Justification IRL, Part 3 (Romans 5:9-11) | Louis Azuma

Speaker: Alright, well we are in Romans five.

Romans five.

Um, so make sure you're turning there in your Bibles.

Um, this is gonna be fun.

I've got tectonic plates right here.

So anyway, Romans five is where we're going.

Uh, we're looking at verses nine through 11.

Um.

But I wanted to start with something that isn't super

fun, but is, uh, kind of scary.

It's, I, I think this is one of the scariest verses in the Bible.

Um, I was terrified of this verse when I was in high school.

I, whenever the, whenever someone put this verse up on the screen or

talked about this verse, I was super uncomfortable and I, I didn't like it.

It made me feel not good.

Um, and that's this verse in Matthew that Jesus says in the Sermon on the

Mount, maybe you remember this from.

Um, last year when we were in Matthew, um, Jesus says, not everyone

who says to me, Lord, Lord, right?

Not everyone who, who calls me Lord, will enter the kingdom of

heaven, but the one who does the will of my father, who is in heaven.

On that day, many will say to me, Lord, didn't we do all

this stuff for you, right?

Didn't we prophesy, we cast out demons, we did all these awesome things in your

name and what she's gonna say to them, I will declare to them, I never knew you.

You lived your whole life thinking you were a Christian.

You did all these great things for God.

You, you, they went to church, they read the Bible.

They, they did all the Christian things.

They, they went to, to camp.

They did all the right things.

Um, and they get to heaven.

And Jesus says, I don't even know who you are.

I never knew you.

You didn't have a relationship with me.

I was so scared that this would be me.

I was terrified that I would be one of these people, and

I would hear that from Jesus.

I wouldn't hear well done.

Good and faithful servant.

I would hear that depart from me.

I never knew you.

And I wonder if that's you.

Maybe that's you.

Maybe you're out there, you're like, I'm not sure if I'm a Christian.

Or what if it's not true?

Maybe you're not a Christian.

You're saying, well, what if I do become a Christian?

It doesn't work.

What if nothing happens?

What if I wake up the next day and I'm exactly the same?

Maybe that's you.

And so I wanna ask you, how do you know that you won't hear this?

Maybe you think you're a Christian and you're doing,

you think you're doing great.

How do you know that you won't hear this?

If your reasoning, your sentence to respond to that starts the way theirs

did, didn't I, didn't we do this?

You might be in danger of hearing that because you're showing that

you are relying on yourself.

You're showing that the reason God you should accept me is because of

what I did my spiritual report card.

And I don't want you to rely on yourself.

I want you to rely on Jesus.

Because even if you are Christian, but your reasoning, your assurance, what

you hold onto to say, you know what?

That's how I know I'm a Christian.

If you're pointing at yourself for saying, this is how I know I'm a Christian,

you're gonna be like me and be scared of this passage every time you read

it, because we're unreliable, right?

Even for those of us who are Christians, we're not super great at it all the time.

And so if you're pointing at yourself to say, man, that's how I know

I'm gonna make it to heaven, then.

You're relying on the wrong thing.

And what we're gonna see in our passage is that um, you can be 100%

sure that you're not gonna hear this.

You can be 100% sure that when you die and stand before God, you're

gonna hear well done, good and faithful servant, and you're gonna

be welcomed by him, um, as his child.

And you don't have to be afraid of something like this happening to you.

And that's what we're gonna see in Romans five.

And what we've learned so far, right in Romans, is that we have a big problem

we've learned so far in the book of Romans that us and God start out at odds.

We don't start out on the same team.

We don't start out in the same family.

We actually are enemies of God.

That's how we all start our lives, because we disobey God, right?

We do things that say, God, you're not important.

God, you're not trustworthy, God, you're.

You don't matter.

You don't deserve my time.

You don't deserve my energy.

You don't deserve my money.

You don't deserve my attention.

Other things are way better than you.

God.

That's how we live our life.

That's what we've learned so far in Romans.

