Okay, so the topic of my message this morning is justification and its effects.
And in Brian's style, my subtopic or my alternate name is, or the great exchange.
So we believe the gospel.
We know as Christians that we're saved by grace through faith in the person and work of Jesus.
Okay, that's awesome.
This is the foundation of the Christian life.
This is the number one truth that a Christian has that the church is to hold fast to.
Paul makes very clear in 1 Corinthians 15, there is a message that is of first importance.
And it's this one.
And we're going to have the facts straight in our brains, but sin makes things muddy.
The world makes things muddy.
Things like what you guys are going through right now.
It clouds the simplicity and the glory of this truth.
This is why Paul says we've got to remind each other of these things.
So that's my goal this morning is to talk about justification and to remind us collectively to believe this truth that we hold fast to.
So I'm not going to go through every single topic on justification in the Bible.
There's not, it's not possible to do that.
This is the whole tenor of scripture undergirds this truth.
The topics that are most pronounced to me this morning, I'm going to move through these.
I'm going to try to live edit some of these scriptures here because I got too much here.
But in case I get up in the weeds, the topics are God's covenant with the elect.
Christ's relationship with the Father, which is good.
It seems self-evident, but it's important for us.
It's important for our relationship with the Father that we understand how good Jesus' relationship with the Father is.
That has direct bearing on our experience of our relationship with the Father.
The great exchange, justification, what God did for us on the cross through Jesus.
The fact that this is a gift that we receive through faith.
And what the effects are in our life.
What the benefits are for us in justification.
How, what kinds of things that we deal with on a day-to-day basis that this directly applies to.
I want to talk about some of those.
So, alright, starting off.
I'm going to go through some Old Testament passages and a few from the New Testament in this section.
First of all, we're going to think about God's covenant with the elect.
And we think of election, we think of individual believers that God chooses for salvation, which is true.
But there's another usage of the word elect, and it has to do with his son.
Okay, we're going to think about that a little bit.
We use the word elect.
Chosen is a synonym for elect.
God chose Christ for a particular work and for a particular purpose.
So, we're going to talk about some of those verses.
Isaiah 42, verses 1 through 7.
And I'm sharing this in the NIV because it makes it a little easier to understand.
This has to do with election.
But it's the election of the son.
Okay.
Verse 1.
Speaking of Christ.
Here is my servant whom I uphold.
My chosen one in whom I delight.
By the way, I need to police this a little bit better, but I'm pretty sure this is the first use of the word elect in the Bible.
If you just do a simple word search in the Strong's, at least.
At least in the Strong's Concordance KJV, this is the first time this word pops up.
Isaiah 42, verse 1.
And it's referring to Christ.
It says,
I'm going to skip down to verse 6 here.
I, the Lord, have called you, this is Jesus, in righteousness.
I will take hold of your hand.
I will keep you and I will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles.
To open the eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison, and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.
I don't know if any of you guys remember, but there's a time when Jesus, in the New Testament, in the Synoptic Gospels,
I think it's in Matthew, it might be another one.
I don't have a cross-reference here.
Matthew 4?
Luke 4.
Thank you.
Jesus opens the scroll and he reads this.
And he sits down and he says,
Today, this has been fulfilled.
Jesus fulfilled this.
This is about him.
This is about his calling and election.
And for a particular purpose.
What's that purpose?
That God will make him, Jesus himself, be a covenant for the people.
All right.
So we're going to put a pin in that one.
We'll move on and read a few more prophecies from the Old Testament.
Psalm 89.
This is a huge one.
I'm not going to read all this.
This is a good one to go sit and pray about, meditate on.
It is Psalm 89.
And think about all the promises that are for Christ, according to him, and the promises that are for us through him.
So I'm going to jump around a little bit in this one.
Psalm 89.
Starts off singing.
I'm going to sing of the steadfast love of the Lord.
And then jumping down to verse 3.
He says,
You have said, I have made a covenant with my chosen one.
I have sworn to David, my servant.
I will establish your offspring forever and build your throne for all generations.
So we see this promise made to David.
But we know from this passage and a bunch of other passages that these promises, they're made to David and his offspring, but they're fulfilled in Christ.
So skipping down to verse 19, we're going to talk about some of these promises that are to Christ.
And I want you to especially think about all the verses that say him.
Okay.
Of old you spoke in vision to your godly one and said, I have granted help to one who is mighty.
I have exalted one chosen from the people.
I have found David, my servant.
With my holy oil, I have anointed him so that my hand shall be established with him.
And again, this is speaking to David, but we know having the benefit of the New Testament and all the prophecies that were made to David, they were filled by Jesus.
This is talking about Jesus.
Okay.
So that my hand shall be established with him.
My arm shall also strengthen him.
The enemy shall not outwit him.
The wicked shall not humble him.
I will crush his foes before him and strike down those who hate him.
My faithfulness and my steadfast love shall be with him.
And in my name shall his horn be exalted.
I will set his hand on the sea and his right hand on the rivers.
He shall cry to me.
You are my father, my God and the rock of my salvation.
And I will make him the firstborn.
Sound familiar?
Hebrews.
Talking about Jesus, the firstborn from the dead.
That he would be made the firstborn among many brethren.
This is speaking of Jesus.
Hebrews.
I will make him the firstborn.
The highest to the kings of the earth.
King of kings.
Lord of lords.
My steadfast love I will keep for him forever.
