Right with God

Hear her. Okay. Now, man, you only tried this one time in your marriage, and then you realize this is never going to work. Okay. All right. Now, we decided to make up something fictitious. And again, understand forgiveness and justification are two different words. The way God uses justification is the same way we use it today. Watch this. Oh, honey, I asked you to pick up the kids. I did. I picked up the kids. I look around and I don't see the kids. You didn't pick up the kids. Honey, I don't see him. I picked him up and then I had to drop him off at a party. Did you hear that? She dropped him off at a party. Oh, OK. Let's not argue. I forgive you. The first time I ever tried that, when we were first married, she gave me a look, went right over my shoulder, went right out the door, hit the mailman, knocked him right off his truck. She doesn't want to be forgiven. What does she want? She wants to be justified. Justified means I did no wrong. Now, here's the problem. For God to justify us would be for God to take someone who is a sinner. God says, I'll have sinned if I'll share in the glory of God. I don't think there's one person in this room that would stand up and say, I am perfect. I've never sinned. In fact, if someone said to that, you'd already have two problems with them. One, you're a liar. And two, you're so arrogant, I don't even want to know you. Nobody would ever say that. In fact, truthfully, in most of the world, most people will actually say only Jesus Christ, whether they love him or not, would probably say he's the only person that ever lived a righteous life, a perfect life. But when it comes to human beings, we all say we're fallen. But God says this, if you are fallen, How can he justify it? Do you understand the problem? It is a religious enigma that covers, it's in every religion. How can God be holy, take unholy people and declare them holy? Let me give you another illustration. Let's suppose Adolf Hitler came before God. And this is what you heard. He's responsible for six million deaths easily in terms of Jews, not counting all the deaths that came from the war, which began with national socialism in the 1930s. All right. But Adolf Hitler appears before God and God says, Oh, Adolf, you know, you're just having a bad day. You know, sometimes those Jews can get a little bit out of hand. Come on in. Come on into heaven. Let me give you a noogie. What would you think? You would think there's something wrong with God. There's something wrong with God. How can God be holy and do that? Is that the way God is? No, it's not. In fact, you expect from a righteous judge, and I expect from a righteous judge, to recognize things that are unjust, that are unholy, that are immoral. It would infringe upon God's holiness for God to take unholy people and declare them holy. So, how on earth can God, Romans 4 verse 5, justify the ungodly? Let me show you how he does that. I asked Ben to come up Let me ask you to turn to 2 Corinthians 5, 21. It's the last verse of 2 Corinthians 5. Take a look at it in your Bible. Okay, now Ben and I, while you're turning here, Ben and I have, he has a white book, I have a black book. Now, I'm representing me and all of you, every person that's ever lived. Vin is representing Jesus. Don't you think that's a rather good typecasting? Okay, he represents Jesus. Now, the book, the books that we have represent our life. Again, I'm trying to explain to you what justification is, all right? Now, I live a life, God says, there's none righteous, no not one, there's none who understands, there's none who seeks for God. You have a life, you have a past, you have a record. of your life. God says at the last chapters of Revelation, He talks about opening the books and judging the lost by their works. This book is black because it's representing the fact that all of us have sinned against God and just destroyed His law. Through the works of the law, no one will be justified, is our word, before God. That's in Romans 3. Okay, so here's my life. Now, Jesus came, and when he came, he did not just come on Thursday and die on Friday. He came and lived a life, 30 years of life, before God. In the life that Jesus lived, he perfectly kept God's law. Three times, Scripture says, three times, the Father breaks out and says, this is my Son in whom I am well pleased. Oh, how I love my Son. Everything that Jesus did, He did to the glory and honor of God. He perfectly kept the laws of God. He never sinned. Whatever He did, He did out of love. The Father was fully satisfied with Him and His life. This is the record of His life. There is no mark in it. It is a perfect life. Do you understand that? Are you with me? You're looking at me like cats. You know what cats look like? You talk to them and they just... There you know not you understand dear Jesus. He's got a perfect life of holiness Here's you and I who have our sin now, you know and you have probably heard That from the scripture perspective that when someone trusts in Christ What happens and this is in your text? Do you see it 2nd Corinthians 521 it says this He became sin who knew no sin. What does that mean? That means that when I trust in Christ, God takes my sin and imputes it to Him. He reckons it to Him. Now that means like you transfer something. Like if one of your kids is in college or down at UVA and he sends you an email and he says, Dear Dad, no mon, no fun, your son. You know, what do you do? You know, you don't have to go take the money down to him. Of course, you really want to send him back, you know, too bad, so bad, too bad, so bad, you're too bad, so sad, you're dead, right? But what do you do? You transfer money into his account. It's not something that it is simply a transfer, it is an imputation, OK? My sin is transferred to Christ. Now, watch this. Did Jesus become a