Lifting Up Our Eyes
Chapter 15 of Genesis, God's covenant with Abraham. After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision. Fear not, Abraham, I am your shield. Your reward shall be very great. But Abraham said, O Lord, God, what will you give me? For I continue childless and the heir of my house is Elijah. of Damascus. And Abraham said, Behold, you have given me no offspring and a member of my household will be my heir. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, This man shall not be your heir. Your very own son shall be your heir. And he brought him outside and said, Look toward heaven and the number and number the stars. if you are able to number them. And then he said to him, so shall your offspring be. and he believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness. And he said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess. But he said, O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it? And he said to him, bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtle dove and a young pigeon. And he brought him all these, cut them in half and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half. And when the birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abraham drove them away. As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abraham. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. Then the Lord said to Abel, Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in land that is not theirs and will be servants there. And they will be afflicted for 400 years, but I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve and afterward they shall come out with great possession. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace. You shall be buried in a good old age and they shall come back here. in the fourth generation for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abraham saying, to your offspring, I give this land from the river of Egypt. To the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Canites, the Kenizites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites and Rephrame, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Gershites and the Jubisites. So let's begin in prayer. Father, what an amazing day to be able to share with one another. To be able to come together as a family, Lord, to just see your power at work. Lord, we know your power, that your spirit is always working. But Father, we have just seen it evidently today in the life of Matt. So, just pray Lord that you'll now bless us as we hear your word. Open our hearts and our ears to hear Lord. Just let us be changed and transformed, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Now, we had everyone's favorite day of the year yet, two days ago, the 31st of October. Halloween, right? Yeah, I know some people are like, ah, you know, that's demonic, satanic day, or some people are like, ah, it's just another day, whatever. Maybe some of you really get into it. I don't know, probably bit iffy, but it's okay, whatever. But are there any other things that have happened on the 31st of October? Any other? Harry Houdini died about 100 years ago, yeah, something happened? The Battle of Beersheba happened on the 31st of October, yep. Lot of different things. I want to point back to something that happened about 508 years ago. I'm not normally one to be history buff, I do enjoy history. And look, if you don't care about history at all, completely fine. But there is something very important that happened on the 31st of October that I think many of us should know. Because without it, this church would not be here today. So on the 31st of October in 1517, have you guys ever heard of a guy called Martin Luther? Not Martin Luther King Jr., just Martin Luther. where we get the name Lutherans from. Now, he decided it would be... So back then, he was what was known as a Roman Catholic monk. And he thought, you know what? There's some things I don't quite agree with in the church. And here, I'm just gonna write up this little thesis and I'm gonna nail it to the church board, to the church door. It was like the notice board. He's just, here's just some things for debate. Just some things I have some issues with. Now, why? Why would this be an important point? Who cares that some random monk nailed a thing to the door? Because the things that happened that day led to something we call the Reformation. Led to the very fact that we now sit in a church of Christ, which is a descendant of that movement. And so all of us right now would be Roman Catholic or recent Orthodox if it were not for that day. And now, really what was the day all about? Luther really struggled with this thing, and again, I'm gonna get to the point in the passage in a second, but he really struggled with this thing that the Roman Catholic Church was doing. were selling these things called indulgences. It was these things the Roman Catholic Church would tell you, because you know, they had this idea of purgatory. You know, there's earth, and then you've got heaven, but you've also got to spend a little time in this kind of limbo area, where you've kind of got to be a bit more perfected first before you get to heaven. If you're a really good person, you could just skip it altogether. But if you weren't quite good enough, you had to spend some time there, right? because none of us are perfect Christians, so you've got to be perfected a little bit more. But these indulgences, man, you could just pay a little bit of money and you could just shave a couple days off your time. It was an amazing system. Doesn't that sound great, guys? You can just pay to get into heaven. It makes it a lot easier than what we have to go through sometimes. How easy it would be. And you see, Luther really took issue with this fact because I hope you guys know. that