The Book of Romans VI, The Freedom of Faith

All right, Romans 3 and 4. Let me say, as you're turning there now, I'm going to just read several verses. There's no way I can take the time to read the whole chapter and a half. But I urge you to do so tomorrow if you haven't done so recently. If you have a new international version, you are just a little closer to the throne tonight. I want you to read along with me, would you please? Beginning in verse 19 of Romans 3, new international version. Now, read loud enough to know that you have it, all right? Now, we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore, no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law. Rather, through the law, we become conscious of sin. But now, a righteousness from God, apart from the law, has been made known to which the law and the prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood. All right, we'll stop there. Now, your pink outlines will give you an idea where we're going. They will match the overhead outlines if everything goes well. I know in the times past, they haven't necessarily done that. I'm confident that the whole reason why the earthquake may have taken place was to allow me to use this analogy tonight to start. You don't think so, I can tell. The World Series, just being a few days from resumption, reminded me of a very helpful illustration that I learned. Imagine the baseball world finding itself frustrated with mediocrity and deciding that it needed a new standard of excellence, so it created what we'll call an all galactic baseball team. This was truly the creme de la creme of baseball players. The commissioner announced that only a select few would be part of the all galactic baseball team, distinguished standouts in the sport. There were several requirements. Number one, you had to have been a player for, let's say, 10 years to qualify, no hot shot one or two-year careers. Now, the two specific requirements other than that were this. Number one, you needed to be able to demonstrate error-free baseball for your entire career. No throwing errors, no fielding errors, no pass balls, no wild pitches your whole career, no mistakes. And number two, in order to make the all galactic baseball team, in order to qualify for the $25 million that each person would get for being inducted, the special media coverage, the retirement home on the island of your choice, the second qualification was you needed to bat an average of 1,000. Every time you stepped into the play, you needed to hit that ball somewhere in play or out of the park, every time. No fielder's choice, no almost every time. Now, if you did these two things for your entire career, you would become a member of the all galactic all-star team. Now, I can see some of the women saying, what's so hard about that? Maybe you don't know baseball. But just to give you a little perspective, has anyone in Major League History ever played an error-free season? Men? Who said it? Yes. Yes, there have been. You know their names? There was someone recently, Steve Garvey. Steve, you know Steve Garvey? Yogi Berra. Ring a bell? Not Yogi Berra, Yogi Berra, Anna, okay? Yeah, they played one. Now, but on the same token, the year that Steve Garvey played error-free, he batted 287. So, he didn't qualify that year. On the other hand, you know what the highest batting average ever recorded was? For a year? For a whole season? 1894, a guy by the name of Hugh Duffy batted 438. Not bad, almost one out of two. You had a difficult time with the ball catching it. He had 27 errors. So, he didn't make it on that score. Now, picture that though, just to give you a perspective as being the qualifications that are necessary to make the all-galactic baseball team. Just picture in your own mind for a moment, our own Bobby Bonilla, our third baseman who most think is one of the best in the league, if not the best third baseman in the league. Now, let's just say, just to bring this down to Pittsburgh here for a minute. Let's say that a reporter from the press went to Bobby Bonilla and said, well, Bobby, what do you think of your season? I'm having a great season. In fact, I'm gunning for the all-galactic baseball team. Wow, great. Well, Bobby, did you know that you needed to bat 1,000 to make it? You had a great year, but you had something like 14 errors this year, Bobby. He said, but hey, don't bother me with the facts. I know what I can do and I set my mind to do it. Now, what's the reporter going to think? He's going to walk away from that and he's going to say, well, folks, here's Bobby Bonilla. He doesn't realize that mathematically now, it's what? Impossible. He's already done two things that he could never do. It'll be part of that team. He's committed errors and he batted under 1,000. Now, keep that analogy in mind. I know it was a little tougher for some than others. I want to make a statement here tonight. I understand for those of you, I thought some people were going to say, well, Jeff, I'm going to go line by line by line here. I'm going to pull out the main strands of these verses and let you digest them rather than try to dice it. I figured out, Pastor Scott's been pressing me for a date. It'll be 1997 if we did line by line, word by word in Book of Romans. I want to make a statement here. Do you have a statement about the ways to heaven? There are two ways to get to heaven. How many of you are about to get up and leave saying, I knew this place was slipping. I knew it was slipping. Theoretically, there are two ways. The first way is perfect performance. No mistakes, no errors, never slipping