The Greatest Text in the Bible — Paul Washer

It's a great, great honor and privilege for me to be speaking here today. It's just a great privilege. I'm overwhelmed at the goodness of God that he would allow me the opportunity to be here in this place and hear the gospel, speak of the gospel of Jesus Christ in fellowship with believers.

I count it such a tremendous, tremendous privilege. And don't be discouraged. Don't ever be discouraged. There's just no reason to ever be discouraged. I believe it was Conrad Murrell who once said the greatest, some of the greatest sermons that have ever been preached have been preached to six people.

Some of the greatest manifestations of God has occurred among just a handful of believers. We are not like the world and we shouldn't use the world's wisdom. We should use God's wisdom and don't be discouraged.

I look back at so many years of ministry and sometimes I just have to almost laugh. I look back the times of, well, I worked in a street ministry for a long time in the inner city of Fort Worth and then in Peru working with street children and starting churches and just so many, many battles.

I look back on it now. It seemed like every day my my heart was tossed like a man on a on a ship on a violent sea. There'd be days when I would feel like I would get up to preach and everyone who had promised fulfilled their promise.

The church, our little church, would be filled and people seemed to be excited about worship, attentive to the sermon. And and then I just feel so good. And then the next week get up and a third of the people had come back and they seemed to be dead in their spirits.

And it seemed like no one was regenerated. And the only thing that held me up, I think, was the pulpit. And folks, if it was easy, everybody would be doing it. But this is not about how useful we can become or how successful our ministries appear to be.

It is about being conformed to the image of Christ. Absolutely everything in our lives is directed towards our conformity. You have to understand, and I wish there are many men who ought to hear what I'm about to say.

God is not served by human hands as though he needed something from us. He's granted us the privilege to participate in a great work that he is doing. But the great goal of God is not to make us successful.

Servants, the great goal of God is to make us conform to the image of Jesus Christ. I have walked with men of mega churches and the such. And literally, if I went into their office and began to talk about how to make a church grow, they would look, fix their eyes upon me as though they were straining to learn something new they hadn't learned in all those conferences they go to.

But if I open my Bible to the book of Colossians and begin to speak about the glories of Christ, they're looking over my shoulder and out the door as though they were waiting for something more important to happen.

Oh, my friends, we shouldn't get caught up in all these things. We should get caught up in what God is doing in our lives at this moment. Sometimes I go to places. And preach, and I don't know why, but preach to a large number of people, I am not any more loved of God.

When I'm standing before five thousand people than when I started in Peru. And preach to three, it is not a declaration that I'm any more conformed to the image of Christ now than I was then. It's really true when the Bible says that the greatest goal of God in our lives is to conform us to the image of his son.

That's really true. It's also really true that if you're the maturest believer among us who has walked with God for 60 years, are you're a brand new believer who has walked with God for three minutes?

You need to realize God does not love the one any more than the other. That the love of God is perfect and complete. Perfect and complete because of the finished work of Jesus Christ. One of the greatest moments in my life was when I realized I did not have to move a quarter of an inch to the left or the right to be loved of God.

That I did not have to be successful in the world's eyes, nor powerful, nor eloquent, nor intelligent, nor any other thing. That I simply was loved of God. I'm going to say one more thing. And don't worry, this is not the sermon.

This is just an added little piece that I felt that I needed to say. I once a while back, about eight months ago, I had a seminary student write me an email. And I know this young man, he's he's far ahead of where I was at his age.

And he wrote me and he said, I am so unholy, I am so unrighteous, I am so ignorant of the things of God. I feel so ashamed. And since I have the gift of encouragement, I wrote him back. And I said simply this young man, you are much more unholy and much more ignorant than you now know.

Signed, Paul. Well, he called me up on the phone. He said, thank you, I think he said, what what were you trying to say? I said, I wanted to say something to shock you into a new truth that I hope you grasp.

Not a new truth as far as Scripture goes, but as far as you go. I said, when you get up in the morning and you have your quiet time, just perfect and you hear angels singing and everything else, and then you go out and and you kiss your wife and make her feel like she's the princess of princesses.

