So we are looking at the attributes of God and we're working through this list. It's an acronym, Sir J. Louie. So you think of a knight, right? And this knight has all these amazing qualities. And thus far, we've looked at the first three. What does S represent? Okay, God is sovereign. Now, there's important things that we've discussed about these attributes and that is, Not to sound too fancy, but we don't create a universal above God. What does that mean? Don't create a universal above God. Yeah. Right. So to simplify, does sovereignty exist if God does not exist? No, God is sovereign. As I jokingly say, it's not like God was walking down the supermarket in the cosmos and saw a jar of sovereignty and said, you know what, I'm running low on that. I'm going to replenish my sovereignty. He is sovereign. Everything about him is sovereign. But he's not just sovereign. He's our, what is our? Righteous, God is righteous. Righteousness does not exist outside of God. That's why it's important for us to understand, right? That's why when we as mankind, that's a collective we, not anyone here or we as in Fellowship Bible Church, but we as in mankind, when we point our dirty fingers at God and say, he's wrong in doing this. How could he do this? How could he do that? We have no basis to do that because God is right. He is righteous. Now, J, we're in J, what are we talking about? Justice. Now that's a comfort, right? Because not only is he righteous, but he's also just, meaning in the end, everything will be made right. Now, what are some things God has already done to demonstrate his justice based on what we discussed last time? I think we looked at three passages, Genesis 3, Genesis 6 through 8, Proverbs 11. So what about Genesis 3? Or you could add what you were going to say before I... His justice is, uh, he didn't, he didn't, uh, he's just because he, we deserve more than he gave us. He gave us salvation. He provided for us. So there's an interesting facet to his justice, right? We get concepts like grace and mercy. Now what's the difference between grace and mercy or are they the same? Grace is an undeserved favor. Okay, undeserved favor. Good definition. Yes. So the way I like to understand this is God's the judge. He's on the throne, right? And I stand before him guilty. I've done something wrong. And he issues a verdict of declaring me righteous or innocent. That would be grace, right? I don't deserve that, but he gave it to me. Or I am guilty and there's been a verdict saying I have to spend X amount of days in prison. I have to, or maybe it's execution. And God says, no, uh, it forgives that trespass. That's mercy. So he's not giving me what I do deserve mercy or giving me what I don't deserve grace. And so understanding those concepts, but that modifies the doctrine of his justice right now, it's important to understand sometimes we can, make a subtle mistake and say God is gracious, that's true, but he's also just. So I would say we have to be very careful in saying God has to be gracious. Does God have to be gracious? No, because He's just, right? It would be, quote, unjust for a certain thing to happen and God to say, it doesn't matter. God is just and things must account. In fact, even though He's gracious, it doesn't change the fact that justice will prevail. We're going to look at a passage today. specifically regarding mankind's sin, that God didn't just say, okay, it was just a little mistake, you just took a bite, you just disobeyed me, maybe you didn't understand what I was saying, we'll just let it go. God didn't let it go, did he? So what do we see in Genesis 3 of God's justice? Sure. When we think of God's justice in dealing with us, we think of us. We've got a lot of sin behind us. So when Adam and Eve, when they first chose to do it, they had no sin behind them. This is the first time that sin has done, has Yeah. Going to just overlook it. Right. He can't do that. Yeah. And I would say he can't. It's impossible for God to overlook it because he is just. It's not, yeah, you know, that wasn't the right thing. So we got to try to make it right. No, he is right. He is just. And just true justice would be what? Death. Done. But where do we see God's grace in his judgment on mankind in Genesis 3? What's that? I was going to say 15. 