Sola Fide

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Good morning.
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It seems like the population has decreased.
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Everybody out at work? Well, I'm glad to see those who are here.
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Open your Bibles and turn to Galatians 2.
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Last few weeks, we've looked at verses 11-14.
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Today, we're going to look at verses 15-21, but for the sake of context, I want to begin at verse 11 and read to the end of the chapter.
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And our main focus today is going to be on verses 15 and 16.
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And in the weeks to come, we'll be able to look at the rest of the chapter.
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I want to say this though, in preparation for our reading, I believe verses 15-21 constitutes one of, if not the most important paragraph in the writings of the Apostle Paul.
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I would almost go as far as to say it constitutes one of the most important paragraphs in the Bible, and therefore would be one of the most important paragraphs in the history of written language.
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So, I'm not exaggerating.
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I'm not giving it more than it's due.
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Galatians 2, verses 15-21, is an expression of truth that is almost unparalleled in its clarity and its power.
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Galatians 2, verses 15-21.
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That's the paragraph that I'm referring to.
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But we're going to begin in verse 11 because it's tied to the context that it sits in.
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So let's read verse 11, and we're going to read down to verse 21.
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But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned.
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For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles.
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But when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party.
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And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.
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But when I saw their conduct was not in step with the truth of the Gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, if you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews? We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners.
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Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.
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So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law, no one will be justified.
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But if in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not.
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For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor.
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For through the law I died to the law so that I might live to God.
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I have been crucified with Christ.
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It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
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And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.
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I do not nullify the grace of God.
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For if justification were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.
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Let's pray.
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Father in Heaven, as we examine this very important passage of Scripture, I want to even now, Lord, ask that You would be merciful to me as the preacher of Your Word, that You would keep me from error.
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For Lord, You know that I am a fallible man.
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I am capable of preaching error.
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And Lord, I don't want to do that for the sake of Your name, for the sake of Your people, and for the sake of my own conscience.
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Lord, I would ask that in this hour You would fill me with Your Spirit, that You would open the hearts of these men to hear the truth, and that Lord, through the truth, that they would be set free.
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Free to live for Christ.
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Free to die to sin.
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Free to understand that salvation is certainly more than a doctrine, but begins with an understanding of the doctrine of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
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And Lord, it is in Christ alone that we pray.
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Amen.
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The title of today's message is Sola Fide.
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Yes.
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And I'm going to talk about the meaning of that a little more later.
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But that is the title of today's message, and this is part one of...
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I don't know.
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I don't know how long it's going to take to get through it all.
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But it's part one today.
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And I want to begin by simply showing you that this is on the heels, verse 15, is on the heels of what has happened with Paul and Peter.
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Now, we've talked about this for several weeks.
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Peter came to Antioch, and Peter, as a Jewish man, was eating and fellowshipping with Gentiles.
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He was eating their food.
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He was fellowshipping at their table.
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And that was something that first century Jews did not do.
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They considered Gentiles to be sinners simply by virtue of not being Jewish.
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They were sinful by birth.
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And yet, Peter was eating with them because he understood that the Gospel made them all equal.
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Therefore, he could eat with them.
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He could fellowship with them.
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He could have a relationship with them.
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But it says that certain men came from James, meaning they came from Jerusalem because that's where James was the pastor.
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Certain men came from James, and when Peter saw them coming, he separated himself from the Gentiles.
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He divided himself.
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I think the NASB says he became aloof, which is a word for almost like a snobbish way of separating.
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You ever had somebody do that to you? They'll act like a snob.
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You know, you're not good enough.
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And so they'll walk away.
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And that's sort of what he did.
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He held himself aloof.
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He separated himself.
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And he wouldn't eat with them anymore.
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And he wouldn't eat their food.
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And he wouldn't sit at their table.
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And Paul freaked out.
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And I say that.
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It says, he said, I opposed him to his face.
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I didn't go and talk about him behind his back.
