Sermon Transcript:
What a great day so far, huh? Uh,
missed you. Last week, I was preaching at a church that was celebrating their 100 and 14th anniversary, and so the pastor there, one of our pastors, asked me if I could come preach, and so, but that's what you get with an interim pastor. He gets to go and do other things. You know,
today we're going to talk about the justified gospel. We're going to be in Galatians again, chapter three, the last seven verses, 23 through 29 one of those big words justification
found throughout the Bible and and it's a complicated word, but it's a really essential word that we need today. You see, today we're going to step into this theme of justification to try to understand what it means to be truly forgiven of our sins. See,
the good news is that Jesus and His awestruck love for people, his love for the planet,
shows his justification towards us. When he said, I forgive you.
I forgive you.
And he says, I'll forgive you forever. See, that's what justification means. It means becoming righteous in the presence of God. You see, we could never clean up our lives enough to come in, in the presence of a holy God to say, I'm no longer doing this. God, I'm no longer doing this. Look at me. I'm no longer doing this. All of those things are are good things, and we do those because we want to be a better person. But that is not justification. That is just you stopping doing something that's bad for your life. We're justified because of what he does did on the cross. So remember this in simple terms, it's just as if you'd never sinned,
justified, just as if you'd never sinned. See, now most of you know I'm not a wordsmith. I'm a I'm a simple guy. I try to connect with the masses. I don't like to use a lot of Greek and Hebrew. That was, those are very hard classes that I took and
difficult to understand,
but if you can please lean in this morning, pay close attention, take notes, and again, if, if you're not a note taker and you want my notes, hit me up with a text. I'll send them to you. I like to share because I want people to know more about who Christ is in their life, so you can begin this process of living a justified life, and you don't have to hold grudges anymore. You don't have to assume the worst in people. You don't have to allow other people's sins to be part of your life, and they don't have to knock you off your path because you live a justified life, you live as if you really are forgiven. Could you imagine living like that, so victorious that you know, we on the shadow of a doubt that you've been forgiven forever, and you get to live life like that. And so many times As believers, we live like this. We're just beaten down. Oh, this, and this is going on, and life is horrible, and, you know, it's, it's so much negativity you almost don't even want to watch TV with all the political ads that are going on now, it's like, this person's horrible. This person, she said, you're just like,
just enough already. We
want to live a victorious life in Christ.
All the doctrines of the Bible are important, but this one doctrine, I think, is the most vital. It gives you the most peace on how to live that life. Because I think sometimes we like to go back to the cross and pick our sins back up and act like we're the ones that have to carry them around. We act like we're going to carry that burden. Jesus never said to do that. He said to give it to him, leave it at the cross and walk in faithfulness, walk in victory, walk in justification. The follower of Christ does not get to
do those things. The peak of the Christian life is being knowing that you're justified by faith. You see, forgiveness is amazing. Pardon is amazing. Cleansing is amazing. But justification, it's forever. You get to stand righteous before Holy God. You see one day the Bible says we're going to stand before I'm going to use a Greek word called Bama, that's the judgment seat of Christ, B, E, M, a, we're going to stand before the Bama, and we're going to give an account for the life that we lived. We're going to tell God, oh, wait a minute. He's going to tell us what we did. We're going to give an account for the life that the life that we lived,
and it's not going to be us bringing up anything. God's going to say
for the believer, well done, good and faithful servants for the non believer that are going to stand before the same judgment seat. He's going to say, away from me, I never knew you. And you
see at that moment, you're not going to be able to be able to say, but I did this, and I did that, at that moment, the only thing you're going to be able to say is, Yes, Lord, you see, you can either give your life to Christ voluntarily this morning. Are you going to do it involuntarily on that day? Because you will confess?
That Jesus, Christ is Lord of all and you will bend your knee and you will fall prostrate, and you will know that he is who he says he is. But you gotta do it while you're alive on this earth,
because even if you do those things at that time, and you never accepted Christ as your Lord and Savior, he's going to send you to the abyss.