And my covenant will stand firm for him.
So we see there's a covenant God's made with Jesus that is immutable.
It's locked in.
It's unchanging.
This is important.
You think about, okay, this is what God did with Jesus.
How does this affect me?
It has everything to do with me.
We'll get to that later on.
But the thing we need to understand is between God and Christ, there is a covenant that is immutable.
It's going to be established forever.
It will not change.
And this is the basis of our hope.
Getting ahead of myself a little bit.
All right.
We've got a little interlude.
Starts talking about not only him, but his offspring.
Okay.
Verse 29.
I will establish his offspring.
Who are his offspring?
Us.
Yes.
The firstborn among many brethren.
His offspring is us.
I will establish his offspring forever.
And his throne is the days of the heavens.
If his children forsake my law and do not walk according to my rules.
He's pretty relevant for us.
Anyone here ever broken God's rules after coming to Jesus?
Yes.
If they violate my statutes and do not keep my commandments, then I will punish their transgression with the rod and their iniquity with stripes.
You're going to get a discipline.
Okay.
My boys know about this.
It's the Holy Spirit spanking.
It's the discipline that the father gives his children.
Does that mean that he'll cut us off?
Well, let's get to that.
Verse 33.
But I will not remove from him my steadfast love or be false to my faithfulness.
Why?
I will not violate my covenant or alter the word that went forth from my lips.
For all that I have sworn by my holiness, I will not lie to David.
His offspring shall endure forever.
His throne as long as the sun before me.
Like the moon, it shall be established forever.
A faithful witness in the skies.
Because of his covenant, he made with Christ, the offspring of David.
But he's not going to change.
This is life for us.
These are the kind of things we can talk back to the accuser about.
When we fall into sin, we've got a sin we've been dealing with for a long time.
You know?
These are the promises we can lay hold of and say, hey, God promised to Christ that this covenant is immutable.
It's going to last forever.
And he will discipline me for my sin.
But since his relationship and covenant with Christ is unchanging, mine is too.
And we're going to talk more about this later on, but I can't help talking about it now.
In the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 1, verses 19 through 20.
You see a similar promise.
For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you,
Silvanus and Timothy and I, these were the apostles.
They're speaking to Gentile believers that came and preached the gospel to them.
It was not yes and no, but in him it is always yes.
For all the promises of God find their yes in him.
That is Christ.
Another version says,
As many as are the promises of God, they find their yes and amen in him, which is Jesus.
That is why it's through him that we utter our amen to God for his glory.
What's the point of all these things?
Before we understand God's choosing of us, we need to understand God's choosing of him.
As long as we think of God just choosing us out of a hat in some arbitrary way,
and we don't understand this covenant he's made with Jesus,
there's insecurity.
God's covenant with Christ is the foundation of our hope and our faith.
His capital E election of his elect, Jesus, is the basis for our election in him.
So we need to understand this.
We need to understand these promises.
They might seem like a level of abstraction away from our regular experience as a Christian,
but it has tremendous bearing on our experience as a Christian.
This is the foundation of our confidence is in the personal work of Jesus.
So we need to understand what this covenant is that God made with Christ.
And then we can start seeing that God, right here, like it says,
all the promises of God find their yes and amen in Jesus.
And we see the promises that God has made to Jesus.
And we see that God has put us in Christ.
We can make the connection.
We can connect the dots.
There's things that God has promised Jesus that the outworking,
a Christian should have full expectation of an outworking through the work of the Holy Spirit
in our life, in our experience, because he's promised it to Jesus.
Okay.
Therefore, it's ours.
So we need to spend time on that.
We need to get anchored in that.
We need to do the work of becoming sure of all the promises of God that he's made to Christ,
because every promise of God has its yes and amen in Jesus.
Christ is the elect of God, the one with whom God, the Father, has made an unshakable covenant with.
He's the chosen instrument of God's, the one whom he has chosen to accomplish his work.
Hebrews 10, 7.
All right, we're going to move on here.
The next section is Christ's relationship with the Father is good.
No doubt.
Of course, Jesus' relationship with the Father is good.
He's Jesus, right?
Yeah, it's true.
We need to understand how good it is.
There's a lot of scripture describing the particulars of how good this relationship is.
And it's important for us to know this,
because the Bible says we've got the same relationship with the Father that Jesus has.
We don't think about it like that very often, though.
That's not the natural bent of our mind and our understanding.
I'm just going to read a few of these.
Matthew 3, verses 16 through 17.
When Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water,
and behold, the heavens were opened to him.
And he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him.
And behold, a voice from heaven said,
This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.
Jesus is well-pleasing to the Father.
He's his beloved Son, and he's perfectly happy with Jesus.
He's well-pleased.
It was a good thing to note as an aside.
We don't know what all happened with Jesus between the time he's 12 years old and now.
He's beginning to be about 30 years old, the Bible says, when he starts his ministry.
So there's a big gap in there.
We don't know what he's doing.
There's a very real chance he wasn't doing anything in a public ministry kind of way.
When we think of the works of a Christian, being on a mission to people, making disciples, baptizing people, fighting the devil, all that kind of stuff,
he's just being a carpenter.
He was growing in grace.
He was knowing God.
He was being obedient to his parents.
He said he was subject to his parents.
He's taking care of his family.
What's God say?
This is my beloved Son, in whom I'm well pleased.
