Now it was not written for his sake, speaking of Abraham alone, that it was imputed to him, but also for us. It shall be imputed to us who believe in him, who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised because of our justification. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. If you go through the whole book of Romans and you begin scaling it up and actually just look from where we began in Romans chapter one and we've gone all the way now to the very first part of Romans chapter five, you'll see that Paul is just building an argument. Piece by piece, bit by bit, layer by layer, he's laying down an argument and the argument is that man cannot in any way approach God by his moralisms, he cannot approach God by his legalistic development and disciplines, he cannot approach God through following all the laws and all these things they will all prove that he's a sinner they all prove that he is still under God's judgment he's facing God's wrath the only way which man can come before God and approach God and stand before a righteous God is to be justified to receive that righteousness given to him imputed that it means God gives him something that he does not have himself Given to him by faith alone Paul and building this argument then brings us showing us first how exceedingly sinful we are how completely ineffective all of our moral strategies and legalistic and religious strategies are then confirming again how incredibly Sinful we are Paul then goes on to illustrate that only his way the only way can be through faith alone And then Paul illustrates this expression of faith as it was first you might say manifested and demonstrated the life of Abraham. So he shows us how Abraham is this vessel through which God poured in this saving faith and poured out by his example the expression of saving faith to others. He is called the father of faith. What we've learned is that Abraham's faith began with a belief in God. Just started with a belief not in what God had promised. but in the Promiser. And that God was a God who brought the dead to life. And God was a God who called things that did not exist and spoke them into existence. In fact, He could speak of those things as if they existed before we saw their existence, before they became present or manifested themselves in the world in which they lived. He calls things that He's planning in the future, things that He's decreed for the future, and He speaks about them as if they exist in the present. Because when God determines something, it's so, it is. And so that's the power of God. He believes in a God who raises to life that which is dead and speaks into existence that which doesn't exist. Based upon that confidence in who God is, he's able to believe God for great and wonderful things. And we saw last week, he believed God that God was going to produce out of him who was a hundred years old or therefore and had a barren wife and had for decades accumulated the ongoing witness that they were not going to have any children. God promises to Abraham that out of him and out of his wife Sarah was going to rise up a great nation that would be blessed of God and would be a blessing to all the nations of the earth. And then God also gave him a vision that through his belief and trust and faith in God, God was going to raise up A constellation of spiritual sons and daughters that would gather round and accumulate in spiritual nations that would be born through faith. Nations of faith that would rise up from the faith of Abraham and he believed God for that. Nations that would rise up and would receive themselves the very blessings and blessings in the same manner that God had promised to his natural children through his natural seed of Israel and they would be blessed as well. So a nation to be blessed of him and to be a blessing and nations through his faithfulness and belief in God that would rise up one day believing sons and daughters that as well would inherit that great blessing. And then finally God also gave him a vision that moment in time of the one through which all those blessings would be secured. One seed rising up from himself who would be the Messiah, who would be the one who would channel and bring and mediate all that blessing to the nation of Israel and to all the nations of the earth. He had a vision of Jesus Christ, the Messiah. And so the Lord Jesus says in the end of John chapter 8, speaking of that time and that vision and that promise that God made known to Abraham, the Lord Jesus says at the end of John chapter 8, your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, sought and was glad. He saw me. He saw me coming. He saw the promise God had given. The promise God gave to me at the moment that He promised you as His descendants. The moment that God promised the nations as His spiritual descendants. At that same time, He gave Him a vision of me. the one through whom all these would rise up and receive their blessings and accomplish this great salvation and this great work of blessing would be accomplished for them. And in that faith, the Bible says it was imputed to Abraham righteousness and believing God for those things. And the word imputation implies that prior to that moment, no matter what Abraham had done and no matter what his responses have been, he was not righteous before God. It was imputed to him through his faith and his belief and in the same way. We are being commended and Paul is commending to us that same kind of belief. That our belief and our faith and what God has promised through Jesus Christ is the means by which we take hold of the righteousness that he has for us so we are justified and we have a right standing before God. Not through the morality that we live, not through the ethics that we put together and we then perform, not through laws that we behave, not through religious conduct that we acquire and we follow in, but through faith in God. and through faith through God and what God has promised through His Son Jesus Christ. We might also see that what Paul