Amen. Please take your seats this morning and join me in your Bibles, if you would, in 1 John 1. 1 John 1, as we come before the throne of grace of our great God and King, as we proclaim His majesty and His sovereignty and His authority, and as we confess before Him that we are sinners in need of His mercy who have been lavished with His grace. John says, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life, the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it, and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father, and was made manifest to us. That which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. and we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. This is the message we have from Him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with Him while we walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His Word is not in us. Don't make God a liar this morning. Don't pretend that you have not sinned this morning. Don't presume to come into the presence of the Holy One. without coming with an attitude of confession this morning, of repentance this morning, of acknowledging to God all of the ways in thought, in deed, even in the intentions of your heart, even in the words that you say and utter with your mouth, that you fall short of His glory. Come into His presence this morning recognizing that He is the Holy One, that He deserves your obedience to all of His law in all ways, and that you have fallen desperately short of that. and come with the confidence that you can confess all of your sin to Him because He sent His Son to shed blood and to die for all of your sin. And that His blood was sufficient. His death was enough. His work is finished. And so you can stand in the presence of your God blameless and with great joy. And you can acknowledge all of the ways in which you fail Him, in which you sin against Him, in which you rebel against His law. knowing that it is for that sin that Christ died, and that you have life in Him, and that there can't possibly be any condemnation for you if you are in Christ Jesus. And so come this morning, bow your heads with me, and take a moment silently before your God, just you and Him, to acknowledge the ways in which you fall short, to acknowledge His great grace that has been lavished upon you in Christ Jesus, to lay hold of that grace, and by its power to continue to be freed from the bonds of sin in your life. Pray to your God this morning. Father, we come together this morning confessing ourselves to be Your people. Acknowledging, Father, that You have given us the right to be called Your children. Your own adopted heirs according to the promises that You have made. The promises that are made to be yes in Jesus Christ. the promises that are given to us and can never be taken away from us because of who Jesus Christ is and because of what He has done for us. By coming, by dwelling in our midst, by taking human flesh, by living in perfect obedience to your law, by becoming our sacrifice, by shedding His own blood, by being our High Priest and making atonement for all and every one of our sins. Father, we praise You that because of His love, because of His sacrifice, because of His righteousness, because, Father, of His life and His death and His resurrection, that we have been crucified with Him and raised with Him to newness of life, such that our lives are not our own, such that the lives that we live now in these bodies are lived by faith in Him who loved us and who gave Himself up for us. Father, we praise You for this gospel truth on this day. We praise You for this gospel promise that is ours, that, Lord, You will never look upon us with eyes of condemnation anymore. because the price for our sin has been paid in full, and because your demand for justice has been met in full, and because your requirements of perfect righteousness and obedience have been met as the righteousness of Christ has been imputed to us, as we have been robed and clothed in His righteousness, as we have been raised to newness of life, made to be new creatures, Father, in Him. We praise You this day, Lord, that You have made, that we can draw near to Your throne of grace and stand in Your presence blameless, though we are sinners. Not because of anything we have done. Not because of anything that we ever could do. but only because, Father, You have loved us enough to give us this great and free gift of salvation, and forgiveness, and justification, and life in Jesus Christ. And so, Father, this morning we ask that You would fill our minds and fill our hearts with the great weight of the truth of this Gospel. That, Father, You would use it to overwhelm us, That You would cause us to be filled with such a love for You because You have first loved us. And such a gratitude, Father, for what You have done. Lord, that all other desires would pale by comparison. That all the temptations of the world would be crowded out. That there would be nothing left for us to want in this world besides You. That there would be nothing that would compete for our affections or our attention or our devotion. But, Lord, that we would be wholly satisfied with who You are and what You have done. And so, Father, we come confessing this morning that we are sinners who need Your grace. We come confessing that You have lavished that grace upon us, but that we need it every day, not only to forgive us and not only to declare us righteous, but, Father, to cleanse us, to wash us, to free us from the bondage of sin in our lives. to replace the desires of our flesh, Father, with new desires for You and for Your holiness and for Your righteousness. Father, for this we need Your grace. To become people who walk by faith and not by sight, we need Your grace. To be able to live our lives as living sacrifices, Father, as living services of worship cast upon the altar for Your glory and for Your praise and for Your adoration, we need Your grace. We're weak, Lord, and we don't have it within ourselves to do. And so this morning, we put ourselves at Your disposal. We lay ourselves at Your mercy. We cast ourselves upon You. And we ask, Lord, that You would meet us, that You would commune with us, that You would speak to us with the words that create life, that, Father, You would fill our souls with life and with love for You, that Your Spirit would be in our midst and that You would cause to rise up in our souls great songs of praise, that we would pour out worship to You and honor to You, that our hearts would cry glory as we think upon the God who You are, and as we think upon the love which You have shed abroad in our hearts and in our midst. Father, we are