In the sermon 'The First and the Second Adam' by Scott Brown, the significance of Romans 5:12-21 is explored, emphasizing the doctrines of the fall of man and redemption through Jesus Christ. The sermon highlights the pervasive nature of sin introduced by Adam and the contrasting life-giving rulership of Christ. Brown discusses the attack on these doctrines by contemporary media, underscoring the importance of understanding original sin and representative headship. He argues for the historicity of Genesis as foundational to the gospel and critiques evolutionism. The sermon outlines three main points: the magnitude of human defilement, the completeness of deliverance through Christ, and the blessedness of victory over sin, emphasizing the transformative gift of salvation and grace. Brown encourages believers to acknowledge the depth of their sin, understand the doctrine of sin in parenting, and rest in the grace offered through Jesus Christ.

The importance of this passage of scripture for all of life is difficult to overestimate, because in it we find out the truth about this life. In it we find the source of every problem we've ever had. In it we find the source of every problem we've ever had. In it we find the source of every marriage conflict we've ever had. In it we find the source of any time we've ever been depressed, Any time we've walked away from God, in this passage of scripture, we find the locus, the center of the heart of the problem in all of us.

And it doesn't take much to look around in this world and to see that something has gone desperately wrong. This passage answers that question. And it's interesting that this doctrine, the doctrine of the fall of man, the doctrine of the first Adam and the second Adam is being particularly attacked right at this moment as there's a new movie that's just been released that's predicted to be enormously popular, that its main message is to destroy the biblical doctrine of the fall. And By saying that the idea of the Fall is the source of all repression that keeps people from doing what they want to do. And doing whatever you wish without any government is the chief virtue.

There's this dark movie that has just been released. And the characters actually undo the fall by committing an act of sin in the garden and therefore they reverse the power of the fall. It's absolutely demonic in every way and of course the Bible teaches us that the fall is the source of the problem and that in man's fallen sinful nature is found the source of all of the problems in this world. And so Romans 5, 12-21 speaks of the fall of man, Adam, and the redemption of mankind through the Lord Jesus Christ. And so here in this passage we see these two individuals, Adam and the Lord Jesus Christ.

They represent the two rulerships that are in this world. There's the rulership of death and there's also the rulership of life and Adam and Christ are the representatives of these two rulerships. And Romans 5, of course, casts a vision for the goodness of God in that it is the rulership of grace, it's the rulership of life that reigns and rules, that death is destroyed by the rulership of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so Paul, in this passage, He looks back to the beginning of time. He takes us back into the garden.

And he takes us to Adam, who is a type of Christ, and explains the way that sin entered into the world through Adam. Now, of course, we know that before this, sin entered into the angels before the fall. But here we're taken to this particular moment in history. You can track sin throughout history which actually begins in heaven with a cosmic rebellion of Lucifer and his angels. Now we have that rebellion brought onto this earth.

And we've seen that rebellion fanned out by experience in our own lives and by those that we have been exposed to in this world. So here, during this introduction of this passage, I just want to say, here's where we're headed. Here's what's in this passage. The doctrine of original sin, the doctrine of representative heads and types that teach us something about redemptive history. There's the reign of death, there is a vision cast of the perfections of the grace of God, the dominating ruling grace of God, and the perfections of God's grace.

The word gift is mentioned six times in these verses. The gift, it's over, mentioned over and over and over again. And the destruction of, of course, of all self-righteousness is in this passage. If anyone feels too good about themselves, this passage will take care of that. Because this passage teaches us that there is none righteous, no not one, that we have this poison in our blood that would send us to hell.

And yet God has been merciful. He has sent us an antivenom to take care of it and to make us right before Him. There's also what I think is the presentation of a critical principle of evangelism that should be in all evangelism and should be integral to sharing the gospel. And that is this doctrine of sin. When we were having our Bible study on Tuesday, we were talking about this and we said you know it quite quite possibly ought to be that this is where you begin in all of your evangelism.

