We need it. Well, good evening. Would you please take your Bibles and turn with me to the third chapter of Romans. I want to thank the GA Planning Committee and the Arbica Administrative Council for the opportunity, the privilege of preaching the Word of God to you tonight. We have a great Savior to proclaim. And I'm very thankful and very grateful to be a herald of God's Word. Here in Romans 3, our text will be v. 19-26. Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore, by the deeds of the law, no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now, the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the law and the prophets. even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance, God had passed over the sins that were previously committed to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Let's pray. Our Father, as has already been prayed, we need not only light, we need heat. We need the Holy Spirit, not only as I preach, but for all who hear. Lord, would you quicken our hearts? Would you give us ears to hear what your Word has to say to us? Would you fix the gaze of our souls upon your Son? And Lord, for any who are here this evening who are outside of Christ, I pray that your Holy Spirit will bring that sweet conviction to show them their need of a Savior. and show them Christ, and grant them repentance and faith that they may embrace Him. For we pray it in Jesus' name, Amen. When Isaiah saw the Lord in Isaiah 6, he saw the Lord high and lifted up. And what was the attribute of God that was most obvious to him at that time? Obviously, it was God's holiness. The seraphim, unpolluted with sin, are flying with two of their wings, but they're in the presence of a God so holy and so much holier than they were that they had to cover their faces with their wings. And they have to cover their feet. And they cry out, Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of hosts, the whole earth is full of Your glory. And when Isaiah sees it, when he sees this holy God, What is the first thing that he becomes conscious of? His own unholiness and the unholiness of those who are around him. For he says, Woe is me, for I am undone. I'm coming apart at the seams. I'm coming unglued. For I'm a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For my eyes have seen the King. When he saw God's holiness, he sensed his need of forgiveness. He knew His need of redemption. The subject matter that's been assigned to me for this evening is redemption accomplished. And I can think of no better place to talk to you about that than Romans 3. In many ways, in the first three chapters of Romans, Paul is taking us by the hand as it were and allowing us in one sense to experience the very things that Isaiah experienced. To show us God's righteousness. and how it exposes our unrighteousness and our need of an alien righteousness that is not our own. And so this evening, as I seek to preach our subject under this text, I want to do so under two headings. Under verses 19 and 20, I see redemption necessitated. Verses 21 to 31, I see redemption accomplished. So first of all, redemption necessitated. As we approach Paul's words in verses 19 and 20, it's really a summation of everything he's been saying up until this point. It's a distillation of everything that's come before. In Romans 1, in verse 16, he states forth his theme. He says, I am not ashamed of the gospel. And then he goes on to tell us why he's not ashamed of the gospel. For it is the power of God unto salvation. It is God's power to deliver sinners from their sins. It is God's power to reconcile sinners to their God. It is God's power to set you free from the wrath that is to come. But then in the next verse, he answers the question of why is it the power of God unto salvation. And he says this, "...for in it," that is, in this good news of the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. As it is written, the just shall live by faith. The reason that the gospel is the power of God is because it reveals God's righteousness to sinners. And then, beginning in chapter 1, verse 18, he begins to tell us why that matters. And his point is to say this, only the righteousness revealed in the gospel will do. Nothing else can save you. And what he basically shows us from chapter 1, verse 18, all the way through chapter 3, verse 20, is that God has revealed His righteous character in a lot of other ways. But the bad news is not one of those ways can save you. None of the righteousness revealed in those things can save you. They can only condemn you. And what he basically says is that God has revealed His righteousness in three things, His creation, your conscience, and in His commandments. It starts off with creation. If you want to turn back to Romans 1, in verse 18, he says this, The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse." Paul in many ways is echoing David, isn't he, in Psalm 19. David says there, the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night brings forth knowledge. There's no speech or language, for their voice is not heard. In other words, what he's saying is, even where the Bible has not been translated into the heart language of a people, where they've never had the Word of God preached to them, where they've never had the Bible translated into their tongue, nevertheless, they have a witness. And that witness is the creation. And that