Transcript

Open your Bibles and let’s go to Galatians 4. Galatians 4 as I want to bring another Christmas message from Galatians 4:1-7. Our Luke study comes into the section where the Lord is speaking of the end times and particularly the great tribulation and I want to save that until after the Christmas holidays. It’s a weighty section in certainly the word of God and important, but we want to dive into that at the first of the year.

I’ve entitled this “In the Fullness of Time.” In the fullness of time. Paul writes to the church of Galatia, chapter 4, verse 1,

1 Now I say, as long as the heir is a child, he does not differ at all from a slave although he is owner of everything, 2 but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by the father. 3 So also we, while we were children, were held in bondage under the elemental things of the world. 4 But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, 5 so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. 6 Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” 7 Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.

In the fullness of time. I. Note our preconversion condition. Our preconversion condition. Let me say this just by way of introduction: when it comes to God doing something or you might even use the phrase “God showing up,” we’ve heard that phrase before, you never, ever can say, “Well, finally,” because God’s never late. He’s never early. Everything he does is according to his perfect divine timetable. God’s always right on time. Now, of course, so it was with the coming of Jesus. Born of the virgin. Laid in a feed trough in a stable in Bethlehem. It came at the precise perfect time ordained of God.

Here Paul writes to the Galatians, I. He talks about, first of all, our preconversion condition and he uses some analogies here and, again, when you see a parable or a biblical analogy, understand every point of it doesn’t line up perfectly but you’ve got to get the general gist of what the writer is saying. Now, A. in our outline, notice he uses the analogy that we were preconversion to be viewed as children without adult privileges. We were like children without adult privileges.

Now, he says you were a child and basically you had your father’s name and your name was on the family inheritance, it was really all yours, but while you’re a child, you don’t get to grasp it, enjoy it and live it out yet. The word “child” here just means “a minor; one who’s not of adult age; he’s one who is immature.” And Paul says here to the Galatians, look at chapter 4, “Now I say, as long as the heir is a child, he does not differ at all from a slave although he is owner of everything,” There may be slaves in the household, there were in this day in the Roman culture, and one may be a child, one may be a slave but as far as the privileges they are able to enjoy because the son is such a young child, he has not more freedoms or liberties than the slave of the household does. He says, “Before you’re saved, you’re like a slave in many ways,” even though, and I don’t know how you can get around seeing something of the sovereignty of God and that he calls them children even before the conversion experience here. He says, “They’re still children in the household but they function like slaves.” They haven’t come to fruition of where God is bringing them yet.

In verse 2 he says, “but he,” the little child in the Roman home, “is under guardians and managers until the date set by the father.” Now, the Roman culture, particularly the wealthy families, would always put their children under the watchful care of an overseer or a guardian until an age that was set by the father and when that particular age came and, by the way, the father set that age and I would assume they all picked pretty much the same age. But anyway, the father would pick a day and he would say, “On that day you enter adulthood.” As a matter of fact, in Roman culture of the day when the age that the father has established had come, they would enter official adulthood through a formal ceremony and they would get their toga virilis. The toga virilis was a new toga and I don’t know what it looked like but it had a different appearance and it marked them, “Now I am in adulthood.” And then from that point, the person was no longer a child but considered a young adult and they began to enjoy and be entrusted with the privileges and the wealth of the household. So that’s what the Lord Jesus is saying here.

So the analogy is that while we were lost, we may have been God’s child and if you want to go this far, it certainly doesn’t violate the text, you may have been one of God’s elect even but you are yet under the law. You are yet in the old order. You are yet just like a slave. You weren’t in your freedom yet. You didn’t enjoy the privileges yet. You hadn’t come to adulthood spiritually speaking. There was a guardian over you and, of course, the guardian is the law. The law is our tutor. The law is over us. As children growing up just to be functional in the home and in society, we teach children certain things they should do and certain things they should not do; certain people they must obey. At least that’s the way we used to teach them before the secular progressives came along and every lust and every childish and wicked fantasy somebody can dream up now is supposed to be applauded and praised. Can you believe that we have little children today claiming that they’re somehow transgendered and the parents are supporting that nonsense? Can you believe we live in a culture that would even think that way? It’s because we don’t know who man is. You see, we’re all depraved sinners and every child comes into the world with all kinds of depraved and wicked stuff floating through their minds. Our job is to take the word of God and lovingly but firmly guide them into truth, not to follow every lust their fallen heart might come up with. God forbid we continue on as a culture celebrating every wicked thing the depraved heart might lust after and that’s what we’ve become. I’m chasing a rabbit, but it’s a rabbit that ought to be chased.

