Turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 3. I'm going to go to a familiar text. We quote this text a lot for different reasons and it's going to be a different reason today while we're looking at this topic here. Very important to me and I think it's very needful and I can't get off my mind so I just want to get this out. The title of the message is it's about Christ. Romans 3, look at verse 10. As it is written, there is none righteous, no not one. Whenever you see as it is written in the New Testament, it's referring back to something in the Old Testament. And if you have a marginal notes or notes in your text. It usually tells you where it is written originally. So keep that in mind. It probably wouldn't hurt to go back and reference those. So there's none righteous, no not one. Verse 11, there is none that understandeth. There is none that seeketh after God. They're all gone out of the way. They are together become unprofitable There is none that doeth good, no, not one. When I was first converted back in 1987, I had, people would know best about this would be Rob and my wife. I had experienced some learning of some doctrine before that point. I had a grasp intellectually of some doctrines that I toyed with that had to do with Sovereign Grace, Calvinism, Reform Theology. And it was before I believed the Gospel. And I was even alerted to that was the state that I was in by someone who did believe the Gospel. They said, Scott, you're a pretty good Calvinist, but I don't think you know Christ. And that was kind of like a shocker. And I had respect for this person. Listened to the person and as he went into some detail about what he thought I was missing That's what I kind of started looking at and learning more about and shortly thereafter I believe the gospel But what I was missing was the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel It's how that this person Christ came to establish a righteousness by what he accomplished in his life and on the cross and for his people, and instead of just putting my trust in my intellectual grasp of this theology that I had toyed with forever, which by the way was just a cherry on top from my other past learning as a self-righteous Baptist not knowing the gospel, I was shown that I was lost. It was revealed to me what I was missing, and that is when I believed the gospel back in January of 1987. And then after that, as I learned more and I looked back and I kept examining and analyzing what I was missing, it became more and more apparent as I learned more to look at the specifics of what I didn't talk about because of what I didn't know concerning the gospel. 2005, I think it was, I did a message in Louisville, Kentucky. It's on Sermon Audio. It's one of my oldest messages, if you have to go all the way to the back, which kind of touches on this. And I think it's called The Doctrines of Grace in Reference to the Righteousness of Christ. And that's kind of what I want to talk about and bring that over into the area of how we talk about the gospel and how we evangelize. The reason I'm bringing this up is we don't want to, I don't want to, I don't know about you guys, spend years and years and years spinning our wheels making the same mistake. I've known about this mistake that I made for a long time, and I talk about it sometimes, but the video, I saw a video that really disturbed me of some questions that were brought up at a conference, a big conference, where the famous preacher giving the answer just gave the same answer that I did when I was lost. And it had nothing to do with the gospel. So I don't want us to make that mistake. My mind was brought to this text here, Romans 3, 10 through 12. And I'll tell you why here just in a minute. And maybe after I explain something in the rest of this introduction, you'll understand before I give the answer away. Over the years, as you talk to people about the gospel, the subject comes up, whether it be you or them bringing it up, an intellectual debate about free will versus predestination. And if you go to college, they'll give courses in philosophy of determinism, versus free will. I can't think of the term for free will in the philosophical, but determinism would be things are fixed. So atheists can have this debate, one with another, and it doesn't matter at hill beans, really. Muslims can have this debate, because Muslims believe that Allah has fixed everything. And it's just like you can find an atheist who rejects creationism, and you can work on the science and do all these things and convince him of creationism, but he still doesn't believe the gospel. And it's the same with this other stuff, free will versus predestination. I can take a lost person that is toying with the Bible, and I know I can convince him of predestination, but that doesn't mean that he believes the gospel. So that kind of gives you an idea of why this is so important. We don't want to produce unbelieving theologians. That's not my goal because I used to be one, you know, 30 years ago. So this is very, very important. So we're going to go through and talk about some of the doctrines of grace, but mainly our point is the doctrines of grace connected to the Lord Jesus Christ because If we miss the Lord Jesus Christ, we've missed it all. Paul, we know, Paul said, for example, in the Church of Corinth, he had all those problems, we know. He said, because he knew in his mind, there's a lot of problems here. How do we tackle these problems? Chapter two, verse two, I've determined not to know anything among you except this one thing. It wasn't predestination versus free will. It wasn't a seminar on what kind of meat You can and can't eat. It wasn't a seminar on abortion. It wasn't a seminar on homosexuality versus heterosexuality. It was Christ and Him crucified. We know another line penned by Paul under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit's guidance. He said, God forbid