This being the Sunday that we remember God's great work through the Protestant Reformation, as we just heard from Martin Lloyd-Jones. He gave us a lot of the history there from Martin Luther's time. And so we want to continue to remember that great work of God. To do so, we're going to be looking at those central verses in Romans chapter 1 that Luther was so long hung up on and were a barrier to him until he finally, as I said, broke through to paradise when he understood what that phrase the Apostle Paul uses, the righteousness of God. Justification by faith alone through Christ alone. So the scripture reading, kind of a backdrop on that theme, is the fourth chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans, Romans chapter 4. And I will begin in 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. 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'd been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised. 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. 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's no law, there's no transgression. That's why it depends on 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's written, I've 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 is as good as dead since he was about 100 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 as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That's 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. There is the word of God and there is the gospel, the good news of the gospel justification by Faith alone so clearly shown way back in the Old Testament, clear back in Abraham's day then. Well, let's ask the Lord's blessing then upon us as we come to the ministry of God's Word, and look at those verses in Romans chapter 1. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this Lord's Day, and we thank you that we now have the privilege of holding your word right here in our hands and being able to read it, to hear you. We pray that your spirit would use your word powerfully in our lives. If anyone listening today is still dead in their sins. We pray, Father, that you would open their eyes to their need for Christ and that you would teach them and show them that Christ is the only way, that faith in him alone is the way that we are justified before you. And we pray this all in Christ's name. Amen. Well, here are these verses. Verses 16 and 17 that Luther spent so much toil over. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it, The righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith. As it's written, the righteous shall live by faith. Now, as we've seen, we already heard this morning that the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s was a real revival of religion in very, very dark times. Darker times, believe it or not, than the times in which we live. That darkness had covered civilization and really the entire world for centuries. The original brilliance of the gospel, which came when the Lord Jesus came into the world, you know, men sitting and people sitting in darkness had seen a great light and so on. Then the apostles took the gospel out to the ends of the earth. But that light had been dimmed by the work of the enemy, by persecution, by corruption of the visible church, specifically through the false gospel of Rome, which Satan established, ironically, in this very city that Paul's writing to then here. You see, well, it was into that darkness that Martin Luther was born in 1483. There had been some precursors before him, precursors to the Reformation, to a return to the scriptures, to a return to the gospel. For example, John Wycliffe, he lived way back in the 1300s. And for that reason, he's often called the morning star of the Reformation. But typically, we acknowledge the Reformation's official start, we might say, on October 31, 1517. Or maybe, as Lloyd-Jones says, it might have been November 1, right? We don't know for sure. But that's when Luther nails his 95 theses to the church door at Wittenberg, where he lived and taught. And at the same time, this is what's very interesting about the Protestant Reformation. It isn't planned. A revival effected by God is not planned by man, right? This is one of the great errors of so many professing Christians today and local churches today. We've got to get something done. We've got to make something happen. Well, that's not really the way God works. He works by his spirit and his word so that we see this in the Protestant Reformation. You have Luther there in Germany, but you've also got contemporary with his time, Things are happening over in Switzerland with Zwingli and with John Calvin. John Calvin actually started out, he was actually French, so his first name isn't John, it's Jean, right? But because of persecution from the Roman Catholic Church there, he fled up to Geneva. So all of these things, that's a sign of a work of God, it's happening. Not through the organization of man, but God is doing it. And he's using man, but he's the one that's doing it. Well, one of the things that primarily sparked the Reformation was that people, and especially scholars like Erasmus, he lived back in, well, a contemporary of Martin Luther, 1466 to 1536. He was a Dutch Roman Catholic. Erasmus was a Dutchman. But he was a Roman Catholic scholar. What he did was, he wasn't a Christian. He wasn't born again. But he was a scholar. And what he did is he put together both Latin and Greek editions of the New Testament. Now, you see, always, always, always a true reformation of Christ's church. And that's where it begins, is