We're starting here in Romans chapter 4. We're looking at a new message in this chapter. I'm going to try to go a little quicker through the next couple of chapters. Like I said, there's a lot of foundational salvation truth here, but it has a lot of good principles for us to understand. Getting into Romans chapter six, we're starting to deal with more of the practical Christian truths that we need to start considering. So I'm looking forward to getting there, but like I said in Sunday school, you can't always go for the instant, you gotta go with the gradual. And we've been gradually moving towards this point. For Romans chapter four, we're gonna look at this chapter which really is a treatise on faith, I've called it getting right by faith, getting right by faith. Romans 4, verse 1, it says, what shall we say then that Abraham our father as pertaining to the flesh hath found? For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory. Let me just fix my mic here. Ben's just saying thank you. but not before God. For what say the scripture, Abraham believed God and it was counted unto him for righteousness. Now to him that worketh is the reward, not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. Even as David also describeth the blessedness of man unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works, saying, blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is a man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. Cometh this blessedness then upon the circumcision only or upon the uncircumcision also? For we say that faith was reckoned to Abraham for righteousness. How was it then reckoned? When he was in circumcision or in uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision. And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith, which he had yet being uncircumcised, that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised, that righteousness might be imputed unto them also. and the father of circumcision to them who are not of the circumcision only, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, which he had being yet uncircumcised. For the promise that he should be heir of the world was not to Abraham or to his seed through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. That teaches you right there in that passage that salvation, and a lot of people try to dissect the scripture and make it where the Jews were saved by works, the church is saved by grace. We have the same salvation from the beginning to the end. It has always been through faith. They just had less truth revealed. but yet Abraham still was counted righteous by what he believed, not by what he did. So it goes on to say here, for if they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of none effect. What that really means is if a person that is working to be saved would gain in the inheritance, then there would be no more faith needed for salvation. So you can't have both. You're either going to work for your salvation or you're going to get it by faith. You're either going to get right by doing the deeds of the law or you're going to get that righteousness by the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ. You can't have both. There's no mixture. There's no starting in the faith and then ending by works, which a lot of religions do. They say, okay, I believe in Jesus, but then now we have to do this to keep being saved. And that's not right. It says, because the law worketh wrath, for where no law is, there is no transgression. Therefore it is of faith that it might be by grace to the end of the promise might be sure to all the seed, not to only which is of the law, but to also that which is of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all. As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations. Before him whom he believed, even God which quickeneth the dead and calleth those things which be not as though they were." who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations according to that which was spoken, so shall thy seed be. And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about a hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb. He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strong in faith, giving glory to God and being fully persuaded what he had promised he was able also to perform. And therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness." There you have it. It is so clear that your belief in what God has said is what imputes to you righteousness, amen? Using Abraham way before the law. Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him. But for us also, who's us? The church, Gentiles, those that weren't part of Israel. And so it's not only just for his sake alone that it was imputed to Abraham at that time, it was for our sake that we can see just like Abraham would receive righteousness of God through faith, you yourselves today can receive that same righteousness by faith, amen? but for us also to whom it shall be imputed. But there's a qualifier if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered for our offenses and was raised again for our justification. What a powerful, I know I read through that, I say, pastor, I didn't catch half of that. Well, you probably didn't catch a 10th of that, but I read it, amen, let's pray. Father in heaven, I thank you, Lord, that we can be here today and we can read this passage of scripture. Thank you, Lord, that faith is how we are saved. Thank you, Lord, for explaining what that means. Lord, so we don't have to live in error. I pray, Lord, if there's anybody here that's struggling with this because of doctrine that's been taught, that, Lord, that