I want us to continue the series that we have been looking at for the last several weeks, and I want to do that by returning to a verse we looked at last week. Romans chapter 10. Romans chapter 10. We'll be looking at the first four verses. We briefly encountered this verse last week and talked just briefly about it, but I do want us to consider it again this morning as we continue to consider the simplicity that is in Christ, as compared to the subtlety of Satan. So, in Romans 10, in verse 1, we read, Brethren, this is the Apostle Paul speaking here, we read, Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved. Brothers and sisters, that should be our heart's desire today, that the lost sheep of God would be saved, that they should be saved. We ought to endure just like the Apostle Paul did. Endure all things for the elect's sake. Be ready to endure. So we can say with the Apostle Paul, Amen, here in this first verse. And then he goes on. For I bear them record, and the same will be recorded against all of the lost sheep of God. I bear them record. that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. For they, being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth." Today I want us to consider again, as we have been, the answer to this question. Why did Christ suffer, bleed, and die? The answer I want us to consider is this. To be God-satisfying and sinner-justifying righteousness. To be God-satisfying and sinner-justifying righteousness. Let's suppose for a moment, as we begin, for the sake of illustration, that we committed a crime. I mean, we committed a crime and we were caught red-handed in that crime. So, we go before the judge of the land and we are convicted. The judge wraps the gavel on his desk and proclaims guilty as charged. I want to ask you, who is it that decides how the crime will be paid for? Who is it that determines the sentence to be served? Why, it's the judge who does this, isn't it? We committed a crime in his jurisdiction. We have come before his court. We have been proclaimed guilty, and rightly so, by him. And now he will pass sentence. He will decide when. He will decide where. He will decide how. He will decide how long. But you and I, we jump in here and say, wait a minute, Judge. You know, I don't really like that idea. He's declared a sentence. He has decided what the payment will be for our crime. And we say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I hear you, Judge, but I don't really like that lifetime in prison idea. I hear you, Judge, but I don't really like the death penalty idea. So you know what I think I'm going to do, Judge? I think that I'll just go do some community service and that'll do. How do you think that conversation will go? How long before they slam you to the floor and put the cuffs on you and carry you out and put you in your cell? I don't think it would go very well. Do you? I mean, let's be honest. We know better than this. We know that this is really an insane illustration that would never fly in a court of law. But do you understand amazingly, there is a world of people who think they can get away with this very thing in God's court of law. Not just the court of the land, no, no, no. The highest court in the universe. the highest court in the universe. They would think his illustration was absolutely silly. That'll never happen. But yet, when it comes between them and God, they think somehow that that's going to fly with God. Now, this morning, to approach the great subject, the simplicity of Christ, seen in him, God satisfying and sinner justifying righteousness, I want us to consider this text we have as our day in God's courtroom. Our day in God's courtroom. First, as we walk into the courtroom, let us see our judge. Let us see the righteous God. Let us see this morning the one whose name is the Lord Jehovah. What do you envision when I say that? How do you envision Him to look? How do you envision Him to appear? in your mind. Well, let us read, let us hear by God's Word how we should envision Him. In Isaiah 6 and verse 1 it says, I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphim, each one had six wings. With twain He covered His face, and with twain He covered His feet, and with twain He did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. And the post of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke." How do you envision your judge this morning? Like this? Or just a mirror of man, a Santa Claus image? Or do you envision him as Isaiah actually saw him high and lifted up? His train, his kingly, priestly, judge-like train filled his temple. Can you see him? The judge. The righteous judge. Let's see him again. Revelation chapter 1. And in the midst of the seven candlesticks, one likened unto the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girded about the paps with a golden girdle. His head and his hair were white like wool, wisdom, as white as snow, and his eyes were as a flame of fire, omniscience. And his feet were like fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace, judgment. and his voice as the sound of many waters, roaring like the lion from the tribe of Judah. And he had in his right hand seven stars, and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and his confidence was as the sun shineth in his strength." That is our judge. He is our judge, the righteous judge. He doesn't just sit in a and a high place in a courtroom. He sits in the highest place of the universes, the highest throne of heaven and earth. This righteous judge, the righteous judge, didn't get elected or appointed to this high seat. He is the eternal owner of it, and all other things as well, including you and I. Can you see the judge of all? How we need to see the judge of all. A judge like no other judge, a God, the God of perfect knowledge and perfect wisdom and perfect power and perfect might. Listen to the bailiff's introduction of him. Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. Do you get an idea of who we're talking about? A judge. our judge, our God, who we will and are appearing before." Let me give you a few of his credentials. The psalmist said in Psalm 19, 9, the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. In 105, 7, he said, He is the Lord, our God. His judgments are in all the earth. In 119-137 he says, Righteous art thou, O Lord, and upright are thy judgments. Can you see who the judge is this morning? The all-righteous, holy, and only God of heaven and earth. And this judge, he will do right. He will do right. Can you see the judge? I pray his spirit might cause us to see him. as he is. We can also see here not only the judge, the great, glorious judge, but we can see the prosecution. We have it before us. It's God's law. The prosecutor. And what a case it has against us. What a case it has against us. The first charge, as we read here in this verse, in verse 3, it says, for they be ignorant. The first charge against us is ignorance, ignorance of the righteousness of God. And I want to tell you something. The prosecutor has an ironclad case against us. He's right, because we, in and of ourselves, we are ignorant. We are ignorant of the heights of God's righteousness, and we are ignorant of the depths of our sins. We are ignorant in and of ourselves. Listen to what the prosecution says in Romans 3.11. There is none that understandeth. Listen, that is right. In the flesh, we are deaf and dumb and blind to reality. You say, hey brother, preacher, I don't like that very much. I don't like you talking to me like that. I'm not talking to you. God's Word is talking to you. In 2 Timothy 1.17 it says, For God hath not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. That's what God gives us through salvation. That's a wonderful blessing of His salvation, a sound mind. So what does that mean that we have before? A mind that is not sound. Ignorance. We are in ignorance. Ephesians 4.18, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness of their heart. That's what God's Word says about the natural man. That's what God's Word says about all of us in our flesh. We are ignorant unto His righteousness. We are ignorant unto the deaths of our own sin. We are blinded. I know this isn't popular preaching and many would deny such accusations against him, but I didn't say it. The prosecution said it. He said it. God's Word said it. And to be honest with you, man may deny it, and we all may deny it, but the rest of the prosecution's case proves that he has the evidence to back it up. He says we're ignorant, but then it's confirmed by evidence, by our actions. You see what the action is in our text? We have gone about to establish our own righteousness and not submitted ourselves unto God's righteousness. The prosecution didn't just say, God's Word didn't just say that you're ignorant. Then it backed up the evidence to prove it. And every one of us that are saved by God's grace, we look at that and we know that it's right. If you're not saved by God's grace, you may be denying that right now. But nevertheless, it is true. We've gone about to establish our own righteousness in ignorance. And we've not submitted ourselves unto God's righteousness. It's just like what we were talking about in our illustration. God, our Creator and our Owner, our Righteous, All-Wise Judge, has said one thing. But we in rebellion have said, Oh no! Oh no! He has declared the sentence, and we in rebellion say, oh no, we'll accomplish it like this. I don't like that part of the judgment. I don't like that death. I don't like that hell stuff. No, no, no, no, I'll do it like this. God has appointed the righteousness that He demands, but we have said in ignorance and in our flesh, no, no, no, no, this we'll do instead. Haven't we? And here we go, trying to do community service to satisfy the penalty of the death sentence. That's exactly what we've done. Taking community service, thinking that we can satisfy the righteousness of God with community service. Though we've sinned against Him and become worthy of death itself, and then in our own We stand up face to face with God and shake our fists at Him and say, well, I'll not submit to the way that you have said that I must be cleared, but I'll do it. I'll do it. Give me some community service to do. You talk about ignorance. You talk about blatant rebellion. God, your God, my God, has said there is but one way to escape the penalty of death, and it's not of you. It's not of your works, it's not of your will, it's not of your running, it's not of your ancestry, it's not of your own ability. You can't. But then a defiant rebellion man goes to work anyway, trying in his own ability, trying in his own arrogance to outweigh his bad deeds with his good. You talk about ignorance, listen, this whole book tells us about how we can't. And we throw it aside and say, we're going to do it anyway. And we work and work and work, but to no avail. We just accumulate more unrighteousness and more sin against God. Lord, save us from ignorance. Lord, save us from rebellion. Save us from wickedness, because here is the truth about those things, those works that you're doing to try to satisfy God. It's just as Isaiah said in Isaiah 64, 6, that we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, and we all do fade as a leaf, and our iniquities like the wind have taken us away. Listen to the prosecution. He is speaking truth, and he has evidence to back it up. He has evidence against us. The thing is, in blind ignorance, we work and we fail. We work and work, and the results are worse than when we began to work. And we work some more, and guilt, guilt upon guilt, and time upon time condemns us and condemns us, and God's own law wars against us and mocks us. And Satan comes along, the father of lies, and says, oh, you better work some more. You better do something. I mean, you'll be okay. Don't worry about what God said about death. Don't worry about what God said about His way of being free from your sins. Don't listen to that. That's not the whole truth. Listen, you better work. You better do something. It's up to you. It's your choice. You'll be okay if you just outweigh