In the sermon titled 'The Treasures of Justification by Faith Alone,' Scott Brown explores the profound implications of being justified by faith, as outlined in Romans 5:3-11. Justification by faith provides peace with God through Jesus Christ, granting believers access to grace and the hope of God's glory. Brown emphasizes the process by which tribulation leads to perseverance, character, and ultimately hope, illustrating how trials serve to refine faith and draw believers closer to God. The sermon highlights the love of God demonstrated through Christ's sacrifice for sinners, underscoring that salvation is not based on human merit but on divine grace. Reconciliation through Jesus' death transforms believers from enemies of God to recipients of His love, freeing them from wrath and enabling them to rejoice in God. The message concludes by urging believers to continually reflect on the gospel's transformative power, reminding them of the eternal blessings and redemption found in Christ.

Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations knowing that tribulation produces perseverance, and perseverance character and character hope. Now hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has given to us. For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely will a righteous man will one die, yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die.

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. Much more than having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have now received the reconciliation. Let's pray.

Almighty Father, please open our ears up that your Word might trickle through them all the way to the deepest part of our hearts. I pray that we would be attentive to the message today and that you would bless God with the Holy Spirit. I pray that you would fill all of us with the Holy Spirit. We are grateful that you have justified us and reconciled us and that we are assembled today before you in peace. We thank you for our Savior Jesus Christ and it's in His name we pray, Amen.

If you have an outline before you, you can see that we're obviously in Romans chapter 5 And the text that we'll be dealing with this morning includes verses 3 through 11. And I've entitled this, The Treasuries of Justification by Faith Alone. I was very interested this morning to speak to one of the Canadians that's here with us, who has experienced blasting for treasure, gold, silver, palladium, iron ore, wow what a great occupation that would be. Are there any 13 year old boys that would love to be blasting for gold and silver or anything actually? Well, we are going to be blasting here this morning for treasure, for the, in the treasuries of the doctrine of justification by faith.

We are going to survey the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. The blood, the resurrection, the cross, everything that's there in the doctrine of justification by faith is in this passage of Scripture. It is a rich treasure trove and we will not be able to blast all of its corners here this morning. But we will be able to proclaim the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we will be able, all of us, to say along with the psalmist that we read earlier, Oh Lord, do not remember the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions, but according to your mercy, remember me for your goodness sake, oh Lord.

You might think a moment about the sins of your youth and the inadequacies of your life and all the things that are there. This is fertile soil for the preaching of the gospel. One of the things that I, that's characteristic of my life is that I very often wake up in the morning with a sense of foreboding and I don't want to get out of bed. A sense of dark foreboding meets me every morning almost of my life. I do throw myself out of bed and the sun comes out quickly, But there's a sense of foreboding because of my own weaknesses, because of all of my sins, because of all the things that might be threatening my life.

Somehow they seem to meet me right at the earliest moment of the day. And fortunately though, God is kind in allowing those things to be quickly thrown off. But if I don't get out of bed, they will not be thrown off. And I trust that even this morning in the preaching of the gospel that is here, that the burdens of sin would be completely thrown off, that we would wake up, we would arise from the dead, we would see the glory of the gospel and the riches, this rich treasure trove in this treasury of justification by faith alone. I hope that happens this morning.

This is my prayer. My little daughter Claudia is in bed with a fever, and I went up and I saw her just before I came up here. And I said, Claudia, please pray for all of us that we would really understand verse 11. That we rejoice in God. Everything in this passage, I think, drives toward verse 11.

And then the subject changes a little bit. So we're driving to verse 11. I'm praying that God would work a mighty work of joy in His people for this great justification that all foreboding would be banished, that all remembrance of sin would be gone because of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross and His blood shed for my sins and your sins and all of the collective sins that are here all of the sins of the whole church of the Lord Jesus Christ meeting all over the world have been have been vanquished by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's absolutely amazing. Well, here we are.

We are a gathered church. We are one of those churches, the people of God's own possession. And we've just finished a conference where we've been speaking about the areas of the church that need to be reformed. And now in Romans 5 we're here to declare the blessings of God upon His people. His Bride, the church.

And what we see here is that the blessedness of the church is not found in how good or well-behaved the people of the church were or are or will be. But the blessedness of the Church is that God is so good to His people that He would redeem them. Now, there are so many people looking out there for the most wonderful, perfect Church. Forget that. You need to be looking for the most wonderful, perfect God who forgives all the sins of all the people in the church who don't behave all that well all the time.