up once and secondly, add to that perfect righteousness, perfect response. Secondly, the second way to heaven is God's provision. God's provision. Let me talk about the first way just in case. It is possible, it is theoretically possible, at least from Bible terms, that you could go to heaven by living a sin-free life. That is to say that in every circumstance in your entire life, you never lost your cool. You never once got angry. You never once swore. You never once told a little tiny white lie. You never once, ever one time, entertained a thought about having an affair. You never once, you know, cut someone off in traffic. Everything you did was without sin. Add to that, all the rest of the time, you responded in God-pleasing, people-building ways. Everything you did benefited other people. You were love-oriented, selfless, and perfectly giving in every circumstance. That is the kind of life. You live that kind of life, and guess what happens when you walk up to heaven's gate? God's going to open that thing. He's going to sit down. He's going to say, wow, where'd you come from? That's very, you know, it could happen that way. But for most of us here tonight, we're honest enough to realize that chances are we're not going to make it on those terms. Now, interestingly, there are people, by the way, who, when you talk to them today, you know what they're going to tell you when they talk about why they should be allowed to get into heaven? Know what they're going to say? I'm batting about 500. You know, I had a couple errors. I have found this repeatedly. I just had a conversation with someone this week. Repeatedly, people say the basis of my going to heaven is on a continuum of, you know, the vilest offender you can name, you know, the worst serial murder you can think of, and Mother Teresa, I'm somewhere, you know, I'm right in there. I mean, I'm not even in the middle. I'm up closer to Mother Teresa. Am I not right about that? And listen, folks, many people that you rub shoulders with all the time think that entry into heaven and eternal life is based on the curve. And there, they figure, hey, listen, God is, if it just takes a Mother Teresa to get into heaven, hey, well, then let them have it, you know, go. And now, this is much more true than maybe we even want to admit. Most people would say they're not worried about eternal life because they figure they're just about as good as the other guy. They haven't done anything that bad. They may not be as good, but they're right there in the middle. They're batting about 500, 600, 700, playing good ball. But entry into heaven is based on error-free living and 100% righteousness. Notice what it says, would you please, and just in case that person needs to be convinced, just look what it says, back up to chapter 3, verse 10. There is no one righteous, not even one. Not even one. There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. Look at verse 19 and 20. Verse 20, therefore, no one will be declared righteous. No one. No one will be able to say in that day that, hey, I deserve to be in based on my record. Do you ever get a little uncomfortable when people start bragging about really how good they are? I don't hurt anybody, that kind of a thing. They need to realize that God said that isn't good enough. Notice, I think something very significant here. It says that every mouth, verse 19, will be silenced. Verse 19, every mouth is going to be silenced. When they stand before God, they're not going to be able to say, hey, look at this, you know. I had a really good year in 1984. I think that's going to be an awesome moment, don't you? All the pride of men is going to be silenced before Almighty God. Now, we can choose to live trying to perform perfectly, even though after the fact, we realize we'll never do it. Or number two, one of my favorite three-letter words in the Bible, look at verse 21. What is it? But, but now a righteousness from God, apart from the law, has been made known. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about God's provision, all right? Now, here's where your pink outline starts to flip into gear here. There is a second way to heaven. Here's where we're going to go on this pink outline on the overhead, ladies. You ready? This is the one that has God's provision of salvation. All right? Here's what God's provided. Verse 22 tells us this. All sinners are eligible. Does that exclude you? I hope not. Every one of us are eligible. No matter how poor your average has been, no matter how many errors you've made, no matter how lousy you've been batting in righteousness. Paul says both Jews and Gentiles, verse 29 and 30. Remember a few weeks ago, we had the Jews on this side and the Gentiles on that side? God's saying, listen, all of you, Jews, Gentiles, no matter how terrible your background, you're all eligible for this free gift. He says, what you need to do is simply acknowledge your sin. The acknowledgement of your sin opens the door. That blank should say acknowledge. The acknowledgement of your sin. Do you ever find that people think it's very difficult to admit to their sin? They try to wash it many times. Most people know they're not perfect, but they'll say, hey, my sin's not much worse than anybody else's if it's bad. And I know some people for whom their sin has put them under such guilt that they think God could never forgive them. I want you to know something tonight. Listen very carefully right now. If you're here and you think, and there might be someone in the back row, it may be somebody messed up in drugs, it may be somebody who's messed