Right On Cue

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Let's pray real quick here, just as we open God's Word. Lord, we ask that your Word would now return void. We ask for you to open your Word to us, that we would understand, that we'd grow, that we would just develop into your likeness, that you would give us eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to perceive what you have in your Word for us. It's your name that we pray. Amen. And you wanna open up your Bibles or power up your Bible to Romans 3 verse 19, where we're gonna start today. Romans 3 verse 19, while you're turning there or getting there, I wanna bring up, not because I really enjoy these, but I wanna bring up driving tests. And if you had to take a driving test recently, show of hands, no, not a ton of you, okay. No, not a, you're like, I took that when I was a teenager, man.

Driving tests, we've been kind of going through them as a family, right, we've gotten a couple of drivers, kind of happening now, and another one of our kids about started driving, those driving tests are agonizing, particularly for a 16 year old, okay. But my wife actually had to take another driving test, I mean, a couple years ago, so she was 22. And so she had to take a driving test.

And she was just really nervous about the whole thing. She was just like, why am I so anxious about a driving test? I am a grown woman. But they're kind of agonizing because, you know, like in a driving test, everybody drives like nobody's looking, okay? That's basically it. And when you drive like somebody's looking, it is nerve wracking. You can't go too fast, can't go too slow, you can't break too hard, you can't roll through the stop sign. You gotta know when it's your turn at a four-way stop. I mean, that is mind-numbing sometimes. You gotta have your hands at 10 and two and you gotta have your mirrors adjusted, right? I mean, it's a whole thing. And if you do one thing wrong at a sequence, you know, like you're gonna get points off and it's, look, that feeling, and if you can maybe remember back that feeling, that anxiety that right there, that is a feeling that is similar to what we see in

Romans chapter three verse 19. Okay, what we see in Romans 3 19 it says this it says, now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God. Okay, as we are talking about this, We need to understand something about the law. We're going to be talking a little bit about this today. But the law is not there for our encouragement.

We don't have the law there to make us feel justified. Okay. The law is not there. The law brings knowledge of sin. Right. We're going to see that a little bit. Um, that is agonizing. That is terrifying. The law in this respect, and this is a very common illustration, I think it's really helpful, the law is like an x-ray machine. The x-ray machine does not heal you. The x-ray machine just shows you how broken you are. It shows you where you're messed up. But it offers no guidance. It offers no healing. It's just a really revealing story about where you are, You are how bad things really are depending on what you're getting an x-ray for, right? And for us, the law reveals the distance between us and God's standard. Okay? Again, this should be as encouraging as a driving test, okay? This is not for us to just feel good. And this is really all that we've been learning in the last three weeks.

people that grow up in an irreligious culture, when they try to do what's right, they don't measure up. People that grow up in a religious culture, when they try to do what's right, they don't measure up. In fact, only obedient people measure up, and this, what we talked about last week, is an impossible target. It's impossible. And this is exactly what the next verse says in Romans 3:20. It says, it says, for by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. This is the sheer impossibility of the human condition. You are not born into a system that you can game. You are not born into a race that you can win. Okay, you are, it's impossible. And there's a few verses earlier actually illustrate that, Just how impossible our situation is. And it's just in Romans, it starts in chapter three, verse 10.

So a couple of verses earlier, and it goes right on through 18. So 10 through 13. Here's kind of its summary, summary of the human condition. None is righteous. No, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless. No one does good. Not even one. Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. This is a full scale rebellion against our creator, our holy God. And this is what, this is really what Romans has been driving at since chapter one, verse 18, where we talked about the wrath of God being revealed against all mankind. It goes on verses 14 through 18. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood in their paths are ruined in misery. And the way of peace they have not known, there is no fear of God before their eyes.

If we could summarize Romans chapter 1 verse 18 all the way to Romans chapter 3 verse 20. We could summarize what we've been the last few weeks is that our perspective, a correct perspective on our own state, on our own sin is that we are sunk. Period. If we could summarize almost two chapters of the book of Romans, It would be that we are sunk, that there's no way that we can win. However, what the rest of Romans 3 does is it shifts. It shifts really from our perspective on our sin, and it shifts a lot more to try to help us understand God's perspective on our sin. So from our perspective, we are completely sunk. But if we're going to talk about God's perspective, we need to acknowledge a few things. There's a few blind spots for us if we're going to talk about, hey, let's have God's perspective on something. You're like, oh, cool. Okay. Yeah. Let's just magically see things how God sees them.

