Romans chapter 3, I want to read to you again part of the passage that we read earlier in our responsive reading. This is, how can we say it, this is the heart and soul of what the gospel is all about. Romans 3, beginning in verse 21. We'll read down through verse 28. Romans 3, 21 through 28. Paul writes, but now the righteousness of God without, that means separate from, apart from the law, is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe. For there is no difference, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are passed through the forbearance of God, to declare, I say at this time, His righteousness, that He might be just, and the justifier of him who believeth in Jesus. Where is boasting, then, It is excluded by what law of works? Nay, but by the law of faith. Therefore, we conclude that a man is justified by faith without, apart from, separate from the deeds of the law. Last week, we took a long look at God's diagnosis of our condition, and it was not a pretty picture. I had a lot of people ask me what had been the reaction of people last week of being compared to cockroaches and fire ants. Well, I've had a lot of reaction, a lot of protestations, mainly from the cockroaches and the fire ants. You know, there is that line in Watt's famous hymn, Alas and Did My Savior Bleed, where modern versions change it for such a worm as I to such a sinner, such a one as I, sinner such as I. And some feel like that is a terrible thing to change those words because people don't like being called worms. I think it's probably because the worms started protesting that they didn't like to be called sinners. Because as lowly and as vile as a worm might be, there's one thing a worm is not. He is not a sinner. He is not under the wrath of God. He has not lifted up his soul to rebel against his sovereign. He's doing exactly what his Maker designed him to do, intended for him to do, and that's more than you can say for me and you. And so I suspect it's from howls of protest from the worms that the words were changed to sinners such as I. Our diagnosis, as I said, is not pretty. Our corruption, if we were to think of it as a disease and the doctor holding up the x-ray or looking at the MRI explaining it to us, our corruption is absolutely universal. Not one of us is accepted. There's none righteous. No, not one. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God, as we have just read. Our corruption is total. You recall that in the closing verses that we looked at last week, Paul speaks of almost every aspect of our life that sin has infected and affected. Our minds are filled with filth. Our lips utter lies. Our hands steal. Our feet go astray. eyes lust our ears yearn to hear slander and gossip and oh you say but you know the heart's still good again you know we get these people that go on a killing spree kill 15 20 people and then they get their mother on the news and she says yeah but he's a good boy at heart well no he's not he's a murderer at heart Our Lord said that it is out of the heart, that the heart is our problem, it is out of the heart that flow things like murder, adultery, fornication, thievery, lying, blasphemy. We are, to put it in modern-day lingo, bad to the bone, inside and out. And God is not neutral. And God is not happy. God is infinitely holy. He revolts, is infinitely disgusted. Oh, you say that description of me like a cockroach, how disgusting that vile, lowly creature is. My friend, surely God is far higher than you, than you are above a cockroach. And you are infinitely more as a sinner, disgusting to the nature, the holy nature of Almighty God, than the filthy cockroach is to your sinful nature. You understand? You say, well, couldn't you have sugar-coated that a little bit? It was sugar-coated. I can't express with my words the revulsion, the indignation that God sees when He sees sin. It is absolutely abhorrent to his holy nature. It disgusts him. He is infinitely indignant towards the unrightness of sin, because all sin at its core is rebellion against the throne rights of Almighty God. It is basically saying to God, who do you think you are? I'll let you sit up in heaven. I'll let you pretend that you're God. I'll even bow my head and say a few words and dip my hat to you as long as you won't act like God. As long as you don't try to tell me what to do, I'll give lip service to you. But don't you dare get into my space. In other words, God, if you'll just not be God, I'll let you be God. You can be my God. Well, that's mighty, mighty pleasing. That's something. You will let him be God as long as he doesn't offend you, as long as he lets you do what you want to do. Well, folks, it just doesn't work that way. He is the maker. He is our sovereign. And he is infinitely disgusted. And the scripture speaks of, as we saw last week, his wrath. His wrath is revealed from heaven. The gospel revelation begins back there in chapter 1 verse 18 with a revelation of God's wrath upon sinful man. We are described by Paul in Ephesians as, by nature, the children of wrath. Paul says in Colossians, we do those things which bring the wrath of God upon men. And here in Romans, as we look back into chapter 2 and verse 5, he describes lost man as collecting wrath. It's like water. You know, the earthquake in China a couple of weeks ago, they had these landslides that began to dam up the rivers. It sort of started forming these lakes and the Chinese army went in and started dynamiting some of them because what's happening is all that water that usually would flow down the river is now collecting behind this landslide. lake that was formed from the earthquake, and if they don't dynamite it, if they don't relieve it, all of a sudden that dam will break and drown everybody below the dam. That's the description Paul gives us in chapter 2 of a lost man who is collecting the wrath of God. It's like damming up a river and the wrath of God is collecting. If you want to collect something, collect stamps. Don't collect the wrath of God, that it is like it is damned up. It's not going away. It is being reserved to a future day, a day of wrath, a day of judgment. If you