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Sermon 2019-11-03 Geoff Follas
GETTING RIGHT WITH GOD
All the religions in the world are human systems invented by people to try and put right the wrongs they have done, to make themselves better people, acceptable to God and good enough to enter heaven.
Hindus teach that through offering sacrifices, religious works, ascetic practices they can get rid of their sins and release themselves from the cycle of reincarnation and become one with God.
Buddhists teach that through spiritual exercises such as meditation they can remove all desire and release themselves from the cycle of reincarnation and experience Nirvana [heaven], a state of blessed nothingness.
Muslims believe that through faithfully carrying out the 5 pillars of their faith – Confessing their belief, praying 5 times a day, fasting during Ramadan, giving to the poor and making a pilgrimage to Mecca they stand a good chance of getting to heaven.
New Age movement [which is a western version of Hinduism] believes that through carrying out certain spiritual exercises you will achieve self-realisation, self-improvement and discover the god within, which is you.
The Jews believe that through faithfully obeying all the commandments of God they can become morally good enough to gain entry into heaven.
What is common to all these religions is that they teach you can only become good enough for God and heaven by your own efforts. All the onus is on you. They are DIY religions.
This appeals to the human ego. There is a proud, independent, self-sufficient spirit in human beings that wants to get to heaven by our own efforts so that we can say, “I deserve to be here, I did it all by myself without anyone’s help.” Even that attitude is offensive to God and yet there are many people in Bible-believing churches who still hold to this teaching.
Not so long ago a survey was carried out in the US among 7,000 church-going young people.
60% believed that they would be accepted by God if they sincerely tried to live a good life.
70% believed that God would be satisfied if a person lives the best life they can.
50% believe that the main emphasis of the Gospel is God’s rules for living right.
I have asked many Christians over the years, “Do you know you are going to heaven when you die?” “I hope so.” In most cases, they are thinking, “If I am good enough. If I work hard enough at being a Christian.”
That is so sad and it is a deception because no one, no matter how hard they work, how good they try to be, can ever, ever measure up to God’s perfect moral standard. We have all failed to make the grade in attitude, action or lack of action.
It is impossible to make ourselves morally good enough for God and heaven.
Only God can make us good enough. And that is the main emphasis of the Gospel. What we could never do, God has done for us through Jesus.
Jesus came into this world to make us right with God and to sacrifice His life so that that could happen.
The only moral standard that God will accept is perfect obedience to His moral laws 100% of the time without a single failure in attitude and action.
It’s a bit like this. Imagine if we all stood at the bottom of the North Island and had a competition to see how far out from the shore we could reach by running down the beach and jumping into the sea. Some people would think they did well if they jumped two metres. Some might even they were the winners if they reached 3 metres. But if they were told that the winner is the one who jumps all the way to the South Island they wouldn’t feel so proud of their pathetic attempts
Lots of people think they have done really well because they have managed to keep some of God’s moral laws some of the time. But their attempts fall so far short of the goal, it’s not funny. God’s standard is that we keep all of His moral laws all of the time in attitude and in action without failing once.
No human being has ever been able to reach that standard except Jesus Christ. And the Good news of the Gospel is that when you believe in Jesus, God gives you as a gift the moral perfection of Jesus and that makes you acceptable to God and gives you entry into His heaven. Perfect righteousness.
In v21-24 we see that through Jesus Gods moral goodness, His perfect righteousness is:
Obtained apart from the law, Confirmed in the Old Testament, Received by faith, Given by grace, Purchased at great cost, applied to all generations.
OBTAINED APART FROM THE LAW v21
No one has ever been able to make themselves good enough for God and heaven by keeping His the moral laws, so God has chosen to make us morally good enough Himself.
CONFIRMED IN THE OLD TESTAMENT v21
Paul points out that this teaching is nothing new. There are examples in the Old Testament where God forgave people and declared them morally good even though they did not perfectly keep His moral laws.
One of these Old Testament characters was Abraham.
The Bible says that Abraham believed God and because he believed God, God declared Him righteous, morally acceptable.
Isaiah 61 speaking about the future ministry of Jesus says, “I am overwhelmed with joy in the Lord my God!
For he has clothed me with the garment of salvation
and covered me with the robe of righteousness.”
Notice this is God’s doing, it’s not someone making themselves righteous by obeying all the moral laws.
RECEIVED BY FAITH v22
In the Old Testament, people tried to become righteous by behaving, now, because of what Jesus has done we can become righteous by believing.
This believing is not simply intellectually agreeing that Jesus died for our sins, even Satan believes that. This faith involves personally receiving God’s gift of forgiveness, righteousness and eternal life by faith.
By faith, I accept what Jesus has done for me at the cross and I reach out in faith to God and receive His gift personally.
Until the middle of last century Tuberculosis or the white plague was widespread and killed one in every three people who contracted the disease. Then in 1944, a cure for tuberculosis was discovered by Selman Waksman. He developed an antibiotic from a fungus and after testing it on patients found that in nearly every case the cure was 100%. Many people who had tuberculosis, read about the discovery and even read the testimonies of doctors and patients and believed that it was true but they still died of tuberculosis. Why? Because they didn’t personally take the medication that was available to them.
Faith in Jesus is more than just agreeing that He can morally clean up your life and make you acceptable to God. You need to give yourself to Him and allow Him to do that. You have to make a commitment.
God’s forgiveness, acceptance and moral purity are of no use to us unless we receive them by faith.
