Good afternoon. It is an honor and honestly a joy to get to be back with my brothers and sisters here at New Testament Baptist Church. It's an honor every time that a minister allows someone else to occupy his pulpit. And this is no less of an honor to get to fill the pulpit of my brother Jake Stone. Thank you all for the opportunity. I thank you all for entrusting this time to me to preach God's word. I'm thankful to my brother Jake for our friendship and for our brotherhood to allow these type of opportunities for like minded bodies of Christ to be able to intermingle and have like-minded fellowship of the sharing of ministers hopefully honestly I would pray that this could bloom into something more or hopefully sometime in the soon future I would like to see our churches do even more together but I'm thankful to be here it's an honor to get to preach the word anytime anywhere that the opportunity is given especially with like-minded brothers and sisters That being said, this afternoon I'll be preaching the Word of God from Romans chapter 5, so I would invite you to turn there with me. Romans chapter 5, verses 6 through 11. Romans 5, 6 through 11 will be our text tonight. Before we go to God's Word, let's go to Him in prayer. Gracious Father, Holy God, Lord, we come to you in worship, in adoration and praise. Father, we come to you thankful for this Lord's Day that you've given us, for this Christian Sabbath. Lord, after difficult days and hard weeks, after struggles and sins and exhaustion, after weary labors, After so many different struggles, Father, it is always a joy and a pleasure to get to come to the Lord's Day, this day of rest that you have set aside for us. Father, we thank you that this is now how we get to begin our week, that it's no longer working six days, looking forward to that day of rest, but now we begin our week with this opportunity to be refreshed, this opportunity to be renewed, this opportunity to get to fellowship with brothers and sisters, to devote an entire day to worship, and to the rest both mentally, physically, and spiritually. Father, we thank you for your word that you've given us, that you speak to us, that you guide your people, that you've given us everything that we need for life and godliness. Fathers, we look to you as the fearsome creator that you are. It baffles us and it causes us to stand in awe and worship that you would give us direct access to be able to speak to you and then to hear from you from your word. God, we thank you for these gracious gifts that you've given. Father, I pray this evening as the herald of Your Word that You would allow me to preach Your Word in the authority that comes not from myself, but comes from the authoritative Word of God, to preach it in boldness and in passion, not as a cold lecture, but as a dying man to dying men, to preach it in clarity and plainness and simplicity. Father, we pray that Your Spirit would give unction to the preaching of Your Word tonight, that You would Unite to the preaching of your word, the Spirit of God, to wield that sword, to cause it to pierce through the bone and marrow, even to the division of the heart, to the discernment of the thoughts of man. Father, we pray that you would do with your word what I can't do, what we can't do, that you would cause blind men to see, deaf men to hear, that you would encourage and edify and build up the saints And Father, if there would be any here that have not truly been born again, that they would see the gospel plainly revealed to them from this passage of Paul's letter to the Romans this evening. Father, we pray that the preaching of your word this evening, the singing of psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, the recitation of the catechisms and everything that we do here in this place would resound to your glory. to your people's good and to the furtherance of your kingdom. God, we pray this in that most holy name of Christ Jesus. Amen. Romans 5, 6 through 11. This is God's inspired, inerrant, infallible, sufficient word. This is the only standard of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience. Hear the word of the Lord this evening. For while we were still weak, At the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die. But God chose his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since therefore we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our God will stand forever. May God bless the reading and the hearing of his word this evening. Amen. So Paul begins our passage of scripture this evening with a little bit of a throwback. I appreciate, as an expositor of God's Word, and honestly, even before becoming a preacher, I appreciated Paul and the way that he writes under divine inspiration, that he never leaves you in doubt of where he's going. He always gives you good connector words to point you where you need to look for information. And our passage today is no exception that if you look at the very beginning of chapter 6, Paul begins with that very helpful word, it's only three letters, four. Now what four kind of does in the English language, and it's so simple that we pass over it a lot of times, is it's supposed to be a kind of a blinking neon sign. It says, stop, slow down, before you go on to what's next, understand that everything that's about to be said is predicated on what has just come before. 