London Baptist Confession Ch 11,12

Well, I would tell you to turn to a passage, but I have a bunch of them because we're in the series on London Baptist confession. This is chapter 11 and 12 in the book. If you happen to have the confession in front of you or you have it on your device, you can follow along. I'll read almost all of it. I think.

I don't remember. I didn't compare, but I think I'll compare or almost cover the whole chapter. We have so much to cover, given the time with communion to follow. So if you accuse me of talking too fast, I'll just tell you to speed up your listening. Okay, so get the ears going faster.

There's always been pressure to try to strive for unity with Christians throughout the church history. There's always been this pressure to join together with people, and it almost always has the idea of doing it because there are causes or issues that joining together with various groups or people that call themselves Christians can benefit, whether that's a spiritual cause or a moral cause or a social cause or a political cause. There's always been pressure to join together in unity with people who call themselves Christian. But there's a fundamental flaw in the reasoning behind that, and that fundamental flaw is the idea that those causes are of primary importance. So if you start with the idea that your country is becoming immoral, and we, I think, all agree that our country is indeed going down the slippery slope of immorality, if you begin with that and say that is our priority, it is the Christian's priority to stop the slide into immorality, then you will join with whoever agrees with you about the slide of immorality.

So there's a fundamental flaw if you begin in the wrong spot thinking that it's okay to join or to connect with people who don't hold to the doctrines of Scripture. Well, I'll tell you that one of those fundamentals is the doctrine of justification. The doctrine of justification by faith alone in Christ alone, according to Scripture alone, to the glory of God, alone in grace. That idea is an old idea. And Martin Luther says that it's the capstone of the Christian faith, that if you lose justification by faith alone, you lose Christianity.

I agree with him. Well, how does that affect us? Well, the easiest effect has to do with what we just talked about in these last weeks months is the Roman Catholic tradition. They do not believe that. In fact, our confession, when I read it in a little bit, it's going to actually use words that the Catholic Catechism does to rebuke it or correct it so over, over one, there are eight billion, almost nine billion now, I think eight and a half billion people on earth.

And of those eight and a half billion, it is said that one billion of those profess to be Roman Catholic. That's an eighth of the human population that if they do believe what they say they believe, do not hold to a fundamental of the Christian faith. So this doctrine is very important. It asks the question, how can a man be right before God? How can a sinner be okay with a holy God?

How can a sinner be reconciled to a holy God? And if you get that wrong, if you get that fundamental wrong, you can't say that the thing is called Christian. If at the core of Christianity, justification is a core doctrine. So we're going to look at that. This part of the confession is really plain.

This is one of those that mirrors the Westminster quite a bit. It'll use language that might cause some chafing in some people, some response, but I think for the most part will love it. But we need to recognize that even though we've talked about these things, I always remember when I saw Martin Luther's translation, not I can't read German, but I saw an English translation of Luther's Bible, his second edition of the Bible of the New Testament. And I remember reading the introduction to the Book of Romans from Martin Luther himself, his introduction to the Book of Romans. And I remember thinking, man, the Awana kids at our church would probably know this.

Like it was so basic, the idea of doctrine, the doctrine of justification by faith, that our young people could probably articulate this as well as Luther did because we are so used to it and entrenched in it. We're so. We have centuries now of believing this doctrine, that it might become old hat to us, maybe lose its preciousness, lose the significance or importance. And I'm going to go and say to our church, we need to remember the significance of the doctrine of justification. It's the only thing that can make you right with God to get that right.

And it's the only thing we have to offer the lost world. Like, what else are we going to offer them? Religion? Happiness, Drugs? What can you offer people to try to help them be happy, accept a right relationship with God?

So let's pray and we'll look at the doctrine of justification and adoption. I have a short section on adoption at the end, so let's pray. Father, this is an important doctrine. We're very used to talking about it. And it's possible, Father, that in our familiarity we Might not appreciate it enough.

That's something that we can do. We can take for granted that we understand these things. But I would ask Father that maybe tonight as we discuss these things, we look through them and what the confession says and the passages that maybe we might kindle the appreciation in that fire that says what you say in your word that you declare us righteous. It's an amazing thing for a sinner to be declared righteous. It is a miracle and we want to see it correctly.

In Jesus name, amen. So it's chapter 11. It's the subject of justification. The first thing I will talk about is the substance of justification. I'm going to go fast.

