Returning again, as you heard, to the third chapter of John, our theme verse, our text for the entire Bible conference, John chapter 3 and verse 16. With God's Word open before us, let us join together in prayer. Gracious God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, To Thee we turn in His name, pleading the merit of His precious blood. We thank Thee that we have the warrant of the Word of God, the command of God, and the promise of God, so to come to the throne of grace, to spread before Thee the desires of our heart. We bless Thee for the promise of our Savior, We know, O God, that he's spoken particularly of the church's meetings in matters of discipline, but yet we thank thee for this universal truth, that where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. We rejoice this evening that we have gathered not in the name of a man, a preacher, a denomination or any other name given among men. We have gathered in the name and unto the name with an eye to the glory of the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we praise Thee for His promise to be in the midst of us. O Lord, by simple faith We would stand in to that promise. We would take Christ at His word. We pray now that the most overwhelming reality that will impress itself on the consciousness of every person here will be the reality of the presence of the living Christ. To this end, bless thy word. Fill me with thy gracious Holy Spirit. Words which thou thyself shalt give must prevail. Give a hearing ear, a receptive and a responsive heart. O Lord, hallow thy name. Advance thy kingdom. Accomplish thy will. Cleanse this human vessel now for the work of the ministry of the Word of God. Tear down every idol in every heart here that there may be a clear way, a highway for the Word to proceed. to storm and take the battlements of man's soul and conquer every mind and will. We pray, giving Thee our thanks, in Jesus' precious name. Amen. Some years ago on a visit to Spain, southern Spain, my wife and I went to see a rather special art exhibition. Those who know me would know that that sounds most improbable, for I am far from expert in things artistic. I think I must have been one of the original philistines when it came to matters artistic. But we went to see this art exhibition. And there we came across outstanding examples of the painter's skill. We saw pictures of various beautiful scenes, rural scenes, coastal scenes. We saw evidences of skillful portraiture. We also saw various examples of the cartographer's art with maps of Spain and of various parts of Europe and indeed maps of the whole world, all in fine detail. Now what made this exhibition so intriguing to us was this, that every picture was on a microscopic scale. In order to view these works of art, you needed either microscopes or powerful magnifying glasses. And many of them were painted with all their detail on the head of a single pin. They were marvels in miniature. I often think of our visit to that exhibition when I come to a verse like John 3.16, For here in truth is a marvel in miniature. Now understand it is most definitely not a miniature marvel. Some of the old Christian publications, I forget from which publishing house, in fact it may have been used by various publishers, but they would turn out little octavo volumes of great works of the church. And because of the size, the smallness of the print, etc., they were able to cram in a lot. And they had a little Latin inscription on the page where you had the publishing details. And that Latin inscription read, Multum in Parvo, in other words, Plente or much in a small compass. That's what we have here in John 3.16. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. In our authorized version, we have here a mere 25 words, so simply committed to memory that I think any three or four year old here could learn them in pretty quick time and probably remember them then for the rest of life. And yet, condensed into these couple of dozen words, there is sufficient truth to save a world. Here there is enough tenderness to melt the hardest heart and there is sufficient theology to engage the acutest intellect for all of God's eternity. We have spoken already about the simple gospel. This afternoon we thought of the greatest possible truth of God's love. Now this evening I want to take a very obvious but important truth. And I don't want its apparent simplicity to blind you to the necessity of giving it your closest attention. The truth is this. that the only way to experience the love of God and to receive the gift of God is to believe on the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, if you remember little of what else I have to say, I trust you will get the central There is but one way for you or for me to experience. And I know in certain parts of Reformed churches that seems like almost a dirty word. I read people who profess a love for the great doctrines of grace. They show immense passion about their theories on such recondite matters as to the extent to which