sinner? He became sin who knew no sin? No, He didn't become a sinner. Sin is put on Him, not in Him. And what that means is that legally, by putting it on Him, imputing it on Him, God says, even though you have not sinned, I am going to take you and execute you as if you were Phil Smulin or whoever that believer might be. I'm going to treat you, Jesus, as if you were him. Now, that's the first part of this, but there's something else. This is what justification means. What does the rest of that text say? Look down at it. That we might become the righteousness of God in Him. What he's saying is that the righteousness of Christ is put on me. Not in me. I didn't become all of a sudden perfectly holy. But the righteousness of Christ is imputed. It is declared to be on my account. And God looks at me And he treats me as if I were Jesus. By the way, this isn't just a ticket into heaven. When you believe in Christ, you say, how could he love me? I still sin. He's not loving you on the basis of what you do. He's loving you on the basis of what Jesus has done. So he takes you and declares you holy. That is justification. You understand? Thank you, Ben. Do you understand? I'm not going to let you go until I see you not. Because this is the essence of Christianity. This is why you are Protestant. Because in the 16th century, when the church was falling all over itself, so men came up and said, this is the gospel. The gospel is not, come to Jesus and He will make you good enough for God. Good enough for God means He'll come in and give me the grace to change and change and change and change and change and all of a sudden, He looks at you and says, I see you're good enough. None of you is good enough. I am not good enough for heaven. Jesus is the only one. who has a right to walk into the throne of God on the basis of what he has done. But I am now in Jesus. Do you understand justification? Alright, now look, there's three things. So, who gets justified? Look at the text. There are three characteristics and they are amazing. But to the one who does not work but believes in Him who justifies, the ungodly. The first characteristic of those God justifies is that they are all, without exception, ungodly. You notice what he didn't say? He didn't say he justifies the Baptists. He didn't say he justifies the Presbyterians. He didn't say he justifies Methodists, or Charismatics, or moral people, or religious people, or people who mind their own business. The only people God saves are, without exception, ungodly people. Now, first, someone might look at that text, that word, ungodly, and think, oh, of course we're ungodly. We're not like God. God is perfectly holy. I'm not. God's infinite. I'm finite. God's all-powerful. I'm not. You say, I'm not like God, but that's not what the text means. The text is different than that. The text actually means that I'm opposed to God. If you saw, for example, if we were here and we saw a big parade go down the street and it had this banner and it said, Americans, Americans for the downfall of, excuse me, American communists for the downfall of American government. You would look and go, they might be Americans. But they are not really for America. They're against everything that America and which America stands for. You would say that. Well, at least some of you would. They're against America. When God says He's ungodly, we are ungodly. He said we have shattered ourselves against the character of God. You say, surely I'm not that bad. I mean, I've done some good things. Okay, good things. Here's the way human beings think. You see that beautiful paint picture? Not paint, stained glass picture. Has different colors and there's different pieces on it. You see it? This is the way human beings think. And this is amazing. What human beings think is that, that sort of, that glass picture up here is the record of my life. And during my life, I've taken a rock and I've smashed one, smashed another one, smashed another one. But then I get really, I got to grow up and do something good. So I go up there and I try to fix up one of those pains. And maybe it's not perfect, but all through life, I am breaking and possibly mending a few. And then at the end of my life, that God will look and say, Yeah, good enough. That's not the way God judges you. Your life is like one of these windows. One big pain. Life is a pain. A pain window. When you throw one rock, you smash the entire window. Your entire record is smashed. All of it. It's gone. It's broken. That's why he can say, he who breaks the law at one point breaks it all in the book of James. The law of God. Thank you. Amen. I got one charismatic here. You smash the whole thing. And if you come with a broken record before God, he says, that's it. I am holy and I will by no means let the guilty go unpunished. Somebody pays for your sin. Either you do or Christ does. You have to see it that way, not this way. Look, I mean, I look at you and I think, man, what a bunch of beautiful people. Love to know every one of them. I'm not sitting here being your judge. The issue is not what I think of you. The issue is totally what God thinks. This message is not for you to be entertained. The message is not for you to nod or sit there and say, what a funny tie. The message here, what I'm asking God to do, is for you, in your heart, to come before God and say, where do I stand with you? And God says, you are ungodly before God. The only people who will ever be justified are those who know themselves to be ungodly. There's a second characteristic, and it is just as strange as the first. Before I say that, let me just ask, has it ever dawned on you? Has it ever been a pressing matter of your own soul that you are ungodly before God? If you are ever to be right with God, you must first realize you are wrong with God. The second characteristic