James chapter 2. We are going to be mainly in Romans 4. But let's start out, if you would, with me at the end of James chapter 2. James comes right after Hebrews. In James chapter 2, beginning in verse 20, the Word of God says this, Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works. And the Scripture was fulfilled that says Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness, and he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. This is what we considered last week, Rahab. And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way. For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead. And this is the Word of God. You can be seated. Let's pray again. Lord, thank You for what we have already read in Psalm 9 this morning, that You are a just God. Although there are human judges, You are the Judge with a capital J. Always do what's right. Justice and righteousness are the very foundation of Your throne. So Lord, we ask for Your help this morning as Ben has led us. Lord, we don't want to run from our weakness. We want to embrace it. Your strength would be made much of. We pray for this time right now that You would give us freedom through the Holy Spirit. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, we started in James 2 with where we're going to end up. If you'll turn to Romans chapter 4, So turn back to the left to Romans chapter 4. I don't know if you were listening very carefully as Brian led us in prayer at the beginning of the service. If you were, I wonder what you were thinking. My task this morning, really, humanly speaking, really is an impossible task. It's to convince us that what Brian was praying at the beginning of service is true. If you maybe remember, he was praying, obviously, about Kenneth Stancil and the events that have happened this past week in our community. And even in this prayer, he was comparing the fact that we will stand before a judge. And even the fact that We have crimes that are on par, maybe even greater, that we will give an account. And I don't know about you, but when you just hear that, it might have sounded to you like spiritual talk, hollow. But it's true. And my task this morning, as I said, is impossible apart from the Holy Spirit helping us, is to help us to see that that is true. If Kenneth Stancil, Kenneth Morgan Stancil III, went to Wayne Community College, shot and killed an employee, as he did last Monday morning, and if Mr. Stancil stood before the judge in Wayne County to begin to answer for his crime, as he did on Thursday, then what would be the proper response of the justice system? In this case, in Wayne County, what should Judge Arnold Jones do? It's been pointed out by Charles Leiter that there are three basic reasons why a crime should be punished. Three basic reasons of why you should punish a crime. First, for the satisfaction of justice. Second, for the good of society. And third, for the good of the offender. We'll go through those again very quickly. Why should you punish a crime? First, and most foundationally, this is the most important, for the satisfaction of justice because crimes deserve to be punished and ought to be punished. Second, for the good of society, for the prevention of further crime. And then third, for the good of the offender, to cause him to change his ways. And so we could ask that question, what would be the proper response of the justice system? I'm sure I don't have to help you a lot with that. We could ask the question, what should Judge Arnold Jones do? It's an important question. There's a more fundamental question that makes, again, Pastor Brian's prayer perhaps seem hollow. Don't lump me in with murderers. Don't lump me in with convicted felons, we say. But as we've already seen in Psalm 9 this morning, the truth before us is just this today. God is a righteous judge. The judge of all the earth. He will always do what is right. You can think of it like this, if Judge Arnold Jones were to say, well, you know, I'm feeling good today, I'm having a good day, and I'm in a good mood, and therefore I'm just going to kind of relax, it's my prerogative, I'm a judge, I've earned this right, I'm going to kind of relax justice a little bit, and of course he didn't, if you know the news, he didn't at all look repentant, but he said, you know what, I have compassion on you, and if that were to be the case, if a human judge faced with a criminal who had committed a wicked act of violence were to say, I'm feeling good today, I'm going to maybe let you off the hook even a little bit. The truth of the matter would be that that judge would be wicked in the same way as the very criminal. Not because he had done the exact same thing, but for a human judge to just throw off justice like that would be wicked. The Bible says so. The Bible says if you exonerate a wicked man, it is an abomination. If you clear the guilty, if you justify the guilty, the Bible says, you're an abomination. So our theme this morning is justification by faith. It's been my burden as your pastor. that we not skip over this. We've been in James. Whether you realize it or not, we've been kind of letting the end of James 2 be our point of camping out. And we've been talking about Abraham, and we've been talking about Rahab, and we've been looking into James 2 itself. And we must not leave too quickly this essential idea of justification by faith. Because of this, because if God Himself clears the guilty, If God says, I just forgive you, that's who I am, you know, that's what God does, right? He just forgives people, then He is an abomination. Then He Himself becomes wicked. And so we come to Romans 4 to think about this subject. There's no better place we could go than Romans 4 to think about this subject of justification by faith. We're going to read a pretty decent chunk. Look with me. This is the Word of God in Romans chapter 4. What then shall we say was gained by Abraham our forefather according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due. And to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. Just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works. Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin. Is this blessing then only for the circumcised or also for the uncircumcised? For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. How then was it counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after. But before he was circumcised, verse 11, he received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised so that righteousness would be counted to them as well. And to make him the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised. Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, continues in verse 13, for the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law, there is no transgression. That is why it depends on what? Faith. In order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring. not only to the adherent of the law, but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all. As it is written, I have made you the father of many nations. In the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. In hope, he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told. So shall your offspring be. He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God. but he grew strong in his faith and as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was counted to him as righteousness. But the words it was counted to him were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in Him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. Paul says two things that we need to focus on this morning, particularly in verses 1-5. The first thing that I want to bring to our attention that Paul says in Romans 4, 1-5 is this, Justification, or we could say it like this, we are justified by faith apart from works. Let me say that again. The first thing that Paul brings to our attention here in Romans 4, 1-5 is we are justified by faith apart from works. Look back at the end of chapter 3 in verse 28. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of law." He said it there in the end of verse 3, and then he's going to tease it out in chapter 4. Before we get there, look back again at verse 21 of chapter 3. Chapter 3 verse 21, But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. Our theme this morning, the big idea of the text and of the sermon is this, justification by faith. And we might ask, what does that big word mean? And so I think we could go to our children's catechism and we could ask the question that is asked there, first of all, why do we need justification? Because none of us always does what is right. We are all sinners. Why do we need justification? Answer, because none of us always does what is right. We are all sinners. What is justification? Because of Jesus' death for us, we are now in right relationship with God. What does justification answer? Because of Jesus' death for us, we are now in right relationship with God. Justification means that God, because of Christ, declares us righteous. Because of Christ and because of the blood of Christ, if you're here this morning and you're not really familiar with Christianity or with Jesus, we're really glad you're here. And you should know that the central part of our message is about blood. It's about the blood of a lamb. In the Old Testament, prophesied about the Lamb of God, and we see the Lamb of God is the Messiah Jesus. And because of His blood that He poured out on the cross, As our substitute, that is the ground of our justification. That is the reason that God is not like a human judge. If there were to be such a human judge, who was to be faced with a murderer, who was also a rapist, we might say, and who says to that very criminal, I'm feeling good today. I'm going to relax justice. The Bible says that judge would be wicked, right? If you justify the wicked, you're an abomination. But God is not an abomination. God is not wicked. Because God sent His one and only Son into the world as the ground of our justification. That's our only hope. That's your only hope this morning, that we can be saved is that Jesus shed His blood on the cross for sinners. Now that's the ground of justification. Justification means God declares us righteous. We're not righteous. Just let your eyes fall down again to Romans 4 verse 5. To the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the what? Nobody said anything. Okay, I'm not trying to be like a TV preacher. They do it all the time. It gets on my nerves. It really does. Hold up your Bible, all this stuff. "...to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly." That's the real tension. The real tension is that none of us understand sin. None of us rightly understand sin. And when Brian prays that this morning and you think, wait a minute, is he saying that I'm going to stand before a judge and that I've done similar things? Yes. Because