in the church. or revival, it begins with a return to the Word of God, right? It begins with a return to the Word of God. If you're like me, and you grew up in a typical professedly Bible-believing church and so on, but what happens so often is, and it's sneaky, it's subtle, I think sometimes even The preacher himself doesn't really realize what's happening. But we can be taught the traditions of man instead of the word of God. And so a reformation or revival always entails a return then to the word of God, because that's what had happened. Rome was hiding the Bible. In fact, Wycliffe paid with his life for translating for translating the Bible then. And others did as well. Or not Wycliffe, I was thinking of Tyndale. William Tyndale translated the Bible into English in England. And he was pursued for a long time, but ultimately he was martyred. And so all of this is a work of the spirit of God. And you see it, as the apostle writes in Hebrews chapter 4 about the Word of God. How does he describe the Word of God? The Word of God is living and active. It's not a dead letter laying on a page. It's living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. That's what That's the only thing that can save us and deliver us from our sins. The Spirit of God taking the Word of God and getting right into the thoughts and intentions of our heart. Well, this is what happened with Luther. He's reading his Bible because he was a scholar and he was able to read those languages, able to read the New Testament. And what the phrase, the scripture that particularly struck him was this phrase here in Romans 1, the righteousness of God, the righteousness of God. Most professing Christian, most people that would profess to be a Christian today, and I think this has been typically true for so long, maybe all the time down through the history of the church, They don't really know what the righteousness of God is. They don't really, they still don't really get it, all right? It's our natural tendency to be hung up on our own works, that somehow we've got to make ourself justified then before God. But this is what, but see, Luther was absolutely honest. Luther recognized the holiness of God. He recognized that God is holy, holy, holy. And he also recognized something else, that Luther was unholy, unholy, unholy. And so he's in this dilemma. People today that claim to be Christians, it's like, well, what's the big deal? You just believe in Jesus and he forgives you your sins, everything's a-okay, right? It's just so easy. But Luther recognized, wait a minute, how is it even possible for a holy God to ever justify me, a sinner? How can that ever happen? He's thinking, how can the Apostle Paul, call this business of the righteousness of God here in Romans 1, how can he call that the gospel? Because the gospel means good news. Now think about that. If you're a sinner, which we all enter this world as sinners, right? So born into this world as a sinner, separated from God, alienated, alienated from God, I'm unrighteous. How is it going to be good news to me for somebody to come along and say, you know what? God is perfectly righteous. He's perfectly holy. He's perfectly pure and righteous, and you're not. There's the gospel. See, Luther couldn't put the two together because he didn't understand that phrase, what Paul meant, really, by the righteousness of God. So he's in this dilemma. But here's Paul saying, I'm not ashamed of the gospel. What do you mean? You're going around from town to town, Paul, and you're preaching this good news that God is righteous. Boy, that's good news. God is perfectly righteous and we are sinners then. But it's the power of God to salvation. In it, in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. But eventually, and this was quite a long process, and a lot of, you know, Luther fasted himself almost to death, and he's, you know, he's a monk. And so, and a Roman Catholic professor and scholar. But eventually, and that was what we heard Lloyd-Jones call, he said it's usually called Luther's tower experience. His tower, because he's up in this tower. I think it was in this time in his life that his friends actually kidnapped him and whipped him off and basically imprisoned him for his own good, right? They're going to kill you. The pope wants you dead. And so he was there for quite some time. But at any rate, at some point, he has this tower experience where the lights went on for him. And here's R.C. Sproul describes that. Luther says here in it, or rather Paul says here in it, the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it's written, the just shall live by faith. This is a verse taken from the book of Habakkuk. in the Old Testament, and it's cited three times in the New Testament. And Luther would stop short and say, what does this mean that there's this righteousness that is by faith and from faith to faith? What does it mean that the righteous shall live by faith? Which again, as I said, was the thematic verse for the whole exposition of the Book of Romans, right? That's what it is. And so the lights came on for Luther, and he began to understand that what Paul was speaking of here was a righteousness that God, in his grace, was making available to those who would receive it passively. That is, by faith, not by works, right? Not those who would achieve it actively, but that would receive it by faith. and by which a person could be reconciled to a holy and righteous God. So Luther finally saw, you know, that's what he says, the gates of paradise opened up for me. He finally saw that a