Dressed in His Righteousness

Hey, man, Ephesians chapter 6. If you just hold up your

Bible and let it fall open, I'm sure that is where you'll land.

We are, again this morning, in the Lord's armory.

We are inside the castle walls, as it were, and the battle is raging outside.

And what we're doing in the armory here is we're examining the armor that the king has for us.

And we're putting it on so that we can stand firm. Verse 13 has already said, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand firm.

This is what we're doing. We're in the armory. We're examining the armor of God, and we're putting it on.

And we've just finished talking about girding our loins with truth.

And this morning, we come to the next piece of armor that we must put on, the breastplate of righteousness.

What is this breastplate? The Greek word in our text this morning is literally thorax.

So today, when you talk about the thorax, you're talking about this whole midsection, this part of the body between our neck and our abdomen.

This breastplate would cover the vital organs of the soldier.

And the text says that it is the breastplate of righteousness.

That is, in this metaphor, the building material for the breastplate, it's not metal, it's not leather, it's not

Kevlar, it's righteousness. Now, let's read and consider this morning, and take the title of this sermon from the song we sang just a moment ago,

Dressed in His Righteousness. Ephesians chapter 6 and verse 14, would you stand with me as we honor the reading of God's word?

Here we are in the armory. Here we are examining these pieces. The text says,

Stand, therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness.

Father, thank You for this text. I thank You for the saints. I thank You for hearing their songs, their singing this morning, and the prayers that were made, and contributions given, and Scripture read, and confession and catechism recited.

You're so good to us. Help us to understand this morning what it means to don ourselves with the breastplate of righteousness.

Make this sermon clear and plain. Let it encourage and equip the saints. Let it call sinners to conviction and repentance.

And do a work for the glory of Your name right here in this little place in Arkansas. We pray it all for the glory of Christ.

Amen. You may be seated. Back to verse 11, Paul says,

Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.

We put on the whole armor of God, which includes this breastplate made out of righteousness so that we can stand against the devil.

So here's the question today. And there's some disagreement, as there is disagreement on lots of verses.

There's some disagreement with commentators, but the question I have for you, the way I want to put it, is you're to don this breastplate of righteousness.

The question is, whose righteousness is this breastplate made out of?

So some would say it's made out of our righteousness. We're to do righteous deeds.

It seems to me that my own righteousness is the very place

Satan loves to attack. The evil one constantly hisses at the saint, you failed, you're not good enough, you are a sinner, or the opposite, right?

Or there's self -righteousness, there's pride. So it seems to me that if this breastplate were made out of my own righteousness, it wouldn't last very long in this battle.

That's why it's my position this morning as we come to the text, that the breastplate is made up of not my own righteousness, but the righteousness of God in Christ.

Now, do not, like I said, there's some disagreement, don't cast out this other application.

There really is an application, beloved, of the church to be holy. And in fact, think about it this way.

We don't have to force, this is a metaphor, we don't have to force the metaphor into just this one application.

Like there is application. For example, if we live by the way God has revealed, it will help keep us, won't it?

From pitfalls of the evil one, right? Like there's wisdom and there's prudence and there's goodness in that.

So we affirm that the justified absolutely live holy. Not as part of their justification, not to keep justification, not for final justification, but because the justified are also sanctified.

So we affirm this morning that the saints live holy lives. But I'm just trying to communicate to us here that the breastplate that we ultimately need in this battle, in this spiritual warfare, is not the breastplate of our good works, but it's of the righteousness of Christ.

Now yes, a holy life helps guard us from Satan's traps.

After all, if you think about it this way, unbelievers suppress the truth in unrighteousness, right?

That is, there is an antithesis to these pieces of Christian armor. There's a counter, if you will, for the unbeliever.

So the Christian puts on truth, the unbeliever suppresses it. The Christian practices righteousness, if you will.

The unbeliever does unrighteous deeds. He or she ultimately hates the ways of God.

The unbeliever ultimately has constructed their own standard of morality, and then they try to live by their own code, if you will, and by God's standard, of course, that is lawlessness.

