Sola Fide and James

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Let's begin with prayer, huh? Father, I thank you for these men.
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I thank you for the opportunity to study together.
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I pray that your word would be the focus of the morning and that your spirit would be the teacher.
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I pray, Lord, that I would not be anything at all, but just a mouthpiece for you.
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And Lord, that it wouldn't be about me or about them even, but about your word.
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And Lord, I pray that you would keep me from error.
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I pray that you would do that for the sake of their conscience, for the sake of your name, and for the sake of my own soul.
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And I pray, Lord, that everything that we do would glorify you.
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And as we discussed, Lord, this morning, the doctrine of justification and how we understand justification and what that even means, I pray, O God, that you would, by your mercy, give us all fresh eyes to see the truth that's contained within your word.
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In Christ's name, Amen.
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Alright, open your Bibles to James 2.
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We have been in the book of James now for a while.
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James is considered to be almost like the Proverbs of the New Testament.
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It provides for us statements of wisdom and truth.
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And we've seen so far, it's got a lot of very meaty and thoughtful things for us to consider.
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And in the second chapter, James deals with the issue of faith and works and the relationship between the two.
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This morning, we're going to begin at verse 20.
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Last week, we looked at verse 19, where he said, you believe that God is one, you do well, even demons believe and shudder.
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And what did I say last week? I said, belief in God merits nothing, because everyone knows God exists.
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And the fact that you simply believe that He exists is not the point.
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It's about trusting in Christ, not just believing in some kind of a God.
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Well, based on that and what he says in verse 19, we're going to read on now, beginning at verse 20 and down to the end, and hopefully finish the chapter today.
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Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works.
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And the Scripture was fulfilled that says, Abraham believed God and was counted to him as righteousness, and he was called a friend of God.
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You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.
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And in the same way, was also not Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.
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And so ends the reading of God's inspired Word.
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If you look at the board, you'll notice I wrote, when I came in this morning, a Latin phrase which I imagine some of you are familiar with.
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Some of you may not be.
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It's part of a larger set of statements that were the banners of truth that were flown during the Protestant Reformation.
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In the 16th century, the Roman Catholic Church had become so corrupt.
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And remember this, the Roman Catholic Church was the church in the Western world.
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There was not Baptists and Methodists and Episcopalians and Nazarenes.
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There was the church.
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The church had an authority, a leader, and it was the Pope.
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And that church had become corrupted through the Middle Ages, with the Crusades and the other things that happened as a result.
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Many corruptions had come into the church.
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There had even been a division in 1056 between the Western Church, which became known as the Catholics or the Roman Catholics, and the Eastern Church, known as the Orthodox Church, the Greek Church.
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In fact, that was one of the biggest distinctions, was the Orthodox Church still used Greek, where the Western Church used Latin.
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And so that's why the Bible of the Western Church, up until the time of the English translations, was written in Latin.
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It was called the Latin Vulgate.
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It was translated in the 5th century by Jerome, and it was used for a thousand years, until the first English translation was made by a man by the name of John Wycliffe in the 1300s.
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Several other English translations would come about, and then in the 1600s we have the advent of the King James Bible.
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You guys are familiar with the King James Bible, I'm almost certain.
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All of this is part of history, and it matters.
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Because at the height of the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church, there was a little priest in Germany named Martin Luther.
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Now, Martin Luther is one of my heroes.
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If you've been here long enough, you've heard me talk about him before.
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So I'm not going to expend all of my time today sharing the life of Martin Luther.
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But I will say this, he was God's bull.
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And he charged ahead, like a bull, into the armies of the Catholic Church, and he took down walls, and burst against barriers, and was used by God to bring massive change within the Church.
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While Calvin was the mind of the Reformation, Luther was certainly the spark that lit the flame.
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He was the powerful one, and he is still today a powerhouse.
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Did everything he said was right? No, I'm not a Lutheran.
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But Luther was an important person.
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Luther was not the first Reformer.
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There were men who came before him.
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John Wycliffe, who I mentioned, translated the Bible into English.
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He was hated so much, the Roman Catholics, a hundred years after he died, dug up his bones and burned them, just to show their disdain for Wycliffe's teaching.
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They burned his bones and scattered them in a river.
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The man that followed him was John Hus.
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John Hus was burned for preaching the Gospel.
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And when John Hus died, he was singing, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.
