Essentials of Justification (B)

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If you have your Bibles, open them and turn with me to the fifth chapter of the book of Romans.
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Over the past few weeks, we have been looking at the essentials of the faith, or what we have said are the basics of Christianity.
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We've looked at the essentials regarding Jehovah, God, His nature, who He is, and those things which are most essential to know about Him, His eternality, His power, His grace, and His Trinitarian nature, that He is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and that those three persons share that being which is God.
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And then we looked at the essentials of Jesus, that He is both fully God and fully man, and that in Him we find salvation because He lived a perfect life, and that perfection became ours when He made that sacrifice on our behalf, our sin being laid upon Him, His righteousness being given to us.
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And last week, we looked at the essentials of justification, and essentially we said that was half the story.
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Because last week, how many of you remember the key word of last week's lesson? It started with an I.
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Imputation, was that, yep.
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Imputation is really the key when understanding the doctrine of justification.
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Imputation, if you will remember, means to be charged to an account, to take from one account and to impute it into another account.
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That's where the term comes from.
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It is a biblical term.
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We see in the New Testament, when it's looking back to Abraham in Genesis 15, 6, when Paul is talking about Abraham, and it says Abraham believed God, and God imputed it to him as righteousness.
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He charged that righteousness to his account.
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And so, last week we dealt with that issue.
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We said imputation is the foundation of how we understand salvation.
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It's different than, as we noted, Roman Catholics, they look at infusion.
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Infusion is that you are given enough grace so as to be able to do good works, and by those good works, you earn righteousness.
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And we said, no, righteousness is not something we attain.
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Righteousness is not something we earn.
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Righteousness is something that is declared by God upon us.
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We are declared righteous by God.
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It's not something that we attain.
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Well, my purpose for this week is I want us to know not only how we are saved, that's through imputation, but I also want us to look at the errors that are surrounding the issue of justification.
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Because, I must say, this is the issue.
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When I have someone come to me and wants to talk to me about the Bible or talk about church, sometimes people will just come to the church door, I'll be here working, and somebody will just come and come right in.
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If the door is unlocked, they'll come right in and come into my office and want to talk about the Bible, ask questions.
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And it happens probably more often than you think it might.
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People just want to have something to say.
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And oftentimes the question I'll ask is how is it, because this is my question to them, how is it that a sinful person can be made right with a holy God? How can a sinful man be made right with a holy God? Because, honestly, the answer to that question will tell you, number one, if they understand the gospel, and number two, likely, if they're saved.
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If they don't understand the gospel, they're not saved.
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But if they answer something to that question, and we're going to talk about some of the answers that you might hear, you can know where they are spiritually, and it's really a good place to start.
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So, we're going to begin in Romans 5.1.
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Romans 5.1, I've mentioned this before, one of my favorite verses of Scripture.
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It's one of my favorite places to take people when I'm trying to help them understand the doctrine of justification.
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In fact, R.C.
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Sproul said this, and I thought it was interesting.
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He was asked, if you were told you were going to be put on a desert island, you could only take one book with you, what book would you take? And he said, obviously, I'd take the Bible.
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He says, okay, let's say you could only take one book of the Bible.
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What would you take? And he said, well, you know, a lot of people would think Romans, but I've studied Romans so much I'd probably take Hebrews, because that's where I think I need the most studies.
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I'd take Hebrews.
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And they said, well, okay, let's say you could only have one line, one verse from the Bible, and you only could write it on a tablet and have it there on the island with you.
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Only one line from the Bible, what verse would you take? And he said, Romans 5.1.
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Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
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That is a foundational, principial passage regarding the doctrine of justification.
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And where it sits in the Bible, particularly in the book of Romans, is very significant.
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Because if you break down, Romans is actually fairly easy to break down.
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Romans kind of works like this.
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Romans 1 through 3 is the sinful nature of man.
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Romans 4 and 5 are how God justifies sinful man.
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Romans 6 through 8 is how God sanctifies sinful man.
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Romans 9 through 11 is God's mercy to his elect.
