Gospel—Stephen Rule
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We begin this evening by singing #14 #14 on the hymn sheet in front of you.
Are you lost in the blood?
Are you hot in my life?
I'm trying to get to watch blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Turn with me to Romans chapter 4.
We'll read a few verses there. Romans chapter 4 and verse 6.
Once four and verse 6, even as David also describeth the blessedness.
Of the man unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works.
But I want a subject that's been on my heart for a week or so. Is this subject of righteousness without works? What is God's righteousness?
How is it extended to you or do you bring it to him? What is righteousness without works? What is God talking about? It says in this verse the blessedness, the blessedness of the man. The next verse says verse seven saying blessed.
Are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered? And the next verse that says blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin says blessedness. In the first verse it says blessed. In the second verse we read, it says blessed. In the third verse we read, God has a message for you because God has a heart for you.
God has a heart for you because He wants to.
Place you in a place before him of love, of holiness, of acceptance. A place where he can.
In our terms, give you a hug forever and let you know the love that's in His heart for you, His purpose for you is to bless you. And three times in these verses it spoke of blessedness, blessed and blessed, but it also speaks of righteousness.
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What is righteousness? We'll look at it this evening. In fact, we'll spend a fair amount of time on what isn't righteousness, because the particular person on my heart this evening is somebody who has sat in a gospel meeting many times. You could probably give the gospel quite effectively and accurately, but the Spirit of God has yet to.
Man, I shouldn't put it that way.
You have yet to yield to the working of the Spirit of God. In your heart. You know the facts, but you can get through a meeting like this and you can get on and you're relieved.
Want to describe the person, what may be going on inside you at the moment? Because you're the one that's on my heart this evening. But I'm going to give you an example that applies to believers. And if you're a believer in this room, this could have much of the message this evening should directly apply to you as well.
And there was a situation in my life where I was disobedient to the Lord. The Lord had asked me. I wasn't going to be specific. I'll be specific. I knew at the age of 12 That it was very clear to me that the Lord was calling me to remember Him at his table. And that's not my subject this evening. But I want to describe what went on in my heart.
Because perhaps it's going on in your heart this evening when you don't know Christ.
Every single time we would read for the next 5 years, I didn't take my place at the Lord's table until I was 17. And every single time we sang hymn on Lord's Day that had anything to do with remembering the Lord specifically spoke of it. I kind of hoped that no one was looking in my direction because that was something that was obvious and outward that I wasn't doing.
But maybe you've been able to get away with it.
Because people think that you're a believer and the Spirit of God is knocked on your door before he's spoken to you before you haven't listened and He's speaking to you in these meetings. And perhaps in the prior meeting, there was some word there. There was something there that spoke to your heart and you knew that you're not right with Him, but you were able to ignore it. And people can't look into your heart.
Tonight I want to allow, if you will, that the Spirit of God would look into your heart.
And expose what's there. Not because he's here to make you feel bad.
But if you're hanging on to something that causes you to refuse to reach out and receive from Him, then you're hanging on to something that's keeping you from Christ. So let's turn to another verse where these verses that we read in Romans were quoted from in Psalm 32.
We just read was it said in the first verse we read as David referred to David. This is a Psalm of David, Psalm 32.
Earth One says.
Blessed is he.
Whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered? Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile, that is, there's nothing.
That has to be in hiding.
I don't say you've robbed the bank. I assume you haven't. I don't say you've stolen from your parents wallet or from someone else's. Perhaps you have, perhaps you haven't.
But is there any cloud between your heart and the heart of the God who loves you? Is there something there that you've held back and you're hiding it? It says here the expression was and blessed verse two at the end of the verse, and in whose spirit there is no guile and David goes on to say, when I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring.
All the day long you've heard the message you, who I'm addressing, heard on my heart tonight. You've heard the message of the gospel before, and it may be that your bones have roared and you've quieted them. It may be that there's been conviction from the Word of God and it's pressed down on you and you've pushed back on it. I did it for five years in another area.
You can be a believer seated in this room. There may be something burning on your conscience.