would be settled today. I pray if there's someone here that's lost, that they would be saved today. Lord, I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. So we would say what we believe in order to be saved, it is by faith in Christ, but I'm not done yet. One more word. What's that word? Alone. Alone. Faith in Christ alone. Now what that does is when you have that little word on the end there, it disqualifies a whole bunch of religions out there. Because a lot of people tell you, faith in Christ, but then they say, but baptism, circumcision, whatever, they add to those things, even United Pentecostals. I remember I was dealing with one of these guys, they were kind of a variant group, started in the 1900s early on there. They believe you have to be baptized in Jesus' name only. and then you have to speak with tongues, and only then are you saved. But not only that, after all of that, you still have to maintain a works-based salvation. But we believe in Christ. We believe in faith. I have faith in Christ, but not alone. See, we believe in faith in Christ alone. Alone. That means alone. There's nothing else. Before, after, whenever, it is always alone. Faith in Christ alone. And that's what this chapter is teaching us today. And so, faith is the way righteousness is counted towards you. So that word you even see here in the passage, I'm gonna have to turn there real quick. When we're reading through here, Where am I? There we go. Notice what it says in verse three. For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. You guys know how to count? See that word count in this passage, the word, the Greek word is used in several different instances here in this passage. And not always translated the same way. The word impute means the same word as count. It actually means to take an inventory. So what he's saying is, he's saying is that because of Abraham's faith, God placed in his inventory righteousness. And you know what was removed from his inventory? All sin. See, imputation, remember we talked about that a while back and what imputation was? I had this chart, I'm gonna pull it up again. There are three imputations in the Bible. There is Adam's sin, how it's imputed to mankind, because they sinned in the garden, his first oldest son was a murderer. I mean, that sin just immediately began to do its work, child after child after child, and you can see that mess that was left from that decision by Adam. You're a part of that process. You're one of those that came from Adam. That's why the Bible says, in Adam all die. All right. So the sin of Adam has been put into your inventory, is what it's saying there. Now, the second invitation is mankind's sin was imputed to Christ when he died on the cross of Calvary. So what Jesus did when he was on that cross, he took the inventory of the sin of the world and he put it on himself, on his record. That's pretty awesome. So that's the second major imputation. Now the third one is the blessed one. Jesus Christ's righteousness is imputed to those that believe. So here, I had this imputation of sin on myself. It was in my inventory. No matter how good I tried to behave, no matter how nice I was, no matter how many times I went to church, it really didn't matter. It didn't erase my record. There was always sin on my record. But when Jesus died and I received him as my savior, that sin inventory was erased because he put it onto his record. Amen? And then in exchange for that, he took his righteousness and he imputed that to my record. See, that's the only way you're going to stand before God is if you stand in the very righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. You don't want to stand before God in your righteousness. You don't want to do that. So I'm just going to do it myself. I've been pretty good. But the thing is this, your sin has not been erased. So you may think you have a couple of good things on your record. But I'll tell you something, if there's one record of any sin on your record, you would have to go to hell for it. See, Jesus had to take all the sin, all the sin of the world. And that's what He did when He went to the cross. And when you receive Christ as your Savior, that's exactly what took place. He took all of your sin and gave you all of His righteousness so that you can stand before God. And when He looks at you, wow, you look like my son. He says, you are justified. It's justified, never sinned. Not like justified, sinned, and then I stopped sinning. He says, no, you look like someone that has never ever sinned because you have the record of the Lord Jesus Christ who has never sinned. You understand that? That's why these people that are adding, I believe in faith in Christ and, oh my. Do you understand, as soon as you add one work, like it says in that passage, it says it voids faith. So now that faith I put in Christ no longer counts because I added maybe a baptism, or I added how good I've been, or maybe I don't drink like I used to, you know, or maybe I sing in the choir. He says if you add one work, one deed, it voids faith. Because then now you're working a debt of the law, not the debt of grace. Amen? So very important. So the first thing I want to look at here as we go through this, I want to look at the testimonies of faith. There's two men that God brings up here at the beginning of this chapter. We already know Abraham is one of them. but David is another. And so we like hearing testimonies of those that step forward for God by faith and their response to that faith. I've heard many people's testimony. It always blesses my heart when someone says, I did this by faith and this is what God did for