completely goes against the teaching of the gospel. The idea that you sit in this state where you still have to be perfected as though Christ's sacrifice wasn't enough. It is silly and stupid. And he took issue with this fact. And it led to a point where he did not seek to split from the church, but inevitably, because of the church's refusal to take back what they had put in place, he had to split from the church. That's where Lutherans and Presbyterians and Baptists and Church of Christ and everything came from was... that. But you see, as he spent time, as he continued to see all that was wrong with the Roman Catholic Church, he sat there and actually started, he turned away from making the indulgences the focus and instead something else became the focus, the main crux upon which the whole Reformation was formed, something that we call justification by faith. Luther called this the doctrine by which the church stands or falls. If we lose this, we lose everything. But Luther wasn't the first person to come up with this. It was first preached in Genesis 15. And so we're going to go to it today. We're going to look at what Abraham has to teach us about this great doctrine called justification by faith and why it matters so much. So let's read verses one to six together. After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram and a vision, fear not Abram, I am your shield, your reward is very great. But Abram said, oh Lord God, what will you give me? For I continue childless, the heir of my house is Eleazar of Damascus. And Abram said, behold, you have given me no offspring and a member of my household will be my heir. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him. This man shall not be your heir, your very own son shall be your heir. And he brought him outside and said, look toward heaven and number the stars if you were able to number them. Then he said to him, so shall your offspring be. And the most important verse, he believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness. So, now we've been following the story of Abraham since Genesis 11, 12, basically, right? At that point, he was about 75 years old. At this point now, he's 99 years old, or 98, around there. His wife is 90. Now, does anyone like the idea of conceiving a child at 90 years old? Shirley, do you know you don't want to do that again? Yeah, right, okay. You've got one and done, right? Or how many, yeah, no. By the time you hit 90, you're like, I'm tired enough as is. Don't need to do any more of that. And naturally, as I'm sure many of you know, there are natural processes that make it very much impossible for someone who is 90 years old to have a child. And so here they sit, and Abram's struggling with this fact. said, my offspring will inherit this land, but I don't have a son. So the one who will inherit will be someone in his household. This was likely a servant of his or someone who was in his group that he would have to adopt into his family to give him the inheritance. And so he was worried about it. And so what does God do? Takes him out, gives him this promise. You might think you're 99 years old, but nothing is too hard for me. Look at the sky. Your children will be as many as them. Of course, many of us here would sit, okay, it's God saying it, so I've got to have some faith, but man, I don't really know how he's going to do it. And when God gives him that promise, Abraham, or Abram as he was still called then, falls silent. You're thinking, what are you going to say, Abram? And all he says, he doesn't really seem to say anything, he just said, and he believed the Lord and the Lord counted it to him as righteousness. This sentence right here becomes the foundation for the richest theology, the richest truths that the gospel has to offer us. Let's break it down. Believed. Do you guys know what the word believed means? Hopefully, most of us. I'm not trying to be dumb it down, but look, belief also isn't a one-time thing. What it was saying when he believed God was that he continued to at every point. He was unwavering. Yes, did he have doubts, but he always came back to the truth, which is, yes, God will grant me an offspring. So he trusted. It means to continue trusting the promises of God. Then we come to another point. It was counted to him, or it can be, the other words put it, to him. Now, have you guys ever looked at a bank statement? You've got your debits and you've got your credits. Hopefully the credits way out far outweigh the debits, but you know, whatever. I'm not criticizing your bank account. You guys do what you do. But what is a credit into your account? Normally your employer or someone depositing money. It's an addition. So it is something being added to your account. Now, think about this. All of us have an account with God, an account of righteousness, right? All of us, we can seemingly add to it. If you're obedient enough, you can add to this account. But, if you are disobedient, debt is taken. You are, how would you put it, withdrawing money from that account. But, scripture puts it another way. It in Romans 3, 5 that we are storing up wrath for ourselves. See, it's storing it up in this account because the problem being, the great problem with this account of righteousness, we're all in the negative. We're all in the, is it the black that's the bad one, Ian? No, no, we want to be in the red. The red is the bad one. We're in the red. Right, sorry, the red. Right. We are all indebted to God because our disobedience far outweighs the good. far and away that is the testimony of scripture that all of us fall under the wrath of God. And so that puts us in a bit of a pickle. All of us have this account, this money owing to God. What are we to do with it all? You're never going to be able to pay back the debt. Because I hate to say it, even when