So don't hear me tell you this morning that the believer does not seek to live holy.

In fact, read 1 John 3, 7. Absolutely, we do. But for this morning, I'm asking us this question.

Whose righteousness is this breastplate made out of?

Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness.

If we do not understand this morning the righteousness of Christ as our breastplate, then

I think that we ultimately are going to go into this spiritual battle that's raging outside the castle walls with a great chink in our armor.

Put on the breastplate of righteousness. Again, to state it plainly for this message, the righteousness used to build this breastplate for God's people is the righteousness of Christ, one for His people, and given to His people by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

So I agree with men like S. M. Ball, who says, whose righteousness is it?

It must be Christ's divine righteousness, from His own messianic breastplate, granted to the believer in justification by faith alone as a gift.

Or John Gill, who says, it seems best to understand this of the righteousness of Christ, which being imputed by God and received by faith is a guard against and repels the accusations and charges of Satan, and is a security from all wrath and condemnation.

This is our breastplate. Now, next week, I want to talk more about how we use this actually in battle, and then maybe the next week we'll see,

I'm still kind of debating if we're going to spend three weeks on this or not. I'll talk maybe about the application of the church's holiness.

But what I want to discuss today is I want us to think about how Christ obtained this breastplate for us, and how it is that the church receives this breastplate, if you will.

So first, how Christ obtained His breastplate. Remember, we're telling you this morning that the church puts on Christ's armor.

Christ has procured, if you will, Christ has won the armor for His church, and now when the church puts on the armor, they're putting on the very armor, the text says, the armor of God.

This isn't your armor that you go out and, hey, good luck, get out there and build your own armor, and we'll see what happens.

No, Paul exhorts the church to put on God's armor. So, how did

Christ obtain His breastplate? A few points here. First, there is a plan.

Now, we don't have to go very far, but we're going to start with this. In Ephesians 1, we're reminded of this plan,

Ephesians 1, verse 4, there is a plan. In Ephesians 1, verse 4, it says this, even as He chose us in Him, that is, as the

Father chose us in Christ, I'm just supplementing the antecedents there for the pronouns, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him.

You see, there's a plan that's mentioned there in the text. Before the foundation of the world,

God had a plan to have a people who are holy and blameless. Out of the mass of fallen humanity,

God chose by His grace to save a people for Himself. And He chose in His divine justice to pass over others, leaving them to their own choice of rebellion against Him.

This is God's sovereign prerogative. Now, in John 10, Jesus says this, for this reason, this is verse 17 and 18 of John 10, you can look at it later.

For this reason, the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again.

No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and I have authority to take it up again.

This charge I have received from my Father. God the Son received a charge from God the

Father before time began, the text says, to lay down His life for the sheep.

But for our purposes today, I wanna stress this. The life that Jesus is to lay down in John 10 is and must be a righteous life.

The death of Christ, my friends, is not an example for God's people.

It is a substitute for God's people. The righteous life must be given in exchange for the unrighteous.

That's what 1 Peter 3, 18 says. For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for, in place of, on behalf of, instead of the unrighteous that He might bring us to God.

Thus, Jesus does not only die a substitutionary death. Hear me very carefully, church.

He first lives a substitutionary life.

I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. We're just considering here the concept of Jesus obtaining His breastplate for His people and the point here, there's a plan and it began in eternity past.

Secondly, this plan came to fruition in the incarnation. Number two, the incarnation.

I have something to confess to you, just something about me. I get kind of crazy about Christmas, okay?

Maybe you didn't know that. Just hang around me, I get crazy. It's a lot of fun. I like to laugh, joke, build tradition and all those kind of things, but let me just say this.

At the core of my love for Christmas really is my love for the incarnation. The Old Testament points forward to a righteous

Messiah. Let me back up, let me give you a summary of what happens in the

Garden of Eden. Here's a summary. Adam is charged to meet a condition.

He is in a righteous and perfect state, but it is a probationary period, if you will, and Adam must meet a condition of positively obeying what

God has commanded him to do in the Garden. He must meet the condition of, to simplify, obedience.

