If you would, go back to the book of Romans. I want you to go to Romans chapter five. And here's my subject in Romans chapter five. Two kingdoms. Two kingdoms. One is grace and the other is sin. Two kingdoms. Look at verses Romans 20 and 21. Romans 5. We read, moreover, the law entered, and that would be the Ten Commandments. That's the law that was given to Moses to give to the people from Mount Sinai. Moreover, the law entered. God sent the law. He wrote the law on two tablets of stone with his own finger, the scripture says. He says, Paul says here, moreover the law entered that the offense might abound. Why did the law come? Well, the law came to reveal sin. That's what Paul said in Romans chapter seven. He said, I had known sin except by the law. And there's something about the law of God that, to a lost man, it just aggravates him and makes him want to disobey God's law. And all of us, by nature, are lawbreakers. All of us are criminals against God. And as we become as we have some understanding of the law of God, we're made to realize that it is the law of God that exposes our guilt. You're not innocent. I'm not innocent. We aren't free from sin. We aren't free from trespasses. We aren't free from iniquities. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. It's what Paul says in Romans chapter three in verse 23. And we know sin by the law of God. However, Paul continues. He says, but where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. That as sin hath reigned unto death, Even so might grace reign by or through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. Now, just real quickly, let me kind of give you a summary of these two verses here. Number one, grace reigns. I still want to talk to you about two kingdoms, but I don't want to begin by talking about the kingdom of sin. A dismal subject, it's a necessary subject, but I'd rather begin by talking about grace. Grace is a happy word. Grace is a pleasant word. Grace is that of God's divine favor, unmerited favor to sinners. Grace reigns. When we bow our heads and our hearts to pray, we pray to the Lord who sits upon His, what? Throne of grace. It's a throne of grace. And then he says this, and I'm just reading this second part of verse 21. Even so might grace reign. Grace is a kingdom now. Grace rules. Even so might grace reign, and it reigns through righteousness. Grace always has regard to the righteousness and the justice of God. Grace never discards righteousness. Whenever grace reveals itself, whenever grace does a work in the heart, it always works upon the basis of justice being satisfied. There is no grace without righteousness. And then he continues, Even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life. Get this, wherever grace reigns, that is, wherever grace sets up the throne in the heart of man, The necessary result will always be eternal life. Grace doesn't wait for you to make a decision. The entrance of grace isn't up to you to let grace come in or reject grace. The grace of God, whenever it is revealed, whenever it is shown to a sinner, whenever grace is poured into the heart, it always results in eternal life. It doesn't try to give eternal life. Grace doesn't want to give eternal life. Grace gives eternal life. And along with that giving of eternal life, grace gives you faith to believe. One of the reasons I began with that passage out of Ephesians the second chapter is because it talks about not only grace being a gift of God, but faith being a gift of God. For by grace are you saved through faith. And that, that faith, that trust, that confidence, That belief in the Lord Jesus Christ, that is a gift of God. It's not of your works. So I'll let God save me. I beg your pardon? You can't let God do anything. God has to give these spiritual gifts and repentance toward God is a spiritual gift. And faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, that's a spiritual gift. Grace reigns. Grace doesn't want to reign. Grace does reign. There's a kingdom of grace. And I'll talk to you about it a little more fully later on. But know this, when grace comes in, grace always brings with it its accompaniment. And that's eternal life. If grace is like a seed is sown in your heart, if God by His grace makes you to live spiritually and believe the Lord Jesus Christ, when grace comes in, grace always has a companion. No exceptions to this. Grace always brings with it eternal life. What is eternal life? Did not our Savior say what eternal life is in John chapter 17? This is eternal life. That they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent. That's eternal life. And it does include the idea of everlasting life, but first, it's the idea of knowing God. Knowing God. Do you know God? Do you have everlasting