Romans 3:21-26

Coram Deo Reformed Baptist Church

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So, the last time we were together, we were in Romans 3 9 through 20.

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My apologies. Today, we are in Romans 3 21 to 26. Just to quickly revisit,

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I'll go back through those scriptures as well, and we will continue on.

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So, starting in Romans 3 verse 9. Then what? Are Jews any better off?

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No, not at all. For we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are under sin.

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As it is written, None is righteous, no, not one. No one understands, no one seeks for God.

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All have turned aside, together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one.

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Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips.

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Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood, and their paths are ruin and misery.

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And a way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.

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Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.

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For by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes the knowledge of sin.

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But now the righteousness of God has been made manifest apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it.

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The righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, for all who believe. For there is no distinction.

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For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom

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God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.

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This was to show God's righteousness. Righteousness because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins.

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It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

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The true means of salvation is revealed by the gospel, as in verse 21.

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But now the righteousness of God has been has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it.

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The righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, for all who believe.

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It sounds very reminiscent of a particular verse in John. This is now manifested and available for all who have faith in Christ Jesus, and this is apart from the law, as Paul says.

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Not that it is disconnected completely. What he's saying is is that the law, it's made manifest apart from the law because the law is insufficient to save.

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You cannot be saved by it. You cannot be saved by it so much so that it actually points to a different means of salvation, which is in Christ Jesus.

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My apologies. I lost my place here. All right.

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It is in Christ Jesus that we are covered, and that language is very specific.

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I use that word for a reason. Covered. We are not saved by our own righteousness or any sort of work that we can do.

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This is the righteousness of God revealed. This is the righteousness that Luther sought after for so long that he could not figure out, well

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I'm doing this, I'm doing this, I'm sleeping outside, and I'm doing all these things, and it's not...

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I still don't have this righteousness that Scripture speaks of. It's because it is an imputed righteousness from Christ to us.

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It is bestowed upon us by God the Son through his federal headship and the fact that he is both

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God and our king -priest. It is bestowed to those who he saved.

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Isaiah 46 13 says, I am bringing my righteousness near.

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It is not far away, and my salvation will not be delayed.

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I will grant salvation to Zion and adorn Israel with my splendor.

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You move forward to the first chapter of Romans in verse 17.

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For in the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.

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James agrees with this in James 2 verse 23. And the

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Scripture was fulfilled that says Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness, and he was called a friend of God.

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Moving a bit forward. For there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

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Between Jews and between Greeks, there is no advantage or disadvantage.

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Paul has established this in chapter 1 and chapter 2. That with or without the law, we are guilty of sin.

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The law simply brings us the knowledge of sin. Without it, we would still be guilty.

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Radical depravity, which is something we discussed a couple several weeks ago, affects everyone and everything on the earth.

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And notice that it isn't just that we fall short of the standard of the law, which we do, but that we fall short of the glory of the

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Most High God. That is the standard. That is the standard for getting into heaven, for salvation.

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This is why we are hidden in Christ. This is why that phrase exists, hidden in Christ.

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We are covered by His righteousness, because to stand before the

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Almighty God by ourselves, we can only be condemned. Verse 24 says, "...and

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are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ."

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Justified. Declared not guilty. Fully and wholly forgiven for our transgressions against God.

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This is a legal action that God takes.

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So in Christ, standing in the courtroom of heaven, standing before the judgment seat, we are completely and utterly justified.

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Not seen as sinners. Psalm 103, 7 to 13 says, "...he

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made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

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He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever.

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He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.

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For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love towards those who fear him.

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As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.

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As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him."

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It is given as a gift. A gift by definition is something that is

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Dorian. If you're familiar with that word, it is free.

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That word is a Greek word that means freely given. It is without payment.

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There's nothing required. If it required anything at all, it would not be a gift, would it?

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It would be a prize or a reward. And since we can't do anything to earn it, then it can't be either of those.

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It is simply freely given. There is no more required of us to receive this gift than there was anything required of the blind man, or the leper, or the bleeding woman.

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But while those are great miracles that are performed in the Gospels by Christ, the healing of those people, the difference is that the miracle that is given to us and given to those he saves is a much greater miracle.

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He made us new creatures. He gave us new hearts, and while we may not see every aspect of this gift, this side of heaven, he promises that we absolutely will see it.

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Verse 25, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to receive faith.

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Now, propitiation for some people might be an unfamiliar word. So God the

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Father put forth his Son. He made manifest this eternal plan of salvation by the giving of his

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Son as a sacrifice or a propitiation by his blood. I want you, if you would, to take a walk with me through Scripture real quick.

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Well, not real quick. I'm not gonna lie. It's gonna be a little bit lengthy, but we'll get through it starting in Genesis 3 verse 15.

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If you're tired, there is coffee and whatnot. We're going all the way through.

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Now, I do apologize for the length of my sermon.

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I know it will be long, but this is the Gospel, so there's nothing that I could...