is this. Look again, Romans 4, verse 5. But to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness. Those who are justified are people who do not work. Do you realize you and I live in a world where everything is based on merit? To a certain degree, the woman or the man you marry has in some way earned your love, at least in your eyes, whether you realize it or not. You run in the Olympics, if you win place or show, you get a trophy, I mean a medal. If you perform a job, you get a raise. If you do well in military, You should get a promotion. If you study hard, you get the better grades. In fact, if you get the best grades in high school, you got to stand in front of your class as the valedictorian and speak while they sat in their chairs and slept. That's the way it is in our world. Everything about our world says you earn what you get. That is the way men think, but that is not the way God thinks. And the first thing, the reason I say that, and I'd like for you to keep your place in Romans and turn to Galatians 3. And for those of you who are worried about the Lord's Supper, we will get there quickly. We're almost done. Galatians 3. But you must see why it can't be through works and something that you do. Galatians 3. Verse 10, this is why God cannot save you on the basis that something you do, something moral, something religious, some sense of feeling close to God, that even that is not enough. It's not your experience or your subjective experience of how you feel. The first reason is that he has a perfect standard. There's nothing you could do that could ever possibly earn. His righteousness, his mercy, it looks, he says this, look at Galatians 3 10. It says this for as many as are of the works of the law, that would be deeds that would be moral or even religious things. or under a curse, for it is written, Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law to perform them." Now let me show you what that means. And again, I apologize for leaving the pulpit, but I want you to imagine that this wall and that wall are millions of miles apart. Millions of miles. And that this is actually a standard. Here is perfect holiness. This is where you think of as God. God starts here. Jesus is perfect, right? And then over here, you think of something that's just absolute sin, absolute rebellion, like Satan and his demons. Now, here's what human beings do. We all do this. Unfortunately, even as Christians, I keep trying to say to them, you're on a different relationship with God now, but nevertheless, Here's what people do. They imagine that they're somewhere along the scale. And they think, okay, I'm probably here. I mean, I may be bad, but I'm not as bad as Satan, and I'm certainly not as bad as Keith Code. You know, and Adolph is over here, Pol Pot's over here, Stalin's over there, you know, and I may not be Mother Teresa, you know, or a Gandhi or a Billy Graham, they're probably on that side, but I'm somewhere over here. Now, what do they assume? They assume that before God, I've done some things and that if God draws a line, who does it make the cut? They always imagine that the line starts here. And everybody else makes it. And I'm here. Except for the person over here says, yeah, the line starts here. Even Adolf thought he was a Christian. Did you know that? And he thought, here, he called himself a Christian. Everybody does that. What does the text say? Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the law. Here. You want to know where God's standard starts here and it ends here. It doesn't go beyond that. I expect perfection. Whatever you might add, it'll never be holy enough to fit within this category. The only person that God will justify is the one who does not work. He gives His deadly doing down. He puts it down. He gives it up. He says, I can't do it. This standard. In other words, you not only repent of your sin because you're ungodly, you also repent of your good deeds if you're ever going to be saved. I have to give them both up. if I'm going to come to God. We sang, nothing in my hands I bring, simply to thy cross I cling. And that's the third category, third characteristic. So, who gets justified? for the one who does not work," verse 5, Romans 4, verse 5, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith, his reckoning, his righteousness. Now, all through this text, all through this book, Paul is arguing that the object of faith is Christ. He even says that Abraham Jesus says, Moses. This text also says in this chapter, David. All of those people in the Old Testament, all the people in the New Testament, all placed their trust in Jesus alone. Look what the end of chapter 4 says. Now, verse 23, now not for his sake, that is Abraham's sake, was it written that it was reckoned to him. Remember, Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. But for our sake, that would be you and me, to whom it will be reckoned. That is the righteousness of God. in justification for those who believe in Him who raised Jesus from the dead and who was delivered up because of our transgressions and was raised up for our justification. Alright, I am finishing up. I'm going to ask you. What's your name? Okay, I'm going to ask you to help me just a second, okay? I won't embarrass you. I always embarrass myself, but I won't embarrass you. We're going to save you through good works. Instead of sending his son, he would have sent more rules. But he didn't do that, did he? He sent his son. For God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son. But what is faith? We've mentioned who we trust in, but what is trust? The word pistil means something more. Pistil means something more than simply acknowledging. Like if I said, did Jesus come and live and die? You know, you would be a fool if you said no. And the reason why is that not only is there