life? Well, if grace has flooded your soul, you do. You have eternal life. So he says there in the latter part of verse 21, grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life, and then there's that little word by, and it's actually the same word as in the previous line, through. Through or by Jesus Christ our Lord. This grace of God that saves. This grace of God that lifts the sinner out of the miry clay and puts him upon the rock, that's the rock Christ Jesus. Grace is always, always associated with the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, the grace of God, like the love of God, like the salvation of God, like the righteousness of God, It's found in Christ, our Savior. Grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life through or by our Lord Jesus Christ, through and by his person, who he is, through and by his work, what he did. He lived a life of righteousness. And that life he lived, and we'd all agree on this, that perfect life he lived, that life of living up to every requirement of God, that life that he lived, you know he credits that to our account. That life he lived, that's my life. That's my life story. My life story is what the Savior did during His lifetime from birth to His death. And then He who lived for me died for me. He laid down His life for me because the wages of sin is death. I deserve to die. But before the world began, God put me in Christ Jesus so that when He died, I died in Him. I died under the wrath of the law of God. I died under divine justice. I was in Him. He was my representative. He stood for me. He lived for me. He died for me. And He arose for me. And He ascended back to heaven. Where is the Savior now? Is He not seated in heaven? Guess what? That's where I'm seated. In Him, I'm seated there. In Christ Jesus, our Lord. He lived, He died, and He ever lives for His people. Learn this. The religion of the Bible is the religion of grace. Grace. Now, most every Most every religion talks about grace, right? I mean, most all of them, television, preachers, whoever, they all talk about grace. But the grace that I'm talking about is the grace that the Bible sets forth, grace that reigns, grace that has dominion, grace that is invincible, grace that is always victorious. That's the grace that saves. The grace that saves. Now, in Romans chapter five, the scripture speaks here of two men, two representative men, Christ and Adam. In fact, if you look at verse 14, Nevertheless, Romans 5.14, nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even after them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure, who is the type of him that was to come. Here are the two men, here are the two representative men. We're all in Adam by nature. All of God's chosen people are in Christ by grace. Two men. In fact, in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul talks about the first Adam and the last Adam. The last Adam. In the first one by nature and the last one by grace. Two kingdoms. Two men, two kingdoms. Two men, two acts. Look down in verse 19. So we got two men, verse 19, for as by one man's disobedience, that was his act. What did Adam do? He disobeyed God. God said, in the day ye eat thereof, of this forbidden, the fruit of this forbidden tree, you'll surely die. Don't eat of it. The day ye eat of it, you'll surely die. He ate, he disobeyed. And that one act of disobedience had a devastating effect upon all of his posterity, upon all of his seed. And we trace our life back to Adam. He was our great, great, great, great, great, great, great. I don't know how many greats it'd be. It's a bunch of them, but we trace our lineage, our nature, all the way back to Adam. And what he did when he put his fist in the face of God, when he defied God Almighty, When he said, I'm not gonna do what you've told me to do. I'm not gonna refrain from taking of this fruit. I'll do what I wanna do. I'll be my own God, thank you very much. From that time forth, everybody born as a result of a union of a man and a woman, we got that same nature of rebellion. We just, we don't want to obey. And we won't. We're rebels against God. His disobedience, the disobedience of Adam, not only included the disobedience of himself, but that's passed to us, his kids. You know, a lot of times you can look at the pictures of kids and you see, oh yeah, Well, he favors his daddy. Oh, yes, she favors her mama. Well, let me tell you something. We all favor Adam. We all have the likeness of Adam because we've sinned by his one act of disobedience. It just devastated the whole human race. But watch this. And so by the obedience of one. Here's that other man. The representative God man. His obedience. What specifically do you believe that Adam is talking or Paul is talking about here? Well, I