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I invite you to turn in the scriptures
to the book of Romans, to Romans chapter 3. And as well, I'm going to be
making fairly frequent reference throughout the sermon to a section
of a confessional document called the Belgic Confession of Faith.
Written in 1561, a summary of what we as Reformed Protestant
Christians believe the Bible teaches. And you can find this
in the thin Forms and Prayers book on page 175. And I'll refer
to articles 22 and 23 as we continue to work through core doctrines
of the Christian faith. Now last week, last week we considered
together the purpose, the meaning, the necessity of Christ's crucifixion. And we saw that while there are
different aspects to why Christ died and what he was accomplishing,
something essential to the meaning of Christ's death is this idea
of penal substitution, that Christ went in our place to be the substitute,
to bear the penalty. However, that only deals with
half of the predicament of human sin. Because in bearing the penalty
for sin, Christ says, made us free from guilt, but God, from
the beginning, covenanted in such a way that his ultimate
blessings are conditioned, not merely on freedom from guilt,
but on personal, positive obedience, on fulfilling the command. God
called Adam not just to sleep in the garden forever and never
have a conscious thought, and that's one way to remain innocent,
but he called him to bear his image, to be fruitful and to
multiply. to guard and to keep. He called
him, in a word, to be a priest and a king bearing the image
of God. So that raises a question. With all of the imperfection
of our best works in this life, how can God justly give you rewards
that he conditioned on perfect fulfillment? And that brings
us to the answer that we confess in Belgic 22. I'll only read
a part of it, but then I'll read the rest as we work through in
the sermon. Here what our churches have for
hundreds of years, really with the church spiritual throughout
all the ages, believes. We believe that for us to acquire
the true knowledge of this great mystery, speaking of the gospel,
the Holy Spirit kindles in our hearts a true faith that embraces
Jesus Christ with all his merits and makes him its own, and no
longer looks for anything apart from him. For it must necessarily
follow that either all that is required for our salvation is
not in Christ, or if all is in him, then he who has Christ by
faith has his salvation already. In other words, Jesus has done
it all. If it's sufficient to have him,
then we need not add anything or look to anything beyond him.
What a glorious hope if you indeed do embrace that. But on the other
hand, do we find that in scripture? I remember very well. I remember
like it was yesterday. Oh, there's so many things that
I've forgotten very well. But I remember like it was yesterday,
the first time that I ever read a very clear statement concerning
the doctrine of justification, like grace alone through faith
alone and Christ alone. And I turned to the person who
was next to me because we were actually sitting on prefabricated
model furniture in a Walmart. And I had printed out this statement
that I had found online. because I was looking for a solution
to my own lack of assurance. So I and this friend were sitting
there, and I was reading it out loud, and I turned and I said
to this person, if this is true, this is the best news I've ever
heard in my life. If, because I wasn't even sure that it wasn't
wrong. I wasn't sure if that's actually what the Bible taught,
because I had been told that it was something of, you know,
God does part and you do part, and the two parts come together,
and as long as you did your part, God will do the rest. What does scripture say? Hear
together with me the word of God in Romans chapter three,
beginning at verse 19. 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. But now the righteousness of
God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law
and the prophets bear witness to it. The righteousness of God
through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. And verse
28, For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of
the law. This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God. We're gonna do that again. Do
you notice that? It's responsive. This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God. Amen. Let's ask the Lord special
blessing. Father in heaven, we are grateful
for the best news there ever was. that in Christ you do all
for those whom from eternity you appointed him as his inheritance. We marvel that Christ is such
a Lord as would count sinners in inheritance. And we honor
you that by your spirit you fit us to be glorious in his sight,
changing us. But even before that, Lord, we
thank you that while we were yet godless, you would call us
righteous. We ask that you would please
lead us into this passage, into this truth, grow us, strengthen
us, not only for ourselves, but that we might be well-equipped
to do spiritual battle and to spread this knowledge into all
the world. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. From a fairly young age, I somehow
fell into an interest in Greek mythology, found books in the
public library about Hercules and all these figures And pretty quickly, you'll learn
that there is a lot of tragedy in Greek mythology, many tragic
figures. And among all of them, I think
one of the most tragic figures is the character of Cassandra. You can read about Cassandra
in Homer's Iliad. She is a priestess of this pagan
false god, Apollo. And one night, while she is going
about her duties in the temple, According to the myth, Apollo
shows up and he tries to incite her to evil. And she has the
audacity, really the piety, the good conscience to rebuke the
God. And so what does Apollo do being petty? He curses her. And the curse that he gives her
is that from that day forward, she will have perfect knowledge
of the future, but no one will ever believe her. And so as all
of the tragedies, all of the horrors mount up against the
city of Troy, Cassandra is warning and warning and warning everyone
what is going to happen. And her fate is to watch as her
husband and her brothers and the citizens of this city go
out to doom because no one believes what she's saying, though it's
true. There is a kind of tragedy to
the speech of God's law. Not because the law is cursed,
but because sinners are under a curse. And as a consequence,
even as the law speaks faithfully, unregenerate man hears everything
it says with a garbled voice. The law speaks one thing, but
man in sin hears another. And even regenerate Christians
who are, to use another's words, hardwired for law, have a tendency
to fall back into mishearing what the law actually says. See
what we read in verse 19. Now we know that whatever the
law says, it speaks to those who are under the law. When the apostle speaks of those
who are under the law, in context, he's not just talking about the
Jews who are under the old covenant. If you read Romans one through
three, he's laying out how all the world, unless you are a believer
in Jesus Christ, is under the law. Because here he's using
the word law in a distinct way. He's talking about the original
covenantal way that God dealt with human beings. Where he had
given specific terms and said, if you do these things, you will
live. And if you don't, you will die. Where life was conditioned
on personal moral performance, And Paul is belaboring this point.
