I would like to read a few verses from the third chapter of Romans, please. Romans chapter three, verse nineteen. Romans three, verse nineteen. For we know that what thing so ever the law says, it says to them who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty, before God. Therefore, by the deeds of the law, there shall no flesh be justified in his sight. For by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now, the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets. Even the righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ, unto all and upon all them that believe, for there is no difference, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are passed through the forbearance of God, to declare, I say, at this time his righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. Where is boasting, then, it is excluded. By what law? Of works? Nay, but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the Lord. Is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also the God of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also. Seeing this one God which shall justify the circumcision by faith and uncircumcised through faith. Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid. Yea, we establish the law. Chapter four. What shall we say, then, that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh, has found? For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory, but not before God. For what sayeth the scripture? Abraham believed God. and it was counted unto him for righteousness. Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace but debt, but to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness." Verse... Just the last verse, twenty-five. Who was delivered for our offenses, but was raised again for our justification. Chapter five, verse one. Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Shall we seek God's faith? Blessed God, our Father, we bow before thee now. We thank you for thine open word we have in our hands. The Word of God written by the Spirit of God through men who were inspired to do this special work, to give us the message which thou hast given to mankind, the story of thine infinite grace with us rebellious men. We thank thee, Lord, for thy grace and for the words we have read tonight, being justified freely by his grace. through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. We pray, Lord, in some way thou help us to make these things simple tonight, and that every one of us, from youngest to oldest, might find out and learn more about this wonderful Word of God, and something more about the wonderful position into which thou hast brought us when we trusted in our Lord Jesus Christ. We seek thy blessing in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Just four weeks ago tonight, I talked to you about what I said. It would be a series on some of the great blessings we get with our great salvation. And we talked four weeks ago tonight on the great blessing of forgiveness, forgiveness. We who have believed in the Lord Jesus have been forgiven. All our sins forgiven. Put behind God's back, buried in the deepest sea. Gone forever, our sins. Forgiven. I talked about that. And tonight I would like to talk about another great New Testament doctrine, but a result of our great salvation. One of the things which God gives us with our salvation. And our subject tonight is justification. Justification. Now what does justification mean? I think one of the best definitions I've found is this, to be cleared from every charge that could be brought against us. To be cleared from every charge that could be brought against us. I have said for years, for justification, just take the word justification, and it means just that I am now just as if I had never sinned, just as if I had never sinned from the word justification. That's true. just as if I had never sinned, but this seems better, to be cleared from every charge that could be brought against us. That's justification. God counts me just. Now I feel writing down immediately, in fact I've written it in my notes here, impossible. How could God count me? I know my heart. I know my sinful thoughts, my sinful ways. I look back over life and I say, how? When I know something of the holiness of God from this wonderful book, when I know something of the righteousness of God, and when I know something of the judgments of God, do you know the more I read in these days of the things that are coming about on this earth, and we're all reading more and more of what's going to happen? And if you have not yet got hold of that book out there, the late great planet Earth, a dollar ninety five, get hold of it. It's well, well worth reading. We're all reading it, but it tells you what's going to happen very quickly in such a clear, simple language. And the more I read of the judgments that are coming, the more I'm awed at the holiness of God. People today are saying we want peace and oh how we need peace. And the young people today, they've got all sorts of movements, they want peace. But I tell you what, God is not going to bring peace to this world the way they think. God is bringing judgment to this And God is a God of judgment, and God is a God of war. Not of peace. Yes, he's a God of peace. But the Lord Jesus made peace through the blood of his cross. That's the only way to peace. But God is a God of judgment. Not one sin will ever go unpunished. Not one sin. Not one simple thought will pass unpunished. God is going to take a reckoning with man for all this. And the age in which we live today, all this