And the hardest thing about hell, the
hardest thing about hell, is this
that you will know that you're living eternally apart from God for the rest of eternity. It's not about the heat, it's not about the flesh falling out. It's not about the gnashing of teeth, it's not about all of that stuff. The reality is is you're going to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you're going to live in eternity apart from God, and it's going to be forever in your heart.
Now that breaks my heart, because how many times Sunday after Sunday or whenever somebody witnesses to you do you have the opportunity to say, I want Jesus for myself. I want to make sure when I stand on that day that I'm able to stand that he's going to say, Well done, good and faithful servant.
You see in Paul's day
and during the Reformation time, when we just had reformation Sunday, which was or reformation celebration was October 31 Did you know Halloween is the same day? Martin Luther Penn, the 95 thesis to the he nailed it to the church posts, and he said, No more. Will we start listening to all this garbage, no matter who's bringing the message, the priest, the the deacon, whatever we're going to go by the the Scripture and the Scripture only. And that's why he did that, and it's made a difference in our life. We are living in the Reformation period. We have said enough of that, and we want more of Jesus, more of what he's done for us. So let's get started. Galatians 323, through 29 stand with me as we read from God's Word. I'm going to read from the New International Version. You read from whatever version that God has placed on your heart. And what you read from some of you use the ESV, the New Living Translation, the King James, whatever you use, I want you to see what God is going to speak to this morning. It said, before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the the faith that was to come would be revealed.
So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. So in Christ, Jesus, you are all children of God through faith. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, nor slave, nor free, nor is there male or female, for you are all one in Christ, Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. Now we can't say, Amen to that. That's an amazing text that we have before us this morning, Father, we give you thanks and praise and we thank you for this day in Christ's name, I pray. Amen, you may have a seat
now if you've been with us throughout this series, back in earlier in the passage in Galatians, chapter three and verse two, Paul is still kind of answering these questions that he asked in verse two, he said,
I would like to learn just this one thing from you. Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by believing what you heard? And so he's going on and answering this question throughout the
the chapter. And so my first point this morning is being justified by the faith. Now
you've heard justified by faith, well, I'm going to take what Paul's doing in this text. He calls it the faith. He puts this word in front of it because he's wanting us to know it's not just faith in anything, but it's faith in the faith. And the faith is Jesus Christ. We have to have faith in the faith. Who is Christ? Paul, in distinctly uses this participle for, I don't know if you have any English gurus here, but that's what the it's describing the word faith. He doesn't just say faith, but he says the faith. You may have a translation that doesn't use that in a second part of the verse. It may say this FAITH or THE COMING faith. And that's it means the same thing. It's a time before the Christian faith had come to us, had come to be so that's what he's talking about. And so look at verse 23 we were held in custody under the law. We were prisoners under the law. Why I think about that? I go, Paul, what are you talking about man? When? When Moses was given the 10 Commandments by God and He gave it to the people, wasn't that a good thing for us to understand how to measure up to God? You see, I think I say yes, but I want to remind you that the law was given for people to know what sin was.
Maybe.
You maybe and hear me. The 10 Commandments were given to us so that we could know what sin was. We're only to worship one God. We're not to take His name in vain. We will not have idols. We keep the Sabbath, holy honor, Mom and Dad, don't steal, don't cheat, don't lie, all of those things. Don't covet, don't commit adultery, all of those things that we can understand, those are sins. And that's what the law was given for, for us to see what those sins were that offend God.
They weren't meant for us to be saved.
And so many times we think of we'll just follow these rules. God is going to love me. Well, Paul wants to make sure that we understand you're a prisoner. If you think that you're going to follow a rule and follow God,
you're just you're locked up. He said, You're, you're you're being guarded by a guardian. The law was never intended to save people, but to point to a need for a Savior, doesn't that make sense? Now, when we read it, we go, we can never measure up. I've I stole yesterday, I lied yesterday, I cheated on a test. I took God's name in vain. You know, every time you say, OMG, you're taking God's name in vain. Sorry, young people, but it's the truth. We think it's funny to to say those things, right? We've even abbreviated it, OMG.