the Christian history of Jesus Christ, there's enough secular history. that you can actually say, there's no question that this man came and the record says the body was missing from the grave. That's not saving faith. I am not looking for a nod in the head. God is not looking for you to say, OK, I agree. The only way that you will ever be saved is when you entrust yourself entirely to Jesus Christ. And I'll give you an illustration when we're done. Any of y'all ever been to Niagara Falls? Okay. My wife and I went to Niagara Falls. Love Niagara Falls. Niagara Falls from one end to the other, that would include both the American and the Horseshoe Falls and the Ribbon Falls. I can't remember now. You're talking about a distance of about a half a mile across. It is 1600 from top to bottom. If you ever go there, You'll know that in one minute, over 4 million metric tons of water comes cascading over the falls in one minute. It's incredible. The amount of – it's just – it's just crazy. If you were picturing it coming off of Lake Erie, down the falls, if you ever get, start walking up to it about a half a mile before you get to the falls, you can begin to feel the ground trembling. You get up closer. If you can get up, and you can do this on the Canadian side, you can walk right up to a balcony and watch this water rushing over. It is terrifying. It's not something where you start dancing around and all of that, especially if you have a loss of balance like I do. Because you think, I could fall into this thing, I'd die instantly. Well, people have actually tried to do this. They've tried to do certain things like swim across, take barrels over it. Most of them are dead. If you ever read, most of them die. Okay, so one guy at one time, years ago, named London. He said, I will go across the falls, and I will go across them on a tightrope. On a tightrope. And they actually strung a tightrope from one end to the other. And thousands of people came out to watch this. They said, oh, wow, man, ah, you know, this is going great. And sure enough, again, if you've ever been there, you notice a puff of wind could come off of Erie just like that. You know, and you're like, I mean, if you're trying to, even if you have good balance, you probably would just get knocked right off. So he, but Blondin gets out there, and he takes those balancing poles, you know, and first of all, he goes, you know, like this, and he stops, and he lays down. He lays down right in the middle of it, with his back on it. Everybody's going, wow, oh, wow, you know, they're yelling and screaming. He goes there, and he goes back. Everybody thinks, man, this is great. Then he puts the pole down. And he does it with free walk. Everybody goes, wow, wow. He even takes a chair. A chair. He takes a chair out and he goes and he puts the chair down. Flips it around. Steps. Puts his hands out. Everybody, wow. Takes a wheelbarrow down and back. And now he says, he comes back and he says to everyone. Let me get you to stand right there. He says, all right, do you think I can get across the falls? Yeah! Great! Do you think I can carry a person across the falls? Yes. Can I have a volunteer? I want you to stand up right up here. Yeah, I'm getting so old I don't even know I can carry you. Nobody said, can I get a volunteer? No one would volunteer. No one would volunteer. They wouldn't. They'd say, no, no, no. And then finally, he turns to his manager. His manager's going. He said, yeah, the other one is making the big money. And his manager said, OK. This is what he told his manager. You do nothing. Don't try to help me. He takes him. Go ahead, get on my back. He takes him, and he takes him from one end, he takes him down, one end, and he takes him back to the other end of the fall. Now, what God is doing is He's saying this. There's only one person. You can't swim across. You have to get across. You have to get to heaven. You can't swim it. You can't go over in a wheelbarrow. And judgment is actually going to come. Thank you. You can't do it. You have no ability. But there is someone who has actually come from heaven, come to the earth and gone back. He can do it. But he says, you, to get there. It's not agreeing. Trust is when you entrust yourself. And he says, don't you do a thing. You trust me and my ability. I will get you there. That is how you are saved. It's when you entrust yourself completely to the justifying work that comes from God. Let's pray. Lord, here is a message that you've given us that is so simple a child could understand it, and yet it is so profound. The greatest of minds have never been able to fathom it completely. For here, the character of God is fully seen. The mercy of God, the justice of God, the wrath of God, the love of God. The grace of God, the holiness of God is all seen in this one extraordinary, outrageous act of grace which you have given to us. I pray for anyone here who is living under the illusion that somehow they might be good enough or not evil enough or religious enough or Baptist or Methodist or moral enough to somehow earn your attention. I pray that we would all give it up and look at your one provision between God and man, the work of Jesus Christ. I pray for those who have trusted in you and that our hearts would be filled with the joy that is everlasting, that would be our strength and our passion throughout our days. that we would recognize that taking hold of you, we discover we have been taken hold of by you. And that we would take our lives, therefore, and make them, mold them according to love and grace and longing for our neighbor to know this great news of Jesus Christ. As we take the Lord's Supper, I pray that our hearts would be filled with joyful remembrance of what you did, how you were slaughtered, executed in my place. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.