Lesson 11a
Romans 3:24-31 · Mike Doyle · Jun 10, 2018
Romans (2018-21), No. 21
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261910335065

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

So we're going to go back and pick up a couple of questions in Lesson 10 for the benefit of those that are on the tape. What does it mean to be declared righteous? Well, we're accounted righteous. Let me put it another way. Is it possible to obtain standing before God so that you can stand there in all of his scrutiny and be qualified to be there? Yes. How do you do that? Only by Christ's faith and Christ's cross. So then if you do that then you have the standing? believe it happens by God's grace and mercy. Would God have you before him by just his grace and mercy because he's a good guy? No. There had to be a death. What's that? Why did there have to be a death? Because the wages of sin is death. The wages of sin is death. Even more than that.

It has to go to God's character. Who is he? He's righteous, he's holy and he doesn't compromise. Ever notice that about God? I know we're always getting him. I mean we pray all the time and ask him to compromise and he's not going to do it because it's not his character to do so.

So if we recognize that we have come short of the glory of God, do you ever think about this, that in order to have a standing before God you have to have his glory? You see that? You got to have his glory in order to have a standing. We don't have a standing ourselves. So we've got to get it somehow. We have to have a standing. that allows us to be in his presence. It's one thing for him to solve the sin issue, it's a whole other issue for him to allow you and me into his presence. You see that? You okay with that? You tracking with me now? So, Newell's had a couple of interesting comments.

He said negatively and positively, from a negative standpoint, Paul begins to declare in the first recorded discourse in Acts 13 that everyone that believes on him is justified from all things. What does justified from all things mean? It seems legal, that expression, just as if I've never sinned. Just as if I've never sinned, okay.

And what makes you justified? What gives you that justification? What is the commodity? The blood of Christ. Without that, there is no justification. Nothing. On the positive side, it says in Romans 4.25 that Christ was raised for our justification. How does that fit?

He is raised for our justification. If He is raised for our justification, what effect does that have on me? That shows God is satisfied with that sacrifice. God is satisfied with the sacrifice that he did and he raised them. But notice the term that says raised for our justification. Put our justification and resurrection together.

How does that work? Here's the deal. You can't and I can't have a place before God ourselves, right? We've got to get a new place. We've got to be in a new surrounding. We've got to be in a new standing. And the resurrection of Christ becomes our new standing. Because there isn't anything in us that would allow us to stand before God.

I drove by yesterday or the day before, what is that place in Aurora where, what's his name, he came back to Denver, used to be called the Potter's House. There's a sign. Dennis Leonard. He's got a big sign on the side of this church, you know what it says? Sinners welcome here. Anything wrong with that? He wants the unsaved to come. He wants the unsaved to come. But that's not his message.

His message is that if you're all sinners, you come to our place. Are you guys sinners? Are you a sinner? No, you're not. You have a sin nature, but the standing and the righteousness before God, you are the righteousness of God, there's the glory part, in Christ. As your position in Christ, you're no longer, there's no such thing in a Christian church as the saved sinner. Because once you're saved, you get moved over into Christ. Can I say that Christ at one time was a sinner?

He never was one, was he? No. So if I have a standing in him, do I? And can I say, well, I used to be a sinner and I'm not a sinner anymore? Is that stretching it too far? You say back to me, well, you still commit sins. I say, well, yeah, on Thursday I do. Doesn't it seem like an oxymoron that I can say I'm not a sinner yet I still commit sins?

Have I got you totally confused? It sounds bipolar to me. Bipolar, doesn't it? How can you be? Well, I think we are. You think we are bipolar? Yeah, as believers. When you think about it, we really are. We have two natures. We live in two environments. One is a position which is the one that is reality. The other is a condition which may or may not be reality at any time.

In our new position in Christ, John says in 1 John, you can't sin. You can't sin in Christ because if you could then the righteousness and all that Christ did and all of his work would be for nothing. Do you see that? I had a debate one time a long time ago with a guy that actually came to this church and he thought that going through eternity that every once in a while that we would as believers kind of look back at our lives on the earth and be thankful that Christ saved us from our sins. And I said, that's ridiculous. He said, why? I said, you know, why would I ever want to do that?

My focus for all eternity is not going to be on me and my sinfulness. In Adam, my focus is going to be on the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ and who I am in him. He's going to occupy all of my attention. I don't think we'll have any memory of this life once we get to heaven.