He was pleased with him because he's his Son.
I think that's the way he's doing.
I love that God had Jesus wait until he was 30 years old before he started doing anything.
It's just a deliverance from putting confidence in what we do for God.
God doesn't care about what you do for him.
He cares about what he does through you.
Okay?
And it's just a challenge with us.
If we're getting our identity and our confidence from how good our ministry performance is going,
we need to set that aside.
He's like, God didn't, he at least chose not to record anything Jesus did until he's about 30 years old.
Other than sitting in the temple for a little bit and answering some questions and going back home and being subject to his parents.
So, being a Christian in Christ, you get this.
All right.
A few other ones.
John 8, 28 through 29.
I'm going to skip down a little bit on this.
He said,
He who has sent me is with me.
This is Jesus speaking of the Father.
He's not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to him.
Jesus is always pleasing to the Father because he does the things that are pleasing to him.
John 3, 35.
The Father loves the Son and has given all things to his hands.
John 5, 20.
The Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing.
John 10, 30.
I and the Father are one.
I'm just going to burn through a lot of these.
So, I'm happy to share my notes afterwards.
I'm probably going to have to skip some of these because there's just so many in the New Testament
describing how good the relationship with Jesus is and all the particular areas that manifest itself.
I love this one personally.
John 11, 41 through 42.
Jesus is praying for Lazarus and he plays out loud.
He says,
Father, I thank you that you've heard me.
I knew that you always hear me.
But I said this on account of the people standing around that they may believe that you sent me.
Jesus knew that the Father always heard all of his prayers.
And this is awesome because you think of Jesus as being someone who always gets all his prayers answered.
I don't necessarily think that for myself.
Even though I pray things in accordance with God's will and I know what the Bible has said.
But when I think of Jesus praying for something, I'm just like,
Okay, 100% take rate on that prayer.
100% chance God's going to answer him.
But for me, I might be like, I don't know, maybe.
Look at his confidence.
You always hear me.
You know everything.
You always hear me.
This is wonderful.
We're going to think about this a little bit later.
But this has tremendous bearing on how we pray for the Father.
And then in John 17, we have some passages that articulate the relationship Jesus has with the Father.
He says,
Now, Father, glorify.
I should put this in the King James.
Glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with you before the world was.
He prays that the Lord would glorify him and that this glory that he had with the Father before the world began,
that he would do that again.
We see this in the resurrection of Jesus and the ascension of glory.
But then he prays something else later on.
He says, he prays this for the disciples.
And then he prays it for us.
He said,
I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word.
Who's that?
It's us.
That they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they may be in us.
Skipping down a little bit.
The glory that you've given me, I have given them that they may be one, even as we are one.
I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sit me and love them, even as you love me.
This is a glorious truth here.
For those who believe in Jesus, we enter into a relationship, the same kind of relationship that Jesus has with the Father.
It's the same kind.
It's the same actual relationship because he puts us in Christ.
And the relationship that Jesus has with the Father, we now enjoy.
That's the basis of our unity.
That's how we can be one with each other because we all are in Christ through faith and enjoy this perfect fellowship with the Father.
And by proxy, perfect fellowship with each other.
Which is why this is the cure for division and strife and heresies, divisions, literally divisions.
This is the basis for our unity.
So anyway, there's a lot of other ones.
There's just doing a study on how Jesus relates to the Father throughout the New Testament and honestly in the Old Testament because all of these messianic prophecies.
And it's so encouraging, especially in light of the fact that God has put us into Christ and now we have the same one.
It's that relationship.
It's not a version of that relationship or like, you know, a Jesus-Father relationship light.
No, it's the same one.
It's just, it's really encouraging.
So definitely encourage a deep dive on that.
It's very edifying for our walk, for our daddy issues, our latent daddy issues that we have with the Father.
We all have them because we had imperfect fathers.
But the wonderful truth is, is that Jesus in his relationship with the Father, there aren't any daddy issues.
It's a perfect one.
And that's the Father that we have now through Jesus.
We get to share in his relationship with the perfect Father.
So what's the point of this?
Like I said, Jesus has an excellent relationship with the Father.
No daddy issues.
Perfect, unbroken fellowship except for the moment on the cross where he became sin for us.
And the Father had to turn away from him.
So anyway, we're going to circle back to this a little bit later, but this is the point.
Jesus has a good relationship with the Father.
Next point, justification.
Or I like the aspect of justification I'm going to hone in on today is the great exchange.
Another word for this is penal substitutionary atonement, which captures an aspect of this, the punishment that we deserve, that God poured out on Christ.
It encompasses more than that.
But that's the aspect of justification I'm going to focus on today is that Christ exchanged places with us on the cross.
So I'm going to unpack a few passages on that point.
First one is 2 Corinthians 5 verses 14 through 21.
Starting in verse 14,
For there we have it.
This is a glorious truth.
This is true in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
This is just a fact.
If we are in Christ, we are a new creation.
Now, Amber and Julie and I were talking about this last night, so this is a little bit of an aside, but I think this is an important distinction.
The Bible speaks of sanctification in at least two ways.
Okay?
One way is in the progressive sense.
This is the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit.
That's our experience of growing in Christlikeness on earth.
That's progressive.
The moment you believe in Jesus, you don't all of a sudden become, boom, sinlessly perfect like Jesus.
We all know that, right?
Unless there's anyone sinlessly perfect in this room.