we presuppose this or that in our arguments in apologetics. The role of logic and of reason, how far it may go, and a host of things that I am not saying are unimportant. I believe they are of importance. But I read men who can generate great passion on such things. But I read in vain for one word of vital Christian experience. I am not here to denigrate individuals. But as I say that, I am thinking of works of immense scholarship that took years to produce. from one of the greatest theological minds that America produced in the 20th century. And I have to say that no matter how far I have read in his works, I have never read a single word that would bow my heart in devotion, that would fill my heart with a vision of Christ, that would drive me to my knees, that would make me long for a moving of the Holy Spirit in revival, that would give me a vision of the needs of precious souls, or that would get me to do anything to reach the lost for Christ. I put it to you that, and excuse my bluntness, My bluntness. Well, let me rephrase that. I do not ask you to pardon my bluntness, for it is no sin. If it offends you, ask God to pardon the hardness of your heart. But I say it is a diabolical, inexcusable perversion of the Gospel and revelation of divine grace that we have in Scripture to take these mighty truths, translate them into ice-cold academic nonsense, to make a mental game out of playing intellectual follies with divine truths without any emphasis on a vital experience of the things of which God speaks. I have labored to emphasize that God is love. God is also holy. Thou art the high and lofty one who inhabiteth eternity, whose name is holy. God is also just Moses even said regarding his worship, he is fearful in praises. I say that God is love will not make the sufferings of the damned one quit less terrible. In fact, It will make the flames of hell hotter. How tragic to speak with the mouth such a glorious truth as John 3.16. To admit this truth and yet have no experience of God's saving love in Christ. I do not know the hearts of men and women. To be quite honest, I have a hard enough job knowing my own heart. But God does. God does know the heart. I will say, from the seventh chapter of Matthew's gospel, from the words of our Lord Jesus Christ himself, I have the dread that in churches throughout history and throughout the world, there have been millions and there are millions. who will stand before God and cry, Lord, Lord, Orthodox in theology, only to hear, depart from me. I never knew you. Those are terrible words. Terrible, terrible words. So it is vital that we have an experience of God's love. And how may we have it? If we are to experience the love of God, if we are to receive this gift of God, it must be by faith. by believing in the Son of God. Now that immediately raises the question, what is it to believe? And here we run into a problem. I was talking to your minister and telling him of an old lady whose minister had brought her a commentary on the Scriptures. thought it may help her education. He ought to have known better, but he brought her this commentary in the Scriptures. A few weeks later, he came back to ask her what she thought of the commentary, and she said, you know, sir, the Bible throws a lot of light in that book. She wasn't the first to feel that. I remember reading of the great Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli, Zwingli was, of course, speaking of the scholastic theology of the Middle Ages, you know, forever spinning endless differences without any necessary or even beneficial distinction. How many angels can dance on the head of a pen and other such wondrous subjects. And he confessed that as a priest, as he studied theology, He was perplexed. He could find nothing. But my, when he came to the Bible, the Bible was an open book. I sometimes feel like that when we come to this subject of faith. And I have to say that this propensity seems to be deeply rooted in the Reformed tradition, where Arminians, Tem, And of course this is painting with a broad brush, this is not true of all Arminians by any means. But where they tend to slope off towards presumption, the Reform tend to go to the opposite direction. I have listened to preachers who cast as many difficulties, they raise as many obstacles and barriers to souls coming to Christ, that they turn this subject of faith and the answer to the question, what is saving faith? They turn it into such a mysterious thing that no one could really be expected short of God sending a lightning bolt from heaven And that's not what the scripture tells us to expect. Couldn't be expected to get an answer at all. So what is faith? I believe the Bible will throw a lot of light on the opinions of men. John chapter 3 is a wonderful place to start. Now, so that you can follow me tonight, I will give you a three-point outline that I will seek to follow. And then I will, if time permits, end with a necessary deduction from that. What is saving faith? I will seek tonight to show you from John chapter 