Romans 4:25 - ...who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.
See: 2 Corinthians 5:21 | Romans 8:31
Five Unanswerable Questions:
- If God is with us, who can be AGAINST? (Rom 8:31)
- He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously GIVE us all things? (Rom 8:32)
- Who will bring a CHARGE against God's elect? (Rom 8:33)
- Who is the one who CONDEMNS? (Rom 8:34)
- Who shall SEPARATE us from the love of Christ? (Rom 8:35-39)
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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00:18-00:21
Open your Bibles with me, please, to Romans 4.
00:22-00:28
You know, there are things about God and His Word that are just very hard for me to understand.
00:29-00:31
You know, like creation? Think about that.
00:32-00:38
The Bible says that God created everything just by speaking it into existence.
00:39-00:48
All the beautiful and complex things that you see in this world, God just took a few days and just spoke it into existence.
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I believe that, but I'm going to be honest with you, I don't understand it.
00:53-00:55
Or like the Trinity, right?
00:56-01:01
The Bible says that there's one God, but He's revealed Himself as three persons.
01:02-01:05
And I believe that, but I don't understand it.
01:05-01:24
And we can talk about eternity, and we can talk about predestination, and all of these All of these things really are kindergarten compared to the one thing in the Bible that I believe is absolutely the most baffling thing, and that is justification.
01:24-01:26
That is the hardest thing for me to understand.
01:27-01:29
I believe it, but I don't understand it.
01:29-01:32
We're looking at Romans 4.25 this year.
01:33-01:37
A couple of days ago we talked about the first half of the verse, and today we're going to look at the second half.
01:37-01:45
But talking about Jesus Christ, Jesus was delivered up for our trespasses.
01:46-01:48
We talked about what that meant.
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The "delivered up" literally means to hand a guilty person over to the authorities in order to be punished.
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And for your sin and for my sin, Jesus was treated as guilty.
02:00-02:04
And He was punished on my behalf and on your behalf.
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The second half of this verse says, regarding Jesus, and raised for our justification.
02:11-02:18
Today we're going to talk about, again, what is in my opinion, the hardest thing in the Bible for me to wrap my brain around.
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Today we're going to talk about justification.
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Like, what is justification?
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Well, if you go to a theology book and get a definition, it says something like this.
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Justification is when God declares a sinner as being righteous.
02:35-02:40
It's based on the blood of Jesus Christ, and it's appropriated by faith.
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It's when God would look at a sinner like me, because of what Jesus did for me, God would look at me and say, "You're perfect." What does that even mean?
02:52-03:05
You know, sometimes we try to come up with little definitions, little illustrations, cute little things to help us understand very hard things, but with justification, I thought of a couple that I've heard over the years, There's ways that people have tried to explain it.
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People say, "Well, justification is like, you know, like in word processing documents, right?
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You know, how you can justify the text.
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You know what I'm talking about?
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You know what I'm talking about?
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Like if it's right justified, that means it's lined up on the right, and if it's left justified, it's lined up on the left." Justification is like when God sort of lines you up, okay?
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Yeah, sure.
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And all God's people said, "Amen," I guess.
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And some people have said, "No, justification, think of it this way.
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Justification, just as if I've never sinned." How many people have heard that one?
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Okay, that's a popular one in here.
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I'm going to break that one down.
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They like that one.
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Okay, now, that's true.
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Look, look, "just as if I've never sinned." That's true, but it's incomplete.
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Because when it comes to salvation, there's a negative aspect and there's a positive aspect.
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And here's what I mean by that.
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is the negative aspect of salvation.
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Which means with forgiveness, God subtracted sin from you.
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Okay? That's forgiveness.
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Justification is the positive aspect, because with justification, God has added something to you, which is His righteousness.
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Is anybody else baffled by this?
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2 Corinthians 5.21 says, "For our sake, He, God, the Father, made Him, God the Son, Jesus.
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God made Jesus to be sin who knew no sin.