There's this massive problem, and the only way to fix it is not for

you to do something about it, but for God to do something about it.

That's what we talked about, Romans chapter four, right?

We talked about faith justification by faith, trusting in God is the only way

to fix this problem because God is the only one who can do something about it.

We can't do anything about it.

We can't be good enough.

We can't do enough good things.

We can't be part of the right group.

We can't try hard enough.

God has to do something about it because he's a good judge.

He has to punish sin, and we've all sinned.

We all are in this situation where we're rebelling against God and the right thing

for God to do is to, to send us to hell.

And so he lovingly made a way for that not to happen.

He sent Jesus, he said, Jesus can, can be your righteousness.

You don't have any righteousness.

We're not good enough to go to heaven.

But if you trust Jesus, you can have his righteousness and he can take away

all the, the penalty for your sin and.

You can trust him that you're gonna live with God forever because

he was raised from the dead.

Right?

We receive what God did by faith, but maybe you're thinking,

can you unre receive it?

Can a Christian unre receive right gift receipt God's God's

grace back to him, right?

What?

Can you lose it?

Can you become a Christian and then not end up actually being a Christian?

Can you become a Christian and sin too much?

Can you become a Christian and.

What if I actually don't?

What if I, what if I don't wanna be a Christian anymore?

What happens then?

Right?

Maybe I go to college and I'm like, I don't really don't think this is for me.

Can you ever stop being a Christian?

Right.

Or will you ever find out one day that you weren't really saved?

And what we're gonna learn today is that the way that God saves people, right?

Specifically what we've talked about, justification by faith.

That's how this chapter started, right?

Since we have been justified by faith.

Makes it certain, makes sure that no one can actually lose their salvation.

The way that God saves people makes it so that no one can can ever lose it, right?

You can't, if you become a Christian, you can't ever become

not a Christian ever again.

You can't opt out of it.

You can't give it back.

There's nothing you can do to get out of it, and so you can have 100% confidence

because of Jesus that this won't be you.

So being made righteous by faith, justification by faith gives Christians

a certain 100% certain future with God.

And that's what we see here in our passage, and that's first of all,

the thing we're gonna see is that God doesn't partly save anyone.

He doesn't give you half your salvation on the front end and give you the

rest of it on the back end, right?

He doesn't say, well, I'll give you some of it now and then if you do really well,

then I'll, I'll definitely save you later.

He doesn't partly save anyone.

That's our first point tonight before we look at our, our verses,

God doesn't partly save anyone.

That's the first thing I want you to see in our passage.

He doesn't give you, hopefully you'll be saved one day.

He gives you 100% certain salvation right from the first moment you trust Jesus.

Look with me at Romans five, verse nine, Romans five, verse nine.

Since therefore we have now been justified by his blood, Jesus blood, we've been

made righteous much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.

Now, this is really interesting, right?

Because we've past tense, been justified.

And then if we've been justified, then in the future we'll be saved

by him from the wrath of God.

What does that mean?

Well, really all that means is that you don't have to worry that one day you're

gonna stand before God and actually end up receiving his wrath because of

something that happened in the past.

You've been justified.

So in the future, when you die, you're gonna be okay.

That's really all that, that this verse is saying, because you've been justified.

Your future is safe.

Right past trusting in Jesus, Jesus gave me righteousness.

Now I'm qualified to go to heaven because of what Jesus did.

Now I don't have to worry about the future, past event

secures my future with God.

I think sometimes because of that, we kind of think that becoming a Christian

is almost like getting a vaccine.

Right.

Uh, you get your, your Jesus justification shot, and now you do whatever you want for

the rest of your life, and you're good.

You don't have to do, you just believe in Jesus.

You're great.

You're covered.

Don't worry about it anymore.

You can do whatever you want.

You're good.

You got your, you got your shot.

Really, it's, it's more like you had surgery and then you

have physical therapy, right?

The, the problem is gone, right?

