Two Journeys

Please take your bibles and open to Romans Chapter 5. This morning, we're going to be finishi­ng our look at Romans 5:18-21. I think every Fourth of July is an opportunity for us as Americans to praise God for the blessings that we have. And one of the greatest blessings, I think, is the system of government, which has endured all this time. We talked about that last Sunday evening. I hope you were there to hear David Barton. I heard him this week on Focus on the Family.

I turned on the radio, and I heard someone talking about the original signers of the Declaration and how a letter was written from John Adams. I said, "This sounds familiar." And it turned out to be David Barton. But he was talking about the form of government that we've enjoyed these many years. And juxtaposed with that was a piece of current events. I don't know if you saw that Slobodan Milošević has been handed over to face a trial for his atrocities, war crimes, for he's called "the Butcher of the Balkans," and he was involved in ethnic cleansing. And it got me thinking just about the close of a chapter, namely, the 20th century. And how it really, the 20th century, you almost could write it as a history of tyranny. One tyrant after another in the 20th century. And Milošević, perhaps the final one, perhaps.

I don't know when you would say the first 20th century tyrant was, but Mussolini maybe began it, a Fascist leader in Italy. And Hitler picked up some things from him, and led Nazi Germany into World War II. Thousands, and hundreds of thousands, and eventually, millions of lives cost by those two. Along with them, Joseph Stalin, the tyrant and dictator of Russia. And Mao Tse-Tung, immediately after, in China, the devastation that's come through his policies and his tyranny. Pol Pot in Cambodia, the killing fields. Perhaps you saw the movie, Killing Fields. He's responsible for the genocide of perhaps as many as 3 million of his fellow countrymen. Nicolae Ceaușescu, and now, the Butcher of the Balkans, Milošević, one after another.

And it got me to try to understand what is a tyrant? What is a dictator? What is the nature of tyranny? And I came across this thing, this story about Joseph Stalin entitled "How To Be A Good Dictator. What an odd title, and it intrigued me, so I read it. And this is what it said: When Joseph Stalin was on his death bed, he called in two of the potential leaders that would follow him. And I think the idea was that he would choose one of the two of them to take over in communist Russia. And he ordered that two small birds be brought in, and each one of them was to hold the bird, and he wanted to observe how they would hold it. And he said that, the way that they would hold the bird would give an insight into how they would lead Mother Russia.

The first one, desiring not that the bird should get away, squeezed it too tightly, and the bird died. He was holding on to it so tightly that the bird died. And Stalin had a look of obvious displeasure on his face. The other one saw that look, and held on very loosely, and the bird slipped through his fingers, and flew out the window, and was gone. And Stalin was outraged at both of them and said, "Bring me a bird." So the bird was brought in. And he held the bird by its feet. And one by one, he plucked all its feathers until it had no feathers left. And he cupped it in his hand like that. And then he opened his hand, and the bird lay there shivering, and naked, and helpless in his hand. And this is what he said, "He is even thankful for the human warmth coming out of my palm. That's how you rule Russia." Brothers and sisters, that is the nature of tyranny, isn't it?

And praise God, we haven't had to put up with that in 200 years in America. But you have had to put up with it in your own lives. And what am I talking about? The tyranny of sin. Isn't that what sin does to us? Doesn't it strip you bare little by little until you have nothing left but the sin itself? And you lay there shivering, and cold, and naked in the hands of sin. You talk to somebody for whom perhaps alcohol brought them down, and they're out on the street now. They lost a spouse. They lost kids. They lost a job. They lost self-respect. And all they have left is the bottle. And at least they're grateful for the warmth the bottle gives them. You see? That's the nature of the tyranny of sin.

And Jesus, I believe, spoke of this when He said in John 10, "The thief comes only to steal, and kill, and destroy. But I have come that they may have life and might have it abundantly." And I believe that the passage we're going to look at today contrasts the tyranny of sin and death with the unshakable and unbreakable reign of grace and life through Jesus Christ. We go from a tyrant, sin and death, to an emperor, grace and life. And the amazing thing that Paul is going to teach us in this passage is that the determination, and the will, and the power of grace and life is even more powerful than the tyranny of sin and death.

Now, that might not seem to be the case. We've seen some terrible things even this week down in Texas, and other things about the nature of sin and death, and it's shocking, isn't it? And it's scary. And then we see the effects of sin and death in our own lives. Sin in our lives, death in the lives of loved ones, and it's scary. And we think, "How can anything be more powerful than sin and death?" If you look at the history of the world, not just the 20th century, but every century, we've seen the brutal imprint of sin and death. And how can it really be that grace and righteousness reigns even more? But that is exactly what Paul is teaching in Romans 5.

Now, we have looked at verses 12-21. I'm not going to read the whole section. I'm going to allude to it, but I'm going to begin my reading today at verse 18 of Romans Chapter 5. It says, "Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous. The law was added so that the trespass might increase, but where sin increased grace increased all the more. So that just as sin reigned in death so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."

Now, this is the culmination of a very elaborate and complicated argument that Paul is making, in which he is comparing Adam with Christ. And it's very deep, remember at the beginning of this whole section, I said that you need to not take a rake because if you rake across the top you'll get leaves. You need to get the pick and the shovel and dig down, and that's where the truth is going to be found. We have to understand the relationship between Adam and Christ. And he sets that up right at the start. In verse 12 it says, "Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man in death through sin, and in this way death came to all men because all sinned." And he stops there. Remember I said that logically we're waiting for a "so also." Just as this, so also that. We're going to compare two things, but he stops himself and doesn't complete the comparison until verse 18 that I just read. He interrupts himself, but he's setting up half of the comparison talking about how sin and death enter the world through one man.

And who was that one man? In verse 14, he tells us it's Adam who was a pattern or a type of the one to come. So Adam was the original man. God choose in His wisdom to create the entire human race through one man and his wife Eve, and through that one man came every nation on the face of the earth. God created all the races, all the nations through one man. And it says in Paul's sermon in Acts 17:26, "From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live." But it all came through one man, through Adam. And we know that God gave Adam a test. He said, "You can eat from all the trees, all the fruit-bearing trees in the garden of Eden but one. The tree in the center. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil. From the day you eat of it, you will surely die." And so God at the very start linked together sin and death. Adam chose to disobey. He disobeyed that command. He threw off the reign and the rule of God. He would not have God rule over him. And the moment he did that, it wasn't Adam that took the throne, was it? It was sin and death that took the throne.

And until Christ threw sin and death off that throne, sin and death has reigned unchallenged as a tyrant in the human race. And all of us, all of us died that day. And this is a mystery, isn't? It's nothing we could have ever figured out. We're just born in a certain year, for me 1962. Some of you way before that, some of you after that, some of you way after that. All of us, though, no matter when we were born, we died the day Adam died. And how can that be? It's a deep mystery. So he interrupts himself in verse 12, "Because all sinned." He stops, lest you misunderstand. He does not mean because all sinned like Adam sinned, in other words we imitated him. He had a known command from God and broke it. We have known commands from God and we break that. That's not what went on there. That's not what he's saying. That is true, but that's not what he's saying. So he wants to clarify in verse 13 and 14. He talks about, "even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come." So there are those that did not sin, and yet they died in Adam. They died in Adam.

And so there's a comparison in verses 12-14, and the first half is set up with Adam, but then he can't go far, except that in verses 15-17 he says, "Yes, Adam and Christ are similar but oh, they're so different." They're so different. The things we receive from Adam, sin and death, are actually far less, no matter how powerful they may seem. Far less than what we received in Christ. The things that we got are different and what Christ did for us is far greater than anything we got in Adam. That's hard to believe, isn't? Don't you feel sometimes like sin has greater power over you than the grace in your life? We just accept this by faith. And when you look around in the world, doesn't it seem that sin's got the upper hand all the time, sin and death? And that grace sometimes seems nowhere to be found. We just have to accept this by faith. In the end, Christ and what we get through Christ will be obviously, clearly, infinitely greater than what we got from Adam, we just haven't gotten it all yet. We haven't received it all. So he's got to say in verse 15-17, that Adam and Christ are so very different. The gift is not like the trespass, he says. He says "not like" twice. And he says "how much more" twice. So not only is it not like, but Christ is much more greater than Adam, and what we get from Christ is much greater than what we got from Adam. So that's the unfolding.

And now we get in verse 18. He finishes the comparison. Look at it again. In Verse 18, "Consequently just as... " We get that "just as" again. "Just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men." Now we get the "so also." So also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men." Verse 19, "For just as... " There it is again. "Through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man, the many will be made righteous." And so we have this comparison "just as," "so also." What do we get in Adam? We get sin. We get death. We get condemnation. And how is that? Well, that's a mystery, isn't? But it seems in some profound way God saw us united together with Adam when Adam stood in front of that tree. You were there in Adam, all of you. Every person on the face of earth. We were all there. We were represented in Adam the day he stood before that tree and made that fateful choice. We were all somehow united. We were represented by him. He was a covenant head, an agreement head together, and he stood for us, and he made the decision for us.

Now, I know you think you would have made a different decision. If I had it to do, I'd have done differently. Is that the case? Think. God knows what He's doing. We've had that chance, again and again and again, haven't we? Clear command of God, and what do we do? We disobey. We've had that chance, but Adam stood as our representative. And everything that came down on Adam flowed through him to the entire human race. And so all of humanity immediately condemned with Adam because of Adam's sin. And in this way, I'm going to use a heavy, kind of theological word. Adam's sin was imputed to you, it was credited to your account. When God opens up your credit book, he sees the deficit as a result of Adam's sin, it was credited to you. That's not fair, we'll get to that. Because neither is your salvation either. We're going to talk about imputed righteousness in a minute. But that's what you got through Adam. You got imputed sin, something credited to your account, given to you, through no fault of your own, you didn't do it. You weren't even born, and yet it was credited to you.

And so also, through Jesus Christ, one act of righteousness justifies many. Jesus stood and represented you at the cross of Calvary, and His righteousness is taken wholesale and credited to your account. And when God opens up your account book, He is not looking for a bunch of good deeds that you do in righteousness. He is looking for the righteousness of Jesus Christ, credited to your account. You know, like a Swiss bank account, those numbered accounts, no one knows it. Open it up and what's in there? There's been a deposit into your account, from someone else, and it's credited to you and it's sufficient for your salvation. It's an alien righteousness, Luther called it, and it comes from Jesus Christ.

Now, it's interesting, it says, just as through one trespass, all of this happened, so also through one act of righteousness, we get justification. What is that one act? Do you ever stop and think about it? It's really kind of hard to figure out. Commentators and theologians say maybe it was the death of Jesus Christ. But the death of Jesus really wasn't one act, was it? It was really a series of acts. Think about it. In Gethsemane, Jesus decided to drink that cup, remember? The cup was handed to Him and He said, "Yet, not as I will, but as you will." And He was willing to drink that cup. But He didn't drink it in the garden, did He? He just declared His willingness to drink it. Was that the one act of righteousness? Or how about when He commanded Peter to put his sword back in his sheath? "Put your sword back in its place," Jesus said to him, "for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?" Was that the one act of righteousness when He told Peter not to fight for Him?

How about when He stood before Annas or Caiaphas and did not revile back and did not answer a word in fulfillment of prophecy. How about that? Was that the one act of righteousness? Or when He stood before Pilate and made the good confession, was that the one act of righteousness? Or when they stretched Him out on the cross, and He didn't pull his arms off or strike back at the soldiers, was that the one act of righteousness? What was it? You see, it doesn't really work, does it? It's a whole collection of righteous acts, and not just there, but His whole life was one act of righteousness, wasn't it? And all of that righteousness, you remember when Jesus went to be baptized, John the Baptist went to stop Him, and Jesus said, "Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness. " It was on His mind all the time. He lived for righteousness. He loved righteousness. At every moment He lived and breathed the righteousness of God, from birth until death, the righteous in God. And all of that righteousness has been given to you as a gift. Isn't that incredible? That whole righteous life is credited to your account. And you want to tell me that original sin is not fair? It's exactly the way that we get saved.

Can I construct for you right now a great religion? I just want to put a good religion together. Let's say we put together a religion where it is preached that you are sinners, and you do things you shouldn't do, we all know that. And you have some struggles you shouldn't have, and we know that. And you need to turn away from those struggles and start doing good things and be really sorry for all the struggles that you had and start, step by step, to obey the law, and to do the right things that you're commanded to do. That sounds like a good religion, doesn't it? I mean, start giving money to the poor and care and not argue with your spouse or submit to your boss and not chafe again. Just start doing right things that God expects. That sounds like a good religion, doesn't it? Well, it does, it's just not Christianity. It's not Christianity. Christianity talks about us and Adam receiving something we never did, and then receiving in him a sin nature that compels us to sin. And then in like manner receiving from Christ a righteousness we don't deserve. And then a new nature in order that we may obey. That's Christianity, does that sound alien to you?

I'm not standing up here and proclaiming a system or morality and righteousness. I'm proclaiming the Gospel of an alien righteousness that's credited to your account through no blessing of your own, through no dessert of your own, but simply by grace. And God wants us to understand it. And therefore it says in verse 18, "Just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men." Remember what I told you justification was? It's the judge looking at you as a judge and declaring you to be not guilty, and the gavel was down, case dismissed, not guilty. Wow! Is it possible on Judgement Day that the judge is going to look and know all those things about you and declare you to be not guilty, case dismissed? Yes, it will happen, but does it just hang in the middle of space? As though there's nothing there, He's just going to... As the sheer act of His sovereign power and will, just say, "You're not guilty, go and do whatever you want." No. He's going to do it on a basis. So also the result of that righteousness was justification, you see. And so that righteousness is credited, then the justification comes. Isn't that beautiful? So justification's a just thing. He sees the righteousness of Christ on you and declares you not guilty.

 So as we sum up all that we've been seeing in Romans 5:12-21, what we see is Adam and Christ, we see two covenant heads, two representatives. All of us were sin in Adam. He sinned for us all. We received from him the sin and guilt. So also in Christ we received righteousness through that justification and eternal life. That's the parallel. And as we compare them, what we get through Adam is sin and death and devastation. What we get through Jesus Christ is grace and righteousness and life forever more. And therefore Christ is far greater than Adam. That's the argument of Romans 5. But now I want to dig in a little bit more and try to understand original sin. What is going on here. In verse 12 it says, "Just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin and in this way death came to all men." Look, "because all sinned."

Now, look at verse 19, "For just as through the disobedience of the one man, that many were constituted or made to be sinners. So also through the obedience of the one man the many will be constituted or made to be righteous." The doctrine of original sin works this way. You get two things because you are united with Adam. You want to know what they are? This is what you get. By being united with Adam, you get two things. You get guilt and the condemnation that comes through that guilt, and you get a nature, a sin nature that pulls you toward unrighteousness. Do you feel that within you? Do you realize it's still there? You still have it? So what are we going to do about it? We'll get to that in Roman 6, 7 and 8. It's still there, pulling you. We get two things.

Now, suppose... Now, of course, this doesn't relate to any of us. I know the Southern Baptist Convention had its meeting in Las Vegas a few years ago. But none of you ever go to the crap tables, I'm sure, and none of you ever gamble. And so they went there to witness and to witness alone. I'm sure that not one messenger from any church went to the crap tables except to witness. But suppose you were there and maybe there was a gambler there and they were rolling out the dice and the dice came up sixes. Wow! Double six. Pick up the dice and roll them again, come up sixes again. Now, that's remarkable. Suppose they pick them up and for the third time double six, and the fourth time, and the fifth time, and the sixth time.

When do you start wondering about the dice? How about after the 10th time? Maybe a little slow. The 100th time, the double sixes. The 10,00th time, the 10,000th times, the millionth time, the billionth time. Sixes every time. How about 6.3 billion times? Every single time, it comes up the same way. Sinner. Every single child born in every single culture will violate their conscience at some point if allowed to live long enough. They will violate their conscience and do sin, without fail. Now, how do you explain that? Do you deny that it's true? You know it's true. How do you explain it? Original sin. There's a nature, a character. It's not just environment. It's far more powerful than that.

Now, there's an ancient debate between Augustine and Pelagius. Augustine said, "Original sin, we're getting in nature. We're getting a pull toward sin." Pelagius said, "Impossible, that makes God the author of sin. Every single baby born in the world gets a clean slate. Absolute possibility to choose to do righteousness at all times. And that's true of all of us at all times. We can at any moment choose to do righteously, anytime you want." Now, which of those two more nearly explains both your experience and the experience of the entire world? Original sin. There was a study done by the police out in California. This is not done by Christians. This is just observation. I thought it was very interesting.

We tend to take babies and think of them as very innocent, don't we? If only we knew everything they were thinking and all of their worldview. What is the worldview of a baby? Do you ever wonder about that? Does a baby have a worldview? Well, this is what this police study in juvenile delinquency said, "Every baby starts life as a little savage. He is completely selfish and self-centered. He wants what he wants, his bottle, his mother's attention, his playmate's toys, his uncle's watch or whatever. Deny him these and he seethes with rage and aggressiveness which would be murderous were he not so helpless. He is dirty. He has no morals, no knowledge, no developed skills. This means that all children, not just certain children, but all children are born delinquent. If permitted to continue in their self-centered world of infancy, given free rein to their impulsive actions to satisfy every want, every child would grow up a criminal, a killer, a thief and a rapist." That's true.

Now, I know that Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me and of such is the kingdom of heaven," but what was He zeroing in on? Faith. Justification by faith alone. The ability just to simply trust and to believe. Not the essential nature. I appreciate Andy reading about this sin nature in Ephesians 2:3. It says, "All of us also lived among them at one time. Gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts; like the rest we are by nature children of wrath." By nature, children of wrath. Now what I tell you is that this is not a big theme in Romans 5. He's focusing on the momentary sin, and we got the momentary sin, we get the momentary righteousness. But it's in there because we were constituted sinners and it flows out. Now, when does it flow out? I'll tell you when, as soon as you understand law from God.

"Once I was alive," he says in Roman 7, "Apart from the law, but when the law came, sin sprang to life and I died." Well, the beauty of the gospel is that it has a response to both aspects of original sin. Imputed guilt and sin from Adam, justification by faith alone through the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Imputed sin nature from Adam, we get a new nature, a new heart, we are new creations in Jesus Christ with a bent toward doing right, a yearning to please. Interestingly enough, though, the two are left to struggle, aren't they? The rest of your life, that's called sanctification by faith, and we'll get to that in Roman 6.

So what do we get ultimately? Sin and death have been dethroned, grace and life have been enthroned. And you may ask, why did God choose to do it this way? Why was the law added, for example? Why this river of sin? Why didn't He just live it at one command? Would it be better if we all just had the one command, don't eat from that tree?

So then sin becomes very simple, but now we have lots of commands, don't we? We have the whole Mosaic law. We have the ten commandments. We have the two great commandments. We have all kinds of commandments. And therefore we can sin in lots and lots of ways, why was the law added? Verse 20 says, "The law was added so that the trespass might increase." But why did God want the trespass to increase? Well, understand what God's motive is. First that you may see just how wicked and evil sin is. When we get to heaven, are you going to want anything more to do with sin? Haven't you had enough? And if you still have a memory, we're not talking Hinduism Nirvana where you lose yourself, we'll still have a memory. We'll remember our history and we're going to say, "Forever I am done with sin, praise God." We've seen its career. We've seen it for millennia, and we've had it with sin forever.

So that sin might become utterly sinful, it says in Roman 7, the law was added. And then sin just gets exposed for what it is. But that's not even the final goal, the final goal is the praise of His glorious grace, so that we see that no matter how big the sin unfolded, grace was even bigger. No matter how much sin devastated, grace restored and healed even more. Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. It's incredible. John Bunyan, who wrote Pilgrim's Progress, he chose this title for his spiritual autobiography, his testimony, how he came to Christ. He was once a blasphemer, and a vile man, and God saved him by His grace. And the name of his autobiography was Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. Do you feel that Christian? Do you feel that God's grace has abounded to you, the chief of sinners? How many times have you gone to Him to confess that sin? What sin? Well, the one you're thinking about right now. Whatever is on your mind. How many times have you confessed it to Him and asked Him to forgive?

Grace abounding. Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. You can't out-sin the grace of God. It is impossible to out-sin the grace of God. It's impossible. And you can say, "Wait a minute, should we sin lots and lots?" We'll get to that next time. But I want you to understand Chapter 5 before we get to the question, "Shall we sin all the more so that grace may abound?" Understand grace first, you can't sin more than God's grace. You can't get ahead of it. Sometimes you try and try. And those are grievous times in your life, but God is gracious and His grace covers all your sin. So what was God's purpose?

That we may see how wicked and evil is sin through a full history in career, but even more that we may be all of us for the praise of His glorious grace. That grace is far greater than any of our sin. But even more than that, he uses language here which is phenomenal. "Where sin increased [or abounded], grace increased all the more so that, just as sin reigned in death..." Remember, like Joseph Stalin, a tyrant, reigning over you, dominating you, in charge of you, right? "Just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."

Grace is a king. Grace is an emperor. Grace calls the shots. Grace is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Grace is in charge, and grace will get you home. His grace, it's grace that's brought you safe this far, and it's grace that's going to bring you all the way home. You have no other confidence or assurance than that. God's grace is going to get you home. Grace is a king, it's a sovereign. What do you think the word reigns means? Just as sin and death reigned like a tyrant, now grace reigns like a good emperor. Roman 6:14 says, "Sin shall not be your master, for you are not under law, but under grace." So who's your master now? Grace is your master. Grace is in charge now. Romans 8:9, "You however are controlled, not by the sinful nature, but by the spirit. If the spirit lives inside you." Grace isn't going to let you go. Grace will not let you be lost. Amen.

Praise God for that. And it's on that basis that we can have joy in our Christian life. It's on that basis that you're going to stand and fight sin through Roman 6, 7 and 8. It's on that basis. Total assurance and security. Just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Note the two "throughs," through righteousness, through Jesus Christ our Lord. That already answers the question we're about to get to. Shall we sin all the more? No. Grace reigns through righteousness. What grace does, is it makes you righteous. It won't let you, for long, stray. It's going to bring you back and say, no, that's not the life you should be living. You're going to be righteous. You're going to confess that sin, and you're going to repent and you're going to keep walking.

Grace is strong, and powerful, like a drill instructor sometimes. You know what I'm talking about, to keep you walking with Jesus until you come home. Grace is an emperor, a reign, a ruler. Through righteousness the grace reigns, but also, he can't help but say, through Jesus Christ, Our Lord. We can never get far from Christ, can we? All of this has come because one day, a long long time ago, our second Adam, our second covenant head walked up that hill with our cross and died in our place. He shed His blood in our place that we might have eternal life.

Now, by way of application, I want to ask you, you say, "What benefit? Why do we have to go through this? What benefits come to us from understanding the doctrine of original sin?" Well, I got these from John Piper. I'm not smart enough to come up with these, so he helped me.

The first is humility. As you look at this, I believe right understanding of salvation always promotes or leaves you with two things, humility and security. Humility and security. Those two, you get humility, you get security, God gets the glory, not you. You get the joy. And so, humility, well, in what way? Number one, it's not the case that you just do bad things. I just do sin, it's kind of like one of my hobbies. It's that you are a sinner. It's deeper than that, it goes to the root of your nature, and not just you, but me, every one of us. We are not just... It's not just that we do bad things, we are bad, essentially. And therefore we need a savior, a great savior. So that's humbling, doesn't that humble you? And it also means that we are all constituted one family, so the terrible things that happen as a result of sin, like in Texas, I'm not essentially different from that lady. I'm not essentially different. We're kinfolk.

That's kind of hard, that's humbling, isn't it? I'm essentially like somebody who'd bomb an office building. I'm essentially like that. I'm not essentially different. And second of all, it's humbling because this brings us to the edge of what we can handle intellectually. How is it that God can give us somebody else's sin and somebody else's sin nature and yet not be the author of sin? I don't know, but I know that it's true. So it brings us to the edge and it humbles us. And secondly, it deepens our gratitude for salvation. You should be thankful, grateful. Roman 6:17 says, "Thanks be to God that though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted." Thanks be to God that you obeyed. That's what he says. Thank you, God, that I obey. It deepens gratitude for salvation. Look that one up, if you don't think it's there. It's there, Roman 6:17, we'll get to that. Thanks be to God that you obeyed. Take no credit whatsoever for your salvation.

Number three, though we want to fight against this doctrine, doesn't it explain the world we live in better than any other system? Isn't that what's going on? We have Adam's sin, and Adam's sin nature, every one of us. And that explains it, and we get sin and death, as a result.

And number four, for the Fourth of July, it gives us insights into human government. To concentrate power in the hands of one person is dangerous. Why? Because of original sin. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, unless it's Jesus Christ who has it. He can't be corrupted, He's incorruptible. So He's got this power, and grace has the power, and it's incorruptible. But humans, you need to spread the power out, as wide as you can, and it's not to pat ourselves on the back that we know how to rule ourselves, democracy. No, it's to minimize the effects of original sin.

And also this doctrine should produce compassion for others. When you read a story of a lady who kills her own children, I'm not condoning that, it brings me to tears. I don't understand it. But at the same time, I can say there's still hope for somebody like that. It's still possible… You can't say you've sinned so much that grace can't reach that. And so that no matter what any of you who are hearing me today are into, any of the ways you've expressed your sin nature, there's still forgiveness possible. And also, we are able to look out to a sinner and say, "I'm not any different than you. There's nothing I don't see, there's nothing I see in your life that I don't see a reflection in my own nature." Because we're kinfolk.

And it also motivates us in evangelism, because there is no other answer for the world. Is there any other answer than Jesus Christ to this? There is no other answer but Christ alone. We need to get out and share the gospel, all of us. And we need to have our eyes on the whole world, because there is one gospel for the whole world. And one final word before we close, I want to know, I'm so... My only desire is that everyone in this room here, this is my field today, right now. All of you would be seen by God, in Christ, not in Adam. There's only two possibilities. You're either going to be seen on Judgement Day in Adam, or you're going to be seen in Christ, there's no third option. Does God see you right now in Adam, or does He see you in Christ?

Some people take Romans 5 and push it too far into universalism, just as every single solitary person in the world sinned in Adam, so every single solitary person in the world will be saved in Christ. Is that what it's teaching here? Not at all. Look at verse 17, Remember, "For if by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ." Have you received it? Have you received this free gift of Christ's righteousness? Have you received Christ? And if so, you're in Christ now. You're in Christ today, and nothing can take you out. But if you have not yet received by faith Jesus Christ, please don't leave this room. Please don't, don't go away until you know you've received grace through faith in Jesus Christ.

We're going to sing a closing hymn, in a minute I'm going to pray. And if you want to talk to me, if you don't know whether you have received grace, please come and talk to me. Talk to me while the hymn's playing, talk to me afterwards, I go up to the back, come and say, "I need to talk to you. I need to talk to you about my soul." Don't put it off. Please close with me in prayer.

Heavenly Father, we can only bow in amazement at what you've laid before us. We don't understand your ways, as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are your ways higher than our ways, and your thoughts than our thoughts. But we do see the wisdom to what you're doing, in that we are utterly humbled by the gospel, and we all, all of us, feel the gratitude, the praise of your glorious grace that we are saved by grace alone. And that means, oh Lord, if we're in Christ today, we're going to see you someday face to face. Holy and blameless, without sin, on that final day. Father, I pray now, for any who have heard me today, who do not have assurance of salvation, they've never looked to Christ, to Him crucified, they've never trusted in Him to take away their death penalty, they've never trusted in Him, that they would today put their trust in Christ. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Today we are looking at Romans 5:15-17. We're going to read a larger section than that, but our goal is to understand specifically Romans Chapter 5:15-17. A number of years ago, as I was on my way to a mission trip, I was going to Kenya, we had a stop for about eight hours or ten hours in Amsterdam. Now, Amsterdam used to be the center of diamond sales throughout the world. It's no longer that way. Many of them go through Belgium. But I remember some friends of mine and I went to a diamond seller, and we just wanted to look at diamonds. And he sat us down in these plush leather chairs, and he rolled out this black velvet piece of cloth. And then he took out this black velvet bag and just spilled these rocks out onto the cloth. And I remember being taken in by that, because against the backdrop of that black velvet, these diamonds seemed to sparkle with a light that seemed to come from within them. It was amazing.

And so it is, I think, as we look around the world and see all the evil and all the sin, and the death, and the struggle, and the suffering, and then we look in Romans Chapter 5 and see that all of it flowed from our union with Adam. And we have to wonder, "How, God? How could it be that anything good could come out of this union with Adam and all the sin and the struggle?" And every one of us feels that struggling within us, don't we? We feel that sin nature. And so we come to Romans and we find out it's because in Adam we died. In Adam we received the sin nature. And we're struggling with that, and we wonder, "How could anything good come out of that?" This passage today, Romans 5:15-17, shows that very brilliantly, the sin of Adam, and the death that we receive, and all of that struggle, all of it serves as a backdrop against which the light of Jesus Christ shines all the more brightly, so that we might understand the grace that God has given us in Jesus Christ.

Paul's purpose here is that we might praise His glorious grace, to the praise of His glorious grace. This is exactly what he said in Ephesians. That all of us, when we stand before God and we are acquitted through the blood of Jesus Christ, through a righteousness not our own, through a gift of righteousness, through faith in Jesus Christ, when we are pronounced once and for all, (and it's declared to the universe) 'not guilty' through the blood of Jesus Christ, we will all be there for the praise of His glorious grace. And for the rest of eternity, we will be praising His glorious grace." And so what is Paul saying here in Romans Chapter 5? He's enabling us to understand our union in Jesus Christ and the certainty of our salvation through faith in Him.

Look with me if you would. I'm going to begin reading at verse 12, and I'm going to go through verse 17.

"Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way, death came to all men, because all sinned. For before the law was given, sin was in the world, but sin is not taken into account where there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern or a type of the one to come. But the gift is not like the trespass, for if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man Jesus Christ overflow to the many! Again, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man's sin. The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. For if by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ?

Let him who boasts, let him boast in the Lord. Let him who boasts, let him boast in Jesus Christ, for our salvation is found in no one else other than the free gift of righteousness through faith in Christ.

Spurgeon put it this way… If you want to understand the logic of the passage, what is going on here, we've got a comparison between Adam and Christ. They are compared, Adam and Christ. Last week we said that Adam was a type of Christ. We're going to talk about that. But in these verses, verses 15-17, Adam and Christ are contrasted. There's a difference between Adam and Christ, so they're compared and they are contrasted. And here we have highlighted in verses 15-17 the differences between Jesus Christ and Adam. Spurgeon put it this way,

“The sin which destroyed us was the transgression of a finite being, and cannot be compared in power with the grace of the infinite God; it was the sin of a moment, and therefore cannot be compared for force and energy with the everlasting purpose of divine love. If, then, the comparatively feeble fount of Adam’s sin sends forth a flood which drowns the world in sorrow and death, what must be the boundless blessing poured forth from the infinite source of divine grace? The grace of God is like his nature, omnipotent and unlimited. God has not a measure of love, but he is love; love to the uttermost dwells in him. God is not only gracious to this degree or to that, but he is gracious beyond measure; we read of ‘the exceeding riches of his grace.’ He is “the God of all grace,” and his mercy is great above the heavens.”

Thank you, Charles Spurgeon. This is what this is all about. This little fount of Adam has polluted the whole race. How much more will what we get from Jesus bring us to everlasting life? The comparison between Adam and Christ.

Now, let's set our context. We always want to understand where we are. It's easy to lose your way when you're going in detail, trying to understand. So what's the big picture? In the book of Romans, where are we? We're in a book that's given to us that we may understand and that it may be explained to us plainly, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the only message of our salvation. "I am not ashamed of the Gospel," Romans 1:16, "For it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes." For in the Gospel the righteousness from God, that is by faith from first to last comes to us. A righteousness that is a gift of God. This is the Gospel. And then in Romans 1, 2 and 3, it explains why we all need this gift of righteousness. The Gentiles, suppressing the truth in unrighteousness, growing in perversion, not understanding the way of God. The Jews having the law but not able to keep it, locked up under the law, unable to fulfill it. And so the summation, Romans 3:23, All have sinned, Jew and Gentile alike. "All have sinned and lack the glory of God and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Him as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in His blood."

That is the Gospel. Well, how shall we tie in? How shall we be united with Christ? By faith alone, apart from works of the law. You can't work your way to heaven. You can't through good work seek to pay for your sin. By faith alone do you receive this righteousness. It's the same faith of Abraham. When God made a promise to Abraham, He said, "Abraham, look at the stars. See if you can count them. So shall your offspring be, Abraham." And Abraham inside his heart heard that promise, believed it and was justified. He was declared not guilty by God. A righteousness was given him that is not his own.

And then in Romans Chapter 5, we've seen this assurance that God wants to give us. Since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul wants us to know that there's an absolute unbreakable chain tying us to the grace of God, nothing can break it. And so we have link after link in Romans 5:1-11. The sum of it all is the declaration that if we have been justified through faith, we will most certainly in the end be glorified. We will someday see God face to face and nothing can change that. So right in the middle of this section, we're trying to understand justification by faith alone. We're trying to understand how it is that God declares us not guilty simply by faith. And so he delves into the depths of the relationship between Adam and Christ, and us in Adam, and us in Christ, that is our context.

And Paul's purpose here is answering some very difficult root questions. How did we come to this depravity, this sin nature that's so hard for us to wrestle against? Do you feel it? Do you feel that sin nature inside? It's so hard to do what is right. How did we come to that sin nature? And how did sin come to have an unshakable reign over the earth, and not just sin but death as well? How did we come to it? And more than that, how shall we escape it? How shall we break the bonds of sin? How shall we escape death? Is there any way? These are the answers that Paul is seeking to give us these deep questions, and how are we secure in Christ and how much glory, above all, how much glory should God get for our salvation? These are the issues that he's facing.

Now, as we look at Adam and Christ, we see the issue of Federal Headship, our Federal Heads compared and contrasted. Now what does that mean, Federal headship? Well, Federal means covenant. There's a covenant, an agreement between God and a representative, that's a covenant. We have a covenant made between God and Adam, it's called the covenant of works. And basically it was this, that if Adam would be righteous in the face of his test, that all of us would be righteous in Him, but Adam failed his test. Adam is our covenant head, he is our representative in that covenant. And so in effect, God saw all of us, the entire human race, every tribe and language and people and nation, all of us represented at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, at Adam, in Adam, all of us represented there. He is our covenant head, our Federal head.

And in the same way, Jesus Christ is the representative to all united in Him. Just as we are represented at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in Adam, so we are represented at the tree on Calvary in Jesus Christ. It's the same. And so these two are being compared, Adam representing us and Christ representing us. And so Adam and Christ are compared. Now, we finished last week in verse 14, in the very last part of the verse it says, "As did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come." Adam was a type or pattern of Jesus Christ.

A short time ago, I took a vacation with my family and we went to Williamsburg. Have you ever been to Williamsburg? You see all those trade shops, you've got the ceramic and the leather worker and all these different ones, jewelry maker? But I love the print shop, I always love going to the print shop because I realize the importance of the printer back then. And these folks always have interesting stories to tell.

And if you go in the print shop, there is a little bin, all these little bins with these little letters inside them. Modern day, we have the word processor and all that. When I was growing up, we had a typewriter. Some of you younger folks might not remember a typewriter. I see the look of confusion on your children's face, "Typewriter? What is that?" But some of you know what I'm talking about. When I went to MIT, that's what I used, was a typewriter, until finally word processors came and freed us from white-out and all those other things we had to deal with. But before the typewriter, there was type itself. There were these little letters, remember? And all of them would be set up in a roll by printers in wooden frames. And they'd press them in and then they'd ink them up and they would print the page. And so in the same way, that's the kind of word that's used, there's a type, a relation between the S or the T or the L that's inked and then the imprint made on the page. So there's a comparison here. Adam is a type of Christ. But Paul is very urgent that we understand that there's a difference as well.

The same thing is said of the relationship between the father and the son. There there's a perfect correspondence between Jesus, between the son and the father. Perfect correspondence, but there is not a perfect correspondence between Adam and Christ. And so in this section, in verses 15-17, he wants us to understand the contrast as well as the comparison. And what is the comparison? Well, it's the idea of the one and the many. Look at verse 15, "For if by the transgression of the one, the many died, how much more did the grace of God and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ overflow to the many!" So we've got the one representing the many. Do you see that in verse 15? One and many.

We also have a "Just as" and a "So also." He begins the whole thing in verse 12, "Therefore, just as sin entered the world... " we're waiting for a so also, we don't get it until verse 18, look down at verse 18. "Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men." So there's a comparison here, just as, so also, and we've got the one and we've got the many. And all of it come together in verse 19. Look down at verse 19. "For just as through the disobedience of the one man, the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man, the many will be made righteous." So you see the comparison, it's the idea that both Adam and Christ stand at the head of a huge group of people and they represent those people. Adam represents a huge group of people, the many. Christ represents a huge group of people, the many. And God sees us either in Adam or in Christ, there's no other option. You're either seen in Adam or you're seen in Christ. So that's the comparison. What's the contrast?

Well, first of all, we know it's a contrast. As you look at verse 15, what's the first word you see in verse 15? It's "but," isn't it? Now as you're moving along in a sentence, you're flowing along and then you come to the English word, "but." That's a contrasting word. We've been heading in one direction, now we're going to go in a different direction. Adam is a type of Christ, but he's different too. And so we're contrasting, we're trying to understand the difference, and there's basically two ideas that Paul is trying to get across here. Number one, Christ is not like Adam in some significant ways. And number two, even better, Christ is much greater than Adam. Those are the two things he wants to get across here. If you forget anything else of what am saying, 15 through 17, Christ is not like Adam. In fact, Christ is much greater than Adam. The effects of Jesus Christ on those in Him is much greater than the effect of Adam on those in him.

That's a dynamite statement, we're going to unfold it a little bit more. But look at verse 15, it says, "But the free gift is not like the transgression." Do you see the words 'not like' in there? So there's a difference. Verse 16, "And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned." And then Christ is greater than Adam, we get that from the words "much more." Again look at verse 15, "But the gift is not like the trespass, for if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man Jesus Christ overflow to the many?" Again, verse 17, "For if by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ."

Now what is Paul trying to work on here? Well, John Piper put it this way, suppose we look at it this way, that Adam has in effect put us at negative 10. Jesus Christ did not come to offset with a positive 10 so we end up back at zero, back at neutrality, back at the Garden of Eden, not at all. If Adam gave us a negative 10, what did Jesus give us? Positive infinity. Positive infinity. You can't compare them. The effect of Christ is so much greater than the effect of Adam. That's what he's getting across here. Verse 20, we have the statement, "Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more." There's a multiplication of goodness and grace.

Now, as we unfold the contrast, we see that Christ is much more than Adam. The free gift, for example, is much greater than the judgement. Grace to many is much greater than death to many. Many transgressions which Christ followed is much greater than one transgression, the result of Christ much greater than Adam's result, and the reign of the grace receivers much greater than the reign of death.

Let's explain or understand each of these. First, the free gift is much greater than judgement. Several times in this passage he mentions the free gift. Now, the word in Greek actually is redundant. If I were to say free gift, it's redundant. The word for gift is charisma. The word for grace is Charis, they're related together. So all of the gifts that we get come from grace. We don't deserve any of them, but there's an underscoring of the freeness of this gift. What is it you could find in your bag of collections that you could use to pay God the father to have Him send Jesus to die in your place? Is there anything you could find? Any of your gold or silver or your most costly possessions that would persuade the father to send the son in your place? Is there anything you can offer on judgement day for your soul? And therefore it's a free gift, and the free gift is much greater than Adam's trespass, much greater. All of this is for the praise of His glorious grace.

Secondly, it says the grace to many is much greater than the death to many. Look at verse 15, "For if by the transgression of the one, the many died, how much more did the grace of God and the gift that came by the grace of the one man Jesus Christ overflow to the many?" What do you get through your union with Adam? You get death, you get to die. What do you get through your union with Jesus Christ? Eternal life. And which of those two is greater? The eternal life is far greater than what you got in Adam. This is the logic of the passage, much greater. And there's an effusion, there's an abundance of grace flowing to us, somewhat like a river. The gift of grace overflowed, it said, to the many.

The Amazon River, second longest river in the world, actually flows more water than any other river. 4.2 million cubic feet of water per second flow through the Amazon. You wonder what that looks like? 4.2 million cubic feet of water? And that's what I think of when I come to the grace of God, it's a river that flows. It just flows and it overflows all of our sin. It's just like the image I got when I said we're standing in grace of a shower of grace. Now, you think, "If I get 4.2 million cubic feet of water per second flowing on me, it'll kill me." But the grace of God is just sufficient for your sin, it just overflows and cleanses you from all of your sin. John MacArthur put it this way,

"Adam's sinful act, devastating as it was, had but a one dimensional affect. It brought death to everyone. But the effect of Christ's redemption, redemptive act has facets beyond measure. Because he not only restores men to spiritual life, but gives them the very life of God. Death is by nature static and empty, Whereas life by nature is active and full. Only life can abound."

And so what we get from Jesus, we get the Garden of Eden in your life. We get full flowering coming up out of grace in your life, and that for eternity. The two don't even compare. What do you get from Adam? A struggle with sin and death and all this wrestling. What do you get from Christ? A river of grace flowing to eternal life. And so Christ's results are far greater than Adam's results. Now, you can only understand that if you understand how much damage has been done through Adam. It's been terrible, hasn't it? Think of all the damage that sin has done in your life. Think of all the things that sin has done.

What would you give, brother or sister in Christ, to have sin gone forever from your life, right today? What would you give to be free forever from sin? All the damage that comes, and Spurgeon put it this way,

"We came into the world with a bias towards evil. Those of us who have any knowledge of our own nature must confess that there is in us a strong tendency towards sin, which is mixed up with our very being. This is not derived solely from faults of education, or from the imitation of others; but there is a bent within us in the wrong direction, and this has been there from our birth. Alas! that it should be so; but so it is. In addition to having this tendency to sin, we are made liable to death — nay, not liable alone, but we are sure in due time to bow our heads beneath the fatal stroke. Two only of the human race have escaped death, but the rest have left their bodies here to moulder back into mother earth, and unless the Lord comes speedily, we expect that the same thing will happen to these bodies of ours. While we live we know that the sweat of our brow must pay the price of our bread; we know that our children must be born with pangs and travail; we know that we ourselves must return to the dust from whence we are taken; for dust we are, and unto dust must we return. O Adam, you did a sad day’s work for us when you listened to the voice of your wife and ate of the forbidden tree. The world has no more a Paradise anywhere, but everywhere it has the place of wailing and the field of the dead. Where can yon go and not find traces of the first transgression in the sepulcher and its mouldering bones? Every field is fattened with the dust of the departed: every wave of the sea is tainted with atoms of the dead."

That's what we got through Adam. We got sin and we got death. But do you see the logic of the passage? What we get from Christ is abundantly more. I know it's hard to believe, isn't it? Do you feel it now? You feel like, "Boy, what I got from Adam is far more than I'm getting from Jesus. I struggle with Adam every day." The text says what you get from Christ can't even be compared with what you get from Adam. "How much more?" it says. You should marvel at this.

And many transgressions greater than one transgression, verse 16, "Again the gift of God is not like the result of the one man's sin. The judgement followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification." How can it be that one sin did all this? Do you ever think about that? How could it be that one sin brought all of this suffering into the world? Somehow it doesn't seem right, does it? But this is the nature of God. This is the holiness of God. I was talking to a brother recently who was talking about alabaster lampshades. Can you imagine a big chunk of alabaster, what it would take to work that thing until it was just thin enough around to be translucent, so you could see the veins of the alabaster? What would you pay for an alabaster lampshade? And if you had small children, would you pay it? And he says, the worker says after days and days of labor, it gets to that dangerous place at the end where he's working and polishing it, can you imagine taking it off? And imagine taking a spike, just one, and a hammer and just crack. What's going to happen to that alabaster lampshade? It's gone.

And so it is, one sin before a Holy God. One sin and the whole is ruined. The book of James says that if you keep the whole law and yet falter at just one point, you're guilty of all of it. Have you ever been to an aquarium? Have you ever seen an aquarium? I've seen this aquarium which is six stories high. This big tank that's got sharks swimming around. You know what I'm talking about? And off to the side they have a display of the glass, have you seen that? And the glass is like, this thick. They're basically saying, "Don't worry. It's okay. It's going to hold." Well, suppose we just had one hole in the glass. What then? The whole thing would be destroyed, it'd get bigger and bigger, the pressure, and the whole thing would be destroyed.

This is the holiness of God. But the sad thing is we're not talking... Brothers and sisters, let's be honest. Are we talking in reference to you about one sin? Is that what we're talking about? How long does it take for you to commit one sin on a given Tuesday? I'm not just talking about sins of commission where you break something when you knew you were... I mean just the things that God has commanded you to do and you don't do. We're supposed to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. We're supposed to love our neighbor as our self. Are we talking about just one sin on your account?

Are we talking, brothers and sisters, about one sin or many transgressions? We're talking about many, more than can be counted. Jesus said, "I tell you that men will have to give account on the Day of Judgment for every careless word they have spoken." That's one scripture, but then there's another scripture. Revelations 7:9-10, "After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: ‘Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.’"

How did they get there? On what basis are they going to stand there robed in white saying, "Salvation belongs to the Lamb?" Because of this far greater gift we got from Jesus. That's how powerful it is. That's the power of what Jesus Christ did for us.

And then finally, the reign of grace receivers is greater than the reign of death. Now this is a surprise. Look at verse 17. "For if by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those... " I'm going to put the word people. It's implied. It's not actually in the text, but [those people] "who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ." This is an unexpected break of parallel. I'll explain what I mean. You would expect if you're following along, if you're paying attention, something like this. For if by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through the one man, how much more will life reign through the one man Jesus Christ? Do you see that? Death reigns in Adam. Life reigns in Christ. Is that true?

Yeah it is, but it's not what he says. What does he say reigns in this verse? Death reigned in Adam. We reign in Christ. Those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. You are, as it says in Romans 8, more than conquerors through Jesus Christ. You have become kings and queens through faith in Him. Isn't that incredible? Those who receive God's grace will reign in life forever and ever through Jesus Christ. Now, do you see the how much more? Adam gave you death. Christ gives you an eternal reign of life through His blood. It's incredible. And you reign now, you're going to reign more later. There's coming a new Heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness, and you will reign with Jesus. Revelation 3:21, "To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with Me on My Throne just as I overcame and sat down with My Father on His Throne."

Paul's point is the reign of those people who receive grace, grace receivers, is greater than the reign of death ever was. The reign in Christ is an eternal reign. Death's reign is temporary. It is an unbreakable reign. Death's reign has been conquered. It is an abundantly fruitful reign. Death's reign is fruitless and empty. It's an abundantly great reign that God has given us in Jesus Christ.

There's one final point I want to make. This is a conditional promise. Remember we said that Adam represented the many, and Christ represents the many? Don't be confused about this. Adam represents everyone physically descended from him. Christ represents those who receive God's grace. Do you see the difference? This is not universalism. There is a parallel between Adam and Christ, but it's not true that everyone is saved in Christ. It is not true. Everyone died in Adam, but only those who receive God's gift of grace will reign in life through Christ.

Do you see the difference? Oh, it's so important to understand that. And so what is the application? Well, to you who have never received it, receive it today. Today is the day of salvation. If you have never come to faith in Christ, God sees you in Adam, and you're under the condemnation of Adam. And you're living out your nature and cranking out sin after sin after sin for what you will be held accountable on judgment day. But through faith in Jesus Christ, you can have all that washed away and be seen in Christ, and receive the abundance, the river of grace, cleansing you forever from sin.

Now, I've printed out some applications on the page. You can read that, but I want to finish again with a quote from Spurgeon. Preaching on this passage, Romans 5:15, he entitled his sermon "Honey from a lion". Any of you know the story of Samson? Remember Samson, how he killed the lion on his way to a meeting, and then he comes back and what does he see in the lion's carcass? He sees honey. And so what is Spurgeon saying? Out of the death of Adam, and out of all of that curse comes honey. And what is it? Eternal life through Jesus Christ. Simply by contrast, take everything you got from Adam and then turn it around and multiply by a billion, by infinity, and that's what you get through Christ. What did you get? You got a sin nature. Turn it around, you're going to be perfect forever in Christ.

What did you get as a result of Adam? You got the ability to wrestle with the ground for thorns and thistles the rest of your life, while you wipe the sweat off your face. And some of you know what I mean, because you're going to have to go to that job again tomorrow morning. Do you know what I'm talking about? That job? I had a 'that job', I've had many 'that jobs.' You feel it most acutely on Monday morning, don't you? At least I did. And you can get in there tomorrow, and if you want to be bitter about it, you can say, "Thanks Adam, I appreciate it. Here I am day after day, having to hold down that job, wrestling with things that don't seem to matter, just so I can provide for my family." Turn it around. God gives you abundant, eternal fruitfulness in Jesus Christ. And what do we get in Adam? We get death. We get death. And we who are alive, we all know somebody who's died. We all know people that have died. We love them and we miss them. Turn it around, what do we get from Jesus? Eternal life in the presence of God. We get honey from the lion.

If you've never received it, will you receive it today? We're going to be singing the invitation hymn. Please come forward and talk to me. If you've never come to faith in Christ, perhaps you need to be baptized. If you have never given yourself to Christ in believer baptism, maybe today is the day. But if you're a Christian, you've already been baptized, you're walking with Jesus, understand that you reign in life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Close with me in prayer, please.

Father, we thank you for this time that we've had to understand this passage. And father, all we can do is just stand amazed at the abundance of your grace. Lord, in your own way, you united us with Adam, and though we don't understand that fully, we also see that it's in the same way that we have eternal life through faith in Christ. You don't see us as sinners, you see us in Christ. And I praise you for that alien righteousness, a righteousness not my own, that covers me now and forever. And father, now I want to direct a specific prayer to those who have never received this abundant provision of God's grace, that today they would receive it. I pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

Romans Chapter 5, we're continuing our study in Romans. And this morning, we're going to be focusing in on Chapter 5:12-14. Now obviously, you know that this past week, Timothy McVeigh was executed for his cold-hearted bombing of the office building in Oklahoma City and I think many of you were following that in the newspapers and concerned about that. The act was heinous enough, but just as stunning (at least to me personally) was McVeigh's coldness of heart is lack of remorse, lack of sadness in any way for the things that he'd done. 168 people were dead and 19 children and all he could do is call the victims of his crime collateral damage. There was just a deadness to his soul that just brought chills to me. And so deep were the issues of evil that McVeigh brought to our national attention that Newsweek ran a cover article that a church member gave to me to read, May 21st and the title of the article was Evil: What Makes People Go Wrong. So asking a question of origins of evil. What is it that makes somebody do something like this?

The article had some comments I thought that were very incisive. One of the articles, (there are three or four articles together), one of them had this to say about McVeigh: "We want to see Timothy McVeigh, somehow as evil incarnate, as Satan, as depravity in human form. He has willfully and gratuitously inflicted harm on others, the very definition of an evil act, through a cold cruel calculation untouched by compassion. There's a reason we need to view McVeigh this way, it allows us to place him in a category labeled evil with a capital E, but also more importantly labeled, ‘not us.’"

People want to say, "You see. That's him. There's just something about him that's intrinsically different from me. I would never do something like that." The idea that the enormity of McVeigh's act in the yawning hole in his soul where human compassion should lie, set him worlds apart from us. And then the article goes on to ask "or did it?" Did it? And the burden of the text today is to show that there is an intrinsic unity to the human race even in terms of sin and death that is so deep and so compelling as to necessitate a salvation that only Jesus could provide. One expert quoted in this article said the capacity for evil is a human universal. There is a continuum of evil of course ranging from trivial evils like cutting someone off in traffic, to greater evils like acts of prejudice to massive evils like those perpetrated by serial killers, but within us all there are the roots of evil.

So what is the origin of sin? What is the origin of evil within the human heart? The article said all religions turn to myths in order to account for the origins of evil. Now here Newsweek went amiss I believe. It said that all religions turn to myths in order to account for the origins of evil: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all looked to the myth of Eden. Where evil enters the world through the disobedience of Adam and Eve, humanity's primal parents. The myth of Eden. Brothers and sisters, if Eden is a myth so is Jesus Christ. Because Paul links the two together. Adam and Christ in Romans Chapter 5. And Adam is a type or an example of Jesus Christ. And there's something that happened in Adam that finds its parallel in Christ. Linked with this whole discussion of the origin of evil is the origin and the universality of death. A fate that faces everyone from the greatest to the least, from the most wicked killer like Timothy McVeigh to the tiny little infant carried out of the wreckage… You remember that photo, the fireman carrying that little one.

And how can it be that all of us are subject to this death penalty. 18th century poet Thomas Gray wrote these haunting lines in a poem called Elegy in a country courtyard. "The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power. And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, awaits alike the inevitable hour. The paths of glory lead but to the grave." How can it be that sin and death are universal? How is it that the banker in Tokyo and the chimney sweep in London and the humble rice farming peasant in Thailand and the pastor in Durham North Carolina are all subject to the same penalty namely death. How did sin and death come to have universal sway over the human race? Why is it that every single human culture, in every time in history has had to wrestle with the sin of its own people? To make laws to deal with this. And why is it that all people innocent and guilty alike are subject to death?

These things are addressed in the passage that we're facing today, Romans Chapter 5:12-21. Now we're going to focus on Verse 12-14, but in order to understand the larger context I'm going to read all the way to Verse 21. Look if you will and read along with me beginning at Verse 12.

"Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned. For before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come. But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! Again, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man's sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous. The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."

Now, I have preached many sermons here, but I have never preached such a meaty passage as we're facing today. This is meat. It's very, very difficult to understand properly the connection between us and Adam, and the relationship between Adam and Christ. But Paul seems to think it's important. And therefore, I'm going to urge you to dig deep into the Scripture. John Piper said, "You know with the Scripture, you can either work with a rake or with the shovel. With the rake, you go across the surface, and you get leaves. With a shovel, you dig, and you might get gold."

So if you're going to go across Romans Chapter 5:12-21, with the rake, you're going to get very little. You have to think and follow what Paul is saying. Now, Paul has a major point and some minor points. The major point that Paul makes is a comparison between Adam and Jesus Christ. There is some kind of an analogy being drawn here between Adam and Christ. So we're supposed to see something in Adam, and then translate it over to what happened in Christ. Basically, there are three issues that Paul is dealing with here. Number one, the obedience of Christ is parallel to, but vastly superior to the disobedience of Adam. Secondly, the righteousness imputed or credited to the account of those who are in Christ is parallel to but vastly superior to the unrighteousness and condemnation credited to us in Adam. And thirdly, the life which comes to us who are in Christ through that imputed, that gift of righteousness is parallel, but vastly superior to the death that comes to those who are in Adam through credited sin. That's what Paul is saying here. If you're going to understand those three things, you get Romans 5:12-21.

Let's try to understand this in context. Where are we? Big picture. We're in the Book of Romans. What is the purpose of the Book of Romans? To tell us what the gospel is. Brothers and sisters, there are many false gospels out there. I could give you false gospels, and they will resonate with you, and you will sound... It will sound familiar, pulling yourself up by your boot straps, trying to be the best person you can be, all those kind of thing. That is not Christian faith. The gospel is something entirely different. If you want to understand the gospel, you got to go to the Book of Romans, and understand it.

Paul says in Romans 1:16, "I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes." For in the gospel, a righteousness from God comes to all who believe. A righteousness that is from faith to faith. And then from Romans' middle of Chapter 1 up through middle of Chapter 3, he explains why all of us, every single one, Jew and Gentile, every single person who has ever lived needs that gift of righteousness or we will not survive Judgment Day. Everyone of us needs to be declared not guilty as a result of the blood of Jesus Christ. There is no other salvation. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. There is no one righteous. No, not one. There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away. They have together become worthless. There is no one who does good, not even one, Romans Chapter 3.

But then right in the middle of Chapter 3 comes the gospel. Substitutionary atonement. Jesus Christ stands in our place, and he takes the penalty of our sin. He dies in our place. And through faith in his blood, we can be acquitted. We can be declared not guilty before God on Judgment Day. That is the gospel.

And then in Chapter 4, we got the picture of Abraham standing out under the stars, and God makes a promise. Point up at the stars, so shall your offspring be. Abraham believes God. And at the moment he believes, he's declared not guilty. Simple faith. He didn't do anything righteous. This is a God who justifies wicked people, a God who justifies the ungodly simply by faith and a promise. The promise now is the promise of eternal life in Jesus Christ, not the promise that our offspring will be as numerous as the stars, but rather that we will live forever through faith in Jesus Christ. And all you need to do is simply believe that message, and you will be saved.

And then as we've seen over the last three or four sermons in Romans 5:1-11, there is that assurance of salvation. If you have been justified by faith, most certainly, you will finish the journey. You will complete the life of faith, and you will go to heaven. There is an assurance. And now as Paul finishes up his whole treatment on justification by faith alone apart from works of the law, we're going to look at Adam and Christ. And what a way to finish. Why does he bring us into the depths that he does, why into the deep waters? Because there's something he wants us to understand about justification.

In Chapter 6, 7, and 8, we're going to be talking about sanctification, how you grow in holiness as a disciple of Jesus Christ. But we're going to finish with justification by considering Adam and Christ. So that's where we are in context. Now, if you look at Verse 14 of the section we're going to focus on today, it says Adam is a type or a pattern of him who is to come, Christ. Adam is a pattern of Christ. There's something in Adam that teaches us something about Christ. And then throughout the section that we read verse 12, it says, "Just as sin enter the world through one man." But who is that one man? It's Adam. Verse 15, "The many died by the trespass of the one man." Who is the one man? It's Adam. Verse 16, "The judgment followed one sin…" The sin of Adam and brought condemnation. Verse 17, "For if by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man." We're focusing on this one man, Adam. And so also, we focus on Christ in verse 15, "God's grace, and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many." And then in Verse 17 it says, that we will "reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ."

You see the parallel set up here between Adam and Christ. There is some kind of an analogy. And we're comparing the two so that we can learn about our salvation. In summary, in verse 18-19 it says, "Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous." There's the full parallel that we get.

But there's also differences between Adam and Christ. And this Scripture also desires, not just to draw a parallel but to show that there's a difference between Adam and Christ, key difference. In verse 15 it says, "The gift is not like the trespass." Again, he says the same thing in the next verse, not like. So there's a similarity, but there's a difference between Adam and Christ. We're going to talk more about that next week. We must come to see just how superior Jesus Christ is. And, yes, sin and death are universal as a result of the solidarity, the oneness of the human race in God's mind that we all died in Adam but the salvation we get in Jesus Christ is so much greater than anything we were cursed with in Adam.

The final bottom line of Romans 5:12-21 is what a great savior we have in Jesus Christ and what a great salvation that God has provided for us simply by faith.

Now the issue here of how sin and death entered the world as I said, is not the major issue. The major issue is that we might understand justification by faith. But how did sin and death enter the world? Look at verse 12, "Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came or spread to all men, because all sinned." Now you know the history of Adam and Eve, Garden of Eden. Brothers and sisters, this is not a myth. I don't care how much you read it in Newsweek, it just isn't true. I know that's hard to believe that not everything in Newsweek is true. But it's true that not everything is true in Newsweek.