rebellion, all this disobedience, God's going to take a reckoning with man for me. And the awful judgments that are falling upon this earth make me stand almost tremblingly before the holiness and the righteousness of God. To be cleared from every charge that could be brought against us, how could that be? That I, a sinner, could ever, in the eyes of a holy God, be counted cleared from every charge. How could it be? And the more we look into our hearts, every one of us, the more we wonder that such a thing could possibly be. How could I be justified? Condemnation, on the other hand, condemnation is the state or the position from which we pass when we are justified. You see, in God's sight, unsaved, we're condemned. Condemnation is our position, our part. He that believeth on the Son has everlasting life. John three, thirty-six. He that believeth not the Son shall not see life but the wrath of God. And this is wrath in its in the term condemnation, the condemnation of God. Abideth on him. Should there be one here tonight? I don't know. Should there be one here tonight still out of Christ? That's your position, in the position of condemnation, with the judgment of a holy righteous God hanging over you. That's what the Word of God says. Now let's look at this Romans chapter three. Let's look at our original state here. Verse nineteen of chapter three. We know that what thing soever the law says, it says to them that are under the law that every mouth may be stopped and all the world become guilty before God. This is the hardest thing to get men to understand. All the world guilty before God. I have found in my dealings with men and women, in dealings with them about salvation, one of the hardest things to get them to admit is that they're sinners. They usually say, well, I'm not so bad. I know people that go to church that are hypocrites and they're not worse than I am. It's hard to get a man to say I have sinned. Do you know it took... sixteen hundred years to write this book sixteen hundred years and it's God's account of mankind from the Garden of Eden and with until we say about the end of the first century AD sixteen hundred years to write it and in this book We read about kings and prophets and rulers, bad men and good men. But you know, there are only seven men in the pages of this book who said, I have sinned. You know that? You could think of them. You could name them, I'm sure. Who said, I have sinned. And of those seven, only two. said it to God and obtained salvation. The others died in those things. King Saul said, I have sinned. Judas Iscariot said, I have sinned and betrayed the innocent blood. Pharaoh said, I have sinned, the Pharaoh who ruled when the children of Israel came out of Egypt. I think Balaam was one who said, I have sinned. But they perished in their sins. King David said, I have sinned. But he was restored to God when he confessed his sin to God. And the prodigal son came over his father. He said, Father, I have sinned before heaven and in thy sight. Only seven people in all these long years would stand up and say, I have sinned. is the hardest thing to make people do, say I have seen. I remember once I was preaching twenty years or more ago in Vancouver, and we have a meeting in Vancouver where in those days they had built a beautiful chapel. I used to say I've been to the cathedral of the brethren, you know, in Vancouver. It was a beautiful building. Now there are many other beautiful buildings now, but twenty years ago, Grandville Street Gospel Chapel. And they allowed me to preach there three Sundays. And I remember one Sunday night a lady came down the aisle to me and she said, I want to talk to you. And I was just praising God. I thought, yes, there's a soul coming to Christ to him. And when I got her in the inquiry room at the side there, she said, I disagree with you. I said, why, why, why? She said, you said I'm a sinner and I'm not a sinner. I said, Madam, I didn't say you're a sinner. I might have sounded that way, but I said, it's God that's saying you're a sinner. And we had quite a long talk. It finally came to the conclusion she admitted. She admitted she was a sinner. She didn't get saved that night. I don't know whether she ever did. But I've always found this a difficult thing to get people to admit they're sinners. And here he says, all the world may become guilty before God. So don't let's be proud. Don't let's boast in our... Oh, the wonderful fact that we had good, wonderful Christian parents, a good mother and a good Christian father. How many people say, but I was born of Christian parents. How many say, well, I went to Sunday school from my childhood. How many say, I'm a member of this church or that church? Oh friend, what we want to hear people say is, I have sinned. I have sinned. Not what I have done to get salvation, but to admit that I need salvation. I need salvation. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Therefore, by the deeds of the law, There shall no flesh be justified in his sight. Our subject is justification. By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight. For by the law is the knowledge of sin. Why people, you know, they think they can get to heaven by keeping the Ten Commandments. First of all, everybody is broken. The first command, the first of all. Thou should love the Lord thy God is one God. Thou should love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind. There's nobody that's ever done that except the Lord Jesus Christ himself. And the Lord summed the whole thing up. And he said the first half of it is summed up in that. Thou should love the Lord thy God with all thy heart. And the final five summed up in this. Thou should love thy neighbor as thyself. And there's none of us that have done that. None of us have loved our neighbor as ourselves. I'll tell you what. If you've got more money in the bank than your neighbor has got, you don't love your neighbor as yourself. If you've got three suits and your neighbor's only got one, you better give one to him. You're going to love him like you love yourself. But we can't do it. None of us have ever done it. And so the Lord says here, by the law is the knowledge of sin. I remember when I was a young fellow going to some gospel meetings years ago and how these I envy the young people you know I envy the teenagers because the things you hear now you teenagers you remember when you're fifty sixty seventy years of age you remember them especially as you hear them tonight and the things we old says heard last week we can't remember today they're God and I remember things I heard when I was a teenager and I remember a preacher coming and he was describing this by the law is the knowledge of sin. And he said, some people try to get to heaven by keeping the law. Now, he said, let me give a simple illustration. He said, here's a man building a wall. And over there in Great Britain where I was born and brought up, they don't build houses of wood. They don't have much forestry over there. And they build them of bricks. In some places of stone. But they build them of bricks. And they used to be, I used to have an uncle whose great boast was that he could lay a thousand bricks a day. Now the Trade Union won't let him lay more than three hundred a day, but he boasted he could lay a thousand bricks a day. And they used to build the houses of bricks. And so this preacher came along and he said, now, when they build so far up, they take a plumb bar and they put a plumb line down and they look to see. Am I building straight? And they find they're not building straight. It's not in line with the plumb line there. It's crooked. So he says, well, I don't mind. The plumb line, the plumb line put that right. No, the plumb line won't put it right. The plumb line shows it's wrong, you see. The law of God doesn't put us right. We can't keep the law to get saved. The law shows us we are not saved. The law tells me, thou shalt do this, and I say, well, I haven't done it. There's the plumb line. When I measure myself up to the side of the plumb line, I'm crooked, I haven't gone straight. By the law is the knowledge of sin. So God is proving conclusively in this third chapter, having dealt with the Gentiles in the first chapter, And with the Jews in the second chapter, and then taking them all together in the third chapter, he describes in detail their sins. He says, in verse ten, there is none righteous, no not one. There is none that understandeth. There is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way. They are to together become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good, no not one. Now look at the details here that God speaks about. Their throat is an open sepulchre. With their tongues they have used deceit. The poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways. The way of peace have they not known. And there is no fear of God before their eyes. That's God's definition of mankind. And he takes notice of their throat, their tongues, their lips, their mouth, their feet, their ways, their eyes. God knows the details. And he says, There is none that doeth good, no, not one. And it's all summed up in verse twenty three, for all have sinned and come short. of the glory of God. I say again, how can a man in that state be cleared from every charge that could be brought against him? Here are all these charges brought by God against mankind. How can he be charged? Impossible. No, it's not impossible. Praise God, it's possible. Let's go on reading. Now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law. The law stands back and look on. All the prophets they wrote, they look on at the righteousness of God without the law. You see, whatever God does must be done on a righteous basis. God is holy. It must be right. It must be straight. It must be according to the plumb line if God is doing that. And God is going to justify man on a righteous basis. How in the world can he do it? Here it is. The righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe. For there's no difference. Now note as we pass, I'm afraid I won't have time to come back to this. I want to finish the meeting early because of the premedies. Note this in verse twenty-three. It's unto all. This righteousness, this justification by faith in Christ Jesus is unto all, but it's only upon all them that believe. Salvation is for all men, but only those that believe get salvation. It's unto all, but it's upon all them that believe. There's no difference for all of sin than come short of the glory of God. Now Paul makes this amazing statement, being justified freely by his grace. This is the only way God could justify a man. By grace. He keeps on saying, not by works, not by works, not by works. And in the next chapter we read about Abraham being justified by faith, but it's not written because of his works, but because of his faith. It's by faith. Being justified freely by his grace. By grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. Being justified freely by his grace. Through the redemption. Through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. Now here's the kernel, the center of it all