Address—P. Jennings
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We can start our meeting tonight, basically #51 in the appendix.
What a gift the Father gave me. He still just trying to save poor ruined guilty man by sin. He fired. I'm done.
Wool. I was lost. I am lost.
In.
All the way, and we pray.
Till God and mercy.
And turn close.
Well, I only see maybe one individual here that wasn't here.
Earlier on, so we won't do a whole lot of.
Review but we.
We noticed that last meeting that the good news that God has for man is concerning his Son Jesus Christ and so.
We're going to be speaking tonight about the gospel, about salvation and.
We're going to see that there are varying aspects of this salvation and that it is a, it's a complete salvation and so.
God's plan.
Purpose to take us from that condition that we just sung about and which we're going to spend some time reviewing.
We're going to spend a little time looking in the rearview mirror tonight.
God wants us to look through the windshield. Most of the time He wants to see what is before us, but sometimes we need to take a look in the rearview mirror and see where we've been and who we were.
My desire.
For the Lord's people, and this has been an exercise for quite a few years, is that in the ministry that the Lord has given me concerning setting forth the truth of the gospel? It is my desire to show the Saints of God who they are.
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And we learn who we are.
In Romans.
We learn. We learn what we used to be if we've accepted the Lord Jesus as our Savior in the first three chapters of Romans, but then after that, God sets before us how he sees us.
And you and I have the right.
And are at liberty before God to live our lives understanding what we are in Christ and so.
God doesn't spend much time with the rearview mirror in front of us, but He does in the first three chapters of Romans and parts of the first three chapters only part of them. But before we get, you might say to what we were, let's just read a few verses as to this wonderful message.
Of the gospel, so we.
We really left off.
At verse 16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew 1St and also to the Greek.
So we're reminded once again of this ministry that has been given to the apostle Paul and he had a very, very clear understanding of what this good news had brought his own soul before God into. He realized that the salvation that came through the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ was a complete.
Salvation.
It was total deliverance.
And so.
He entered in at least as much as we can enter in. We know God enters into it so much more because he sees the value of the person and the value of that work far greater than we can. But he says.
What the Spirit of God has brought home to my soul about the gospel of Christ, there's no way I can be ashamed of it. And you know we might.
Be slow before our fellow man to witness about the gospel. We may be slow to tell our fellow neighbors and our work associates.
About their true condition before God and their need of a Savior. Sometimes we may shrink from identification with the name of the Lord Jesus, and that's a sad thing. It shows our weakness, and it also shows that we don't realize just what He had, what means to us. But the more we're brought into the value of this work, the more we taste of its.
Its deliverance, the left were ashamed of it. You know, I find it a joy to spend whatever time and opportunities the Lord gives me to set these truths. You know, there are those who preach the gospel, and I appreciate those who preach the gospel because they have a longing for the salvation of souls. But there are those that God has put in the body of.
To teach the gospel. And ever since I was in my 20s, it's been my desire to teach the gospel. And so thank you for coming tonight.
I realized that you could have had other things to do, but you've given me another opportunity to set the truths of the gospel before the Lord's people, and I trust that the effect of it will be through this series, whenever that is finished or takes place, that there will be.
A greater appreciation of the work of Christ and that there will be a sense of greater liberty and deliverance because of what we have brought out in this, in this these chapters in Romans. And so the apostle Paul, he wasn't ashamed of the gospel of Christ because it was the power of God now.
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You and I were in and we're going to see the condition that we were in. We were in a lost, ruined condition. We have illustrations in the gospel of those who were, they were paralyzed. They were lame. They they were, they were unable to do anything for themselves as far as their healing. And that was our condition in our sense.
We had no we were powerless.
Now some of us that were born and raised in a Christian home, we may not feel just how powerless we were, but we could never have remedied the condition of our fallen.
Position in as a children of that we could never remedy that but.
God had a plan.
And it was through.
A person and the work of the Lord Jesus on the cross where he could display his power in bringing about a salvation that not only would deliver us from the power from the from the penalty of our sins. That is what God required as to the payment.
For the offenses?
That a holy God.
Demands for sin we don't quite have a very good understanding of what it takes for him to be satisfied as to the question of sin. There has to be judgment, and then at the cross that judgment was fully.
