Justified by Faith

-Transcript-

Thank you for joining me. Welcome to the cafe today. Pastor Clark Covington here with another message for you today on Justification. That’s a big word Justification. Maybe you’ve heard and preaching before. That we are justified by faith. Well, what does that mean? Exactly. Where is that in the Bible? Today, we’re going to explore what it means to be justified by faith. And not by works, specifically Romans 4:4-5 “now to Him that worketh is the reward, not wrecked of Grace but of death but to Him that worketh not but believeth on Him that justifyeth the ungodly”. His fate is counted for righteousness. Now to him that worketh is the reward, not reckoned of Grace but of debt, that was verse 4. But to Him that worketh not but believeth on Him that Justified the ungodly His faith is counted for righteousness. So what does that mean? Exactly? What are we going to take from that? Well obviously, here Paul is writing the Book of Romans about how we’re justified and that when we try to justify ourselves before God with Works, we are not. I’m going to be justified because we can’t work our way. Into any kind of relationship with God, right? Uh, we it says, here not at Him that worked as a reward. Not reckoned of Grace. But of debt saying God you owe us something right? Oh God, uh we don’t need your grace. We we’ve worked ourselves into some way or condition. And remember Paul was writing at this time, uh, to people that were still following the law Jews, or what would be called, Jew dyIsers, as well. Both those that believed in Christ in those that didn’t that still believed they were under the law. This was a very serious issue of the time. In fact, the early disciples, you remember, Peter like it wasn’t the book of Acts, you know, he had not eaten, any unclean meat and the Lord told him to eat. And it was a picture there for Peter to realize that God was calling. All everyone to be saved, not just the Jews, and that following the law was not going to save anybody. Amen. And so, the disciples had a picture. Of that by following Christ. But Paul is the one here that reveals this truth Most certainly I would say in the word that we are not justified by our works and that we cannot follow any kind of law or program to get into heaven. And you would if you went and knocked on a few doors, amen and asked, are you sure you’re going to heaven? Some people may say, I don’t know. Some people may say No, some people may say yes. How do you know? And they might say, well, I’ve tried to do good, or I’ve done more bad than good, or I’ve given this own so cause or whatever it is. I joined. So, and so church, right? It’s always some kind of action. And what God’s teaching us in His word here in Romans 4:4-5 is this beautiful picture of believing of just having faith and not being enough. What a beautiful picture that is to know that if we just believe, if we just believe the Lord and His word, and we believe on Jesus Christ because we have to believe we weren’t there. Amen. We can’t pull up the replay. The video replay. Amen. We can’t. Stream, this thing. We can’t. Uh, pull up the archive in the library of newspaper. No, we can’t do that. We have to trust God, we have His word, but at the end of the day and we have many witnesses to explain what happened there and the more you study the Bible, the more you realize the truth of, uh, the crucifixion of the resurrection. You believe it? Amen. There’s a great movie. Uh, and I can’t think of the name of it now. Um, of a reporter, a sceptic for the Boston Globe, I think it was, and he was very skeptical. He was an unbeliever and he said, I’m gonna preach that the crucifixion never happened. The resurrection never happened. And as he investigated, guess what? He got saved, he became a follower of Christ and it’s a great movie. I can’t again think the case for Christ, I think is what it’s called now that I think of it, in case for Christ. And so that’s an example of look, we want to disprove, we want to do this and that, but at the end of the day, all work called to do is believe. And once we believe, then we are justified in front of God. Let’s look at Romans 4. Let’s just look at Romans 4. We’re just going to look at the first four or five verses here. And we’ll see what it says, “what shall we say, then that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh have found” for if Abraham were justified by works, how he has wear of to glory. But not before God, for what saith the scripture, Abraham believed God and it was counted unto him for righteousness. That’s verse 3. Remember that verse there. “Now to him, that worketh is a reward, not reckoned of Grace, but of death, but to him, that work is not, but believeth on him, that justifies the unvalid, his faith is counted the righteousness”. And so, we see this very clear picture, if you’re trying to get to heaven by works, it’s not going to work. Use the pun, but it won’t work. Amen, now, Works won’t work. In fact, the only thing that will work is faith and we see here, in verse three of Romans, 4 for what? say in the scripture, well, any times, you see, anytime you see something that says, what says the scriptures or thus, says the scriptures or haven’t you read something like that? Um where the Lord Jesus Christ might say, haven’t you read? Or haven’t you seen? It’s often done to referencing the Old Testament. So, what I’ll do is when I see this I’ll go back and research it so it says for what state of the scripture Abraham believe God and it was counted unto him for righteousness and so I’ll take that, I’ll pop it into search engine. And guess what comes up? We get a scripture here. That explains that scripture and that’s Genesis 15 and we look to Genesis 15:1-6 where Abraham did believe God and it was counted unto Him as righteousness. A Genesis 15 1-6 after these things. The word of the Lord came unto Abram in a vision. Remember “Abram“, was he still called Abram wasn’t Abraham yet? God had changed his name yet. After these things, the word of lord came unto Abram in a vision saying,” fear, not Abram. I am thy Shield and thy exceeding. Great reward in“, Amen. And Abram said, “Lord God, what will thou give me seed I go childless, and the steward of my house is Eliezer of Damascus“. And so, Abraham’s in Abram at that time was in a conversation here with God about this reward and he didn’t have any children and back then. As it is today it’s a big deal to have children and it’s a great reward to have children. Anything. I don’t have any