3 that saving faith is first, an acceptance of Christ's message. Second, and these cannot be divorced, they are one depends upon the other. Second, it is a reliance upon Christ's merits. And finally, they will yield an assurance of Christ's mercy. Now, that is a road map of where we are trying to go this evening. Let us start then with this, that believing on the Lord Jesus Christ is a hearty acceptance of the gospel that the Savior preached. I am glad that in making that statement, I am echoing the opinion of the old Scottish theologian, Thomas Halliburton. Halliburton said, and I'm quoting from memory here, so I think I've got it just about exact, for I thought it was a wonderful statement of simple genius. Halliburton said that saving faith is nothing but a hearty acceptance of God's way of saving sinners. And the more I have thought of that, the more I realized the genius in the statement. Saving faith is nothing but a hearty acceptance of God's way of saving sinners. It starts with the message of the gospel as defined, described, and expounded by the Lord and His apostles. When you turn to John chapter 3, you'll find that the Lord Jesus sets forth the gospel that men are to believe, what it is to believe in Him. He addresses the gospel to men in all their sin. I said in the first of these messages that God's love is not some fluffy, sloppy sentimentality that ignores the real condition of the souls of men, the state of the ungodly. It rather goes straight to the heart of the matter. It acknowledges the reality of sin and it deals with sin. And that's where the Savior starts. Now men and women, hear me well tonight. Hear me very carefully. We are living in a day when the gospel has been redefined. We have a preacher in America, in fact we have various ones, but we have a preacher in America who boasts the largest church in America. I think his membership is either 25 or 35,000 people. And he's a worldwide influence. He sits down with presidents. He travels from nation to nation. He is working with the United Nations. He is seeking to eliminate world poverty and a host of other things. People are thronging to his ministry. He says he is an evangelical. He says he believes the Bible. He gives his testimony as to how he was brought up. under the sound of the Word of God. But He makes it clear, there are certain things that are not in His vocabulary, and there are certain things that are not in His message. He will not talk about sin. Or He will talk about hurt. He will talk about an emptiness of heart. He will talk about all these things in pseudo-psychological terms, the touchy-feely religion of that man has evolved in the place of the Word of God. But he will not deal with sin. He will not talk about repentance of sin. He will not talk about God's judgment upon sin. He will not talk about the reality of perishing as a result of sin. These are, to use the American vernacular, these are turn-offs for people. So therefore, He does not deal with them. He is there to build people up, to make them feel good about God and feel good about themselves. And I put it to you that that is a fundamental perversion of the Gospel. And while God is a miracle-working God, And saving faith is the product of the Spirit of God in the heart of a man, and therefore I cannot limit when and how and why he works. Yet I would say that in the common run of expectation, preaching a false gospel is likely to produce a false profession of faith. The Lord Jesus addressed the gospel to men in all their sin. He described their state fully and honestly. Time will not allow me to go down John 3. This would be a long, should I say, I was going to say Bible study, but a series of studies were we to do these things in detail. He said to Nicodemus, you must be born again. In other words, Nicodemus, you are a Pharisee, but you are dead in trespasses and sin. You are upright, dead in trespasses and sins, a member of the Sanhedrin, a man of personal and civic virtue, but dead in trespasses and in sins. You must be born again. Verse 6, that which is born of the flesh is flesh, Nicodemus. You are yet carnal, sold under sin. Verse 10, you are yet blind and ignorant. Verse 14, you are yet corrupted. bitten with and poisoned by the serpent of sin, condemned and under the wrath of God, unbelieving, willful and stubborn in your stand against God, depraved and doing evil things, willingly deceived, hating light, practicing evil, rejecting God and history. That's the natural man. It came as a rocket to the heart of Nicodemus. He could never in a thousand years have come to believe those things about himself. I, dead, carnal, corrupt, poisoned by sin, condemned by God, stubborn, willful and wretched, In my rejection of God and His truth, I, who can quote the Hebrew Scriptures, I, a master in Israel, and yet this is how I am being described? Yes, sir. Nicodemus could not believe on Christ until he first believed what Christ had to say concerning his state. If all that was true, then obviously Christ was saying the need is