And the glory of the church isn't the character of her people. Well that's a nice, it's something nice. But it's not the glory of the church. The glory of the church is that Jesus Christ has redeemed sinners and brought them together in their sinful state. He's declared them righteous and set them free.

And he also calls them to love one another with exactly the same kind of love that he has loved us. He has justified us by faith. And so we must also look at one another that way, instead of with a heart of judgment, but a heart like the Lord Jesus Christ. So what's striking about the church is the grace of God, not the beauty of her people. Malachi reveals the amazing affection that God has for us this morning.

He says, they shall be mine. They are my jewels. I will spare them as a son, as his own son, who serves Him. This is our status today. We are the jewels of the Lord Jesus Christ, not because of anything that we've done, but because of the cross, because of the blood, because of the act of justification by faith.

And that's why we can say, David, bless the Lord, oh my soul, and forget none of his benefits, who forgives all of our iniquities, who heals all of our diseases, who redeems our lives from the pit, who crowns us with loving kindness and tender mercies and who satisfies our mouths with good things. So here we are ready to declare as we walk through Romans 5 the loving kindness of the Lord Jesus Christ, and to do some blasting in the treasuries of justification by faith. Now I want you to look at two verses here because I want you to get sort of the emotional impact of this passage of Scripture, what the Apostle Paul is saying. There are two really interesting statements that I want to draw our attention to. Look at verse 3.

And not only that, okay, in other words, there's more. Not only that, and he's talking about the things that we were preaching on last Sunday the four treasures of justification by faith and now we're going to continue the list and look at verse 10 and much more There's just, it's an infinite treasure trove. Not only that, much more. More and more and more. That's what we're gonna be trafficking in here this morning.

This is an artesian well. It's pouring out into our hearts. We're gonna see a strong man rescuing sinners. We're going to see a reconciler removing wrath. So here we have these treasures of justification by faith.

Let's bring us up to speed. We have dealt with the fact of justification in verse one. That a judge has declared us righteous through an irreversible judicial ruling in our past. And it is finished. And then Number two, we have peace with God in verse one.

Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. The anger of God was toward us in our sinful, unrepentant state, but now, As a result of this work of justification, God is no longer angry with his people. He is at peace. He is at peace with you. He is not at war with you.

And then we learn in Verse 2 also that we have access into this grace and we stand actually in that grace as if there was a cascading flow of purifying grace. And then, fourthly, we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Verse 2, three words, exalt hope and glory. And we learn here that God desires that our hearts would be blessed in such a way that there would be an upwelling and exultation toward Him in all things. So these first four give us some of the treasures and now we're going to continue on.

And we come to that brilliant statement in verse 3, and not only that, not only all of that, not only have we been justified, had peace with God, access into His grace, and then actually standing in His grace, and we rejoice in the hope and the glory of God. Not only that, there's more. And so we'll begin with verse 3 and the fifth treasure in the treasure house of the justification by faith. Rejoicing in tribulations. It is through our justification that we are able to glory or rejoice in our tribulations.

And this brings up a fact, and that is the fact of tribulation. This word calls up images of squeezing grapes, pressure on them or olives. You know the olive press coming down with hard pressure and it overwhelms the object and then out comes this fluid. This is the kind of tribulation he's talking about. You know what that's like where you just feel like you're pressed in from all sides and there's no rest for the labor of this pressing upon you.

This is the image that he's bringing about. Yes, we are in tribulation and there is a response to that tribulation and that is that we glory and we exult in it. Well, what's that all about? Who does that? Who's able to do that?

It's far more natural to, when the press is coming in, to complain about them and to say, ah, to one another, to your wife, to your children, to your friends. You meet them and out comes your complaint toward the tribulation. Or, you might actually despise them in your hearts and learn how to despise this tribulation that has come to you. But here, here in this passage, something very unexpected and surprising is presented to us. And that is this, that we have a blessedness in our tribulations.

And our tribulations are blessed in this sense, that they cause us to glory in them. What we see here is that there's a stair step upward of their four steps. First of all we glory in our tribulations knowing that tribulation produces perseverance And so there's this rising ascension that takes place. It begins with our feet in the dirt and the dust, the sweat and the grime of tribulation and hardship. He acknowledges that yes, we are being pressed.

