Essentials of Justification (A)

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I want to invite you to turn in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 15.
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Over the past two weeks, we have been in a mini-series.
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I started this mini-series as a way to sort of bring us back into the normal study of Wednesday nights.
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I did say that we were going to do a mini-series, and then we're going to go into a longer series on the subject of the doctrine of the Trinity.
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I had said that this was going to last three weeks, but I may push it one more week.
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The reason is, when we look at the subject of justification, there's really two aspects that I want to deal with.
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If you notice in your notes that I gave you, it says the essentials of justification, A.
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The reason why it says A is because there is a part B.
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This is part one, and there's part two of just this.
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So in this week, this will allow us to have spent all of September on this subject, and then when October comes, to go right into the doctrine of the Trinity.
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So I don't think spending one more week on the essentials of Jehovah, Jesus, and justification, that's what this series is about.
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I don't think spending one more week will harm us in any way.
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Hopefully, you weren't too terribly excited.
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Well, I hope you are terribly excited, but I hope that's not a big disappointment, that we're not going to be doing the Trinity starting next week.
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But as I said, over the last two weeks, we've talked about the essentials of the faith regarding Jehovah and Jesus, and when I said Jehovah, of course, I was referring to the Father.
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Jesus, of course, is referenced as Jehovah, as is the Spirit.
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He's known as the Spirit of Jehovah.
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But in regard to this particular series, we're talking about God the Father, or God as He is in His nature, so we could speak of the Trinity in that regard.
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And then last week, we talked about Jesus Christ, the fact that Jesus is fully God and fully man.
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And tonight, we're going to move to the subject of justification.
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Because when we're talking about the essentials of the faith, and last night in our Dads and Dudes, we actually discussed this, we said, what are the things that we would look at a false belief system and say, those are the places where they've really derailed? And almost every one, it's either going to be something about the nature of God, it's going to be something about the nature of who Jesus is, or it's going to be something about the nature of salvation.
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So really, these three things sort of are the hinges that everything sort of turns on.
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In fact, Martin Luther, when talking about justification, he said, this is the article upon which the church stands or falls.
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He said, justification is the article upon which the church stands or falls.
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Because remember, in Roman Catholicism, justification is different than it is in Protestantism.
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And the simple answer, the difference, if you want it in just a nutshell, in Roman Catholicism, justification is something you're going toward.
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In Protestantism, in what I would say is Biblical Christianity, justification is something you're coming out of, in the sense that it's past.
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Your justification has occurred if you're in Christ.
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You see, for the Roman Catholic, you can be a Roman Catholic and not be justified.
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That's something you're going toward.
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Justification is a goal.
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Justification is not a reality that you're in.
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And that's a major difference.
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Because if you say, I'm going towards my justification, that means you're not yet justified.
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If you're saying, I'm essentially working towards my justification, then what you're saying is that you're still unjustified.
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You still stand as a person who is worthy of being punished for their sins.
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And that's why, again, I think that this is such an important topic for us to understand.
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And again, it's my firm belief that this and next week will hopefully challenge us all in understanding what justification is and why it's so vitally important.
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It's my belief that so many people miss this area.
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And let me give you a good explanation.
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You talk to people and oftentimes people will say, are you saved? You've heard somebody say that, are you saved? Or they'll use that language of salvation.
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And then you'll hear somebody say, well, you know, I got saved when I was eight or I got saved when I was 12 or I didn't get saved until I was 25 or 50 or whatever.
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But the reality is salvation is the broader term.
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And what generally they're saying is that I came to faith at this point and something occurred.
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So I could say this, like the scripture says, I'm being saved.
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The Bible says I was saved.
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I'm being saved and I will be saved.
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There's a salvation is broad because salvation includes justification, sanctification, glorification.
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Salvation is a very broad term and it can even be used in other ways.
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Like I talked about Sunday when it talks about women are saved through childbearing.
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That's not talking about salvation from sins.
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It's a totally different way of using the word deliverance.