creation is sufficient to condemn them to hell. That's why missions is so important, isn't it? I love what Dr. Jim Renahan says about our confession. Chapter 1, paragraph 1 opens up with the necessity of missions. Because men cannot be saved apart from the special revelation of God. They must have the Word of God preached to them. But nonetheless, what he's saying is it shows them there is a God. The creation shows there's a Creator. Design shows there's a Designer. That God exists and even tells them something of what that God is like. that He is a God of infinite wisdom and a God of almighty power. And it's enough for every man to be rendered without excuse, even if he doesn't have a Bible. But what do men do with it? What do men do with that revelation? Paul says they suppress it. They hold it down. They do one of two things, they either simply deny the existence of the Creator, and in our own day we've literally gotten this down to a science, we call it the Big Bang and the theory of evolution and things like that, to deny that there's a Creator at all. Or if he doesn't deny that there's a Creator, what he does do is man substitutes the true God for a God of his own making. a God who will pacify his own lusts. I was sitting in a place with an inmate one time who was having to go see his probation officer and I was seeking to minister to him and I heard two women having a conversation right in front of me. And this one woman was telling the other woman that she went to Alcoholics Anonymous and she liked the phrase that I will trust a God as I understand Him. And she said, you know I go to a Baptist church down the street, but I don't believe in that God of wrath and all that stuff. I invented my God. And I sat there and thought most people aren't quite that honest. But that's what we do. We pick a God, we make a God of our own choosing and replace Him. for the true God that is. And yet, God must be received as He is and as He has revealed Himself to be. So Paul tells us very plainly that though God's righteousness is revealed in His creation and it obligates us all to worship and thanksgiving and obedience to Him, nevertheless, all it can do is condemn us. It is powerless to save us. It is sufficient witness to condemn every man on earth to hell, even if they never heard the Gospel. because God's righteousness is revealed in His creation, but it's bad news for you and I because it can only condemn us. But He's revealed His righteousness in a second way, and that is to man's conscience. Paul goes on to say, Romans 2, that as many as have sinned without the law, this is verse 12, will also perish without law. As many as have sinned in the law will be judged by the law, for not the hearers of the law are just in the sight of God, but the doers of the law will be justified. For when Gentiles who do not have the law, in other words they don't have the written word of God, by nature do the things in the law, these although not having the law are a law unto themselves. who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness in between themselves, their thoughts accusing or else excusing them, in the day when God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel." In other words, if you go into some secluded country that has never been exposed to the outside world, they've never been exposed to our laws, or our Bible, or anything else, you will find that they already have laws in their culture. Laws about lying, and laws about murder, and laws about it being wrong to take another man's wife. Because God's law, His image is in man, as fallen as man is, God's image is stamped inside of him and he understands that there is a right and there is a wrong. His conscience knows it. It cries out about it. I have an older sister who was trying to witness to an atheist online, and they were having this dialogue back and forth. And the atheist finally said to her, he said, why do you keep telling me that I must become a Christian? After all, I'm a moral person. I mean, after all, I've never killed anybody. And I thought to myself, you've just proven the point. Because you've just shown, why is it that the sixth commandment is the standard by which your morality is judged? You see, every man has this within himself, and he can sit there thinking he's excusing himself, accusing himself, whatever, but on the day of Christ Jesus, the true thoughts of his heart will be revealed. And when those thoughts are revealed, it's going to be shown that he hasn't even lived up to his own standards. So again, conscience would condemn you. There's a third way God has revealed His righteous character, and it's in His holy law. It's in His commandments. You know, the Ten Commandments are not a bunch of arbitrary rules that God came up with to make sinners miserable. They are a transcript of His own character. is what God is like. And when He was on Mount Sinai saying to the people, saying audibly, speaking the Ten Commandments all He was saying was, be holy even as I the Lord your God am holy. I like to tell our congregation, I'm preaching a series on the Ten Commandments right now to our church. And what I like to tell them is when you look at those two tablets of stone you need to realize those are also sandal prints. They are the sandal prints of Jesus Himself. This is what Jesus was like. He if you read the Ten Commandments. This is His pathway of