You begin with the nature of men and then you go to the doctrine of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. If you get them reversed you might confuse someone about grace. They might not understand who they really are and what's really wrong with them. So We'll cover a number of these thoughts as we move through this text. And I'm going to order all these thoughts under three headings.

And I hope you have an outline with you. The magnitude of our defilement, first of all, in verses 12 through 14. And then the completeness of our deliverance. And then the blessedness of our victory. So those are the three categories that will walk through this passage to help us understand it.

Okay so first of all the magnitude of our defilement verses 12 through 14 it's a there's just so many stunning statements here Through one man sin entered the world and death through sin. And so here you have these two ideas, a man and death. That should help us understand everything about this life that we see around us. He says, therefore, in verse 12, as through one man. There's a comparison.

Do you notice that? Therefore, as through one man, sin entered the world, death reigned. So he's making a comparison here. Now, I want to give you a number of observations I want to give you eight observations regarding this defilement that has come upon the world and therefore upon each of us. First of all, the pervasiveness of sin.

We have to understand that sin is pervasive here, that there is a rulership of death here. Death reigned here. And you know, last week we were talking about the fact that sin is pervasive in our souls. And we talked about the idea if sin were blue, then all of our words would have some color of blue. All of our thoughts would be somehow blue.

All of our actions would somehow have an aura of blue in them because There is none righteous, no not one. And so all of this character development actually doesn't get you very far because everything is blue no matter how good you can tune your character to be. Isn't that amazing? And that should also help us in our own relationships with one another as we look at each other through the eyes of the Lord Jesus Christ. But you see the pervasiveness of sin.

Jonathan Edwards said that our sins were infinite and multiplied infinitely. That you just couldn't even absolutely imagine. You couldn't count your sins. You can't even confess all your sins. You can confess known sins.

You can have your heart be convicted but there's so much sin that it's unconfessable because it's deep within our hearts it's part of our thinking our speech every word that we that we speak and so all have sinned and And it is for us to repent of all known sins, but also to cry out to God for His mercy, that His blood would cover all the sins that we're not even aware of, because those are many. They are millions upon millions with every word and thought and deed that's the depravity the level of depravity that we're dealing with here until we understand that we can't understand life here's here's another observation regarding our defilement and it really it brings us to a reality here is that the news of our defilement is rooted in history okay So this brings us to the historicity of the book of Genesis. People might say it doesn't matter if the first chapters of the Bible are true or figurative. They're spiritual in meaning. Have you ever heard anybody say that?

There are people who hold that view. But This idea destroys the entire Gospel because it's the historicity of Genesis that is linked to the historicity of the Lord Jesus Christ. If you say that this sin is figurative, What is Jesus? He is nothing. He is also figurative.

And if you take away the historical activities in the Garden of Eden, you've also destroyed the doctrine of salvation by grace alone. And there is a historical cause and the remedy is also historical. There was a man sent from God whose name was John who announced the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was born into the world as a baby. That's the doctrine of the incarnation, yes.

The Gospel is rooted in history. Take away the historical aspect and you've completely taken away the gospel you have a literal Adam one individual one person not a symbol corresponding with another genuine person that is the Lord Jesus Christ and so here here we find that this pervasiveness of sin is rooted in history. It's not a phantom idea to explain life on earth. It arises out of a real historical moment. And then that takes us to the next point here in making observations about this defilement.

This defilement is also related to another doctrine. It's the doctrine of representative headship. Some people call it federal, that Adam was the federal head of humanity, and Christ was the federal head of saved humanity. And this idea of representative headship is found all over the Bible. In fact, I bought an old book the other day that it was all about this one theme in scripture and it identified, I think, ten different individuals in the Bible who are representative heads of particular ideas but there the Bible is absolutely crystal clear on two representative heads and that is Adam and the Lord Jesus Christ And this idea is something that God has wrought in scripture.