don't believe there is such a day, you better read the book of Revelation. There's a lot about Revelation I don't understand. I'm the first to admit it. But there's one thing that runs through the book of Revelation is that there is a day of wrath and vengeance coming when God is going to enter into judgment with sinful man. He's going to call man to account. Oh, the descriptions. We like to think General Jesus meek and mild, but the descriptions we have of Christ there is of a one who presses, treads the wine press. who thrusts in his sickle and gathers the grapes, gathers them to a place called Armageddon, where mankind is gathered together as in a vat, and the Son of God, Jesus, tramples them till the blood flows out, till the horses bridle in hype. That's the gentle Jesus meek and mild, folks. There is a day of judgment coming. Judgment has been committed into the hands of the Son of God. Sin will be dealt with. Houston, we've got a problem. Earth, we've got a problem. Center, you've got a problem. You are sinful through and through. And God is infinitely angry at sin. That's your problem. Your problem's not your poverty. Your problem's not your rheumatoid arthritis. Your problem is the wrath of God. And if you think that's a little problem, look carefully, look closely at the description of hell For there we see the punishment that comes as a result of that wrath. Punishment that is everlasting fire. The fire of God's wrath burning, consuming sin forever and ever. You've got a problem. But, amazing. God has made my problem His problem. That's the simplest definition of the gospel, the good news. As bad as the bad news is, as difficult, you say, well, how in the world are we going to solve this dilemma, this problem? How am I going to get out of this fix? I can't quit sinning, and God can't stand sin. You understand the problem? He's not going to change His mind, and I'm not going to change mine. You say, well, I can repent and straighten up and fly right. The best thing you've ever done has enough sin in it to send you to hell for eternity. The best thing. You've got a problem. But, oh, the gospel is that your problem God has made His own. And you know how He did it? He did it with His Word. No sooner had man fallen into sin that God spoke. He spoke a promise. That one, the seed of the woman, is going to come into this mess, and it's just like you on your word processor hitting the undo button, you know, the little undo thing. Put it back like it was. He's going to come, this seed of the woman, going to crush the head of the serpent, and he's going to undo what the serpent has done. In the Garden, in Genesis, we see paradise lost. In Revelation, we see paradise restored. What was lost in Genesis will be regained by mankind, and it will be regained through this seed of the moment. A little later to Abraham, he speaks again. He promises Abraham, no, to use Hebrew's terminology, he swears to Abraham. You know the argument there in Hebrews, he didn't just say it, he swore it with an oath to Abraham saying, surely, blessing, I will bless thee. And because he could not swear by anything greater than himself, he swore by himself, says the writer of Hebrews. He turns this into an oath. I will bless the nations of the earth through you, Abraham. I will bring blessing rather than cursing. And he swears that he'll do it. He swears. He promises. David, that a seed of his will reign on his throne forever and ever over a redeemed people." God has entered into the problem, and he has made my problem his problem. He didn't have to. He could have just washed his hands of the whole stinking bunch of us. But he in grace and in mercy has entered into the picture and he has linked the veracity of his word and of his promise with the fulfillment of redemption, with the solving of this sin problem. You see that? He has tied his own name, his reputation, his character, to the solution of this problem. He didn't have to make my problem his problem, but he did. And in these verses, we begin to see how this problem, this sin problem. Now, let me try to hasten and say that some of you are saying, oh yeah, God's got a big problem. He's got to justify himself for putting everybody in hell. My friend, that's not a problem. That is no problem at all. Your sins cry out for judgment, and He is more than ready to judge sin. That's not the problem. The problem is, how is God going to put a fellow like me, who deserves to be in hell, in heaven, and do it justly? Do it without violating His own holiness. How is He going to do that? I'll tell you one thing. It's not going to be done, as Paul has already pointed out to us by what he calls here the deeds, of the law. What does he conclude about the law? Look in Romans 3, verse 20. Well, let's start in verse 19. Romans 3, 19. What's the purpose of the law? Is it a shovel to allow us to dig our way out of this problem? Is that what the law is? Now, he says, we know that whatsoever things the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped and all the world become guilty. before God. Well, the shovel's just digging me deeper, isn't it? The law is not helping me out. The law is showing me the depth of the hole I'm in. Verse 20, Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight. For by the law is not the remedy for sin. By the law is the knowledge of sin. And so one thing is clear, and Paul has made this very clear, if I am just in the sight of God, if I am acceptable, right in God's eyes, it will not be through the works of the law. For the law merely amplifies my sin. How will it come? The solution. is revealed starting in verse 21, and there is a phrase there that is most important. It is this phrase, the righteousness of God. The righteousness of God. First of all, do you realize that righteousness is the commodity that we are in such great need of? You say, well, we've got these commodity problems today. We don't have enough oil, don't have enough natural gas, They don't have enough energy. Well, you've got a commodity problem, alright, but it's none of those things. The commodity that you are lacking is this thing called righteousness. To