Your people. We are at Your mercy. And we ask for You to do with our lives and with our church whatever You will. Not what we will, Lord, but whatever You will. And so, Father, we ask for the grace even to become submissive to You. The grace, Father, to take us beyond our own desires, our own hopes, our own dreams, our own priorities, our own plans. And, Father, to be yielded to whatever You would have for our lives. And so, Father, as we think upon the things that we have need of this morning, we come before You to cast our cares upon You in great humility, knowing that You know all things, and that You are working together all things for good for those who love You and for Your glory. And so, Father, we lift up these needs to You. We pray for Bob and Cindy Anthony this morning, as Cindy has lost her brother to a heart attack suddenly. Father, we ask that You would bless her and that You would keep her. We praise You, Father, for the knowledge of Jesus Christ that her brother had and for the knowledge that her family and her now has that He is with You. But Father, we ask that You would grant comfort and peace and that You would give consolation to these grieving family members as they cope with this great loss. And Lord, this morning we pray and continue to ask for Jason and Nancy Utley, lost her father a few weeks ago. And we thank You, Father, for being a God of comfort to them, for being a heavenly Father to them, for pouring out Your grace and Your mercy upon them, for assuring them of the salvation that was His in this life and now has come to consummation as He is with You in glory. Father, we praise You for that great comfort and that great hope, and we ask that You would continue to minister it to Nancy and to Jason and to their entire family as they continue to mourn and to grieve the loss. And Father, we pray especially for Nancy's mom, Jean, as she is frail and as she is weak, as her heart is burdened and heavy laden. Father, we ask that You would be with her and that You would grant her strength and comfort Give Nancy and Jason the ability to meet her needs and to minister Your love to her. This morning, Father, also we pray and continue to ask on behalf of Jane Whiting. Father, last week she met with a surgeon who didn't give her the news that she was hoping to hear. Another time of disappointment, Father. And yet we know and she knows that she is in Your hands, that You are sovereign over all things, and that it is Your will that is done and not necessarily ours. on earth as it is in heaven. And so, Father, we pray that You would continue to teach Jane and teach Ted to trust You. That even when they don't have the answers, Father, they would trust You. That they would be able to say with Job, though he slay me, yet I will trust him. And so, Father, in this season of protracted hardship and prolonged suffering, without an end in sight, without answers to the questions of why or how long or when it might be over, we pray, Father, that You would be enough, that Your sovereignty, that Your glory, that Your majesty, that Your plan, that Your sustenance, that Your providence would be enough in whatever form it takes. And so, Lord, give them comfort, give them confidence, give them hope, give them strength, and be their God and be present with them, that they may say, For me, the nearness of God is my good. Lord, we pray also this morning for all who are still seeking jobs. We ask that You would provide. We ask that You would give hope and confidence even in the midst of uncertainty. That You would lead and that You would give the ability to say, Father, Thy will be done. And Father, we ask that you would provide whatever jobs you would have for these people who have been out of work for so long. And Lord, this morning we pray for Zach and for Charlene Eckert as Charlene has been suffering from these horrible headaches this week to the point even where she was passing out and had to be rushed to the hospital. Father, we pray that you would be with her even now as she has been able to come home, as the pain has subsided some, but she is still suffering, she is still struggling. Father, she's not able to be here even with us this morning, and so we lift her up to You, and we ask Your blessings upon her, and we ask that You would care for her. We ask that You would remove this pain, and Father, if it is Your will for it to remain, that You would give her the strength to cling to You, to find hope in You, to find refuge and shelter in You, and to sing Your praises even in this time of difficulty. Father, with her, we confess that we are Yours. We confess that we are at Your disposal, that we are in Your hands, that we are incapable of doing anything apart from You, but that by Your strength and by Your grace and in You, all things are possible. And so, Father, we ask this morning that You would fill us, not only with comfort, but with strength and with confidence, that the Gospel promises are true in Christ Jesus for us. that You would unleash the power of Your Spirit within us that would transform us by the renewing of our minds, so that, Father, we would not leave this place the same as we came. That we would continue to grow by Your grace and be transformed and transferred from one level of glory to the next and to the next. That, Father, this work that You have begun in us would be brought along towards completion by the power of Your Spirit and that we would be submissive to it. And Father, as You do this work, as You shape our lives, as You shape our church, as You fill us with Your Spirit and with Your grace and with Your power, we pray, Lord, that You would cause light to shine in the darkness that is all around us. We pray that Your truth would go out boldly, that no one would compromise, that no one would be ashamed of Your Gospel, and that, Father, it would be the power of God for the salvation of many. as your people minister it to the lives of those who need to hear. And so, Father, we look to You, and we ask for You to use us and to use Your church for Your glory, for it is in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen. ...cleansed by the blood of Christ. Let us stand and confess our faith. As we come to the Creed, hear the words from Peter. And if you call on him as father who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the feudal ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold But with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot, he was foreknown before the foundations of the world, and was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. In these verses, Peter shows us that the only begotten Son of God, who is begotten