Adam is to meet the condition of obedience. Guess what? Adam fails.

He plunges humanity into sin and misery, and for some 4 ,000 years, the people of God wait for the promised seed of the woman to come, as God said it would in Genesis 3 .15,

and crush the serpent's head. But in crushing the serpent's head, the Messiah needs to do two things.

We're doing some big picture biblical theology here. He must, first of all, be able to meet the condition that Adam failed to meet.

We'll talk about this in just a second. God doesn't like do away with the condition. Well, Adam couldn't meet it, oh well.

No, no, first, the Messiah has to meet the condition that Adam failed to meet. Secondly, now, he needs to pay the penalty for all those born in Adam and held guilty for not meeting

God's condition in Adam and guilty for our own turning away from God. So two things, live a righteous life, die a substitutionary death.

But in order for the Messiah to meet these two demands, he must be born in their likeness.

And here we have the incarnation, God becoming man. Genesis, sorry,

Galatians, it is another G book. Galatians 4, 4 and 5. But when the fullness of time had come,

God sent forth his son, born of woman, born under the law to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons.

So God sent forth his son when the time, when the plan was ready, God sent forth his son. He was born under the law.

He was born of woman so that he could redeem us who are born of women and born under the law and we could receive adoption as sons.

That is the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, equal with the Father, equal with the Holy Spirit, yet distinct in his ministry, the

Son of God, entered into the womb of Mary and took on human flesh and he's born under the law.

Essentially, Christ is born under the covenant of works. The covenant of works, what is that? Essentially, it says this, do this and you will live.

This is the same law that you were born under and that I was born under.

Do this and you will live. Again, I said I'd come back to this, so let me pause here and remind us.

The law of God is not something outside of God that he adheres to.

Do you hear me? The law of God is not something like out there that God's like, oh man, well, we just all gotta, we all just gotta obey the code or whatever.

No, no, the law of God is a reflection of who God is. It is a reflection of God's holy character.

James Buchanan says it this way, the law of God, which is the rule of man's duty, is also a revelation of God's eternal justice and holiness.

The law of God reveals God's holiness and justice. Therefore, here's a requirement.

We're gonna say this a lot today. Here's a requirement God had for Adam. Perfect, personal, precise, and perpetual obedience.

That's what Adam had to do. Perfect, personal, precise, and perpetual obedience.

This is not God being mean. This is God being God. To fail to meet the standard of perfect, personal, precise, and perpetual obedience is unrighteousness.

It is to be a sinner. It is to deserve the justice of God because God is just and must and will punish every sin.

Perfect, personal, precise, and perpetual obedience. And Adam failed that standard.

Now, I said I was coming back to this, and here's the whole point I was getting at. Listen very carefully to this.

God does not lower his standard to Adam. In other words, boy,

Adam didn't make it He's never gonna make it. He can't make it.

Okay, I'll just lower my expectations. That's what we do sometimes, isn't it?

Sometimes, unfortunately, maybe in family, maybe with friends, you're just like, well,

I'm just gonna lower my expectations for that person, right? God can't do that. Why? Because he's

God, and his expectations are perfect. His expectations are righteous.

For him to cease to do that, for him to lower his expectations would be for him to cease to be

God. It would be for him to compromise his own godness, his own holiness. It would be for him to sacrifice his glory.

Adam broke God's law, but the standard is perfect, perpetual, personal, precise obedience, and it remains.

And it remains today. In fact, let me put it this way. Listen to this very carefully.

Only those who are faultless will get into heaven.

Only those with perfect, personal, precise, and perpetual obedience will make it to heaven.

Guys, I hope this raises an eyebrow. I hope that it gets your wheels turning a bit, because I hope it makes you think, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, because the reality is,

I don't meet that standard. All of us fall short of the standard, and those who fall short of the standard, if nothing else happens, they will spend an eternity in hell under God's judgment.

And here's the further reality. You're born already in a broken covenant. You're born under the law, already failed in Adam, and you have failed this law every day of your life.

