God, thank you so much for this morning. Thank you for every person here. Lord, I want to specifically ask right now that you just open our hearts and minds to your word. Your word is powerful. It's true. Lord, even if if we're here and or we're watching and we've never really engaged with scripture before, we have all these preconceived notions of what the Bible is about, I pray, Lord, that you would help us set those aside and realize that when you speak something, when you speak truth, it has the ability not to just change what's happening around us, but it can change us. And we want that to happen this morning. We want to be more like the people you created us to be. We want to experience our destiny and being your children, part of your family, equipped by you, filled with your spirit. We pray this in your name, Jesus. Amen. All right. And this morning feels like eventful. I'm excited. I was telling our team this last week that it feels like everything's kind of coming out of our sort of transition phase, and now we're going back into being a full-fledged church again. I'm like, I'm excited about everything happening. I'm really excited about the series that we started last week. If you weren't here, we started a brand new series called The Full Gospel. The full gospel. We're studying Romans chapter 3, verses 21 through 31. If you have a Bible, you can actually turn there, or if you have our mobile app, you can read directly, follow along. You can do that at home as well. I'm gonna go ahead and read this, and I want to preface this by saying most people when reading this section of scripture will be tempted to check out after about two sentences. Because it is, it is, it's amazing, it is complex, it's very nuanced, it's also filled with a lot of terms that a lot of us, even those of us maybe who have been following Jesus for a long time, have sort of a hazy understanding of. And so it's so easy to read this and get a few sentences in and just be like, uh, skip forward, God loves me, I get it, right? But but it's very important for us to really fully understand what this is communicating because this section of scripture might just be the most comprehensive laying out of what the gospel, which is a word that means the good news, this might be the most comprehensive detailing of the good news of Jesus that we have in all of Scripture. And so it's important for us to understand the full gospel. We can't just get the gist of it. You know, some things in life you can just get the gist of and it's fine. Like I've been watching uh the Marvel movies with uh with one of my kids at home, and uh, don't know if you guys are into those at all. I'm not like crazy into them, but they're fun movies. And so uh my wife will walk in the room sometimes and she'll be like, What's going on? And all she needs is the gist, right? Uh bad guy trying to get some powerful object, they don't want that to happen. That's the movie. And she's like, Got it. There's some things in life that the gist is enough, but there are other things where it's not. Like if you were having major surgery and you asked the surgeon whether or not they really felt comfortable and they said, Yeah, I think I've got the gist of it, you would be like, No, that is uh, whoa, the gist will not do. As we read this, understand that the gist of the good news, you need more than that. You need a complete understanding of what Jesus has done for you. A complete understanding of the gospel, because without that, with just a partial gospel, you'll only experience partial joy, partial love, partial peace. No, you want the full thing. So let's read this together. Romans 3, 21 through 31. But now the righteousness of God has been made manifest apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it. The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe, for there is no distinction. For all have sinned and fall 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 forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Then what becomes of our boasting? It's excluded. By what kind of law? In other words, it's saying, by what kind of law have we been justified? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Or is God the God of the Jews only? Is he not also the God of the Gentiles? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means, on the contrary, we uphold the law. Again, there's a lot going on here. It's very nuanced, but there's four major concepts that we're tackling in this series. And I believe if you understand, or at the very least, have a pretty good understanding of these concepts, you're in a really good place to experience what God ultimately wants you to experience as a believer. Last week we talked about the first concept, which is righteousness through faith. Righteousness through faith. Today we're going to look at justification by grace. Next week is propitiation by atonement. And then the last week is the ability to uphold. The ability to uphold, the ability to actually do what God calls us to do. Those four concepts give us the full gospel. And so, what I want us to do this morning is have a little bit of conversation about definitions, like really exciting stuff, right? Who came to church this morning being like, you know what I want? I want to learn definitions of words. That sounds like spiritual and impactful. But the reality is, sometimes, sometimes we read scripture and we see words, and we know that those words are meaningful. We might even understand, like I said a minute ago, the gist of the word. But but if we don't actually know what's being communicated, we're missing out on the power of what's being said. You know, sometimes you say something and it's it's powerful. Those of you who have a spouse, think about the first time, or maybe you're engaged, right? You're at that level of commitment. Think about the first time that person looked at you and said, I love you. How powerful was that moment?