I have tonight tons of notes. I've already kind of planned ahead for how many notes I'm going to skip because I have so much to cover the substance of justification. Just so you know, if you are unfamiliar with the idea is that justification is a declarative idea. It's God declaring someone righteous. Now God cannot call someone righteous who is unrighteous.

Does everybody understand that? That would make God a liar. He would contradict himself. So the doctrine of justification is a legal declaration. In fact, you can call it forensic.

That has to do with law. It's a legal declaration by God that a sinner is righteous. And he does that because of what we'll see in the Gospel. So those the confession says, those whom God effectually calleth, he also freely justifieth. There are no called effectually called people that aren't justified.

All of them come to faith. It goes on to say, and I'm going to give this by three contrasts things that justification is not. And this is where that language of Roman Catholicism comes in. So the confession, the Westminster divines and then the Baptist confession folks, the Reformers, the Protestants, they were specifically putting things in their confession to counter the false doctrine of Rome. So when you hear these letter, these words, like the word infused, that word infusing is almost directly related to Rome.

So listen to it. And the confession says, not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous. So this is the language that there is no blending of our righteousness and God's. That is the Roman idea is that you can earn merit, you can earn favor, you can earn righteousness, but God will help you with some righteousness. So there's this.

That's why it uses the word infused. Like there's a blending together to where those two things get blended together. And our confession is Saying, no, that's not true. And literally you have passages like Romans 4. Now, to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace, but debt.

If you could earn it, then it's something God owed you. Right? That's the idea. If you could earn it, then God has to give it to you. It's not free.

But to him who does not work but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness. You get a lot of that banking language, money language, economic language and legal language. Romans 4 says, Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin. The next thing in the confession says, wrongly, not for anything wrought in them or done by them, but for Christ's sake alone. So it's not something that we do internally in ourselves or we can do in ourselves.

You can't make yourself right before God. You can't. And then it also says, for Christ's sake, He made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. Him. It's for his sake.

So it's for the sake of Christ's work. Christ is the main character in justification. Now, again, I have to say these things all the time. But do you. Do you recognize that then in salvation, the salvation of sinners, God is the main character, not the sinner?

God is doing it to amplify God. He's doing it because you as a sinner are not glorifying God. So he's saving you for Himself. He's not saving you just for you. Now you get benefits.

We are very thankful that God gives us all the wonderful stuff he gives us. We want to make sure we recognize the main character is the one who does it. Then he goes on to the confession, goes on to say, not by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them as their righteousness, but by imputing Christ's. Now listen to this language, because I'll explain a little bit, but I don't want to spend too much time on it. But by imputing Christ's active obedience under the whole law and passive obedience in his death, for their whole and sole righteousness by faith, which faith they can't, they have, not of themselves.

It is the gift of God. Now, that almost sounds just like the Bible, doesn't it? This whole section of the confession just sounds like it's kind of reiterating language that we hear in the Bible. But there's something here that I just want to touch on very Briefly, there are people who do and people who don't believe in the concept of the active obedience of Christ. If you want to get doctrinal, here's your chance.

I'm giving it to you. Active obedience says that Jesus had to obey God's law. And when he obeyed God's law, that obedience is the righteousness that he gives us when we put our faith in Him. So all the times I blasphemed God and Jesus didn't, instead of my blasphemy, counting his obedience when he didn't counts for me. That's the act of obedience of God that Jesus, when he came to earth, he fulfilled the law.

Galatians says he was born under the law, right? He himself, Jesus says I kept my Father's commandments. He says that just as I have kept my Father's commandments. That's active obedience. Passive obedience is when he lays down his life to be killed.

Right. So the reason I'm bringing that up is because there are people mainly in the dispensational crowd, and I actually think maybe somebody at our church or to hold to this, they don't believe that Jesus had to earn our righteousness. They believe he was inherently righteous, and when he dies, he gives us that inherent righteousness. Now, the reason those are both okay to believe is because both of them say it isn't our righteousness. Got it.

Both of them say it's the righteousness of Christ, whether it was through his act of obedience or whether it's by his nature. I'm just saying it to you because those are things mainly in the dispensational world, like the stronger dispensationalists who see a more hard line between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Those are the ones who say that the active obedience idea is not tenable. It's not. It's not a true doctrine.

