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Faith By David Cox

Two verses of John chapter 3 verse 35 and 36.
If you have one of our church pew bibles it will be page 941.
When Steve and I sat down to talk more about what the topic would be at this conference,
he pointed out to me that redemption and reconciliation are two acts that God does.
Salvation is all of God from beginning to end.
Reconciliation and redemption are two things that God does.
He does the buying, he does the reconciling.
Faith and repentance, while they are graces that God gives as well,
they are also our response then back to that.
So we come to the first one now which is faith.
And I'll just read John chapter 3 verse 35 and 36 and I'll pray.
This is John the Baptist speaking.
The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand.
He who believes in the Son has everlasting life
and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life
but the wrath of God abides on him.
Let's pray.
Father we do thank you again for this conference.
We thank you for the opportunity to consider the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Gospel of our salvation and Father we pray that as we come now to our pause
and consider faith in your call that we must believe in the Gospel.
We pray that you would help us to know and understand.
We pray for those amongst us who are yet unsaved.
We pray that by your grace you might grant them that same saving faith
that they too might know Christ and life eternal.
And Father we just ask it in Jesus' name, Amen.
So faith.
The fact that faith is so important that you can't ignore
when you look into the Scriptures.
I mean the Gospel call is often put in the words of Paul.
Remember Paul was in prison in Philippi in the jailer
after the earthquake came rushing in, bursting into his cell
and said, what must I do to be saved?
Good question.
And Paul said this, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.
That's quite correct but what does it mean really
to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ?
What is it to have faith in Christ?
Or in Ephesians chapter 2 verse 8 we see that it's put this way,
by grace you have been saved through faith.
And so that raises some important questions then.
For a start, what is faith?
I mean people talk a lot about faith, a little bit like Steve said
that people talk about redeeming themselves
and they use redemption in a way that's not quite the way
that the Bible would use it.
And so it is with faith.
Some people talk about having faith in themselves.
That's a big one today isn't it?
Believe in yourself, you know.
Believe and faith are really the same thing.
To have faith in yourself is to believe in yourself.
The Bible actually says that's a dreadful no-no.
Don't have faith in yourself.
There's nothing there to look to.
So we want to know what is faith?
If you're a Christian and you've got friends that you know are unsaved
and you're concerned about them, you want to know what do I tell them?
When I tell them to believe on Jesus Christ and they say what's that?
What do I say to them?
Or what if you have friends and you speak to them
and you suspect there's something there that perhaps they're not really Christians
and you say that they need to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and they say I do?
How would you answer that?
How do you approach that?
How can I tell a true faith from a counterfeit faith?
Because there is such a thing.
Now the Bible uses the word faith in many ways.
It talks about trusting God for our day-to-day needs.
There is a sense in which of course that is to live by faith, trusting God.
But we're just going to limit ourselves today
to what we might call saving faith or justifying faith
or the faith we talk about when a person believes in the Lord Jesus Christ
and is saved.
What is that faith?
Well as many of you will know that a good way to start defining something
is to say what it is not.
And as I mentioned the Scripture warns about some counterfeits,
there's some fakes, if you like to put it that way.
There's some counterfeits that people see in themselves
or they see in others and they think well that's good, I've got faith.
I must be saved, I'm right.
I believe in Jesus.
You heard that one, I believe in God, I read my Bible
and I pray from time to time, especially when hard time comes,
I have faith, I believe.
Well the Bible says that there's some counterfeits
that you need to be aware of.
The first one James talks about in James chapter 2 verse 19
where James says you believe that there is one in God, you do well.
He's not being serious, he's being sarcastic.
You believe there's one in God, good.
Even the demons believe and tremble.
So James is saying you believe there's one in God,
he said that's the devil's faith.
Does it help him? No, not one bit.
So to say that you know that there's one in God is not true faith.
To even believe in your very heart of hearts that there's a God,
there's something somewhere out there, someone, some high power,
that's not faith the Bible talks about
when it says that you must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so this tells us that faith is not simply,
faith is not only agreeing to certain facts.
As he said in that verse as James says,
you might believe there is one in God, well, that's good,
but it's not enough, that's not faith, there's more to it.