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You could say it deals with the doctrine of election and with the issue of the Jewish nation.
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You could say election and the Jews is Romans 9 through 11.
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And chapters 12 through 16 is how we should live in light of all of this.
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That's Romans in a nutshell.
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So if you think about where this particular passage falls, chapters 1 through 3 tell us that we're sinful.
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Chapter 1, Gentiles are sinful.
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Chapter 2, Jews are also sinful.
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So in chapter 3, this has been said to let everyone know that all are sinners.
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The whole first three chapters of Romans is to indict everybody.
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Nobody can read Romans 1 through 3 and come away saying, I'm a good guy.
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No, Romans 1 through 3 is designed to tell you how much you need Jesus and how sinful you are.
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But at the end of chapter 3, he begins to talk about justification.
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And then in chapter 4, he uses Abraham as his example of justification.
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He says, Abraham believed God.
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It was accounted to him as righteousness.
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Not because of what he did, but because of what he believed.
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He believed God and God counted him as righteous.
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So Romans 4, he talks about justification.
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Then in Romans 5, we get this awesome verse.
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Therefore, what does that word therefore mean? I love breaking down this verse and I love to do it.
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This is just one of my favorite things to do.
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We do the whole thing.
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Therefore, what does therefore mean? Based on everything that's been said, this needs to be understood.
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Now, you could say there's immediate context for the therefore and there's the extended context of the therefore.
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The extended context is because everybody's sinful and they're justified by God, therefore have you been justified by faith.
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But the immediate context, if you go up a little bit, you'll see that the immediate context actually is he's talking about being counted to him.
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Look at verse 22 of chapter 4.
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His faith was counted to him as righteousness, but the words that was counted to him were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also.
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It will be counted to us who believe in him, who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.
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What's that word counted to him? What's that talking about? Amputation, that's right.
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All that stuff we talked about last week.
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He's talking about the same thing.
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He says it's counted to him, counted to him, counted to him.
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He says it three times right there in those three verses.
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Therefore, see that's the context.
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Therefore, since it's been counted to him, therefore, since we have been, or I think the King James says having been, right, that's past tense.
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That's key.
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Having been is past tense.
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Having been what? Justified.
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That's key.
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Having been justified.
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Past tense verb.
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It's done.
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It's not something that is going to happen.
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As we talked about last week, there are those who believe you're working for your justification.
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You'll be justified one day.
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Just keep going.
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That's not right.
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If you are justified, it's already done.
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When did you get justified? Now this is a theological scary question because I don't want to call anyone out and I certainly don't want to start any arguments.
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Not in such a gracious group of people like this.
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No one would ever want to argue.
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When did you get justified? Okay.
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I hear mumbling but nobody is raising their hand.
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Okay.
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Well, from the perspective of God, our justification...
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Go ahead and say it.
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At the time of salvation.
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At the time of salvation.
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Okay.
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All right.
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For the foundation of the world.
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For the foundation of the world.
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Okay.
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All right.
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Well, that's not what I was going to say but it's a good answer.
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You're all right and you're all wrong.
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No, no.
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What I mean is...
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It depends on the perspective.
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From the perspective of when was our sin paid for? At the cross.
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Jesus said, Tetelestai, it is finished.
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Actually, Jesus never said Tetelestai because Jesus didn't speak Greek.
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But the Hebrew word that he said, I'm sure, the Aramaic word that he said was in line with Tetelestai because that's the word that we get in the English.
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Tetelestai is the word for paid in full.
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So the actual payment for your sin and it was done was at the cross.
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Right? But the Bible does say that Christ was slain from the foundation of the world.
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So from the perspective of God, the cross was a reality even before it was a reality.
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Because God doesn't think in potentialities.
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He thinks in absolutes because He's not a potential.
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He's an absolute God.
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Right? He knows it's going to be.
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He said these things happen that your hand predestined to take place.
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Acts chapter 4.
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Pilate and the Jews went against Christ because God predestined that to occur.
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Acts 4 says that specifically.