I hold to the active obedience idea, if you care. I'm sort of. I sort of lean dispensational, but I hold to the idea that Christ earned my righteousness. And it comes from those passages I mentioned, that he obeyed commandments and those kind of things. So you just take that with you.

You don't have to fight over it. I'm only pointing it out because it's in the confession. Baptists have historically held it. This comes from more the Reformed side with Westminster folks. And it is something I kind of hold to.

I wouldn't fight over it, though. As long as you don't think you're the one that's Righteous. And you recognize that Christ gives you his righteousness if you think he earned it or had it intrinsically. Either one of those is okay with me as long as you don't say it was you. Or he helped me.

He gave me some righteousness, but I earned some right. That's the idea. So this idea you get the language of imputation. That's the idea of charging or reckoning he gives to our account. If God were to look in our account for righteousness, our account would be empty except for one thing.

What would be in there? Sin. It wouldn't be empty, it would be full of sin. So we are in debt to the Lord. And so we have nothing in ourselves.

God has to do it. And you notice the confession says that faith is not a work of obedience. Did you catch that? In fact, we are given the ability to believe. I talked about that last week.

But it does say as they're not by imputing faith itself. In other words, the faith itself is not the righteousness. God gives you the faith so that you can put it in Jesus. He's the righteousness. Got it?

So that's. I always like that language. If you want to use a word that the Reformers use, use the word alien righteousness, foreign righteousness, a righteousness that wasn't ours. Now let's talk a little bit about that uniqueness of the. Of the faith.

And this is the instrument of justification. You think of this as the agent, the tool that we get to use, exercise and become righteous. That is the idea of faith. And it says that in paragraph two, faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and His righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification. This is directly in response to Rome that they believe that you.

That faith and justification is a process, not a moment that you work toward. The idea of justification and the justification and sanctification are blended together. And this is saying, no, there is a single soul, agent or instrument or tool that is you trusting God. Now, we said last time that God gives us the ability to trust him. That's all over the New Testament.

But here we're saying that once it gives you the ability that faith, this thing that God gives us called faith, so that we can exercise it in Jesus, is the only thing that we can do to obtain being declared righteous. And even it is by grace, right? That's what Ephesians 2:8 says. So there's no boasting. Paul says it is excluded.

There's no boasting in Romans 3. So faith is the only way to get the benefits of Christ's work. You have to trust God. That idea of leaning or trusting God, it's not alone, though we say this, it's faith alone that saves us. But faith is never alone, right, because that's what the confession says next.

Yet it is not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanying with all other saving graces and is no dead faith, but worketh by love. I think you all understand that what the confession is saying is you. You put faith in Christ and you get declared righteous by God. But then once you've done that, that faith, the same kind of living faith that you trust Jesus with, also produces righteousness in your life. So you're not just declared righteous, you start becoming righteous, you become zealous for good works.

That's what James is talking about saying, that's a living faith, not a dead faith. Now, the goal of justification, this one, is the idea of the justice of God, that God does what he does so that he can maintain being just. If God were to let sinful people go or acquit them, then he would not be a good judge. He's a good judge, so he has to judge sin. Paragraph 3.

Christ, by his obedience and death, did fully discharge the debt of all those that are justified and did by the sacrifice of himself and the blood of his cross, undergoing in their stead the penalty due unto them, make a proper, real and full satisfaction to God's justice in their behalf. The confession doesn't use the word propitiation, but it would fit here. The idea is that God's mad at sin. And that might be news to you to find out that God hates sin and, and he's angry at sinners. But that is what the Bible says.

He's wrathful, right? We were children of wrath and he doesn't like when we sin. And the idea is, how can God, who must pour out wrath, be satisfied? And then here comes Jesus. He steps in between us and he says to his Father, punish me.

Pour your wrath out on me, not on the sinner, not on Johnny. And then he does that. And when he does, God is satisfied by that. God is satisfied. He doesn't need to do any more.

If his son is willing to die and he accepts his son's sacrifice on my behalf, I never need to add ever any righteousness to that because Christ did all to pay the penalty. So once your penalty is paid, it's paid. The language of Colossians and one of my favorite verses, if that's okay, says, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And he's taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Some translations say canceled the debt.

It uses the language of debt. So we had a hand. We were required to keep God's law perfectly. We failed miserably. Jesus stands in our way and says, instead of punishing them for that, punish me, Father.