me. Amen. And these men, it's the same thing. They got a wonderful testimony. So Abraham. Abraham was the father of our faith. You know where he came from? Can anybody remember where he came from? Where was his homeland? Ur of Chaldeas. So what was his nationality? Babylonian. He was in the southern part of the Babylonian kingdom. He was of Babylon. Wow. Now Babylon's not good, we know that. It's really the heart of all idolatry. In fact, Abraham probably was involved in idolatry until the Lord found him. What else could he have been? Living in the heart of it. He wasn't saved until he was counted righteous by his faith. Same as you. You were in Babylon. You remember that day you were in Babylon worshiping those idols. and the Lord came and found you. Then you put your faith in the words that he showed you, and then that faith was counted righteousness towards you. Ur of Chaldees, the southern part of Babylon. So the Lord's eyes were looking to and fro throughout the whole earth, looking for someone that would believe his words. And he found him, Abraham. And he went to that man, you know, there was no, there was no Hebrews. There was no Israel. There were no Jews. So what was Abraham? Was he a Jew? He was a Gentile, just like you and I. So what the Lord did in Romans chapter four is he's using this man that really is just like you and I to show you that the same way that he got saved is the same way that you'll get saved. It's no different. Like I said, the only difference is we have more truth revealed. But it also shows that when you believe truth from God, you'll believe truth from God. That means it's like this. I remember Curtis Hudson. He was a Sword of the Lord editor, and his testimony was he was of the Nazarene Church. Now, what they did is they denied the virgin birth. They didn't believe in that. But he was brought up in this church as a child, and he just grew up, and God got a hold of his heart. And one Baptist preacher one day heard him preaching, and he's saying, whoa. And he went up to Curtis Hudson and says, do you believe what you just said? He says, well, of course. Well, you're not gonna last long in your church. You see, what Curtis Hudson found out after he got saved is that when you believe God's truth by faith, you will continue to believe God's truth by faith. So here he's been taught the virgin birth is false. Didn't happen. Yet when he got saved and someone said, let me show you this truth, oh yeah, I believe that. Do you understand that? So Abraham, when God came to him and said, I'm gonna bless you, and through your seed, all the families of the earth are gonna be blessed, and he just said, I believe you, God. I just simply believe you. You know, in that moment, he became righteous before God because of his faith in what God has said. And you know what, that traveled throughout his whole life. Because when it came to that promised son that he had, and this was really it, he was putting all of his stock in this one son that was supposed to be the one that was gonna build this nation where the seed is gonna be like the sand of the seashore. And so all from this one boy that I'm gonna have at 100 years old. Now the interesting thing is God came to one day and says, Abraham, I want you to sacrifice that son. The one that you're putting all your stock in and the one that you think is gonna make my promise come to light. So it didn't make sense to Abraham. He said, well, why in the world would you ask me to kill the very one that really your promise is going to be fulfilled through? So at that point, reasoning comes into play for most of us. Well, no, then we can't believe that because I think this will happen, but that's not what Abraham did. Abraham immediately came up with the plans to go up to Mount Moriah and to sacrifice his son on that mountain. Now, the Bible says in the book of Hebrews that what he believed was He didn't know how this made sense, but what he believed was, is that if I kill my son, because God told me to, and that's a non-negotiable thing, and God told me to do it, I'm gonna do it, but I still am reasoning it out here, that I bet you what God's gonna do is raise up my son after I kill him so he can continue to do what God said he was gonna do. My goodness, man, that is faith. His first step of faith was that I believe that even though I'm 100 years old, and I don't even have the capacity to have children anymore, my wife, her womb, it's over. But God said, you're gonna bring forth a son. And he believed him. You see, it started in Genesis chapter 12, where Abraham said, I believe what you said, God. I'm going to leave my family and I'm going to go to this land I've never seen before. I'm going to make this journey out of the place that I call home. And I believe you're going to do what you said you're going to do. And then later on, when he finally got the son, that faith continued. It continued on where God said something else and he said, oh, you know, I believed you back then. It was counted to me for righteousness. So in my heart, I just continue to believe what you say. See, this is where if you're a true believer, you're a believer. You understand that. 