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Right? So God, from His perspective, He knows.
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From Jesus' perspective, the cross pays.
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But the reality for us is when we believe because that's when our heart of stone is taken out and the heart of flesh is put in and that reality becomes a reality in our life when we're regenerated.
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So I can say there was a time when I was a child of wrath because there was a time when I, as an unbeliever, had I died in that condition, I would have died an unbeliever and broke hell wide open.
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But God never saw me as a potential hell-bound sinner.
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God knew what was going to happen to me.
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So from God's perspective, it's different than mine, right? I had a time when I was a hell-bound sinner and I now have a time when I'm going to heaven.
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But what made the difference? Being justified by what? Faith.
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Faith is the result of an action of God whereby He opened up my dead heart to believe His good news.
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Faith is not something that I conjured up on my own.
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In fact, if left to myself, I wouldn't be able to exercise faith at all because my natural desire is not only to doubt God, but to be angry with God and to reject God, to be at enmity with Him.
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That's the natural state of all men is to want to be their own God.
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That's part of the curse.
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What is it that made Eve take and eat of the pomegranate or whatever it was? What is it? You always say it is, Richard.
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What, an apple? What was it? Pomegranate.
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Richard, we joke about what the fruit was.
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Because everybody says apple.
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We don't know.
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What was it that made her take the fruit and eat? You will be like God, knowing good and evil.
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And ever since that moment, it has been in the nature of every man to want to be the captain of his own destiny, his own God.
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And so, the nature of man is to be at war with his Creator.
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To want it His way according to His standard and His time.
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And that's why the verse goes on to say, by faith, having been justified by faith, we have what? Peace.
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And by the way, this is important because even though in the Greek it is not shalom, but in the Hebrew, which Paul, of course, being bilingual, being a person who understood both Greek and Hebrew, would have understood the foundational Hebrew idea behind the word peace is the word shalom.
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And what is shalom in Hebrew? It's enduring peace.
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It's lasting peace.
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You know what they say to each other in Israel? Peace for Israel, shalom.
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They greet each other with that.
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Is Israel at peace right now? No.
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Their teachers have to carry guns when they take the school children out for field trips.
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When your teachers are having to carry automatic firearms to take field trips, you're not at peace.
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When people are driving car bombs and laying IEDs and all these things in your land, you're not at peace.
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But what do they pray for in Israel? Peace, right? Shalom.
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They don't want a ceasefire.
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They want peace.
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Real, enduring peace.
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This is why I cannot get on board with people who think you can lose your salvation.
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We talked about this a little bit last week, but I want to make this point.
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If we have peace with God, it's not temporary.
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Peace with God is enduring.
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That's the key.
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If somebody says, well, I have peace with God, but tomorrow I could be at war with Him again.
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Where is your peace coming from? You? Did you get that peace? And are you in charge of maintaining it? No.
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Therefore, having been justified by faith, we now have, present tense, with ongoing peace with God.
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We who were at enmity with Him now have peace.
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That's why it's one of my favorite verses.
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Because it tells me where I was.
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I was at war with God.
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It tells me what happened.
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Faith, which was not me, but God working in my heart, and now the result of that is peace.
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That's justification.
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So, having said all that, it's just sort of an exegetical breakdown of that passage, I now want to talk about the three fundamental errors that people make when they talk about the subject of justification.
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The first error, and you have your sheet, right? Did I hand them out? They have the blank? The first one is universalism.
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Universalism is what I like to call justification by death.
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Justification by death.
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What is justification by death? Everybody who dies goes to heaven.
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Or at least the vast majority of people who die go to heaven.
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And if you've been to a funeral, I've done well over a hundred in the last ten years.
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If you've ever been to...
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Well, I was going to say, you've done a few more, because you work at the funeral home.
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How many people have you ever heard been preached into hell? Never? Whoa, boy.
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I remember sitting in a service.
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A friend of mine had lost his father.
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This is a guy in Callahan I grew up with, and he had lost his father.
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Now, I hope his father was saved, but I don't know.