radical. That's why he said, Nicodemus, you must be born again. There must be an internal renewal. You must become a new creature. The Lord Jesus is getting over to Nicodemus and to all of us. This is something that the religious world needs to get back to. That God is not in the business of patching up the corrupt and carnal lives of fallen men. God is not in the business of putting a bandaid of religion upon the cancer of sin. ye must be born again. Oh, how we need to recover that message. By the way, getting off on a little tangent, but by the way, that is normally preached as a duty. It is actually not stated as a duty. It is stated as a necessity. It's a vast difference. It is casting this man upon God's sovereign grace. Nicodemus, you must be born again. That is a work of the Spirit of God. What did you do to contribute to your first birth? The question seems ludicrous. What could you do to contribute to your first birth? The answer is nothing. Now, let us be very careful here because sometimes in our Reformed churches we carry this over to areas where the Bible doesn't. In regeneration, I have nothing to contribute. It is a new birth. From that point on, in the process of developing life, which we call sanctification, the Spirit of God works with the human spirit, the divine will works upon in and through the human will, so that we work out with fear and trembling what God has wrought within us. But it starts with a sovereign, divine act, whereby God, to use the Imagery of the prophet Ezekiel in the 16th chapter. Comes, he finds us as a babe by the side of the road, an aborted babe cast out to wallow in our blood and die our death. And he comes and he says in a sovereign word, Live! Live! You must be born again. The need is radical. It's a need of regeneration. Oh, that there would be spirit-baptized, passionate, prayerful preaching of the new birth. I do not think that I am misreading British history when I say that what we enjoy, and this may come as a bit of a shock to us Presbyterians, but let us be humble and let us be honest. I'm not going too far when I say that all we have and all we enjoy under God. I believe what saved Britain from the fate of France when revolution was sweeping Europe and there was no reason why it should not sweep Britain. The same social and economic conditions that cursed other countries were cursing Britain and yet when they sank into revolution and bloodshed, Britain was preserved. Why? Because God raised a race of men, but preeminently two. The greatest evangelist in English history and the second greatest evangelist in English history. One a Calvinist, Mr. Whitefield. Spurgeon always said, the greatest preacher ever in the history of the English tongue. And Mr. Wesley. What was their message? To a nation sunk in dead religion, it was, ye must be born again. That was the message. And by His gracious Holy Spirit, God visited England, and Scotland, and Ireland, and later America, as these men certainly would feel as far as America was concerned. And those who followed them went into the highways and the byways. Some of those early Methodist preachers were not very learned. They lived in poverty. They took their lives in their hands. Mr. Wesley himself was literally trailed by the hair of his head from one end of a village to another. He was often kicked in order to try to kill him. He was often at the point of death, but went on and on and on with a passion to tell men, you must be born again. And God visited this nation, turned about its history, and sent a revival. whose impact is felt to this day. We need, we need a radical solution to the religious morass into which most churches have fallen and a radical solution to the societal and familial and personal mess into which the millions of our people have dropped. Jesus said, if you're going to believe, this is where you start. There's a message. There's a message. See your sin. See God's answer. It's regeneration, but it's also redemption. Those were in verses 14 and 15. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. The Lord Jesus was saying to this Master of Israel, yes, there is a work of God to which you can contribute nothing. It is a new birth. But Nicodemus, there is another aspect to saving truth. You remember that occasion when the children of Israel, in their wickedness and stubborn rebellion, were bitten by fiery serpents, and God said to Moses, take a serpent made of brass, hold it up upon a pole, lift it up, and he who looks will live? Now, there was a miracle involved in that. May I put it to you very clearly? There was a miracle involved in the healing of those people who were condemned to death by the bite of the serpent that is just as inexplicable as the mystery of the moving of the sovereign Spirit of God in regenerating a dead soul. I can no more explain the one or understand it than I can the other. But when God said, and live. Men and women, believe me, those who looked did not need a medical degree first to understand what was happening physically in them. They