Are you sinlessly perfect?
No.
Just teasing me.
Yeah, no one else.
That's the point.
No one else.
But there's another sense in which the Bible speaks of sanctification.
And that is in a finished, complete, past tense way.
This is much of the way sanctification is treated in Hebrews chapter 10.
When he speaks of, by one offering he perfected for all time those who are sanctified.
It's finished.
It's just like, okay, how's that possible?
Like if sanctification is me becoming more, like being saved from sin, how is it a finished work?
I'm not finished.
I'm obviously not finished, right?
It has to do with what's true in the heavenly places in Christ.
There is a finished Seth.
Hidden in Christ.
Seated in the heavenly places with him right now.
Who's got no sin.
Okay.
That's true of every believer.
That's how we ought to think of this promise.
Verse 17.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation.
The old passed away.
Behold, new has come.
So, like, think, instead of thinking of yourself, think of Jesus.
Is there any lack in Jesus Christ right now?
No.
Okay.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation.
See, that's the key.
There's no lack in Jesus.
So, therefore, because we're in him, there's no lack in us in the heavenly places.
The progressive work of sanctification is the work of the spirit, taking what's true in heaven and making it true on earth as it is in him.
Through faith.
This is the outworking of this great salvation.
We've got to get this stuff straight, though, because otherwise, the tendency of a Christian is to be a legalist when you think about sanctification.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Justification.
God making me right for giving all my sins.
You know.
Of course, he had to do that.
But sanctification is kind of on me.
You know.
That's the tendency.
And, of course, we have a responsibility to respond to God in obedience.
The obedience that comes from faith.
But the basis of our sanctification, the basis of our being able to walk out this progressive sanctification by faith and not by works, is because it's on the basis of a finished work.
Jesus is complete.
Therefore, we are complete in him.
All right.
So, take, I don't know, blasphemy, drunkenness, you know, lying.
All of these things.
I can look at that sin being present in my life still.
I still got a flesh.
I got sin in my flesh.
And I can say, you know what?
That guy's dead.
He's crucified.
He's nailed to the cross.
I'm no longer a drunkard.
I'm actually sober-minded in Christ.
Lord, help me by faith put on the new man.
Put off the old man.
Put on the new man by faith and really walk in that identity I have now that it's mine in Jesus.
Okay?
I can put on the new man by faith.
Does it involve denying myself?
Yeah, because I got a flesh.
That guy got nailed to the cross, and I got to tell that guy no.
And it hurts.
But I can do it according to faith, not according to works.
Because God has given it to me as a free gift.
Okay?
So, a little bit of an aside, but it's important.
All this is from God, verse 18, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
I love this word.
We think of reconciliation as a lot of different usages, different synonyms for this word.
Probably the easiest one is just being made right.
You got a bad relationship with somebody.
Reconciliation means you made it right.
All right?
You ask forgiveness.
You got back into fellowship.
It's reconciliation.
And there's a sense in which this is exactly what this is talking about.
But there's another sense.
The word is...
The Greek word used here for reconciliation is katalage.
Katalage.
I don't know.
Does anyone else have a better pronunciation for that?
Katalage?
Anyway.
So, that's probably a bad pronunciation.
But it means exchange.
Trade.
Exchange.
That is the sense that penal substitutionary atonement, the reconciliation of Christ on the cross,
that's the sense in which I think we can understand that doctrine.
So, we'll unpack it a little bit.
This passage finishes it out and makes that point.
Verse 19.
That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself,
not counting their trespasses against them,
and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation or exchange.
Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.
We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
Verse 21.
For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin,
so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Do you see the exchange?
God made Jesus the righteous one to be sin for us.
He made me the sinner to be the righteousness of God.
He took our sin and he put it on Jesus.
He took his righteousness, he put it on us.
He traded places with us on the cross.
That's why Penal Substitutionary told me this is the foundation of the gospel.
This is that core of the glory of the good news is Jesus Christ traded places with me.
He endured the wrath of God.
That was my just reward on the cross.
All my sins deserve a punishment.
God would be wrong.
He'd be unrighteous if he didn't punish me for my sins.
Okay?
We understand that.
You know, siblings.
You got a sibling who does something horrible when mom and dad aren't looking,
and then mom and dad just be like, oh, it's fine.
It's fine.
That'd be wrong.
They need to get in trouble for that.
You know that as a kid.
You're so offended if one of your brothers and sisters gets away with something, you know?
That sense of justice, you know?
Well, that's actually because God is putting his law in our heart.
We know what's wrong.
It would be sin for God to not punish sin.
So, he did.
But he did it on Christ because he loves us.
Okay?
You see the justice of God and the mercy of God come together with what God did through Christ for us on the cross.
He traded places with us.
Okay?
Galatians 2.20 is one of my favorite verses in the whole Bible.
This is Paul's articulation of the truth that he knew was true for him.
I have been crucified with Christ.
It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
In the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God,
who loved me and gave himself for me.
Paul's hope was in Jesus.
Paul had died.
He knew he was a dead man.
His whole life, dead.
The whole thing, beginning and start to finish, good stuff, bad stuff, the whole thing, crucified.
Dead on the cross.
And then when God raised Jesus from the dead, Paul had a new life that was hidden in the Son.
Now you could say, Christ, it's no longer I who live, but Jesus lives in me and I in him.
He's my life.