of His Father before all worlds, foreknown before the foundation of the world, was made manifest for our sake that we might believe in God. Because the Son of God has been raised from the dead and given glory, we place our faith and our hope in Him. What is implied in these verses is that the precious blood of the spotless Lamb, meaning the sacrifice of the Son of God, was known from eternity past. We who are in Christ were ransomed by this foreknown blood even before we were born. Knowing this, we are to honor God, as Peter says, with our lives, trusting in the security we have in the Lamb who is slain, raised, and given a kingdom in glory. Therefore, Christian, what do you believe? I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible, and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds. God of God, Light of Light, very God, very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made, who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary and was made man and crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried. And on the third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father. And he shall come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end. And I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets. And I believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins, and I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen. Please take your Bibles now and let's turn to Romans chapter 3 for this morning's reading. Start at verse 9, read through verse 20. Now hear God's word. What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin. As it is written, none is righteous, no, not one. No one understands, no one seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. their feet are swift to shed blood, in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. Grass withers, the flower fades. God's Word stands forever. In the beginning, Moses reveals to us in Genesis 1 and verse 1, by the Spirit's inspiration, In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. That reality and that truth helps us to understand the seriousness of the fact that we have fallen short of His glory. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Before God created all that there is, there was nothing besides God. And by nothing, I mean nothing. There was no time. There was no space. There was no matter. There was only Him. Scientists, you've probably heard on the news, have now created this massive multi-billion dollar machine somewhere in Switzerland called the Large Hadron Collider. And they plan to use that to send beams of protons and nuclei flying around this 17-mile underground loop so that they can slam these atomic particles into one another and watch what happens after the collision. Watch what comes spraying out. They're hoping to see some of the stuff that protons and neutrons are made of. They're hoping to see subatomic particles come flying out of the crash. Things with names like quarks and leptons and bosons. Sounds mysterious. These are the building blocks of the building blocks of all matter in the universe. And one of the subatomic building blocks that the scientists are really hoping to see, because they've actually never ever seen one before, but they theorize that it has to exist, It's called the Higgs-Boson particle. Some scientists have called it the God particle. Because they think that this particle exists as a carrier of a kind of field or force in the universe that could explain how things with no mass can give mass to matter. Does that make sense to you? Okay. Me either. But I'm not very smart about these things, so basically what they're hoping to find is this kind of subatomic particle which can explain the origin of mass in the universe and help them answer the question of where mass came from originally. How did it come to be? How did matter come to be? It's a pretty sticky question, right? How did stuff happen? Where did stuff come from? If you chase it back far enough, it has to have a starting point. Where did it all come from? How did it all get here? And they think that if they can show how a state of zero mass can change into a state of positive mass by the influence of this mysterious force-carrying particle, then they've got their answer. They've shown how mass and matter could have come to be from a state where matter had no mass. Right? Sounds good. Of course, there's always that other sticky question of how the force-carrying Higgs-Boson particle came to be, isn't there? Where did it come from? Fine, it helps give mass to matter where there was none before, but where did it come from? Fine, maybe we can fire up this multi-billion dollar machine and maybe it won't break this time, and maybe we'll find a particle that explains the origin of matter, But what explains the origin of the particle? In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Just admit it. Simple as that. When there was nothing, no mass, no matter, no molecules, no atoms, no subatomic particles, when there was nothing, God spoke and the universe came to be. Quarks and leptons and bosons were spoken into existence by God and He brought them together and He made matter. And over the course of a single week, six days, God took that matter and with it He fashioned all that there is. Photons shot forth and there was light because God said so. Hydrogen molecules were formed and they were attached to oxygen molecules and there was water because God said so. And then the water was separated and dry land appeared because God said, let the waters be gathered into one place and let dry land appear. And it was so. It was so because God said so. The Almighty Maker of the universe speaks And the creation happens and the creation obeys the power and the authority of His voice. And over the course of those six days, God spoke dry land into existence and trees and plants and the sun and the moon and the stars and fish and sea creatures and birds and beasts and every living thing. He spoke them into existence. When God said, let the water swarm with life, the water obeyed. and swarmed with life. When God said, let there be lights in the sky, the sky was filled with billions and billions of stars and galaxies, all intricately made, all meticulously placed, all perfectly balanced. so that His glory and His majesty and His authority and His power and His creative genius is seen and beheld and wondered at every time we look up. And on the sixth day, God made man in His own image, in His own likeness, fashioned out of the dust of the ground, filled with the very breath of life that God Himself breathed out into man's nostrils and man became a