I hope you spell it with a little g, because it ain't my god. That you're talking about, my god spelled with a capital G, and his name is Jesus. You see, Paul says, while we wait for a savior, we are under the law. So this morning, if you've never asked Jesus personally into your life. Guess what? You're still under the Law. You still gotta try to measure up, to make to make God happy in your life or with your in your life. You see, you're still under the Law.
When you think of a prison seal, we think of a awful place no freedom.
But think about this,
what you don't realize is, when you're in jail, you protect yourself from yourself.
You can no longer do all those crazy things. That's why they have em. You can no longer be free to cause hay havoc on the society. So Paul compares our time under law like being in jail and he protected out of trouble until we could be free, not actually a bad thing, because Jesus came into this world and He set us free. So until that time, if you've never been set free by Christ, you're still under the Law. See, the 10 Commandments, again, are good thing, but they point to Christ. If you're here today, listen to me and you have never trusted Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior. You're still in custody of the law, you still have a guardian, you're still in a prison cell. You're you may be protected, but you're not free.
You have rules and regulations to follow to have a relationship with God, and you may have grown up that way, and you've been taught that all your life, as long as I do, this, God's going to be happy with me. The Bible doesn't teach that at all. In verse 23 he says, until the faith was to come and be revealed, the faith is Jesus, the Christ. He offers freedom from the law. You see, without Christ in your heart and in your life,
you're being held in custody. Jesus has come to set you free. Jesus has revealed himself to the world. He has said, You can be free. You don't have to be under the law. Jesus is the most loved and the most hated and the most controversial figure that's ever lived in history. You either love him or you hate him or you don't like him, because when we follow Christ, all of a sudden we have to live a certain way. Nobody said you had to.
You get to you
see the difference with our attitudes. We don't have to do these things. We are allowed to. We get to do them. We say, Oh man, I'm going to have to pray. Have to pray.
You get to pray. You get to do these things. In verse 24 in our in our text, he says the law was our guardian until Christ came through that we might be justified by faith. And here's a million dollar word, justified. We're no longer under law, because Jesus has justified us when we have faith in Him. If you're here and you claim you have the faith and your actions speak otherwise. How does you balance those two things you see? We see a lot of people claiming to be Christians, claiming to be followers of Christ, and yet their life is out of balance with what that means. They are doing things that don't look Christ like
but here's where we make a mistake. We want to try to ask people to clean up their life. We tell our kids, and I said this in my sermon last week at the other churches, like we tell them behave, get over there and behave.
How are they going to behave if they don't believe
we're.
Are they the what are they supposed to behaving about? They've never come to Christ. So what we should be telling our kids is to believe in order that they might behave, you see, and that's the same thing with us as believers. We believe first and then we behave. You can't clean up your life before Christ, He cleans it up for you. Listen to me, you will always let other people down. I let people down all the time. You're always going to be in the sinful temporary body that God has given us, right? We walk around and we're like, Paul called it a tent. He's like, man, we got this temporary tent. We just we, you know, you put up a tent, and the wind blows and everything happens to our body. It just lets us down. So at times, it doesn't appear that we're related to Christ, because maybe we didn't get healed from this disease, or we got this or this happened, and bad luck came our way, and we say, I thought you were a Christian, those things don't happen to Christians. You want to bet
they might happen more to believers, because we're in a spiritual warfare when we claim Christ and these things come into our lives. The great thing about justification is how it relates us to Christ. This is important for us. He said the word justification means to be pronounced or to be treated as righteous. Jesus says, you're justified, therefore you're righteous. Before me, I
don't know if you know this, but God cannot look upon sin.
So whenever you do a sin, God can't look at you. You come back to him, You confess that sin, and now he sees you again as righteous. You're justified. It's a wicked cycle. I know I get it, but thank God we can come back to him every day you see,
the Bible states that they're in several places. Justification only comes by faith. Justification is not earned by our own works. Rather, it's covered by the righteousness of Jesus. Being declared righteous is what frees you from the guilt of sin.