believe Paul sets it forth in another one of his epistles in Philippians chapter two. He was obedient. What does it say next? Unto death, unto death, even the death of the cross, even that horrible ignominious death of crucifixion where man did all he could to inflict pain and agony to the body of Christ. And when God the Father poured out the fullness of His cup of wrath upon the Son of God, our Lord was being obedient, obedient to God. For in the covenant of grace, He purposed to lay down His life for His people. He pledged Himself And that covenant of grace, which included the appointment of a chosen people unto salvation, our Lord Jesus, He signed up, as it were, to be the substitute, the sacrifice, the sin offering, the Savior of His people. He signed the covenant of grace with His own blood, with His own blood. By his act of obedience and laying down his life for the sheep, he saved us. He saved us. By the disobedience of one, the many, verse 19, the many people that Adam represented were legally considered to be, legally constituted to be sinners. And so I, maybe there's somebody here who's foolish and would say, well, hey, don't lump me with everybody else. I'm not a sinner like everybody else. Like it or not, you are. That's just fact. God legally constituted you to be, considered you to be a sinner because you were in Adam when Adam fell. Like it or not, you're a sinner and that's what God calls you. Well, Jim, you don't have to preach it so hard. Well, no matter how hard we preach that people are sinners, No matter how we describe the sinfulness of everybody as the blackness, the awfulness of our guilt before God, you know, our sin is kind of like what the Queen of Sheba said about Solomon. The half has not been told. When we paint the picture of our sinfulness, we ain't even begun to hardly scratch the surface of it. Well, I'll tell you who does know and who has felt it, our Savior. When our sins were laid on Him on the cross and the Father forsook His own Son, He knew the horribleness of sin the Savior did. But He was obedient. He was obedient. and therefore we bathe the righteousness of God in Him. Now let me get down to talking about these two kingdoms real quick. Sin and grace. If you take your notes, it's a pretty simple outline. Sin, Grace. Just single syllable word, just two words, sin and grace. Sin deals with our ruin. Can you remember that? Sure you can. Sin deals with our ruin. Grace speaks to our recovery. Sin is our ruin. Grace speaks to our recovery. Sin is the disease and we're all infected with it. Grace is the cure. We could say sin is the poison. Grace is the antidote. And the Holy Spirit, through the preaching of the gospel, He shows us in our text both the malady and its result. What's the malady? Sin. What's the result? Death. You see, sin reigns under death. If something's not done about your sin, you're going to die, not only physically, but you're going to die eternally. Sin, when it is finished, when sin is done with you, when you've served the kingdom of sin, and then you die, sin will be triumphant, because then God steps in, for he said the soul that's sinning shall die. And I'm telling you, when you die, you're going out to meet a holy God who demands perfect righteousness. And if you die in your sin, Christ said, where I am, where you reckon Christ is? He's in glory. He's in heaven. He's seated at the right hand of the Father. Christ said, if you die in your sin, where I am, at the father's right hand. Where I am? In heaven's sweet paradise. Where I am? You can't come. You can't come. Sin is the malady and its result is always death. Isn't it amazing how we We hug up to sin. We think very little of sin. By nature, that's the way all of us are. We don't worry about it. It's just a little white lie. Really? Well, I didn't steal much. I only stole a quarter or whatever. I tell you, that's sin, anything. Anything that is not absolutely perfect in the eyes of God, not in the eyes of men, but in the eyes of God is sin. And like I just quoted, when sin has finished with you, sin has used you, sin has fooled you, sin showed you the pleasures of sin, which are only for a season. The result is death. Here's the malady and its result. Sin and its result is death. But here also is the remedy for sin. The remedy. Aren't you thankful there's a remedy for our malady? There's a remedy for our disease. And the remedy is the almighty, sovereign, free grace of God to sinners through the Lord Jesus Christ. The hymn writer said, if you from sin are longing to be free, look to the Lamb of God. And I say that to all of you, I say it to myself, I say it to all of you who are watching. If you from sin, the kingdom of sin, if you want to be free, look to the Lamb of God, for he's the king of the kingdom of grace. Well, let me talk to you just a little bit about sin. Sin. Turn in your Bibles, I should say, to 1 John. if you would, 1 John, the 3rd chapter. 