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But justification is an act of God whereby in one instance you go from being declared a sinner to being declared righteous.
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It's a it's a moment and it's a it's a it's a it's it is something that occurs.
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Justification is not something that you earn and justification is certainly not something that you achieve.
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Justification is something that is declared by God.
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And so the more proper vernacular, if you're asking about something that happened in the past or you're talking about something that is not that I got saved when I was eight, it was, you know, I I came to faith and understood my justification when I was eight years old.
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Now, you wouldn't go through all that language wise.
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But you see where really honing in on the most important thing is what we're trying to do tonight, we go to Genesis 15 and we come to the words of Abraham, which at this point he was simply called Abram.
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You go to Genesis chapter 15 and you go to verse six.
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Speaking of Abram, it says, and he believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness.
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He believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness.
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Now, most of us are familiar with who Abraham is.
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Most of us are familiar with his covenant with God.
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If you go back to the beginning of chapter 12, you'll see that God made a covenant with Abraham and the covenant said this.
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It says the Lord said to Abraham or to Abram, go from your country and from your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you and I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing and I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you.
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I will curse and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
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That was the promise God made to Abram.
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He said, I'm going to bless you and I'm going to bless your descendants and those who bless you, I'm going to bless those who curse you, I'm going to curse.
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That's the Abrahamic covenant.
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But as his age progressed, Abraham, Abram began to doubt the fidelity of what was happening because he wasn't having children.
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If God promises you that you're going to have heirs and you begin to advance in age and you begin to get to a point where you and your wife are no longer of the standard normal childbearing time, it might cause you to think, well, where's this promise? God has made a promise.
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I don't believe that God's going to lie.
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Maybe I've misunderstood the promise.
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Maybe I've maybe I've not really understood what this descendant thing is all about.
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And you remember, Abraham did have other avenues that he tried to make that promise work.
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The first was Eliezer of Damascus.
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Eliezer of Damascus was Abraham's chief servant who would have been considered like an adopted son.
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Eliezer of Damascus would have been the one who would have inherited Abram's goods and his property had Abram died because he was that in that line.
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In fact, that's what he said to God at one point.
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God said, you're going to have children.
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He goes, I don't have any children.
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All I have is Eliezer of Damascus.
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All I have is a servant.
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I don't have any children.
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God says, no, you're going to have a child.
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What did he do then? Well, his wife said, here's my handmaiden.
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At this particular time in history, it was not considered taboo, even though we know it's not biblical, for a man to have multiple wives.
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It wasn't considered taboo for a man to take a second wife or multiple wives.
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And so he took for himself Hagar, her handmaiden.
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And what happened? She gave birth to a child.
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And how did Sarah react to that? Not as good as one would hope.
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You got to look back and say, well, it was kind of her idea, you know, but we all think maybe something's going to be a good idea.
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And then it happens and we realize maybe that wasn't the best thing.
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Yes, dear.
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Yeah, that's true.
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She was trying to help God out.
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Well, God finally did give them a child.
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Isaac, of course, was born in their old age.
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But in the midst of all of these promises, we come to Genesis 15.
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Genesis 15 is important to tonight's discussion, not because of the promise of the child or those things, but because of what it says about Abram's faith.
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In Genesis 15, beginning at verse one, it says after these things, this is after the Abram had gone to rescue Lot from Sodom and he had gone and brought Lot back.
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And now he's offered to Melchizedek.
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This is after a great victory in war.
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It says after these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision.
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Fear not, Abram.
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I am your shield.
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Your reward shall be very great.
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But Abraham said, Abram said, Oh, Lord God, what will you give me? For I continue childless and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus.
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And Abram said, behold, you've given me no offspring and a member of my household will be my heir.
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And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, this man shall not be your heir.
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Your very own son shall be your heir.
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And he brought him outside and he said, look toward heaven and number the stars if you're able to number them.
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Then he said, so shall your offspring be.
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And he believed the Lord and it was accounted and he counted it to him as righteousness.