15. Yeah, so we see the covenant to Abraham, and that starts a thread, right, all the way to Jesus. But we see he provided covering for them. He kicked them out of the garden. Now, how's that gracious? Isn't that more of a judgment thing? They deserve death. They deserve death, so they were permitted to live. That was justice for him to, you know, he told them all they did. They know what they did. Yeah. But instead of doing what they deserve, it's justice. It's grace. God is a grace, you know. Who knows what God is except Jesus. Right. Dave? Our guardian in the mouth of the garden, he prevented him from eating the tree of life. Right. Right. So sounds mean, right? Get out of my garden, get off my lawn. Is that what God was doing? No, he was being gracious because had we stayed eating that tree or been able to continue to eat that tree, we'd live forever in this state. And that's not what God would have. Yeah. That's probably, I feel like in that whole account, one of the most overlooked or maybe underappreciated moments of grace is God preventing man from living in his sinful state for all of eternity. Because everything we look forward to with the return of Christ and the eternal state and kingdom wouldn't be possible if man had stayed in the garden and eaten from the fruit of life. Because there would be no death and no, you know, Well, death is such a powerful draw to himself, right? That's why I say, and don't take this the wrong way, but I would much rather do a funeral than a wedding. Now, I hope I don't have to do a funeral for a very long time, but funerals are such a great opportunity to share the gospel because everyone in the room is thinking about death, right? And how some of them are thinking, I'm a lot closer to death now than I was a day ago, a month ago, a year ago, 10 years ago. And so they start to think What's next? And then they hear some pastor saying that they can have everlasting life by believing in Christ alone. Great opportunity, ripe fruit. And I think that's one of the reasons why God permits evil is as a draw to himself, but ultimately he will solve the problem of evil. Now, what about Genesis six through eight? What was the issue? And then how, how did God show his justice? What's that? Okay, the flood. Now, why the flood? God just had a bad day? Wanted to take it out on creation? Genesis 6, 5. Then the Lord saw the witness of a man who was great on earth, that every intent and thought of his heart were only evil continually. And so that tells us something about ourselves, right? Because we have a lot of people in the world that believe man is basically good, right? Just a little sprinkling of bad stuff, but they're basically good. They have good intentions, right? And we fall into that line of thinking if we stop reading in Genesis 1 through 3, where God says they will have the knowledge of good and evil. Does the knowledge of good and evil equate to the ability to do good and not do evil? No. And so when we get a update on man's situation, when we come to Genesis 6, every thought of man's heart is only evil continually. And so if there is no restraint, if we are left to our own devices, we will spiral to bare minimum. And this is what is known as the doctrine of depravity. Now there's a lot of discussion to be had on that. My understanding is, I've said it before, man is not as bad as he could be, but he could be. And what that means is, Are we all guilty before God? Yes. But are we all on the same plane of depravity as, say, a mass murderer or someone like Hitler? No, we're not. But are we capable of that same? Absolutely, because we're depraved. And God has issued certain restraints in creation, government being one of them, which this might be a hot take for you guys, but I believe even a bad government is better than no government. Because when you get anarchy, what do you get? Eventually, Genesis 6. But even a bad government, a corrupt government, we can, and praise the Lord, we live in a nation that we can vote in better government, usually. If we get better candidates, we'll keep this apolitical. So God has issued restraints. Government is one of them. You know what another restraint is? Marriage. Marriage is a restraint on evil. How? Well, when you have a mom and a dad worshiping the Lord, following him, and they have children, and they train them to do likewise, what happens to that home? It's a godly home. If you've got your neighbors doing the same thing, what happens to that neighborhood? A godly neighborhood. That whole community is doing the same thing. What do you have? A godly community. That state, that nation, that world, but what do we see attacked most in our society? marriage and family. Those are restraints on evil. Now, does it solve evil? Can having a godly mom and a godly dad and raising godly children solve the problem of evil? No, it just restrains it. All of God's restraints restrain evil until ultimately he will deal with evil. And how does God deal evil? We get a picture in Genesis six through eight, and it's a picture of his justice, but how does he deal with evil? Wipes it out, right? And so when we deal with people that say, how could a good, loving, all-powerful God allow such evil? We can say he won't forever. And truth be told, you don't want him to deal with evil now because that means we're all gone. Except for the believers who have been imputed with the righteousness of Christ through faith alone in him. But that's another topic. So we see God's justice in the flood by wiping it out, right? Now did he just destroy all of