You had surgery, you removed the thing that was causing you problems,

or you fixed your, your ACL or your rotator cuff or whatever, but.

Now you have a relationship with this doctor who loves you and is committed to

you and cares about you so much that he's gonna make sure that you get all the way

back to flinging fully healthy, right?

It's, it's less about a one time thing.

You forget about it, and it's more about the, the, the main thing

happened and now the doctor is gonna help me finish this thing out and

he's gonna make sure that I do it.

He's gonna make sure that I make it all the way to the end, right?

What, what Paul is saying here is that if Jesus justified you, right,

if you trusted Jesus and he saved you, he's gonna make sure that you

make it all the way to the end.

He's gonna make sure that up until the, the moment you stand before

God, you're not gonna drop out.

Right?

You're not gonna be like those, those guys I told you about that,

that pastor, that youth pastor who had to take all the pictures down

'cause he, he was too tired of.

And too sad to look at all these students who walked away from the faith, right?

He, you're not gonna be one of those people if you've really been

justified, because Jesus is gonna make sure that you get saved, right?

All the way till the end.

And that's because of what justification is, right?

It it means that nothing legally can change between you and God, right?

Because Jesus righteousness doesn't change.

He already lived his perfect life.

He's done.

He's not adding to it.

He's not taking away from it.

So if, if you get Christ's righteousness, you get a finished product, there's no

more modifications, there's no, there's nothing else that's happening to it.

You get full 100% perfect righteousness and there's nothing

that you do to change it, right?

You don't do anything to add to or subtract from Jesus's work.

So if you have Jesus' righteousness, you can't change it.

There's nothing you can do about it to make it better or worse,

and also justified by his blood.

Jesus paid for.

Sin.

He took away the punishment for sin.

He died on the cross.

And there's nothing that you can do to change that, right?

Jesus already died.

You can't do anything about it.

You can't take away from the penalty that he already paid for you and

you can't add more stuff onto it 'cause he already paid for all of it.

Or you can't add more to what Jesus already paid for.

He's already paid for all of it.

And so.

What this does for us, if you're a Christian, is it gives you a certain event

to look back on to give you confidence that you're gonna make it right.

You don't have to look at, well, how did I, how did I do this week?

Was I, was I loving?

Was I trustworthy?

Did I honor God with my thoughts?

You don't.

You don't have to look to that to know if you're gonna make it.

What you look to is, well, look what Jesus did.

That's why I know I'm gonna make it.

Because I trust him.

I trust Jesus.

And the reason that I'm gonna make it is because he saved me.

It's not because I started doing really good.

That's not why anyone makes it to heaven, right?

No one makes it to heaven because they started reading their Bible.

No one makes it to heaven because they started doing all these

really good things for God.

No one makes it to heaven because they learned a bunch of Bible verses.

No one doesn't make it to heaven because they.

They tried really hard and it didn't work out right.

Really what the, the reason behind that is, is they didn't trust Jesus.

So if you are a Christian, you don't have to look at yourself to, to give you

confidence that you're gonna make it.

You can look to Jesus.

So if you're in that situation, I've been there, you're like,

man, I, I really messed up.

I'm not sure if I'm a Christian.

I don't think a Christian would really do that.

I'm that, that was horrible.

Right.

You don't have to say, well, I don't know.

I'm not a Christian.

What you do is you come to Jesus.

You say, Jesus, you paid for that sin, right?

You died because of that sin.

That's, that's why I trust you, is because I'm a sinner.

When your conscience tells you you're a sinner, you're, you're terrible.

You're not good enough.

God would never love you.

You look at Jesus, you say, well, yeah, that's why he died.

He just died for sinners.

He didn't die for righteous people.

You have.

An unchanging person that you can look to to give you confidence

that you're gonna make it.

And it's such a great thing that you don't have to worry about how

you're doing to give you confidence that you're gonna make it to heaven.

I had a friend in marching band who gave me a lot of confidence, um, and it was not

because he was really encouraging, it was 'cause he was really bad at marching band.