is doing in all of this and all that he's writing and actually we can see this through all the writing of the book of Romans in this letter is that Paul's primary goal seems to be to take those who've placed their faith in Jesus Christ and position them in a solid assurance This is yours. This is what you've gained. This is what God has done for you. To those he's writing to, he wants to cement them through their belief and trust in Jesus Christ into an immovable, abounding assurance of their salvation. And in that assurance that they might realize the promise and the benefit of all that God wants to bring to them through that salvation. And so, Paul has been highlighting all this and bringing all this through the life of Abraham. But after having given us the life of Abraham as this demonstration of faith, Paul says, now listen, God did not just speak that he was justified by faith for Abraham's benefit. That through his faith it was imputed to him righteousness for Abraham's benefit. It was stated and declared for you also. You who have trusted and believed Jesus Christ whom God has raised from the dead. Because He died for your sins and He was raised from the dead for your justification. This was written for you also. And so what we ought to see here then is that all that Paul is writing up to this point in time, all that he's putting together, the arguments that he's formulating are directed to us. He's speaking to us. He's writing it for our benefit. The scripture that you have in your hand, this book that you're holding, is not just a historical treatise. It's not even there just so that you might be intellectually informed. It's written for you for a purpose. That you might be established in the complete and wonderful and solid assurance of salvation through Jesus Christ. That you might know Him and in that salvation that you might grow into Him. That's going to be our first little point here for today. The first point is this, that all proper instruction in God's Word is for the benefit of people, so that they may be saved, and so that having been saved, they may progress into that salvation, that they might be reconciled to God, and then having been reconciled to God and brought into relationship with Him, they may then through that relationship grow and expand in the growing experience of the benefits and blessings that are theirs through Jesus Christ so that they might know the work that God has accomplished completely and finished in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ for their sins and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ for their life. They might live in that life and project themselves into all these things so that through their faith in Jesus Christ they might stand before God right. and right with Him. And in that standing then I grow into Him and experience Him. And this is how God is glorified in our life. This is how God fulfills His purposes for us in our lives. We are saved for these reasons. He did it for our sakes. So, all theological debate, all biblical instruction, all preaching from pulpits must channel into this purpose. to save those Christ came to save and to bless those Christ died to bless. To bring us into loving conformity into the image of Jesus Christ. If we don't have that as our purpose, we can come into our pulpits and we can write our doctrinal positions and we can argue our beliefs in such a way that all we're doing is inflating our egos or I'm speaking in order to inflate your egos. In other words, for example, When I come into the pulpit here and I preach, my goal is not to castigate those outside the walls of this church. It's not to kind of talk to you about how everybody else is in a wrong position and doesn't see the right view, but we got it here. It's not to turn the scripture and weaponize it to complain about what some other church is doing or someone else believes. That's not the purpose. It's not here to preach to the choir, you might say. I have a bit of a complaint against what I call rimshot preachers. You know, preachers who preach in such a way, they should have a drummer behind them, because they say things and the drummer should go... Every time they sing, then everybody can clap, and you know, no, this is the time we're supposed to clap. This is a signal we're saying, yeah, of course, amen, amen, for us. Everybody else is in the wrong position, but hey, we're in the right position, amen, amen. We've got to be careful about those things. We've got to be careful about bringing forth the word and bringing forth the truth in such a way that it allows us to bask in ourselves and not in Him. And it allows us to band together to gloat in our unique brand of thinking and our unique theology as opposed to what somebody else might think. That's not the purpose. The whole purpose of all good teaching and all instruction is that God might speak to our hearts that God might penetrate into our own souls, that God would correct us, that God would lead us into growth, that God would refine us. Martin Lloyd-Jones said that he always knew when he was preaching in the South, he was a preacher from England, and he always knew when he was called to preach in like Texas or in southern United States, he knew when he was speaking and the Holy Spirit began to work in the different churches he was preaching in. He knew that the Holy Spirit was speaking when the people out in the congregation stopped saying amen to what he was saying. Every time he'd say something he agreed with, amen, amen. Actually once I had a man come and criticize me who was attending our church some years back because he attended our church for a year and he said amen. I said anything he agreed with and I'd never said any amen to what he had said. That's not what amen is for. Amen. You're right. Preach it. Preach it to them. Preach it to that person. Preach it. Tell it to them. No, it's seelah. Amen. God sealed this to my own heart. Speak it to me. And then after a while, you don't shout it. You just say, Oh God. Do you like playing