00:10:01
And you push back on it. It says there's blessedness in having it all out in the open before God, nothing hidden, nothing covered. It says in verse four, for day and night thy hand was heavy upon me. My moisture is turned into the drought of summer. Selah. And verse 5, David says.
I acknowledged my sin unto thee.
And my iniquity have I not hid. It's my prayer for you tonight before you walk out of here, that you can say, not because of words you heard here, you've heard the gospel over and over and over again, but because God by his Spirit has pressed that word into your heart, you can say, I acknowledged my sin unto thee, unto God.
And the last verse of the Psalm says?
Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice ye righteous, and shout for joy all ye that are upright in heart. You might know what the righteousness of God is.
Burdens partly on my heart because my grandfather.
Preached many hundreds of times, perhaps thousands of times from platforms like this. Grew up in a Christian home. You grew up with parents who loved him. He grew up with parents who had good training for him and.
He could clearly state the gospel. In fact, he said, up through the age of 12, if some friend on the playground had argued with him about the Bible or about the gospel, he could have explained it to them.
And he would have.
But at the age of 12, it was without Christ, without the rights, and without any sense of the righteousness of God as having.
But applicable to him.
He was lost. He was on his way to hell.
There are many here in this room who have godly parents who love you. Many here in this room you could explain the gospel.
What, I ask you, are you like my grandfather without Christ? Maybe 12, maybe older than 12, maybe younger, but you know the word of God.
So what God does is He's provided an instrument to look into our hearts, and we'll use that first.
And then we'll turn to what Christ has done. It's provided an instrument to look into our hearts. My son's involved in learning welding, getting training and welding. So the little I know, I've learned through him or watched a training video that he'd like to share. And apparently you can have a really good quality Weld. You can have one that looks nice on the surface, looks good.
But I guess if it's a really important situation if you have an oil pipeline.
And you want to know that that Weld is quality. You need to, if you're a person in training, you might get a bend test on your Weld. But if it's out in the field there, you need an X-ray of it to look on the inside. Because you can get a good bottom level root pass and it might look good there. And you can have a cap on top and it might look good. But somewhere in the middle there, there's some bubbles at a key point and it weakens that Weld.
Under pressure it breaks and you can have your oil pipeline and it can snap in the field and there's tremendous consequences.
Because of something hidden in there, but the X-ray brings it out. Well, suppose that you were a window washer in the Burj Khalifa. I understand. Still the tallest building in the world, 2716 1/2 feet tall. 163 stories. And for this example, we'll only put you 100 stories up.
And you're got a nice harness and you double check that and there's a chain there to hold you.
Up. You didn't bother to check that one. It's got to be good look kind of looks good.
And so you go out and you're hanging there.
Which of those links is expendable?
Which one would you say? Well, I've got, I've got eight or nine of them are pretty good. One or two of them are.
Well, maybe they're a little sketchy, but who cares?
You have to have every single one. You want 100% quality in that circumstance. Maybe if you're towing your little brother in a wagon in the backyard and you have the 10 lengths, you might say one or two are little sketchy.
00:15:08
I'm not concerned, and maybe that's the kind of attitude you've brought all the way along with what God sees of you. But early this week I read a quote and been coming back to my mind a lot this week in a secular context. It was about business owners and the quote was you can't read the label from inside the bottle.
And for the business owner, the idea was that you're uniquely unqualified to have an outsider's view of what people think of your business.
The quote's been going through my mind. You and I are uniquely unqualified for giving a proper judgment of what we are in the sight of others, let alone in the sight of God. So let's turn to some questions that God uses to probe the heart to show what's in there. Let's turn back to Romans chapter 2.
I'll read the principle of it and then just a few questions.
Romans, chapter 2.
I'm going to read the first verse of Romans 2. Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judges. For wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself, for thou the judgest doest the same things.
Would like to use a couple verses a little further down in the chapter, but just look at the principle there.
Have you ever accused your brother, your sister, your mom or your dad at least in your thoughts of lying?
Maybe it was an adult and they said something and you thought for a moment and you said, eh, don't think so.
Don't think so.
You're saying in your own morality, you're saying it's wrong to lie.
You're looking on them and you're judging, and you're saying it's wrong to lie.
Have you ever in the workplace? Perhaps you work in a?