4 simply points readers back to what has just been stated. So, side note, this isn't going to cost you anything extra. If you highlight, if you underline your Bibles like I do, if you're comfortable with that, I circle or do something every time I see words like before or therefore to point my attention back. And so what is Paul pointing our attention back to? If you look back to verses 1 through 5, Paul has essentially asserted that the Christian, who has now been justified by faith, Paul makes a bold statement here. He says that the Christian now has such a peace with God. Think about that. This terrifying, awesome, fearsome Creator God, that the justified Christian can now have such a peace with God, that even something as severe as suffering could not damper that joy, could not damage that joy. In fact, Paul makes clear in Romans 5, 1-5, not only would suffering not damage the Christian's joy, Paul almost sounds like a crazy man here, he says not only will suffering not damage the joy, it would actually produce a hope, a certainty in God, a certainty and even more joy that comes namely in the justification that they have now received from God. And so Paul, after making that bold of a statement, saying, Christian, you who have been justified, you have peace with this fearsome Creator. You have peace with this God. You, Christian, can have assurance. Not only peace, Paul's going to say, now therefore, based on everything I've just said, not only can you have peace, He's gonna tell us why we can have peace, that we have assurance. Our peace, Paul says, and he's gonna argue tonight, is rooted in our assurance. He points us back to that peace before we get into our passage tonight. And he says, you, Christian, can have assurance of your final salvation. That's the main point of our passage tonight. It's nothing too complicated. It's nothing too over the top. It's something so simple, though, that if you're anything like me, if you've been a believer for a while, if you've been the doctrine for a while, you've been into the confessions for a while, sometimes the simple things are things that we forget. Sometimes the simple beautiful truths are the truths that we move on past and we somehow convince ourselves that we don't need to be reminded of. But hopefully I'm not the only one in this room that sometimes struggles with assurance. That when life gets difficult, when I see my sinful self reflected back to me in the mirror, when I find myself struggling and the Scriptures are struggling in life, I can find myself, even if it's momentary, struggling with that assurance. And so Paul's going to reassure us tonight, telling us that you, Christian, can have assurance of your final salvation. I think that's a beautiful thing. If we don't have assurance, we're not very effective. We're not very effective in doing missions and evangelism if the people we're preaching the gospel to can see that we're not really sure of it ourselves. So Paul tells us, you can have assurance, and he's going to tell us you can have assurance for three reasons. None of them being how great and wonderful we are. None of them being how good of a Christian you are, and man, that's great news. Instead, he actually does the opposite. And this sounds like crazy talk. Paul does this a lot. where he says things that don't make sense at first glance. Paul's big point tonight is that you can have assurance, Christian, actually because of how terrible you were. Paul's going to tell us you can have assurance for three reasons. Because Christ died for you while you were weak, Christ died for you while you were ungodly, and Christ died for you while you were an enemy. And Paul's going to argue, and I'm going to argue tonight, along with Paul, that should give us great assurance of our final salvation. And so Paul begins in verse 6, the first portion of verse 6, telling us that you should have assurance of your final salvation, of that state of glory being entered into, because Christ died for you while you were weak. How might the Christian be assured of their justification? The way that Paul puts forth here right at the very beginning is by reminding oneself of who it is that Christ died for. Christ didn't die for you, the doctrinally sound, confessional, reformed Christian who now has your life together. Christ died for you while you were weak. while you were helpless. What does that mean when he says he died for you while you were weak? It's not a good picture. It's not something we like to think of often, as a man especially. I mean, I'm sure women can relate too, but men in the room, how would you feel if someone just walked up to you and called you weak? That's not a term we like applied to ourselves, but I think it's a great term here. Paul tells us we were helpless. We were without strength. We were unable to save ourselves. Our condition could not have been worse, even if we had tried, left to ourselves. we would have remained in this desperate state. But