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John Hus, you ever heard the phrase, your goose is cooked? He was called the Goose, that was his nickname.
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He was from a town called Goosetown, it was the nickname of the town.
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And so he was called the Goose.
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And so when he died, the goose was cooked.
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And that's where that phrase comes from.
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We stand today on the shoulders of giants, of men who have been men of renown.
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The Scripture talks about in the old men of renown.
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Well, these are modern men of renown within the last few hundred years who stood for truth.
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And the foundational truths of that Reformation are not the tulip.
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I know you've probably heard of the tulip, total depravity, unconditional election, the five points of Calvinism.
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That's something else.
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That's not the foundation of Reformed theology.
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That's a part of Reformed theology, but that ain't the bedrock.
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The bedrock of Reformed theology, Reformation teaching is the five solas.
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Sola gratia, saved by grace alone.
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Sola fide, justified by faith alone.
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Solus Christus, in Christ alone.
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Soli Deo Gloria, to God alone be the glory.
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Sola Scriptura, according to the Scripture alone.
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Every one of those five banners of truth was a response to a false teaching of Rome.
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If you think about it, sola gratia, salvation by grace alone.
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Not grace plus works, but grace alone.
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Sola fide, justification by faith alone.
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Not faith plus works, but faith alone.
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Solus Christus, by Christ.
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Not Christ and the Pope and the priests and the church, but Christ alone.
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Sola Scriptura, the Bible.
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Not the Bible in tradition.
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Not the Bible in the magisterium.
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Not the Bible in the Pope, but the Bible alone.
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Soli Deo Gloria, to God alone.
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Not to God and the Pope.
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Not to God and the priests.
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Not to God and the magisterium.
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But to God alone be the glory.
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So, I stand firmly on those five pillars, on those five banners, as a teacher who is known as a Reformed theologian.
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Having said that, the most difficult one of the five for people to understand and to apply is sola fide.
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Sola fide is justification.
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You're right, it does mean faith alone.
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You're right, because sola is Latin for only or alone.
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Fide is faith.
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In fact, if you are a Marine, if any of you were ever in the Marines, the Latin phrase for the Marines is what? Semper Fidelis, which means what? Always faithful.
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Semper Fi, always faithful.
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That's the motto of the U.S.
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Marine.
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And Fidelis comes from the word fide, to be of faith.
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So, sola fide means justification by faith alone.
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Now, here is where this is a problem.
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And this is the argument that the Roman Catholics will use.
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And by the way, if you are a Roman Catholic, I'm not here to kick you in the teeth or to smash your shins in today.
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If you're a Roman Catholic, I'd love to talk to you.
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I'm not a beater-upper of anyone.
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Not even a word, a beater-upper.
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I'm not an attacker.
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I'm just simply giving...
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I love to teach history, and I love to teach church history.
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And if we can't recognize the errors of our history...
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I mean, Protestants have had some errors too, some major ones.
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And if we can't recognize the errors of our history, we'll never learn from them.
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So, please don't think I'm just here to be an agent of attack.
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But I try to be an agent of truth.
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So, justification by faith alone.
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Here's the argument that comes up.
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The only place in the Bible where faith alone is ever used...
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The only place in the Bible where faith alone, that phrase, is ever used is in James chapter 2.
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Where James says, You see that you are justified by works, and not by faith alone.
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So, immediately, we see James 2...
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And what verse is it? 24? Look at it.
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Which one says, you see that you're justified...
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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So, James 2.24 seems to be running headlong against the entire Protestant doctrine.
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In fact, I would argue, this is the foundation of Protestantism.
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If there are five pillars, there's one that's holding them up.
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And it's this one.
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One might argue it's Soledad Gloria, but I would say it's this one.
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Because, in fact, I think it was Luther who even said that the doctrine of justification by faith alone is the hinge upon which everything turns.
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It's what's going to take you from darkness to light.
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It's what's going to take you from error to truth.
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It's the hinge on which everything turns.
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And so, if this is the foundation of Protestantism, and if this is against the Bible, that means that the entire Protestant movement is a sham.
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Now, obviously, as a Reformed theologian, I didn't come here to say Protestantism is a sham, but I'm saying that's the argument.
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The argument is, James 2.24 says it's not by faith alone.
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So, if you say it is by faith alone, you are by nature a liar, or a false teacher, or a false prophet.