Yes, we are being squeezed. Our hearts are being broken. We're being stretched beyond the limits of our wits and our emotions. And sometimes we just want to completely give up. But here, the Gospel brings us something to us in our tribulations that is so helpful.

You know, many of the great saints suffered greatly. I believe it was A.W. Tozer said that when God wants to use a man, he hurts him, and then he uses him. And we see suffering among so many of these godly saints of ours whom we look to for help and for inspiration. I was made aware that John Calvin, at the height of the reformation, suffered desperately.

His wife died and his son, his only son died in a short span of time. He was afflicted with gout, with kidney stones, with tuberculosis. He had to be carried on a stretcher to do his preaching from time to time. He could not even taste his food. Sometimes this dear saint would pray that God would just kill him and put him out of his own misery.

But God did not do that. He cried out, Oh Lord, your hand is heavily upon me, but I take comfort that it is your hand and not another." And so we learn here that these tribulations produce perseverance. And that means that this tribulation comes and it does something for us that we could never do for ourselves. And it strengthens our capacity for difficulty, makes us more patient, makes us more resolute. You know, great things require people with great perseverance.

And tribulation makes us into people who have perseverance and the ability to persevere. I'll just have to tell you, that term perseverance has always been dear to my heart, but it's even more dear to my heart now I have a grandson by the name of triumph perseverance and it reminds me of this passage of scripture and also Paul's a note to the Corinthians where he said thanks be to God who always leads us in his triumph. And he talks about how though enormous pressure is upon him, know that he rejoices in his tribulations. But tribulation produces perseverance. Do you see that?

You start, you start in the dust, you start in the rancor and the difficulty of this challenging time, and you step up to perseverance. That's what he's saying. And So if you're under a time of testing now, God is building your strength. He is causing for you something you could never do for yourself. A new strength and perseverance that you never had before.

This is one of the blessings of trial and tribulation. Step two, and perseverance produces character. So here we are in the mud and the guts, we step up to perseverance, But perseverance does this work in us as well. And then, what does it do? It produces character.

It changes us. It humbles us. It softens us. It makes a little girl into a new little girl. It makes a boy into a new boy.

It makes a man into a new man, and it makes a woman into a new kind of woman that has not been seen before. So there's this ascending steps, step by step, It changes your life. We were just reading, I believe it was two weeks ago, the men in our church, a chapter out of John Owen's book, The Mortification of Sin. We've spent all year reading this book. We're now at the very end.

We'll finish the book and I think two weeks or something like that, having read a chapter a week all year long, because we desired that God would help us to do business with our sins. Well, Two weeks ago we read a chapter where Owen states that God often sends trials to stop the progress of sin in our lives. And that this Tribulations often come to us because there's an abiding sin of some kind Perhaps it could be pride perhaps it could be materialism something and God brings a trial to cut off the sin He loves you so much that He would even bring a trial to stop a sin that has been engaging you all of your life. I've seen this many times in my own life. Many of the tribulations that I've had, there's a connection with some sin in my life, and God has brought it, the tribulation, to humble me and to help me to see things maybe I never saw before, but everybody else could see.

But the tribulation came from Almighty God to help me. Owen writes this, God oftentimes sends a sickness and abates his strength, or a loss cuts him short of plenty and so takes him off the pursuit of his lusts though it may be his heart is not weaned from them His power is weakened and he cannot do the evil that he would. Oftentimes this tribulation has a particular design by God to cut off a sin of some kind. It may be the sin of the heart, it may be some outward sin, but often this tribulation, it comes to us so that the perseverance from it would produce character, that it would change us and make us different. It pleases God to stop the progress of sin by intervening by some trial that would dislodge it or to refine us as sinners such as we are.

And this is the tribulation that produces perseverance and the perseverance that produces character. But then there's even another step. You can go higher, higher with God. This is the upward call of God and character produces hope. That's the next step, the third step.

And this hope, this hope puts reality and authenticity to our faith. It makes our faith real. And the reality of our faith has been proved. Because now, though we started in the grime and the difficulty and the press of the vice, We have taken these steps upward, upward, farther and farther. And now the result of that is that our hearts are filled with hope like we never had before.

Do you want more hope than you have today? Well, God will give you tribulation to produce it. Because hope is a direct result. It's a direct descendant of tribulation. You might ask yourself right now, what will be the descendant of my trial?