I'll give them my righteousness. I'll take on their sin. And when he does that. The important part of this deal, very important part of this deal, is that God is satisfied by that. That God later doesn't hold your sin against you.

If he's seen it fully paid for in His Son, he's not going to bring it up again to you. Who can bring a charge against God's elect. He wouldn't, because he already declared you righteous. And His Son such a beautiful thing. And then speaking of beautiful, it's by the grace of God.

Yet inasmuch as he was given by the Father for them and his obedience and satisfaction accepted in their stead, and both freely, not for anything in them, their justification is only of free grace. That both the exact justice and the rich grace of God might be glorified in the justification of sinners. Usually we always say that, like soli dea gloria, right, to God alone be glory. But in the Word, there's that passage in Ephesians that says, to the praise of the glory of his grace. So in some sense God wants His grace to be praised.

He wants his. He wants his grace to be pedestaled in some sense to say, look at the grace of God, look at how powerful it is that it can save sinners. He wants. He wants to be glorified specially for his grace. And again, this goes so against works, righteousness, Pelagianism, semi Pelagianism, all those doctrines over the centuries that have tried to say that we cooperate with God to be right with God.

There's no cooperation to be right with God. Not even your faith. Your faith is even that is given to you so that you can trust God. Right? I've said that a hundred times.

Well, what is the occasion? This is this part of all, of everything I'm going to say. I was thinking, as I reviewed 100 times, because I review this a lot, it should be better if I reviewed it so much. I'm sorry. Of all the things I'm going to say, this next part might be the part where I do hear the most people either be confused.

I don't think of false teaching. I just think of people that Might not have this as outlined and precise in their brain, as ordered as put together. So this next part, after I read and I explain this would be an area where I would encourage you to maybe take with you. Like, okay, I need to think about that because maybe I didn't have that clear in my mind. And so I'll read it now from paragraph four.

God did from all eternity decree to justify all the elect. So notice the language there. From all eternity in the past, in eternity, God decreed to justify all the elect. And Christ did in the fullness of time, die for their sins and rise again for their justification. Nevertheless, this is important, even though that's true, nevertheless, they are not justified personally until the Holy Spirit doth in due time actually apply Christ unto them.

What is he talking about? What is the confession talking about? The idea is this, and I've heard people do it. I've heard people do it from this pulpit. Not me or Pastor Heinrich, but someone else.

And they did it, I think because they didn't know. Now you will know and you can take it with you that we don't say be accurate anyway, that we got saved in election. Election is not being saved. Predestination is not being saved. Being called is not being saved.

None of those things are being saved. Not even being decreed in eternity to be justified as being saved. Being saved is when you answer the call to the gospel and repent and believe the Gospel. You're not saved until you repent and believe. So this is important because those of us who are of the sovereign grace doctrines of grace time, we can get what is called Hyper Calvinist and not think that people need to repent, not think we should do missions, not think that we need to share the Gospel and call people to repentance.

And we say, well, they're elect, so they're safe, right? No, they're not safe until they repent and believe the gospel. So it's really important. I love that the confession has that in there. God does decree to justify time, pat it before time.

He does predestined before time. He does elect before time. He plans all of that before time, but it isn't effective and doesn't have an actual effect on you until the fullness of time. But when the kindness of and love of God, our Savior toward man appeared not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to his mercy, he saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit. This has to happen in the life of people for them to be able to Say they're right with God.

I always remember a guy I used to work with. I love this man. So I'm not being critical of him. He was. He was a hyper Calvinist.

He was a Primitive Baptist. If you've never heard of that, it is. There's a smaller kind of group of Baptists that are not just Calvinistic. They are what most people think a Calvinist is. Somebody that believes there's nothing you can do and there's, you know, God's going to save, he's going to save and all that.

They're. That they're hyper Calvinist. They don't believe in evangelism, all those things that we are very clearly that we believe in. But he. I remember one time asking him.

He was a dear friend. He was my boss at the time, but I loved him. I should have said, he's my boss. So I loved him anyway. It was my boss, but I loved him.

And I asked him one time, what does your church believe about how somebody can be right with God or something like that? And he says, the fact that you're asking means that you're a Christian. And I'm telling you, I was not a Christian when he said that. Because in his mind, me asking meant something was happening internally and I was showing my election. But no, that's not accurate.