I'm sure work in a fast food place and the rules of the fast food place got explained to you during training and you're allowed X amount of food and you can have it after the shift. I don't know what they're all different in different restaurants, but suppose in your place you're allowed to buy the food at half price and you see a colleague and the first day of work and there's that leftover hamburger there and it's 10 minutes to closing and they're just going to.
Throw it away anyway. They told you not to eat those. But the colleague picks it up and eats it and says, ah, we do this all the time here. And you think to yourself, you just had your training the day before. You think to yourself, oh, but that's stealing. My parents would call that stealing. That's stealing.
It's turned down in the chapter.
To verse 21.
Now talking to a different group of people than at the beginning of the chapter, but the principles are the same.
An instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, which asks the form of knowledge and of the truth. And the Thou therefore, which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? Thou that preachest a man should not steal.
Dustile steel.
Thou that preaches a man should not steal.
Dost thou steal?
A meal, a string, and then illustrate. I'm going to illustrate again.
We lived in Ecuador for six years, lived in a neighborhood kind of far from the downtown. We frequently caught buses. We frequently caught taxis. We didn't have our own vehicle. It was a taxi stand in the neighborhood. And when it wasn't convenient to catch a bus, we caught a taxi at that taxi stand. And there are certain places you had to go regularly and in the taxis there.
It's probably been more than 40 years since I've been in a taxi in the United States that I can remember, so I have.
You've probably been in one here. I don't know how it works, but there they have a taxi meter with these big red numbers, and it starts out at a certain number fixed by the government. And there's the dollar value. They use the dollar, the US dollar there. There's a dollar value on the meters. And when you start up the taxi, that dollar value should be showing. And then as you're driving, that meter is running.
00:20:15
If you're going quickly down a high speed Rd. it's moving quickly.
If you're sitting stopped in traffic, it goes fairly slow, and so there's a little bit of a variety in how much you have to pay from where we lived to where we needed to go toward the downtown.
But there was a fairly narrow range and I don't remember it, we'll say it was about 225 to 265, unless traffic was really horrible and then it might have hit about $3. Not bad.
So he hopped in the taxi and the whole way there I always liked to talk to the taxi drivers and kind of make conversation. I figured it gave sometimes it gave an opportunity for the gospel. At the very least, I felt if you gave him a gospel tract at the end, they were a little more receptive because you showed interest in them as a person.
So we're talking with the taxi driver and the hallway there. He saw our appearance, assumed that we were tourists because we hadn't seen him before. It wasn't one of the regulars at the taxi stand. So the whole way there, he was talking about our country and how corrupt our country is and our bankers. Our bankers are all, they're terrible. You know, they run off to Miami, they take the money and they shuttle it around and they're off to Miami. And if they don't go there, the judges, they're taking money and.
And they're taking money on this side and they're getting away with it. And he went on and on and on about the big corruption. This kind of stuff you could read on the front page of the newspaper. And I imagine he felt pretty good educating the tourists. We'd lived there several years.
We got to the location the meter should was normal traffic should read about 2:50 or something. The meter read around 4:50. And I'd been watching it. I'd been watching it go and go and go and go and go and wondering all through this corruption lecture what he'd have to say. And I pointed out a few things to him and told him how much I was willing to pay. And he said.
He accepted it without a complaint. He knew exactly what he'd been doing. There's places you can go and you can get those taxi meters fixed and they'll run quicker and you'll have a little switch underneath and you can just hit that little switch. And if the person doesn't know what they're doing, well.
They had the money anyway.
How many crops in that taxi?
There was more than one corrupt person in that taxi. Let me ask you a question.
It's money, the only thing you steal.
It says and I'll read it again here.
Thou that preachest a man should not steal.
Dost thou steal? Do you steal?
What do you have that doesn't belong to you that you just take anyway? Let me give a different example.
Suppose you are working in that fast food place and you're being paid by the hour, and when you're on break, you talk with your fellow employees, people around your age, and you're.
They're paying just over minimum wage and this is hard work.
But you got trained and you do the work and you're not. You're not taking money. You're not even taking that hamburger.