But let me give you an encouraging word. I mean, in this dark world, how can it be that in the United States of America we have the abortion industry killing unborn babies, trying to keep the little unborn baby alive so they can get the most for the harvested body organs and body parts. I don’t know what else you can do with a culture like that but judge it, yet I do know from reading history and church history in particular, there have been very, very dark eras out of which God birthed a reformation and an awakening of purity and wholesomeness and God-centeredness. So let’s pray somehow in God’s grace that God is going to bring that awakening. It may indeed in a quiet way, in a small way, he is bringing that awakening. And by the way, he always does it through awakening his church and pray that in God’s grace, if indeed he’s doing that, we are right in the middle of it if not right at the front of it. And by the way, if our churches were what they ought to be and our churches had been what they should have been, we wouldn’t have this stuff going on in the culture. God has ordained his church to be his salt and his light. I’ve been saying it for years.

Did you know Southern Baptists have brought home 800 missionaries. Do you know why Southern Baptists have brought home 800 missionaries? Because the giving to missions has shrunk that much. Do you know why giving to missions has shrunk that much? Look, folks, who wants to sacrifice and give to missions when we’re preaching a Gospel that basically says the world’s got all the answers, we just need to make Christianity look more like the world. That’s what’s going on in our churches. It’s worldly. It’s nothing to sacrifice for, nothing to give generously toward. Look, I’ve been saying this for 35 years: the church is on the wrong track and now we’re seeing the results of this.

What am I talking about? Our preconversion condition. We are under guardians. We’re like little children who haven’t yet grown to the point of experiencing adult privileges. Now, this is all parallels to the spiritual realm. So he says you’re like a child without adult privileges. Now, why is he saying this to the Galatians? Because many people or some false teachers had crept into the Galatian church. And you’ve heard me say that before, haven’t you, about false teachers came into the Corinthian church and false teachers slipped into the Ephesian church or at least Paul warned that they would and now false teachers crept into the Galatian church and they began to teach that, “Yeah, the preaching of Christ is good and you must receive him but you must also add works of the law back into your Christianity and then you’ll really come to maturity.” The Apostle Paul turns that rightside up. He says, “No, that’s upside down. When you go back to works, when you go back to the law, you’re going back to immaturity like a child again. You come to maturity and adulthood spiritually speaking when you receive Jesus as Lord and Savior and your faith and trust is in Christ and his merit alone for your justification, your continued sanctification and your one day glorification.” So Paul, “These false teachers are radically warped. This is not in any way compliant with truth. You must repent of letting that influence come into your church and into your thinking. Go back to simple faith in Christ and reject works salvation or you’ll be like an adult man that goes back to play with toys in the nursery. Don’t go back there.”

Alright, number 2 or B in our preconversion condition he gives another analogy: we’re like slaves in bondage to a master. Look at verse 3, “So also we, while we were children, were held,” here it is, “in bondage.” That’s a strong word. It’s the picture of a slave in bondage. “Under the elemental things of the world.” So he says, “Before you come to Christ, you are prone, like all men are prone, to look to a works or achievement based approach to life and to a right standing before a holy God.” Now, let’s clarify some things. In time and space history, there has to be a works and reward and merit system for daily living whether it’s raising the child or somebody working in your business. That’s proper, good and right. The Bible teaches that, however, that’s not proper, good or right when it comes to your standing before God. He says, “So don’t go back to the elementary principles of how God has ordained the world to function in this temporal physical realm when you’re thinking about your eternal standing before an eternal and holy God.” Don’t go back to the elementary, the common way men would approach things because that’s basically what they were tempted to do.

Now, spiritually speaking, we are dead before God in trespasses and sin, Ephesians 2:1. Spiritually speaking, the prophet Jeremiah said, our hearts, the very nature of our hearts are desperately wicked. Now, why is that doctrine so important? And why do I, your pastor, preach that doctrine so often? Because you must grasp the truth that the core nature of your being is offensive to God and if you grasp that, then you obviously grasp so no work, no performance, no rite, no ritual, no human priest, no sacrament, no ordinance, nothing I can do can possibly make this wretched heart do anything that is pleasing or gains merit before God. So he says, “Don’t go back to that mentality. That’s what you do when you hire people to work for you. There is works. There is rewards. That’s good. That’s elementary to the world, but that’s not how men come to God.”