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. And I looked at the tense of that word one time. It says, you know, I know what it means. It means that it happens at one point in time, a punctiliar action, just like this. I was looking up the verb tense in the Greek, and I had it all figured out before I went there. But when I went there, it wasn't what I thought it was. That believeth is continual. I said, Lord, what does that mean? Here I grew up in a Mennonite community. We were taught you could lose your salvation. And then I figured it out. It's just like Abraham. If you say that you believe that Jesus Christ came to die for your sins and rose up from the grave defeating death, which is impossible for man, by the way, And you say you believe that? The Bible says, if you truly are born again, you'll always believe it. So if you can say, well, I once was a Christian, but I walked away from my faith. This is what I got to say to you. You were never a Christian. You were never a Christian. In my life and all the trials and battles I've gone through, never once did I look at the word and say, oh, you know, you're just not true. I tended always to look at myself and say, it's my problem, not yours. It's me, God, not you. That's what true regeneration is. You say, well, I'm going to walk away from Christianity. Then you've never walked into it. You've never walked into it. So you hear these testimonies out there. Well, this person walked away from Christ. He did not. He never walked away from Christ. Because Christ has never done anything to let him down. And if he walked away, that means he's never walked to him. Amen? Abraham, father of faith. If Abraham was justified by works, he could glory before men, but not God, is what it says here. For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory, but not before God. For what sayeth the scripture, Abraham believed God and was countered unto him for righteousness. It's telling us that the justification that Paul is speaking about has nothing to do with his works. The justification took place the moment he believed, way back in Genesis 12. Like I said last time, justification isn't the process. It's a legal action. It's a declaration. The moment that the Lord sees you make a decision by faith and believing Him, He says, I've declared you righteous. I declare you righteous. It's not a progressive thing. And it's important that we see this. The Bible says in 1 Peter 1.24, for all flesh is as grass and all the glory of man is a flower of grass. The grass withereth and the flower thereof falleth away, but the word of the Lord endureth forever. And this is the word by which the gospel is preached unto you. Well, that Bible is important, amen. Well, then Martin Luther made this statement. He was the You remember he was a big reformer. He nailed his thesis to the door of the Catholic church there. And his basic statement was, hey, I've come to the conclusion that man is justified by faith alone. But one statement he made was, I would like to rip the book of James out of the Bible. Why is that? Because in the book of James, it says that Abraham was justified because he offered his son up to the Lord. So what does that mean? Well, this is what I'm gonna tell you. See, Romans is dealing with salvation. James is dealing with religion. I've told you this, and this is why I teach it to you this way, that salvation is between you and God. Religion is between you and man. It's a great way to help people understand. You can take somebody that believes in a works-based salvation, help them understand that they're dealing here instead of here. So what we're really dealing with in Romans is we're saying that you're justified by faith here, but you're justified by your works here. That means that your faith, saving faith, works. You understand that? You can't say, I believe God, and then don't do anything that God's asked you to do. So basically Abraham justified himself in the eyes of the people because they said, you know what? He really believes what God said. Now God knew that he believed that way back in Genesis 12. That's where he was justified. But later on in his works, in sacrificing the son whom thou lovest, He says, like, that doesn't make sense. Why would Abraham offer the son that was supposed to be the son of promise, that all the promises that were made to him was going to work through that son? That just showed you what faith Abraham had. And when people saw that, they said, you know what? He is justified to me. You see, Christian, that's important for you to understand. We're very big on, hey, I'm saved. But do you understand there is an element of people looking at you and saying, are you saved? Do you really believe God? Well, it doesn't matter as long as I'm saying, well, it does matter because the Bible talks a lot about it. In fact, it talks about circumcision here. There was a sign, the sign of circumcision. That was simply something that God did to separate himself of peculiar people on the earth as an outward sign of an inward faith. You can equate that to baptism. It's not the same, but you can equate the principle. See, you were justified the moment that you received Christ as your savior. When was that? Somebody have a date? When was yours? 18 years ago. So that day you were justified by faith to your God. How about somebody else, you got a date? When were you justified by faith, John? 1997, that's when God declared that legal act, justification, justified. Anybody else? December 84, amen. Nothing has changed. Still justified. Now let me ask you this, from that date onward, your salvation onward, have you been justified before men? Has that faith that was saving faith, has that saving faith worked? See, faith has action. That's why James says, faith without works is dead. It actually says that works perfect faith. So are you telling me to work for salvation? No. Because the moment I received Christ is the moment I was justified. That's when I was saved. But a faith that you have that does not produce anything cannot be countered on or nobody will look at it and say, I don't believe you're saved. I don't believe you're saved. Because