Dear brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ, While we were just reading that, did you ask yourself, why are we asking whether our good works can be part of our righteousness or not? Why are we asking how they cannot be said to merit anything when God promises to reward them? And why are we asking if this teaching leads people to indifference or wickedness? Did you ever think this morning, why are we asking these three questions? The answer is because some people teach these things. Some people teach that our good works are our righteousness before God or part of our righteousness before God, without which you cannot be justified to eternal life. Some people teach that our good works merit from God a reward. We make Him a debtor by what we do and He is obliged to give us the reward. And some people teach, if you teach other than that, then you're just going to make people indifferent and wicked. Well, what we're going to look at this morning using these questions is, well, what does God's Word really say about all that? What does God's Word say about the nature of good works? Does it justify? Does it merit a reward? And if we teach that they don't justify, which they don't, and they don't merit anything, are we just going to make people wicked and different? Or is God's grace going to make people very thankful and holy? Now, as I go, my plan this morning is read the question and answer again to us, give some scriptural passages to support it, but then I'm going to be introducing statements by the Roman Catholic Church that teach these things. Because I want you to know, people teach it. Now, I'm not picking on Roman Catholics. We have brothers and sisters in the Roman Catholic Church. But I am picking on their teaching. And this catechism is picking on their teaching. This is a 16th century catechism, written in the time of Reformation. And people really teach contrary to the Bible. People really teach that you have to have good works to be saved, to be justified. That your good works put God in debt. And if you don't teach this, then you're just going to make people indifferent and wicked. So as you go along, these aren't just straw men. I read the Council of Trent again this week. I read the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the most recent one, put out in 2017. They still teach these same doctrines. Many of you might know, because you might have grown up in a Roman Catholic Church, or you have Roman Catholic family and friends and neighbors, and they talk to you about these things. And it's not just them, it's whoever teaches these things. We want to know what does God's Word say. Now question 62, why can't our good works be our righteousness before God, or at least part of it, right? Because a righteousness which can pass God's judgment must be entirely perfect, must in every way measure up to the divine law, but even our best works in this life are all imperfect and stained with sin. Where does the catechism draw this teaching from? Here's one place, Romans 3.20, Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in his sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. Another place, Galatians 3.10, For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse, for it is written, Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them. And the prophet Isaiah, as we heard this morning, said, but we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. Now in contrast to this, the Roman Catholic Church teaches, and here I'm quoting the 24th Canon under the section on justification. A canon is a little pithy statement on what you should accept about justification or what you should reject. And the 24th Canon says this, if anyone says, that the justice received is not preserved and also increased before God through good works, but that the said works are merely the fruits and signs of justification obtained, but not a cause of the increase thereof. Let him be anathema, let him be accursed. So if you teach contrary, if you teach that good works are not part of our righteousness and don't increase our justification, the anathema, the Roman Catholic Church says, They also say in the 25th Canon, if anyone says that in every good work the just, the justified, sins venially, or at least, or which is more intolerable, still mortally, they classify sins as venal, mortally, whether it kills your justification by grace, and then you have to have penance to be restored to justification, and consequently deserves eternal punishments, and that for this cause only he is not damned, that God does not impute those works unto damnation. Let it be anathema. The Roman Catholic Church is saying we do good works without sin. We don't have venial sins, immortal sin. Our good works, if anybody says good works, the works you do as saints, are sinless, are not sinless, let it be anathema. But we heard what Isaiah says, and we heard what Paul says. Nobody's justified by works. Our righteousnesses are unclean rags. Now, let's see if we can illustrate this. I'm pretty passionate about this teaching, as you can probably tell, as you should be well, because as you know, congregation, we are doomed without God's grace. This whole sermon is about leaving God's grace gracious. So I get a little worked up about it. It's not directed