be right in God's eyes. Your rightness. Remember back again in Romans 1, 18, where we speak of this revelation of His wrath. What's His wrath being revealed against? Verse 18, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness. It's your unrighteousness that's the problem. Your lack of righteousness. You don't have any. And so the Gospel concerns the one commodity that you and I need more than any other. It is this commodity Righteousness. And notice that it's not just called righteousness, it's called the righteousness of God. It's God's righteousness. Now, why would we call it God's righteousness? How can God produce a righteousness that can be applied to me? Now notice, this is His righteousness, not mine. It is, and I'm using the words of the reformers here, an alien righteousness. You know what I mean by alien here, not E.T., but I'm talking about a righteousness that is foreign to me. It is not my commodity. It's not my production. It is the righteousness of God in that He is the source of this righteousness. He is the producer of this righteousness. He is producing it, not me. Okay? Now, the question is then, well, how can God do that? How can God, who is the Creator, render a righteousness that is owed by a creature? You're following that? How can the Creator render a righteousness that is creature righteousness? That is the kind of righteousness that we owe, right? Creature righteousness, that is what you are, isn't it? I mean, you're either creator or creature, one or the other, which class you fall into. How can the one who is in the creator class produce a righteousness that can be applied to one in the creature class? You see the problem? How can the one who is on the throne, the king, render a righteousness that is owed by man, the subject? You see the problem? Or, to put it another way, how can the one on the throne who is the law-giver render obedience to the law that's owed by the subject of the law, the one made under the law? Perhaps the force of all this just doesn't quite hit you, but how can God produce a righteousness that can in any way, shape, fashion, or form be applied to me? He's not in my position. He's not the one who is subject to the law. He wasn't made under the law. He's the lawgiver. So how can his actions as the lawgiver ever be applied to me, the one who's supposed to be the law keeper? You see the problem? And the solution is this thing we call the incarnation. This mystery whereby God the Son, true God of true God, is made man. He doesn't just put on a man suit. You know, He's really Superman, but He just dresses like Clark Kent. He's just not wearing a man suit. He truly takes upon Himself our nature. Oh, do you understand that what that means is is that God, who is the Creator, has become the creature. Now, He doesn't cease being the Creator, you understand. You can't quit being God. But He can take upon Himself our nature so that He truly now lives, not as God, but as the creature, as the servant, as man. You remember Paul writing in Philippians 2 that he was equal with God, but he thought it not a thing to be grasped or held on to, that he inked himself, he became in the form of a servant, found in fashion as a man, he humbles himself. The point is, he's not acting. He truly has become man, and so he has taken our place. God has come down to us to live as a man among us. And as a man, he is subject to God the Creator, like you and I are subject to God the Creator. As a man, he's subject to God as his King, as you and I are subject to God as his King. As a man, he is subject to the law, like you and I are subject to the law. Because he became man, he can owe what we owed. I can tell by the look on your face, you're not blown away by that thought. You ought to be. Because he became man, he can owe what we owe. He can never do that as God. But if God takes on the form of man, embraces our nature, becomes one of us, now He's subject to the same things we're subject to. The same demands of a righteous life that are upon you and me are now upon Him. He can owe what we owe. And the righteousness that He produces as perfect man is that very righteousness we did not produce. It's the very one that we need. That's one of the reasons Paul describes Jesus in Galatians as one who was made of woman, born under the law, born subject to the same law that we are subject to. As a man, as perfect man, he lives perfectly in harmony with that law. Jesus had an audacity about him, for he would challenge his opponents in a way that I wouldn't challenge my friends. He said to his enemies, which of you can convince me of sin? I'm ready to take on all comers. Anybody who has ever seen me sin, ever seen me do anything in opposition to the law of my Father, come on, bring it on. Now, I wouldn't make that claim to my friends, let alone to my enemies. They would all be lined up. It would be take a number time. I'll be there. I can do it. I can bring a charge. I can make it stick. And yet Jesus dares the opposition to prove sin in his case, to convince him and make it stick. God himself spoke on three occasions, this is my son in whom I am well pleased. And the resurrection of His Son from the dead is God's authenticating stamp upon the life of His Son, that He's everything He claimed to be, the perfect Lamb of God, the perfect sacrifice, in whom, as Peter will point out when he's discussing this thing called redemption, this Lamb that was without spot, And without blemish and under the alloys, we know from studying Leviticus, those sacrifices, when they would bring them to the tabernacle, had to be outwardly perfect, didn't they? Couldn't have any blemishes, couldn't have three legs, couldn't have five legs, couldn't have two heads, couldn't have any superfluous parts or missing a part or two. Outwardly, they had to be the picture of perfection before they could be offered, because that's what God requires. And now Peter turns around and speaks of Christ, the Son of God, as the perfect Lamb with no blemish, no perfection. And this time it's not just outwardly. It is inwardly and of the heart that there was no fault to be found in Christ, the Son of