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I took it right to him.
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And I said, you are wrong.
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And he called them out in front of everyone.
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Now, it's in that context that we get to v.
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15.
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And there is a question about v.
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15.
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And that is, does v.
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15 continue Paul's speech to Peter? Or is v.
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15 what we would call an aside? Meaning it is a commentary on what has happened with Peter.
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I think it continues the conversation.
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I think this is continuing what Paul was saying to Peter.
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Therefore, I think this is what Paul said to Peter.
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At least down to v.
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16.
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But I think it continues even further.
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So if we consider it that way, this is Paul saying to Peter, if you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews? We ourselves are Jews.
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See how that would flow right into it? In a lot of your Bibles, a new paragraph starts.
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And because a new paragraph starts, you think a new thought or a new situation starts.
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I don't think it is.
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I think it's just a continuation of the same situation.
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Because he uses the plural pronoun we.
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Who is he talking to? Him and Peter.
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He says we ourselves are Jews.
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And he says we are Jews by birth.
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What does that mean? Well, Peter was born into a Jewish family.
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He would have been circumcised as a baby.
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And he would have grown up learning the customs and the responsibilities and the laws of the Jewish people.
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Have you ever heard of somebody who says I'm a Catholic by birth? Meaning they were born into a Catholic family and they grew up in a Catholic family.
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Or somebody says I'm Lutheran by birth or Episcopalian by birth or Baptist by birth? That's the idea.
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He says we're Jews from birth.
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But there was something that was even more intrinsic about this idea of being birthed as a Jew.
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Because within the Jewish community, especially in first century Judaism, there was a belief that the Jews, because they were God's people, were specifically and particularly righteous because of the covenant they had with God.
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And therefore, if you were not a Jew, you were a sinner by nature.
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You were either a Jew or you were a sinner.
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It's not just Jew and Gentile.
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It was righteous and sinful.
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And we see this in the text.
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Notice what he says.
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He says we ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners.
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Notice he's comparing and combining ethnos, which is the Greek word for Gentile, so we get the word ethnic or national.
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It's an idea of everyone else.
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In the Jewish mind, in the first century, there was only two types of folks.
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Jews and everybody else.
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You didn't have all different nations.
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You had Jews and non-Jews.
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And so it was understood that I'm either a Jew by birth.
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You could also be a Jew by conversion.
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You could be taken as a Jew, but you had to become that through a process of what they called the proselyte or conversion where a person would be circumcised even as an adult, if you can imagine that.
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Would have to be circumcised.
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Would have to follow all the laws and would become a Jew.
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But Peter and Paul, the point is this, we are Jews from birth.
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We're not Jews by conversion.
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We're pure bread.
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We are birthed into this.
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We are pure Jewish blood.
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And we're not Gentile sinners.
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Now you say, well, why in the world is he mentioning that? Because he goes on in the next passage to say something very important.
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He says we're Jews by birth.
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We're not Gentile sinners.
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We have this special relationship with God because of our national relationship that God chose our nation.
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And we have this by birth privilege.
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Yet, this is verse 16, yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.
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So here's the point.
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Paul is facing Peter in his sinful act.
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And it was a sinful act.
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He mistreated his brothers in Christ.
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He was a snob to his brothers in Christ.
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He had put himself aloof over them.
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He had separated himself from them.
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And Paul confronts him to his face.
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He says, how can you, being a Jew, live like a Gentile and expect the Gentiles to live like Jews? That's not the way it works.
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How can we, who are Jews from birth and not Gentile sinners, yet we have to be saved by Jesus Christ, expect any different for them? That's the question.
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How can we expect something different for them? We can't and haven't kept the law.
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Why can we expect them to keep the law? We have not kept the law.
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We've been saved by grace through faith in Christ.
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They're saved by grace through faith in Christ.
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Therefore, our salvation is equal.
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We are no better off because we are Jews in the face of Jesus Christ.