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Now, how many of you have a King James Bible looking at you, brother? I just know I know you at least you do.
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What is your say if you don't mind reading it to me? Oh, well, I thought it said imputed there in the King James.
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I'm wrong.
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Does anybody's Bible say imputed? Does it say that in the NASB? Richard says counted.
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Reckoned, that's better, I think, closer to because the doctrine of imputation finds its birth, in a sense, in this passage, imputation, I think.
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Yeah, sorry.
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Yeah, that's right.
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I just there's a there shouldn't be a space.
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The doctrine of imputation.
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Is the idea or the teaching that something is charged to an account where otherwise that account did not have that particular thing, for instance.
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If I have money in my account.
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And you have no money in your account, let's say our bank accounts, your bank accounts, empty, my bank account has money in it.
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I take my bank account.
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I take the money out of my account and I put that money into your account.
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That is an example of imputation.
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It's taking out of one and putting it into another ledger book is how people often describe this.
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You have a ledger book.
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Your ledger is empty.
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Christ ledger is full of righteousness.
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Your righteousness ledger is empty.
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His righteousness ledger is full.
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The righteousness is taken out of his and accounted to you.
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Likewise, your sin ledger is full.
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His is empty.
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Your sin ledger is taken out and imputed unto him.
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And that's called imputation.
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In fact, in when we talk about with Christ, we talk about what's called double imputation because my sin is imputed to him.
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His righteousness is imputed to me.
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Our accounts switch and that's double imputation.
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This particular text references, and I would say not super explicitly, but it does say the word counted to or reckoned to.
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And like I said, I know there are some translations that use the word imputed to.
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Because that's what the Hebrew means, it's charged to his account.
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He is he is declared righteous by God.
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His righteousness is imputed to him by God.
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People think that righteousness is something that you achieve.
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That is not true.
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Righteousness is something that God declares.
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In fact, the word justify means to declare righteous.
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If you stand before a judge and the judge justifies you of whatever the action is, you have been declared righteous.
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The Bible says here in Genesis 15, 6, Abram believed God and God declared him righteous.
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Was Abram perfectly righteous? The thing with Hagar still hadn't happened yet.
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In this case, we didn't know that the thing with Hagar is coming.
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He's still going to make some mistakes, isn't it? Is he not righteous anymore when he makes that mistake? Now, that's that's a good question, because there are some people who believe you lose your righteousness.
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And you know what? If righteousness is something you earn, then, yes, sure, you could lose it.
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If your righteousness is something that you achieved, then it would make sense that it's something that you could lose.
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And that's where the whole doctrine of the loss of salvation comes from, because loss of salvation, again, salvation is a broad word, because what they really mean is loss of justification.
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If you speak to a Roman Catholic, they will tell you that you can lose the grace of justification.
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That's the exact terminology that is used.
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They will say by committing a mortal sin, you will lose the grace of justification.
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If you commit a venial sin, you simply add to your time in purgatory, which then can be dealt with through penance, the saying of prayers, the going and confessing the sin to the priest, going through that action, that action can take away that guilt.
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But mortal sin, you lose the grace of justification.
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Yes.
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No, no.
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The only thing and I have had this conversation recently, people ask me, do I think all sin is the same? I don't think all sin is the same, but I don't think that you can qualify it mortal or venial.
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When I say I don't think all sin is the same is Jesus talks about the Pharisees and he talks about those who have the greater sin.
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When he was talking to Pilate, he said Pilate said to him, you know, they're talking and he says, those who deliver me to you have the greater sin.
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And in that instance, their sin was greater than what he was doing.
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So Jesus, in a sense, places that in a you know, think of what he said about Sodom and Gomorrah, he said to to to what are the two cities? What do you best say to what do you cause on for if what had been preached and you had been preached to Sodom and Gomorrah, they would have repented and it will be worse for you in the day of judgment than for them.
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You know, so there is a there is a sense in which even Christ references judgment being worse and sins in that sense, having having different, differing consequences.
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And I think that's what he was talking about with with Pilate.
