Two Witnesses, Jeff Kliewer

Father God, thank you for sending Jesus to atone for our sins, to wash us in rivers of grace.

We recognize that our only righteousness is that which is imputed to us, the righteousness of Christ.

We thank you for the forgiveness of sin in his name. Father, we pray for any that hear this sermon today that do not yet believe in Jesus, that this would be the day that they come to the well of salvation.

And for us who have believed, we pray that we would fix our eyes on Christ, drawn nearer than ever before, that you would use this sermon to sanctify us in the truth.

Your word is truth. Father, I ask that you would help me to faithfully deliver this word in Jesus' name.

Amen. Pastor Tim and I and Joe Gormley, who we affectionately call

Average Joe, had the opportunity to go to Princeton not long ago, to one of the

Palestinian protest encampments that have been common on college campuses.

And obviously we went there to preach the gospel, not to join in what they were saying. But it was strange to see when we got there that it was a combination of many

Muslims with many progressive liberals. And they were strange bedfellows because the two are very much diametrically opposed.

But somehow their moral systems were overlapping in this case.

I think because the secular humanists believe in so -called social justice, where the cause of the weak, the oppressed, the marginalized, the vulnerable is always the side that they're going to take.

Well, in the case of Palestine, Israel has the stronger army. So therefore,

Israel becomes the aggressor in the minds of the liberals. But the

Muslims feel like they are being oppressed by the system.

Now, we say that they were strange bedfellows, but the real issue is that each is operating by a different standard.

The question is, by what standard is someone righteous and someone wicked? People seek to establish their own righteousness by comparing themselves with other people.

And if someone feels like they're fighting for a cause against a wicked enemy, the great Satan, they can feel better about themselves and feel righteous in their own eyes.

All humans in the flesh have a tendency to do this, to separate between the righteous and the wicked, and to consider themselves the righteous in this struggle.

The righteous and the wicked. The issue at the

Palestinian protest movement is a rejection of the lordship of Jesus Christ.

The Quran offers a standard by which Muslims feel that they are being justified.

And the example of their prophet teaches them what they think is right and wrong, and they feel like they're living up to a standard when they obey that.

Recently, Iraq has proposed a new bill to make the age for marriage for a child bride nine years old.

But it's not arbitrary, because when Muhammad married Aisha, she was six years old, and he consummated the marriage when she was nine, according to the prophet, so -called prophet himself.

And the standard of Islam written in the Hadith and the Sunnah of the prophet gives the example that Muslims are to follow as they become more and more faithful to Muhammad's example.

These are the kinds of things that you see. There is a righteousness that comes not by the works of law, the standards of any people, but through faith in Jesus Christ.

This is the only righteousness. It is strange to see a people advocating for justice and freedom for the oppressed, standing side by side with the most oppressive system in the world, which is

Islam. And yet this happens precisely because both groups reject the claim of Jesus Christ.

When you are sharing the gospel, and perhaps opening to the book of John, you will find that those who reject the message of Jesus Christ will object to the authenticity of the book of John.

I want to show you a verse in John 3 .36 to begin with today. This is the central idea of my sermon today.

It is also the central idea of the Bible. In John 3 .36

we are told, Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. Whoever does not obey the

Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.

There is a division in the world between the righteous and the wicked. But it is not between those who perform better and have better works by a standard of self -righteousness.

Rather, the distinction is between those who believe in the Son and those who do not obey the

Son. The wrath of God remains on those who have rejected the message of Jesus Christ.

If you were to go to a Muslim apologetic site online, you would find that the claim of the

Muslims, this is very important because you'll run into this, the claim of the Muslims is that the book of John is a historical development.

That when Mark wrote his gospel, he said much less about the claims of Jesus Christ.

Because Mark wrote in the 50s AD and John wrote in the 90s.

And over the time period, those decades between Mark and John, you have a development of this idea that Jesus is the

Lord and that he is the Son of God. The claim of the Muslim apologists is that the author,

John, took what Mark wrote and developed these ideas. This is also what's taught at Princeton in the theological seminary.

So the professors there believe that there was a development of doctrine by tradition from Mark to John.