Adam and Eve are not a myth. And you could see now how if Adam's a myth then we must say Christ is a myth because there's a definite connection being drawn here between Adam and Christ. Now you know what happened, God placed Adam in the garden, and he said, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For when you eat of it, you shall surely die."

And so from the very beginning, God has married together sin and death. The wages of sin is what? Death. There's no question about it, there's a connection between sin and death right from the beginning. It was re-established in the minds of the Jews over and over, with every sacrifice, every animal sacrifice. The wages of sin is death, the wages of sin is death. We see it over and over. But right from the start, God united together sin and death by telling Adam, "If you eat from that tree, you will die." And so Adam was being tested. Eve joined him later in the accounts, and you know the story. The serpent tempted Eve and she was deceived and she ate, she gave the fruit to her husband and he ate. But sin entered through Adam, very significant. Eve isn't even mentioned in Romans Chapter 5, because Adam was our representative at the tree. He was our head. And it was through him that sin came to the whole human race. 

Adam had a perfect purity in the world beforehand. There was a satanic rebellion in the spiritual realms. We know that before the fall in Eden, because it was… Satan attempted… And he had already fallen. So he was in rebellion from the beginning, he was a liar and a killer from the beginning. And he was basically, I believe on a recruiting mission at the garden of Eden. He was going to recruit the human race (Satan was), into his rebellion against God, and he was successful in that recruiting.

And we have been recruited, and we are born into Satan's kingdom, we are born into the kingdom of darkness and at some point we have to be rescued and transferred into the kingdom of light. But we are born into that kingdom of darkness and the recruiting happened at the very start. And it says in Romans 5:12, "Sin entered the world." It is so important that you understand it, it does not say sins entered the world. Sins are a result of sin. We all have many sins but we're not talking about sins here, we're talking about the principle, the power of sin. And that entered the world. It's like a king, sin reigned in death it says. There's a sovereign power almost of sin that cannot be broken except by Jesus Christ. And so that principle of sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin.

Now as we talk about death, what kind of death are we referring to? Scripture refers to three. There is a spiritual death, there is a physical death, and there is an eternal death. Spiritual death happened for Adam the moment he ate, he died spiritually. That means he died to God. He died in his relationship with God. This is referred to in Ephesians 2:1, "But as for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live." You were dead while you lived. Living dead. This is the spiritual death and all of us who are not born again, all of us who have not come to faith in Christ, we are spiritually dead. And that happened to Adam that day, the moment he ate.

Physical death happened next, for Adam much later. He died when he was over 900 years old, but it came later. And then eternal death, in hell. Matthew 10:28, Jesus said, "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him." And so you see the three kinds of death that we're subject to as a result of sin. Spiritual death, a broken relationship with God. Physical death, which comes later and we're all of us under that death penalty. And then eternal death, in hell. The very thing that I believe the gospel of Jesus Christ came to save us from.

And it says that death spread to all. Now, brothers and sisters, I don't understand this. You've heard of the human genome project? Where they're sifting over all the genes. You think they're going to find a sin gene somewhere? I don't think so. I don't understand this. This is mystery to me, but death spread. Sin and death spread through the whole human race. It says, "In this way, death spread and sin spread." In what way? In the way of Adam's one transgression. In this way, it spread to everybody. This is underscored in the steady drone in Genesis Chapter 5, that genealogy chapter. "Altogether Adam lived 930 years and then he died." Genesis 5:8. "Altogether Seth lived 912 years, and then he died." Genesis 5:11. "Altogether Enosh lived 905 years, and then he died." 5:14, "Altogether Kenan lived 910 years and then he died." And it's been going on, hasn't it, ever since. It goes on around us all the time and every single one of us is subject to this death penalty. If the Lord does not return in our lifetime, everyone sitting in this room today will die someday.

And according to Romans 5, it's because we were united somehow with Adam. That's a teaching of this text. And this death penalty comes to all who are in Adam, but there's a new race, isn't there? A new race of human beings, those who are in Christ. And there's only two of those categories. Everyone is either in Adam or they're in Christ. 1 Corinthians 15:22, it says, "For as in Adam all die, so in Christ will all be made alive." Praise God for that. Praise God that there's a new Adam, a new head to the human race and by faith in him we can be transferred and miss the eternal punishment of death.

Now, at the end of Verse 12, look at it. It says, "Therefore just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men…" What does it say? "Because all sinned." You can circle those words. Those are the most important words to interpret properly in the entire section. If you interpret it wrong, you'll get... I believe Christianity wrong. What does it mean that we all sinned in Adam? There's two possibilities. Either we all sinned like Adam sinned or we all sinned somehow through some spiritual union with Adam. In other words that his sin became our sin, one or the other.

Now, the first case, we all sinned like Adam, meaning we heard a command from God, we understood the command from God and rebelled against the command of God. Well, that's true but I don't think that's what Paul's talking about here. And if you trace it out, you will understand the gospel wrongly. How is it? Okay, just as through one man sin entered the world and death through sin and this way death came to all men because all committed individual acts of unrighteousness. So also life entered the world through one man and righteousness through him and in this way, righteousness came to everybody who committed the similar acts of righteousness that Jesus commits. In other words, if you do the righteous things Jesus does, you'll get saved. Is that the gospel? That is salvation by works, folks. And it's a burden none of us will be able to bear. We cannot save ourselves by good works, by righteous deeds. So because all sinned, means something else.

It means we sinned through union with Adam and so also through union with Christ, we have a righteousness that doesn't belong to us either. You see how it works? That's the gospel. We get our righteousness as alien from us just as we got a condemnation that was alien to us as well. Now, I know that this is what Paul is saying because he interrupts his own thought. And maybe he didn't even notice it. Verse 12, "Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned. For before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses."

What did he do? Stop and think. Therefore, just as, dot, dot, dot... What are you waiting for? So, also, right? Just as, so also. Well, he finishes it in verses 18 and 19, but he's got all these verses in the middle to explain what he means. And why does he stop? Because he's afraid that you will not understand what it means when he said, "because all sinned." You're going to think it's because I lied, or because I didn't obey my mom and dad, or because I commit this or that sin. That is not what he's saying here. That's the fruit that comes out of the nature, but that's not what he's saying here.

So he interrupts himself and he talks about sin from Adam to Moses. What happened from Adam to Moses? Well, sin was in the world, but it's not taking into account when there is no Law. There was no law. Adam and Eve had a specific law in the garden, didn't they? "You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil..." Was there a specific law from God after that, until the Law of Moses? No. And yet, there was sin in the world, wasn't there? In the very next chapter, in Genesis 4. Remember what happens? God spoke to Cain. When Cain was all upset at his brother, you remember that? And he said to Cain, "why are you angry? …If you do right, will you not be accepted?" And then he said, "Now, Cain, I want to give you a warning. "Sin is crouching at your door… You must master it." Did Cain master that sin? No. The sin mastered Cain and he killed his brother. But sin is in the world, just not imputed, it's not taken into account where there is no law.

But then he goes even deeper and he says that its true even more over those who had not sinned after the likeness of the offense of Adam. In verse 14, Who is it? Who is it in all human history who did not, or has not, or could not sin in the way that Adam did? Well, obviously Jesus, but he's not in view here. Is there a category of human beings that could not hear, understand a law from God and disobey it? I think so. Infants. Babies, right? They didn't understand. They haven't gotten the law yet. Paul says in Romans 7, "Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the law came, sin sprang to life and I died."

So the little ones, they die, don't they? Do you ever feel there's a sense of tragedy there? Here are these innocent babies and they die. In our country, with abortion, they're dying in the womb. They couldn't possibly have heard a law or command of God. And yet they die, they're under that death penalty. And why is it? Beause they're human. They're mortal. The word mortal literally means subject to death. And why? Because they're united with Adam. That is the text. That's what he's saying.

Now, that might not be a big issue for us. But let me tell you something. For most of human history, infant mortality has been a horrendously huge factor, hasn't it? Think about it. What are the infant mortality rates in the Third World? Before medicine came in and... You're talking one third, perhaps, of all babies being born, or more. I don't even know what the statistics would be, maybe even more, dying in infancy. And they never once heard a command from God and disobeyed it in the way that Adam did. And yet they were subject to death. And according to this, it's because they're human. They died in Adam.

And then the final thing in our verse. It says in verse 14, Adam, who was a pattern or a type of the one to come. This is the main idea. Adam was a type or a pattern of Christ. Now, why does he include this now? It's so that we understand the gospel. All of us, in some deep and profound way, we're united with Adam. When you talk about this with others, they say it's unfair. I don't understand how I could be held accountable for something done thousands of years before I was born. I was talking to one of my kids and the child said, "This isn't fair." Kids are very attuned to what's fair or not. You know what I'm talking about? What is or isn't fair. This doesn't seem fair.

So I grant the point, I don't say I understand this, I'm just telling you it's what Romans says. It doesn't seem fair. I said to this individual, I said, "Do you hope to go to heaven someday?" "Oh, yeah." "Do you have a sense of personal sin that you've done wrong things?" "Yeah." "Well, how do you think that God's going to let a sinner like you into heaven?" "Well, because Jesus died for me." "I want to ask you a question. Were you there when they crucified your Lord? Were you there when they laid him on the tree? Were you there?" God is intensely fair, and very consistent. Because the very same thing he did with Adam, he's doing with Christ, isn't he? Very same thing.

And just as we got a condemnation and a judgment that wasn't ours, we get a righteousness that's not ours. And it cuts off all boasting, doesn't it? It's just a gift. And you know what else it does? It encourages anyone anytime to repent and trust Christ. Because God justifies ungodly people. He does it all the time. It doesn't matter who you are, even if you've committed a heinous act, you can still be justified through faith in Christ. Because it is not based on your works of righteousness. And that's the burden of what Paul's trying to say here.

Now, what are the implications of this? Well, there's amazing implications. The first, I already hinted at, is that Adam is our original head and our representative. It is Father's Day, and I think it's important for fathers to understand how God has established men in a specific role. It was Eve chronologically who sinned first. Chronologically. But she's not even mentioned here, and nor is she mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15. It is Adam's sin that brought us down. And in the same way, men bear a special burden of responsibility. Sometimes very poorly, but they bear it, and God holds us accountable for what's happening in our families, in our homes, in our society and Church.

We also see the solidarity of the human race. Every single human being is one in this way. We're all one in Adam. There's no master race, but all of us fell when Adam sinned. And we're going to talk more about Original Sin and human nature. Why it is that 6 billion people in the face of the earth, as soon as they understand right from wrong, they do wrong without fail. This also says something, I think, in terms of Father's Day. Babies, they don't come into the family innocent and pure like you think. They come into the world needing to be trained and brought to the gospel. And fathers, I just want to challenge you. Will you please evangelize your children? Bring them to faith. Or your grandchildren, because they need the gospel.

There's other points and I'm not going to make them now, we're going to talk about them. I think it's very hard for Americans as individuals to accept the solidarity. I think Arabs or other tribal type, they understand this. One can represent the group. We have a hard time with this. We're used to rugged individuals and get your axe and go out and chop down some trees and build a house for yourself. We need to understand exactly what God has said, the justice of God. We've discussed the universal gospel… Understand that this same gospel travels to the ends of the Earth because it is one race, one sin, all of us one in Adam. So there is one savior, one gospel. This is not a tribal deity, Jesus Christ, but it's a God for the entire world.

And humility? Does this humble you to recognize that you, there's nothing you can do about being born in Adam? And so our salvation comes as a free gift through Jesus Christ, let it humble you.

And as we go now into a time of celebrating the Lord's Supper, praise the Lord and give thanks for such a great salvation. Realize the security of justification by faith in Christ alone. You didn't do any acts of righteousness coming to Christ, you just simply trusted him. And as you look around the room and there's other brothers and sisters in Christ celebrating the Lord's Supper, realize that this is our unity now. We're in Christ, every last one of us and as we partake of the bread and the blood symbolically, it represents an incredibly unity. One body through faith in Jesus Christ. Please close with me in prayer.

Father, we thank you for the time that we've had to begin to look at this. I thank you that God willing, that you will give us more time to understand this. But Father I thank you, for the depths of the riches of the wisdom and the knowledge of God. How unsearchable his judgments and his paths beyond tracing out. Father, we do thank you for your goodness and I pray that now as we celebrate the Lord's Supper, that you would be with us. Help us to understand your word and to understand the gospel and more than anything to give thanks for this great salvation represented through the body and the blood of Jesus Christ. We pray it in his name. Amen.

Pastor Andy Davis finishes his survey of the wisdom Proverbs has to give us about handling conflict. 

Our discussion tonight on Proverbs deals with conflict resolution. There's an awful lot of Proverbs that have to do with relationships - one to another - and we saw some wisdom, and we got about three quarters of the way through the study that we had last time, and so I think it's beneficial for us to finish that tonight. It could be even that, sometime in the last week, you may have had a conflict with somebody. I don't know if it's... I mean, I don't know if maybe it's just me, but people - sinners living in close quarters with one another - sometimes there are conflicts. Is that true? Maybe it is just me. Maybe you all brothers and sisters can counsel with me afterwards. But could it be that there are conflicts, there are disagreements, there are arguments that the sin nature bubbles to the surface?   

As we've been looking in the book of Romans, we've got this strong emphasis on justification by faith alone through five chapters. It's very plain that there's nothing we can do to get ourselves justified. But then there's that whole sanctification thing in Romans 6, 7 and 8, and that's hard work to grow like Jesus Christ, to put sin to death, to be selfless, to walk with Jesus. Is that hard work? Oh yeah, it's difficult. And meanwhile, there's somebody else in your house or in your church that's doing the same thing, and so conflicts are going to come. And the book of Proverbs gives us some wisdom, I think, to help us to understand what to do. 

Now, last time we talked, just going quickly over the things that we looked at, we talked about God's attitude toward dissension in particular, that God hates, in particular, somebody that stirs up dissension or causes dissension among brothers. And there seems to be a category of people in the book of Proverbs, somebody that just seems to enjoy engendering strife, and that is a very damaging thing. Let's be positively - it is a very powerful thing and a sweet thing when Christian brothers and sisters get along and have good strong fellowship with each other. It's amazing the fruit that comes from that. Strong times of prayer, witness, fruitfulness, ministry, sensitivity to each other's needs. So, you can bet that Satan wants to damage that in any way he can, and so he's going to be trying as best he can to sow seeds of discord between people, and it's very important for us to know just the damage that comes from that, how important it is that we maintain unity in the spirit and in the bond of peace. 

We talked about the devastation to human conflicts. "Better a dry crust with peace... " Proverbs 17:1, "Better a dry crust with peace and quiet than a house full of feasting with strife." You'd be better if you could have peace and starve than to have all kinds of feasting and have conflicts and dissension. And then in 18:19, I remember, "An offended brother is more unyielding than a fortified city, and disputes are like the barred gates of a citadel." Once that rupture occurs in a relationship - very difficult to win it over. Unless you've got a gracious brother or sister who is quick to forgive, and that just like that, it's over. Isn't that beautiful? Christian forgiveness cuts across that, cuts those bars, that unyielding citadel, and just like that you've got good, solid fellowship again. 

And that's why it says that we are to bear with one another and forgive whatever grievances we have against one another. "Forgive as the Lord has forgiven you." And how has the Lord forgiven you? What did you do to earn God's forgiveness? We've talked about that. Zero. It's a free gift because of the blood of Jesus Christ, and so we are to forgive from the heart one another as quickly as possible. 

So, we talked about the devastation of human conflicts, and then we looked at what it is that causes conflicts. Where do they come from? Where do these struggles come from? Well, they come from sin. There's no other answer than they're just sin. But the book of Proverbs breaks that apart for us. They come from pride - pride, the desire to be first, the desire to appear more righteous than you really are. The desire to appear more knowledgeable than you really are. Somebody's trying to give you some help or some encouragement, "I already know that. I already know." Well, that comes at an early age. You try to help a child with something, "I do it, I do it." Right from the start. I mean, that desire is, "I can do this. I don't need you." But the book of Proverbs says, "Pride... " - 13:10 - "Pride only breeds quarrels, but wisdom is found in those who take advice." Did you take any advice this week? Did you gladly receive a word from a brother or sister? I did. There were people that gave me some advice, and it was worth taking. And I say that, of the advice-taking situations, I had a better batting average unusual of responding graciously and saying, "Thank you for that, I appreciate that."  

And then annoyance and anger - those things that we talked about. The devastation and the danger of anger. And it's a big problem, and the book of Proverbs has a great deal to say about that. 29:11, "A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control." Self-control. Were you tempted at all to get angry this week? What percentage... Think about this. What percentage of your anger is the kind of righteous anger and rage that filled Jesus as He cleansed the temple? Or that He demonstrated when He was about to heal somebody on the Sabbath, and He asked them a question, "Which is lawful? To do good or evil on the Sabbath, to save a life or destroy it?" (Mark 3:4), and they wouldn't even answer His question. It says Jesus looked around at them in anger because all they cared about was their own little rules, and they didn't care about somebody who could be healed today. What percentage would you say? 50%? I love that little laugh. I think the more you go on, you start to realize that very, very rarely is your anger righteous. It usually traces back to something in yourself, some way that you're inconvenienced, some way that you are made to look at the fool or something like that, and so you defend yourself.  

And then there's words. Words get us into trouble, don't they? Saying things you shouldn't say. Many words, reckless words. 12:18 says, "Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing." 12:18. Reckless words. Have you ever hurt somebody with your words, said something you wish you hadn't said? It's hard to take it back, isn't it? As a matter of fact, you can't take it back. The only thing that can heal it is the forgiveness of Jesus Christ flowing through that individual. "I forgive you, and I understand that other times I've said reckless words to you or to others, and I forgive wholeheartedly. I'm glad to forgive." That's the only healing for it, because once those words are gone, you can't take them back. And they hurt, and they wound. And harsh words. I told you that 15:1 may be one of the most important Proverbs in this whole category of conflict avoidance or resolution. Harsh words can stir it up. Look, 15:1 says, "A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger." Right in the middle of that conflict, a gentle answer can stop it, but what started it? A harsh word. Deceitful words and gossip in insults. 

We also talked about hatred, people who don't overlook offenses, people who love a quarrel. And there's a lot of Proverbs about that - people who love a quarrel. Male and female, both a man who seems to enjoy a squabble or a quarrel, and then the quarrelsome wife who's in there four times. "It's better to live in the corner of a roof then with a quarrelsome wife” (Proverbs 21:9). So, it cuts both ways. This is a cross-gender issue. We both tend squabble and have conflicts, and God wants us to put it to death. Also, unforgiveness. And this one is so true. Misunderstanding, remember? 18:13, "He who answers before listening, that is his folly and his shame." How many conflicts are based on just you didn't understand what they were saying? It really ends up that you're in total agreement, but you just didn't get your words lined up, and so you answered before listening. And the whole thing could have been avoided if you had had an empathetic heart of saying, "What are you trying to say to me?" To reflect back and say, "Now, what I'm hearing from you is this. Is this what you mean to say?" "No, no, no, that's not it. This is it." Then you reflect it back, "Is this what you... " "Yeah, that's it." And then the whole conflict disappears because now you've understood each other, and actually you're in essential agreement. Misunderstanding.  

We also talked about sin, alcohol and drugs, adultery. These kinds of sins cause deep, deep conflicts between people. And I mentioned them just because of the damage that they cause. Provocation from fools and greed.   

Then we talked about how to avoid conflicts. Number one is be patient and even-tempered. Have a long fuse. And the reason I'm going over this at this point - understand it's better to avoid the conflict than to learn how to patch it up once you're in it. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It's better to not have the rupture than to know the Biblical procedure for healing it up afterwards. So better to avoid it, and the best way is to have a long fuse. Don't have a quick temper. Everyone should be, it says in James, quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to get angry. Slow to get angry. 

Okay, 14:29, "A patient man has great understanding, but a quick-tempered man displays folly." A quick-tempered man. So, a patient man has great understanding. And then 16:32, 16:32, "Better a patient man than a warrior, a man who controls his temper than one who takes a city." Along with being even-tempered or having a long fuse is the ability to overlook an insult, to say, "You know, I understand that you meant to hurt me by that." You don't have to say these words. You probably shouldn't. But within your mind, you're saying, "I understand you meant to hurt me, but I forgive you. I forgive you." And one of the things that helps me do that is for me to understand how many times I have spoken words that have hurt God, how many times I have insulted Him or blasphemed Him before I was a Christian, for example, or even now. There have been times that I've spoken against a brother or a sister, and James says they're created in God's image. "With the same mouth you praise God and you curse your brother who was created in God's image” (James 3:9). 

So, the thing is, how much has God overlooked? How many insults has He overlooked in your case? This is the whole… the arm-twisting that Jesus does when He says, "I've forgiven you 10,000 talents. Can't you forgive the 100 denarii?" in Matthew 18. And so, we should overlook an insult; we should be an active peacemaker, energetic in that. 15:18, "A hot-tempered man stirs up dissension, but a patient man calms a quarrel." And then use gentle and healing words. We talked about that. "Forgive quickly and wholeheartedly as the Lord forgave you." 10:12. Look at that one as we did last time, but a very important verse. 10:12 says, "Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers over all wrongs." Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers over all wrongs. Forgiveness is a covering over, isn't it? I'm going to cover your sin just like Jesus covered mine. 

Have you ever heard of Yom Kippur? It's a day of atonement. You know the word Kippur in Hebrew means “covering.” It's a day of covering. It's the day that God covered the Jews' sins. Atonement is a covering; God covers our sins. “Blessed is a man whose transgressions are forgiven and whose sins” are what? They're covered, covered by the blood of Christ, and so we cover each other's sins. And we drop the matter quickly before it gets out of control. 17:14, "Starting a quarrel is like breaching a dam, so drop the matter before a dispute breaks out." Don't hang around people who love to argue. 22:10 says, "Drive out the mocker and out goes strife. Quarrels and insults are ended." 22:10. 

So, you notice you've got a certain category of people that, just everywhere they go, there is strife and conflict. Don't hang around them because you're going to get into a conflict; you're going to get into difficulty. And then we finished up with observe proper social boundaries. Remember, "Seldom... " 25:17, "Seldom set foot in your neighbor's house. Too much of you and he will hate you." I'd rather have somebody wanting me over more than wanting me over less. You know? It's funny, we go on vacations, and we stay with relatives, and I always feel... I think about this Proverb frequently. I'd rather leave a day early or even a few early than and say, "Boy, so soon? Leaving so soon?" And if I can believe that they're really saying it from their heart, I feel like we've achieved something good. Rather than, "Can I help you pack? Is there anything I can do to help you on your way? Some gas money maybe or something to help you get going?" 

And then last, don't meddle in other people's private affairs. 26:17, "Like one who seizes a dog by the ears." Isn't that a funny expression? Have you ever seized a dog by the ears? I mean, I never have, but maybe Solomon did. He said, “Did that once, I'll never do it again. And so, here's a Proverb. "Like one who seizes a dog by the ears is a passerby who meddles in a quarrel not his own." Some things we're just not meant to get involved in. Some things that are within a family, or there's two people; they just need to work it out, and just stay out because you don't understand the history, you don't know. That's the wisdom there. 

Alright, now how do you resolve a conflict once you're in it? Well, first, the first rule is listen. And we already talked a little about this, the misunderstandings, but once you're into it, you need to listen. 18:2, I like 18:2. It says, "A fool finds no pleasure in understanding, but delights in airing his own opinions." Have you ever played the fool in that sense? I don't care what you think or what your take on this situation is, this is my opinion. And then well, realize, guess what? They're doing the same thing. And you're not listening to each other. This can only make the situation worse. There comes a point, I think, in every conflict where somebody stops and says, "I want to know what you're saying. I want to understand what the deal is from your point of view." And so, the first rule is just listen, try to find out what they're saying, and get all the facts. 18:18.  

I think about this a lot as a parent, "The first to present his case seems right until another comes forward and questions him." So, you know, "So and so did da da da... " It's like, "Well, that sounds terrible; that sounds like grounds for eviction from the family as a matter of fact." But then the other sibling comes along, and there's some more information that was left out the first time. And the same is true in the middle of a conflict with one another. You know what I mean? The thing is, “Let me try to understand what your perspective is. If I'm not listening to you, I don't know what the facts are, I may be missing some things. So, let's get all the information before we come to hasty judgments on things.  

And then, as we've talked about, use gentle healing words. 15:1 right in the middle, I'm telling you, 15:1, has gotten me out more conflicts because if it comes from the heart, if it's genuine. It can stop the thing just like that, like a big bucket of water on that fire before it really gets going, and that is, "A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger." And so really, at every moment in a conflict, you're like at every moment, you're at a fork in the road: gentle word, harsh word. You see what I'm talking about? If you go with a harsh word, you just signed on for another 20 minutes or more. You know what I'm talking about?  

Or, you can say, "Hang on, hang on. We're talking at each other." One of the most – best - gentle words is, "Can we pray? Can we just take a minute and pray and ask the Lord to come into this situation? I want to hear you. I want to understand what you're saying. I've got some feelings in the situation too, and it seems like we're just... We're letting Satan get the upper hand here. Can we pray?" "Well, I don't want to pray." "Well, can I pray then at least?" Sometimes it takes being persistent, but you know... Yeah, let's pray. But a gentle answer turns away wrath. "You may be right, I want to hear you, I want to understand what you're saying." And then 25:15 along that same line says, "Through patience a ruler can be persuaded." And it's very interesting, "A gentle tongue can break a bone.” Solomon, what did you mean by that? Well, I don't know. I've thought about that Proverb a lot, and, basically, it's saying, as you think of yourself in a struggle, try gentleness and you may get your way, is what he's saying.  

Try gentleness, try that approach, try listening. It's more effective than what you've been doing up until now, because what you've been doing up to now causes them to dig in their heels and want to resist, but a gentle word is very effective. Persuasion and a gentle word. 

Make amends for sin. 14:9 (this is so important), "Fools mock at making amends for sin, but goodwill is found among the righteous." This is so important. If you've done wrong, there's retribution to be paid sometimes. If you've hurt somebody, there are times that you have to make amends for it. You have to do more than just apologize; you have to make the thing right. We see that a lot with parenting, but I think it's also in all relationships. There are times if you have sinned, you have to go the extra mile and find out, "What can I do to make this up to you? How can I make amends?" Fools mock at that process; they don't think it's important. But wise people understand that it is. "Forgive quickly and wholeheartedly as the Lord forgave you." We already talked about this in prevention, it also works in the middle of it. At any time... Isn't this sweet? If you're a child of God, at any time, all the time, you're free from sin. Isn't that amazing?  

That is one of the greatest truths I have ever learned from Romans chapter 6. We will never be slaves to sin again. Isn't that great? So that means at any moment, I can stop and become a Christian again and start behaving. Not that I ever was... You know what I mean? But I mean, I can immediately start behaving like a sanctified believer of Jesus Christ right here, right now, and say, "What was I doing? What was I saying? I'm sorry." Just like this. And to also be forgiving and gracious. Right in the middle of the conflict, you can do that. I'm not going to read the verses again, or you can cite them. 10:12, "Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers over all wrongs." And 17:9, "He who covers over an offense promotes love, but whoever repeats the matter separates close friends." And by the way, about that, 17:9, repeating the matter means bringing it up again. After it's over, it's done. Don't mention it again. "Don't forget that I forgave you that time, so you owe me one." No, that's not how that works.  

And then, don't feed the issue. Let it die. Look at 26:20. "Without wood, a fire goes out. Without gossip, a quarrel dies down." Okay, now gossip is the culprit there, but other things feed a conflict, don't they? You know what I mean? There's like a fire, and you put another log on. You said another thing. Sometimes I liken those things to prairie fires. Do you know what I mean by a prairie fire? It's got no boundaries; it's got no topic. We're just roaming here. We're just going from one thing to another, and we're really just behaving to some degree as an instrument of the devil to hurt the other person. And who do you think is passing you those logs to throw on the fire? Could it be the devil in that particular moment? Just like Simon Peter played the role of the devil when he said... When he rebuked Jesus for saying He was going to go to the cross, and Jesus said, "Get behind me, Satan” (Matthew 16:23). He said it to Peter. Sometimes we can be taken captive by the devil to do his will. That's what it says in 2 Timothy 2. “And I found myself becoming accuser of the brethren.” Sometimes people... I'm dealing with somebody, and all of a sudden, I've got accusations flowing through my mind. Where do you think they're coming from? And you're throwing another log on the fire, another log in the fire. 

Stop. Stop it. Don't feed the issue. Let it die. 26:21, the very next one, it says "As charcoal to embers and as wood to a fire, so is a quarrelsome man for kindling strife." Do you see that? He keeps it going; he keeps adding fuel to the fire; he keeps the conflict gong.  

And then next, leave retribution to God. 20:22. "Do not say I'll pay you back for this wrong. Wait for the Lord and he will deliver you." Have ever heard of payback time? What goes around comes around. That shouldn't work in the Christian circles. Just drop it. 

It is not our place. It really isn't. Let God work with that person. If they're a non-Christian, let God deal with them directly. If they're a Christian, let God deal with them in terms of correction and chastisement. Just leave it. Leave it to God. And the next one is clear about this in the same way. 25:21 and 22, "Show kindness even to the worst enemy and commit the rest of God. If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat. If he is thirsty, give him water to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head and the Lord will reward you." This is quoted in the book of Romans, isn't it? "Do not repay evil for evil, or insult for insult, but with blessing." And then this Proverb is quoted by Paul. I think it's in Romans chapter 12 or 13, I think. "So show kindness even to your worst enemy."  