living soul, a living being, of all of God's massive, immense, spectacular, beautiful creation, nothing more glorious than man. Nothing more reflective, even all the stars in the heaven, nothing more reflective of the divine beauty and purity and majesty of God than man. and nothing with more cause, more reason to submit to God, to honor God, to obey God, and to worship God than man, because there's nothing in this universe that is more aware that our life and our very existence completely and utterly and absolutely depends on Him who made us out of nothing. who fashioned us out of the dust, who breathed life into our nostrils and caused us by His divine authority to be. There's nothing in the universe that is more aware of His kingship and His lordship over all things than man. And yet, where every other part of the created order obeyed the authority of the Maker, from elephants to fish to spiders, to stars and nebulas and supernovas, to molecules and atoms and photons. When God spoke, they all obeyed, they all conformed, they all responded, they all did what they were supposed to do. All except for man. The one being created with the capacity for moral choice chose to not obey. To not do what we were supposed to do. To instead follow the convenience of the lie of Satan. To instead seek deeper and greater satisfaction in life and a far more profoundly meaningful existence, we thought, than what was promised in trusting God. I mean, have you ever thought about that moment? When Eve did what she did, when she did things her way, when she bit into that fruit, when absolute love and trust and dependence and enjoyment all of a sudden changed and yielded to selfishness and pride and greed and lust. Sin can seem common to us and ordinary and banal, We shrug our shoulders at it because we're used to it and we're surrounded by it all the time. We're filled with it. But try to imagine that moment when everything changed, when everything that was made holy and pure and perfectly righteous, all of a sudden became absolutely wicked and defiled and depraved, like taking a 50-gallon drum of dirty motor oil and pouring it out on fresh white satin sheets. I mean, imagine how stark the contrast was in that moment between the confidence and the assurance and the comfort and the reality of God's acceptance and God's approval and God's blessing. The contrast between that and what came after sin, the onslaught of fear and guilt and shame. Nothing was the same after that day. And the disease of sin spread like wildfire through the whole human race. Every single person except for Jesus Christ. Paul will say in Romans 5 when we get to that passage that sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. And the whole Old Testament bears witness to that, doesn't it? It bears witness to the fact that through the sin of one man, sin entered into the whole world through the human race that was now contaminated and polluted and sinful and guilty in Adam. The Old Testament shows us that, not only in its teaching, not only in what the prophets reveal to be true from the mouth of God, but also in the history that it records. Cain's murder of his brother Abel, to the godless and unspeakably wicked days of Noah, from the idolatry of the Tower of Babel, to the unbelief of the Israelites as they wandered in the wilderness, to the Babylonian captivity and beyond, from Genesis to Malachi, the history of God's people, I mean to say nothing of the pagan nations, but the history of God's people Israel in the Old Testament is a massive demonstration of the hardness and the sinfulness of the human heart, is it not? No matter what was going on in the history of the Israelites. Seasons of great blessing, as well as seasons of terrible hardship and chastening from God. Times of abundance, like in the days of Solomon. or times of great famine and poverty, like in the days of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, the one constant thing was the sinfulness of the people. What did they do after the Red Sea was parted and manna fell out of heaven? And after water flowed out of a rock by the supernatural divine providence of God? They complained. They whined. They bickered. They murmured against God. They said that what He was giving them wasn't good enough. That they wished He hadn't saved them out of Egypt. That they could go back because there was water there, because the food tasted better there, because they thought without God would be better than being in the wilderness with Him. What did the people do when Solomon was king? And the land was absolutely full of wealth and prosperity and abundance that was unmatched anywhere else in the world. What did they do? Through Solomon's own leadership, what did they do? They worshipped false gods. And they gave themselves over to pagan idols. They turned their backs on God. They despised His faithfulness and His love and His mercy and His provision. They became, God would say over and over and over again throughout the whole Old Testament, they became as an unfaithful bride. That's one of God's favorite pictures of the nation of Israel in the Old Covenants. The picture of an adulterous wife. In fact, a harlot. You remember poor Hosea who had to marry a woman named Gomer? It's bad enough. But Gomer was a prostitute that he was required to marry in order to be a living illustration of the faithlessness of God's bride to him as a husband. This picture of a harlot is the picture that God uses to illustrate Israel's unfaithfulness. You remember in the book of Ezekiel when we studied through it together, where God said In chapter 16, Jerusalem had been like a helpless child, like a little baby left abandoned to die in a field until God came along and saved her and raised her up and nourished her and strengthened her and clothed her and made her to be beautiful and splendid beyond any comparison. And then she recognized her beauty when she came of age. And instead of being grateful to God, And instead of living in harmony with God, she recognized her beauty and threw herself like a prostitute into the arms of immoral men. A picture of the spiritual unfaithfulness of Israel as idols and false gods were dragged into the temple of Yahweh and worshipped by the people of God instead of Him. Pagan rituals were performed inside the gates of the holy tabernacle. The worst kinds of immorality, you remember? The most unthinkable forms of debauchery and wickedness were entertained and engaged in inside the walls of the Jerusalem Temple. Things like ritual homosexual prostitution. Things like ritual sacrifices to pagan gods, even sometimes human sacrifice, even as kings of Israel cast