Good morning. I apologize for my voice. I have a little bit of a sinus deal working, so you can just pretend I have a deep resonant voice, but it's not a deep resonant voice. It's just a sinus issue going on. The passage we just had read to you is a passage you're familiar with if you're a Christian or if you've been in church. And I wanted to ask you a question from what our Lord said, his final of his seven sayings on the cross. What did our Lord mean when he said, it is finished? And you go, well, duh, that's not very hard. Well, it's not really a duh question, because as we'll see, people have all kinds of ideas about what Jesus meant when he said that. Some people would Not necessarily here, because you're in church on a Lord's Day morning. But if you were at school, if you're out in the community, if you were talking to one of your relatives at a get-together, there might be a question of, well, who knows if Jesus ever really lived? I mean, do we really know that? And that's not a very smart thing to say, because it's one of the most historically proven facts in history that Jesus lived. So you're really committing what's called intellectual suicide. You're acting stupid purposely to say Jesus didn't even live. Or some people, wanting to evade the question, would say, well, whatever, man, as if they can just blow it off and ignore it. But the problem is, you can't, because Jesus makes claims on our lives that we can't ignore. And so, if this person is who he claimed to be, then we must deal with him. Now, some people have a false modesty as another way of ignoring the question by saying, well, you know, this is a pretty deep question. I'm not a Bible professor. I'm not a pastor. I'm not a rabbi. I'm just a layman. I'm in sixth grade. And who knows what, you know, I just don't know these heavy duty things. And you can't say that either because the Lord doesn't give you that cop-out. He doesn't say, well, these things are all important for people who have graduate school or seminary degrees or people who are theological professionals. It's for all people who have any sense about what's going on. Do you understand what Jesus means when he said, it is finished? Now let me give you some wrong answers. I've just given you some evasive answers where people don't want to even deal with the question. They just want to put it away. But people have all kinds of wrong answers. This is what some people have offered. Well, Jesus came and he was our great teacher and our example. And he wanted us to follow his example. He wanted us to practice the golden rule and to be kind to others, yada, yada, yada. And that doesn't really make sense if you think about it. It is finished. but I'm your teacher and you're supposed to copy me, that doesn't seem to go along with it as finished. It seems like he's beginning something that you're supposed to continue, but he's not really finishing something. Others, and there's a whole large group that calls itself Christians, maybe you grew up in this next group, that says, oh man, Jesus, look at up here in the cross, look at the sacrificial, look at the great sacrifice he gave for you. He sacrificed his life, doesn't that touch your heart? Now, you're supposed to. so to speak, build on what he started, he made the down payment. Now, I purposefully use the word down payment because some of you who are children might not know this, but adults know this very well. There's a thing called buying something on time, whether it's a house, a car, a motorcycle, something expensive. And you don't have all the money to pay for it, so you put a down payment. And then after the down payment, you get to take it home. You get the car, the motorcycle, or you get to live in it if it's a house. But you don't own it until. Every single payment is made. So even though you might say, oh, that was such a huge sacrificial down payment. Well, keep tearing out your little payment cards every month and mail it in with your check or press send on your phone and mail in a check to the owner of the house or the owner of the car, but you don't actually have it yet. You need to build on what the down payment is and you can make down payments on this thing for years and still not own it. And this view of Christianity that this particular group that calls itself a church does is to say, Christ only made the down payment. He didn't actually purchase anybody. And you must keep working very hard your whole life, right up until the very death, so to speak, of your life, when the priest gives you last rites. And then you might go to purgatory. But you don't go to heaven. Now, when Jesus said, it is finished, In that particular group's understanding, he just started the ball rolling, and you need to keep it going, and you need to make payments your whole life. If you've ever been on a treadmill, you know that, after a while, it gets old. Some of my friends calls it a dreadmill, because it just goes on and on and on. Now, you know, you might be on a treadmill for even an hour. Can you imagine living your life on a treadmill? I mean, who could do that? You know, you just get tired after a while. You go off the back, but you're supposed to stay on this treadmill and make payments your whole life to add to the sacrificial payment that Jesus made. So in this scheme, as they understand it, Jesus doesn't save anybody. He just makes the down payment for you to save yourself with his down payment help. There's a third view which is equally wrong too. I mentioned a teacher. I mentioned Jesus as a sacrificial down-payer. And the third view is Jesus is like a coach. Now what's the difference between a teacher and a coach? Well, coaches do teach. Here's the play. Here's what you're supposed to do. But coaches usually go a little bit farther. They're not impartial people. sitting up behind a desk near the blackboard going, well, I hope you get it right, but they're yelling at you and screaming at you, and they're, come on, you can do it, exhorting you, staying on you, making sure that you do it, so to