And then this one's interesting: give a gift. Now, I told this to one of my children and they said... Well, I'll read the Proverb. It says, "A gift given in secret... " 21:14, "A gift given in secret soothes anger and a bride concealed in the cloak pacifies great wrath.” Well, when I saw the phrase pacifies great wrath, I knew we were in the category of conflict resolution. I'm just telling you what's in the book of Proverbs. I don't always know. Someone said a bribe. You're supposed to bribe somebody back to friendship? I don't know. How would you interpret this? All I know is it says, "A bribe pacifies great wrath." Well, alright, bribes are, I think – obviously - have a very negative connotation, but could it be that maybe there's a rupture in a relationship and it might be enough for you to bring over a meal to them and say, "I just want to give this to you, and I just want to tell you I love you. I know we're having some struggles in our relationship, but here's something." Or to say, "You know, can I pray for you?" Or something. These are blessings that come. And they work both ways. They really do. It flows. It flows. And we all need it. There's not one of us that doesn't need love, forgiveness and mercy and care. All of us do. James says, “Drive out a mocker and those who love quarrels.” We already talked about that. 

And then this one, 18:18. This is an odd one. And like I said, I'm just reporting it because it's in the book of Proverbs. 18:18, "Casting the lot settles disputes and keeps strong opponents apart." What is casting the lot? Well, I wrote here, “When all else fails, flip a coin. I don't know, and you can decide who's going to get that last piece or whatever.”  

But at any rate, these are all the Proverbs on conflict resolution. I guess what I would urge you to do is, if you feel in any way strife or conflict or difficulty with a brother or sister in Christ, don't wait. Don't wait. Resolve those issues. I was talking to someone saying that they felt that one of the most important parts of the service was the offer... It was you, Jeff, Jeff Melvin. Brother Jeff was talking to me about one of the most important parts of the service was the offertory, because if you're going to give your gift to the altar and there you remember that your brother has something against you, go and resolve that. I think we talked about that. And I think the point is, don't give sleep to your eyes. Don't let it go. Don't let it grow and fester, but go to the thing and restore your love relationship with that brother or sister in Christ. 

Alright, well, we've covered conflict resolution. Where we're going from here is - next week, I believe we have the fourth of July. David Barton is going to be coming. Is that next week, Scott? I believe so. So, that's next Sunday. You won't want to miss that. This guy is fantastic. So, let's celebrate America this next Sunday. The following Sunday will be, I believe, our final week in Proverbs. We're going to be looking, I think, at the Gospel according to the book of Proverbs. And then God-willing, I'll be gone for the following two weeks to a populous oriental nation. And after that, we'll be looking at, I believe - I'm praying about this - but at spiritual gifts, and the topic of spiritual gifts. A very important topic, and you won't want to miss that. So, Lucy, you're going to be in... Yeah? Scott, were you going to say something?  

Okay, did you hear that? 7:15 pre-service music next Sunday evening, 7:30 the thing begins. You won't want to be late; you want to come a little bit early and get your seat. And Lucy, you're going to be in the parlor to talk more about Belarus and the ministry that you're having there.  

Let's close in prayer. Father, we thank You for the time and just the way that You have blessed us today. Thank You for the Word of God. I thank You for Sunday School, all the things that we learned, Lord, this morning about the Lord's Supper and how beautifully it meshed with actually having the Lord's Supper. We thank You for that. Thank You for the testimony of the youth tonight. I praise You for them and for the way that they took courageous faith steps. And Father, we just praise You for what You're doing in their lines. And Father, we thank You for the book of Proverbs and the things that we've learned tonight. And Father, I pray that we'd put them into practice that we might not give the devil an upper hand and not let any root of bitterness grow up, but rather that sweet fellowship that You desire to have with each one of us and through each one of us. In Jesus' name, Amen. 

Pastor Andy Davis looks at what Proverbs has to say about conflict and discovers how it starts, how to handle it, and how to resolve it.

Before we get into this particular topic, I've really enjoyed going through the book of Proverbs and following this or that or the other issue. Proverbs isn't really written in a way similar to an epistle of Paul or an Old Testament narrative. There doesn't seem to be a tremendous amount of organization in terms of what proverb follows which one. We would never want to... We're not second guessing the Word of God, we're just saying that it doesn't seem to matter that much what verse follows the next one. So really what you're doing is you're following certain themes or topics or issues through the Book of Proverbs. And what I've done here is just to read through the whole book, and it really only took about an hour and a half or so, and followed any proverb that had to do with disagreements or conflicts between people, and started to organize them. You could do this on parenting, or on money, or on rich and poor issues, social justice issues, you could do it on the Gospel, on the nature of God, anything, and you would find a great deal of riches just coming out of this book. 

So what I'm doing is I'm just taking a minute and telling you how you can enrich your own personal Bible study in the Book of Proverbs. Just pick a topic and follow it through, and you'll pick up a lot of other things coming in as well, but you could make a list of all the proverbs that have to do with anxiety, for example, or with the mouth, we've talked about how we use our tongue, or various other ones. So that would be a way or an approach to studying the Book of Proverbs. But what I did here are those that have to do with conflicts, and by that, I don't just mean people disagreeing, I think that's part of life, but I mean even going beyond that into ruptured relationships, arguments, dissension, and what the Scripture has to say about that. Now, one of them comes out right from the beginning, Chapter 6, Verse 16 through 19, in which God lists things that he hates. It says, "There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies, and a man who stirs up dissension among brothers.” Somebody who causes trouble.  

Before that person was there, there was peace and unity and harmony, and then as a result of the activity, the dissension, there's now that dissension stirred up. The flip side of this would be what we see in the Beatitudes in Matthew chapter 5, where it says, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God." So the opposite of somebody who has a habit or a tendency of stirring up dissension is somebody who could rightly be called a peacemaker. So those are the two opposites, and God loves a peacemaker in that regard. There is a tremendous devastation that comes from these kind of human conflicts, isn't there? There's a number of Proverbs that talk about that. 17:1 says, "Better a dry crust with peace and quiet than a house full of feasting and strife." You know what this is talking about. It really doesn't matter what's on the table if the people aren't getting along sitting around it. So I'd rather have a dry crust and some tepid water than a Thanksgiving feast and strife and difficulty. 18:19 speaks of this as well, "An offended brother is more unyielding than a fortified city, and disputes are like the barred gates of a citadel." Once a rupture has come into a relationship, it's very hard to restore. 

It can be done, but it's the kind of thing that is a very serious issue. And so there's a great deal of trouble that comes from this kind of conflict. And then 21:9, and there's a number of Proverbs, we will be talking about these, so this talks about marriage. It says, "Better to live on a corner of a roof than to share a house with a quarrelsome wife." I'll say this, there's a number of verses about quarrelsome wives. If you're not a quarrelsome wife, you don't have anything to worry about, it doesn't apply to you. If you are, then this might have something to say. It distressed me that it never said anything about quarrelsome husbands because I find myself quarrelsome too, but then the fact is all the other verses that have to do with quarrelsome and dissension-filled people are all addressed to men as well, and so it works both ways. It's not just females or males that have trouble with this issue. But there are a number of proverbs that talk about it, and the issue is that there's a great deal of distress and trouble that comes from dissension in a family. A great deal.  

And Proverbs, the Book of Proverbs, has some wisdom to give us as far as how we're gonna deal with that. Now, what I've done is I've organized it into some categories here. The first major category is what causes fights and quarrels among you. That's, by the way, a quote from the Book of James. But what is it that... What causes fights and quarrels? What causes dissension? That's the first major category. The second is, if I can find it, how to avoid conflicts. How would we avoid conflicts? It's good to avoid a conflict in this definition that I'm giving of a ruptured relationship or a dissension or a disagreement in that way. And then how to resolve conflicts.  

I see that I've messed up my Roman numeral thing, so you can adjust that if you like. But how do you resolve conflicts? So what causes conflicts, how to avoid conflicts, and how to resolve after conflicts occur? The Book of Proverbs has something to say on each of those three.  

Let's look at the first. What causes fights and quarrels among you? I think probably the greatest is pride. Most human conflicts, most dissension and disagreement comes from pride. Now, how would you define pride? What is pride? What does that mean? What do you think, Steve? What is pride?  

I want what I want, when I want it and you're in my way and you're causing me trouble. That's right, it's a me-first attitude, and it causes us a great deal of strife. It's interesting here, the one that I've selected, 13:10, it says, "Pride only breeds quarrels, but wisdom is found in those who take advice." So the opposite of pride is of course humility. And I've found just for myself, there are many, many people that are able to give me corrections, they're able to give me input, and in many cases, they're right, and it's amazing that reaction that comes up inside when somebody's doing that. Do you know what I'm talking about? And it's like, well, it's pride is what it is, and it starts to rankle. And in almost any other relationship, except the marriage relationship, you keep it covered and it's, "Well, thank you for your input," and all that, but it's when a spouse points something out that you can have some trouble.  

And I've found that this one spoke to me almost more than any of the other ones. Pride is the unwillingness to take some criticism or some correction. And it's one of the big themes of the book of Proverbs, the ability to take correction, the ability to take a rebuke. That immediately divides people into the category of a wise or foolish person. It's the ability to accept correction. And why is it? Because we need correction, don't we? We need to be adjusted. We need to be corrected. And it's pride that says, "No, I'm gonna fight, I'm gonna oppose, I'm gonna disagree." And then the quarrel comes in. 

Along with this comes anger in two different forms. The first phase is what you call annoyance, instant annoyance. I like this one. It says, "A fool shows his annoyance at once, but a prudent man overlooks an insult." Now, the thing with Proverbs is that you've always got an A and a B portion. And so some of these we're gonna see a couple of times, 'cause there's at least two nuggets in here, but one of them, the source of conflict is this annoyance that rises up inside you. Not just in terms of taking correction or criticism, but just anything that somebody does that might annoy you. 

You know the Book of Colossians covers pretty much all of the categories of negative human inner relationships when it says that we should bear with one another and forgive one another. Bearing with one another has to do with things that are not moral issues, they're just things that people do that get on your nerves, and you just are supposed to bear with it and put up with it. And then there are those things that are moral issues in which somebody has sinned against you. That's covered as well, "Forgive one another as the Lord has forgiven you." But when the lubrication between the gears gets removed, you start getting sparks and metal fragments and shards and difficulties, and the love is removed and it starts getting shrill and difficult. And so annoyance is the first kind of squeaking of the gears when there's no lubrication and we start having annoyance with each other.  

Also arrogance. Sorry, anger. As you extend it, it says in 14:17, "A quick tempered man does foolish things and a crafty man is hated." 15:18 on your sheet there, it says, "A hot-tempered man stirs up dissension, but a patient man calms a quarrel." We see that one again. 19:19 says, "A hot-tempered man must pay the penalty. If you rescue him, you'll have to do it again." That's an interesting proverb. Basically, if this is the way he is, he's always gonna be like this, you're gonna have to keep getting him out of the trouble. And it keeps coming up again and again, and so anger leads to a great deal of conflict, doesn't it? 29:11 says, "A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control," and then, "An angry man stirs up dissension and a hot-tempered man commits many sins."  

Now, 29:11 is interesting. In 12:10, we had, "A fool shows his annoyance at once." Annoyance is the first inkling of anger. But in 29:11, we have "A fool giving full vent to his anger." You see, just taking the wraps off. Temper, the word temper literally means self-control. If you lose your temper, you've lost your self-control. Now, it's interesting how we've kind of changed the meaning a little bit if we say that so and so has a temper. We mean that they are an angry person. But really, temper originally meant self-control, the ability to control yourself, and when you lost your temper, you'd lost your self-control. But here in 29:11, the fool is giving full vent to his anger, he's putting logs on the fire and off it goes. And that's where a conflict goes from just a run of the mill disagreement to something huge. 

Another cause of conflict are words. Words. Now, we've already talked about talk to some degree, but there's just six sub-categories in this. First of all, many words; secondly, reckless words; third, harsh words; fourth, deceitful words; fifth, gossip; and sixth, insults. First, in terms of words, 18:21 says, "The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit." So the tongue can be either an instrument of tremendous blessing, or an instrument of division, dissension and arguments and conflicts. So watch how you use the tongue. Watch it very carefully. But then in terms of words, if there are many words, it's very likely that there's going to be sin. We've seen this before. 10:19, it says, "Where words are many, sin is not absent." Or in another translation, "Sin is inevitable, but he who holds his tongue is wise." Sometimes it's better for the sake of the relationship simply to be quiet. Where there's a multiplication of words there's a greater likelihood that there's going to be conflict. Something will be said that shouldn't be said. 

Also, reckless words. When you think of a reckless driver, you think of somebody who's driving out of control. Somebody driving out of control, breaking the rules of the road, driving on the wrong side, driving too fast. And there are certain interpersonal relationships, you learn them in kindergarten, they haven't changed much since then. And when you start going recklessly, you pitch to the wind those rules for good relating that you learned so long ago. And you can even put words to it, reckless words. 12:18, it says, "Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing." Have you ever been pierced by somebody's reckless word? It hurts, doesn't it? And it's true of all of us. And the sad thing is, we have both received and have given those wounds, and that's where the conflicts come in, reckless words. 13:3 says, "He who guards his lips guards his life, but he who speaks rashly will come to ruin." So be careful what you're saying. Think before you speak. 

The Book of James says, "Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry." So be slow to speak. Think a little bit before you speak. Some of us have an easier time with that than others. The quiet and silent types don't struggle with this as much as those that talk more. But be careful of reckless words and also harsh words. 15:1. I think of all the Proverbs, this one may be the most useful. In other words, we're going through a lot of Proverbs tonight, but look at 15:1, memorize it, put it somewhere so that you can see it. "A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger." There's so much truth in there, isn't there? "A gentle word turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger." So if you say something harshly to somebody, don't be surprised if all of a sudden you've got yourself a conflict. A harsh word can rub and it hurts. 

Also, deceitful words. 15:4 says, "The tongue that brings healing is the Tree of Life, but a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit." If somebody starts to lie to you, if there starts to be deception in their speaking, pretty soon you've got a ruptured relationship, you've got a conflict. ‘You've got a disagreement. And also 25:23, "As a north wind brings rain, so a sly tongue brings angry looks." If you get to the point where you can't trust somebody and what they're saying, pretty soon, again, you've got a ruptured relationship. And then there's gossip, 16:28. It says, "A perverse man stirs up dissension and a gossip separates close friends." Somebody who said something out of turn, gave some information that was shared in confidence. Spread some news or some story about somebody just because gossip is fun to listen to and it's fun to be in the know and spread it, and before you know it, you've broken a relationship. So gossip can do that. These are all words that hurt.  

And then insults, 11:12. It says, "A man who lacks judgement derives," another word for derives would be insults, "his neighbor, but a man of understanding holds his tongue." So those are different things that the tongue can do that lead to conflicts. Also hatred. Now, in this case, I think hatred of the type that doesn't overlook an offense. 10:12 says, "Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers over all wrongs." So it's a special kind of hatred. It's the unwillingness to forgive, an unwillingness to say, "I'm a sinner too. I could do that and I'm gonna cover that just the way Jesus covered my sins with his blood." But instead, there's a pride that comes and says, "Yeah, I'd sin, but I would never do that. And so therefore, I'm gonna withhold forgiveness and I'm going to start the rupture and I'm not going to forgive." And also there's categories of people, strangely, who seem to love a quarrel, they just seem to enjoy an argument. 

Now, all of us are quarrelish to some degree. We all have dissension built in us, it's part of the sin nature. It really is. But there's some people that just seem to live for it. 16:28, it says, "A perverse man stirs up dissension and a gossip separates close friends." 17:19, "He who loves a quarrel loves sin. He who builds a high gate invites destruction." 19:13 says... Sorry, 20:3 says, "It is to a man's honor to avoid strife, but every fool is quick to quarrel." And then 26:21 says, "As charcoal to embers and as wood to a fire, so is a quarrelsome man for kindling strife." So there's just a category of people in the Book of Proverbs called quarrelsome. They are the kind of people that easily and quickly start a quarrel or a fight. And as I said, there's a number regarding the quarrelsome wife, but I really think 26:21 shows there's quarrelsome men as well. 27:15 and 16 says, "A quarrelsome wife is like a constant dripping on a rainy day. Restraining her is like restraining the wind or grasping oil with the hand." 

I think we should grow to despise quarrels and arguments. And say anything that we can do to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace, short of sacrificing doctrinal or biblical truth, we will do. That's what it means to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace, and that's very much what we desire to do. 

So if you struggle with quarrelsomeness, you know who you are. You know if there's that irritability and that agitation, and it's just easy for you to get into a quarrel, it's easy for you to get into a fight, you're very quick with that. Work on it. Bring it before the Lord in prayer. Say, "This is who I am." He already knows who you are. There's no sin that God can't work out of you through sanctification. There's nothing that he can't change. This is the big lie of Satan. I can't wait to get to Romans 6. Romans 6, the breakthrough idea I have from Romans 6 is that Satan's main lie is that you will always be a slave to sin, when that's the very thing that God has freed you from. You don't have to be who you are today if who you are today is characterized by sinful patterns. You're not a slave to sin anymore, you're free, you don't have to be quarrelsome. But the devil's in there, he's gonna say, "This is just who I am." Have you ever had that creep in? It's like, "I am quarrelsome, it's just who I am, I'm just irritable. You just have to put up with me." Well, you don't have to be that way, and so you can bring this to God and ask him to work on it. It's gonna take time, but it's well worth it.  

Another thing definitely that causes conflicts is unforgiveness. Look at 17:9. It says, "He who covers over an offense promotes love, but whoever repeats the matter separates close friends." This word cover is a major word in the Book of Proverbs, a very significant theological word. It reminds me of Romans Chapter 4. And you don't have to turn there, but just listen to what it says. This is a Psalm of David right in the middle of the discussion on justification by faith alone. "Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered." Isn't that beautiful? "Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him."  

Now, all of you who are Christians, you enjoy that every day. God has covered your sins in the blood of Jesus Christ. And so what he's urging us to do is to cover one another's sins, just as he's covered our sins. It's called forgiveness. But if there's an unwillingness to forgive, there's going to be a rupture in the relationship, guaranteed. Guaranteed. And so he who covers over an offense promotes love, but whoever repeats the matter separates close friends. What do you think it means to repeat the matter?   

Well, to bring it up again. To say, "Well, you did this to me. This is... You remember that when you... " You brought it up again, you've wounded afresh. You should have forgiven. So to bring up the matter means it's uncovered again. But God has commanded us that we should love one another and forgive each other just as he's forgiven us. And another thing that causes conflicts is misunderstanding, or you could say poor listening habits. Sometimes conflicts come from nothing.   

Just from absolutely nothing, just two people just talking at each other and they are both in essential agreement, it's just the words are getting in the way. Have you ever experienced that before? And then when it's all... When the mist is blown and you say, "What was this all about? There's nothing here." If you had just taken a moment to listen to each other, there wouldn't have been the conflict. Look at this one. 18:13 says, "He who answers before listening, that is his folly and his shame." 

You know what I'm talking about? You start talking when the person... "Well, I know what they're gonna say." Well, no, you don't. You're not a mind reader. Jesus was a mind reader. He knew what people were gonna say, he knew what was on people's hearts. It says in Scripture, Jesus knew what they were thinking and said X, Y, and Z. Do you know what people are thinking? Here, I'll test. I'm thinking of something right now. I do this with my kids. What am I thinking of? How many of you guessed pink elephants with green bows on them?   

Okay. Well, if you have the ability to discern what I'm thinking, then you and Jesus are alone in that ability. My kids have never been able to do it, and I can't do it with them. How is it then we have access to each other's thoughts? Words. It's a gift that God's given us, but you have to listen to them. Try to understand what the person means by what they say. It's really kind of a selfless thing in communication. Whatever your opinion is about an issue, you're going to lay that aside so at least you can listen enough to say, "What is this person saying?" Unless you do that, there really is no point in a conversation, there's no point.  

You already know what you believe, and you're not listening to what the person is saying, and so many conflicts come from just poor listening and misunderstanding. And then there's others, there's just the issue of sins that come in. I could have grouped these next ones in to just sins that creep into your life. For example, alcohol or drug abuse. 23:29 and following, it says, "Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has strife?" Did you see that? Somebody who's struggling with alcohol or drug abuse, what do they have in their life? Nothing but one broken relationship after another, one argument after another. Strife and conflict comes in as a result of that.  

It goes on, "Who has needless bruises, bloodshot eyes? Those who linger over wine and who go to sample bowls of mixed wine." And it goes on from there. And also adultery. In Chapter 6, 32 and following, it compares a man who steals to feed himself 'cause he's starving to somebody who commits adultery. Even though that man has to pay restitution, you can still at least understand why he did it. You can still... You don't despise the man because he was hungry. He still has to pay restitution, even though if it cost him everything he owns, he's gotta pay restitution. 

"But the man who commits adultery," it says, "lacks judgment. Whoever does so destroys himself. Blows and disgrace are his lot, and his shame will never be wiped away for jealousy arouses a husband's fury and he will show no mercy when he takes revenge. He will not accept any compensation. He will refuse the bribe, however great it is." It's a deeply ruptured relationship. In this case, the man to the offended husband, but also the husband and wife as well. So this is a conflict or a dispute that almost there can be no healing for. And that's why I think it's permitted... Divorce is permitted in the case of adultery because of the deep rupturing that occurs in the relationship. Why Jesus permitted it. 

And also provocation from fools, 27:3. "Stone is heavy and sand a burden, but provocation by a fool is heavier than both." What is provocation? Somebody provokes you. Somebody who gets under your skin, who just kind of just rankles you and seems to make it his or her business just to annoy you, and that can lead into conflict, and also greed can as well. 28:25, "A greedy man stirs up dissension, but he who trusts in the Lord will prosper." So dissension comes from greed as well.   

And that's what it says in the book of James, "What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you?" You want something and don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. And why? Because there's a yearning for earthly things or for earthly comforts. It's greed. 

Alright, so we've done a kind of biblical analysis on where conflicts come from, according to the Book of Proverbs, there may be others as well, but this is a diagnosis of where they come from. Well, how can we avoid them? How can we avoid conflict? Well, first, be patient and even-tempered, have a long fuse. Some of you have a longer fuse than others, and this may be more a matter of temperament. Some of you have had your fuse greatly extended by being a Christian. There is no one who has as long a fuse as God. God has a long fuse. He is very patient. Isn't he?  

And you hear about atheists or others tempting God and saying, "If there's a God, may he strike me down right now." God isn't like that. He's not a quick-tempered man. He has a long fuse and he's very patient. And so sanctification works in us, I hope, in extending of the fuse. Again, the Book of James, "Everyone shall be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. Therefore, get rid of all moral filth." What is James talking about when he talks about moral filth? He's talking about anger. Human anger, for the most part, James would call moral filth, and so we want to get rid of it, take out the garbage and lengthen the fuse so that it takes longer to blow up, if you ever even do. 14:29 says, "A patient man has great understanding, but a quick-tempered man displays folly." 16:32, "Better a patient man than a warrior, a man who controls his temper than one who takes a city." Isn't that great? It's better to control yourself than to be a powerful warrior who can conquer a city. 17:27, "A man of knowledge uses words with restraint, and a man of understanding is even-tempered." It says in the Book of Hebrews that we should consider Jesus who endured such opposition from sinful men so that we do not grow weary and lose heart. Jesus was basically provoked every day of his ministry, wasn't he? Every day he had enemies pounding on him. And what kind of fuse did he have? Did he ever sinfully blow up at anybody? No. And the same Jesus, the Spirit of the same Christ, is in you if you're a Christian, to extend that fuse so that you don't blow up or give vent to your anger.  

We've already write 29:11, "A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control." So be patient and even-tempered and you can avoid a conflict. Overlook an insult. Overlook. That's big, isn't it? Just overlook it. It's hard to do, I know. Spurgeon said, "If you wanna be a pastor, you should have one blind eye and one deaf ear. And know when to turn it." And why? Because it's just so important. People are very opinionated and they're gonna say what they're gonna say, and that's good, and you'd have to be able to sift through 'cause there's a lot of truth in there that you wanna take. But it's true of all of us. We all, to some degree, need one blind eye and one deaf ear and know when to turn it. Overlook. Don't let it get under your skin. 12:16, "A fool shows his annoyance at once, but a prudent man overlooks an insult." Is that easy to do? Do you find that easy to do? Somebody says something, you wanna get back, don't you? You wanna... Boy, if I could just have a good comeback to that. Far from turning the other cheek. 

In 19:11, "A man's wisdom gives him patience. It is His glory, it is to His glory to overlook an insult." Do you know God looks down from heaven? And when you overlook an insult because you're conscious of God, it is glorious to him. It is to your glory, it says, to overlook an insult. And 20:3, "It is to man's honor to avoid strife, but every fool is quick to quarrel." That's a great one. A next one is to be an active peacemaker. It takes an outlook, an energy to be a peacemaker, to say, "You know, I don't want to have a conflict with you. I want a good relationship, and I'm going to work on this relationship." 15:18 says, "A hot-tempered man stirs up dissension, but a patient man calms a quarrel." He pours water on the quarrel, and the fire goes out. That takes effort. You gotta haul the water and pour it, you've got to make the effort to calm the quarrel. You have to have an outlook of a peacemaker. 

And also instead of using those damaging words that we talked about in the first category, use healing words and gentle words. We've already looked at 15:1 but it's worth saying again. "A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger." You know, it's more than just true if somebody comes with a whole bunch of stuff to you and for you to say, "You may be right, you may be right." They probably are. We're all such sinners that if somebody's bringing a whole handful of gravel and throwing it, some of it's gonna hit you. Some of it, you deserve. This is one of the things I love the most about George Whitfield, one of the most criticized men of his generation. People always hammering on him, criticizing his field preaching or his evangelistic techniques or something in a sermon or whatever. And when people would bring him a criticism, he would say something like, "You may be right, I wanna pray about that." He'd take it in and he'd go sift it through in prayer with God, and he would allow the wheat to stick to him and the chaff he'd allowed to blow away and it didn't bother him. 

And that's humble, isn't it? To say, "Even though this person has come full of spit and vinegar, they may have something that I need to hear and I need to be corrected thereby." But that's not easy, but the start of it is a gentle answer that turns away wrath. Say, "you may be right, you may be right. I wanna hear what you have to say," that kind of thing. 15:4, "The tongue that brings healing is the Tree of Life, but a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit." 17:27, "A man of knowledge uses words with restraint, and a man of understanding is even-tempered." So use words that heal, words that calm the quarrel. 

And this may be perhaps the most important for us all, and that is to forgive quickly and wholeheartedly as the Lord forgave you. We've already looked at 10:12, "Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers over all wrongs," and 17:9, "He who covers over an offense promotes love, but whoever repeats the matter separates close friends." It's so important for us to cover each other's sins, isn't it? You know, it's not gonna be long before they're gonna need to cover your sins. It's just the way it is. Jesus says the measure you use is the measure we'll receive. The way you judge others is the way you'll be judged because we all do the same things, don't we? We all do. And so right now you're needing to forgive them, it won't be long before they'll need to forgive you for the same thing, so treat them the way you wanna be treated in that time. 

And then the next one is, "Drop the matter quickly before it gets out of control." Look at 17:14. "Starting a quarrel is like breaching a dam, so drop the matter before a dispute breaks out." The image is of a big... You imagine a big dam and there starts to be a crack in the top. And at first just a little trickle of water's coming through and then it starts to widen. You know what I'm talking about? 'Cause more and more water is pushing through and rubble's starting to come out, and before you know it, you have a flood flowing through. Have you seen that happen in a relationship? It just, it's gradual at first, but then it starts to accelerate and then the relationship's broken. It's better to drop the matter. That's part of overlooking, but just drop it. Don't continue on.  

Now, there are some times you need to work things through, but there are other times that this proverb kicks in and we drop the matter before the dispute breaks out. The next one is, don't hang around people who love to argue. The Book of Proverbs tells us that. Don't hang around people who love to argue. If there's a person in that category who by track record just constantly is causing strife and division and conflict and distress and all that, don't be with them, don't hang around them. 22:10 says, "Drive out the mocker and out goes strife. Quarrels and insults are ended." Boy, it's quiet, all of a sudden. What happened?   

So there comes a point where you start to realize that we don't have any problems with each other, just one individual who's stirring up strife and conflict. And then 22:24 and 25 says, "Do not make friends with a hot-tempered man and do not associate with one easily angered, or you may learn his ways and get yourself ensnared." The next one says, "Observe proper social boundaries." I like this one. 25:17, "Seldom set foot in your neighbor's house. Too much of you and he will hate you." I mean, that's just good wisdom, isn't it? Here I am again, I brought over some biscuits. It's like... You know, there's just boundaries, there are just reasonable boundaries, aren't there? And sometimes you don't know what they are, but Proverbs is a book of practical daily wisdom, and sometimes conflicts come because you've just broken some boundaries, you've stepped across. You brought too many biscuits, I guess, I don't know what it is. But day after day, you're there and observe those boundaries.  

And then this last one that we'll cover tonight, we'll stop here and then we'll... Boy, I hate to stop but it's 7:02. Anyway, don't meddle in other people's private affairs. This is interesting. 26:17, "Like one who seizes a dog by the ears, is a passerby who meddles in a quarrel not his own." I mean, don't get involved if it's not your thing. Now, they may ask you into it. Pray about it first and then, well, I mean, do you really want me involved? And all humor aside, I'll tell you what, you talk to police officers that get involved in domestic squabbles, they'll tell you those are some of the most dangerous situations they face because of the anger and the rage that's going on there. They will tell you that these are difficult ones. 

How to resolve conflicts. No, there's still another page and a half to go, so why don't we stop here. You've got the outline, read through it and God willing, next time we'll pick it up at this point. I'm gonna leave you with in the middle of your conflicts, and you can read through and resolve them this week, and next week, a week from now, we'll get them resolved with the Lord's help. Why don't we close in prayer and we'll be done for the evening. 