sinner is justified before God, not through their works or not even by faith plus works, right, as Rome had taught him, but by faith alone in the work of Christ alone. You probably know how this works, right? Paul says that Christ, who knew no sin, was sinless, became sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him. How does that work? The way God saves us through faith is that when we come to Christ in faith, then Our sins are imputed, transferred, credited to Christ on the cross. And he pays for them on the cross. But then there's another transfer that has to happen. Christ's perfect obedience to the law of God, perfect obedience, even in every thought that he ever had, his perfect obedience to the law of God is imputed to me. so that I become the righteousness of God. He becomes a curse. He was made a curse for us, but I become the righteousness of God in him. And this is what this righteousness of God thing is all about, and what Luther finally saw. We just read it in Romans 4. For what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. counted him, his faith. Now, don't fall into the trap of thinking that faith is a work, you know. Well, you know, I'm a Christian, and God accepts me because I chose him. I believed, I chose to believe. Now, my neighbor over there, who's going to hell, is going to hell because he hasn't chosen to believe like I have, right? Well, now, wait a minute. Paul says over and over and over again that there is no room for boasting. If your understanding of this salvation in Christ leaves any room for boasting, you've got it wrong. Faith is what? It's a gift of God. It's a gift of God. If you're a Christian, it's because God, in his mercy, while you were still dead in your sins, while you were still hostile to God, hated him, you were an enemy of God under his condemnation, God in his mercy said, you, you're coming with me. Grabbed you, and he brings you to faith. He grants you faith, just like he nailed the Apostle Paul on the road then to Damascus. So there's only two religions in the world. There's only two. There's never been more than two. There's just two. There's the religion of Cain, and there's the religion of Abel. What's the religion of Cain? It's, by the works of my hands, by the fruit that I'm offering on this altar, God, you should accept me, because this is so great, right? And then there's the religion of Abel, which is what? Really, Abel had faith in Christ, in the blood of Christ, as he brought this bloody sacrifice that God, they had no doubt been instructed by God what was an acceptable sacrifice, and Abel brought his. So you can heap up every kind of religion in the world that's ever existed, that exists today, just name them, make this huge long list, right? And it's all the same thing. When you boil it down to its essence, it's all about works, making yourself, man making himself acceptable to God. That's what drives Rome. That's why the Roman Catholic Church's so-called gospel is false. What does it say? Here's how Rome works, all right? And this is just like the chief example, and it's the one that Luther was facing, right? Here's how it works. You're born, right? So your parents take you to the priest who baptizes you. Now, the Roman Catholic teaching about the church is that the church is like this big dispensary, and it dispenses salvation. And you've got to go to it to get salvation and basically everything else. So you go to it, and the infant is baptized. And that baptism, effected then by the church, justifies that baby. It washes away original sin. It makes him righteous before God until the first time he sins. Then it's all gone. And from that point on, that child, that person is taught, you've got to make yourself acceptable to God. And how do you do that? Well, you've got all these. Did you know that there's only two biblical sacraments or ordinances in the Bible, baptism and the Lord's Supper? Rome has seven. And one of the seven sacraments in Rome is penance. And you've heard of people, I'm going You're going to have to do penance for that one there. And so you've got to be punished. You sinned, and you've got to pay the penalty right now. So it can be anywhere from, go say, this many Hail Marys, or whatever it might be. Whatever the priest tells you, this is what you've got to do. And then they'll absolve you until the next time, and so on. Here is this horrible, horrible system that keeps people then in bondage. The Roman Catholic has no assurance whatsoever, no assurance, can never have insurance. In fact, Rome pronounced as a heresy the Protestant teaching during the Reformation, the Protestant teaching that you can know that you're saved. It pronounces you, what's the word? Basically, anathema, right? Anathema. Damned by God. Anybody that teaches that, they're damned by God. They're an anathema that someone can know that they're saved. And the best case scenario is what? Maybe you're going to catch only about 1,000 years in purgatory when you die. And then, what's purgatory all about? Well, purgatory, is there because Rome is telling people, well, first of all, it's a way to sell indulgences and make a lot of money. But also, what Rome is saying is, if you're going to be justified before God, if you're going to be counted as righteous before God, you've got to really be righteous. You really have to be righteous. And you're not. So you've got sins that haven't been paid for. So what happens in purgatory is you've got to suffer for those sins, pay the price then yourself, until God decides that you are righteous. And then he'll