And then you go off to to study at the seminary. And on your way, you you see a man with a flat tire. And even though it means you're going to miss an examination, you stop and you witness to him. And he is gloriously saved.

He and all his household. And then you go take the exam and it's a makeup exam six times harder. But God sends an angel down to lead you through the exam and you get a hundred and and you're just walking around blessing your enemies.

And you spend the rest of the day. You're so filled with the power of God that you don't eat. And I mean, just go to bed and your last waking thought is how good God is. I said, are you very happy? He said, yes, I would be happy.

Would you be content? He said, yes. I said, would you feel loved? He said, yes. I said, OK, let's say you get up in the morning and you don't have your quiet time. And you jump out of bed and your wife throws a Twinkie in your hand and you run out the door asking her why she doesn't cook more and get up earlier.

And you go and you see a guy with a flat tire and you run him down because you're on your way to your exam. You take the exam and you don't do well and you spend the rest of your day grumbling. So how would you feel?

He said, horrible. I said, you're an idolater. And he said, what? So your greatest problem is idolatry. He said, what do you mean? I said, young man, I have studied your life and you are probably much more spiritual and much more holy than I am.

But I'm happier than you are. I said, your joy and everything about you, your comfort, your joy, your peace comes from your performance and what you can do for God. I said, my comfort, my joy, my peace comes from what God has done for me in the finished work of Christ.

God will not allow your source to be anything but him and grace. Now, there is a sense in which we're not walking with God as believers. God's going to convict us of our sin. There is a sense in which we should be sorrowful over our lack of obedience.

But at the same time, we need to realize something. Do you know what God does for the most part in the life of believers after they're saved? He doesn't work life in them so much as he works death in them.

After a small period of what some people call a honeymoon period or this God protecting you with grace, he begins to draw back a little so that you will begin to see that you can do nothing and that absolutely everything depends on him.

He begins to... That's why a lot of young ministers will go out and preach. Now, if they're God's man, they will usually meet with years and years of failure. Now, there are exceptions. There are exceptions like Charles Spurgeon and others.

But for the most of us, God allows us to be confronted with so much failure in our prayer life, failure in our ability to read the word and understand it, failure in our preaching, failure everywhere, so that in the end, we reach a point where, oh God, who do I have in heaven but you?

Who do I have on earth but you? And then it becomes a work of God in our own mind, in our own heart. And that's what I want you to see. I want you to draw your joy, not from your performance, but Christ's finished work.

I want you to draw everything from that one thing and that one person. And then your joy, your comfort, your peace will be as solid as a rock that does not change. But as long as all your joy, your comfort and everything else comes from your performance, you will spend the rest of your life like this.

I had a guy tell me one time he came in and he said, you know, you can do this and this. And the ministry would expand and you could think about TV and you could think about all these things and it would be so great.

And after he got done, I said, but if I did all that, where would I find time to go fishing? And he looked at me and he said, I know how he was thinking, it was like you're the most unspiritual man I've ever heard.

And I looked at him and I said, sir, I've been there. I've spent a great part of my Christian life working myself to death. So that somehow God would think I was special. I said, I don't need this ministry or that ministry or the things that you're talking about.

I know that I am deeply and eternally and perfectly loved. Now, if God wants me to go do something, I'll go do something because he loves me so much. But I don't need I don't need to be big. I don't need to be smart.

I don't need to be eloquent. I don't need a tremendous ministry and I don't need to be well known. God loves me. And that is enough. I want you to know if you're a believer here today, God loves you. The Charismatics and Pentecostals, some of them very, very dear friends of mine.

They've always tell me the greatest act of faith is to raise the dead. Boy, if you can raise the dead, you have got faith. And I always tell them that's nothing for a Baptist. They said, well, what's the greatest act of faith?

I said for me to look in the mirror of God's word and see all my faults, all my sin, all my shortcomings. And to believe that God loves me exactly as he says he does. He truly does. You are beloved if you are in Christ, you are accepted if you are in Christ.