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You know, the consequence for you is different than the consequence for them.
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You know, you're acting as a politician.
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They're acting as ungodly blasphemers who know the law and are denying it.
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You know, there's a different consequence that's coming.
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And leading a child astray.
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Oh, yeah.
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It'd be better to have a millstone tied around his neck and thrown into the sea than he should leave one of these little ones away.
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So in that regard, there are some people who would say hell is worse for some than others.
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I don't know that I would go there completely, but I again, I go back to the words of Christ when he talks about this punishment, the punishment for them is going to be worse for you on the day of judgment.
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And I tend to think it's like this.
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I think on the day of judgment, the people of Sodom and Gomorrah never saw Jesus, but the people of Tyre and Sidon or Corazon of Bethsaida rather, the people of Corazon of Bethsaida are going to remember that they saw Jesus and denied him.
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And I think that's where the worst part of judgment will come in is they'll remember the face of the savior that they denied.
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So.
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In that regard, I think that that would be worse, knowing that you face the savior and you denied him.
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But those are that again, that this is a this is a conversation that theologians tend to have regarding what do we how do we understand the nature of sin? But in the basic, simple understanding, James tells us, if you break the law in one point, you've broken the whole law.
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So if a man comes in and he's only a liar and he's never murdered anyone, he can't say I'm not a sinner because he's a liar.
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Or if a person's never lied, but he's stolen things, he can say, well, I'm not a liar.
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And we could say to him, no, but you're a lawbreaker, even though you may have never stolen anything, even though you may have never committed adultery, never looked with lust even one time.
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I never met anybody who is so perfect that's never lie, steal or look with lust, but it may happen.
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But if you've broken the law once, you're a lawbreaker, just like the guy who stood in the narthex at night and told me I'm not a sinner.
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And I said to him, I said, sir, have you loved the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength from the moment you got out of bed this morning to this very moment right now? And he said, I didn't say I was perfect.
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I said, but you said you're not a sinner.
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What is imperfection if it's not a sin? The word sin, hamartia, to miss the standard or to miss the mark.
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It was a archery term, hamartia meant to shoot and to fall short of the bullseye.
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We are sinners.
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And so every day we lack in ourselves righteousness, so righteousness is required to go to heaven.
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Yes, but that is I'm getting there, you're going to jump ahead of me a little because just because the declaration of righteousness is how we make our right before God.
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But that also comes with a heart change, which will cause us to want to live for Christ.
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I'm not saying that you can be saved and your life not change.
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And if you hear me and you think I'm saying that, please forgive me because I haven't meant to imply that what I am saying, though, is the salvation is not based upon anything I have done or anything I will do.
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You know, it always scares me.
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And I've had people say this.
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And I even shudder even saying it, I've had people say, because I've talked about, you know, being, you know, we're all going to die one day and so be talking to somebody about dying.
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And I'm not morbid, I don't go around talking about dying all the time, but we're talking about death and eternity.
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And they'll say, well, I'm not worried about you, pastor, you're such a good man.
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I've had people say that.
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And you know what I say? I say, please don't count on my goodness is why I get to go to heaven.
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If you think, first of all, I'm not a good man.
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I said, but whatever goodness I have is because of Christ and whatever righteousness I take before the throne of God will be his, not mine.
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But isn't that dangerous for somebody to think that people think, yeah, I know I'm going to heaven because I'm a good man.
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If that's what you're taking to the throne, you are going to fall short.
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No, I don't believe that.
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But if you have a new book and you're born with a new spirit and it's a life giving spirit, how can you lose it if it's time to give birth? Yeah.
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I just want to say, does that tie in? No, it does.
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And the idea that you can lose your justification typically is the idea that you who have been born again can die in sin again.
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So you're born again and then you die again.
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Here's the issue, though, there's only a couple of verses in the New Testament that would support that.
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I don't I don't believe they teach it, but could possibly support that.
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One of them is Hebrews and Hebrews actually says that if such a thing were possible, if it were possible for a person to fall away, it would be impossible for them to be renewed under repentance.
