I invite your attention back
to Romans Chapter 3. The title of my message this morning
is, How Great the Gift. How Great the Gift. David Brainerd was a missionary
to the Native Americans in New York and New Jersey. He died when he was 29 years
old. He had tuberculosis. And it was said that you could
follow where he was going to the different tribes to preach
by the places on the snow where he'd spit out blood on the ground. He wanted to marry Jonathan Edwards'
daughter. But Jonathan Edward refused to
let his daughter marry him because she said, you will mess up his
ministry. So he didn't get married, and he died a very young man.
He was a thoughtful young man, and in his little book about
his life, he said there were four things
that God required of him for salvation that stopped him dead
in his tracks. First of all, God required perfect
obedience to His law and He could not keep it nor answer its demands. Secondly, faith was a requirement
in the salvation of His soul and He could not work it up and
He could not produce it. Thirdly, faith was the sovereign
gift of God and He could not get it Himself nor oblige God
to give it to Him. And fourthly, God could at His
own pleasure save him or damn him and be just in doing both. And He could not do anything
about it. Those four things. Brother Bainard was actually
employing words that are common to faith because faith excludes
all things that man has ability to produce. So David was speaking
as a believer when he said those four things. Of those who had precise and
practiced religion, our Lord said, seeing they see not, and
hearing they hear not, because he had no intention to save them
or convert them. Of His redeemed, our Lord said
of those He had justified, He said four times in His Word,
the just or the justified shall live by faith. Paul said of all
saints, we walk by faith and not by sight. In another place,
He said we look not on things that can be seen, but we look
on things that are not seen. Faith is not easy. I know we
have in this world an easy belief in it. Well, all you got to do
is believe. Well, go ahead. Give it your best shot. It's
not easy. It's impossible apart from a
work of grace. Those who have faith can't explain
it and can offer no proof that they have it. And those who don't have faith
seem to know everything about it and have even devised means
to make a bundle of money off of it. But those who believe,
ask them about it sometime. What is faith? They cannot tell
you. They know it's believing, but
they can't point out their faith to you because they believe from
the heart and from the soul and from the mind and not from the
body and from the nature. One time someone asked Peggy
Kerber, I think it might have been her mother, asked her, well,
how do you believe? And Peggy suddenly realized she
didn't have an answer and nobody else did either. How do you believe?
How do you believe? Henry Mahan wrote a book on faith
many years ago. It was a real wooden book. Took
it to a book publisher and the book publisher said, I'm not
going to publish that. People aren't interested in that. People
are interested in those things that are going on in Revelation,
those monsters and those things like that that you can get all
excited about. People aren't excited about faith. Everybody
knows about faith, but nobody knows about faith. Nobody knows
about faith. Without faith, it's impossible
to please God. That's what the Scripture says. And faith is
the gift of God. And faith only believes. Only believes. It doesn't do
anything else. It believes. It believes. In Romans chapter
1, you have natural man and his natural religion, the carnal
mind, the mind of the Gentile. And it's found out to be totally
insufficient for anything except sin. Then in Romans chapter 2,
you have the Jewish mind, and it's found out to be concluded
under sin also and of no value to anybody. So in the first two
chapters of this book, you have man and natural man. And then in chapter 2, you have
natural man with organized religion added. And in chapter 3, we have
Paul concluding them all under sin and under damnation and condemnation
before God. In our text, we see an interesting
phrase in verse 25. whom God has set forth, speaking
of Jesus Christ, to be a propitiation, that is a satisfaction or appeasement
through faith in His blood. It's there, right there in our
text. This phrase is inserted in the
middle and right along with the grand themes of our salvation
in this chapter. God's glory is spoken of here
in verse 23, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of
God. In verse 24, we have free justification. Free means without a cause. That is, no cause in you. Somehow
the cause is in God. We don't know what causes it,
but God does it. Free justification. Free standing
before God just as if you never sinned. That's what justification
means. Verse 25, you have redemption.
The buying back of the slave off the slave market, never to
be put on the market again in Jesus Christ. In verse 25 you
have the word propitiation, which means satisfaction. The Old Testament
word would be pardon, but pardon implies guilt. Propitiation means
that God's law is wholly satisfied and those whom He has redeemed
are considered by Him not guilty and never having been guilty. That's what propitiation means.