you try to put the deposit in, normally it just ends up being negative because your good works are just so rubbish anyway. But here is where our answer lies. Abram had faith in God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Abraham didn't do a good work in this moment. What did he simply do? God told him what God was going to do and he said, sounds like you're going to do it. I believe you're going to do it. And that was credited to him as righteousness, as in what was meant to be righteousness, good deeds put into his account was simply replaced with faith. His faith became his good deeds. That is what put him in the black, as you would say. And so here becomes the bedrock of the gospel. It says in Galatians 2.16, that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ. You want to know what to be justified means? It's very simple. If I'm going speeding down to Dolby, I'm sitting on 150, there's probably some people here that do that. Cool. And look, if you get pulled over, You gotta have a good excuse to give the copper, right? Now if you say, look, I just really, really needed to get to Hungry Jacks because there's none in Chinchilla, not a good enough reason. You're probably gonna get slapped with that ticket. But if you get pulled over and your screaming wife is in the back just crowning, ready to give birth, you're probably gonna get off. He might tell you not to speed the rest of the way, you're, again, this is not the best illustration. But what I'm saying is, when you genuinely have good reason, That means you were justified in what you have done. You were innocent. To be before the judge, you come with what you have done. He says, I have no reason to punish you. So you were justified, you were made right, you were innocent. And so here he's saying, we are not justified by works of the law, by doing good things, but through having faith in Jesus Christ. So this means when you were justified now before God, that means even, so God is the one who sees all things. It doesn't need to be a jury, He is the jury, Judge, Jury and Executioner. And that is to say, when you were before Him, when we have faith in Christ, no one can bring anything against you. No one can bring up your past. All the things you have done, they just wash away. It is all gone. Nothing can condemn you. not because you are a good person, but because you believe in God's Son. Now, okay, Abram is being offered this. What an amazing thing. God is crediting this faith to him as righteousness. But now we come to really the big problem. It's really nice that God would do that for Abram, but God has to be a judge. He has to be just. He can't just let him get off scot-free. So he has to do something. Because Abram hasn't been perfect up until this point. You guys remember that time that, you know, he just went through Egypt and then said, Oh, no, she's not my wife, that's my sister because of somehow his 65 year old wife looked so good that Pharaoh wanted her. And he lied and he was, know, God rebuked him and then he still got off there. He wasn't punished for that. In fact, they actually left with many possessions and better yet in the next chapter, if you guys are doing the devotions, Hagar and Ishmael, right? He sleeps with his wife's servant so that they can make a child. He seeks to fulfill God's promise his own way. This is no perfect man. So what is God gonna do with all this unrighteousness? He can't just let it go past. That is what the rest of the passage helps us to understand. I'll just read from a few select passages. We won't read the whole thing out. But starting from verse seven, said, I am the Lord who brought you out from the ear of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess. But he said, oh Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it? And here is the important part, how he will know. Bring me in heifer. Three years old, a female goat, a ram, a turtle dove, a young pigeon, he brought them all these, cut them in half, laid them half over against the other half, and he did not cut the birds in half. When the birds of prey came down on the car, because Abram drove them away. Abram, as the sun was going down, deep sleep fell on Abram, and then the Lord said to Abram, he goes through a whole prophecy telling the future. I'll skip ahead and we'll go to verse 17. 17 is the most important one we're gonna be focusing on. When the sun had gone down, it was dark. and behold a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between the pieces. On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abraham, with Abram, saying, I will give this land to your offspring. And all the different names that Matt was really struggling to pronounce, which we would all struggle to pronounce. Anyway, so you see, right, Abram was no perfect man, so how was God gonna deal with this? He still has to punish the unrighteousness. Well, here we are introduced to a ritual, basically. Now, look, there are some things in here that you're like, he's cutting things in half and laying them across and like, what? Look, back in the day, they probably would have understood this a bit better. You kind of need to understand the context. This was an ancient covenant ritual. You know, like when we get married and we put on rings? Well, this was just the same kind of thing, except you're cutting up a bunch of animals. We could try doing it at weddings. If one of you guys is getting married, you want to cut up an animal, I don't know, hey. No, we're probably not going to do that. But you see here. We are seeing one of the, we are literally laying down the foundations here for Christ's sacrifice. So what he was doing, he cut the birds, sorry, no, he didn't cut the birds. Anyway, he cut all the animals in half, laying the pieces on either side. And so this was part of a ritual where