board games? You know, A game that I haven't played for years is the game Risk, but that's a game that I used to like to play. But it's a long board game, and part of the reason I don't like it is it just takes too long to find out whether you're going to win or not, right? And so I like to play games that are long enough to get you involved, but you find out whether you're going to win or not at some point in time in the process of playing the game, because then you can gloat over the fact that you've won. And so the whole purpose, by the way, of a game is to gloat when you've won. I consider myself a good winner. I'm a really good winner. I know how to gloat when I win. And people think of me as a poor loser, but I'm not a poor loser. Because if you're going to win a game, you want to win against somebody who doesn't like to lose. So I want to help people enjoy winning by losing poorly, right? So at least that's the way I look at it. I actually think I have become, over time, not that way. I don't mind losing now. It was when you had children, and you wanted your children to experience wins, so you actually delighted in the delight they took in winning. You even had to pretend that you were unhappy that you lost, but you really weren't, just to make them feel a little better. But it's also because I've been married for almost 40 years now, and after 40 years of arguments and discussions and disagreements, I've become accustomed to losing, right? I've discovered it's not that bad it's actually it's actually a good thing and it makes for peace in your relationship and and not only that the fact is they're just right all right and you're just wrong yeah amen you're supposed to say I have this week been working on a theological and biblical response, an academic article to an article that was written or a letter that was written by a colleague of mine that I know. I disagree with his position and I disagree with the way he stated his position. Yet, he brought forward his credentials, and he brought forth his argument in a kind of a disciplined, academic expression. I just felt prompted to write a response. So I've been writing it. Actually, that's what I've been doing almost every day this week, writing the article, thinking about how I'm going to put it together. I've got it all written, and now I don't know if I want to publish it and put it forward, because I'm afraid that all it's going to do is just ignite another volley, another round of intellectual upmanship. You know, I'm going to state my academic position, I'm going to put forward my logical arguments, and then he's going to return his arguments in this position, and we'll just go back and forth. And that is not the reason which we come before God's Word and we wrestle with its truth. And yes, iron sharpens iron in this relationship. And it's good thing sometimes, it's not wrong to talk about things and disagree and discuss them back and forth. But if all we're doing is engaging in a kind of intellectual theological gamesmanship, in which we're playing our game of risk to see who's going to win before we put the game away so that one of us can go away feeling good about ourselves or even if we lose so we can go back and sharpen our position so the next time we can win. That has nothing to do with why these things are written and why God gives us these truths. Why from the outset Paul in Romans chapter 1 and going forward begins to lay down all these wonderful theological and biblical truths and brings us to consider history and brings us before the history and life of Abraham and David and gives us his observations of society and its idolatry and its moralisms and its religious legalisms and puts before us his strong argument that we can only be saved by justification by faith and He does all these things to direct it just to one point. You and me. It's just for us. It's just that we would grow and we would learn and we'd discover God's truth and we'd live in conformity to it. This puts a profound obligation and responsibility upon the man in the pulpit and the preacher and the teacher. That he check always his motivation and his intent and his purpose. That His design is not somehow to preen Himself, to show how intellectually sharp He is, how good He is at communicating, or whatever. It's for the benefit of the hearer. It's for the benefit of those who are here to listen and learn and grow and mature and be conformed in the image of Christ. It actually puts a profound obligation on the listener as well. You're not here to build up a reservoir of information so that you can feel good about yourself or so that you can measure yourself against what other people know or don't know. When the word is spoken and it's pronounced, it's pronounced for you. It's not so you can say, man, I wish such and such were here to hear this. It's pronounced for you. That you would know and you would grow and you'd learn what God is trying to teach you. So, This is the purpose, and this is why we're here, and this is the goal, and this is why we gather together, and this is why we meet for Sunday school, and this is why we gather together in small groups, and this is why we have women's Bible studies, and this is why we have our times of discipleship with one another. It's because we know. We know these things are for us. They're for our benefit. They're for us to learn and grow and develop and mature. That might be the most important thing just for today that we carry away with us. It would change, I think, the way we approach this word and the way we grow and learn together. And also would give us an ability to some extent to use discernment when we're reading the articles that are being published and we're fishing through social media. Nowadays, it appears to me that the way that the algorithms work on the types of things that show up on your computer is your computer knows what you've read before and so it'll start feeding you stuff. If you're reading stuff that's written by an author who has a unique position, theological position one