up with another person right now. You may think God could never forgive my sin. I want you to know something. Your acknowledgement of your need for God, of that sin in your life is the very key that opens the door to what I'm gonna share tonight. The happiest moment of your life is when you can acknowledge your sin because that's when God can begin to flood grace towards you. Very important. And notice what he says. That acknowledgement of sin then opens you to be able to say that it's not by works, it's not by your efforts. It's a gift that comes from God. All right, Roman numeral two, salvation is obtained apart from the works of the law. Look at it, verse 21. A righteousness from God apart from the law has been made known. Verse 28, 27 down there also, it says this. We maintain that a man, verse 28, is justified by faith apart from observing the law. Now, listen carefully. There are three groups of people pretty much in this subject. There are people who would say when it comes to going to heaven, being justified before God, group number one would say, well, I'm gonna do good works and take my chances. Do the best I can, take chances. That's largely the kind of people that don't go to church. They feel like God's gonna judge them based on, you know, put them on a scale. Good versus bad. I've done more good deeds than bad deeds. You know, I gave more money to charity than I ripped off from the rich. Whatever the case may be. Number two, then there are those people who believe Jesus, they pray a lot, they worship him, they come to church, they do good deeds. Or if you're filling in the blanks, it says there, believe Jesus and lead a clean life. Those are the religious people. Now, listen very carefully. Many of us here tonight, I would venture to say, or at least a number of us, think that our acceptance before God is based on believing and leading a good life. And many of us think that our progress, our sanctification, our holiness, is based on believing and meriting more grace. Listen very carefully now, spirit-filled Christians. Paul says in Galatians 3, those of you who began in the spirit, why are you doing what? Reverting to the works of the flesh. One thing I've seen a lot of folks in mature Christian watches, they go so far believing God, believing, trusting in Jesus, and then they get to the place where they think, well, now I've got to work my way on. I've got to try harder and do more. I want to submit to you, that's a snare. Very few people are number three. They see that being given the gift of salvation and growing in grace is not a matter of work at all. But being at peace with God comes by trusting God. Hallelujah. Someone say, that's good. It is, it's good news. I want you to know something, sitting in that McCandless Township boardroom on Monday night, I wasn't trusting in Pastor Scott's ability. I wasn't trusting in the architect or my own. I don't mean, I mean, Scott's very good at that. Or my own, or our architects. I was trusting in God. And I was really free. And that applies to every part of our Christian life. I was really free. Some of you have not gotten answers, you know, looking for answers to my career, my service to God. I want you to know tonight, the answer is not in working to dig it out. You know, God isn't, I don't think it's a matter of like beating, I think it's a matter of growing in faith. In fact, let me lead you on over the page to Romans four for just a minute. Let's take the ultimate example of this, which Romans four relates to us, which is Abraham. And what did God promise to Abraham? I'm going to give you a great progeny of faith. I'm going to give you more descendants than the stars of the heavens. And I'm going to do it. And how old was he when that hadn't happened? Yeah. Some of our folks really like this story. It makes them feel so young. Abraham was 90 something. Sounds like a TV show. And Sarah was what? She was a hundred or vice versa. They were up there. They were really up there. And remember this, I love the fact that Abraham was so like me, he tried to help God out. Well, listen, God, you know, I've waited long enough and if you can't do it, I'm going to find another chick, you know, 75 year old chick. We're going to go for it here. And we create an Ishmael, which he did. Ishmael means what? I don't know either, but it means something significant. I used to know. I'm telling you, it's just starting to happen. You identify, don't you, Gene? You know, when you just can't pull it out anymore. It used to be there. But he tried to create God's promise and he didn't work. And you all know that story. It's in Genesis 15 and following. Look what it says here. Verse 20 of chapter four. The promise ultimately came when verse, he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. Now you can say, amen. See, now we see that your growth, your achievement, your ministry, your advancing of the kingdom, your fulfillment rests on God's power to fulfill his promises to you and your ability to believe them. Not on your ability to try to generate, God doesn't need you to put the staging in place to do it. You're saying, well, don't I work? I just sit around and say, I believe God, I believe God. No. You just do what he tells you to do. Very simply, you respond by faith. Understand, we're not saying inactivity here, passivity. We're saying, though, that faith is what moves God. Faith is what tears down mountains and moves obstacles. Faith is what gives us salvation. Not works, not helping God out, not trying harder. Now on Sunday's message coming up, I'm gonna be giving you some very