This suffering that I've engaged, this great sorrow that has befallen me. Well, this sorrow will have descendants. Let it be that those descendants would be hope, all manner of hope, hope against hope, and every kind of Holy spirit developed hope in your hearts. There are descendants of all the things that we experience. Let these descendants be the descendants that would be expressed in hope.

You know, one of the things I've noticed is that Though I do wake up with a sense of foreboding so often, here's one thing that's true. Here at my age now, I am far less a fearful man than I was when I was 40. And also, I was a far less fearful man at 40 than I was at 30 and and I would say I was a gigantically more hopeful and less fearful man at at 30 than I was at 20. This is the glory of God. This is the the stepping up, one trial after another produces more hope.

You have more experience. You see the goodness of God as the years pass. You know, I don't know how many of you are are 17, 18, 19, 20, 25 years old. Here's what I believe. You're being attacked on the area of hope like nobody else in this room.

The devil would attack you in the level of your hope. You young ladies, you young men, I know that's true. Let this attack take you to more and more hope. Look at the hope that you see in those that are more mature around you. Grab onto that hope and ride like the wind.

So this character is hope. Now, God often tumbles us so that we would long for His resting place, that our hope would be increased. Often our tribulations are such that they would wean us from our idolatry of this world. We've fallen much in love with this world and the things that it gives us. It might actually be a person in whom he might remove from us by his own sovereign will and it would break our hearts and it would perhaps help us to long for heaven like we never did before.

There was a dear young man among us who died a few weeks ago. He was a 19-year-old young man, one of the most gifted young men I've ever known. He was the clearest thinker I had ever been with in my life at the age of 19. He was preaching at 17, 18, and 19 sermons that sounded like Jonathan Edwards and Charles Spurgeon. And God took him off the face of the earth in a car accident in a moment in Texas.

And so in preparing for his funeral, as I was doing the graveside service, I picked up Richard Baxter's The Saints Everlasting Rest. Richard Baxter wrote this amazing work. He says he wrote the book for himself in his time of languishing. And so he entered a period of trial and temptation when he was actually, it was later in his life. And he wrote this book, Saints Everlasting Rest, to minister to himself.

And here's what he says in Saints Everlasting Rest. He says, he says, do you not perceive that God tumbles you up and down in the world? He crosses your desires to weary you out. And He sets loose the winds that raise those storms that may make you long for the harbor and may toss you to His breast. This is the purpose of all trials, to toss us on His breast, to throw us around in the great waves, thinking that we might be sunk, but no, we're thrown on His great breast, on His everlasting arms, and carried, carried like a lamb in his bosom He says He makes your dearest friends afflict you and those who took sweet counsel with you and went up to the house of God with you.

He made them to be sentient to you so that you might not have a resting place or a soul of your foot. Oh, learn God's gracious meaning and look upward. And so we can say, along with the Lord Jesus, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when men revile and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you, falsely, for my sacred joys exceedingly. Be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven.

For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you." how can we have hope in a time of trial and temptation? We can have hope because we are thrown onto the breast of Almighty God alone. And all earthly comforts, all earthly relationships cease to become our idols. And we throw ourselves on the mercy of God. Well there's another step here.

Hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has given to us. It's poured out in our hearts and then its content goes with us wherever we go. The love of God is the end of all these trials. We start down in the dust and the smoke and the fire and the grime and the difficulty, the pressure, relentless, and where does it go? It goes all the way up to the love of God being poured out within your hearts.

This is God's design for all of our trials and our temptations. That they would bring us to the love of God poured out within our hearts. And so God has a treasure of hope to fill us with, to remove the disappointment for our trials, that we would understand that all of this leads to the love of God. Now let me just make a comment about this. The love of God in our hearts is not a function of our upbringing.

The love of God in our hearts is a function of a work of the Holy Spirit in us. And you know, it's a supernatural work. You know, some of you may have spent half of your life as head bangers. Some of you might have spent some of your life maybe even as prostitutes and reprobates of some kind like that but that doesn't cut you off from the love of God being shed abroad in your hearts the love of God shed abroad in the heart is for everyone who comes to the Lord Jesus Christ for grace Everyone who repents of his sins is a recipient of this grace. It matters not what kind of family you grew up in.