speak. This is how you play the game of life. Work, work, work, work, come on, get out there, work, come on, you can do better, try harder, lift up those feet. Well, the sad thing is none of these things are who Jesus is or what he's all about. He's not a teacher, he's not a sacrificial down payer, and he's not a coach exhorting you to work harder and try harder. Each of these things says do, do, do, do, do. But what Christ said on the cross is done. The work of Christ is done, it's finished. Now, what do I mean by that? What do I mean by saying that Jesus says done? Well, look at here at John 19 again, that was before you. In verse 28, it says, knowing that what? All things were now accomplished. Other versions use the word finished in verse 28. Well, some versions use the word completed. The idea is, it's done, it's accomplished. Well, it's the same word here in verse 28 that our Lord uses when he says in verse 30, it is finished. It's one word in Greek. He's hanging on the cross. The last thing he says, one word, to talistai. You go, what is that? It's just Greek for it is finished, or it is paid in full. Now, the apostle John, who was Jesus's cousin by the flesh and was the closest disciple to him, He writes that Jesus said, it is finished. Here's an eyewitness who was there. And he said, it is finished. Now, what this word tetalestai, which I mentioned, in the first century was both a legal word and it was a financial word. If you owed money to a moneylender or a bank and you had to pay them back, when you made your last payment, they would give you a writ. And they would stamp on it, paid in full. You paid the money back that you borrowed, that you owed. Or if you committed a crime and went to jail for two years, And when you finished your last day in jail, there'd be a little writ outside of your cell. They'd rip it down. It would have your crime and your sentence. They'd stamp, to tell us die on it, paid in full. You've paid your debt to society. And that's what the word that our Lord chose to use and that John records for us. Our Lord said at the very end of his life, the last word he ever uttered was, it is finished. It is paid in full. Now, let's look at what that means a little bit more because I could read, I could see that it says it's finished. What does that mean? The New Testament does not talk about the work of Christ as something that needs to be added to. How would you say that? Well, Christ didn't come to offer savability. or redeemability. What do I mean? I'm going to give you five examples from the New Testament of the words that are actually used under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to describe the work of Christ. And it's a finished, completed, accomplished work. It's not a guess, hope, pray, cross your fingers. For example, the apostle in Galatians 3.13 says, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. Christ redeemed us from the curse of God's law, everyone who breaks God's law must die, by becoming a curse for us. Now, if it said he came to offer redeemability, that would imply there's something to be added onto what Christ did. But Paul doesn't say that. He says he redeemed us. That's something that's been accomplished. It's a past accomplished fact. In Romans 5.10, Paul says, while we were yet sinners, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son. Jesus didn't come to offer reconcilability. Jesus came and reconciled us by what he accomplished on the cross. In Revelations chapter five, the Apostle John quotes the creatures in heaven. What are these angelic creatures saying? Speaking about the Lord of glory, the Lord Jesus, worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals. For you were slain and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe, language, people, and nation. Jesus did not come to offer ransom ability. He came to ransom a people. He accomplished it. It's something that's already been accomplished. Luke quotes Paul at Acts chapter 20, where Paul's saying goodbye to the Ephesian elders in that very emotional scene where he tells these men, the Lord's given me, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, a vision that I'm never going to see you again, that I'm going to Jerusalem and I'm probably going to die soon. And they're all weeping and things like that. Well, this is what Paul says to these men, Acts 20, verse 28. God's called you to be overseers and overseers are to care for the church of God, which Christ purchased, purchased with his own blood. Christ isn't offering you men purchase ability is if you get your act together, he's purchased you. And the final one is from the author of Hebrews in chapter 10, verse 14. What does the author of Hebrews say? For by one offering, he has perfected for all time those who are being made holy. By one offering, by himself on the cross as a sacrifice for God. By one offering, he has perfected for all time those who are being made holy. As we'll see in a minute, this perfection is Christ's perfect righteousness given to the believing sinner. And in the process over the course of the rest of your life, you have the standing before God, that you're a redeemed sinner, that you're totally have the righteousness of Christ, but over the course of your life, you're living out your new life and growing in grace and growing in holiness. I could multiply examples, but the New Testament describes a finished, not to be repeated, not to be added onto work. Excuse me, this is unclear, but I have to blow my nose. I've said a couple times already that the Bible portrays the work of Christ as a finished work. Now we're going to look at it in more detail. How is it finished? I'd like to just recite a verse and you can picture it in your mind. 2 Corinthians 5.21. It's the gospel, it's the New Testament's great message in one verse. For God made him who knew no sin to become sin. God made him who knew no sin, Jesus, to become sin. When did that happen? On the cross. Jesus was accounted for all the sins of all of his people for all time. Jesus