Father, we thank you for the practical wisdom that you've given us tonight. Father, it's hard to put these things into practice because we're all such sinners. Lord, you know my pride and my anger and my carnal nature and my sinfulness. And Father, I also know that those same things are in others as well. There's no temptation that has overtaken us except what is common to man. Father, we all struggle with the same things, and so I pray that we would treat one another as you have treated us, that would be as gracious with one another as you've been with us. Father, I pray that you would make us a congregation that puts these truths into practice. Father, help us to be wise people, and more than that, help us to be Christ-like people. Father, help us to be like Jesus, with a long fuse, quick to forgive, a willingness to lay down our lives for others, Father, that we might minister in the way you've called us to do. Thank you for this time tonight and thank you for this day in your house. And be with us now as we go on into our world that we might be witnesses for you. Bless our homes, our families. Bless those that are out on mission trips right now, the youth, Scott and Mark Lee and do things in others, Father. Bless them and bring them all back to us safely with great stories to tell of your faithfulness. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.  

We're going to focus this morning on Verses 9-11. About 400 years ago, a Puritan theologian named Thomas Brooks, wrote a book on Christian assurance called 'Heaven on Earth.' Isn't that a great title? 'Heaven on Earth.' To experience here on Earth a foretaste of heaven… I think that would affect everything, wouldn't it? If you could be walking daily with that kind of sense of assurance of salvation and all that it meant for it to trickle down and affect every area of your life. For it to affect your marriage. For it to affect the way you work, the way you pray, the way you live, the way you face temptation, Heaven on Earth. And that's my purpose today.

I want to read a few quotes from Brooks. Brooks did a great deal of thinking on assurance, and I think they're marvelous. Listen to this.

"Assurance is glory in the bud. It is the suburbs of paradise." Isn't that great? The suburbs of paradise, glory in the bud. And he said, "Assurance is the sense that I am wholly his, [Christ's]. I'm peculiarly his. I am universally his. I am eternally his." And then this, "It is the very drift and design of the whole Scripture, to bring souls first to an acquaintance with Christ, then to an acceptance of Christ, and then to build in them a sweet assurance of their actual interest in Christ."

So there's three points, all of them begin with A. Acquaintance with Christ, acceptance of Christ, and then assurance with Christ. I'll preach that sermon some other day. But that was Brooks. And then he said this in, 'Heaven on Earth'. It says,

"To be in a state of true grace is to be miserable no more. It is to be happy forever. A soul in this state is a soul near and dear to God. It is a soul much beloved, and highly valued of God. It is a soul housed in God. Housed in God, is a soul safe in the everlasting arms. It's a soul fully and eminently interested in all the highest and noblest privileges. The being in a state of grace makes a man's condition happy, safe, and sure. But the seeing, the knowing of himself to be in such a state is that which renders his life sweet and comfortable."

You see how he makes a distinction between being and knowing. You can be in a state of grace. You can be justified and not have that full assurance. That's why I'm preaching through this. I wanna labor that those of you who are already justified through faith in Christ might have a full, a rich, a deep assurance of that salvation.

"The being in a state of grace will yield a man heaven hereafter, but the seeing of himself in this state will yield him both a heaven here and a heaven hereafter. It will render him, therefore, doubly blessed. Blessed in heaven and blessed in his own conscience." That's worth laboring for, isn't it?

And it's to that purpose that God gave us Romans 5:1-11. Paul's goal here in the verses we're going to look at today is much more heaven on earth. That we might have much more of an experience of our justification, much more of an assurance of our salvation. Now, we've seen already in the gospel, that the gospel is the message, the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes. Romans 1:16. And then Paul unfolds in Romans 1 through Romans 3, the middle of three, the need for justification, every single one of us, all of us, Jew and Gentile, rich and poor, old and young. It doesn't matter what our national origin. All of us have sinned. All of us lack the glory of God. All of us need to be justified. Every last one of us stands guilty before God. And there is a great and an active wrath that God has against us for sin. Something we'll talk about more this morning because it's in this text.

But God has this wrath and he has in Romans 3, it says that he poured out his wrath on Jesus. Jesus is the propitiation for our sins. He is the atoning sacrifice. Well, how do we appropriate that for ourselves? How can we receive this forgiveness? How can it be ours? Well, by faith alone apart from works. Not by working it out by doing good things by works of the law, not at all, but simply by faith. Simply by trusting, justification by faith alone." And so in Romans 4, he gives us the example of Abraham, who simply looked out of the stars and believed a message from God, "So shall your offspring be." And the moment he believed he was declared righteous by God. It's just that simple. You hear a promise from God and you believe it. And this promise is far greater than Abraham's, isn't it? "So shall your offspring be" s the star promise that God made to Abraham. But we get far more, not more than Abraham but more in the promise. The promise of complete forgiveness of sins and eternity in heaven forever and ever if we simply believe.

And then in Romans 5:1-11, he labors to show the effects of justification by faith alone, and that is assurance of salvation. So I've just given you a kind of context and now we're zeroing in, and we've already seen in assurance, why assurance is so important. First of all, it's important for assurance of salvation itself. If you have no assurance of salvation, it may very well be that you have never been justified. And if you have never been justified, you're under the wrath of God. If you were to die today, you would go to hell forever and ever. This is a serious issue. If you have no assurance of salvation, it maybe you've never been justified, and therefore this is important. But if you have been justified but have a poor assurance of salvation, this affects everything, doesn't it? It affects your present joy and peace.

Assurance is a good gift from God. He wants us to enjoy a perfect peace and a perfect joy, and if we don't have that assurance we won't enjoy that. And it therefore will affect I think our fruitfulness. We will do less for God because we're so inward focused. We've got a poor conscience. We're struggling with sins. We're wrestling through things. All of that because we don't understand justification. If our conscience is troubled and we fear for our souls, we will be much less fruitful for Christ, but if we have full assurance, we'll be much more fruitful, more impervious to the devil's accusations, much bolder in evangelism. And also, our good works will be done for absolutely the right motives.

What can wash away my sins? Not all your good deeds. Nothing but the blood of Jesus. And then after that, all the good deeds flow out of thankfulness and gratitude, a desire to build the kingdom of Christ, but not an inward focus that you may somehow pay for your salvation. And then ultimately, a good solid assurance gives glory to God. And that's where we're going to end up in our passage today. It ends up giving glory to God. You boast in God, you brag in God, you glory and exalt in God because you realize there's nothing inside you to boast about or brag about or glory in, but in God alone.

Look with me. We're going to read the full 11 verses. And we're going to try to understand most especially Verses 9-11.

"Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us."

"You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation."

One of my favorite Bible expositors is John MacArthur. And he saw in these 11 verses, a chain of six unbreakable links that links us to our salvation. An unbreakable chain of six links. Well, I found another one, so I've got seven in there, with apologies to a man greater than I in expositing Scripture. But they are.

Number one, peace with God. Look at Verse 1 again. "Since we have now been justified through faith, we have peace with God." This is a new status. And this is going to come more alive today as we understand that, we were God's enemies, it says. In the text we're looking at today, we were enemies with God, but now through faith in Jesus Christ, everything has changed. And we are no longer at war with God, and God no longer at war with us," link number one.

Link number two, we are standing in grace. We have gained access by faith into this new standing in grace. We used to have an old standing. It was like a country that we were a citizen of, and we have transferred our citizenship to a new kingdom. We used to live under wrath, under judgment, under condemnation. We're going to find in the rest of Romans Chapter 5. We were in Adam, original sinners. We were under condemnation and under sin. And we have been transferred now into the kingdom of Jesus Christ. We are now standing in grace. It's a whole new standing. And I also like the picture of standing in graces. Oh, it's a cleansing shower, washing sin from us at all times because we sin all the time, don't we? And it's so tragic. And the more you go on in your Christian life, and read, and see how holy God is, the more you'll understand how much you need grace every moment. And we are standing in grace.

And number three, we have a hope of glory. We actually boast in it. We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. And this means, I think our own personal glorification, as Jesus said we will shine like the sun in the kingdom of our Father. Isn't that going to be something? You got to think about that for a minute. You look over to a Christian brother or sister, and realize, "Some day, he or she is going to shine like the sun in the kingdom of the Father." Will that affect how we treat one another? It's incredible. But we boast in this glory that's coming, and we also rejoice in our tribulations.

Number four, tribulations can't separate us from Christ. No, they actually prove, they test and prove our faith. As we go through trials in a certain way, our faith is proved genuine. And we end up with an even greater hope. We have a tested proven character.

And then number five, the Holy Spirit pours out his love into our hearts. You see this chain of assurance that just is building here in Romans Chapter 5. The Holy Spirit testifies to us that we're children of God. He pours out his love into our hearts. And then we have the great display of Jesus Christ crucified in history. Nothing can erase that. God demonstrates his love for us. And while we were sinners, Christ died for us. We have this display, and that is the love that the Holy Spirit pours into our hearts. It's a love of an act in history, 2000 years ago. No one, no potentate or king can ever erase an act of history. It is what it is. And Jesus died 2000 years ago that we might have eternal life.

And then number six, saved by his life. We're going to talk about that today.

And number seven, exulting in God. Do you see this incredible assurance, this whole body of assurance working in us?

Now, I organized assurance into three kinds of categories. Steps to assurance you could call it, but all three work together. An assurance reasoned out in the mind, you remember that? Jesus loves me, this I know for the Bible tells me so. There's certain things that we know because the Bible said so, and we believe those promises and we reason out the implications, and our assurance grows as we think more and more about it, and we reason it out. We're going to do that today. Today's text is the highest and greatest form of reasoned out assurance. There's much more argumentation that Paul does.

And then secondly, an assurance worked out in the life. You're going to see changes happening in you. What you boast in or what you exult in and what you enjoy and delight in changes when you become a Christian, doesn't it? You change. You're a different person. And as a result, as Jesus said, "Make a tree good and its fruit will be good. Make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad. For a tree is known by its fruit." So if you have become a... Because of justification by faith, a good tree, you're going to bear good fruit, an assurance worked out in the life.

And then thirdly, an assurance poured out into the heart by the Holy Spirit. All three of these work together to give a solid assurance. These are the three categories. If you see none of those three, you're probably not a Christian. And if you're not a Christian, you're still under the wrath and curse of God. And today must be for you a day of salvation. Today must be the day for you to give your life to Christ. It's a terrifying thing to be under the wrath of God. But if you see this assurance in you, it can grow. Reason out in the mind, worked out in your life, poured out into your heart by the Holy Spirit.

Now we're going to look at a little bit of the backdrop of assurance. And I wonder sometimes about Americans today. I wonder about Christians. I think we don't think much about the wrath of God. I think we don't think much about hell. Jesus talked a great deal about hell. And the wrath of God that's mentioned in our text today is a future wrath. It's a wrath that is coming. It is a biblical truth. We have universalistic tendencies. We have a sense that everybody's going to be alright. Everybody is going to go to heaven, one way or another, they're going to get there somehow. The Bible doesn't teach this. Does it? And so therefore to people who understand the wrath of God and hell, assurance is precious. It is absolutely precious. But for those who don't grip these biblical doctrines, assurance is relatively worthless. It doesn't mean much to you. Because everybody is going to go to heaven anyway, and besides which, God has no wrath against sin, right?

But is the wrath of God a biblical reality? It's clear in this passage. Look at verse 9. "Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him!" So it's clear in this passage. There is a future wrath. Shall we be saved? That's future. We will be saved from God's wrath, a future wrath through Christ. It's also clear earlier in Romans. Romans 1:18, "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness."

And then in Romans 2:5, "But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God's wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. God 'will give to each person according to what he has done.'" That is clear biblical teaching. Jesus taught it too. Luke 12:4-5, "I tell you my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear. Fear him who after the killing of the body has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him." This is the words of Jesus and we must hear him. We must understand what a threat this is.

And then finally, it's clear in Christ's death. What is it that killed Jesus? Wasn't the Romans. It was the wrath of God that killed Jesus. What do you think it meant when Jesus said, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" What is that coming from him. The Son of God experiencing the wrath that we deserve for our sins.

The Denial of God’s Wrath in Liberalism

Now liberalism, a false form of Christianity which is no Christianity at all, denies this. Does it not? It denies the wrath of God. God has no wrath toward sinners only love. He only has love. And our greatest need is to just know and experience this love. We must come to understand that God loves us all. There's no wrath. There's no hell. There's no judgment. Only love. This is not Christianity. This is false teaching. H. Richard Niebuhr in 1937 wrote a book called 'The Kingdom of God in America' and this is how he summarized the liberal gospel, "A God without wrath, brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross." Is that Christianity? No.

I'll read it again. "A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross." That is not Christianity and it's not what Paul is talking about. But instead we have an understanding that the wrath of God and the love of God both exist in the same eternal being. There's no schizophrenia. Not at all. Realize that the love of God and the wrath of God are two aspects of his personality. And the wrath of God is his aggressive passion concerning his own holiness and his own righteousness. It is a form of love, about purity and about his own glory.

Now, what is our need? If we were under judgment, if we were under the wrath of God, we need to change, don't we? We need a reconciliation. We need to change relationship, realize what we were apart from Christ. We learned last week, we were helpless. We were ungodly. We were sinners. In today's text, we were enemies, that's what we were. And what was God to us? That's what we were to God, what was God to us? Why we hated God? We were at war against him. There was something... There was an enmity in our heart against God. It says in Romans 8:7, "The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so."

And then in Ephesians 2:1-3 it says, "As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts." Listen to this, "Like the rest, we were by nature children of wrath." By nature, children of wrath, Ephesians 2:3.

Now how in the world can somebody who is by nature a child of wrath become a child of God? How can that happen? Well through the blessings of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's how it happens, but if you don't have the backdrop of wrath and of judgment, assurance of salvation means nothing. It's worthless assurance. Our greatest need is reconciliation with God. I may be speaking today to people who have never come into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. You're greatest need is to be reconciled with God. It said in 2 Corinthians 5:20, "We are therefore Christ ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you, we beg you. Be reconciled to God."

Now it says in our verse, it says, "Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him? For if when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through his son…" Isn't that beautiful? A reconciliation and notice that it's passive. It's something that happens to us, something that God does. We have been reconciled. Now, I tell you the full implications of this reconciliation where we were enemies and now we're made reconciled will not be seen in this world, but you will see it if you have been justified, you will see the full implications of the fact that God is now your friend and more than that, your adoptive Father. What an incredible thing.

But Paul and God through Paul are laboring that we might have much more assurance and so they're working, he's working with us, working with our minds, and people think in terms of much more assurance. They think how can the reasoning process have anything to do with faith? Aren't they two different things? When I was at MIT, they kept telling me that, "How can you a reasonable person believe these things?" As though reason and belief are mutually exclusive. Not at all, not at all. See what faith does is it accepts invisible truths as truth, and then we can use our minds and extend those truths into new areas. The more you meditate on these things, the stronger your assurance gets. It's an assurance that's worked out in the mind, reasoned out in the mind, and we know that because Paul is doing some logic with us here.

Sanctified Logic

He's saying, "If this, then that…" Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more having been justified shall we be saved? There's a how much more language. If A is true, how much more will B be true. You see how it's working. So there's a logic, he's reasoning with us. Okay well, let's give an illustration. It's a reasoning from the greater to the less, from the more surprising to the less surprising, from the harder to do to the easier to do. Imagine an Olympic power lifter… As I was thinking about the sermon, I was thinking he had to be Bulgarian. So imagine a Bulgarian power lifter, have you seen these guys? They're unbelievable. Strong chest and big arms, and this guy won the gold medal in his weight class, and he has just finished receiving his medal and the Bulgarian national anthem is playing whatever that is. Does anyone know what the Bulgarian national anthem sounds like? I don't, but anyway, he has won the gold medal, comes down off the podium and his little 2-year-old son comes kind of toddling over to him.

If he can pick up a gold medals worth of weight, how much more can he pick up his 2-year-old son? You see how it works? It's an argument from the greater to the lesser. If he can do this, surely he can do that. That's how it's working. Well, Paul uses this. Romans 8:32 is an argument from the greater to lesser, "He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will he not along with him graciously give us all things?" Other things that are so much less than Jesus.

You see how it works? Is there anything in all the universe as valuable to God the Father as God the Son? And he gave him up to death for us, full gift. Then he'll give anything that helps his cause and helps your soul and his kingdom. Anything is yours. Argument greater to lesser. Jesus did the same, remember? Remember in the Sermon on the Mount, we're talking about how Jesus argues us out of anxiety? If that is how God clothes the grass in the field consider the lilies of the field. If that's how he clothes the grass in the field which is here today and tomorrow thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, oh you of little faith. If A is true, much more will B be true. That's how it works. Or he does this in terms of prayer. "Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"

You see how it works. It's an argument from the greater to the less. Well, how does it work here? Apparently, in God's way of thinking and in Paul's way of thinking, it was a greater thing to get you justified than to keep you saved for the rest of your life. You see how that works? It was harder to get you forgiven, than it is to keep you there and bring you the rest of the way to heaven, harder for him.

Now that might not make sense, we've got years to go some of us. Lots of temptations to face, lots of opportunities to blaspheme Christ, lots of opportunities to apostatize and fall away, right? But in God's way of thinking, it was harder to get you saved justified than it is to keep you there the rest of the way. Apart from Christ, we were helpless, we were ungodly, we were sinners, we were enemies. He gave his perfect son and poured out his life blood, that is a greater thing than now that we are adopted children of God and growing in grace and walking with him and yearning to love him and please him will he save us. A dead Jesus with his blood poured out on the cross got you justified, a living Jesus will most certainly keep you the rest of the way.

You see how the argument goes. So you've got it. We'll understand the greater to the lesser argument. Let me give you another illustration. This did not really happen, but just I'm trying to illustrate a point. Imagine during the Vietnam War, a soldier fighting in 1971, near Da Nang, hears the cries of a little boy in a bungalow, and he's had just about all he can take of death and destruction, and he wants to do something to do with life. And he runs across a field of fire, and he grabs this little boy and he runs back and in running, he gets hit, he gets injured, the boy's safe, but he's injured, he keeps going, he manages to get him to safety. He finds out once the battle's over that the little boy's parents were killed in that firefight and so now this boy's an orphan, and so he sets him up in an orphanage and continues to keep in touch with him.

He provides for him, provides lesson maybe English lessons, because he already has in mind, he wants to adopt this boy. And he provides for him, he gives him food and clothing, and then he starts to work with the agencies and pulls in every IOU he's ever got from the military and he managed to get that boy out of the country and sets him up in his home, loves him, cares for him, and then one day, the little boy looks up at him and says, "Daddy, will I be with you next year? Will I stay with you?" Now he who risked his life in a firefight running across machine gun bullets and all that was wounded for him, paid for him to get out of the country and went through the legal steps of adoption. If he did all that, is he going to keep him for another year? Absolutely and that's the same argumentation that's going on here.

Past Justification Guarantees Future Salvation

Past justification guarantees future glorification. Get that in your mind. If I am justified today, I will someday shine like the sun in the kingdom of heaven. So the issue is, am I justified today? That's what we have to know, but am I, if I am justified today, I will most certainly be saved in the future. By the way, I mentioned this to our class on Wednesday evening, and by the way, all of you are invited, it's not just for Sunday School teachers, but for everybody.

But we're talking about how Southern Baptist tend to use the word "saved" interchangeably with justified. They are not interchangeable terms. Salvation is bigger than justification. It's true that we have been saved. It says that in Ephesians 2:8, "For by grace, have you been saved through faith" in Christ. That's justified, but it's not done yet. We've still got a ways to go. We're going into sanctification and Romans 6, 7, and 8 deals with that. So we are presently being saved, aren't we? Sanctification's going on every day. We're growing in godliness, we're putting sin to death, we're growing to love the things of God.

That's a present salvation going on in our lives, and there is a future salvation too, isn't there? And really in two parts, one in that Judgment Day hasn't happened yet, has it? You may think you have a course down in college or whatever, but if the final exam hasn't happened yet, you haven't passed the test yet. Judgment Day hasn't come yet. The wrath of God has not yet been poured out on this earth. How do you know you're going to survive that? That's the purpose of the passage here. And also, there's a future salvation in what will happen to us, we will be glorified as already mentioned.

Salvation's bigger than just justification. But if you have been justified, you will finish the whole course, you're going to finish the salvation plan that God has. No way you will jump out, it's impossible.

Now in Verse 10, he gives us even stronger assurance. It says, "For if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, how much more having been reconciled shall we be saved by his life?"

So here is the how much more: If dead Jesus did this, living Jesus will do this. This is how it works. Now there's two senses of this, either it means that Christ is alive for me, he's doing certain things for me now that he's alive or secondly Christ is alive in me. I believe it's both, I believe it's both. The living resurrected Christ is doing things for you if you're justified. What is he doing? Well, first of all, he's interceding for you, he's praying for you all the time. It says in Romans 8:34, "Christ Jesus, who died more than that, is that how much more, more than that was raised to life, is at the right hand of God, and is interceding for us."

How do you think the Father hears the prayers of the Son? Very gladly. The Father gives the Son every thing he asks, and he's praying for you. He is saturating your life with prayer right now, and everything he asks he gets. So Christ as Intercessor and also Christ as Protector, remember? Who was it that said, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" Who said that to Saul of Tarsus? It was Jesus protecting his flock, also protecting Saul of Tarsus from eternal damnation by saving him. He is the Good Shepherd, isn't he? And the Good Shepherd takes care of his flock. The Good Shepherd doesn't lose any of his flock. The Good Shepherd goes out. He's not the hired hand. He goes out and meets the dangers that are coming on the flock. He is a protector of the sheep, you see? He's a living Savior. He's going to preserve, protect, and defend you until you make it the rest of the way.

So a living Jesus is interceding for you and protecting you, but more than that, a living Jesus is inside you changing you forever. Isn't that beautiful? The moment you become a Christian, Jesus comes and lives inside you. Romans 8, it says, "You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature, but by the Spirit of the Spirit of God lives in you. If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin yet your spirit alive because of righteousness." Christ in you, the hope of glory. Jesus Christ will come and make his home with you, living within you. Is he active or passive when he lives inside you? What do you think? Does he come in there and just kind of accept you as you are? Well, in manner of speaking I suppose, but he's not going to leave you that way. He loves you too much to leave you that way. Sin is devastating to the life and so he will love you enough to transform you. He's going to be working in you, changing you, and this gives you increased assurance too.

You're not the person you were the day you got saved. You've been changed. Isn't that beautiful? And so this is ever increasing assurance. From greater to less, you were a wrath-filled enemy the day you got justified. God justifies the ungodly, but you're not ungodly anymore because Jesus is living inside you and transforming you from within. That's the logic and that's the work that he's doing. Jesus said, "I am the vine and you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit. Apart from me you can do nothing." So we are in Christ and Christ is in us, and out of that union comes a flow of good fruit. That's that worked out in a life assurance, a flow of good fruit. You're being transformed.

And the final step is in verse 11, We exult in God. "Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God, [or exalt in God, or boast in God] through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation." The end result of our salvation is praise for God. That's what comes. At the end of all of this is glory for God, worship for God, praise for God. God gets the glory. You get the joy. God gets the glory. You get the salvation. God gets the glory. You get the streets of gold and the mansion and you get all that, but God gets the credit and the glory, and why? Because you are helpless. You are ungodly. You are a sinner. You were a rebel, and there's nothing inside you except all of that and now God has transformed you. He gets the glory. He gets full credit, and you are glad to give it to him.

At the end, you're going to be saying not, "what a good job I've done," salvation by works. "What a ladder I've climbed, a stairway to heaven." "Every step I did it my way," and in the end you can boast in yourself. Absolutely not. No one will be boasting in heaven except about God. We exalt in God. And what do you think…Remember we began this sermon talking about heaven on earth? What are they doing in heaven right now? What do you think? What are they doing in heaven?

They're exalting in God. They're praising God, and so you want heaven on earth? Praise God. Worship God. Give glory and praise to God. Listen to this. Revelation 19, "After this, I heard what sounded like the roar of a great multitude in heaven shouting, 'Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God. '" Isn't that wonderful? We're going to exalt in God. And so what's happened is, we are presently exalting in God. We have been transformed from being an enemy to being somebody who wants to see God exalted. We can pray from our heart, "Your kingdom come, your will be done, may God be exalted on earth. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name." We can pray this, because we've been transformed by his Spirit. "Hallelujah," it says, and we're going to be saying it too.

Well, how do we apply this? What do we learn. As we looked at Romans 5:1-11, we've seen the links of a chain of assurance, one after the other.

And I want to say to you, Christian, be assured of your salvation. If you've been justified, you will most certainly make it to heaven. There's no doubt about it. You're free from any concern about that. Now, pour out those good works that God has prepared in advance for you to do, and do them for his glory, build his kingdom.

And if you're not a Christian, can I say to you with all the tenderness in my heart, flee the wrath to come. Verse 9 speaks of a coming wrath. There is one place to flee and that is to Jesus Christ. In a few moments, I'm going to be down at the front. If any of you would like to come to Christ, or you want to pray with me, I'll be here. If you want to come after the service and talk to me, come to Christ today. Won't you close with me in prayer.

Heavenly Father, we do thank you for what we've learned today. We thank you for the how much more assurance, oh Lord. Much more heaven on earth I pray for my brothers and sisters in Christ who have already been justified that they would understand this assurance and that they would rejoice in it and exalt in God. And for any here who have not yet trusted in Christ, I pray that today would be for them, a day of salvation. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

Andy synthesizes the wisdom given in Proverbs about money and shows that when you put it all together with the rest of the Bible, we are to use money to advance God's Kingdom instead of accumulating it.

I appreciate Tom sharing about George Müller because basically, George Müller's example on money is what I want to commend to you. We got about three-quarters of the way through our study last time, so I just have a few verses from Proverbs that I wanna share, but more than anything, I want to share with you an example and a warning in reference to money. Let's begin and look at Deuteronomy chapter 17. Now you wonder, why are we starting in Deuteronomy? Well, hopefully, that'll become clear, but in Deuteronomy 17, we have regulations given by Moses before the Jews enter the Promised Land about what a king must and must not do if he should ever take the throne over the people of God. So there's rules in here about a king.

So in Deuteronomy 17:14, it says, "When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, 'Let us set a king over us like all the nations around us,' be sure to appoint over you the king the Lord your God chooses. He must be from among your own brothers. Do not place a foreigner over you, one who is not a brother Israelite. The king, moreover," look at this, "must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the king has told you, 'You are not to go back that way again.' He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray and he must not accumulate large quantities or large amounts of silver and gold." You just read Solomon's life story there, the opposite of Solomon's life story. Look at the very last part, what does it say? He must not accumulate. That's my lesson tonight. Don't accumulate. Don't accumulate. It's not for accumulation. There's no purpose in it. It's to be used here in this world. For what? For the advancement of the kingdom of God.

Now, Solomon was an incredible accumulator, actually. Look over at 1 Kings chapter 10. 1 Kings chapter 10 describes some of that accumulation. 1 Kings 10:14, it says, "The weight of the gold that Solomon received yearly was 666 talents." One talent is 75 pounds. Well, it's a ton of gold. It's more than a ton. That's an awful lot of gold. 666 talents of gold every year. As a matter of fact, so much gold flowed into Solomon's kingdom, so much came in that silver was considered of little value in his day. Parenthetically, what did Jesus say we owed? Remember the parable in Matthew 18, what do we owe? 10,000 talents. So how much accumulation is that for Solomon? That's like 20 years of Solomon's income or whatever that we owed. Twenty years. Why did Jesus set the stake so high? Because God is infinitely holy, and we are sinful. End of parenthesis. 

But Solomon accumulated tons of gold. If you look down at verse 26, I guess that's the best way I can find from 1 Kings 10:26. What are the first two words you get there in the NIV anyway? Solomon accumulated. That's all you need to know. He just did. He accumulated tons and tons of stuff.

Now, the thing about George Müller that I love is that he was not an accumulator. In his life, he was a man of faith who, God used in a mighty way to provide for orphans, to minister to orphans, and meet their needs. Every day he would have to get on his knees and basically beg bread for the orphans that their needs would be met. In his lifetime, in 64 years of ministry, he cared for 10,029 orphans. That's the equivalent of 10,029 children. Can you imagine having 10,029 of your own children you are to feed and care for and clothed and send to Duke University, which I've been told is $120,000 for four years? I mean, that's an awful lot of money. And he did. Well, he didn't send them to Duke, but he fed them, he clothed them, he cared for them, he educated them, he evangelized them; 10,029 of them. 

All in all, when he died, he had about 60 pounds, British pounds, to his credit and 1.5 million pounds had flowed through his hands. 1.5 million pounds. In hundred years ago, American money, that's about $8 million. So what was $8 million a hundred years ago be worth today? Hundreds of millions of dollars flowed through this man's hands, and he had a couple of thousand bucks when he died. That's about it. He was not an accumulator. Instead, he used his money and his riches for the kingdom of God.

Now, the Proverbs that Solomon gives us do teach us how to accumulate wealth. I think it's good to accumulate and then disperse. There's nothing wrong with accumulating and dispersing, alright? The point is, as soon as we get money spending it out, it goes, I think we are violating some principles that we get from the Book of Proverbs, there's a wisdom to it. For example, we have the fun here, Jack, that every year we pay out Memorial Endowment fund. And now we're just living off the interest on that, and every year tremendous amounts of money go out for missions because of some wise financial policies. But if you were to look at it, we're in the Book of Proverbs now.

How do you accumulate wealth? We covered some of this last time. If you look at Proverbs  3:9 and 10, it says, "Honor the Lord with your wealth with the first fruits of your crops, then your barns will be filled to overflowing and your vats will brim over with new wine." So the desire is that first and foremost, we would honor God with our wealth. That is as true in my opinion for a church collectively as it is for individuals.

