08-23-2020

Park Meadows Church

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You look up at the sky, and you think about the person who spoke all of that out there.

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And you get to meet him some day. Isn't that something? And we worry about dying, you know?

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We do, but we shouldn't, right? Because think what that day is going to be like. It's going to be amazing.

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So anyone wants to come up, I'll breathe on you and share the coronavirus since I've had it. You can maybe see the

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Lord sooner. No, I should be. Actually, I should be bulletproof in Charlotte, too, because we're supposed to have, like, three months where we can't give it to you nor catch it from you.

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So we're the only two that can hug. And has anyone else had it, though? Anyone else had it?

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We have a few of our online friends that have had it. And by the way, for you guys, oh, I forgot to ask you, Ben.

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But for you guys out there in the internet world, we have at least three families that are wanting to join the church from afar.

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Is that cool or what? Well, how can we do that? The denomination hasn't given us orders on how this works.

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But the good thing is we're not part of a denomination. So we just talked with the elders and the deacons, and we decided to put this little forum together.

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And it will sort of ask you guys out there things like, have you been saved?

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Do you know when you're saved? Or if you don't know, do you know approximately? Have you been baptized? Are you called as a preacher?

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Did the church ever call you as a deacon? A few little interesting questions. How many kids do you have?

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What are their names? Are they little sheep or little goats? No, I'm kidding. They're little sheep or lost sheep.

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All those kinds of things are on that form. So Ben, you go out to parkmeadowschurch .com,

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and which tab would I hit to find the form? Oh, it literally says that up at the top.

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It's brand new. Membership form. That's easy. Way easier than working this stuff.

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Can we switch jobs? All right. So click on that, fill the form out. And Ben tells me somehow

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I will get the answer. Actually, I think that Paul Davis will get the answer, and he'll email it to me.

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So if you don't get to join, it's Paul Davis's fault. So he decided, no, not that one.

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No, we're teasing, of course. Some of you guys don't know me as well as these guys, so I tease sometimes. You'll have to get used to it.

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All right. We better get started because we're a little behind schedule, because my schedule has a lot of time for this sermon.

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So let us get started. I hope you guys can see that. I will call off the scriptures so you can look them up on your phone or whatever device you're using.

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But to review just a little bit, we've been right here in this little passage in Romans chapter 8.

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And specifically, verses 29 and 30. And the cool thing is we've really already gone beyond those all the way to the end of the chapter and covered everything.

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So this is the last thing for us to cover is what's in those two verses. And when we finish those, we'll be done with Romans chapter 8, which

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I'm not excited about that, because it's an amazing chapter. But I am kind of excited about getting to chapter 9, because that chapter isn't taught in any of your

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Sunday school quarterlies anywhere in the world. They don't want to talk about that subject in most churches, Romans chapter 9.

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So we will be preaching verse by verse through it. Are we going to do children's church today?

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All right. Sorry about that. I was informed we might not, but we might.

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OK, so now the kids are gone. OK, so now this is the adult version of the sermon.

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All right. So we're in these two verses. For whom God did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

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Moreover, whom he did predestinate, them he also called. And the same group that he called, them he also justified.

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And the same group that got justified, all of them got glorified. Now, I added a few of my own words in there, but that's because I've studied the whole chapter and the whole

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Bible, and I know what it means. That's what it means. You look at the context, which if you want to go back in our archives, if you've missed some of these sermons, go to the beginning of this discussion on these passages right in through here.

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And you'll see that that is talking about a group of people known as the elect in the Bible. And it starts, well,

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I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit. This is just review. But it starts before time begins, and that is the foreknow and the predestinate part up at the top of verse 29.

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We're in Romans 8 .29, by the way. That starts before time began. The same group of people that were foreknown and predestinated as you come into time on the planet

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Earth, they are called and justified. Now, I want you to notice something right off the top here.

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You can't be justified unless you're called first. Because think about it.

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The predestinate and the foreknowledge don't happen in sequence, because there's no time before time started.

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Time started in Genesis 1 .1, correct, Bill? Am I right, physics man? All right. Genesis 1 .1,

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space, time, and matter began. Before that, you just had God, all right? So you didn't have him foreknowing something and then choosing something.

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He just is, OK? He's present. He's now. He's the eternal now, the I am.

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And the I am just knows, and he just is, and he just enjoys everything that is, or ever shall be, or ever was.

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I don't know how you talk about eternity past. It's kind of a funny phrase, because it doesn't have time. So you say past, weird.

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I don't know how else to talk about it. But the point is, the first two words happened before time began.

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But the same group of people, and let's call them the sheep, OK, the sheep were known by God and chosen by God and predetermined that they would become sheep and be sheep, actually realize that they're sheep is kind of what happens.

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Then when you come into time, the calling is how they realize they're sheep. And it's the Holy Spirit that does that work, and only the

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Holy Spirit, no human part of it whatsoever. Now, the human part is

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God's given us the written word right here. And he used humans to be the penman, did he not?