You know, this idea that the iniquity of the fathers will be upon their children. When the Bible says that, the Bible is talking about this doctrine of headship there's something there's something that God is embedded in nature that there are representative heads that have an effect on all those that follow in some way and this this representative headship of course is very very clear and the progeny of Adam carry particular characteristics as a result of it and it's the doctrine of representative headship. Now Another observation about this passage of scripture here is that this passage of scripture is a direct attack. It's a frontal attack. It's an atomic bomb on evolutionism.

Verse 12 makes it clear that you have two choices here, evolutionism or creationism. And verse 12 destroys the idea of evolution. Why? Evolution envisions millions of years of decay and problems in the world. But Genesis doesn't picture that at all.

Genesis pictures perfection and then fall. And that fall is tied to the gospel. And Christianity teaches that there was no decay before the fall. Evolutionism teaches that there was much decay for millions of years before mankind hit the scene. And so if you believe that the events in Genesis are not literal, that they're not real people, they're not real days, they're not real events, then what do you do with Jesus?

He was real. And here in Romans chapter 5, the historical events in Genesis in which there was no decay until the fall are tied to the gospel. This is why it's so critical that we defend creationism. This is why it's critical that we cleave to the words of scripture regarding the age of the Earth and all the things that are there. Because if you have millions of years of decay and fall, then you don't have the gospel because they're inextricably linked.

And so, and we read about this, the fall in Genesis 3, 1 through 5. Now, it's not only attack, this is not only an attack against evolutionism, it's also teaching the universality of death, that the moment you're born you begin to die, Because it says here that death spread to all men. It is appointed to man to die. And all of us have a short fuse in this life. And we don't know how short that might be.

We've had the sorrow bearing a young man, a very young man, in which we would say it was an untimely death. But no one leaves this earth without God taking him off of this earth. But here we see the universality of death, that death spread to all men. You know, there are attempts that people are making to, you know, lengthen their lives. And I believe we should live healthy lives.

We should eat good food, We should do all kinds of things to take care of this body that God has given us. We should be good to this body. But when you find people who want to freeze themselves cryogenically to come back in another life, it's madness. It is a point in time to men to die. This is the way it's going to be.

Nobody is going to be able to controvert this. All the scientific advancements are not going to get people to live forever. And then there's the reality of transgression. In these verses here, we learn that there is a thing called transgression, And that it was the transgression that brought about the destruction into the world. Now think about transgression for a minute.

To transgress means to cross over a line. You know, I could transgress your space, you know, by getting in your face. I would be transgressing over this imaginary line. It's interesting. People have different lines.

You know, if you're Italian, the line is pretty tight, you know. If you're, you know, if you come from the Northeast, you know, the line is, you know, arm's length at least, something like that. But we all have these different sensibilities regarding the line of Transgression where someone has invaded your space but here we find the reality of the transgression Where the boundaries of God were despised and they were stepped over and that was the unleashing of Sin into the world. It was a refusal to obey the law of God, it was preferring some forbidden fruit over the will of God. We exchange the glory of God for a lie and we degrade the lines over which we ought not to transgress and we prefer our own realities and we commit these sins because we prefer an activity that values God's will for our lives.

You know we we do this so often we do it every day we make all kinds of choices where we transgress the law of God. Jesus said you transgress the law of God for the sake of your tradition. We have many traditions, we have many lifestyle patterns that we grew up with. We actually, many of them, we have absolutely no idea we're even doing them. And we end up preferring unholy things for holy things.

You know, we might, and I'm not making a case against newspapers here, but you might choose, you might prefer a newspaper over a relationship. You know, You might choose internet surfing over a God-given responsibility. This is the trend. These are all these transgressions take place in us. And we have to, as we grow, just continually be aware of them so that we come before God with a contrite heart for all of them.