was made to be sin. For God made him who knew no sin. The New Testament makes a big deal of the fact that Christ never sinned. The soldier at the foot of the cross was amazed at this being, at this person. Surely this is the Son of God. For God made him who knew no sin to become sin. One of the horrors of the cross was being counted as sin. For all of the sins, all the vile, gross, petty, wicked things we do, God made him who knew no sin to become sin. But that's not the end of the verse. That, that's a conjunction, that's a word that's been, there's something coming after that's important. God made him who knew no sin to become sin, that we, now Paul, Paul's writing to the Corinthians, I said 2 Corinthians 5.21, we, me, Paul, Jewish sinner, you Gentiles in Corinth, Gentile sinners, but we're all both believing sinners. God made him who knew no sin to become sin in order that we, believing sinners, might become the righteousness of God in him. It's called the Great Exchange by Bible teachers. My sins are counted to Christ, really, truly, literally, all of my sins. And Christ's perfect righteousness, His perfect life, 24-7, 365 that He lived, is given to me, the believing sinner, to wear for the rest of eternity. You know what the idea of a substitute is in this great exchange, whether you play basketball or football, or you're in school and you have a substitute teacher, a substitute is someone who's taking the place of someone else. Jesus is God's substitute. He substituted for us on the cross. Rather than being condemned for our sins, Jesus was condemned for us in our place as a substitute. In our place condemned, he stood, sealed our part with his blood. If you're a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, as you place your trust in Christ, your sins are all counted to Christ and you're counted fully pardoned, fully freed from the condemnation of your sins. Now, if this wasn't in the Bible, you'd say, wow, that's a fairy tale. No, it's the gospel. as the angels told the shepherds in the fields that night. Imagine you're out in a dark night here in Indiana. I'm from Indiana. My wife's from Indiana. And sometimes it can be very dark at night. There's no stars. There's no moon. And you're out there trying to watch sheep that are grazing. And suddenly, 10,000 stadium lights come on. Boom! And everything's lit up. And an angel appears to you. We've come to announce to you the greatest news that's ever been proclaimed. on this planet. God has sent his Son. There's a Savior has been born to you. Your sins are not going to have the last say about your life. Well, why do we need both of these things? One of the sad things that's happened in America, and it's not your job to know church history, that happens to be one of the things I find great interest in, we live in one of the weakest times of American church history. And for the last 150 years, only half of what Christ did on the cross has been taught in most churches. In most churches, you go to church, Christ died for your sins, end of story. Well, that's no small thing. I'm not saying it's a small thing, but it's only half of a thing. And what happens is so many Christians limp, so many Christians struggle, so many Christians drag through their Christian life because they don't get it. What do I mean by that? Well, I not only need someone to die for my sins, but so where does that leave me? I'm a big zero, a goose egg. There's no righteousness to me. There's no positive conformity to the Lord's will in my life. Think about it this way. We live in an age when people are concerned about the environment. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. In many ways, it's a good thing, although it's taken to extremes. But you're concerned about ecology or the environment or how things are. Imagine you save up some money. You say, we want a backyard pool. We don't have a city pool where I live. We're going to have a backyard pool. Or you're going to put up one of these above ground pools. OK. So you do that. And there it is. And it's a pretty good sized pool and you've got 15,000 gallons of pristine water. You can't wait to go in the next morning. One of your neighbors doesn't like you. One of your neighbors really doesn't like you. And they're jealous and envious of your pool. Now they have a septic tank in their backyard and they go out at night and they dip down and get a cup of raw sewage. And they go over to your above ground pool and they look around and they dump it in the above ground pool and swish it around. Now you go, that'd be gross. Well what's really gross about it is after a couple of hours you can't see it. Because how water disperses, and I know this because my homeschool son had a thing on water dispersion and I learned more about water dispersion than I ever wanted to know in my life. But what happened was, Within a couple hours, you can't see one particle of that, probably, because it just diffuses all through the water. 15,000 gallons of pure water and one cup of raw sewage. Now, that's not a bad illustration of our hearts. There may be many fine things about you and me, but there's something fatally wrong with us. There's something in us that pollutes every part of us. You and I have never had a perfect thought. We've never had a perfect deed. We've never had a perfect word. All of our good deeds, so to speak, Isaiah says, are like so many filthy rags, they're tainted. So this person came and they ruined your pool. Now, you don't know that. You come out in the morning and go, wow, pool looks great. I can't wait to jump in. Is there anybody here who would want to jump in that pool? Well, you say, maybe if I could keep my head above water. Is there anybody who'd want to get any of that water in your mouth? I mean, the pool is ruined. You've got to empty it and clean it and start over. Well, that's what sin has done to us. It's polluted us. And we need something to clean up the stain of sin. We need something to clean out the pollution. Now some people think, why does God have to go to all