You always walk with a safety net underneath. That's a beautiful thing. Legalists don't like that very much, but to someone like me, that's a beautiful thing. To someone who has never been able to cross all the T's and dot all the I's.

Romans 3 and Justification by Faith

Like other people, it's a wonderful message, it's a wonderful message. Now, let's open up our Bibles to Romans three, verse twenty three. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption, which is in Christ Jesus, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith.

This was to demonstrate his righteousness because in the forbearance of God, he passed over the sins previously committed for the demonstration, I say, of his righteousness at the present time so that he would be just in the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus, where then is boasting it is excluded by what kind of law of works?

No, but by a law of faith. Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones says, and I think it originated with him, I've heard a lot of other people say it, but I think it was he that first said it. This is the Acropolis of the Christian faith, the Citadel, possibly the greatest passage in all the Bible.

This is possibly what I have just read, the most important passage in the entire Bible. Have you read it? Do you understand it? Have you poured over it? Because here we find the greatest and greatest of truths.

So many people read this passage and the only thing they remember is Romans 23, 23. And yet this passage, in my opinion, at least, is the most important of all of them in the Bible. And in order to understand the cross of Jesus Christ, we must understand this passage.

The Sinfulness of Sin

Now we start by saying for all have sinned. As I said last night, it is very, very difficult to bring forth the meaning of this text in our modern day world. Why we use sin to sell truck tires, we drink down sin as though it were water.

We're like fish who swim in a culture of sin. Fish never recognize they're wet. Talk to a fish, ask him if they've ever thought about being wet. They really don't think about it because they're surrounded in it all the time.

We cannot understand the depth of the wickedness and the sinfulness of sin. Let me give you just a small example. It might not mean quite much to those who are here. But in most churches, when I say this, people are a bit shocked what the average so-called church member wears to the beach today.

I'm not particularly fond of going to the beach or anything like that. I'm not saying go to the beach, but I'm just making a statement what the average church person wears to the beach today and considers it to be OK.

Sixty years ago, if someone had gone out in public, the unbelieving secular authorities would have either thrown that person in jail or put them in an insane asylum. That is true. That's not an exaggeration.

If what people wear, even people who claim to know Christ, if what they if what they wear today in good conscience would have been worn 60 years ago, lost people would have had them committed to an insane asylum.

Now, why am I saying that for just this purpose? Do you see, you can't recognize how far we have fallen when you just look around yourself and compare yourself to those around you. You can't see how far our culture has fallen.

This is all we've ever known. Now, if in 60 years the world has become that numb to sin and immorality, how much in six thousand years have we fallen? You see, and when you think, oh, it's just a little sin, you can't realize that it was just such a sin that threw the entire universe into chaos.

There are two things I know I will never be able to do one harder than the other. But two things I know I will never be able to do. Number one, I will never be able to preach Christ as he ought to be preached.

And number two, I will never be able to explain the sinfulness of sin for two reasons. I myself cannot understand how wicked sin is before the throne of God and the people who hear me cannot understand.

There is one way in which the burden of preaching never leaves. And there is one way in which preaching is a very, very, very depressing thing for the preacher, because he knows every time he steps down from the pulpit, he has failed.

He's talking about things too great for himself to even understand, much less his hearers. But if we go through Scripture, we quickly discover how much God hates sin. It says for all have sinned, every one of us.

And if we understood that, we would fall right now out of our chairs and try to dig a hole through this asphalt and hide ourselves, not simply from the wrath of God, but hide ourselves from the shame of it.

The shame of it. Don't you realize that we live in a culture today that is not embarrassed over anything? It does not blush. It does not blush. But all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Today in our human centered, man centered ideas and preaching, most take this to mean, well, God created us for this marvelous, glorious purpose.

And all the fall short of this. All have fallen short of this glorious, glorious purpose. I don't think that's what this passage means. At least that's not its main meaning. I think what he's saying goes back to chapter one, where it says, although they knew God, they did not honor him as God.

You see, you need to understand something. The one of the reasons why people are so miserable is that they were made for God. And one of the reasons why even true believers sometimes fall into misery is because they begin to live for themselves and do not realize they were made for God.