It's not just the Jews, if they do not believe on Christ, who
have this voice of the law warning them, but all of the Gentiles
as well. You say, well, they didn't receive
the law. I thought the law was given at
Sinai. I thought God gave the Ten Commandments there. It was
inscripturated there. So how are the Gentiles under
the law? And Paul lays out in Romans 1 and 2 that the work
of the law is written upon the heart of man. As it says in Romans
2.15, it shows that the work of the law is written on their
hearts as they experience convictions, as they feel the work of conscience,
this distinction of right and wrong. The job of conscience
is to tell you there is accountability. There is a standard, even if
people disagree about what it is, through our corruption, through
our darkness. yet conscience itself bears witness.
There is a God to whom we'll give an account. And what is
the function of the law when it speaks to people who are yet
under it? What the law says according to
verse 19 is this, 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 it's this image of people
Telling the Lord, but, but, but, but, but, but I did this and
I did that. I served you in this way. You
said don't lie and on that occasion, I sure didn't lie. But the function
of the law is to stop every mouth because the law was never do
some things most of the time. The law is do this and you'll
live. Don't do this and you'll die.
It's binary. Those are the options. 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. Let the gravity of that sink
in. By works of the law, no human
being will be justified in his sight. First, what does it mean
to be justified? To be justified, for any children
here, we don't use that word on a daily basis, but it is for
someone to declare that you did the right thing, and in your
heart, you're right as well. To be justified is to be pronounced
just or righteous. Here again, for by works of the
law, and the Greek word for works here simply means an act of the
will, so it goes all the way to the heart, For by works of
the law, no human being will be justified in sight. Well,
what are works of the law? Jesus was asked to give a summary
of the law. And he said, love God with all
your heart, mind, soul, and strength. Love your neighbor, what? As
yourself. So let's read it that way. For
by any attempt to love God and love your neighbor, no human
being will be declared righteous in his sight. Which means that
even if from today for the rest of your life you gave everything
that you could consciously bring to the table to love God at every
moment, you rose early, you prayed for 18 hours a day, you gave
all your gifts and goods to the poor, everything is given to
others. out of a desire to honor him,
you will go to hell if you are not in Jesus Christ. For no human
by works of the law shall be justified in his sight, since
through the law comes knowledge of sin. The law can reveal your
need, but it cannot cover your sin, and in your sinful state,
you still owe perfect obedience. And so that brings us to now
this point in the scripture where the apostle, led by the Holy
Spirit, begins to unfold one of the clearest, one of the most
beautiful, one of the most full, one of the most comforting statements
of the doctrine of assurance that we have anywhere in scripture. The basis upon which you can
be confident that as you go into God's presence, he will say,
well done, my good and faithful servant. enter into the joy that
has been prepared for you. And so our goal this evening
is unusual compared to what I typically do. You all know that I typically
lay out two or three points very clearly, and we just look at
those in order. But tonight we're going to just
walk through Romans 3, 21 through 4, 7, and see what it says. We're
going to move through the verses and ask what it says about the
nature of justification, and then how we are to respond to
that. Now, as I said, I've already
defined justification as a declaration of righteousness. Ordinarily,
how do we, on what grounds do we declare a person just or righteous? By the way, you do this all the
time. You make judgments all the time, so do I, about people
driving, about your neighbor and what they do with their lawn,
or their speaker volume. We're always making judgments
about other people. Deciding if, in that instance,
we think that they are righteous or unrighteous. Ordinarily, our
judgment about a person's justice is based on what they do, and
to the extent that they had a voluntary choice in that. But here in Romans
3.21 and following, Paul says that God has revealed an alternative
way, a different way of being declared righteous. Think about
that. a way of being declared righteous that doesn't have anything
to do with what you personally did relative to that command
to love God and love your neighbors. How can you, a different way
to be righteous without actually doing what is right? How can
that be real? And here Paul lays it out. This
goes to the very heart, the glory of the gospel that we as Christians,
and in particular, we as Protestant and Reformed Christians have
insisted on through the ages. Verse 21. But now the righteousness
of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law
and the prophets bear witness to it. When he says apart from