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I can't take from it. I really can't add to it either.

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I can only exegete it. But in Genesis 3 verse 15, it reads,

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I will put enmity... I said it right. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring.

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He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. This is a promise made.

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This is the first sign of... this is the promise made after Adam and Eve eat the fruit and bring sin into the world.

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God curses the serpent, and as he does so, he says this, promising that one day the offspring of the woman would destroy the serpent.

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So let's move forward in time to Genesis 22 verse 9 through 14.

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Then they came to the place which God had told him, and Abraham built the altar there and arranged the wood and bound his son

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Isaac, and put him on the altar on top of the wood. And Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.

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But the angel of Yahweh called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham.

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And he said, Ah, here I am. And he said,

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Do not stretch out your hand against the boy, and do nothing to him. For I know that you fear

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God, since you have not withheld your son, your only one, from me.

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Then Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw, and behold, there was a ram. There was a ram after it had been caught in the thicket.

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I typed this weird. I apologize. It was a ram that had been caught in the thicket by its horns.

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And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering in place of his son. And Abraham called the name of that place,

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Yahweh will provide. And it is said, as it is said to this day, in the mount of Yahweh will it be provided.

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Is anyone familiar with the name of that mountain, that hill? So that hill is

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Mount Moriah where this took place.

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That's what it was named. God will provide.

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Eventually, this is the location where Solomon builds the temple, where Jerusalem is.

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Not very far away from here is another place that we're very familiar with called

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Golgotha or Calvary. It's not the same location.

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It's several hundred meters away outside the gate, but that too is significant.

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Please move with me to Exodus 12. Starting in verse 1, it says,

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The Lord said to Moses and Aaron and in the land of Egypt, this month shall be for you the beginning of months.

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It shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month, every man shall take a lamb according to their father's houses, a lamb for a household.

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And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons, according to which, according to what each can eat, you shall take or you shall make your count for the lamb.

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Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, and you shall keep it until the fourth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight.

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Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lentil of the houses in which they eat.

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They shall eat the flesh at night, roasted on a fire. With unleavened bread and bitter herbs, they shall eat it.

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Do not eat any of it raw or boil it or boiled in water, but roast it, its head and its legs and its inner parts.

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And you shall let none of it remain until the morning. Anything that remains until morning you shall burn.

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In this manner you shall eat it. With your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand, and you shall eat it in haste.

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It is the Lord's Passover. For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast.

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And on all the gods of Egypt I will execute my judgments. I am the

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Lord. The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are.

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And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you when

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I strike the land of Egypt. The blood of a spotless lamb to cover the doors posts so that the wrath of God would pass over them.

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Let's move to Leviticus chapter 1 verse 3 says,

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If his offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he shall offer a male without blemish.

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He shall bring it to the entrance of the tent of meeting that he may be accepted before the

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Lord. He shall lay his hands on the head of the burnt offering, and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him.

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The blood of a spotless male to atone for the transgression of man.

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Leviticus 16 6 through 15 starting in verse 6,

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Aaron shall offer the bull as a sin offering for himself, and shall make atonement for himself and for his house.

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Then he shall take the two goats and set them before the Lord at the entrance of the tent of meeting.

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And Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats, one lot for the

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Lord and the other lot for Ezazel. Now it might be a little bit different in yours.

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I'm using the LSB for this, so I apologize if there's some difference. And Aaron shall present the goat on which the lot fell for the

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Lord, and use it as a sin offering. But the goat on which the lot fell for Ezazel shall be presented alive before the

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Lord to make atonement for it, that it may be sent away into the wilderness to Ezazel.

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Aaron shall present the bull as a sin offering for himself, and shall make atonement for himself and for his house.

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He shall kill the bull as a sin offering for himself, and he shall take a censer full of coals of the fire from the altar before the

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Lord, and two handfuls of sweet incense beaten small, and he shall bring it inside the veil, and put it on the incense, and put the incense on the fire before the

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Lord. And the cloud of the incense, that the cloud of the incense may cover the mercy seat that is over the testimony, so that he does not die.

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He shall take some of the blood of the bull, and sprinkle it with his finger on the front of the mercy seat on the east side, and in front of the mercy seat he shall sprinkle some blood with his finger seven times.

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Then he shall kill the goat of the sin offering that is for the people, and bring its blood inside the veil, and do with the blood as he did with the blood of the bull, sprinkling it over the mercy seat and in front of the mercy seat.

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A scapegoat and a sin offering for the people of Israel.

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This was to be done once a year for the atonement of the congregation of Israel.

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The blood of one was to be offered as the sin offering to cleanse the temple, because it had sat in the midst of the people who were unclean, and the other was to carry the sins of Israel into the wilderness.

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Christ fulfilled both of these roles when he took upon himself the sin of his people, and bore them on the cross of Calvary, or the same place

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I mentioned before, Golgotha. He took upon himself the wrath of God, poured out upon him that we deserve.