If the church collectively accumulates and spends money always on itself, I think it's gonna dry up, eventually.  God won't continue to send the water flow down that tributary, there's a blockage. There must not be a blockage on this financial issue, we've gotta keep the pipes clear. So a church therefore should be channeling money for the Lord's work. But we must put God first and then he will see to it that there's a sense of blessing, a sense of abundance.

And we also saw the blessing of God by grace, 10:22, it says, "The blessing of the Lord brings wealth, and he adds no trouble to it." So the blessing of the Lord brings wealth, and we should pray that blessing, we should pray that God would bless us with money with wealth. Why? So that we can see unreached people groups come to Christ. Some things do cost money. Now you can't relate money to soul saved, but it costs money to cross the Pacific Ocean. It costs money to print Bibles in the language of large populous Asian nations. It's expensive to do some aspects of ministry, and that's what the money is for.

We also covered live a righteous life, righteousness. Look at 21:21, "He who pursues righteousness and love finds love, prosperity, and honor." So as you pursue righteousness, this reminds me very much of another statement on wealth, and that's in Matthew chapter 6, Seek first the kingdom of God and his what? Righteousness. And all these things will be added to you as well. You put God's righteousness first. And that's a big topic, isn't it? Remember what John the Baptist tries to stop Jesus from being baptized? And Jesus said, "Let it be so now, we must fulfill all righteousness."

Righteousness motivated everything Jesus did. And so as we pursue righteousness here at First Baptist Church, we're gonna see financial prosperity, and why? Because it's not accumulating here, it's being dispersed for the Lord's work. Also, work diligently and skillfully. Look at 10:4, "Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth." We have a lot of diligent workers in this church.

Also, it says in 22:29, "Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will serve before kings, he will not serve before obscure men." So a combination of hard work and skill tends to, in this world, produced what? Wealth. It just does. That's good, that's a good thing. Then disperse it for the kingdom of God. That's how the money multiplies. Be skillful and hardworking, and then be generous. Look at 11:24-26, "One man gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly but comes to poverty. 25, A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed. 26, People curse the man who hoards grain, but blessing crowns him who is willing to sell." If you put those three together, it's the same thing. You hold on to it, you're stingy, then you will not be under the blessing of God. Again, I think it works for corporate bodies like First Baptist, as much as it works for individuals. If we have an accumulating kind of mentality here, we will not be under the blessing of God. But if we have a dispersing mentality, we will be under the blessing of God, and he's gonna keep the money flowing in here.

Now, this one has nothing to do... It's here only because it's in the Scripture, and that's, have wealthy parents. So you wanna accumulate, have wealthy parents. 19:14, it says, "Houses and wealth are inherited from parents, but a prudent wife is from the Lord." And 13:22 says, "A good man leaves an inheritance for his children's children. But a sinner's wealth is stored up for the righteous." Now, I think there's some truth to this. And the fact of the matter is, that we want to leave to our posterity a storehouse of wealth, but I think first and foremost, what we wanna do is leave a storehouse of a legacy, a legacy of godliness, a legacy of righteousness.

When Müller died, there was not much to disperse to his relatives, but there was an incredible legacy, wasn't there? There was an unbelievable spiritual legacy. His relatives, his friends, those who work with him understood how to handle money. They understood how to get on their knees and ask God for things, to not hoard, to not store up, to not accumulate, but to disperse and to disperse freely.

Now, the next one, it says that we should store up wealth little by little, and here we have the ant. Look at 6:6-11. "Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest. How long will you lie there, you sluggard? When will you get up from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come on you like a bandit, and scarcity like an armed man." So what is being enjoined here is that we should be diligent and plan for the future, to be like the ant, to be hard-working who stores up when there's abundance for times when there is not abundance.

The problem I have with this verse is that it seems to contradict the no-accumulation principle. Well, that's the way Scripture is, you know? You don't wanna drift too far to one side or too far to the other. I will say this, that Müller challenges me 'cause he seems to have accumulated nothing! He resolved in his heart that he would not accept a salary, a paid salary from his church, but rather they put a box at the back of the church, some of you may be taking notes on this and may come to me and say, "You know, it's a good idea." I'm growing into Müller's fate. I would say of all the years of the faith, he challenged me the most. I mean, no joke, I'm really challenged by this guy. He determined that he would not accept a set salary, but instead, there'd be a box at the back and if you want to contribute to the ministry of the church, including meeting his needs, you would contribute there. He also resolved, he and his wife, that they would never once ask anyone or talk to anyone about financial needs ever. Never, but only to God.

And there were times that he would get on his knees and there'd be some money, some British pounds in that box in the back, but the deacons didn't unlock the box and forgot to look after the issue. And he would get on his knees, he and his wife, and they would pray, and the deacon would literally have... This is no joke, a sleepless night, he would toss, he would turn, he would wonder why he couldn't get to sleep, and finally, it would hit him, the locked box. And he'd go and he'd unlock it and find some money in there and bring it to the Müllers so that they could eat. He would pray that sleepless night under the deacons. Maybe I should pray sleepless nights under the deacons, I don't know, maybe God is leading us to do amazing things, I don't know. But just the faithfulness and the trusting of God, he would get on his knees and ask God for it.

So how do you hold that example together with the ant? I don't know, I'll leave that to you, but I think it's good that we... At least this much is clear, we can have the ant's diligence. Müller was not lazy, he was a hard-working man, and he was frugal with his money and he was faith-filled in the work he did. So he is not convicted by the ant, he's not a sluggard, he's just trusting God.

The final that I found in the Book of Proverbs is, have a good field and good equipment and be a good steward of them. Now, this is an odd place to stop, but I think it's interesting. Luke 12:16, you remember the parable of the rich fool? You don't need to turn there, but just... You remember how the parable of the rich fool be. Remember, the rich fool has a great year. Remember? And it's just abundant harvest, and he says, "I don't know what I'm gonna do. I don't have barns big enough." What's a barn for in one word? Yeah, accumulation, storage, that's what you use a barn for. It accumulates stuff. So that it sits there, and you can have plenty for years to come. And the rich fool says, "I know what I'll do, I'll tear down my small barns and I'll build bigger barns so I can accumulate more." You see? And remember what God said to him, "You fool, this very night, your soul is required of you, and who then will get the things you've stored up?"

But what's interesting to me is how the whole thing begins. 12:16, "The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop." Now, just stop and think about how Jesus begins the parable, "The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop." Where did his wealth come from? From the soil, it came from something he didn't have any claim over. It came from God. It wasn't really his, was it? It was God's.

And I guess, what I'm saying is, I want us to be faithful like Müller. I don't want us to be accumulators, I want us to be open-handed, be clear pipes to allow the money to flow through us individually and corporately together for the building of the kingdom of God.

I'm gonna close tonight with the fog story, just 'cause I love it so much, and to challenge you. Thank you, Tom. I wasn't planning on sharing it tonight, but I'm gonna share it anyway. Some of you have heard this now three times, hear it again. Alright.

Basically what happened was, for many, many, many years, George Müller had been trusting God day-by-day for the needs of, at one point, as much as 2500 orphans at any one given time. He had over 2000 orphans to care for. And again, this is a man that never raised funds, he never sought or solicited funds from anybody. Just by faith, he trusted God for their needs, and so he recorded over 50,000 specific answers to prayer. He kept a record of them. He wrote down, "We prayed for such and such and such and such happened." 50,000 specific answer to prayer, and it would be just as simple as, "We had no food, we prayed, a bread cart broke down in front of the house and wanna know if we had any use of X number of loaves and sure enough, we did." And send it before the orphans.

That's the kind of stuff that would happen. God broke that axle and answered a prayer, I think, is what happened. All of a sudden they're trotting by, then boom! I'll tell you what, if you're a bread cart driver, the word gets out, "Don't drive by that orphanage. Strange things happen to your truck or your cart as you're going by." Many, many answers to prayer.

When he was 72 years old, he and his wife were sailing from England, steaming from England to America, they were gonna meet the President who had heard about his work with orphans who were gonna go on a speaking tour and do various things for the Lord and they were gonna start in Quebec.

They got some distance off the coast of New Finland, and suddenly a very, very dense fog bank surrounded the ship and they did not move. Now, you know why. Out there in the ocean, you might hit an iceberg, you might hit another ship, and you might sink, and so you don't move. And so the captain spent 24 consecutive hours standing on the bridge waiting for a slight break in the fog bank, and he must have been exhausted, waiting and waiting for that fog to clear, at least some. And it says in the account, suddenly his life changed forever because 72-year-old George Müller appeared on the bridge, and I tell you parenthetically, I'd like to be that much of a life-changing kind of person, that just appearing on the bridge and having that little conversation with somebody changes somebody's life forever, and that's exactly what happened.

Müller appears and says in true Prussian style, and he was a Prussian, he was a German man, he lived in England all his life but he was born and raised in Germany. Alright, and he said, "I am here to tell you that I must be in Quebec by Saturday afternoon without fail." They're in the middle of the Atlantic. And the ship captain says, "I'm sorry, sir. That is quite impossible." And then Müller answers, "Very well then, if what you say is true then God will provide another way. In 52 years, I have never missed an appointment, and I'm not gonna miss this one."

At that point, the account says, "This man's looking at him like, 'What kind of lunatic asylum did you come from?'" And he said, "Do you realize how thick this fog bank is and how long we've been sitting here? Do you realize what kind of fog this is?" He said, "No, and I don't really care. My eye is not on the fog, but on the God who controls every circumstance of my life." Isn't that something? And that had been forged with 50,000 answers to prayer, and then he said, "Let's pray." And he kneels down right there, and he prays a simple prayer. It's not in the words, is it? It really isn't.

"Father, I pray that this fog would move so I can get to Quebec by Saturday afternoon. In Jesus' name, Amen." Something like that. At that point, the captain begins to pray. He probably felt guilty, I think, like, "Well, alright. I guess we should pray about the fog, I never did pray. In 24 hours, I haven't prayed. Okay, so I'll pray." He begins to pray, Müller puts his hand on his shoulder, squeeze a little, stop. He tells him to stop. He said, "First of all, you don't believe He will. Second of all, I believe He has. And therefore, there's no need for you to pray." Now, this guy's eyes I'm sure are wide as saucers and he continued, he said, "In over 50 years, I've never failed to gain an audience with my king. You may get up and look through the door, the fog has lifted." And the man walked across, open the door and the fog was gone. Praise God. 

Now, we kick this around in the Acts seminar. So what happened with that fog? What was going on with that? Müller didn't move it. God moved the fog. What was going on there was a source of divine communication from God to his faithful servant. And he didn't show you those kind of things lightly or quickly, you kind of work into that. When you've been trusting God and trust in God, He starts to show you more and more of His will, more and more of what He wants to do, more and more things. Wouldn't you love to see that happen in this church? Won't you love to be the kind of church where people just kneel down and answers to prayer happen like this? Wouldn't you just love to just kneel down and say, "God, we know you're sovereign of all things. Do X, Y and Z." And then God does it. Not because we're kings, we're not. He knew he wasn't, God is the King, but because he's communicating His will to us then we're praying effectively. Wouldn't you love to be that kind of a church? It's a matter of stewardship. And I think the money, it all fits together. I want us to be faith-filled with what God gives us.

Let's close in prayer. Father, we do thank you for what we've studied tonight, it's been appropriate. We thank you very much for the answer to prayer about the passport. We thank you also O Lord for what you're gonna do through that, and we do pray now in Jesus' name that you do mighty things, O Lord. Do things O Lord, with those that are already there. Do things with those that are going to go there between now and when we leave. Do things when we're there. Lord, just do awesome things there. You know exactly what we're praying for, we're praying for conversion, we're praying that people who are imprisoned by sin would rise and go forth and follow you. And we ask this in Jesus' name for their sake. We wanna see great things done in that country.

And Father, we thank you for the money and the finances that you've given this church. This is a wealthy church, by almost any standards. Father, I pray that there would be no accumulation here, no blockage, but rather just a flowing and flowing and flowing of resources for the kingdom of God, and we're gonna see the budget grow, we're gonna see amazing things happen as we trust you and as we build your kingdom. Father, I thank you for the patience of those that sat through tonight and we went a little longer, I just pray in Jesus' name, Lord, make us faith-filled people. Thank you for your servant, George Müller, who taught us faith by his example, O Lord. I pray that we would imitate his faith, as it says in Hebrews 13:7. Father, we thank you for the day we've had in your house, and now as we go on into our world, pray that we'd go empowered by the Spirit to be witnesses for you, Lord Jesus, we pray in your name. Amen.

We continue our study in Romans by looking at verses 6-8, and what someone has called the greatest description of God's love in the Bible. And I think I concur with that as we look at it. And we think about love a lot, and especially self-sacrificial love, the kind of love that costs something. A week ago we had the opportunity as a nation to think about the sacrifice of those in the military who'd sacrificed their lives. Memorial Day, originally set apart I think to honor those that died in the Civil War and then extended to other wars. And as you think about the sacrifices of those that fought and died for our nation, there are a few that stand out with incredible poignancy. And I read one earlier, this is a story of Private First Class William Baugh who won the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions on the 29th of November 1950 in the Korean War.

This is what his citation said, it said "For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as a member of an anti-tank assault squad, attached to Company G during a nighttime enemy attack against a motorized column. Acting instantly when a hostile hand grenade landed in his truck as he and his squad prepared to alight and assist in the repulse of an enemy force, delivering intense automatic weapons and grenade fire. Private First Class Baugh quickly shouted a warning to the other men in the vehicle and unmindful of his personal safety, hurled himself upon the deadly missile, thereby saving his comrades from serious injury or possible death. Sustaining severe wounds from which he died a short time afterward, Private First Class Baugh by his superb courage and valiant spirit of self-sacrifice upheld the highest traditions to the United States Naval Service. He was a Marine. He gallantly gave his life for his country."

Now you've heard those kind of stories before and they cause us to pause, don't they? I mean, Jesus himself said, "Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." And that's what William Baugh did for his unit. He saw immediately that there wasn't time to get that grenade out of there and saw the only way was that he should lay down his life and he threw himself on that grenade. But it's not just soldiers like this man. My wife gave me this devotional last night, put out by LifeWay. Maybe you have read it. About a woman who was at a car race. She went to see a car race on Sunday, November 10, 1996. It says a hot rod careened out of control during a drag race and flew into the grandstand killing a woman who used her body as a shield to protect her 5-year-old son.

The boy was hospitalized in critical condition. The accident happened at a National Hot Rod Association event and it happened during a race where speeds approach 100 miles per hour. An axle broke causing the car to veer and flip over a rail and fly through a 12-foot high chain link fence. And that's when 36-year-old Vickie Lynn Foster went into action. Sheriff Joe Higgs said, "She grabbed her son when she saw at the last minute what was happening, turned her body to protect her son from the impact and the car came down and crushed her." The mother was pinned beneath the car but the son was knocked out and escaped with his life.

And then someone recently gave me a story, and I don't remember the details but I was thinking about it in the same light. It was the story of a young boy whose sister was in need of a blood transfusion in order to save her life. And they explained this to the young boy, I think he was five years old. And his lip was trembling, and he said finally he'd be willing to give his blood. So he laid down and he gave the transfusion and the sister's life was spared. But the child was crying and seemed inconsolable and his understanding was that by giving the blood he would die. And yet he gave his blood so that his sister might live.

So you have a man, you have a woman, you have a child, all of them, willing to lay down their life for a loved one.

But the love that we have described in the text today goes far beyond any of these. And this is what the apostle Paul says in Verse 6, "You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man, someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us and this, while we're still sinners, Christ died for us."

You see it's one thing to give your life for someone that you love, a friend, an army buddy, even for your nation, for a spouse, for a child. There's a bond of affection there and there's something in that individual or in that country or in what it is you're trying to save that you love, and there's something in them that draws your love from you. It's somewhat of a conditional love. As you look at it, there's something that reaches out and says "This is my child. This is my father or my mother. This is my spouse or my friend. And I'm willing to lay down my life for that person."

But God's love is different than that. He doesn't look to you at all. He doesn't try to find something in you to love and then the love extends. It's not like he was searching and then found something that no one else could see and that, on the basis of that, he gave his son, not at all. And the text is going to remove forever any misconceptions to that end. God's love is utterly different from ours. It's based entirely on his own character, his own yearning to love. And in that, there is for us obviously tremendous humility, but also incredible security. We are conditional lovers, aren't we?

We see some display of that a little bit in the shifting of a wedding vow, I read this recently. In the past, you have a vow like this, "Will you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and health, as long as you both shall live?" But I saw in this magazine, this was a short time ago, it changed and at the end it said, "For richer, for poorer, in sickness and health, as long as you both shall love." Well, that's just one letter difference. What's the difference? Well, what it means is as long as you feel loving toward one another, you're going to keep being married, but as soon as you stop feeling that love for one another, then the thing's off.

Well, how long does that take? Probably on the honeymoon, isn't it? It's about... Things aren't quite what you thought they would be and is it at that point that the covenant is broken? As long as you both shall feel warm feelings of love and affection for one another? Absolutely not. But we are conditional lovers, and really the fact of the matter is, that that's the way we're built, it's the way we are in our sinfulness. There was a movie a while ago, I did not see it but the title intrigued me, it was a Tom Hanks movie entitled "That Thing You Do." Now, don't tell me you saw it, I don't even want to know about it because I haven't seen it.

But there's something about it, that's what draws love out, isn't it? There's something you do, that thing you do, if you keep doing it, I'll love you. As long as the circumstances are favorable, I will love you. But when things shift, when they change, I'm going to pull back my love from you. That's not God's love, is it? God is an unconditional lover, and the expression of it is here in the cross as read in verses 6-8. God's love is founded in his unchanging character. It's not dependent on us in any way, and therefore it is the only sure basis for eternal security.

Now, let's remember where we are in the chapter. Romans chapter 5 is describing to us the basis of our security, our eternal security. And God wants to put that basis on something that isn't going to move, something that is rock solid, something we can come back to again and again. And God's unconditional love is as tangible as the wood and the iron spikes that killed Jesus, that's about what Paul's getting at. There's an action in history a long time ago that demonstrates forever the love of God and nothing can remove it. It's as tangible as the blood that flowed from Jesus atoning for our sins.

And so therefore, what is God's purpose in Romans 5:1-11? His purpose is his own glory in your security. That's his purpose. He wants to glorify himself by giving you security. He wants to glorify himself by assuring you of your salvation through faith in Christ. He wants to glorify himself so that you will never be shaken again but know what it means that you are justified through faith. And so, he inspired Paul to write Romans 5:1-11. Now already, we have seen in verse 1, having been justified by faith, that's a past tense, once for all declaration in which God as the judge stands over you and says, "You are by virtue of your faith in Jesus Christ, not guilty of all your sins. You are acquitted. You're free forever from the guilt of sin." Having been justified through faith.

And then it says, "We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." What does this mean? Well, it's a new relationship. Whereas at one point, God was our enemy and we were God's enemy, that is no longer the case. We have been, another word for it will be, reconciled. We're brought into a right relationship with God. And then it says that we have an "introduction" or an "access" by faith into a new standing in grace. Remember I talked about the shower of grace? That cleansing hot shower, and we need to be under it all the time, don't we? Is there ever a moment you don't need grace? "God, turn off the grace shower for a while, I'm going to coast here in holy perfection for the next two or three days."

Is there ever a day that you don't need grace from God? Absolutely not. Love the Lord your God with all you heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. That kind of covers it, doesn't it? I did that today. I perfectly loved God with all of my heart, soul, mind, and strength, and I loved my neighbor as myself every moment of the day today. Is that right? Well, if the answer is no, then you need grace today. And God has given you a new standing in grace, the grace is just flowing over you all the time, that forgiveness and the love of Jesus Christ.

And then it says, "We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God." Remember I explained to you, you're rejoicing in the hope that you will be glorified by God. I think that's what that means, that someday you'll be transformed, you'll be changed forever, and you will be glorious, you'll be like God. And then it says, "We also rejoice in our sufferings." And some of you are going through testing right now, aren't you? You're going through trials, you're going through difficulties. I know who you are, some of you. Others, I don't know, you've got your own private struggles. But those tribulations, those trials are necessary for the building of your character, aren't they? Because we know that testing produces perseverance, and perseverance proven character, a tested character, that only God can work.

And so, unlike the world, we actually rejoice because of the trials because we know we need them, and that's different. And then finally, what we talked about the last time I preached, the love of God poured out into your hearts by the Holy Spirit. Remember the woosh? The fact that God can lift you up and give you such a hug that you would not believe it.

It's a supernatural assurance that comes through the Holy Spirit that you are a child of God. There's no human explanation for it. And it can reach as high as the third heaven, paradise itself, that's where Paul went to get it. Now, that's a hug from God. The assurance of God. But now, I want you to see the connection, because there's a connection between verse 5 and verse 6, and the connection the Greek could be translated "for," the NIV kind of slurs it a little bit with the, "You see." They try to be a little bit poetic there. But, there's a connection. And what is the connection? Well, this is it: Verses 6-8 are going to describe the love of God tangibly in the cross of Jesus Christ. That love, the love of Jesus Christ, the love of wood, and nails, and blood, and cries, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" That love, is the love that the Holy Spirit pours out into your heart, assuring you of salvation.

It's that love. It's the same fountain, and it keeps flowing, and keeps assuring, and keeps working in your heart. That's the context. Now in verses 6-11, he's going to continue. In 6-8, we've got that positive statement of God's love, an exposition of the cross of Christ. And then in verses 9-11, he's going to draw out logical deductions. And you're going to see the words, "How much more." If God has done this, how much more will he do that? And there's going to be a logical drawing out for your assurance. If God when you were a sinner, forgave all your sins by the death of his son, how much more will he enable you to finish the race? That's where we're heading. We are not going to get there today, but that's what he's talking about.

And so basically in effect, Paul wants you to see that the journey from justification through faith in Christ alone, justification to glorification, heaven, perfection is unbreakable. And everyone who is justified through faith will most certainly be glorified. Everyone. You can't lose your justification. You're going to be glorified. And so he says it straight out. We'll get there in Romans 8:30, "Those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified." Alright, well, that's the big picture.

Now, let's get into the details, and look at Verse 6. It says there that while we were still helpless or powerless, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. Now, I've put in your outline there, the greatest statement of God's love in the Bible, but it's in quotations. I didn't say that. But Martyn Lloyd-Jones, one of the great preachers of the 20th century, a Welshman who was the Queen's physician, and he gave up his medical career that he might go into the ministry. Some of you who are doctors, may want to give up your medical career and go into the ministry. I don't know. Martyn Lloyd-Jones would be your pattern and your example. He said, "I do not hesitate to assert that this is one of the greatest statements of God's love in the Bible."

I'm talking about Verse 6. Verse 6. "You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly." Now, this is a central doctrine, isn't it? The love of God for us in the cross of Jesus Christ. What could be better for a preacher than to stand up and preach Jesus Christ and him crucified? We're right at the center of our faith, aren't we today? Jesus Christ and him crucified. It's a central doctrine.

The basic idea is that God the Father appeased his own wrath through the death of his son, and that this is the highest expression of his love for us. There is no higher. Now, some people see a kind of a schizophrenia in that. They say, "How can you have wrath and love in the same being? It didn't make any sense." And so they wanna get rid of the wrath, and just keep the love. That's unbiblical. We actually see the wrath of God and the love of God in the same place, the cross of Jesus Christ. And there's no schizophrenia within the Trinity. Some people do that as well. "Well, the Father is the one with the wrath, and the Son is the one with the kind love." Nothing could be further from the truth. Any wrath the Father has against evil, and against sin, and wickedness, the Son has as well. And any love the Son has, the Father has, too.

There's no division whatsoever between them. And so God, the Father is expressing his love for us in sending his Son. What does Romans 8:32 say? "He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?" This is the love of the Father in the cross of Jesus Christ. And then John 3:16, "For God so loved the world, God the Father so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."

Now as we look at this, we see the plan of God unfolding. And we see that it's been meticulously planned out. You remember the word meticulous when we were studying the Book of Daniel? Our God is a careful planner, is he not? You remember how he had measured out the days of Nebuchadnezzar's reign? Nebuchadnezzar's son and his grandson is going to be 70 years, and all of it had been measured out carefully. Well, so it is also with salvation. God had planned all of this before the foundation of the world. And we get that indication in verse 6. It says, "For at just the right time Christ died," at just the right time. So salvation had been worked out meticulously, literally before the foundation of the world. It says in Revelation 13:8 that Jesus is the lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world.

Now, he wasn't literally slain before the foundation of the world. But in the mind of God, it was as good as done. He already had worked out the salvation plan before any of us came to be, before any human being came to be. But yet, there was a perfect time for Jesus to enter the world, wasn't there? It had to be at a certain moment in history. Remember what it says in Galatians 4:4? "But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law…" When the time was full. The senses of a harvest time, of a fruit that ripens. Maybe some of you like green tomatoes, but I don't. I like red tomatoes. You're not going to pick a tomato when it's green. It's not ready yet. The same thing with an orange. You wait until the full ripeness comes. You can tell by the color. And when the full ripeness comes when it's just the right time, you pick the fruit. And so it is with Jesus. At just the right time, Christ entered the world. Galatians 4:4. And died. Romans 5, "at just the right time."

Now, what does he mean by the perfect time? Well, let's look at three sentences. First, in terms of human religion, it was the perfect time. Why do we say that? Because the Jews had had the law for 14 centuries, plenty of time to prove that it was impossible to save yourselves by the law, by human effort. Do you think that's enough time? Is that fair? 1400 years, and no one had managed to do it. Nobody had managed to be justified by works of the law, and so that's 1400 years to prove Paul's statement Roman 3:20, "Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law, rather through the law we become conscious of sin." So that's plenty of time to prove you can't save yourselves by works of the law. You can't save yourself by doing good things, plenty of time for that.

Alright, what about in terms of human philosophy? Well, by this time, we have had the full flower of Greek philosophy. We had had Aristotle. He'd come and gone, but no salvation had been found in his system of ethics. We have had Socrates, he came and went, no salvation found there. Plato, perhaps reached the highest of any of them. He posited an unseen eternal creator being, inscrutable, invisible. But we don't know anything about him, but he did not explain could not know how to reach him. And so, the apostle Paul, when he came to Corinth and resolved, and it's hard, to know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

He said to those Corinthians, he said, "for since in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not know him." God revealed that through Jesus Christ, you see. So human wisdom was no way of salvation, neither was human righteousness or religion and neither was human government. We have had all those kingdoms. We had the Babylonian Empire, and then the Medo-Persian Empire, and the Greek Empire and then the height of it, the Roman Empire, the Pax Romana spreading over the whole Roman world. Roman government, the highest expression of human beings figuring out how to order society, and it did not bring salvation.

And at just the right time, Jesus entered the world. No salvation found, and Jesus Christ is the perfect savior. Not only was it the perfect time, but Christ is the perfect savior. Can we ever tire of saying the name of Jesus? Jesus Christ, Christ alone is salvation for the world. American Christians, sit up and listen, this is being attacked today, isn't it? Well, that's the Christian God, then you've got Buddha, he's the Buddhist God. And you've got Mohammed and Allah, that's the Islamic way to reach God. No, Christ and Christ alone is God's provision for sin and there is no other. And that message is going to get increasingly unpopular here in the US.

But Jesus Christ and him alone, he's the perfect savior, and why? Because God saw that we could not save ourselves, impossible for us to save ourselves. Isaiah 59:16 it says that God saw that there was no one. He was appalled that there was no one to intervene. So his own arm worked salvation for him and his own righteousness sustained him. God stepped in because we couldn't save ourselves. Just at the right time, we had the perfect savior. And then we have the ultimate expression of love. It says that Christ died. Notice that what Paul focuses on here is the death. He does not focus on the sinless life. He does not focus on the miracles, however amazing they are. He does not focus even on the incredible teachings, which are timeless. He focuses on the death of Jesus Christ as the expression of God's love, just as Jesus himself had taught greater love had no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

Now, the key here is this word "for." Christ died "for." Now, we've already talked about the death of Christ in Romans Chapter 3. Understand that it's not the life of Jesus Christ that saves you, it is his atoning death that saves you. And so, Jesus stepped in your place to pay your penalty, the death penalty for sin. Romans 6:23, you haven't got to it yet, but it says, "The wages of sin is death." There ia a death penalty to be paid for sin. All of us are sinners for all have sinned and lack the glory of God, and Jesus came to pay that death penalty. The question you have to ask yourself is, who is paying my death penalty? There's only two options in all the universe, either you will pay it eternally in hell or Jesus Christ paid it for you. And you, through faith receive that payment.

So Christ died "for." Now, who does he die for? Now, that's the interesting thing here. And it's that that separates his love from all of our love. He dies for ungodly, helpless sinners, who are enemies of God. That's who he dies for, a love utterly unlike ours. Paul talks about that in verse 7. Look what he says, "Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man, someone might possibly dare to die." I don't really know if there is a difference between a righteous man and a good man. Somebody wouldn't die for a righteous man, but they would die for a good man. I don't really want to make a distinction between the two. I think it is just very rare.