And they claim that John, being written later, developed this higher

Christology that did not exist in Mark or even Matthew and Luke, which came in the 60s.

I want to give you a tool right now to begin this sermon to refute that idea and to establish that the one and only gospel has always been the same message of Jesus as Lord and as the

Son of God. Because the first book in the New Testament that was recorded was not

Mark, Matthew, Luke, or John. It was the book of Galatians, written probably between 48 and 51

AD. Turn with me just to the introduction of the book, Galatians chapter 1.

And notice that the first New Testament book to be written preaches the same gospel that John preached in the 90s

AD. He preaches Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, making

God his Father and as the Lord. Paul, an apostle, not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the

Father, who raised him from the dead. And all the brothers who are with me to the churches of Galatia, grace to you and peace from God our

Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age according to the will of our

God and Father. To whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.

Not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed.

As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.

Paul is very strong in this language. He preaches Jesus as the Son of the Father and as the

Lord, in verse 3, who died on the cross for sins and rose from the dead.

The same gospel that Paul preached from the very beginning was recorded by every gospel author.

The second book in the New Testament, anybody know what was the second book written? Some say

James, others 1 Thessalonians. They're all about 50 AD. 1

Thessalonians in the very first verse, if you'll turn a couple pages. 1

Thessalonians declares the lordship of Jesus Christ and the fatherhood of God.

1 Thessalonians 1, verse 1,

Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy to the church of the Thessalonians in God the father and the

Lord Jesus Christ. The idea that Jesus is Lord, the kurios, the

Lord, the king, is not new in 90 AD. It is the only gospel that was ever preached.

Jesus is Lord. Paul preached it. In fact, the very first verse of Mark, which they say is earlier than the development of the doctrine, declares the lordship of Christ.

Look at Mark 1, verse 1, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the

Son of God. Mark preached the same gospel that Paul preached, which is the one and only gospel, the only gospel as given by God, the message of Jesus Christ, the

Son of God. The main idea this morning is that God justifies people through faith in Jesus Christ, not through the works of the law.

And for us who've grown up in church or been in church for a long time, we say, well, duh, that's just, of course.

But that is the most revolutionary idea in the history of the world. Paul, first of all, set out to prove this by showing how sinful all people are.

When we look at one another, we might judge ourselves as better than one or another, or perhaps ourselves a little worse.

But we always hope that we're doing okay and might be doing enough to please God. The book of Romans in chapter 1 through 3, 20 establishes that there are none righteous.

And Paul did not want us to think that this was his idea. So he quoted from the book of Psalms again and again and again, chapter 5, chapter 10, 14, 53, 36, 140, each chapter demonstrating that there is none righteous, no, not one.

We are all guilty. And then turn with me to Romans chapter 3, verses 23 to 25.

He sums up that teaching with the famous verse, Romans 3, 23, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

All have sinned. There is no distinction between the righteous and the wicked in terms of who's better one than another.

All of us together are shown to be unrighteous. In verse 24 and 25 says, and are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom

God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith.

This was to show God's righteousness because in His divine forbearance, He had passed over former sins.

The big idea here is that the righteousness of God is credited to those who have faith in Christ Jesus.

God's justification of sinners is by grace. It comes from the goodness, the kindness of His own heart, not any merit in the sinner, but as a gift,

God has redeemed us by making a public spectacle of His own

Son, pouring wrath into the body of the

Son of God on the tree. And in this, the wrath of God against sin was fully satisfied.

God turns wrath away from us because He's poured that wrath into the Son of God and in His blood, there is forgiveness of sin.

And so the big idea in these verses is that we are justified by faith.

Faith must be in the Son of God who has turned God's wrath away from us.

It is not by works of the law. It is by faith in the

Son of God. So Paul's doctrine here is earth -shaking.

It's marvelous. It's incredible. But how do we know that it's true?

How do we know that Paul did not invent this doctrine? Turn with me to Romans 4, and the passage today is the first 12 verses of Romans 4.

Paul will call upon two witnesses to prove justification by faith.

Abraham and David. Abraham and David.

Let's begin with Abraham. What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh?

For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.

For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed

God and it was counted to him as righteousness.