specific things that you can do. If you're like me, I say, I gotta do something. I'm gonna give you ways to help build your faith to stay out of the ruts. But I want you to see, very, very important. All right, in Roman numeral three now, let's go on here. All sinners are offered this free gift, every single one of us. Look at that. Verse 22, this righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. Aren't you glad today that Lutherans who lived in a state of confusion for 30 years can believe Christ? Aren't you glad that people who never went to church can believe Christ? I'm so glad I'm going to India just 10 or 11 days from now, and 900 million people can all come to Christ if they just believe. God would never say, well, you were a Hindu, you can't do it. Listen, there's a lot of people today who think that they just could never do that. You know, they were so messed up, they already had something that didn't work. Everyone who believes can come. Now I wanna kinda draw things near a conclusion here. I wanna give you four key concepts in understanding this salvation as a gift message, folks, because I believe some of us still haven't grasped this. And it's so important when it comes to sharing your faith with people, people who think going to church doesn't cause them to be accepted by God. All right, four things. Here we go. Four key concepts. The first one is substitutionary atonement. See, now we're getting theological. I see a couple of our seminary guys saying, hey, finally getting some meat in this church. We need to know these things. The second one, imputed righteousness. The third, propitiation. And the fourth, justification. Don't shrink back from these things. Every Christian needs to know what these things are because it makes a difference in how you live your life. I wanna give an illustration. Are we ready? Teresa, are you ready here? Where are you? I wanna bring out a typical sinner. Here we go. All right, the cross is, I'm sorry if it's a little hard for you to see over here. Here's Teresa. The typical North Way sinner for Teresa. Now, what we know is that God cannot accept her in this condition. Those red stains indicate her sin. And, you know, looking to me like maybe she was batting about 127 in her life. But something significant happens here. And Teresa, I want you to help me. You came to a place in your life when you realized you couldn't make it. You weren't gonna bat 1,000 and live an error-free life. So you said, I've gotta turn and trust Christ. Now, folks, substitutionary atonement means this. It means that God looks down and he sees her condition and my condition and your condition, and he says, well, there's gotta be a solution. There's gotta be a price paid for those sins. I don't know, God just doesn't say, oh, who cares? Now, we as parents sometimes, our kids will do something wrong, and what do we say? Well, you know, no big deal. You know, we can get another dish, whatever. We can buy another car, whatever the kid ruined, you know? But God looks at sin, and you see God's holy, and sin is an affront to God. So God looks at these things, and someone's gotta pay for your sins, Teresa. Now, watch this, folks. Because what God did, this could take me a little bit longer than I expected. All right, you can take off some, too, just to give me a hand, all right? God said, I'll take these sins, every single one of them, and I'll come and put them right here. See, every single one. That's why Isaiah 53, verse six says, he laid upon the suffering servant, what? The iniquities of us all. You see, dear ones, what Jesus did for us is to take our sin, yours and mine, and the sins of all who would come to him, and put them on Jesus. And you see, second Corinthians 521 says, he who knew no sin, listen, became sin. That the righteousness of God might be made known to us. Now, something very significant happened. There's one more here to take off, and we've got this. That's okay, I guess not. See, this is substitutionary atonement, and what this means is, this is why Jesus sat on the cross that day. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Because, you see, in that moment, he was separated. God could not accept him with this sin. And so the atonement, the substitutionary atonement means that Jesus was your sin substitute. But the second thing that Romans chapter three tells us was, that he also imputed righteousness to us, and we'll use this white robe, which is a little symbolic, if you know in scripture. It talks about robes of righteousness being given to the saints in Revelation. And the amazing thing about our God, brothers and sisters, is not just that he takes our sin, but he then says, the life that I give you is a righteous and pure and holy life. You see, I've taken away the errors that you made, but I also am giving you the 1,000 batting average. You see, the reason why Jesus' life is so important was because he lived a perfect life. You'll never do that, but by faith, you receive his perfect life. That's why the Bible says, when God looks down at you, he looks at you as though you never sinned. And I'll say, amen. Isn't that something? And the thing that most Christians miss is they see themselves like miserable sinners. God sees you by faith. He sees you in the robe of righteousness. I don't know about you, but boy, I sure love Jesus when I think about that. I sure love a God who loved me so much that he'll take everything I ever did and put it on the cross. And then, he didn't leave me naked. He gave me that wonderful, beautiful robe. Thanks, Teresa. Isn't that an exciting, beautiful