to you, I just get worked up about it. Who likes to go to the county fair? who likes to pick up that big hammer and swing it as hard as you can and ding that bell. If you make it 99.999% of the way up without dinging the bell, are you going to get the prize? It's like that with God's law. You can be 99.99% of the way there. If it ain't perfect, it's not passing judgment. Now, what if Mr. Strongman happened to be there, and you said, hey, let's work out a bargain. You swing for me, I get the prize. And let's say he swings it and dings the bell, are you going to get the prize? Yeah. Jesus is our strongman. He dung the bell. He lived, he died perfect, and we get his righteousness. But unless we have perfect righteousness before God, we will not pass muster in his judgment. He is just. who is merciful in giving us a substitute, one to represent us, take our place. Now, I'm sure that all of you would agree with me that a parent's eye finds more dirt than a child's eye. Am I wrong? We've all asked our children to pick their rooms up, clean the bathroom, sweep up the kitchen, wash their own bodies, wash their own teeth. And they do these things, but as you know, they just don't do them perfectly right as you're asking them to do them to get all the dirt off. Now, I just want to be clear. I'm not talking about perfectionism here. I'm not talking about never good enough. Don't treat your children that way. God doesn't treat us that way. It's just that when our children do these things, if you come inspect their room later or their bodies or the kitchen floor, you're probably still going to find dirt there. There's stains left, even though they did a good work in doing what you said to do. Now, our good works aren't any different than that in this life. They are good. They just aren't perfect. They're not entirely pure in God's eyes. A child may put a dish into the right place, and that is a very good thing and good on that child, and he should be praised for it. But even if he put the dish in the right place, if it's not clean, it's still unclean. And so, not so good, right? Yes, we want dishes in the right place, but we want them in the right place that are also clean. There is, I think we would say, room to improve, right? And that's how we are in this life. There is room for us to improve, to keep improving in our obedience and service to the Lord. God, as you know, first loved us. He gave us Jesus to give us life. He gave us Jesus to die for us. And we really love God. And we really want to act by faith, trusting in His Word, and responding to Him, and trusting and relying upon Him in what we do. And we really want to comply with His law. You know, Paul says, we yearn for it, we delight in that inward man and God's law, we want to keep it. We really want to bring God glory and praise to what we do. We want him to be recognized at how good he is and how wonderful when we do these things that he commands, because they show the world who God is. We do all these things, and of course, sometimes we don't do these things, and we flat out just sin. We just don't do any of these things perfectly yet. To men, our lives may seem very upright, But if God were to take out his forensic flashlight, that blue light, and shine it upon us, he would find hidden stains, hidden sins that we thought we'd covered up because we'd begun to live pure, and yet they are still there. And so that is a wonderful thing, to live under this grace, And so we want to leave that grace gracious and not try to mix these good works in to give us a justification before God and earn eternal life. Because God has already graciously done that for us through his son Jesus and received my faith. We want to let God's grace continue to cover the deficiencies of our good works. We want God's grace to us through Jesus Christ to continue to accept what we do to him. As Peter says, as a priesthood of God, our spiritual sacrifice was just our whole lives offered to God, they are acceptable to him in Christ. And this is like saying that even a newborn fawn pleases God, and not just a mature, grown, gracious deer, right? Even that struggling, weak calf, have you ever seen a fawn or a calf can't stand up, stumbling, bumping into things? God is even pleased with that. He's not just waiting for us to get mature and perfect. He's pleased with us even now in His Son and what we offer to Him in our still, sinful, weak estate. I'm sure you'd agree that that's a wonderful place to live, as Paul says, under God's grace. It's very encouraging to know that our heavenly daddy, he's not a perfectionist. He doesn't think nothing's ever good enough to please him. But he delights in all that we bring to him through faith in Christ. And whatever we do bring to him through faith in Christ, he accepts it. You know, you've got that drawer at home with all your kids' stuff from like 30 years ago. He doesn't forget what you did either. He's got a drawer full of that stuff too. He remembers when you turned from sin and began to love him, make choices for him, put him first in your life. He knows all of that, and he accepts all of that. I think rather than discouraging good works, this teaching promotes them. Because who thrives under a perfectionist? Our God does do everything perfectly. Our God does require perfection