their infant sons on the fires of Molech worship. Unspeakable godlessness. Unimaginable faithlessness to the God who had been so faithful and so merciful to them. God said, how sick is your heart because you have done these things. You have done the deeds, He says, of a brazen prostitute. Indeed, you were even worse than a prostitute because you scorned payment. God said to Israel, in other words, you were unfaithful for free. He says, you were an adulterous wife. who received strangers instead of her husband. And the Old Testament is rife and full of examples of the depravity and the fallenness of human hearts. Even the hearts of God's people, Israel. Even when God had lavished them with favor. Even after He had broken them with discipline. even after He had given them His Law and spelled out His will so clearly for them, and promised to bless them if they obeyed, and warned them of judgment if they disobeyed. In fact, that's really the whole message of the Old Testament. It's a revelation of the sinfulness of man in relationship to their God. And in that way, it is a revelation of mankind's great need of a Savior. And that need is so utterly desperate. God teaches us through the proclamations of the prophets and the history of the Old Testament, that need is so desperate that the Savior that God would give would have to be God Himself. No other Savior could do. No other Savior could save but God Himself, Emmanuel. And so if there is anyone who might try to argue that man is not fallen in Adam, that man is not sinful and in rebellion towards God, then the Old Testament canon of Scripture, in Paul's day, his Bible, the Scriptures shut the mouths of anyone who might try to claim that they're innocent, that they're guiltless before God. If anyone tries to say that mankind is basically good, God's Word shuts their mouth. If anyone tries to say that somehow we are capable of working our way into God's favor, God's Word shuts our mouth. If anyone says that we have what it takes to be or to become worthy of God's presence and of His acceptance, His Word sews our lips shut. Now this is what Paul means in our text today when he says in v. 19 of Romans 3, now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be accountable to God. This is what the law teaches, he says. And it teaches it to those people who are under the law. And he says that on the heels of having said everything that he did in verses 9-18 about the pervasive universal condition of every human heart. All, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin as it is written. None is righteous. No, not one. And then proceeds that long series of quotations from the Old Testament Scriptures, from God's law, proving that all of us are guilty before God. And Paul is saying that whatever the law says, whatever God's Word says, it is saying to all of us who are under God's law so that our mouths may be stopped from trying to make excuses, from trying to justify ourselves, from trying to be right with God in our own strength and by our own good deeds. The word law there in v. 19, namas, means that which binds us. That which we are bound by God to be conformed to. God's law binds our reason. It binds our conscience. It binds our hearts. It binds our life. It is the revelation of His holiness, of His character, of His will as the Holy God of all creation. God reveals His will in Scripture and as He writes it on our hearts. We saw that already back in chapter 2 in verses 14-15. You remember there that Paul was arguing that the Gentiles are without excuse before God? They can't say that they are innocent before God. They can't say that it's not fair for God to treat them as guilty because He only revealed His law to the Jewish people through Moses in the Old Testament. They didn't have it, so they didn't know, so how could they be held accountable? Paul says they can't make that argument. They can't make that excuse because God has written His law on the hearts of all men. All people are created in God's image. All people see. All people understand God's divine nature and invisible attributes clearly shown and clearly displayed in creation. And all people have God's Law imprinted on their hearts and in their consciences. And of course, God has made His Law even more explicit in His Word, in the Law of Moses. in the Ten Commandments, in all of Scripture. And Jesus, in fact, uses the word law, namas, in John 10 to refer to the entire Old Testament. And that's how Paul is using it here. Having quoted from the Psalms. Having quoted from the prophets over and over again. As he was making his case that all men everywhere, whether Jews or Gentiles, all men are under sin. And Paul has appealed to places throughout the Old Testament as proof of that. What he's arguing, see, is that everything that God has revealed in His Word and through His law stands to shut the mouths of all men everywhere who would try to deny their sinfulness and their guilt before God. I was driving over the hill yesterday and I saw a bumper sticker that said, born just fine the first time. in response, of course, to a bumper sticker that says, born again. Basically, he's saying, no thanks, I don't need to be born again. I was born just fine the first time. God's Word stands to shut the mouth of anyone who would make that kind of claim. I don't need a Savior. I don't need religion. I don't need the Gospel. I was born just fine the first time. Anyone who would try to claim that God has no right to condemn them to an eternity in hell has their mouth shut by God's law. And anyone, that means you and me included, who would try to argue or maintain that there's something that we can do to try to gain God's approval or improve our status in His eyes on the basis of something that we have done or can do, our mouths, our mouths are shut. by God's law. Whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped. The word stopped, frasso, literally means to block up, to close up, to stop up. Paul is saying that God's law puts a sock in the mouth of anyone who tries to say, that God's approval of them can be based in any way, no matter how small, on something they do. God has revealed His law to put a cork in every self-righteous mouth. And, Paul says in verse 19, He has revealed His law so that the whole world may be held accountable to God. The King James Version says, so that the whole world may become guilty before God. That is why God has revealed His law, so that we are accountable, so that we are seen as guilty before God. The Greek word is hupodikos. Literally, it means to be brought under judgment, like a criminal coming to court, coming to trial, standing before the