thing? Now, propitiation simply means that what God did was for real. It says in my Bible, verse 24 to 25, God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement. And in King James, that word propitiation means a legitimate sacrifice. In other words, one that really counted. What is this talking about? Well, it simply means this. Propitiation means that what God did counted it for real. It was a real sacrifice. It was real righteousness. That means that no other man could do it. That's why the Moonies and that's why the other cultists, that's why their whole thing breaks down is because no other man could do that for us. No other man ever batted a thousand or lived an error-free life. Moon never did or Muhammad never did. Only Jesus. And that means then that we can be justified. And I think Pastor Scott gave us a very good definition last time. Just as if I never sinned. That's what it means to be justified. It means that God looks at us perfectly pure. You say, well, how come then when I do wrong things and I fail and I sin, I feel so miserable? I feel like God doesn't want to be with me. Well, listen to this because this is where a lot of us struggle. Why? Has God changed how he sees you? So who has the problem here? Remember that your sin shuts the door on your side so that you can no longer believe it. It hasn't changed how God sees you. But you just can't believe it anymore because the sin has created this smoke screen where you can't believe it anymore. And if you don't confess that sin every day and get cleansed afresh, you live in that definition. It's a feed mentality. And that's why it's so wonderful that we can come every single day and be cleansed afresh by the blood of the lamb. Roman numeral four, salvation and life in Christ must be personally appropriated. You must decide to receive it every day, every moment. You know the best time to repent? When's the best time to repent? Every time you think about it. When you need, when something comes to your mind, I mean the moment something comes out of your mouth, something, an action, a thought, a deed, whatever, comes out, right then, repent. Don't wait until that night to kind of clear the decks. I love someone who's sensitive enough to say, you know, hey, I just, I'm sorry I just lost my temper. I'm sorry that I just, you know, smashed into your car for the sixth time or whatever happened. And I'm sorry I'm gonna just punch you one time and get this out of my system. No, you see, repentance, that's what it means to be soft-hearted is the minute God convicts, you respond. I have to say, that's a good definition of maturity. The moment God convicts, you respond. The gap between God convicting and you responding, well, that's rebellion, that's immaturity. And that's how we grow in faith as well, by appropriating what God has given. Now, let me conclude with this. How many here tonight just feel a little bit more thankful for what God's done for you? No, isn't it wonderful what God's done for us? But here's the scary part. You can just close your outline up. Well, here's the last sentence. This is incredible news for a sinful world. And I wanna leave us with this thought before we come to worship the Lord together. You see, most of the people that you see in the workplace and in your neighborhoods and in your family times, stay with me, most of them do not understand that Jesus died to take their sin and that He wants to give them a robe of righteousness. They think that they're gonna earn their way. They think that they're gonna deserve it somehow. They think that by being part of such and such a church that they are automatically in. Folks, listen to me. You've got to tell them. You've gotta tell them about this great gift. You gotta tell them that God wants to give them a gift. I looked this up, by the way. If your Bible's still open, let's look at it if you're not just gonna read it. It says, we're justified freely by His grace. It says in this version, in the RSV, it says, justified as a gift by His grace. How much does a gift cost? What do you have to do for a gift? Now, hear me well as I conclude here. Most of you here tonight have already received that gift. Most of you here have already realized that you were batting about 138 and committing 150 errors a week. And you said, God, I need you to take my sins and give me a robe. Most people have not discovered that. And week by week, I stand up here and tell you, church, God has put an anointing upon you to go out and invite people to come in here for you to share with them right where they are. But there's only one way. No one else is ever gonna make it by batting 1,000 or committing an error of free life. But they can make it as a free gift. And I wanna ask us tonight, are you doing what you can do? Are you really thinking about, are you supporting the ministries that are out there to touch people? When are we gonna rise up in one accord and say, God, I'm gonna give my best efforts? I'm gonna sacrifice. If Jesus could take my sin, then I can certainly take a little bit of the rejection or the scorn or the misunderstanding. Even for the one that might say, I understand, I see, I receive. As we worship these next moments together, could I ask you also to present to the Lord the names of the people that you're praying will one day respond? And just let your worship be an act of intercession. Would you do that? Pastor Scott and the worship team's gonna come and lead us now. And let's stand, shall we? And let's ask the Lord to create that sense of intercession even as we worship together. Let's come before the Lord.