to pass his judgment. It's just that by his perfect grace to us in the Lord Jesus Christ, we're no longer under his judgment, but we live under his grace. And under there, under God's grace, that's where you and I, can really and truly flourish. So let's leave God's grace gracious and not try to mix our good works in with our righteousness before Him as some teach. Let's go on to the next one, which is question 63. Question 63 asks, how can our good works be said to merit nothing when God promises to reward them in this life and the next? And the answer is that, well, the reward is not merited. It's a gift of grace. And our Lord Jesus Christ did say and teach us, rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven. For so they persecute the prophets who are praised before you. Jesus has a reward promised to you in heaven. The writer of Hebrews said, But without faith it is impossible to please him, to please God. For he who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. It is of the very nature of God to reward those who diligently seek him. But we must not confuse what that means, as Jesus taught us in the gospel lesson this morning when he said, so likewise you, when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, we are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do. That doesn't mean unwanted servants. It just means God doesn't gain anything from your service so that you then make him a debtor to you. Well, in contrast to this, the Roman Catholic Church teaches, this comes from their catechism, since the initiative belongs to God and the order of grace, no one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification at the beginning of conversion. Moved by the Holy Spirit and by charity, we can then merit for ourselves and for others the graces needed for our sanctification, for the increase of grace and charity, and for the attainment of eternal life. Even temporal goods like health and friendship can be merited in accordance with God's wisdom. Eternal life is now something God owes you as a debt in this teaching, because you received initial grace, but then you cooperated with that grace your whole life with the Spirit, and then you earned merits for yourselves and for others, temporal rewards, as you heard, and eternal rewards, according to their teaching. Now, children, when you do your chores, when mommy and daddy give you a task to do at the house, Do you expect balloons to come raining down from the ceiling when you do it? If I actually saw clothes in the hamper at night, I might do that. It would be wonderful. It would be a big help. And that's my point I'm getting to. Rewards are a big help. God knows if balloons came down, we'd do a lot of things. So thank you, Barnabas. But no parent would have to have balloons raining down from the ceiling when the child did their chore, right? Because it's the child's duty to obey Mommy and Daddy and do what they say. Well, it's our duty, as you know, not only as God's creatures created in His image, but also as His sons and daughters redeemed in Christ and recreated in Him. It's our duty to obey God. You can never come to this thinking with God, and I hope you don't. I'm going to do my best for a week, a month, a day. I'm going to do my best, and then I'm going to go before God and demand that he give me that spouse that I want, that child that I want, those looks that I want, that job that I want. I'm going to get it, because God owes it to me, because I obeyed him. If I do good, God, you bless me. When I was 18, my grandfather gave me a birthday card, and in it, it had this verse. Delight yourself also in the Lord, and he shall give you the desires of your heart. Now, do you know where that comes from? It's Psalm 37, verse 4. And I am now very partial to this psalm, the whole psalm now, then I was just partial to that verse, but now I like the whole psalm, because I didn't take the time then to look it up in context, which is always a dangerous thing, I just latched on to that verse. In context, the psalm is about giving counsel to godly people how to live when the wicked flourish, and to comfort them with the truth that it's not going to last for long if they do. Well, I sort of latched on and made it my life verse, another thing you need to be very careful about doing, life verses. And I thought, great, you know what? Now I know how to get a wife from God. I'm going to do a little delighting, and He's going to give me what I want. But the truth of the matter was this. I just wanted the wife. My delight in God was for show. It wasn't until a decade later, up late one night, after another failed attempt to get a wife, when I confessed to God that if there were a choice between Him and my future wife, I'd take my future wife. Because that was the truth. And God knew it all along. He just wanted me to get to the place of acknowledging it. And it wasn't too long after that, though, that God did give me a wife. So we all should make God our delight, but we should make God our delight. And as he promises, he will give you promises, the desires of your heart. Rewards are gifts of God's grace. They are not merited by our good works. Jesus taught that in the parable of the unprofitable servant. We can never put God in our debt. However, we can expect to be