1 John, the 3rd chapter. 1 John, chapter 3 and verse 4. What exactly is sin? Well, this verse tells us. First John chapter 3, first epistle of John chapter 3, verse 4. Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law. For sin, what is it? It's the transgression of God's law. If you want a definition of the word sin, here it is. It means missing the mark. That's what sin is. Look up the word, that's the definition in the original. It's missing the mark. What is the mark? Perfection and the will of God. And we cannot render perfection, nor can we fully and perfectly obey the will of God. You see, sin is anything said, thought, done with any degree of imperfection. Now let me ask you a question, and I don't want you to answer out loud because it'd just be a massive mess if everybody talked at one time. Sin is the lack of perfection. any imperfection at all. How many times do you think you've sinned today? That's kind of a redundant question, isn't it? When you ate your breakfast, I fixed a pretty good breakfast this morning, bacon and eggs, sliced tomatoes. sliced some toast and put jelly on my wife's bread. When you ate your breakfast, oatmeal, cereal, you know, animal food like that or real ham and eggs or bacon and eggs or sausage and eggs. When you had your breakfast, every time you chewed your food, did you do so for the glory of God? Did you do so believing that God had graciously provided that food for you? Let me tell you something. That which is not of faith is sin. Oh, we're all guilty, aren't we? I don't need to ask for a show of hands, because we're all guilty. All have sinned. Sin is missing the mark. which means that everybody is a sinner. What is a sinner? I was talking about this to somebody just yesterday. What is a sinner? It's one who sins. One who does not keep the law of God perfectly. One who doesn't do all that they do or all that they think, all that they say, one who does not do those things perfectly in accordance with the will of God. God doesn't demand the best you can do. Well, preacher, that's the best I can do. Well, I can tell you right now, that ain't good enough. Because Leviticus 22, 21 says, it shall be perfect to be accepted. When you face God at the judgment, He's not gonna put your good deeds on one side of the scales and your sins on the other side. Because you've never done a good deed. You ain't got none on that side. All we've done, we eat, drink, smell, taste, think, do, motivated by sin. And it's in the kingdom of sin, it's the kingdom of sin that holds us captive. And not only does sin hold us captive, but we're captivated by sin. Isn't that right? We're captivated by sin. It says here, sin is the transgression of the law. A holy God can accept nothing and no one apart from perfection. And this gives birth to the fifth verse. And ye know that he was manifested. Who was manifested? The Son of God. You know that he was manifested to do what? Take away our sins. That's good news. That's why he came. If we had the time, we could look in Hebrews chapter 10. It says the blood of bulls and goats can never do what? Take away sins. They couldn't take sins away. Couldn't even take one sin away. So our Lord Jesus Christ, He came. He died in the stead of His guilty people who were chosen unto salvation, but nevertheless, we fell into Adam's transgression. He came to do something that nobody else could possibly do, and something that He alone could do, and something He alone must do by laying down His life. He died for our sin. Isn't that what Paul said, 1 Corinthians 15? He died for our sins, according to the scriptures. His burial, he rose again the third day, according to the scriptures. You see, the kingdom of sin, it holds us captive. We're prisoners in the kingdom. And we can't get out. And furthermore, we don't want to get out. We don't want to get out. We're kind of comfortable. You see, sin as a kingdom, it's not a passive thing. Sin is not content to just exist in you. Sin insists on sitting upon the throne of your heart. And sin insists on defying God. I know what the Bible says, but I know Christ is the way, but I'm doing the best I can. That's it. That shows you're still in the kingdom of sin. It holds you captive. And be sure of this, sin is not opposed to religion. It's opposed to grace. It's opposed to salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ. It's opposed to eternal life. Because you see, sin, as a king and as a kingdom, holding you captive, sin will be satisfied in your death. In your death. And you can be sure of this concerning sin, it always brings misery. You