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And, by the way, if you look at Roman Catholic literature on the subject of Martin Luther, they do define him as a heretic.
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A dangerous man, because he taught justification by faith alone.
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Well, we're going to get there.
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You jump ahead a little, but you're right.
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But, let's just for a moment address the issue of what James is saying, and what we are saying when we say faith alone.
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Because one thing that we have to understand is the argument that's being made by the Roman Catholics, and anyone who would deny sola fide, is the argument, the fallacy of equivocation.
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Equivocation means...
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Yes, go ahead.
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Yes.
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Yes.
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No, I agree 100%.
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But the issue that they're making is they're saying, why would you even say you're justified by faith alone when the Bible says the only time faith alone is used is to say you're not justified by faith alone.
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So, they're arguing that we shouldn't use this phrase.
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And what I'm saying is that I think that there is a false equivalent, or what's called equivocation.
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It's a logical fallacy.
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Right? It's not the same.
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When we say justification by faith alone, there is actually a larger truth that we are proclaiming in that statement.
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Here is the larger truth.
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When Jesus Christ came to the earth, He lived a righteous life.
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Amen? He lived a perfect life.
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He never sinned in thought, word, or deed.
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He was taken five different courts.
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He was taken by sinful men, beaten, drug across part way up, and then Simon of Cyrene came and drug it the rest of the way, and He was nailed to a cross, and He was suspended between heaven and earth, where He died of asphyxiation.
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Which means His lungs filled with fluid as He drowned in His own blood.
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As your body is crushing against the weight of gravity, and pulling down onto your lungs, and they're filling with the fluid of your own fluid, and you're crushing yourself to death because of how much weight.
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This is why you think about Jesus said seven things from the cross.
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Every time He spoke, He had to push up on the nail in His foot, just to lift Himself up enough to get enough air in His lungs so that He could speak.
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And as soon as He was done speaking, He had to fall back down because of the crushing weight of His own flesh.
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That's why they broke the legs of the two men who were beside Him.
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Because those guys were still holding on.
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And how do you get them to die? Well, you make it where they can't push up anymore with their legs.
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You break their legs and then they can't hold themselves up anymore.
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They die pretty quick.
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Jesus had already died.
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Because Jesus didn't die from asphyxiation.
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He died by giving up the ghost.
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He said, I know man takes my life from me.
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I give it up on my own accord.
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When I say He died from asphyxiation, I mean the physical death on a cross is death of immense pain.
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Yeah, it's a physical explanation.
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But He gave up the ghost.
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He said, it is finished.
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And He gave up the ghost and He was dead.
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That's why they didn't have to break His legs, fulfilling the prophecy that not one bone would be broken.
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They stabbed Him just to prove that He was dead.
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And out came water and blood.
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And there's some argument as to what that means.
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I think it has to do with the fact that they pierced the pericardium, which is the sac that surrounds the heart.
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It's filled with a liquid that looks like water.
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And when it came out, they would have said it looked like water and blood.
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It could also be the fact that the blood had already begun to separate from the plasma.
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And you have something that looks like water when that happens.
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Meaning that it had already been dead for a little while.
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So there's a couple of reasons why the piercing would have poured out as blood and water.
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He was on the cross six hours.
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Yeah, so that's rough.
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I mean, I can't even imagine it.
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So here's the point I'm making.
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When He died on the cross, He died in the place of sinners.
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Because I deserve that cross.
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You say, well, what have you done to deserve the cross? I have broken God's law.
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In fact, I've broken every one of God's laws.
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You walk me through the commandments and you show me one that I have not broken.
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In fact, you just take me through the two commandments.
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What are the two commandments? Love the Lord your God, love your neighbors yourself.
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I have not done those.
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Not as I should.
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So I deserve the wrath of God.
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I deserve God's punishment falling upon me.
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As much as the people outside the ark in Noah's day deserve God's wrath, so do I.
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Jesus goes onto the cross.
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God's wrath, it's like a cup, right? It's like a cup.
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And it's filled to the top with wrath.
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That's what I have stored up.
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A full cup of wrath.
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Jesus drinks it down to nothing.
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He takes every drop of God's wrath.
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That's what Jesus said on the night before He went to the cross.
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When He said, Father, if it be Thy will, take this cup from Me.
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It was the cup of wrath.
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Because Jesus wasn't concerned.
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By the way, people say, oh, He was worried about the Romans, He's worried about the Jews.