If the owner of the franchise were there and the owner of the franchise were present or the guy that trained you, if there's no customers in there, then, well, I mean, you should be wiping down the tables. You should be sweeping up. You should be. Aren't there things you're supposed to do under those circumstances? I mean, there's no customers in there. It really, it's not like the lunch rush or anything like that, but there's jobs to do that you got told we're supposed to do. But the manager.
The owner's not there.
Thou that preaches the man should not steal.
Dost thou steal?
It's convenient for me to stand here because I can. I can step on your conscience, right? And I can skip any examples that cover myself. I'm going to give you another example. Remember, when you waste what is not yours, I believe it's stealing. You're taking what's not yours. Isn't that the very definition of theft? You can't keep it down to just money, right? Or a cookie, or some physical good.
00:25:04
When I was.
Teacher.
In the 90s, taught in the Chicagoland area and there was, I wasn't paid by the hour, but I had a contractual obligation. During that contractual obligation, I was there from whatever it was. I don't even remember. We mauled the teachers at school, arrived earlier and left later, but I think it ran 7:45 to 3:45 and you had to be there in the school during that period of time and after that period of time.
You got a little extra.
And I worked it out with my wife. It worked better if I just got everything done at school and then came home and focused on everything at home.
So I would often leave there after five or something like that. I didn't enjoy grading and so.
By setting up a lab test, some creative new activity way of explaining things that was very enjoyable. But grading, grading was awful. You had to find out that you had explained this to somebody three times and Mike Cho still didn't understand it and you just why? I've been through this over and over again. Why?
So it was, it was emotionally stressful in a funny kind of way to sit there and go through paper after paper. And occasionally, you know, you get this little jolt of joy and wow, finally.
But that was that was painful. So they had in the room, which was kind of they just gotten in a year or so before they had educational cable. So there was C-SPAN in the room and I have a distinct memory of one day, just one is sound in the background, right. So you have C-SPAN going and it was.
A history panel somewhere in Washington, DC and somebody had written Daniel was his name. Don't know his last name.
But Daniel had written this book on eliminationist anti-Semitism and you can imagine it was exciting. He was being interviewed by a panel of professors on his theory on eliminationist anti-Semitism. And we'll share a lot better than grading.
And there's that professor from Notre Dame, and he's standing up and he's kind of given the professors on the on the panel A hard time because they were given the other guy a hard time, but they weren't using evidence. And he was defending the fact that they were doing a terrible job. He'd brought U.S. history students here, and I could probably give you a few of the facts from it because that was a whole lot better than.
But oh so let's see, no plus one. I didn't get that man. Short shrifted the grading. I still got home on time.
You can't relate, Kenya.
You've never done that with your phone?
You've never taken what wasn't yours time wise and wasted it, have you? Fewer.
There's one who's pure and when he looks from outside that bottle, that label says guilty before God. I want to give you. There's two more questions here, by the way, and it was quite an encouragement to me the first reading this morning. Our brother Matt stood up and he gave a wonderful little very brief.
Heartwarming talk on the first of those, the second of the questions, so I'm going to skip over it.
The end of the second reading, he got up and gave another heartwarming little talk on the third of the questions here. And so he's covered them nicely if they weren't spoken to. Touch your conscience, I'm sure that the Spirit of God can take that in. Touch your conscience with it because it's been covered already today. I want to go to one more before we turn to the beautiful side of the subject.
The next one is just for a verse for connection that's in Titus.
Chapter One.
Just have to turn the tiger.
That is chapter one and verse 2.
In hope of eternal life, which God that cannot lie? It's a wonderful statement. God that cannot lie.
00:30:00
So to finish this section, what's on my heart, I just want to ask you, in the language of Romans 2, you that say that lying is wrong?
Have you ever lied?
Well, I mean, not a big one.
Let's turn to John, chapter 12. I'm going to tie these two together.
John, Chapter 12.
And I'll read from verse 3, just for a little context.
John chapter 12 and verse 3 then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair, and the house was filled with the odor of the ointment. And saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, which should betray him.
Why was not this ointment sold for 300 pence and given to the poor? I'm going to stop there.
Why was not this ointment sold for 300 pence and given to the poor?
Is that a lie?