we think of sin as something out there, when in reality sin is something in here. And this is the problem, is that God cannot be just and at the same time Say to Jerry, or to me, or to Robin, I, for Jesus' sake, I declare you to be righteous. That's the problem. He cannot be just and at the same time the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus unless Unless there is a sure ground of our justification, and there is, it is Christ's death on the cross. He justifies the ungodly. He doesn't declare righteous those who improve themselves. The judge, Arnold Jones, this would still be wicked. If Kenneth Stancil comes and says, I'm really remorseful. Think about this with me. If he says, I'm so sorry. I know I've been all over the news bragging about other people that I've killed. I'm a neo-Nazi and all this stuff, but I'm sorry and I've even started to do some community service as best as I can. The judge would still be wicked if he exonerated him, if he let him off the hook. God doesn't justify us because of anything in us. Right? We're justified. If anybody is justified at all, it's because of Jesus. If anybody's ever, ever declared righteous, if anybody is ever accepted by God, it has nothing to do with us. Not even our faith. This is the key this morning. Justification by faith. How do you get into a right standing with God? You simply believe. But even that, in a true sense, has nothing to do with us. And to the one who does not work, but believes in Him, who justifies the ungodly, look at the end of verse 5. His faith is counted as righteousness. And so your employer is going to think you're pretty weird, maybe. If on the third or fourth time, you go up to your employer and you say, I got my paycheck again. Thank you. Thank you so much. I got my paycheck again, and I went to deposit it, and I love you, man. All right. But you say that to me every week. The employer might say to the employee. Somebody might begin to think you're a little strange if you say, man, I've been working my bone off, but I got my paycheck and thank you. Why? Verse 4, Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as due, because if you're an employee, you've got a contract, right? That's how it works. You do X amount of work for X amount of pay. That's how it works. The boss is not doing something really wonderful for you. I mean, sometimes bosses go above and beyond, and that's great. But it's not like the boss is saying, you know, it's going to be super generous. That's kind of the contract. Look at it again. To the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due. If you want to play that game with God, Play it. It ends in a dead end. Paul is at pains to say, this is what it's not like. This is what justification is not like. It's not like you have a boss and you work and you get paid because justification is by faith apart from works. That's the first thing Paul says. We are justified by faith apart from works. Or you can say it like this, faith alone. Faith alone. The second thing Paul says is this, he says, I'm going to prove it to you by Abraham. He says, we're justified by faith apart from works, and I'm going to prove it to you by Abraham. Verse 1, What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Very quickly, Genesis 15. Genesis 15. Here's what Paul is referring back to. Now remember, if you were here... Let me look up for just a moment. If you were here like a month ago, we camped out on Genesis 22. James references Genesis 22 where Abraham was called to sacrifice his son, to offer his son, to kill his son. And he was willing to do it. And he didn't have to do it. But in Genesis 22, Abraham proved his faith because he was about to kill his son. But Genesis 15 obviously comes before Genesis 22. Genesis 15, after these things the word of the Lord came to Abram, in a vision. Fear not, Abram. I am your shield. Your reward shall be very great. But Abram said, O Lord God, what will you give me? For I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus. And Abram said, Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, This man shall not be your heir. Your very own son shall be your heir. And God brought, I'm supplying these words here, God brought Abram outside and said, look toward heaven and number the stars, if you are able to number them. Then he said, so show your offspring thee. Stop right there for just a minute, boys and girls, you get the picture. Abraham, as we read early in Romans, he's an old man. Sarah, his wife, is old. It's not like 2,000 years have made any biological difference. It's the same thing. It was an unbelievable miracle for God to actually give Abraham and Sarah, or Abram and Sarai, as they were first a child of their own, And Abram says, listen, it's just not happening here. He says, I'll help you God, I'll help you to make it happen. And God says, no, you're going to have your own child. And then God says to Abram, come outside with me. And as we have beautiful land here in Wayne County, you can go out and you can look at the stars and you can see sometimes for miles. And God says, Abraham, come out here and look up at the heavens and count the stars if you can do it. And there's no way he could have counted the stars. But that was the point, is that God said, so shall your offspring be. Trust me, Abraham. Trust me. Believe me. I'm going to give you your own biological child. I'm going to make your offspring more numerous than the stars