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And this is Paul's point.
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He said, yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.
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So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law.
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Because by the works of the law, no one will be justified.
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Now again, that's the paragraph.
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This whole paragraph, and we're going to unpack it today and in the weeks to come.
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But this whole paragraph is alive with significance in regards to how we understand how a sinful man is made right with a holy God.
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In fact, that's the question to end all questions.
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That is the main question.
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And it's the question that I ask people.
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When those people show up at my door with their Watchtower magazines or their little 10 speeds with their elder sign on their sheet and their nice t-shirts, and they come to my door, knock on the door, hi, I'd like to talk to you about Jehovah.
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Or I'd like to talk to you about the Mormon church.
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My first question, well, not always my first question, but one of the questions that I ask is tell me this, how is a sinful man made right with a holy God? How is a sinful man made right with a holy God? Because if you understand God's holiness, which you don't, I don't fully understand it.
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But if we even get a glimpse of God's holiness, it exasperates, it expands our sinfulness.
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The more you know about God's goodness, the more you know about your own badness.
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It's like a light, right? If a room is completely dirty, but there's no light on in the room, you won't know that it's dirty.
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But if a little light comes in through a crack in the window, then you might be able to see that there's some trash on the floor and maybe there's a cockroach scattering across the floor.
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You might see a little bit of the dirt in the room, but as that crack begins to open and more light comes in, you get to see just how dirty the room is and you start seeing the candy wrappers and the food plates and the dirty dishes and then when the blinds come wide open and the light truly hits the room, you see just how disgusting the dirty room is.
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That's the way it is for us.
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But you understand the analogy is talking about us as sinners.
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It's easy to consider yourself a good person.
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Especially when you compare yourself to other people.
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Because there's some real jerks out there.
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Right? And you ask any person, are you a good person? I've yet to find somebody who would say, nah, I am horrible.
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The Bible even says almost every man will proclaim his own goodness.
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Almost every man will say how good he is.
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I've met people that beat their kids and their wife.
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And I say, do you think you're a good person? Yes! I mean, I'm just saying, men will proclaim their own righteousness.
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But when you are faced with the holiness of God and His light sheds the light of His goodness on your badness, your badness is expanded.
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Let me show you this in Scripture.
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Hold your place in Galatians.
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Turn to Isaiah 6.
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My favorite Old Testament passage.
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Well, one of my favorites.
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I have so many.
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But one of my favorite passages is Isaiah 6.
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Go to verse 1.
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And we'll read down to verse 7.
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Isaiah 6, verse 1.
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In the year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up.
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And the train of His robe filled the temple.
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Above Him stood the seraphim.
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Each had six wings.
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With two He covered His face.
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With two He covered His feet.
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And with two He flew.
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And one called to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.
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The whole earth is full of His glory.
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And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of Him who called.
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And the house was filled with smoke.
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And I said, remember this is Isaiah, I said, Woe is me, for I am lost.
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I am a man of unclean lips.
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And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.
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For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.
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Then one of the seraphim flew to me having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar.
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And he touched my mouth and he said, Behold, this has touched your lips.
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Your guilt is taken away.
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Your sin atoned for.
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Now let me give you a picture of this.
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Just in your mind.
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Isaiah.
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Isaiah is in a place historically of great significance.
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The King Uzziah, who was a king that was in a lot of ways a positive king.
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He has died.
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This is a time of distress among the people of Israel because there's concern about the loss of this king.
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And it says in the year he died the prophet sees the Lord.
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And in John 12 it actually tells us this is a pre-incarnate picture of Christ.
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But we can talk about that another time.
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But he sees the Lord in the temple sitting on His throne.
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And it says the train of His robe, and if you think about like a bride that has that long train that follows her, in the ancient world, that was a picture of regality.
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It was a picture of importance.
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So the longer a king's train, the more power he had, the more authority he had.