You know I have.
A strong doubt that Judas ever went up to Peter and told him about the tuna he caught on the Sea of Galilee.
You know, topped top Peter's story of bringing in a bunch of stuff in his net. Well, what about the tuna that I got?
I'm pretty confident Judas didn't bring that up.
In fact, Judas hadn't done anything that allowed any of the other disciples.
To detect what was going on inside him. And so when Judas says that, is that a lie? Why was not this ointment sold for 300 pence and given to the poor?
I'm just asking, it's just a question.
Simple question. In fact, I care about the poor.
But the one running the X-ray machine on Judas's heart gives us the next verse too. And the next verse says this. He said, not that he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief, and had the bag and bear what was put therein.
Judas's question was a lie because he was hiding the motive of his heart, and the motive of his heart was to take from whatever that sale would have been.
And pocket some of it. Sure, he didn't pocket all of it, but he was covetous. He held the bag, and if the money passed through the bag, he could get something.
Maybe you could sell it for 320 pence. 300 would go in the bag, 20 in his pocket. I don't know, but Judas question didn't fool the eye of God Judas question, as simple as it sounds.
Didn't fool the eye of God, it passed the disciple test.
Perhaps it passed the Judas test, but it didn't pass the X-ray test of God. Judas was guilty before God.
Let me turn to what it says on the outside of all of our bottles. We can't read the label from inside the bottle.
What God says from outside us is a perfect description of what's on the inside. Turn to Romans chapter 3.
Romans, chapter 3.
Verse 19.
Now we know that what things soever the law saith, saith to them who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.
If you're attempting tonight to present your own rightness to God. If you're attempting in your thoughts or you haven't even thought about it.
And think that you can appear in the presence of God exactly as you are right now, and present what you've done. Have you ever said that it's wrong to lie? Have you ever said that it's wrong to steal?
00:35:09
Have you ever done either in the slightest degree?
God says whether you agree that you have or not. God says guilty before God.
The label on your bottle says guilty.
That's not the gospel and I want to change now.
It's a necessary part of the message. It's a necessary way, the reason God gave us the law to detect, to expose, to be an X-ray machine, to show what was on the inside. But that's not as good news. We began with blessedness.
And blessed and blessed. And talking about liars and thieves isn't talking about blessedness and blessed. And I want to take the time we have left to show how God can be absolutely consistent with who He is. He's holy, He's light, and He's loved. And how can He be totally consistent with himself and still accept you into His presence?
That's the righteousness of God, His total, absolutely consistent.
Behavior and taking a person like me and like so many others that are seated here this evening.
And saying you have a place in my holy presence.
It can't do it if we're attempting to come to him, holding out our own righteousness. But if we come, we're going to have to come consistent with who he is, consistent with his character, and that is his good news. I'm going to read in Romans chapter one just very quickly.
Speaking of the Gospel.
Verse 17 The gospel of Christ is mentioned in verse 16. So in verse 17 it says for therein or for in the gospel.
Is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith as it is written?
That just shall live by faith.
I want to talk to you about a person briefly.
And then go to his work. I want to talk to you about the Lord Jesus.
You know, these facts of speaking tonight, the person on my heart doesn't need this instruction as a fact that you've never heard before, but I want you to hear it for the first time, perhaps as pressed into your heart by the Spirit of God. And so let's turn to Psalm 69.
Psalm 69.
Psalm 69 says.
The speaker being.
The Lord Jesus Christ speaking for Voice of Prophecy, prophesying many years before this event and expressing.
His heart.
Verse 4.
They that hate me without a cause or more than the hairs mine head you can't say.
You can't say.
If God calls you guilty before him that you're not but the Lord Jesus could say they that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of my head. They that would destroy me being my enemies wrongfully are mighty.
Then hear these words. Then I restored that which I took Nah away. Here's one who not only wouldn't look on a single second of his master's time as a perfect man here in this world. Forget touching the money that belonged to someone else. He wouldn't touch a second of his master's time.
And here, in this moment, he says.
Not only do I not take, I give back what I didn't take.