the law, again, he means that it's on a different basis or
a different principle than that which was contained under the
law. And what is it that is being
declared here? Verse 22, the righteousness of God through
faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. Now let that sink
in. Since he's already said that
it is apart from the law and that no one is justified by works
of the law, which is loving God and loving your neighbor, then
what it means in this context here relative to justification,
what it means to have faith in Jesus must be set in opposition
to any kind of moral cooperation as being the ground or the reason
why God is pardoning you and declaring you righteous. Everything
in terms of the goodness you would bring to it is not why
you're being declared righteous. Through faith in Jesus, which
means that faith in Jesus must be not simply trusting Jesus
to help you help yourself. Trusting Jesus to give you the
moral fiber to climb up the ladder. Jesus gave you the boost, or
Jesus is cheering for you from the bleachers, hoping that you
score. How many of those who profess
Jesus Christ in churches throughout the entire world think that's
the gospel? I thought that was the gospel.
I don't know when I came genuinely to faith in Christ for sure,
but I know when I came to Assurance, I came to assurance when I looked
away from anything I did do, was doing, would ever do, as
the reason why God was now declaring me righteous. And I hope you
can say the same. What is that hope? Summarized
very beautifully for us here in Belch Confession 22. Again,
for it must necessarily follow that either all that is required
for our salvation is not in Christ, Or, if all is in him, then he
who has Christ by faith has his salvation entirely. Therefore,
to say that Christ is not enough, but that something else is needed
as well, is a most enormous blasphemy against God. For it then would
follow that Jesus Christ is only half a Savior. And therefore,
we justly say with Paul that we are justified by faith alone. or by faith apart from works. Why did God establish this alternative
way of being declared righteous? Who is it for? The short answer
is, if he didn't, all people would be condemned. Because there
is no one righteous. No, not one, and that's Paul's
point here. Look at verse 22, Romans. 322, for there is no distinction,
he's saying, whether between Jew and Gentile, rich and poor,
young and old, male or female, there is no distinction, for
all have sinned and all fall short of the glory of God, and
are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption
that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation
by his blood to be received by faith, a gift to be received. I had the great pleasure last
night of going to a children's birthday party. My son was invited
to a party and we went to one of those bounce houses with the
inflatables and it turned out that the adults were far more
interested in jumping on them than the children were. We all
went home injured. And then we came to the time
when The gifts were shared out to this young boy. It was delightful
to watch him receive these gifts. And as he received one after
another, he pulled from the inside of his
coat a large roll of bills, and he began to pay cash to each
of the families who he'd know he did not. They were gifts. Isn't that the point? They weren't
something that he had earned. They weren't wages. It was a
gift simply to be received. Some of us really like giving
gifts and have no idea how to receive them. And the moment
somebody offers us something, we're already plotting, okay,
I gotta give it back. I don't wanna be indebted to anybody.
And it's good for it to go around and come around. But the very
nature of gifting and of grace is simply to receive. And here
the apostle is saying very clearly Those who are justified, since
no one is justified by works of the law, the only people who
are justified are the people who receive it simply as a gift.
Which means if you're trying to be good enough to deserve
it, you're not getting it. The only people who will enter
glory are justified people. The only people who are justified
received it as a gift. which means you don't have to
do something other than, by faith, receive it. Paul says in verse
25 and 26, this was to show God's righteousness because in his
divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. And here he's
saying it had seemed like God was being partial to people of
faith like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It seemed like God was
being unjust because he didn't bring judgment on them Even as
some, certainly the demons knew of this fact, some human beings
died in this life and passed into judgment, but other human
beings were being taken into a place of peace described as
paradise. Why was an Abraham suffering
when clearly he was sinful? Here it was to demonstrate God's
righteousness that Christ had to die on the cross. Justice,
as we saw last week, has been paid. Verse 26. and it was to show his righteousness
at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier
of the one who has faith in Jesus. How does this work then? Why
is it that faith, or how is faith connected to our justification?