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I know his father's...
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The wife was Roman Catholic.
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The son was basically all religious.
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He and I were friends.
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We grew up together.
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Neither one of us...
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He went to Catholic Mass, but he wasn't a very religious young man.
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But the father, I never knew of having any religious experience at all.
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And so I didn't know them after becoming adults.
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You know what I'm talking about.
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After becoming adults, we kind of fell out of hanging out.
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We didn't see each other very much.
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But I got the call his dad had died.
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Okay, I want to go be with his dad passing.
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Went to the funeral.
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I've never ever in my life heard more of a sermon that this is an absolute person is in heaven.
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And again, I hope that he is.
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That'd be great.
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But the way that the guy was describing it, eating ice cream on Hallelujah Boulevard, it was the most crazy description of heaven I've ever heard.
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And I just remember thinking, I don't know the condition this man saw.
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I pray to God that he truly did come to know Christ and that he's in heaven.
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But it is so indicative of the modern funeral experience that everyone that is placed before us in the box is justified simply because they've died.
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And that's the modern expression of universalism.
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It's the modern expression of universalism.
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Can I ask a question and to be honest? Does the Bible teach that everyone goes to heaven? Does the Bible teach that the majority of people go to heaven? Does that ever scare you? It ought to get all of our attention because we have people in our lives that we need to evangelize.
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But the reality is, if all the people are going to heaven that get preached into heaven at their funeral, we don't have anything to worry about.
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There was a Catholic priest and I heard about this.
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I don't know how accurate the story, but I tend to believe it's true based on the source and everything.
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There was a Catholic priest in Mexico who was asked to preach at the funeral of a drug dealer, a very well-known drug dealer.
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And he stood in the mass and he said, this man was a known drug dealer, murderer, thief, and liar, and he is the type of person that on judgment day will be sent to the lake of fire.
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That was it.
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That was it.
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Family was not happy.
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No one was happy.
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But the priest...
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But the truth...
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But that was it.
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I forget it was a little more eloquent than that, but it was just the idea was this was the kind of guy who needs to remind us that there is a hell and it's hot, basically.
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I don't know.
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I don't know how long he survived after that.
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But based on, like I said, based on where I heard it from, I tend to believe it's true.
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But the reality is, you know, I've done a lot of funerals and I don't walk into funerals and do that.
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I don't walk in and say, well, this person's in hell.
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But I also don't say this person's in heaven either.
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Every funeral I do, you know what I say? I talk about their life.
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I talk about whatever it is that they...
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whatever the good parts of their life would have been, whether they enjoyed this or enjoyed that or whether they did this job or were in the military or whatever.
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And then at a certain point, I will say, as a minister, I'm here to speak to you who are still living because this person cannot hear anything I had to say.
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But you can.
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I always...
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that's the shift in the service.
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I always say nice things about the person, whatever.
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Unless I know the person was a believer, and sometimes that is the case.
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Sometimes their life speaks to their faith.
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I had one lady who called me and had me do her husband's funeral because her pastor was on a cruise and they were church-going people and he offered to fly back.
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And she said, no, pastor, we'll get another minister.
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And she went on our website and listened to a bunch of my sermons.
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She wanted to know I was the man for the job.
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And I was grateful.
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I was thankful that she cared.
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So when I went to his service, it was...
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yeah, here's a guy who most likely...
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I can confidently say this man professed Christ.
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But for the most part, I don't know.
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So my response is always to say, this is for you.
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You need to understand that this man's life reminds us of one thing.
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We are all going to die.
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Death comes for everyone.
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Royal doors cannot block death's entrance and wealth cannot bribe death away.
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And that's where I begin my gospel presentation.
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So my point is this.
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As a culture, we've begun to accept that everybody who dies goes to heaven, except for the very, very bad.
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You know, your Hitlers and, you know, your really crazy bad guys.
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You tell them.
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That's me.
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But then there's something...
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I can't go past this.
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I want to move on.
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But there is something that's called semi-universalism.