In verse 25, you have the righteousness of God, and that righteousness
is not His essential righteousness. It is the righteousness of the
Lord Jesus Christ as revealed in the Gospel from faith to faith
in Romans chapter 1. Then you have, in verse 25, you
have the remission of sins, the putting away of sins. In verse
25, you have the justness of God to justify those who believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ. And in verse 26, you have God's right to justify,
and in the middle of this complete catalog, and it really is a complete
catalog, Romans 3 summarizes The natural mind, the Gentile
mind and the Jewish mind concludes all other sin and then sets things
in the proper order of how God indeed saves sinners by His grace. And right here in the middle
you have this phrase, through faith in His blood. In His blood. And why should
faith not be included here? Are not all these things the
work of God? Do you all men have faith? Scripture
says all men have not faith. So who has faith? Those whom
God has given faith, and only those. No one else. Who does
He give it to? Those who want it? They don't
even know about it when they get it. They have no knowledge. When they get it, they use it,
and they don't even know they're using it, because faith only
believes. That's what faith does. That's
what faith does. That's why it's given to us.
So faith is included here. If it's included here, This is
the work of God and not the work of man. It's a gift of God, and
He gives it to them every will. By grace, Scripture says, ye
are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. That
faith is not of yourselves. It's not of works, lest any man
should boast. You can't boast in faith. Yet
people talk about it in that way all the time. Well, I have
my faith. I don't trust my faith. Do you trust your faith? I trust
the object of my faith. I trust the one who died in my
room instead. Faith is included in these things
that God has done, not to insert any activity on our part, but
to prove what of mankind is excluded from the entire process called
salvation. This is put in here with all
the things God does, so man cannot lift it out and say, well, this
is my part. Right in the middle of all that God has done. God
has sovereignly saved His people. And know well that faith is not
a generic term, but it's directed toward a specific object. Faith,
through faith in His blood. Now what does that mean? When
you see the word blood in Scripture, what does it mean? It means death,
except for those few people in Scripture who were wounded. When
you see the word blood, it means death. I know there's a popular
song, I think, that said one drop of blood could have cleansed
hope. No, it couldn't, because blood doesn't cleanse. Death
satisfied God. And when he's talking about blood
in Scripture, he's talking about somebody bleeding out, dying,
dying. What's the faith in? The sacrificial
death of the Lord Jesus Christ. Why? Because He had been charged,
according to this passage, and was accountable for the propitiation
of God for the sins of His people. He was accountable to do that.
He was charged to do that. It was His responsibility to
do that. Under God, in the covenant of
grace, Jesus Christ bore the responsibility of the sins of
all His elect. Now what does that mean? That
means they came into this world, those sinners all, God-haters
all, drinking iniquity like water, lame, halt, damned, doomed, dead
and dying, all of that, And yet they were never looked to by
God for the payment of their sin. Never. Jesus Christ is the
eternal surety or guarantor. In other words, we owed a debt
to God we could not pay. He took a debt He did not owe.
He signed His name to our debt. And though we came into this
world as God-haters, we were already sure of salvation by
Jesus Christ, if He indeed signed His name to our debt. And what
a glorious thing that is. Through faith in His blood, His
death, His death. Faith, this faith that God gives,
latches on. It understands and embraces all
scriptural and spiritual principles, and not the least of which is
the necessity of substitution and confidence in the finished
work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith embraces it. I've got six
things this morning and I won't take long. First thing is this,
faith grasps and embraces and has confidence in this fact,
that salvation cannot be produced from anything in or about or
from natural man. Faith embraces that fact. If
you are a believer, you believe that. If you don't believe that,
you're not a believer. It's that simple. It's that simple. Faith
understands that in the matter of salvation, and what we're
talking about salvation is from pole to pole, from eternity to
eternity, full and complete and absolute. In the matter of salvation,
nature, carnal nature, our natural ability, will, or inclination,
or interest is excluded. All of them is excluded, if you
believe. Now, if you don't believe, you'll think your will can do
something. If you don't believe, you think you have natural ability
to actually move closer to God. But if you believe, you know
that's not the case. Because the Scripture declares
that to be not the case. Look at verse 10 of chapter 3.