Yeah, I don't know, but I don't know. I don't think so. I mean, how can we? I agree with that. How can we? And whether it's a memory or not, we won't ever spend any We won't spend any time in eternity doing X. Well eternity isn't time. I don't know how that works.

But I agree with you because Christ will be the focus. So we have a place in Christ resurrected which is the righteousness of God in him which is his righteousness and I have it because I'm positioned in him. my position in him, like it or not, I'm no longer a sinner. Because a forgiven sinner cannot be in the presence of a holy God, because he's still a sinner. So what does God have to do? He has to recreate us in Christ, give us Christ's standing so that we have the access to God that he has, no sin. Now we think, well gee, that We probably need to be dealing with our sins all the time. The real secret is no you don't. The more we are occupied with the Lord Jesus the less we are occupied with me and whatever I am doing or thinking.

So what does, any questions about Question 8? I think the thing goes back, you know, the bipolar part is understanding between position and condition. That's right. That's the bipolar part. Right. And the lack of or understanding of position and condition. Where, you know, positionally God only sees us in Christ. Yeah. That's how he sees us. That's all how he can see us now. We see ourselves both. from a believer, as you said, is we focus more on Christ. We're more focusing on our position than our condition. Do you think that, does God just tolerate us living under the old man? I mean, does he look at Courtney and say, well, you know, you've got a sin nature and you're going to sin and I guess that's okay. Does he do that?

No. No, he doesn't. When you think about it and you discover, as you were saying, what he has done and you begin to believe him, he doesn't ever expect you to go back to where you were. You can't go before God and say, I screwed up. If you plead with God out of the old man, he won't respond. You know why? From his perspective, he's done with your sin. He's done with your old man. It's already over.

So, how do you live this life? You live by faith. And I asked the question in nine, what does faith in Jesus Christ mean? And again, back to Newell. Newell did a very interesting thing here. He went through four different viewpoints of what this term faith concerning Jesus Christ or faith of Jesus Christ really means.

Trust in Christ but Christ has already died for sin for the world and trust here would mean relying on Christ to do something for the soul either to put forth power to deliver or as they say, to become one's personal savior, or to see through to the end, or like for the like.

Newell says this is according to man's gospel. Jesus will never save you if, or Jesus will save you if, you understand that? If you make Jesus the Lord of your life. If you agree to obey. So Paul's gospel and believing God's word concerning Christ as having accomplished for us a work that was finished once and for all at the cross. So the problem is always asking Christ to do something for it.

How often do you, and I don't know how often any of you listen to any contemporary Christian radio, but invariably The presentation of the gospel is to ask Jesus to forgive you your sins. Why would I do that? Why would I ask him to forgive my sins? Why would I ask him to save me? Why would I even pose the question? Should I do that? Should I ask him to forgive my sins as a non-believer? Should I go to him and say, I'm asking you to save me? I'm asking you to forgive my sins.

Is that the right attitude? Come on, cowards. Once you're saved, you are saved. Once you're saved, you're saved forever. How about before you're saved? Think about this. How are you saved? You're saved by grace through faith. Your faith has to have an object. Is your object that, gee, if I ask God to do something for me, he'll do it?

Is that what I'm doing? What am I doing? I'm believing what he's already done. Do you see that? And as you go, if you start your Christian life with that premise in mind, then through the rest of your Christian life you're going to be going and asking him to do things that, guess what, he's already done them. And he wants us just to believe him. There's a jillion hymns like that. Oh, Lord. I didn't understand that. I think what I don't know. I came here where they said, you don't ask Jesus to come into your heart. You know, that song. Yeah, sure. Yeah. I think I read somewhere there was 15 million of those Southern Baptists. But that's what the Baptists still preach, that you have to ask him to forgive you your sins. But wait a minute. Did he not take care of the sins of the whole world to the satisfaction of the Father?

So what am I doing? I'm acknowledging what he did and I'm believing him. There's a difference. You see that? The next one is rendering. The rendering received by many today in certain circles which would make the faith of Jesus Christ mean Christ's own believing on our behalf. Do you think that's pretty accurate?

And that's what's in Galatians 2.20. And I asked once where it was supposed to be faith of or faith in. But it's faith of. Yeah, is it Christ's faith? Does he do it for me? No, he doesn't. Is it okay for me as a strengthless human being to call on men's hearts just to believe him? Not to have him believe on my behalf?

