Let us look to the Lord as we approach His Word. Father in heaven, our God, the one that we come to boldly in Your Son, and we're thankful, O Creator, that You love us beyond measure, that You have shown us kindness in Christ, that in the goodness of Your grace You've redeemed us and brought us to Yourself, and we're thankful for that. And Father, we are Your children, and You know us intimately. You know that we still disobey. And yet, when we come in Your discipline, You forgive, and You restore, and You reconcile, and so we're thankful for that. But Father, most of all today, I am thankful for the message of Your gospel that reveals the righteousness that is ours in Christ. And so, Father, I would ask as we approach this text that the presence of Your Spirit would be with us, that these blessed words that we can read and reread and study and meditate on, that these blessed words would be buried deep in our heart that we would have understanding and be filled with the wonder of Your grace and secure in Christ. So help us, O God. And we thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. I love the gospel of God and I'm eager to preach it. I'm not ashamed of it because the gospel of God reveals something to us. His good news reveals to us the righteousness that He provides. A verse that you ought to memorize is 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 21. God made Him who knew no sin to be a sin offering for us. that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. The provision of God's righteousness is in Christ. And that verse speaks to two things. God made Him who knew no sin. That speaks to the perfect obedience of Christ. That speaks to the righteousness of Christ. That speaks to the sinlessness of Christ. He knew no sin. Do you understand that? Finally, in the history of humanity, there was a man who knew no sin, the second man, the Lord from heaven, the one the Father sent. to reverse what the first man did in plunging the entire human race into sin and death. The story of the Bible is the story of two men and the people they represent. We are all in Adam. We descended from him. We are all family. We are all related. You're my distant family. Some of you are my close family by blood. One person in this room is my family by blood and it's my daughter. But all of us are family because we're descendants of the first man and what he did impacted all of us. But thank God there's a second man. Thank God He was sent. And if you are in Him, then all that He did is credited to you, is gifted to you. That sinless, righteous, obedient life of Christ now counts for anyone and everyone that are in Him. And that sacrificial death of Christ, that death that was demanded by the justice of God for man's disobedience, for God said that the day you eat, you shall die." That death for disobedience had to be paid for. And in the kindness of God, He sent His Son to be the one that would die in the place of His people. That death can count for you. That death that satisfied the law's demands for payment can count for you. You can truly say that I am crucified with Christ. You can say that the death of Christ now counts for you. That death that satisfied justice, if you're in Him. The message of God's gospel. is given to all humanity. And this gospel, this salvation, this gift of righteousness, this gift of the obedience of Christ can be yours by putting your faith and trust in Christ alone. And we've been studying this section, and we have highlighted the fact that this section, in Romans 3, 19 through 31, focuses on this righteousness that comes from God. Twice in the text, verse 21, the righteousness of God. Verse 22, the righteousness of God. And then twice in the text, verse 25, it's His righteousness. Verse 26, His righteousness. the righteousness of God, the righteousness of Christ. And then there's another word that I have highlighted in verse 20, by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified. You have that word in verse 20. You have it again in verse 24, being justified. You have in verse 26 that God would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Christ. And then you come down to verse 28, we maintain that a man is justified by faith. That word, justify, means that God, in a judicial sense, is going to declare people righteous. God is going to speak as the judge, and He's going to say, you are righteous. Now, I know me. Unfortunately, my wife knows me. And unfortunately, my daughter knows me. And both of them know that Bill Jones is not righteous. There is none righteous, no, not even one, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And so the question of the ages is how can God be just, verse 25, how can God remain true to who He is? How can God conform to His character, to His nature, to His name, to all of His attributes? How could He remain true to all of that and turn around and declare us unjust people righteous? How can God do that? Well, He has chosen to do that. in the person of a representative, Christ. It's been His plan since Adam sinned. And the issue today is, are you in Christ? That's the issue. And we have seen that this provision of righteousness in Christ needed by all of us because we are unrighteous. We've already seen in this text it's called the righteousness of God. It's a righteousness that comes from God. It's not the righteousness of men. God is the author of this righteousness. And so that you would understand it, the text tells us that it's apart from the works of the law, verse 21. And in verse 20, by the works of the law, no flesh will be declared righteous in His sight. And, verse 28, we maintain that a man is declared righteous by faith apart from the works of the law. This righteousness has nothing, nothing to do with what you do. This is not a righteousness that comes from