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And so the kings would expand their trains to expand their sense of power.
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And so it says the train of His robe filled the temple.
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And so this is a picture of the Lord Yahweh.
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God in His fullness is there.
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And we see this.
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He's in the temple and the train is filling the whole temple.
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And it says there were these creatures.
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The creatures are called seraphim.
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They're a type of angel.
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And they had six wings.
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And they had these wings that they flew with.
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And that's often how we think of an angel is having wings to fly.
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But it says they also had wings that covered their feet.
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The reason that they covered their feet, we find this in Exodus 3 when Moses speaks to the Lord in the burning bush.
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And you remember when Moses speaks to the Lord, what does the Lord say? Take your shoes from off Thy feet for the land that you stand on is holy ground.
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Well, these angels are in the presence of God all the time.
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And so their feet are covered all the time because they're always on holy ground.
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They're always there with the Lord.
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And their face is covered because they're in the presence of majesty.
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They don't look upon God.
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Their faces are covered.
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So they have six wings.
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With two, they covered their face.
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With two, they covered their feet.
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With two, they flew.
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And they say one thing over, over, and over again.
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Holy, holy, holy.
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That word, holy, should scare you to death.
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Because this is the word that identifies all of God's attributes.
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In fact, there is no other word that is given three-fold significance.
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God is never called love, love, love.
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He's never called mercy, mercy, mercy.
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Justice, justice, justice.
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But He is called holy, holy, holy.
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It's the only attribute that He is called three times.
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And in Jewish speech, if you said something once, it was important.
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If you said it twice, you were giving significance.
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Simon, Simon.
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Verily, verily.
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Anytime you said something twice, it added significance.
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When you said it three times, you were giving it the superlative.
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So you said holy, holy, holy is God.
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This is who He is.
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His love is holy love.
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His wrath is holy wrath.
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His justice is holy justice.
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His mercy is holy mercy.
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Everything about God references His holiness.
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But what does it mean? Holiness means absolutely and absolutely.
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I said it twice.
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Absolutely and incredibly distinct and different.
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Holy means other.
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It means to be other.
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There's none like Him.
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Holy means to be separate and other.
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If you say God is like, I say stop! Because there's nothing that's like Him.
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And there's no one that's like Him.
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Stop! And just say God is holy.
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And none is like unto Him.
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I am God and there is no other.
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I am God and there is none like Me.
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He says through the prophet Isaiah.
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So we have here this holiness.
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And I say it should scare you to death because when you get a glimpse of God's holiness, what's the response? Well, think about Isaiah.
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Isaiah was the most holy man in Israel.
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Among his contemporaries, the most righteous man in the world.
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And what does he say? He says, Woe is me.
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When he sees the holiness of God, when he sees the power of God, he does not stand and announce his own goodness, but he shrinks back and he holds his mouth and he says, Woe! Now we think of woe as some silly word.
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Oh, woe is me.
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Oh, oy vey.
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No! Woe was a word of judgment.
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Recognizing his own sinfulness.
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Woe is me.
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Think about Jesus when He was talking to the cities that had sinned.
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Woe to you Bethsaida.
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Woe to you Corazon.
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Remember that? The word woe is a statement of judgment.
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So when Isaiah sees God, he sees the Lord, he pronounces upon himself judgment.
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Why? Because he sees his own sin.
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He recognizes himself as sinner.
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And he says, Woe is me.
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For I am a man of unclean...
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And where does he go first to identify his sin? His mouth.
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Doesn't James tell us this little small thing in our mouth is the most dangerous part of our body because this is the part with which we bless God and curse others.
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This little rudder is like a rudder that turns the whole ship.
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This little dangerous part of us is the worst part of us.
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It's our mouth.
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Because what's in our heart comes out of the mouth.
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Jesus said that.
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He said that what's inside a man comes out of the mouth.
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And that shows what kind of man he is.
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I used to have a professor in seminary.