My life is wrapped up in the Son of God, seated in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
Colossians 3, 3-4 says the same truth.
For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
That's why we look forward to Jesus coming back.
You know, this is one of the many reasons.
There's many reasons I look forward to Jesus coming back, but this is one of them.
He's our life.
And we look forward to him coming back because our life is tied up and hidden in him.
And we long to put off this flesh that fights so hard against this truth in our love.
We just want to be at rest.
We want to experience the fullness of this.
Well, it's because there's a real thing that's happening.
You know, our life's hidden with him.
So now we have a longing to see him.
This is why it's so dangerous, by the way, to get into a contentment with not looking forward to Jesus coming back.
But there's a lot of deception.
I mean, it would be bad enough if it was just our own heart.
Our own heart gets wayward.
And we love this world.
It's just our heart naturally just loves this world and things of it.
You know, it would be bad enough if it was only that.
Well, there's also false teaching out there that distracts us from the imminent, present hope of the return of Jesus.
That's healthy.
A healthy Christian looks forward to Jesus coming back.
That's just what it means.
It's just like a bride looking forward to her husband coming back.
We have that hope.
It's the most basic Christian hope.
I love it.
Ruby recently professed faith in Jesus.
And one of the things that she brings up a lot, which is really encouraging to us, is that she's excited for Jesus to come back because then our body of sin goes away.
You know.
Amen.
That's the hope of a Christian.
All right.
I'm taking too much time on that.
Last verse in this section.
First Corinthians 1 verses 30 and 31.
It's a trap to look for these things apart from Jesus.
It's easy.
My own righteousness.
Level up my own wisdom.
I mean, you can spend a lot of what you might think of as being faithful time in the word and in prayer.
And all you're doing is trying to build up your own righteousness.
Trying to build up your own wisdom.
You know.
He made Christ to be our wisdom.
I don't got any.
He made Jesus to be that.
I lack wisdom.
There's an answer.
God has made him to be my wisdom.
I lack righteousness.
Okay.
I'm not made righteous by confessing my sin a whole bunch and making sure that I get every little last sin confessed.
No.
I mean, the fact of the matter is you're so sinful it would be impossible.
You spend to, you know, to infinity trying to confess your way out of that and you'd never get to the bottom.
All right.
God made Jesus to be our righteousness.
So we look to him and say, no, he's my righteousness.
Our sanctification and redemption.
The whole thing.
Why?
So that the one who boasts, let him boast in the Lord.
So God gets all the glory.
Okay.
Sorry.
Actually, I do want to read one more.
This is from the Old Testament.
Isaiah 61 verses 1 through 3.
Actually, I'm just going to read verse 3.
Jesus actually quoted this one as well when he, anyway, in his ministry he quoted this.
But this is his ministry.
To appoint to them that mourn in Zion to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified.
So you see it there again, this exchange.
He's taking our ashes and he's giving us beauty.
He's taking our mourning.
He's giving us joy.
See, he's trading all throughout the Old Testament, all throughout the new.
The work of Christ on the cross is a gigantic trade that he's made with us.
And it's just glorious.
Okay.
And I want to emphasize specifically our sin.
Okay.
We're thinking about justification.
It's our sin.
He took our sin and he imputed it to Christ.
He took his righteousness.
He imputed it to us.
This is the basis of our Christian hope and rejoicing.
Just a few comments on how this gift is to be received.
So the Bible speaks of this as being a finished work.
So when we think of when did God do this work?
He did it 2,000 years ago in Christ.
Crucified and raised him from the dead.
It's a finished work.
How does it benefit us?
We receive it through faith.
So just a few verses on that.
Wait, where did I go?
There it is.
Romans 3, verses 21 through 26.
Now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law,
although the law and prophets bear witness to it,
the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe,
for there's no distinction.
For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God
and are justified by his grace as a gift
through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,
whom God put forth as propitiation by his blood
to be received by faith.
It's a finished work.
And we receive it as a free gift by faith.
You got to trust him though.
You know, this is not just some automatic thing
that we can kind of psychoanalyze ourselves into.
We got to come to God and say,
Lord, I want it.
I believe, help my unbelief.
I'm a child who's in need of you.
I need to be saved, Lord.
And you know, this is true for the first time we get saved.
You know what?
There's lots of times we get into a bind after that.
We need to remember this truth.
And we remember this, it's a free gift.
We come to the Lord like children and say,
Lord, please help me to receive this.
There's so much more in that.
A Christian should make it their ambition
to know this truth in the New Testament.
You should be an expert in what Romans 3, 4, and 5 say about this.
We should understand what Hebrews says about this.
Like this, the Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians,
like they're like, this is real.
They shouldn't take this as like, you know, do better, try harder.
Oh, you don't read your Bible enough.
There's a reason God exhorts us to be diligent,
faithful workers in his word.
Jesus says, you'll know the truth and the truth will set you free.
We need to be experts in this.
We think about, you know, we're, this is a church plant.
We're starting the foundation of a church here.
Every single member in this church needs to be rock solid on this stuff.
There's no other message by which men are saved by.
This is the antidote for all kinds of false doctrines and heresies and error
that creep into our own lives and creep into our brothers and sisters' lives
because of sin.
There's no excuse for not being totally convinced of these things.
We have a Bible.
We need to come to God by faith.
We need to hear good preaching.
Amen.
Let it spur us on to not just hearing good preaching.