judge. and having all of his crimes laid out and then being held to the standard of the law. Here's the law you broke with this behavior. Here's the law you broke with this word. Here's the law you broke when you did this. He's judged as guilty. He's accountable for his crimes. That's how the law functions. J.B. Phillips writes that it is the razor straight edge of God's law that shows us how crooked we are. That's how God's law works. It reveals our sinfulness to us. And that ultimately is what Paul means here. This is what he's emphasizing. And I want you to notice this morning very carefully precisely how he does that. Look at the connection between verses 19 and 20. In verse 19 of Romans 3, Paul says that God reveals His law so that every mouth may be stopped and all the world be held accountable to God. But how does the law do that? How exactly does God's law stop up our mouths and hold us accountable before God who is holy and righteous and just? Verse 20 says, see there's the connection. It's indicated by the word for. What's been said in v. 19 is true because of what's being said in v. 20, for by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sights. Ok. So, whatever the law says, it speaks to all those who are under the law. That's the Jews who have the law of Moses in Scripture and the Gentiles who have it written on their hearts. That's all men. We're all under the law. And the law of God speaks to all of us and stops our mouths from making any claim of self-righteousness. And it holds us accountable as guilty before God. How? How is it able to do that? It's able to do that because by the works of the law, no human being will ever be justified in the sight of God. None. The word justified means We'll dig deeper into it next week in verses 21-31. But very simply, the word justified means to be declared righteous by God. To stand in that courtroom with God as the judge, holding out that razor straight standard of His law, which is a revelation and a manifestation of His own holiness and righteousness. Justification means that God stands over you as the sovereign, holy judge, holding you against that standard of His infinite, precise, perfect holiness, measuring you with omniscient precision, and declares that you are holy as He is holy. That you are righteous. that you are acceptable in His sight according to the standard of His own righteousness. That's what justification means. How? You don't have to look very deep into your own heart to say, I'm in a lot of trouble if that's what justification means. How can I ever hear that divine declaration of God that I am righteous by His standard, that I am acceptable in His sight? And Paul begins to answer the question, how? By first of all saying, I'll tell you how not. I'll tell you how you'll never, ever be able to be justified by God. by works of the Law, no human being will ever be justified in His sight. Never. Ever. There's no chance. There's no possibility. Not in a million years. that any human being anywhere could be justified in God's sight by doing works of the law. No one will ever stand underneath the judgment seat of the sovereign, almighty, holy God of creation and say, I have a right to enter into the eternal rest of heaven. I have a right to come and commune with God for endless days because I did this, whatever this is. No matter how good you think you are. No matter how much good you think you may have done. Because any good that we think we have in us is only relative to the so-called goodness of other human beings. It's not good relative to the goodness of God. And we don't stand accountable ultimately before other human beings. We stand accountable and will stand accountable ultimately before God. Hebrews 4 says, No creature is hidden from His sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account. Naked, exposed. Nothing to cover us. Nothing to hide the things we're ashamed of and embarrassed about. Nothing to hide from His sight. the ugliness of the sin that we don't confess to anybody. No creature is hidden from His sight. We are all naked and exposed to the eyes of God and we must give account to Him. Romans 14 says, God in Romans 14, as I live, He says, every knee shall bow to Me and every tongue shall confess to God. And Paul says, so then, because that's true, each of us will give an account of himself to God. That day is coming when life on this earth is over. All men will stand before the great blazing white throne of Christ's judgment and have to give account. God Himself will say, what right do you have to be here in my heaven? How will you answer Him? What will you say to Him? And he will open up those books that John saw in Revelation 20, that terrifying set of books that records everything that we have done, every deed, every word, every thought, every intention of our hearts, recorded meticulously by God and brought to bear on the last day. And he'll just rifle through them. And he'll say, what rights in light of all of this? Do you have to be here in My presence, in My glory, in My heaven, in My rest, in My holiness? What right do you have? And anyone who might have claimed in this life that their own personal righteousness, that their own list of good deeds, that their own relative goodness was enough to gain them access, their mouth will be shut on that day. It'll be shut. When we all stand before the judgment seat of Christ and give an account for what we've done and for what we haven't done, there will be nothing to say for the self-righteous. Because by the works of the law shall no human being be justified. And that is true, Paul says, in the second part of verse 20, because through the law comes knowledge of sin. And he doesn't just mean that the law defines what is right and good, and so we, by contrast, can understand what is wrong and bad. That's not all that Paul has in mind when he says that through the law comes knowledge of sin, because if it was, it wouldn't explain how no human being can be justified by doing the works of the law. What Paul means here in verse 20 is the same thing that he will expound on more in chapter 7. Listen to what he says. Verse 7 of chapter 7. He says, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. Why? Because I would not have known what it was to covet if the law had not said, you shall not covet, but sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dormant." Do you understand what Paul means there? He certainly doesn't mean that the law is bad or that the law tempts us or that the law makes us sin. In the very same verse, he says, by no means is the law bad. And a few verses later, he'll go on to say, the law is holy and