obedience. Well, up to this point, the Jews would have said to Paul, you're right, Paul. Those low-down, good-for-nothing Gentiles, they're idolatrous, they're ignorant, they don't have the Bible like we do. You're right. They deserve everything that's coming to them. We're an instructor of babes. We're teachers of the blind. Because we have God's Word. We have the two tablets of stone, and we have the Word of God in our own tongue and language. And what Paul essentially says to them is, you're more guilty than the rest. Because if the Gentile world has two witnesses against them, creation and their conscience, you've got three witnesses against you. Because you know what you're supposed to do, because it's written for you down in the Word of God, and you don't do it. You don't obey it. Then he brings this point to them in Romans 2. Verse 17, "'Indeed, you are called a Jew, and rest on the Law, and make your boast in God, and know His will, and approve the things that are excellent, being instructed out of the Law, and are confident that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, having the form of knowledge and truth in the Law. You, therefore, who teach another, do you not teach yourself? You who preach that a man should not steal, do you steal? You who say, do not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who make your boast in the law, do you dishonor God through breaking the law? For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you as it is written." What is Paul saying? The righteousness required by the law can't save you. It can only condemn you. And so when he gets to verse 19 and 20, He is really distilling this and summarizing it for us. Now we know that what the law says, it says to those who are under the law that every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before God. If you believe that your works can save you, if I can just be good enough and my good works will outweigh my bad works before the judgment bar of God and all will be well, you have not understood at all what the law requires of you. The law does not require you to be mostly good most the time. It requires absolute perfection of every action you've ever taken, every word you've ever spoken, every thought you've ever entertained in your mind, every attitude and every motive that's ever governed your heart without the slightest deviation. And yet every last one of you in this room has broken the law of God more times than you can even remember or count. We are guilty before God. We've offended a holy God. We deserve His judgment. And Paul says, you basically have the right to remain silent. You have no right to protest your innocence because you are guilty. I had a professor in college that liked to say, you know, if you feel guilty, maybe it's because you are. Verse 20 says, therefore, by the deeds of the law, no flesh will be justified in His sight. For by the law is the knowledge of sin. There are so many things to learn here. So many things to learn. First of all, for our own souls, that the law cannot save you at all. Your own works cannot save you. If salvation were by works, you would be damned. But also notice how long Paul takes developing the argument so we are thoroughly convinced that every refuge we have is taken from us. Every hope that we can save ourselves in any way, shape, or form is gone. He doesn't just do it for two minutes. He goes through three chapters making sure. The important point for us, particularly as us who preach the Gospel, is we need to realize that so often we tell the world that Jesus is the answer. And Jesus is the answer, but the world does not know what the question is. And we must teach them what the question is. Why do you need a Savior? Because you're guilty. When you come to the end of verse 20, it always strikes me that God in His justice could have ended His Bible right here. And He would have been just to have done so. He could have left us without any hope whatsoever, just waiting for His wrath to fall. But thank God His Bible doesn't end there, does it? We've seen redemption necessitated, but now I want to spend the bulk of our time talking about redemption accomplished. I think the first two words of verse 21 are some of the greatest words in all Scripture. But now. In the context, understand what Paul's saying. God has revealed His righteousness in His creation and it can only condemn you, but now. And God has revealed His righteousness in your conscience and it too condemns you, But now. And God has revealed His righteousness in His holy law, and that condemns you too. But now. But now. But now, the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, and at first you might think, oh no, Paul's told me about all these other ways God has revealed His righteousness, and now he's about to show me one more. But what he's telling us about is a new kind of righteousness that he's showing us that God has revealed in another way that does not condemn you, but that saves you. The righteousness which is the power of God unto salvation. But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed. What he means by apart from the law is this. It's not a righteousness which you must perform. It is a righteousness which God Himself provides. being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets. And I love that Paul added that in there. Because, of course, you know Law and the Prophets