this trouble to save us? Why does Jesus need to take our sins upon himself? Why would God, think about this, why would God want to pollute heaven with the stink and the pollution of our sins? Say, you know, I'm having a good day, y'all come in. I live most of my adult life in the South, so I say y'all. Y'all just come in. Is God going to do that? Is he going to pollute heaven? Is he going to stink up heaven? Is he going to defile and befoul heaven? Just so, no. He doesn't want to live for eternity. with foul sinners in his presence. So he needs to do something to clean us up. But that's only half of our problem. We need to be cleaned up. OK, let's say all of the foulness is taken out. But God isn't simply a person who's not sinful. You think, what's God like? Well, he's holy, holy, holy. And he's righteous. He conforms to perfect moral rectitude. He conforms to his law, which is an outward, objective expression of his being. God's simply not sinful. He's positively righteousness. He's infinitely holy. And you go, and you're getting to a point here. What is it? You need two things. You need your pollution dealt with, your stain of your sins, and you need somewhere to get righteousness. Otherwise, God's taking a bunch of zeros to heaven. You have nothing positively righteous. You're just morally neutral. God's not just morally neutral. He's absolutely positively righteous. So what does he do? He not only deals with our sin problem by Christ bearing our sins on the cross, but Christ's perfect righteousness. He obeyed his father 24-7, 365 his entire life. He loved the Lord as God with all of his heart, soul, mind, and strength. and his neighbor as himself always. He never sinned. So his perfect record of obeying God's law, so to speak, his righteousness, so to speak, is therefore counted, imputed to us believing sinners. The Bible says you're saved entirely, wholly by the work of Christ plus nothing. And on that, I want to take a drink. So we have these two debts. We have a debt of our sins, and we have a debt of no positive righteousness that God says, I will meet both of those needs. Imagine that, and I can remember back, I was a junior in college when the Lord saved me back in the day. And I can remember looking back at the first 21 years of my life, And I'd lived long enough to know I was a sinner. My conscience told me I was a sinner. And the more I came around Christianity, the more I saw my sins. And I knew that I couldn't do anything to save myself. And what an amazing thing it is to have all of your sins wiped out. All of them forever. And it's something that I trust I'll never get over. A couple of times in my life, the Lord's reminded me of that month of January, 1969, when the Lord saved me. You go, 1969. I've read about that in history books. Well, folks, you get old enough, you know those things. Anyway, God has been so gracious to me that he not only wiped out all of my sins because they were atoned for by Christ, there's not one sin clamoring for my arrest. There's not one sin clamoring for my condemnation. and he gave me Christ's righteousness. 24 seven, 365 for the rest of eternity. As men count time a million years from now, the God man who's at the right hand of the father, I'll be wearing his righteousness. And he, the God man, God in the flesh is representing me there before the father. Christ is all of my standing before God. The whole book of Galatians, I can teach you the book of Galatians in one or two sentences. Jesus plus nothing equals your salvation. Everything you need to know, everything you need to be, to be acceptable before God the Father, is in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. And while you're not saved by your good works, you're saved by Christ's good works, your changed life will ultimately usher in the changed life of good works. But no work saves you. My trust as I prayed for this morning was not, did I have a good week? Did I have a good day? No. Christ is my standing before you, Father. I plead in the name of Christ that you might bless these people today. Not my performance, not my how well I did or didn't do, but the work of Christ. Let me give you an illustration. I've talked to people who, they don't seem to understand theology, but if you talk about your checkbook, they go, oh, I understand the checkbook. Well, let's think about it this way. Some of you don't know, but Doug confided me in lunch this week that he's been day trading. And if you know what day trading is, it's kind of like playing the stock market on steroids. You watch the thing go up and down, try to get in and get out, and you make a little here and there. And I had a guy in my church in Atlanta that lost $40,000 in one afternoon doing that. This is an illustration. If you're thinking, gosh, really? Does Doug do that? No, he doesn't. But since I know his name, he's fair game. See, if I knew your name, I might use you as an illustration. So, in fact, his wife doesn't know, the church doesn't know, but he mortgaged his house, mortgaged part of his company, and he's a half a million dollars in debt. Whoa, what are we gonna do with that? I tried to make the amount big enough that the average person would have a stomachache laying in bed at night thinking about that. If you're really rich, maybe it's five million, but for most of us, a half a million dollars would do it. So, what's Doug gonna do? He's just great consternation. Can't sleep at night, has a stomachache all the time. Finally confides in his wife, confides in the church. Brethren, you know, I've done this. It wasn't innately sinful, but I kept doing it and kept doing it until I put myself in a bad place. Please pray for me. I wanna get this right, and you know, et cetera. And the church is gracious, and they forgive him, and they've made their sinful mistakes. And what churches do so often is we need to put it in the prayer sheet. I don't know why people put these things, but that comes out in the prayer sheet. Now, as it happens, one of you has a friend who lives in Mercer Island, Washington. You