did not need a theological degree to explain the miracle. They did not have some theological debate as to how and why looking would be the vehicle of blessing. All they were called upon to recognize was, we are poisoned. We are dying. We are condemned. God has provided a remedy. And if I look, I will live. Now, says the Lord Jesus, Nicodemus, that is but a picture. Come to the present. As Moses lifted up that serpent, even so I will be lifted up upon a cross. How can a serpent be made a picture of Christ? If you want to see how the Lord Jesus humbled himself to save us, think that one through. He chose a serpent, a snake, which is usually the emblem of the devil, to be a picture of himself. Why and why? Remember that serpent in the wilderness. was so fashioned because these people had been bitten by fiery serpents. When God sent His Son into the world, He did not send Him in the garments of resplendent glory. Morally and spiritually, that glory was there, but His body was an ordinary... When I say ordinary, I mean in appearance. a real human body. But listen carefully. This is how Paul put it. What the law could not do through the flesh. God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. Not in sinful flesh, in flesh that was sinless, but it was in the likeness of sinful flesh. By doing so, He condemned sin in the flesh. Jesus said, Nicodemus, You do not understand the mystery of the new birth. That is God's exclusive sovereign work. But here's another aspect. There's no contradiction. You're a sinner. You're dying. The poison is already in you. And it will damn you. But on yonder hill there will be a cross. where I will be hung an object of derision and shame, where I will bear the wrath of God and the curse of a broken law, shed my blood to make an atonement for the soul. Nicodemus, proud of your religious activity, I tell you, here's the message. Look, and you will live. As Mr. Spurgeon found out, that wintry day when he wandered into an old primitive Methodist church, burdened with sin, and the preacher could not be there because he was snowed up or snowed out, and an old fellow got up to preach who could preach none, but announced the greatest text for Spurgeon in his need. Isaiah 45 verse 22, Look unto me and be saved, all ye ends of the earth, for I am God and there is none else. Not knowing what to say, the preacher repeated the text, Look unto me and be saved. Looking around, he wondered, what can I say? And so he repeated the text again, had nothing else to say. And finally saw this lonely teenage lad in the gallery and pointed to him and said, young man, have you looked? God used that. to open the heart of a young man steeped in biblical truth from his earliest days, but who could not grasp the simplicity of saving faith. There is life for a look at the crucified one. There is life. That's not just the line of a hymn writer. That is the statement of the Son of God. The message of regeneration, ah, but the message of redemption leading to the message of justification. Verse 18, freed from condemnation. Implicit in all that I say there, you'll see that The Lord Jesus is presenting the two great aspects of the work of salvation, the subject of work of the Holy Spirit within us, the object of work of the Son of God for us, and that is the basis. His work is the basis of the working of the Spirit. Now, says the Lord Jesus, Nicodemus, this is the message. Believe it. Accept it as true. Intellectual accept is not the only thing in saving faith. But I want to tell you it is the first element and without it you cannot be a believer. And I want to say that Make it clear, because certain eminent people are leading others astray here. I could quote you a man who has been a very prominent Reformed theologian in the United States, and he has insisted that saving faith is purely intellectual ascent. Just believing the facts. That's enough. That doctrine will damn the soul. But then there are others, and they will say that intellectual ascent is not really that important. It's the faith that matters, and faith is some fuzzy thing, some indefinable thing that they may make interchangeable with love for God or whatever, but it's not what you believe. They say you need an encounter with God. Oh, that's very true. But if you divorce God from the revelation of Scripture, how do you know it's God you're encountering? Again, I could quote eminent names that have said, I think of one world-renowned preacher who said, I personally believe in the virgin birth of Christ, but I do not find anything in the Bible that teaches me that you must believe that in order to be a Christian. And I want to tell you that is heretical nonsense. Heretical nonsense. There must be an intellectual ascent to the infallible, essential truths of God's revelation of grace in the Lord Jesus Christ. And that then must lead to the reliance upon the merits of Christ. Believing on Christ is not only an honest acceptance of the message, it is an honest dependence on Christ's work for our salvation. In other words, there is the believing with the mind, and then there is personal trust. If you turn to the second chapter of John, you'll see how the Lord Jesus Himself makes this clear. At the end of John's Gospel, chapter 2, we are introduced to people who apparently believed on the Lord Jesus Christ. At the end of verse 22, they believed the Scriptures and the word which Jesus had said. Now we read on. Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, in the feast day, many believed in His name when they saw the miracles which He did. But Jesus did not commit Himself unto them, because He knew all men. And need it not that any should testify of man, for He knew what was in man. Now notice the words of verse 24, Jesus did not commit Himself unto them. I may, quite honestly, translate that as Jesus did not believe in them. Now, we have just read, they believed in Him, apparently, but He did not believe in them. I love the way our translators have put it. He did not commit Himself to them, because with all their professed belief They had never committed themselves to Him. There is a commitment in faith. Faith is the commitment of ourselves and all our hopes to Christ. It is the abandonment of all hope and self, and it is the casting of ourselves entirely upon Christ and upon His merit. Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to thy cross I cling. I'm naked, but I look to thee for dress. I'm guilty, but I look to thee for grace. This is the element of personal reliance. What is reliance? It is placing the full weight of our dependence upon Jesus Christ. What do I need to get to heaven? What do I need? Let me tell you. I need perfection. Sinless perfection alone enters heaven. The Bible says it, nothing that defileth shall enter therein. I need absolute perfection. I need a perfection that absolutely satisfies God and the standards of His law. And anything less will bring me to hell. Where will I find it? Will I find it in myself? No, sir. Will I find it in my faith? No, I won't. My faith is not perfect. With all my believing there is, to my shame, a strain of unbelief. In all my repenting, there is yet a hardness of heart. There is no perfection in me. I didn't know you'd be singing the Psalms that you sang. But didn't we sing this in the 16th Psalm? My goodness extent, if not to thee. So where would I find this perfection? I find it in Christ. I love to preach this So I better swallow hard and realize this is not going to be the message tonight. I love to preach this. This, to me, is the meat of the New Testament. The gospel has not come to Jesus and he'll forgive your sins. That's true. But that's not the gospel. That is a result of the gospel. The gospel of Jesus is a whole lot more than he'll fill the aching void in your heart. Oh, he does fill the aching void. The gospel is addressed to men who are enemies of God, alienated from God by wicked works, condemned to the outer darkness of a lost eternity under the wrath and curse of a sin-hating God. And yet, These men hear a message of God's love. It says, there is my son. I tried to touch on this today, though time ran away from us. I placed him under the law. You had a double obligation to God's law. You had an obligation to fulfill its precept. And then you have an obligation to pay its penalty. The Lord Jesus stood under the law and he fulfilled it to absolute perfection. Isaiah the prophet speaks of the robe of righteousness and the garments of salvation. I love to think of this that the Lord Jesus in obeying God's law in all its precepts was weaving a robe of seamless, spotless righteousness. And when he comes to a poor sinner who casts himself upon the Savior, he divests that sinner of the filthy garments of his sin and his self-righteousness. washes him in his precious blood, purifying him, forgiving all his sin, and clothes him in his own perfect righteousness. I love the words of Paul. Here is a depth I cannot possibly plumb. I have preached this text. Rarely have I felt I have even scratched its surface. In the English version it says, 2 Corinthians 5, 21, God made him to be sin for us. Who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in him? I think that you couldn't do better than the little paraphrase of one of Scotland's greatest theologians. Hugh Martin, his work on the atonement, in my humble estimation, is from many aspects the greatest work on the subject. Hugh Martin paraphrased that as follows, God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, who knew no righteousness, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. there is there a double transfer. Remember, this is based on covenant union. Christ is the head and we are the body. Let me warn you, there are no illustrations in human affairs to illustrate this. Be aware of that. I don't know, you may have heard illustrations about substitution. I remember hearing a particularly touching one when I was a young fellow, and it was touching. It may even have been true for all I know, not just a fairy tale made up to illustrate a point. In