you might have, say, I don't know, just two people. You might have two countries or two kings. One king has come in and conquered that country. Now it is theirs, but they look, you know, they want to go back to the homeland. So they want to have a governor in control of that land. So they put a governor over control of it, right? You know, we've got the King Charles, he's not coming in every day to see how Australia is doing. He's got governors, the governor general, right? Premiers, all those kinds of things. And so there was this ritual that they would do where there would be promises given. We will protect you if someone comes and attacks you, but in exchange, this country would have to give things to this other nation because they've obviously They're conquerors, right? And so to make sure that the promises stayed, they would do this ritual where they would cut all the animals in half and then each person would have to walk through. One went one way, one went the other way. And it was simply this. It was essentially enacting a curse upon themselves. If I do not obey the promises and the obligations in this covenant, then let this happen to me. What has happened to the animals? Basically, let me be ripped in half. It is to be fully cursed, it's to be under the wrath of God and anger. I'd just imagine being ripped in half. Doesn't sound very nice, does it? Yeah. And so, the most important part here, like I was saying, verse 17, behold a smoking pot and a flaming torch pass between the pieces. Now look, there's a lot of different debate about what the pot and the torch symbolise. There's stuff about the slavery in there, God being the pillar of fire, but quick and simple, it is God. This symbolises God passing between the pieces. This is how you were saying, Abraham, the promises I have made to you will surely come to pass. But notice the important thing. God walks through the pieces, Abram does not. God alone walks through this. And so what is he saying? I will uphold the covenant. And even when you fail, I will take it upon myself. He says, this is an unconditional covenant because it does not involve you. You will receive the benefits and the blessing, but I will do all the work. And so this was a guarantee because, okay, here guys, yes or no question, can God be torn in two? No. God is one, he cannot be separated or torn in two. So therefore this promise must come to pass. And so you see this then turns into what will become our justification, our being made right with God. How does He deal with the disobedience? He makes it His problem and He is the one who deals with it. This is what it's called in Romans 3.26, beautiful passage, that He might be the just, that He might be just, sorry, and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. You see, God must remain just. He must be a judge. We have to believe in judgment day because there are wicked people in this world that will never repent. Of course we want them to be punished. There has to be justice in this world. But, therefore, He must punish all of us because all of us have done wrong. So what is He going to do? He will become the one who justifies us. He will be the one who makes us right here by putting the punishment on His Son, on Jesus Himself. And so you see now, You don't need to be, you don't need to do all the good things in life. You're never gonna be perfect. That is not Christianity. We're not all sitting here because we figured it out. I know none of you have, all right? I don't even need to talk to you to know that. But instead, through faith in Christ, our sin is taken away. Everything, the guilt and the shame, and you were given His perfect righteousness. He lived a perfect life, and it is now given to you. now you have peace with God. God is not angry with you. You have a relationship with Him. You can now come to Him without any fear because your sin has been taken away because you have faith in Jesus. That is why we pray in Jesus' name, because we put our faith in Him. So now, I'll come. We're gonna spoil three points. Three points that really flesh out how justification, why it's so important. Three different things. Basically, that it brings to, sorry, that justification by faith brings to an end. End of salvation by works of losing your salvation and of thinking God hates you. So end of salvation by works. Now, look as people, we can very easily get stuck on a treadmill. You know, it's this treadmill where we think, I've just gotta keep doing enough good things. We fall into this mindset so easily. We just think we have to be good enough. We have to do enough with our day. And so we're just sitting on this treadmill, hoping to do enough, and everyone falls asleep. It's not just Christians, non-Christians too, right? They're either pursuing good for themselves, I need to keep getting this next thing to make me happy to find satisfaction, or maybe they're a bit more a good person in a way, and they're seeking the good of humanity, the good of the world to make a positive impact in the world. But everyone's seeking good. climbing this treadmill, I've got to do more good, make a positive impact in my life or the lives of others. Look, even Trump thinks this. He said, man, if I can maybe end the war in Ukraine, I might get into heaven. even inevitably in my RE classes, whatever you want to call them, that I do in the public school, I ask my kids this just about every week, how do you think you're getting into heaven? And I sit there and I literally just say, I know what one of you is going to say by being a good person every single time. Actually last week for the first time in two months, two terms, was the first time they didn't say it. And so you see, we just naturally have this thing in us which says, If I'm a good person, I will earn the reward of heaven. We just