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He said what's in the well comes up in the bucket.
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What's in the well comes up in the bucket.
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If you've got sludge in the well, it's going to come up in the bucket.
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And that's what the heart of a man is known by the mouth of the man.
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So Isaiah says, Woe is me because I have unclean lips.
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I'm a man of unclean lips.
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And I've seen the King.
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I've seen the Lord.
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I live among a people of...
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We're all sinful.
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You know, it was Isaiah who said that all our righteousnesses are filthy rags.
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And that word, filthy rags, is not just a little dirty rag, but it is a rag that is drenched in the worst kind of dirty and nasty things.
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And I don't want to get into what it means literally because it's a pretty nasty thought.
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Thank you.
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But you understand, when Isaiah says, all our righteousnesses are filthy rags, you in the very best you can do is just glorified sin.
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And me too.
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I'm not saying you as opposed to me.
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I should be saying we.
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The very best we could do.
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Even in my prayers, I find myself sinning even in my prayers.
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This is the very best I can do.
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And I fall short.
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You ever be in prayer and you just mind start wandering? You ever been in prayer and your mind wandered to sinful things? You ever been in prayer and you're praying for selfish things? Doesn't James tell us that? You ask and you don't receive because you ask for things that you don't need or things you shouldn't have.
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You ask amiss.
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So all of this points to the holiness of God.
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Points to the sinfulness of man.
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And I go back to the original question.
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How can a sinful man be made right with a holy God? Could we build some kind of a righteousness that would take the place of our sinfulness? Could we do something to make ourselves right in the eyes of this holy God? That's the question.
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And that's the question every religion seeks to answer.
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And let me tell you something.
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All other religions except for Christ try to do something.
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Try to build something.
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Think about Islam.
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The five pillars of Islam.
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The prayers and the almsgiving and the trip to Mecca and all these different things that must be done because that's how you build righteousness.
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You go to a lot of churches and they have what I call false gospel works-based religion.
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And they'll tell you, well, for you to become right with God, you've got to do X, Y, Z and this and that and the other, right? And they start building this system that you have to follow and you have to obey and you have to be good because God's not going to take you unless you're good.
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Let me tell you something.
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If that were true, we might as well give up.
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If God's not going to take us unless we're good, He ain't got a chance.
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And I know I've done this illustration before, but there's always new guys, so I'd like to again remind you of an illustration.
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And if you've heard it before, you'll hear it again.
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I want you to imagine Jesus Christ standing right here.
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And I want you to imagine a scale of goodness.
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Jesus Christ is perfect, righteous, and good.
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And so He's on the highest point of the scale.
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On the other end, you put whoever you think is the worst.
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You might say Hitler was the worst.
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You might say Genghis Khan was the worst.
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You might say some other person sits on the other end, right? So you've got the highest of righteousnesses, which is Christ, the only true righteousness.
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And then you've got on the other end someone of complete moral bankruptcy.
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Ted Bundy, whatever.
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Where are you on the scale? And I want to draw the picture because this is often, if we put Jesus here and we put the evil person here, a lot of people like to fancy themselves as being somewhere around here.
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But the reality is, and those of you who've heard me talk about this before, you are arm and arm with Hitler when you compare yourself to Christ.
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See, the problem is we compare ourselves to each other.
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And when you compare yourselves to other men, you might find goodness in yourself.
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When you compare yourself to the Lord, you will not find goodness in yourself.
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People say, well, people do good stuff all the time.
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All we are is pirates on a ship.
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When pirates live on a ship together, they do pretty good to one another.
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They don't steal from each other.
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They take care of each other.
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They watch out for each other.
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But they're still pirates.
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They're still maritime criminals.
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And that's where we are.
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We're pirates on the ship.
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They are.
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I'm serious though.
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If you think about it that way, we are still criminals in God's courtroom.
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We have broken God's law.
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We stand condemned before Him.
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We have no righteousness.