pronounce you justified, and into heaven then you go. And there it is. It's a wicked and evil system. Well, what did Luther discover? And he already knew this much. He is that man is dead in his sins, totally fallen, no ability whatsoever to make himself right with God. He didn't even want to make himself right with God. God is perfectly righteous and holy. And therefore, the sinner is under God's wrath and condemnation. That's why Paul says, Romans 118, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. Now, we all know lots of people, maybe friends, relatives, whatever, who aren't Christians. They're still dead in their sins. They don't know the Lord. They're not justified before God. But there's only two kinds of people in the world in this respect as well. And what those two kinds are is those people who are justified by faith in Christ and therefore are the children of God, and he is their loving heavenly father, and they're reconciled to God. And then there's the other category of people who are not justified, who are still dead in their sins. And here's where today the fangs come out, right? What is the condition of the person that doesn't know Christ? They're under God's wrath and condemnation. His wrath and condemnation. In fact, people just want to hear that God is love. That's what it's all about. Since God is love, don't worry about it. Everything's going to be OK. When you die and stand before God, he's going to cut you all kinds of slack. Because after all, you're basically a good person. That's the lie that's taught in so many so-called churches today. And people are deluded then by it. So we're either under the wrath of God, or he is our loving heavenly father then, you see. So here it is. It's a bad scene. Condemnation, death, hell, and God's wrath. But Luther finally got it. In other words, God in his time turned on the lights for Martin Luther. And he understood, look, here's how it works. Salvation is by grace. It's a gift. What's the gift? The gift is the righteousness. It's righteousness. Where'd it come from? From Jesus. That's where it comes from. And God is like, look it, look it. Will you just knock off this business of being so arrogant that you think you can make yourself righteous before me? I'm telling you, here's the righteousness. Take it. How do you take it? You take it by faith. You take it by faith. And he makes you a brand new creation, you see. It's not the righteousness by which God himself is righteous. It is the righteousness of Jesus Christ, which is imputed to us, credited to our account by faith and faith alone. Listen, this is really plain when Paul says it in Philippians chapter 3. Not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, works of the law, but that righteousness which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends upon faith, you see. Now, this is why the preaching of the word of God is vital then to the church. Because God, in his mercy towards us, God in his mercy towards us, even while we're dead in our sins, he brings the light and good news of the gospel then to us, right? I mean, I can remember when I was a kid, fortunately, I probably don't remember all of it, but I was bad, right? I mean, I was, I did ornery things just because it felt good. I can remember, you know, you kind of might chuckle about this, you know, or whatever, but I'm sure at the time, in God's sight, it was nothing to laugh about. So we used to play with slingshots. You know, you could buy them. They were kind of wire-shaped and whatever, rubber bands and so on. If you give a kid like I was a slingshot, you're just asking for trouble, right? So one of my friends, he had his too, but he had his back turned to me and he had shorts on and I thought, oh, bare skin, you know? Pull it back and whack. Man, I mean, that had to hurt. That had to hurt bad. So I just did all kinds of stuff like that. And worse, my parents, when I was in, I guess, still grade school, we moved to southern Oregon. And it was kind of a traumatic thing, because all my friends were gone, whatever. And my parents started a business down there, and I was left unsupervised. We walked to school and did this thing, and I was unsupervised. So I ended up, I'd go into the store, and if I wanted to swipe some candy or something, then I did it. I'm doing all this kind of stuff. I mean, I was a little sinner. But we went to church. We went to Sunday school in church. My parents would profess to be Christians, but I don't think they were. We definitely didn't have a Christian family. But we would go to church. So from my earliest years, I also heard the gospel, all right? At least in its basic form, it was Jesus died on the cross for our sins. If you believe in him, he will forgive you. And when you die, you can go to heaven. Well, that was enough to make me, at nighttime, lay there and think about hell, right? Or brought under conviction then. of your sin, but it took a long process and a lot of years. I can't point to the time when the Lord actually regenerated me, but at some point, but at some point then, he did. Well, it's the preaching of the word of God that he uses to get through to sinners, you know, including, that's why being in church, It's not the only place that we hear the Word of God, but there's something about the preaching of the Word of God as we're gathered together in his church, where his spirit is, that's powerful. And we need that. All of us, even after then, were saved. Now, let me give you a challenge, OK? Now, I've already told you what a rotten sinner I was, and I haven't even