that you can see, Abram. If you will what? If you will just believe. If you will simply believe. That's everything this morning. By faith. By faith. And then what does it say in verse 6 of Genesis 15? And he believed the Lord. And he counted it to him as righteousness. He counted it to Him as righteousness. Because God counts all of us guilty in Adam. All of us are counted as sinners because of our own sin and because of Adam's. And then God takes our sin and counts it to Jesus on the cross. And Jesus is accounted in our place. And then God takes the righteousness of Jesus and He counts it to us. And so justify, again, simply means God declares us to be righteous for Christ's sake, or God counts us to be righteous, or God reckons us to be righteous. Justification, listen, and I know this morning, it's not, you know, last week, Rahab, it's a wonderful story. I know we're not looking at a story this morning, but this is critically important. And this may feel like maybe a little bit of the deep end of the waters, but this is central. That our sin, we are counted as sinners because of Adam. And God counts our sin to Christ. And He counts Christ's righteousness to us. He declares us righteous. He reckons us to be righteous. He doesn't make us righteous. That's the Roman Catholic view. The Roman Catholic view is faith is very important. And then you do need to have works, and then God makes you righteous. That's not our view. We're a Protestant church. The Protestant, the biblical view is that God counts us righteous. Now through regeneration, we do become righteous. He does give us a brand new heart. If a person does not have a brand new heart and never lives according to God's law, they've proven themselves never to have been justified. But justification is God counts us righteous. He declares us righteous. It's not that He goes in and does surgery and makes us righteous on the inside. It's the legal courtroom. I declare because of Christ. And so if Kenneth Stancil would repent and believe If Kenneth Stancil would repent and believe before he's given the death penalty perhaps, I thank God, I don't know about you, but I thank God that the other day he didn't take somebody else's life, as we were thinking that he was around here, and the helicopters were swarming, and I thank God that he didn't take his own life. Because if he will repent and believe, then God will reckon his sin to Christ And in the courtroom of God's immaculate and perfect justice, He will say, I declare you righteous. Because your sin has been paid for. Your sin has been paid for by another. And so in Romans chapter 4, Paul says two things. Number one, we are justified by faith apart from works. Faith alone. And then he says, I'm going to prove it to you by Abraham. And that's what we looked at in Genesis 15. So go with me to James. James chapter 2. Verse 20, do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works. Now stop there. In what we've just read in verses 20-22, what seems to be more important? If you had to say one is more important, faith or works, what seems to be more important? At first glance, it seems like James is hammering works. I mean, he says things that even make us uncomfortable. A person is justified by works. He's going to say in verse 24, a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. It's almost like Paul just said in Romans 4, we're justified by faith alone, no works, and I'm going to prove it to you by Abraham. And it's almost like, if we don't read it carefully, James is saying, no, we're justified by works, and I'm going to prove it to you by Abraham. You see that? But you've got to remember that Genesis 15 comes before Genesis 22. And we've got to look again at verse 22 of James 2. You see that faith was active along with His works, and faith was completed by His works. God is not a man like us, but if we think about If we think about the way God can use language to help us, it's as though God was in Genesis 15 saying, Abraham, I receive you simply because you believe. And at that moment, at the moment that you believe the Gospel, you are justified. In Genesis 15, that's what's going on. Abraham simply believes. Abraham, look at the stars. That's going to be your family. Okay? I believe. He's justified. And what James is saying in verse 22 is that his faith was completed by his works, verse 23, and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. What Scripture is that? Not much longer here, stay with me. What Scripture is that? It's Genesis 15, 6. The Scripture was fulfilled. Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. In other words, we are justified, we are declared righteous, we're in the courtroom of God, and God says, you are not guilty, and not only are you not guilty, but you have money in the bank. And we're declared righteous and Christ's righteousness is imputed to us the moment we believe But all those who are truly justified, it will become manifest in their lives. And in Abraham's case, it was decades later that the Scripture was fulfilled. And he was called a friend of God. Verse 24, you see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And I said last week, just like in America, football means football, and around the rest of the world, football means soccer. I think we have to realize here that James is saying justified in the sense of vindication. Paul is saying justified in the sense of declared righteous. James is saying justified, I think, on