know, whatever. Anyway, Mercer Island, Washington on the West Coast near Seattle is where Bill Gates, the owner of Microsoft, the founder of Microsoft, lives. One of the world's wealthiest men. Mega, mega billions. Well, he's out walking his dog one day, and he sees a piece of paper. And he's very concerned about the ecology. So he picks up the piece of paper. It's a piece of trash. But it comes from a prayer sheet from a little church in New Castle, Indiana. And someone here had wrapped it around a package to keep it inside the package from being jarred, and sent it off to their friend. And the friend, in throwing it away, and it somehow got out of the trash, and it's blowing in the street. And Bill Gates picked up this, and he's reading the prayer sheet. Isn't this quaint, these little Christians praying to their God? And he sees that the pastor owes a half a million dollars. And suddenly, he goes, I don't know what's come over me. I feel like I must help that man. I can help that man. So he goes home and writes a check for $500,000. And it's a good check. And he mails it. So Doug's wife looking out the window one day and sees Doug stop to get the mail. And he sees him open a letter, open an envelope of some kind. And Doug starts jumping up and down and twisting around. She goes, he's got the gift. She thinks gosh, you know, he's become a charismatic right there by the mailbox. What's going on? Well, he comes running up. Honey, honey, guess what? We're rich. We're rich. Bill Gates, you know, the guy who owns micro, Bill Gates sent us a half a million dollars. Now, you know, one of the things I've noticed is that people who go grocery shopping frequently have more common sense than their spouses. which my wife goes grocery shopping, I suppose your wife does too. And she said, honey, and particularly if they're a homeschool mom, they know everything because they have to teach everything. So honey, let's do our math. Half a million dollars, take away a half a million dollars that we owe, equals zero. We can get a grocery cart and become street people and push it around Newcastle because we got nothing. We have nothing. So what am I saying? If Christ wipes out your sins, but you're not given any righteousness, what do you have to deal with? Nothing. But let's change the illustration. Same story. The purse sheet gets mailed to Washington State. Bill Gates is walking his dog, picks it up. Guy owns a half a million dollars. I can deal with that. This time he writes a check for, wait for it, $5 billion. You go, how much is a billion? A billion is a thousand million. You go, that's more money than I have. It's more money than the whole city has here. What's the point? If he mails the check back to Doug here and he opens the check, what does it do to the 500,000 dead he has? It's just gone. What does he have left? Well, he's got 4 billion and a whole lot of change. What's the point? It wipes out his sin, so to speak, his debt. You know, why is when we read the Lord's Prayer, forgive us our debts. as we forgive our debtors. Now that you can't take that to the bank and says, it says in the Lord's prayer that you're supposed to forgive my debt. That doesn't work because he's not talking about finances. He's talking about the debt of sin. I owe God perfect obedience all the time. Adam and Eve and you and I were created to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. And our neighbor is ourself all the time. That's what I owe God, 24-7 obedience and allegiance. Do I give that to him? Sadly, no. So what happens? I have this debt that I owe him, this debt of my sins. Well, Christ wipes out what we owed to God, and he gave us this huge positive righteousness, so to speak. You are as righteous as Christ. When God the Father looks upon a believing sinner, he looks upon them as righteous as Jesus Christ, because it's true. It's not a myth, it's not a fairy tale, it's the gospel. Martin Luther and John Calvin both said, that what I've just explained to you, these two halves, my sins counted on Christ, his righteousness counted to me, is the gospel. The gospel has two halves. Not just Christ died for your sins, but what a great liberating thing it was to see that Christ's righteousness has been given to me. So I don't need to limp along all the time feeling half guilty, because I haven't accomplished anything. Christ's perfect life and perfect death make what? A perfect gift to save any sinner who puts their trust in Him. How do you respond to a perfect gift? You go, I don't know, I haven't thought about it. No one's ever given me a perfect gift. Well, think about it a minute. How would you respond to a perfect gift? While you're thinking, I'm gonna take another drink here. I took an antihistamine before I left the house and it's working. The Sahara Desert is in my tongue. Well, let me give you two ways not to respond that you might be tempted to respond. By definition, you cannot improve a perfect gift because it's perfect. It's a sad reality. But the default mode of every person on the planet and every other religion but Christianity says, you know, you need to do something to contribute to your own salvation. And so only biblical Christianity, only the work of Christ says you can't improve on a perfect gift. There's a man you may have heard of. You may have some of his books on your shelf, Arthur W. Pink. He pastored in Kentucky and a couple other states while he lived in the States. And in his church, he had a carpenter. And this is back in the early 20th century when, if you've ever lived on a farm or been around a farm, you know that there's a thing called gates. And gates used to be made of wood. And gates got old after a while, and they would sag, and they would drag. So you had to contract with somebody to build you a new gate. So the farmer contracted with the carpenter to build a new gate. And the carpenter did. Put it on the trailer behind his pickup, pulled it out to the farm, offloaded it, hung it. It swung perfectly. It was perfectly constructed. It was functionally