This is bad news. But here's where we're getting at in the incarnation.

Christ is also born under this law. He's born under this requirement of perfect, personal, precise, and perpetual obedience, yet because he was conceived by the

Holy Spirit, he's not born fallen in Adam. He's also born under the

Mosaic covenant. By the way, the design of the Mosaic covenant was to keep the line of the

Messiah going until Christ. It pointed to Christ, and the need for him to be the redeemer of God's people.

All the feasts and the sacrifices, all of those things in the Mosaic covenant, they point to Jesus.

He was born under this covenant to be its fulfillment. Not only that, but he is the fulfillment of the

Abrahamic covenant, to be the true promised son of Abraham. Not only that, but he's born under the

Davidic covenant to be the full, true promised son to sit on David's throne.

He was born under the law. He's born under the covenant of works in Adam, and yet,

Christ is the last Adam. The stage is set again. Do this, here's what's presented to our

King. Do this, and you will live, essentially. Adam failed. Moses failed.

Noah failed. Abraham failed. Israel failed. You failed. And I have failed.

But here is Christ, truly God and truly man, the infinite, as they say, became an infant. Maybe that's

Spurgeon. What glory. Now, we've considered the plan and the incarnation.

Thirdly, I want you to consider, number three, obedience. What we're trying to think about in this first point is how

Christ, one, obtained, if you will, his breastplate. I need you to do something.

Turn in your Bibles, please, to Matthew 3. So we've talked about the plan. God had this plan. And we talked about the incarnation.

Jesus became man. The stage is set. He is going to be charged with obedience.

And now you're turning in your Bibles, I guess I should as well, to Matthew 3. And in Matthew 3, this is at Jesus' baptism.

Maybe I can answer a question for some of you. Why did Jesus get baptized? So Matthew 3, verse 13.

Matthew 3, verse 13. Then Jesus came from Galilee to the

Jordan, to John, to be baptized by him. By the way, I can't, I'm a Baptist, I can't read this and not mention something.

Like, he came to the Jordan, right? The river Jordan, right? Why'd they need a whole river? Because baptism is by immersion, okay?

So Jesus comes from Galilee to the Jordan to John to be baptized by him. John, verse 14, would have prevented him, saying,

I need to be baptized by you. And do you come to me? But Jesus answered him, verse 15. Let it be so now, for this is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.

Then he consented. In his baptism, friends, Jesus is identifying himself with his people.

He is publicly owning his people, as it were. He is binding his future to theirs and their future to his.

And this baptism, Jesus says, is part of the text there in verse 15, it's part of Christ fulfilling all righteousness.

Jesus came not merely, listen to me, church, not merely to die for our sins.

That's important. And we're not, we would never at all, ever minimize that at all.

But don't miss the other part of the gospel. It all goes together. Jesus didn't just die for our sins.

He came, he had to first fulfill all righteousness. Remember Isaiah 11, five.

Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist and faithfulness the belt of his loins. Isaiah 59, 17.

He put on righteousness as a breastplate and a helmet of salvation on his head.

He put on garments of vengeance for clothing and wrapped himself in zeal as a cloak. We are considering this morning how

Christ procured this breastplate of righteousness for his people. We have the plan, we have the incarnation, but now we have the obedience of the

Son. What am I saying to you, church? I'm saying Christ in his life was righteous by God's standard of righteousness.

Here is how he put on his own breastplate of righteousness.

Obedience. Perfect, personal, precise, perpetual obedience.

Salvation is not, I don't care what you hear people say. Salvation is not unconditional.

What are you saying, preacher? Salvation is not unconditional.

There is a condition that is required to be met. The same condition

Adam failed to meet. The same condition Israel failed to meet.

The same condition that you have failed to meet, that I have failed to meet, that all humanity has failed to meet and have rejected or scoffed at or minimized.

Perfect, personal, precise, and perpetual obedience to God's holy standard.

This is the condition for eternal life. You do not go to heaven unless this condition has been met.

God's holy and uncompromising righteousness requires this condition to be met.