a class in a primary school, a little ragged urchin, poor, ill-kept, ill-dressed, ill-fed, and rebellious, was found guilty by his teacher of some grave misdemeanor, brought up to be punished. The kids nowadays would hardly know much about this, but even when I was in school, punishment was punishment. Teachers knew how to wield the stick, the big stick. They did. And this little fellow, miserable, trembling little wretch, was up there to be punished. Well, a strapping lad, well fed, well fleshed, well looked after, with a tender heart, stepped forward and said, Sir, I'll take his place. Let me take his punishment. And so the transfer was made. And the preacher was making it clear this was an act of kindness and of love to take the place of one so condemned to suffer. Yes, it was an act of kindness and an act of love. But stop and think of it. For the teacher to do that was an abominable injustice. For if the little fellow deserved to be punished, he deserved to be punished. And if the guilty went free, it was unjust. And if the innocent was made to suffer, that was a double injustice. So how can it be right for God to lay my sin on Christ? and his righteousness on me. It is because I will leave it to Mr. Murray to work out the theology of this when he has more time. I am among free church people, so you should know the name of the revered William Cunningham. William Cunningham said that ideally, ideally God only deals with one man, the man Christ Jesus. Ideally, God has only ever elected one man, the man Christ Jesus and all others in him. God has only ever justified one man, the man Christ Jesus and all others in him, in union with him. There's a tremendous wisdom in Cunningham's insight. He is the head and we are the body. What God is saying is, that he visited all that the body deserved upon the head, and he bore it all uncomplainingly. And then he gave to the body all that the head had merited. I have a perfect righteousness. I am not yet perfect. We are all yet, sanctification-wise, works under construction. But as to justification, I want you to understand this. If you are a believer in Christ, you are as righteous today in the sight of God as you will be when you have been a million years in glory. You cannot be one Quit more righteous than you are the moment you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Why? Because as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1 verse 31, verse 30, of God are you in Christ Jesus. Who of God has made unto us wisdom and righteousness. and sanctification and redemption. Christ is my righteousness. And if that is true, I have a perfect righteousness. If He is my righteousness, I don't want you to think this is extreme. Though nowadays it sounds extreme, for so little preaching takes place upon it. But follow me carefully. without any reference to my merit, but total reference to His merit. If Christ is my righteousness, then I have the same right to glory as He has. Isn't that what Paul says in Romans 8? Heirs of God are joint or equal heirs with Christ. equal heirs with Christ? Here's a thought for you. When the Lord Jesus returned to heaven after His death and resurrection, He did not go there by virtue of His deity. As God, He has the inalienable right to eternal glory in the highest place. But that's not how He went there. Hebrews chapter 9 says, He went back to glory by virtue or taking with Him His own precious blood. In other words, it was as the man Christ Jesus. There's a man in the glory tonight. By man came death. By man comes the resurrection from the dead. By man came damnation. By man came the obedience and the redemption. that opens heaven by the man Christ Jesus. And as the one who shed his blood, he is entered into heaven. So to believe on him is to say, Lord, this is the message. I commit myself entirely. I have no hope apart from Christ. But, oh, I have every hope in Christ. I could ask for nothing better than Christ. I believe and depend on the power of His blood to satisfy God, to wash my pollution, to sanctify my corruption, to justify me from my guilt, reconcile me unto God. Take this enemy and adopt me as a child of the King. Redeem me from the slavery of my sin to the freedom of the sons of God. I believe, and this is the nub of the matter, in the all-sufficiency of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. I cannot tell you who said this. If I were to quote a source, I would probably quote the wrong source. For in my folly, I didn't write it down. I wish I could say that I had thought it all up by myself. But there is vast wisdom here. What it is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ depending on the merit of Christ, His work for our salvation, it is to say, I trust no lesser merit than Christ's. No works of mine, nothing less than His absolute perfection. I trust no other merit than Christ's. As Lloyd-Jones termed his sermon in Acts 4.12, no second name. No second name. I trust no added merit to Christ's. If you have anything less than Christ, you're still lost. If