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No.
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He sweat drops of blood because He was about to experience the wrath of God.
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And the weight of the wrath of God for every person who would ever believe was poured out on Him.
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And He yelled out, My Lord, My Lord, why have You forsaken Me? So we have this awesome thing that has happened.
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Christ has taken our sin.
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He was perfectly righteous.
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From birth to death, He never sinned.
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He demonstrated a perfect righteousness.
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When He died, my sin was placed on Him.
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When He died, His righteousness was credited to me.
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It's like this.
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You have a ledger.
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I think I've talked about this before.
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This is my ledger.
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This is Christ's ledger.
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My ledger, you have two lines.
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You have sin and righteousness.
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On Jesus, you have sin and righteousness.
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On mine, I had all this sin.
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No righteousness.
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On His, He's got all this righteousness and no sin.
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His life had no sin but perfect righteousness.
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My life has no righteousness.
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You've never done anything good? I'm not saying I've never done anything good.
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What I am saying is nothing I can do merits me before God.
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God does not owe me anything.
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And thus I have no righteousness.
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The Bible says all our righteousnesses are as filthy rats before a holy God.
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So when Christ dies on the cross, His righteousness gets credited to my account.
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My sin gets credited to His account.
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And He bears the sin.
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And I get the righteousness.
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Thereby I stand, as the hymn says, in His righteousness alone, faultless to stand before the throne.
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You say, why are you going over this? We know this.
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I hope you do know this.
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But here's why I'm going over this.
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This is the heart of justification by faith alone.
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Because while Roman Catholics may argue that Christ took our sin, they don't believe He took it all.
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That's number one.
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Because they still believe that you have to do penance.
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They still believe in purgatory, which is the place that you go to continue to be cleansed of sin.
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They still believe that you have to have a mass after a mass after a mass after a mass.
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And you could have a mass a thousand times in your life and still die unclean.
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Beloved, that is not forgiveness.
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And they don't believe that the righteousness of Christ is credited to you.
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They believe your righteousness is your own.
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And that is dangerous.
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It's dangerous.
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What do you think of the Catholic Church? I don't want to go off on a tangent only to say I think that there has been corruption in the Catholic Church for a long, long time.
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It's based on a very bad hierarchical system wherein you have those who are intended to have a certain type of authority that was never given to them in Scripture.
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The Pope and the Magisterium and these people.
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You've heard the term power corrupts? An absolute power corrupts? Absolutely.
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And there was a time in history where when you had to choose between the Pope or the King as to who had the more authority, it was always going to be the Pope because the Pope could actually communicate the King.
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And the person who has the most authority is the person who can tell the other person you're going to go to hell.
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So there is a time where the Pope had more authority than the King.
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The entire Anglican Church is based on that division of power because the King wanted the authority for himself and he didn't want to have the authority of the Pope and so he declared himself the ruler of the Church.
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And this is why in the Anglican Church the monarch of England is considered to be the head of the Church rather than the Pope.
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In Anglicanism, the King, or now the Queen, is called the protector of the faith.
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They are the head of the Church.
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So yes, I think there is a lot of corruption even today.
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So the point I'm making here though is the reason why we believe justification by faith alone is because you cannot earn righteousness.
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Righteousness comes as a gift.
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And how is that gift received? For by grace you have been saved through faith and that is not of yourselves.
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It is the gift of God.
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Free gift, right.
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Because a gift by its very nature is free.
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If I say, Brother Charles, I'm going to give you this pen.
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I'm not because I've got to use it.
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But if I say I'm going to give you this pen and you take it, then it's a gift.
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But if I say, Brother Charles, I'm going to give you this pen if you'll go turn that light switch off for me.
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That's not a gift, right? That's a wage.
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That's an earn.
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You might say, well, he didn't do much.
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That pen is sure worth a trip to the light switch.
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It doesn't matter.
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As soon as you add contingency to a gift, it's no longer a gift.
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As soon as you add effort to a gift, it's no longer a gift.
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And when Paul says, we are saved by grace through faith and not of ourselves, it is the gift of God.
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What else does he say? Lest anyone should boast.
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Ephesians 2, 8-10.
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Boast.
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Think about this.
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Imagine you get to heaven.
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You look at God.
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And you say, God, here I am.
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And here's all that I have done for You.
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Just imagine it for a second.