If Abraham had been able to obey God's commands and the standard of righteousness to the point where God said, okay, this is a righteous man on the earth, then

Abraham could boast in his own righteous standing. He did something to earn it, and God found him acceptable.

But that's not the case. From the very beginning, we are told, verse three, what does the

Scripture say? Abraham believed God and it, his belief, his faith, was counted to him as righteousness.

If you're one who writes in your Bible, take your pen and underline that word counted.

Or maybe you can highlight it in your app. Counted. The idea here is that God has credited righteousness to Abraham based on his faith, not based on anything that he's done.

As a matter of fact, Abraham has not been particularly stellar in his obedience.

He was called out of Ur of the Chaldees to come to the promised land, but right away he was encountered by a famine.

And because of the famine, he fled to Egypt to try to find food. As he came into Egypt, he realized that he was vulnerable.

There he was going into a strange land with his beautiful wife.

How could he defend her? How could he keep her from being taken from him? And so he concocted a plan.

In his selfishness, he told Sarah to tell the Egyptians that she was only his sister, not his wife, to protect his own skin.

And so the king of Egypt took his wife into his harem and made

Sarah his wife while Abraham was showered with gifts.

Does that sound like a good guy? No. This is works of darkness.

This is wickedness. He threw his own wife under the bus to get rich, to protect his own skin.

And Egypt just showered him with gifts, including servants and cattle and all kinds of possessions.

One of those servants that he received in Egypt was named Hagar. And later he would accept his wife's idea to sleep with Hagar, that a seed would be given through her since his wife

Sarah was old and barren. Abraham, in fact, would do this same sin again, pretending to Abimelech that Sarah was only his sister and not his wife, and repeat the same sin.

Clearly the point of Moses in recording the life of Abraham is not to exalt a man and say, here's the father of righteousness.

If you would just be like him and work your own salvation,

God will accept you too. No, the point of Abraham's story is to say something remarkable.

Turn with me to Genesis 15, verse 6. This is the verse from which

Paul quotes. And it shows that the doctrine of justification by faith, not by works, is not something that Paul made up.

Paul has called the witness Abraham to the stand. And now we are asked, how was

Abraham declared righteous? Was it by the works that he had accomplished? No, we are told that Abraham was given the promise of a seed.

His own flesh, your very own son, it says in chapter 15, verse 4, will be your heir.

It won't be Eliezer, the servant, but one of your own offspring will be your heir.

Now this seems impossible because Abraham is quite old, his wife Sarah is old as well, and barren, and yet he's promised that his offspring will be like the stars of the sky, numerous and illustrious, and verse 6 tells us how he received a righteous standing before God, and that is he believed the

Lord and the Lord, that's the he, counted it, his belief, to him as righteousness.

Isn't that remarkable? Christians believe, and we proclaim to the world, that God is crediting the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ to those of us who believe in him.

Christ is the object of our faith, and by faith we are united to Christ such that his death and resurrection is our death and resurrection.

We die with him, are buried with him, and raised to newness of life.

Christ takes our sin into himself, and in a great exchange, he gives his righteousness to us.

Isn't that remarkable? Abraham was justified the same way.

He was looking forward to a seed that would come from his own body, the one promised in the

Garden of Eden to Adam, that a seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent.

Abraham had been told that it was now through his seed that all the world would be blessed. He's looking forward to the promised seed, the one to come, a human that descends from Abraham's own body.

And when he believed in Christ, looking forward to him, the coming

Messiah, God counted Abraham's faith as righteousness. In other words, this was always

God's plan, to justify sinners through faith in the Son of God.

Abraham didn't have the full picture like we do. We live on this side of the cross, he lived before the cross, but he was still looking forward to this promised one, and his faith was counted as righteousness.

Now, what is saving faith? More poignantly, do you have it?

Do you have saving faith? Many people have prayed a prayer to accept

Jesus because they were coached to do that by the preacher or a parent, and yet their life never changed.

Many people think that Jesus is their

Lord, yet we'll hear on the judgment day, I never knew you.

What is saving faith? A Hallmark movie will tell you it's believing what you want in the depths of your heart.

This love interest, if you just believe, you'll make it happen. The idea of hope in your own dreams and in your own desires.