God. He has lived the life that you and I should have lived, ought to have lived, and didn't live. He is the one man who earned life and blessing. He's the one man that death had no claim on. The wages of sin is death. And he didn't owe death a thing. He's the one man that when he died, didn't have to die. He laid his life down. And the reward of his righteousness, life, He forfeited in obedience to his father and laid down his life, what Paul calls here in verse 25, a propitiation. Oh, I hope you fall in love with that word. It is not a word that we normally use on the street. In fact, I dare say if you were at a party and used the word propitiation, everybody would turn around and look at you and scratch their head. We don't have a ghost of an idea what the word means today. And it's being expunged from most of the modern versions of Scripture, by the way, the new versions of the Bible removing this word. Boy, but it is a wonderful word. Propitiation means a wrath-averting sacrifice. A wrath averting sacrifice. You remember, that's the problem. It is the revelation of God's wrath upon man that is my problem and that Christ's death is a wrath averting sacrifice. It's propitiation. We see it back in David's day when David numbered the people, you remember? And God sent the angel to destroy Israel, and the angel is standing over Jerusalem with a sword ready to slay the inhabitants. And David went down to the threshing floor of Phila and bought it from him and offered sacrifices to turn away the wrath of God. That's a propitiation. And notice again that wrath is the fundamental concept here. It's the thing that we need to be saved from. You say, well, I need to be saved from my sin, but that doesn't carry much weight in our day because we're so self-centered that we only think of sin in terms of what it's doing to me. I need to be saved from my sin of drug abuse because, after all, it's killing me, putting me in a poor house, right? Or, at best, we think of sin needing to be that which we're saved from because it's messing up my life, my wife and kids have left me, it's tearing up society, it's hurting my next-door neighbor. If we have a little higher view of sin, it's that. But what Paul has set before us is the main problem with our sin is not the sin itself, it's the wrath of God on that sin. That you need to be saved from His wrath. And by the way, to show you, I'm not just trying to read into the text something here. Go to Romans 5. I realize we're getting ahead of ourselves. But look at verse 9. Romans 5, verse 9. I'm saying this is what Paul is saying to us. Much more than being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from what? Wrath from Him. It's the wrath of God that salvation is designed to shield us from. to satisfy, to avert. And God sent His Son to a cross to avert His wrath falling on sinners. In that death, He makes a demonstration, Paul goes on to say, of how He was able to overlook sins in the past. How in all that Old Testament age, men sinned and yet He didn't destroy them. that he is making a display of his justice. Now, what is going on here is not that God has mellowed out in his old age. You know, he used to be real strict and legal in the Old Testament, but he's gotten a whole lot more generous, a little like a big old teddy bear in the New Testament age. No, God has not changed. Neither is the gospel that God has lowered his standard. You know, he had this rather high price of salvation in the Old Testament. Hardly anybody was getting saved, so he put it on sale. He sent Jesus to the cross so he could run a fire sale on salvation. You know, get it down here, affordable. You know, put it in Wal-Mart where poor folks can shop. No, that's not the gospel. The fact is that God is ever been as strict and holy as he ever was, and the price of redemption is as high as it ever was. The difference is that the price that he demanded has been paid by another, paid in full. A satisfaction has been rendered to offended justice. Some of you kids about to get out of high school and you're applying everywhere for scholarships and most scholarships, you've got to be smart to get them. That rules most of you out. You've got to be smart. Well, suppose some billionaire dies and sets up a scholarship for dummies. No smart people need apply. This is for dummies. This is for those who don't know. This is not for those who know everything. It's for those who admit they don't know everything. This is not for those who have a merit. You know the old merit scholarships we used to call them? Then I don't even know if they're still around anymore. This is not a merit scholarship. This is a demerit scholarship. This is for those who don't know who can't do. Come one, come all. You're all welcome. In a sense, God has set up a scholarship for sinners. The righteous can apply themselves to it, but they don't because they think they know. They think they've got something. They think they've got some merit to plead. This is for sinners, for those who can't, for those who don't, for those who haven't. those who apply themselves to the person and work of Jesus Christ. And then how does this righteousness come to me? Does it just automatically accrue to my account? No, throughout this passage you have noticed that it comes by faith of Jesus Christ. It comes by faith in Him, by trusting Him, by laying hold of Him as my substitute, my sin, is reckoned counted to him, his righteousness reckoned counted to me. It's an accounting metaphor. To put to someone's credit. My sin is credited to him, his righteousness credited to me. It is by faith that, like the Old Testament worshiper came and put his hand on the head of the sacrifice that is taking his place. He identifies with that sacrifice. Basically, he's saying, him in for me. It's like in the old days, some of y'all may be old enough to remember this. I'm looking at Wayne here. May be old enough to remember this. In the days in basketball games, when you went in for somebody, you had to run over and touch them. Anybody remember that? In the old days, you just didn't run out there on the floor and the other guy come off. You go