But isn’t it so tempting to do that? It’s just in our system. How many people in my 35 years of ministry have I counseled with, good folks and I believe they know and love Christ, but they just go back and back and back and back to, “Well, this happened. Well, I did that. Well, I struggled here. Well, I failed there. Well, I didn’t do this and I didn’t do that.” Well, yes, maybe you should have done all those things and you ought to be humble and a repenter and 99% of the time they are humble and repentant, and instead of seeing that as evidence that they are one who knows Christ because they would not be as humble and repentant if they didn’t know Christ. But when you know Christ, there is a repentant humility that registers in the soul that causes you to feel that you don’t measure up, but at the same time in the same faith, you accept the truth about yourself, accept the truth about Christ, that he is the sufficient one to cause you to be righteous before a holy God.

So he says, “When you go back to the law, you’re like a slave functioning in bondage again.” The slave in a household is very different than a son. You must understand you do not come to God by works or by merit, but in man’s lostness and in man’s blindness, his spiritual darkness, man naturally concludes unless God intervenes in his heart that he can find salvation through some system, some religion. Now by the way, this would include the liberal secularist who finds their own works, if you will, and their philosophies or approaches to life in culture and family life or whatever it may be, we all look to some system, some thing, some strategy, you might could call it, whereby we think we’re going to be right and ultimately we’re going to stand as right before a holy God.

Now, through the ages we’ve seen man-made religion after man-made religion pop up that is built on human works and merit, not built on the merit of Jesus Christ in our place. The Jehovah’s Witnesses. The Mormons. Some sects of professing Christianity are just based on works and human merit. Now, they use the same Scriptures we use very often. They use some of the same terminology we use. Well, listen, you’ve got to have discernment. You heads of the household must have discernment for your families. Your wives and your children need you to be the one who can discern between a guy who can use a lot of Scripture and a guy who knows the word. Do you understand that? Hitler used a lot of Scripture from time to time but he certainly wasn’t a man of the word. He certainly didn’t preach the word.

And so we see these things in every generation. The Galatians had it in their generation where man-centered, works based, ritual salvation is taught and relied upon and Paul says, “Look, you’re not advancing in maturity, you’re going back into slavery. You’ve been adopted out of slavery as a child of God and a son of God, don’t go back to the elementary things.” It’s like a man going to the library, an adult man with a good intellect goes to the library and he’s sitting over there and you would look at him and think, “What’s he doing? He’s got some little blocks.” And you look at those little blocks and on each block is a letter of the alphabet and he’s going over the alphabet. You think, “Why would a grown adult man be sitting in a library going over the alphabet?” No, what he ought to be doing is reading the Encyclopedia Britannica. He ought to be studying the great works of literature. Well, that’s what Paul says you’re doing, you’re going back to ridiculous immaturities and infancies in your spirituality when you reject faith in Christ alone and you go back to works or religion based salvation. So instead of being mature and instead of being intelligent, you are actually becoming immature and ignorant.

So our preconversion condition, we were in the stage of becoming something but we were like children. We knew there was a God and we knew he had absolutes, but we didn’t grasp how to know God and enjoy God and enjoy the inheritance he has for his children. And we were like slaves that slaves can never really advance beyond slavery. They’re never a pure bred born child of the family. And we were held in bondage under the rules of our taskmaster, the law.

Now Paul goes on and says, “But God did something while we were in those conditions.” Verses 4 through 7, we come to our post-conversion condition. Our post-conversion condition. A. would be: rescued and redeemed by Christ. Rescued and redeemed by Christ. Notice how he says this, “But.” So often the word has those conjunctive words that radically change the situation. “But when the fullness of time came.” In other words, why the children were not to adulthood and they were laboring, nothing more than a slave. And while you were, in a sense, a slave and laboring under the taskmaster of the law, at the absolute perfect time to perform his perfect will and achieve his perfect purpose of saving for himself a people, “God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law.” You see, the incarnation of Christ was not an accident. The incarnation of Christ was an appointment. He was born at the foreordained fullness of time.