As it is written. This is written in Psalm 14.
As it is written, there is none righteous. No, not one. That means on all
the people of whoever lived upon this earth save for one, the
Lord Jesus Christ, there is not one righteous person on the face
of the earth. Not one. And in case you're wondering,
he adds it, no, not one. He adds the word no because you
think maybe there might be. No, not one. Verse 11, There is none that
understandeth There is no man born of woman
on this earth apart from a work of sovereign grace that knows
or understands anything that God says. Now, I know there are
theologians who believe lies. They can quote scripture upon
scripture, but I'm telling you, you cannot understand this book
at all in any way, shape, or form unless God gives you faith. And your understanding is based
entirely upon the fact that you believe this is what God said. You say, well, I can't explain
it. I can't explain a lot of this
stuff. But I believe it. And therefore, I understand it.
I understand who it came from and I understand the purpose
of it is to glorify God in the salvation of sinners. There is
none that seeketh after God. Some people like to talk about
them being seekers, and they wear that like some kind of a
humble badge, that they're seeking God all the time. There are none
who naturally seek God. There are no seekers of the truth.
Scripture says they are all gone out of the way. That means they're
not in the way, and the way is Jesus Christ. They are all together
become unprofitable. What does that mean? Everything
they do, everything they think, everything they are, their whole
life span, everything they've accomplished, so-called, throughout
their whole life adds up to zero, whether or not they are a child
of God. Nothing you do is profitable.
Didn't our Lord say to His disciples, after you've done all your duty,
then you can say, I'm a most unprofitable servant. That's
right. Add a man up to zero, you've
gone too high. It's what Spurgeon said. They
all together become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good,
no, not one. And this does not speak only
of natural men and calm men. It speaks of all humanity and
all of humanity, even those who know Jesus Christ. Even what
you're doing today, what I'm doing today, is not in and of
itself good. Because it is fraught with sin. Because I did it. And I am a
sinner. And everything I think and everything
I do has the element of sin in it. So there's none good, no,
there's none that doeth good, no, not one. Description of them, their throat
is an open grave. An open casket. Nobody wants
to see an open casket. That's why we like to close them
up and put them in the ground and put them out of the way. Your throat, what does that mean?
What comes out of you is dead. Is dead. With their tongues they
have used deceit. All men are liars. Let God be
true and all men be liars. You're a liar and I'm a liar.
If you say you're not, you're even a bigger liar. You're all
liars. The poison of ash is under their
lips. Their tongue is said to be like
a fire. Set worlds on fire. Natural man and redeemed man. Often their tongues is like a
poisonous snake bite. Whose mouth is full of cursing
and bitterness. That's not cussing. Though if
you get me mad enough, you'll hear some of that too. But cursing,
that means saying there's no hope for this and no hope for
that one. Judgmental looking down on folks that say that person's
dead and doomed and going to hell. You don't know and I don't
either. And bitterness, boy, that speaks
to today, doesn't it? I try my best not to involve
today's things going on around me in my preaching, but I look
around this world and I see a bunch of bitter people. among the unhappiest
bunch of people in the world, and even among God's people.
I mean, if anybody ought to be happy, we ought to be happy.
We ought to be joyous in our soul, walk around with a snap
in our step and a smile on our face, and our backs upright and
full of joy in this world. But we're bitter, too. Bitter
word. Everybody just complaining, bitter,
bitter, bitter. Their feet are swift to shed
blood. All over. Say, I'm glad I'm not
one. Yes, you are. You just ain't
committed murder yet. Murder is in your heart. You
are a murderer. If you don't kill somebody, it's because God's
kept you from it. You know that's true. And now over the least
little thing, somebody says something you don't like, somebody disagrees
with you politically, somebody runs you off the road or pulls
out in front of you in the road, if you could get by with it.