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What have you done? You say, well, what if I'm Billy Graham? What if you are Billy Graham? Do you think any one good deed anyone has ever done has paid for one of their sins? No, that's the point.
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What do you mean saved by grace? We're justified by...
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What are you asking? Oh, I would go and look at Ephesians 2, 8-10.
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I would just look just right there.
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Because Ephesians 2, 4, By grace are we saved through faith and that not of ourselves.
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In fact, this was one of the verses that was the hallmark of the Reformation.
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We said, look, Paul says it right here.
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It's not of works.
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And then, of course, the response is, but James says it is of works.
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James says it's not by faith alone.
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But here's the point, and this is what I have to get across to you today.
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James is speaking in a categorically different way than was Paul.
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You say, how do you know that? Because context rules.
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Context determines interpretation.
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If you ever want to know the three rules for determining the meaning of a text, the three rules are simple.
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Context.
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Context.
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And context.
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Thank you.
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It's very easy.
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If you abandon the context...
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This is why I hate it when I go...
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This is why I preach verse by verse.
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As you guys have heard me, y'all have heard me preach now for several months, I've not left the book of James in the sense of going verse by verse.
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Because it forces me to stick to the context.
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On Sunday mornings, I preach 1 Corinthians.
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I've been in 1 Corinthians for over a year.
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Before that, I did the book of Hebrews.
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It took three or four years.
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I did the book of Luke.
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It took three or four years.
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I stay in a context to ensure accuracy.
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Because I believe in accuracy.
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And if I'm preaching false, as James 3.1 is going to say, and we're going to look at this next week maybe, if we get there, not many of you should be teachers.
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Because teachers are held to a greater account or greater strictness.
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So, getting back to here.
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James 2.24 You are justified not by faith alone.
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What is James talking about? James is talking about, in the context, the issue of what faith does.
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What faith does.
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And I think that this has been a problem since the beginning.
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Obviously, it has because James is one of the first books in the New Testament written.
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The problem from the beginning is this.
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When you preach a message of salvation by grace through faith, the initial response is, if I'm saved by grace through faith, I don't have to do anything.
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I mean, that's the initial response, right? And you hear that.
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How many times have you ever been to a Baptist church and somebody says, all you've got to do is believe.
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Just come forward and get on your knees and believe.
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And I even heard a preacher one time say, if you believe in Jesus tonight, even if you never believe in Him again, you've got Him because you believed in Him tonight.
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Beloved, that's not good.
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That's wrong.
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Because here's the deal.
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I've explained it over the last few weeks.
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I don't want to go over it again.
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Faith is not just knowing something is true.
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And it's not even really just believing something is true.
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Faith is acting on the truth that you know is true.
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Faith is acting on something that you know is true.
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And so James, when he says, faith without works is dead, he's basically saying, faith without works is not faith.
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Because faith is a living thing.
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And if you say, faith without works is dead, it's no longer living, thus it's no longer faith.
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In fact, if you go back up to verse 14, he says, if someone says he has faith but does not have works, can that faith save him? And by the way, the word that is in the Greek.
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That is a definite article.
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That faith.
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Referring to a specific type of faith.
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A type of faith that does not save.
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And the type of faith that does not save is the type of faith that does not change us.
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Yes, sir.
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Yeah, I mean, what does Paul tell us about that? He said, a person who doesn't work does not eat.
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But that's...
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Faith is...
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Faith is trust, right? And trust acts.
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And that's James' point.
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If you have anyone tell you...
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If you have anyone tell you...
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I don't know all the preachers that come here.
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I think they're all pretty solid dudes, so I don't think any of them would say it.
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But if you ever have anyone tell you that faith in Christ will not result in a change in your life, you can feel fairly certain he's wrong.
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In fact, you know for sure he's wrong.
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Because that's James' point.
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If you say, I have faith, then it doesn't change your life.
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I love you, brother.
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See you later.
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So, if we say we have faith, but we don't, have any accompanying response to that faith, any accompanying gratitude, as my brother said, to that faith.
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We don't really have the faith.
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I've heard people say, well, you can have dead faith and dead faith will save you.
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No, I've heard.
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There's a guy out in Tempe, Arizona who will say that.
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There is a type of faith.
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It's dead faith and dead faith can still save you because you're saved by faith alone.
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I would say that's a distortion of sola fide.
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Because I think that you have to balance Paul and James together.