humanity? Nearly, but Noah found grace, right? Was Noah untouched by the depravity of man? What do we see the very next episode of Noah after the flood? Depravity. So lest we get these ideas that God is hand, you know, selecting, okay, that guy's not touched by sin, so I'm going to use him. No, we all are, but God shows His grace. And I think Noah, relatively speaking, was righteous in his day. And that's why God used him. He worshiped the Lord. And so God used him. And there's signs of this throughout scripture that even in dark climates, even in terribly depraved world systems, God's people can shine. One of my favorite stories is Josiah. Who's Josiah? King of Judah. Now, at that point in Judah's history, how were they faring? Were they worshiping the Lord, following Him, keeping the commandments? Just had the most wicked king. And Josiah becomes king, and he starts off good, and he starts destroying the pagan idols and the priests, those sort of things, removing it from the land. But was it because he was wanting to, you know, he knew something was trying to wrong it, or was it kind of more tradition of Well, this is the right thing to do. But what happens when they find the book of the law? When they're repairing the temple, what do they find? Book of the law. What happens when they find the book of the law? Starts to read it. Now, when it's being read, I hope you understand it was probably Deuteronomy that was being read when things start to happen. If he was a king like any of the other kings, he would say, get that out of here right now. In fact, you reading it, you're sentenced to death. Who found it? Okay, they're sentenced to death. But what was Josiah's response? He tore his clothes and sat in ashes. He says, we need to act yesterday. We need to get this right. We have broken a covenant we made with God. We signed on the dotted line a contract saying we would do what God said. And we have not been doing that. And so God is doing what he said, and that is to punish us for our sins. So if we write this wrong, perhaps we'll get respite or relief from that. Now, did everything fare well? In the end? No. But what did God say to Josiah? Because you have done so, these things that will happen to Judah with the Babylonian invasion, you will not see. You will go to your grave in peace. So personally for Josiah, it worked out, right? But what about the ripple effect? Did Josiah have an influence on anyone else? No. Some of my heroes came out of Josiah's reforms. Daniel was a young teenage boy and his three friends, when they went to Babylon, where did they get that godly education and training? Josiah. What about Ezekiel? Josiah. All those guys that were instrumental during the darkest time in Israel's history, We're under that system of reform Josiah implemented. And so you never know the impact that maybe it's just your neighbor. Maybe it's just a single soul. Maybe it's just your children, but what's the ripple effect? How are they gonna go out and perhaps influence others? Appropriate rabbit trail, but we'll go back to God's justice. Turn to Isaiah chapter 53. Oh, we also saw, while you're turning there, Proverbs 11.1 is a passage I really love. It talks about God abhors weighted scales, so scales uneven, unbalanced scales. So why would someone have unbalanced scales? They're a crook. They're a thief, right? They've weighed their side heavy or light so that as they put more on, oh, yeah, you don't quite reach the payment of your debt, so you better throw a few more coins on. God hates that. He hates conniving, deceptive, thieving practices. And that is because he is just, right? God is perfectly just. Now we see a development to this understanding of God's justice in the matter of sin. Now, just a quick word on something that I think is important. Bible memorization is important, right? Can we all agree? Bible memorization is hard. Can we agree? I would propose to you, first of all, try to memorize verses, especially really important verses. You should memorize them. If you can't manage to do that, memorize chapters and the content. So when you think of Isaiah 53, what is the content? What is the theme? What is the subject of Isaiah 53? The suffering servant. So if you're thinking about, hmm, what's a good passage about the suffering of the Messiah and the promises of God to deal with sin? Isaiah 53. Then you could turn there and you could go through, right? What about if I wanted to learn what the New Testament says about love, agape love, where would I go? 1 Corinthians 13, right? That's the love chapter. And so getting that in your mind, you can map out those things. Now, I would also encourage you as we go through books, right? Upstairs, we're going through Matthew. Down here, we're going through the attributes of God, but we're going to be going through Exodus. Think through each chapter. As we're learning, try to take from your short-term memory and put it