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So the person who tries to use Hebrews to prove that you can lose your salvation, my next thing is I say, do you believe that a person can be saved if they lose it? They'll say, yeah, they can always come back.
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And I say, but Hebrews six says, no, it is impossible for a person who has fallen away to be renewed under repentance.
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Why does Hebrews say that? Because it would be impossible if you can lose it to ever get it again, because it's impossible to lose it.
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But that's a thing.
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If you could fly up towards the sun, you'd burn up.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a it's a hypothetical.
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If it were possible, then, yes, it would be impossible to for for you to to ever have it again, for sure.
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But let's go because I did kind of I kind of depart a little bit on the loss of salvation thing.
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I do want to come back very quickly to the to the what justification is.
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Justification is a declaration of righteousness.
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And the reason why this is important is because if God declares you righteous.
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And you're not righteous, how does he keep from being a liar? Because this is the argument that Roman Catholicism and others who deny double imputation, who deny justification by grace alone through faith alone, they will say that if we are justified this way, God simply declares that God's a liar because he's calling you something that you're not.
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You're not righteous, but God calls you righteous, so God's a liar.
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They call it legal fiction.
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That's the typical Roman Catholic term.
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They'll say Protestants believe in legal fiction because they believe that God has made a legal declaration that's untrue.
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Fiction, of course, being that which is not true, legal, of course, being that which is legal.
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And they say it's legal fiction.
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It's it's it's not true.
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This is where imputation is has to be understood because imputation is not taught in Rome.
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And by the way, I didn't come tonight to talk about Roman Catholicism.
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It's just easiest to to to show the distinction.
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But they're not the only ones who deny this.
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But it's just easiest because they're very clearly do they deny imputation for the Roman Catholic? They believe in what's called infusion, infusion of righteousness, infusion of righteousness is not imputation.
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Protestants believe you are imputed righteousness.
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It is given to you and you are declared righteous.
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Roman Catholics believe grace is given to you whereby you are able to then become righteous.
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And it is that righteousness that saves you.
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One is based on the righteousness of Christ.
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One is based on the righteousness of self.
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One is based on God's declaration.
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The other is based on your working with the spirit and becoming righteous.
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This is why one is based on justification done.
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One is based on justification doing or becoming.
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Oh, absolutely.
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It becomes an issue of I'm very careful because I do not want to be dishonest and I certainly don't want to be unfair, even though people would probably call me both.
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Well, people who disagree.
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Roman Catholics oftentimes will say they believe in work salvation.
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You must understand.
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They will deny that because they will say all the work we do is because of the grace of God and thus because it's grace, it's not from us completely.
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And so it's not work salvation.
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It's not that we're saying that we work and attain grace.
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We're given grace to work and attain.
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Huh? Potato, potato.
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But but but I want to be fair because if you go to a Roman Catholic who might come to your door or something or you might come talk, you might have friends, family, whatever.
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And you say you believe in works based salvation.
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They'll say, no, we don't.
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And they would be correct because if you read their literature, it says we deny that salvation is by works, but they believe that salvation is by grace through work, essentially, because grace gives them the ability to do the work to become righteous.
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Yes.
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Oh, yeah.
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Well, and while that adds again, when you go back to the issue of venial and mortal sins, purgatory exists only because it doesn't exist.
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Let me back up.
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What I was saying is purgatory exists in the mind of the Roman Catholic theologian because there has to be a way for you to deal with your venial sins after death.
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The word purgatory comes from the word which means to purge.
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It literally means a fire.
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It's a place of fire where you're purged of all of your venial sins.
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It can be thousands of years or hundreds of thousands of years, but eventually you'll make it to heaven.
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Purgatory is a place that's simply invented in the minds of Roman Catholics.
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There's nothing in the Bible about it.
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The very one veiled reference to it in the Apocrypha is even that, very veiled and not explicit at all.
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Purgatory is designed to perpetuate this idea, because if you didn't get righteous enough here, you can keep going over there.