think, whatever, you set the good up, know, whether it's, I'm gonna earn the good life, whether as Christians we think, if I just read my Bible enough, do the right things, I will get there. None of us are gonna say we're saved by works, but we all fall back into it. And so you see the problem with this, right? We've already said our debt will always outweigh any good we have done. You do all the good, it's still a little bit of good, all the debt, all the bad things far outweigh it. And the beauty of justification by faith now. Believe in Jesus, you get heaven. No one in heaven will earn heaven. No one except Jesus. All of us will be there because we've received it as a gift. You don't work for gifts, so why do you keep doing it? We always fall back into this. And so you know that on judgment day, there will come a day where God will come back to judge us. You're not gonna sit there, sorry, no one on that day will have God go through the book of their life and God's gonna see that and go, oh, I didn't realize you did all that. Oh, well, come on through. No one, all of us will be condemned on that day, but those who have faith in Christ will enter in. Now the second one will be the end of losing our salvation. Now you see, this is the hardest thing of the Catholic system, right? That I was talking about, Luther so opposed. It's nice in that system, you get baptized and you're justified, right? Whether you're baby, infant, whatever, just you gotta, we gotta baptize all the babies because then they're justified. But what happens if that baby does something a bit too bad? What if they scream at mom a bit too hard this morning? Right? What if they do something that, you know, had certain, call them seven deadly sins, seven bad, fatal sins, whatever. If you do those certain sins, there are ones that can throw you out. You're not justified, you're not good enough anymore. So now you have to come back to the church, confess. You have to perform penance, do mass, other different things to show that you're sorry, to truly, and you have to do these things to earn back your salvation. This is returning right back to the 10 Commandments again, saying you have to keep The law, keep doing good things. But Jesus showed a better way. Because you see, the law could never save us because, keep the 10 commandments, you'll get heaven. No one has kept them. We all fall under the curse of the law. So Jesus came and made a way where our works would no longer be a part of the equation. Do you think it's interesting, right, he has this, right, Genesis 15, six, like we said before, it was counted to him as righteousness. Why did he only introduce it at that point? We've had Abraham now for three chapters. He's done things that required faith. He left his homeland, his father's household. He went and killed all those kings, if you guys have been reading along in the chapters, right? He did a lot of things that required faith. Why now say that his faith is counted as righteousness? I think because there's an important part where we are seeing the reflection of the gospel. Because you see, in this promise that was given to him that he would receive an offspring, he could do absolutely nothing. He had no power. He couldn't suddenly make his wife not barren again, right? But he could show some faith in that when he was leaving his father's homeland, he could do, wasn't that he was doing some of the work, but there was an action to be done, something to be followed. But what could he do to make his wife pregnant? Simply trust God. And so you see, that is the only answer that you will ever receive in the gospel. How do you get to heaven? How do you have peace with God? Trust in God to save you. trust in His Son to take your place. And so you see, that's the equation, right? The equation comes, your sin plus Jesus equals eternal life. What do you bring in that equation? Your sin. That is all you bring. All you have to do is take all the bad you've done, bring it to God and say, please just deal with this. I'm sorry I have done it, but can you please do something with it? And He will, and He has. by putting his son on the cross. And so you see, part of the equation, the only thing you bring is your sin. and it is dealt with in faith. And so your position before God, whether you were saved or not, is it dependent upon if you're a good person? No, it is wholly dependent upon your faith in Jesus. So on your deathbed, when you're sitting there, whether it comes in a moment or you're sitting there for three months just waiting to die, you will find no comfort in sitting there and thinking, I did this for God, I did that for God. The devil will come and remind you of all the things that you did do, the bad things and the things you should have done. You will find no comfort in your works that will bring you no assurance, the only thing that will, faith that Jesus loves showing mercy to sinners. He loves it. He loves showing grace to bad people. And so our third point, really one of the most important ones, especially for our daily lives. Justification by faith is the end of thinking God hates you. Now, real quick, I'm not saying God doesn't hate anyone, all right? God hates people, okay? Because this is a reality that if we do not truly believe in Jesus, if we do not confess Him as our Lord and Savior, where does that leave you? With the debt in your account, under the wrath and anger of God. If we do not truly believe Him as Matt has today, showing that we've given our lives over to Him, we trust in Him completely. We are hated by God. We are sinners. We must face that fact. He may show love to you in certain ways at the moment. We're breathing at this very moment. That's a show of love. But that eternal, sin-forgiving love will not be shown to all people, only to those who trust in His Son. But