you have anything other than Christ, you're still lost. If you add anything to Christ, you're lost. It's Christ. Christ for me. That believing, that acceptance of His message, That reliance or abandonment of all your hopes for heaven to His merit, nothing else, is the meaning of believing. And that will bring a humble assurance of God's love for you. This takes the great general truth and particularizes it, brings it right down to the pinpoint exactness where you can say without presumption, God's love so vast and full and free is love for me. The Son of God loved me. What an assurance. How do you achieve it? By make-believe? No, leave the make-believe to Hollywood. By forcing yourself into a state of mind? No, sir. But let me tell you something else. Here I may be getting a little controversial. I know I'm in Scotland. And I hope it has been clear from what I've said, I have a deep, deep abiding respect for great Scottish theologians whom God has used. After all, we Ulster men, we call ourselves Ulster Scots, we're just Scotsmen. And it's Scottish blood that flows in my veins, so I'm not trying to be obnoxious to Scotland. But as I've talked to Scottish Brethren over the years, I particularly remember listening to a sermon on John 3 actually, from I think it was Professor McQueen of the Free Presbyterian Church in Oban many years ago when he was preaching with great liberty and power on this very subject to his people. I'd gone there to hear him while I was on holiday. Assurance will not come from introspection. One of the worst elements of English Puritanism was an over-emphasis on introspection and this notion that you examine your evidences and if the evidences are strong enough you will then get assurance and I am going to tell you, you will never get assurance. from your evidences. Now do not misunderstand me. I am not denying the need for a man to examine himself. The scripture so commands us. What I am saying is, assurance is certainty. Certainty can only stand upon absolute impregnable immutable perfection. If there's the slightest chance of an imperfection, you cannot be sure. So if you're going to look at your evidences, are they perfect? Have you loved God for a single day with all your heart? Never. I'll give you that Bible. Give me one command in that Bible that you have ever fully obeyed. Not one. Not a single one. So sure, let us examine ourselves. But what is the examination? To see whether you be in the faith Whether you're believing, believing what? On the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, assurance comes from a genuine, A, contemplation of Christ, and second, commitment to Christ. By commitment, I'm not talking even essentially about our service, I'm talking about our dependence. He is perfect. God finds no fault in him. And when God clothes you in his righteousness, in Paul's expression, God justifies you. Some people say that means it's just as if it never sinned. Rubbish. It's not what it is. It's not and a whole lot more. If I was just as if it never sinned, I would still go to hell. Because I'll sin again. Justify. Yes, I am so united to Christ. I'm clothed with Christ. He is my righteousness. And I stand in Paul's language, accepted in the beloved. Men and women, that's why Paul could say, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. That's how you get peace. For this assurance will yield peace in a troubled world. They say peace and safety, but sudden destruction is coming upon them. we look to Christ. He is our peace. I trust tonight you've caught a little glimpse of what it is to believe, saving faith. Remember, it is an honest acceptance of Christ's message It is a humble reliance on Christ's merits, and that yields this heart assurance of Christ's mercy. I trust tonight that you will enter into that rest, the rest of believing faith. Let us pray. Our loving God and our Father in Heaven, we thank Thee as we contemplate the Lord Jesus Christ, we can stand back and honestly say from the depths of full hearts, Hallelujah! What a Savior! By Thy Spirit, do that sovereign work of regeneration in every heart. Make sure, O Lord, in every soul of that mighty work of grace. But, O, we pray that Thou will direct every man, woman, and young person here to turn their eyes upon Jesus. Lord, we do not know the mysteries of the working of God. The wind bloweth where it listeth. We can hear its sound. But really, Lord, we cannot penetrate the mystery, and so is everyone that is born of the Spirit. But, Lord, we can understand that we're sinners. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. That the command of the Gospel is to repent and believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ. And we can understand that lovely promise that he will not cast out one single soul who comes to him. Father, enable every man and woman here to exercise this saving faith, the ascent of the mind, the trust and submission of the will, leading to the assurance of God's love in Christ. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.