You might even agree with certain creeds or confessions,
you might be in a denomination where they have a creed or confession
and you might have read it and say, yeah, I like that, I agree with that.
It doesn't mean it's faith.
Looking at a creed or confession and agreeing
and signing on a line somewhere might get your church membership,
but it doesn't mean it gives you faith necessarily,
it doesn't mean that you get salvation from that.
There's even more than that, you may sign up
with the devil and say, yes, there's one God, yep, that's right,
that's my creed, there's one God, but that's not faith.
In Acts 26 verse 27 we have an interesting account
where Paul is witnessing the King Agrippa and he says this,
King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets?
And he answers his own question, I know that you do believe.
And Agrippa says later on, Paul, I can see what you're doing,
you're trying to persuade me to be a Christian.
And Paul says, yes, and yet here he just says,
do you believe, I know you believe.
And then he keeps working to try and make him a Christian.
You think, well, did he believe or didn't he?
Well, yes, he did believe, but it wasn't faith.
It wasn't the faith that the Bible talks about.
He believed the Bible, he believed the prophets,
he believed what they wrote about Christ.
And King Agrippa could nod his head and say,
yes, I believe everything the prophet said about Christ,
I believe it, I believe it's true.
And yet Paul says, I know you believe,
I wished he was a Christian though.
And so that's a interesting predicament
to put some of us in, doesn't it?
So yes, I believe the scriptures,
but I wish he was a Christian.
I know you believe what the Bible says,
what the scriptures say, but I wish he was a Christian.
In Acts chapter eight, verse 13.
Or in Acts chapter eight, we have a story
where the gospel comes to Samaria.
And there's a fellow there called Simon,
who was a sorcerer, a bit of a wizard or witch, if you like.
And he tricked people into thinking
he was some great man of God.
Well, it says that the gospel came,
the gospel was preached and it says,
Simon himself also believed.
And you go on and read the story that he was baptised.
The apostles come up to see what's happening
and they visit this Simon.
He offers him money that he might have the power
to give the Holy Spirit to people.
Peter sees straight through it and he says to him,
your heart is not right on the side of God.
He says, your money perish with you,
meaning you're perishing, may your money perish too.
So even though Simon himself also believed
and was baptised, Peter says,
your heart is not right on the side of God,
may your money perish with you.
And he counseled him, he said,
that he needs to ask forgiveness
that perhaps God might forgive him his sin.
And so faith is just not simply hearing about Christ
or even being baptised.
All of these things fall short of true faith.
So what is it to believe on Jesus?
What is it to have him by faith?
What is it, as John the Baptist said,
he who believes in the Son has life,
he who does not believe the Son does not have life,
the wrath of God abides upon him.
So what is it to believe in Jesus then?
Well, it's a bit of all of those things in a sense,
but it's not the whole.
So what faith is.
And just as the Bible is clear about counterfeits,
it also describes what genuine faith is
and what it looks like,
so that you can be made wise to salvation.
Perhaps a more famous verse is Romans 10, 17,
faith comes by hearing
and hearing by the word of God.
In other words, there must be information
fed into my mind, I must hear,
I must hear the right, of course, the right gospel,
I must hear, hearing comes by the word of God,
but there must be hearing.
So that means the scriptures must either be preached
and you hear the scriptures preach,
you come to an understanding,
God happens to your understanding,
or they must be read.
Quite often you'll hear a testimony of someone,
they've read the scriptures,
they've read certain things
and it convicts them in their heart
and that person comes to faith later on.
And so that's where it begins.
There must be the scriptures.
As a matter of fact, the word faith,
I don't know if you've thought it through,
but the word faith presupposes a promise, doesn't it?
To believe, to have faith, to trust,
presupposes there's a promise somewhere
and you must respond appropriately.
And the Bible always from beginning to end
says that salvation is by faith.
Remember in the Garden of Eden
when Adam and Eve first fell into sin,
and it's quite remarkable when you go through
and you look at chapter three
and they've fallen into sin
and God comes to deal with them
and you know what he does?
He doesn't give them a how to,
how to get out of this problem,
what to do to fix it,
he gives them a promise, doesn't he?
The seed of the woman will come.