into your long-term memory, chapter by chapter, what is being discussed? What's the flow of the narrative so that when you're going through life and you need to learn something about the Exodus, boom, you could go back. Or the life of Christ, where does Jesus heal the paralytic? Oh, we could go back to Matthew, right? So memorizing it that way. So Isaiah 53, the suffering servant, and look at verse 10. Which says, yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. He has put him to grief when you make his soul an offering for sin. Now we're dealing with pronouns. Who do these pronouns belong to? So who's the Lord? God the Father, right? Now who would Him be? Might need to look back a little bit. So the son, right? Or the suffering servant who is the Messiah. So the Messiah would come and the Lord, the father would bruise him. In fact, it says it pleased the Lord to bruise him. And what do we do with that? Is God an abusive father? What does it mean it pleased him to bruise him? I don't think it was taking pleasure in the abuse, but it pleased him the reason why. Now, why did Jesus suffer? Go back to verse four. Surely he, the suffering servant, the Messiah, has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon Him. And by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way. And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all." So when it says it pleased the Lord to bruise Him, what does that mean? God was fully satisfied in the suffering servant for our sins. So we see the doctrine of propitiation here, right? What does propitiation mean? Million dollar word. Satisfaction. What's the difference between atonement and propitiation? Atonement is just a covering, right? So when they have, in fact, this week, right, is the day of atonement or Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. What would happen on the day of atonement in Israel's history? Bring your lamb to work day, right? Yeah, the high priest would go and take the sacrificial lamb, the blood, and sprinkle it on the altar for the whole nation, right? And that was a covering. Did that remove their sin? Did it solve the penalty of sin? Just covered it, right? Until what? Until Christ, the perfect spotless lamb without blemish, died on the cross for our sins. So that's why Jesus had to die, is he took our penalty. And that's also why, how much of the penalty remains after Jesus's death? Zero. So that means faith alone is all that's required, right? That's it. You believe, you accept that that paid your debt. You don't need to work and be a good boy or a good girl, go to church, give money, all of these things to earn your way to heaven. It's already been earned, right? It's been paid. You believe, you receive. Now you're a child of God, now what? Act like it. Live like a child. What should I do when my children disobey or misbehave? Discipline them. Why? Because I don't like them? I despise them? No, because I love them. And I know that's not right. And they're going to grow up in those little misbehaviors, that little disobedience is going to be big stuff, right? And so we correct it now. Likewise, God wants what's best for us. And that is to fully follow him and worship him. Now, is that guaranteed? Do all Christians automatically follow him? There's plenty who don't, right? In scripture even. We have Demas. Who's Demas? Think of Paul. What is Demas' relationship to Paul? Ministry worker, right? Co-laborer, until he wasn't. And what did Paul say? Demas has forsaken me. Why? Having loved this present world. Is this world lovable at times? Deceptively so, right? But that's why we get to the problem of evil. What are the coping strategies? Well, if we don't have a biblical coping strategy with evil, we're gonna fall in love with the world. Because the world offers, hey, just take a drink, take a load off, relax, right? That'll take your, drink your sorrows away. Or you know what you need? Pleasure. That'll remove your problems. Or whatever it is, right? Insert blank. Are those sufficient to satisfy the problem of evil in your life? or suffering in your life? No. Right? What can solve that? Resting in Christ. And so it pleased Him to put our sins on Him. Now, how do we see God's justice in that? How do we see God's justice in punishing the Son in our stead? Yeah. I mean, I think you get used to the combination of justice and grace. because the grace is that the Son is punished instead of us, but the justice is that God's holiness and righteousness is still fulfilled. Demanded punishment. There's no skirting it. Like you were saying, it's not like God just said, oh, you know what? I'm merciful. Let's just forget the sin. Let's just forget what man did. He still remembered it, still has the exact Punishment, whatever, for that sin, but it was on the son instead of on each of us. I've mentioned this word before. The Latin is called lex talionic justice. God operates from a lex talionic