all you're doing is professing. but you're not possessing. If you possess faith, that will be seen in your actions. That's religion. But the Lord knew we couldn't do religion without salvation. In fact, that's what the world is trying to do. They're trying to do a lot of religion so that they can get their salvation. How in the world can I dig around in the garbage can of this earth come up with something precious enough that I'm gonna offer back up to God so he can establish my salvation. That's why salvation has to come as a free gift at a moment of time when I believe what God said about his son dying for me on the cross of Calvary. That legal act was made, the declaration of righteousness was made towards me, And from that point on, he says, now son, get the garbage out of the way in your heart. Because my goal for your life is that what I'm giving you from above can flow through you and out of your belly. That's my religion. I tell people that are involved in religion, I say, what you need to understand, it's one way flow with God. It starts with him and it works towards man. It doesn't start down here and work toward God. There's nothing down here that he's gonna look at you and say, oh yeah, I really like that, I'm gonna declare you righteous. See, because when you do that, you void faith. You void faith. You can't have it. So examining Abraham's faith. Let's examine David's faith for a moment here. Romans 4, 6, and 7. Even as David also described with the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputed righteousness without works, saying, blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered. So here we have a New Testament passage that is elaborating on an Old Testament scripture. Now, how can they do that? Because the same person wrote it, God. Amen. The Holy Spirit of God. And many times you find in the New Testament how the Lord elaborates on something He gave you in the Old Testament, and that's what you see here with David. So in Psalms, this is what it says in the Old Testament. It says, blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity. and in whose spirit there is no guile. Remember, imputing means to take an inventory or to count towards. And so here, who's David? David's a good guy, right? Really? Do you know anybody that has, in order to commit adultery and to cover it, he went and killed one of his loyal friends? Would that be one of your friends today? No, I broke off fellowship with people like that. Well, David was a people like that. But David found forgiveness. And notice that his adultery, his laziness, his murder, his conniving, his manipulation, all these things he did completely for self. It was all about him. He didn't care about Bathsheba. It wasn't about his love for her. It was about his love of himself. You would think, boy, God would make him jump through hoops religiously to come back to God. Yet here we see he just says, blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven. That's it. How did he deal with that murder? How did he deal with that adultery? How did he deal with that laziness? He dealt with it by confessing it, acknowledging it, and receiving forgiveness for it. Why? Because he believed God. See, that's why the Bible says his heart was perfect all his days. He never had a false god, not like Solomon. Solomon worshiped false gods. David never did. He sinned. But when it came down to it, he always went to God. God was always his God. He was never any other God. He knew the God that he served, the one that he had, and the pastor there as he was looking after the sheep. That's my God. He's always been my God and always will be my God. But he really messed up. So God uses him as an example for us to exemplify this aspect of faith and justification. And we know that David as well, not only was a king, but he was also a prophet. Now, why was he a prophet? Because he was used to write the scriptures. And he prophetically gave us many passages pointing forth to the crucifixion of Christ and so forth. And yet, in these writings, he personally involves himself and says, guess what? This is me. And I'm going to let you know how I got saved from that. Romans comes along. It says, David also describeth the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works. Now, this is the thing. When I read Psalm 32, it says nothing about imputing righteousness without works. All it says is, blessed is a man that doth not have his iniquities imputed to him. So what does that mean? That means having your sins forgiven and having righteousness placed in its stead is the same act. It's the same thing. So Romans finishes the idea. where David just says, blessed is the man whom the Lord doth not impute sin. He's saying, you know what? If that adultery was placed on my account, I would burn in hell forever. He said, if that murder was placed upon my account, I would burn in hell forever. And you know what he says? The blessedness of man. He stands up and says, let me tell you about the blessed thing. that if you've murdered someone, that if you've committed adultery, that if you've sinned in any way whatsoever, He does not necessarily have to impute that to you. But instead, He will give you His righteousness. Wow. You think David was happy about that? He was real happy about that. Real happy about that. That's why it says, describeth the blessedness of man. I'm not just talking about imputation here. I'm talking about blessing, folks. I'm talking about how real blessed I am to have a God that will not just put to my account all the garbage of my life, but in a moment of time when I came to Him, He said, and he wiped it away. And he says, now