It matters nothing what you've done in the past. The love of God has been poured out in your hearts. This is for those who grew up in broken homes and whole homes and no homes at all. And so we find this amazing truth of Scripture, that tribulation is actually a good thing. And it's so good that we rejoice in our tribulations.

Because tribulation produces perseverance and perseverance produces character it changes us into different people and character produces hope and God drives away our sorrows through it and then hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts through the Lord Jesus Christ. What a marvelous marvelous thing. Well let's move on to the next treasure in the Treasury of the Doctrine of Justification by Faith. Let me go back though. I want to just go back before we move ahead.

In James, we find one of the most wonderful testimonies of the purpose and the value of tribulations. This passage is one of them. James gives us tremendous help in discerning how we should respond to our tribulations. But in James chapter 5, I know you thought I was talking about James chapter 1, didn't you? But in James chapter 5 there's something that really sums it all up.

James 5 verse 10, my brethren, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord as an example of suffering and patience. Indeed we count them blessed who endured. You have heard of the perseverance of Job and seen the end intended by the Lord. And what was the end intended by the Lord? He's saying, look at Job.

He lost his entire family. He lost everything that he had. He became a pauper, And he lost everyone but his dear wife. And what was the end of it? James says we have seen the end intended by the Lord for Job.

And what is that end? That the Lord is very compassionate and merciful. That's the end of it. That's the end of the story for Job. Job is a beautiful example of how tribulation causes the love of God to be poured out within your hearts.

It is the compassion and mercy of the Lord that is really the heartbeat of the story of Job. It's not the trial and the devil attacking him. It's the love of God poured out within his heart. Okay, now let's move on. Number six.

Christ died for us as helpers, ungodly sinners. Verses six through eight. Please look at this. This is so beautiful. For while we were without strength in due time, Christ died for the ungodly.

For scarcely for a righteous man will one die. Yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us and that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us now. This is helplessness. We were helpless in our sins The sins of our youth were real there was And we were helpless to save ourselves.

And this is what ungenerate sinners are. They cannot help themselves. They're like the Apostle Paul who was breathing fire against the church. His only hope was that God would stop the anger toward him. And he did with the Apostle Paul.

Paul was not seeking, he was sought, he was helpless. He was on the Damascus road and a cataclysmic event in the midst of his helplessness came to him. And God demonstrated his own love toward the Apostle Paul, that while he was yet a sinner, Christ died for him and ungodly." You know, it's interesting to note in this passage how helpless he makes us here. And he says that we were completely without strength to save ourselves and God came to us and Then number seven we are saved from his wrath not only did Christ die for us when we were ungodly and helpless sinners We were saved from wrath verses 9 and 10 Much more than having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. Now, saved from wrath, what is that all about?

Now There are two things in here that you need to notice. We're justified by His blood. That's that judicial, final act of justification for your sins when you truly repented. And then, and that's by blood. And then you're saved from wrath.

Well, we've already read that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. This is what brings the wrath of God. It's the suppression of the truth in unrighteousness. And we know from the book of Romans that there are two kinds of wrath. The first kind are the normal punishments for sin and the miseries that come from disobedience.

God is opposed to the proud, but He gives grace to the humble. There is natural wrath. In chapter 1, verse 24, we read those who dishonor their bodies, receiving in themselves the penalty that was due. There's just a natural wrath from our sins that we receive as a natural result of rebellion against God. But there's a second kind of wrath.

It's eternal wrath of God against sin. And this is expressed in the biblical doctrine of hell. Hell is where God's wrath is expressed for all eternity. And the reality of hell and the fearfulness of it is shown in many places in the Bible. Luke 12 4 through 5, do not fear those who will kill the body and after that have no more that they can do.

I forewarn you of whom you should fear. Fear him which after he has killed has the power to cast into hell. Yes, I say to you, fear him. You know, I was speaking with a man yesterday who told the story of his life. He was in New York City and Wall Street.

His wife was working at an investment banking firm down the street, and he was in another one. And when the Twin Towers went down, he looked out his window, and there was the building, and then all of a sudden it was gone. And his wife was watching people burning, jumping out of one of the towers, seeing this terrible thing happen. Here's what he said to me. He said what was so strange about that being there down in Wall Street is that while it was all happening people just kept shopping as if nothing was happening at all.