is verbal shorthand for the 39 books of the Old Testament. So there's two things that we should draw from this. First of all, when he says this righteousness is witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, he means it was not unknown to the Old Testament saints. It's been revealed late in time, yes, but it was not unknown to them because they wrote about it. But furthermore, it's not a righteousness that is in contradiction to God's law. There's no conflict with Jesus and Moses. Why? Because it's a righteousness that satisfies the law in every precept and in every penalty. In other words, God didn't say, well, I put my law too high and sinners can't reach it, so let me lower the standard. That is not what He did. God met the standard with the righteousness He provides. And that's the righteousness Paul is going to tell us about. Verse 22, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all who believe. It's a righteousness God gives and it is received by faith, not by your works, but by simple faith in Christ alone. It is given absolutely free, freely to us by God Himself. And notice, it's given to all who believe, and there's no distinction made, whether you're Jew, whether you're Gentile. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God being justified freely by His grace. Point being this, the Jew was a sinner, and the Greek was a sinner. Therefore, the method of their redemption and of their salvation was all the same. And the application for you and I is this, it doesn't matter what your background is. It doesn't matter what your skin color is, what your ethnic origin, or whether you're rich or poor, fat or thin, who your father was. None of that matters. If you will come to Christ believing in Him, this righteousness is yours freely to be given to you. A righteousness that satisfies God's law. Because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And I love the word, and I know you do too, justified. Verse 24, being justified freely. We use the word justified in our own language a lot, don't we? If someone accuses me of wrongdoing, I've done something controversial and someone accuses me of wrongdoing, but I think that what I did was right, I justify myself, don't I? Which means I declare the rightness of my own actions. I declare myself to be innocent and declare my actions to be righteous. But Paul is here speaking not of me justifying myself, but of God justifying sinners, which leads us to a dilemma because in Proverbs 17, verse 15, Solomon tells us, he who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the just, both of them alike are an abomination to the Lord. If I condemn someone who is innocent, I am guilty before God. But also if I justify someone who's wicked, if I declare them to be righteous, then I have a problem too. And yet, here's the Bible telling us that God Himself justifies sinners. In the very next chapter, He's going to say God justifies the ungodly. He declares to be righteous those who are ungodly. He declares to be innocent those who are guilty. How can God do such a thing? How can God be just and yet justify sinners at the same time? Well, the text tells us. First of all, in verse 24, we're justified freely by His grace. By His grace. You know, if I'm guilty of a crime and I stand before the judge, let's say I'm Let's say I'm not guilty of the crime, but I'm in charge of a crime and I stand before a judge and the judge looks at me, looks at the evidence, concludes I'm innocent and declares me innocent. He hasn't dispensed mercy to me. He's given me justice, right? It would be unjust to declare me guilty if I'm truly innocent. But if I'm guilty as charged and all the evidence points to that, but the judge chooses to show me mercy, That is mercy. Mercy is voluntary on the judge's part. Even so, God's grace is His unmerited favor. Favor I don't deserve. It's God withholding from me what I do deserve, namely hell, and giving me that which I don't deserve, namely eternal life. But how can God still be gracious to me and give me this gift and yet still be just because God can't stop being Himself. I don't know if it's an encouragement to you, it is to me. You ever meditate upon the things God cannot do? I love that. We have an omnipotent God and there's some things He can't do. He can't lie. He cannot repent. He cannot change His mind. He cannot sin. He cannot be tempted to sin. He can't tempt you to sin and He can't cease to be God. He cannot deny Himself. I think the thing that makes His holiness so extraordinary, even the Seraphim, they are holy and yet their holiness is mutable. Other angels have fallen before. They've lost their holiness. But God's holiness is an immutable holiness. He can't cease to be holy. Even so, God cannot cease to be just. He can't just overlook sin and not have His justice satisfied. And that brings us to our next word in the subject matter that's been assigned to me. Through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. What is this word redemption? What does it mean? Maybe it would be helpful to think of it this way as we think of the various words that describe our salvation. When the Bible uses the term regeneration, in some ways you might say it's the language of a hospital. God acting as our great physician does heart surgery on us. He takes out our hard heart of stone and gives us a heart of flesh that loves Him, loves His