Jesus Christ, this evening we are going to be considering Christ's benefits. We've been talking about Christ's benefits. Frankly, one of my most favorite things to talk about, union with Christ and all the benefits that come with it. I think sometimes in the Christian life, the benefits that Christ gives us in justification, adoption, sanctification, glorification, these sometimes take a back seat. And there appears an emphasis rather on extraordinary feats, miracles. And so when I was a missionary in Mexico for three years, you know what the most popular churches were? The charismatic churches. That's not only the case in Latin America, it's true in many places in Africa, too. The health, wealth, and prosperity gospel is just off the hook in Africa, and sadly, even in the States. People want something tangible, right? They want, you know, they want to be healed. Who wouldn't want to be healed from their cancer? Who wouldn't want to be healed from blindness and deafness and these types of things? I mean, I don't think there's a person in here that doesn't desire that. But what I think people miss is that when we talk about the benefits of Christ, justification, adoption, sanctification, glorification, healing is mixed up in all those things. It may not be now, and in a lot of cases, it's not now. In a lot of cases, it's later, it's the not yet, it's the eschaton, it's glorification. But it is true, a text that is often abused by health, wealth, and prosperity pulpiteers that by his wounds we are healed. That's true. That's absolutely true. Now, spiritually, and then physically. All of us will be healed. The lame child who had polio, the kid who was hit by a car and has not been able to walk, he will be running in heaven to the glory of God. And so, but the portal to all of these benefits are union with Christ, which gives us justification, adoption, sanctification, and glorification. You can't have the health benefits of the eschaton in the new heavens and new earth unless you come through justification, which makes you right with God. So I remember a conversation one time I was having with someone. She was a non-believer, very intelligent non-believer, very, very intelligent, smart, probably smarter than me, is smarter than me. And she was very pleasant and we got to talking and she said, so what do you do? I said, I'm a pastor. She said, okay, so what do you do all week? I get that question a lot. What do you do all week? Sometimes I wish I can have a go cam just in the corner and just seeing all the things that I do. Well, I prepare sermons, I prepare lessons, I pray, I do some admin stuff and I counsel. And that piqued her curiosity. What do you mean you counsel? I'm like, well, there's people in my congregation that have issues and I take them through the word and just highlight what the word says to that particular issue in their life. But she was flummoxed by this. Because in her mind, the people that did counseling were professionals, right? And so I told her, I said, you know the word psychology, it means study of the soul, right? Psychos, psychology. It means study of the soul. Oh yeah, yeah, I know that. Well, I told her that the whole industry of psychology rests upon the attempt to help people who have problems with their id. Have you heard that word before? Id, Pearl Jam wrote a song about that. I got id. Okay? But id, or ego, or superego. The id is the part of the mind in which innate instinctive impulses and primary processes are manifested. I said, the whole industry of psychology is predicated upon trying to help people in their id, and really what it comes down to is trying to help people with themselves. And I said, now when psychology calls that the id, we call it something else. We call it the soul. And it's crazy because the Bible actually has a lot to say about your soul. The Bible actually has a lot to say about your identity. And we believe that our identity is shot through with sinful passions, and that identity, inept and weak as it is, because it is shot through with sinful passions, is alienated from God. So from this alienation springs, listen, every psychological problem that confronts man. Now notice I said psychological. Because there's psychological, psychos, and then there's physiological. What is physiological? Anybody know? The body, right, okay? Physios, okay, the physical. And I'm not a medical doctor, okay? I may be on my road to be a doctor, but not the doctor that can actually help anybody, okay? The Bible doesn't necessarily serve, well, it doesn't serve as a manual to help people with their colds. But I would say that from this alienation, as I said, springs every psychological problem that confronts man. Now the secular man has a certain way of going about identifying, naming, and solving these problems, right? Some of these methods are fairly complex and others are more behavioristic. So for example, and this is real, Behaviorism in the realm of psychology will say, oh, you've got a fear of driving. Okay, so here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna get you in the car, I'll be in the passenger seat, and we're gonna get you in the car, and you're gonna drive just for 60 seconds. And then next week, we're gonna jump it up to 120 seconds, and then we'll get to five minutes, and then 10 minutes, and eventually we'll overcome. That's behaviorism, okay? Now, at the risk of making this sound too simplistic, Though someone's immaterial struggles have a variety of manifestations, we believe as Christians, I told her, that the foundation of all those struggles is one's standing before God, okay? The foundation, the spring, the source of all of those psychological problems Okay, you're deprived as a child of blankets, or you're deprived as a child of love, real things, okay? But the source of those is something