the way of righteousness,
there is no death. The sentence of death is condemnation.
But in the way of righteousness, there is no condemnation. where
there is righteousness, there is life, there is no condemnation,
no sentence of death, and no death. That's what it says in
Romans 8.1. There is therefore now no condemnation to them that
are in Christ. And what is established by the fact that Christ died
for them? The law of righteousness is fulfilled in their life. In Christ, the law has no claim
on you. No claim on you. That's why Paul said the law
is not for the righteous man in 1 Timothy. The law has no
claim on you. Why? Well, it's satisfying. It's satisfying. Justice demands
you be declared righteous because there is no ground upon which
you can be accused or charged. What a thing! The holy, righteous
law of God, perfect and holy, without sin the law is, operates
only in that realm, but it's without sin. Can search a child
of God from top to bottom, from the top of his head to the bottom
of his feet, and find no thing, nothing, that he can accuse him
of. No law that he's broken. Why? Because he's not righteous, he's
righteousness. satisfied in Christ and Him alone. You are righteous, you have righteousness,
and you are righteousness, and you have no death, and no death
will come to you. That's what this is. If you are
in Christ, who is the path of righteousness? There is no death there. There
is no death there. like I said on Wednesday night
that old saint was dying his last words were goodbye sin goodbye sin that's what it's
going to be because sin is our enemy and the old man still lives
bless his heart even though he's been crucified with Christ no
more sin well if there's no more sin what else is there not going
to be? Because death and sin came by
Adam, sin in the Garden of Eden, according to Romans chapter 12. This is just a statement of fact.
A plain, absolute, declared by God through the old preacher,
Solomon, in his wisdom, in the way of righteousness, is life. and in the pathway thereof, there
is no death. That's so plain. So plain. Believest thou this? Father, help us to understand
in Christ's name.