Meted out God in all of his fury and all of His wrath. Laid stroke upon stroke of His judgment.
On his son as he demanded a price.
For our sentence, why we we just cannot even fathom what it took for his his his righteous demands to be satisfied. We can't even enter into it, but we know it happened because the Lord Jesus knew exactly what the Holy God would demand as to the question of sin and when it was through.
He was the first to say it is.
Finished. And so this left God with the power.
Of salvation, the ability to bring us into not only deliverance from the penalty of our sins, but salvation goes way, way farther than that. Often times when we preach the gospel, we only preach the aspect of deliverance from the penalty. We want souls to be saved, and we want them to be delivered from the consequences of.
Judgment. And so it is urgent to present that side of the gospel. But that is only, you might say, one aspect of salvation.
And so you have the deliverance from the penalty and you have the deliverance from the power. Deliverance from the power is a subject in in all in itself. Deliverance from the penalty takes us up to Romans 5, verse 12. Deliverance from the power takes us from verse 12 of Romans 5 on in through chapter 8.
And it's a beautiful, beautiful subject which I can't wait.
To be able to open up to you because that's the side of the gospel and the salvation and the deliverance that were so slow to understand. The reason why we're slow to understand is we get mixed up as to who the person is that brings the deliverance. We spend so much time in our own.
Fleshly attempts to try to deliver ourselves from the power of sin.
God never planned that city. And so we're going to see when we get into that portion of the of the deliverance, we're going to see that God immediately presents the person of the Lord Jesus.
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And he he sets Christ as the one who brings deliverance from the power of sin. I can't go into that. We also have deliverance from the law. So you know us by nature, we and you know, I'm when I, when I speak of and, and as we go through the book of Romans, I will be speaking about deliverance from the law, but I'm not pointing.
Anyone. There's a brother in our meeting that used to say if you point your finger at somebody, you have 3 pointing back at you. I know you've all heard it, but it's so very true that we all are going to take up a legal method to try to produce righteousness before God. That's our nature. I won't go into that, but please, I want everyone to understand.
That I'm not pointing any fingers when I present the truth of deliverance from law, because we all need it. You could take the.
Of the children of Israel. And God said, I want to bring you blessing. And the children of Israel said, OK, all that you say unto us, we will do. And they said it of 1 accord. Everybody said, you just tell us what to do, we'll do. So that is an indication that that's my heart, that's my tendency. And I think there's probably no one here that would put themselves in any different category. We are by nature.
Are legal.
So I just present this because I love you all. I have nothing to point at in connection with the truths of deliverance in the book of Romans. Therefore all of us and we all need them. And so I just make that point. So we get delivered from the law, then we get delivered from the flesh.
It's a interesting one, isn't it? So this is salvation. God in his, in his plan.
Has made it possible for us to be able to live out from underneath the.
Power of the flesh. Now, I'm not here to tell you that the flesh is burned out or we're dead to the flesh or any of that. Remember what I spoke of yesterday when I said.
That David had rest from all his enemies.
We too can know, at least in truth. We may not always be walking by faith in the enjoyment of the truth that is set before us, but God has provided a way for for we as Christians to be able to walk free from the demands or the the the the empowerment.
Of the flesh.
Ye are not in the flesh. That's what God says. And so when he says that then we want to learn how to begin our lives living in the enjoyment of the fact that we are not in the flesh. Well, the the the opposite of not being in the flesh you have in Romans 8 is being in the spirit.
And so that goes along with the salvation. We're not going to enjoy deliverance.
In our Christian lives, if we don't understand the working and the power of the Spirit of God.
We're not going to get out from underneath the demand the the desires of the flesh if we don't understand the presence and the power of the Spirit of God. Those things go together because the spirit is the energy for my new life. The flesh is the energy of what I wasn't at and so.
This is the gospel.
Brings me into the enjoyment of the deliverance from the flesh.
I get delivered from death.
Spirit of God. He's the same Spirit that raised up Jesus from the dead.
And so there are other deliverances.
I've probably missed some, but we're going to enjoy it when the time comes and so.