Let us become experts in these things.
Let us get into God's word and understand just the glorious,
precious promises he has for us in Christ and his truth.
I love this one in Romans 4, 4 through 8.
This is what I say back to the devil when he accuses me before God and before myself,
which he does all the time, by the way.
Now, to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift,
but as his due, as his payment.
But to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly,
his faith is counted as righteousness.
So when the devil accuses you of sin and say,
you need to do more good works to pay for that sin.
You know what I say?
No.
To the one who doesn't work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly,
his faith is counted as righteousness.
Not going to work.
I'm going to rest in the finished work of Jesus.
So he's done the work.
We receive it in its finished, complete state.
So those attributes we talked about,
you know, the covenant God made with Jesus,
his choosing of him as the elect,
the wonderful, excellent relationship he has with the Father.
That's the implication of this exchange.
When it says God has made him to be,
you know, my paraphrase is everything that we're not,
when God made Jesus to be those things for us,
wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, justification, redemption, everything.
The implication is,
I enjoy all of the promises of God that he's made with his son, Jesus.
I get the same relationship with Jesus that,
the same relationship with the Father that Jesus has.
You know, when I'm discouraged about God answering my prayers,
I always think to myself,
well, does God answer Jesus's prayers?
Of course.
Well, guess what?
He answers mine too, because I'm in Jesus.
That's why we pray, by the way, we pray in Jesus' name.
We don't pray in our own name.
We pray in Jesus' name.
That's the basis of knowing that we have what we ask for.
Okay?
And it's like that in every other relationship situation that we have in our life,
where there's insecurity about our sonship and our adoption,
just think about Jesus.
What does Jesus's relationship with the Father look like?
Do I have any problem believing that that's true for him?
No.
Well, if the answer is no,
guess what?
It's for me too.
This is why the capital E election of Jesus is so foundational to our understanding of our own choosing.
He chose us in him.
So when we're discouraged,
we can look away from ourself and look to Jesus.
So,
what are some practicals?
I'm going to try to burn through this list pretty quick.
I'm a little over time here.
What effects does this have on our life in a practical way?
There are myriads.
So,
this is not a comprehensive list.
These are just some of the things I thought of.
I was praying about our church.
These are things that I'm impacted by.
These are things I struggle with.
These are things I know some of you struggle with,
you know,
because I know you.
I've talked to you.
Prayed for you.
We talk about things.
We're at the point now in our life where we're starting to share things with each other,
which is awesome.
The Bible says,
bear one another's burdens.
So fulfill the law of Christ.
And that takes time.
That's okay.
But these are the things that were coming to mind
as I was praying through this.
Number one,
what's an effect of this justification,
of this exchange?
Peace in exchange for turmoil and anxiety.
Romans 5.1 says,
by faith,
we have access.
No,
Romans 5.1 says,
we have peace with God,
in the Lord Jesus Christ.
By faith,
we have access into this grace wherein we stand.
We have peace.
You know,
the foundational root of all our anxiety is because we have,
we don't,
we're not confident about our relationship with the Father.
Okay.
You have peace with God.
You get peace everywhere.
All right.
So think about that.
You're all wound up.
You're all wound around the spokes.
You're full of anxiety.
Wait a minute.
Am I enjoying the peace that I have with the Father?
Am I clear on that?
There's prophecies about this all throughout the Old Testament.
Isaiah 57.20 says,
there's no peace for the wicked.
There's no peace.
They're like the troubled sea.
They're always just churning up muck and mire
and bringing up all kinds of,
all the problems they have with other people
and all the things that are wrong.
And well,
that this was just right.
Then my life would be less anxiety.
I'd be less anxiety in my life.
If all these people just fixed all their problems
that they're causing me.
No,
you're not in peace with God,
man.
You have peace with God.
Like you think Jesus wasn't,
uh,
frustrated by the problems of all the sin of all the people around him.
For sure.
You think it affected his peace with God?
No.
All right.
Anxiety is a byproduct of not being at peace with God.
This exchange fixes that.
It addresses that.
It speaks right to it.
We get a clean conscience.
Number two,
a clean conscience in exchange for a guilty defiled conscience.
Constant guilt,
seeing the bad in everything.
Again,
this is a sign of a conscience that's dirty.
All you can see is the bad stuff going on in people's lives
and in your own life.
You might have a dirty conscience.
You might have a conscience that's not experiencing the cleansing blood of Jesus
that cleanses our conscience from dead works.
Like here's another example.
If you're always thinking about all the stuff that you're not doing a good job in,
you probably don't have a cleansed conscience.
The Bible says in Hebrews 9,
14,
that the blood of Jesus cleanses our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.
It delivers us into rest.
Third one,
openness,
vulnerability,
in exchange for hiding.
First John 1,
7 speaks of this.
If we walk in the light as he is in the light,
we have fellowship with one another,
openness,
and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin.
John 3,
20 talks about those who hide.
They hide their sin.
They're embarrassed about it.
They cover it up.
They do it in darkness.
They don't want the light to shine on that.
You know what that says?
You're justified by your works.
The only reason you don't want anyone to find out about it
is because you don't want them to think less of you.
And there's an implication.
If they don't think less of me,
then what's God thinking?
You know,
try to just kind of sort it out on the side,
get taken care of real quick.
So people don't find out about it.
Hey,
if we walk in the light as he is in the light,
we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin.