And God's holy sovereign grace supplies the condition, fulfills the condition in Christ.

Works are required to be saved, just not yours.

Christ, without the works of Christ, no one is saved. And I'm not just talking about his death, which is absolutely vital, but also his life.

Your best that you can bring to God, the Bible calls, filthy, putrid rags.

The works required to be saved are the works of another, namely Christ. He is the obedient one on behalf of his people.

Pontius Pilate, not fully understanding what he was saying, pointed at Jesus and to the crowd and said,

I find no guilt in this man. Well, no. No, you didn't.

There is no guilt in this man, but even more so, it's not just that there's not guilt in this man, there is positive righteousness.

He is not merely innocent of not doing sin. That's Adam before the fall, you understand?

Adam before the fall was innocent of not doing sin. Jesus is innocent of not doing sin, but he had something that Adam never got, and that is he is responsible for positive righteousness.

He is obedient to God's law. Psalm 40 and verse eight spoke of Jesus when it says,

I delight to do your will, oh my God. Your law is within my heart from the womb to the tomb.

The God man is actively and positively obedient to the

Father. Hebrews 4 .15 says, for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin.

Sin, if you remember, is doing anything that God says not to do, and not doing anything that God says to do.

Christ, the spotless lamb of God, is the sinless son girded in righteousness and faithfulness.

To every law of God, he is the faithful one. We have broken God's law.

We are the unfaithful. We are the guilty sinners, but he is righteous.

He stood against the temptations of Satan in the wilderness on his very own merit.

His whole human heart, soul, mind, and strength loved God perfectly, worshiped

God perfectly, obeyed God perfectly, served God perfectly. He loved others perfectly.

He hated sin perfectly. He delighted in these things. His life was full of holy zeal for God's glory.

In all things, he woke up every morning focused on the glory of God. His desires were perfectly holy.

His thoughts were perfectly holy. His motivations were perfectly holy. His actions were always perfectly holy.

He was without sin in every way, every day of his life, every week, every month, every hour, every year, every minute, every second.

That's not in order, but you get the picture there. He is sinless, he is obedient, he is righteous.

Perfect, personal, precise, and perpetual obedience.

Christ, every prophecy given of him, he fulfilled.

He taught God's word perfectly. He prayed perfectly.

When he laughed, he laughed righteously. When he wept, he cried righteously.

When he got angry, he got angry righteously. A perfect prophet, a perfect priest, a perfect king.

Pilate could bring no accusation against him. Satan could bring no accusation against him.

And those who did bring an accusation, if you read the gospel accounts, those who did bring an accusation against him, they had to lie about it, and then they couldn't even get their story straight so that there's no accusation in all the universe, in the heavens above or underneath the earth, there's no person anywhere at any time ever who can make an accusation that will stand against Christ.

Because he is righteous. Behold, the man, here is the righteous one, born under the law, fulfilling all righteousness, completing the covenant of works, completing and fulfilling the covenants of promise.

He is the faithful one, the holy one of God, morally perfect, righteous in every way, sinless in all his ways, he pleased the

Father perfectly. But listen to me here. He did this as our federal head on behalf of his people.

In our place, as our substitute. Adam disobeyed.

Christ the last Adam obeyed. He secured for his people a righteousness to meet the condition that would meet

God's holy standard of perfect, personal, precise, and perpetual obedience.

And so Paul tells us here to put on the breastplate of righteousness. So second point now, how

Christ bestows his breastplate. So first, how he obtained his breastplate. Now, how does he bestow his breastplate?

I want that. How do I get it? Hebrews 9 .15 reminds us, therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.

Christ is our perfect prophet to teach us. Christ is our perfect king to rule us. And he's our perfect priest to die, to sacrifice for us.

Christ's obedience, theologians say rightly, our confession rightly says, it's both active and passive.

He obeyed God perfectly and he endured the suffering of sinners.

The culmination of this obedience, of course, is the cross. So think about it this way.

The law says, do this and you will live. But for Christ, in one sense, it comes down to do this and you will die.