way or another, eventually you start getting authors from that way. And then when you start reading those authors, oftentimes in order that you read them, they want you to read them because they've got a complaint. They got somebody they want to correct. They're going to put themselves in the right position and show five reasons why they're in the right position and everybody else is in the wrong position. And you get this habit starting forming around you of this constant contention and theological gamesmanship. And you think you're learning, but the medium through which you're learning, and it's truth. They might lay out wonderful truths that are all good, but the medium, the way in which it's coming to you and the way in which it's processing you is always in this comparative state of getting ahead of somebody else and gaining the position around the person and it defeats the whole purpose. It makes it kind of self-idolatry and an idolatry of your theology, even good theology and good biblical truth. It's something that this age particularly needs to repent of. So use discernment when you're reading things. If this is just feeding, in a sense, an idea, no matter how good it is and true it is, if this is just being put forward in a contest in order to make me feel better or feeding my appetite for controversy, to show that I'm in the right place, Take a bit of a step back. This has been written. God has brought these truths for me, for us to learn, so that we would be led before him. And here would be the second point. Now let's look at Romans chapter five, verses one and two. Before we look into the particulars of it, there's a little statement here that's most important for us to read. It says this, of the glory of God. It's going to talk about what the objective of this faith is, what it is we're brought to, what the object that's gained or acquired through this justifying faith, and there's three things mentioned here. It's going to say that we have peace with God, we have access now into these gracious abounding blessings that are ours through God, and then we also have this standing of joyful anticipation of the future that overcomes the trials and difficulties we face in life. This too is brought to us through our faith, our justifying faith in Jesus Christ. So that we have this wonderfully assured state, and that's basically what Paul is getting at. But the thing that I want us to see here, first of all, is that these gained objectives that we have through faith all rally around the person of Jesus Christ. So Paul writes, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have gained access. It all comes around the Lord Jesus Christ. So let me just make this as a second point here, that all proper instruction in God's word All of the things that God brings to us as promises, as benefits that we should know and understand so that we can grow in those benefits, so that we can, in a sense, avail ourselves of all that God has brought to us. All of it gathers around our Lord Jesus Christ. We have nothing to offer you, I have nothing to offer you, but that which comes through Him. Pay attention again to those who are teaching you and instructing you and delivering the Word of God to you and trying to apply its lessons to you. Pay attention that what they say, if it is not clothed and covered and guiding you all the way to the feet of the Lord Jesus. to love Him, to find Him dear and precious. If it's instead appealing to your intellect, if it's appealing to a sense of maintaining some moral superiority, if it's appealing to just ethical exercises by which you develop good disciplines so that you can regulate your own life, and it doesn't bring you to Christ, not simply as an example so that you can show that you can be just like Him, but as the provision and the answer for everything in your life, well, something is amiss here. All good instruction brings us to Him because He is the door, and He is the way, and He is the truth, and He is the life, and He is not only Savior, but He is salvation, and He is not only sanctifier, but He is our holiness. His own life is our holiness, living and abiding within us. He's our reconciler, and He's the one who enfolds us into relationship with God, and we have nothing good to offer you. I have nothing good to offer you. apart from Christ. So we should always be speaking of Him. Our language should always be directed to Him. I don't know what it is about the nature of the teaching we have in our church, but at times we attract individuals who want to think critically and theologically. That's a good thing. We want to attract those individuals and they want to think critically and theologically. But then when they come into your fellowship, they discover that you don't think the same way they think. You don't have the exact same theological position. They thought that you did. You know, they were listening to you. And here's a guy who's going to have the doctrinal positions that I have. I've had people call me and be convinced that I was a Pentecostal because they've been listening to the message I've been preaching on how the Holy Spirit works in our life. And they've wanted to come and attend and then they find out, well, I'm not a Pentecostal. Another person might come and think that this guy is a solid five-point Calvinist. So, you know, a guy came here to our church at one time. He said, I'm so Calvinistic. He says that I only grow tulips in front of my house. Tulip is the five-word acrostic for a strong Calvinistic theology. And I will tell them, listen, I'm of the reformed tradition, but I'm not a five-point Calvinist unless I get to make all the definitions. And if you listen to me, I can. And then I can be, but maybe I won't satisfy you, and I don't. So as soon as they find out I'm not, they might leave. No, instead, the first issue is they want to come in, and we had one young man who just wanted to debate his theological position with everyone. just wanted to make sure, and he was concerned that I would inhibit him, I would