If you have faith in what you want, it will come to be. Like Jiminy Cricket, singing about this magical idea of faith, when you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are.

Anything your heart desires will come to you. It's what the world thinks faith is.

It's if you believe in yourself, you have good energy, you have positive vibes, faith will bring good things to you.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Louis Burkhoff is a great theologian, lived in this country, he was of Dutch descent, and he defines faith this way, a certain conviction wrought in the heart by the

Holy Spirit as to the truth of the gospel and a hearty reliance, a trust, on the promises of God in Christ.

Let me repeat that phrase by phrase. A certain conviction. Faith is to be certain and convicted.

It's not a vague hope in a dream. It is rather wrought in you by the

Holy Spirit. A work of God changes how you think and believe.

The Spirit gives this thing called faith, and it is not in whatever you dream or whatever you hope.

It is in something that comes from God, not from you. You don't invent it, you don't make it up.

It is in the gospel. The message of God regarding His Son, the content of this message that Jesus died and that He rose.

Faith is to be convicted, to be certain that this is so. And a hearty reliance, that is trust, in the promises of God in Christ.

It's a mouthful, isn't it? The early reformers used three

Latin words to describe genuine saving faith. Notitia, assensus, fiducia.

You don't need to remember those words. What's Latin going to help, right? But it really refers to the mind, the emotions, the will.

And even that is not necessarily the key to understanding what I'm saying to you. Genuine faith involves the whole person.

The true and deepest part of who you are, the heart of you. Not just the mind, that's the idea.

Notitia means the information. You have to know. Someone has to tell you there is a

Christ who came and lived a sinless life and died and rose and ascended to the right hand of the

Father. Without that information, you cannot be saved. You have no faith.

So that's the first part. But assensus is, that is assensus, A -S -S -E -N -S -U -S.

It is to give assent to it in your mind and in your emotions. That is, you believe that this is true.

The Holy Spirit has so opened your eyes that when you see Christ, you see the Savior. You believe

He is not just the invention of religious people. A tradition that developed.

But you believe it. And then lastly, fiducia refers to personal trust.

The word refers to the will. The surrendering of a will.

That your will was dead set to go your own way, to follow your dreams, to chase what you want, to get the most out of life, to be the

Lord and King of your own self. But fiducia is a trust in another.

It is a surrendering of your will. To regard Christ as Lord.

To say Jesus is Lord, not just in an information kind of way, but in a personal trust.

To begin to rely on Him for your salvation and to surrender every other hope.

To stop believing that you can be righteous enough to earn salvation from God and to throw yourself on Him.

So it's mental. You have to know about Him, but you must surrender to Him as Lord.

Birkhoff was right. It is a certain conviction. It's something that your whole body and mind and soul, every part of you, has submitted to.

This is genuine faith. Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.

So Romans chapter 4, we call the second witness. Second of two.

And that is David. This giant of the faith who killed a literal giant by faith.

This man who wrote so many of the 150 Psalms. A worshiper from the heart, playing the lyre, the harp, and singing, writing songs of worship.

Ruling as king. The great hero. The man who saw

Bathsheba bathing and called for her to come to him and slept with her and made her pregnant.

The man who then called her husband back from war and then sent him to a place for him to die.

The man who later in life numbered the mighty men to establish his own prideful esteem.

Was David justified by his greatness and his works?

We call him as witness in verses 4 to 8. Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due.

If you come and work here at the church to perform some function, maybe mowing the lawn if we paid for that, but it's all volunteer anyway.

But if we made an agreement for you to mow the lawn and we then paid you for the work that you did, it would be counted as what was due to you, not a gift.

You've earned it. You worked hard for that. And to the one, verse 5, who does not work, did nothing to earn it, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

The religions of the world believe the exact opposite of this.

Christianity alone says that God will count the righteousness of Christ, the perfect righteousness, to someone who believes, someone who doesn't work, in fact, someone who is ungodly.

Joseph Smith was a deceiver who founded the Mormon church. He wrote books that he claimed to be from God, but these books contradict the word of God.

In fact, Joseph Smith, few people realize this because they use the King James Version, Joseph Smith actually made his own translation of the

Bible, the Joseph Smith translation. And in the JST, he adds a word to Romans 4, 5.