I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ because it's deliverance from all of those things that I would never ever have gotten out from under the ******* of. I was enslaved.
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And as a Christian, in my experience, I spent a lot of time struggling to get out from under the influence of those things. It wasn't because the salvation hadn't already been accomplished.
It was that I didn't know how to use what had been accomplished. And so I'm going to give an illustration that may help with this. When I was in my career, I went to work for the school district and I, I walked into a shop. I come from a cabinet shop and I read a lot of cabinet magazines and saw the all the nice machinery that was out on the market and I walked into a cabinet shop.
At school, the school where I got my job, and it didn't really have much. And so I did the best I could for quite some time. And then I went to my boss and said if you want the product that you're asking for, you're going to need to get me equipment that is capable of producing that product. And so he sent me to a trade show, which is, you know, one of the neatest places for any of us to go to enjoy our craft. And I found the saw that I wanted.
It was a sliding table saw. It had a carriage that you put the some of you made. This may be old news and I'm sorry, but it had a carriage. You put the material on and you slid the carriage through the blade. You didn't, you didn't really mess too much with the material. You were kind of just pushing things a little bit and it had two blades. It had a big main blade and had a little scoring blade. So the material hit the scoring blade 1St and it scored the.
Side of the sheep and then the maiden blade came over and it completely cut the sheet and when you turn the sheet over there was no chips there was you could you could run veneer through it there was no splinters it was beautiful and and so we got this machine cost about $18,000 which is a lot of money for a table saw I thought anyway I didn't have to pay for it and so.
I got the machine, we set it up.
And I started using it and I thought, this thing is so high tech, I don't even know how to use it. And I had to call customer service to ask them how to make certain cuts. How do you use this saw because it was so different from what I was used to.
I use this illustration just to help us to understand that we have something in the gospel that is so wonderful.
Is such a full and complete deliverance that we're ignorant as to how it works.
And so we have to have divine instruction through the Holy Spirit to help us to understand actually what has happened through the death, burial and resurrection. We have to understand how we're associated to it. We have to understand how God sees us in our experience, in our feelings.
If we were left to what we think, we'll never understand the deliverance that comes because we'll always be measuring the truth.
By how we feel about it, or will always be measuring the truth by our experience and our experiences up. And it goes down and you stand up for a while and you fail and you fall down. But that's got nothing to do with the salvation that Paul was not ashamed of. It's got nothing to do with the salvation that is connected with God's power.
And So what we need is we need to have it, yes.
Doesn't help to have someone else come along with the Spirit of God has enlightened and it's become a reality in their lives for them to take up these scriptures and to open them up in such a way that the Spirit of God can then take them up in our lives, in our everyday practical experience, and we can understand this deliverance ourselves.
And so Paul found.
Joy, you know, it says in the Corinthians that, he said.
First Corinthians chapter 4. Let's just turn there real quick.
He said I have.
Verse 15. The end of verse 15. For in Christ Jesus I have begotten you.
Through the gospel in Christ Jesus, I have begotten you through the gospel. It was almost as though the effort that the apostle Paul put in bringing up the children of God in Corinth was almost an experience of almost giving birth.
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And he had gone over the, I'm sure he had gone over these truths, unfortunately.
There were things that were hindering their growth and so they couldn't enter into the value of these things because they were putting things in the way and that's not what we want to do and so.
So we see the grace of God, don't we? In verse 16 it says to the Jew first.
And also to the Greek. And so God would would accept the fact that this nation had rejected him. And yet because of the value of the work of Christ, He would, as it were, give that nation the opportunity to come under the blessing of the gospel, to come under its fruit, and he would offer it to them first.
That we know that meant them accepting.
The Lord Jesus as their Messiah, falling under his authority, owning him as Lord and as a nation. They refused. And so it was to the Jew 1St, and it's also to the Greek. And tonight we can say by the grace of God, we all sit here in the enjoyment of the fact that there's been a work of God in our souls and we have accepted the Lord Jesus as our Lord.
And we have come unto the benefit of all of the work of Christ, for therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith. As it is written, the just shall live by faith. And so the cross, the gospel, is the revelation of God's righteousness.
You know there was never a more right display.
On earth and the cross of Christ because God was dealing with sin.