Now, scholars speculate that God had in his providence worked out that the Roman empire ruled the known world. Rome had built these fabulous roads all over their empire that anybody could travel on so that the Gospel could travel fully and freely all across the known world. And the Romans had instituted a common language all over the world so it would be easier for the Gospel to be preached and shared with all peoples. That may very well be true, but what we do know is that God brought Jesus at the set time.

You see, there was a set time when God created Adam in the Garden of Eden. There was a set time that after Adam and Eve sinned that God clothed them and covered their guilt with the sacrifice of an animal on their behalf. There was a set time when after wickedness and depravity filled the earth, that God brought the flood and destroyed all of mankind but Noah. There was a set time when God throttled the thinking of those who would build a tower in Babylon whereby by their own efforts and merits they thought they could reach God and God confused their tongues and wouldn’t let it happen. There was a set time when God called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees to go to a land that he would show him. There was a set time when God called Isaac to be the patriarch and spiritual father of all of God’s children. There was a set time when God called Jacob and a set time when God broke Jacob and humbled Jacob and caused him to be the man of God that God needed him to be and he changed his name to Israel. There was a set time when Joseph became Prime Minister of the pagan nation of Egypt. There was a set time when Joseph’s brothers journeyed to Egypt, found out that it was Joseph who ruled in Egypt, and they began to multiply and populate it and become a great nation even under Egyptian bondage. There was a set time when God called Moses to lead the children of Israel out of Egyptian bondage. There was a set time when God called Joshua to lead those children across the Jordan and enter into the Promised Land. There was a set time when God led his people through judges. There was a set time when God led his people through kings. Then in the fullness of time, a virgin was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit and at the set time she gave birth to a son, her firstborn, wrapped him in cloths and laid him in a feed trough in a stable in Bethlehem. In addition, there was a set time when God called him at about 30 years of age to begin his public preaching and discipling ministry. Then there was a set time about three years into that ministry when God commissioned Jesus to turn from that ministry and go to his real reason for coming and he set his face like flint and headed to Jerusalem. There was a set time when Pilate declared him to be crucified to accommodate and to call off the riot that the Jews were basically pledging to bring if they didn’t get their way with Jesus of Nazareth. There was a set time when they nailed him to the tree. There was a set time when he breathed his last and took the wrath of God for the sins of his children. And there was a set time when he rose again from the grave. There was a set time when he met with his disciples and told them and gave them their marching orders. And there is a set time when he’s coming again to reestablish his kingdom on planet earth. Nothing just happens. “In the fullness of time,” Paul writes to the Galatians, “God sent forth His Son.”

Now, he goes on and, by the way liberal theologian, by the way liberal pastor, the Scripture doesn’t stop there. You don’t get to interpret the coming of Jesus the way you want to. You don’t get to put your humanist, worldly, man-centered spin on what the coming of Jesus means. Verse 5 tells us what the coming of Jesus means, “so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.” Praise his name.

First of all, the Bible says he was born under the law. He was born under the law. Let me talk about that just for a moment before I get into verse 5 any further. You see, the Father did something to the Son, Jesus, he’s not done with any of his other children: he put Jesus under the law. He doesn’t put you under the law to gain acceptance before him, but he did put Jesus under the law. And Jesus labored both under the ceremonial law and the moral law of God. Matthew 5:17, Jesus said, “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.” And when Jesus died on the cross, as he breathed his last, he had known no sin nor committed any sin and at that point he had perfectly fulfilled all the ceremonial and moral law of holy God. Then at that moment in a radical reversal, the Father completely changed his view of his Son Jesus Christ and instead of looking upon him as the infinitely holy, beautiful, righteous Son, he now looked upon Jesus as a sinful, miserable, wrath-deserving wretch, as a lawbreaker even. 2 Corinthians 5:21, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf.”