I want you to hear that this morning, you're no longer guilty from sin. When you come to faith in Christ, he has forgiven you. Now, if you want to continue that thing in your life and keep doing those things, I just don't believe that Jesus would allow you to do those things because he has told you you're forgiven. You get to walk another path. You see, once a person is justified, there's nothing that he or she needs to do in order to be entering into heaven,
because he's already done it for you. You see our own works,
our own works, are disqualified as a means of salvation.
Again, I want to reiterate, if you're trying to work your way to Heaven, you will be disqualified on that day.
You can't do it. Only Christ can do it for you.
The there exists various religious systems that try to teach us that complex theologies and false doctrines that teach on justification by works. We are not working our way to heaven. Jesus has done all the work for us. We are on this road and on this path, on our way there by way of justification, as if we'd never sinned.
Now that should be victory in your life, but they're teaching this different gospel, which is no gospel at all. But Aren't you grateful for justification today? I know I am. Every time I read that word, I go, man, I don't have to worry about it. He's already forgiven me. Aren't you thankful? You see we need to have faith in Jesus to be justified by God. In verse 25 he says, Now this faith has come. It's already come, and you're longer, no longer under a guardian. And he iterates verses 23 and 24 and you too can live under the doctrine of justification.
So I want to kind of
humor me for a minute this morning. Okay, I'm going to, I'm going to read a couple things, but here's how the system of religion works. Today. You love God by following the law. Then when you break the law, you go to jail for sinners.
You wait here, you wait there until you ask for forgiveness so that you can have your freedom for a short time. Again, you break the law again, you become a prisoner, over and over again, in and out of jail. Then one day, you realize you can no longer continue to do this cycle that you're in. You don't want to be in jail or out of jail, and you just give up. So you think it's easier just to stay in jail. You think it's easier just to stay under the law, apart from God, since you never seem to please Him, everything you do doesn't please God, and so you decide, I'm just going to stay in jail the rest of my life.
Church is no longer important. Prayer is no longer important. The Bible is no longer important, because you never measure up.
Then one day, a crisis of belief comes in your life. Something happens where you.
I realize, Oh, now I need God.
And you find yourself searching for answers. But you've already tried the God thing, and it didn't work out for you, right? I don't want that. So you look to human wisdom, and then you try other options, and you keep trying harder. You start talking to people, you start asking for their opinion. You start searching the internet. You start working more. You start investing in support groups. You see where I'm going. That's religion that is still under the Law. You don't have to live like that anymore. You get to live in freedom, in Christ, justification. See the faith. Who is Jesus has come to set everybody free, including you, including me,
from the curse of this wheel of this circle, over and over and over, of trying to figure out who we are and how we live our lives, not the religious Jesus that you were taught about in your past, but the real Jesus the freedom. Jesus the justification. Jesus the justified gospel. How about you? Have you been justified? Have you been forgiven of your sins? Are you trying to still set yourself free?