that I should glory except in one thing, the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is Christ and Him crucified. Keeps bringing us back to the same thing. And we need to, in this ministry here, now and as long as we're involved here, to keep the central focus, Christ and Him crucified. Now, you can play all the games you want in your mind and think, well, we could never drift away from that. Well, you don't know what's in your heart. We can drift away from that next week or by the end of this message. You can go out of here and drift away from that and get distracted by everything else, even though it's in the Bible, in reference to your priorities and your focus. You can get off track. Christ-centered, gospel-focused. We got to do this. If I get off track, you guys need to remind me. And if you guys get off track, I'll remind you. So what I was getting at earlier, I didn't finish, As we're dealing with people, the subject will come up of the sovereignty of God. That's the big heading under predestination versus free will. The sovereignty of God will come up, right? And then, of course, the sovereignty of God and salvation. Well, the sovereignty of God is an essential attribute. If you take the sovereignty of God away from God, you have an idol. That's elementary. Anybody that says otherwise, they're a fool. I don't care how famous the preacher is. I don't care if he's written systematic theology books and he claims to be a five-point Calvinist. If he says you can believe in a God that is not sovereign, he's an idiot. Don't listen to him. Expose him as often and as loud as you can. So it's an essential attribute of God, sovereignty. When I was lost, I believed Armenians were lost because of that one point there. And I wasn't even converted, and I knew that. And a lot of unconverted people will agree and embrace that idea, that if you take God's sovereignty away, just like anything else, you take His holiness away, you take His justice away, He's not God. He's an idol of the imagination. But as you are talking to people about different things, they usually are intrigued and they'll ask you questions. But usually it's not about the gospel. Usually it's about things connected to the gospel. Like the sovereignty of God by itself is not the gospel. I think everybody would agree. But of course, if you take the sovereignty of God away, you won't have a gospel. I don't think that's a contradiction. I think most of you know what I mean. We have to have a certain God in place that's the author of this gospel. But when people are talking to you about the gospel, they know that we teach something different than the rest of the religious world. I mean, it's going to come out pretty quick. And they'll want to gravitate toward certain issues that you could sit and spin your wheels in forever. But we want to get to Christ and Him crucified as quick as possible and connect everything else to that. The sovereignty of God is connected to Christ and Him crucified. In this video, it was brought up in a conference. They have these people, they'll stand up. Sometimes they have a panel. This was just a single famous Calvinist fellow answering questions. And the young boy stood up and asked the question, If Arminianism, and we here loosely define that, I do, as conditionalism. Conditionalism existed before Arminianism. Conditionalism was in the earliest of time. Conditionalism was there. We see it in even the typology of Adam covering himself with fig leaves. It's the first hint we get of it. And then we see Cain offering the fruit of His works, rather than the blood. So you start to see it early on, and that's connected to, that error is connected to Satan's, hath God said, believing Satan's lie, promoting the false gospel of through conditions you can reach a certain height without grace alone and Christ alone. But the subjects will come up concerning, again, predestination versus free will, and then it'll drift over to, and this is the part I want us to understand, it'll drift over to, and I'm gonna, for lack of a better phrase, I'm gonna use the phrase mechanics. For lack of a better phrase, I'm gonna just say mechanics. The mechanics of conversion. Very important, but we can't let that eclipse Christ and Him crucified. Conversion is the fruit and effect of Christ and Him crucified. But what we don't want to do, and I detected this with somebody recently. I was talking to them around a bonfire. They came to the realization that the mechanics of conversion, that they realized that they were shut up to, that they couldn't do anything. And that's a good place to be. Intellectually, they understand. that they can't do anything, they're unable, talk about depravity, which involves this text that we read here, four things that are negative in the natural man. So they got to that point, and it was like, all right, so now what? Well, for me, the now what was pointing them back to Christ and Him crucified as our only hope. but they wanted to talk about the mechanics of it. Well, if I'm dead in my trespasses and sins, how can I hear or understand about Christ and Him crucified? You just keep talking about Christ and Him crucified, and you expand that, and you open all these aspects and facets about Christ and Him crucified, because that's the only thing that will aliven them by the power of the Spirit, is the Gospel. So we keep driving them back to Christ and Him crucified. If they're worried about, what if I'm not one of the elect? It's none of your business. You have no idea. I don't know. You don't know. Nobody knows but God. Christ and Him crucified. Keep driving them back as if there are some kind of preconditions to get to conversions. No. The only thing you need is to hear Christ and Him crucified over and over and over until God makes it real or until, as we know, God does use that same message to harden the hearts of people. It does one of two things. So in this text here, what