And if there was no law to punish you for doing it, it wouldn't
be nothing for you to pull that gun you hide under the seat away
from the law anyway and just blow their head clean off and
drive away happy. Destruction and misery is in
their way. That's the nature of man. Started
out pretty well for a little bit. I don't know how long Adam
lasted in the Garden of Eden. There is a scripture that seems
to imply that he didn't last overnight. That he didn't last overnight.
And since then, it's been a downhill run. Well, we've got to save
Mother Earth. Give it your best shot. Your presence in it as a sinner
is what started its ruin. And as long as there's a sinner
on the earth, the earth is doomed. And God will make it anew someday. The way of peace, have they not
known? Turmoil, angst, anger, all over
the place. No peace. There's no fear of
God, no love for, no worship of, no appreciation of, no reverence
for God. before their eyes. That's what
faith believes about humanity. That's what faith believes. Some
might say, well, it can't be that bad. Listen, these words
are the best that English and Greek and Aramaic could ever
write down, and they don't describe the depth of human depravity. They do not. They do not. God gives them for us so we can
look at them and say, well, at least I've got some understanding
of how rotten and wretched I really am. Secondly, faith grasps and embraces
and believes that keeping the law for required righteousness
to stand accepted before God cannot ever produce salvation
or any meritorious standing before God. Look at verse 19. Then whatsoever the law saith,
it saith to them that are under the law, that every mouth might
be stopped, shut up. And all the world may become
guilty before God, or subject to criminal punishment before
God. That's what the law said. That's
what the law said. Therefore, because that's true,
therefore by the deeds of the law, by doing the law or trying
to keep the law, Therefore, by the law there shall no flesh
be justified in God's sight, for by law is the knowledge of
sin." How do you know it's wrong to do 59 in a 55? Because the speed limit is 55. That's the law. By the law is
the knowledge. Paul said, I had not known sin. But when the law came, sin revived
and I died. I died. Faith knows this. And I wonder about those who
would stand in the pulpit and preach grace to believers and
then try to bring them back under the rule of the law for righteousness
or rule of life or justification or sanctification or anything.
That bothers me. Because we have faith in that
death of the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith excludes human works for
righteousness from salvation. It excludes it. The Pharisee
and the publican, the Pharisee thus prayed with himself in the
temple, Lord, I thank Thee that I'm not like other men. You wouldn't
say anything like that, do you? I thank Thee that I'm not like
other men. I'm not an extortioner. I don't extort people. I tithe
of everything I have. I pray. Lord, I'm not like that
old publican over there, that worst kind of sinner, that publican
who's not only a sinner but a tax collector that steals from good,
wholesome people. The worst kind of sinner, not
like him. Lord. And then there's that publican. over by the, wouldn't even come
in the temple, just kind of looked around the corner, one of them
pillars started banging on his head. Lord, be
merciful to me, the sinner. What's he saying? Lord, put your
blood on the mercy seat for me. Lord, propitiate for my sin. Propitiate for my sin. And the
Lord said to that Pharisee, nothing except by omission," he said
of the public. And this man went down to his
house justified rather than the other. That's what he called
that self-righteous, pat me on the back, I'm not like other
man fellow. And he wasn't lying. He wasn't
an extortioner. He wasn't a thief. By all human
standards, he was the best that society could produce. Religious
society. And God says, he's the other.
This one's justified, not the other. Not the other. Thirdly, faith grasps and embraces
that no one but God deserves, is worthy of, or possesses glory. Verse 23 says, We all have sinned
and come short of the glory of God. Faith excludes all nature,
all humanity, even at its best state, from even approaching
to the mark of God's glory. To God be the glory. Great things
He has done. In Psalm 29 it says, All in His
congregation give glory to His name. Fourthly, Faith grasps
and embraces that the blood of Christ's sacrifice alone, His
magnificent self-willed accomplishing death, completely satisfied God's
just demands. Completely satisfied. So much so that God can say about
saving wretched, ruined sinners like us. He can look at us and say, it
was the right thing for me to do to save that person. That's how sufficient and effectual
is the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. You can look at
old Jonathan. He says, it's right for me to
save him. Now Jonathan will tell you that
can't be right, but it's right. Why? Because of this sacrificial,
bloody death of the Lord Jesus Christ. Look at verse 24. "...being
justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is
in Christ Jesus, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation
through faith in His blood to declare His righteousness." God
did this to declare He was righteous. for the remissions of sin that
are passed through the forbearance of God, and it's talking about
the Old Testament saints, they were saved exactly the same way
the New Testament saints were, on the cross of Calvary, to declare,
I say at this time, right now, His righteousness, that He might
be just, and justifier of him that believes on the Lord Jesus
Christ. Faith excludes anything but the
blood of propitiation as the declaration of God's righteousness
in the forgiveness of sin. It excludes everything else.