Right?

That word love, it meant so much. I'll never forget the first time I told my wife that I loved her. She looked at me and it was like her eyes were just they're blue and they're beautiful and they were bright, and she just said, Thank you. And uh, you know, that meant the world to me. You know? It's a powerful response to that. Sometimes you just gotta keep at things, right? That's what I did. But but see, sometimes what happens when we read scripture, especially sections like this, is we read some some statements. And there's a lot of words, and especially when they're kind of religious words, and we're sort of like, yeah, I sort of understand that, but but but no, no, we've gotta we've gotta hear the power of what's being spoken to us. If we go back to verse 23 and 24 for just a moment, it says, we've all sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And if that's a hard thing for for you to come to terms with, this is like this is how I like to think about it. I have fallen short of my own standards like a thousand times. I fall short of my own expectations, let alone God's. That's easy for me to grapple with. It says that we've all fallen short of the glory of God, but we are justified by his grace as a gift. We are justified by his grace. This morning we're talking about justification by grace. And so I really want to make sure that we understand what these words mean because they are powerful, powerful words. Let's start with justification. Justification. This is a core concept of our faith. So if you're like a new believer, it is so vital for you to understand what justification is all about. If you're someone that hasn't put your faith in Jesus yet, good news, this will help you understand what you actually receive when you do that. Justification is a it's a massive term. We see it elsewhere in scripture, all over the place. Romans 5 1 says, Therefore, since we've been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Titus 3.7 says, so that being justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. We see this phrase, justified, pop up all throughout the New Testament. We are justified because of the grace of God. But what I found is that very few people actually have a real understanding of what justification actually means. In fact, I would put myself in that camp just a few years ago. Like honestly, four or five years ago, if you would have come up to me and just on the spot, without any prep said, Hey, Justin, you are justified by God, what does that mean to you? I would have said, Yeah, I'm forgiven. God has forgiven me. And that's true. God has forgiven us. Forgiveness, it's it's part of justification, but it's it's not the full picture. Let me give you an example. Uh, legally speaking, there's there's something called a pardon. And if someone's pardoned, what that means is that they are guilty and their guilt is recognized. But but someone who has authority determines that they don't need to worry about paying the price for their guilt anymore, and they're they're pardoned. And in that sense, all of us have been pardoned by God. He's looked at all of us and he sees our sin, right? He knows everything. We've all fallen short. And so, yeah, he has chosen to forgive us. We've been pardoned. But he didn't stop there. Justification, legally speaking, would be you being declared not guilty. You've been declared innocent. So there's actually nothing to forgive you for if you've been justified, if we're using legal terms. That's actually what God has done for us. When it says that we've been justified, it's so much more than forgiveness. It means that God has looked at us and through our faith in Jesus, he has declared us righteous. He's declared us not guilty in his presence. Now, I want to do something really quick, an exercise, if you guys are willing to participate with this, I believe it's powerful, to help us actually understand the difference between those two things. And so, just in your mind, picture you standing before God the Father. I don't know how you picture God the Father. Maybe it's a throne, maybe he's got a beard, maybe it's just light. I don't know. Don't worry about that. But just picture yourself standing before God the Father. Aware of all your shortcomings, of all your issues, of your baggage, all your stuff. And we all have stuff, right? Anyone here have stuff? Yeah? Wow, some of you don't. Okay. Well, I always say if you don't have stuff, we should trade places, because I got lots of stuff, right? Like you're in front of God the