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That when He was on the cross, Jesus was treated as sin.
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But look at the second half of this verse. This is justification.
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So that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.
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That when you put your faith in Christ, God sees you as righteous.
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But look at this last phrase. How righteous?
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As righteous as your grandma? No.
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As righteous as the Apostle Paul? No, no, no.
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Greater than that. As righteous as Billy Graham? No.
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Look, when you put your faith in Christ, He sees you as righteous as Himself, so that we might become the righteousness of God.
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That is how perfect God regards you.
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Is there anybody else baffled by this?
05:22-05:35
that God would look at a piece of garbage like me, and I've done some things that I'm so ashamed of and embarrassed of, and God would say, "Well, when you receive My Son, you're as perfect as My Son." Baffling.
05:35-05:40
An illustration that I like that helps me understand it a little bit more.
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I heard the story of this lady who was speeding through this town, and she got pulled over and she ended up in court.
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I don't think this is a true story, by the way.
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Don't fact-check this, okay?
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Somebody right now is like, "Fake news!
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Fake news in the church!" It's an illustration.
05:58-06:09
So as the illustration goes, the woman shows up in court, and the judge says, "You either have to pay a $500 fine, or you go to jail." That doesn't sound right, so I think this is an illustration.
06:10-06:23
But anyways, the woman looked at the judge, and she said, "I don't have the money, and I really can't go to jail." And as the story goes, The judge looked down on her from his bench, and he stood up.
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And he took his black robe off, and he put his suit jacket on, and he went and he stood beside the woman, and he pulled out his checkbook from his coat, and he pulled out a pen, and he wrote a check for $500, and he slapped it on the bench.
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Then he took his suit jacket off, and he went and he put his black robe back on, and he sat down on the bench, and he said, listen, the law says you owe $500.
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And then he picked up the check that he just wrote and said, oh, your penalty's been paid.
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You're free to go.
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And you see in that story, what I like about that story, is the judge didn't just say, you know what?
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Just forget about it.
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Get out of here.
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I'm just going to let you off.
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Because if he had done that, there's still a matter of $500 that hasn't been paid.
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But what he did instead was come down to her and actually, from his own account, pay what she owed.
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And church, that's exactly what Jesus Christ has done for you.
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He came down from heaven to stand beside us to pay what we owed, credited to make perfect.
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Jesus was raised for our justification.
07:31-07:41
The crucifixion of Jesus Christ, His death, paid the penalty of our sin, and understand that His resurrection is what validated the sacrifice.
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That's what raised for our justification means.
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In other words, if Jesus had just stayed dead, crucified, put in the tomb, and He stayed dead, there would always be this shadow of doubt over the significance of the cross.
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Always.
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We'd still be sitting here today going, "Well, you know, He said He was the Savior of the world, and He said He was going to die for our sins, but how do we really know that sin was conquered?
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How do we really know that He really is who He said He is?" And the answer is the resurrection.
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Jesus was raised for our justification.
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Do you believe that?
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You know, somehow we believe it, but we don't live like we believe it.
08:25-08:33
Because even in the church, we still somehow want to think that we contribute to our justification, to our...
08:33-08:38
We somehow have to contribute to our right standing before God.
08:38-08:40
And I understand why we feel that way.
08:41-08:44
It's a very performance-based society, isn't it?
08:44-08:48
Some of us grow up feeling like, "If I do a good job, Dad's happy with me.
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If I do a good job, my boss is happy with me.
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If I do a good job, the teacher is happy with me." And we carry that over to God.
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And say, "If I do a good job, God is happy with me." And we think somehow that we contribute.
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Maybe it's the amount of faith that we have, or the amount of good works that we do, or we hope that when we cross over into His presence, hopefully our good outweighs the bad.
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That basis is going to be how God lets us into heaven.
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And we convince ourselves that those things are easier to believe than what the Bible actually says.
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And what the Bible actually says is Jesus was raised for our justification.