So straight up front there's a promise.
Will they believe it, will they not believe it?
And so faith comes by hearing
and hearing by the word of God.
So the word of God had to have been preached
or taught in some way or read.
In 2 Timothy verse 12 we have a wonderful statement
by Paul, he said,
I know whom I have believed and am persuaded
that he is able to keep what I've committed to him
until that day.
There's a couple of things I want to mention,
the word believed and the word committed,
you might like to underline them,
that's the same word.
I know whom I believed
and he is able to keep what I've committed to him.
So he said, I know who I've committed my soul to
and I'm persuaded he can keep what I've committed to him.
It's the same thing,
believed and committed.
And he says, I am persuaded that he is able to keep.
Scholars will tell you that that word
persuaded in the Greek
is where they get the other word believed from.
And so belief, true faith comes from a deep persuasion,
a conviction.
So you don't just hear and you don't just say
along with the devil that yes, there's one God,
but it actually means something to you deep inside.
Or you don't just read the prophets
and you don't just think, yes, I believe what they said.
This does something deep inside to you.
There's a persuasion, there's a conviction that happens.
And so Paul says, I know whom I believed
and am persuaded that he is able to keep
what I've committed to him until that day.
And so having heard the word of God or read it,
are certain convictions coming in your heart,
are certain beliefs, certain persuasions, certain truths,
truths concerning God, truths concerning yourself
and also concerning Christ.
You start to hear about God and you think,
God has given a law, it is a good law,
there's nothing wrong with it.
Then you think about yourself, you think I have broken it.
I'm guilty.
These things start to persuade you.
And then you hear of Christ,
the Holy Spirit opens your heart
and you think there is a savior God has provided.
Can he save me?
And that's what went through Paul's mind
at some point in his life.
And he came to say, yes, he can.
I know whom I believed and am persuaded
that he is able to keep what I've committed
unto him until that day.
And then Psalm 37 verse five says,
commit your way to the Lord, trust also in him.
Commit and trust being the same thing.
The Psalm is repeating himself to drive home the point,
commit yourself to the Lord, trust in him, same thing.
And that's what true faith is,
is to come to Jesus Christ,
committing yourself to him and to his care.
It's not just believing about him,
it's not just hearing about him,
not even knowing certain truths,
but it's then getting up and acting.
I said to you a couple of weeks ago,
where Jesus says, come unto me,
all you that labor and heavy laden,
come unto me and rest, I'll give you rest.
So if Jesus says, come to me, what do we do?
You go, yes.
If Jesus says, come to me,
you think, oh, that sounds wonderful and you don't.
Nothing's happened, is it?
You're like the man who heard the word
and didn't do anything and build his house on the sand.
There's people who respond to the gospel.
And so faith is hearing the word of God,
hearing especially the promises,
coming to know the truth about yourself,
about God, about Christ,
that's becoming persuaded, convinced.
And then there's a commitment that takes place,
where you commit your way to the Lord,
you trust also in him.
And so you're stirred to act on these convictions.
A person then receives Christ as his savior.
A firm stand is taken for Christ.
And then the question, which often has a past,
you hear people saying, I'm not a very good Christian.
You think, well, what does a Christian do?
He believes, doesn't he?
Christian believe, he believes and the son has life.
Christians believe.
People who talk like that
show that they don't understand what faith is.
They think they're saved somehow by their works.
And so the question then doesn't become,
am I a good Christian?
But is Christ a good savior?
Can he do what he has said that he would do?
If he said, trust in me, believe in me,
I'm the way, the truth and the life,
I can get you to glory.
You trust him.
That's what Christians do.
They trust a savior.
They don't try and work their own way there.
And so that's what faith is.
And so true faith will always lead
to a person receiving Christ.
It'll be more than just learning about him.
Sadly, many, many people know a lot of things about Christ.
Even King Agrippa knew a lot of things about Christ.
He believed the prophets, but he wasn't saved.
It's more than just learning about him.
It's more even than just admiring him
and saying, what a wonderful fellow this Jesus is.
What a good example for us all to follow.
His words are truth and verity
and we should take good notice of them
and we should follow them diligently.
That's not faith.
That's not faith that the Bible talks about.