rewarded in this life and in the next for our good works because God has promised this. As you know, Jesus teaches us, to the one who has, more will be given. Whatever he's given you, one talent, five, ten, or fifteen, if you increase that and serve him, you can expect to receive more. Jesus promised to Peter when he was going, hey, look, we left everything. He said, Peter, it's not about whether you leave everything, whether you're going to get anything from me. He says, I'm going to give you a hundredfold in this life of whatever you leave. And in the next life, I'm going to give you eternal life. As we heard Paul say in Romans 6.23, eternal life is God's gift to us in Christ, and that includes, contrary to Roman Catholic teaching, all the sanctifying work leading up to its attainment is God's gift to us. He does make it clear, your obedience leads to sanctification in this life, your sanctification leads to eternal life, but all that is subsumed under God's gift of His grace and not a merit that you earn. As Barnabas already helped us out, God rewards our good works, right? That would be a great help! That would be a great help to us to obey God and do what he says if he would reward us. And God does this to teach us that he delights in these works that we do, and that he gives us these rewards to encourage us to do them more. You know, what parent has not said, eat your dinner, and you'll get ice cream. And if you've never said that, that's truly meritorious. We all use rewards and the promise of rewards to encourage what we need to do. And God does that. God's promise of reward to us ensures us that our sacrifice is here for Him because it's a real choice serving God. You can't serve God and mammon, right? You can't have your best life now and do what the world says and also be faithful to Jesus. It's a choice, it's a sacrifice. There's only so much time, only so much energy, only so much effort, and there's a lot of things pulling at those things. But the promise of reward is to let us know that all that we do for Him will not go unnoticed by our God, nor unrewarded. God makes it very clear that our diligent seeking after Him our whole life, it'll be worth it, now and forever. So again, let's keep gracious and seek the reward not by merit, but by God's free promise to his unprofitable servants who serve his son, the Lord Jesus. Because I don't know about you, but for me, it is the grace of all graces to just have a seat at Jesus's table. If it were possible to live in heaven in rags, I'd be happy to be in rags in heaven. I just want to be there with Jesus. There's a kid's song that I don't remember the words, but it leads me to say this. Rewards schmords, right? On our best day, that's how we think. What are the rewards compared to knowing Christ already? That's gone. Question, last one, 64. This teaching make people indifferent and wicked, and the answer is no. It is impossible for those grafted into Christ by true faith not to produce fruits of gratitude. That's why we sung Psalm 30. David's giving gratitude to God who saved him. Jesus taught us, right, that a good tree does not bear bad fruit, and a bad tree doesn't bear good fruit. But you'll never go get from a thornbush grapes, and you'll never go get grapes from a thornbush. And he told his apostles that I'm the vine, and that means I'm true Israel. You are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him bear much fruit." Because he's a living vine. He's not dead in the grave like Adam. Well, you know, he's alive in heaven. He's a living vine. And attached to a living vine you bring forth living fruit. These good works of righteousness. Without me you can do nothing. And I appreciate, here's why I had us read both the unprofitable servant account, but also the next one about the Samaritans and one coming back and being healed, because I really appreciated the comment by one scholar and his understanding of why Luke put these two accounts together when he writes, the disciples are not to seek thanks, but to give thanks. Have you ever done something just so people thank you for it? Don't serve God just so he'll thank you for it. Give God thanks, because He saved you and healed you. He did something for you you can never do for yourself. The disciples are not to seek thanks, but to give thanks. And we give that thanks to God through our whole lives of dedicating them to Him, serving Him, praising Him. Now, I don't actually know what the Roman Catholic Church teaches in contrast to this, But I do know, because it's in Scripture, that since Paul's day, it has been said of those who preach his doctrine of justification by faith, of those who preach God's free grace to sinners, that in why not say, let us do evil that good may come. as we are slanderously reported and as some affirm that we say, their condemnation is just. So at least since Paul's day, this teaching on God's grace and how he justifies people who have never kept his law, people who are still inclined to all evil, and yet God declares them as righteous in his sight, through the righteousness of Christ, imputed to them by faith, that since Paul's day, this teaching have led people to think, well, let's just do evil. Because so much good's come out of it, right? Because children, when you do something wrong in your