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And he used humans to preserve it, and recopy it, and recopy it, and eventually print it. And the first people that printed it got burned at the stake for printing it, because the

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Catholics didn't want you, the common people, to know how to read the Bible or have one in your language. That's just history.

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I'm not picking on anybody. It's just history. But God ordained how we would get this book, and have it, and keep it.

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And he said, we'll have it till the last generation, so he's going to preserve it. And we have this book. And then we've been given a mission to go out and tell people about this book and about the gospel, which means the good message, the good news in the book, which is you can't save yourself.

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That's the good news. Because if you could, you wouldn't. And if you did, you'd lose it. The good news is it's not about you.

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It's about the Holy Spirit regenerating you and opening your eyes, opening your ears, changing your want to, and then you responding by receiving

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Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior, and you know the gospel, right? That is the good news.

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That part happens in time in verse 30, and it starts with the calling. And the same group of people, the sheep who are called, are also justified.

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Now, a Baptist would call that getting saved, okay? But to be more accurate, it's actually getting justified, because salvation is a big word that includes the past, present, and future.

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So not only have we always been saved, God knew us from the beginning of time, and then we got saved, which is justified, and then we're always being saved because he's our intercessor in heaven, and we shall be glorified.

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That's a future part of our salvation. So let's call it, if you really want to get it right, we got justified. We got justified, that's what happened.

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And who did it to us? Takes two things, Jesus said. It takes the water and the

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Spirit. The water is the Word of God. Throughout the Old and New Testament, especially the New Testament, this is called the water of the

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Word. So we had to have a Bible and human effort, penman, witnessers, which is we're supposed to witness.

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So we have the human effort there, but that's the water. And then the Spirit, by the way, all the humans are born of water, right?

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Think about that. You get born of water. That's the human side.

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It's also the Word of God side, which had a human component. And then you have to have the Spirit. That's the

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Holy Spirit. But it's the Holy Spirit's job to do the calling. And what he does is he uses that bit of gospel that got placed in your mind by some person, some mama, some grandmother, some preacher on the radio, some gospel tract or an old

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Bible you found in a hotel room. There's a million ways, and I'm convinced God saves everybody in a different method with regard to the means that happen, the ways that we come to know about it.

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But the Holy Spirit uses that information and he just wakes you up. And it's like he shows you

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Jesus and says, he's your shepherd, you're a sheep, you're hungry, he's got the food, what are you gonna do with him? At that moment, he becomes irresistible because the

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Holy Spirit makes him irresistible. That's called the calling, and regeneration happens at that moment.

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And theologically, they're two separate things, calling and regeneration are two things that can be studied, but they happen in the same portion of a second of time.

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And it's work done by the Holy Spirit, not by any man, woman, boy, or girl. The modern gospel's all messed up because it puts the work in our hands and in the preacher's hand, the church's hand, that's all wrong.

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Never happened that way. It happened this way. And then you move on out from time, out the other end into eternity future, and you see the last word there, you're glorified.

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That's the future tense of your salvation. But the same people that end up in heaven glorified were the people that God knew and predestinated before time began and called in time because he sent his

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Holy Spirit to each one he knew were his and called them and woke them up, gave them life, and then they're justified, which we'll talk about that today, okay?

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So we've talked about the scope of predestination up in this first,

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I wish this pointer would point at that, but it won't. I gotta get one that will somehow. So I'll be doing this till I remember it doesn't do it, which it never.

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But the predestination part, the scope of that is two things, it's unto salvation, and that's the

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B part of verse 29, the second half of verse 29, and also unto good works, and that's the first half of verse 29.

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So predestination includes salvation and good works. God predestinated that his chosen sheep would do both.

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They would get saved and they would do good works and walk with him. That's all predetermined. Now you say, well, what do

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I have to do? Respond. All you have to do is do what you want to do because that's what you're gonna do anyway.

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And I'll tell you this from my study of scripture, you never wanted salvation three seconds before you got saved.

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So why'd you get saved? It's because the Holy Spirit changed you want to. And then you wanted

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Jesus, so what'd you do? You received him as your shepherd. So did you have to do that?

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Absolutely. Depends on how you wanna talk about it. Did you pray in the little prayer,

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Jesus save me, did that save you? No, that was a result of the fact you'd already been regenerated or you wouldn't have wanted to pray the prayer.

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See, that's what's wrong in the modern gospel. It gives man too much part of it. Man has no part in it.

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The only part man plays is the same part a baby plays when he's born or she's born. She enjoys the fact she's now part of the family and has a mom and a dad and a wonderful life.

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That's the part we play. We respond to having been born. Isn't that wonderful?

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So how could you lose your salvation any more than a child could lose its birth? You can't.

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There's so many false doctrines in the world of Christianity, like that, that arise because you don't understand

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Romans 8, 29 and 30. So if we do understand it, it opens a whole world like it did with Ron and Pam in particular.

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I'm thinking about that time period. I didn't even talk to him about this stuff.