a perfect gate. Now the farmer and the carpenter had been having a discussion for years about being a Christian. And the carpenter had witnessed to the farmer many times. And the farmer couldn't let the work of Christ alone. So as they were looking at the gate, the farmer goes, it's great. I love it. You did a fine job. I'll pay you. And the carpenter said, no, just a minute. And he had one of these hatchets on his belt with a flap and unsnapped the flap and got it out and began going like this, like there was little slivers or something. And he kept going. And after a while, he's just hacking away and wailing away on the gate and practically ruining it. And the farmer stood there dumbfounded. He goes, what are you doing? Leave it alone. It's a perfect gate. And the carpenter whips around and goes, I'm doing to this gate what you've done to Jesus Christ for the last 10 years I've talked to you. Every time I talk to you about the work of Christ, you have to improve on it. You got to add your two cents or take away two cents. You can't let it alone. You always need to add something of your own to it. And he was willing to, so to speak, eat the price of the gate to make the point with the farmer, you've been guilty of this very thing. I was just ruining a gate. You were ruining the work of Christ. There's nothing you could do to add to it, to improve it. Now, let me ask you a personal question. Not that you need to raise your hand or speak up, but are you ever guilty of trying to add to the work of Christ by something you bring yourself? Well, let me put it another way. Do you believe God the Father is 100% satisfied with the work of Christ on your behalf such that you don't need to add anything to what Christ did? Do you believe the Father is 100% satisfied with what Christ did for you? No improvements, no add-ons, no performance on your part. It's not Jesus plus my add-ons, it's Jesus only. Do you believe that? Well, let me tell you a second thing that you way you shouldn't respond. This is also common because of our default mode. Most people are too proud to take a gift. You know, the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Is anything simpler than that? A free gift? No, I don't want it. Let me pay for it or I'll pay you back. Well, paying God back, paying God for his son is one of the most offensive things you can do. You go, well, I'm just trying to, you know, I'm just trying to add my two cents. I mean, I don't want to just be a slacker and just trust in the work of Christ. You can't add anything to the work of Christ. And it's not that God would think of you as a slacker. He would think of you as a very proud, unbelieving person because you will not accept the work of Christ plus nothing. And let me give you an illustration of how this works. We know that there's been a war going on in the Middle East with America for 21 years, comes 9-11. And many young men and women have gone over there and fought for us. My son and son-in-law used to commute to downtown Atlanta, where I lived for many years. And my son almost enlisted after that happened, but he went to work for a defense contractor and helped build armaments. But let's say he did enlist. And let's say that he did. He's now in Fallujah. Iraq. He's kicking out down doors in the middle of the night. I had a nephew with the SEALs who was kicking down doors in the middle of the night trying to find bad guys inside. And you've cleared the first floor of a house, but you hear something up above. You know there's people on the second story, and you believe they're bad guys. So you have a squad of four or five men. You're supposed to clear this house. So you go up a few stairs to a landing, and you look up. hoping there's nobody with a gun pointed at you. And you start to take a step up to the last flight of stairs, and suddenly somebody lobs a grenade over the top, and it hits the bottom and scuttles around and stops, and you have a second or two to make a life-changing decision. And like many brave men have done, my son takes off his helmet, puts it on the grenade, and falls on the grenade. It blows up. It kills him, but what he did saved the rest of his squad. Very sad, very heartrending. I can't imagine anything more traumatic for a parent. But it gets worse. So we have a funeral. And you come up to me after the funeral and say, you know, my son, my brother was in that squad. Your son, by his sacrificial action, saved him. And I just want you to know how grateful I am. And you caught me on a good day. And he reaches in and pulls out his wallet and says, I got a couple of 20s and a 50. And I just wanted to say thanks. Do you think I would be impressed? Do you think I would thank Him? Do you think the 220s and a 50 is somehow going to mean anything compared to the life and death of my son? What about God, the Son coming to earth and living and dying, and I think I can pay Him back? That just shows how totally clueless I am about who Christ is, and that I would want to pay God back for something that's infinitely beyond my ability. It's an old, old problem of the human race that salvation, being right with God, is something you purchase, something you earn, something that you work for. And it's false. And people trip over their own pride, their own false understanding. In John chapter 6, which I've been reading in my quiet time, The Jews finally said to our Lord, in verse 28, just spit it out. What works does God want us to do to be right with him? Just tell us, just come clean. What's the work that God wants us to do that God requires? And Jesus says, and you can see them licking their lips and they're getting ready, tell us what to do. He says, the work of God is this, to believe on the one whom he has sent. It's to look away from yourself and your performance and your doings and your works and believe on the one that God sent in your place. For by grace are we saved through faith and that not of yourself. It is the gift of God, not as a result of works that no one should boast. The great news of