As much as I hold to those doctrines, they're precious to me. We need to understand people must repent and believe the gospel to be right with God. You can't deny repentance. You can't deny conversion. There has to be a change.

There has to be a turning. So that I always think, because if you hold to the idea that there are some people chosen by God for salvation, we should be the most evangelistic people, not less, but more. Because there are people out there that we don't know who they are. God might know who they are, but I don't. So I need to go share the gospel with everybody.

I need to cast the seed. That's the idea. That's what I think. But anyway, that I just want you to catch that the, the confession has that in it. It's that even though God does what he does in eternity in his own plan and his own decree, it's not effective until it's effective in time, until you respond to the gospel.

And that's why we. If you want a technical, you guys want to impress your friends with your Latin ordo salutis. Yeah. You throw that around at your next barbecue. You watch, your friends are going to be A boy, huh?

I'm so glad I get to hang around Abraham. He's. He broke out with an Ordo Salutis. That's just the order of salvation. That's the order that the things happen from predestination and then the calling and then the justification and the glorification.

It's the order of all the things that happen. And the typical historical view is what I just expressed to you there some version of it. Also in that order of salvation is the fact that you can't lose it. The confession says in paragraph five, got the can continue to forgive the sins of those that are justified. And although they can never fall from the state of justification.

I'll read the rest of it in a second. They can get in trouble. I want to make sure the first part is clear, that you can never lose something. You can never keep something that you didn't get. Doesn't that make sense?

You can't protect something that you didn't earn. It's not yours. Justification is God's declaration of righteousness. You didn't get that by your own obedience. So because he is the one that declares you righteous, you can't reject it once he gives it to you.

So if God says you're justified, you'd have to tell him, okay, take it back. Take back the justification, get a refund. Lord, God cannot and does not once he justifies. If God declares you righteous, it would have to be him taking away the effectiveness of Christ from you to declare you unrighteous again. And he won't.

So that's what the confession is saying, is that you can't ever fall from the state of justification. You can never once justified, be unjustified. Okay, so we didn't add to our justification, so we certainly can't lose our justification. But then it goes on to say, by the way, that language like therefore, having been justified by faith, that's a past tense, done deal. Having now been justified by his blood, Paul says, these are.

These are complete language. This isn't like being. Or there's more to do. It's a done deal. But then it does say about, and this is important about chastening.

Yet they may by their sins fall under God's fatherly displeasure. Think of the difference in the language there. Fatherly displeasure, right. You never lose the Father. And in that condition they have not usually light, the light of his countenance restored unto them until they humble themselves, confess their sins, beg pardon, and renew their faith and repentance.

The idea there is that you cannot Lose your salvation. But you can definitely get chastened from the Lord so that if you walk in disobedience as a believer, the Lord will chasten you until you come. In fact, you should. You shouldn't. Don't worry about your justification if there is sanctification or chastening.

Worry about it if there's not. Because if the Lord isn't chastening you, you're not his son or daughter. But when he chastens you and it hurts and you. Oh, man. I'm not right with the Lord.

I need to get right with him. I need. We're going to communion in a bit. The idea of being right with the Lord and being current with the Lord and making sure that as a believer now, I'm not talking about earning my salvation. I'm talking about walking in the gospel.

I'm talking about living obediently. I'm talking about sanctification. That now, because I'm in a right relationship with him, my name's written in the book of life. I've been declared righteous by God. And now I have fallen into some sin, whether it's a small one or a big one.

Or maybe I've been in habitual sin for a while. And now I know that there's. There's a wedge between me and the Lord. That doesn't mean I'm not saved. It means my father's not happy, right?

And the Lord will indeed spank you to get you right with him. And you feel that spanking. You sense it. Like you could sense that you're not right with the Lord. If anybody who's walked with the Lord any length of time knows what I'm talking about.

That idea of, like, I know I'm not right with him, and I need to get right with him. And he. When he. When you confess, he has his arms open and he brings you right back. So the idea there is, you can never lose your salvation.

You can lose that closeness of fellowship, but the Lord will always be generous to bring you back. He. He chastens every son that he loves. And if he's chastening you, I know that's not fun, but it's good news because he's not done with you, right? If you're.

If you're ever struggling with any sort of sin, just be thankful that God isn't done with you yet. Like, he's bringing me back. He loves me. It hurts and I don't like it. I've never, ever disciplined my kids and had them say, that was nice.