bigger, something greater, and we maintain that if that is taken care of, we're not saying your life's gonna be perfect, but we are saying you will have been given a foundation, a psychological foundation upon which you can begin to navigate through these other issues and have resources to be able to deal with them. Okay, now here's the qualification. Not that being a Christian solves all the problems in life, good grief. We've got enough hypocrites in the church for, you know, many Jerry Springer shows to be made, okay? But there's still gonna be problems, there's still gonna be fears, there's still gonna be anxieties, but such problems, as I said, are dealt with upon the foundation of having been made right with the God of the cosmos. So this is why Christians make such a big deal about the benefits that flow from Christ. justification, adoption, sanctification, and glorification. And so we want to talk very simply tonight about three, the benefits that we have of Christ in life, in death, and then at the resurrection. Okay, so let's start with question 40. Let's start with question 40. And the question is this, what are the benefits which in this life do accompany or flow from justification, adoption, and sanctification? And we answer, the benefits which in this life do accompany or flow from justification, adoption, and sanctification are assurance of God's love, peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Spirit, increase of grace, and perseverance in grace to the end. There are people who have never known the power and pleasure of genuine love. Okay, maybe some of you know some of those people. Maybe you are one of those people. I worked at a group home for a total of four years. And these were kids, this was a level 13 group home, which that probably means nothing to you, but what it means is these were high risk kids. These were kids that had been if I can use a euphemism, violated by their parents, by uncles, by aunts. These are kids that had been physically abused, emotionally abused. These are kids that had been abandoned by their parents or CPS took them away from their parents because their parents were negligible. They were not taking care of their children. They were strung out on drugs and could not provide for them. And one of the common scenarios and scenes that I would see about four times a year, is a set of parents would come in and they would come to the group home and they would spend time with a particular child in hopes of perhaps adopting them, okay? It was kind of like this dating process, right? I'm sure you're familiar with it. And then if they liked that, that setting, then they would take the kid for like a weekend for like two days, okay? And then a week would pass, and then the child's basically agent would come and tell the child yay or nay, thumbs up or thumbs down. And so often, I saw the agent come to the child and say, I'm sorry, but they don't want, I mean, there's really no easier way to break it to him. They don't want you. And he could sugarcoat it all he wanted, but what that child heard is they don't love you. Nobody loves you. You've been abandoned, and the people, the one chance that you thought you had to get some love, it is now gone. And every single time, no matter the constitution of that child, whether they were a tough kid or a weak kid, their eyes would immediately fill with tears, their disposition would fall, and they would run to the room and start crying. And it was heartbreaking. It was heartbreaking. Can you imagine what it would be like to feel like nobody loved you? Maybe some of you do. And if you're not loved, it's virtually impossible to show love. Just think about that for a second. Love flows out of having received love, right? Love is reciprocal. You love because you've first been loved. And if you do not receive love, and as a result cannot show love, how many problems are you going to face in life? At 3 a.m. in the morning, multiple times in that group home, I was physically wrestling down a kid who was angry for whatever reason, maybe he got a privilege taken away, maybe he got told by his agent that nobody wanted him, and he began throwing punches and I had to detain him, and for two hours I'm sitting on top of a kid, angry, he's angry, because this kid doesn't know love. What kind of emotional and psychological hang-ups do you think that they would have? Well, I knew another orphan when I served as a missionary in Mexico. His name was Alejandro. And I didn't find out that this guy was an orphan until much later in my missionary career there. But before I found out he was an orphan, this guy was on fire for the Lord. He was about 32 years old. He was my oldest student. and he was thoroughly committed to the Lord. He lived in poverty, and the one job that he had, he gave it up so that he could come study full-time in the Bible Institute where I was teaching. This guy would get up every single morning at 5 a.m. and go to the sanctuary at the church that was right next to the Bible Institute, and he would put on this really loud worship music, Mexican worship music, and he would pray for an hour. I knew because my room was right behind that sanctuary. So I was praying different kinds of prayers, okay? But he would pray for an hour every single morning. And not only that, but this guy, this guy would take a PA system and he would go out to the roughest parts of Ensenada and he would share the gospel with people. And I was just amazed. I was amazed at the commitment that this guy had. And I remember one time I went out evangelizing with him and we came upon some orphans. I mean, they were grown by this time, but they were orphans. And immediately Alejandro, it's like he had this immediate connection with these kids. And he looked them in the eye, and he said this. He