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Somebody planted someone in a group of people I was speaking to. Someone brought them just to argue with me, to make me look foolish.

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And I wasn't stupid enough to do that in front of the group. So they raised their hand. Yeah, you know, I said, you know what? That's such an awesome question.

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Can't answer it in three minutes. So come to lunch with me. So I invited him to lunch while I had other people.

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Ron and Pam were sitting at the table too. And you've all heard the story. But as I argued with this young man who didn't get a thing out of the argument, they were listening the whole time and went home totally different because all of a sudden

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Romans chapter nine made sense to Ron for the first time in his life. He said he could never make it fit any of the Bible. Isn't that wonderful?

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It all fits when you get that right. You know why? Because you have to start with God to make it fit.

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Predestinate and foreknow, who is that? Who's doing that? Man or God? God's doing that.

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You have to start with God to make any sense out of anything. And yet theology today starts with man.

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We call that humanism if it's secular. We call it Arminianism if it's in the church. And boy, is it ever.

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And it rots every church and every church group and every denomination. It rots it when it gets into it and it gets into all of them.

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That's why God's always bringing out little new groups that nobody knows about that wanna just love the

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Lord, study the Bible together. They get tired of all the nonsense. Isn't that true? All right.

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Now there's the scope of it. Next, we discuss the meaning of foreknowledge which was pretty much last time.

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And the difference between that and omniscience which I found very interesting. So if you wanna study that, go back, hit the archives and listen to it.

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I think it's really important to know they're not the same thing. All right.

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So last Sunday, we looked into the calling which is there at the first part of verse 30.

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So we came into time and we looked at the calling which is really misunderstood but it's also missing from the modern gospel.

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We'll talk about that in detail. Now, just to review foreknowledge just a little bit and why it's different than omniscience.

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I'm gonna quote Arthur Pink here, one of my favorite authors. False theology makes

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God's foreknowledge of us believing. False theology thinks that God looks out in time and sees us believing and so therefore he chooses us.

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False theology. It's everywhere. It was all over Baylor University when I went there. That's what they taught.

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That's what they were teaching us. False theology makes God's foreknowledge of our believing the cause of election and salvation.

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Whereas God's election is actually the cause and the believing is the effect.

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See, you thought I made that up. There are believers going back 2000 years that believe this right here.

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And it's not John Calvin. He's one of the greatest, but I mean it's thousands of years before him, thousands of years after him.

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It's all of us who read and study the Bible literally under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit cannot teach you that man's in control.

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He won't do it. And by the way, he won't teach you that he's in control in the most important thing in church either.

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In fact, what he will always do is lift up Jesus Christ. Can I get an amen on that? I mean, he will lift up Jesus Christ.

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You have to study really hard to learn much about the Holy Spirit in the Bible because he talks about Jesus all the time. And who does

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Jesus talk about all the time? The Father. This is how the triune being works.

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Isn't it wonderful? But I love this quote by Pink.

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He makes it really clear. He quotes Acts 13, 48 there in part of this book

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I was reading by Pink. It's one of my favorite verses. As many as were ordained to eternal life believed.

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Anytime you have a preacher preaching, I don't care how many people are out there and you have a group of lost people and saved people out there, and some of the lost people may or may not get saved.

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The only ones in the crowd that get saved are the ones that were ordained to get saved. That's what that verse says. It's very plain.

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And so many people love to just omit that verse and never talk about it. Very plain. You have to start with God.

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It all starts in Romans 8, 29 with the foreknowing and the predestination.

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Now, the other, some interesting things about foreknowledge. We discussed the fact that foreknowledge is never used in scripture in connection with events or actions.

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And I bet you didn't know that. Because if you're like me, you sort of equated foreknowledge, brother

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Bill, with omniscience. It's like God looked out and saw stuff. And he does look out and see stuff, but that's omniscience.

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That is not foreknowledge. What foreknowledge means in biblical language, you can't get this from Webster's because in the

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English language, it just means knowing stuff in the future. And that's what the Armenians wanna say it means in the Bible. But if you look at every usage of it in the entire scripture, all you will ever find is that it's never dealing with events or actions.

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It is always dealing with human beings. Is that fascinating? God only foreknows people.

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He foreknows who's gonna be saved because foreknowledge in the Bible does not mean anything other than in Genesis 4, 1,

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Adam knew Eve, his wife, and she conceived. It is a loving, intimate knowledge.

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That's what the Bible word means. It doesn't just mean you know something. It's a relationship. God had a loving, intimate relationship with you before he made anything.

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That's how special you are. And yes, he chose you as his own child because he already knew you as his own child.

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It's not even in order, it just is. It just was that way. It's just as eternal as God is.

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God has always known his children. He's known his only begotten son, Jesus, who's always existed with him.

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But he's also known us in his heart and mind ever since he's existed, which is forever.

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That's how long you were planned to be saved. Think about that.

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How's that make you feel a little more secure, doesn't it? Because we mess up, don't we? But you can't mess up something

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God did. And he did it 2 ,000 years before you were born. It says you rose from the grave with him.