I want us to look at is how that we can miss the gospel when we claim we're evangelizing. And it's getting sidetracked by, again, the mechanics of how a sinner is saved versus what it took, the work that it took to save a sinner. There in Romans 3, look at verse 10, and the first line is the most important part of these verses that I'm talking about here in Romans 3. The first line, this is it right here. As it is written, there is none righteous, no not one. Total depravity, it's a big doctrine. We could do a 50-part series on total depravity. I'm not kidding you. I think some of you could talk for hours about total depravity, bring out all the different facets of it. There's a lot of facets to it. We know as far as we've talked about the ground of condemnation in total depravity is the imputation of Adam's sin. That's why we are depraved. We are not sinners because we commit sins. We're sinners by nature, and then we commit sins. Let's give credit to the ground, which is imputation of sin, and what flows from that, the fruit of that is the sin nature. And then what flows from that is the actual committal of sins out of the wicked heart. Having said that, when we're viewed by God, At any time, if we are not justified, there's only one thing left. We're not righteous. We are void of the righteousness that God demands for acceptance. Here's where we go to the gospel. Let's remember, what does it say? Hopefully you got this memorized. Romans 1, 16 and 17. Paul says, for I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it, the gospel, is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes. Verse 17, for or because therein, therein that gospel, the one that's the power of God unto salvation, the righteousness of God is revealed in it. Here's where it shows our lack right here. There is none righteous. We need to know about if we are going to know the gospel, the vital ingredient that if you take away, you don't have a gospel, the vital ingredient is the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel. And as a reminder, the book of Romans set that whole book up by putting that up front, and they talk about it the rest of the book, the righteousness of God. So you get to the part where they're in the gospel, Romans 1.17, they're in the gospels, the righteousness of God revealed. What that revelation is, and it's in, for us, English, we have it written on the pages. It's revealed to where we can read about it, say the words about it, but it's going to take the conversion to open up an understanding so that we can embrace it. But that righteousness revealed throughout the rest of, especially Romans, and many other, all other books in the Bible, is this righteousness that Christ came to establish As it says in Daniel, he brought in an everlasting righteousness. It talks about establishing a righteousness here in Romans. But it is by the merit of Christ, by who he is and what he did, to present to God this gift of righteousness that is given to us so that it is imputed to our account. The merits of Christ are imputed to our account so that we may be accepted to God based on what Christ did for us in our place, in our stead, as our representative. And of course, those details about what he did is the gospel ministry. That merit that's gathered up by Christ and earned or established and given That merit is accepted to God as the value of the whole person in the work of Christ. That is totally outside of ourselves. It is objective, outside truth that doesn't change. It's not a subjective thing that we work up in ourselves. It's not even the work of the spirit in us, what God enables us to do, then we fulfill certain conditions. But that righteousness that Christ has established and merited, and when it is given to the believer, God judges the believer to be perfectly righteous. God makes that judgment. And he does that, and this is what we'll be looking at next week in part two of last week's message. But he does that in a just way that's faithful to his own character, so that he can be looked at as both a just God and a savior. In other words, he doesn't cheat. He doesn't let things slide. Law is satisfied. Justice is satisfied. That's taken care of. So that righteousness meets the standard, in other words, of his inherent essential attribute of righteousness. So when it says the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel, it's not saying the attribute of God's righteousness absolutely considered, because that is not in and of itself good news. It's actually scary to the to the sinner, because he knows that righteousness demands perfect obedience. We don't have it. But the good news of the gospel, which is the power of God and the salvation, is that Christ has established a righteousness that can be given to the elect sinner so that he can be accepted. And so it will meet the standard of God's essential attribute of righteousness. I mean, that only took a second to explain, but you could talk forever about it. And that's what we do in the ministry. That's what it's all about. the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel. But this first point here, there is none righteous, no, not one. By legal standing and by nature, everybody coming into the world is void of that righteousness that is the righteousness of Christ's standard of righteousness, of who he is. And if we're not like Christ, we haven't met the standard. Remember, God's holiness, it demands that we be absolutely perfect all the time, every time, nothing messed up in our past, nothing messed up in our future. Perfection, that's what God demands. There's only one place to get that, and that's where we glory. God forbid that I should glory except in that one place to get that, in Christ, by who he is and what he did. So there is the gospel stressing and focusing of what this line here in this verse means that's connected with this doctrine of total depravity. Where do we get