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Semi-universalism is kind of what I was just describing.
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There's universalism.
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Everybody goes to heaven when they die.
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And semi-universalism is most everybody except for the really, really, really, really bad.
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You know what? I believe that.
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I just tend to believe and know that everyone is really, really, really, really bad.
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We're worse than we think.
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It's kind of funny.
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I think it was Spurgeon who said it, but I could be misquoting him.
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He said that if you ever find out that someone's been talking bad about you, don't be too angry with them because they don't know the half of it.
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They don't know the half of what you really are.
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You know? How true that is.
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So...
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But that's the first thing.
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That's the wrong view of justification, but it is the most common American view.
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It's justification by death.
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Universalism.
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The second one is legalism.
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Justification by works.
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And if you want to add a little parentheses, moral living.
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Because not many people will say, I'm saved by works.
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What they'll say is, I'm saved by what I do.
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And by what I do, they don't mean like, I work my way into heaven, but they say God looks at my life and he sees that I'm more moral than I am immoral.
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I'm more good than I am bad.
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And they sort of take a Muslim approach because the Muslim idea is that everything is scaled and your good outweighs your bad.
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And so as long as your good outweighs your bad, then you have glory to look forward to.
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And if your bad outweighs your good, you have hell to look forward to.
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And no Muslim really has any confidence in his end, except for those who are promised to have paradise.
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And the only ones who are promised paradise are the ones who give their life in the service of Allah.
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So that's why they're willing to strap a bomb to themselves and go drive into the middle of a crowd because in taking out those infidels, they are fighting for Allah and they are promised their 72 ladies on the other side.
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You see? But here's the thing about that.
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And I'm not necessarily saying that this is how you approach a Muslim, but a good question for a Muslim would be, is your God just? Because justice, the whole idea of scales for justice, that's not how justice works.
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Because here's the thing.
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If you rape somebody, no matter how many good things you do, it's never going to take away that rape.
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You understand that? If you murder somebody, no matter how many good things you do, it's never going to take away that murder.
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Goodness never wipes away badness.
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That's not how it works.
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That's why we say our sins must be forgiven.
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They must be paid for by Christ.
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They are not just balanced out with our good.
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Because that's not how justice works.
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There's no rapist ever stood before a judge and said, but hey, I'm a Boy Scout leader.
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And they said, well, we didn't know that.
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It looks like we're going to have to let you go.
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Oh yeah, of course.
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But you understand what I'm saying.
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It's unjust.
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The God of Islam is unjust because He does not enforce the penalty of sin.
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See, the God of our faith, the true God of the Bible, is just because He has ensured that every sin, every sin is accounted for.
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For the believer, our sins are paid for in Christ.
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For the unbeliever, his sins are paid for in hell.
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No sin ever goes undealt with.
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So the person who says, I'm a good person, I live a moral life.
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So what? Not only does the Bible say you're lying because it says there's none good, no not one.
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There's none righteous, none.
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And that's a universal negative.
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Nuh-uh, not you either.
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But it also says, not only that we're not good people, but it says that even one unrighteous act would make us guilty of breaking the law.
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James' book tells us that.
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We studied James last year, or earlier this year.
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He says, the person who's broken one law has become a lawbreaker.
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You could say, I've never raped anybody, but I'm a liar, and you're still a lawbreaker.
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I've never murdered anybody, but you've hated people, and you're a lawbreaker.
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You stand before God as guilty.
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And no matter how many good things you do, if you're trusting in your good works, you are trusting in the wrong thing.
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And yet that is, if universalism is not the majority of American belief, this one is.
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If universalism isn't, legalism is.
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And people won't necessarily refer to themselves as legalists, but that's what a legalist believes.
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I get by on what I do.
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Had a real interesting conversation with a guy very recently who told me, he said, I'm okay because I do what's right.
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I'm okay because I do what's right.
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But we know we don't.
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But that was where his peace is found.
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He believes he does what's right.
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So, that's the second one.
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I want to move on to the third one now.
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The first one was justification by death.