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You had nothing to do with that, but that's how you got saved. And we can't even talk about time before time started, can we,

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Bill? So if you wanna call that long ago, I don't know how to say it. Is there no better way to say it, is there?

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You can't say it. Is there a mathematical way to say it? Infinitely, and then you go infinitely long ago.

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You just can't say it. It's funny, I love stuff like that. But anyway, that's how long you were known by God and he loved you as his child that long.

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So that's what foreknowledge means. All right, so what did that say? That might've been good. The biblical term to know means to know with affection and love, always.

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The only way it's used, and it's always people that are known, not events. So to say that God looked out in time and saw you were a pretty good person and you were a believer, so he chose you because he knew you that way is totally unbiblical.

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The Bible meaning for knowledge never means that. Isn't that something? I think that's good stuff to learn.

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People 200 years ago, 300, 500, 1 ,500 years ago, almost 2 ,000 years ago, already knew that.

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And we're just learning it because we were all taught so wrong growing up, were we not? And then we talked about the calling.

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The gospel must include the calling for in time, justification must follow the calling.

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You can't get saved without being called. Now, I don't want you to overly worry about that because I know you weren't taught this way.

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So all I want you to think about was, can you think of a time when you didn't want Jesus and then all of a sudden you did?

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That's when you got called. You didn't, no one called it that, but that is what it was. You didn't want him and all of a sudden you did.

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And that might've happened long after you thought you got saved when the preacher told you the little prayer to pray, or it might've happened before you prayed the little prayer.

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God has many ways and means of calling you, but you had to be called. Also, you can't get glorified without being justified and you can't get justified if you didn't get called.

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So you can't be in heaven if you didn't get called. So we talked about all that for a while. Conclusion, one may not be justified nor glorified without having first been called by the

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Holy Spirit and it's totally left out of the modern gospel. When's the last time you heard a preacher that said, as part of his altar call, well, make sure the

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Holy Spirit's calling you before you come down here. Did you know that there's evidence in history of evangelistic preachers actually saying that at big meetings in the 1800s?

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Yes. They'd have people come down, they'd go down here and they'd say, now, dear lady, I know you want to be a

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Christian. We're gonna be here two weeks preaching because back then they'd last that long. People would come in from the fields and come in at night and come here preaching.

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And you know what Dr. Freeman, oh, sorry guys. You know what? Sorry about that.

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Do you know what Dr. Freeman told me? He said,

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David, and this was not that long ago, 70s, right? For me, that's not long ago. So he used to do two week meetings,

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Dr. Freeman, my mentor. He was a Bible conference speaker. He'd do two week meetings. Hearts were so in the world and in the flesh and with the devil.

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A whole week of preaching and nothing happened. The second week starts, four days, nothing happens.

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And you get down to maybe the last two days and it just breaks open and God takes over and breaks hearts. But they want you to get saved in three minutes because we got to go watch the

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Cowboy game. I hope they have those again. Will they, coach? I don't know. I won't get to go one.

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I don't want to go one anyway. I want to watch it on TV. But anyway, so I got to leave just a minute. So they would come down and the little lady is here the first, third day of the first week.

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And he would tell her, look, you keep coming every night and you pray, Holy Spirit will call you because until he does, you can't get saved.

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And he walked away from her. What did Jesus do? That's historical. I've read it. What did

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Jesus do with a woman at the well? Did he ever once say, look, just pray this prayer and I'll save you.

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Dear Jesus be mine. Amen. Or did he say, look, you got, how many husbands was it?

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Five, right? Go get them and bring them. Well, how'd you know that? Don't worry about that.

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Just go get them and bring them. And on the way she got saved, right? Somewhere in there, right? He never did anything verbally to change her other than tell her the truth, which is

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I am the water. And if you drink me, you will never thirst. That's all he told her. Holy Spirit did the rest, right?

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That's the true gospel. I would love to stay on the calling, but we're supposed to be on something new today and Charlotte wanted me to get into it.

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All right, there are two callings taught in the Bible. Universal call, that's like, just think of it as the gospel going out.

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You don't have time to read that. Check the archives. And the second one, that's called the universal call. And the second one is called the effectual call.

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And that's the one where the Holy Spirit comes and wakes you up, opens your eyes and regenerates you. Both are taught in the

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Bible. By the way, it's the same Greek word. So the only way you can tell which it is is by the context.

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You gotta read the whole passage to know which calling it is. Both are taught. This is the greatest example in the

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Bible, Acts 22, six through nine, of the calling. That's Paul's conversion. We talked about that in detail.

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And I do wanna stop and read this and I don't even care if I get to today's stuff or not because we didn't really look at this enough last time.

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But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people.

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Different than the rest of the world because you're God's elect sheep. The rest of them are goats.

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You're not like them. That you should show forth the praises of him who has what?

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Called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. You cannot be saved without that happening.

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And I wanna put it in the positive. Now that you're saved, think back and remember that happening because it did.