people, loves His Word, loves His ways. But it's God acting, as you will, in the role of the great physician. The term justification is the language of a courtroom where God, acting as a just judge, declares sinners to be righteous. What then is the language of redemption? The language of redemption is the language of a slave market and God acting as our liberator. That I am enslaved to sin, I love my sin and my sin pays me wages to serve it. The wages that it pays me is death to serve sin and God comes as a liberator to pay off our debts, the debts we owe to God Himself for our sins and liberates us from our sin and makes us free. So here's this regeneration paid by Christ Himself. He pays for our sins upon the cross and satisfies God's wrath. That's the word propitiation. I'm not going to steal Pastor Lindblad's thunder from tomorrow night. But the word propitiation means simply to satisfy. That God's wrath, God's justice have been satisfied by Christ on the cross on behalf of all for whom He died. When Jesus died upon the cross, as you know, He was not dying for His own sins. He was not dying for His own crimes. He was dying for the sins of His bride, the sins of His people. Our sins were imputed to Him, and the Father was punishing Him in our place for our sins, and punishing Him in our place. An old hymn that says, He paid a debt He did not owe. I owed a debt I couldn't pay, and I needed someone to wash my sins away. Christ Jesus paid the debt that I could never pay. If you try to pay your own debt to God it will take you all of eternity in hell to do it. and His wrath will never be satisfied. But Jesus upon the cross satisfied perfectly the wrath of God. His justice was absolutely satisfied by what Jesus did upon the cross. You ever think about 1 John 1, 9. We all love that verse. We confess our sins. He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. But have you ever thought about the two attributes of God that John sets forth when we're confessing our sins. If we confess our sins to God as His children, He's faithful. Now, I get that, don't you? I've been unfaithful, but my God's faithful. And that's great. But then He says He's faithful and He's just. And sometimes in my own heart, I'm thinking, well, I don't want Him to be just when I'm confessing my sins, right? I would like Him to say, I want to be merciful. Could you be faithful and merciful? Why did you not pick those two? But there's a very specific reason that John picked that particular word. Because when God forgives His children for their sins, He is being just because the price has been paid. And because of that, He can forgive us freely and be just. And that's great. That's good stuff. Jesus took our debt upon Himself. My favorite of all the sayings upon the cross has to be, it is finished. Because as you know, the word tetelestai means paid in full. My wife and I received a substantial tax reduction. A number of you have talked about having six kids. We've got six kids too. So when we file all those dependents, we get a pretty decent tax return. And we had accumulated some debts on some different credit cards. And this year when I got that paycheck back and got the deposit back from the IRS, It was such a joy to sit down, figure out exactly to the penny what I owed on those credit cards, and write the check and pay it off, send it in the mail, and then I would take a red pen out and I would take my bill and write paid in full. And that's exactly what Christ has done, but not just for a credit, not a credit card. He's done it for our sins, paid in full the full measure I deserve for my sins. He has paid it to the Father. So there is not so much as one burning ember of wrath burning against me from the Father because Jesus has quenched it all on our behalf. And so because He took it upon Him, there's this redemption. And then verse 25 says, God set Him forth as propitiation, a satisfaction by His blood through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness. Because in His forbearance, God had passed over the sins that were previously committed to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness. Now what does it mean, He passed over the sins previously committed? I believe Paul is talking about the Old Testament saints. We've already talked about the fact that this righteousness that the gospel reveals is already known and witnessed by the Law and the Prophets. But the Old Testament saints, their redemption was paid by Christ upon the cross. I knew a brother by the name of Joe Novosin. He's a pastor at Lookout Mountain. As a matter of fact, Nathan White is about to plant a church there. Joe Novosin is the pastor of the PCA church and has actually donated the building to them, he and his fellow elders. Back in 1991 when I was at Columbia Bible College I heard Joe Novosin give an illustration that has stuck with me ever since about this very point. He said that he used to take his young people in his church to the State Fair every year. And when he would do so, he'd say, maybe I've got 20 students with me. I took all the money to pay for their entrance into the gate, and I would line up the first 10 in front of me, the last 10 behind me, and I said, I want to do something specific here, and later I'm going to explain to you what's significant about it. And the first 10 who would walk in the gate would come up to the gatekeeper and say, he's