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And I know that that was a long jaunt through the Old Testament, but you can see the relevance there.

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It is everywhere. All of the law and all of the prophets, everything, it points to him.

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In John 3, 16 through 18, it says, For God so loved the world that he gave his only

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Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

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For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that it might be saved through him.

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Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only

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Son of God. Paul reiterates this in Romans 5, verse 8.

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But God shows his love for us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

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God sent his only Son to be the sacrifice of atonement for all of us that the

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Father calls. He was the only one that was ever going to be sufficient.

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There was no lamb, there was no goat, there was no bull. Isaac was not sufficient.

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He was the only one, because his worth is above everything else.

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You can ask, how could one man at one point in history be sufficient?

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I will give you the words of Paul Washer. That one man is worth more than all of them put together.

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You take mountains and molehills, crickets and clowns, you take everything, every planet, every star, every form of beauty, everything that sings, everything that brings delight, and you put it on the scale, and you put

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Christ on the other side, and he outweighs them all. He outweighs the entire universe.

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Jesus Christ, our Lord, the second person of the Trinity, gave himself up to be sacrificed.

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He was not a victim. Some people portray him that way. He was not. To be cast out as the scapegoat and the sacrifice, the sin offering on our behalf, he who is worth more than all of us.

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Moving along in Romans, this was to show God's righteousness, because his divine forbearance, he passed over former sins.

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In his forbearance, or his long -suffering, his patience.

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In his patience, he allowed for those that lived before the cross to be saved on the basis of their faith in him and the revelation that he had given them.

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Abraham had believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.

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All those that were saved before Calvary were saved by the cross, even though it hadn't happened yet.

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How, you might ask? Because God knew about it, and because their belief, they were saved, just as we are saved by faith alone.

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A very real price that would be paid at a later date. This is similar to our idea of credit.

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From Adam to Christ and from Calvary until it was returned, everyone is saved by one singular event.

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This event is referred to as the fullness of time. If you've ever heard it referred to in the fullness of time.

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Now, if you can work your brain into thinking about how time works linearly within the universe, the fullness of time being something that has already happened, not at the end.

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God's patience also refers to the fact that he doesn't smite us every time we sin. Now granted, it would be the one time that we sinned, but it is in his forbearance that he allowed that in his forbearance and his eternal plan of salvation that Adam and Eve were not immediately destroyed the moment they ate the fruit.

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I'm not gonna say apple, because I don't know if it was an apple, but I'll say fruit. It says fruit.

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This is also a common question that you might see in the mission field.

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Well, what about all the people that came before Christ? This passage answers that question.

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The promise of salvation is there right from the beginning in Genesis 3. And like Abraham, we and they were saved by faith alone and Christ alone.

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By the same means, verse 26. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

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One of the immutable attributes of God is his justice or that he is just.

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It cannot be changed. It cannot be bribed. It cannot be bought.

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God cannot, he can't not be just. Use improper

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English. So how does God remain just and yet allow the guilty to go free by a perpetuatory sacrifice in our place, making him both just and the justifier?

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Jonathan Edwards certainly says this more eloquently than I can. The justice of God requires the punishment of sin.

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God is the supreme judge of the world, and he is to judge the world according to the rules of justice.

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It is not the duty of a judge to show favor to the person judged, but he is to determine according to a rule of justice without departing to the right or to the left.

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God does not show mercy as a judge, but as a sovereign.

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And therefore, when mercy sought the salvation of sinners, the question was how to make the exercise of the mercy of God as a sovereign and of the exercise his strict justice as a judge agree together.

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So how does he make both actions coherent?

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And this was done by the suffering of Christ, in which sin was fully punished and justice satisfied.

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Christ suffered enough for the punishment of the sins of the greatest sinner that ever lived, so that God, when he judges, may act according to a rule of strict justice and yet acquit the sinner if the sinner is in Christ.

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Justice cannot require any more for any man's sins than those sufferings which

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Christ suffered. Romans 3 25 and 26,

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God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood.

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He did this to demonstrate his justice so that he may be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

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This is the gospel. This is the magnum opus.

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This is the message that we are commissioned to spread. I sincerely pray that we always remember the time when it was revealed to us, the time that we could do nothing but talk about it to everyone that we knew and at the same time could not understand at all why they could not see it.

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It's a book. It's here. Read it. It's plainly on the pages. As mind -boggling as it is to those who are enslaved by sin, we must tell them until we are not only blue in the face, but until we take our last breath.

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We have the greatest news of all to share and we are commanded to share it.

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That Christ is the way. He is the truth. He is the life. He is the physician and the cure.

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He is a wonderful master whose yoke is light and he is the only one capable of removing the burden of sin.

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He is the only one who can fill that hole that every human being has that we try to stuff with the pleasures of sin and material things.

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He does not grant a temporary happiness, but an unending joy and peace.