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Because a condemned man can't claim anything that he's done to blot out his condemnation.
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You bring a guy up forward in front of a courtroom and the judge says, you're condemned and guilty of rape.
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And that man says, yeah, but I gave to the homeless.
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I walked old ladies across the street.
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I worked at the Salzbecker Center and the McDonald's house and I did all these good things.
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You know what the judge is going to say? He's going to say, you're still a rapist in the midst of any good that you have done.
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Your sin deserves punishment.
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And you stand condemned.
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What are you going to do? That's the question.
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This is what Paul is dealing with.
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How can a man who is a sinful man stand in the courtroom of the righteous God and have any leg upon which to stand? He can't.
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He's condemned.
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Unless, unless there is someone who is righteous, who is willing to take his place.
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That's the Gospel.
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The Gospel is there is that one righteous man.
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The one good man.
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The one who never sinned.
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The one who was perfect from birth to the tomb and even beyond.
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The one who lives forever.
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The one who is right now making intercession for his people.
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The one good man steps into the courtroom and he takes you out of the box that you're condemned.
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You're standing there waiting to receive the sentence of an eternity in hell.
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And Christ comes and He takes you out of the box and He steps in and He says, all the wrath that you deserved now will be poured on Me.
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And here's the beauty of it.
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He didn't deserve it, so He can take your place.
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Because if He deserved the wrath Himself, if He wasn't good and He deserved the wrath, He couldn't take your place.
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But because He was completely perfect, because He was completely innocent, He can take you out of the box, He can step in the box, and that's what He did on the cross.
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When He went to the cross, He took upon Himself all of that wrath, all of that punishment.
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And the Bible says He drank the cup of God's wrath to the very last drop.
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I have a cup of wrath that I have filled up with my sin.
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Christ takes that cup away and He drinks it down to the very last drop on my behalf.
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And now I stand back and I see this One who has taken my sin, who has taken my punishment, who has died for me, who's standing in that place, who's been beaten, flogged, stabbed, and hung on a cross.
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And I see that One.
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And He is now my Savior.
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Because that's what I deserved.
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The beating, the flogging, the stabbing, the hanging.
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I deserved everything Christ received and He received it for me.
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This is a thing a lot of people will say but not really believe.
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Do you really believe you deserve to be hung on a cross today? Do you really know that you do? Do you realize you deserve to be beaten, flogged, and killed the same way Jesus was and yet, He took it for you? And even more so, He took the wrath of God for you.
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When Jesus was on the cross, He was receiving in Himself the full weight of the wrath of God.
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This is why He cries out, Eloi, Eloi, Lehem asabachthani, which is, My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me? Which is the first verse of Psalm 22.
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He was quoting the psalm because that psalm is actually a psalm of victory.
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It's not a psalm of defeat.
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The question is, why have you forsaken Me? And the answer is, God has not.
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God has poured out His wrath but there's victory in the end.
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Read Psalm 22.
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There's a victory and the victory comes three days later when He comes out of the tomb and He demonstrates that He is the victor over sin, death, hell, and the grave.
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And He comes out of the tomb and He comes out of the tomb now as the One who proves who He was.
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See, in death, He gave propitiation.
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He satisfied God's wrath.
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But in His resurrection, there is verification.
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Everything He said was true.
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If you doubt today what Jesus said, just know this.
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He rose from the dead.
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He was seen by over 500 people alive, many of whom were willing to go to their deaths because of having seen Him alive.
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Not for something they simply believed, but for something they knew was true because they saw Him with their own eyes.
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Jesus Christ was alive, He is alive, and He lives forevermore.
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And the Bible says He lives to make intercession for His people.
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How can a sinful man be made right with a holy God? By Christ only.
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And this is where this term sola fide comes in.
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And we're going to talk more about it next week.
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Sola fide is Latin for faith alone.
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And there's actually five Latin phrases.
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Next week, I'll write them all out and I'll explain them all.