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Paul says we're justified by faith and not by works.
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James says we're justified by works and not faith alone.
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And he says it sounds like a contradiction only if you think that they're contradicting one another in the sense that they're both saying the same thing.
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They're not.
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Paul is talking about this.
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James is talking about this.
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You say, well, what's the difference between this and this? This happened 2,000 years ago.
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Your sin debt wasn't paid when you believed.
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Your sin debt was paid when Jesus died.
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Now that's an important point.
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Let me finish this thought.
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Your sin debt was paid when Jesus died.
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That's right.
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The word, tetelestai, paid in full.
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That happened then.
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When you came to Christ, your name was already written in the Book.
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He already knew you.
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You didn't know Him, but He knew you.
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So what changed? You changed.
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God didn't change.
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And when you changed, everything changed.
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Or it should have.
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Now I'll answer your question.
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Go ahead.
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I'll just say it.
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In my opinion, to me it sounds like by different beliefs or different religions or say by the Gospel alone or say by Christ alone or works alone.
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All that to me is just people trying to not do certain things.
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You know what I'm saying? Like the lazy way.
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You know what I'm saying? Like why not do them all? Why not believe in just all of them? I get what you're saying, but let me counter this with something.
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If I say we're justified by faith alone, and what I mean by that is genuine faith that changes our life, and that's the only way we can be justified.
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And you counter and say, no, we're justified by faith and what we do.
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Right? I say then, how much do you have to do? What do you have to do? And how well do you have to do it? That's the problem.
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Once you begin thinking that you have done something to merit salvation, the question becomes how much have I done? Have I done enough? We have to rest in what Christ has done alone because we can never do enough on our own.
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We have to rest in Him alone.
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If we try to add what we do to Christ's work...
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You've probably all heard this before, right? Christ plus nothing equals everything.
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Christ plus anything equals nothing.
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You say, what do you mean? If I try to add to the work of Christ...
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It's like this.
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It's like a guy who's got a mountain that's a diamond, and I walk over with a little speck of dust and I say I want to add to your diamond.
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What kind of foolish nonsense would that be? I'm not talking about you, brother.
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I'm talking about somebody who tries to add works.
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I'm going to add my speck of dust to a diamond.
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I can't add anything to Christ.
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Justification by faith alone is a shorthand way of saying justification in the work of Christ alone because that's what my faith is in.
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Faith always has an object.
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And the object of our faith is Christ.
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Christ is the object of my faith.
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When someone says, well, I think I can add works to my salvation.
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You cannot.
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But now let's deal with what James says here because James does talk about two instances.
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He talks about Abraham taking his son Isaac up on the mountain.
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That's Genesis chapter 22.
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I don't want to go there and read it.
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It's a long chapter.
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I've only got a few minutes left.
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But you know the story, right? Abraham is called by God, take your son, your only son whom you love, and sacrifice him on the mountain that I will show you.
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I've got two boys and three girls.
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I can't imagine anybody asking me, especially my Lord, to go and sacrifice.
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Think about Abraham.
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At this point in his life, he has waited for Isaac.
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He's tried to circumvent God's plan.
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He adopted a son, Eleazar of Damascus.
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He had a child out of his marriage with Hagar Ishmael, the son of the handmaiden.
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He's already tried to circumvent God's plan.
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God finally fulfills the promise and gives him Isaac.
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Now Isaac is a boy and this is the son of the promise that God has made.
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Oh, and now you've got to give him back.
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And you've got to give him back in the worst way possible.
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You have to strap him to a pier of wood and strike him down with a blade to the chest.
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As they're going up the mountain, Isaac asks a question that I think must have destroyed the heart of Abraham.
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Father, where is the lamb? God will provide.
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That's right.
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That's the point.
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God will provide the lamb.
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And He did.
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Not only did He provide a ram to substitute for Isaac, but He also provided Christ who substitutes for us.
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That ram was a picture of Christ because it substituted for Isaac.
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And Christ substitutes for us.
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So here's why I'm telling you this.
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James uses this situation as his argument.
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He says Abraham was justified by what he did.
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You say, wait a minute, we said we're justified by faith.
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I want you to look at something really clearly.
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Look right here.
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Verse 21, Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac? You see that faith was acting along with his works.
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Faith was completed by his works.
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And the Scripture was fulfilled that says Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.
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Let me ask you a question.