Now, why would a righteous man die? Why would the only perfect, personal, precise and perpetually obedient man die?

We've already been taught this in Ephesians 5. Look at Ephesians 5, verse 2. And walk in love as Christ loved us and gave

Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

God is pleased with this fragrant offering of the righteous life of Christ.

And in His grace and justice, these two attributes, as it were, kiss on the cross,

He's able to use this life, this perfect life as a substitute whereby

He imputes the sins of His people upon the sacrifice of Christ upon Jesus.

Remember what Jesus quotes, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, Psalm 22.

My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? In that moment, the perfectly righteous one is imputed, credited with our sins, our unrighteousness, our lawless deeds, our impure thoughts, our shoddy motivations, our misplaced affections, our murderous anger, our selfishness, our sexual immorality, our idolatry, our lies, our half -truths, our envy.

All of these things are laid upon the Son of God. It is in that moment legally credited to His account.

God put forth Christ as a propitiation, as a wrath -satisfying sacrifice.

There on Calvary, suspended between heaven and earth, Jesus is nailed to a cross of wood.

Jesus, our Messiah, satisfies divine justice against sinners.

He stood, as it were, before the grand counsel of justice, God's own holy and eternal righteousness that demands retribution.

Christ stood before that tribunal, if you will, condemned, in my place, imputed with my guilt, shame, sorrow, and transgressions.

So Isaiah 53 11 says, out of the anguish of His soul, He shall see and be satisfied.

By His knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous.

And He shall bear their iniquity. These two things were necessary.

One, Jesus would need to be able to meet the condition that Adam did not meet, and that you and I cannot meet.

And two, He would need to pay the penalty for those who have broken

God's law. And the completion of these two conditions culminates on the cross, whereby

Jesus says, not just a catchphrase, not just something cute to put on a t -shirt, but if you understand this rightly, it brings great power to these words that Jesus proclaims, the last words that Jesus spoke on the cross.

It is finished. This is what

Jesus is doing. But death is not the end.

Like Jonah emerged from the big fish, Christ emerges from the grave, and on the third day,

He resurrects in victory, raised, the Bible says, for our justification.

Raised in relation to our text this morning that the church would now be clothed in His own breastplate of righteousness.

In His death, if you will, there is the breastplate of righteousness, lying dormant, what's gonna happen?

But His resurrection means that He now has this breastplate to bestow upon the church, ready to bestow

His own righteousness upon His people. That when the army of Christ goes forward into battle in this sin -stained and Satan -influenced world, we would be arrayed in flawless armor, armor that will bring the church all the way home to victory when

Paul tells us here in our text to stand firm, therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth and having put on the breastplate of righteousness,

He is giving us flawless armor, armor that will do the job for which it was intended.

What now can Satan, the accuser, and we'll talk about this more next week, but what can the accuser say to the church?

There is therefore, the Bible says now, no condemnation for those who are in Christ.

What is Satan going to say? The righteous requirement has been met in Christ.

He did not lower, God does not, He's not like the, look, it's okay if a professor does it, it's fine, a professor can do it, they can play these games, they can grade on a curve, they can say, hey, you know what, everybody in here made a

D on the test, so if you made a 68 on the test, that's now a 98, and then you just do that.

I like those kind of professors, what about you, right? And then there was always that one person in class that made a 90 and it hurt us all.

God is not your college professor because He's right.

So He does not lower His standard for the children of Adam.

Rather, He, in His sovereign grace, lifts up the children of Adam to meet

His righteous standard in Christ, only by the merit of Christ, by Christ's fulfillment of the demands of the law.

I read a quote this week, John Cahoon, he says, the law promises eternal life for man's perfect obedience.

Is that what you stand, do you stand under the law? Listen to me, if you stand under the law, eternal life is held out to you if you meet perfect obedience, you've already failed.

You fail from the moment of your conception because you're broken in Adam and then by your own unrighteousness.

So the quote, whole quote, the law promises eternal life for man's perfect obedience the gospel promises eternal life for Christ's perfect obedience.