over and you touch the one that you're taking his place. In other words, I'm in for him. When that worshipper in the Old Testament laid his hand on the head of that animal, he's basically saying, this one's going in for me. And the next thing that happened is that sacrifice got his throat slit. He's in for me and judgment falls on him. And I walk away, Scott, free. I walk away alive. I walk away righteous. because this one has taken my place and borne my judgment. Well, that's the picture, but the blood of bulls and goats is not going to satisfy God. It will be His own Son that stands in my place and offers His life for my life, His righteousness for my sin. Him in for me. And how do I affect that? I lay my hands on Him. I reach out in faith and I lay hold of Him as my hope, as my righteousness, as my merit. I turn loose of everything else to lay hold of Him. And my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I am not trusting in me plus Him. I am trusting in Him instead of me, in my place. He stands condemned that I might go free. We sometimes say that Christ died on a cross to save us, and that's certainly true, looking at it from our perspective. But Paul here is really more interested in another angle on the atonement, that Christ died on a cross to enable his Father to forgive us. It's not so much what the cross did for us, it's what the cross did for his Father. That His Father again has made my problem His problem. He has ordained my salvation. How's He going to do it? It took the cross to enable God to save my soul. It took the cross to remove the barrier, the obstacle to the free will of God to let me go free. You notice I say free will of God. He's the only being in the universe that has absolute free will. All the rest of us, our wills are bound to someone or something. We serve somebody, but not God. He has absolute free will, but even the free will of God has one obstacle. How can he do this thing that he has promised, put a hell-deserving sinner like me in heaven? That obstacle is removed at the cross. Now he can, in the words of Paul in verse 26, be just and the justifier of him that believes in Jesus. These sinners who have put their faith in Christ, God can now be just and at the same time their justifier. He can look on him and pardon me. Is that what we see? He can look on him and say to me, not guilty. He can justify me. He can declare me innocent in the courts of the moral universe. Because another has taken my place and paid in full, and oh, the scandal of it! I realize that today, if you are a self-righteous person, if your hope is built on your own goodness, your own merit, you're sitting there squirming under the words that I'm saying. Because I'm telling you that no matter how good you are, you're not good enough. How righteous you are, it's not near enough. Your righteousness will put you in hell and that's it. That's the only thing God owes you for your righteousness. Hell. And you don't want to hear it. And then you hear me say that a sinner can get off scot-free. That is free justification. Let's throw everything at it. It is the free gift of His grace. A sinner A thief on a cross who never did a good thing and never is going to do a good thing. Hard to do good stuff when you're nailed to a cross, folks. You say, well, I'll serve you the rest of my life, big whoopee. How are you going to do that, nailed to a cross? Your life's just about over, buddy. You see, never has he done anything worthwhile, never will he do anything worthwhile, and he's going to get off. The Savior will say today, you'll be with me in paradise. He's going to get all scot-free! Because this is a sinner's gospel. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief. And then, it's noon. I've got two chapters to go, but I'm in no hurry. In chapter 4, Paul gives us two wonderful illustrations of justification, of what he's talking about. You say, well, I'd sure like to see this thing in action. Well, I'm glad you asked him that question, because that's exactly what he does in chapter 4. He gives us two Old Testament personages, David and Abraham. as examples of this thing that he's talking about. And since David, he gives him just a little bit of time here from all verses 6 down through verse 8. We'll take him first. Notice verse 6, he says, David also describes the blessedness of the man under whom God imputes righteousness apart from, without, separate from works. Any works. Good works, bad works. God imputes righteousness to him separate from works. And here he then quotes from Psalm number 32 in verse 7 saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. He won't do it. He will not put sin to that man's account. When he sins, his sin is not imputed to him. And notice the two sides of this thing. Notice what David is saying. God imputes to that man something that he doesn't have. What does he say in verse 6? He imputes to him righteousness, a righteousness that he didn't produce. His works didn't buy it, purchase it. He gives him righteousness that doesn't belong to him. And notice in verse 8, he does not impute sin that doesn't belong to him. He will put righteousness to my account. And I suppose most of you, if you've got a charge card, you know what it is to get something put to your account. He will not charge my sin to my account. He will charge righteousness to my account. And David lived a thousand years before Jesus. But he's saying, David spoke of this. David knew something about this. Oh, if any man ever knew anything about this, David knew. Just read his confession in Psalm 51. Because you see, David's sin wasn't some little old bitty tiny sin. It wasn't stealing the goat of your neighbors. It was committing adultery with Bathsheba, and it was murdering her husband, Uriah the Hittite. You say, well, all he needs to do is just go down to the temple and offer a few sheep and everything will be all right. My friend, under the law, there was no sacrifice for what David calls blood guiltiness. What do you do with adulterers? You stone them. What do you do with murderers? You slay them. There's no sacrifice to be offered under the law. The law holds