We may prefer something over something else that might be more blessed. So we, like Adam, have exchanged the glory of God for a lie. We transgress the law of God. Now, this rule of death reigned from Adam until Moses and there's an interesting statement in here for until the law for until the law sin was in the world but sin was not imputed when there is no law." Now what's that all about? Well, you just think about redemptive history.

You have the Lord Jesus Christ, and then you can go back to Abraham, 2000 BC, right? You can go to about 1445 BC for the law and 2000 BC for Abraham. Now we're going all the way back to the beginning of creation. These are some of the great points of redemptive history. What was happening between Adam to Moses, what was happening before the law was given.

And what he's saying here is that there obviously was sin in the world because God judged that sin through the flood. So it wasn't as if there was no sin or even consciousness of sin. The Bible says that men's hearts were evil, you know, continually. And, but sin had not been as clearly defined for man until the law came. When God gave the law, he cleared up so much about what sin was and told us what it was all about so that we would know more more clearly whether we were transgressing the law of God.

And the truth is is that from Adam to Moses all sin and fell short of the glory of God, just like it was today. Deuteronomy 32, 5 and 6 says, they have corrupted themselves, they are not his children because of their blemish, a perverse and crooked generation. Do you thus deal with the Lord, O foolish and unwise people? We read in the time of Noah that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. We read in Genesis 8, the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth.

We read in Psalm 14, 1-3, they are corrupt, they have done abominable works. There is none who does good. The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there are any who understand, who seek God. They have all turned aside. They have all together become corrupt because there is none who does good, no not one.

And so we find the reality of transgression, there is a line, we cross it, Adam crossed it, and unleashed was the poison into the souls of all of his progeny. And then next we see we see a number of questions being raised and I'll just raise one right now and we're not going to be able to get to the bottom of this question we have this poison in our souls so all of us all of us are condemned to death right well what about babies what about babies that die in their infancy What about babies that die in the womb? What about babies that die at two months or five months old or something like this? How far does this go? How do we understand this?

How do we understand the doctrine of the fall and this imputed unrighteousness that damns us to everlasting darkness and these little babies? How do we put that together? Well, first of all, this passage does not say, I think we have to be careful what Scripture actually says. This Scripture does not say that children are thrown into hell as infants. A number of things that we know about hell is that hell is a place of punishment for sins consciously committed in the body.

Second Corinthians 5.10 says that. We know that All of humanity is marked by this poison. But we also know that hell is reserved for those who commit sins in the body. And there's some interesting passages of Scripture if we had time to really delve into them. I would just suggest that there's lots of mystery here.

Deuteronomy 29 says, the secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever that we may do all the words of the law what that means is that there are certain things that are mysteries their secrets the Bible doesn't answer every question for us this is one question I believe the Bible does not answer with perfect clarity and so there are these secret things but there are things that we know for sure think of think of David's child who died it's clear that David believed that he would see that child in heaven. When David saw his servants whispering, he said, it was clear to him that his child had died. And he said, is the child dead? And they said, yes, he is dead. So David arose and he went on with life and then he declares that he was able to go on in life because he believed that his baby would be seen in heaven by him.

Now, it's just an indication of a possibility here in this whole question. To me, the most important question to be asked is, who is God? What is God's character like? We read that the Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger, great in mercy. The Lord is good to all and his tender mercies are over all his works." So I would just suggest that yes, babies do die in their sins, but this is something that is left completely up to God.

He is wise and He does punish according to sins and He does understand what is right in every situation. My personal belief is that there will be many babies in heaven. That's my personal belief. You can find people throughout history that were on one side or the other. To me, I think scripture has enough in it to say, yes, these babies are in heaven, that God is just in every way and He knows exactly what to do.

We also in this section come to the doctrine of sin. This first part Paul is focusing on sin, and he's focusing on this desperate ruin that has engaged us. And I just want to say that understanding the doctrine of sin is so critical for every part of life. Now, let me just make a comment about all of you who are parents and myself. Parents who misunderstand the doctrine of sin, they either they misunderstand it or they downplay it, will end up living with a number of repercussions in their family life and in their children's life.