told you the half of it. So don't take this as like, I'm up here and you're down there, right? But nevertheless, here's a challenge. So Verla and I have been here in this church for 31 years. And in that period of time, the Lord has moved me, enabled me, right, to preach the word of God to you. preach the word of God to you. And if you've been here, and this would include people listening online as well, but if you've been here during that period of time and you're still not born again, and it's very possible, people can be church members and sit in church and so on and not be born again, then let me give you this challenge. Don't blame God. Don't say, well, hey, this business of election, he hasn't chosen me, so whatever. I'll just sit back and wait for him to choose me. And there's nothing I can do about it in the meantime. No. If you've been here and you've listened to the gospel over and over and over again, the only reason you remain unsaved is because you are actively hardening your heart. against the Word of God. And you see it. Listen to Hebrews here. Hebrews chapter 3. Take care, brothers. Take care, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it's called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we've come to share in Christ if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. As it said, today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion. For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for 40 years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? Do you realize that? Maybe two out of that first generation made it into the promised land, right? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest but to those who were disobedient? So now listen to this. So we see that they were unable to enter. Why? Because of unbelief. They hardened their heart. You know, if you're still unsaved, you're under God's condemnation. You're under his wrath. Many, many people who are regular church members and professing Christians are still unsaved, dead in their sins. They're under God's wrath. And if you're in that condition and you die and you pass out of this life, there's no second chance. You're going to stand before God. That's it. That's it. Eternity then. in hell, and all the time, every moment, the world is trying to seduce you away from Christ. He's trying to make your interests be in the world rather than... I mean, think about it. Isn't it insane to be primarily concerned? The primary concern of my life is, you know, I'm dead in my sin. I'm under the wrath of God. If I die at this moment, I'm going to go to hell. But hey, I want to go get a new boat. And I won't think about that right now. I'll just go party on. The insanity, then, of sin, you see. Now, what is the chief and fundamental sin of man? What is it? What is the sin that really is the cause, you might say, of the wrath of God upon the sinner? It's probably not what you think. There are people who think they're quite moral, that they're better than that drunk or thief or pervert that they've heard about in the news. But those sins are just fruits of the fundamental sin. And Paul lays out the fundamental sin here also in Romans 1. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven revealed as light poured out from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, and I get it here, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. Suppress the truth. And then to skip down to verse 21, for although they knew God, they know God exists. Everybody knows God exists and is their creator. They didn't honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Man's chief sin is this. He lives as if God were irrelevant. What does God think of that? Me, the creature, everything I have, every good thing I have comes from him. I'm living as if he's irrelevant to me. Whether you're an atheist or an agnostic, it doesn't matter. Both are doing the same thing. They suppress the plain and clear proof of God, they push away their knowledge of God, and they refuse to give him thanks and the glory that's due him. That's it. That's the sin. I see that God's revealed himself to me in his creation. I see that. You can go home and sit and stare at a tree, and there's enough revelation of God in that tree, or in a bug, to condemn you if you reject what it's telling you, the creation's telling you, that God exists, that he's our creator. We are his creature, and what does that mean? It means that I owe him honor and acknowledgment. But if I live as if God were irrelevant in my life, then take him or leave him type thing, his wrath is upon me. And there will be plenty of people on the day of judgment They stand before God, and they'll say, well, I did all this good stuff for you. God did all this, and I was a church member, and all this. Depart from me. I never knew you. I hope, if anybody listening is unsaved, I hope that God, remember what he did to Luther? Lightning bolt, right? What did he do to, what was it, the Philippian jailer? earthquake, right? And it scared those people to death, got their attention. God's doing this all the time. I mean, what do we think these hurricanes are all about? Is God in charge of hurricanes? Does he send them where he wants them to go? Is the message of those hurricanes to people You know, some of those centers that were hit so hard are known as New Age sinful centers. They are. They brag about it. And they're hit. Is the message of God in all of that? I love you. And I just have a wonderful plan. Or is he trying to say, you need to repent. You need to repent of your sin. And