We are finite and God is infinite. We are imperfect and God is holy. We are messed up and God is just, we are cold and God is compassionate. Okay. There's so many ways that we can't reach God's perspective. Okay? And even when we consider it, so I'm kind of prepping you here, even when we try, even when we consider it, even when we use, I mean, the words that we're going to use are going to be limited in how we're going to understand God's perspective. Okay? They're just gonna. Yet, because Romans chapter 3, verse 21 through 26 attempts to do this or shows us to do this, then we should try also. We should understand it from God's perspective, okay? So from God's perspective, as we would consider it, our sin creates a crisis.

Our sin creates a crisis. And to show you this, what I need to do is engage in an extended metaphor. Now, you've been through the gospel course, you've heard me use this metaphor before, but I'm going to use it again. I want you to imagine, this is the ruler illustration, I want you to imagine that you are the ruler of a sovereign kingdom. Your authority is absolute and you came into power through a really bloody civil war. Okay, so it wasn't just like you were just kind of born into it, but half of your kingdom basically hated you and was trying to do something different. And so what you did, when you came into power and you had absolute authority, you made a rule. You made a rule and you said every Saturday, the entire kingdom is going to gather in the great hall. Everybody, everybody's gonna gather in the great hall. And you, the ruler, are going to enter last.

And when you enter last, everybody bows, everybody. Whoever doesn't bow is put to death the next day. That's your rule. That's your rule. You had to make a rule to keep your kingdom intact to not go into another civil war. So this is the best thing you could think of. You said, okay, I'm going to go in. When I go in last, every Saturday, everybody's going to bow. Whoever doesn't bow is going to die the next day. They're going to be up for execution. Now, I want you to imagine, because you are a ruler, that you have a prince, a son, a 19-year-old son. And I chose that age specifically, because 19-year-olds know everything. They do. I'm not saying they don't. They absolutely do. You and the prince, you guys have a big argument, a really big argument. And the prince leaves in a huff. It did not end well. Prince comes back on Saturday. Everybody's gathered in the great hall, including the prince.

And you enter last, and everybody bows, except the prince. What do you do? What do you do? How do you solve that? And before, you just want to wave the magic wand and say, well, just make him exempt. just, you know, like, you know, except the prince. The prince can not bow. No, because doing so is going to incite a civil war. My illustration, I get to make the rules, okay?

If you make your prince son exempt, you are, that's instant civil war. I mean, you're basically sentencing half your kingdom to death. So you are choosing between essentially your son, the prince, and half of your kingdom. Okay, that dilemma, that crisis, that's probably the closest we can come to what God felt, feels when his beloved creation, people that he made, people that he knows intimately, engage in a full on rebellion against him, and he cannot just let it go. justice had to happen. We're gonna come back to this illustration, but we need to understand that from God's perspective, our sin creates a crisis.

And this is what God did to address that crisis. We're gonna read this in Romans 3:21. It says, but now, but now, the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law. Let's pause right there. the righteousness of God. Righteousness means that you are in right relationship with God, okay? You and your creator are in alignment. You guys are good. You guys have relationships with people where you know you are in right relationship with them, or you are not, okay? So when I do something dumb, and I don't apologize for it, my wife and I typically are not in right relationship, okay? I need to make that right. And so we're talking about righteousness of God. This is unity that's being united with the one who loves you and knows you intimately. Okay. That's what we're talking about. Righteousness of God. Okay. You are in right relationship with him. And this righteousness, this right relationship is now manifested apart from the law.

What does that mean? It means that God is making available another avenue to be in right relationship with him that doesn't go through the law. It doesn't go through our obedience. It doesn't go through us hitting the target perfectly. God's making another way for that to happen. He's making another avenue outside, apart from our obedience. How does he do that? Next verse, Romans 3, 22, just between two A. The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. This other avenue requires faith in Jesus. It requires faith in Jesus, but what kind of faith? What kind of faith are we talking about? What do we need to believe? Do we just need to believe that Jesus exists? Okay, yeah. Put my hand up. Yeah, hey, Jesus exists. We're good. Okay. Okay, I'm made right with God? Okay, good. No. Let's keep reading. Let's keep reading. The rest of 22 through 24 it says for there is no distinction for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God