If you misunderstand sin, then you might think that your job is to focus on just getting the right behavior out of your children. To get them to say, yes sir, no sir. To get them to wear the right clothes or whatever it might be, but just to get them to do it on the outside and to misunderstand that Sin is so pervasive that our only hope is to get to the heart of the matter. The behavior is important, yes it is. It does matter what children say and do.

But if you misunderstand sin and the importance of the heart, then you end up turning your children into robotic legalists or something like that, and with no heart for God at all. The second problem in dealing with sin is If you downplay sin, or if you don't deal with sin, first of all in your own heart, with your own relationship with your wife, and with your children. There are temptations to downplay sin in our children's lives and not to deal with it because it's harder to deal with it. Guess what? It takes time to deal with it.

It can be exasperating to deal with it. It can make you sin to actually deal with it. And I'm convinced that there are many parents who do not deal with sin in their children because they sin so much in trying to deal with it that they just say, I am not going to do this anymore. I get too angry. I blow up.

I, you know, I sin when I deal with sin. And so I think parents sometimes they throw up their hands and, but it would be presumptuous and it would be wrong to think of sin in such a way to downplay it and to think that everything will somehow just be okay. That boys will be boys. Absolutely not. That's not the right view of sin.

To say, well, this is just a stage of life. We'll land our children into the jaws of death, into the grip of that python. And If we minimize sin, if we don't help our children understand the real heart of the problem of sin, what will happen to them and maybe even to us is that python will just take one inch at a time and slowly engulf us and put us to death in our lives. And so we must understand sin. I would like to quote an English Puritan on this matter.

Philip Dodridge has written a brilliant little book in which he says this, the poisoned nature of the human race and the redemption that addresses that poison through your veins, the original infection which tainted the first authors of our race has flowed down to them and audit not quicken you to their relief so he's saying there's this poison audit not to spur you on to relieve them, ought it not put you into action?" And he says, when a man has treason tainted in his blood and forfeited his estate, with what grief and regret does he look on his own children and think of the injury he has done to them by his fault and how we are those traitors. Our children have derived from us a tainted blood and forfeited inheritance. How tenderly we should love them, how solicitously we should exert ourselves to prevent their ruin, Mr. Flavel expresses the thought still more pathetically. Should I bring the plague into my family and live to see all my poor children lie dying by the walls of my house?

If I had myself used, should I not direct them and urge them to try the grace of God. I should still be more savage and a criminal to neglect it. The application is easy and here it is. The Lord deeply impressed it on your souls that your dear children may not die eternally of the malignant plague they have taken from you it's a mistake to take sin lightly in a family it's also a mistake to misunderstand sin And to think that just outward appearances is where all this rises and falls. And so I would just urge all of us here to take inventory.

All of you children here, if you could just look at me, have you let sin reign in your mortal bodies? Have you let dishonor or disobedience? Have you nurtured affections that are wrong? If you have, repent before Almighty God. Letting sin rule and reign in your family.

Are you parents? How about you? We all are susceptible here. Have you disciplined out of pure legalism or have you desired for a true repentance of the heart? Have you disciplined in anger and in rage rather than in loving kindness to attempt to rescue this poor child who has been caught by this poison in his veins?

So let's just be very careful with this whole doctrine of sin, that we understand it and that we deal with it properly in all of our lives. Well, this takes us to the second heading in our outline, and that is the completeness of our deliverance verses 15 through 19. Now the nature of our rescue is the focus of this passage and here you find the word gift five times in these in these few verses. In nine verses you have the term gift because this explains the nature of salvation. It is a gift that is from without.

Now the Lord Jesus was speaking about a gift that was so refreshing to the woman at the well. He said, if you knew the gift of God, and He who says to you, give me a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water. This gift of salvation keeps on refreshing. And Jesus says, if you knew, if you knew how wonderful this was, you would be asking. In Acts chapter 8 verse 20, Peter says that the gift cannot be bought by deeds or earned.