That's why we write about these kind of stories, like this woman who covered her son or the private who covered the hand grenade, because these are unusual things, aren't they? Paul was right when he said, very rarely do these stories happen, that we would be willing to lay down our lives. And if you don't think that's the case, then think of this. Think of how much Simon Peter is your model, your exemplar, when he said to Jesus, the night before Jesus died, he said, even if all fall away on account of you, I never will, I'm ready to lay down my life for you. Remember how Peter said that? "I'm ready to lay down my life for you Jesus. " Jesus was a perfect man. He was more than a good or righteous man. Was Peter really willing to lay down his life that night for Jesus? No, the little slave girl at the door proved that. "You're not one of his followers, are you? " "No, not me. "

All of us have a limit to what we're willing to lay down for Jesus, don't we? That's the limit of human love, but there's no limit to God's love, the unconditional love of God, and you see it in whom he died for. Look what it says about us. First, it says in verse 6 that we were helpless. Literally, it says, without strength we're powerless. I think, for me, I get a good illustration of this from Jesus' miracles. I've noticed a common thread uniting all of Jesus' miracles, and they are human helplessness. That unites all of Jesus' miracles, except maybe the cursing of the fig tree, but I think that has roots into Israel sin. But I think as you look at the miracles, first look at, in John 9, you've got the man blind from birth. He'd never seen the light of day, didn't know the difference between red and blue. He couldn't see. Jesus healed him, so he could.

And then you've got John Chapter 5, the man paralyzed for 38 years. He's laying right by some healing waters. They believe that an angel came down and disturbed the waters, and if anyone could move themselves and get into the water first, the legend had it that they'd be healed of their affliction. This man was paralyzed. How frustrating is that? To lay there unable to move into the healing pool? He can't walk. Jesus heals him with a word, he can walk. You see? It's the same thing with the feeding of the 5000. 5000 men plus women and children, maybe 20,000 people. Jesus says to his disciples, he says that they don't need to go away, but the disciples should give them something to eat.

Feeling of powerless came over them. The crowd couldn't feed themselves either. There was no food out in that deserted area. Human inability, human powerlessness. And what did Jesus do? He fed them just like that. And then the ultimate expression, the resurrection of Lazarus from the dead. What can a dead man do? Nothing. Nothing at all. And so, we are powerless, ultimately powerless. We are dead in our transgressions and since can't move, can't do anything, can't live. Jesus just says a word and suddenly Lazarus is raised from the dead.

Look at it. Helpless to see, helpless to walk, helpless to eat, helpless to live. Does this offend your pride? I'm telling you the truth. We are helpless before God and we're certainly powerless to save ourselves. This is the constant lesson of the miracles. Humanity can't, Jesus can. And we're helpless spiritually above all. We're powerless to understand spiritual truth. It says in 1 Corinthians 2:14, "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned." You can't understand the gospel I'm speaking to you now, unless the Spirit makes it clear to you.

You can't understand it. It'd be foolishness to you. Not only that, you can't do right things, you can't serve God, you can't please him or do any good deeds that he will accept. It says in Romans 8:7-8, "The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God." That means that all our righteous acts are like filthy rags in his sight. So, there's nothing we can do about our situation. Nothing at all. Helpless or powerless.

It also says that we're ungodly, again, in verse 6. The word ungodly or wicked means totally stripped of the glory of God. We were created in the image of God, created to be like God and to love God, but that was stripped away from us through sin. Ungodly. For all have sinned and lack the glory of God. Now, to whom does this apply? It applies to everybody. We're all ungodly. Let me give you a description of someone. Suppose someone you knew led a moral life, belonged to a couple of civic groups, volunteered his time on Saturdays to raise money for worthy causes, was a member at a church, attended regularly, was active at the church and on a number of committees. Seemed like a kind and nice person, but saw no need for Christ's blood to atone for his sins. No need at all, rejected the need for atoning sacrifice, does not see God as a God of wrath or judgment, rejects that whole thing.

What does the Bible call that individual? According to this verse, ungodly. That doesn't make any sense to us. That's humbling to us. But let's be perfectly clear, there's no such thing as a naturally good person. Jesus said that. No one is good, but God alone.

So, that's who Jesus died for, helpless, ungodly, and then in verse 8 it calls us sinners. "God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we are still sinners, Christ died for us." A sinner is somebody who actively transgresses the law of God. So, he has just revealed us, hasn't he? That's who we are. And then in verse 8, it speaks of the demonstration. It says, "God demonstrates," note that tense, "God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we are still sinners, Christ died for us." What is demonstrates? Present tense, right? That means there's an ongoing demonstration of the love of God in a past completed action, the death of Christ. You see how it works? There's a constant demonstration or display of the love of God in something that happened 2000 years ago. God demonstrates in that Christ died.

You see how it works? There's a fountain being opened up in the house of David, and from that fountain comes living water and you can drink for thousands of years from that one completed action, the death of Jesus Christ. Now, how is he presently demonstrating that? Well, he's demonstrating it now through my words, through the preaching of the gospel. And around the world in 24 time zones, people just like me are getting up and demonstrating the love of God by preaching clearly the cross of Jesus Christ, by having somebody stand up and talk about the death of the son of God on the cross for sinners. That's a demonstration of the love of God, and it's going on right now. It happens for you, any time you sit down and read the Bible and remember again what God did for you. A demonstration of the love of God directly to you.

In Galatians 3:1, Paul said, "before your very eyes, Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified." It's not because they had a drama team or something like that, or they showed the Jesus film, it's not that, it's in the clear exposition of the gospel through the preaching, through the foolishness of preaching. He talked about the death of Jesus Christ and that's why Paul said, I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And it was demonstrated way, way, way, back then when Jesus spread out his arms and they were nailed to the cross, he did not save himself, but he died to save you. Ongoing demonstration of the greatest love that there's ever been. A love for helpless, ungodly sinners who were God's enemies.

Now, what kind of application do we take out of this? Well, the first I want to say to you, who don't know Jesus, who have never come him, if you're that good moral person, been trusting in your church attendance even in your baptism, trusting in your good deeds, realize none of these things save you. None. Simple faith in Jesus Christ alone saves. And I pray that any of you who have been playing that righteous game might today come to the simple cross of Jesus Christ for eternal life.

But then to those of you who have trusted in Christ, who are justified, I want to give you what this passage intends to give you, a solid foundation for your assurance. Don't look inward, God doesn't. He's not looking inside you to find something that no one else saw. He didn't look to you to love you, he looked to the cross to love you. He looked to his own character to love you and therefore it's unshakable. Don't look inward, look backward at the cross of Jesus Christ, and look upward to God who gave that gift. That's your assurance and those things will never go away.

Second of all, be honest and be assured. If you cling to the idea that I'm basically a good person, you'll have no assurance, because what guarantee is there that you will be basically a good person five years from now. But if you realize that you were in fact helpless or powerless, ungodly and a sinner when Christ died for you, then you realize that nothing can take away that love. It's an absolutely certain guarantee. Now, we are going to go next week into saying, okay, that's what you were, but now God is working in you. He's sanctifying you. He's moving you on, then it's a lesser thing for him to keep you and hold you right to the final day. That's how the logic works. But you were right at your worst when God gave his best. So be honest and be assured.

And third, survey the cross day after day. In a minute we're going to sing, "When I survey the wondrous cross." Survey it. Look at it. Think what it means. "When I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died, my richest gain I count but loss and pour contempt on all my pride." Do you see why he does that? Because he's a helpless, ungodly sinner who is an enemy. That's why. "Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast, save in the death of Christ my God! All the vain things that charm me most, I sacrifice them to His blood. See from His head, His hands, His feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down! Did e'er such love and sorrow meet, or thorns compose so rich a crown? Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small. Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all."

And that's brings me to my final application point. It is not in this text here, it isn't. There's nothing for you to do in this text, have you noticed that? You don't need to do anything with Romans 5:6-8 just understand and believe its message. But there are other texts, aren't there? That point back to the cross and say, if this is how God has loved us, we should in the same way love one another. Do you see that? This cross then gives a basis for us to love our neighbor as ourself. This cross, this love of God for us in Jesus Christ is the basis for us to love others. John writes us in 1 John 4:10-11, "This is love: Not that we loved God…" not that we love God, helpless, ungodly sinners who are enemies. "Not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins."

Now, listen to verse 11, "Dear friends, since God so loved us…" by the way, "so" means, "in that way." "Since God so loved us, we also ought," [so in that way] "to love one another." But how does that work? Well, it's easy to love the lovely, isn't it? It's easy to love people that are easy to love. Jesus talked about that, didn't he? Remember he said, "I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous."

If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Even pagans do that. And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Even tax collectors do that. You must be perfect therefore as your heavenly Father is perfect. It's easy to love people who love you. But to be like God, love people who don't love you. Love people even who hate you. Love your enemies.

Now, where in the world are you going to get the strength to love your enemies? Someone once said, this is the only unique ethical idea of Christianity and it's utterly undoable. That person doesn't know Christianity. Of course, it's undoable by us, but if the Holy Spirit is in us it is possible to love the unlovely, even enemies, and love the needy, unlovely. Luke 14:12-14, Jesus said to his host, "when you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers, or your relatives, or your rich neighbors, if you do, they may invite you back, and so you'll be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the cripple, the lame, the blind, and you'll be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you'll be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."

Love those who can't love you back. Give to those who can't repay you in this world. And then finally, love sinning Christians. Who does that cover? I hope it covers you. Not the sinning part, the Christian part. I already know in 1st John it says, if anyone says I have no sin, I'm a liar. If I say that I'm a liar. There are going to be times that I will be utterly unlovely to you. And there will be times that you will be unlovely to me. There will be times you'll be unlovely to each other. Is that the time we say, as long as we both shall love? When we stop loving each other at those times? Not at all. That's the time that we take the love of Jesus Christ demonstrated in the cross and we love those that are difficult to love. Like speaking of myself now, I want you to understand that I'm speaking about myself, when I say like spouses.

It's important that I make that point. I'm not talking about Christi, I'm talking about myself. There are times that I'm hard to love. Husbands are supposed to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Do you see how Paul uses the cross as the foundation for a husband to love his wife? The cross is the foundation for Christians to love one another, even when it's hard to do. The cross of Jesus Christ, is the greatest display and demonstration of love ever in the universe. The love of God is most clearly seen in the cross of Jesus Christ. Come to Jesus, day after day, that you may receive what you need. Forgiveness of sins and also the ability to love those that are hard to love. Close with me in prayer, please.

Father, we thank you for this time we've had to study Romans 5:6- 8. We're staggered by it. We don't understand how you could love those who are so unlovely. And Father, all of us are like that. Father, I pray that this passage and the truths in it would slay our pride, that we'd stop holding grudges against one another and bitterness. Father, I pray instead that we would realize that you loved us when we were so unlovely and you continue to do that. I pray heavenly Father that you would send by the power of your Spirit a reviving and renewing move of love in our church, based on the cross of Jesus Christ. And Father, I pray for any that are here who have not trusted in Christ, who find the message of the cross incomprehensible or even boring. Father, I pray that you move in them and that they would in some way, come to personal faith in Christ, even today. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

This sermon covers wisdom and wealth, greed, false security in money, the false life focus of money, false pretenses about money, growing wealth, and wealth is God's grace.

We continue in our study in Proverbs tonight by looking at what the Book of Proverbs has to say about money. Now, before we get into the Old Testament wisdom on money, I think it would be best for us to take a look at what Jesus has to say about that topic. It's an important topic. This has nothing to do whatsoever with you need to increase your ties or offerings or any of that kind of thing. This is not one of these strong-arm type things. It's just that money is a big topic in the scriptures, and it's a big topic in the book of Proverbs as well. But I wanna begin at Luke 16.

In Luke 16 verses 1 through 13, Jesus tells a parable there of an unrighteous steward. Now, a steward with somebody. What's a steward? What does that mean, that term steward? What does a steward do? Somebody who's in charge of what?(reply from audience) Say again. (another reply) Keeper. Okay. What's the issue of stewardship? There's a bunch of stuff that's being watched over and what's the key principle with the stewardship? Yeah, you don't own it. It doesn't belong to you. Say again. Yeah, to manage it. You're supposed to multiply it, use it well, use it wisely. And one of the key issues of stewardship is at some point you're going to give an account to the master for how it's going, right? Well, in this parable, we're not gonna go through it carefully 'cause we're not focused on it tonight, but this man was wasting his master's possessions. I don't know if he was spending it lavishly or if he was just doing a bad job as a steward. And so basically the guy calls him in and says you're fired, you're doing a terrible job and put all the books in order and then you're gone. So in the interim time between when he's told he's going to be fired and when his final day is, he calls in all the people who owe his master money and he cuts it in half or takes off 20%.

And he makes a lot of friends during that time. You remember that? Somebody owes him a thousand measures of wheat, he says, Make it 800. Somebody owes him 800 of this, make it 400. What is he doing by doing that? What's going on there? (someone replies) Yeah, they feel a sense of obligation. And so when he's out on the street, he might have a place to have a meal. You see, that's the bottom line. Now, this is a very strange parable, isn't it? It's very odd. Now, we're not gonna take time with it, but in effect, the principle is the same. We have this stuff and this position for a very short time, and we're supposed to use it, Jesus says, to make friends for the Kingdom of God. The point is to use our money to multiply the Kingdom and for no other purpose. That's why it's given.

But then he says some interesting things about money toward the end. In Verse 10, Luke 16:10, it says, "Whoever can be trusted with very little can be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will be dishonest with much." Okay, in Jesus' way of thinking, what's very little? Money, money itself is a very little thing to him. In context, that's what it is. It's not very little money, you'll get more money, that's not the issue, money itself is a very little thing to Jesus.

So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? Wow, that's an interesting verse, isn't it? Worldly wealth versus true riches. What do you think that might be to Jesus? Worldly wealth versus true riches. Kingdom riches. What's truly valuable to God? Eternal souls. People, people are valuable. Word of God is valuable. The Son of God is of ultimate value, we find our salvation in that value, don't we? The value of the blood of Jesus Christ. That's eternally valuable. We think of money and wealth and all that is incredibly valuable.  God thinks of it as a small thing. And he says, If you're not faithful in a small thing, who's gonna give you true riches? And then he goes on, he says, And in verse 12, if you have not been trustworthy with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own? Wow, another bombshell. We know that all of our money and possessions belong to God, don't they?

But what does it mean that at some point we'll have wealth of our own? I don't know, maybe that's a new heaven and new Earth reality, just speculate on that, but the point is, the perspective Jesus gives us. Money is to be used for the Kingdom of God, and it's not truly ultimately valuable. And then he says, No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

Well, that's Jesus teaching on money. We're gonna be looking tonight at the Book of Proverbs, and the interesting thing about the Book of Proverbs is that there are some tremendous principles in there for making money. As a matter of fact, if you follow the wisdom in the Book of Proverbs, you'll amass quite an amount. The question is, will you do it for the right purpose? And that's why I wanted to start with Jesus' view on money.

I'm not saying that the book of Proverbs has a different or a lower or contradictory view, but there are some practical hints in here in how you can amass a small fortune, maybe even a large fortune. And I'm actually gonna be teaching on those verses tonight. Now, you know I don't really have any interest in making all of you wealthy, except that you might use that wealth for the kingdom of heaven.

What I've done is I've gone through the book of Proverbs and I've looked at various Proverbs on the issue of money, wealth, income, inheritance, etcetera. And I've begun to organize the Proverbs into various categories. The first proverb category that I'd like to look at is the issue of the comparison between wisdom and wealth. Between wisdom and wealth. So start at chapter 3, verses 13 through 17. 

And there it says, "Blessed is the man who finds wisdom, the man who gains understanding, for she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold, she is more precious than rubies. Nothing you desire can compare with her. Long life is in her right hand and in her left hand are riches and honor. Her ways are pleasant ways and all her paths are peace."

 So there, it's clearly teaching that wisdom, wisdom of God, is better than any material possession. Better than rubies, better than diamonds, better than gold or silver, it yields better return. It gives you a long life, it gives you fruitfulness and blessings, and nothing compares with it. Now, in chapter 8, verse 1 through 4 and 10 through 11, 17 through 20, "Does not wisdom call out, does not understanding raise her voice on the heights along the way where the paths meet, she takes her stand, and beside the gates leading into the city at the entrances, she cries aloud, 'To you, oh man, I call out, I raise my voice to all mankind,'" skip down to verse 10, "Choose my instruction instead of silver and knowledge rather than choice gold."

Verse 11, "For wisdom is more precious than rubies, and nothing you desire can compare with her." And then down to verse 17 and following, this is again, wisdom speaking, "I love those who love me, and those who seek me, find me. With me are riches and honor enduring wealth and prosperity, my fruit is better than fine gold. What I yield, surpasses choice silver. I walk in the way of righteousness. Along the paths of justice, bestowing wealth on those who love me and making their treasuries full."

 Now, I think it's easy to understand why Solomon, who was the richest person in all the earth would say this, you remember the story of Solomon, the Lord appeared to him in a dream and asked him what he would like, what he could give him. And Solomon, in a moment of humility said, "You've set me over this people and I don't have the wisdom necessary to do the job. And so Lord, who can be a king over this people of yours?" A great question, if you know Israel's history, who can be a king over the people of Israel? "I need wisdom, God give me wisdom."

And God was pleased with his request and granted it, and then lavished on and beyond, and so it got to the point where silver and gold were as common as stones in Jerusalem. And so I guess in a very crass materialistic sense, wisdom was the portal through which his entire wealth came, and so he can say this in a very materialistic way, through wisdom, I got lots and lots of loot. But I think there's a deeper spiritual essence here isn't there?

 The true riches that we talked about in Luke 16, the ultimate wealth is God Himself. Isn't that the case? Remember in Genesis 15, where God spoke to Abraham and said, "Fear not, Abram, I am your shield and your very great reward. I am your reward. I am your reward, I'm what you get." And so I would say to you, Christian, don't focus on the streets of gold, who cares as long as God is there. And the gold is just there to reflect His glory. The issue is not that in heaven, you'll have all kinds of gold and silver and a mansion, and all that. None of that matters. What matters is that you'll have God Himself, this is the true wealth. And the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Is it not? It is a spiritual relationship through which all this wealth comes. Now, why is wealth not important? Ultimately, look at 11:4 Proverbs 11:4.

At some time, we're gonna be going through the book of Proverbs and looking at the gospel according to the book of Proverbs. But this is a great verse, isn't it? 11:4, "Wealth is worthless in the day of wrath, but righteousness delivers from death." Is that not a great verse? "Wealth is worthless in the day of wrath, but righteousness delivers from death." Now, we know from the book of Romans what righteousness this is. This is the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ. That righteousness alone will deliver us on the day of wrath. Only Jesus' blood can protect us from the wrath of God. Only Jesus' blood atones for his righteous judgment against sin. And in that day, what will our wealth mean? It will mean nothing. What would it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul. Or what would a man give in exchange for his soul?

What would you trade for your soul? What would you hold back? Wealth is worthless in the day of wrath, but righteousness delivers from death. Well, that's the basic essence of the message on wisdom and wealth. Namely, that righteousness is the ultimate thing, and righteousness comes through the wisdom that God alone gives. But then there's other things that Proverb says, and we'll start with what I would say the dark side of wealth and then we'll talk about how wealth comes and grows as they get another opportunity, I'm gonna talk about how wealth goes.

Okay, but let's talk about how wealth comes and grows, but first the dark side of wealth. And what do I mean by that? Well, Proverbs gives a number of warnings about wealth, doesn't it? A number of warnings about riches and material possessions, the first is the issue of a false God, and that's the issue of greed. Look at 28:25. 28:25 says, "A greedy man stirs up dissension, but he who trusts in the Lord will prosper." So here, greed is contrasted with trusting in the Lord, is it not? There's a contrast between greed and trusting in the Lord. Now, how is that? Well, in the New Testament, in the book of Colossians and also Ephesians, it calls greed idolatry. Isn’t that interesting? Greed is idolatry, and Jesus said in Luke 16, you've got to choose between God and mammon or material position. You have to make a choice, one or the other will be your God,.

And so the initial dark side of material wealth and possession is that it can become your God. It becomes an idol, it becomes the thing you worship, the thing you live for, the thing you're passionate over. A greedy man stirs up dissension, but he who trusts in the Lord will prosper. Also in 15:27, it says, a greedy man brings trouble to his family, but he who hates bribes will live. So if you have this idolatrous, this materialistic way of looking at the world, you will bring trouble to your family.

Well, there's a lot of ways that that comes, you could become a workaholic, for example. You could be living constantly for material possession, you're never around to see your kids grow up, let's say if you've got children that are growing in your home.  That's one way you could bring trouble to your family. You could compromise your principles, and thereby you lose your ability to teach your children morally right and wrong. And all of this because mammon or material possessions, that's your god. So a false god is the first issue of the dark side of wealth.

The second is the false refuge. Look at 10:15. It says there, "The wealth of the rich is their fortified city, but poverty is the ruin of the poor." And then one Chapter over 11:28, it says the same thing. 11:28 says, "Whoever trusts in his riches will fall but the righteous will thrive like a green leaf." And then finally,  18:11 says, "The wealth of the rich is their fortified city. They imagine it an unscalable wall." Very interesting. They imagine their wealth an un-scalable wall, it's their protection against the rainy day. But if you go back one verse, 18:10, it says, "The name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous run to it and are safe." Do you see the contrast there? If you look at Verse 10 and Verse 11, now, usually you don't need to do context with proverbs. Verse 8 of whatever chapter, does not necessarily relate to verse 9. So you can really pick and choose and draw together scriptures in this way, but sometimes verses come close together and they run three or four in a row on a certain theme, and I think that it's interesting that 18:10 and 18:11 are side by side, 18:10 says, "The name of the Lord is a strong tower, the righteous run to it and are safe. The wealth of the rich is their fortified city, they imagine it an unscalable wall.

What is the contrast? What's being compared here? Say again? (reply from audience) Yeah, God and money. In what sense? God as what? Protector, a refuge. When you think of danger, does your mind go to God or does it go to your bank account? When you think of trouble that might come to you, do you go to God and to His name and to His provision and his promises, or do you go to the things that you've stored up by the strength of your own hand and your skill? And so a dark side of material benefit is that it can become a false refuge.

Third, a false life focus. Look at 23:4 and 5. It says there, "Do not wear yourself out to get rich, have the wisdom to show restraint, cast but a glance at riches and they are gone. For they will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an eagle." Some of you know what that's talking about, especially around April, tax time, they just go. How can it be? They just disappear. But Verse 4 is fascinating, "Don't wear yourself out to get rich." What is that talking about? It's talking about the expenditure of your life strength. What are you doing with your time, what are you doing with your energy, with your physical ability, the years that you have to walk around and do things? What are they being poured into? Don't wear yourself out to get rich. Jesus said, seek first, what? The kingdom of God and His righteousness. That's what you should be seeking, wear yourself out for that, wear yourself out for the kingdom, but don't wear yourself out to get rich, a false life focus. Also false friends. Look at 14:20. It says in 14:20, "The poor are shunned even by their neighbors, but the rich have many friends." How is that?

And if perchance, the rich person should become a poor person, what will happen to his friends? Well, the verse covers that. He's shunned. He's not popular anymore. Just like the prodigal son, when all his money was gone, what happened to his friends? They were nowhere to be found. So are they genuine friends? That proverb talks about a friend that sticks closer than a brother, that's Jesus Christ. But these are false friends, aren't they? They're there because you've got a lavish table, a beautiful home, you throw great parties, or you can give them some kind of benefit, but as soon as that wealth is gone, they are too. False friends.

And then false pretenses, 13:7. It says in 13:7, "One man pretends to be rich yet has nothing, another pretends to be poor yet has great wealth." Money does strange things to people, doesn't it? When you get into the topic of money, people start behaving oddly. Pastor gets up and says, "I'm gonna talk about money tonight." What's going on there? You have a relationship with somebody, but if you're going on a mission trip and you put the pinch on them for financial support, it gets a little awkward or a little odd. Why is that? Because we're funny about money. And so false pretenses come up, and the wealthy persons pretending to have nothing and the poor person pretending that he's wealthy, because money does odd things to people.

Another one I like is 20:14. You don't have to turn there, I'll just read it. It says, "'It's no good, it's no good!' Says the buyer, then he goes off and boasts about his purchase." Money and material possessions do odd things to you. And you're putting on a false pretense saying, "Oh, it's a piece of trash," and then you go and say, "Look at what I bought." Why it's all part of the financial game, it's part of the thing you do in the area of materials. And then finally 13:8, since we're already there. Additional threats. I read this proverb and I didn't understand it at first, and then I think it hit me what it means. "A man's riches may ransom his life, but a poor man hears no threat." Now, what is the context for a ransom? When do you need a ransom? When you're kidnapped, so you're in trouble, right? Well, your money may get you out of trouble, but it seems according to the verse, it's the money that got you into the trouble to begin with. Because the poor man doesn't have a threat. Nobody cares.

It reminds me of when I had a $500 car with a bunch of dings on it and all that, I never locked the thing. Nobody would want it. And nobody ever did. I took anything valuable out of the car, okay, that's true. But I mean, people walked right by and people gave me wide berth on the road, I noticed that as I'm driving, they were just, "He's got to be uninsured, we've gotta stay away from him."

[laughter]

But your wealth can actually get you into trouble that if you didn't have it, you wouldn't have to be worried about it, like watching the stock market, some people don't ever need to worry about what's going up or down. Who cares? They don't have any money in it. So, there are just things that wealth gets you in difficulties. That's the dark side of wealth. Now, let's talk about how wealth comes and grows. I didn't say comes and goes, we'll talk about that another time. But how does wealth come to begin with? Where does it come from? Well, the first principle in the book of Proverbs is that you must put God first. Look at chapter 3, verse 9 and 10. And there it says, "Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the first fruits of all your crops, then your barns will be filled to overflowing and your vats will brim over with new wine."

Now, these kind of concepts are the seed bed for the so-called health and wealth gospel. In other words, if you give X amount, you'll receive back tenfold. Have you ever heard these TV preachers that talk like that? But yet there is something in the book of Proverbs and it's a regular theme. That if you honor God first, he'll take care of you, he'll even take care of you in a lavish way. Now, not everybody's gonna be wealthy, that's true. God causes some people to be wealthier than others, and I think we're all gonna be held accountable, no question about it. For the things that He's given us. But yet there's a principle, "Put God first with your wealth."

Then 15:16, these are all perspective verses. Having the proper perspective on the issue of wealth. 15:16 says, "Better a little with the fear of the Lord than great wealth with turmoil." Do you think that there's a great deal of turmoil in the lifestyles of the rich and famous? Have you ever noticed that? Those that are in the upper, you're always hearing about the difficulties that they go through. And the strife and the conflict and the trouble.

You'll hear stories about people that win the lottery, and then they said, "Before that happened, my life was peaceful. But after that, all kinds of terrible things happened to me. People I'd never heard of wanted money, relatives came out of the woodwork. I had second and third cousins, I didn't even know I had. I would rather have had the simple peaceful life I had before." Wealth brings with it some distress. But the issue here is not that, the issue is putting God first. Read it again, "Better a little with the fear of the Lord than great wealth with turmoil." It is possible to depart from the fear of the Lord to grab for wealth. And when you've done that, you've also included turmoil, difficulty, strife, conflict, conviction from the Holy Spirit, all kinds of trouble. Better a little with the fear of the Lord.

Then 16:8 says similar thing. "Better a little with righteousness than much gain with injustice." And then 22:4, "Humility and the fear of the Lord bring wealth and honor and life." Now, that is true. I think though, I would ask you to think first and foremost, spiritually. We are going to be given true riches, we're going to be given the earth; The meek will inherit the earth. We're gonna be given all things. Paul says to the Corinthians, "All things are yours already." Already, they're yours. Now, you don't enjoy them now in the way you will in the new heaven and the new earth. But they're all yours. But I think it's also true in this world, humility and the fear of the Lord, God honors it with wealth and honor and life, and then expects you to use it for his kingdom. 

So the first and foremost principle is putting God first. Secondly, wealth comes by the blessing of God, by grace. Look at 10:22, it says there, "The blessing of the Lord brings wealth, and he adds no trouble to it." There is a wealth that comes with trouble and turmoil, we just discussed that. You departed the fear of the Lord and grabbed for the wealth. But there is a wealth that he can give you, and he adds no trouble to it. He holds you accountable for it, but he adds no trouble to it.

Thirdly, live a righteous life. Look at 13:21. "Misfortune pursues the sinner, but prosperity is the reward of the righteous." Now again, as I read these verses, you get uncomfortable. This is health and wealth. No. But there are principles here. If you live your life in a righteous sort of way, it's going to arrange your life in such a way that you can receive blessings and benefits from God.

I see each one of us as basically open pipes and conduits of blessings from God to others. If there's a blockage, there's a problem, isn't there? You're accumulating for yourself. God has no interest in that. But if you are a righteous person and you are given the gift, let's say. Let's say you have a spiritual gift of giving, you're going to see money flowing through your house and through you being channeled to others, and that's exactly the way it should be. That's what money is for.

It's funny, until you go overseas, you just don't realize how wealthy Americans are. You just don't realize how much we have, because we always tend to compare ourselves to somebody maybe a little higher on the economic scale, you ought to go overseas, isn't that right, Bob? Go to Haiti and spend some time worshipping with the brothers and sisters there. And you'll see some things. We are wealthy, and I'm not saying that that I would boast from, I'm just saying we are wealthy and we are accountable for it already, it's already happened, and we need to answer to God for it. He's going to call us to account for what we've done.

15:6, it says, "The house of the righteous contains great treasure, but the income of the wicked brings some trouble." 21:21, "He who pursues righteousness and love finds life, prosperity and honor." So as you pursue righteousness and pursue the love of God, I think you're going to find other things as well. Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things get added to you. And in some cases, superabundant material possessions get added, but not that you keep them for yourself. Like the Apostle Paul said, we will be content with basic necessities in order that we may serve the kingdom of God. But some of you are blessed lavishly, use it for missions. Use it for missions.