Um, so he was.

I was scared going into, I was like scared that I was gonna learn everything.

I was like, how do, how do you know where to be all the time?

You gotta memorize all your music, you gotta memorize all your spots

that you're supposed to be at at this time and do all this stuff.

And I was like, I don't think I could do it.

I was really nervous.

But there was this guy, he was a great ahead of me.

Um, his name was, his name was Dago Dog Alberto.

And, um, he was terrible.

Like he was the worst, like if you think of like the worst player on the football

team or whatever, he was like the worst.

Um, but he could do it.

He, he did it.

He survived.

He didn't get cut.

Um, he made it, and every time I was like, man, I'm not sure if I can do this.

I thought, you know what?

Doggo did it so that means I can do it too, right?

So every time I was nervous, man, I don't know if I can do this.

I don't know if I, I, I scary.

I'm not sure if I'll be able to learn all this.

I thought, and I was like, you know what?

Doggo did it so I think I can do it right.

I don't know if I can, I can make it to all these things.

I don't know if it's such a big commitment or I don't know

if I can learn all this stuff.

I don't know if I'm good enough.

And I was like, you know what?

He did it.

I could do it too.

Right?

Looking to doggo gave me confidence that I could do it too.

Right?

And it's kind of the opposite if you're a Christian, right?

The, the reality is you can't do it.

You're not good enough.

But you looked at Jesus and you say, you know what?

He did it.

And that's where I get my confidence from.

I don't, you don't get your confidence from your own

ability to make it to heaven.

You get confidence from Jesus' ability to keep you to save you.

He does the saving.

You don't do the saving.

That's the whole point is you can't do it.

So you say, Jesus, I needed you to do it.

And so you look to him.

There's a famous quote that says, for every look at yourself.

Take 10 looks at Christ for every look at yourself.

Take 10 looks at Christ.

You think about, man, I'm such a sinner.

Well think about, man, Jesus is just so merciful.

He's so gracious.

He paid for my sin.

He died on the cross.

God said, it is finished, it's paid in full.

It's all done.

You have to talk to yourself and, and fight yourself to trust Jesus, right?

And to not rely on yourself.

So if you have those, those doubts, am I really a Christian?

Will I really make it to heaven?

Will God accept me right after everything that I've done or after what I just did?

That's when you look to Jesus, you don't look at yourself.

You don't keep looking at, man, I'm so bad.

I really, you know, I really am a sinner.

I wouldn't accept me if I was God.

Right?

That's you looking at yourself, and that's not gonna help you.

That's not trusting Jesus.

But what's cool about this next verse, verse 10, is there's also that question

of what about God's love for me, right?

We talked about this the last time we were here, which feels

like forever ago, but um.

Maybe you're thinking, I know God could save me, but I just don't

think he would really want to.

Maybe that's what you're thinking.

I know that hypothetically, like on a test, God could save me.

Like Yeah, I know.

Okay.

No one's too sinful, but I just don't think he'd really want to.

Maybe that's what you're thinking.

Maybe you're thinking, I just dunno.

If God really loves me, I'm too sinful, or I'm too unimportant, or I still sin even

though I really think I'm a Christian.

Maybe you're just thinking, I just don't know if God would really.

Want to save me.

I don't know if God really like cares about me enough to save me.

He doesn't seem involved in my life, and that's where we see verse 10 come in.

We talked about if we've been justified in the past, then we know

we're gonna make it to the end.

But verse 10 says that if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by

the death of his son, much more Now that we are reconciled, that means.

Two people who were enemies, who became friends.

Um, we shall we be saved by his life.

So same thing happening here.

Right?

Past event, we were reconciled.

We talked about this.

Um, at the beginning, God, we were enemies of God and he made peace between us.

How did he do that?

Well, he took away all his wrath by dumping it on Jesus.

And so then all of it's gone.

So now he, when you become a Christian, he adopts you into his family, and instead

of God's hostility, you get God's favor.