the good news that Paul has us for us tonight is not an encouragement and a challenge to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps. The encouragement that Paul gives is not, Christian, while you were weak, you figured it out, you struggled along, you elevated yourself to the position of the deserving poor, the deserving weak. No, what Paul tells us tonight is that Christ died for you exactly when your manner was most desperate. Look at the second part of what verse 6 says. He says, for while we were still weak, At the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. What makes it the right time? How is it that Paul can say, why is it that Paul says that Christ died for us at the right time? We were weak. That's not an exactly good time. While I'm weak, it doesn't seem like a good time for anything to happen, but Paul says this is what makes it a good time. It is in fact our desperate state that makes the Savior's timing so perfect. Christ didn't wait for us to pick ourselves up from the dirt and mire. He didn't wait for ourselves to clean ourselves up as if that was even a possibility. He tells us He saved us while we were weak, completely incapable, completely helpless, struggling alone. I don't think this concept is new to Paul. I definitely don't think this concept is new to Paul. If you look throughout the Old Testament, you're going to see testimony after testimony, account after account, that this is exactly when God chooses to act. Isn't this continually with his nation Israel when God chooses to act and act and chooses to save his people? Think about Gideon back in Judges chapter 6. Gideon had a pretty big force. He probably could have fought and he was strong enough. He might have been able to save his people by himself, but what does the Lord do? The Lord, by the time it's said and done there in the story of Gideon, reduces his army to 300 men, and they're not even the good soldiers. You remember how he picks those men? He says, look at the ones that, not the ones that are smart enough to get a bucket or something to get up the water, not the ones who bring a bottle over. Look at the men who are so dumb that they lap the water up like a dog. Those are the men, Gideon, that you're going to use to fight for your people. God does this, why? Because Gideon will get not an ounce of glory. God does this, God chooses to save and chooses to act when Gideon is at his weakest to receive more glory. Think of what the Lord tells His people in Deuteronomy chapter 32. In Deuteronomy chapter 32 verse 36, the Lord told Israel that He would only vindicate His people, quote, when He sees that their power is gone. It's then that the Lord, their God, will choose to act. God receives the most glory in this way. This is how our God has always chosen to act. God receives the most glory in this way, by magnifying His saving power, by saving the undesirable weakling. What gives God more glory? saving a man who looks like he's already saved himself, or saving the one who didn't have a chance. God saved us at the most opportune time. That is when we were weak and incapable so that He will in turn receive the most glory, the most worship, the most praise. And so this is basically what Paul is getting at here. You should have assurance, Christian, because if God saved you, if He gave you initial justification, if He brought you to Himself when you were weak, Should you not be even more confident that He'll bring you to final salvation because now He has made you strong? If He gave you the Spirit when you were weak, why would He take His Spirit from you now that you have been made strong by that Spirit? Christ died for you while you were at your weakest. How on earth could He not bring you to salvation in the end now that you have received the powerful indwelling of the Holy Spirit? Paul says you should be given assurance by how weak your state was. But the truth is that we are not only helpless, if you continue into the latter part of verse 6 going on into verse 8, Paul continues and says that we should also be assured because Christ died for you while you were ungodly. Look at what Paul says there beginning Let's start again with verse 6 and read through verse 8. He says, "...for while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." He tells us that Christ died for not just the weak, he died for the ungodly. As if it were not enough to assure the Christian of their justification that Christ died for us while we were struggling and weak and incapable. Just honestly pathetic. He tells you if that doesn't assure you, if He saved you and that was your condition, Paul now reminds us that we were ungodly. We weren't just weak and helpless. We were sinning against the Lord our God. We were deserving of God's punishment and wrath. He says we were not like God in any way. We were ungodly. It's the opposite. We were opposed to Him. We were on the opposite end of the spectrum, and yet He died for us. Paul continues into verse 6-7 by offering an explanation. And honestly, I think what Peter says of Paul would be applicable to this verse. Peter warns his readers, talking about Paul's writings, he says that some of these