here. Through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. This is where you put the red cross in your Bible. The redemption which is in Christ Jesus. This is Calvary. And he goes on to describe this is Calvary. Look what he says. Whom God has set forth to be a propitiation. That's a long, hard word. But in the margin of your Bible, it'll say he's put him forth to be a mercy seat. Now some of us who've read the Old Testament, and some of you boys and girls that have been to Sunday school, you know what a mercy seat is. When God brought the children of Israel out of Egypt, he gave them minute and detailed instructions how to make a tabernacle. And he said, I'm going to come down. Exodus twenty-five, I'm going to come down and dwell among you in the desert. And he had all their tribes laid out. Numbers tells us so clearly numbers, the first few chapters, how the tribes were laid out by name and number, and the thousands in each triad. Seventy-six thousand, fifty-five, all the different thousands of Israel in their tents. And I believe personally, there were three tents to the east from the tabernacle, three tribes to the east, Judah and so on and Dan and so on, to the east. And there were three tribes to the north, and there were three tribes to the south, and three to the west. And I believe they went outwards from the tabernacle. The first tribe, Judah, nearest to the eastern gate of the tabernacle, and beyond Judah. Don't forget there was nearly a hundred thousand people in that one, that was a city in itself, Judah. And then go to the next one, all there, thousands and thousands, and then the next. But what I'm trying to say is this, when the tents were all laid out, and right in the middle of it all was the tabernacle, when God looked down, do you know what he saw? A great big cross in the desert. Three tribes that way, three tribes that way, three tribes that way, three tribes that way, and right in the middle of that great cross, the tabernacle. And right in the middle of the tabernacle, the Holy of Holies. And right in the middle of the Holy of Holies, the Ark. And the Ark was covered with a golden lid called the Mercy Seat. The Mercy Seat. And two chariots been looking down with their eyes, always on the Mercy Seat. And once a year the High Priest went in, and he took the blood of the goat, the Atonement goat, and he took that blood and he sprinkled it once upon the top of the Mercy Seat. And the eyes of the cherubim look right down upon that blood. And the eye of God looks upon that blood. He called that the mercy seat. That's where he passed over their sins for one year. Their sins were not put away forever, the children of Israel. No, they were passed over for one year. And the Atonement Day came up again next year. When the Lord Jesus died at Calvary, he said, He put away our sins forever. And He made an eternal salvation. Never take place again. God passed over their sins. That's what we said as we read. We emphasize, I believe, in the reading, the remission of sins that are passed. How could God remit their sins for one year? By the blood of a goat? There was no value in the blood of a goat. The value was in what the blood of a goat stood for. It was the type of the blood of Christ. and God looked on to the blood of Christ to the mercy seat when his son would hang upon a cross and the cross would be sprinkled with his precious blood and he looked down upon that and see that holy sacrifice and then God passed over their sins for one year on account of that. But when the Lord Jesus died upon the cross he forgives sins forever as we said last time we were talking and he puts away sin forever by the blood of Christ. So this is the basis The mercy seat, or in simple language, the basis of all is the blood of Christ, the cross of Christ, where the holy, spotless, sinless Son of God became the Lamb of God and died on the cross for you and me. And there God, the Holy God, the righteous God, dealt with this question of sin, which he described here, which he hates. and his son became sin on that awful cross. And there in that darkness, that lonely three hours of darkness, the Son of God took your place in mine and became my substitute. And the punishment that I should bear for all eternity on account of my sin was born, oh, think of it, the sins of every man and every woman, of every age, the eternal punishment of that. Think of all that concentrated into three short hours and heaped upon the blessed Son of God when he hung upon that child, when he paid to the utmost the penalty of your sin and mine. God calls that mercy seat, propitiation, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation of mercy seat. Through faith in His blood, that blood spread there, shed there, through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for a mission of sins that are passed, to declare, I say, at this time, never mind the past for you and me, to declare at this time His righteousness that He might be just and the justifier, of him which believeth in Jesus. This is how God can justify our wicked sins. Because his beloved Son shed his blood and paid the price on Calvin's cross. And God can be just, and the justifier, of him which believeth in Jesus. Justification is by grace. But look at verse twenty-eight. Wherefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the works of the law. Justification is by grace, but justification is by faith. I am justified when I accept the Lord Jesus as my Savior. Now let's go into this very briefly at times, God. When I accept the Lord Jesus as my Savior, I believe on him. God says, I remember the moment in my