no hope to one guilty of blood. And yet David in Psalm 51 says, God, deliver me from blood guiltiness. He is not appealing to all. He's appealing to this. That there is a way that God will not impute my sin to me, but he will impute righteousness to me. He'll put it to my account, even though I don't earn it. I haven't deserved it. And then the lengthy explanation in Romans 4 is that of Abraham. The big picture, the big example is Abraham, a picture of justification. You know that God called Abraham out of idolatry, out of error of the Chaldeans and caused him to a land that he didn't even know where he's going and Abraham obeyed and he gives Abraham a promise in Genesis chapter 12 that in you all the nations of the earth are going to be blessed. I'm going to make you, I'm going to have a blessing, not a curse, a blessing that comes on man that's going to come through you. It's gonna come to you, Abraham. And then over in Genesis chapter 15, well, a lot of time's gone by, a lot of things have happened, and Abraham still doesn't have a kid, doesn't have a boy. And God says, look up, Abraham, can you scat those stars? Well, of course you can't. And He says, that's how many of your seed, your descendants, are gonna be. As many as the stars of the sky. Now, Abraham's not father of anybody yet. And God is saying that's how many you're going to have. And the scripture says Abraham believed God. And it was counted to him. for righteousness. There's that term again. It was good to his account. It was counted to him as righteousness. His faith in this promise of God, this provision of God. And I'm convinced he didn't understand all the outs and ins of it, but he knew that God was promising that blessing was going to come through him, through one of his descendants. And he believes it. And God reckons him just and righteous. Oh, there's so much more to the story. Because a little later, well, I'll save that for a moment. Just notice at the moment that this clearly rules out law keeping and circumcision as being involved because he wasn't circumcised in Genesis 17. He's justified in Genesis 15. He wasn't circumcised in Genesis 17. So to say you've got to be circumcised to be justified just doesn't work in Abraham's case, does it? Which becomes a big argument at the Council of Jerusalem. The mechanism the means by which God is going to fulfill his word, his promise. And by the way, this still is Paul's central thought. Not how God's going to justify himself to you, but how is God going to justify himself to the moral universe? Paul says that God has obligated himself to save for himself a people. And if he's going to do it by the law, fat chance. Because the law does not bless me, the law curses me. The law says cursing is everyone who doesn't do all the law all the time. Is that right? That's what the law says. You say, well, the law will give me the means to reach heaven. I said the only horsepower the law is ever going to give you is a stick horse. If you get to heaven by the law, you're going to have to do it yourself, and there's your problem. All have sinned and come short. Furthermore, if it's by the law, then don't bring up this thing of faith, because you see, faith is putting my trust in somebody else. It's putting my trust in somebody else's righteousness, somebody else's works. The law doesn't allow me that. The law hands me that stick horse and says, get after it, boy. Go to it. Get to digging. You understand? The law offers me no hope but myself, and what hope is that? And that's what Paul is dealing with in the middle of chapter four of Romans. That if this thing is hinging on the law, God's promise is going to be frustrated and made void. Null and void. God has promised something that he could not perform. But, ah, he says, if it comes, and I'm reading here in verse 16, therefore it is of faith that it might be by grace to the end that the promise might be sure to all the seed. The only way God could make his promise sure is to produce righteousness himself. He couldn't depend on you or me for obvious reasons. So he did it himself and he gives it by grace through faith. He gives it as a free gift. That's the only way he can make his word, his promise, his oath certain and sure. Do you get it? In other words, the thing that Paul is wrestling with is God is obligating Himself to do this. How is He going to do it? How is He going to solve this problem? And the answer is, He's going to do it Himself. The very thing that you and I owe, the thing that is required of us, God will produce it in the person of His Son, and He's going to give it away. He's going to give it as a free gift. He's going to give it as a scholarship to dummies, sinners. But you say, well, wait a minute, they still got to believe to get it. Yeah, they do. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Well, what if they don't believe? What if they just all refuse to believe? It's interesting if you look at the last part of Romans chapter 4. It is an explanation of how God brought Abraham to faith. And he didn't make it easy. Abraham is now 99 years old. He still doesn't have a son. Oh, he's got one. His name is Ishmael, and God's told him that one doesn't count. It's going to be the son that comes from you, and from Sarah. She's about 89 now. Her womb dried up. Abraham, as good as dead, the Scripture is telling us. In other words, God didn't make this promise, or He didn't fulfill His word when they're young and vital and fertile in their youth. He waits till they're both as good as dead and then says, it's going to happen, it's going to happen within this year. And there's a wonderful way that Paul puts it. Abraham in verse 20 of chapter four says he staggered not. Well, sometimes we get staggered by circumstances, staggered by things that happen. In this case, it's a promise that Abraham was not staggered by this staggering promise that in his old age, in Sarah's old age, that God was going to give them a son through whom these promises would be fulfilled. He was. He didn't stagger, he says, that the promise of God through unbelief, but was strong in faith. He wasn't strong in flesh. strong