It's not admiring him, but it is receiving with him.
It's beginning a new life under his care and authority.
We just heard about redemption and Hosea going and buying Gomer
and he became not just a husband, but a Lord, a master.
And so the Christian happily commits himself
to that position through faith.
Now this shows us that faith involves a whole man.
It involves firstly the mind.
Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God.
In other words, we've got to hear certain things.
We've got to hear the promises that involves our mind.
You notice that you read in the book of Acts
that Paul went around preaching the gospel
and you know what he did?
He'd go into the synagogue and when he was in the synagogue,
he would open the scriptures
and he would reason with the people from the scriptures.
Opening and alleging, Jesus must be the Christ.
You see, they had to have information
that they could base a commitment on,
some information that they could believe,
promises they could hear.
And so Paul laboured to reason with the people
because he knew their minds were involved.
Now some people tell you that faith is blind.
They say, when you can't understand, just believe.
That's not biblical faith either.
There's a lot of things we can't understand
and we believe that God is still true.
He's wise, he's good and we trust God's character,
but it's not faith just to turn a blind eye
and just ignore it.
Faith always involves a mind.
That's why Paul reasoned with people
and wanted to offer evidence of what he was saying
so that they could look at it and think about it
and find out that it was true.
And so it involves a mind, it involves a reason.
In other words, what do you do then if this is true?
If what I'm saying to you about Christ is true,
then what are you going to do?
There must be a reasonable response.
And so it involves a reason.
It involves a heart of what we call the whole person,
the will, the emotions.
It's hard to be touched by the Holy Spirit
and convicted of sins and keep a dry eye
and not be affected and be there
sitting like a cardboard cutout.
It involves a whole man and faith in Christ.
When you hear that there's a Saviour who can save
and you're in a desperate condition,
of course there's an emotional response.
Now that'll vary.
Some people are more emotional than others
and we don't dare think that emotions are any sign
for sure that a person has faith,
but it does and affects a whole person.
The mind, the reason, the will, the emotions.
There's a happy turning to Christ to receive Him.
That's faith and salvation offered by Him.
And so it's based on a persuasion but it doesn't stop there.
So faith you could say, in other words, is trust.
I'm committing my soul to Christ, that He must save me.
That's what faith is, to give it up as a sort of a,
you could call it a radical abandonment.
I'm totally throwing myself at the mercy of God.
And sometimes you see hitchhikers
and I might be holding up a sign,
Dubbo or bust.
It means you've really got to desperately get to Dubbo.
Or you would hold up a sign saying Jesus or bust.
And you may have a similar story to mine.
My own testimony after walking with the Lord for some years,
I came to that crunch that I think a lot of true believers
do at times and I think, well, am I really truly saved?
You reflect on your life, you look at yourself
and you start to question.
You think, I don't think I'm a Christian.
And you start to tremble a little bit
and you think, is that true?
And I went through that and I labored and struggled
and read and prayed and didn't get any comfort.
And then one day I thought, well, what if I'm not a Christian?
What can I do better?
I think, I can't do a thing myself.
The Bible tells me to believe in the Lord Jesus
and He will save me.
And I've done that, I've believed in Jesus.
I believe He can save me.
Then the question came, well, can He save me or not?
And I had to come to the point where I think, well, He can.
And I had to abandon myself totally.
I thought, if Jesus can't save me, then I'm lost.
And there's not a thing I can do about it.
Jesus must have saved me or otherwise it's all over.
And so there's that radical abandonment to Christ.
And we are happy to go to Him and rest, just like He said.
And to rest in Him, to rest that He can save me,
He can do what I can't.
He can take me, He can lift me up out of the miry clay
where I can't lift myself and He can save me.
Now, is that your faith?
We're not talking about, do you believe the Bible?
Do you believe that there's a God there somewhere in the world,
in the universe?
But do you have that faith?
Have you really, truly committed yourself into Christ's care?
Have you come to Him wanting Him to save you,
knowing that you can't save yourself?
Or is the old puerile just to say, have you closed with Christ?
I like that.
Have you closed with Christ?
You might go down to the corner down here where they sell cars
and see a ute and think, wow, that's a nice ute.