this righteousness? We're not righteous, the first question. Where do we get it? How do we get it? Is it something inside? We already know that. By no deeds of the flesh shall anybody be justified. None of the deeds of the law, nobody can be justified. then the next step would be okay if we if it's outside ourselves how do we get it a lot of times you'll have a cooperation a combination and it'll end up being it'll end up violating Romans 11 6 that says then if by grace It's no longer of works. Otherwise, grace is no more grace. You've cancelled out grace when you add little dashes and sprinkles even if it's a mist that you cannot see. Or don't even know you're doing. That's no excuse. Ignorance is no excuse. God is so strict He doesn't play the ignorance is an excuse game. This is God that's faithful to his character. He's going to override ignorance in God's people anyway because he's going to give them the gospel, the knowledge of the gospel. So there's no acceptance of substandard gospels. In this video that I listened to, what really bugged me about it was it promoted an existence of a substandard gospel. of a God that would accept something less than Christ in Him crucified, finished, effectual, sufficient, accomplished. So there it is. None righteous, no not one. That should drive our minds to the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel, which is the power of God and salvation. By the way, that is why the gospel is the power of God and salvation, because it has the righteousness of God revealed in it. If it didn't, it would not be the power of God and salvation. There would be no salvation and no gospel. Verse 11, there is none that understandeth, and there is none that seeketh after God. So when we always talk about this, I do, I bring up four nones, four universal nones. And they're listed in these two verses. Now the second two, for example, none that understandeth, none that seeketh after God, really as important as they are, they focus on what I had mentioned earlier sort of the mechanics of salvation it is how that they can't come to God right if they if you don't understand you can't come to God so right away our minds should go to instead of like some of these goofballs saying okay so you got to be a you got to have an encyclopedic knowledge of systematic theology isn't it getting old hearing that Our minds should go to. We need knowledge of this gospel. And we see throughout that God's going to give it to his people. People can debate all day about what that knowledge is, how much or how less. I don't care. It doesn't matter. But some people just outright reject that truth that you have to have knowledge. It's not a condition. It's the fruit and effect of the work of God in a person. And this is life eternal, that they may know you, the only true God. Have fun getting around that. But anyway, these two things. There's none that understandeth. Now, when you're preaching the gospel, that might come up, somebody might come up, you believe that man is dead, and he has no idea, no understanding, so if that's going on, how am I gonna, why am I even listening to you, you know? They're pulling you back into the mechanics a sinner's activity, even if it's God that changes that activity, bring them to Christ, they're pulling you in that direction to get you in a debate. And again, it goes back to predestination and free will. It goes back to spiritually dead versus regeneration. The gospel is not regeneration. The gospel is the personal work of Christ, which affects regeneration. Keep driving them back to the cross of Christ. There's none that seeketh after God. There's your free will. There's your free will argument right there. Free will versus, you know, inability. Again, these things are important. We can talk about them all day. They are important. But we must know that if we are going to preach the gospel, we need to go for in the direction of Christ and Him crucified. And bring these things up in light of that. Because we can talk about these things all day. And we can change people's minds on those two points. There's none that understandeth. I think that I can wrestle with somebody on that for hours and days or weeks or whatever and convince them, show them, I mean, it's in plain English. We could get them to concede some. And they'll say, okay, okay, I agree. Have they believed the gospel? No, because we haven't gone to Christ and Him crucified. We've got to bring them to the gospel. Now, having said that, These other things, we're gonna talk about them some more. There's none that understandeth, and there's none that seek after God. We're not done talking about them here. We're gonna talk about them. If God gives us weeks and years to live, I'm not done talking about them, because they're important to talk about, but only in light of Christ and Him crucified. So do you see so far, in my mind at least, there's a division. And you can get even distracted there. None righteous. You can talk about the evils of man, you know, both self-righteous and immoral. You can get bogged down in that. And those are truths. They need to be talked about. But there's something missing in your mind. If you claim you're evangelizing, the number one thing you go for is the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel. People by nature don't have it. That's what they need. Along the way, as you're talking with that, these other issues can come up, no problem. We're not compromising or sweeping anything on the carpet. We're trying to prioritize and focus on what needs to be focused on. And as we said, we can deal with those other issues. Now, the last one there is just talking about none good, no, not one, none that do with good, which is a performance. And you can really tie that last one in with the first one. And what I like to do with those two, with none good and none righteous, is talk about man's state or his position as God looks at him. It's