Follow along in the verse as it really is. And to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly,

Joseph Smith writes, who justifies not the ungodly. Why must

Joseph Smith add that word not? Because Islam and the

Eightfold Path of Buddhism and Mormonism and Jehovah's Witness and every other religion in the world, including the secular religions of trying to be good and bring good into the world by following the heart, all of these systems require doing work to make yourself godly.

And God will reward the one who works and becomes godly. But here is the most amazing statement.

God justifies the ungodly. There was a lady after first service who said, hey,

Pastor Jeff, I loved your sermon on depravity. I loved hearing from Romans 3 how wicked we are.

And she said, it brought me comfort. And she's right.

Because when we really look deep into the depths of our heart, we don't see godliness.

We see unrighteousness, ungodliness, the suppression of truth. Who are we in ourselves?

We are ungodly. And here we have a testimony that God is willing to justify an ungodly person like us, the true you.

Be honest with your own memory of the things that you've done in the history of your life.

Whatever it is, however deep and dark and ungodly, God is willing to justify you.

His faith is counted as righteousness. And so David testifies, verse 6, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom

God counts righteousness. Again, that word count is a legal term.

This is forensic. It is not an infusion of righteousness.

It is the counting of righteousness to your ledger.

As if you were the innocent one. God is counting the righteousness of Christ to you.

Apart from works. That's amazing. For every sinner who knows himself a sinner, who's ever beat his chest and said,

God have mercy on me, this is the best news in the world. The gospel says he will count the righteousness of Christ to you.

David knew it because David wrote Psalm 32. And that's what we're quoting from. Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered.

Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin. It's the flip side of being justified by faith.

Your sin is not counted against you. David testifies to this.

Turn with me to Psalm 32. I think sometimes it's good just to read scripture.

My job as an expositor of the word is to bring out what's here. But sometimes we just need to be washed in the word, just to hear the word.

In Psalm 32 verse 11, David is calling out to the righteous. Be glad in the

Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.

And the self -righteous man says, yeah, he's talking about me. But David is talking about the man who has been broken by his own sin and finally under the weight of that sin has called out to God and believed the promise of forgiveness.

Let's just read it. Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.

For day and night your hand was heavy upon me. My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.

Selah. I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity.

I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.

Selah. You see how a man is justified before God? Is it by the works of the law?

The works of religion? Or is it by faith in the forgiveness of the righteous

God? It's by faith. When he confessed he was forgiven.

Verse six. Therefore let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found.

Surely in the rush of great waters they shall not reach him. You are a hiding place for me.

You preserve me from trouble. You surround me with shouts of deliverance.

Selah. I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel you with my eye upon you.

Be not like a horse or a mule without understanding, which must be curbed with bit and bridle, or it may not stay near you.

Many are the sorrows of the wicked. But steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the

Lord. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy all you upright in heart.

So David has come to the stand. He's given his testimony. It's the same as Abraham.

Believe God, credit his righteousness. David was a sinner who knew his sin and confessed and the

Lord counted not his sin against him. Lastly, we have a couple more verses in Romans 9.

We're going back to Abraham to make one more point.

Seems odd, the point that was made, but it's because in the first century the

Jew and Gentile divide was real. The Jewish person thought they were children of God because they descended from Abraham.

They were the ones that descended from the flesh of Abraham. The Christ Jesus was a

Jew descended from Abraham. So do they have a leg up on the competition?

Do they have a special way in? And moreover, what about the Gentiles? They don't descend from Abraham.

How are they justified? And here's how Paul answers. Is this blessing then only for the circumcised or also for the uncircumcised?

For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness.

How then was it counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised?

It was not after, but before he was circumcised.

All Paul is saying there is Genesis 17 comes after Genesis 15.

Genesis 15 .6, he was already credited as righteous. Genesis 16,

Sarah proposes that, hey, why don't you take Hagar? That the child should be born through Hagar.

And Abraham sinfully agrees to this. Genesis 17, though, he's given the covenant of circumcision, the sign of circumcision.

It comes after he was already justified. So what does that mean?

Verses 11 and 12. He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised.

The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised so that righteousness would be counted to them as well.