Father, and you're aware of all of that. And picture for just a moment, and really picture this. If you have to close your eyes, close your eyes to picture it. But you're there, you're thinking on all those things, and the father looks at you and he says, I forgive you. I forgive you. And you might want to protest a little bit, you might want to say, no, but Father, you you don't understand what I've done. You don't understand what I've, the thoughts that I've had, the things that I've done in my life. No, I I I forgive you. I forgive you. That's that's a powerful thought to experience, right? But that's not justification. That's a pardon. Justification's a whole different level. Same thing. Picture yourself standing before the Father. If you have to close your eyes, close your eyes. You're aware of your stuff, you're aware of your shortcomings, all your baggage. In fact, you can even picture yourself carrying all the baggage. And the father looks at you and he says, I find no fault in you. And you're like, Father, I've got all this baggage. Like I've done all these things, I've had all these thoughts. You, I mean, I've I've fallen so short. And he looks at you and he says, No, I find no fault in you. I find no fault in you. You are righteous, you are justified in my sight. That's what justification means. It's more than forgiveness. You see it? It's more than forgiveness. I mean, how powerful is that? Really grab a hold of that for a second. Let this sink in. Like you've been forgiven by God. We talk about that a lot. He loves us, he forgives us, but it's so much more than just that. His love for you is so powerful, it is so complete, that simply by placing your faith in his son Jesus, he looks at you and he says, I find nothing wrong with you. I find nothing wrong with you. Scripture says that he's taken our sins and he's put them as far as the east is from the west. That he's thrown them in the ocean. Through faith in Jesus, you have been so completely cleansed by God that he looks at you and he doesn't see it. Like you might even bring it up and say, God, I, you know, I've I struggle with this, and he's like, What are you talking about? I see nothing wrong with you. I find no fault in you. Your phone going off during church isn't even a sin. It's good. You're justified. It's all fine. I find nothing wrong with you. I find no fault in you whatsoever. Do you believe that? Is that hard to believe for anybody else? Like on a daily basis? Like in moments like this, I'm like, yeah, I believe it, but on a daily basis, God looks at me and he finds no fault. See, if you really believe that, here's what that means. You never have to bargain with God because you have nothing to make up for. You never have to look at God and say, hey, God, I'm I know I messed up yesterday. I'm so sorry, I'm gonna make up for it today. I promise I'm gonna do better. Like he would look at you and go, I find no fault in you. I find no fault in you. In fact, some of us, I believe God is looking at you right now, seeing you, and he needs you to hear this so badly. He's like, he's been saying it over and over again, but it hasn't sunk in, and so he's beyond the whisper. And he's like going, I find no fault in you. I love you, you're righteous, you've been made holy in my sight. Jesus' blood, his sacrifice, it's covered everything, you're good. I find no fault in you whatsoever. That's amazing. That's what justification is. It's powerful, it's so much more than forgiveness. And so if you walked in here this morning, if you turn this on this morning and you're like, man, I love the fact that I'm forgiven by God. I hope that you leave today knowing that no, you're more than forgiven. You're justified. And you're justified by this thing called grace. And grace is another one of those terms that we spend a lot of time in church talking about, thinking about, singing about, right? But again, it's a term that we can get hazy on sometimes. Like, what is grace? And I have found that a lot of times, whenever we're in this mode, like everything just sort of becomes forgiveness. You know, what is justification? It's like, I'm forgiven by God. What is what is grace? I'm forgiven by God. But no, no, no, we've got to know these terms because this is powerful. Grace, grace is really powerful. Grace is like the the initiator of everything that God does. Like he loves us by his grace. He saves us by his grace, he justifies us by his grace. And if you want a really basic definition of grace, it's simply this: Grace is getting what you don't deserve. Getting what you don't deserve. It's different than mercy. Mercy is you not getting what you do deserve. Grace is actually receiving what you don't. It's a slight difference, but actually really, really different if you think about it. For example, let's say you have a job and uh and you don't you don't do your job well. In fact, you mess up in a in a major, major way. If your boss finds out that you messed up, you lost the client, you whatever mistake you made, and decided not to fire you, that would be mercy. Because maybe you deserve to be fired, but you weren't. You you were given mercy. And you would walk away with mercy, being like, thank you, thank you, oh, thank you. Grace would be your