life when God revealed to me from John that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. And like a flash, I got it. Whosoever believeth in him. And that moment I was saved. How about many, many things happened to that moment? I didn't know. I only had a great thrill in my heart that wonder of wonders. I know the meaning of the word, believe as I never knew before. And I said to myself, can it be true that I'm saved? Because I believe in the Lord Jesus. That's it. It's by faith. I believe that when he died, he died for me and I've set him. And by faith I'm saved. Now what happens? Well, as we said last time we were talking, that moment I was forgiven. All my sins forgiven. Past, present, future. All my sins forgiven when I accepted Christ as my Savior. What else happened? What is the next step tonight? I was justified. You know, I received the Holy Spirit of God. The moment I accepted Christ and you accepted Christ, we received the Holy Spirit of God. And we got a new nature, a divine nature, that cannot sin. The old one cannot do anything else but sin. And we accepted Christ. And now God looks at me not in that old Bob William, but he looks at me in Christ. And when he looks at me in Christ, he sees me clothed in the righteousness of his Son. And he says, he's justified. He's justified. There is not one charge that can be brought against him. It's all pain. Every charge has been made. And now I count him just as if he had never sinned. All the past put away. And God looks at me in the Lord Jesus as being without sin. Amazing. I said impossible. Impossible? No. Possible. Because the Lord has done it all through the blood and the work and the salvation that has encouraged Jesus. Just one other thought. It says in the last verse of chapter four, who was delivered for our offenses, but raised again for our justification. What do you mean, raised for our justification? I've got a wonderful illustration of this the other day. Here's a man, and he's committed some crime, and he's condemned to six months in jail. six months in jail. And he's locked up. And he's got to pay the price. Six months in prison. But a friend comes along and he says, I want to be your substitute. I want to take your place. An arrangement's been made. and the prison gates open, and the substitute goes into the jail and into the cell, and the man who committed the crime comes out, and he's free outside. Is he justified? I don't think he'd feel justified. I think he'd feel more sinner than ever, don't you? That somebody that had done it had not in there taken his place. Now tell me something. And this is how the little story went. The substitute that went into the jail... He could die in two months. If he died in two months, what would the law do? Come and find a man and say, come on, there's four more months to go. You go back in. He died. He didn't pay the price. You go back in. But one day he's walking down the street, and he sees the substitute walking down the street. He said, what happened? Well, he said, I behaved myself. They gave me a parole, and I came out. And I came out free. I paid the complete price that they demanded and I'm out. And the man says, I'm justified. And it wasn't until then that he realized he was justified. When the price was paid. Now it says, we're just to raise the gain for our justification. You see, if the Lord Jesus had stayed in the grave, like the man stayed in the jail. If he'd stayed in the grave, there could be no justification for you and me. The fact that he came out of the grave. proves that the price was paid to the very, very last drop. And God's throne was satisfied, and God's righteousness and holiness vindicated at the place of Calvary. And the Lord Jesus paid off. And when God accepted the full payment, he raised his son, he came out. And I look at the Lord Jesus, come out of the jail and I say, I'm justified. I'm justified. The price is paid and I am free. What a wonderful thing God has done for us. Forgiveness, justifies us. Next time we go on with these talks, we probably talk about, what should we say, redemption. Should we make a note? We'll talk about redemption. You might be reading about it. I don't know when that will be. Blessed God, our Father, we do thank You now for this wonderful, wonderful salvation called in Thy Scripture great salvation. We thank You for It. We thank thee, Lord, thou'st taken us, as we were in our sin. And thy beloved son took our place and died for our sins according to the Scripture. And when thou dost look upon him, we believe in him, we accept him by faith. And that moment, thou counting us, forgiven and justified. Just as if we had never sinned, with not one charge of thy holy throne that can be brought again. Help us, Lord, as we go through life, to realize that we have been freed, and thou wilt never charge sin to our account again, because the Lord Jesus paid it for us. Bless us, Lord. Make these things real in our hearts. We ask it in our Savior's precious name. Amen. Now, we would like that those who care and could spend ten minutes or so, fifteen minutes in prayer, that we would seek God's face very, very earnestly for this question that comes up tomorrow morning. We got into this thing innocently and we didn't know that we were in, this thing had to be done, but here's the question. It'll mean fifteen thousand dollars. to the Florida Gospel Pioneers, which money can be used for paying back bonds and so on for the Florida Gospel Pioneers. So, shall we spend a few minutes in prayer about this very matter? Now, those of you that want to go, please be free to go.