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If you have not received Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, it is a gift that God has bought for you that He desperately wants to give you.
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And you can receive that today.
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And if you're sitting here today You have received it.
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I want to remind you that you didn't earn it.
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And you can't work to keep it.
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I want to remind you that God doesn't love you less when you have a bad day.
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And God doesn't love you more when you have a good day.
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It's not based on your works.
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It's not based on your church affiliation.
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It's not based on your church attendance.
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It's not based on how much you've suffered here on the earth.
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In Christ, God has pronounced you justified.
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You are perfect because it's not based on what you do, but it's based on what Christ has done for you.
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If your salvation, if your justification was based on you, how many times a day do you think you would get saved and lose your salvation, and get saved, and lose your salvation, and get saved, and you lose your salvation, and "Oh God, I hope I die in a good moment." And some people believe that.
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But it's not based on you.
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based on what Christ has done for you.
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I want you to turn over a couple pages.
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We're gonna stay in Romans, but I want you to turn to Romans 8.
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Romans 8, looking at verse 31, Paul writes, "What then shall we say to these things?" He just spent all this time talking about the crucifixion of Christ and the resurrection of Christ and God's Holy Spirit indwelling God's people, that we are free and we are forgiven.
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And then he gets to Romans 8.31, and he says, "What shall we say to these things?" as in, we have to say something about all of this.
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This is good news for you today.
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For when you're feeling condemned, if you're thinking, you know, I believe in Jesus and I believe all that, but you know, Pastor Jeff, I feel like God is mad at me.
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Or if you've ever struggled with, you know, I just don't know if God really loves me.
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We're gonna look at five questions God's word gives us that we can ask ourselves.
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Five questions.
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I'd encourage you to take this outline, Keep it as a bookmark here, because you're going to want to turn back to it.
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Stick it on your refrigerator, because you're going to want to go back to it.
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But the times that the doubt creeps in, or the self-condemnation creeps in, you need to look at these five questions that God's Word gives you.
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Now, these are easy questions, because they don't have any answer.
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We're going to look at them quickly this morning.
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Five unanswerable questions.
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They come straight from the text. Look at the first one.
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"What then shall we say to these things?" He says, "If God is for us, who can be against us?" You see, if Paul would have just said, "Who can be against us?" I don't know about you, but there are days that I feel like the whole world is against me.
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Anybody else?
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Do you just feel like, "Who can be against me?
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"There's like a line forming outside my house.
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"It feels like everything is against me." But that's not what he said.
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He said, "If God is for us." Meaning for those of us who have received Jesus Christ, The cross proved once and for all this glorious truth that God is for us.
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All the powers of earth, all the powers of hell could stand against us and never prevail because God is on our side.
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And whoever could rob us of our salvation, whoever could rob us of our justification, whoever could destroy our relationship with God would have to be more powerful than God Himself.
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The first question is, if God is for us, who can be against us?
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Well, let's answer that.
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Go ahead, shout out the name of somebody that could be against you if God's on your side.
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Shout it out, shout it out.
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Who can be against you if God is for you?
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Who?
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Anybody?
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Can anybody be against you if God is for you?
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Anyone?
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Anyone?
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God is on your side.
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And there are so many people walking around thinking that God's just waiting for me to step out of line so he can smack me back in.
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That's the kind of God that we serve.
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And that's not true, because the cross proved that God is, He's for us.
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He's for us.
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So who can be against us?
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Second question, "He who did not spare his own son, "but gave him up for us all, "how will he not also with him graciously "give us all things?" Again, notice Paul didn't say, "Will God not graciously just give us all things?" Because we can look at that question in that form and say, "How can we be sure that God's going to give us everything that we need?" Also, in the world, what I deserve from God, the answer is nothing.
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But the way that Paul phrases the question takes the doubt away.
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You see, Paul points to the cross, and he says, "Listen, God gave you His Son." That's a big difference between God and me.