keep him from bringing to everybody the gospel of his theological position. I told this young man, no, you're free to say whatever you want. You're free to share your position any way you want. Here's just one proviso I want to give you as advice. If you're just trying to win a theological argument, people ultimately are not going to appreciate it, or you're just going to divide people up. But if instead, in your theological argument, you can just show that it causes you to be brought to the feet of the Lord Jesus where you're living in surrendered, loving worship before His feet. Even if they don't agree with the arguments, they'll love where it brought you. And they'll want to go with you to that point. So just make sure, let's have the debate, let's have the discussion, but let's get to that point always. Let's get to Christ. We're living in this surrendered obedience to Him. We need that more and more in the life of our churches today. 71 times in the book of Romans Paul is going to deploy the name of Christ. 31 times in Romans he's going to deploy the name of Jesus. 39 times he's going to refer to our Savior as Lord. 15 times in Romans, Paul is going to pull all those names together, and he's going to speak of the Lord Jesus Christ, or Jesus Christ our Lord. And 11 of those times, he states it in the possessive. He says, our Lord Jesus Christ, or Jesus Christ our Lord, or Christ Jesus our Lord. He can't get away. He cannot get away from casting the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ over everything that he says. Even as he's teaching these wonderful truths, at all, he has to constantly be interjecting the name of the Lord Jesus. You know when we were parents and our children now all of them have grown up and they've left their home but we knew when they were either infatuated or actually fall in love with somebody because all of a sudden we'd hear names of people that we didn't know being mentioned constantly around the house or at the dinner table and so when our daughters were in love we'd hear the name of the young man that they were in love with. When our son was in love he just wanted to drop the name of the young gal that he was in love with. It just It's just the way it is. It was the same way with me. When I fell in love with my wife, I wanted to just refer to her as often as I could when I was speaking to my friends and when I was speaking in my own home. I would find a way to drive the conversation so that I could drop her name. And you know, actually the habit hasn't changed. When I'm traveling and I'm speaking with individuals, I speak about my wife Nikki and I. When I'm traveling, oh, my wife Nikki and I like to travel to the Oregon coast. We'll be vacationing there. My wife Nikki and I have five children. My wife Nikki and I have 11 grandchildren. We're expecting two more. My wife Nikki and I. It's just the way it is. You remember how it was? If you don't remember that and that doesn't come to your mind, tell me which one of you didn't doodle somebody's name that you had a crush on when you were in grade school, right? On your piece of paper. You all wrote it down. We're all kind of like name droppers. Now if Paul would have doodled in his day, which he didn't because it was too expensive, the paper was too expensive, but he might have been the dirt. He would have doodled our Lord Jesus Christ, our Lord Jesus Christ, my Lord Jesus Christ, Jesus, the Lord Jesus Christ. He would have done it over and over and over again. First Corinthians chapter 2.2, Paul says this, I've determined to know nothing among you but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I just want to know Jesus among you. I just want Him to be the source of our conversation and what He's done for us. Philippians 3, 7-10. Take your Bibles there. Listen to Paul's testimony. Remember that phrase, Lord Jesus Christ, and the possessive as well. But what things were gained to me, these I've counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed, I count all things lost for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them but rubbish that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith, that I might know him. So, it's all about the Lord Jesus. John Newton wrote a song that gives expression to Paul's heart here. He writes how sweet the name of Jesus sounds in the believer's ear. It soothes his sorrows, heals his wounds, and drives away his fear. It makes the wounded spirit whole and calms the troubled breast. It's his manna to the hungry soul and to the weary rest. Dear name, the rock on which I build, my shield, my hiding place, my never-ending treasury filled with boundless stores of grace. Jesus, my shepherd, brother, friend, my prophet, priest, and king, my Lord, my life, my way, my end, accept the praise I bring. It's all about you. Frederick Faber said it this way, Jesus, Jesus, dearest Lord, forgive me if I say for very love thy precious name a thousand times a day. It's all about you. It's all about you. Again, there is a defect in anything we call Christian or in any doctrine we celebrate or any manner of conduct that we pursue that does not draw out from us a singular rallying point around our blessed Lord Jesus Christ. This is a warning to you who are pursuing those that you want to rally around for their doctrines, or their beliefs, or their truths, or what they're teaching, or what they're railing against, or what they're calling for. Find Jesus in it. Find Him so much in it, that He's what matters above everything else. This is a warning for the pastor. If for the work we're engaged in, ultimately as we look at it, demonstrates that we have little regard for His name, for His life, for His presence, for His being. No matter what we're doing, however valuable it may seem to be, it's not really Christian. That's not really of Christ. All this wonderful instruction is for us. It's for our benefit. All this wonderful instruction proves itself and that it brings us to Jesus Christ for our life, for our very being. Let's remember these things.