Go over and have a good look at it and talk to the salesman
and maybe do all sorts of work out deals
and the trading for your car and all that sort of thing.
But until you sign on that line, it's nothing, is it?
You haven't closed a deal.
And so it is, a sinner can't be saved unless he closes with Christ,
unless he goes to Christ.
Said, Christ, you have said, come, here I am.
You have said, come, give me rest, give me rest.
You have said, come and let us reason together.
I'm here to reason, I'm here to confess my sin.
I'm here to admit you're right and I want you to save me.
You closed with Christ in that way.
And so a faith that has not closed with Christ
or a faith that has not finalised matters, so to speak,
a faith that has not entered into the covenant with Christ is not faith.
There must be a closing.
An opinion about Christ, even a sound opinion,
even a good opinion is not faith.
You can hold a high view of Jesus, as I said, and it's not faith.
Faith must be that committing myself to Christ,
committing myself into his care.
And if I've done that, then that means that faith brings about a few things.
And if you've done, as Paul said, know who you believed,
you are persuaded that he's able to keep what you've committed to him till that day,
then faith brings certain advantages.
And where true faith is exercised, there are certain benefits.
And these only come by faith.
There is no other way to get these benefits purely by faith.
Faith alone, we often say, only faith, faith alone can bring these things to you.
The first one is found in Romans chapter 5 verse 1.
It says, having been justified by faith,
we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
And so the first one then is justification,
having been justified by faith.
You know, it was through the channel of my faith,
through my act of believing on Jesus Christ, I've been justified.
Now, what does justified mean?
Well, it means you're not condemned.
Paul in Romans says, who can bring a charge against God's elect?
It's God who justifies.
And so there's the opposite, there's a contrast.
There's someone bringing a charge before God about you,
and God saying, oh, I can see that's true, this is serious.
He said, no one can do that if you're justified.
God justifies and that's it, the person can't be condemned.
There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.
Why? Because they're justified, same thing.
He could have said there's full justification to those in Christ Jesus,
but he didn't, he said there's no condemnation, the same thing.
So being justified means you are not condemned.
It means you'll be declared righteous in the sight of God,
not just declared, actually made righteous in the sight of God.
Like I was just not imagining that you were righteous.
He makes you righteous.
He makes you to be righteous before him.
Now this is a result of a couple of actions.
And both relate to the crucifixion of Christ.
I had to put this in because there's this...
Some parts of the church that seem to think
you can preach the gospel without the cross.
I don't see for the life of me how you could do that.
Faith is what faith is and Christ is the Saviour,
and I must believe in him, I don't see how you can leave the cross
out of any declaration of the gospel,
especially when it comes to justification.
Justification involves two things.
The first one is forgiveness.
Christ suffered as my substitute.
There was one preacher said,
where Christ was, you read through the gospels
and see what happened to Christ when he said to his disciples,
the hour of darkness has come.
And then he went to Gethsemane and you read from there
right through to his crucifixion.
And this preacher said, you watch where Christ went,
what happened to him, he said, and that should have been you.
He was your substitute.
You should have been going to Gethsemane,
you should have been in great...
Sweating great drops of blood in anguish over your sin.
You should have been hauled before the soldiers
and laughed at and spat on and punched and mistreated.
You should have wore the crown of thorns.
You should have been condemned guilty and led away to die.
But Christ suffered in my place as a substitute.
He has made full satisfaction to God.
God is absolutely content with a price,
with a ransom that he has paid.
And so I am the guilty one, I'm absolved of all my sin.
I am forgiven, Christ has paid my price.
And that's why we say we've been washed in his blood.
Once filthy and corrupt, now because he shed his blood,
I'm clean because my sins have been forgiven.
He was willing to sacrifice himself.
The second thing is the imputation of righteousness.
I purposely put that word in there because you must learn it.
If it's a new word to you, please go home and learn it.
Get the Baker's Theological Dictionary, look it up.
Imputation, learn what that is.
It's the second part of being justified.
It's one thing to have your sins forgiven,
it's another to be imputed with righteousness.
And what it means is that Christ,
we know that he suffered and he died
when he said this is the hour of darkness
and he headed towards Gethsemane across the Brook Hedron.