They just kept buying going from aisle to aisle and buying things that they thought that they needed. They were completely oblivious to the fire that was raining down and the judgment and the death that was impending to so many people. And they were just blind to it all. This is what the world is like. Jonathan Edwards says that in his famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, that people are like walking on rotting wood and the fires of hell are burning.

And they have no idea that in one moment the wood might give way. They have no idea. They're just shopping and going about. And they're congratulating themselves about the things that they have done or the things that they're going to do, thinking that those things will protect them from the wrath. That they continue to walk on these rotten boards, but the wrath of God is being revealed against all unrighteousness with eternal fire in hell.

And that's the reality of this verse here, that we have been saved from wrath through Him. Jonathan Edwards quoted Deuteronomy 32-35, for their foot will slide in due time. That every man's foot will slide. That there will be a moment in time and no one knows when that is. And so they should repent to escape the fires of this wrath of God, this eternal, amazing, beyond-comprehension wrath that is expressed in so many, many different ways.

Matthew 5 speaks of the terrors of hell for the unrepentant. Let me just give you 10 things the Bible teaches from hell, teaches about hell in this amazing wrath that God has has established for those who do not repent. In Matthew 25, the Lord Jesus says, depart from me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. The first thing we know is that hell is real, that it has been prepared. Remember John Lennon and his famous song, Imagine.

Imagine there are no countries. Imagine there's no heaven just sky above you. Imagine there's no hell. Well, that's nice. It's a nice thing to imagine but the Bible says that hell is a real place hell is separation from God and From the and from the exposure to the love of God and an exposure to his wrath Depart from me he says but we must say this It's not hell is not an absence of God.

For David said, where can I go from thy spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in hell, behold, you are there." Why is that? Because God is giving His wrath forever in hell, personally, to those who have rejected him.

Hell brings unbearable weeping and gnashing of teeth. It's a place of outer darkness. Hell is for the accursed. He says, depart from me you who are accursed. Galatians 3 10 says, Cursed is everyone who does not continue in the things written in the book of the law and do them.

How many of us have broken the laws of God? Well, the Bible says that if you've broken one, you've broken them all. We're breaking the commandments of God every day. I read somewhere recently and heard it spoken that if sin were blue, all of your words would somehow be colored with blue. All of your activities would have blue around them.

All of your thoughts would be somehow some shade of blue because sin is in everything. I have never spoken a pure sentence. Not one single sentence have I ever spoken that's not somehow tainted with the blue of sin in my life. I've never done one thing in my life that wasn't somehow affected by the fall. I've not preached one sermon.

I've not done anything that is not somehow tainted with sin. This is the nature of sin upon us. It's comprehensive and Here what we find is that is that Almighty God has sent his son to save us from the wrath That we deserve from our sins Hell is eternal and the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever and they have no rest day or night. Hell is a fire. Into the everlasting fire they are thrown.

Hell is prepared. It's a prepared fire. God has made it custom to deal with sin. You know people look about and they say, when is God going to do something about the terrible things going on in the world? Why doesn't God bring this to justice?

Well, here's the truth of the matter. God is going to bring everything to justice. Every wrong thing that's ever been done in the history of mankind will be reconciled. God will take every account and He will make it right, but He will do it in His own time. Some of those accounts He will not set right until the fires of hell set them right.

We should not worry about whether God is out about judgment or changing something because He is responsible. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord of hosts. And there is a prepared fire. Eternity is prepared for the devil and his angels. Hell is certain.

And if you don't repent and believe in the gospel, you will someday fall through those rotten boards into the fires of hell. Hell is inescapable. Once you die, there's no review. Once you die, you don't have a chance to say, wait a minute, can't I change my mind here? No, absolutely not.

There is a line. There is a line into which one passes into eternity. And No, it's not true that you can get before the throne of God and say, Oh Lord, I knew it was all wrong, I knew it was bad, I knew I should have repented, I heard it a thousand times, but now I repent. No, depart from me into everlasting perdition. That's the reality of hell, brothers and sisters.

Hell is a place of torment. It's a place of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and they will be tormented day and night forever. John writes in Revelation 20, Then I saw the great white throne and him who sat on it, from those whose face the earth and heaven had fled away, and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, the small and the great, standing before God, and the books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life, and the dead were judged according to their works by the things which were written in the books.