There are people who teach that. Have faith in God, have faith of God. A grotesque, unbiblical, impossible meaning. Our Lord said if you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes. He did not say I will believe for you. You are going to run up against that. This is the work of God that you believe on him whom he the Father has sent.

John 6.29. The work of God is not to believe for you, the work of God is to offer salvation and his work to you and the most feeble man in the world can believe, can trust him. The last one is finally some have thought to render the faith of Jesus Christ as his faithfulness to us, which is not the meaning in the Greek, it is out of place, it is contrary to the apostles' uses. The one that I skipped over.

Faith in the gospel of God concerning Jesus Christ is set forth at the beginning of the epistle of the Romans involving of course appropriation. You know what appropriation means? Appropriation of Christ and his benefits. What do I mean by appropriation?

Applying it to ourselves? Yeah. And by believing God the application is made to me. He makes it. We believe faith in the gospel of God concerning Jesus Christ is set forth in the epistle for it accords perfectly what this first great expansion of chapter 3, the announcement, the gospel of God concerning his son. See here's the thing, God the Father has made it known to mankind what he did and it's called the gospel of the glory of Christ. And his righteousness is revealed in that gospel.

And it's revealed, I understand it, if I just simply believe him. That's all I have to do is believe him. And I can't say to him, you know, I've got to go to class and I've got to get really well educated before I can believe. No. Just take him at his word. Take him at his word.

So faith is simply acceptance for ourselves of the testimony that God is true. So as you grow spiritually in the deeper truths, as we will hopefully get to before this class is over, there are some astounding things that God is going to say in his word. How many of you really believe that you died with Christ? How many of you believe that? You're the only honest person in the room.

What I'm saying, of course, is that I just can't comprehend things as thoroughly as I'd like to. It's really interesting because when he starts to tell us in Chapter 6 about our being crucified with him, we don't have any empirical evidence that proves that that's true, do we? There's nothing that would indicate to us, oh yeah, no problem, I got that one. It's facts that the Father has revealed to us and he just puts them out there and he explains them to you and he doesn't expect you to be fully orbed in all of that truth at the beginning, but he does expect you to take his word for it.

You see that? So why do you say that none of us do that? You just said we're all monkeys because we raised our hands. Well, we're monkeys because once one hand went up, a bunch of others did. I mean, it's all about faith. It's like it's impossible to comprehend that really, if God said we were buried, we died, we're buried. Resurrected. Resurrected. You can spend the rest of your life just contemplating what those four things mean. And are they really true?

Did I die? So the next time I sin, do I go to God and say, well, maybe I didn't get really dead? I used to think a lot that if I'm dead to sin, how come when the music starts, my feet are moving? How come when the temptation comes, I'm in the game? were dead beings.

There's an understanding, but there's more than that, don't you think? You think there's more than that? Even when we're talking about justification and righteousness here, there's a vastness of what God has done that's so complete that we can't, I don't think we can enter into any of it without just taking God at His word. You can't do it. And then you have to leave it up to the Holy Spirit to sort of make that understanding in your mind because you're looking at an eternal truth trying to be understood by a finite mind. And because we're spiritually alive and we are possessed by the Holy Spirit, he will make known and persuade us about those truths.

Now I may not ever be able to explain the fact that I was crucified with Christ to you, to your understanding, but I'm convinced Because he convinced me. You see that? How does that all begin? It all begins because I took God at his word. When he said it, I believed in him. Why? Because I understood it? No, because I believed in him. I trust him.

The one thing, as a young Christian and today... Say that again. As a young Christian and today, When we were talking earlier, John, I guess 1 John said, a Christian cannot sin. It's really frustrating when everyone in this room still sins. Can you explain that? Well, he says, right before that, he said, if you say that you have no sin, you call God a liar. I know, so... So God is tricking us, right?

One is sin and one is sins. Positionally, in Christ, I can't sin because I have his resurrected life, and his resurrected life is to be lived through me. Does his life sin? I can't sin, right? Because sinning is what? Falling short of God's glory. Well, this is God himself, Christ. So what do I have to do in order to be a committer of a sin? What's got to go on inside of me? You have to take the bait. I'm walking by faith. I'm beholding the glory of the Lord Jesus. And there's no sin. But 15 minutes later I find out, oh my goodness, I just sinned.