It was about the entering to his sufferings,
but he lived for 33 years before that, didn't he?
And he lived a perfect life, upright life.
He was pure before the Father, that's why he could say,
this is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased.
He never did anything to upset his father,
to displease his father.
He lived a perfect holy life.
And he becomes my righteousness.
I become that righteous because it's imputed to me,
it's passed on to me.
You see, when you read through the book of Romans,
Paul talks a lot about the Gospel and he identifies
what is the real problem with man.
So the problem with man is that he is unrighteous.
And the other problem is the day of judgement is coming.
On the day of judgement, do you want to be unrighteous?
Or would you rather be righteous?
Yes, you'd rather be righteous.
How are you going to get this righteousness?
You can try and create your own,
it's not going to work, is it?
You need another righteousness.
And Paul says that in the Gospel,
you discover this righteousness.
He said, that's why I'm not ashamed to go and preach it.
Because when people find there's this righteousness
available to them and he goes on in chapter four
to discover it and we won't look at it now,
you go home and read Romans four and see how God passes on,
if you like, this righteousness to you,
to those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so the Gospel uncovers a real problem that man,
if you like, is enveloped or folded up
in condemnation, unrighteousness,
through Christ, through what he does,
justification takes that wrapping away.
And then it closed the sinner instead
in a perfect righteousness.
And the perfect picture for this is Joshua,
the high priest standing before the Lord
in the book of Zechariah.
And Satan standing there accusing him.
Say, Lord, you know, that this man,
do you want to stand his life?
Do you understand what he's like?
And it says he was standing before the Lord
in filthy clothes.
What do you think that's a picture of?
He's guilt, hey, he's guilty, he's sin.
And the Lord says, take those filthy clothes off him.
So they do.
And you go, that's wonderful, but use your imagination.
Now what's wrong with Joshua?
He's naked.
And so God says, now clothe him.
Put a fair mitre on his head.
You see, and that's justification.
It's one thing to have your sins forgiven,
but God clothes you again in a righteousness.
So you're not standing before him naked.
You have been clothed.
And my faith brings me that.
Having been justified by faith.
And so through faith I receive that justification
so that there is now no condemnation
to those in Christ Jesus.
Their sin is gone,
cast as far as the east is from the west,
washed away in the blood of Christ.
Justification has come.
They are clothed in the righteousness of Christ.
But Paul says in Romans 5 that because of that,
we have peace with God.
He doesn't mean serenity,
although I'm sure that's one of the spin-offs.
He means peace as in not war.
The hostilities are over.
God was threatening to destroy you.
He is angry with the wicked every day.
That's finished now.
There is no condemnation.
God won't condemn you.
We now have peace.
The wrath of God has been removed by Christ and his sufferings.
And instead, God looks upon us favourably.
And that brings up another important gospel word
that we need to write in.
This is not in your notes.
This is terrible oversight.
Proopitiation.
P-R-O-P-I-T-I-A-T-I-O-N.
Proopitiation.
Sadly, some Bibles don't use that word anymore.
If you have an old King James or a new King James,
you'll find it there.
The word proopitiation several times in the New Testament.
What it means is that God was angry.
I often say this, that the problem is the wrath of God.
The solution is propitiation.
Christ offered himself before the Father,
bearing my sin, the wrath of God,
the condemnation that should have been mine fell upon him.
He became my propitiation.
He took the wrath of God away for me.
God is not angry with me anymore.
He is not threatening me anymore.
I am now at peace with him.
Having been justified by faith,
we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
So having had my sin washed,
clothed in the righteousness of Christ,
I can now face judgment, as the Apostle John says,
with boldness.
Isn't that strange to go to the judgment seat of God,
the great white throne, him who sat upon it,
and walk up boldly.
John says that's what we can do as Christians.
We can walk up boldly to this great white throne
and appear before God.
Not because of me, but because of what Christ has done.
Washed in his blood, forgiven, my sins taken away,
clothed in the righteousness of Christ.
And so this flows from justification.
Having been justified, we have peace with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Reconciled, which we'll look at later.
Another thing that we get from this is adoption.
In John chapter 1 verse 12 it says,
to them he gave the right to become children of God
to those who believe in his name.