It excludes the satisfaction of judges and that which enabled
God to be just when He justified those who believe and that by
His sovereignly disposed gift. God must punish sin. You can't
get by. Nobody can get by. You can't
have one foot in the door. You can't be almost good enough.
You can't be trying and doing your best. Your best is not good
enough. You know how good you've got to be to stand before God?
As good as God. Oh, you can't stand. That's why
your salvation must be such that He says, I'm right to save that
person. And I declare my righteousness
in the salvation of that person. And I am just to justify them
because of the sacrificial, magnificent death of the Lord Jesus Christ. Fifthly, faith grasps and embraces
the fact that in the scheme of the saving of man's soul, all
boasting of human participation, all boasting of human merit is
excluded. Verse 27, where is boasting then? Where is boasting then? It is
excluded. It is excluded. And faith further concludes that
human merit by an act of humanity is excluded. That is to say that
even faith is not a work of humanity. Because the exclusion of the
law of works is also the exclusion of faith as a work. Faith ain't
a work. If you can't be justified by
the work of the law, then faith don't have anything to do with
the law. Faith itself is excluded from the salvation of our soul,
save that God has given us faith to believe it. Faith is not a
work. It's not a work. Romans chapter
4. Look one chapter over. Romans
chapter 4. Verse 3 says, what saith the
scripture, Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for
righteousness. Now that's from Genesis chapter
15. That's particular to Abraham because Abraham was a man of
faith. He's called the father of the faithful. He did a lot
of things that exhibited that he believed God. When God called
him out of the Arachaldes, he just packed up his bag, took
his family, and he left. When God gave him the covenant of
promise in Genesis chapter 11, he believed God and went where
God said to go. When God said, take that boy Isaac up on Mount
Moriah and offer him up as a lamb sacrificial lamb to me, he said,
son, let's go. Let's go. We've got to go worship
God. How are we going to do that,
Father? I see we've got the wood and I see we've got the fire
and I see we've got the knife. Well, where's the lamb? Abraham said, God shall provide
himself a lamb. And he did. when Lot and his herdsmen were
arguing over the land that one should inherit and who should
have the best land, Abraham said, you take whatever you want and
I'll take what's left. He showed to be a man of faith.
But all those instances, if you look in Scripture, never is Abraham
recorded as believing God and it was accounted to him for righteousness. When did that take place? Abraham
told God one time, you know, I don't have any son born in
my house. If I make Eliezer my servant, my son, or Ishmael,
I got that son." He said, no. He said, it ain't going to be
Ishmael. The Lord said, come on outside. Took him outside,
took him up on the mountain and said, look at them stars. Ask
them if they can number themselves. He said, You're going to have
a son by a woman who's almost 100 years old and can't have
babies anymore. And you can't produce anything to make her
have babies. You're dead too. I'm going to
give you a son, a naturally born son that's going to come out
of her womb and from your body. But it's going to be a supernatural
birth. And you're going to call him Isaac. It's going to be your
son. That shall be your seed. And
from him, the Messiah is going to come. The Messiah is going
to come through that seed. And Abraham said, I believe that.
I believe that. God says, you're righteous. Abraham believed God and was
counted for righteous. Now, to him that worketh is the reward
not reckoned of grace, but of death. If you work for it, then
God owes you something. God is obligated to pay you.