God and does not satisfy God completely, and you have to add to it. This is not a righteousness that was infused into you when you were sprinkled as a baby. And then for the rest of your life, you have to cooperate with that righteousness, add to it your own righteousness. That's not what this righteousness is. And lest you think that you're not righteous enough, guess what? There are those that teach that there are saints that are, who have lived so righteously they have a surplus of righteousness. And all you need do is pray to them, and they will transfer some of their righteousness to you. Know this righteousness that comes from God that is good news for all of us has nothing to do with your obedience. But I'll tell you whose obedience it has to deal with. It is the obedience of Christ. It's apart from law. We've seen that it's the entire message of the Bible. This righteousness was witnessed by the Law and the Prophets. Oh, I love that. I love that. And in a moment, I'm going to highlight some text in the Law and the Prophets. But I was reading this morning in the book of Acts the Sermon of Stephen. ready to meet the Lord, Stephen, who looked toward heaven and he said, I see the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. That scene from Daniel. But he was preaching the people. And you know what he was preaching about? He was preaching about the righteous one. And he says in his sermon that the message of the prophets who were constantly being killed, that the message they were preaching was the coming of the righteous one. Do you realize that? That has been the message that God has given humanity since Adam. There's going to come the righteous one. And having said that to that crowd of people, his own, he then says, God gave you the law, but you didn't keep it. What was he trying to do? To show them that they needed what? The righteous one. The message of Stephen. And he pulled it right out of the Old Testament text. We've seen this already. And we saw that this righteousness was manifested in the life of Jesus Christ. This righteousness, verse 21, has been manifested. This obedience, this perfect obedience to God, this keeping of the covenant demands was manifested in the life of Christ. And His obedience took Him to the cross for in the plan of God, God determined that it would be death for disobedience. We also saw that this righteousness of God is provided as a gift. Do you have to work for a gift? No. No, there's nothing you do for a gift. There's no cost to you for a gift, right? But this righteousness came at a great cost. Someone had to pay for it. This gift that God will give to you had to be paid for at great cost. And Christ paid it. Have you ever thought about the fact that for eternity now, moving forward, the eternal Son of God is now eternally a human being? Have you ever thought of that? The Father never took upon Himself a humanity. The Spirit of God never took upon Himself a humanity, but Christ did. He is the Son of Man, and yet He is the Son of God. It came at great cost, but it was for us. And He lived a perfect life of obedience, and when He came to Calvary, He obeyed and died in the place of His people. And that death and that righteous life We learn, satisfied the justice of God and allowed God to remain just. The demands of His law were kept and the penalty for breaking it was paid. And God can now declare us righteous because our faith is in Christ. We are in Him and God sees us just like He sees Christ. That is His gospel. That is His good news. And the point that I want to bring us to today is that the righteousness of God is imputed to all who believe in the righteous one. What a big word. We're going to get into this in the weeks ahead in chapter 4 where He uses this this concept of imputation in the life of Abraham, and I'm going to touch on that today, and the life of David. The word impute literally means to put down on one's account. It's kind of an accounting term. You have debts, right? Accumulated because you spent money that belonged to someone else. They put their money on your account and you spent it. credit. God uses the term impute or to put on your account when He discusses the righteousness of God. God will put on your account. Listen, before I came to Christ, before my faith was in Christ and I trusted Christ, my account didn't look too good. didn't. And apart from the righteousness of Christ credited to me, my account still wouldn't look too good. Any of you get that? I know Roger does. He's laughing. Lynette, I hear you now. We get it, don't we? But in the kind grace of God, He will allow what Jesus did to be stamped on our account. Do you know how He sees us now? He sees us as righteous as Christ is. And what about all our unrighteousness? He sees the debt as having been paid completely. And we are declared righteous by our faith in Christ. Your faith is not your righteousness. Faith brings you to the one who is righteous. It gets you to Christ. And if you believe, that the God of heaven satisfied His justice by allowing Christ to be your righteousness and your atonement. If you believe what God said He has accepted and your faith is in Christ, you're saved eternally. And this text focuses so much on faith and believing. Would you just note with me in verse 22, that this righteousness of God is what? Through faith in Jesus Christ. And it's for how many? All who believe. Come down to verse 25. Whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood. And we noted last week that propitiation means God's justice is satisfied. His wrath is turned. His wrath is appeased. And it was appeased in Christ's death, in His blood. This afternoon, we are going to pick up a cup. And we're going to remember that it took the shedding of the blood of Jesus the Christ in the place of His people as a substitute, as