Now, why did God in a radical reversal on the cross look upon Jesus as a sinner? Verse 5, “so that He might redeem those who were under the Law,” under that curse, under that wrath, and they “might receive the adoption as sons.” Now, redeemed, as we know, is a word from the slave trade of the day. It’s how someone would purchase a slave and set them free and that’s exactly what God did. He sent his Son Jesus to die on the cross and he purchased us off the slave market. Now, listen now, he purchased us out of childhood just like the Roman father would take his son out of childhood, put the new toga on him and present him as adult. Jesus purchased us, he changes our toga. He said, “You used to be a child with none of the rights and privileges but now instantly through my Son Christ, I present you as one, a joint heir with my Son Jesus Christ.” What a picture. So we have now an adoption as sons, verse 5 tells us. You see, the moment you’re saved, you come into God’s kingdom as an adult son enjoying all the benefits of the family, enjoying the liberties as an adult, being a full joint heir of the Lord Jesus Christ. So we’ve been rescued and redeemed by Jesus.

Secondly, B. in our outline: we’re exalted to sonship and a divine inheritance. In verses 6 and 7, notice the whole of the Trinity is involved in this. He says, “Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!'” So here we have God the Father sent the Son. The Son came and died for us. And then the Son sends the Holy Spirit to come and live in us. So in the very truest sense, we are not God’s possessions like a slave was in this day, we are actually precious sons.

Let’s think for just a moment about the contrast between sonship and slavery because that’s one of the metaphors he’s using here that you’re not a slave, you’re a son. First of all, the son has the same nature as the father; the slave does not have the same nature. The Bible says we have become partakers of the divine nature. God, through his Spirit, has made us partakers of the divine nature. Now, one of Paul’s points here is, “See if the law can do that for you. See if keeping some rules can change your very nature.” It can’t do that.

Not only that, but the son also has a father; the servant only has a master. You see, no servant, no slave could ever call his master Abba, Father, but we can call our Father that in heaven.

The son obeys out of love; the servant obeys out of fear. It’s a beautiful thing when our children grow up and they begin to keep our values and obey our rules because they love us and see the wisdom in them. When God changes your heart, a seed develops in you whereby you no longer labor in some sort of self-centered coercion that maybe if I do enough right, God will take me. No! You know he’s already accepted you through Christ fully and you begin to want to honor him, serve him, give to his work, be faithful in his local church because you’ve grown to love him. That’s what a son does. A slave never functions out of love.

The son is rich; the slave is poor. The Bible says we’re both sons and heirs because we come into the family as adult sons and we immediately can begin drawing upon our inheritance. You know, one of the wonderful things we draw upon as God’s son is we enjoy the people, the family, God has redeemed for himself. Do you know one of the main reasons Jesus saved you is because he wants you to be with him and enjoy him and him enjoy you forever. And we enjoy something of that now if we’re in a true church. I’m not talking about churches where you just go through the motions and they’re just collecting all kinds of membership. I mean where the Spirit of God has actually regenerated the hearts of individual members and those individual members have shown that regeneration by repentance toward God and faith in Jesus Christ, therefore knowing that God has added them to his church and we get to enjoy that fellowship. That’s one of the riches of the inheritance we have. The riches of grace. The riches of his glory. The riches of his goodness. The riches of his wisdom. And as you mature in Christ, you’re studying your Bible as I get to every week in preparing to preach or getting ready for your small group lesson. You’re having your devotional time in the morning and you’re reading the truths of God and deep down in your spiritual man, a joy wells up in you that’s greater than all the joys of the earth combined. Not that all the joys of the earth are somehow wrong, they’re just not to be compared with the spiritual joys we have in Christ Jesus.

Now, you and I are seeing the vile, corrupt wickedness of a world without God. Are we not seeing that right now? Aren’t you glad, folks, we have pleasures the world knows not of? So we’re right now enjoying the pleasures as an adult member of the family of God. Now, there’s a sense in which we are a little bit like a wealthy heir, a son maybe, who’s off on a journey. His name’s on everything. He’s begun to enjoy all that the family has, but while he’s on the journey he doesn’t actually get to put his hands on a lot of it and physically enjoying it, but as soon as he gets home, he gets to do every bit of that and that’s where we are in this pilgrimage right now.

So let me make something clear. When we talk about that we are babes in Christ, listen to me now: babes in Christ means we are only babes in understanding, not what we have in the sense of knowing Jesus Christ. You have it all as adults now, you’re just a babe in grasping all that it is yet. The Bible says we see through a mirror dimly. We see dimly. The light comes on a little bit more as we grow in Christ but we don’t see it all yet but we will one day. We’ll see it all to the full.