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There's a lot of differences, I'm sure you could tell.
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There's one in particular.
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"If giving up my Son meant saving you, I wouldn't do it." Hey, you are loved.
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But I'm just going to be honest with you, if somebody said, "Hey, Pastor Jeff, you can save everybody in this room right now.
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You just have to kill one of your sons." I would say, "I'll see you all in heaven, because I'm not giving up my son for you.
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There is no way that is ever going to happen." But you know, God didn't think like that.
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God says, "I'm willing to give up my son for you.
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I'm willing to allow my son to endure the most horrible, brutal, public execution for you.
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And that's why Paul points to the cross, and he says, "Do you want to know how generous God is?
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He who spared not His own Son, but gave Him up for us all." In other words, if God gave us the most precious thing that He has, He's going to give us anything else that we need.
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In Jesus, God gave us everything.
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And the cross is proof of God's generosity.
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The third question is, "Who will bring a charge against God's elect?" Who will bring a charge against God's elect?
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This question and the next question we're going to look at actually take us to a courtroom scenario.
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And what Paul's saying here is no prosecution can succeed, because the judge has already justified us.
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So stop walking around saying, "You know, I'm just a sinner." I hear people say that, "Well, I'm just a sinner." I'm just a sinner." In Christ, no you are not.
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You used to be.
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But God doesn't see you like that anymore.
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And you need to stop seeing yourself that way.
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Because when you walk around saying, "I'm just a sinner, oh, I'm just a sinner," do you know what you're doing?
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Not only are you contradicting what God has said about you, but you're giving yourself an excuse to sin.
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"Well, God, I can't help it. I'm weak. I'm just a sinner. I'm just a sinner." If you're just a sinner, go sin.
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But that's not who you are.
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You're a blood-bought child of God. You are set free from that.
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The charges were dropped.
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And the next question carries the same courtroom theme when he says, look at verse 34, he says, "Who shall bring," verse 33, "Who shall bring any charge against God's elect?
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It is God who justifies." There's that word again.
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Verse 34, "Who is to condemn?" We've got a lot of people that want to condemn us.
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We have critics, we have enemies, we have the devil.
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Worse than that, I think our biggest problem is our own heart.
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Our own heart wants to condemn us.
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But Paul says, "Who is the one who condemns?" And he gives us right here, it's right there in the text.
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Four reasons there's no condemnation.
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Four reasons. Just look at the text.
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There's four reasons there's no condemnation for you if you're in Christ.
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Look at the first one, "Christ Jesus is the one who died." There's no condemnation for you because Christ took it on Himself.
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He bore a condemnation on the cross.
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He was delivered for our trespasses.
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There's no condemnation.
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That's one reason. Look at the second reason.
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He says, "More than that, who was raised, raised to life by the Father, accepting the sacrifice of His Son for our justification, Jesus defeated death." That's the second reason.
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The third reason, again, look at the text, who is at the right hand of God.
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Jesus is seated at the right hand of God.
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There's no condemnation because Jesus is seated at the right hand of God.
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And you can't miss the significance of this because the work of justification was an event that happened one time, that never needs to be repeated.
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See, that's why Jesus is sitting down.
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Jesus isn't sitting at the right hand of the Father because He's tired.
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Like, "Oh, that was a long 33 years on the earth.
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I need to just take a load off for a few thousand years." That's not why Jesus is seated.
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Jesus is seated because He's done.
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The work of salvation doesn't...
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Nothing else needs to happen.
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It's not like Jesus sat down, He's like, "Oh, Father, they're messing up again.
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I'm going to have to go do some more redemptive work." It's over. He's done.
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And He's sitting down, so there's no condemnation.
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And the fourth, look at the next phrase, "Who is indeed interceding for us." This is great news.
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That Jesus Christ is interceding for you right now.
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Do you realize that?