Let's take a second on that. That's those those two little parts right there that summarizes where we've been Okay, you need to understand that you need to believe that faith in Jesus Christ Means that you are not thinking that people can somehow make it to heaven by themselves or somehow achieve right relationship with God by themselves. It is a desperate situation and this is part and parcel with understanding what it means to be in right relationship with God. It says there's no distinction for we've all sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified. Here we go, here's what we need to kind of really hook on to. We are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Okay, so this other avenue that God is creating that is apart from the law, This other avenue that God's creating that whereby somebody can be in right

relationship with him, it requires faith specifically in Jesus justifying us and Jesus redeeming us. Now this is curious, and really this is not curious for most of us in this room because we see justification and redemption, we see those paired together all the time. Okay. Romans 3 24 is not some, you know, like obscure scripture that we never read. I mean, that's a, that's a common one. All right. So justified by His grace through the redemption. And it's curious because those two things are very different. They're not the same thing. They're very different from one another, yet they're both pinned together in verse 24. And we need to understand that. And when we do, when we understand what, what these two things are why they're pinned together, it will change everything about our future. What those two together mean for us changes everything about our future, our perspective

on our future even. So let's look at both justification and redemption. And we're going to take justification first that Jesus justifies us. And this is where we need to kind of teleport back into the illustration that we were going through ruler illustration, okay? The ruler, the crisis that I gave you, okay? Our sin creates a crisis. The only way, the only way to save your son's life and to keep your kingdom from civil war, the only way through is if you, the ruler, take your son's place and face your son's execution. It's the only way through. No other way through it. Can't go around it, can't go under it. You got to go through it. And if you do, you go through it, then you're switching places with Him.

And this is justification. This is how Jesus justified us, that Jesus took our place and we took His place, okay? Romans 3:25 talks about how this Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. Propitiation then is a...so we talked about wrath a couple of weeks ago. Propitiation is a satisfaction of that wrath. Okay, remember, wrath is this strong emotion that we feel against injustice. And when we have been wronged, that wrath that we have needs to be satisfied. Okay, quick illustration if somebody takes your your Somebody steals your car somebody steals your car and you call the police Police find the car within like 10 minutes. It's like record time They bring you your car back and they have the the perp. Okay, they've got them by the collar literally in your house and they say, okay Mr. Caperton in here This is the guy that saw your car, but we found your car. It's all intact. There's nothing wrong with it

We put it back in your driveway, so we're just going to let this guy go. What? Why? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. What? Why? Why would you let that guy go? It was like, well, and the police politely explained, well, look, you've got your car back. No harm, no foul, right? Everything's put back where it should be, right? And I say, no, no, no, I want to press charges. I believe everybody in here, at least the vast majority of people in here would want to also press charges. Why? Why do you want to press charges? I'm not asking you to answer that. I want you to think about it. Why would you press charges? Because there has been an injustice done against you and you want to see justice happen. In other words, somebody stole your car and somebody's got to pay. You can get your car back. That's fine. But there was, you were sinned against. Do you know what I mean?

There was something wrong. Wrath is that strong emotion that we feel against injustice. When we see a little kid getting picked on by a much bigger kid, we feel wrath. We want that injustice to be remedied quickly. Okay? Propitiation is the satisfaction of that wrath. It is a way for Jesus to make it all right with God, if we can speak about it this way, emotionally.

The reason that we can be justified, in other words, let me say it a different way, the reason that we can be justified is because Jesus bore our punishment for sin. He suffered the wrath that we deserve Jesus makes us right to be really clear about this Jesus makes us right by giving us his innocence the righteousness that he earned by obedience Jesus earned that righteousness by obedience. He gives that to us and He takes our place. There's a lot more to say on this obviously, but But we need to see justification, but we also need to see redemption. I want you to go back to the ruler illustration one more time, back to the crisis, okay? To understand redemption. When you take your son's place, when you take your son's place and you face his execution, you are, what we've already said, you are trading your righteousness for his unrighteousness, okay? doing that, but you're also doing one more thing. And I want to talk about it kind of in two different

arenas, because that's really the difference here between justification and redemption. Because you're not only trading your righteousness for his unrighteousness. By rescuing him from death, you are also giving him an intact kingdom to rule. Okay, in other words, you are not just saving him from something, you are saving him for something. You follow? In other words, okay, let's just step out of the illustration here. Okay, we're gonna step, look what Jesus has done. Jesus has justified us by taking our place, but he has also redeemed us into a new life. It's not like Jesus just saved us and said, okay, okay, you're good, saved you, done. There's something a little more. He saved us. He redeemed us into a new life. And when you combine these two, it changes your future. Let me show you how. Okay, Jesus, when He saves you, He doesn't just want to save you from death.