And to make him the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised, but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father

Abraham had before he was circumcised.

The sign of the covenant came later. Abraham was justified when he believed the promise.

The sign came two chapters later, the seal of that covenant. And from that point,

Abraham began to grow in faith. This is very important.

In the New Testament, we do not have circumcision as the sign of the covenant.

The Abrahamic covenant was signified or sealed with the sign of circumcision.

That's what made someone a Jew. It was a patriarchal world. In the

New Covenant, the sign, the seal is baptism. To be baptized is to be demonstrated to the world publicly and openly here that you have faith in the

Son of God. So some of the churches say that you must be baptized in order to be saved, that you get saved in the moment that you go under the water and pop up.

Is that true? No, Abraham was justified two chapters before he received the sign.

In the same way, the moment you put your faith in Christ genuinely from the heart, the whole being, you are counted righteous by God.

You ought then to go obey God in the waters of baptism. It's the first step of obedience.

Abraham did circumcise Ishmael and received that as a sign.

And this was the obedience of the Israelites for all those generations. In the same way, you must be baptized.

We actually have a baptism at the shore on September 8th. If you haven't been baptized, you should talk to myself or Ivan is teaching the preparation class.

To be baptized demonstrates to the world, it's a seal of this new covenant in which you are sealed.

But one more thing about Abraham. And I promise one more. Abraham still, even after his baptism, went to Abimelech's territory and pretended that Sarah was only his sister and not his wife.

He threw her under the bus again, even after he was saved and sealed, but he grew.

And in the latter parts of Abraham's life, the obedience of faith became more and more obvious.

And in chapter 22 of Genesis, he's even willing to obey God. Having seen a record of God's faithfulness, that Isaac was born to his wife in her old age.

He was willing to take Isaac up a mountain to offer his only son this obedience of faith.

That is what faith looks like. It is called sanctification.

You must distinguish in your mind between justification to be declared righteous by faith and sanctification.

Sanctification will flow out from justification, even though these are distinct things.

You are justified by faith in the moment that you believe in Christ. And you always remain justified.

You don't maintain that on your own. It's a legal decree, something that God has said.

It can't be undone. It's sealed by God. But sanctification is to grow in the likeness of God.

By faith, your faith becoming stronger, causing you to resist sin more and more.

Abraham believed God, it was credited to him as righteousness, but he grew, which demonstrated that his faith was genuine.

So in closing, you can forget about the

Princeton professors who claim that the

Bible changed and the message was perverted over time.

Muslims say the same thing. It's even written right in their Koran against the sonship of Christ.

You can forget about every other person. There's a billion Muslims in the world that make this claim.

And most of the people that you know and work with reject the claim of Jesus Christ.

You have Jesus himself, his words recorded by John. You have

Paul, who was a persecutor of Christians until he met Jesus himself, blinded by the light, who gave us the book of Romans.

But you have two more witnesses that predate the coming of Christ himself. You have Abraham as a witness and you have

David. These men were not justified by their works, but they believed

God who credited their faith as righteousness. Let's thank God for this way of salvation because without it, nobody here would be saved.

Somehow it's comforting to know that because you can be honest with the true you, who you are, and bring your sin to God in confession.

And he is faithful and just to forgive you and cleanse you of all unrighteousness. Be baptized and begin to grow.

Step out in faith and your faith gets stronger. And you're sanctified by his truth.

Let's pray. Father God, we thank you for this word this morning. Lord, just to read

Psalm 32 about the forgiveness of sin. Thank you so much for counting righteousness to us by faith and not counting our sins against us.

Thank you for the testimony of Abraham and also the witness of David.

Thank you for using Paul and John and Mark to testify to the

Son of God. And Lord, we confess, Jesus is Lord. Father, I pray for anybody here today or listening that has not put their faith in the

Lord Jesus Christ, that they would stop seeking to establish their own righteousness and believe in the one you have sent.

And Father, I pray for the majority of us here who have been saved and baptized. Lord, sanctify us.

Help us to walk by faith and live by faith to grow and become more like Christ.

Forgive us when we stumble, Lord. Don't count our sins against us.

Forgive us, Lord. We look to Jesus and to Jesus alone.