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Exactly.
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And that's the point, is the reason why they add the thousands of years into purgatory is because they know how much righteousness is required.
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And they're trying to talk about legal fiction.
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The legal fiction is that we can somehow become righteous by what we do.
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That's legal fiction, because if a rapist went before a judge and said, but this morning I served in a soup kitchen, did that make him righteous? Did it deny that he was a rapist or did it take away one instance of him committing rape? No, simul justus et pecator is Latin.
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Simul justus et pecator, at the same time, just and sinner.
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That was the statement that Luther made.
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He said, yes, I remain a sinner, but I have been declared just by God.
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So at the same time, I am just and sinner.
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Perfect.
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You have to be perfect.
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And guess what? Yeah, the only one who did that was Christ.
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And so let me give you the blanks for your sheet, because I know we are getting a time is run as it always does.
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And we got about 10 minutes left.
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And I want to give you guys these blanks.
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This will take us in the next week.
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First of all, is the grounds of our justification.
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The grounds of our justification is Christ's righteousness.
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Just like what Mr.
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Irv was just saying.
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How much righteousness do you have to have? Perfect.
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How much do you have? Zero.
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Isaiah tells you all your righteousnesses are as filthy rags.
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So that's the ground of your justification.
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When I ask a person, are you ready to face God on Judgment Day? And they say, yes.
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I say, based upon what grounds? If they say anything other than Jesus Christ, they're not ready to face God on Judgment Day.
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Because that's the only ground of justification.
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That's the only ground of justification.
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It's His righteousness alone.
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And that's, you know, think about some of the songs we sing.
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The solid rock.
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When He shall come with trumpet sound, oh, may I then in Him be found, dressed in His righteousness alone, faultless to stand before the throne.
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You see, these doctrines are in our songs.
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We trust in you, our shield is another song.
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We trust in you, oh, captain of our salvation.
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In your dear name, all other names above.
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Jesus, our righteousness, our sure foundation, our prince of glory, and our king of love.
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He is our righteousness.
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He is the foundation of our righteousness.
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Why are you righteous? Because God has imputed His righteousness to me.
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When God sees me, He sees me through the veil of Christ's righteousness.
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I've told this story before, but I think it's a great analogy.
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There's a little boy who went with his father to see the changing of the guard outside of the castle there in England.
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And you know what the changing of the guard...
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What is it? The palace? Buckingham Palace.
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They were there.
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The little boy and the father went to a building where they could go up high and look down and see the changing of the guard.
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And the boy was looking out the window and the father said, son, look at those beautiful red coats that the soldiers wear.
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And the boy said, dad, those coats are white.
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And he said, no, those are red coats.
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That's beautiful, you know, red coats, that's standard.
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And he says, no, dad, those are white.
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And the father finally steps back and looks down and the son is looking through a window that has a red tint.
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And if you look through red glass, anything that's red looks white.
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It's the way your eyes...
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If you look through a red pane of glass, everything on the other side that's red will look white.
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So the son saw white.
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It's a good example, not perfect, of course, but it is a good example of how Christ sees you.
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You are stained red with your own sin, but because Christ has covered you in His blood, when God looks at you, He looks at you through that blood and sees as white as snow.
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John Piper said this, what God requires, Christ supplies.
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What God required, Christ supplied.
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God said you've got to be perfectly righteous.
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We said we can't do that.
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Christ said I do it for you.
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So that's the grounds of your justification.
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If you're grounding your justification in anything else, you will come up short.
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The second, the means of our justification, the means is faith in Christ alone.
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Faith in Christ alone.
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Christ's righteousness is all that can save us, but how do we know that we will share in that righteousness? By faith in the promises of God concerning Christ.
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In the Old Testament, believers who were justified were believing in the promises of God.
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And the Apostle Paul tells us in Galatians, they believed the gospel.
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It says Abraham believed the gospel when he was told that he was going to have a seed and that seed would bless the entire world.
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That was the gospel.