Every fiber of my being, every beat of my heart, every thought of my mind is for God. And to the degree that it is for God, I will have joy. You were made for him to breathe, you were given breath only to return it to him and pray.

Your heart beats only for him and you will only, only, only, as Augustine said, find peace and contentment and life in giving yourself to him. I'm a I love to make things. I make furniture. I love to make bows, bows and arrows that you shoot and hunt with and do target with.

I love that kind of thing. And I could bring one of my bows here today and it would be a fine thing to use to shoot an arrow. But you can't play a song on it to the same degree. I can't take the guitar that was here last night and put an arrow in it, pull back and draw and expect to hit a target.

Guitars are made for one thing, bows are made for another, and they only find true purpose when they're used for the thing they were made for. In the same degree, you were not made for chasing this world, you were not made for looking like this world, you were not made for loving this world, you were made for God and you will be restless until you find yourself found by him.

Let me give you another example. Christians in America and in Western Europe today, real Christians, we are the wealthiest, most protected. Group of Christians on the face of the earth and in the history of Christianity, and yet you go into all these Christian bookstores and you find out that half the books are written about how miserable we are, our emotional needs, our financial needs, our spiritual needs.

We are the wealthiest, most protected group of Christians in the history of Christianity, and yet we seem to be the most needy and most miserable. And why is that? I will tell you, we are miserable and needy for the same reason that Jesus Christ was never those things.

He was persecuted, he was poor, he was many things. But he said, I have food to eat that, you know, not he was always full for the same reason that we are always empty. He was full because he had food to eat that we know not of.

And that was doing the will of the father. We are empty because for the most part we are about doing our own will instead of the will of the father. If I ever see a person who claims to know Christ and there is evidence in their life that they have truly been converted and yet they're walking around telling me they're empty, I just go and tell them you are empty because you are not about doing the will of the father.

And then they'll say to me, but you don't understand the trials in my life. I said in the midst of the trials, do the will of the father and you'll be full. Trials are not designed to make us self-centered and turn in to ourselves to try to fix our own need.

There's no excuse. I have known saints, a dear friend of mine who died of cancer, and while she is dying of cancer in that hospital room, 15 people professed faith in Christ. Why? While she was suffering her body terribly with cancer, she was doing the will of the father and she was full of joy in spite of her trials.

All have sinned. Yes, my dear friend, they have broken God's law. But I want to tell you something. The greatest crime is not in simply breaking a law. The greatest crime is not giving yourself wholeheartedly to God.

Holiness and the Otherness of God

Now, let me talk to you for just a moment about holiness, because I believe people are quite confused on this today in America. We have confused the term holy and righteous, both those terms. We've confused them.

If you ask somebody, what does it mean to be holy? They will say basically, usually sinlessness, obedience and all those things. Well, that is part of holiness. But let me tell you something. That is not the full meaning of holiness.

It is righteousness refers to conformity to the law of God, to living rightly. Holiness includes that a bit, but means something more. The word in its basic root means to be cut. Which means to cut and to separate.

Now, when it means when the Bible says that God is holy, it does not simply mean that he's sinless. It does not simply mean that that he has no shadow or turning in him. It means much more. It means that he is cut, that he is separated, that he is unique, that there is only one God.

There is no one else like him. He is unique. Let me ask you a question. What is closer to God? An archangel in heaven or bacteria floating around in your toilet? Which one is more like God? Neither one is like God.

You see, that's your problem. That archangel is no more like God than a piece of bacteria, because God is not like us, just bigger. He's totally different than creation. He is the only one unique, the only one different.

I'm not demeaning the character of God and saying he's something like bacteria. What I'm saying is he is so great. He is so distinct that that archangel whose glory would destroy the world is still nothing like God.

He's completely separate, completely unique. That is why when God dealt with Moses and Moses said, who do I say you are? He said, I am what I am. I am who I am. What does that mean if a Martian came down today and I'm walking out in a cornfield in the nighttime and a Martian from outer space came down and said, who are you?

I could say, well, I am like him. I could point out my point outside of myself to so many people and say, I am like him. I am like her. If you want to know who I am, just look around. There's a whole bunch of examples of me.