a vicarious atonement to satisfy the justice of God. And I believe that. I believe that Jesus Christ died for Bill Jones. I believe He hung on the cross for me. I believe that God made Him who knew no sin to be a sin offering for me that I might be made the righteousness of God in Him. I believe that. And we're going to pick up the unleavened bread that Jesus said represents my humanity. And we're going to believe that Jesus Christ came from glory. He came down here. And you know, He came down as the seed of the woman, bone of our bones and flesh of our flesh. He was the second man, the Lord from heaven. And the promise of God is that If I'll confess with my mouth that Jesus is the Lord, for that's who He is, He's none other than the Lord from heaven, the second person of the triune God, the angel of the Lord. If I confess that Jesus is the Lord and I believe in my heart that God raised Him from the dead, I'm going to be saved, saved from the wrath of God. For I have put my faith in the sacrifice that God has accepted. I have put my faith in the one who cried on the cross. It's finished. It's done. I did nothing for that. He did it all. I am complete in Him. All I have is Christ. I'm in Him. And because I'm in Him, everything that is His his mind. And I can say with Paul, as he does in Philippians chapter 3, that I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I've suffered the loss of all things, and I count them but rubbish so that I might win Christ, and get this, and be found in Him. not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law. That's impossible for me. I've looked at the law. I've read those 10 words. I've read them over and over and over again, and they are not a sentence of life for me. They're a death sentence for me. But I know the Lord. I know Him. I'm in Him. And I have a righteousness not of my own derived from the law, but I have that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith. Philippians chapter 3, that's what I have. And I have that righteousness of Romans chapter 1 and verse 16, that righteousness of God, which is the power of God to save to everyone who believes. I have that righteousness, chapter 4 and verse 5, to the one who does not work but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly. I'm not working for my own salvation, but I am believing in the one who can declare me righteous. Are you? Is your faith in Christ? Is your faith in the coming Redeemer? Chapter 5 of Romans, verse 1, it says, therefore, having been declared righteous by faith. Ephesians chapter 2, 8 and 9, for by grace you've been saved through faith. Galatians chapter 2 and verse 16, knowing that a man is not made right with God, with the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. And because of that, even we have believed in Jesus Christ that we might be right with God by faith and not by works. For by the works of the law, no flesh will be made right with God." Do you understand that? And as I said earlier, you can say with Paul, I am what? Crucified with Christ. I paid the debt in Christ. He paid it for me, but I'm in Him. And I am totally believing that that death satisfied. Totally. I have believed. Ephesians chapter 3, this was according to the eternal purpose, God's eternal purpose that He realized in Jesus Christ our Lord in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in Him." Are you going to enter glory when you pass from this line? Are you going to enter the presence of God? I mean, are you going to dwell with God forever? My friends, we can say with great boldness that we have access through faith in Him. That's how you get it. That is how this righteousness is credited to you. It has been the eternal purpose of God. And I'm so thankful for Acts chapter 13 and verse 39 that says, all that believe are justified. This message of God's gospel has been preached since the garden of Eden. It is not new. This was not some message that was preached after Christ came. I want you to understand that. This message of salvation in the righteous one has been preached since Eden, and God preached it in the Garden of Eden. Probably one of the greatest texts about this is found in Isaiah chapter 53, and listen to this text, speaking of the death of Christ and the work of suffering as a guilt offering. Verse 11 says, he'll see it and be satisfied. Now hear this, by his knowledge, the righteous one, my servant, will what? Justify the many as he'll bear their iniquity. My servant is the righteous one. He's on his way and he will get a declaration that will justify you because he's going to bear your iniquity too. Do you understand that? It is by Christ and Christ alone. His righteousness, put on your account. What a great theme. Double imputation in 2 Corinthians 5, my sin credited to Him, His righteousness credited to me. When God imputed my sin to Christ, He didn't make Christ a sinner. He had never sinned. Do you understand that? God just put my sin on His account and He never sinned. But as my substitute, He paid it as if He had. And then God put His righteousness on me. And it's His righteousness, not mine. When you go into the Garden of Eden, you see this incredible preaching of the gospel of God. Our Bible opens with Adam in a garden. And God had one condition for him. He said, I want you to obey me in this way. You can eat of every tree, every tree in the garden. But there's one that you cannot eat of. And the day that you eat, you're going to die. God said, believe me, submit to my will, and obey me. And he did that until the serpent deceived his wife. And he followed Eve into disobedience. And when he did that, against the law principle, there was a precept in the garden. When he did that, he faced the penalty of God. But was it instant? Did God kill him immediately and he lose his physical