GIVEN BY GRACE v24
Paul says here that we have been justified freely by His grace. One of the best ways we can describe the word justify is “just if I had never sinned”. Because of Jesus death on the cross, God now accepts us as if we had never ever done a thing wrong in our life.
But the big question is, “Why has God chosen to forgive, accept and welcome us into His eternal family?” And the answer is ‘grace’. Instead of giving us what we deserve which is punishment, God has chosen to give us what we don’t deserve which is forgiveness and eternal life.
Why has He done this? I don’t know and I will never understand this. The unexplainable kindness and mercy of God. If I was God and had been treated by mankind the way He has, I would have given up on them long ago. I would have written them off as a lost cause.
But this is not how God acted – even though we have all turned our backs on Him, rejected Him, disobeyed His moral laws and abused His gifts, He chose to reach out in love and show undeserved kindness to us. That is grace. And it is what makes Christianity utterly unique.
This is nothing we can earn, deserve or work for – it is undeserved gift of God to us.
Someone has put it like this: “God’s mercy is when He doesn’t give us what we do deserve. God’s grace is when he does give is what we don’t deserve.”
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England there was an assassination attempt on her life. A woman disguised herself as one of the queen’s assistants and hid in her bedroom so she could creep up on her and stab her. This woman didn’t know that the queen’s bedroom was also thoroughly checked out before she went to bed and the assassin was discovered and brought before the queen. The woman realised that she had committed treason and would be executed, so she threw herself on her knees and begged and pleaded for mercy and grace.
Queen Elizabeth looked at her coldly and quietly said,
“If I show you grace, what will you promise me in return?” The woman looked up and said, “Grace that has conditions, is not grace at all.” The queen said to her, “You are right. I choose to show grace to you and pardon you.” The woman was released. History tells us that from that moment this woman who tried to assassinate the queen became the most devoted, faithful servant the queen ever had. When someone experiences the undeserved grace and kindness of God that is the way they respond.
PURCHASED AT GREAT COST v25
Although God’s forgiveness and acceptance is His free gift to us, it was not cheap, it cost Him dearly.
Before God could forgive and accept us, he had to ensure that our wrongs and offences were justly dealt with. His moral law demanded that.
How would you feel if you were watching the news one night on TV and they announced that a man had been found guilty of murder and the judge had decided not to sentence him but to acquit him and set him free?
Can you imagine the public outcry? The relatives of the victim would be outraged and the public would be calling for the judge’s resignation. That would be an abuse of justice.
That deep sense of justice in us that demands crime must be punished comes from God. If God simply forgave us and allowed our sins to go unpunished He would be as unjust as an earthly judge who allowed a convicted criminal to go free without paying for his crime.
How could God offer us forgiveness and set us free and at the same time ensure that our wrongdoing was punished. This is where the cost comes in – He chose to take the punishment and the serve the sentence Himself in the person of His own Son.
APPLIED TO ALL GENERATIONS v26
Paul says something very interesting here. When God forgave people before Jesus came to earth, the penalty for their sin still needed to be paid and Hebrews tells us that even their animal sacrifices could not really atone for their sins.
Do you realise there were people who believed in Jesus before He came to earth [Abraham and David to name a couple] and through believing in the coming Messiah they received God’s forgiveness.
Paul says that the penalty for their sins was left unpaid until Jesus came and when Jesus died on the cross He not only paid the penalty for our sins but for theirs as well. That simply means that no one before or after the cross could be forgiven without the demands of Gods justice being met.
Many years ago the evangelist, Billy Graham was driving through a small town in America and he was stopped by a policeman and charged with speeding. Billy accepted he was in the wrong but was told by the officer that he would have to appear in court. The judge said to Billy, “How do you plead?” When Billy pleaded guilty, the judge replied, “I fine you ten dollars — a dollar for every mile you went over the limit.” Suddenly the judge recognised who Billy was. “Mr Graham, you have broken the law, and legally the fine must be paid — but I am going to pay the fine for you.”
He took a ten dollar bill from his own wallet, attached it to the ticket, and then took Billy Graham out and bought him dinner. “That,” said Billy Graham, “is how God has chosen to treat us.”
God offers us forgiveness, acceptance and His moral goodness as a free gift to be received by faith but it cost Him dearly to give it to us.
He had to sacrifice His own Son.
At the cross God took my sin, pride, selfishness, rebellion and He placed it on Jesus and judged Him for it, instead of me. Then He took the moral perfection, sinlessness, the purity of Jesus and placed it on me. When God looks at me He no longer sees my failures, my offences, my wrongdoing – He sees the moral purity of Jesus.
I only recently discovered recently that the Chinese character for the word righteousness is a lamb on top and the pronoun for me underneath. When God looks down upon me, He doesn’t see me, He sees the Lamb. The pure morally perfect, spotless Lamb of God Jesus. I am covered by the Lamb, the lamb that was sacrificed for me. His perfect moral purity covers me and God accepts me because of that.
In Norway, there is a church that has the statue of a lamb on its steeple instead of a cross. Many years ago one of church members was repairing the church roof and he fell off the roof. Below the roof was a stone pavement and the man would certainly have been killed, but at the very moment he fell a shepherd was leading a flock of sheep past the church and the mans fall was broken when he landed on one of the sheep. The soft body of the sheep saved the man’s life, but the sheep’s neck was broken and it died. The church folk were so grateful that the man’s life was saved by the sheep that they made a statue of the lamb and attached it to the steeple. It also reminded them that our lives were saved by the Lamb of God Jesus, who gave His life in rescuing us.