Stop ask Jesus to set you free. He's still in custody of the law, Jesus is your only way to get to that destiny of being free from the law. My second point is justified by the promise. Justified by the promise. Verses 26 through 29
the most famous, one of some of the most famous words that are repeated over and over in Christ, in verse 26 in Christ, he says, so in Christ. I don't know if you know this, but about biblical context, when something is repeated over and over and over, it's highly important. And so he says these two words in Christ all throughout the New Testament. I don't know if you know this, but Paul wrote 13 of the 27 New Testament books, and he talks about this being in Christ, and what it really means is in a relationship with Jesus. And so he says, So in verse 26
in Jesus Christ, you're all children of God through faith. Now some people may look at that verse and go, we're all children of God, right? Because people believe that in the world, the Bible doesn't, doesn't say that God created you in His image. Yes, he did, but the only way to be a child of God is to be in Christ,
you see, Paul made it distinct, and he said, so in Christ, you are all children of God. A big difference from saying everybody is a child of God. So when we come to faith in Christ, we now become a child through our faith in Him,
we would need to be in Christ for us to be saying that we're all part of God's kingdom. Verse 27 and what a great picture for all of you who were baptized into Christ Jesus, have clothed yourself with Christ now a picture of how you are to live in Christ baptism. We're
going to have baptisms in two weeks, and if you've never been baptized, I want to make sure that you know this for sure it doesn't save you. So you're looking to have some magic waters poured over you, and you come up out of the water and you think that this baptism is going to save you, it doesn't save you. It's an act of obedience on what God has already done on the inside of your life. So that you're just telling the world, telling your family, telling the church, I have accepted Christ already, and now when I go into the water, I'm saying that old person is gone,
buried with Christ in death, raised to live a new life. And that's why we say those words. We bury the old person, and we're raised to live this justified life. And so that's what Paul's saying. You're clothed with Christ. You've applied Jesus to your life. You've app you've put it on as an applicator, you've smeared it on, and you and you're now walking in Christ. Justified baptism is a huge importance. It's a step of obedience, but it's not for salvation. It's for those that are already saved. Saying, I want to tell the world that I'm saved. Make sense?
Paul says, when we're baptized, we put on a new identity in Christ. Who you get to be new? How many may get baptized in two weeks here? Anybody? Yeah, awesome. If you're not, if you're not, signed up, sign up. Listen,
I want, I want to talk to each one of you before you do that, to kind of explain what baptism has.
I don't think you're going to feel any bells and whistles and fireworks when it happens. So I just want to let you know it's still the same El Paso Water that we're going to have in the the baptistry. Nothing magic about that water, right? You ever noticed that it's been smelly? Kind of.
Lee, I
was like, What is this smell? My house is clean. It's the water has an odor. You know, that's the water we're going to baptize you in. So don't expect to take a shot or get be clean. It's, it's a it's a symbolic and a resemblance of what God has done in your life, not for salvation, but a symbol of it. So when salvation happens, when a person opens their heart and asks Jesus to be the Lord of of their life. And that's why we always, at the end of the service, we invite you to come and open your heart and ask Jesus to be the Lord of your life. And if you do that today, in two weeks, we'd love to be we'd love to baptize you. We'd love for you to go. I'm no longer me. Now I'm with him that person died now I'm alive in Christ.
November 17. So verse 28 one of the one of those unifying verses that believers in Christ
look at what it says.
There is neither Jew nor Gentile, nor slave nor free, no male or female, for you are all
one in Christ. So I want
to make sure we understand this. We're still going to be Anglo and hispanic and black and Asian, whatever your ethnicity is and where you're from, and that's what makes up the body of Christ. It makes it so unique. But we do away with all of that stuff when we come to Christ and we say we're one in Christ amen. The other thing that we are is secondary. They can't take the Mexican out of you, but they can put the Jesus in you. Okay,
I have the honor and privilege of being half Anglo and half Hispanic, thank God. But when it comes to me, I'm a follower of the living God, and His name is Jesus, and that's my number one priority. I'm not saying we're not going to be different, brother and sister. We are. We're now brothers and sisters in Christ, no matter what we look like or who we think we are, Amen, that's who we are
going to be assimilated in the Jesus identity, not the Mexican and Black and Asian identity. Jesus identity. Look at Life Church. Look around you. The makeup we have is represented of this universe. This is of this verse. Even this is who we are. We're different ethnicities and different cultures and different people, and we come under the banner of Jesus, and we say we don't we're going to put all that aside and say we're here to lift up Jesus.
We identify with each other as followers of Christ. Our culture tells us not to right. Our culture says you don't have to do those things. You have to be with those people. You have to be Listen, listen,
we're in Christ,
put all that stuff aside and focus on him.