going to be one of two things. It's going to be condemned or justified. It's going to be righteous or guilty, right? When we, for example, turn to Romans 5, it's just right around the corner there. Romans 5, and I want us to see a couple things, and this text is familiar to you also. Verse 12, I want to read through the end of the chapter. I don't want to spend too much time, and I'm doing none of this with any notes, which is It makes me nervous doing it. I don't like doing it. But it's something that I couldn't get out of my head. I could not not do this message this morning. I just had to get this out. Verse 12, Wherefore, as by one man, sin entered into the world. We know that's Adam. Who, by the way, God had established Adam to be the one representative of the whole human race. In systematic theology terms, they call that him being the federal head and representative. I don't have any problem using that language, as long as we know what it means. Now, let me say this before we go any further. Now, I think Adam's representation is of the whole world. I really do believe that. But I think contextually, in Romans 5, I think it's just talking about the elect as Adam represented the elect, even though he represented everybody. I think it's in its context, and sometimes we can deal with that later. I think it's just talking about the elect here that were in Adam before they were in Christ, judicially. Wherefore, by one man sinnered unto the world, and death by sin. And so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. For until the law, sin was in the world. but it was not imputed where there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is a figure of him that was to come. So people were counted sinners even though they did not physically commit this very same sin of eating that fruit. They were still made sinners. They didn't have that fruit in their hand with that bite out of it. But yet when they were born, they were declared to be sinners based on the representation of Adam. Verse 15. But not as the offense, so also is the free gift. For if through the offense of one, Adam, many be dead, much more the grace of God and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, has abounded unto many." Referring to the elect. And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift, for the judgment was by one to condemnation. But the free gift is of many offenses unto justification. So it's setting up the two representatives. The whole human race is represented by Adam, and every one of them is a sinner because of Adam. and the elect are represented by Christ and they will be justified in the representative of Christ. Verse 17, for if by one man's offense death reign by one, Adam, more they which receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ. Therefore as by the offense of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation, Now, stop there. Isn't it clear what we've said in weeks and years past that the ground of condemnation is by one man, Adam. That's the ground. Out of that, the fruit comes, the nature. And then out of the nature comes the actual committal of sins, which men are, it's piled onto their account after they commit those sins. So it establishes the ground, this chapter here, 12 through 21, establishes the ground of both. Both sin and justification. And the ground in both instances is legal. Legal imputation. Legal life, legal death. Death in Adam, life in Christ. Now, last week we talked about the power of God, which has to do with His ability and His authority, which has to do with His rights connected to His sovereignty. In other words, does God have the right to do this? God set it up this way. Are we going to reply against God in the way He set this up? How can you? Yeah, I'm not going to complain about how God set this up because my answer is in here. Christ is my representative. and my substitute and my federal head. If it wasn't set up this way, it wouldn't work. Do you want to be put on a fresh, even playing ground? Do you think it'd be fair if everybody comes in the world and God says, okay, I'm going to run this test on everybody. I got to make it fair, right? I'm going to set this up to where everybody gets a chance, just like Adam. We'll see how this works. Go ahead. You got a little probationary period. Is that what everybody wants? You think you're gonna, first of all, you think you're gonna perform like Adam did when you're born with a sin nature? You think you're gonna do any better than Adam and Eve did? Verse 18, therefore as by the offense of one, judgment came unto all men unto condemnation, even so, in like the same manner, in other words, so by the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all men unto justification all men that are justified not all men without exception all the elect it's talking about because we know everybody in the world is not justified right that's pretty easy for by one man's disobedience verse 19 many were made sinners made sinners kind of reminds me of second Corinthians 521 right Christ being made sin who knew no sin so that we might be made the righteousness of God in him But so by the obedience of one, many shall be made righteous. Moreover, the law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." See the mathematical hyper language? This has to do with being hyper. Hyper grace, right? It's right here. It's proof text. hyper Calvinist hyper grace God uses hyper language that as sin had verse 21 as sin hath reigned unto death even so my grace reign through the righteousness unto eternal life how by Jesus Christ our Lord now bring you through there to to bring up a point Romans 5 12 through 21 is talking about legal standing there's nothing in here about the work of the Spirit in us, it's legal. Legal condemnation versus legal justification. And why I say that is not to discount the work of the Holy Spirit in us. We know we have to have that or we're not