Jesus wants to save you for obedience. Let me say it again. Jesus doesn't wanna just save you from death, although he does, and he did, glory. He also wants to save you for obedience. Now look, this is really important. He doesn't want you to obey so that you get saved. That's a different thing than what we're talking about right now. about now is what you were saved to do. What you were saved to do. Jesus doesn't... He wants to give you abundant life and the power to follow Him, but this is not just following rules. Like we're not just, okay, now I'm, you know, now I never break rules. That's not really... Jesus wants to save you for abundant life and to change everything about the trajectory of where you are going. If somebody is without Jesus Christ, it's not only that they are enslaved to their sin, but it's also that the trajectory of their life is hell. And it's a living hell in the midst of it. I mean, think

Think about it, right? What hope do you have? Do you live, you ever lived a hopeless life? It's terrible. It makes everything terrible. It makes your cereal taste bad. I mean everything. It makes it terrible. And so we're not just, okay, well, I mean, I'll go to hell when I die. No, man, no. You are experiencing all these kinds of things, wrath of God against you. You are experiencing all that in real time, even today, whenever you are living outside of salvation. Whenever the Lord redeems you into a new life, it changes the trajectory of that life. You have new plans. It changes your whole future. I want to just tell you two ways it changes your whole future. Past and present. So Romans 3, 25b, this was this being what Jesus has done, what God has done through Jesus. This was to show God's righteousness because in His divine forbearance He had passed over former sins.

Look, this should motivate you. This fact that you were saved for obedience, let's not lose it, you were saved for obedience. This fact makes you move past your past. Okay? It makes you move past your past. It is so easy to slip into the lie that you are a second-class disciple. It's very easy to do that because you feel dumb a lot of times. And when you feel dumb, you might think it's because you are dumb or because you are some second class. Like, you don't know enough. You don't know enough Bible. You haven't done this long enough. You haven't, you know, you're not mature enough. You're not old enough. You haven't been in a church long enough. You haven't, you know, whatever. And because of that, you look at other people and you go, okay, they got it together. They got it together. They got it together. I'm the idiot. And they all know it. They're just having pity on me by talking to me.

It's very easy to believe that lie that you are a second class disciple. You are happy that you are saved from death and sin slavery, but you miss totally the fact that you were saved for obedience. You are saved for good things. You're never going to strive for anything more than just making it. And you are always going to be living in the shadow of your past, what others have done to you, what you've done, how embarrassed you are. All of that is a lie. It doesn't define you. Not because you're some great person, okay? No, you're still dumb. I'm still dumb, okay? We're all in here. Everybody say, I'm dumb. I'm dumb. That was not very convincing. Let's say one more time, please. I'm dumb. And we are comparing ourselves to God. If we compare ourselves to God, our only response is I'm dumb. It's our only response. But what God does in response to that, He goes, look, I've made you

for more than just believing that you're gonna stay dumb. I've made you for more. I've made your life a different trajectory than for you to just hang your head and shame the whole time and for you just to repeat to yourself that you're dumb the whole time. I've done more than that. I've got better plans for you. You're never going to strive for anything more than just making it. If you do not understand that Jesus has justified you and redeemed you and in doing so has changed your destiny. not just where you're going eventually, but where your life is headed tomorrow, this afternoon, next week. So it motivates us to move past our past. What else does it do? We see this in Romans 3:26. It, again, it, being God saving us, justifying us, redeeming us in Jesus Christ, it was to show His righteousness, righteousness, God's righteousness at the present time so that he, God, might be just

and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Okay? We don't have time to say it today, I really don't, I would love to, but God is not just going to wave a wand and be unjust, like for little old you. That's not how it works. God is justice. It's like it's a part of him, okay? Or maybe yeah there's a better way to say that, but it's fine. God doesn't just get to be just when he feels like it and not just when he does it because he's God. That's not really how God presents himself. That's not how God shows us who he is. God is just so he's not going to pretend like something didn't happen, but what does he do? He He sends Jesus, He puts Himself in our place. Why? So that God can be just and the justifier of who? Of the one who has faith in Jesus. God has done all of this. God has justified you, a sinner, so that in order for the purpose of showing His righteousness,

in you. God has made you more. God has more in store for you than sin, repent, repeat. God has more in store for you than sin, repent, repeat. God has good works in store for you. Ephesians 2:10 tells us that the Lord God in heaven has good works prepared beforehand for you. Why? So that you might do them. So that you might do them. Why, why does God, okay, Sean Coffman is right here. I'm going to just pick on Sean for a second, cause he's a deacon. So I can do that. Okay. What'd you signed up for? Sean Coffman before the foundations of the world, the Lord God in heaven was looking at you, thinking about you and saying, okay, all right. February 19th, 2023, I've got these good works laid out for Sean Coffman to do. It's going to be great. I'm going to be excited. He's going to get a lot of joy from it. It's going to be amazing. Period. The end. Think about that. I mean, you're kind of like