said, my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me in. That's a promise from Psalm 2710. And this promise was as real as the noonday sun to Alejandro. And he was able to comfort these orphans, if they believed in Christ, with this very real experiential promise that though his mother and father had abandoned him, the Lord would adopt them. the Lord would be their father. He assured them of God's love for them in Jesus Christ through faith. This is what stood at the bottom of Alejandro's assurance. It is what transformed him from an unloved orphan to a loved child of the king. And if he has genuine faith in Christ, then that status of child will never be removed. the Lord would preserve him, which is one of our promises, one of our benefits in life, until the end. And Alejandro's assurance is our assurance. Even if we do have a faithful mother and father, and even if they weren't that faithful, but they at least took care of us, they put clothes on our backs, they put food in our mouths, they put a roof over our head, they still weren't perfect parents, and the Lord becomes our father through faith in Jesus Christ, and this assures us that we have someone who loves us with an infallible love. So as Paul says in Romans 5.5, hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. So that's assurance of God's love. And all I wanna say, coming back to the intro comments that I made, is that when we, it's not just pastors, it's you too. You sitting here in these chairs can help people with the word of God. you can administer assurance of God's love to God's people and to those with whom you're sharing the gospel just by sharing the word with them. And you know what? I'm gonna tell you something. There is more benefit in many cases, not every single one, because some are a little more specialized, There is more benefit in you as a Christian sharing the powerful Word of God with the help of the Spirit with either a Christian or a non-believer than sitting with a shrink for 60 minutes and paying $450. Okay? Period. Tweet that. It's true. Because it's God's Word. to the degree that any counselor, any psychiatrist, any psychologist will take God's word, even God's common grace word, and give it to people, great. But what we're giving is something redemptive, which is off limits in the psychiatrist's office. But you can give it to your brothers and sisters, and you can give it to non-believers. And what about peace of conscience? I'm gonna tell you a story, and I'm gonna qualify it, so let me finish before you start coming to an opinion, okay? Just let me finish. It's amazing how powerfully the conscience can manipulate our soul. Jay Adams, like the father of biblical counseling back in the 70s, he tells this story about this guy named Steve. That's not his real name. College-aged guy had been diagnosed by psychiatrists as a catatonic schizophrenic. He didn't talk, except minimally, and he shuffled about as though he were in a stupor. He was in a mental institute. The psychiatrists, though, of the ilk in the whole world of psychiatry, where they took this more confrontational approach, which isn't very common in the world of psychology. It's something that Jay Adams has taken and added the Bible and made it biblical counseling. But in the psychiatry world, there is a form of psychiatry where instead of saying, you're a victim, it's not your fault, it's your parents' fault, it's the world's fault, it's the man's fault. Who is the man? I don't know. But it's the man, it's not your fault, you're a victim. Instead, they say, no, they confront them. And they say, you've got some things that you've got to admit to, you've got some things that you've got to confess, and you've got some things that you've got to do. And until you do them, you can't expect that you're going to get any better. Now, there's the medical side, that's true. But these psychiatrists were not convinced that Steve was withdrawn psychologically. They were convinced he knew exactly what was going on, and as people talked to him, he was choosing not to reciprocate. After three weeks of counselors engaging Steve, he broke and the fuller story came out. It turns out that Steve in college, uh, was spending all of his time as the prop man in the play department. Okay. And the acting department was not doing any studying. Wasn't even going to class. Mid semester grades were going to come out and he was going to get all Fs and he was going to disappoint his parents. Well, that was too much for him. So instead of facing the music, what did he do? He put on a show. and he made it look like he was a catatonic schizophrenic. He began acting bizarrely and discovered that this threw everybody off track. He was thought to be in a mental stupor, out of touch with reality, mentally ill, but this was actually a pattern in Steve's life. Steve's problem wasn't mental illness, but listen, listen very carefully, guilt and shame and fear. He was confronted and charged to tell his family the truth and he eventually did and actually gained some self-respect. But what Steve needed was not necessarily to focus on changing, listen, his feelings in order to change his behavior. He needed to change his behavior in order to change his feelings. Now listen, isn't it, isn't this the counsel that God gives Cain? Remember Cain? He got mad because his offering was not accepted by the Lord, you remember that? And what did the Lord say to him? He said, Cain, sin is crouching at your door and its desire is for you. But before that he says, why are you angry and why has your face fallen? If you do well, this is Genesis four verse seven, if you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it. Notice the chronology there. If you do well, will you not be accepted? Well, he didn't heed God's advice and he received judgment, a judgment that he cried out to God