Here a very important clarification needs to be made. I think this was the area that
I struggled most with. In the period from age 10 when
I first heard the gospel, but I don't think I really understood
it clearly, up to age 21, when it was very clear. And I know
that some of you are right in that age group, and I wonder
if you have grasped it, and I hope that you have. You see, I thought
that faith was the one good thing I could do, and that because
I had faith, that was what, I don't know, deserved from God. I knew
that, technically speaking, it didn't deserve anything, but
I thought that God was grading on a curve, like he accepted
the part for the whole, and faith was the one good thing I could
do, even though the scriptures say faith itself is a gift, because
the Holy Spirit works graciously in the heart of the dead man
to bring that man to life. Faith is the instrument of our
justification, but it is not the ground of our justification.
When I say it's the instrument, I mean, that's a classical way
of describing it. I mean kind of like another analogy
that people have used throughout the ages. Imagine a lead pipe,
but there's molten gold flowing through it. Faith has no special
value of its own, but it receives, and what it receives, this gold,
is the promise of justification in Christ as we are united with
him. Faith brings us by God's covenant into union with Jesus
Christ, so that everything that is his is counted ours. And everything
that was ours, all of our sin and all of our guilt, was counted
his. Faith is the instrument of union. But faith of itself
doesn't have merit. Belgian Confession 22, however,
we do not mean, properly speaking, that it is faith itself that
justifies us. For faith is only the instrument by which we embrace
Christ, our righteousness. Christ is our righteousness.
But Jesus Christ is our righteousness, crediting to us all his merits
and all the holy works he has done for us and in our place.
And faith is the instrument that keeps us in communion with him
and with all his benefits. When those benefits are made
ours, they are more than enough to absolve us of our sins. Think
about the wonderful effect that this has on us when we walk in
it. It removes every ground for fleshly boasting. Everything
where one person might say, I did this, that's why I'm different,
that's why I'm accepted. I again, when I speak of myself,
it's simply because I know myself better than I know anyone else.
I remember praying prayers. Which, when you hear them, I
trust anyone who has the Spirit of God will hear this and be
like, what? What even did you believe? But I prayed on my knees
prior to really understanding the gospel. God, there are people
in this city, I was living in Appleton, Wisconsin at that time,
and I wanted there to be a revival. And I think I wanted that in
the way that, say, Saul, as a Pharisee, wanted things for the Lord, but
he hadn't yet come to the grace of the gospel. And I was praying
for a revival, and I prayed, Lord, There are so many people
here who have not yet accepted you, and I pray that you would
make it so clear to them, Lord. I pray that you would lay out
before them the truth. But Lord, if then they're so
stubborn to not receive it, damn them to hell, because it's so
obvious. I prayed like that. I mean, partly
that was just youth, partly that was being a late teen, but I
really thought the difference with me is that, you know, it's
pretty obvious I just made the right choice. No, the glory is
in the Lord. It's entirely, and after that
I would have thought, well, it's that I persevered longer than
others. But where does that come from? Faith is trusting in the
Lord to do all of it, to be all of it. Romans 3.27, then what becomes
of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind
of law? By law of works? No, but by the
law of faith. And here he means the principle
of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from
works of the law. And he gives the illustration
of Abraham. who is justified by God, but
clearly you read his life and you find it wasn't because of
some special good thing he did. It says he believed the Lord
and the Lord counted his faith for righteousness. So in place
of having righteousness, the Lord accepted this faith that
unites him with Christ the promised one. Now, what do we do with
this? I want to exhort you by way of
conclusion. Hold fast to this. Defended in your own heart by
the word for your very soul. Defended in the world against
the devil. Defended in the church. He would
like nothing more than to see this one truth eroded. I do believe
that the devil is perfectly content to have these large and sometimes
gorgeous buildings that are called churches all throughout the world.