To those who believe in his name,
to those with faith, God gave the right
to become children of God.
Now that's a bonus, isn't it?
Could God have saved you and not adopted you?
Yeah?
Someone's shaking their head, he could have, couldn't he?
He could have saved you from hell and said,
well that's all right, you don't go to hell
because you're not my son.
He could well have done that, but he didn't, did he?
He saved you and he adopted you.
So we know if Paul said in Ephesians
that God always does exceedingly abundantly
above all you ask or think, and there's a good example.
Not only has he saved you, but he's declared you to be his son.
He's taken you into his family and said,
you are my son, I adopt you, I take you as mine.
He gave them right to become the children of God
and thus we call him father.
We call Jesus our brother because he is.
God has taken us and adopted us.
So he doesn't just justify, he doesn't just reconcile us,
but he takes the wash thinner and says,
you are mine, you are my child.
I take you now as my child.
A good picture is in the book of Ezekiel,
I can't remember the chapter, but where God says,
you know, it's like I was walking through a field one day.
You know what I found in the field?
A little baby.
He said, but no one cared for it.
Its cord hadn't been cut, it hadn't been washed,
it was laying there in its blood.
And I looked at you and I said, live.
And I said, I took you into my own home.
I raised you up as mine.
And that's what God does, he adopts us, he takes us.
And so when I believe on Jesus Christ,
I'm adopted as a child of God.
And also we're given victory.
John says in 1 John 5, 4,
this is a victory that has overcome the world, our faith.
And so believe in Christ and the world won't overtake you again.
You won't be swamped again by the things of the world.
It will try and you'll be tempted
and you may trip and stumble, but you won't fall.
So you won't be cast down totally.
If there's true faith, you will overcome the world.
Commit the keeping of your soul to him and he will keep it.
No one can snatch you out of my hand.
And you may not realise Jesus said that twice,
no one can snatch you out of my hand.
The very next verse he said,
no one can snatch you out of the father's hand.
That's right.
And he said, I am my father of one.
And so you're doubly secure if you like.
And so you will be kept.
And so over and over again,
the scriptures talked to us about justification,
said man is justified by faith alone.
Paul points out that that's your great need is to be justified,
to stand before God pure and sinless, without condemnation.
That's your great need.
And that happens by faith.
Not only that, it happens by faith alone,
purely by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ.
It's not faith and then some other works that we've got to do.
It's purely faith, believing in Jesus.
As I said earlier, can Jesus save me or not?
We're told in Hebrews that without faith,
it is impossible to please God.
And you might think, well, okay, faith's a good starting point.
So I believe in Christ and then I've got to go on and build on.
But Paul asked a good question.
He said, having been begun in the spirit,
ain't I justified by the flesh?
No foolish idea, isn't it?
Having begun in the spirit, we complete in the spirit.
As you receive Christ Jesus, so you walk in him.
And so you stay in him, simply through faith.
So it's not faith and works of some merit.
Paul actually said in Galatians 2.21,
which I didn't put in your notes.
He might just like to put the reference there.
He says this, if righteousness comes by the law,
in other words, if righteousness comes by something I do,
if I can build my own righteousness,
if I can be a good person and go before God
on a day of judgment and be happy and content
that all is well with me, if that is true,
if righteousness comes by the law, Christ is dead in vain.
In other words, Christ died for nothing.
If you think you can save yourself
by becoming a good person, go ahead and try.
But on the day of judgment, God will have an accusation.
He said, you said to me that my son died for no reason.
That's a serious charge, isn't it?
That's why John said, if you have the son, you have life.
If you believe in the son, you have life.
If you don't believe, the wrath of God abides upon you.
And in 1 John, he goes on to say
that you're making God to be a liar.
Because he has testified of his son,
that there's life in his son and you must believe in him
and just believe in him
and not try and work your own salvation.
Nothing else.
If righteousness comes by the law,
then Christ is dead in vain.
Christ died for nothing.
I don't want to say that to God.
I dare not say that to God.
And so I trust that he will save me
in spite of my sinfulness.
He will save me and keep me.
I'll believe his promise to do that.
And so justification is something that is instant.