was too much for him to bear. And what is the New Testament equivalent of doing well to be accepted? Faith in Jesus Christ. That is the New Testament equivalent of doing well. Do this and you shall live. I can't live, but Christ has done it, so I put my faith in him. And then that rush of redemptive benefits comes to me by virtue of my faith in Jesus Christ. Justification, sanctification, adoption, and glorification. So this takes away guilt, shame, and sin, and gives us peace with God. And this is not a one-time event, but it's the process of sin, repentance, confession, faith. It continues on and on and on in your life. And if you have this pattern in your life, you can be assured that you are a child of God. It's called sanctification. So sanctification gives us joy in the Holy Spirit. And Gerhardus Voss, one of my favorite theologians, has said that The Holy Spirit is the environment of heaven. I love that, the environment of heaven. If he is in you, you have the perpetual joy of heaven. Amidst trials, yes, it looks different, doesn't it? But you can have joy even though trials are in your life because you know who is behind your trials. What about an increase of grace? Well, the beautiful thing about being in Christ is he doesn't give you an MRE of grace and say, that's it, have a good trip. He continually gives you grace, day in and day out. Where sin increases what? Grace abounded all the more. If you are a true child of God, you can't out-sin the Savior, but neither will you want to. With every sin, you will receive the grace and mercy for repentance as a true child of God, and you will take it. Okay, so these are our benefits of Christ in this life. Let's jump real quickly now to 41, the benefits of Christ at death. What benefits do believers receive from Christ at their death? Answer, the souls of believers are at their death, made perfect in holiness, and do immediately pass into glory, their bodies being still united to Christ, do rest in their graves till the resurrection. Very simply, the Bible teaches that we need not fear death. In fact, I think, what is it, Psalm 116, 15? Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. What a beautiful verse. We look at death and we're like, oh, I'm so afraid. And we should be. I mean, it's not gonna be fun to suffer. It's not gonna be fun, even if it's quick, to go through death, the process itself. But death itself, as an event, is not something that the Christian should be fearful of. Because for us, death is a comma, it's not a period, right? For us, and now here's where the catechism descends more down into the details, very simply, we believe as Christians that when you die, your body does go into the grave, or maybe somebody burns it, or whatever, there's a lot of qualifications there, but your soul the immaterial part of your being goes to be with the Lord. So Paul says to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. What I love about the catechism question here is this little phrase, their bodies still being united to Christ. I love that. I love that. It's not that we are disembodied spirits and that's all we are. We are body and soul. That's why the resurrection's so important. Now there's always a question, and I'll just give you a preview right now. What about people who were dismembered by a wolf or, you know, eaten and digested by a whale or, you know, whatever, or they were burned and their ashes are in the four corners there? When the Lord comes back to resurrect the living and the dead, how is he going to get their bodies back? Well, who is he? I mean, come on, he's the Lord. He brought a dead man from death to life. I mean, do you think it's a small thing for him to bring all the particles? I mean, he created particles, he created atoms, he created molecules. Why could he not bring everything back together? So I cite Isaiah is the arm of the Lord too short. Well, no, it's not. He can do whatever he wants and he has promised that that's what he's going to do. Okay, so the thief who was on the cross next to Jesus, Today you'll be with me in paradise, okay? So at death, we are immediately taken into the presence of the Lord, and it's called the intermediate state because that's not the final state, right? At the resurrection, which is now our last question here, we are soul that has been taken to be with the Lord in his presence will now be united with our bodies, okay? So let's consider finally. the benefits of Christ at the resurrection. Question number 42. What benefits do believers receive from Christ at the resurrection? And we answer, at the resurrection, believers being raised up in glory shall be openly acknowledged and acquitted in the day of judgment and made perfectly blessed both in soul and body in the full enjoyment of God to all eternity. Okay, I need you in our closing minutes here to turn to Matthew 25. If you've ever been reading through the Bible as a Protestant, and you, which that's who you are, and you have been a little bothered by this language of works at the final judgment, Revelation 21, the books were opened and the living and the dead were standing before the Tribune of Christ and he considered their works. Romans chapter 3, you will be judged by your works. Those who do good works will live eternally with God and those who have done evil will be damned forever. Matthew chapter 5 verse 20 and 29, I made reference to it this morning. Jesus says the Lord's going to come back. He's going to have a great shout. The living and the dead will rise. Those who have done good to a resurrection of life and those who have done evil to a resurrection of judgment. Now, a Roman Catholic is sitting back in the corner with a smug face saying, what are you going to do with that? OK. Well, I think Matthew 25 is really, really helpful. If you're familiar, Matthew 25 is the parable