things that Paul has written are kind of confusing. I think verse 7 would definitely fall into that category, because Paul is actually trying to give an explanation. And his explanation is sometimes a little bit more confusing than if he just hadn't given the explanation because of our sin, not because of the lack of writing ability on Paul's part. But here's what Paul explains in verse 7. He says, Now what on earth? As Paul's saying, because if you're like me, hopefully I'm not the only person. The first probably ten dozen times I read through this passage, just doing my own Bible study, I kind of was left scratching my head going, isn't a righteous person and a good person the same thing? I don't know. Maybe Paul just wasn't from Mississippi and I just don't have a big enough vocabulary, but if I say that my brother Jake is righteous and then in the next statement I say that he's good, I'm not saying two different things. I'm saying the exact same thing. Maybe my vocabulary is just limited. And maybe you're like me on that. Maybe you're wondering, how does this example make any sense if they're the same thing, but they're not the same thing. If you get out a lexicon, if you have what I think is very helpful, that blue letter Bible, if you use it appropriately, they're actually two different Greek words. And so here's what Paul is basically saying. Paul is saying someone would maybe be willing to die for a good person. And a good person, as defined here, is someone who's useful, someone who serves a purpose, is what the Greek word is really getting at. So he says someone might be willing to die for a good person, a useful person, someone who serves some purpose. But you probably wouldn't be too willing to die just for a righteous person. A righteous person is someone who's morally upright, a good, upstanding man, whereas a good person is someone who is useful. What Paul is saying is that this death would somewhat make sense, that we can begin to wrap our minds around laying our life down for a good person, for someone who is useful. We see this happen in life. Think about the president and the Secret Service. The president might not be the most morally upright man. We've had some pretty morally wicked presidents in our nation's history. And yet, nonetheless, no matter how wicked the president was that was in office, Secret Service, what's their job? Someone pulls out a gun and goes to take a shot at the President, they're jumping in the way. It has nothing to do with how morally upright the person is, it's how useful he is. The President's life, as mean as it is to say, is more valuable than that Secret Service member's life, at least in the context of how our nation operates. And so the Service member will willingly take that bullet for the President. The president is more useful to the country than that service member. It has nothing to do with how morally upright he is. So in this context, the secret service member is saying, I'm going to jump in front of the bullet because he's a good person. He's useful, not necessarily righteous or morally upstanding. But on the other hand, imagine you have a neighbor who is a morally upright man. He pays his taxes. He mows his yard. He brings food over to you when you need it. He buys you pizza. He takes you out. He watches your kids. He's the guy in the neighborhood that everyone loves. He has a big swimming pool in his backyard. He's constantly inviting people over. Everyone in town loves him and speaks highly of him. He's a morally upright, righteous man that everyone loves and adores and looks up to. Now imagine your righteous morally upstanding neighbor gets arrested on false charges. And whatever the charges is that he's been accused of, you know it's not true, but he's facing the death penalty. Now you might be likely, honestly if you're a halfway decent person, to go testify in court on his behalf, right? You'd be willing to go to the judge and say he didn't do what you're saying he did. You might even be willing to maybe pay some money to help him get out of the situation. But if the judge told you the only way to save that morally upstanding neighbor is to sit in the seat, the electric chair that he was about to sit in, would you do it for him? I mean, maybe I'm just a terrible person. It wouldn't matter how good my neighbor was, how morally upstanding. I'll testify for him, but I'm not sitting in the death seat for him. It doesn't matter how morally upright he is. Most people, this is Paul's basic argument, You can kind of wrap your mind around dying for a useful person. Someone who you might not like, but they serve a purpose. But not too many people are willing to put their life on the line for just someone because they're morally upright. It doesn't matter if he gets wrongfully sentenced. You may petition the judge, you may testify for him, but you're not taking his seat. And so Paul says we're not about to die in the place of a morally upright person. We can maybe wrap our minds around laying our life down for a good person, that is for someone useful. Maybe that makes sense. But what Paul is going to say makes no sense at all, however, is that God shows