But Abraham believed God and was counted for righteous. But
to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth
the undeadly, his faith is counted for righteousness. His faith
is counted for righteousness. The law of faith, if you want
to use those terminology, the principle of faith, is that absolute
principle that embraces all glory. All glory belongs to God and
the saving of your soul. That justification is the act
of God conditioned upon the blood and righteousness of the Lord
Jesus Christ and delivered to God's elect by sovereign grace
through regeneration and faith. Faith embraces that and rejects
all others. Sixthly, the elect then conclude
that a man is justified by faith without the works of the law.
That's what it says in verse 22, even the righteousness of
God which is by the faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all
them that believe for there is no difference between the Jew
or the Greek. No difference at all. Faith excludes itself from
the work of salvation and thus justification. What does it mean
that a person is justified by faith? What does that mean? Because
it's used in Scripture. It's a Scriptural term. There
are 17 different ways in Scripture that said a man is justified.
We know they're all by grace, but they're set forth in different
scenarios by God, so we'll understand them better. But what does it
mean when He says you're justified by faith? It simply means that
God gives His people this Wondrous special gift. You ever really
thought about it? To me it's still a wonder. I'm still utterly
amazed by it. Why do I believe? Why was it
one second I was an unbeliever, the next second I was a believer?
Why, how did that happen? One second I hated God, the next
second I loved God. How can that happen? I mean,
there was no learning process. I didn't start in the kindergarten
of faith and work up to graduate as a senior in faith. One moment
I was an unbeliever, the next moment I believed. One moment
you couldn't convince me that anything about God was so, the
next minute you couldn't convince me that anything about God wasn't
so. One minute I didn't believe this book, the next minute I
loved it and believed it and couldn't get enough of it. Why?
What happened? It must have been God because
it sure wasn't me. And that's what faith always
says. It excludes itself from this world. What does it mean
to be justified by faith? It means that you believe that
all salvation was accomplished by God and that you were saved
and redeemed and justified and sanctified and accepted long
before hearing the gospel by which you were informed that
all of this had taken place. You don't get saved when you
hear the Gospel. When you hear the Gospel, if
God gives you ears to hear and eyes to see, you hear that God
saved you in eternity, in time on Calvary Street, and revealed
it to you in time by the Spirit through the Gospel. If your salvation,
some preacher told you that if you'll do this, you'll be saved.
He wasn't telling you the truth. Even if he says if you believed,
you'll be saved, he wouldn't tell you the truth. Wouldn't
tell you the truth. Because you can't believe. You
can't believe. How does a person believe? By
the gift of God. What does he believe? I have
been saved. I have been saved. That's what
he believes. Not that I'm going to be. Not
if I do some things I will be. Not if I come down an aisle.
Not if I pray. Not if I pray through. Not if I pray enough.
But I've been saved. That's what the gospel tells
you. That's good news. It ain't good news to tell a sinner that
if he does something he'll be alright because he can't do nothing.
He's dead. The good news is to have your ears bored and open,
your eyes open, your heart open, and your mind open by God, and
find out that that wondrous transaction that took place 2,000 years ago
included you! That's good news. That's good
news. Finally, faith excludes all efforts
to establish the law in personal performance of it, in its requirements,
in its work of shutting men up to grace, even to faith itself.
Only by believing the gospel, the proclamation that salvation
is not accomplished by anything you do or any law you keep, but
only by the person and work of Jesus Christ, only by faith is
the law established. Those who try to keep the law
aren't establishing the law, they're bringing people back
under the principle of sin, according to 1 Timothy 1. If you believe,
you establish law. That's what the Scriptures say.
Verse 28, Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith
without the deeds of the law, Is He the God of the Jews only?
Is He also the God of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also, seeing
it is one God which shall justify the circumcision by faith and
the uncircumcision through faith. Do we then make void the law
through faith? God forbid. We establish the
law. What are we saying? The law is good and holy. I am
carnal soul done to sin. I am carnal soul done to sin.
What are we saying? What does faith believe? Faith
believes and establishes the law by declaring that Christ
kept it fully and honored it completely and satisfied its
demands completely. Faith in the blood of Christ.
What is it? It's the exclusion of all things
in nature. Exclusion. and embracing that
in the matter of salvation and everything else in the universe,
God Almighty merits, deserves, and is worthy of all the glory. Father, bless us for understanding.
We pray in Christ's name. Amen.