So we get this natural,
you know,
openness is not natural.
We want to hide everything because we're children of Adam.
What's the first thing Abinid did after they eat the fruit?
Hide.
Okay.
So we get it honest.
The gospel is a cure for it.
All right.
There's another one.
Rest in exchange for toil.
God's commands are unbearable.
All right.
It's supposed to be that way.
It's supposed to be more than you can possibly handle.
Have you ever attempted to be like,
it's just too much.
Like you're,
you're asking too much,
God,
come on,
cut me a break.
Start justifying yourself,
trying to like,
you know,
say thus far,
no further,
Lord,
you already asked enough of me.
It's unreasonable for you to ask more of me.
That's just unreasonable.
Guess what?
For us in our natural state,
it is unreasonable.
It's impossible.
The only solution is Jesus doing it for us.
He says,
take my yoke upon you.
There's only one man who's ever done it.
It's Jesus.
He fulfilled every commandment.
He's asking us.
It's our inheritance.
Actually,
he's commanding us to enter into his rest.
Speaks of this in Hebrews.
There's a lot of wonderful mysteries in Hebrews talking about those who believe enter into rest,
real rest.
This is a mystery of a hardworking Christian who can say,
like Paul,
I worked harder in all of them,
yet not I.
But the grace of God,
Christ in me,
worked harder.
It's a real thing.
It's not just like some kind of extra spiritual mumbo jumbo we throw around.
It's an actual present experience of saying yes to all the commands of God,
but not on the basis of our own righteousness or our own strength.
It is unreasonable for me,
Lord,
but you've given me Christ and his spirit.
The spirit of Christ gives life to our mortal body and gives us grace to do it.
But guess what?
If you try to fake it till you make it,
you are going to be the most hypocritical,
anxiety filled hypocrite who is constantly debating with God and constantly debating on,
well,
is that verse really for me?
Is that God really asking me to do that?
I don't know if it's really what he's requiring me to do that.
No,
you're just a liar.
And you're trying to manipulate the commandments of God and bring it down to something you think is manageable.
It's supposed to be unmanageable.
So you look for a savior.
Anyway,
next one,
security in exchange for insecurity.
Jesus says,
this is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased.
Or no,
the father said this to Jesus.
The father said to Jesus,
this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.
Remember when Jesus prayed?
I'm glad that those who believe in me would have that same relationship.
We get to.
We haven't.
You know,
Jesus,
the father is pleased with you.
He's well pleased with you because of Jesus.
Because he's pleased with Jesus.
He's pleased with us too.
And it's particularly,
he calls us by name.
This is not just sort of like wiping us out and saying,
you know,
there is no real Christians.
It's all just Jesus.
No,
it's sons through the sun.
He's called us by name.
And he says,
Amber,
my beloved daughter in whom I'm well pleased.
And I can receive that because I know he's pleased with Jesus.
You know,
this delivers us from insecurity.
You know,
not knowing what I'm supposed to do.
Am I doing it right?
I don't know if I really want to go out on a limb and obey God and that thing.
Because what if I screw it up?
This is my beloved son and who I'm well pleased.
Jesus says,
he's never left me.
The father's never left me because what?
I always do the things that are pleasing to him.
Always.
So another wonderful doctrine.
This is the foundation of our faith.
The active righteousness of Jesus.
His actual keeping of every single command of God on our behalf.
And it's ours.
Okay.
Here's another one.
This is relevant for a new church plant.
Knowing Christ in exchange for ministry ambition and being right.
This is awesome.
Start a new church.
Start having ideas about how's God going to use me.
And you have an imagination about how that's going to go.
And then some sin crops up in your life.
What's the temptation?
Push it down.
All right.
We all experience this.
I love Paul's own testimony.
In Philippians chapter three,
this is one of my favorite passages in the whole Bible.
You get a raw,
just straight shooting testimony from Paul.
And he said,
you know what?
I had all kinds of ministry ambitions and I was better than everybody.
I was more zealous for God.
I kept the law more faithfully.
This is someone,
you know,
you kind of like fast forward 2000 years and you just,
you would look at someone like this who calls himself a Christian and be like,
man,
they are just gifted on fire.
I'm going to be like that Christian.
Maybe,
maybe not.
You know what Paul says?
Everything that was gained to me regarding this ambition that he had,
he counted as loss for the sake of knowing Christ.
He says,
in fact,
I count everything as rubbish.
And the word he uses is poop.
All right.
Poop.
All the good things I had going for me,
all my ministry ambitions,
all the things I was leveling up in,
all my Bible knowledge,
all my zealousness for God and preaching this message.
garbage,
garbage for the sake of knowing Jesus.
He says that he makes that his holy ambition.
Do you,
sorry,
it's my children.
Praise the Lord for kids.
Is that your ambition?
Do you have no other ambition than to know him and be found in him?
That I might know him in the power of his resurrection,
being conformed to his death.
If by any means I might attain to resurrection.
And he goes on to say,
Hey,
if any of you are mature,
you ought to think like this.
If you're not,
it's all right.
God's going to reveal this to you.
One thing you do.
One thing I do.
I forget what's behind.
I press on to what's ahead for the upward call of God to lay hold of that,
which he laid hold of me for.
This is it.
If you got an ambition that's bigger than this,
more nuanced than this,
got a little bit more ministry particulars in it than this.
Those are all good things.