children, how are you going to bless me verse 3 and Abram said, “behold to me thus given no seed in low one born in my house, is my hair and behold the word of the Lord came unto him saying this shall not be nine heir, but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be nine heir“. So, verse four is referencing Isaac and He brought him forth abroad and said look now toward heaven and tell the stars if they’ll be able to number them and He sent unto him. “So, shall I see thee“. verse 5. Ask anybody even studies up astronomy and they could tell you. There is a countless star, limitless stars. And that’s what God is saying here that His Abraham seed will be Limitless, countless and then verse six and he this Abraham believed in the Lord, and He counted it to Him for righteousness. So, Abraham is brethren, he does not have children he has not been able to have his own uh children with Sarah. And he’s getting up at age and he’s going to be 14, he has a child and that’s improbable back then as it is now if you your neighbor called and said, hey look, I have a hundred-year-old Grandpa on that 100-year-old. Grandpa is going to have a child soon. Would you believe them you would fall out of your chair, but Abraham believed. And then we see here, he believed of verse 6 of Genesis 15, “he believed in the Lord, and he counted it. He as in God, accounted it to him as an Abram for righteousness“. So that’s what Romans 4 is referencing that Abrams believe in what God was going to do the miraculous. It was counted to a room as righteousness. And so, what does that mean to you? It means it’s not what you do. It’s what you believe. Now that can be a big burden and it also can be a big blessing. It can be a big burden in the sense that we often want to be in control. We want a list of lists of tasks. Say. Okay, we do one, two, and three. Then we are going to be good to go. And if we don’t, then we’re not. We want something to do to be in control and it can be a burden to say. Oh, all I have to do is believe all that’s so hard. Right? But then on the other end of it, if we do believe, if we just say, God, we believe and we don’t, uh, look to earn favor with God through our works. If we just believe that ironically is what earns the favor from God, it’s accounted to us as righteousness. And so, we are justified by faith. So, the entire idea of being Justified or the idea of justification is, simply this idea of believing What God has told us through His word of truly, believing it right? And understanding that, that’s all we can do and that’s all we have to do and there’s a lot of other principles behind that. Like the idea that man is sinful, so we’re sinful, we can’t be righteous on our own, the Bible speaks of our righteousness being like dirty racks like a dirty gauze pad. So, we are not uh, righteous on our own. We the Bible also says, we can do nothing good with without God and so we know that underpins it. But at the end of the day, if we understand it, we’re a sinner. We understand that we’re saved by grace. It’s just believing that justifies us. But you may ask. What exactly do you need to believe? Well, you have to believe in Jesus Christ. And this is by God’s design that He wants you to believe in Jesus Christ. And what Jesus Christ did, and what did he do? Well, He came to Earth, He was born of a virgin that’s miraculous. So, you have to believe that Mary was a virgin and that she was given Jesus in the womb by God himself. Not by man. It was not you Jesus will not conceived by Earthly, man. And then that also underpins the idea that there was no Uh, father. But God, Amen. In the picture that Joseph was the adopted father so to speak, right? So, to believe that Jesus was miraculously born that He walked this Earth and He lived and He had this Earthly Ministry. And that He was crucified on the cross that He willingly gave Himself up and He crucified on the cross, For the sin of mankind, for the sin of mankind and people, uh, they don’t love that. They don’t love the shedding of blood. They don’t love the idea of talking about the blood because that gets into the idea of a substitutionary death. And I’ve got some messages coming up on that. But the idea real quickly here is that Jesus took our place so that we were made righteous only by Him because he was sinless and us being sinners. We needed someone to take our place for that perfect sacrifice. And you say, well, why where did that start? That started the Garden of Eden. Did not sin enter the picture. This is called the original sin handed the picture when Eve and Adam, Adam and Eve, however, you want to look at it eight of the forbidden fruit, once they did that. Well, why did they do that? Because they wanted to be like God, why did they get that idea? Well, the devil tricked them. Amen, the serpent. And so, you have this situation take place, which is very supernatural, isn’t it? Very miraculous and of itself take place in the Garden of Eden and that’s what sin enters the world, right? And this is where we get the idea that Paul actually compares Adam and Jesus because you have the first Adam, the one, we’re sin entered the world and then you have to last Adam, where Jesus died on the cross to pay that sin debt for all mankind and that payment has been made. It’s already done. What we need to do is believe on Jesus for our Salvation and when we believe along what He did on the cross, so we believe that He was resurrected miraculously from the graves by who by the Father, by Father God, right. When we do that, that’s what we’re saved and that’s when we get the Holy Spirit. So, you look at it, you got God, the Father God, the son, and God the Holy Spirit, that explains the Holy Trinity, God the Father sent God, the son. That’s Jesus. That’s why it says that John 3:16″ that He gave his only begotten Son“, right. That’s Jesus to die for our sins and we accept Jesus Saviour because He took on, that brutal death, the death that was worse than any death ever in the history of mankind. When He took it on, we then believe on Him and His resurrection. We got raised Him from the dead and we have the Holy Spirit that is the Holy Trinity of nutshell. But the thing to remember today is that we are justified by faith. We are justified by faith. All we have to do is believe what I just explain, and we’re saved, and we’re set free. And our works won’t save us. Nothing else will save us but Faith, we are justified by faith and thank you so much for listening. I wish I had more time, but I don’t take care. God bless. Amen.