the commandments of God are holy and righteous and good. What he means is that the holy, righteous, good law of God acts to provoke the rebelliousness of unregenerate flesh and hearts. Our sinful spiritual natures hate God. In our unconverted state, we resent God for wielding authority over us as our Maker, and as our Lord, and as our God, and as our King. And when those fallen hearts meet up with the Law of God, the result is that our rebellion is stirred up against Him. It's stirred up against Him, and it's brought to the surface. Sin rises up in the presence of God's holy Law, and shows itself in all of its ugliness, in all of its heinousness. In fact, in Romans 5 and verse 20, Paul goes so far as to say that the law came in to increase transgressions. Again, not to say that the law is bad or that it tempts us or that it causes us to sin. It's the opposite. The law points to and leads the way to the holiness and the righteousness of God. But that is exactly why sinners whose hearts are dead and full of idolatry and resentment towards God push against the law. and resist it. Our sin rallies against God's law. And in that sense, it's made known by God's law. So do you see Paul's point here? That is how sinful hearts respond to God's law, by resisting it and breaking it and rebelling against it. And oftentimes, even by using it as an expression of trusting ourselves instead of trusting Him. fallen people, sinful people, even redeemed sinners like me and you, will oftentimes take God's Law and use it in a way that dishonors Him. Does God want us to obey? Absolutely. Does God ever permit or condone or approve of disobedience or complacency or anything short of being holy as He is holy? Never. But what God is opposed to is any effort, like the Pharisees, of legalistically trying to take and use God's law in the service of our own pride, for our own futile attempts to try to declare ourselves righteous before God on the basis of our own efforts and in our own strength. And that's what we do. And this is where the Gospel must heal us. And this is the impulse that the Gospel must expose within us. Because all of us were born this way. It's what we are by nature as sinners. We're people who are at enmity with God. We're His sworn enemies who are seeking to do what is right in our own eyes, who have no fear of Him before our eyes. We're people who look at His law in the face and we say, And we won't obey it for the purpose of bringing Him glory. We won't obey it for the purpose of praising Him and pleasing Him. At best, we'll try to obey it and use it and conform to it in some vain effort to cover our own shame. Like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, hiding from God in their shame. Covering their nakedness. covering their shame with fig leaves that they had picked with their own hands, that they had sown together with their own fingers in an effort to deal with the problem in their way. It didn't work, did it? Fig leaves weren't enough, were they, hiding from God in their shame? Covering their nakedness, covering their shame, with fig leaves that they had picked with their own hands, that they had sown together with their own fingers in an effort to deal with the problem in their way. It didn't work, did it? It had to be cleansed, and the sinners had to be covered by someone else, not by their own efforts. And so instead of fig leaves, God stripped them bare again. And He said, I stand before you and I'm looking upon your shame. And the only thing that can make it right is death. If an animal sheds blood that can wash you, that can cleanse you, and if you are covered by Me with the skin of that sacrificial animal, not with these pathetic leaves that you've fashioned together as a robe, And you see what a wonderful foreshadowing that is of all that God would do in the culmination of His redemption throughout history. As He worked all throughout the Old Testament to illustrate through all of the blood sacrifices, all of the animals killed, how desperate our need of a Savior is, how much we need cleansing, how much we need hearts that are renewed, that are reborn, that are recreated by His sovereign power. How much we need to be forgiven by something He does. How much we need to be covered by a righteousness that He gives. Because we can never produce a righteousness that is righteous enough. In all of the history of God's redeeming work and purposes, in what He did, in the ceremony, In the prophecies, in the teachings, in the history, all of it comes together in this grand culmination as that baby was born in the manger in Bethlehem. As God became man. You deny that, you deny everything. As He grew up and lived a perfect life. And as He obeyed to the point of death on a Roman cross for you, as He shed His own blood, listen, if He's only a mere man, then His blood is only worth a finite amount. If He's not God incarnate, then His blood isn't worth enough to cover your sins, let alone the sins of all of God's chosen people. He must be God. He must shed blood. He must make infinite sacrifice. His death must be of infinite value, even to cover the sins of one person. Even to cover my sin, because I have committed sin that is of infinite transgression from His infinite holiness. There's no other blood that would ever do. There's no other sacrifice. There's no other means of atonement. There's certainly nothing I could ever do. But God became man to His mystery all, amazing love. And He became our blood offering. He became our High Priest. And in this great divine transaction on the cross, this legal exchange, God treated the sinless Son of God as guilty, because my sin was legally counted to Him, legally attributed to Him. God sat in the courtroom of His judgment, and He said, as I look on Christ, I see the sin of My people, and I will punish My Son for it. And in the great exchange, He looks upon you and He looks upon me if we have been saved by His grace, if we have been reborn by His power. And He says, I know you're a sinner. That's why I punished My Son. But I look upon you as covered, not just with skins of an animal, but with My Son, with His obedience. with His perfection, with His righteousness. And so you are forgiven because His blood of infinite worth, His precious, priceless blood has redeemed you, as Peter says. You're forgiven for everything you've ever done, for anything you'll ever do, you're forgiven. And as God looks upon you, He says, you're righteous, not just forgiven. The account hasn't just been brought to zero. The account has been given infinite value. You're justified. You're declared righteous in His sight. As we'll see next week, it's a legal