What happened? What did I do? Your focus changed. My attention got taken off. You exchanged the truth for a lie. I exchanged the truth for a lie? I began to look at me, I began to look at the circumstances around me and the environment that I live in and I began to put my faith in that rather than who God says I am in Christ. And the minute I do that, I sin. Ever notice that Paul says, whatever is not a faith is sin?

That includes all the really good stuff. We had a friend of ours tell us one time, well, there's nothing wrong with educating your kids in culture and taking them to the symphony and all that kind of stuff. And I said, that's nonsense. The symphony is not of Christ. It's designed, well, they need to read classic literature. There's nothing wrong with that. Problem is, it's not of Christ.

See? So if he says whatever is not of faith is sin, it means that As soon as my faith and the appropriating part of it focuses on anything but him, what happens? I'm missing the mark. I'm falling short. I'm not measuring up. That's called sin. And I would say that a lot of times you don't even know it.

But he gave us a spirit to do what? To restore us, to convict us and restore us. So both of those statements are true, that if I'm walking in the flesh and I do commit sins, these sins that have already been paid for by Christ on the cross, and I lose fellowship because of it, and I can be restored to fellowship by confessing, not just that I'm a sinner, but all that God did. But I have to understand too that by faith my position in Christ, my position in Christ, I'm not a sinner. I'm not a sinner before God. If you picture in your mind walking into the throne room of grace, you don't have to check your sins at the door to go in. Because you're not going in under your own worthiness anyway. You can't get worthy enough. I've got to do the Lord's Table today and that's what I want to talk about. You just can't get that worthy.

So when you watch the Bronco game, you're sinning, right? I could be. Yeah, isn't that interesting? What about my favorite TV show or any sports event? Like I watched the Rockies lose last night? What about reading just a good book? Sure, yeah. What do you consider a good book? War and Peace, I don't know. Is that sinning? Yeah, I think so. You know why? Why would it be sinning?

I don't read very many secular books, but I've got one I'm into now. It's not a novel, it's a book about, it's called A Disconnect. And it's why our society is having so much trouble with depression and anxiety. And this book is really fascinating to me. And I'm reading it so I can hopefully understand more than I do now about, you know, it's like studying sin. Is it a sin for me to read that book?

What do you think? I think you just switched it all back to you being the judge and jury. And I think that's totally off the mark. Sure it is. Sure it is. You know, the Lord's got to convict you or move you to his thing. Sure. I love doing crossword puzzles. Is that a sin? I've been looking for those religious ones. What's that? Watching a horse race. Watching a horse race. Yeah. Is that a sin? Isn't that all psychology? The study of the sin nature? Is it possible to make a blanket statement that says that anything is not of Christ is sin? And so do I judge watching the Belmont Stakes as something not of Christ? Can I legitimately look at God and say, oh, thank you for letting me watch the Belmont Stakes or the Brockies or the Broncos?

What do you think? It's your attitude. reading Dr. Seuss to her kids, is that wrong? Taking two apart, is that wrong? Is that a sin? I think it goes back to our definition, you know, the definition of anything that is not of faith is sin. I don't know if that covers every, and maybe kind of what Donna was saying, I think it goes back to what we and not be affected. Boy, Dr. Seuss is real dangerous. But I mean, I think they show us back to that as the master. No, I understand that.

We are in life and there's things and it's not that as I'm driving down the highway in traffic that I have to be concentrating on the Lord, not the traffic in front of me or there's red light in front of me or everything. That's not a sin because I'm paying attention to the highway. Let's address that issue because that's a really good one. Whose responsibility is it to keep my focus on Christ? Is it mine? Holy Spirit. It's the Holy Spirit. So I'm driving down through traffic and Christ comes into my mind. Is that because I'm so holy?

No, because I know how you drive. I think all the other people are brought to faith. Everybody prays when you're driving. It's like the old joke that when I die, I want to go peacefully like my grandfather, not screaming and yelling like all the people in this car. You know how we are new creatures in Christ?

Yeah. And all things become new. Yeah. And we really did come alive. And part of us came alive as the new creature. New creatures, yeah. Does that creature within us sin? The new man in Christ? No. It can't. And we are those new men. Positionally we are. No question. It's like in James when he talks about, I'm abiding in Christ and here comes the bait. The bait is designed to lure me out of that abiding. The temptation itself is not sin, but if I reach out and take it, I sin. Now, think about this.