Moses said, God, who are you? He could not point outside of himself and give Moses an example. He said, I am who I am. I am what I am. Never pointing out of himself, outside of himself to give an example until 2000 years ago when someone said, God, who are you?

And he pointed down to his son and said, I am like him. Now, I know I'm probably running rabbits here, but that's just fine. I love to hunt. Let me just tell you another thing about holiness. When you talk about holiness and fear, so many people say, what does it mean to fear the Lord?

One of the biggest motive or reasons behind fearing the Lord is his uniqueness. Let me give you an example. It's four o 'clock in the morning and I'm crossing a glen, I'm crossing a meadow to hunt. OK, now I've got two choices as I'm crossing that meadow.

I can choose to be confronted by a man who is seven feet tall, weighs 300 pounds, has muscles coming out of his ears and wants to beat me up. That's one choice. The other choice is I can be confronted with a Martian.

Now, I don't know if you know anything about Martians, but they're only about this tall. Their arms are really, really skinny. They don't have any muscles at all. They got really big feet, long fingers and great big eyes.

Now, when you like that, I would look at him and say, I could walk 40 of these guys. I could kick them, punch them, everything. But if I have to make a choice between in that four o 'clock in the morning, walking across the field and meeting this huge monster of a man who wants to beat me up or this little Martian, I'm choosing the man.

Now, why? It's kind of a vulgar illustration, funny illustration, but it proves its point. I would be much more afraid of this little Martian than I would this man, regardless of how big and how mean he is.

Why? This man is like me. I know this man. I know he's a man. He's characteristics. I know what he's going to probably try to do. I know what he's going to be able to do. I'm going to be able to think about what I should do, because this guy is like me, at least to some degree.

This thing I know nothing about. It's not like me. It is other. And that is why many theologians will talk about the otherness of God along with his holiness. He is nothing like anything or anyone. That is why it is so foolish.

When you sin against him, you know not what you do because you don't know who he is. All you know is this, you take all the strength of all the created beings in heaven, hell and earth, combine them together and they are nothing compared to God.

You take all the greatness and glory of every created being and thing, the power of seas, the power of the great rivers, the power of volcanoes and everything else, and you combine them together. They are nothing.

If we were to go to the sun and heat up the tip of a needle that we sew with, if you were to stick the needle into the sun and bring it back to earth with just the tip heated, it would destroy everything in a thousand mile radius.

The tip of that needle, that is nothing. Christ would take the needle and go. And so when we talk about that, that we're to live unto the glory of God, what a crime it is when we sin against him. What a crime it is when some stupid, and I use that word on purpose, it can be used, some little stupid, trite little thing.

That means nothing, takes the place of the living God in our hearts. What a travesty, what a vulgar travesty. I was hunting one day and I was hiding. I had bought a bow in England, actually, big long bow like Robin Hood, and I had brought it back to the States and I was hiding in these bushes waiting for a deer to come by and I was admiring the beauty of the thing.

On the tips of it had horn from buffalo and all these sorts of things and had ivory where the arrow would pass and beautiful bow. And all of a sudden it dawned on me. This piece of wood contemplating and meditating on this thing over the God of glory.

Justification as a Gift of Grace

What idolaters we are. What a shame for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Now, it says here being justified. So many people, they do not understand justification and some reformed theologians are now turning on what we know to be the biblical evangelical definition of justification back to a more Catholic idea.

It's unbelievable. Justification, what does it mean that every true believer in Jesus Christ justified? What does that mean? Does that mean that every true believer is righteous, that they in themselves are righteous?

No, that's not what it means, because every true believer still sins. God has not made you righteous, because if you were righteous, you would not sin. God has rather legally declared you to be righteous.

God looks down upon the man who repents of his sins and throws himself upon Christ, believing in Christ and Christ's finished work on his behalf, and God declares him legally to be right before him. Now, that's an amazing, amazing statement.

Legally in the courts of God, I have been declared to be right. I'm right with God. I'm accepted before the throne of God because of Jesus Christ and his work on my behalf. It's also the term forensic is used forensic or legal righteousness.