Just like that and complete.
It's not a process.
It's not a partial process that gets completed over time.
It is an event that happens.
Paul said, having been justified by faith.
In other words, I exercise faith in Jesus Christ.
Now I've been justified.
How many times do I have to be justified?
Just the once.
I've been justified, he says,
and therefore I have peace with God.
It's happened.
It's an event that happened in an instant.
The moment you dare believe in Jesus Christ as a saviour,
all your sin is cast as far as the east is from the west.
You are clothed in the righteousness of Christ.
You are now justified.
It's an event that takes place.
And it's complete.
It doesn't need any more.
One of the men that had an influence on my life
used to explain it like this.
He said, God gives you, salvation is complete.
It's like a cup of water, it's full to the brim.
You take some away.
It's not full anymore, is it?
It's now imperfectly full.
If you try and add a little bit more, what's gonna happen?
It runs over.
You just leave it as it is.
It's perfectly full.
Take it like that.
Justification comes by faith.
It's a perfect justification.
It's instant and it's complete.
The deal is done, so to speak.
That's why I talk about closing with Christ
and you are saved.
Now this can't be undone
because it's the work of God for you.
The Lord said, by grace you've been saved through faith,
that not of yourselves.
It's a gift to God.
God puts it within your heart somehow
that mysterious working where we believe
in the Lord Jesus Christ,
we're able to cast ourselves totally in his care.
Surrender up myself.
It's an act of God that you can do that.
And so even the act of believing on Christ
is a result of the stirring of God's spirit.
That's why Jesus said, you must be born again.
Otherwise there'll be no faith.
There'll be no committing yourself to Christ
unless the Holy Spirit moves within.
And so if you haven't never cast yourself on Christ,
you must do it now.
Today's a day of salvation.
Today's a day to call on the Lord Jesus Christ.
As I said, seek the Lord while he might be found.
Meaning there's time when he won't be found.
And so you better do it now while he can.
And do it now.
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
You must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ or perish.
And we also said at the beginning of the talk,
what I would tell my friend,
well, that's what you must tell them.
You must point out that they're a sinner.
They are unrighteous.
They need righteousness.
And there is a place where they can get it.
The gospel tells them.
They can come believe in the Lord Jesus Christ,
abandon themselves to his care.
That verse, where was it?
2 Timothy 1.12,
I know whom I've believed and have persuaded he's able
to keep what I've committed to him until that day.
Go home and memorize that verse,
commit it to memory, ponder it, think about it.
And you'll have an excellent verse to tell people
what they must do to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
Commit yourself into his care.
Don't just believe certain facts.
Don't believe that, yes, I know that he walked
in Palestine so many years ago.
Don't worry about that.
You must of course believe that, but that's not faith.
Remember King Agrippa, do you know the prophets?
I know you believe the prophets.
Don't stop there.
Don't believe that there's one God only.
Don't even believe that Christ came into the world
to save sinners, but trust yourself to that.
Commit yourself totally to that.
As though that's everything for me.
John 3, we read at the beginning.
He who believes in the Son has everlasting life.
Anyone who has taken that step, who is closed with Christ
and cast himself on his mercy.
He who believes in the Son has everlasting life.
He who does not believe the Son shall not see life,
but the wrath of God abides upon him.
A word we need to take to heart.
But let's pray.
Now then we'll close this session.
Father, we do thank you that your word tells us
quite simply and quite plainly that we're justified by faith
and for those who are, that we have peace with you,
that we've become your children.
We thank you for that.
Father, we confess our sinfulness in not trusting ourselves
to Christ and determining that we must save ourselves
and somehow or do something good or worthwhile
so that you'll accept us.
But Father, we just pray you might help us
as the hymn says, just to come, just as I am,
tossed about with fears and doubts, filthy with sin
and not trying to clean up one bit,
but simply to come to the Lord Jesus
and reason with him that though my sin is like scarlet,
I can be made white as snow
and to trust that Christ is a savior,
able to save to the uttermost all who come to him.
And Father, we just pray that you might help us
to study this topic so that we might know it
and tell people what they must do.
And Father, we just pray that
by spiritual might teach us this.
And we just ask all these things in Jesus' name.