All of God's goodness is for you as a Christian because

all of his wrath is gone.

So because that happened in the past, you can be confident that he's

definitely gonna save you in the future.

He's gonna welcome you into heaven when you get there.

And the idea here is that if God loves you enough to do that when

you are his enemy, of course he'll do that now that you're his child.

That's that's the whole point.

We talked about this earlier in this passage.

Um, God showed his love for us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

If God decided to love you at your worst, of course he'll love you at your

best because you're part of his family.

Now, of course, he will love you.

So God's love for you to save you proves that He will keep you saved.

Right?

If God loves you enough to save you in the first place, he's gonna

love you enough to keep you saved and help you make it to the end.

Right.

It's like if your parents said, we'll take you on a really nice vacation, we're

gonna go to, I don't know, we're gonna go to Hawaii and we're gonna be there

for two weeks and it's gonna be awesome.

Everything's paid for.

Um, and then you were like, are you gonna feed us?

That would be such a dumb question to ask.

Right?

They've paid for the flights, they've paid for the tickets, they paid

for all the places to stay, they paid for all the fun activities.

And you're like, did you guys pay for food or not?

That's what it's like when you're saying, God, I know you can save me, but

I don't know if you'll keep me saved.

That's the same type of question.

God, I know you love me enough to save me.

I know you love me enough to pay for my sin.

I know you love me enough to give me Jesus righteousness.

I know you love me enough to give me the Holy Spirit.

I know you love me enough to adopt me into your family, but are

you really gonna keep me saved?

That's what, that's what really we're doing.

We're saying, God, I know you love me enough to do all this stuff for me

to save me, but I just don't know if you love me enough to keep me saved.

We're showing so much doubt in God's love, and that's what God says is, look,

I, I proved my love to you because I, I sent Jesus to die for you when you

were my enemy, when you were hating me, when you were worshiping everything else

instead of me, when you were looking for everything else to make you happy.

I loved you.

I sent Jesus for you.

Of course, I'll love you now.

And that's what God says.

Of course, I'll love you now that I've adopted you and so you can trust him

because you know, you know he did do that.

And it's a concrete event, right?

It's not, well, God loves me more this week because I was really nice to my

siblings, so he must love me more.

That's not how this works, right?

Or I'm, I'm more sure that I'm gonna make it to heaven because I

read the Bible every day this week.

That's, that's not how this works.

God already loved you before you even knew who he was.

God loved you before you loved him back, and so your love back to God

doesn't change His love for you.

God's love for you comes from God.

It doesn't come from you.

God's love for you is not a reaction to you.

It's not a response to, to the stuff you do.

It's self-generated.

It's God generated.

God is a, he's like a fountain of love and he generates his

own water, his own love, right?

And it just comes outta him.

That's what he does when we say God is love.

That's what, that's what we need.

Okay, so nothing changes.

God's love for you, right?

When bad things happen to you, you can look back and say, you know what?

I was a horrible sinner, rebelling against God, and he loved me then so

surely he still loves me now even though this really hard thing's happening,

or even though this family situation is really hard, even though school's

really hard, even though my friendships are really hard right now, God loved me

when I was rebelling against him, and so surely he still loves me now, right?

God.

Loves me, even though you know what?

My life isn't going the way I wanted it to.

I'm not as talented, or I don't look the way I want to, or I'm

not as smart as I I want to be.

And you think, well, maybe God doesn't love me.

Maybe he loved me.

Things would be different.

You can look back and say, you know what?

God loved me when I hated him.

Surely he still loves me now.

Also, God already knew all of your sin before he saved you.

If God knew, and this is crazy to think about.

God knew you were gonna sin against him before he saved you.

And if you're a Christian, you're thinking, man, I've

sinned so much against God.

I don't know if I really am.

Right.

God knew you were gonna do all those things right.

Um, he made that commitment to save you knowing.

Yep.

Lewis isn't gonna be perfect.

Lewis is gonna sin against me still.