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But they're sola fide, sola gratia, sola Christus, sola Deo Gloria, and sola Scriptura.
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And all five of them have importance.
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But they all reference the fact that our salvation is not in what we do, but is in Christ alone.
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Our faith is in Christ alone.
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Our grace is because of Christ alone.
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Our salvation, our justification is in Christ alone, through faith alone.
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We believe in what He did.
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We don't believe we can add anything to it.
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And this is what we're going to really break down next week.
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Because Paul says, he says, can we add the works of the law? No! Adding the works of the law doesn't do anything.
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Can we do anything to add to the work of Christ? The answer is absolutely not.
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I tried explaining this to a man one time.
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Some of you have heard this story.
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I had a man come to the church and he was hungry.
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So I invited him in and I gave him some food from our pantry.
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And as he sat and ate the food that I gave to him, I began to try to share the Gospel with him.
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And I usually share the Gospel much the same way I've shared it with you today.
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I start out by asking how is a sinful man made right with the Holy God? Most people answer, by being good.
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Another way to ask this question would be to ask this, if you died today and you faced God, and God said, why should I let you into my heaven? What would you say? The vast majority of people, and I've asked this question to many, many people, the vast majority of people would say, I'm a good person.
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That's why God should let me into heaven because I'm a good person.
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And then I just begin asking them, why do you say you're good? Jesus said no one is good.
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Paul said no one is good.
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Why do you disagree with Jesus and Paul? What makes you good? Well, I do good things.
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Does any good deed you've done negate your sin? No.
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Paul says in Romans 3, there is none good, no not one, there's none who understands, there's none who seeks after God.
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All have gone astray, all each one to his own way.
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The venom of asps is under our lips.
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The way of peace we have not known.
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And he goes on and on talking about our sinfulness.
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Anybody who proclaims his own goodness is doing so in ignorance of Scripture.
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But I'm sitting there with that man.
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I'm trying to explain to him.
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And I get to the part about Jesus standing in the box.
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And I talk about Jesus letting me go and standing in my place.
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And I said, Jesus is my only hope.
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He's my only righteousness.
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He's the only one.
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He takes it all for me.
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An old boy said, Pastor, you can't think that way.
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He said, you've got to learn to pick yourself up by your own bootstraps.
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And I said, bro, you're here getting food from me.
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I mean, I didn't mean to get like, I got to kind of get away.
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I'm like, did you really just say that you don't...
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So, the whole bootstraps thing, you ain't got no boots and you ain't got no straps.
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But that's actually what I did say.
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I said, man, when it comes to righteousness, I don't have any boots.
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And I don't have any straps.
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I don't have anything but Christ.
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Either Christ is your righteousness or you don't have any.
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Either Christ is your righteousness or you will go to hell.
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You are not saved by what you do.
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You are saved by what He did alone.
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And therefore, we say, we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
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Next week, we're going to break it down more.
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Go into this verse.
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Take these words one at a time.
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Learn more about what the three words that are most...
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By the way, it says it three times in the passage.
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It uses the phrase justification.
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It uses the phrase faith.
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It uses the phrase works of the law.
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We're going to break those three things down next week.
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But today, I just want to set the stage by saying it's all about Christ.
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And if we think of anything else as our righteousness, we have missed the point of the Gospel.
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Let's pray.
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Father, may it be that even now You remind us in our hearts that we have nothing in ourselves that we can cling to.
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Nothing in my hand I bring.
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Only to the cross I cling.
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Lord, that is all we can do is hold tight to Christ and know that ultimately, He's the One who holds tightly to us.
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I pray for every man in here, Lord.
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If any man is thinking that he can make his way on his own, that he can save himself, or that he can bring some good works to You that you would find meritorious, Lord, I pray that You would convict him now to turn from that sinful, world's works-based religion and turn to Jesus.
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For there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.
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And we pray it in His name.
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Amen.