And he dealt with it in the manner which satisfied who he is as a righteous God, and it didn't fall short.
It absolutely satisfied God's need to judge sin, and so you and I can rest.
Absolutely rest in the fact that God is completely satisfied in the question of sin, and how do you and I come into the blessing of it?
By faith on the principle of faith, I use the illustration of.
What was the first sin that took place in the Old Testament? What was the first sin in man's history?
It was.
Man not believing God.
So Adam and Eve, when God gave them instruction, they didn't believe God. They acted contrary to his instruction and God was dishonored. God must be believed. You know, if you and I are going to come into the blessing of the gospel, He has made it first of all for salvation, the salvation of our souls. We have to, we have to believe Him.
You know, it's a wonderful thing. Faith is a gift, isn't it?
Faith is a gift, and we've all received that gift. We've accepted the Lord Jesus as our Savior. We didn't come up with this faith on our own.
We were given a gift and that was what it took. To satisfy God in connection with the principle on which He's going to bring blessing to man is the very principle on which the 1St man rejected him and said, I don't believe you. Now we come into the blessing of this. This really we come into the blessing and the enjoyment of this salvation.
Every day on the principle of faith, so it's on. It's on the principle of faith to all those who exercise faith, so it says, revealed from faith to faith around the principle of faith. So let's understand the principle on which God brings blessing.
It's not my feelings. We've got to get out of measuring things by our feelings.
We have to take God's word for what it is and say.
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I believe it.
Simple faith brings so much blessing. If you and I are going to come into the full extent of the gospel, the deliverance we've been brought into, if the truth is going to set us free, as we brought out in from from John 8.
It says the just shall live by faith.
There's only one principle, taking God's word and believing it.
Even sometimes when we don't, we're having a hard time.
Just believe it because God says it and.
I believe that when we give God the glory of believing Him.
That He causes our faith to grow.
And you know, I don't want to say the Christian life gets easier.
Because it's not something I'm doing that's coming to my credit in some way, but once God proves himself to us and he continues to prove himself to us.
When you have a difficulty or a trial or a test, you just realize, look how faithful he's been in the past.
I can trust him for this one too.
And so although we're we're going from the doctrines to the practical side, I believe they always, they're always they, they always.
Are together we don't ever want to get doctrines at such a point we don't know how to apply it. And so God just wants to be believed, read his word through the guidance of the Spirit of God, come unto the understanding of it and then walk as though it is a reality. Walk as though it affects my life in every aspect and this deliverance, this salvation that Paul wasn't ashamed of will.
To make sense. It will begin to have an effect. It will change our lives. And I can honestly say that through all the struggle and the pain of years of being possibly under teaching, that wasn't very clear.
God, in His own way, has brought the truth of deliverance home to my soul.
And it's by his grace, but it's real. So he to the measure in which faith has been in operation has changed my life. And that's what I want for each of you. If you're struggling in some way, needing deliverance, needing to be set free, you know, one of the most difficult things to be set free from is the law.
Because the law puts demands on us.
And we, it makes obligation upon us and it says there won't be any blessing until you measure up to to that standard. And we by nature, we want to get there, but God says no.
You're in the energy of the first man. I don't work on those principles anymore. I don't bring blessing.
On that, on that basis, you're going to get everything because you're in Christ. And so maybe that was a little diversion. So we as we go into this chapter, what I'm going to do is I'm going to move quickly through the end of the rest of the first chapter. I'm going to move quickly through a trust through the 2nd chapter. I would like to get somewhere.
We only have 25 minutes, but let's talk about this.
God's wrath is revealed from heaven, verse 18, against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth and unrighteousness. Now I think there's different ways to interpret this verse and I only know in part. And so I might give you an interpretation that you don't agree with and that's that's OK.
But I just feel, I believe that God has revealed himself as we see in the rest of this chapter. He's revealed himself.
Through creation, He has shown His eternal power and Godhead.
In the creation that he made, if you want to use an illustration, you can go back to the fact that I spent.
A lot of my time building cabinets and let's say I got a job from one of the principals and I, I, I designed a set of cabinets to meet a certain need and I built it and I went and I installed it. And then I walked away and somebody came along and said, no, that's not evidence that there's a cabinet maker. There's not, that's not evidence that that.