going to pay. He's going to pay. He's going to pay. Joe Noveson would come up, he would pay for the 10 who went before and the 10 who went after, and the last 10 would say, he paid, he paid, he paid. And then he would teach his young people later, that's exactly how the Old and New Testament saints were saved. through the prophecies, and the types, and shadows, and the sacrificial system of the Old Testament the saints looked forward to the Messiah in places like Psalm 22, Isaiah 56, Daniel 9 and they said, He's going to pay. He's going to pay. And through faith in the Messiah who was to come they were saved. And then Jesus came, paid for the sins of all His elect past, present, and future. And now we, who are in between Christ's ascension and His second coming, look back and we say, He paid, He paid, He paid. Because the redemption of Christ availed for all of His elect. I love our Confession of Faith says this in chapter 8, paragraph 6, and today and forever." Good words and true words. Verse 26, He demonstrates at the present time His righteousness that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Our God has found a way to be just and gracious all at the same time. To pour out His wrath upon His Son that He can pour out His grace upon you and me. Two applications I want to make from our text this evening. First of all, I want to ask you, are you dressed in the righteousness of Christ? Because remember I told you this righteousness revealed in the gospel? righteousness that can save you. The righteousness the Gospel reveals is none other than the righteousness of Jesus Christ the Son of Man who obeyed every precept of God's law as a man depending entirely upon the Holy Spirit while He was on this earth. He has fulfilled God's law, it's every precept, but then He has also suffered under it's every penalty because our sin was imputed to Him. And the moment a sinner turns from his sins and puts his faith in Jesus, he Because our sin was imputed to Christ, His righteousness is imputed to us. It's what Paul means when he says there in 2 Corinthians 5, that He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us in order that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. Are you clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ? I've had the privilege over the years of working in various prisons and jails and ministering to various inmates. And when I ask them the question, how can I pray for you? The answer is almost always the same. Pray for my court date. And I completely get that. If I was in prison like they were I'd want somebody to pray for my court date too. But I've meditated upon that answer over the years and thought about what do they mean when they're saying that. What they mean is this, I have a day in court and I'm gonna stand before a judge who has authority to lock me up and throw away the key, or he's got the authority to pardon me. Please pray for my court date, pray that I'll find mercy in the eyes of my judge. That's what they're asking. Let me tell you something, you may have not committed a crime that gets you put in prison, but every last one of you has sinned against God, and every last one of you has a court date. And Jesus has already told us what He's going to say on that day. If you're standing on His right side, dressed in His righteousness, He's going to say to you, Come, you blessed of My Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. But if you're on His left hand, not dressed in His righteousness, He's going to say, Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire. Prepare for the devil and his angels. Now at Judgment Day, honesty, if you were to die right now, tell me, what would Jesus say to you? What would Jesus say to you? About 16 years ago, my son was having a birthday party, he was turning two, and I needed to get my tire changed on my truck. So I went to Bill's Payless Tire in Powder Springs, Georgia, where I live, and they were working on my truck, and there was a man there who was an African man, and his name was Jacob, and I began to talk to him and began to share the gospel with him. And I asked him, I said, when you stand before God and He asks you, why should I let you in my heaven, what would you say? And he said, well, God will let me in because I am perfect. Right then and there I knew he was a liar, right? But I started taking to the law of God to show him his sin. Have you ever lusted after a woman in your heart? No, I've always been faithful to my wife and I've never thought about another woman. I'm like, you're still lying to me. But I went through, have you ever lied? Have you ever done this? And everything kept on saying, oh no, I've never done any of those things. I'm perfect, I'm perfect, I'm perfect, I'm perfect. Kept on saying this. Finally, I looked at him and I said, let me ask you something since you're so perfect. Are you as perfect as Jesus Christ? And when I said that, his countenance fell. And he said, I'm not that perfect. And I said, that's the problem. That's how perfect you have to be. But that's exactly the righteousness Jesus offers in the gospel. It's His own righteousness that satisfies the law. It's every precept. It's every penalty for sinners. And Jesus is willing to save you. He's able to save you, whoever you are. As a matter of fact, I don't know who all of you are here tonight. I'm sure there are some lost people among