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Where does that verse come from? Abraham believed God and it was counted unto him as righteousness.
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What verse is that? Genesis 15, verse 6.
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Let me ask you a question.
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It's a simple math problem.
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What comes first, 15 or 22? I mean, 15 comes before 22, right? Abraham was declared righteous in Genesis 15.
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That's seven chapters before he took Isaac.
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That's before Isaac was born.
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That's before he understood the fullness of the promise.
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He was justified by faith in Genesis 15, verse 6.
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But his faith demonstrated itself in works in Genesis 22.
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Was he not justified in 15? He most certainly was because it said Abraham believed God and it was counted unto him as righteousness.
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That's what justification is, by the way.
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It's accounting righteousness to you.
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Not righteousness you earn, but righteousness that's accounted to you.
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And when Abraham believed God, it was counted to him as righteousness seven chapters before he took Isaac up the mountain.
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But why did Isaac have to go up that mountain? To show that the faith that he said he had was real.
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Our works do not add to the work of Christ, but they do testify to the reality of our faith.
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Abraham's faith was testified by his works.
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Can he still sin though? Yes, because it's counted as righteous.
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You don't become righteous.
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You be declared righteous.
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This is the whole point of the Gospel.
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You are called righteous by God.
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And that's not a legal fiction because He's calling you righteous because of Jesus' righteousness.
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He has clothed you in righteousness.
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He has placed a garment upon you that is white as snow.
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That's why you're called righteous.
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In fact, Paul says this, he says, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but a righteousness which comes through faith in Christ.
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A righteousness that comes apart from the law.
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Not through the law.
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We are counted righteous.
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Genesis 15, 6 is used by the Apostle Paul in Romans 4 to show that justification is by faith alone.
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Yes, sir? It just seems unclear.
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I mean, that was the sole purpose of Jesus for our sins because people in the Old Testament worked their butts off and there ain't nothing.
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Bull after lamb after bull and dove and this and this and this and this and this.
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Absolutely.
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And they're dead.
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Yeah.
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Jesus had to come to earth to be the perfect Sacrifice.
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He's come for our sins to be on us righteous.
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Absolutely.
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Nothing they did back then.
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Nothing we do now.
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Amen.
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Amen.
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You're right.
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You come up here and preach.
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You're right.
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That's exactly right.
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And you know what's funny? On the Day of Atonement in Israel, there's a little brook down in the Kidron Valley.
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A little brook of water that goes beside Jerusalem.
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When they would kill those animals on the Day of Atonement, so much blood would go down that it would cause that brook to run red on the Day of Atonement because of so many animals being killed.
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And the Bible says in Hebrews, the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sin.
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All they do is point to Christ, the one Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
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So you're right, brother.
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Absolutely.
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And he uses another example.
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I'm going to finish up just by finishing the chapter.
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He uses the example of Rahab.
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Here's an example of someone who it doesn't even say she had faith, but her works testified to her faith.
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Remember what James said earlier.
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You say you have faith and I have works, I will show you my faith by what I do.
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Rahab showed her faith by what she did.
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So there is a reality where that's how our faith is justified by works in that it justifies the reality of our faith.
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I don't have to tell people I'm a Christian.
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Now, I do.
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But I live for Christ and that testifies to my faith.
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Now, I'm not saying don't tell people you're a Christian and I'm not saying don't evangelize.
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But what I am saying is your works should go before you.
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Your testimony is in you and how you live and what you do.
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Because that demonstrates your faith.
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It's not perfect, and brother, we don't add to anything Christ has done.
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But when Rahab hid those men, when Rahab was willing to side with God's people rather than siding with her own people, she demonstrated she believed in the God of Israel.
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We can walk down and think about the story of Esther.
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Did you know the book of Esther doesn't even mention the name of God at all? It doesn't even say the word God at all.
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But the whole book is about faith.
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About a young girl who had faith in her God to the point that she was willing to stand before the king and risk her own neck for the people of God.
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The Bible doesn't talk about her faith.
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It demonstrates her faith by what she did.
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So does our works demonstrate our faith? Yes, it does.
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But our works do not save us.
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They don't add one speck of dust to the diamond that is Jesus Christ.
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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 diamond.
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Jesus Christ, He is our reward.
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He is our blessing.
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He is the only one that can save us.
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And Father, let it be that our trust be fully in what He has done and not try to add anything to it.
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In Christ's name, Amen.