That is the Lord Jesus. That's the person that delights God. Here's one. When he looks at you and he looks at me and he slaps the label on our bottle and it says guilty before God, what we are in ourselves, if we were to present it to him, that's the only thing he could say about it. Here's one.
00:40:03
That doesn't just not steal. Here's one that restores what he took not away.
Let's go to the other aspect.
I want to throw this one in. I didn't go through this question because it was covered in the reading, but this aspect wasn't so.
The topic of adultery. I just want to read a verse about the Lord Jesus.
Matthew, Chapter 17.
When the X-ray of the eye of God.
Looks down on the Lord Jesus.
Looks down on him after those 30 years where we have so little written about what he did.
And looks down on what was hidden from our view. And there's a similar expression to this. But in Matthew 17 we get the expression again and this time at the end of his life describing the Lord Jesus as he's about to go to the cross in Matthew 17 and verse 5.
While he yet spake, behold a bright cloud overshadowed them. Behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved son.
In whom I am well pleased bring this up in the subject of adultery that came to me in meditating on it, because.
You can do everything right with your eyeballs and have your brain wrong. You can look away, but not think away.
Or when it comes to this person, every thought, everything on the inside.
Everything was pleasing to God, His Father, that person in his very thoughts, not just in what he did, I can't say it that way. What he did was fabulous in his life, but not only was what he did in his life fabulous, everything that was on the inside was fabulous. And when it was X-rayed by the eye of God.
He gives a conclusion that tells it all.
He says I am well please, this is the one he delights in.
We've gone back to heaven at that moment.
In every right, God would have been righteous.
In receiving him.
Or would I be?
Where would you be?
I want to take you to another verse on the righteousness of God. Turn with me.
To 2nd Corinthians.
Chapter 5.
Before we read it, many of you know what I'm about to read. But before we read it?
I just want you to think about this.
There's this one God, and he's holy. God is absolutely holy.
Can he take you consistent with his holy character?
And bring you into his presence and sit you down there and welcome you to His house.
Is he consistent with himself in taking you?
And your sin and setting you down there.
You've run into people.
And they will. Oh well, he didn't mean it.
Didn't bother me too much, I'll let it go.
I think of that image when projected on the God as the grandfather God.
Looking on dad and mom as a dad and mom raised the children and maybe they were pretty strict and maybe they were kind of made the children toe the lines and I'm speaking stereotypically this certainly isn't true of all but now that they're the grandparents that kind of enjoy the role of.
00:45:01
Taking him out for the ice cream cone instead of saying no, no, that's really not good for you because wow, the eyeballs light up and they're excited and, and well, it makes grandpa feel pretty good, doesn't that when you see the grandson or the granddaughter and those eyeballs light up and the big smile and you know, the mess and the reaction later on.
Our kid kind of deserves it, doesn't he? No, I doubt any of you think that way.
But some people look at God that way. They think God is a God of love and he can be the stereotypical grandfather God. God is holy and to be fully consistent with himself, we need this Second Corinthians 5 verse 21 for he.
Hath made him to be sin for us.
Who knew no sin?
On the cross.
My Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ was made sin for me.
He was treated as hanging there on the cross, as though I were hanging there and in all the awfulness of the things that I've done.
He stood there for me. He was treated as sin.
And now where is he, my savior?
As a glorified man, and he's in heaven, He's there righteously. God had every right to put him there. He was delighted with his work. But there's more than that, it says.
But.
That we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. He did it so that He could be totally consistent with Himself as holy in love, and saying that He wants me and His Son in His presence forever. Can you say that?
Are you seated in this room, hanging on to your own righteousness?
Thinking, daring to think that you could appear before a God who doesn't have a breath of a lie in him. Not just words spoken, but in actions taken absolutely, totally, completely transparent. In fact, they skipped over the verse. I want to read it. It's in John chapter 8. It describes the Lord Jesus, but it describes our God because.
That's who he is.
I love this verse, become one of my favorites in the Word of God.
I'm going to read it from Mr. Darby's translation. I think it's a little more clear. John chapter 8, verse 25.
They said, therefore to him, Who art thou?
Jesus said to them altogether that which I also say to you.
Does that convey to your heart what it does to mine?
Who are you? Everything that I've said to you, who he was and what he said matched 100%.