us who don't know Christ. But you know, you may sit there thinking, well, you don't know how guilty I am. You don't know how wicked I've been. Well, frankly, you don't know how wicked I've been either. And you're right, I don't know how bad you are. But you know something? Jesus didn't come to save righteous people. He came to save sinners, sinners who've made a royal mess of their lives. That's exactly the kind of people Jesus came to save. And He is full of mercy and pity for sinners. And you need to repent from your sins, and not just repent from your sins, repent from your righteousness. Stop trusting your good works, stop trusting your righteousness to save you, and trust in Christ to do for you what you cannot do for yourself. He is a gracious Savior who is able and willing to save sinners. Second application I make is this, and I speak to my fellow pastors laboring in the gospel, laboring in the trenches of local church life. Remember the price paid to redeem the souls entrusted to your care. For my co-elder and I, our very favorite text about the pastorate is found in Acts 20-28. When Paul was exhorting the Ephesian elders, you know what it says. He says, "...therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God, which He purchased with His own blood." The blood of His own Son was the purchase price of their redemption. And God has entrusted you and I with the care of their souls. put it another way, He's put us in charge of taking care of His bride until He comes again. And it always struck me that there's a note of warning in Paul's words. Remember how precious this bride is, the price it cost the Lord Jesus Christ in order to purchase them and take heed how you take care of them. I suppose that I was away from my family for an extended time and for whatever reason was going to be gone for a long time and I wanted to make sure that they were taken care of while I was gone so I took some men that I trusted to make sure that my bride had what she needed and was taken care of. And so they did so and while I was gone they started to treat her cruelly. They thought, well, Jerry's away, so we'll treat her bad. We'll treat her harshly. We'll not give her the resources that she needs in order to sustain her life. In fact, why don't we try to steal her things? We'll start slipping poison into her food and taking things away from her. Perhaps one or two of the men even said, let's make her just loyal to her husband. Let's try to seduce her. And suddenly, I come back on a day they're not expecting. And I find out what they've been doing to my bride. Can you imagine the day of reckoning those men would face? Brothers, we're going to stand before Christ someday to give an account of how we've treated His bride. And so we need to be on our guard of not lording our authority over His sheep, but being examples to the flock. But on the other extreme, we need to beware of not asserting our God-given authority when we should. Sometimes the fear of man keeps us from rebuking people when they need to be rebuked, and sometimes they need to be rebuked sharply. but because we fear men and what men might think, or this person might leave if I do that or say that. And yet, if we see the sheep wandering into sin, soul-destroying sin, and we see it happening and we don't warn them, on the day of judgment we'll stand to give an account before Christ. Why did you not warn my people of the sin they were going into? We need to remember whose bride the church is. There's times we get frustrated with God's people. And sometimes in my flesh, Some of them push me enough. It's like, I think I'm just going to cook and eat that one and make them into mutton chops. Eat them in the front of the rest of the flock so the rest also may fear, you know. Now, you know you've thought that in your flesh, and there's times you've thought that in your life. But remember the great price paid for them. Remember the blood shed to redeem their souls. They are precious to Christ. We've been entrusted with a great privilege of taking care of God's Christ bride until He comes again. But I'll also give you some encouragement. I look back on my ministry and I have so many things that if I could go back in time, I would do different, don't you? Things, if I could say this a little bit nicer, do this a little bit different. We all have that. We have our triumphs and we have our failures. But I also want to encourage you, Jesus didn't only die for his sheep, he died for his shepherds too. He died to cleanse me of my sins I commit as a man, as a husband, as a father. But He also died for my pastoral sins, didn't He? And He paid for yours too. And we can take those sins and bring them before His throne and find fresh cleansing from the blood of Christ because Jesus died for His pastors. We have a good Redeemer, a great Redeemer who has come and given us a righteousness that satisfies the law. He's given us a redemption by which we are saved. Father, thank You for sending Your Son. Thank You for sending Him to die for our sins. We thank You for His perfect righteousness, and we thank You for His redemption that is a full atonement that redeems us to God. Bless us, Lord, and for any who are here outside of Christ, please. I pray that You'll make them so uncomfortable in their sins that they'll flee to Christ and find in Him an irresistible Savior. For we pray it in Jesus' name, Amen.