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That there was a designer there's that's not in evidence that there was intelligent.
Involved in this no how that just happened that those those cabinets over millions of years just began to form and all of a sudden they became a complete set of cabinets and we would all laugh wouldn't we? And say that's ridiculous, but that's what man has done to God.
God has built an amazing creation in which all of these, not all of his glory, but an amazing amount of power has been put on display. And man says I know it in his heart, it says.
The for the invisible things in verse 20, because that which may be known of God in verse 19 is manifest in them, for God has showed it unto them. So it's not a question of man not having been shown.
He has been shown to some extent in man's heart. He knows he's responsible to a creator. But.
He ends up turning away from that knowledge, and because he turns away from a God who has revealed himself.
In all of this glory, he also knows that that God has a certain character and that he is responsible to him, and the wrath of God is revealed from heaven. And maybe that was the flood.
Some have linked the flood to this. I don't, I don't try to link things that aren't there. But the wrath of God has been revealed because man has the knowledge and decided he doesn't want the knowledge and he lives his life contrary to what the knowledge gives him. And so God says I have nothing but wrath for you because I showed you.
And you wouldn't have made your living, contrary to what I showed you.
And so God's wrath is revealed. Now, if we were to go through the rest of this chapter, we would find that because man turned his back on the knowledge of God, God began to take man's knowledge away. And so man begins to because.
He has chosen to reject the knowledge of God.
Man's ability to discern good and evil begins to depart.
And he becomes reprobate, as we see at the end of this towards the end of this chapter. And I believe that means he doesn't have the ability to discern between good and evil. So the judgment on man for not giving him the place that he has proved himself to deserve is that God takes away his ability to judge between good and evil.
And he finds himself in a very, very.
Degraded state.
That is very present in the day in which we live. We all know what man's course, the way it has taken and the reason why it's taken this course is because man has turned to heathen. So the first chapter, the end of the chapter, deals with man, fallen man in the condition of rejecting the knowledge of God.
And becoming reprobate so that.
His life becomes completely immoral.
The second chapter takes up another class of Fallen.
Human race.
And that is the moralist.
So it begins. Therefore thou art inexcusable a man whomsoever without judges, or were in thou judges than other, thou condemns thyself for that. For thou that judges you do the same thing. But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things and things.
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Thinkest thou this, O man that judges?
Them which do such things and do us the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God. And so here we have a class of people that's really different. So man doesn't always take the same form in his fallen condition. You might have a fallen creature, a child of Adam, who rejects the testimony of God.
Then you have.
A An individual in Adam's fallen race that chooses to live on a more elevated plane. And the more elevated a man gets, the more he likes to look down on others, and so he becomes a judge.
And.
There's only one problem. He's not the judge. God is the judge. And as soon as man takes this place of being a moralist elevated, he always, you know, to become a moralist you always have to use a certain standard because you're judging yourself by something, saying I am better than someone else and so.
He has the standard.
And he likes to think that he does pretty good with his standard, but God's looking at him and seeing that there is absolutely no difference in his true behavior between the one who's elevating himself and the one who is completely demoralized himself. In God's eyes, as a perfect judge, he sees no difference.
Now, what makes God angry in the sense in the case of the moralist? Let's go on verse 4.
Or despises thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance, and long-suffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance. What makes God? What made God angry with the heathen? Because the heathen was presented with who God was, and he rejected the knowledge and the testimony of who God was. What makes God angry with the moralists?
The God is waiting patiently.
Lovingly.
To address the needs.
Of the morals.
But the moralist doesn't feel a need for patient, loving, long-suffering God who wants to bring forgiveness. And so God waits. And the moralist, he's too high and mighty to accept the fact that God has the remedy for his need. And so God is.
Filled with wrath because his long-suffering, his kindness.
Is forbearance his goodness? All the beautiful qualities of a God who loves man are being rejected by the morals. You know, that's kind of like.
We as Christians who don't want to really fully enter in to what grace is, if we like our standards and we like to think that we can live up to a little bit higher standard than other Christians, we're really despising the grace of God because God's looking at us saying you can't get, you can't, you can't enhance your relationship.