house, what do you expect to get? Balloons falling from the ceiling or a scolding? What was that, partners? Discipline, yeah. Well, the gospel, we did a lot of evil things, Paul makes clear in Romans 5. Transgressions increased, increased, increased. You know what we got? A great gift of righteousness to justify it. And we might think, wow, We can do all that bad and so much good comes out of it? You might be tempted to think, right, maybe we should just keep doing bad things and see how good God can get. That's to completely misunderstand the gospel. God is not rewarding us because we're bad. He's rewarding us because he's good. It's not about you and me being bad. It's about God being good despite our being bad. and showing us grace. Because if you've ever showed a bad person grace, it will either harden their heart or it will soften their heart. And it will change them. They'll begin to be less bad people. They'll become grateful people. They'll be amazed at your grace. And God's grace is amazing. I once batted a piece of concrete through my parents' front window on Thanksgiving Day. I don't remember much after that until waking up the next morning. But you know what? I wish there was somebody there to take my punishment that day so I could have enjoyed Thanksgiving, right? Right. Wish I had a substitute. Wish I had God's grace that day. There are words and deeds in my past that I'm still ashamed of, and I'm sure you are, as Paul says. I do not need the hope of merit to move me to serve the Lord Jesus Christ. I don't need the promise of a righteous standing by my good works to move me to obey. I just need to remember the grace I've already received and been shown. I just need to keep tasting the good fruit of sanctification that is mine now as I enjoy tasting what a good life, a righteous life of obeying God is like. I just need the truth that by our Lord's grace I'm no longer a slave to sin, but to become a slave to righteousness. Not only does the Lord Jesus take our punishment so we can have his reward, but he also frees us from sin and its bondage. We might obey God. In the last canon on justification, the Roman Catholic Church says this, if anyone says that by the Catholic doctrine touching justification by this holy synod inset forth in this present decree the glory of God or the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ are in any way derogated from, lessened, and not rather that the truth of our faith and the glory and fine of God and of Jesus Christ are rendered more illustrious, let it be anathema. What they're saying is this, if you say our teaching on justification takes away from God's grace and Jesus' merits, be anathema rather than making God's grace very illustrious in His glory. Well, I wholeheartedly take their anathema. I wholeheartedly want their anathema on my head, because their teaching on justification by faith does nothing but derogate from God's glory, does nothing but take away from the merits of Christ. It does nothing to make God's grace and glory shine but to darken it. If you are indifferent to God and holiness, even indifferent to sin, if you have no zeal for Christ and His law, your problem isn't how gracious God's grace is. Your problem just might be you've never tasted God's grace yet, or you've forgotten what it's tasted like. You've been taken in by the tempter. And you need to remember, because he's still gracious. If God's grace leads you to be wicked and to say to yourself, as one man said to me, I was trying to share the gospel with outside of Starbucks, if I sin, God will forgive me. Complete attitude of indifference to sin. Your problem is not how gracious God is. You just may not yet have tasted that the Lord is gracious. And my encouragement then would be to you, come and taste. Jesus says, come and taste. Just come to him and find out how gracious he is to sinners. Come and find out how free and full and faithful and unbounding is his grace to sinners. In closing to you, congregation, God, by His grace, He has clothed us in the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ. We don't need any more righteousness to be justified before Him. God, in His grace, congregations, He uncovers all the imperfections and deficiencies and sinful stains upon our lives as we serve Him. God, in His grace, promises to reward these still sinful and imperfect good works and this life, and in the next. God's grace in no way encourages us to be indifferent or to be wicked, because God's grace is very costly. If I watched a man burn at the stake and saw how horrible it was to die that way, so I knew it, And if I watched a man die and burn at the stake, he was doing it for me because I had sinned. I had taken someone's life or taken someone's wife, and that was my punishment. I watched someone do it for me, and I may continue living on here a good life. That would be enough grace for me to live thankful the rest of my life and to live for God. You need to remember, congregation, that Christ has spared you from the eternal pangs of hell by his death. He has made you a member of his body. Give him thanks for his costly grace, and not just with your lips, but as you know, with your lives. And all your life, draw near to his throne of grace, that he might help you in any time of need that you have.