I often think, if you have this money here now you can send it on ahead and you'll see it again at judgment day if you use it for missions, you use it by faith. You can transform it. This currency, the green stuff with the American presidents, it's not accepted in heaven. It's like a travel... They don't recognize it. You've got to convert it into a different form of currency. Deeds done in righteousness by faith, that's accepted on judgment day. You can convert your money, so convert it by giving it away for the purposes of God.

Fourth principle is work diligently and skillfully. You could say that's a no-brainer. Well, look at 10:4. 10:4 says, "Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth." Be a hard-worker. Don't be lazy. I'm speaking to children now, at this young age, you can get habits of either diligence or laziness. Work diligently. Be a hard worker.. Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth. 12:11 says, "He who works his land will have abundant food, but he who chases fantasies lacks judgment." That's a great verse.

I'm not saying that this verse should be used to close off the entrepreneurial spirit, but if you have a good job, think twice before leaving it, I guess would be one of the things. It could be that God's leading you to start out on your own and start a new business, that's great. But basically, God gives you a feel to work, work it faithfully. Work it faithfully.

12:14, just a few verses later, it says, "From the fruit of his lips, a man is filled with good things, as surely as the work of his hands rewards him." 14:23 says, "All hard work brings profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty."

I remember when I was overseas in Kenya, I was building a water tower out of concrete, and I was pushing a wheelbarrow full of concrete up a hill, and these girls, it was a girl school, were lining the road and laughing at us as we push these wheelbarrows. And I've been reading Proverbs this morning, and that proverb popped in my mind, "All hard work leads to profit, but mere talk to poverty." We're working hard here, and at the end, guess what you'll have? You'll have a water tower. So that when the rains come, you'll have something to drink, but there's an abiding principle there, isn't there? Diligence and hard work leads to profit.

The fifth principle is, be generous. Be generous. Look at 22:9, "A generous man will himself be blessed for he shares his food with the poor." Now we're gonna, I think, God willing, spend an entire time on each issues of the rich and the poor, that's a big theme, the issue of justice in the book of Proverbs. But also 11:24-26. "One man gives freely yet gains even more. Another withholds unduly but comes to poverty." Verse 25, "A generous man will prosper, he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed." Verse 26, "People curse the man who hoards grain, but blessings crown him who is willing to sell." Those three verses taken together are my philosophy on the way we should be with our finances. If we're open, if we're a clear pipe and water is flowing through us, blessing those that God leads us to bless, he'll give us more and it'll keep running and running. And you can store up treasure in heaven. You'll be giving the money away, but converting it into heavenly currency, and you'll see it again on judgment day. Be generous and give.

Now, we've only gotten through a certain number of those principles, we'll get to some more, God willing, next time. They have wealthy parents. I'm not joking, it's in here. If you have wealthy parents, it's a leg up. Store up wealth little by little, have good friends, a good field, good equipment, and be a good steward of them. Those things lead to material benefits as well. God willing, we'll talk about this next time. Why don't we close in prayer?

Father, we thank you for the wisdom of this book, and we praise you for it, and we thank you for the attitude about money that you've given us here. Father, we desire to use the wealth you've given us to build the kingdom of heaven. Father, I pray that we would be generous, that we would be lavish, that we would give in faith. Father, that we'd give for missions for the reaching out of the gospel. Father, I pray that we give to the needy. I pray that we'd be generous with our money. Father, we thank you that you've given it to us, we know that we're accountable for it. We pray that you would give us also a spirit, the Holy Spirit, that we might use it in the way you have in mind. And now Father, as we close our day of worship in this house, we thank you for the music that we've experienced, we thank you for the handbells for each person and all the hours of labor that they put in, Father, and then desired to share it with us tonight. We thank you for them. We pray that you'd bless each one of them for that. And now as we go into our work week and into our time, Lord, away from the house of God, be with us, Lord. Help us to walk in the power of your Spirit. We thank you for all these blessings given to us in Jesus' name, and it's in HIS name, we pray. Amen. Goodnight.

Take your Bibles please and open to Romans 5. This morning, we're going to focus on one verse, Romans 5:5. And what does it mean, when it says that, "Hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts, by the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us." This is the first mention of the Holy Spirit. As we've been unfolding the doctrine of salvation, this is the first time the Spirit has been mentioned. And what does it mean, that, "The love of God has been poured out into our hearts, by the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us"? That is the purpose of my sermon today, but I want to go far beyond it. I want the love of God to be poured out into your hearts, by the Holy Spirit. And it's something that can't be put into words.

Well, how do I know it can't be put into words? Well, last week, I read Paul's experience. In 2 Corinthians Chapter 12, Paul says, "I know a man in Christ, who, fourteen years ago, was caught up to the Third Heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body, I do not know. God knows. And I know that this man, whether in the body or apart from the body, I do not know, but God knows, was caught up to Paradise. [Now, listen] He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell." Those are two different things, aren't they? "Inexpressible," means you can't put it into words. "Things that man is not permitted to tell," means you're not allowed to try.

Now, what was Paul talking about? What did he see? What happened to him? Has anything like that ever happened to you? Anything even remotely like that? Has the love of God been poured out into your heart, by the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us? Well, Scripture says, "Yes." But to what degree? My perception is, that most of us walk along satisfied with a much lower level of experience in our Christian lives, than God intends for us. We're dryer, more fruitless, more patterned after legal requirements, satisfied with far less than God intends for us. And I want to just open up your heart today, and have the Holy Spirit pour out God's love into you. I want you to experience His love in a way you never had before.

Now, Richard Robarts, a minister of God in the early 19th century, early 1800s, died of consumption, (tuberculosis), when he was 36 years old. That's a young man. And he writes about his experiences toward the end of his life in a journal. And this is what he says, "Frequently, all around me, thought me about to expire. My cough was so dreadful, and so were the pains I felt in my chest inside. And above all, the languor, which oppressed me for a while, seemed almost overwhelming. But while I was thus sinking, I felt more of the consolations and supports of religion, than I ever had experienced before. Oh, with what strong and assured confidence, was I enabled to look upon my Redeemer, and how gladly would I have resigned my soul into His hands." 

Assurance of salvation carried that man right to the end of his life. All of us are going to die. If the Lord doesn't return in our generation, we will face the day of our death. This man came into it, knowing he was soon to die, with an incredible assurance of his own salvation. "Oh, with what strong and assured confidence, was I enabled to look upon my Redeemer, and how gladly would I have resigned my soul into His hands." Gladly. Glad to go. Glad to go across the river and see Jesus face to face. Not sad, saying, "I've lived a good life." Glad to go. The best things are yet to come. I can't wait to see Him. For me, to live is Christ and to die is what? Gain. What could be more than Christ? Nothing's more than Christ. More Christ then. Face to face, not through a glass darkly. Seeing Him face to face. "Oh, I would be glad to go."

"What glorious manifestations of His love and mercy did He make to my soul? And how did I rejoice to believe that, in a few days more, I should be with Him in glory eternal. For the sake of my dear wife and friends, I was willing to live, and I saw it my duty to use all proper means to promote my recovery. I need to get better and I'm praying for it. I'm going to take my medicine, but let me tell you what's in my heart. For my own sake, I had a desire to be with Christ. And thus, I lay in sweet suspense, as it were, between Earth and Heaven, somewhere in between. And indeed, so I have remained, in general, ever since." This is a great journal entry, isn't it? Do you write journal entries like this?

Later on, a friend said to him, "I should be glad to enjoy your happiness." He was standing by his death bed, observing him. He's basically saying, "What is your secret? How do you do it?" At this point, Robarts couldn't speak, but he wrote this on a slate, "Believe constantly on the Lord Jesus Christ and you may be much happier than you are. Had I been more faithful in this respect, I should have enjoyed more consolation," and listen, "And done more for the glory of God."

The account continues: "In the course of this day, he experienced an ecstasy of Heavenly joy. His eyes were bathed in tears, and he uttered words of praise, consolation, and triumph. It appeared as if he were transported into Paradise. It was evident that he experienced a foretaste of Heaven. He said, 'Oh, I am happy in my God, in His love. I'm going to possess Him forever. I shall enter into that city whose streets are a fine gold. Yes, the New Jerusalem, from above the city of the living God.' "

And then the final journal entry, he wrote this, "Since my last attack, three weeks ago, the Lord has been near, and has manifested His love to my soul in an uncommon degree. I have been deeply humbled under a sense of my unworthiness and past unfaithfulness, but I have felt myself firmly fixed upon the rock of ages, and have been enabled to anticipate my departure from the body with unspeakable delight. One thing has much occupied my mind, mainly, the great proneness I have ever felt to rest short of all the fullness of God." What is he saying there? "I was too easily satisfied. I stopped short."

"Often, it seemed within my grasp. Often, has my soul seemed to take possession of it, but never did I enjoy a constant sense of it, of all the great salvation of God. However, I never gave up the hope of possessing it fully, and I trust that I shall now obtain my heart's desire." He's saying, "God had something for me, but I fell short of it. I didn't take it all in and I regret that. I would have done more for God, if I had. But now, I'm going to get it. I'll get the full amount now. I'm certain of it. No question about it." 

My question to you today is, what is Robarts talking about? What is this? What was Paul talking about in 2 Corinthians 12? And do you experience this? Is this part of your Christian experience? If not, I want to point the way. I want to point the way today. "God has poured out His love into our hearts, by the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us." Now, by way of review, this fits in somewhere. It's not just out of nowhere. Paul has been talking to us about what we were, apart from Jesus Christ. We were, it says in Ephesians, "Dead in the transgressions and sins." In the language of Romans, it says, "There is no one righteous. No, not one. There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God." Let me say that again, "No one who seeks God." We don't naturally want God. We want anything else, but not God. "There is no one who does good. No, not one."

Alright, is there any salvation for people like us? Yes, there is. "For all have sinned, and lack the glory of God, and are justified freely by His grace, through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus." Free justification. A free declaration from the Judge of all the universe. You are forgiven, because Jesus died for you. His righteousness has become your righteousness. The gift of righteousness has been given to you and I have declared you not guilty on that basis. How do we receive it? Well, Romans 4 tells us, simply by faith, apart from works of the law. Abraham heard a promise from God. He believed God and it was justified. He was declared not guilty, because He believed a promise from God. And so, also, all of you who have been justified, if you have been justified... If you have been justified, it's because you heard a promise, you believed it, and God declared you not guilty, because of Christ's righteousness. That's what we've been getting to now.

In Romans 5, he unfolds the benefits that come to you. Look at it: Romans 5, beginning at verse 1, "Since we have now been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace, in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that our suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character, and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts, by the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us. You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely, will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man, someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through Him? For if when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to Him through the death of His Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through His life? Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation."

Do you know what Paul's doing here in these 11 verses? He wants you certain of your justification. He wants you to know that you're saved, and that no power in Heaven, or on Earth, or under the Earth, can take that away from you. You're going to Heaven when you die, if you've been justified. That's was he's laboring for here. He's working that you may be assured. He's giving you an assurance.

Now, last week, I gave you the categories of assurance, and I've given you the same diagram again. It's on the cover of your worship bulletin. These are the three types of assurance that God measures out to us. And what are they? First, an assurance that's reasoned out in the mind. That's the lowest level. It basically works this way: God has made you a promise. You believe it, you trust that it's yours, and therefore, you know you're forgiven. Lowest level. "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tell me so." Period. That's the lowest level of assurance. Then the next level, worked out in the life, that talks about proven character. Remember, trials result in proven character, and proven character is the basis of hope. What's another word for hope? Assurance. Okay, so the basis of your assurance, in this case, is proven character. You are a Christian. Why? Because God is doing things in your life, things that only He could do. You don't take credit for them. Jesus Christ has changed you. He's working in you.

What's this third one? "Poured out into the heart." And what is this strange looking swoosh on top of it? Well, that's the purpose of the sermon today. God pours out His love into your hearts. It means He just tells you, "You're a child of God." He just assures you in truths that words can't express. And He can do this so much, that you will feel as if you've been swooshed up to Heaven. He can take you as high as He wants to take you here. Paul went up to Third Heaven, Paradise, whatever that is. Now, you can't work your way to this. It's not like, "Well, if I do this or do that, then I'll get higher... " This is something God does. It's something God does. But every Christian's somewhere along this swoosh at different times in their life. A certain elevation comes, a certain sense of God's presence, a certain sense of His love. That's what we're talking about today.

Now, I want to give you a few words about assurance, so you'll understand it. First of all, assurance is worked by the Holy Spirit. All three flavors of assurance, three types, the Holy Spirit does all three. We'll talk about that in a minute. All of them are a direct result of faith, interconnected with faith. Faith and hope go together. They're totally related. Without faith, there's no hope. These are all just really out-workings of justifying faith. Thirdly, this assurance is not required for salvation. It's true. It's possible to have salvation and not be fully assured. I think many of you, frankly, are in that category, and that's why I'm preaching on this today, that you may be assured, but it's not the same as salvation. And it's not equally strong for all Christians, nor is it equally strong within the life of one Christian all the time. It kind of comes and goes. And why is that? Because it's tied to how you're living. It's related to sin, isn't it? You can sin your assurance away. You can't sin your salvation away. You can't sin your justification away, but you can sin your assurance away. And some of you know what I'm talking about. Those are the things I want to say about assurance, in general.

But now, I want to zero in on the gift of the Holy Spirit, who has been poured out on us. The Holy Spirit is universally given to all justified people. I am not, today, talking about a "second work" of a Baptism in the Spirit or any of those things. I am talking about a filling of the Spirit. But I'm not saying that you do not have the Holy Spirit if you are justified. That, I believe, is doctrinally impossible. If you have been justified, you have the Holy Spirit already. Well, you know that from our verse, it says, "Through the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us." "Whom He has given us." So He's already given us the Holy Spirit.

Romans 8:9 says, "If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, He does not belong to Christ." "He does not belong to Christ." And Romans 8:16 says, "The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirits, that we are God's children." Isn't that sweet? As soon as you're justified, what happens? The Holy Spirit comes into your heart and He begins to tell you, "Child of God, you're a child of God. I love you. You're a child of God." And so, if you look at our verse, Romans 5:5, what is the verb tense? "The love of God has been poured out into our hearts, by the Holy Spirit." You've already experienced it. You're somewhere on the swoosh, maybe a low one. You haven't been swooshed up as high as Paul, but you're somewhere there. He's already poured out His love into your hearts, but He has more to give you. That's all I'm telling you today. He has more love to pour out into your heart.

From the moment you're born again, you have the Holy Spirit. Now, I want to stop just a minute. There's kind of a danger in preaching on assurance to a huge mixed group. Now, what is the danger? Some of you may not be regenerate. Some of you may not be born again. I don't want to give you any assurance of salvation. I want you to seek Christ, if you're not born again. If you have not yet been justified, the Scripture says that you're under condemnation, under the wrath of God, heading for hell. That's a clear teaching of Scripture. So I don't want to give you any assurance at all. None. Because I want you to seek justification through faith in Christ. I want you to know this, but you can't depart from entering through the narrow gate, Jesus Christ. Through faith in Jesus Christ, all your sins can be forgiven.

But those of you who have received this, I want to give you a full and healthy, full body, muscular assurance of your salvation. These are the people I'm talking to now. I want you to have assurance of your salvation, if you already trusted in Jesus Christ. Now, what happens at the moment of justification? The Holy Spirit comes in and Ephesians it says He is a deposit, guaranteeing a full inheritance. Well, how does this work? Well, suppose one of you were underage and you had wealthy parents, Mr. and Mrs. Bill Gates. He has a daughter, I think, isn't that true? She stands to inherit a lot of money, billions and billions of dollars, but she's underage. And so, if they should tragically die, and leave her all that money, they're not going to give it all to her at once. It's going to be put in trust, to be held against her maturity. When she comes into her maturity, she will come into her inheritance. But how will she live in the meantime? That's the question. There's going to be a certain amount coming out of that sum, a small amount coming toward that inheritor, toward that heir, to support her. A down payment, a deposit guaranteeing the full amount, and it'll come to her at the right time. You see? And so that is what the Holy Spirit is for us. We have a full inheritance coming and what is it? What is it?

Face to face fellowship with God for all eternity. Is there anything better than that? Is there something you would trade? "Well, I've got face to face... But I'd rather have... " No. There's nothing better than face to face fellowship with God for all eternity. Are you experiencing that now? No. You haven't come into your inheritance, but you're getting a down payment, a deposit, "I love you. You're my child. Stay with me. Walk with me." The down payment, the experience, it's coming. You feel it? You know what I'm saying? The Spirit testifies that you're a child of God, and you feed off that, and it keeps you going, but it's not the full amount. No. "We see through a glass darkly, then we shall see face to face."

Now, the indwelling Spirit is responsible for the other forms of assurance too. He does all of this. None of this is done, except by the Holy Spirit. For example, reason out in the mind, it says in 1 Corinthians 2:12-13, "We have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us." The Spirit tells us what God's given us, as we read the Scripture. We open up the Bible and the Spirit illuminates it, lights the Scripture to us. If you don't have the Spirit, the Scripture will make no sense to you.

But, if you do have the Spirit, you will understand, and these things come as a form of testimony to you. The Holy Spirit also works it out in your life. Those changes I was talking about last week, the proven character, the action fruit, and attitude fruit? It comes by the Holy Spirit, doesn't it? And no other place. It comes as we're grafted in the vine, Jesus Christ, and by His Spirit, He produces good fruit in us. The Holy Spirit works holiness in us. Highest form of assurance, in terms of your practical everyday working out, is that you're putting sin to death. We'll talk about that in Romans Eight. If you're not putting sin to death in your life, if you're not following, keeping step with the Spirit, you're not a child of God. This is what it means to be a child of God. I didn't say, "If you sin, you're not a child of God," we know that. 1 John 1 says, "If anyone says, 'I have not sinned,' he's a liar." All of us have sinned. But there's a relentless urge to put sin to death in the life of a child of God.

Now, where did the Holy Spirit come from? Well, He was poured out on us. Pentecost, right? It says that, "The love of God has been poured out." What is this pouring out? Well, it's similar language from Acts 2 The Day of Pentecost, Peter stood up and quoted Joel chapter 2, it says, "'In the last days,' God says, 'I will pour out my Spirit on all people.'" The Holy Spirit poured out on all people... And as He pours out the Holy Spirit onto you, and you receive the Holy Spirit, at the moment of justification, He opens a channel, a conduit, through which He pours out the love of God into your life, day by day. That's how it works.

Now, what is this experience? What are we talking about? Thomas Goodwin, a Puritan, put it in these words: Suppose a father and a son are walking along a road. Let's say they're walking through the woods. It's a beautiful day. It's fall, let's say. The leaves are beautiful, the breeze is blowing, and they're holding hands. Father and five-year-old son, let's say, walking along, and the son knows he's the son of his father. And he knows that his father loves him, and he knows that his father will provide for all of his needs. He's always done that. He knows those things, and he's happy they're having a walk together through the woods, when all of a sudden, from some sudden impulse within, the father picks up the son, and squeezes him, and speaks into his ear, 'I love you. You're my son.' And twirls him around a little, maybe throws him up in the air, catches him, and sets him back down, holds his hand, and they continue walking.

Is there a difference in the son after that, as before? Is there a cognitive difference? No. You try to write it down, there's no difference. It's the same stuff, right? The same truth. But they're on fire now, you see? There's a love. They've been filled in. They were black and white; now, they're color. There's a vividness to the love. Have you ever experienced that? Has God ever picked you up, and squeezed you, and said, "You're my child," in that way? And you went higher up on the swoosh, than you've ever been before? Has that ever happened to you?

There are testimonies about this from church history. Blaise Pascal, 17th century philosopher and mathematician, something happened to him one day. Something happened and he never forgot it. It changed the rest of his life. Up to that time, he'd been doing his mathematics, and his philosophy, and all. From this day on, he concentrated totally on theology. Something happened...

When he died, they found his coat, and they opened it up, and there was a piece of paper sewn inside the lining of his coat. What is this? And they took the paper off, and written on it were these words, "This day of grace, 1654, from about half past 10 at night, to about half past midnight. [Two hours] Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the wise. Security. Security." What's another word for security? Assurance. "Security. Security. Feeling. Joy. Peace. God of Jesus Christ. Thy God shall be my God. Forgetfulness of the world in all except God. He can be found only in ways taught in the Gospel. Greatness of the human soul. Oh, righteous Father, the world hath not known thee, but I have known thee. Joy. Joy. Joy. Tears of joy. I have separated myself from Him. My God, why has thou forsaken me? That I be not separated from thee eternally. This is life eternal, that they may know thee, the only true God, and whom who now has sent Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. I have separated myself from Him. I have fled, renounced, crucified Him. May I never be separated from Him. He maintains Himself in me, only in ways taught in the Gospel. Renunciation, total and sweet."

What was going on there? That's a hug, isn't it? He gets swooshed up and he hugs. And he's hugged, and he feels that love in a passionate way. And you know what? He wrote it out on a piece of paper and sewed it in his coat. And when the coat wore out, he sewed it in the next coat. And when that coat wore out, he sewed it in the next coat. He never forgot.

Jonathan Edwards. Who's Jonathan Edwards? "Oh, he's one of those dry, dusty, theologian types." Don't you believe it. But I want to tell you about a quiet time he experienced one day:

"As I rode out into the woods for my health, in 1737, having alighted from my horse in a retired place, as my manner commonly has been, to walk for divine contemplation and prayer, I had a view that was, for me, extraordinary, of the glory of the Son of God, as mediator between God and man, and His wonderful, great, full, pure, and sweet love, and grace, and meek and gentle condescension. This grace that appeared so calm and sweet, appeared also great above the Heavens. The person of Christ appeared ineffably excellent, with an excellency great enough to swallow up all thoughts and conceptions, which continued, as near as I can judge, about an hour."

What is going on here? "About an hour, such as to keep me, the greater part of the time, in a flood of tears and weeping aloud. I felt such an ardency of soul, to be what I know not otherwise, how to express emptied and annihilated? To lie in the dust, and to be full of Christ alone, and to love Him with a wholly and pure love. To trust in Him, to live upon Him, to serve Him, and to be perfectly sanctified, and made pure with a Heavenly purity." And then he picks himself up, off the dust out of the ground, and dusts himself off, and keeps walking with his father, but it's never the same, is it, after that?

D.L. Moody, heard of him? 19th century evangelist. He'd been a Christian, a minister in charge of a mission. He was seeing people converted, but he was unsatisfied. He wanted more. And this is what he says, "I began to cry, as never before, for a greater blessing from God. The hunger increased. I felt that I did not want to live any longer. I kept on crying all the time, that God would fill me with His Spirit. Well, one day, in the city of New York, oh, what a day. I cannot describe it. I seldom refer to it. It is almost too sacred an experience to name. Paul had an experience of which he never spoke for 14 years. I can only say God revealed Himself to me, and I had such an experience of His love, that I had to ask Him to stay His hand." Stop. I can't take anymore. It's too much.

Have you ever experienced anything like that? When God does it in one life, it's one thing. When He does it to a group of people, it's called a revival. Isn't that true? It's called a revival. Now, let's understand that word, Southern Baptists. A revival is not something you can schedule. It's not something you can advertise. You don't know when it's going to come and you know why? Because a revival is a miracle. Finney had it wrong. You can't manipulate and maneuver people. You can manipulate, maneuver them to do many things, walking aisles, singing songs, and to jumping up, but you cannot manipulate or maneuver, so that they're born again by the Spirit. That's something God does. Also, He gives a revival, and only He gives a revival, the only one.

John Wesley talked about it, 1734 journal entry, "Mr Hall, Ingham, Whitefield, Hutchins, and my brother, Charles, were present at a love-feast at Fetter Lane with about 60 of our brethren, about three in the morning, as we were continuing instant in prayer." What time was it? Three in the morning. What were they doing praying at three in the morning? Well, they wanted to be there. There was a group prayer time. Three in the morning, they were praying. Maybe revival doesn't come at convenient hours, I don't know. But at three in the morning, they were praying. "And as they were continuing, instant in prayer," it says, "The power of God came mightily upon us, insomuch that many cried out for exalting joy and many fell to the ground. As soon as we recovered a little, from the awe and amazement at the presence of His Majesty, we broke out with one voice, 'We praise thee, oh, God, we acknowledge thee to be the Lord.' "

Now, lest you think this is unbiblical, you ought to read Acts chapter 4, After Peter and John were released, they went back, and they prayed together, and they continued in prayer. "And after they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and spoke the Word of God boldly." I'm quoting Scripture. This happens in the Bible. It happens in church history. Has it happened at First Baptist? Will you pray with me that it will?

Well, what are we to do? Can I urge you to seek this feeling, to hunger for it, to yearn for it, to not be satisfied with Christian mediocrity any longer, to want more? I'm going to give you some invitations, an invitation from Jesus Christ. John Chapter 7:37 and following, "On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood and called out in a loud voice, 'If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.'" Are you thirsty or are you satisfied? "It's enough. Enough, God. I have enough God." "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me," as the Scripture has said, "Streams of living water will flow from within him. By this, He meant the Holy Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were later to receive. Up to that point, the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified." I've just quoted John 7:37-39. By this, He meant the Spirit, "Streams of living water flowing from within," out to who? Well, we'll talk about that in a minute. To others? That's an invitation. Are you thirsty or are you satisfied? If you're thirsty, come to Jesus. Come and drink.

Or He invites us to pray. In Luke 11:9 and following. "So, I say to you, ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you fathers, if a son asked for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or, if he asks for an egg, will he give him a scorpion? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit, to those who ask Him!"

Now, wait a minute. I thought we already had the Holy Spirit? Well, if He's your Heavenly Father, you do have the Holy Spirit. What is Jesus talking about? He's talking about the love of God poured out into your hearts, by the Holy Spirit. He's talking about that hug. He's talking about a power, which cannot be explained humanly.

I'm going to skip the benedictions and I'm going to go right to Ephesians 3. It's printed out there. I believe that Ephesians 3 is Paul's prayer exposition of Romans 5:5. We don't have time to fully develop this. I would urge you to take Ephesians 3:14-21, and break it apart, and see. But let's see what Paul prays for his people. It's printed out in your bulletin, if you want to read it, or just look in your own Bible. "For this reason, I kneel before the Father, from whom His whole family in Heaven and on Earth derives its name. I pray that out of His glorious riches, He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit, in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the saints to grasp how wide, and long, and high, and deep is the love of Christ, and to know that love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." Does that characterize your present Christian experience? "Filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." If not, can I urge you to begin asking for it?

Paul prays for it here for the Ephesians. He prays for them. He gets on his knees and asks that God, that they might know the dimensions of the love of Jesus Christ. I get the picture of the Grand Canyon, how wide, and long, and high, and deep is the love of God. And that you may know that love that surpasses knowledge. That doesn't make sense. Know something that can't be known? Speak of something that can't be put in words? It's an experience of God's love that can't be put into words.

Do you know this love? Do you know what I'm talking about? Are you somewhere in the swoosh? Would you like to be higher? Would you like to know more of God's love? You say, "Wait a minute, I don't want to experience now." Well, I'm not really talking about experience, I'm talking about God, that you may know God, that you may know Jesus, that He may be enough for you. All of the experiences that I've read are not empty-headed nirvana-type things. They're filled with truth. Look at what Blaise Pascal wrote. It's just saturated with biblical truth, and ideas, and quotes, and it's just flowing in some fire. It's not an empty-headed drifting thing. No. It's a fullness of the person of Jesus Christ, who is truth incarnate. Well, if you've never experienced anything like this, ask Him for it, and keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking, until He gives it to you.

Thomas Goodwin said, "Sue Him for it. Sue Him for it. Ask Him for it. Don't give up." Now, the Puritans meant 'sue' differently. We're not going to take God to court. What we're going to do, is we're going to pursue Him, until He gives it. I'll get very practical: Begin setting aside specific time every day, simply to ask God for a deeper experience of His love. Instead of watching the ballgame today, do this instead. Say, "It's not enough. I've been drinking out of my own cisterns. I want the living water. I am thirsty, Jesus. I don't want the ballgame. I don't want nine holes on the links. I've done that so many times before. I don't want this. I want Jesus today." Ask Him to work His Holiness in you. He's not going to do it to... He's not going to assure a rebellious child. He'll convict you and try to fix those things, but He's not going to assure you. He's not going to pick you up that way. He's going to fix the sin problem first. If you've got sin problem, repent, turn to Him, allow Him to change you, and then start lifting those hands. And say, "God, please give me that hug."

Put aside earthly pursuits. Seek God diligently. Take Ephesians 3:14-21 and pray through it line by line, until it becomes yours. And look around you, and realize that there's other brothers and sisters. Want it for them too. That's what Paul's praying. He gets on his knees for his brothers and sisters. Pray for First Baptist Church, that we may be pipes or conduits of the love of God. Jesus said, "If anyone comes to me, as it is written, streams of living water will flow from... " The Greek is 'ek.' "From within and out to others." To who? To other Christians, other believers who need it, who are parched, and need love from Jesus Christ. To unbelievers, to a world that's not yet been justified, and a great outpouring for missions.

Remember Acts chapter 4? "After they prayed, the place they were meeting was shaken, and they are all filled with the Holy Spirit, and spoke the Word of God boldly." What do you think happened after they spoke the Word of God boldly? People got saved, as a result. I want to challenge you to begin asking for this. I want to challenge lay people to start praying for it. Don't wait for the staff to organize that prayer meeting on Friday or whatever. You be thirsty for it. You organize it. You get together, and pray, and ask that God would pour out His love into our hearts, by the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us. Why don't you close with me in prayer?

Father, I thank you for the time that we've had to understand and experience your Word. Father, I pray that we would also experience your love, that we may know that love that surpasses knowledge, that we may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Father, I pray for any here who have not yet trusted in you, who are not born again. Father, I pray that you would bring them to personal faith in Jesus Christ, that they might also know this love that surpasses knowledge. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.