He says, your money perish with you because you thought you could, you thought you could, that The gift of God could be purchased with money. In 2 Corinthians 9, Paul says that this gift is actually indescribable. The word gift appears five times in this little section, and then again in the last section that we'll cover in a minute but Paul says the word is indescribable, the gift is indescribable it's too marvelous that you just can't get to the bottom of it he says thanks be to God for this for his indescribable gift in Ephesians 2.8 Paul says that our salvation is a gift and has nothing to do with ourselves. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that, not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. The Apostle Paul in Ephesians 3 says that it was the gift that gave him a life he says it was the gift that put him into service he said this of which I became a minister according to the gift of the grace of God given to me by the effective working of his power.

This is the gift. It's refreshing, it's indescribable, it can't be bought, and it's this gift that puts you into service. You know, it just makes me think of the early days of my salvation. I was honestly, I was going, I was going, I had no idea what to do in my life. It was my salvation that secured my future, absolutely.

It was not until I was saved that God made clear what He would have me do with my life. And this is the same thing with all of us. This gift is so marvelous, And it's spoken of here, the completeness of our deliverance is found in that there is a gift, a great gift that has been given to us. Verse 15 speaks of the abundance of the gift, much more. The grace of one abounded to many.

There's all this language in the New Testament about this. Much more abounded, riches of his grace. It's absolutely everywhere. And then the breadth of the gift. It went to many, not to all.

The atonement is limited. But it is for those who will repent and who will be converted. And then The practical nature of the gift is shown to us in verse 17. Do you see this? The gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.

This gift is so practical. It reigns in life, in everyday life, in every step of the way, in every thought of the mind, this gift of salvation works out in life. And that's the ruling principle that makes everything different in life. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, This gift that puts us into service, that helps us to know what to do and where to go and what to say, is part of this gift of salvation. When the Lord Jesus Christ saves His people, He helps them along the way.

He does carry them in his bosom and he gently leads those that are with young. The Lord Jesus Christ is a shepherd and he takes you on through life. That's the idea that's here, that it reigns in life through the one. This gift reigns all through this mortal life that we've been given. We don't know how long our lives might be I trust that God will give us many many years, but we don't know that but until he until he takes us from this earth He makes this promise that this gift will reign in life through us.

And it is a justification of life, verse 18. That means it's a judicial action in the past that rules the day from then on. And then it makes us righteous, Verse 19. So this is the completeness of our deliverance. It covers every area of life.

It talks to us when we sit in our house, when we walk by the way, when we lie down or when we rise up. This is the shepherding of the Lord Jesus Christ toward us. Now we come lastly to the blessedness of the victory that God has given to us, verses 20 and 21. Moreover, the law entered that the offense might abound, but where sin abounded, grace abounded much more. So that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Look at verse 20. The first few words are very telling. It says here that the law entered. We're talking about the law now. What about the law?

Well, the law entered that the offense might abound. So the law made our sins even more clear. The law was a schoolmaster to teach us the details of all of our transgressions. It shows us the lines that there are to cross and to keep back from them. And you know the law is good if one uses it lawfully.

It reveals anything that is contrary to God. Spurgeon said that the law was good because it stirred up the mud to show us what was really there in the container. And that's what the law has done. But abundance of grace is proved by the law. So the grace was abundant where the sin abounded the grace abounded much more and so this is the the idea that the grace is always greater than whatever the law can dig up in us.

We might be condemned. We will be condemned by what we read in the Word of God. But grace is greater than all that mud that stirred up in the container of our lives. And then the gift of righteousness will reign in life through Jesus Christ. So that grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life.

Now here we come to the concept of grace reigning. Grace is a rule, it has a rulership is the idea here. In the same way that death reigned, grace reigns even greater. That's the idea. Now, if you read the word reign, it calls up images of a government or a rulership.