Christianity is that salvation is a free gift. It's not earned, it's not paid for, it's not purchased. It's a free gift. Come and buy without money, Isaiah says. Come and get it. Now, I want to close with two applications. We have three kinds of people in every congregation. You have people who know they're Christians, people who know they're not Christians, and people kind of in the middle, well, I hope I'm a Christian. Some days I think I am. I don't know. I'm kind of uncertain. So let me address the people who don't know if they're Christians or they know they're not Christians. I've explained to you what it means to become a Christian. It's to look away from yourself. And Jesus said, it's finished. And then if you were standing there, he says, can you believe that? Do you believe I died for your sins? Do you believe there's nothing that God requires of you? Let me give you an illustration. Several years ago in Arizona there was a terrible forest fire and 19 firefighters, men out fighting the forest fires, were killed when there was tremendous shift in the wind and the flame came roaring back the other way and 19 firefighters were burned to death. And I know a pastor who pastored in a small town where many of the funerals took place, and he did some of the funerals. It was an awful thing. There's things that you can do to try to survive a fire. They have these kind of aluminum blankets they wrap themselves in, and they fall in a ditch and hope that the flames go over them quickly. The problem is it burns up all the oxygen, and you suffocate. The safest place, if you're ever caught in a forest fire, if you're out in the middle of a field and there's a grass fire, What's the one and only safe place you can run to? The burn spot. The what? Well, if there's already a spot that's burned, you know, it's black, there's nothing left, run there. Why? Because there's nothing for the fire to burn. It gets to the edges of the burn spot and stops. What's the only burn spot on planet Earth for God dealing with human sin? the cross of Christ. So if you run to the cross of Christ, that's the safe spot. Christ endured the judgment of our sins. I don't have to worry about fleeing from the wrath to come. I'm at the place of safety. I'm trusting in the work of Christ. And when Jesus told the Jews who said, what works does God want us to do? What works does God require of us? Do you know what repentance means? You've heard the word repentance. It doesn't mean go in your bedroom and cry real hard. Because people in the Bible cried and didn't change. They were sorry they got caught. They were sorry there were consequences. But crying doesn't automatically mean repentance. Repentance is a change of mind leading to a change of action. I used to trust in myself. I used to think that there was something I had to do. I used to think I had to make myself acceptable to God before he could save me. What you're telling me, Pastor Martin, is that the work of Christ isn't totally, entirely the work of Christ. It's not my adding anything to it. God doesn't require anything from me but to look away from myself and to look to him. That would be repentance because you're not looking to yourself. You're changing your attitude that you can do anything. I believe God's word. I believe what he says. It is finished. It's a done deal. And I trust in him. Lord, why did I make it so hard for so long? Thinking I had to clean up my life. Thinking I had to make myself better. Thinking I had to do something to make myself savable. You save sinners through nothing they add on their own. Believing on the Lord Jesus Christ. If you're a believer, you're kind of going, well, this has been a nice review, Pastor Martin. I appreciate you taking the time to go over salvation, but I kind of know this stuff. Well, there are things in the Bible we kind of sort of know and kind of sort of never apply. Well, how do I mean that? Well, years ago, I was convicted by an article, or I should say a sermon preached by Donald Barnhouse. His commentary or exposition of Romans was useful in my life to bring me to an understanding of the doctrines of grace. But he gave an illustration about how believers don't really understand and appropriate the finished work of Christ. So I'm going to use a volunteer. Doug, thank you. OK, so I used Doug again. He's a ready volunteer. Doug goes, you know, I was appreciating the things that Steve said this morning. I think tomorrow morning I'm going to get up extra early and spend time with the Lord. So normally Doug gets up at 6, let's say. But he sets his alarm for 5. I want to spend extra time with the Lord. So he sets the alarm for 5 o'clock. But you know, the power goes out in the middle of the night and the house gets kind of stuffy and he doesn't sleep well. And when the alarm goes off at five, he reflexively reaches over and hits the snooze button three or four times. And before he knows it, it's seven o'clock. You not only didn't make it to this special time with the Lord, you're running late for life and for work. So you get up and you're dashing around the house and, you know, trying to shave in the shower, catch yourself, ow. And one of those cuts where even those styptic pencils doesn't stop it, so you have to put a piece of toilet paper, which is always very fashionable to go to work with a piece of bloody toilet paper stuck in your face. So then he doesn't kiss his wife goodbye, he doesn't kiss the kids goodbye, he doesn't kiss the dog goodbye, he just leaves in a hurry. He gets a flat tire on the way to work, he's got a job in Indianapolis, he gets a flat tire. He doesn't claim Romans 828 for the flat tire. And then he gets to work and a couple of the guys chide him, hey, you're kind of coming in late on the height of a hard Sunday, you're coming in late on Monday. Oh, whatever, he just blows it off. And then at lunch, he has an appointment with a guy, and he has an opportunity, a golden opportunity to share his faith, but I don't feel like talking about the Lord today, and just whatever. On the way