I am overwhelmed at the love of God here. This is the righteousness of Christ.

Here is the gracious love of God. It is not reckless, it is righteous. It is sovereign, it is deep, it is wide.

Oh, the love of God for sinners. It flows from eternity past, from the divine counsel of the

Godhead choosing to enact this great plan of salvation, choosing unbelieving sinners by grace.

It flows from Bethlehem, from the incarnation, from Christ's birth, from his submission to his earthly parents, from his baptism, from his temptation in the wilderness, from his fulfilling all righteousness, from his ministry, from every act of obedience.

It flows, the love of God we're talking about flows from Golgotha, from the crown of thorns upon his head, from the nails driven into his hands and to his feet, from the lamb laying down his life for the sheep, from the wrath of God being satisfied, falling upon Jesus in the place of sinners.

It flows from the empty tomb that Jesus resurrected, from the grave, from the triumph of the

Messiah over all, from perfect victory, and it flows from the throne of grace even now into this very room in Perryville, Arkansas.

The love of God flows down to us to shout to us this glorious news that what you could not fulfill in and of yourself,

Christ has fulfilled for sinners. Here is the love of God, here is the good news of the gospel.

Shame on us, shame on me as a preacher of grace forever minimizing or not getting this right.

Oh, there are so many people out there today, like Spurgeon said, who preach the gospel better than Quatro Nelson, but there's not a single person in the world today that preaches a better gospel than we got.

Because this is it. It's the only gospel. And this is the good news.

The gracious command of our triune God echoes through this place even now. Believe, believe, forsake your unrighteousness and believe upon the righteous one.

Now listen to me, children, listen to me. I know people, adults, teenagers, I know people offer so many excuses for not embracing

Christ. Oh, I'm just not ready yet. Oh, I'm just too young. Maybe they feign humility.

Oh, that just couldn't be for me. But let me sum up in one word what it is to reject such a gospel.

It's wicked. To trust your own righteousness this morning, or to love your sin over such grace is to tarnish and besmirch the beautiful gospel that we have been examining.

And God will not hold you guiltless. He cannot and He won't, but herein is grace.

The gospel comes to us this morning and breaks down everything else. Every excuse, every plan, every way of escape.

How could you ignore so great a salvation? Jesus saves.

He comes to make His blessings known far as the curse is found.

The gospel of grace comes to us demanding its reception and offering only one way to receive it.

Faith. To repent, turn from your sins, and to turn from Christ.

Listen to me, church and unbelievers, you don't turn in your justification, you don't turn from law -breaking to law -keeping.

You turn from law -breaking to the law -keeper. That's the only way justification can be received.

You cannot put anything in between the sinner and Christ as an avenue for justification.

You cannot put baptism there. I was baptized, therefore that brought me into justification.

No, sir, it didn't. I partook of the Lord's supper, therefore that brought me into justification.

No, sir, no, ma 'am. My parents are

Christians, therefore that brings me into justification. No, little man or young woman, it doesn't.

Well, I am good. I come to church and I'm good and I do good things and I try to help people and I just try to love people in the community and I just try to be a good person.

And so therefore, that brings me into a justified state before God. No, ma 'am, no, sir, it does not.

There is nothing that you can put in between the sinner and Christ to be the instrument of the means of your justification except this, open up your weak hand in faith and receive

Christ. It's faith alone. There is nothing else that can justify you before God.

This is the only way that Christ bestows His breastplate upon His people, faith.

By the undeserved grace of God alone through faith alone in Christ alone, we are imputed, meaning we are credited now with Christ's righteousness.

Those who stand before God without perfect, personal, precise, and perpetual obedience stand before Him only in future drags which call for His swift and holy judgment.

But here is the hope and grace of the Gospel. For those who look to Jesus in faith as our sins were credited to Christ to count, now by grace through faith,

His righteousness is credited to our account, upon our account by faith alone is written perfect, personal, precise, and perpetual obedience to the law of God.

Are you getting that this morning? What is written on your account is something that you could never do. But here it is, to stand before God, we are legally declared righteous in God's sight based on the work of Christ.