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Now you say, now was that all about Jesus and the nails and the blood and the sacrifices? No, but it was the gospel and Abraham believed it.
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The gospel in its seed is in the Old Testament.
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The gospel in its fruit is in the New Testament.
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But they're both there.
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The gospel is there throughout.
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And any man who's ever been saved has been saved by the means of faith and not the means of work.
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You go back into the Old Covenant, those who were saved, even during the law, even under the law, those who were saved were saved by faith because they still broke the law.
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You know why I know they broke the law? Because every day they did a sacrifice and every year they did a sacrifice.
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They did a sacrifice called the Yom Kippur, which is the day of what? Atonement.
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They knew they had broken the law and they knew they needed forgiveness.
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So they would bring that animal and they would cut him open, they would sprinkle his blood.
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But what does Hebrews tell us? It says, by the blood of bulls and goats will no one be justified.
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Because that blood was in itself ineffectual.
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It pointed toward the blood of Christ.
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It was a picture and a promise of what Christ would bring.
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Absolutely, Hebrews 11.
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By faith this person, by faith that person.
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Never do we see anybody ever say that they were justified by the keeping of the law.
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It was by faith in the promises of God.
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And I would say by faith in the gospel.
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So, the last thing, there's certainly more that we could say about that, but the means of faith.
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We are justified because of the work of Christ.
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We're justified through the means of faith we believe and as a result are justified.
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Now there's more to it than that.
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We can talk about regeneration.
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We can talk about election.
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We can talk about sanctification.
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But I'm in the very bare bones.
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The grounds of our justification is Christ's righteousness.
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The means whereby we are justified is through faith in Him and not by works.
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But the result of our justification is Christ honoring works.
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And this goes to what Mr.
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Irv was mentioning earlier.
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And I did tell him I would get to it.
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And I'm going to make myself a truth teller right now because I'm going to finally get to it.
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When we are justified, we then will have a new heart.
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The Old Testament promise was this.
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God takes out the heart of stone and He replaces it with a heart of flesh.
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That's called regeneration.
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And this is, honestly, if somebody were to ask me, Pastor Keith, I need you to preach right now.
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Because, you know, maybe I was at a church and I have had this happen.
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I've walked into a church before and it was a group of pastors and they were all speaking for about 10 or 15 minutes.
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And one of the guys walked back to me and says, Hey, would you speak today? Okay.
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I'm ill prepared, but I will speak.
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But the passage that is always on my heart, because I believe it expresses the gospel so clearly, is Ephesians 2, 8, 9, and 10.
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For by grace are you saved through faith, and that is not of yourselves.
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It is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.
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For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works.
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See, that's the key, my friends.
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You were saved by grace through faith, and not because of anything you have done.
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But you weren't saved to do nothing.
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You weren't saved by what you did, but you did get saved so that you will do something, not to earn your justification, not to earn your righteousness, but so that you would glorify God in your bodies.
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As Romans chapter 12 says, to do what? Offer up yourself a living sacrifice.
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See, Christ saved you so that you'll be like Him.
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That's what the promise is in Romans 8.
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You have been predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son.
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So a person who says, I could be justified, but it's not going to change how I live, doesn't understand justification.
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In the same way the person who says, I'm not going to be justified until I live a certain way, doesn't understand justification.
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See, both are wrong.
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One says it's all relying upon me, and the other one says it's not going to change me at all.
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Both are wrong.
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Justification is by grace through faith, and it results in a life lived differently than before.
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So I hope that was helpful.
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I hope that was an encouragement.
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Next week, we're going to talk about false views of justification, and we'll end our four parts.
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Yes, sir? Oh, number three was, the result of justification is Christ honoring works.
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Christ honoring works.
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All right, let's have a short prayer.
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Father, thank You for our time to study.
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I pray that it's been encouraging for Your people.
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I pray that though this is a rudimentary lesson that many of them probably already knew, I pray that there's been something tonight that's been encouraging to them and will encourage them to continue to study.
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We love You, we thank You, we praise You.
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In Jesus' name, amen.