your bad deeds with your good. And the whole time, you know what? In blind ignorance, we don't see it. And in spiritual death, we can't see it. But the whole time, God's way of righteousness is so much better. Isn't it, brothers and sisters? We who have fought that battle, we who God, in spite of ourselves, has saved us, can I get a witness that God's way of righteousness is so much better? I mean, first, man's way of righteousness will never work, because the whole thing is in rebellion to God's way of righteousness. But here's the thing. God, the Judge Himself, now, this glorious, high and lifted up, holy and righteous Judge, you know what? He has declared Not only has he declared, but he has made a way for sinners, guilty sinners, though he hath sinned, though he hath committed a crime in his jurisdiction, though he be entered into his courtroom and be found guilty, though he be found worthy of the death sentence itself." Listen, the judge, "...of his own mercy, out of his own love, out of his own grace, that was based upon nothing but himself." Though our sin and our rebellion is ever against himself, yet still in an abundant grace he has provided the way for condemned sinners to be set free. He has done it, and actually right here, it's right here before us, in verse 4. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. You know what that means in short? Christ is righteousness. for everyone that believes. Let's look at that a little further. Turn with me over to the book of 2 Corinthians. Let's look at what the judge has done. 2 Corinthians, in chapter 5, Listen to what the judge has done in verse 21. For he, the judge, hath made him who? Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ. The judge hath made the Lord Jesus Christ to be sin for us, who knew no sin. Not us, that's not talking about us, that's talking about him. Though Christ knew no sin, The Judge made him to be sin for us, for a purpose, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. I want us to see two things here about God's righteousness, two things about what the Judge has done for sinners. Oh, that we would be ignorant no more but believing. Oh, that we would be rebellious no more but obedient, submitting unto God's own righteousness, because right here, right now, this morning, by the grace and through the power of the Spirit of God, we are about to see the righteousness of God Himself. We are about to see the one, one way that sinners like you and me can be set free from sin. One way, and it's right here before us. The Judge has done it. He has accomplished it through His mercy and through His grace. Let us see our pardon. Let us see our pardon. Yes, we have sinned. Yes, we are guilty in God's court, the highest court in the universe. His word, the prosecutor, has gone forth. It has an ironclad case against us. We are guilty. We are guilty. There's no recovery. The wages of sin is death. You can't work enough to escape it. You can't be good enough to escape the penalty. You can't! You can't! You can't! But if it would please God, He can. He can. Can a guilty sinner be free from sin's judgment? One way. He must be pardoned. You and I must be pardoned. We must be pardoned by the judge himself, by the lawmaker himself. We must be pardoned because we've sinned against him. He's the only one that can declare the pardon. And how does this happen right here? He has made Christ to be sinned. He has made Christ to be sinned. Remember, the judge is holy. He is righteous. and no unrighteousness will stand in his courtroom. All sin must be judged. All sin must be condemned. All payment must be rendered. All sentences must be carried out. But we find here in the great holiness and righteousness of this great judge, we also find great unsearchable mercy for sinners. Mercy which has placed the sin and judgment of the guilty upon the sin-bearing shoulders of the innocent. He made Christ to be sin, who knew no sin. The innocent was declared guilty with the sin of sinners upon him. He made him to be sin, and that innocent one was his very own son. That innocent one was the sinless, spotless, impeccable, beloved son the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, to think man's way, a futile, impossible way, it is described under the weight of his own sin. But God's way, God's glorious, gracious, merciful way, the only way, is that He take the weight, take the burden, take the judgment, take the curse, takes our sin itself, and He places it upon His own appointed substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ. I can't explain that. I can't get to the end of it. None of us ever will, through all eternity, get to the end of it. But I want to tell you, I can take God's Word and I can believe it because His Spirit has made this Word life. Our great Judge really took the sin of His people, really He took it and put it all upon His own Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. The transaction was made at the cross of Calvary. There the Lord Jesus Christ bore our sins in His own body on the tree. He bore them all for all of His people, each and every sin. He bore them all. He made Him to be sin for us. Man's way provides nothing but sin, and unrighteousness, and wrath, and judgment, and an eternity in a lake of fire. But God's way—oh, listen! Listen to God's way! Come unto me, all ye that labor, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. That's what our God says. That's what His Christ has said to us. Come unto me. You ought to be free from your sin. Do you know you're a sinner? Aren't there is the weight of your sin upon your own shoulders? Are you labored? Are you labored down, burdened down by the sin? Do you know that you've offended the holiness of your Creator? Christ says there is a way of escape. Come unto me. Come unto me. Cast yourself upon my mercy. and He, the promise is, the glorious promise, He will give you rest. He will give you rest. Listen to the promise. There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus. What a difference! What a difference from when the judge