We're forgiven of all of our sins. Having our sins completely and sufficiently paid for in Christ, and we stand before God clothed in Christ's righteous robe, dressed in His righteousness.

We're not taken back to the garden where Adam was. It's not that we're declared innocent like Adam was.

We are declared righteous positively that's written on our account.

We are justified. Saints, you gotta believe this.

Just quit fighting for your justification. Quit, quit putting things on Facebook so that others will think that you can be more righteous or whatever the case may be.

I'm just using illustrations. I don't have anything in mind. I'm just saying we fight for this. What do

I gotta do to be justified? What do I gotta do to be justified? What do I gotta do to be in a right relationship with God?

What do I gotta do to stand before God in the righteous robes of Christ? You gotta believe. You've gotta put your faith in Christ.

Won't you believe what God has required, Christ has provided in the new covenant?

And Romans 4, 5 says this, God justifies, who does God justify? The one who try their best like the false gospel of Mormonism.

Do your best and the grace of God will make up the rest. That ain't what the real Bible says. The real Bible says that God justifies the ungodly.

What is your requirement? What standard do you gotta meet in order to be justified by a holy

God? You gotta be ungodly. That's the only kind of people that God justifies. Sinners, the ungodly.

The ungodly who are deserving of hell and justice and punishment. The ungodly who will suffer hell righteously.

It is what the ungodly deserve and yet here is grace. Here is the gospel of righteousness.

Here is the righteousness of Christ offered to you if you'll open your weak hand to receive it.

Behold the man and receive him by faith. The gospel supplies what the law demands.

The gospel supplies what the law demands.

Christian, what joy to ruminate again upon this glorious gospel. The heavy lifting has been done.

Your debt has been paid. Let every Christian in this room rejoice again at such a gospel and live by faith in the

Son of God and face the enemy clothed in Christ's righteousness. Put on the breastplate of righteousness.

Not that you can ever lose it, but there are times when you do fighting with Satan that you don't appeal to such a breastplate.

Stop. You can't win. Put on the breastplate of righteousness.

Christian, remember too that this righteousness that you have received is the same that your brothers and sisters in Christ have received.

You ain't standing closer than they are, right? We get frustrated sometimes, you know, our brothers and sisters.

But they have the same righteousness because it's not yours, it's not theirs, it's Christ's. So let us do battle against sin and the flesh and the devil together in light of this truth.

Okay, I land the plane by speaking to the unbeliever.

Here's the reality. I don't have, I don't even have good physical glasses, let alone spiritual glasses.

I have absolutely no idea when I look around this room who is genuinely converted and who is not.

Now we can make educated guesses. And I have even in my own family, my children, some of my children who

I believe are not yet converted. What I'm telling you is I believe that in this room there are people here who are not converted.

That if something catastrophic, this just sounds so silly, but if, you know, there's been some earthquakes, you know, they've been kind of measuring earthquakes.

If the New Madrid fault line went crazy right now and this whole place, just a terrible thought,

I know, but this whole place just split apart and we all fell to our death, there are people in this room right now when their hearts stop beating, they would open up their eyes under the judgment of God in a place called hell forever.

And so hear the preacher this morning. I hold out to you the promise of God of eternal life.

I hold out to you the righteousness of God in Christ that may be yours today, even now, even right now, if you will but receive it by faith.

If you will look to the Son and live. Quit holding on to your sins.

Quit holding on to your hypocrisy. Quit holding on to your self -righteousness and open your hands and receive

Christ and walk with us as we seek to be the church putting on the breastplate of righteousness.

Repent, come you sinners. And believe the gospel.

Would you stand with me and let's pray. We thank you,

Father, for this text. And we pray that the gospel has been rightly and sufficiently proclaimed and the

Holy Spirit would be pleased to use this gospel in encouraging the church in awakening dead sinners and emboldening us to give all our thoughts, time, give all that we have and do for the sake of proclaiming such a gospel.

We're undeserving. How can it be that you would do such things?