home, he gets stuck in a traffic jam at 465, and he's so frustrated. He gets home, comes in the front door. His wife hears the door slam. Honey, is that you? Yeah. Hmm. And he makes a beeline for the bedroom. She leaves the kitchen and goes back. Everything okay? Yeah, it's just kind of a hard day. You want to pray about it? No, you want to talk about it? No. You want to pray about it? Not now. Maybe later. Okay. That's a scenario that you might recognize. Let's take another scenario. Same thing, he sets the alarm for five, but it's spring. A little bird has built a nest in a bush right outside of his bedroom window and is chirping to the glory of God at 4.45. And it wakes Doug up and he goes, ah, the Lord sent that little bird to wake me up to spend extra time with him. So he gets up and sure enough, the spirit of God takes the word of God, it leaps off the page, it leaps into his heart, it leads him to worship, it leads him to appropriation of truths, it leads him to worship and glorify God and just has a great time. makes coffee, brings it to his wife in bed. She has cardiac arrest, so he has to get the defilip and wake her up. And he goes and kisses his wife goodbye, kisses the kids, kisses the dog. And he goes out the door, and he gets the flat tire. But this time he claims Romans 8.28. All things work together for the good of those who love God and are on the call according to his purpose. And then he goes on to work, and guys chide him again that he's late. But he's secure in Christ, because what men think of him is not as important as what Christ thinks of him. And so he goes on, and at lunchtime, he has the opportunity to witness. And he does witness, and he leads the guy to Christ. It's a great time. Coming home, he's stuck in a traffic jam on 465. And then he prays for all the lost people around him who are so frustrated. And he comes in the front door, and his wife hears the door slam, and he's whistling. Honey, is that you? Yeah, honey, I'm home. Wow, and so she meets him back in the bedroom. How was your day? It was a great day. Want to talk about it? Yeah, let's talk about it over dinner. Would you like to pray about it? Yeah, I'd like to pray about it. Barnhouse said, on both days, Doug would be wrong. Why? Because the first day, he didn't think he had accomplished enough grounding points to merit God's favor that day. Why would God want to hear from me? I bungled everything today. But the second day, I got up extra early, had a great quiet time, served my family, claimed Romans 8.28 in a tough situation, didn't let what other people think bother me, witnessed, prayed for people who were frustrated in a traffic jam. I accumulated a lot of good things today to add to my account. So Doug would be trusting in himself, not the finished work of Christ. On your best days, on your worst days, the finished work of Christ is your standing before God the Father and your only standing. Let's pray. Father, I pray for my brothers and sisters and friends here. I pray that you would make it crystal clear in their minds that it's Jesus Christ plus nothing as they're standing before you. Would you help them to see if they've been subtly trusting in their own performance, as if Christianity was just the latest and greatest religious scam out there where people have to work really hard to earn some kind of favor with whatever God's out there? rather than the one true and living God who sent his only begotten Son, that he might purchase salvation for sinners through nothing of their own, no effort of their own, but wholly through his initiative, his work of his Son? Would you help them to rest in the finished work of Christ, to repent of thinking that their performance adds anything to that? And for unbelievers among us, or those who have not been sure of their salvation, would you make it crystal clear to them that Jesus alone would be there standing before you, and they would believe your word, and you would save them? Would you do this for Jesus' sake, I pray? Amen. Well, we certainly thank you, Brother Martin, for pointing us to Christ this morning and reminding us of the sufficiency of our Savior. In that sense, we have a fitting hymn. If we would all rise and turn to page number 80, How Firm a Foundation. How Firm a Foundation, as we consider the thoughts of Christ shared with us by Brother Martin. Page number 80. We will sing all six verses of page number 80. We see from Isaiah chapter 41, verse 10, where the word of the Lord says, fear thou not, for I am with thee. Be not dismayed, for I am thy God. I will strengthen thee, yea, I will help thee. Let us worship. and have firm a foundation. His sake, O Lord, is laid for your faith in His excellent Word. What more can He say than to you He has said, to the one, to Jesus, for refuge have fled? Fear not, I am with thee, O be not dismayed, I, I am thy God, and will give thee aid. I'll strengthen thee, and cause thee to stand, Upheld by thy righteous, omnipotent hand. Where through the deep waters I call thee to go, the rivers of blood shall not thee overflow. For our Lord will be with thee, thy troubles to bless, and sanctify thee through the deepest distress. With rude fiery trials Thy path which shall lie, By grace of sufficient shall be Thy supply. The flames shall not hurt Thee, Thy only design, Thy draughts to conserve, and Thy balm to refine. When, down to old age, all my people shall be My sovereign, eternal, unchangeable law, And when glory e'er shall their temples adorn, Like lambs they shall still in my bosom be born, The high song that all Jesus hath learned or reposed, I will not, I will not desert to his force. That song, though all hell should endeavor to shake, I'll never, no never, no never forsake. You may be seated as we have just a moment of silence before we come to the Lord's Supper. As God's people continue to prepare their hearts, I'd like to call Brother Mark and Brother Levi, if you guys would come and pass out the elements for the observance of Christ's sacrificial death and victory upon the cross.