if you do and turn from your sin and turn to my son, I'll save you, you see. And so that's, but this is the fundamental sin, then, of man. Well, these are the things that we remember, then, this Reformation Sunday. And just one final note here, and that is that Robert Godfrey, you know, you've heard him speak before and so on. He's a Reformed theologian. He talks about, he talked about, I'll read it to you, and you'll explain it. One of the, what, slogan, I don't know if that's quite the right word, but one of the phrases of reformed churches is, always reforming. Always reforming. We are always reforming. What does that mean? Listen to Godfrey on this. We recognize that every generation not only needs to learn again what it means to be reformed, But every generation also needs to be about the business of always reforming. We need to be always reforming because we're sinners. We fail to understand and follow God's truth as we ought. So it's almost like sanctification, you might think, is kind of a synonym there. We recognize that the reformers, like Luther and Calvin and so on, were sinners too, and they didn't understand everything perfectly. So we want always to reform ourselves and the lives of our churches, and how do you do it? By turning again and again to the Word of God and allow it to reform us, to do its work on us. Always reforming doesn't mean allowing our clever little insights into the needs of the present world to change the biblical inheritance we've received from the Reformation. It means turning, as the Reformers did, to the Word of God to allow it to change us. And so here's one final challenge to put to all of us, myself included. Am I turning, then, to the Word of God? The Word of God is the powerful word, which is the power of salvation. It's also the power of God. for our sanctification, for our growth. Remember how the apostle to the Hebrew said, you guys, I can't believe it. You're still babies. You're still babies. You're still sucking on a bottle. You can only handle milk. You should have been teachers by this time. Sometime it passed, apparently. You should be teachers sometime. But I can't give you meat. You know, there's a lot of people that profess to be Christians that are in that state. And if I were to, you know, if we had a bunch of them here, you know, and I got up and I was going to preach to them, I'm going to preach to you today about the doctrine of justification. You would lose them. I mean, that would be the, or if you were to say, can you explain to me the doctrine of justification? Because this is like, the author of Hebrews, he says, this is like the ABCs, OK? But there's a lot of professing Christians who haven't even got the ABCs yet, you see. Don't be one of those. There's no excuse for it, really. Do I have a hunger and thirst for Christ's word? We have tremendous opportunity to grow in Christ. I can sit down. I can open up my Bible. There's been so many people in history of the world that couldn't do that. We can open up our Bible. We can read it. We can gather together faithfully on the Lord's day and hear and be taught then the word of God. Every single week, Verla and I put five videos online on Sermon Audio and on YouTube. We've got just like 800 of them there now. I've preached and taught through the Gospel of John, 1 John, Revelation. We're in Ephesians now. We're also in Romans now. We recently started a children's study. So those videos, they're all there. And in addition to that, you know I'm going to mention Martin Lloyd-Jones, right? Because this is tremendous. I mean, all of his stuff is there for free. All of these messages are free. So that means what? You can sit down with your Bible. You can say, OK, here's Lloyd-Jones's sermons, 300 and some of them, on Romans, from Romans 1 at the beginning right to the end. I can sit down. I can open up my Bible to Romans 1. hit that sermon on the MLJ website, and one of the greatest preachers in the last 200 years will come right into my home and preach and teach the word of God to me. There's no shortcut. There's no shortcut. You know, we've heard it said before. A ship doesn't drift into safe harbor. it drifts onto the rocks. And if we just drift, that's all we do, we're careless, we don't apply ourselves, give ourselves to the word of God, then we're gonna make shipwreck of our faith and end up on the rocks. Men and women and children down through history, think of John Bunyan, prison, 12 years, have suffered and died so that you and I can have this Bible right here in our hands. And if I'm careless, if I'm careless about it and I just don't, you know, I act like it's irrelevant or something, what does that say about my thoughts about God's people that have suffered then so much? Well, there it is, the good news of the gospel. the righteousness of God. I can be perfectly righteous before God, and I am, if I am in Christ, so that when I stand before him one day, he will say, well done, well done, good and faithful servant. Father, we thank you for the gospel, thank you for your spirit and your word as you've so powerfully intervened in the affairs of men, and as you did, in the time of the Protestant Reformation through Luther and Calvin and others. And Father, we give you thanks for this. And we pray that you would work that powerful work in our own lives, particularly in regard to anyone listening that's not saved, but also in our nation, Father. For your glory and for your praise, that you would pour out your spirit upon this dark nation and save us. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.