his love for us and that when we weren't, we were neither righteous nor useful. We weren't good or upright. God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Not only were we weak and unable to save ourselves, not only were we ungodly, not only were we not useful, not only were we not morally upright, but we fell short of God's standards in every conceivable way, neither morally good nor useful in any way, and yet the Savior still died in our place. Paul's argument here is essentially that we had no merit We could offer no service that He Himself could not provide, and yet Christ died for us, His church, His elect bride. And here's what Paul is basically saying, if Christ died for you when that was your condition, if Christ died for you when you offered no service to Him, when you were standing opposed to Him in every way, when you were neither morally upright nor useful, Why would you ever think that He wouldn't save you in the end now? You've been made godly now. You've been given the rejuvenating, washing blood of Christ to make you both upright and useful. Well, if Christ died for you when you were neither, why would He not save you in the end now that you are both? As Paul says, be encouraged. Have assurance. Have this assurance that comes from knowing that Christ died for you while you were weak, that Christ died for you while you were ungodly, And now Paul gets, I think, to the most important one, that we should be assured because Christ died for us while we were enemies. Not only did Christ die for you while you were weak and ungodly, Christ died for you while you were an enemy, while you were committing cosmic treason. Paul tells us in verses 9-11, Since therefore we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of the Son. Much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. You see, so far, what Paul has given us, we could maybe possibly come out with a skewed picture of exactly what our situation was. If all we understand about our condition prior to Christ is that we were weak and that we were filthy sinners, we could possibly, there's a chance that we could come away thinking that we were just a victim, that we were just sad and downtrodden, that we were just struggling along and that Christ came and just kind of cleaned us up. And in fact, there's actually a growing movement, even in certain reformed churches. Talking with a few brothers that are in the PCA, this has been a struggle in a few different churches in the PCA over the last few years, where there's been a growing group of people that are making the case, trying to make the case, that the reason Christ died was not to stand as a substitute in place of the wrath of God on our behalf, but really the reason Christ died, these certain men would say, is because we were broken, We were needy and broken, and Christ died on the cross to put together our brokenness, to heal our brokenness, to mend our brokenness. Now brothers and sisters, while that's absolutely part of the gospel, that's not the whole gospel. That doesn't even begin to touch it. And so far, if all we had was Paul saying you were weak and ungodly, you were weak and filthy, we can maybe come away with this skewed image of the gospel, that we come away looking like the sad victims. That it's not that we necessarily deserved God's wrath and we're under the fear of His wrath, but rather it's merely that we're broken and we just needed Christ to put our little pieces back together. We can maybe come away saying that the cross wasn't about satisfying the demands of God's wrath and justice on sin, but rather just about bringing healing to us. We can come away maybe with a picture, I don't know if you're familiar, there's a series of commercials made by Don Dishliquid. Have y'all seen the dish liquid commercials with the little duck that's covered in oil? A lot of them came out back in like 2008, 2009, I think. Is that when the BP oil spill happened? A lot of these commercials just came out on almost every TV channel where there's this little duck. It's just the cutest little duck you've ever seen. And the poor little thing, not of any fault of its own, all of a sudden he's flapping around and he gets in an oil spill. and the poor thing starts struggling. His little wings start coming up. He starts choking. He's about to go into the water, covered in this oil. It's not his fault, man. He is just this sweetest little thing. And he's in this struggling, horrible situation. And then it's always the same thing in these commercials. A glove reaches down, picks him up, and next thing you know, Don Dish Liquid. It does much more than cleaning dishes. And they're putting the Don Dish Liquid on the duck, and it's cleaning him off. And next thing you know, you have this cute little clean duck once more. He's good as new. He's back to normal. We could come away, potentially, if we have a skewed image of the gospel, viewing ourselves like this dirty little duckling. Our situation was no different than that. We were just minding our own business, going about our day, just a sweet, innocent little thing, and all of a sudden we found ourselves in an oil spill. Sin trapped us, the enemy