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That's universalism.
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Second one is justification by works.
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That's legalism.
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The last one is religionism.
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I know it's kind of a weird word.
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I didn't want you to have to write sacerdotalism, so we'll just call it religionism.
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It's justification by the church.
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Justification by the church.
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Or you might could add, if you just wanted to add another word, the sacraments of the church.
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Now remember, in Roman Catholicism, there are seven sacraments.
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In Protestant teaching, there are only two, and we wouldn't even identify them as sacraments.
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Ordinarily, we would call them ordinances.
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And they are what? What are the two things that we believe are ordained in the scripture that all believers should participate in? Baptism and the Lord's Supper.
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One is a once for all thing.
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It's baptism.
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One is a thing to be done in perpetuity, and that's the Lord's Table.
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We're not supposed to get baptized every Sunday.
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We're not supposed to only take communion once.
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You know what I mean? And one, in my mind, logically one does precede the other.
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I think that baptism precedes communion logically because if a believer comes to faith, the very first step of faith is demonstrating his faith to baptism.
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So communion would be after that, which is why on Sunday mornings when I say, if you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ and you've been baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the reason why I say that is because I don't want, it's not necessarily that it's an absolute have to, but I don't want somebody thinking that baptism isn't important.
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I don't want them to think, okay, I've come to Christ, I'm going to start taking communion, but I haven't been baptized.
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Baptism is an ordinance, meaning it's something that we've been ordained.
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It's been ordained by Christ.
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It's been ordered in scripture.
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It's not an option.
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Baptism isn't optional.
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I'm not saying that baptism saves you.
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I do think there are some who teach that.
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I know there are some who teach that, and there is a false doctrine called baptismal regeneration, which I don't teach, but the Bible does tell us that baptism is something that believers do.
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It's not as if baptism is just a maybe.
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Baptism is something that believers do, and then communion is something that believers do.
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But here's where the confusion lies in religionism, or what we might call sacerdotalism.
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Sacerdotalism is the priest or the clergy having the power to bestow grace through that thing.
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So you want the grace of the church, you have to go through the Mass.
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You want the grace of the church, you have to go through the sacrament.
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The sacrament is the means of grace, and that's just how it's received, and it's given through the priest or through the clergy.
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So, are there people who believe that their actions in church make them right with God? I'll tell you, it really is very common.
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People, you know, last year at the fishing hole, a lot of people come by, hey, can I talk to you about Christ? I hand them a gospel tract.
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It's good, man, I've been baptized.
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I don't care if you've been baptized.
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What's that mean? What do you mean you've been baptized? How has Christ changed your life? How's that question? Because if all you did was get wet, I mean, any one of us can go jump in a pool.
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What do you mean you got baptized? But that's the way often people look at justification.
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It's something I did.
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I got baptized.
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I took communion.
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I went forward.
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I raised my hand.
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I signed a card.
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I shook the hand of a preacher.
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He whispered in my ear, and we sang just as I am for three whole measures.
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And then I prayed a prayer.
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That's justification through the church.
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It's not justification by faith.
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There's a difference.
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Now, am I saying that no one who ever walked the aisle got saved? No, a lot of people who walk the aisle get saved.
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But what I'm saying is that there are people who are trusting in that, not in Christ, because that didn't change their life.
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If you walked the aisle and Christ didn't change your life, that's something that you need to consider.
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If you have shook a preacher's hand or been baptized and Christ hasn't changed your life, that's something to consider.
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That's an important question to ask.
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Now, you're not going to be perfect, but do you see your life being governed by your desire to follow Christ? Are you convicted of your sins? Do you have a desire to forsake sin and follow Him? Do you have a desire to share your faith with other people and to see other people be pulled out of the fire of hell just as you were? These are things that accompany the saved life.
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And so the person who says, well, yeah, I'm saved because I go to church every Sunday.
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I sing the songs and blah, blah, blah.
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You know, going to church, as my professor used to say, he said, Jesus, when He comes, isn't going to ask for the secretary to go get the church roll.