boss giving you a promotion and a raise, even though you just did what you did. And you'd probably walk away from that conversation confused. Because grace does not make sense. That's something that I need us to understand. Like, ultimately speaking, grace does not make sense to us as people because we experience very little grace. We live in a world that it that gives very little grace. We live in a culture right now where if you say the wrong thing, if you tweet the wrong thing, it doesn't matter who you are, you could be famous with millions of fans, you said the wrong thing 10 years ago, no grace. Right? You're out, you're canceled, you're done. Our culture talks all the time about love, but it doesn't give very much grace. Because we don't understand grace as people. We live in a world that understands love by merit, but not love by grace. So it just doesn't make sense to us. Let me kind of explain how this works with with God. Uh the word salvation, that's another word that we often talk about, hear about in church, salvation. Hey, salvation really has three parts. Has three parts. Number one, justification. That's what we just got done talking about. God, through faith in Jesus, looks at you and says, You're righteous. Justification is an act of God. You don't do anything. Like you didn't, you didn't have to do anything. Right? Raise your hand if you did something prior to Jesus coming and dying for you on the cross. Anyone? No? Right? That's pretty easy for us, right? Because he was like 2,000 years ago. But no one did. No one ever did. In fact, if we look at a scripture in Ephesians chapter 1, verses 4 through 5, it says, even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. That means God did not come for you, send his son to die for you because he had to. It's what he chose to do. He knew from the very beginning he would have to do it. It gave him great pleasure in planning that. Why? Because he loves you so much that he was happy to do whatever was necessary to secure your place in his family. It's grace. Starts with justification, salvation. It's an act of God. You didn't do anything. You don't, you can't do anything for it. The second part of salvation is something called sanctification. And that's a fancy word that just means being made holy over time. That's a process. And so the good news is that if you're sitting here and you're like, man, I've got stuff. I've been a Christian for a long time. I don't know why I'm still struggling with this. Well, because you're there yet. That's okay. You're still being sanctified. God's working on you bit by bit, his spirit within you. And then the third part of salvation is something called glorification, which means the ultimate moment when we are in God's presence, no more issues, no more baggage. That's all done. We have eternal life with God. Something that Paul talked about, for example, in Romans chapter 8, verse 18, when he says, For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed in us. Paul was always looking toward this future glory. So you've got three parts to salvation: justification, sanctification, and then glorification. Here's why I'm talking about this related to grace. This is not just a morning of definitions. If you're new, it's your first time, you're like, man, is this all they do, just defining words? No, not really. But it's important for us again to know these words so that they can have the impact. That whole process of salvation doesn't make sense. Because here's how it makes sense. Sanctification should be first. First, we should have to get right. First, something should have to change in us, and we should be able to be at a certain level. We're good enough, we're holy enough. And then, once we're good enough, God should look at us and go, okay, now you're justified. And then we receive the prize, the the glorification part. That's how our world works. I'll give you an example. Uh for several years I have coached youth basketball, never two seasons in a row, because it's not good for me to be a pastor and a coach in the same community. Um, if you're a referee in the youth basketball, I you probably recognize me, and I'm sorry. Um, but you made a bad call, and I had to do what I had to do. So you got to get better. Um, I'm just joking. No, I've coached youth basketball, and and if you've ever done this, by the way, anyone in the room ever coached youth sports at all? You guys have been youth, okay. Sometimes you have to go through this process, especially with young kids, and it is like I hate it, and I know the kids hate it. It's it's awful. It's like an it's like a necessary evil, and it's called assessments. And what assessments are is all the kids who are gonna play, they all show up and they all have to do these drills in front of their friends and in front of coaches. And if you're a coach, you're standing there with a clipboard, and you are numerically rating the ability of like eight-year-olds. You know, it's really messed up, but necessary. And the reason you do that is because you're trying to make sure that the teams are balanced and even that you know, all the kids who have played for years don't all end up on the same team, and all the kids who thought, yeah, I want to try this