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Which in the time past, you were not even a people if you're a Gentile. That's talking to Gentile.

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We weren't even a people of God. We weren't supposed to get saved. Jews didn't think we could get saved. Jesus told them different.

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He's talking about that, I think, in the story in Sunday School in 99 and the one who was a stray, that's the

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Gentile, I think. And Jesus went after him, was more happy about that than the

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Jewish people who weren't living for him and didn't even love him, didn't care for him that much, did they? So many of them didn't.

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Which in time past, we're not a people, that's the Gentiles, but are now the people of God. Now that's, we're part of the elect now along with the

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Jewish elect. You see, we're just part of that whole group. So that includes the Jewish elect too now, second part of verse 10, which had not obtained mercy, but now you have obtained mercy.

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Why? Because of the calling. You see that? See how important it is and it's totally left out of the modern gospel.

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First Peter 5 .10, but the God of all grace who has called us unto his eternal glory by Jesus Christ.

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After that, you have suffered a while, make you perfect, established, strengthened and settle you. And that last part is talking about the glorification.

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So it moves out of time off into eternity future, but it all has to start with the calling. And that can't start unless there was a foreknowledge and love for you before God ever made anything and an election, a choice that you would be his child.

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And then in time you got called and as brother Otis used to say it, the Holy Spirit notified you that you are a sheep because you thought you were a goat.

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You weren't, you were just a lost sheep. And that's something. To him be glory and dominion forever and ever.

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Do you know that the only way that Jesus gets all the glory and the dominion is if you understand it this way?

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Because if you understand it the modern way, man gets an awful lot of that glory and dominion. And the scary, frightening thing about that is

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God won't allow that to happen. There won't be that. So what does that tell you? A lot of the churchy stuff isn't accomplishing anything real.

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That's frightening. So in the same two passages, not only did we teach about the scope of predestination election, the scope of it is it's about salvation and it's also about good works and living right and being conformed in the image.

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Then we talked about the breadth of God's love in predestination election. And obviously what that is, is it starts before time began.

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It goes into time out the other side and then into the future. Well, today we're supposed to be focused on the justified, but you guys started me late.

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I mean, it was like five till 12 when I got up here. Seemed like, but anyway. So Coach Davis says, all right, preacher, you shouldn't lie.

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I mean, you can have fun, but you shouldn't lie. Charlotte tells me that too. And Ron says, well, the

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Holy Ghost should be telling you that brother David. No, Ron wouldn't say that.

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Nah, Ron wouldn't say that. Charlotte might say that. All right. What scares me is how many people are thinking that.

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That's what scares me. What'd you say? That doesn't mean that, yeah.

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So let's look at the justified part a little bit. Now think about it. Moreover, whom he did predestinate, them he also called, and who he called that same group he justified.

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He didn't say he might do it or he'll do some of them. It's the whole group. And later we'll get to glorified a lot later, several

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Sundays from now. Justification is gonna last a few Sundays. It might be other than grace itself is probably one of the greatest topics you can study, but you'll see in a moment, you cannot understand justification if you don't understand grace.

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So we have to talk about grace too, and that can last in itself weeks. I had this wonderful mentor named

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Gary Plumlee, and he had this huge IQ, but I asked him to do a business man's

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Bible study. And if it'd been today, ladies, I would have said business men and women, but this was like in the dark ages, okay?

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So back then I just said, business man's Bible study. And so he came to my office and taught us once a week, and he picked the topic, grace.

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I still have a folder at home that thick with every note I took from that man's teaching and I cherish it.

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Some of it's in this a little later today. They won't be that thick, so don't let me frighten you. But justification, here's what it means.

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It literally means to render or regard as just or innocent.

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See, that is not what the world teaches. The world teaches you have to go and do good works so God will accept you into heaven.

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That would be a little difficult when you consider the times we mess up, wouldn't it? That wouldn't be the gospel, that would be bad news.

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In fact, that is Satan's gospel, that your works play any role in it at all other than effects of it, but they have nothing to do with the cause.

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So justified literally doesn't mean that you are a righteous acting person all the time.

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It's not what it means. It means you are regarded as if you are just and righteous.

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And who do you think it is that's regarding you that way? It's the father. So justification literally means to render or regard as just or innocent.

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You could say it's translated in the New Testament as to be righteous, but you could say to be made righteous would be a better biblical concept of how it works.

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So you're gonna find that justified and being righteous are almost synonyms in the

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New Testament. They're different. Sometimes they're the same Greek word and they're translated. One time they'll do it justified one time or just.

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The other time it'll say righteous. Didn't you have one of those in your Sunday school where it said just and Bill pointed out correctly that that means righteous.

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So they can be used as a synonym in the Greek and often it's the same Greek word.

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Dikai yo 'o if you say it in Texas Greek to be regarded as just or innocent.

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And you know how we teach each other and the children church kids. Justified means just as if I'd never sinned, but that's in God's regard.