With me based upon your efforts in your fallen by in your, in your fleshly nature.
And so the believer who wants a higher standard so that he can maybe be a little bit more elevated really is acting in the same flesh as the unsaved moralist. He's acting in the energy of the flesh. He's trying to keep this standard, and he is living.
In a way, that's despising.
The grace of God now you and I have the privilege of living in the enjoyment and the power of not deserving anything but receiving it all because God is who he is. He has provided us everything we need. We he's even given us the power, the Spirit of God to be our power. And yet when we take up the law.
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We are actually saying I don't need that energy. I have my own, even as a believer.
And we're despising the grace of God. Now, if God doesn't take us up on the same ground he takes up, but this morals, we're already saved. We're not going to come under his wrath. But there's not going to be any growth and development in our lives if we're not fully in the enjoyment of the grace of God and we're not going to enjoy.
The fellowship of one another, either because there's all, all the time, there's these little squabbles.
And there's these little possibly there's these little areas in which we don't really have true fellowship with one another because we've we've put up barriers. Why? Because Grace hasn't taken them down.
And so I just want to encourage us that even though this is instruction about looking in the rearview mirror, sometimes we have to realize there's things in the rearview mirror that still exists because we haven't gotten deliverance from them and we're still kind of operating under the same principles that we were in our fallen.
Unsaved condition and so I bring these out because.
You know, we were never given the law, but it says in the end of this chapter or towards, not in the end, but in the middle of the chapter.
It says for when the Gentiles in verse 14, which have not the law due by nature the things contained in the law, these having not the law are a law unto themselves. You know, we don't need the 10 commandments given to us from Mount Sinai for us to get under the principle of law. If we do the things contained in the law and we use that as a standard, then that's become a law to us.
And so we build these these standards and we start measuring and isn't, doesn't that sound familiar? Isn't that the moralist flesh in us that would use those principles for righteousness, even in a practical sense? I only say these things, brethren, because that's what I was guilty of. That's what that's what I will be guilty of if I'm not walking by faith in the enjoyment of the full deliverance that has come in the salvation that Paul isn't.
I know these things because I walked in them. I did not understand that these things were true but.
We don't need.
This type of regulation to.
Produce the fruit of the spirit and so I I share these things not because I want to you know, I always feel like.
It makes people feel bad. Well, just realize if, if, if, if these things are speaking to your heart, it's only because God had to show this to me and this was what was true.
And we just need to put distance as the Spirit brings these things to light, then we begin to leave them behind and they actually end up in the rear view mirror. And it's not part of what's before us as believers.
Living and enjoying walking in the spirit. And so I trust that I've made a little of this clear that we'll go on because we're going to talk about the.
Religious group here. So there was a class of people that God gave.
His. His.
Ordinances too. So he gave.
It says in chapter 3, verse one. What advantage then hath the Jew, or what prophet is there of circumcision? Much every way, chiefly because.
That unto them were committed the oracles of God. So God spelled out what He looked for in this class of.
The fallen. The fallen human race.
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God actually spelled it out and said this is what I'm looking for from you. What did that do to those who did not have life?
That's stirred up the flesh, causing pride. So when man gets the knowledge of God's.
Right and wrong, he begins to consider himself.
A very special class of people.
And.
Puts himself, it says.
Verse 17 Behold, thou art called a Jew, and resteth in the law, and maketh thy boast of God, and knows his will, and improveth his things that are more excellent, being instructed out of the law, and are confident that thou thyself are to guide of the blind, a light of them which are in darkness. Now there's going to come a time when God is going.
To exalt.
This same class of people, he's going to give them the ability.
To be the blessers on the earth. That was really his desire in the beginning. But.
He couldn't do it to man under responsibility. He had to do it. He's going to have to do it on the very same ground that you and I received the blessing of God, and that's on the ground of faith and grace so that in the day to come, God is going to give them a new heart.
And He is going to bring them into that promised blessing because He has chosen that people to be the dispensers of blessing on this earth and yet in this condition.
They were not, they didn't have life. And so this knowledge of God, all it did was it puffed them up. It made them feel like they were special and they didn't give God the credit. They didn't follow the commandments that God had given them. They were not a light and a testimony for her. They did not represent God, which was his desire.