the final day. justified on the final day. Jesus said, I tell you, on the day of judgment, people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned. I don't think we like to think about things like this, but James, I think, is teaching is that justification means that we're going to be judged on the last day. As believers, we're going to give account of our works. And if we have no works, it means we have no faith. It means that we had no faith. And James is saying there is a day of reckoning coming. Let me try to bring it home and hopefully be able to show you, not only that this is important for us to believe, but it's important for our lives. Because anything that's worth our belief is inherently practical. So I'm greatly helped by a man named Charles Leiter. And some of you have maybe picked up that book because I've recommended it before, Justification and Regeneration. And I'm just going to close with two or three simple, short illustrations. And I pray that these will be helpful. We'll call the first one the bridge. A person can have a very weak faith and still be justified. Imagine two bridges crossing a chasm. One is very weak and untrustworthy, the other is very strong. A man may have a strong faith in the weak bridge and confidently step out onto it. His strong faith will not keep him from plunging to his death. On the other hand, a man may have a very weak faith in the strong bridge and only barely manage, with fear and trembling, to... Okay, I'm going to step on the bridge. The bridge will hold him securely, regardless of his weak faith. All that is necessary is for him to have enough faith to get on the bridge. When someone told Hudson Taylor that he must be a man of great faith, he replied, no, I am a man of very little faith and a very great God. It's about faith, justified by faith. The bridge. Number two, hanging by a moment. That's my 15 year old reference to life house. He says this, one sister who went through a great struggle before finding rest in Christ spoke like this. This is a sister in Christ who was sharing her testimony. She was aware of her lost condition and trying to do everything she could to keep herself from going to hell. She found herself losing ground. I felt as if I were hanging on the edge of a precipice by my fingertips. Below me was hell. I did not want to go to hell and I had worked myself to exhaustion trying to keep from going to hell. Finally, I could hold on no longer. I let go and fell right into the loving arms of Jesus. And so the faith that justifies is not, I can't let go. I'm going to hell. It is, yes. It is, yes. I am going to hell. But Jesus has died in my place. Fists become unclenched. I see Jesus. And I see Him on the cross by faith. And I see His resurrection. And I fall. And I rest on Jesus with all of my weight. And one more. This one we'll call, if the floor drops out. One elderly man, If you're here this morning and you're near to the end of life, then some of us listen to this, but all listen to this. One elderly man who gave no evidence of true conversion, when he was asked if he was ever bothered by the thought of eternity, answered, no, I'm not bothered at all. Because the Bible says if you have faith, you'll be saved. And I have plenty of faith. In what was this man trusting? not in Christ or in Christ's blood, but in His own faith. The trust of a Christian is entirely different. If suddenly the floor were to drop out from under all of us at this very moment, every true Christian would cry out, Lord Jesus! None would cry out, My faith! And so I say to you this morning, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. That's it. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. You'll become able to sing maybe in nursery. Father Abraham had many sons. And many sons and I am one of them. And I am one of them and so are you, so let's all praise the Lord, because the Scripture says He is the Father of faith. He's the Father of all who believe. I'm not a Jew. They're not Jews. It doesn't matter. Jews and Gentiles alike, saved through Jesus Christ. There is no salvation apart from Jesus Christ. Look to Jesus this morning. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved. Don't look to your faith. Look outside of yourself. Let's pray. Lord, I want my brothers and sisters to be joyful and encouraged this morning in light of the illustrations we've just heard. Lord, may the deepest truths that You give us cause the most profound joy in our church. Lord, help us not to be satisfied to tickle the surface Not because we're trying to compare to those shallow Christians over there or anything like that. But to see that you are a God who justifies the ungodly. And how we can say, praise the Lord. Set us free, even now. Lord, for those in this room even now who have never simply and truly believed, grant faith and repentance by the Holy Spirit even now, and for those of your people in this room who are justified and who are accepted by you completely, But as we so often do, revert back again and again to say, oh, I failed and I failed and I failed. Let us say that Jesus has succeeded and He has succeeded and He has succeeded. And let us look to Christ and have unspeakable joy today. We pray for your glory. Amen. If you have any questions or concerns or comments about the sermon or would like to speak about the gospel, please see me after the service, Pastor Ben or Pastor Brian. Let's respond now and stand together.