justice, which means like for like. So the punishment fits the crime. What was the crime and what was the punishment? Punishment was death, right? So any penalty has to equate to that punishment. So Jesus had to die, right? Or someone had to. Either we pay for our own sins or Jesus pays for it. And we praise the Lord that Jesus paid it all, right? All of it. And did he stay dead? No. He rose from the grave, demonstrating the debt was paid, but also that he was sinlessly perfect And he was resurrected and shows that we too, who are in him, will follow suit. But we have to trust in him. If we don't trust in him, that payment doesn't get into our account, right? To use banking terms. Just because he died, and I do believe he died for all, all mankind, he died for them. But it doesn't go into their account unless they believe, right? So complicated because you told Abraham, he says, I'll bless who I want to bless and I'll curse who I want to curse. God is very complicated. That's why his thoughts are higher than our thoughts. Well, I'm glad you mentioned Abraham because I love a word that's used of Abraham. He believed and it was what? Credited. There's a transaction term. His belief credited to his account righteousness. Was Abraham righteous? Maybe before man, right? Maybe he did a few good things. And I do believe we're capable of doing good things. I think I brought this up a while ago. Can an unbelieving father love his children? Is that a good thing? Yes. Does that accrue to any amount of value before God to where God says, you know what? You're in, I like you. No, we all fall short of the glory of God. So we need a savior. And so even though Abraham might have had some good days, he had bad days, but his faith is what credited to his account righteousness, the righteousness necessary to be with God forever, who is perfectly righteous, right? And his justice demanded that anyone unrighteous cannot have fellowship with him. It's impossible. It's not even a question of God wants to, it's he can't because he's righteous, but he's also just and he sent his son to die for us, which also demonstrates what we'll talk about next time, His love. So go to Ecclesiastes 12 next. This might sound odd, but I love the book of Ecclesiastes. If you've ever read the book of Ecclesiastes, that would sound odd to you, but I love it because of Where I was in my past, I felt very much the wisdom from this book was obvious in my life, that it's all chasing after the wind. It's futile. There is no purpose in any of this. We're all gonna die someday, but we'll stand before God. And that's, after all, all that counts. And so at the conclusion of the book, in chapter 12, Ecclesiastes 12, Solomon sums things up for us in a very helpful manner. He says in verse 13, let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Matter of what? Life and everything. Fear God and keep his commandments. For this is man's all, for God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil. So this talks about judgment, that we will all stand before God. Well, pastor, you're just saying that if we trust Christ, we're saved, right? So believers don't stand before judgment, right? We do. The Bema seed. Now, that's a good judgment to be at. It's not a judgment to say, are you actually saved? Did you have enough fruit? What was the fruit like? Did it last till the end? Did you persevere to the end? No, that's not the judgment. You being there means you're saved. But that judgment is about the deeds done in the body, because all of our works will be judged. And at that judgment, your good works will receive a reward. Your bad works, you're going to get beaten up. You know, God's going to really rake you over the coals and make you feel bad about why you didn't do this, why you didn't do that. It's going to burn. But your good works are rewarded. Now, how do you get good works and not bad works? In fact, I would say many of our, quote, good works may be bad works. How's that work? No pun intended. How do we get good, quote, good works that endure the fire? Spirit led. What's that? You think at that time that he's going to ask us, let's say at some time in our life, He'll put somebody in our life that we're supposed to talk to about the Lord, and we don't do it. And you think, when we're at the Beeman seat, he'll say, when I sent this guy to you, why didn't you talk to him? That's a good question, and I can't say yes. Clearly dogmatically, but I think we will recognize why we lost rewards because I I take the view Ephesians 2 10 we God prepared works for each of us Which means if we're not and so how are those works done by the way through the Spirit? So if we're not walking by the Spirit if we're not following the Lord and what he has commanded Church-age believers to do those works aren't gonna be done, right? So the guy who God put in our life Never talked to him. So I think we'll recognize why we lost those rewards because God had things for us and we didn't do them. And so those potentially rewardable events. are lost to us because we didn't do them. And so what Amanda said, spirit led. So walk by the spirit and you won't not only gratify the desires of the sin nature, but also fruit is produced, right? And that's the good fruit, the good works done in our life. Those I believe are what stands the test of the fire, the judgment. Now on the other side, Everyone else will appear at the Great White Throne Judgment. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ or you ever had believed at any moment in your life, you will not be at that judgment. That judgment is also not about who's saved and who's not. If you're there, you're not saved. Because you went through life thinking, I just got to be good enough and God will let me in. Righteous. Good enough is not perfect, right? Yeah, go ahead. So we're worse to person at birth, you know, with baptism and things like that. Now, do you believe that when you die, obviously you go in front of them and you answer for everything that you've done. So do you believe that you have to ask for forgiveness before, like an impendence? So my view is from a believer standpoint, asking for forgiveness is even as believers, we still sin, right? Don't recommend it, but it still happens. What do we do when that happens? Well, then we confess our sins and God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So from a believer standpoint, there's some who take the view that you have to repent from your sins and believe in Christ. Nowhere is that listed. And so all we have to do as the guilty party, the sinning party is receive that gift of life. He already paid the debt. And so believing is all that's required. Does that answer your question? Okay. You have the 10 commandments, you know, I mean, those are the ones that you absolutely do not want to do anything for. It's hard to get forgiveness for something like that. So do you say, do you think that you can be forgiven for something like that? I killed somebody. yes you were punished by the state or whatever but that's different sure being in front of god himself sure and i'm turning for everything and that's a great question and i think paul right paul killed people he imprisoned people wrongfully god's people and yet he was forgiven because nobody has the right to do it regardless of the situation right but there's always extenuating circle right and and so We actually recently talked about this in our Matthew study. Jesus kind of brought up that question, and I'm glad you brought up the Ten Commandments, because the religious leaders thought, I didn't kill anyone, I'm a pretty good guy, right? And Jesus says, have you ever hated your brother? Have you ever thought nasty thoughts about a brother? Have you ever lusted for someone? You're guilty of violating the essence of that law. Just because you didn't commit adultery, just because you didn't commit murder, you're guilty. And so Jesus was trying to demonstrate the true intent of that law. And so I would say that the 10 commandments isn't something we could ever perfectly fulfill. We're all guilty by just the 10 commandments, not to mention the 603 other commandments God issued to the Jews. And so Jesus died for all of our sins. And so I would say even a murderer, even a liar, even a thief, even adulterer, no matter who they are, if they believe and they accept as true the facts that Jesus died on the cross for their sins, they're saved. And that's hard for us. Cause some of us might be better than those. Right. So, uh, I think was it Charles Manson or, uh, there was a famous serial killer who historically the rumor says he trusted Christ when he was on death row. So what do we do with someone like that? If assuming that he actually believed that person can't be saved, can they? There was, there was this lady at Texas. Yeah. that came to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, even the Lord could see the change in her. The judge and everybody seen the change in her, but she was sentenced to death and they couldn't do nothing about it. And they truly believed that she had changed. The Lord, it comes to First Corinthians, or where it says who he picked. Even when Christ was on earth, he ran along with the sinners. So, you know, to me that, it says, you can see not very many are rich people, but he chose the base people. He chose the weak people. Those that he chose, so if you don't keep people in prison, you know, a lot of people say, well, everybody that goes to prison comes to the Lord. Well, but actually, that's what God called the people that are... Well, we have to be careful because this is why this is important, by the way. Because if we don't understand that God is just, He's the one who's the judge, right? Not us. And if we don't understand this, then we're going to have problems with, God, how dare you forgive that