It's always hard. It always hurts. And I don't know if it hurts me as bad as it hurts them. Like dads say, I think it hurts worse to get spanked.

I can't spank them now. Judah's bigger than me.

Paragraph 6. The justification of believers under the Old Testament was in all these respects one and the same with the justification of believers under the New Testament. Now, that might be a surprise to you if you're. You hear me talk about dispensationalism. There's various colors.

Dispensationalism, right Degrees. Like I was going to say severity, but that's not the right word. Like depending on where you're at on that spectrum of dispensational. The hard line all the way. Hard 7.

Dispensation Dispensationalists over here that are the Scofield Darby guys, right? Those guys over here is different than somebody like John MacArthur. He would call himself before he passed away, he would call himself a leaky dispensationalist. Meaning that, yes, I do see a distinction between Israel and the. And the church.

I also see that there are some unifying principles between the two. That's kind of more where I am. I might be considered by some a progressive dispensationalist. So I don't. I do believe there's going to be a rapture.

I hope there is. And all those things. I hold to those things, but I don't fight about those. This issue here though, is kind of important because it has the idea that how are people saved in the Old Testament versus how people are saved in the New Testament? And the farther you go down that spectrum, you might get different answers because you might hear people say that Old Testament people were saved by works.

You might hear that, but that's not true. They were saved just like you. The only difference between them and you, as you looked back to the cross and they looked forward to the cross. It's the only difference. So if you get it, I got a bunch of verses here.

I'm not going to read them all. But in Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, and you all the nations shall be blessed. Does that sound like the gospel? Well, yeah, it is, because eventually Abraham, your seed, capital S Jesus seed, will save the world. So that is a promise to Abraham before he was born.

And that was 2200 B.C. is that right? Somewhere around there. So he was told to look forward the book of Colossians says those Old Testament things, the festivals and all that were a shadow of things to come, but the substance is Christ. Hebrews says the law is a shadow of the good things to come, not the very image.

So the. So in other words, the Old Testament was always pointing forward to Christ. Always. And so when God was telling people to sacrifice lambs, they were looking forward to the lamb. We'll talk about that in communion.

Right. So I love that the confession says that, that all people who will be in heaven, every single citizen of heaven who will be with the Lord in glory, every single one of them will have been saved by Jesus. That is the only way. So when the Bible says he's the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through him. And it doesn't just mean New Testament believers, it means Old Testament believers, too.

I think Adam and Eve are in heaven. Does that scare you that I say that? I think because God came to them and redeemed and covered their nakedness and covered their sinfulness. Now my buddy says they're going to have a high fence with barbed wire around it because we're all going to want to find them. And why did you do what you did?

Right. But the idea being that redemption is there in the Old Testament and the New. It's the same. Not it's. Now, I'm not covenantal where I say, like a Presbyterian would, that it's the same covenant of grace in both places.

I'm not saying that, but. But there is some unity that Abraham believed the gospel. So Baptist historically held that now we will. Oh, we did. I did good on time.

I'm gonna hurt my shoulder patting myself on the back. We now the last chunk is chapter 12, and it's a shorter chapter. And it's about adoption. And I remember if you wanted. I don't ever recommend books.

How often do you hear me recommend books from the pulpit? Oh, man. Here's a rare book recommendation. But Pastor Solomon, maybe I waited to a smaller evening service because I'm scared to recommend books, but no, this I would recommend anyone read this book. It's called Redemption, and I think it's colon Accomplished and Applied Redemption Accomplished and Applied.

It's a little book like this. It's not hard. And the author is John Murray. It is an amazing book. In fact, I cheated because I had read that book in seminary because there was one assignment I had to do in a class where you had to do an elective choice of a book and read it and do a report on it and I had already read that book and so I wrote a report on that book and I got a good grade.

And you'll all be happy to know I confessed to my professor I had already read the book. I cheated. But I really, I was thankful to get to do the work and write a report on it and I got credit for it. But that book is so beautiful and it does, by the way, it has a whole section on the Ordo Salutis in it, the order of salvation. But one of the things, it talks about union with Christ a lot.

And the idea I love when you think about that is passages like this from our confession that say all those that are justified. Okay, if you just take that by itself, that sounds kind of the word that came to my mind was saccharine. But that's not the word I'm looking for. It just sounds sort of flat. It sounds sort of basic.