When you go to heaven and the Lord is in front of you and the earth is still functioning Are you going to be worried about whether the Broncos won on Sunday or not? Why not? Did God just change the movie? Is that what he did? He just said, well, we're not going to watch that stuff anymore. We're not going to watch this stuff over here, which is my stuff. What did he do? Think about what he did. It's really cool what he did. He took us out of all of this stuff and he placed us in his stuff before he took us home so that this was the only thing we could watch.

In order to watch this while we're still here, we only get to do it by believing him. When we go to be with him, we won't have to function by faith. Because our whole environment will be him and nothing but him and our desire will never be to do something other than him ever. Well we won't have this in nature. That's right. So now we're just forced to live by faith. We've got to trust him.

So with circumstances, you know, when you get into that game, well, is this a sin or not a sin? I remember in high school with the Catholics, you know, and they're giving us this lecture on how to be sexually pure with the girls. And the question was always, well, how far can I go before it's a sin? And depending on who you talk to, it got stretched farther. Don't you love how man's mind works?

And saving faith then, you do not trust God to do something for you. He has sent his Son who has borne your sins already. You do not look to Christ to do something to save you. He has done it at the cross. You simply receive God's testimony as true, setting your own seal that it is true. It is true. You rest in God's word regarding Christ, His work for you. You rest in Christ's shed blood. Okay. Last question.

What's the standard for sinners to reach in order to be righteous before God? Do you have to reach a standard to be righteous before God? No. You don't? Explain. Jesus is the standard and I'm in Him. Okay. To fail to earn God's holy approbation or to come short because of the loss of all spiritual strength through sin, of that estate God prescribes for and must demand of man. See, God demands, if you're going to be before him, he demands the standard. He does it.

And you can't modify guilty, inability to stand before him or his glorious holy presence. I think what Newell is saying here is that you have to come to the realization that you can't do it. That you don't possess within you the capacity to have a standing before God in anything you do or anything you think. You have to rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

You have to understand I am in Christ. I have a standing before a holy God only in Him, no place else, and He didn't impart it to me. What He did was He picked me up through the cross, put me in Christ, and whatever is true of Christ in terms of His standing before God, I have in Him. But I don't have it independent of Christ, no way. I'm actually going to get the chip. You got 11 in front of you? So this works.

Is justification a change produced by God in us? Trick question. Is justification a change produced by God in us? Think about the question. What do you think? He doesn't change us does he? So God comes along, like with Abraham, or you, and he declares you to be righteous before him. You're justified. You're counted righteous. It's God who's doing the reckoning. He's the one that's saying, okay, I am reckoning to you righteousness. You have a standing before me.

But it wasn't based on anything you did. It's all based on the fact that you believe that the work that I did was efficacious and it was in effect, it was in effect before him that perpetrated for you a perfect redemption, perfect redemption. The Word of God never says that God means to make you righteous. You alright with that? You don't have it in and of yourself. There's no change made in you. He doesn't take anything of Adam and make it better.

So was there a difference between Abraham being justified and us being justified? Abraham, how do I answer that? Justification is not a change that's wrought by God in us, it's a change of our relationship to him from his side, not from my side. So then Abraham and us are the same. In terms of having a standing before God, no we're not. But Abraham could not be accounted righteous without the work of Christ because no man could be. no man, because the man from Adam does not possess in his absolute existence the capacity to be righteous before God.

So God institutes this thing called faith, which means we take him at his word, and if he comes to us and says, here's what I've done, or in Abraham's case, here's what I'm going to do, In our case, he never says, here's what I'm going to do. He always says, here's what I did. Abraham believed God. What did God do? He said, okay, you're righteous before me.

We have a change of relationship from my side, not yours. In our case as believers, not only do we have a change of relationship, but there's a recreation where we are placed into Christ so that we have exactly the same relationship that Christ has with the Father and with God that we do. Abraham is not in Christ. That's different. How would I say that? So then the believing of Abraham, he believed what God revealed to him. So that believing is the same as us. We believe what God revealed to us. It's the same faith. It's the same kind of faith.

It's the object was different. See, when we're presented with the gospel of Jesus Christ, we're not presented with something God is going to do. We're presented with something he's already accomplished. It's already over. With Abraham it was different. With Moses it was different.

With all of the Old Testament saints, even with John the Baptist, it was something coming that he was going to do in the future. With us, our faith is in what he's already done. And that's why this whole idea of a growing faith is not a growing in the fact that I'm becoming more holy, it's a growing understanding of what God has already done and what he's done we'll spend the rest of eternity finding out about and entering into. And because we have believed him, he's given us the whole thing. You alright with that? So in verse 24, somebody read 324. Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. We've been justified by his grace.