say, oh, boy, I don't feel good this morning, Jim. I got aches and pains, or I got a headache, or I got this disease or that disease. That's because you're in the kingdom of sin. See, sin always results in misery. And the most miserable thing about sin is it lands you in hell. Romans 6.23 says, for the wages of sin is death. See, you're a sin slave. Me too, by nature, we're servants of sin. Well, how do you think the kingdom's gonna pay us? The kingdom of sin, how's it gonna pay us? What wages am I earning? Death. But thank God there's another kingdom, and it's the kingdom of grace. Go back to my text. Let me show you this real quick. Back in chapter 5. It says that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace. Instead of the kingdom of sin, there's the kingdom of grace. And grace reigns. In fact, it says in the 20th verse, moreover, the law entered that the offense might abound, but where sin abounded, grace did much more about or grace super abounded. You see, grace, the grace of God is omnipotent. The grace of God is victorious. The grace of God is invincible. Grace doesn't come to you and say, you want to be saved. Grace just saves. Grace saves. Grace doesn't say, would you like a better life? I hear preachers. I watch some of the preachers on television. I got up early up there in northern Michigan. I'd watch some of these religious guys. And one guy was talking about the grace of God. He says, the grace of God offers you a better way. Offers? Offers? Grace doesn't offer no more than God offers. There's the gift of grace and God gives you the willingness to receive the gift. Grace doesn't try to do anything. The grace of God is omnipotent because of whose grace it is. It's God's grace. And it's sovereign grace. Grace flows where God says for it to flow. Grace reigns. Thank God for that kingdom. Grace is, I read this week before last, and I read this quote to the folks who are in Michigan who are no doubt listening to me this morning. I read this quote to them. An old Puritan wrote this. He said, grace is the divine provision for people who are so fallen that they cannot lift the axe of judgment, the A-X-E of judgment from off their necks. It's the divine provision for people who are so corrupt they cannot change their nature. They're so opposed to God that they can't turn to Him through Christ. Grace is the divine provision for people who are so blinded that they can't see their need for Christ. They can't see the beauties of his person, the necessity of his work of redemption. Grace is the divine provision for people who are so ignorant that they don't see the necessity of a mediator between them and God. They're so foolish that they cannot see the need of a perfect sacrifice to satisfy the justice of God. They're so deaf that they can't hear the voice of Christ in the gospel. They're so dead that they can't open up the grave of their own sinfulness. And they're so deep in sin that they can't lift themselves out of the pit and put their feet on the solid rock of Christ. Only grace can do that. The almighty grace of God which comes to us, watch it, in fulfillment of righteousness through our Lord Jesus Christ. All the good, all the grace, all the love, all the salvation, all the true mercy of God for sinners is found in the kingdom of grace through our Lord Jesus Christ. It's a glorious kingdom. No wonder. I'll give you several things. I've jotted down several things. I was supposed to tell people about how many points you got, but I got 10 more points. But I'm just gonna read them to you. The only difference between a saved center and a lost center, you know where it is? That's the only difference. Number one, God's election is of grace. So Paul calls it in Romans 11, the election of grace. God's covenant with Christ on behalf of chosen sinners is called the covenant of grace. Hebrews 13. Our adoption into the family of God was by grace, Ephesians 1. The redemption of our souls was by a marvelous work of grace, the work of Christ Jesus. We see in Romans 3 that we're justified by grace. God declares us to be righteous upon the basis of righteousness being established. by the faithfulness of our Lord Jesus Christ. We're justified by grace, Romans 3. We're forgiven by grace, Ephesians 1, 7. In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his what? Grace, grace. Our regeneration and calling, that's of grace. Paul says, when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb and called me by his grace. And I'll just quit. It's all of grace. Saved by grace. That's what the book says. Oh, may the kingdom of grace invade your heart If grace comes to you, you'll be found rejoicing in God's salvation by grace through the doing and the dying of our Lord Jesus Christ. Well, let's sing the closing song.