Now, in keeping with the analogy Paul pictured here, I want to bring this out in closing and that is that there is a sense, I guess, where we are not fully adopted. Now, we’re officially adopted but in the Roman culture of the day when a boy was adopted, first there had to be a price paid to whoever was the caretaker or whoever was giving the child up. And the Roman family, the wealthy Roman family, would pay for the child and it was official right there, but often it was some time later before that little boy was presented before family and friends in the community, “This is now my son.” There was a formal ceremony yet to happen and I think that’s very true for us. We are fully and officially God’s child now, but there is coming a day, now listen to me, when we’re going to be revealed as the sons of God and all of his glory which we will share, now listen to me, and there will be a sense in which all of those who scoffed and ridiculed and mocked and reviled us for our doctrine and for our convictions will be put to eternal shame and we will know eternal glory.

As a child of God, you stay by the truth of the word of God. I don’t care what this culture does. God’s going to redeem. God’s going to glorify. God’s going to manifest. God’s going to unveil his children in a formal and official ceremony one day and make sure you’re one that will be unveiled with him on that day. That’s what Paul is getting to here.

So that’s why Jesus came. That’s why he was born. He was born, he came into this world that you might be released from the bondage of slavery to the law into the joy of grace adoption as a full son of God and a full heir of all that God is and all that God has. And God accomplished, now listen to me, he accomplished all of this on your behalf through the merits of his Son Jesus Christ. I want you to leave this service today from your heart crying out, “O Christ, I take you. O Christ, my faith is in you. My confidence is in you.” If I come to your deathbed one day and you’re still with it enough to have cognitive thoughts in your mind and I’m talking to you, I want you to say, “Oh pastor, I have Christ. I have Christ.” Not, “I walked an aisle.” Not, “I jumped through a hoop.” “I know Christ. My faith wasn’t just a thing that happened in a revival meeting, it’s a reality that stays in my heart.” It may have started there, it may have started a lot of places, oh, but I want you to have that abiding trust in Christ.

The Son of God became on Christmas the Son of man at least in the physical sense. The Son of God became the Son of man so that the sons of men could become the sons of God. Paul writes to the Galatians, “Don’t go back to anything else. Don’t go back to the law. Don’t go back to legalism. Don’t go back to works. Don’t go back to circumcision. Don’t go back to the philosophies of the world and add those to Jesus because that’s like going back to infancy. It’s pitiful and pathetic when you see an adult person who has the mind of a child. Don’t do that. Don’t go from the adoption as a precious son back into the slavery and bondage of the old elemental principles of the world and the law. Enjoy, rejoice in the liberties of grace. Salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone.” That’s why he came, to give us that salvation full and free.

Now, if you like that kind of salvation would you say amen? I like that kind of salvation, do you know why? Now listen to me, not because it’s our kind, it’s the only kind there is. If that doesn’t save you, you don’t get saved. You don’t get saved if Jesus doesn’t save you. But I’ve got a promise for you from the word of God: whoever believes in him will not be disappointed. If you will turn to him, he will save you. “Pastor, what about election and foreknowledge and predestination?” Every bit of it’s true and if you’ll repent of your sin and believe on Jesus, you’re one of those. Whosoever will may come. If you will, he will take you, amen?

He will save you. Oh, with all of our failure and all of our weaknesses and all of our shortcomings, don’t you get sick of yourselves? I was going to say don’t you get sick of me but don’t say amen on that. We get sick of ourselves. Sick of our sin and sick of our proneness and sick of our weakness. Sick of our wondering, “O God, save me from me! And save me from the wrath to come.” Do you know what he says? He sits on the throne of heaven, a lot better than this, and he looks over at his right hand and there is Jesus, nail prints in his hands, spear gashing wound in his side, and he says, “Based on the merits of what he’s performed for you, not guilty. You’re free, forgiven forever period.”

I think I’m going to start over and just preach the whole sermon again. Do you know him? Oh, listen, I plead with you. I plead with you: do you know him? Do you know him? He’s mighty to save. You say, “Pastor, what must I do?” You must know you’re a sinner. You must know that in the heart of your being, “I can’t bring anything. I can’t do anything. I can’t merit anything. All I bring is filth and wretchedness and offensiveness and ruin to you, my God, but Jesus died to forgive even me and I take Christ.” Come, you sinners, seek his grace whose wrath you cannot bear. Flee to the shelter of the cross and you’ll find salvation there.

Let’s stand together in prayer.