in virulence, but he was strong in faith, giving glory to God and being fully persuaded that what he had promised he was able to perform. He's talking about God here. Persuaded that what God had promised he was able to perform. Therefore, it is imputed to him for righteousness. Do you understand that what's going on here is that faith is not a resting in me and my ability, it's resting in God and his ability. And how did Abraham come to faith? How did he come to believe this impossible thing God revealed to him? How does he put it? That what he had promised, he was able also to perform. Verse 21, being fully persuaded. Why did Abraham believe this impossible thing? God persuaded him. The same way you and I are going to believe the gospel, if ever we believe it, God will persuade us. God will open our eyes to see that this is an impossible thing. He's promising that a sinner like you and me is going to be one day walking in glory with God forever and ever. That impossible thing, God is able to perform. He will persuade you of it as he persuaded Abraham of it. You say, how's he going to do that? You remember John 6.44, no man can come to me, he said, Jesus sent the Father who has sent me drawing. And then he goes on to say, and they shall all be taught of God. God's going to teach them. Everyone who hears and learns of him comes to me. God doesn't have one failing student. Everybody that he sets out to teach learns the lesson. And that's why this promise can be sure. And then Romans 5, there is one more chapter. The results of this justification. Oh, it's like Paul describes it as we're standing in this field. It's like there's desert, there's heat, there's fire all around us. And then there's this spot of green and fruitfulness. It's like a pasture out here. And we, by faith, have entered into this grace in which we stand. We now have peace with God. He is at wrath. The wrath of God abides on all around us. But we have entered into this thing called grace. We've entered into the person of his son and in the shelter of his son. We don't have his wrath on us. His wrath has already fallen on his son. We have peace. We have peace with God. We're in harmony with God, we're in fellowship with God, and he goes on to talk about the things we experience in life, and none of these things can shake us from our confidence, because we realize that if God did this stuff for us when we're sinners, we're sitting pretty now. If you look at the descriptions Romans 5 has of you and me, in verse 6, when we were without strength, that's us. We were only sinners, and we couldn't change. We had no strength to do anything but sin. In due time, Christ died for the who? Ungodly. That's us. For scarcely will a righteous man die. Maybe somebody would venture to die for a good man, he says. But God commends His love toward us, and while we were yet what? Sinners! Christ died for us. Much more than being now justified blood, we shall be saved from what? Wrath through Him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled. Do you see the description? This is not flattering. This is not to puff you and I up. It is to remind us of how evil How corrupt, how vile we were, and yet in the midst of our corruption, in the midst of our rebellion, what did God do? He sent His Son to a cross to die for us. When we were enemies, when we were shaking our fist at His faith, He sent His Son to take my place. Do you see the comparison from the lesser to the greater? If he did this for me, if he had this love for me when I was his enemy, now that I'm reconciled, now that I'm his friend, now that his grace and favor is resting on me, what in the world will separate me from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus my Lord? That's my confidence. That's the hope of glory that he talks about. We rejoice, he says, in the hope of glory, the hope of one day being in heaven forever with our God. Nothing can wrestle that hope from me because it all rests not on me. It rests on my substitute. Well, I'll close reminding you that last week I told you that Tim says it's 20 minutes from the time I say close. Tim, I'm glad you're moving. You know, you've reminded me of stuff like that. It may be. But last week, you know, I told you the very fact that God's wrath is revealed from heaven against our sin. He reveals his wrath. He makes us to know his wrath. You understand what that says? That very fact is a clue that God's ultimate purpose is not condemnation but salvation. Because I don't reveal my wrath to the cockroach. I don't reveal my wrath to the fire ant. I don't get down on his level and reason with him and tell him how he's offended me and how disgusting and vile and unclean a critter he is. I could care less. about the cockroach. I do not reveal my wrath to him. I exercise my wrath. And the very fact that God has gone to the trouble to diagnose my sin, to prove my sin, to paint the picture of my sinfulness is in itself an indication that His ultimate purpose is not to drive me to despair, but to shut me up to this salvation that is only in His Son. You remember Jonah? Jonah called by God to go to a foreign land. He's the first foreign missionary. Jonah, an Israelite prophet, a Hebrew prophet, sent to Assyria, to the enemies of Israel, to pronounce nothing but a message of judgment. In 40 days the fire's going to fall and you're all going to be burnt to a crisp. And he didn't want to go, did he? He jumped on a boat heading in exactly the wrong direction and you know the story about the fish and he had a change of heart and he went and he started walking into that great city of Nineveh pronouncing judgment 40 days and you're going to be destroyed and the people repented from the king down to the cows. And God said, I'm not going to destroy them. And Jonah is as mad as a wet hen sitting out east of Nineveh under a gourd for shade, angry. Why? He's saying, God, I knew it. I knew it. I knew this is what you were up to. I knew it was not your purpose to slay them and to destroy them. If that's all it was, you wouldn't need a missionary to go, would you? You wouldn't need someone, a prophet, to go and warn them. I