out, they're all on the same team. That would be a horrible experience. And so you've got these kids, and and and they're they're going through their stuff, and you're sitting there as a coach with a clipboard, and and you're you're making notes, and it's it's like they're looking at you nervous, and you're like, man, this is awful for me too. And every year that I've coached, I guess because the Lord loves me, I've I've gotten the first pick every year. And so, what do I do? I pick the best kid, like shocker, right? That isn't grace, by the way. Like that's me wanting to win. So I pick the best kid, and then when my next pick comes up, guess what I do? Whoever's the best kid on my list is still available. That's that's what makes sense to us. You know, every year there'll be a kid who's like, clearly, you've never Even heard of this sport. Like, I think you may have just walked in a few minutes ago and said, sure, I'll try this. And you can tell this is totally new to this kid. It's like he's never done it before at all. And those kids, guess where they get picked? Last. If you they're the last ones, because that's how our world works, right? How odd would it be if I got the first pick? And I decided to pick the kid who was the worst. Who had never played before? And I'm like, no, no, I'm gonna pick him with my first pick. And then I'll then I'll start working with him. Like I'll pick him, I'll secure his place on my team, and then after I pick him and choose him for my team, then I'll start to teach him how to play. I mean, I I could go about that as a strategy, but I don't know how well it would go for me in the season. But that's what God's done with all of us. It doesn't make a lot of sense. It's not the strategy that we would choose as human beings, but God has chosen you. And he chose you and he gave you his son and he loved you before you had even displayed one iota of what he desired in you. It's grace. It's unmerited love. That before you breathed, God loved you. Before you had done anything, God chose you. And he didn't choose you because he looked at you and said, Man, they've got potential. I'm not saying you don't have potential. I'm just letting you know that that's not why God chose you. God did not choose you because he's like, ooh, wow. That one's super smart. I want that one on my team. And by the way, if that is how God chose people, the disciples would make no sense if you know the story of Jesus. Right? This is not, he's not, this is not the best of the best. He doesn't choose us because of what he sees in us. He chooses us because of who he is. And he loves us. There's a man named Charles Spurgeon, who was a preacher many, many years ago in England. And um sometimes when I write his name down in my notes, autocorrect changes it to Charles Sturgeon, and that's fine. Um but Spurgeon once wrote this. He said, Such is the grace of God. It does not visit us because we ask it, much less because we deserve it, but as God wills it. And the bottles of heaven were unstopped. So God wills it, and grace descends. No matter how vile and black and foul and godless men may be, he will have mercy on whom he will have mercy. And that free, rich, overflowing goodness can make the very worst and least deserving the object of his best choices. You have been justified by grace. God looks at you and he says, I find no fault in whatever fault you find in yourself. You are alone when it comes between you and God in fixating on that. Not saying there aren't things you need to work on, like sure. That's sanctification. That'll happen over time. But when it comes to that initial moment of God declaring you righteousness, it's it's just by grace. It's just you have faith in Jesus. By his grace, he loves you. He says you're righteous, he says you're good. He finds no fault in you. And it doesn't matter what you've done, it doesn't matter where you've been, it doesn't matter how how short you've fallen, none of that matters. Because you've been justified by grace, unmerited love. It's a powerful concept, and we have to understand that. We've got to understand that this morning because we can't walk around and carry shame and guilt and fear and worry as if somehow our relationship with God is fragile. I think some of us sometimes believe that there's some fragility in our relationship with God. And we believe that because we experience fragility in all other relationships. Even the relationships that should be secure. Some of us grew up in homes where where the love that we had from our parents was not secure. Maybe it was absent or it was fragile or it was performance-based, and we're wired that way now, but that's not how God is. Your relationship with God is not fragile. It is secure because you have been justified by grace. God finds no fault in you whatsoever, none, zero, zip. There's none. Why? Is it because of what you've done? No, it's because of who He is, which is great, which means you can't mess it up. You you cannot mess this up. Like it's impossible. There's nothing like that in the world. There's nothing like that in the world. There's nothing that you can have in this world that you can't mess up. Believe me, I got four kids. And it's it's so hard being a parent sometimes because