person? Well, couldn't God just say, how dare I forgive you? You know, I think one thing that When I'm trusting Christ as my Savior, that's a demarcation. I don't care what I've done before. But at the time of my salvation, that's the one point in my life when I'm sinless. Because He's forgiven it all. Well, then I start living. I do things that are wrong. I do that life. Okay, but when you go to 1st John, when he talks about if you confess your sins and God is faithful and just and forgives sins and cleanses from all unrighteousness, that's talking about after. Now, I've got a sin that I'm doing. I know I shouldn't be doing it. There was a time in my life, I was running across the field, I won't tell you what was going on, but it was nice and icy, and I said, God doesn't like this, I quit running. Because I don't want to fall down and break my leg. Because I knew that the way I was living my life was not pleasing to God as a believer. But where's the forgiveness? When I finally woke up and said, I've got to stop doing what I'm doing. And I've got to live for him. And now at that point, I've truly confessed my sin. Now he's faithful and just and forgiven. Well, what does that mean? That means that I'm forgiven, but now I'm not going to suffer the consequences of that. Or maybe I will. Yeah. And sometimes even though we're forgiven, we can still, we made bad choices, but that becomes an appropriation of that forgiveness that because I was not living the way that I should. And so that changed in my life. I appropriated what he has already given, but still he's faithful. He's just to forgive. us and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness. What unrighteousness? Well, in that case, the reason I stopped running across that field. And so that's important for us to see that there is a distinction that begins to come forward. I have rewards. I suffer loss. I gain a reward, and so on. But that helps, I think, when we think about the way forgiveness comes before the cross. When we accept Him as our Savior, oh, I'm forgiven. But what about the next time I sin? Yeah. Do we lose it? Do we lose it? Nope. I need to confess my sin. That's what that's talking about. That's the time that it's talking about. It's not talking about the point of salvation. Yes. Karen? The question of whether somebody can be saved, you know, later in their life and whatever, or right before they die. Sure. Is dealt with in the parable of the guy who hires people. Sure. at the end of the day and gives them the same reward. The reward is salvation. It doesn't matter when you do it. And everything that happens before is gone. So it doesn't matter whether you kill people or not, you're still saved. And this is so crucial. And so I want to spend some time just finishing with this thought. We have to understand the grace of God in terms of our salvation. He paid it all. And so when, not if, you sin, even as a believer, yeah, I believed and I just can't stop this. I can't stop doing that. I must not be saved, must not have stuck, right? No, we have to understand it has all been paid. Nothing you can do can separate you from the love of God through Christ Jesus. And so one of my favorite passages is in Romans, Paul says where sin increases, grace increases all the more. So the way I like to illustrate is you got a big pile of trash, right? We'll call it your sin. The bigger that pile gets, the bigger the pile of grace gets to cover it, right? That's great, right? We should just go on sinning and do what we want. And Paul anticipates that, right? If what you're saying is true, pastor, if what you're saying is true, Paul, why not sin all the more? Then we glorify God because he's demonstrating more and more grace. But what's his response? He says, no, because actually you need to actually show fruit and do that. No. He says, you're dead. You're dead to sin. So why live in a dead body? Why dig up the dead guy, open the box and animate him and play puppet the rest of your life. Rather, you have newness of life. In who? Christ. Learn to walk in him. Walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the sin nature. Abide in me and you will bear much fruit. That's the solution to the sin problem post salvation. But we have to get it right in our minds. Positionally, you are made perfectly righteous. Nothing can change that. And until you understand that, you're going to struggle on the pendulum swing of licentiousness and legalism. Legalism is the death of sanctification. because you're saying, okay, I really got to stop doing that. I'm going to implement all these rules, and if I do that, I'm righteous. That's not righteousness. And if we fool ourselves and pretend that we're accruing these credits, that these are good works, it's all going to burn. The only work that will not burn is the work done through God's work in us, the Holy Spirit. So we went over a little bit, so I will close in prayer.