You might say, well, I'm listening to you this evening, and when you're done and when you're quiet, I can keep going.
But we've also been reading God's Word this evening.
And the one that you will meet someday.
Is 100% exactly what he says he is. Everything he writes in this word is everything that he is. He is totally, absolutely, purely consistent with himself and he will be and how he treats you. And when I appear before him, I'm in a new bottle. The label on my bottle says.
Accept it in the beloved Do I feel it perfectly? No, I don't. But I'm inside the bottle. And remember, we're uniquely unqualified to give all the right thoughts. When you're inside that bottle, you can't read the label correctly. So who labeled that bottle? God did.
My bottle says accept it in the bloat. My bottle says right here what it says here and back. I guess I've turned over, but back in Second Corinthians chapter 5, it says we're made to righteousness of God. No, it says we're made the righteousness of God in Him. It's anchored in that person and that is how I can appear before God.
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Why? Because he's delighted with his son.
He is absolutely, totally, completely satisfied with who his Son is and with what his Son has done. That is how you can appear before God.
I want to turn to.
One of the scripture related to that in Psalm 22.
This is another scripture. In just the last few years it's become very precious to me.
Psalm 22.
I'm just going to read the 1St 3 verses.
My God, my God, why as thou forsaken me, why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?
Oh my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not, and in the night season, and I'm not silent, but thou art holy, O thou that inhabit us, the praises of Israel.
You're familiar with these words. You know that they were spoken. My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me from the cross?
Those hours of darkness at the end.
I love this little word.
My if I'm that word over and over again in the Psalm, trace it out. My, me, mine as he speaks. But I love it in that first expression he says, my what distance was he putting between himself and God? You know when somebody is hurting you.
What do you do?
Somebody stomps on your toe, What's the reflex?
And you yank the toe back.
I was mowing in the garden, didn't know we had a nest of yellow jackets a couple weeks ago and mowed right past them and they followed me and stung me four times. It was the instant reaction. Slap away and get rid of that thing that was attacking me.
And then take care of the source of it.
But the first reaction is to get away from that pain, right?
Sometimes it's words, and perhaps you've been hurt by the words. Perhaps you've been injured by the words of someone who they do love you.
But they've said something that hurts.
It's hard and it's hard to take.
You shrink back.
And you change just a little bit, and you protect yourself from more hurt, right?
But this is perfect man do when he's being made sin for me.
This perfect man, as it were, reaches out and he says my God. He doesn't say you God, He says my God. And in that word there's an expression of the perfection of that man as he was being made sin for me.
And when God looks at him now, and he looks at the Lord Jesus Christ, and he says.
What won't I give to someone who's in him?
I can give anyone anything, anything consistent with myself to one who's in Him. I want to finish with these verses because my bottle says accepted and the Beloved, but it's the end that matters. So I'm just going to read from Ephesians 1.
Their precious verses, you know them, but just to emphasize.
This is what he is worth.
Going to read a few of the verses there.
Umm.
Ephesians one and verse three. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ? What has He given? Every spiritual blessing? Why? Because Christ is worth it and I'm in Him.
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My address doesn't say guilty before God, it says in Christ and Christ is worth it. What does your address say?
The next verse, according as He hath chosen us.
In him.
He chose me. He chose me in His Son, in Him before the foundation of the world. That we should be What? Just like Him, holy and without blame before Him in love. Just like Him, holy and without blame before Him in love.
I'm going to skip down to verse six. To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted.
In the beloved.
I'm going to write something on here.
That's our time.
Comes to an end.
If you're close enough to read it, maybe you can help me. Jared, what does it say?
Says my righteousness.
There one of you in the room this evening that in figure has it clutched in your hand.
And God wants to be able to express his righteousness, his estimation of his son to you. He would like to take you from if I can beat the figure to death, he'd like to take you from in the bottle that says guilty before God because that's what he sees written on it. And he'd like to move you to in Christ before him and all he asks.
Is for you to reach out and take it. That's it. Receive. It doesn't ask you to give him anything.
What do I need to do to receive a gift with my right hand?
I need to open it up and let go and receive.
That's what he would ask you to do tonight.