with his temptations, the struggles of life, no fault of our own. And that's what we need Christ for. He's just going to come and cleanse us off, do the little parts that we can't do, But brothers and sisters, that wasn't our situation. We were not just dirty little ducklings covered in the oil stains of sin that needed to be cleaned up by the dawn dish liquid of Christ's blood. That is not the full gospel. We were not just weak. We were not just filthy. Brothers and sisters, you were enemies of Almighty God. It was much more than just some wiping off that we needed. We stand opposed If you're a cinephile like I am, I love watching movies, especially old movies, like the old kingdom movies where there's kings and knights. Do you know what happened 600, 1,000, 2,000 years ago if someone rebelled against the king? Do you think they just had a conversation about it? And they talked it out and apologized and all was well? No, it got the death penalty. They probably went to the guillotine. Now imagine this situation. You have not just any rebel, he's a peasant. I mean, he's been starving to death, and the king has been graciously feeding him, graciously giving him water and clothes and food and sustenance, providing for his family. And yet this peasant consistently, continually rebels, consistently disobeys his king. And the king even brings him into his court and says, look, if you will stop, I've offered forgiveness. And the peasant just spits back in his face. He's an enemy of the king. under fear of the king, under the wrath of the king. And that doesn't even begin to touch on what our situation was. We're not just in some little kingdom. This is the king of the universe that we have rebelled against. We were enemies of God. And Paul tells us it was right when we were in the middle of our cosmic treason that Christ died for you and for me. And Paul begins telling us in verse 9 that Christ's death has done two beautiful, wonderful things for us. He tells us that Christ's death has both justified us and reconciled us. He tells us Christ's death has justified you. Look at what verse 9 says, Since therefore we have now been justified by his blood, much more so would be saved by him from the wrath to come. He tells us we have been justified by His blood. And this is a great deal. This is a big deal indeed. This is basically saying that regardless of how many treasonous actions we had committed, regardless of how many blasphemies we had breathed out against the king, regardless of how many things we had done and how much wrath we deserved, He tells us you have now been made innocent in the eyes of God. This is what justification is. It's legal courtroom language. Paul is saying that in the cosmic courtroom of Almighty God, you have now been legally declared righteous. That's to give us some inventory that you were wicked, you were sinful, you deserved wrath, you deserved punishment. And it's not because you made yourself righteous God now hits his gavel and declares you righteous because of the blood of Christ that was spilled on your behalf. You, the sinner, have now been acquitted of all charges. And man, honestly, if this is where Paul ended, this would be enough. I think if he just said, you've been justified, I think that would be enough to give us the assurance. What more do we need? We have been justified. We have been declared righteous. This would be enough to cause us to worship. This is enough to get us into heaven. We are now righteous. We have now been made holy. It's a great thing, but as great as justification is, I think reconciliation is even better. Well, justification is simply a legal term. It's almost cold. It's great, but it's cold language. It's a legal term that brings to mind a holy courtroom in which a holy judge acquits the center of all charges. As beautiful as that is, it's kind of cold. It's kind of distant. There's other religions that have this kind of language. Reconciliation is different altogether. It's not cold courtroom language. It's close, personal, relational language. Paul tells us that not only has the holy judge, God of the universe, declared you just, declared you acquitted of all wrongdoing, he has then reconciled you to himself. He has now brought you to himself. It's much more than the cold judicial declaration of an authority over a criminal. It's father language. To reconcile is to literally bring together two parties that were separate, to bring peace between two estranged persons. Specifically in this context, God is saying to covenant breakers that now I have restored to you my covenant favor. I have brought you into that covenantal relationship. That same covenantal love that the father looks upon the son in reconciliation, he now gives that to us. Justification is great, but I think reconciliation is even better. It's extra. This isn't common language in the religious realm either. There's other religions that have the concept of justification. I would argue and I would challenge you to find other religions that have the concept of reconciliation between their God. And man, you're going to be hard-pressed to find that. Most religions could not fathom an area where it