declaration such that God no longer has any right to say to you, you deserve my condemnation. because you're forgiven and you're covered with the righteousness of Christ that is imputed to you through faith. And the question for Christians becomes, who do you trust? You know that Gospel. You've heard it. It's been the source of your life. It's been the power of God unto your salvation. Is it what you instinctively trust in your life? Or do you still find yourself sewing together fig leaves of self-righteousness? Compelled by the habitual trustlessness, if that's a word, of your flesh. To not trust God. To not trust Christ. To say, I'm not sure if I can lay myself fully naked and bare and vulnerable in His hands. I'm not sure if He won't crush me. And so I think there's something I need to do. I think there's work I need to do. I think I need to flog myself. I think there's penance I need to do. I think I need to clean myself up because if I don't, God's going to destroy me. Is that why you obey? Is that the impulse that is driving your conformity to God's holiness and your obedience to His law? I hope not. I hope you don't labor under the bondage of legalism and trying in your own strength to be okay in God's sight. I hope instead that you know that you are confident, that you have absolute, full assurance that you are okay in God's sight, not because of anything you've done, and in spite of everything that you have done, because what Christ has done is sufficient. Amen? It's sufficient. It's enough. It's so sufficient that it could have covered the whole sins of all of the people of the whole world if He had wanted it to. Christ wouldn't have had to suffer any more if it were God's intention for every single human being who ever committed any sin anywhere to be with Him in glory. His blood is enough. His righteousness is enough. His sacrifice is enough. His work is finished. You can trust it. You can lay yourself before God and say, God, do you know what? This is what I did. You can tell Him things you've never told anyone. You can tell Him what you've never told your wife, or your husband, or your best friend, or anyone else. Things that you can't even bring yourself to admit to yourself. You can tell to God and know. that He's never going to look at you and say, oh, I can never accept you because of that. You'll never see My presence because of that. He will only ever look at you and say, I know. I know what you've done. I know what you've said. I know what you've thought. I know how hypocritical the intentions of your heart are every day. It's okay, because my Son died. His blood is enough. His righteousness covers you. I look at you, and I see Him on the cross, and I say, you're forgiven and you're justified. Come and enter my rest. I'll never condemn you. You can be confident of that. Because the work of Christ is enough. And if you are confident of that, If you are strong in the love of Christ and the grace of God towards you, that is when obedience and conformity and submission to the law of God gets unleashed in your life, not out of a prideful, sinful, legalistic impulse. but simply because you know that God is good, and you know that God is true, and you trust Him, and you love Him, and with all your heart you want to please Him. It is no longer I who live. It is Christ who lives in me. And the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by faith. Faith in the Son of God who loved me. and faith in the Son of God who gave Himself up for me. That is what produces my life of submission and obedience to God. Amen? We're going to sing this song here after we pray. Rock of Ages, cleft for me. And when you get to verse 3, I want you to sing like you haven't sung to God before maybe. I want you to raise your voice to Him and make this a heartfelt prayer to Him as you say, nothing in my hand I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling. Naked, I come to Thee for dress. Helpless, I look to Thee for grace. That means I renounce and I forsake every impulse to try to clothe myself, to try to dress myself, to try to save myself justify myself, make myself acceptable, deal with my fear and my shame and my guilt myself. I renounce it. I look to You for grace. Foul I to the fountain fly, because I know that unless He washes me, I will die. Is that your prayer? Is that your heart? Is that your confidence? Let's pray this morning that God would fill us with hope and with confidence and with comfort and with assurance, assurance that looks to His Son, assurance that looks to the cross, assurance that produces a life that loves God's law, that hides it in our hearts, that we might not sin against Him. Father, we praise You for this Gospel and this work that You have done for us and we recognize, Lord, And we confess to You and admit to You today, Father, that the impulses of our sinful flesh still resist the Gospel of Your Son, Jesus Christ. We recognize that we confuse ourselves, Lord, and that so often we recognize the need for obedience, but we confuse it with a self-righteous attempt to justify ourselves. Father, I pray this morning that You would expose that tendency in all of our hearts. That You would cause all of us to renounce and to forsake those tendencies. That anything that we do, any one of us, to try to minimize our fear or our sense of guilt or our sense of shame because of our sin, anything that we might do in our own strength, whether it be good works or whatever, Father, that You would replace that with a vision of Your Son and His sacrifice that we can trust in and that we can embrace by faith that is so strong that there would be nothing else that we would need to do. That our fear would dissolve away. That our guilt would be shattered. That our shame would be covered. That we would know with full confidence that nothing can separate us from Your love. That no one can snatch us out of Your hands. that there is no condemnation, that no one can bring a charge, because You are for us, and so no one and nothing can stand against us. Father, may this gospel love and power course through us spiritually. And may it produce in us a love for You that compels us to live our lives as sacrifices of worship to You, honoring You, living worthily of the calling with which we have been called, obeying You, loving Your law, treasuring Your will and Your way, craving Your holiness, passionate for Your pleasure. Father, we ask this morning that Your Spirit would be with us, and that You would do this work in us, and that You would establish our lives on the firm foundation of Jesus Christ. For we pray it to Your glory and in His name, and all of God's people said, Amen.