has proclaimed us guilty to the place where we find Rest from our sins. Rest from our burden. Oh, glory to God, there is pardon from sin through the way of God, not the way of man. Not the way of man. You can't. But God can. God can. Through the righteousness that is of God, through Christ Jesus our Lord, there is pardon. There is also perfection. Perfection. What does the Scripture say? Where sin did abound, grace did much more abound. Notice verse 21 again, For he hath made him to be sin for us. Though he Christ knew no sin, God the great Judge in mercy imputed the sin of his elect unto the charge of his own Son. But that's not all, is it? that for this purpose, He did that for this purpose, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. Now listen, this is why salvation is impossible with men, two reasons. Actually, not only does God require sinlessness, which men cannot accomplish, we all know We cannot accomplish that. We sin every day in spite of ourselves. God not only requires sinlessness, but above that, He requires righteousness. He requires righteousness. He not only requires a balanced account, if you will, but He requires us to be in the black. Now, just how impossible is that? With men, I want to tell you, if you don't know, it's absolutely impossible. Absolutely impossible. You nor I, we will never accomplish it. We can't accomplish the balanced part, let alone being in the black, let alone being righteous. But with God, all things are possible. Every child of God in this building today is a living example of one of the greatest miracles that God has ever performed. and that is the miracle of justification. He has declared us not just sinless, brothers and sisters, but He has declared us righteous in Christ Jesus. He's not only settled our account and balanced it, no, He's given us abounding grace. It's went over and above. He's given us righteousness. God took our sin, get this, and accounted it unto and upon the Lord Jesus Christ, His Son, with all of its curse, and with all of its penalties, with all of its wrath, with all of its judgment, look at the cross of Calvary, and there you will see it. Look at the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, in that tomb, and there you will see it. God did it. He really did. But that's not all He did. He took the impeccable, perfect righteousness of His dear Son, who, as we see in our text, He knew no sin. That's righteousness. Remember, we were talking about Him being perfected in righteousness in His life. We see that He was what He was claimed to be. He was the righteous God. He not only had sinlessness, but He also had righteousness. But when He was on the cross, He became sin. The judge made him to become sin. But then another transaction occurred. He took that righteousness from his own dear son, and he credited that to our account. To our account! His son got with our sin all the wrath, and all the curse, and death itself. But we get with the righteousness of Christ all the blessings, and all the and glory itself, glory itself, eternal glory, what a transfer, what a transaction, what a glorious thing the judges done for sinners like us, complete pardon and complete perfection, complete pardon and complete perfection, this is the righteousness of God. This is what God demands, complete righteousness, and that is absolutely impossible with man, but it is absolutely amazingly possible with God, through the great work and merit and the ability of the Lord Jesus Christ, his Son. Here is the straight and simple as we close, and you'll have this message as well. You can live to sin all your life. You can live to self in ignorance and continued rebellion to the way of God, striving to work your way into acceptance before God, the great judge, and die your sin, not accepted but rejected, not righteous but unrighteous, not looking forward to the glories of glory book, the only thing before you, the flames and the fires of an eternal hell. For by the mercy and grace of God, you can cast your sinful, guilty self upon the Lord Jesus Christ, and submit and surrender unto the way of God's righteousness. Quit striving, quit fighting to balance the scales, and trust Christ! Trust His merit, it's enough! Trust His ability, it's enough! Trust His righteousness. Trust Him. He is all you'll ever need. Trust Him. Cast yourself upon Him. In Him there is acceptance with God. In Him there is pardon and perfection. In Him there is the hope of glory. In Him is perfect, glorious simplicity. Satan is a liar and a deceiver. Christ is righteousness. Christ is pardon. Christ is perfection and hope and acceptance, a Savior for sinners. Once again, this morning, we see the glorious simplicity that is in Christ. Why did Christ suffer, bleed and die? To be God-satisfying, sinner-justifying righteousness. I am so thankful in God's Though the prosecution has brought an ironclad case against me, I am so thankful in God's court where the righteous and holy God resides on the bench. I am so thankful in that court. He, my God of mercy, appointed His Christ, His Son, as my Advocate. Aren't you? Aren't you? Think about that day in court. The gavel is wrapped against the Holy God's desk. The guilty sentence is proclaimed. And now we want to think we can stand in the face of God and say, no, I'll do it my way. And the whole time in that court, His book is in front of Him. And the whole thing says, look at Christ. Look at Him. There He is in the court. Look at Him, the Advocate. Look at Him, the one Savior who can really save you from your sin. Look at Him. You hear His Word this morning. Oh, may the Holy Spirit attend to it within your heart. May He make it real. May He give you that which is impossible, faith to believe in this Word that says Christ Jesus is the only one that can save you from your sins. You can't, but He can. By His grace, to Him there is pardon and protection. We praise the Lord for His Word this morning. We praise the Lord for His great mercy. For it is in mercy, we pray, that He has brought us to this place today to receive His Word. We rejoice.