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You know? It's just because your name's on the church roll isn't going to make you right with God.
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And so that's the third, and I think one of the most dangerous.
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Because where justification by death, universalism is dangerous because it sort of gives a false peace.
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And justification by works gives sort of a false peace.
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I think the danger in the last one is it gives a false sense of righteousness.
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Absolutely.
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And I would say that's part of it in the same category, but justification by emotion is absolutely true because that's what we do.
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We have emotional experience, and it's often produced by all kinds of things that are intended to do that.
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Yeah, it's music.
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It's the way this creature speaks.
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Lower the voice.
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Get real.
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Look at me.
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You know, you get real emotional, and then you start talking very softly.
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You know, you get that, and you focus.
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And everybody, ooh, the lights go down.
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The music comes up.
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There's a little video online of a, they were sort of making fun of the modern church.
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It was a church making, it was sort of a self-parody thing, but it was talking about that, how the preacher will use the way he speaks to get people to respond.
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And we do.
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I mean, pastors do.
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They're trying to, and that's why, honestly, and some of you don't know this, but I want to share something with you.
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If you look at our worship service, the way that it's structured, our worship service is not structured the way a lot of Southern Baptists, and I only speak about Southern Baptists because I went to Southern Baptist College.
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I feel like I can, you know, I feel like I'm close enough to being one that I can talk about them without feeling too, too guilty.
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If you look at our service compared to most Southern Baptist services, you'll notice one major difference.
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Our service does not push toward an invitation.
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Now, we do offer a time for prayer at the end of the service, but I was told in school that unless you take...
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First, I was told I was only supposed to preach for about 25 minutes.
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Knocked that out of the water a long time ago.
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Yeah, you can't even open the book in 25 minutes.
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But...
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Yeah, I'm still on my introduction, 25 minutes.
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But I was told in a 25-minute sermon the last 8 to 10 minutes should be invitation.
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That your whole goal in preaching was to move towards this emotional response.
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And that everything should be aimed at that response.
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Music, lighting, everything is to be coordinated to when you get to that end of the sermon that people are just so fixated on moving forward that you're just going to have to...
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All you have to say is come and the dike will burst and the people will roll forward.
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You want to know, in the history of Christianity, what sermon is considered by many people to have had the biggest evangelistic effect? It was called Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.
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It was preached by Jonathan Edwards.
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It was said that during the sermon people were literally shouting out in terror saying that they saw the earth beneath them open and that they could see into the fire of hell and themselves were afraid of falling in.
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Jonathan Edwards never moved and never raised his voice during the message.
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It is said by those who heard it he preached by reading his sermon from the paper in a monotone voice.
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The most powerful evangelistic message in the history of America was preached with no circumstance, no pomp, just the power of the word and people were moved to literally grab the pew in front of them in fear of falling into hell.
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So I only tell that story and remind you of that because my goal in preaching has never been to manipulate a conversion.
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My goal is to preach the gospel and ask God to convert as He wills and He has converted people among us.
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He has brought people to Christ among us and people say, well what if they got out of here and they should have gotten saved and they didn't? I said, that's where we differ on the providence of God.
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I trust that God is going to save as long as I preach the truth and so I just preach the truth.
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So having said all that, one of the most dangerous things I think in the world right now is justification by the religious expression or the church.
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We are not justified by the church.
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We are justified by faith in Christ.
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Now that will work out in our desiring to be a part of the church, desiring to be a part of the ministry, but that's not why we're saved.
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That's what happens after we get saved.
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Well I hope that was helpful.
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I hope that was encouraging to you and I hope that you guys are looking forward to next week.
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We're going to be turning our total attention aside, going to look at the study of the Trinity.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for the truth.
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I pray that it's been an encouragement to your people and I pray, Lord, that you'll use this to just remind us all that salvation is not of works, salvation is certainly not of death, and salvation is not given out by the church as if it were some kind of commodity to be purchased, but salvation comes by grace through faith alone, in Christ alone.
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And it's in His name we pray.
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Amen.