Lewis is gonna say he's a Christian and still not be, still not act

like it sometimes, but I'm gonna save him anyway because I love him.

Right?

God's love, um, is he already, he already sees everything about you, right?

There's nothing that you, you've hidden from God and you're like, well, if God

really knew this, he wouldn't save me.

That's not gonna happen.

Right?

God already knows everything.

And so you can be very, very confident in God's love.

God will love you enough to keep you until the end, and hopefully

that makes you a quick repenter.

And I know that seems unrelated, but if you think about it, when you sin God,

one already knew you're gonna do it.

Two, still loved you.

Three loved you regardless.

Like even before when you weren't sorry for your sin.

Hopefully instead of running away from God with your sin,

you run to God with your sin.

Right?

When you feel guilty of something, don't hide it from God.

Right?

Bring it to God.

God loves you.

He wants to, to deal with your sin because he loves you, right?

He, he's not gonna harm you.

He's gonna help you because he loves you, right?

Hiding your sin from God doesn't.

It actually takes you away from the very thing that will help you.

And the only way you're gonna deal with it is if you bring it to God.

And so hopefully God's love actually helps you repent faster

because you say, you know what?

God will love me even though I am gonna confess this.

'cause you can trust.

You know what?

He loved me in the past.

He'll still love me, right?

I can bring this sin to God, I can confess it to him and trust Jesus.

His righteousness is my standing before God, not how I'm doing.

One of the hymns I really love has a line like that.

It says, um, it, it's, it's, it's this sentence where, um, it's talking about

God's love and it says, I'm loved not for works that I have done right.

You're not loved because of what you do for God.

You're loved because of who God is.

God just, he decided to love you, right?

You're not loved because of the things that you do for God.

Um.

Later on in the hymn, it says that, um, the highest judge took all my

wrongs and set them on his only son.

Right?

All your things that you've done wrong, he put them on Jesus.

And because of that, Jesus took your sin, and now you get God's love.

Right?

There's, there's zero wrath from God directed toward you.

If you're a Christian, nothing, none of it at all, right?

It's completely gone.

Um, and you can be confident in that because of what Jesus did, right?

And that's where we started this thing.

But I, I wanna highlight this to you.

This is how big of a deal sin is, right?

Sin you, you don't just say, oops, I sin God will forgive me anyway.

Right?

When you think about God's love, you think about, well, Jesus

died because of my sin, right?

That's how much God loves me.

But also at the same time, it, it doesn't let you take sin lightly.

God's love doesn't let you take sin lightly because you realize, man, to show

his love for me, God had to kill his son.

And that makes my sin a big deal and also makes God love a huge deal.

And so even though God loves me so much, and I'm so confident he'll accept me,

it doesn't make me okay with my sin.

And so even in this passage, you can be so confident in God's love for

you, and you also are so uncomfortable with your sin at the same time.

And so.

The reason you get that confidence is because you see, man, my sin

is a huge deal, but God's love is an even bigger deal, and I can see

what he did to show his love for me.

So God doesn't partly save anyone, right?

You don't, there's no, there's no dropouts between getting saved

and making it to heaven, right?

There's no one who's kind of saved and kind of part of God's family.

There's, you're, you're fully saved and if you're fully saved, you're

gonna stay fully saved the whole time.

Um, but this paragraph, there's one more verse and it's kind of like,

you know, those old commercials and they go, but wait, there's more.

There's one of those, there's one of those things right here.

And what I think this verse is showing us in verse 11 is that the, we talked

about being a Christian isn't like a vaccine where you just get the

booster shot and forget about it.

The point of being a Christian isn't just to fix your future.

So that you're like, great, I'm gonna go to heaven.

I'm good.

I don't have to worry about it anymore.

Now I'm gonna go do whatever I want.

Right?

That's not what being a Christian is all about.

It's not, well, okay, great, I'm not gonna go to hell, so now I can go do whatever

I want and live my life however I want.