of the sheep and the goats. It is one metaphorical way that the Lord Jesus is explaining to us the final judgment. And here's what I want you to notice, okay? Matthew 25, go to verse 31, and I just need you to follow along with me here. Jesus says, when the son of man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations and he will separate people from one another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. And then the king will say to those who are on his right, come. So this is the sheep on the right. Come, you who are blessed by my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, et cetera, et cetera. And then later on, they say, well, Lord, when were you hungry and we gave you something to eat? When were you thirsty and we gave you something to drink? And what does he say? Beautiful, beautiful. to the degree that you did this to the least of these, my brethren, so Christians, it's not just anybody. This is not a social justice warrior text, okay? This is the Lord talking about specifically in the day of judgment how people treated his precious flock. So to the degree that I was hungry in my people, okay, and you fed me, you did it to me, okay? So the sheep, as they served the people of God, because that's just their nature, their new creation. That's what they wanna do. They were serving Christ, okay? And that's one specimen of their good works. Now, then he turns to the goats and he says, hey, I was hungry and you didn't give me anything. And they asked the same question. And he says, to the degree that you didn't do this, you didn't feed the least of these my brethren, you didn't feed me. And then he sends them off to damnation, and the sheep, he says, come into the kingdom prepared for you before the foundation of the world. Now, it seems very clear that their works aren't of you here, but here's the clue. What has happened before any of their works are considered? Anybody know? Huh? They were separated, yes, the sheep and the goats, that's very important. Anything else more specific? They were, how did they know? I would say, like I said this morning, even as a sheep resurrected, this is metaphorical language, I could look around and say, ooh, that's a goat. And the goat would say, well, that's a sheep, because of their what? Their resurrection. Okay, their resurrection. John 5, 28 and 29, everybody will be resurrected, some to a resurrection of life, some to a resurrection of judgment. This is before works are even considered. Okay, so when they come before the judge, Jesus Christ, it's a foregone conclusions what's gonna happen. Because in life, they either chose Christ, which made them a sheep, and they were resurrected with the qualitative resurrection of life. It's qualitatively different than the resurrection of judgment. And every time I think of the resurrection of judgment, I think of Michael Jackson's thriller video, right? Because you have these zombies walking around. They're alive, but they're dead. And I think that's what the resurrection of judgment is going to be. I don't know what the resurrection of life is going to be. I don't know. Are all the guys going to look like Brad Pitt? I don't know. I don't know. Or like Scott Jones? Probably. We're all probably going to look like Scott Jones. Okay, so here's the thing. As Protestants, this text is on our side. Because judgment is already taken care of by virtue of whether you did put faith in Jesus Christ and then you died, and now you're resurrected as a sheep, or you didn't put your faith in Jesus Christ, you died, and now you're resurrected as a goat. And now the works are subsequent. You know what the works do? They corroborate what is already true. Okay? So listen very carefully. This is a very important distinction and then we're gonna end our time. There are works in the final judgment. And I'm not just talking about the works of Christ. The works of Christ is what gets us in, okay? On the day of judgment, there will be works. Our works will be tested. Okay, Paul talks about this, remember? Works are gonna go through the fire, hay, wood, and stubble gets burned up, but whatever was true, had a right motive, had a Christ-honoring, God-glorifying motive, it comes through and that's a crown. but then you're gonna throw that at the feet of Jesus, John tells us in Revelation, okay? But works do nothing more than confirm the ground of justification. So justification is by faith, and that faith gives me the ground of justification. And so now, think of a tree that grows out of that ground and that good soil that you have by virtue of union with Jesus Christ, and fruit will go on that tree. That fruit is doing nothing more than flowing out of the soil of justification, okay? So it corroborates your faith. It does not listen. It does not establish your justification. So works are not the ground of your standing before God. Works are the confirmation of your standing before God. Okay? All right, are there any questions? Yeah, no, I think that's one of those things. I don't know. That's, yeah. Oh, Mr. Freeman knows, yes. I mean, all we know from 1 John is that we'll look like Jesus. Not literally, but our bodies will be like Christ's resurrected body. That's what we know. Because the way they describe Jesus is Paul says he's the first fruit, right? So the subsequent fruits that come after will model that first fruit. But I don't know, I don't know. Let me pray, because the tykes are getting restless, and if you want to stick around and talk, we can. Father God, thank you so much for your grace to us. You are so merciful to us sinners. And I pray that this week as we go and we perhaps deal with a difficult boss or father, perhaps there's trouble in our marriage that you would give us grace that is sufficient to glorify you. And we ask all these things in your son's name. Amen.