would be even appropriate to use such personal language between deity and man, the immortal and the mortal. This is where Christianity, I would argue, is really beautifully unique. Not only is the judge of all things judicially declared believers in Christ righteous, but also they have been restored fully in their proximity and relationship to their Father in heaven. This is where we stand opposed to our Muslim friends and acquaintances. I got to share lunch and dinner and a lot of conversations with Muslim friends of mine when I lived and studied at Mississippi College. We had a huge international program. We would discuss these type of topics. We would discuss our faiths, obviously me trying to get the gospel to them. And this is where they always started to really have problems. See, they teach the same as we do about the transcendence of God. They'll say Allah is transcendent, absolutely. Where they don't have a category for is eminence. But when we start talking about that God has made himself eminent, that God has chosen to make himself known, that God has condescended to step down from his throne and welcome us to his table, that's blasphemy. They cannot fathom this type of language. But this is what Christ says is true of us. By Christ's death and shed blood, we are not only declared righteous, but we are declared reconciled. And here's what Paul's argument is basically here. He's saying if God has done all this for you, if He has made you just, if He has made you reconciled, if Christ made you just and reconciled while you were weak, ungodly, and an enemy, If He did all that for you when that was your condition, then Christian, you should never have doubt concerning that final salvation. If He gave you all that when you had nothing to offer Him, now that you have been renewed, now that you have been seated at His table, now that you've been given the title of son and daughter, why would we ever question what more He would give to us? Paul's basically using what's called a how much more argument. It's a common argument. It's what he's saying in verses 9 through 11. Paul is arguing that if Christ has already justified and reconciled you while you were enemies, why would you possibly think he wouldn't bring that salvation to its completion now that you were righteous and reconciled? This isn't an argument unique to Paul, it was a very common argument method used by the rabbis. It's what the rabbis called an argument of light and heavy. We use it all the time, we just don't give it terminology like that. I'll give an example of basically the argument that Paul is using. A couple of years ago when my wife and I moved, for a while we were actually in a rental house that was a pretty decent size in Clinton. And so when you move into a bigger space, you have a tendency to fill that bigger space. And so we bought some new furniture, we bought some bigger couches, we bought a lot more furniture to fill that space. because we didn't plan on ever going smaller than that again, but that's exactly what happened. I got accepted to go to Reform Theological Seminary, and so we moved on campus to save some money, and we lost about half of our square footage that we had in our house, and yet we had all this furniture. And so then we got the fun opportunity of trying to move all this giant furniture into one of the tiniest apartments I've ever seen in my entire life. And whoever designed these apartments, I want to find them and have a conversation with them. Because I am by no means an architect, but whoever thought it would be a good idea, you know normally, I don't know, y'all just went through the building process here, so hopefully someone's going to understand what I'm getting at. Normally the front door is a little bit wider than the other doors that go to outside because the front door is usually where you move furniture into. That's not how these apartments were designed. They instead put the big door at the back And when you open the big door, there's a staircase right there and a hallway. And so we got to have the really fun, sanctifying opportunity of getting to move a bunch of furniture in through this tiny little cramped hallway. And by the grace of God, I have an awesome father-in-law who came all the way down from Memphis to help us with that because there was no way I was going to get all that in. Now, most of the furniture moved in with little to no problems at all. Most is really the key word there. We have this one couch. We need to have some of y'all brothers and sisters over. We have more space now in our house, praise be to God. And we'd love to have some of y'all over for dinner. And if we have y'all over, y'all can see this couch I'm talking about. It's a mammoth of a couch. It's like a foot longer than standard couches. It's like six inches wider. It's basically a bed. I mean, it's absolutely massive. It's over seven feet long and it's over four feet wide. And now because we knew this would be the most difficult of the furniture to move, I say we. Honestly, I'm dumb enough, I probably would have tried to do that one last. My father-in-law stepped up, the wise man that he is, and he said, I think we