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It's not our experience here yet. We're not perfect, are we? But God the

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Father sees us as if we never sin and never have sinned and never will sin. Isn't that beautiful? Now when you've been justified, that's how

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God the Father sees you. And that's what we should use right in saying, I got saved. You say, I got justified.

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Because the Holy Spirit at the moment he called you, what does the scripture say happen next in time?

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Them who were called, he also what? Justified. That's what we call incorrectly salvation because salvation is a bigger word than that.

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It includes even more than just justification, but we got justified at that moment. Now some of us will remember the day and the time when that happened, and others who got saved younger in life won't remember the exact day and time.

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We got some of each in the room, I'm sure. Now a lot of strict Baptist church will say, if you don't remember it, you ain't saved, right?

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That's why we took Baptist off the sign, okay? There are reasons, but it took years to get everyone 100 % to vote to do it.

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We finally did. Had to get Raymond and Sharon convinced, but they finally did. All right,

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Sharon, I know you're listening. You remember that. I'm telling the truth, right? All right.

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Justification, 1 Peter 2 .24. Who his own self bear our sins in his own body on the tree.

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Who's that talking about? And when is it talking about in time? That tree is the cross, isn't it?

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So almost approximately 2 ,000 years ago, a little more than that now, I suppose, when he was on the tree, hanging there, nailed to the cross, the

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Bible says the father put your 2020 sins and your 2019 and your 2018 and 17 and all the way back to when you were born and all the way to when you die, that set of sins, yours, yours, yours, yours, mine, everyone out there, all of them.

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And every saint's ever lived even before Christ from the garden on till the end of time.

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All of those sins were placed on the body of Jesus Christ at the moment in time and space when he was on the cross.

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And I want you to think about that. He was tempted at all points and yet without sin. And all of a sudden the deluge of all the sins of humanity were placed on him and he sensed it and felt it in the full, all of it in his mind as if he had done all those sins.

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It says he was ashamed of that moment. It says he did not like that moment.

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That is the very moment he asked God the father to find a different way to save us if he could. And he said, nevertheless,

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I will be done. That was the cup he wished would pass. That plus being separate, because he knew the second that happened, the father would turn his head away.

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I had some nutcase sent me an email where he argued in a paper that the teaching that the father turned his head from Christ is not true.

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He would never have done that. What a nut. You know, I hope you're not listening. If you are,

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I'm sorry. You can, you know, you can do better. It does mean that. It's exactly why do you think

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Jesus never called God, God? He called him daddy until he was on the cross and your sins and mine were put on him.

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He said, God, why have you forsaken me? How do you change scripture that plain?

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You know, people do it. This is sad, isn't it? It's just so people like me have to study and people like you, so you can, cause you guys have to answer family that says stuff like that and friends, right?

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So, but that keeps us studying, but that's just what happened. All of the sins of the world were placed upon him when he was on that tree.

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Why? Second half of the verse tells you why. So that we, we being dead to sins should live under righteousness by whose stripes were healed.

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So now you have to have another scripture to make that second part make sense, but I'll tell you, it makes sense.

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What's interesting in the Greek, you see that little word unto, it's not in the Greek at all. It was added to make the

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English read better, but I don't think it makes it more plain. I think you should remove it and realize that the little word righteousness is dikaiosune, righteousness.

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What's interesting about it, the little word unto is missing in what the

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Greek would read, right? In that little portion there is that, who his own self bear our sins in his own body on the tree, that we being dead to sins should live this righteousness.

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Doesn't that read better? That's what it means in Greek. It doesn't say that you should live under righteousness.

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That sounds like maybe you will, maybe you won't. It does not, there's no maybe there. Not only were you predestinated to be born again, you were predestinated to be conformed into the image of Christ.

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So it will happen if you're real. And you know, if you're real, I'm not trying to talk you out, I can't talk you out of it.

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You know, Holy Spirit witnesses with your spirit that you're the child of God. Even when we do wrong does, that's when he really witnesses to us.

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All right, so that just means that we will live this righteousness and we're healed by his stripes.

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And by the way, you go into Isaiah 53 where that's quoted from, where Peter quoted

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Isaiah 53. A lot of people talk about that being that Jesus, God's gonna heal every time you're sick.

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It's not talking about that. It's talking about your soul that's healed. Now it does speak of physical healing, but it puts it in the context of after you raise, either you raise from the grave or you die and you're given a new body and you're with God.

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At that point, you will never be ill again. You will never die. Or it's the rapture. So in that sense,

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Jesus' death on the cross healed your body. I want you to think of it. That's taken out of context so often and used to try to prove

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God just healed everything. If he did, how come your grandmother's in the grave? Why didn't you go touch her and save her if that's what it means?

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It doesn't mean that. And to think to be led by false preachers into believing that it means that has got to be discouraging.

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Ron, you grew up that way. Was that discouraging? When the preacher would get up and say, hey, God doesn't want anybody to be sick or die and then your loved one dies?