That's how a lot of people today, people probably, you know, believe

that being a Christian works.

That's how I thought it was growing up.

I thought, yeah, I believe God exists.

Um, Jesus died from me.

I'm gonna go to heaven now.

I just do whatever I want.

That's what I thought being a Christian was.

Um.

The point of being a Christian is actually that it's, it's less about

what you're saved from and it's more about what you're saved for.

It's less about I'm saved from hell, and it's more about I'm

saved so that I get to be with God.

And that's the point.

More than that.

More than being justified, more than being saved.

In the end, we rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom

we've now received reconciliation.

Right?

The point of reconciliation is there's a relational repair, right?

Justification is like a legal repair.

Like you're not guilty anymore.

You're not gonna go to jail, you're gonna go free, right?

Reconciliation is the, the emotional relationship has been fixed, right?

You're.

Forgiven.

You're friends again, right?

You, and the whole point of forgiveness is you get your friend back, right?

The whole point of forgiveness is, I sinned against, I sinned against you.

And now there's, there's a barrier here.

There's tension, there's problems, there's conflict.

And the whole point of being forgiveness isn't just so I

can say, great, I'm forgiven.

Now I'm gonna go do my own thing.

The point of forgiveness is I get you back the point like, when, when Shay

and I sin against each other, right?

And we have to forgive each other.

The point isn't so we can forgive each other and move

on and, and do our own things.

The point of forgiveness is, I, I get to hang out with her and

it's not, it's not tense anymore.

Right.

It's, it's sweet.

It's good.

We're back.

Right.

That's, that's the point of forgiveness is I get her back.

Right.

I don't, we're not at odds anymore.

That's the point of forgiveness is you get the person back.

That's the point of being saved.

That's the point of being reconciled to God.

It's less about reconciliation, it's more about God.

You get God.

That's the point.

And so our second point tonight is that the best part about being with

God, or the best part about being saved is that you get to be with God.

And don't worry, the second point is way shorter than the first point.

Being with God is the best part about being saved.

Being with God is the best part.

I almost put being with God is better than being saved, and I still might

believe that, but being with God is the best part about being saved.

In this verse, it says something about rejoicing in God.

And maybe you're thinking, what does that mean?

What you hear something like, oh, the joy of the Lord, or,

you know, uh, rejoice in God.

What does, what does that even mean?

Um, I was reading a book this morning that actually was really

helpful in explaining this.

Um, the guy who wrote it, he was talking about how sometimes when you

say you love something, you're really saying, I love me, not I love you.

And that might be weird to think about, but.

Really, when you say you love something, sometimes you just love

that thing or that person because of what they do for you, right?

You say something like, oh, I love this person because they make me happy.

I love this person because they are really nice to me.

I love this person because right, all the things that they do for me.

So really, you don't love them.

You love what they do for you.

So really you love you, right?

You don't love them for who they are.

You just love what they do for you.

And if they stop doing those things for you, then you don't

love them anymore, right?

That's why the divorce rate in our country is so high.

People get married because they don't love their spouse, they love themselves,

and as soon as their spouse stops making them happy, they say, well,

I actually don't love you anymore.

But really, they never love them in the first place, right?

They always just love themselves and they just wanted to use their

spouse to make them happy, right?

That that's.

A lot of marriage problems right there that you could save a lot of drama if

you figured that out on the front end.

Right.

But maybe even with like with, you could do this with friends.

This happens with friends all the time.

As soon as your friend stops benefiting you, you're not friends anymore.

You go your separate ways.

And really, it wasn't about them, it was just you were really using them

to, to get something outta them right.

As soon as they stopped making you happy.

You leave.

So when we talk about rejoicing in God, I wanna ask you, when you say you

love God is your I love you to God.

Really just an I love me in disguise.

Do you just love God?

Because you want God's stuff.

You just don't wanna go to hell.

You just don't wanna have to worry about feeling bad about your sin,

and it's really just for you.

You don't really want the God part of it.