going to understand the legal. We know the Holy Spirit testifies of Christ, that's what His office is, his task is to testify of Christ, gladly so. Christ has all preeminence, so the Spirit's going to testify of Christ. So he's going to testify of the work that Christ did for the elect. That's priority in the Spirit, of showing the sinner. So in other words, when we step up to judgment, and it's said that judgment was delivered over to Christ, because Christ has all preeminence. He is even going to be the one that judges. As sinners stand before Him, or humans that are passed on stand before Him, Christ is He looking and saying, is He regenerated or not? I'm looking for regeneration. No! This doesn't even talk about regeneration. Will a person have been regenerated before that point, before that day of judgment? Oh yeah, of course. Except a man be born again and cannot see the kingdom of God. But judgment is not about regeneration. It's about justification. That should set our priority right there. Justification is about Christ in Him crucified. That produced the work of the Spirit in us that we still do talk about. but we don't get bogged down so much in that as to distract from the message that will get people, if they believe it, to Christ and Him crucified. It's just a matter of priority. It's not splitting hairs. It's very, very important. I think the more you maybe go through your experiences of both reading the scripture and dealing with people and pay attention to the distractions and how that Satan will distract us from doing what we're supposed to do by maybe getting us bogged down in fine details of arguments with lost people about how the Spirit operates rather than talking about what Christ has finished. I know some people listening are going to really misunderstand that. I understand that. I understand their misunderstanding. They're not listening if they're misunderstanding. They haven't heard anything yet that I've said if they misunderstand that. So I'm taking the risk. I'm a big boy. I'll put up with people talking, saying, Scott is rejecting the work of the Holy Spirit in us. If you believe that, then you just haven't heard a word I said. So we understand it's a matter of focus and priority. In other words, you have this person that you care for and you love, say it's somebody really, really close to you. What they need is Christ in him crucified. It's what they need to hear. As clear, as bold, as loving, as many times as possible, Christ in him crucified. So the gospel is what Christ did for the elect, And this other thing that might get us distracted and bogged down so that we might not get back to Christ and crucified is what the work of the Spirit did in a sinner. I mean, we could use conversion. But the conversion experience, right? And when you hear talk about People run to, what about the thief on the cross? They'll talk about the thief on the cross, you know, and they wanna say, they wanna demolish everything that we stand for about concerning Christ and Him crucified. And they'll come with a head full of assumptions. The thief on the cross, they'll say, was absolutely ignorant. Now, I'm not gonna take time to preach a message on what did the thief on the cross know, but we know he knew the gospel. We know that he had a lot of information from Christ right next to him that was telling him gospel things. He was seeing the gospel taking place before his very eyes, and he was having commentary by Christ. And we don't know that that thief didn't hear Christ himself preach in the city before that. But in order to promote ignorance as humility, and to tear down doctrine and theology, people want to say, the thief on the cross didn't know anything. Therefore, that's the standard, and now nobody has to know anything. Know how. I just threw a little hillbilly in there. But you understand, that's a poor example to go to. I've heard a couple good messages on what the thief did know, and some of the stuff, when you read the text, it's just plain in front of your eyes, you're just not seeing it. Some of the statements that were made by Christ, by the thief, and tied to some other texts. So in conclusion, I just wanted to just kind of just rehash. This is a training issue. You know, I've known about this for a while, but there's times where I kind of like get this idea. I've got to tap myself on my shoulder and say, you remember this issue? Don't you keep seeing it? Don't you keep seeing even some of your friends making the same mistake online or whatever? And sometimes I will get tempted to be pulled into getting off focus of Christ and Him crucified. And talking about other things in the scripture, which is okay, but don't get distracted from Christ and Him crucified. Everything must run through that funnel and filter of the gospel. Even if we talk about practical matters, whether it be obedience, whether it be marriage, whether it be the Lord's Supper, Baptism anything we talk about must be talked about in light of the gospel but when you Bring it into okay now now my purpose is evangelism It better be there there if it's not there in that you are wasting your time You're doing what I did when I was lost you'll go you'll start debating people just for the sake of debating for sport and It won't accomplish anything If you're really off, it'll make you feel proud because you defeated an intellectual argument that had nothing to do with the gospel. We've got to focus in on the gospel. Christ and Him crucified, everything else connected to it. Any questions or comments? Was that coherent? I didn't use any notes, but I don't know. didn't have an outline or anything. What I'll do is this video I was talking about I will try to find that link and put it on the church page so you can hear the video too that kind of got me stirred up. To me this issue is so important the doctrines of grace in relation to the righteousness of Christ. No questions or comments?