dumbfounded looking at me, but no, no, no, no. Think about that. The Lord God in heaven has Good works prepared for you to do already so that you will do them Sean The Lord God in heaven saved you to be obedient. He saved you because he wants you to do good work He has good works laid out for you to do That's how invested he is in this. It's not like he just kind of like saved somebody Sean he didn't just say okay, well save Sean, but I mean he barely deserves it and Maybe he just won't screw up that bad. All right Sean gone Yeah, right. But that is the operating mindset that many of us have. Just don't mess up too bad today. This justification and redemption, it changes our future because it motivates us to want to grow spiritually. And I just want to leave you with this question, and then we're going to say, my question is this. is this? My question is, what is your dream for your life in following Jesus?

And you might be saying back to me, I don't even know if I believe in Jesus. Okay, cool. I'm not asking you that. That's fine. I'm asking you specifically, in following Jesus, what are some things that you are going to strive for? What are some things that you hope to gain? I was talking to my life group a couple weeks ago and I asked the question, like where do you wanna be in five years, spiritually? Not career wise, not with your family, not as a guy. Where do you wanna be spiritually in the next five years? And it actually sparked really great discussion. We started talking about one year even, in five years and all that. And I really wanna pose that question to you guys and just ask and answer that of yourself and say, Where did I want to be in the next five years? Where's the Lord God calling me to serve or what is he calling me to be in the next five

years? And look, don't turn this around. Don't turn this around and think it's something that you need to control after that. That's not what we're talking about. I'm talking about you somehow, some way sitting down and grasping the Lord's dream for you. Not the best thing you can come up with, not a selfish ambition. It's not what we're talking about. We're talking about what is the Lord's dream for you? Can you answer that question? And if you're still, gosh, if you're still wrestling with the fact that maybe even if God's real, I mean, that's cool too. Wrestle with that. But I can assure you, look, I'm on the other side of a lot of those doubts. I can tell you, he's real. I've seen him. He's done some things that I cannot explain otherwise, several times over. There's just one time, I didn't plan on telling this story, there was just one time my wife and I were very poor and young, young and poor.

Not middle aged and poor, we were young and poor. So we're very poor and we're going through and we needed a ton of money. I don't remember how much we needed, like $1,500 unexpected in something, or $1,000. The numbers get blurry. We are walking through a furniture store, and this furniture store is massive. I mean, it's like Nebraska furniture market, but there's no walls. I mean, it's just massive. It's just furniture as far as I can see, basically. And there's this massive center aisle, and I'm not joking. The center aisle is almost as wide as this room. I mean, it's massive. Center aisle. There's a handful of people at this store. My wife, we're walking down this center aisle, main street in this little town of a furniture mart. And there are eight or 10, 400?

Is it 400? I thought it was eight. Five, 400, numbers are fuzzy. It was $400 bills laid out nice and neat, just like that on the floor. And we kind of, you know, just, what do we do? How do we just take the money and run? You know, what's this look like? So we picked it up because my wife has scruples. We went to the front counter, honestly, went to the front counter and said, look, we found this money, found this cash money. If it belongs to anybody,

then, and they report it to you and it's $400 bills. If they report it missing, then we will gladly come back and give you this money. But for right now, so here's our name and information, but for right now, we're going to take this money. And we waited, I think, a few days, three days or something like that. And nobody called, and it was our money. And we thought, man, what a huge blessing. And then right after that, there was this unexpected bill that came, and we had the money for it, because $400 was just sitting there. I know that sounds crazy. I'm not saying the Lord's going to give you $400 tomorrow. Okay, that's not, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that the Lord provides in ways that, and that's the only time he's ever done it. I mean, we don't, that's not like a regular thing. We don't go back to that furniture store, okay. But that, that's just a small,

look, that's just a small testimony of the way that the Lord has provided for us and a way that was completely unexpected. Look, the Lord wants to make himself known to you, okay. My encouragement to you is if you're still trying figure that out, talk to somebody about it. Whenever we are done singing, when our service is over and there's music playing, I'm gonna be sitting or standing right over there awkwardly. And if you want to come and talk to me, if you want prayer, if you want anything, that's great. Come on and talk to me. Make me feel less awkward being by myself over there. But just as we do that, as we pray and sing, I don't want you to forget the question. What is the Lord calling you to do. What's the next five years? What's that look like for you? Let me pray for us. Jesus, thank you for the ways that you are so kind to us, the ways that you help us to

listen, the ways that you help us to grow. I pray that you would help us to see where you're calling us, to see where you are drawing us. Or it's your name that we pray.