David, you stand righteously before me. See, that's a testimony. Let me ask you, what were the works involved there? What did David do? No works, no pride, No I. Oh, I'm glad I didn't get imputed righteous or in sin because I did this and I did that. No, no. He just said very clearly, blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. That's what happens when you come to Christ. That's faith alone. That's faith in Christ alone. One time, legal action, in that moment of time, whatever date that was for you, whatever date you have. You say, I don't know the exact date. Well, you know what happened. You know the situation. That moment you were declared righteous before God and your sins were removed. You mean just my past sins? No, sir. When he died on the cross of Calvary, he didn't just die for the sins up to the cross. He died for the past, the present, and the future. One time thing. One offering for all, the Bible says. Amen. What great truth that is. Forgiveness means to send forth. God says, David, I send your sin forth. As far as the east is from the west, so I've removed your transgressions from you, David. Aren't you glad about that? Think about your life. Think about the stupid things you've done. You know, you have a memory of that, don't you? Yesterday I was thinking about something, and I'm always hard on myself, and I thought, I've been such a fool. I mean, it's 20, 30 years ago, man. You know what? It's like it's still there. It's a reminder of what God has done. And as I'm looking at myself and being hard on myself, you know what? God doesn't know what I'm talking about. I feel all ashamed for all the things I've ever done, but God's looking at me, what are you talking about? I've sent it forth. I've sent it forth. See, that's what keeps you from condemning yourself. Therefore, there's no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, the Bible says. You can't even condemn yourself. Now, you'll remember he left you with this thinker, and you've got some cells in there, you've got some memories. You know, I don't want you to use those memories to condemn yourself. But let those memories remind you of what Christ has done. Let them bring glory to God. And I'm not saying go tell everybody what's in all those cells. The least people know the best. But you know what? God, you can glorify him with it. Say, Lord, thank you. Thank you that they don't condemn me anymore. I'm free because of your forgiveness. because you sent them forth. You covered, you concealed my sin before me. The great English preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon told of a man who had been sentenced to death by a Spanish court because he was an American citizen, but also of English birth, the councils of both countries decided to intervene. They declared that the authorities of Spain had no right to take his life, but their protests went unheeded. Finally, they deliberately wrapped the prisoner in their flags, the stars and stripes and the Union Jack. Defying the executioner, they issued this warning, fire if you dare. But if you do, you'll bring the powers of two great nations upon you. There stood the condemned, but the rifleman would not shoot. Protected by those flags and the governments they represented, the man was invulnerable. We are condemned by our sin, but the blood of Christ covers us when we seek his forgiveness. What a blessing to have our sins forgiven and covered. So you're all wrapped up. When the devil takes a shot at you, he's taking a shot at Jesus. It's no longer about you. Like I always say, you weren't good enough to get saved, and you sure aren't good enough to keep it. The reason why you are saved is because he wrapped you up in his blood, and the devil can take no more pot shots. He can't have you. Death has been defeated. through what Jesus Christ did for you. Amen? Let's bow our heads. And I understand a lot of people on a Sunday morning are born again. You're saved and you understand that concept. But I'm going to tell you something. I grew up in a religion that taught you couldn't really know. And you couldn't really know, because after faith, they didn't put alone. They put faith, and then you just keep trying. And that always left a question mark. And you know, there's many people that have come out of the religion like that, that that question mark lingers. It just lingers there, because they've been so indoctrinated by these false ideas. What I want you to get from this message is I want that question mark to be erased. I want you to make that statement today, Lord, I'm blessed because I'm saved by faith in Christ alone. Can you say that? Can you say that to the Lord today? Can you honestly make that declaration that it is Christ alone, faith in him alone? If you get that question mark popping up, you have to hold up this scripture and say, Lord, could you please erase the question mark? Because I understand now it's by faith in Christ alone. Please receive that victory this morning. It is a victory. See, folks, I had to renounce the part that I had in a false teaching. And if you're here and you've been involved in doctrine where they've taught you things that is opposite what I've said today, you need to bring that to the cross. I'm not saying you're not saved. I've counseled with people that could not get victory because that satanic hold of their past religion wouldn't let them go. They wouldn't go forward. And maybe you need to renounce it. Say, Lord, I renounce the place that that doctrine has had in my life. I ask you to take back the ground that Satan has gained in my life through these lies. I believe that I'm saved by faith in Christ alone.