life? No, not at all. One precept has a test of their obedience with a penalty of death for disobedience and the promise of eternal life for obedience. Can you imagine where we would be today if Adam hadn't sinned? He'd still be on the earth. He'd still be here thousands of years later. But his disobedience cost him and cost us. And it's in the midst of that that God comes along in grace with the gospel. And he promises that he would send a seed. Didn't he say that? He would send the seed of a woman. The moment he sinned, God in grace came in seeking to reconcile Adam back to himself. That voice that they had heard in the garden day after day, that presence that they got in the evening, They worked through the day and in the dust began to settle. God shows up in the garden and they enjoy His fellowship. They have conversation with Him. I wonder what those conversations were about. But the moment he sinned, he knew he had disobeyed God. He was disappointed in that. He heard the voice and he hid, just like a child does when they disobeyed a parent and they know the parent is coming. How many a child has suffered because they were told, you just wait till dad gets home. And they're not eager to run out and embrace dad when he shows up. No, they'll hunker down in their bedroom and maybe even in their closet. We get it, don't we? Just like Adam. But you see that grace, that desire to reconcile. God had a purpose of mercy toward them, and He extended forbearance. He promised them they'd have a seed. Do you get that? They weren't going to die today. They were going to have a seed. Their life would be extended. And this seed... would crush the head of the serpent. And the serpent would bruise his heel. There would be conflict, but this seed would be a mediator. They were not going to be crushed. They were going to be saved. And God did this in His sovereignty. He said, I will put. This is something I'm going to do. Adam had nothing to do with this. It was the plan of God, the gospel of God to send this mediator with an unconditional promise that he would reverse what Adam did, not based on what Adam would do or Eve would do or any of Adam's descendants apart from Christ, nothing that they would do but something that he would do in the seed. And don't we even see in that a promise of a new head for the human race? A seed that would obey, a seed that would be righteous, a seed that would be sinless, one who would hear the covenant demands of God and keep them out of love for God. That seed would come. And don't we see even an election according to grace, for there would be the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, two distinct people. And don't we see God remaining just? For this seed, this deliverer would have us heal, nip that. Don't we see that? God satisfying His justice in the seed. And don't we see the seed as the object of faith from the very beginning? He's on His way. Matter of fact, when Eve gives birth to her first son in chapter 4 and verse 1, the Hebrew says, I've received the man, even the Lord or from the Lord. Their object of faith was the seed. But lest we forget something, God took an innocent animal there in the garden. And He slew that animal, took the life of that animal, and took the skin of that animal and covered them. God testifying that there would be death. And He did that through sacrifice. You know, I was thinking of this last night. Never thought of this before in my life. And I googled. I googled sacrifice among the nations of the world. Do you realize that just about every religion and every culture has sacrifice? Where did that come from? Where did the concept of taking an animal, an innocent animal, taking the life from that animal and in many cultures to appease the what? To appease the gods. Somehow in human history from the very beginning of the Garden, woven into the histories as this nation goes this way and this nation goes this way, there is something in the stories about death and sacrifice. Because from the very beginning, God determined that this seed would give His life in the place of His people. And Adam believed that. And you know something, he had a son by the name of Abel, and Abel believed that too. And Cain and Abel come to God and Cain brings the work of his own hands. And God looks at Cain and He says, I have no regard for Cain or his offering. But Abel comes and he's offering what? A blood sacrifice. And he has faith. That's what the text says. He has faith that the seed is coming and the seed will give his life. And he's illustrating that by sacrifice. He was gloriously saved because his faith was in the coming seed. And you continue to go through the history of the Bible, and you come to the man Abraham, this great man that we're going to look at in greater detail in the future, the great patriarch you meet in the 12th chapter of Genesis. And what about him? The one who's said to be the father of us all. Now, how can he be the father of us all? Remember when God came to Abraham? He said, leave the Ur of the Chaldees. I'm going to show you a land. I'm going to take you to the land. I'm going to give it to you as an inheritance. And Abraham, I'm going to make you a blessing. I'm going to bless you. And get this, in you, all the nations of the world are going to be blessed. And then he says this, Abraham, I'm going, now get this, I'm going to give my land, I was reading Ezekiel this week, The land of Israel is called the Lord's land. And he said, I'm going to give my land, Abraham, to your seed, singular. You ever read that in the Bible? You know who was given the land? The seed, singular, of Abraham. Who is that seed? Who's the seed? Abraham's descendant, but you know who Paul says he was referring to? Christ. There's one descendant that was given the land. Now why was he given the land? I thought about