I want to challenge you.
Is it all garbage for the sake of knowing Christ?
It's a good test for our hearts.
Tell you what this ambition produces more openness,
more freedom.
You're free to be an idiot.
You're free to suck.
You're free to not be an awesome Christian.
You're free to be one of those not awesome Christians.
Guess what?
Those are the only kind that are encouraging to other Christians.
It's awesome.
It's free.
You're free to be a loser.
You know,
Paul just didn't even think about it.
You know,
there's another passage.
He says,
I don't even judge myself.
Whether I'm right or wrong,
like in my own eyes,
it actually is immaterial.
It doesn't even matter.
It's God who judges me.
He actually knows.
I'm living for him.
We should be the same way.
This is going to free us from a lot of hypocrisy.
That's really easy to get into,
especially at the beginning of church plant.
And we're all,
yeah,
we're trying to build relationship with each other,
trying to be on mission stuff,
but there's something in our flesh that wants to show off to everyone else,
how good of a Christian we are.
You're not.
Similar unity in exchange for division.
Okay.
This is a glorious truth.
The foundation of our unity is in Ephesians 2 verses 13 through 22.
He uses the Jews and the Gentiles to make this illustration.
He took the two groups.
You couldn't have two groups that were more disunified and different.
Okay.
Then the Jews and the Gentiles,
he took the two groups and he made them one.
By destroying the law.
That's the list of commandments that stood as a barrier between the two of them.
He took it out of the way,
nailed it to the cross,
took those two groups,
made them one,
made one new man.
That's the basis of our Christian fellowship.
This is why a church is a outpost of the kingdom of God on earth.
It illustrates our new family that we're in.
That's the basis of our unity.
I love that.
I don't know.
I don't know who said this,
but I think it's attributed to Robert Lee.
I think there's a story about him taking communion with a slave and they're kneeling down and people are offended by it.
And he said,
the ground is level at the foot of the cross.
It's level.
It's the basis of our unity.
Anyway,
I don't know if he actually said that,
but I heard that.
You can't hear me.
The story was Robert E.
Lee took communion with a black guy,
a slave at that time during the time of the civil war.
And that was offensive to some people in that church.
And his response was the ground is level at the foot of the cross.
So that's the basis of our unity,
brothers and sisters.
The ground's level at the foot of the cross.
And that's a wonderful thing.
A couple more.
Second to last one is perfect love in exchange for fear.
First John 4,
19 through 20 says,
perfect love casts out fear because fear has to do with being punished.
You know,
that the reason you fear is because you're worried about getting punished.
It's just the truth.
You fear death.
You fear stand before God and being punished for the evil things you've done.
You might,
that might not make it up here,
but it's down here symbol.
You're struggling with fear.
You're worried about that.
Guess what?
Perfect love casts out fear.
And you know what he says in this thing?
I love it so much because as he is,
we are in this world.
As Jesus is right now,
perfect,
complete,
wanting nothing.
So are we in this world.
And Josh's AI cleanup is going to have a doozy on this one.
Last one.
Sonship in exchange for being enemy of God.
This is all out throughout Galatians is so precious.
One of the primary benefits of justification is sonship.
We enter into a father son relationship with Jesus.
We've talked a lot about this,
but it's precious.
It delivers us from fear.
All right.
I want to quote a couple of quotes at the end here.
Just finish things up.
Martin Luther said this about this doctrine.
This is the truth.
Let us become expert in the art of transferring our sins,
our death,
and every evil from ourselves to Christ.
And Christ's righteousness and blessing from Christ to ourselves.
This is the exchange.
God already traded places with us on the cross.
Faith makes that real in reality.
It says,
no,
I believe that's true.
My sins are Jesus's sins.
His righteousness is my righteousness.
This is the doctrine of justification that blew open Martin Luther's world
and started the Protestant Reformation.
And it's the foundation of the church.
Okay.
This is the golden,
this is the crown jewel of our,
of our doctrine.
You know,
and it's a,
it's crazy thing is this is often the first one to go.
That's why we have to hold fast to it.
The Heidelberg Catechism.
We've been going through this.
That's the last thing I'm going to read.
This is a very precious one.
Question and answer number 60 from the Heidelberg Catechism.
This is one of the oldest catechisms that happened during the Protestant Reformation.
The question is,
how are you righteous before God?
The answer is only by true faith in Jesus Christ.
Even though my conscience accuses me of having grievously sinned against all God's commandments,
of never having kept any of them,
and still being inclined to evil,
nevertheless,
without any merit of my own,
out of sheer grace,
God grants and credits to me the perfect satisfaction,
righteousness,
and holiness of Christ.
As if I had never sinned,
nor been a sinner,
and as if I had been as perfectly obedient as Christ was obedient for me.
All I need to do is accept this gift with a believing heart.
oatmeal,
the advantages of me,
that I could not only express myself.
Amen.
I love you.
Alice,
I am not sure if I would ever think of him as a Jew,
butdecine,
others would haveanimous none do not come here.
They have a Froise,
so it couldas will be forgiven.
I am not sure if my husband came from the Internet,
but it's one of the best.
I love you.
I lovepped for JP значит.
The purpose of God
because I love him as a Brave else.
Because I am a sinner.
And again,
I'm not a sinner.
But I love him.
operative.
I miss to have one way been more successful today,
because I hang Brist for the truth about him since he was seeing
died where magngow.