It sounds sort of like, yeah, that's a truth there. All those that are justified, I got that. But it doesn't stay there. It says, God vouchsafed in and for the sake of his holy Son Jesus Christ, to make partakers of the grace of adoption. It's one of my favorite things I've ever seen in scripture.

And the reason is because I'm a messed up person. Because I have my challenges with self loathing and depression and all those things. Because I'm low. Because I think low of myself. So much that when I learned that God loves His son so much that he gives his son a bride, I now know how secure my love is from God because He comes through his son to give it to me.

Why is that important? Because I feel yucky and dirty and incapable of maintaining a love relationship with the Father in heaven. I feel weak, I feel small, I feel low. And now you tell me, well, Johnny, how are you doing in your walk? And I say, I don't know how I'm doing.

I'm feeling pretty low. But then the Lord says, aren't you happy that you were justified and put in the adoption of the family? And that God doesn't see you as you alone, he has you in his family and he loves his son. And he loves his son enough to protect you for his son. Man, that is powerful.

If you just take time to stew on it a little bit. The thought that my now it is good that God loves me, but it is hope that he loves Jesus because he'll never stop loving Jesus. And if you promise as a bride to his son, this bride, this part of the Bride is going to be given to his son. I can't be lost. I can't undo that relationship.

Oh, it's been one of my favorite things to learn. And I'd like to tell you it makes me feel good. Sometimes it makes me feel good. I love the truth of it. I love the truth that he says we are partakers of the grace of adoption for the sake of his son.

That God loves his son enough to adopt you into his family. It's powerful. And we get privileges by which they are taken into the number and enjoy the liberties and privileges of the children of God, have his name put upon them. Oh, that one gets me. That one gets me.

That God would want me carrying his name. That God would want me walking around and have the name of God on me. That God, instead of saying, don't put my name anywhere around that guy. He makes me look bad. No, that's mine.

Johnny's mine. I'm gonna put my name on him. It says that he put his name upon us. They receive the spirit of adoption, have access to the throne of grace. With boldness are enabled to cry.

Abba, Father, I love it so much. Do you know that's in our confession? That's in the 1689 London Baptist Confession. That kind of love relationship, calling God, Father, Abba, Daddy, I love it. So people think, well, yeah, back then they were all doctrinal.

Everything was cold, everything was rigid, everything was academic. Nah, they're talking about a real good relationship with the Lord. Then it goes on to say they're pitied, protected, provided for and chastened by him as by a father, yet never cast off, but sealed to the day of redemption and inherit the promises as heirs of the everlasting salvation. Are you grateful that you're an adopted son or daughter? Does that make you grateful?

When you hear Peter say, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his abundant mercy, has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you. There's like strong military language there, that God has done this for you. And he's essentially telling you, especially he's telling me, I need to hear it, maybe more than you do. Hey, God did this and he would not fail in it for his own glory. There's no way he's going to fail on getting you to your inheritance.

He loves you. He put his name on you. You're his son now, I guess I might say, well, then I should be acting more like it. And maybe that's the right application, right? Walking with him, calling him father.

But I do want you to see that God does everything for us as children. This is not for mere servants, that he calls us children, beloved children over and over again. That language is in the Bible that he loves his children. So I love that that language is in an old confession. I love that that loving father kind of language is there, that God never gives up and he adopted you into his family.

So that connection with the Lord of being and we're not the same as Jesus, that is a mistake that people make is making themselves equal with Jesus because they're adopted children. Well, I'm a son like Jesus is the son. No, it's different. Jesus is a special son. We're not the same.

But it is important that we are sons and daughters. We are adopted. We do get an inheritance. We are his people, the sheep of his pasture. We've been given the right to be called the children of God.

That doesn't sound like God compromises, does it? That doesn't sound like God is like, I guess these are my children. No, he says he gave us the right. We are his children, bought and paid for, associated with his son, declared righteous before God. Well, what a time to take communion.

We're going to go with communion and say that we're righteous. What a convenient time to have communion. Let's pray. Father, as we now go into this communion time, we would focus on the righteousness that you gave us in your son. We would exalt him.

We would point to his death. We would recognize that we could never add to our righteousness. We were. If it was up to us, we would have been lost. But thankfully, Father, you chose to rescue us.

So please now be with us as we take this communion time and we glorify you in it and we thank you in Jesus name, Amen.