God looks at the sinner who has trusted in Christ and declares him to be right. Now, that's very important as we go on. It says here being justified as a gift by his grace, being justified as a gift. Every religion deals with one thing, and that should be a proof of the universal sinfulness of men.

Every religion deals with this one question. How can a man be right with God? You go to Judaism. The question is, how can you be right with God? Even in the Muslim faith, how can you be right with God?

There's always in the heart of all men this idea that something is terribly wrong with me. Even in pagan Druid religion, every kind of religion you can imagine, there was this question of how can we be right with God?

Will you ask a Muslim, sir, are you right with God? He'll say, yes, I'm going to paradise when I die. Why? Well, I've read the Koran. I've obeyed the Koran. I have given alms. I've made the pilgrimages.

I make the prayers. I'm right with God. You talk to an Orthodox Jew, sir, if you died, where would you go? To the way of the righteous. Why? Because I read the law. I love the law of God. I try to obey the law of God.

I'm a righteous man and I walk in the way of the righteous. You come to the Christian, the true Christian. You say, sir, if you died right now, where would you go? He would say heaven with great joy. When you ask him why, with great humility, he probably will bow his head and say something like this.

I was born in sin and in sin did my mother bring me forth. I have broken every law that God has ever made and I am worthy of all death. Immediately you stop him and go, sir, I don't understand. I understand the answers of the other men.

They say they're going to heaven because they proclaim that they deserve it. You, sir, tell me that you're going to heaven and yet you declare that you deserve just the opposite. How can that be? And the Christian looks up with a smile and says, because I'm going to heaven, not on my own virtue or my own merit, but upon the virtue and the merit of another Jesus Christ, my Lord.

That's the difference. And that's why the Christian is the only person that can actually say they are right with God and going to heaven and not be proud because they're going to heaven and they're right with God based upon the finished work of another.

Jesus Christ, the Lord. Now, he says here justified. Very, very important, he says, justified as a gift by his grace. This is actually an iteration. It's saying the same thing. It's redundant. It's just as though Paul is saying that we are made right with God as a gift, as a gift, as a gift, as a gift, as a gift, as a gift, as a gift, as a gift, as a gift, as a gift.

And why does he keep having to say this in the book of Galatians over and over and over again, that salvation is by grace, that it is a gift? Why does he say that? Because men hate grace. You would think just the opposite, wouldn't you?

You think that if you walked up to a man and said salvation is completely free, not based on your merit at all, but the virtue and merit of Jesus Christ, you think that a sinful man would rejoice? No, he hates it.

Why? Because he has to humble himself and recognize his need. He has to recognize and declare publicly he is not God, but he needs a God who can save him. And men would rather go to hell being their own God than escape hell by bowing the knee.

That's very important here when he says that it is a gift, we look at it again. He says being justified as a gift by his grace, this word translated as a gift is the same word that we find in the New Testament when it says about Jesus, they hated him without a cause.

Now, let me ask you a question. Did anyone ever have a cause to hate Jesus? People always answer, no, of course not. You could study his entire life and you would never find a cause to hate him. Well, the same degree he saved you without cause.

You could search throughout all eternity for to try to find one good reason why God should save you and you'll not find one. He justified you without a cause. He justified you not because of you, but in spite of you.

He justified you because he is love and because he is doing a work of salvation in the world. Now, he says being justified as a gift by his grace through what? Redemption. This is not theatrical. I'm not doing this for some preaching reason.

I'm saying this to you because I believe it. There are some words in the Bible that we ought to almost be afraid to speak. There are some words in the Bible that are so glorious, so full of worth that maybe after we say them, we should pause a moment and think about what we have said.

One time, I forget which museum it was. It was over in Europe. I think it was actually in London at a piano there from a very, very, very famous composer of ancient times. There was a man standing there, a guard right by the piano, and it was roped off.

A teenage girl walked up there who was just starting to take piano lessons. And she said, sir, could I could I play a song on that piano? And the old man looked at her and said, OK, she crossed over the rope.