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It just means you were so evil you didn't have enough faith, right? See, but what it really means is it's not teaching that because what it's actually teaching is, and I want you to think about this, had

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Jesus not died on the cross and risen from the grave, the entire human race would have perished.

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There would not be one human being in the millennial kingdom, only angels, no humans. So he healed us and made us well and where we will live forever and never be sick again as a race, but also we who are risen with our new bodies will be ruling and reigning with him over the flesh and blood people, won't we?

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We're sure not going to be sick ever again. We're never going to die. So he did heal us, but that's the context of it.

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And it alludes to it here. Look at the context it puts that in. It's talking about while he was on the tree. What did he do on the tree?

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Did he save me from the COVID or did he save my soul from hell? That's what he saved me from, he healed me.

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He healed the real me, which is the new me and the new me never sins. I mean,

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I've got an old man that will, but the new me won't and your new nature won't either.

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So as long as we walk spirit filled, we won't sin. That's pretty good healing, isn't it?

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And half the stuff we do when we're in the flesh is what kills our bodies and makes us sick. So in a sense, he's done some physical healing too, hasn't he?

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Because he gives us some wonderful knowledge and things we should do and shouldn't do. Now, when you take 2

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Corinthians 5, 21 and put that with 1 Peter 2, 24, all of a sudden you almost, you could have a mini study on justification just right there without the hours and hours of other material

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I've got. But it's such a majestic topic. This also moves into a little bit of what we call imputation which you'll see later.

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But let's just look at it for what it says here. For he, that's the father, has made him, that's

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Jesus, to be sin for us. Now the word for in Greek means two things, because of us and for us.

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You see the difference? He was on the cross because we sinned and we were elected and chosen and of them he can lose nothing.

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So he had to die to save us. So he died because of our sins, but he also died for them in the sense of taking them away and taking them upon himself.

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So when Jesus took your sins and mine on that day when he was on that cross, they were never to be returned to you.

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He's not giving them back. He died with them in his body. And he was buried because of your sins and mine and they're not coming back.

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They were sent lower than the deepest ocean and as far as the east from the west, you'll never see those sins again.

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Now that's, I understand, positional, and by that I mean it's from the father's viewpoint. He regards us as having never sinned.

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That's what justification is. So if you've been justified, that's who you are to the father. Don't you love to know that?

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Now, do you find it hard to believe though? Because we've been taught false doctrine so long and it's all related to what we do, whether God please with us, all related with what we do or don't do, right?

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If that were true, we might as well not have not showed up today, any of us. We don't even need to be here if that's true.

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But if God the father can look upon us in this church service today and all our friends out here can look upon us and see no sin in us, can we have fellowship today?

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Can we glorify him with our presence and our feeble language? Can the

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Holy Spirit interpret that into God's majestic infinite language with whisperings and yearnings that we can't even think of the words to say?

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And if that's true, then we have fellowship as if we're in heaven right now, just as good as if we were in heaven right now.

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Well, he made Jesus to be sin for us. There's a lot in that little word for, used up a lot of my time this morning on that one word just then.

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Who knew no sin, so it wasn't his sins, is not what took him to the grave, it was yours and mine.

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Why did he do it? So that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

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Now I want you to notice the word made. You see, that doesn't say that we might do the righteousness.

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You are made, it's in the passive. Someone greater and more holy than you had to do it to you because you were not equipped to do that to yourselves.

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You could not justify yourself. And this is a case where that word righteous is the same word as just, justified, same

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Greek word. So you were made to be justified by God.

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He did it to you when he regenerated you. And he had to call you first and then he regenerated you.

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And then you responded with all the stuff that you used to think saved you. All those are effects of it.

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He did it all. God did so many works to save us from giving his own son's life to planning it all and letting

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Jesus speak it all into existence. And who knows if Jesus is the God man, maybe he sat and planned it for eternity, some eternities of eternity, all the little flower petals and the bees and the little insects and the sand on the seashore and the dust in outer space.

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I don't know if he took time to do all that. If he wanted to, he could have done it that way or he could have just thrown, boom, there it is.

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I know with the ultimate existence of it, he just spoke it. Jesus did and there it was.

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Well, that same one who spoke all that into existence took your sins on his body on the tree and he was made to be sinned by the father for you and for me so that you could be made to be as righteous as he is in the father's eyes.

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All of that was made to be. It was all regarded as we know experientially, none of it's true yet in our lives.

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We just have not arrived. Paul said he hadn't arrived yet, didn't he? But from the father's viewpoint, you can't arrive any further.

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You can't get more saved than you're saved right now. You'll never be more justified than you are right now because it's like a glass of water.

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You can't say this thing is more full. I mean, if it's full, it's just full, right? I can say it's more nearly full than it was.

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It's less nearly full because I took a few drinks of it, but you can't get more justified than the next person or than you used to be last year.

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You're just like God just did it all and gave you 100%. You're totally full and complete in Christ.

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And we rest in Christ, and that's what the word Sabbath means. Why did he do it? So that we would have the righteousness of God.