for those who do trust in Jesus, God does not and never can hate you. But I bet you think you can. You know how I know? Because I reckon if I came up and asked any single one of you, hey, how's your relationship with God going? You guys will either answer one or two ways. You will completely shut down and deflect the conversation, or you'll say, oh, I didn't read my Bible this morning. Oh, oh goodness, yeah, I probably screamed at the kids a few too many times this week, but man, they're really ratty though, so you know there's good excuse for ... Oh man, I ran back into that sin that I've been fighting for just so long and just... Instantly, you just see how I ask you a question about how your relationship with God and instantly you've gone back to what you've been doing. All of you will do it, I guarantee it, because I've asked people that question before and it happens every time. Very rarely do you get the person who will jump straight to the truth. What does God think about you? What does He think about your relationship? Romans 8, 38 to 39. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything, nor creation will be able to separate us. We're able to separate me, we're able to separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. God loves you always. He is not angry, He is not disappointed, He is not unhappy. When He looks at you in every moment of every day, He smiles. Because you were justified. through faith in His Son. When He looks at you, He sees Jesus. He does not see all your sin because it is wiped away. So don't do what we always do. When we read these passages and start to add in our little exceptions, oh, well, nothing can separate me from the love of God except, well, there was that one thing I did this week and, that other thing. We love doing that. We need to stop. Because you see, to say God doesn't love you because of what you have done this week or last week or any week to come is to actually blaspheme the gospel itself. He loved you so much, He sent His Son to die in your place. and he still loves you. That's how much he loved you. He sent his only son. Because of you, his son was murdered and he still loves you. And yet you think, well, I yelled at the kids a few times this week, so he probably doesn't love me anymore. That is not true. And it goes completely against the gospel in which we believe. Nothing could make him stop loving you. This teaching, as I draw to a close, this teaching that teaches you that God is only happy with you when you do the right things, when you do enough good things. This teaching propagated by cults, Catholics, by every other major religion except Christians comes from the pit of hell itself. It is stupidity. We can never be made right with God by what we do. So we must become like Abraham. You notice how it has that weird little verse talking about him scaring away all the the birds of prey that were coming down on the carcasses. You see, the animals he offered were clean animals, those which were right to sacrifice. And then there were unclean birds, right? Those which ate from carcasses normally, birds of prey. And so you see, he scared them away because he did not want them to take away from the sacrifice of God. And so you see, a sacrifice has been made for us, a sacrifice once and for all, Jesus Christ on the cross. There is someone unclean who will seek to take you away from it every time. He is the one who will constantly take you back to thinking God does not love you because of your works. The devil, all right? The one that Matt renounced earlier. He said, I no longer will listen to him. That's a start and we've got to keep making that commitment every single day because he is there. You must scare away the birds of prey. You must scare away the devil. You must tell him to go away because he will seek to attack the sacrifice that was made for you. Because my friends, this is literally the root of your joy right here, that you were justified by your faith. If he can destroy this, he is happy. Why do you think every false religion he's made is about being saved by works? Because you can never find the joy of the gospel in them. So you must return to this truth quickly and often, that you were made right with God. Not because of what you did or will do, but because you put your faith in Jesus. The Reformation reclaimed this most beautiful truth for us when it was covered up by the Catholic Church. That truth has been proclaimed since Abraham. It is not a new truth. Don't lose it. It is your greatest treasure. It is the thing you need to remember at the beginning and at the end of the day. Because you will look back over your day and say, oh Jesus, I didn't do too good today. And He will say, I know, I'm God. I see the end from the beginning. I knew you wouldn't do that good today. You're not going to do good any day. Just keep trusting me and I will smile at you always. So we'll finish up in prayer and then I'll invite the worship team up. Father, you were the one who made a way where there was no way. Lord, we were condemned under the law, the 10 commandments. Father, none of us have kept them. None of us have kept the commands which you gave us. Father, we all fall under your wrath and your anger. We all deserve hell and none of us will get there by being good enough. The only way we get there is by putting our faith in your Son. Lord, overcome our dead and cold hearts and fill us with faith in Your Son. Do not let us walk the road to hell, Father, but let us know that there is a gift of salvation freely for all those who will partake of it. All those who will open their hearts to You, just let them do that now, we pray, Father. Let all of us continue to have trust in You to the final day, never trusting in ourselves, but wholly in You. We pray all these things in Jesus' name, amen.