you know, every child, when when they're handed to you, they love you and they think you're amazing and smart and like you know everything. And then eventually one day you see them roll their eyes at you, and you realize they think I'm stupid. And then if you're honest, you go, I've kind of earned that at this point, you know? There's nothing in this world that I could hand you that you could not mess up if you tried. But the love of God, your status and his family, the fact that you're justified by grace, like he's given that to you, take it, receive it through faith in Jesus, and guess what? You can't mess it up. You can try, but it's indestructible. You can try, but it's indestructible because God's grace, his love for you, there's nothing like it. You gotta believe that. Like we're believers, it matters what we believe. If we're believers, it matters what we believe, it matters how intensely we believe. Do you believe that the love that God has for you is indestructible? Do you believe that he looks at you and says, I find no fault in you and there's nothing you did to earn it, which means there's nothing you can do to break it. Do you believe that this morning? That's good, you need to believe that. And here's why, when you have such security in your relationship with God, guess what? That security translates to every other aspect of life. There are many people right now who are experiencing a lot of insecurity because of the status of our nation, depending on their political views, depending on who the president is or isn't, or will be, or won't be, and things like that. But no, guys, come on, our security has nothing to do with those things. Nothing to do with those things. Jesus is the king, he is the king of all, and he loves us, and we're part of his family. And he's forgiven us and he's brought us into a relationship with him, and we can't mess it up. It's beautiful. Here's how beautiful this is that the only thing I can think of doing in response is worship. It's like, what do you do with grace? Like he hands it to you, you can't break it. You can try, you can throw it on the ground, you can step on it, you can do whatever you you can think of to destroy it. Can't can't happen. So, what do you do with it? You just you just enjoy it. Like you just enjoy it. That's what you do with grace. You bask in it, you reflect on it, you walk around being like, whoa, like when Megan said I thank you after I said I loved her, and you know, to give her credit, it was three weeks into our relationship in high school, so you know, I was a little forward. But uh that was one thing. But when she finally looked back at me and said, I love you too, you know what I did? I basked it. I walked around smiling. That's how powerful that was. You gotta bask in the love of God, you gotta soak it in. You gotta spend time just being like, He loves me. I've been given grace, and here's what's so cool, God is awesome, and this happens so often at his hands that you might you might hear this story enough for me that you're like, no, this is too often. You just plan it. This is how cool it is. I'm writing the message on like Wednesday, and uh I'm getting toward the end of it, and I'm like, what do we do at the end? You know, what what do we do with grace? And I'm like, we need to worship. We just need to take two, three minutes and and worship in response to this. The undeserved favor of God, the fact that he looks at us and says, I find no fault in you. We we we just need to bask in it a little bit. So I open up this app that I have that has all of our worship songs and all the plans. Because Matt and the team, they're not like me, they plan things out really well. I'm not good at that, so I apologize. Um But Matt's a planner, he's awesome. And so I pull it up and I open it up to the date, and I'm looking at the songs and I'm like, ah man, none of these songs will, none of these songs will really work. Like we could kind of mess with it a little bit, I could probably frame it a certain way, but it just didn't feel right. And I thought about asking Matt to add another song to the list, but I had just given him this huge task, and I'm like, that's not gonna be good for our relationship. Um, I love you, man. And uh and I'm going, oh, oh well, well, you know what? It was a nice thought. Maybe, maybe we don't need to worry about worshiping at the end this week because it's I don't want to create all this extra work and all this stuff. And then I looked at the date that I was looking at and realized I was looking at next week's songs. You know, I don't even know what day it is most times, so that's that's that's kind of me. And so I'm like, oh, I had this moment, like I'm gonna, I'm looking at the wrong day. I'm gonna flip back to the eighth. And I just I hope there's a song on the list that works with this whole like justification by grace message. And I'm like, Herb is singing amazing grace. Look at that, and then I say, God, thank you for doing my job for me. I really appreciate that because he does that a lot. It's grace. God finds no fault, none. He's given you everything he has his love, his passion, his commitment by grace. Unmerited, you get what you don't deserve. Can we bask in that for just a few minutes?