And all rulers have particular characteristics, don't they? And this is a rulership, though, that is of grace. The chief quality of the rulership of the Lord Jesus Christ is that it is full of grace. He himself was full of grace and truth. Now we've seen how death reigned.

It was a reign of terror and it was a reign of destruction and the sons of men have been belittled by it, they've been hardened by it, and they've been destroyed by it and that's the reign of sin. You know the the devil treats his subjects very poorly the devil hates his subjects and will kill them. The Lord Jesus Christ is a shepherd and he redeems them and he saves them and he takes them unto himself. And here we find the Lord Jesus Christ and his rulership is uncovered, that it's a rulership of grace. And it's a rulership in which those who are saved stand in this grace.

We read that earlier in this chapter. This grace in which we stand. We have received an introduction into grace and now we stand in the grace. That's our lot in life. This is the escape from the rulership of death of this dark ruler that has destroyed everything.

Of his fullness we have received grace upon grace. And here we learn that grace reigns through righteousness. And because of that, we can come boldly before the throne of grace to find grace to help in time of need. There is a throne of grace. It is a rulership of some kind that it that has overcome the world.

This realm, this rulership of grace has destroyed the rulership of death that the devil has wrought in us. So here we find these two kings. We have the king of death in Adam, and we have the King of righteousness and of grace and of eternal life. These are the two kings, these are the two representative heads of mankind. And of course Jesus Christ is indeed King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Okay, so we've just covered, we've covered really a lot of subjects here this morning. The doctrine of original sin, the doctrine of representative types, the doctrine of the reign of death, the perfections of the gift, mentioned so many times through this passage of scripture. We have touched on the destruction of our self-righteousness and the principle that The doctrine of original sin is critical in the presentation of the gospel. We've seen the magnitude of our defilement. We have seen that our defilement is rooted in history.

And our rescue is also rooted in history in the Lord Jesus Christ. We have seen the abundance of the gift and that the gift reigns in life. And we've seen the blessedness of our victory. Now, so what of it? That today would be one of those days where we would celebrate this great gift of the Lord Jesus Christ toward us, that we would truly rest in it.

One thing I've noticed about myself and others is that I can have the gift, but somehow, because of discombobulating wrong thoughts or whatever, I don't rest in it, and I don't rejoice in it. Brothers and sisters, let's not let this day pass without truly rejoicing in His indescribable gift. Rest in the grace that's there. And also, as we're here together, We're here with other sinners who've been redeemed by the grace of God. What a blessing it is to be with another sinner who's been redeemed and to know that it's not their perfections that bind us together.

In fact, if it had to be perfections, we would never be bound together. We never could be. But it's the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ that binds us, it's the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ that keeps us in any kind of relationship at all, husband and wife, children and parents, and we brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers and aunts and uncles spiritually here in this room. So I pray that this would lead to a praising of God for his rulership of grace toward us. And also that if there has been anyone who's not repentant of their sins, repent.

Come to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. Recognize this poison in your soul and that you're committing sins in the deeds of your body. And to repent, turn to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is full of grace and truth, but we come by faith as a result of our repentance toward him and laying down our arms and saying, Oh Lord Jesus Christ, come and save me from my sins. We began this service with the song, Oh for a thousand tongues, to sing my great Redeemer's praise, the glories of my God and King, the triumph of His grace.

So as sin reigned in death, even so, grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord." It's interesting that this passage begins with a Lord, the Lord of Death, and it ends with the Lord of Life, the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we are brought to this marvelous principle. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through his poverty might be rich. What a blessing it is to be in the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. Would you pray with me?

Oh Lord, to get Our minds around this, the magnitude of this grace is impossible, we know it. And the magnitude of our sins is also impossible for us to know. But you, O Lord, are all wise, and you know how to redeem sinners. Thank you Lord Jesus. Amen.