that this week. Adam, you had the Garden, the Garden of Eden, and you disobeyed God and you lost your land. Abraham, even your descendants get access to this land, but it's given to the seed, singular. And they stayed in that land for a while, yes? And didn't He come to them in the book of Deuteronomy and He said this, if you'll keep My law, you're going to remain in the land. But if you disobey Me, you're going to be scattered around the globe. Did He say that? And they were scattered, the first group, in 722. Ten tribes go into captivity. In 586 they go into captivity. And you read the Hebrew Bible and it's the story of their disobedience to the covenant. That's what it is. And he's threatening to take them from the land. And Israel lost the land because of their disobedience to the covenant. You know who has a right to the land? The seed singular. Why? Because he kept the covenant. He has obedience that can count for you and me. And you read the book of Galatians. I read it like six times last night. And there's an emphasis placed in that letter on Jesus the seed, who's the gospel of God that was preached to Abraham. Abraham knew that that descendant, that seed would be his righteousness and Abraham believed and God credited righteousness to Abraham. And you read carefully in the seed singular is called the offspring of God. And it tells us that if you and I are in Christ, guess what? We get the promises too. because they were made to Christ. Now, how is he going to be the father of many nations? Have you ever thought about that? I used to think years ago that that means that he's going to father this particular people group, and this particular people group, and this particular people group. I mean, he's got Isaac, and he's got Ishmael. Is that what God was talking about there? No, not at all. He said, you're going to be the father of many nations. because many nations are going to put their faith in the coming seed, and be born again, and be in him, and you are the father of the coming seed, and the nations of the world belong to you because they have the same faith that you had. You go read the book of Galatians. And you know how I get the promises? I get them in Christ. And I'm going to stop there. It's always been by faith in Christ. Always. It's always been the message of God's gospel. There's a righteous one coming who's going to give his life for your unrighteousness, typified in a sacrifice. That's why Noah offered a sacrifice after he came off the ark. That's why Abraham offered sacrifices. That's why Abel offered sacrifices. That's when God built into the worship of His people the concept of sacrifice, a peace offering, a trespass offering, a sin offering, a guilt offering. All of these offerings were what? Pictures of the coming Christ. It's going to take death for disobedience. An animal is going to be offered. And you know what? I thought of this too. God had clean animals and unclean. Yes or no? Who determined that? God. God said, these animals are clean, these animals are not clean. And initially it was only the clean animals that could be sacrificed. Do you understand that? It takes a clean animal, a righteous picture, that can be sacrificed. You can't offer the unclean. And then God came along. He said, now you can eat. But you could only eat the what? The clean, they were pictures of the coming righteous, clean one. Jesus would say, if you don't eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no part of me. You have to partake to get. You need my clean life. You need my righteousness. God built it all through the oldest. as a picture of the coming righteous, clean, who has the right to the land that belongs to God, a land that stretches from the Mediterranean Sea just over to the Jordan. Is that all the further it went? No, the land stretched from the Mediterranean Sea all the way across to the Euphrates River Do you know that that land encompasses the Garden of Eden's original site? It's given in Christ the seed. And what Adam lost, he regained. The land that Israel could not have because of their disobedience, He obeyed and the right is His. And you know what? It's mine too, for I'm a descendant of Abraham through faith in Christ. I've been to the Holy Land. It's my inheritance too. Are you in Christ? Have you believed on Him? If you have, then all of His righteousness is credited to you, and all of your unrighteousness He paid for. I was crucified with Him. I was buried with Him. But He came back to life again, and now I can live a new life. an obedient life, a righteous life because of Him. Let's pray together. Father, there's so much I want to share with these people and we just don't have time. These great truths that are woven all through your Bible about the coming of the righteous one. I'm just overwhelmed. What a clear message from the very beginning that you offer freely by your grace and your tender mercy a reconciliation with you in Christ, that you're willing to allow Him to be our head, our Savior, our husband, our representative, our attorney, and you receive us as you receive Christ. And I'm thankful that He's seated at your right hand. That's where I am. I'm seated in the heavenlies with Him. For everything that He has is mine. I'm a joint heir with Him. This came to me not by works of law, but it came to me because you made a promise that it could be found in the seat of the woman, the seat of Abraham, the seat of David. And we're secure in Your Son. Lord, I pray that You'll help us to share with greater simplicity than I could today this gospel message with everyone around us, that the people of Chelsea, the people of New York, the people of this nation, the people of the world, can put their faith in the seed and be saved. So teach us theology and help us to put it into practice. I ask in Jesus' name, amen.