The sea gave up their dead that were in it. Death and Hades delivered up the dead that were in them, and they were judged, each one according to his works, and anyone not found in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire." Well, we also know that heaven is avoidable for those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. There all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. All of us have words and lives and deeds that are blue, so colored by this poison that was given to us through Adam. In the next section in Romans 5, we really delve into this, how sin came to so poison us.

You know, we just finished this conference about families and how families can be in biblical order. We alluded to this in the conference, but let me just try to say it again, hopefully in a better way. Through Adam, sin was imputed to mankind. And all of us have been polluted by the sinful nature that has passed on through the seed. It's passed on through our having of children from one generation to the next.

We pass on this curse. How much should we work to deal with this curse in our homes? How much should we appeal to our children to be saved from the wrath to come? How much should we present to them the beautiful things of God? How diligent should we be?

We gave them the disease that would destroy them and set them down through the rotten boards into everlasting perdition. We gave them that potential. Now what will we do? How will we deal with that? Of course, God has told us how to deal with that.

Just speak of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, or when you rise up. That's how we deal with it. We deal with sin in the hearts of our children. We deal with sin in our own hearts. We deal father and mother, husband and wife with our own sins together and we work out our salvation in rumbling.

But isn't it amazing that God would do such for sinners like all of us are. Can you imagine the enormity of the grace of God for one man who has never, ever spoken a sentence without being affected by this poisonous sin in his heart. Isn't that amazing? This is a treasure. This is a treasure of justification by faith alone.

And then, number eight, another treasure that we have, not only are we saved from the wrath of God, we are reconciled while we were yet enemies. Verse 10, for when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son. Much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. So we were enemies and we were reconciled through the death of His Son. You might think that it's foolish to love an enemy, and that's exactly what God has done.

And that's why He says, pray for your enemies and Love your enemies and bless those who persecute you because he's done the same thing Toward us and now he asks us to stand in that same place and and act as he has acted toward us It's foolishness to love an enemy, But you know the foolishness of the cross is to those who are perishing, but for those who are saved it's the power of God. God has chosen the foolish things of this world to shame, the wisdom of the wise. God has chosen the weak things of this world, put to shame the things that are mighty, and He's taken the base things of this world, which are despised. And then ninth, we rejoice in God. And of course this is where we've been driving, right?

This is really the end of the message in verses 1 through 11. What is the result of this? What does God desire from all of this? This recognition of His wrath being satisfied, of our being enemies and yet made friends at the same time through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. It says this, and not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have received the reconciliation.

So there's that amazing phrase, and not only that, and not only that, not only are we saved from His wrath, not only were we reconciled as enemies, not only have all these things, all these treasures been heaped upon us, Not only that, not only that, but we rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ. How could there be more blessing to be set free from the poison of sin? How could there be more blessed than the Lord would say to you, oh dear brother, dear sister, remember not the sins of your youth. Do you remember the sins of your youth? See them in the light of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.

It says here that we rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Do you see that in the text? Our rejoicing is through Him and unto God. He is our intercessor and He works for us in His intercession. So, here's the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ that we celebrate today.

That where sin abounded, grace abounded much more. And that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. We can so easily say like the prophet Micah, who is a God like you? Pardoning iniquity, passing over the transgression of the remnant of His heritage, He does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in mercy. He will again have compassion on us and will subdue our iniquities.

You will cast all of our sins into the depths of the sea. You will give truth to Jacob and mercy to Abraham, which you have sworn to our fathers from the days of old." So is there anyone walking on those rotten boards, have known, have had conscience screaming at you to repent and to return to the Lord Jesus Christ, that He has been calling you and deep in your heart you know that your name must be written in the Book of Life. And so, come to this Lord Jesus Christ, who passes out mercy to all sinners who repent. And for those of us who have repented and have found the grace of God, let us not forget this great treasury of the grace of God for us. We should be preaching the gospel to ourselves every day.

We should be glorying in the gospel and all that God has done for us from eternity past. He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blemish. He did this all in His love to gather a people together for Himself, to connect them, to make them brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers in His great Church. And He does so love His Church. And again, The great thing about the Church is not about how great the people are, but it's how great the God is and the enormity of His grace toward them in the midst of their many imperfections as the blue words and thoughts and deeds continue to flow.

There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins and sinners plunge beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains. They lose all their guilty stains. They lose all their guilty stains. They lose all their guilty stains. Let's pray.