If Paul were writing to the American church today,
which is, by by way, still very segregated on Sunday mornings, amen,
it is. I'm happy to see different colors in our church
doesn't mean that we're perfect. Nope. But
listen, we have we can't get caught up in all that nonsense. We must focus on Christ. We exalt the name of Jesus here in order to win all no matter what their ethnic background is, no matter what color they are, no matter what what language they speak,
but see,
I'm Isabella's and Manas Isabel. See,
I love preaching in Spanish too, with my brothers and sisters in Christ,
men will not be elevated above women in this church, women will not be elevated among above men in this church, Jesus will be elevated above all in this church,
that's the Church of Christ. He's the one that's elevated, not us.
Oneness in Christ is called that we see the justified gospel proclaimed verse 29 Paul reminds us, once again, we are people of the promise. That's who we are. We are in the lineage of Abraham. We're heirs to the throne of Jesus. Do you know that when we stand before God, he's going to say, all of this is for you. I did it for you.
Our parents may leave behind a legacy. They may be leave behind a few dollars for us to inherit, but it's not going to mean anything compared to what Jesus is giving us as our inheritance. Amen, that's what we're here for today. And
so I'm going to close the service with this first Corinthians, 1212,
through 21st. Corinthians 1212, through 20.
This is one of the greatest illustrations of the Body of Christ. And I hope you see yourself in here. Listen to these words. Just as a body, the one has many parts, but all of it has all of its many parts. Form.
Body. So it is with Christ, for we were all baptized by one spirit so as to form one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free, we were all given one spirit to drink even so the body is not made up of one but many. But are one part, but of many.
Now, if the foot should say, because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body, it would not be the reason to stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body, it would not, for that reason, stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact,
God has placed the parts that's you in the body, every one of them, each one of you, just as He wanted them to be. If they were all the same or one part, where would the body be? As it is? There are many parts but one body. We are one in Christ.
No matter what is going on in your life today, you can become part of the body of Christ. May we are here to proclaim a higher calling,
a higher victory, a higher life, because of what Jesus did for us, amen.
So now we're going to have this time that we call an invitation.
And I know sometimes it's hard to say, Well, Pastor, you just don't know what I've done.
You're not confessing it to me. I'm not a priest. You're confessing it to God. It doesn't matter what you've done. Jesus will forgive you.
It doesn't matter who you are. Jesus wants you in his body. It doesn't matter where you come from, what your socio, socio economical place is in this in this world, we're all level at the cross. When we come to Jesus, we're all one.
We put aside our riches and our poverty and our race and our ethnicity and our color and who we are and what we speak, or all of it goes to the side when we come to the cross. And so I ask you this morning,
would you please come to Jesus and ask Him to be the Lord of your life? And I
know some of you have been here many times, and you still haven't done that.
Oh, we like the blessings of the believers, right? We like to sit by the believers so that we can somehow get some of the blessings that God has blessing them with. But wouldn't you like to get your own blessings? Wouldn't you like to say, I want Jesus to be the Lord of my life, and so you can do that this morning. So I'm going to pray this prayer, and there'll be some of you here that don't want to come alone. Well, good. There's somebody sitting next to you. Just say, would you go with me?
I bet you they will see. We're here to cheer you on as you make this decision. It's not about, Oh,
what did he do? What did she do? It's not and we're not, we're not here to do that. You're here to get right before a holy God so that you can live for him.
So as you do that, maybe you're here and you just haven't been in connecting with God in a long time.
Come to God and reconnect with them.
You're coming up. Here is a statement of your faith and saying, This is who I am. I want to be part of the body of Christ. Now I do want to ask you this, though, when you do come afterwards, if you've made a prominent decision in your life, whether it's for salvation or reconnection or maybe you're coming just to say, You know what, I want to be baptized, would you stop by the prayer room afterwards so that we can guide you through that process. We'd love to get your name and number and that's it. We're not going to bombard you with emails and all that, but we want to be part of your walk. We want to be part of your journey. So let me pray with you and as we sing this song, if it is your heart's desire to come and God is leading you to come, you come Father in Jesus name. We thank you for this time.
We thank you for the love that you show us for the gift of Jesus. And so this morning, as we think about this time that we call invitation, I pray God that you would lead those that need to come.
So Father God, be be there. Be with us during this time in Christ's name, I pray amen.
Let's stand Amen.