should do that one first and get it out of the way. And so it literally took us over two, I'm kind of embarrassed to say this, over two hours to get that one couch through the door, past the staircase. My mother-in-law wound up busting her finger wide open, but finally after two hours and a lot of sweat, a lot of sanctification, we get this into the living room of our new home. Y'all, we literally, we had to take the door off its hinges, maneuver it through three separate tight hallways to get to the living room, because for some reason this house is completely backwards from how a house should be built. Now once we had gotten, here's the good news in all this, where the wisdom of my father-in-law shines through, once we got that heavy ordeal done, Y'all, the rest of the furniture didn't seem like a big deal at all. And it was a breeze. We had like a 15 foot U-Haul worth of furniture. Couch took two hours. I don't know. She can correct me on this if I'm wrong. I'm pretty sure if I remember right, the rest of it took maybe 30 minutes to get every other ounce of our furniture moved into the house. I mean, it literally took less time to get the rest of the stuff in than it did to get the first couch. See, what had happened was, because we did the heavy lifting up front, because we had done the heavy work with the first couch, the light work of everything else was really a guarantee. We knew it was going to happen. It gave us confidence that the easy things were going to get done. Brothers and sisters, y'all, this is exactly what Paul is trying to get across to us about our justification and about our final glorification. Paul reasons that if God has already done the heavy lifting of justifying and reconciling, that is of declaring acquittal over the sinner and bringing us in relationship to God, how much more should we have confidence Absolution, positivity, how much more should we have hope in Him to do the light work of saving those whom He's already justified in the final judgment? He's already got the big couch through the front door. You who were weak, ungodly, an enemy of God, He justified you, He reconciled you. Why on earth would we doubt that He could now sanctify and glorify us? should give us absolute confidence in our final salvation, and that confidence should be such that it produces joy. Paul tells us in verse 11, he finishes on this note, he says more than that. We rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. And I think that's the only appropriate response to this assurance. We rejoice in this assurance. In our day and time, we don't get to have assurance about too many things. Things are constantly changing, things are constantly moving around. But this is different. He says, we have assurance and we rejoice in this assurance. And this is no fleeting pleasure. This is no sudden happiness that is soon lost. This joy, the response of the believer to the immeasurable greatness of all that God has done for them, it's not marred by circumstance. It's not marred by a situation or a bad day. We who were weak, who were ungodly, who were enemies of God have now been justified, we have now been reconciled, and we will be saved from His final wrath. What can shake this kind of hope? The answer is nothing. What can take away the joy that the believer now has in this Christ that will bring him to the finish line? Nothing. You can have assurance of your final justification, your final salvation, that glorification that God will bring you into at the judgment. As a result, we should go out from here in a true everlasting joy, a joy that's noticeable, a joy that is unfading, a joy that disregards circumstances in the day-to-day. Christ has saved you, Christ will continue to save you, and Christ will bring that salvation to completion. Brothers and sisters, we should absolutely have assurance of our salvation with God. Let's go to Him in prayer. Father, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You for Christ and for His death on our behalf. We thank You for the beautiful truth of the Scriptures. Not that Christ came for the deserving. Not that Christ came for the already righteous, the already law-abiding, the already covenant keepers, as if there were any. We praise you for this beautiful gospel that he has come for the weak, for the ungodly, and for the enemy. And through his death and resurrection, he has justified, he has reconciled, and he has made those of us who are weak strong. He has made those of us who are sinners. He has made us clean and holy. He has made those of us who are enemies. He now calls us sons and daughters and seats us at his table. In fact, Paul tells us in Ephesians that this salvation is so certain, we're already tasting of some of these benefits. We have already been given every good and wonderful gift in Christ Jesus. We have already begun to partake of the heavenly blessings that come along. Father, we praise you for the assurance that comes not from our works, not from our strivings. Father, we praise you for the assurance that comes through what Christ has done for sinners like us. Father, we pray this and we pray this in the name that we praise Jesus Christ. Amen.