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And having been made righteous is the same thing as saying I got justified. Having been made righteous is the same word in the

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Greek. Let's do a little word study and we'll probably be out of time. I can't believe I got like six months of material.

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I didn't need to stay up as late this week as I did. Or even last night trying to, you know what takes time is popping them into these

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PowerPoints. I didn't used to have to do that. I just had it on paper up here. But I like it better this way.

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I like you seeing it's scripture. So let's just look at this for a moment, okay? Notice up there where it has the word righteous in verse 24 that we should live unto righteousness, okay?

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And then in 2 Corinthians 5 .21, it has the word righteous, that we might be made righteous.

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That particular word is dikaiosoune. And it literally means justification or it's translated as righteous.

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It's the same word. You'll see two different words in the English just because the English writers wanted it to read well and not be redundant and use the same words all the time.

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So they would pick synonyms, but in the Greek, it's one word, all right? What's interesting is that Greek word comes from a little

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Greek word, dikaios, which means to render just or innocent, to make something just or innocent.

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Now, do you remember when the Old Testament priests would sprinkle the blood of the offering on the altar?

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It would actually make the altar righteous, holy. Then when they put the next animal on there, the holy altar made the new animal holy.

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So they were made holy. They weren't holy, they were made holy. Do you see the picture?

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It's all through the Old Testament, again and again and again. The priest had to sprinkle the blood on himself before he ever tried to take care of the sins of the people.

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And certainly before he went into the Holy of Holies one time a year and present the blood there and sprinkle that on because that was a model, therefore it wasn't really holy.

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So once he sprinkled it, now God receives it as holy. Things were made holy. And that's what that little root word that this word righteous comes from is means to render something or to cause it to be holy.

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That's what Jesus's blood did, you see that. Now that comes from a little root word, dikaios, which means right or just.

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So he had to make us right or just, it's not something we do. Do you get that?

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Now it is true Jesus said, be holy for I am holy, didn't he? That's us trying to live a good life and not be hypocrites because why would we be a hypocrite if we don't live a good life?

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Because we are already holy. We are already justified. We are already fully, totally as justified as we will ever be justified.

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Therefore, if we live any less than that, we're hypocrites. That's why he says live right, but we're not perfect.

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And you know what? He said he put this treasure and earthen vessels on purpose so that he'd get the glory. So when you do get it right, guess who you have to say caused you to get it right?

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You didn't just get lucky and all of a sudden did a good thing, right? The Holy Ghost that saved you came into you and said, okay, let's go do something for this person.

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The father wants that person to have something, whatever. And so you do it. And even in this earthen vessel, which tomorrow we may go do something wrong with the same body that we just helped that, like that time when

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I came and ministered with you guys, who knows what I did the next day? Charlotte could tell you and it wouldn't be pretty probably. But the point is it's how

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God wants it. Remember that Charlotte. It's how God made it this way on purpose.

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You listen, you could not appreciate being justified if you weren't bad. You wouldn't appreciate it.

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You wouldn't appreciate the fact that he made you justified if you knew you couldn't get justified.

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I mean, people say, did you get saved? No, you don't get saved. You're made saved.

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It's not something you can do to get saved. You're made saved and all of it's in this root word.

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Now, look over here. Romans 5, 8 says, but God committed his love toward us while we were yet sinners,

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Christ died for us. Much more than being now justified by his blood.

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That's not something you could do, is it? You couldn't give that blood. That blood had to be applied to you by the

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Holy Ghost. It got put on you. That's what made you righteous. Being now justified by his blood, we are saved from wrath through him, nothing to do with you or me.

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But now we see the word justified. So look over here. Does that Greek word look interesting? Because it's dikaiouo, and if you'll notice, it's kind of more like the root word for the word for righteous over there.

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But it means to render just or innocent. It comes from exactly the same root word as the word righteous does over here, which is dikaios, which means to render just or innocent.

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Basically, as you follow, it comes from the same root word, right or just, it's the same word. It's just little different endings on the word that has to do with the way

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Greek grammar works. It's the same word. So to be justified is the same as to having been made righteous by someone greater than you.

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So that's a good start on justification. And next

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Sunday, the Lord willing, we'll come together and we'll go a little deeper, all right? So let's have a word of prayer together.

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Father, we thank you so much for your word and that you've preserved it. First, you gave it, then you preserved it, and you keep it for us, you keep it safe.

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And Lord, you speak to our hearts through your written word and by your Holy Spirit as he teaches us what the word means and the senses of all the little words and meanings.

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Thank you, we could have none of that without your word. Lord, thank you that being your word, it is you speaking to us.

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The relationship is with you, not with that book called the Bible. It's with you because it's your love letter to us.

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It's your heart, your mind. And so Lord, use all of it from today in our lives going forward this week and continue to help us to grow and be conformed into Jesus' image by your word.

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And we ask it in Jesus' name, amen. All right, well, goodbye all.

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Out there in the internet world, and we enjoyed it. We'll see you next week.