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Do you realize right now, at this very minute, Jesus Christ is praying for you our advocate are to use this courtroom terminology Jesus is our attorney. He's our attorney much better than that. Who's that guy? There's never a fee unless we get money for you Attorney Edgar Snyder. Thank you Much better. We already saw this as we went through Revelation But Satan is called the accuser of the brethren Satan is an accuser of God's people and in this courtroom scenario Satan is accusing you before God.
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Satan is saying, "He's no good. She's just a sinner." Look, I can't believe you have any interest in this piece of garbage, because worthless, okay? Worthless!
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Satan is accusing you, but you have this defense attorney, Jesus Christ, who stands and says, "Your Honor, I hear these accusations, but I present to the court that I died for Him, and that sin He's being accused of, I died for that.
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and every sin that the enemy wants to list and throw up in your face, I'm here to tell you that I died for that.
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I took the condemnation. I gave her my righteousness.
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So often even born-again Christians are tempted to think, "You know, I have to answer for all the wrong that I've done." Not if you're in Christ, because there's no double jeopardy in God's court.
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You see, it's not like God punished Jesus for your sin, and God's like, "I'm still mad, and I'm going to punish that person too." Romans 8.1 says, "There is now therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
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It is forever settled in God's courtroom." And then the last question, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" Look at verse 35.
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"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" And then he gives a sample list.
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"Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?
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As it is written, 'For your sake we are being killed all the day long.
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we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.
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Quoting from the Old Testament, really all he's doing there is saying, you know what, suffering has always been the experience of God's people.
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He says, "Knowing all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.
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For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present or things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else, and all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." We are not just conquerors.
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We are more than conquerors.
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We are not just squeaked out a run in extra innings because the team committed an error.
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Whoo, that was a close one.
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We won eight trillion to nothing and the team forfeited.
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We are more than conquerors.
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So these are the questions.
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If God is for us, who can be against us?
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If God gave us his son, how will he not also give us everything else that we need?
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Who can accuse us when God has justified us?
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Who can condemn us when Christ has already paid the penalty for our sin?
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What can separate us from the love of Christ?
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What's the answer?
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Praise God, none of these questions have an answer.
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There's no condemnation.
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There's no separation.
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There is nothing that can undo your standing with God.
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He has pronounced you perfect because Jesus was raised for our justification.
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Would you bow your heads with me, please?
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Father in heaven, we thank You for the truth of Your Word.
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Father, I confess, this is a hard one for me to understand, because I know my own wickedness.
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I don't know it as well as You do, but I know it a lot better than everybody else does.
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I know my wickedness, and the fact that You would pronounce me not only not guilty, but You would pronounce me perfect and righteous because of what Jesus did on my behalf.
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God, I just can't even wrap my brain around that.
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Father, I pray if there's any here today who don't know You.
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There's any here today that feel like, "I'm not good enough to come to God," or, "I don't deserve anything from God." Maybe that's true, but that certainly isn't how you acted.
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That certainly is not, Father, how you regard that person.
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You sent your Son to die for the worst, like me.
22:44-22:55
I pray, Father, today is the day that we stop looking at reasons that we don't think that you would accept us, and instead we look at the truth that because of Christ, you have accepted us.
22:55-22:59
You welcome us back. You redeem and transform us.
22:59-23:01
You adopt us. You save us.
23:02-23:04
Not based on our conduct, but based on Christ's.
23:05-23:11
Father, for the believer here who maybe has been struggling, I pray that today is the day of repentance for that person.
23:11-23:13
We don't walk as defeated people.
23:13-23:18
We walk as people who have been called more than conquerors because of the victory of Jesus Christ.
23:19-23:20
It's in His glorious name.
23:20-23:23
We pray and we praise You, Father. Amen.
Small Group Discussion
Read Romans 4:25
What was your big “take-away”? What stood out to you from this passage / message?
Define justification. How is it different from “forgiveness”?
Why do many Christians still feel condemned, despite saying they believe what the Bible says about justification?
BREAKOUT
Pray for one another to live in light of Romans 4:25.