You just want the forgiveness part of it.

You don't really want the God part of it.

You just want the no hell part of it.

You don't want the God part of it.

You just want the heaven part of it, but you really wouldn't like heaven

that much 'cause heaven's all about God anyway, and you'd feel outta place.

So

when you're thinking about rejoicing in God, are you actually

enjoying God for who he is?

If you're a real Christian, that's what Christians do.

Christians enjoy God for who he is as a person.

God is a person, God thinks and feels and does He, he, he's personal, right?

So

God is

is to, is a a, like a, a person to be enjoyed in that sense of not

just you, oh, I want God's stuff.

I want the benefits of being a Christian and I don't really care about God.

It's the, the, the whole point of getting a relationship with God is

that it's a relationship with God.

So I get to talk to God, I get to hear from God.

I get to be with God.

That's the best part about being a Christian.

It's not that you get your sins taken away.

It's not that you get to go to heaven.

It's not that you don't have to be scared of death.

It's, the point is, I get God, and God is amazing and I love him.

That's the best part about being a Christian, and that's only

possible through Jesus because God is deadly to you without Jesus.

Because without Jesus you're guilty.

It's kinda like you remember the solar eclipse that happened a while ago?

I was further north when it happened, so we were like right in the.

Or you were right in the area.

We were out of the area.

You guys were here, right in the area.

But they gave you those like glasses to like look at it the right way.

'cause if you didn't look at it with the glasses, it would hurt you.

It would like burn your eyes and, 'cause you're basically

looking at the sun, right?

But if you put the glasses on, it was like, oh, this is actually really cool.

This is actually a beautiful thing.

This is so cool to see.

I, it's really interesting.

But if you don't have the glasses on, it's bad for you.

Right?

That's kind of like how God is, right?

If, if you are still in your sin.

If you're opposing God, God is bad for you because God is opposed to you and

you're opposed to God, you need, right.

I'm not gonna, I'll say it.

You need sunglasses, right?

Like Jesus, the sun.

Yeah.

You need, you need sunglasses

for God not to be bad for you anymore, right?

Because Jesus blocks out the rays of God's wrath.

From you, so you get to enjoy God for who he is now without

experiencing God's wrath.

So now God is good for you, not bad for you anymore.

Jesus is how you get connected to God.

And God becomes instead of against you, God becomes for you, right?

That's how this works.

You enjoy God through Jesus.

You the only way for God to not be deadly to you is through Jesus.

You come to him on Jesus' righteousness, not your own.

You get to enjoy God for who he is instead of being scared of him.

And Jesus is the best way to enjoy God.

Right?

The point of of reading the Bible isn't to read your Bible.

The point of reading the Bible is, I see God.

I see the things God does.

I see what God says to me.

I see God's promises and I I get more of him.

That's the point of reading your Bible.

It's not to learn information.

It's not to be smarter than your friends.

It's not to impress your leaders or your parents, it's 'cause the

Bible's where you see God, that's what God told you about himself.

And you say, man, I love God and I wanna see more of him.

So I'm gonna read even when it's a bunch of laws that I

might not understand, right?

Because God wrote this and God loves me and this shows me who he is, right?

So I hope that as you think about why am I a Christian?

I hope you think about, I love God.

I want God.

And that's why I'm a Christian, right?

I don't just want God's stuff.

I want God.

And you can be 100% confident that one day you're gonna be there with him in

heaven, and you get to enjoy him forever without any of your sin and without ever

dying and without ever worrying about anything else, you get all of God forever.

Let's pray and we'll go to small groups.

God, we are thankful for you.

We're thankful that you've made a way for us.

To be at peace with you, that we can be, um, part of your family

instead of being under your wrath.

So I pray that you help us right now to, um, focus and ask good questions

and to be honest, and to respect our leaders and respect each other.

Um, I pray that you help us to be excited about you, to enjoy you, to

see you for who you are, um, and to trust you and take you at your word.

We pray this in Jesus name.

Amen.