He's perfectly content to have them packed with people. and
to even have people who are on the moral uptick. He can abide
that, it makes him queasy, but he'll take it. If, if he does
not have to hear the true gospel proclaimed. Galatians 1, verses
six through nine, I don't ask you to turn there, but here again,
this familiar but essential statement. The apostle says to these Galatians
who were tempted to turn back to confidence in their works,
he says, I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting
him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to
a different gospel. Not that there is another one,
but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the good
news of Christ. But even if we or an angel from
heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached
to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now
I say again, If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the
one you received, let him be accursed. But don't go that way
yourself. For you younger ones here, you
are going to go out if you haven't realized this already and you're
going to discover, I don't think I'm overstating it at all, the
great majority of professing Christian churches do not proclaim
this gospel. Now that's not to say that there
are not believers in the world, and we thank God the number of
them is huge relative to, you know, the beginning number of
the disciples. But Jesus wasn't kidding when
he said broad is the way that leads to destruction. There are
many churches, I was in some of these churches for years,
where I heard with my own ears the pastor say that the difference
between the old covenant and the new covenant is that in the
Old Covenant, it's like an umbrella that is in its closed position. It's really hard to hide from
the rain in that. We'll come to what that means. But under
the New Covenant, it's like an open umbrella. And he said, under
the Old Covenant, there were so many ways to end up under
the wrath of God by doing what was wrong. But under the New
Covenant, there's really only a few sins that could really
put you back out in the rain. And as long as you stay under
the umbrella, you're saved, because Jesus covering is for all the
sins that are not really, really adamant. And then he gave an
example. He said, some of you, this is when I was in Bible college,
he said, some of you might be considering going out and getting
drunk this weekend. Let me just tell you, that'll
put you back in the rain. as if you just go in and out
of the umbrella based on your works and deeds. Now, don't get
me wrong. If you live consistently in a
way that is a rebellion against the law, such that you end up
excommunicated from the church, we don't have any credible ground
to think that you have ever come to know him. But that's different
than saying that our works are somehow contributing to our justification. They do not, not at all. Not
even the character of faith as being compliant and obedient,
contributes. The very obedience of faith is
not why we are saved. It's the instrument, but it's
not the ground. Jesus Christ's own humanity,
his life of human obedience is our confidence. Why did he become
a man? To live a perfect human life
for you, which means if your faith is in him, you already
lived your best life. It's concluded and it's raised
to glory. It's seated at the right hand of God. How should
that then shape you? One, shouldn't we be so much
more grateful than we are? And don't just beat yourself
up about that. Confess it and then receive fresh
grace that even in the midst of your ingratitude, he sent
Christ. And then shouldn't this be what
we tell others? Because everyone you will ever
meet, unless they are a genuine Christian, defaults to thinking
that works. make the difference. They do. And when they hear that you're
a Christian, they presume that you think that you're doing the
good things. Take the short line whenever
possible with somebody. Get to the point to tell them,
oh, there are different kinds of Christians, but the kind of
Christian I am, I think the Bible says that our goodness doesn't
have a thing to do with why God saves us, but simply trusting
what Jesus did. So this should shape how we confess
the gospel, how we trust the gospel, and how we hold fast
to the gospel. Hear finally these words from
Belgic 23, and I exhort you to heed this counsel. And therefore, beginning midway,
Belgic 23, and therefore we cling to this foundation which is firm
forever, giving all glory to God, humbling ourselves and recognizing
ourselves as we are. not claiming a thing for ourselves
or our merits, and leaning and resting only on the obedience
of Christ crucified, which is ours when we believe in him.
That is enough to cover all our sins and make us confident, freeing
the conscience from the fear, dread, and terror of God's approach,
without doing what our first father, Adam, did, who trembled
as he tried to cover himself with fig leaves. In fact, If
we had to appear before God, relying no matter how little
on ourselves or some other creature, then alas, we would be swallowed
up. Therefore, everyone must say with David, Lord, do not
enter into judgment with your servants, for before you, no
living person shall be justified. True faith frees you to stop
sowing fig leaves from the law, and instead to be dressed in
that imputed righteousness, that credited righteousness, even
before he begins to clothe you with that lived-out righteousness
of the Spirit. Let's ask the Lord to work this
deeply into us now and go before him in prayer. Our Father in heaven, we thank
you again this evening for the opportunity to hear the best
news. And we pray that you would work
in our hearts a fresh dependence upon you, that you would fill
us with admiration for our Savior, and all that he suffered and
all that he did, which was right. We pray that you would work in
our circumstance to have opportunities and due time to share this good
news with others, and in doing so, to boast nothing in ourselves,
but only in you. For in Jesus' name we pray, amen.
Faith Sets Aside the Fig Leaves We Sow from the Law
Series Belgic Confession
| Sermon ID | 5212446484929 |
| Duration | 36:19 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - PM |
| Bible Text | Romans 3:28 |
| Language | English |
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