Is it a gift? It's a gift, right? What would you say the gift is? Well, let me back up. What is a gift? Something that you don't have to pay for. I didn't have to pay for it, right. And I don't expect you to pay me back if I give you a gift, right? Because as soon as you do that, it isn't a gift anymore, right?

I invite you over for lunch, you say, well, I'm going to have to reciprocate. There went the gift. Okay? So there's a gift involved here. What is the gift in verse 24? The cause of our justification is in God and not in us. He's the giver of the gift. We are justified freely, graciously, gift-wise without a cause in us.

If someone comes up to me and says I love you, it better not be because I'm a good guy and a swell dancer. Hopefully they just love me. The secret to a marriage is that, that I love my wife, as Christ loved the church, and it's a gift. She loves me. I know it's a gift from her. It's not anything that either I'm trying to get her to love me more through my performance, or she's working really hard to demonstrate and show that my loving her is worth it. It's free.

So God offers us a free gift, and if you look into yourself, if someone gives you a gift and you look into yourself to see if you're worthy or not, you're missing the boat. What does God expect you to do? Believe. Believe. And if you believe, what do you get from Him? Unfathomable riches of Christ.

What's that? Yeah, and what kind of an effect would that have on me? I'm looking for the word that I would just have peace and rest. When the God of the universe declares you righteous as a free gift, the one thing it should do is cause you just, just okay. The Lord Jesus said, if you come unto me, all you who are What? Troubled? Weary. I'm sorry? Weary. Weary.

And I will give you the one thing you can't buy at Walmart. What is it? Rest for your souls. You cannot buy rest. I don't care. We went to a wedding last Saturday with a lot of wealthy people. No rest. No rest. That was the one thing we talked about going home. These are, you know, A room full of name droppers. But there wasn't any rest except for a couple of the people we knew there who were believers. The rest of them didn't have rest. They had a lot of money and a lot of fame, but no rest. Isn't that interesting? What have I got, about two minutes?

Question three, what is the resource of our justification? Understand the question? The resource is God's grace. Exactly right. That's the total resource. And the word means going forth in boundless oceans according to himself, of his mighty love who so loved the world that he gave his only son." We have exhausted the Macaulay definition of grace. Here is another one. The grace of God is infinite love operating by an infinite means, the sacrifice of Christ, and infinite freedom unhindered.

Now, not by the temporary restrictions of the law, but it's unlimited, it's unmerited blessing. Ever think about that thought? God is trying to convince us and relate to us that he only operates in this environment of grace now. That's the only way he operates.

And when you think about what is this grace thing, if it's unlimited, it means there's no limits. and it's totally unmerited, which means I can't earn it, and it's all because of what he is and what he's done, it changes the way you view God. It changes the way you view everything that he has done and is doing.

Is that the second Bill? No. Do you understand that? So when you realize that justification comes from a gracious God and it's free, it's a really interesting equation, isn't it? When's the last time somebody offered you a deal that good? The problem we have is we're skeptics. We think, ah, nobody's that gracious. I remember before I was saved and guys were telling me about the security of salvation, my thought that kept banging on my mind was, God can't be that gracious. No way. Nobody's that gracious. But he is, and even beyond that. So the resource of our justification is the grace of God. That's where the source of it comes from. Define the word redemption.

What does it mean? Have you ever really considered yourself to be a slave to sin? I mean Kortney's question twenty minutes ago was to I can, you know, what is sin and what isn't sin, what can I handle and what I can't handle about sin, really? That sort of eliminates the slave idea, doesn't it? That I can do something about my sin. Alright, we'll pick up there next week. I have one question. Please. Now we talk about all these very complicated things.

You know, when you're watching the football game and they do How do they say, for God is the Lord of all, and he is the only begotten son of whose whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. Right. It kind of seems like that little sentence, if someone really believed that, I mean there's lots more to it. Well, if somebody really believes that, what do they get?

We could go into the depths and talk and Jesus himself said that verse. In terms of importance, does that supersede whatever you're watching on TV? Let's close. Father, how we thank you for your grace. We thank you that you are constantly working to Educate us more and more, not only educate us, but bring us into the whole environment that we might live by grace and function by faith. We thank you and we pray in your son's precious name. Amen.