Is that God's desire was that he would impart this this knowledge of him to them and then they would go forth and they would display it in the world. But there was one problem.
They have a sinful nature. They were fallen and they did not have the ability to be obedient to God and obedience was required. Obedience was required. Obedience is still required, but we're under a completely different set of circumstances now. We have a nature that loves to do the will of God, and that's how you and I.
Can answer to the obedience that God requires. We have a desire to do the will of God.
We find joy as the Lord Jesus did when He walked in this world and we because we have been brought into this blessing, we really want to be a light and a testimony for Him. We really want, really want the light of the glory of God to shine in us so that it can be reflected to this world, so the world can see who God is.
And so yet.
Man in his fallen condition, and this is the third class that God sets forward.
This was, you almost might want to say that the privilege gets greater and greater as these these these classes of people are introduced and the Jew was the highest class of privilege and so they were the most responsible.
God's conclusion I know I'm skipping a lot, but what I'm doing is I'm giving an overview.
So we don't need to be concerned about the fact that I've missed quite a few verses. What we want is an understanding of God's ways so that we can.
In meetings to follow, we won't be looking in the rearview mirror, we'll be looking out the windshield, looking at the blessing that is in store for us, that it really, truly is ours as God's children. But.
The conclusion that has come to?
Is in verse 19 of chapter 3. Let's just let's just we'll just skip through we, we, we see that God draws a a conclusion about the condition of our condition as children of Adam and there's not one single thing that God can he can he can commit. It's all bad.
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And so it's really important that you and I lay hold of the fact that if.
If we take up any aspect of what we were having.
We're dealing with something that's completely rotten that God has fully tested and has proven to be incapable of bearing any fruit for God. That's you and me by nature. And if we're going to live this Christian life and enjoy the deliverance and the salvation that has been run, it's going to be completely separate from what we were.
And.
But his conclusion is verse 19 Now we know that what things so ever the law saith, it saith to them that are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped in all the world, become guilty before God. It's interesting there were three classes of people.
But God just uses the last class because they were the most privileged class.
And if they failed, there's no hope for the other classes.
So.
God's conclusion is.
Now we know that the things so over the law saith, it saith to them that are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.
All the world may become guilty before God. So we've had 4000 years of the test and God has tested man with.
He's tested man with, with the, the, the evidence of creation. He's tested man with, I guess you could say his conscience with the moralist. He, he, he, he kind of lived according to his conscience.
And.
He's tested man by giving man his oracles. In other words, he told man everything he wanted to know, right? Wrong.
God's standard of righteousness, not the highest standard, but a sufficient standard of righteousness. The law of man failed to to answer to the requirements of the law, so the whole world becomes guilty.
And unfortunately, that's where we have to end our meeting tonight. But if there's any question, if there's any question that you and I want to take up, what's left?
Of what we are in Adam. This should answer it. We need a new identification. We cannot.
Enjoy the deliverance that God has wrought in the gospel if we in our souls are in any way looking for something.
That produces.
Something that God is looking for.
We need to close the book and so we can stop looking in the rearview mirror and we can start looking forward at God's plan of salvation. Sinners.
Than the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And it's through him that God is going to find his satisfaction as to the, the, the, the the demands or sin. God is going to become, he has become completely satisfied as to his demands.
And then it only gets better for more because God says I'm going to put you in a position where I don't see you and Adam anymore. I see you in Christ and you have your identity in my eyes is going to change.
You are going to be seen in Christ.
Everything that I have tested in as as to what you are in Adam. I'm done with the test ended at the cross and for us, we just need to understand that from henceforth we're in Christ and we have totally it's it's a total new creation.
Isn't that wonderful to leave Adam at the foot of the cross?
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Rise in minutes of life, go there ourselves in death. See, as I brought out the truth in Exodus chapter 13, God is not going to lead us by the way of the Philistines. By the way of the Philistines was religious flesh getting to the promised land and enjoying the privileges of the promised land.
God isn't leading us, by the way of the Philistines.
He's leading us through the wilderness of the Red Sea, death, resurrection and new association.