knew it! And the very fact that God has condescended to prove to you you're in my guilt, the fact that you and I are under His wrath, is an indication that His ultimate purpose is not destruction for you, but mercy! Why would He bother? And then, and then, take a look at that cross. Why, why would He send His Son to that place to pay that price? And may repentance fill your soul that you suddenly realize that the God whom you thought was your enemy is your only hope, that God has offered, opened a way, a way that had not been opened before, a way that is now open for sinners to come and be justified. My first plane trip, I may have told you some of this, but forgive me if you've heard this before. I was a freshman at Rice down in Houston, and I had no money. And I heard that you could buy a student standby ticket from Houston to Dallas on Trans-Texas Airways, TTA. We called it Treetop Airlines. But you could buy a student standby ticket Remember those days? For seven dollars. Round trip. Seven dollars. And they even threw in a meal. So I decided that I was going to fly home for Thanksgiving. I'd been at Rice all the first semester and been able to go home. Didn't have a way to get home, so I decided I'd heard this. I was going to cough up seven bucks and fly home. But you know how student standby worked in those days? You go and you buy your ticket and they put a stamp of the time that you bought your ticket. And if there is any seats left on the plane, They take the ticket who has the earliest time stamp, and they get the seat. Okay? That's the way it worked. This is the day before Thanksgiving. Anybody know what the day before Thanksgiving is as far as airlines are concerned? That's the heaviest travel day of the entire year. That's the day. And I was relying on a friend of mine down the hall from me to get me out to the airport. He got tied up. Something happened. He's the only one who had a car. So he took me, and by the time he got me there, I still remember walking up to the counter at TTA, telling the woman I wanted a stand-by ticket, student stand-by on this flight to Dallas, and I'm looking up at the clock, and it is exactly the time that the flight is to leave. It's like 2.30 in the afternoons when the flight departs. I look at the wall, the clock says 2.30, and this lady at the counter looked at me like I had absolutely lost my mind. And she gives me a ticket, stamps it with the time, 2.30, and says, when you miss your flight, not if you miss your flight, when you miss your flight, come back here, we'll see if we can do something for you. So I run, run down the corridor, run down to the gate, and here are about 20 people gathered around the counter. And I'm standing at the back of this crowd, and I'm asking the person there, what's going on? Well, the lady up there's collecting all the standby tickets, and she's going to go through them and see who has the earliest time. And there's two seats on the plane. There's two seats. And I'm just sitting back at the back of the crowd. I mean, I don't bother. I mean, every one of them, there's 20 of them, and their times are all earlier than mine. You understand? So I don't even bother. I'm standing at the back of the crowd, just scratching my head. One of my poor folks, they've left the farm. They've driven over to Dallas to the airport. They're expecting me to be on that plane. I don't even know how to get in touch with them and let them know I'm not coming in. And when I'm coming in, who knows? And I'm just sitting back there and there's a stewardess standing beside me. And a pilot walks in from outside and walks over to her and says in her ear, there's a storm front coming in. We've got to get out of here. Grab two people with tickets and let's go. Gospel. Because you see over there at that counter, that's where the law works. Over there is where if you've got a hope in having merit, early time, you got there early, you did what you're supposed to do. You've got any of that, you've turned your ticket in over there. You've banked your hope over there at that counter. But all of a sudden, a new way opens up. A way not for those who have early times, but anyone who has not put their trust over there can now come this way. And that lady walked over to the door, and I mean, I followed her like a shadow. And when she turned around and said, let me have two people with tickets right here, I was the first to slap my ticket in her hand. And out the door I went and never, never looked back. I don't know when it hit those folks around that table, that counter. But I think I know what they're saying. This isn't fair. And it wasn't. Oh, can you get it through your thick skull? Grace isn't fair. If you want fair, you know what's fair? Hell. That's what's right. That's what's fair. That's what's just. If you want fair, then over there at that counter is where you belong. This is grace. This is not for those that can. This is for those that can't. This is not for those who think the righteousness for those who have no righteousness. This is not for the righteous. This is for sinners. And it's a way that's open. Get in if you can. Squeeze in. You put your ticket over there, go get it. Come back over here. It's the only way you're ever going to make heaven. Let's pray. Father, open our eyes to the beauty of the gospel. What a wonderful thing this is for a sinner without hope, lost, undone, unclean, and vile. Oh, to the righteous, they turn up their nose at it, they scoff at it, they mock it, they hate it, because it robs them of their supposed righteousness and of their supposed glory. But oh, to the sinner, what a glorious sound the gospel is. that there is a way for the worst of us to be accepted with our God, that in Christ we have a door that has been opened, a door, an entrance into this place called grace, where favor rests, where blessings are poured out, where the hope of heaven is found. Lord, may we not be resting or standing on any other thing but the rock of Jesus and his shed blood. Let us not be found at legalism's counter. May we place our hope in the nail-scarred hands of Jesus Christ. It's in his name we pray. Amen.