Stop Negotiating

By show of hands, how many of you, let's have a moment of honesty here. How many of you by show of hands are into zombie shows? Just go ahead and put your hand up. Own it. I won't judge you. I promise that my hand is up.

Your neighbor might judge you, but I won't judge you. It seems like zombies are definitely the horror genre of choice these days. Here's one little statistical piece of proof. More than twice as many people watch the opening season of The Walking Dead as watched the final season of Mad Men, which is kind of like a zombie show in its own way, in my opinion. But I read a great article in the New York Times recently by one of my favorite social commentators, a guy named Chuck Klosterman, who suggested that the reason that zombie shows appeal to so many of us is because sort of subconsciously they correlate with how we feel in our day to day lives. A seemingly endless onslaught by mindless emails and advertisements and pop up ads and tweets and voicemails that you have to eliminate one by one or else be consumed by them. You know what I'm talking about?

You open up your email on Monday morning and there are 68 emails just kind of droning towards you and you got to start shooting each of them with the delete button one by one. The good news, Klosterman says, is that by now we're all pretty prepared for the zombie apocalypse. If you awake from a coma and you don't immediately see a member of the hospital staff, you should assume that a zombie takeover has transpired during your incapacitation. Do not let zombies spit on you. If you knock one down, make sure that you pump a second bullet into its brainstem to make sure that it's dead. And by the way, if you've never seen an episode of the walking dead, here's the basic plot line of each episode.

Every episode is, this is it. There's something that we really need over there where the zombies are. That's basically how everyone unfolds. Zombies are basically moving bodies without souls. Zombies are bodies that mimic the actions of being alive, but they are not in fact alive. I want to use that image over the next three weeks to explain a concept that we're going to call phantom faith. Having phantom faith means that you go through the motions of Christianity, but you do so without the soul. And by that, I don't mean that you're an out and out hypocrite, just that there are certain core things about the Christian faith that you don't quite get yet. And so you end up mimicking the motions of Christianity, but there's something missing in your relationship with God. And maybe you know that.

There's a joy that you like. There's a confidence that you lack. So I'm going to use this series to identify three concepts that a lot of sincere people miss and cause them to live this way without the soul of Christianity. And by that, I don't just mean newbies to Christianity. Sometimes these people that I'm going to describe have been in church for years and they've still never quite grasped these things that we're going to talk about. If you're not a Christian, I'm going to explain some of the things that make what Jesus taught absolutely distinctive from every other religion in the world. Sometimes people that are alike what I'm going to describe are people that are trying to get back into church. We have a lot of people in this church that have gone through some life event.

They got divorced or maybe they had a baby or something and they're just like, I got to get back at church. These are the concepts that they seem to stumble over. In fact, this message series came from me having conversations one-on-one with, I just felt like we were always talking about the same things. And I was like, I got to quit talking about these one-on-one and I just need to do a series on them. So here we are.

Let me go ahead and also give you a sort of a four premonition maybe, or that's not the right word, but whatever. For the first three weeks of October, we're going to do baptisms every weekend here at the church. Here's why we're going to do that. Baptism is supposed to be the first act that you take as a new believer. It is what we call the going public phase of your faith. We know that we've had a lot of people over the last few weeks here make first time decisions to trust Jesus and follow him. And you ought to follow that up by being baptized.

There are others of you that have had a relationship with Jesus for a while, but you've never taken that step. And so we're going to give you a chance in the coming weeks to do that. We're not in October yet, for those of you that are really bad with your calendars and you're like, is that today?

No. It'll start in October. I just want to give you a sort of time to get prepared at the end of our message today.

I'll actually give you some steps you can take to get prepared. The first concept that we're going to talk about in Phantom Fate is from Romans chapter four. So if you have your Bible, it invites you to take it out and begin to open it to Romans chapter four. Romans is the sixth book in the new Testament.

If you need help finding it, just open the table of contents. If the person next to you judges you, raise your hand, I'll have them thrown out. Okay.

You can do that. Romans chapter four. It concerns how you know for sure that you belong to God or why you think it is that you were going to go to heaven. Let me ask it this way. If you were to die today and God were to say to you, why should I let you into heaven?

What would your response be? And I know that sounds like a cliche question. If you grew up in the south, you grew up in the church, you know, I feel like that's a Billy Graham, I think made that question famous. You know, if you died tonight, do you know in Christians, we always assume you're going to die at night.

Nobody knows why, but whatever. It's a cliche question, but it's still a good one. Why do you think that God's going to let you into heaven? You say, JD, I'm not even sure that there is a heaven.

Okay. If you suppose there is a heaven, then what is the criteria for who gets in and who doesn't? And are you sure that you will be one of the ones who gets in?

I have taught with you before about my own struggle with this question for many years when I was in high school and also in in college, just not being able to know for sure and really wanting to know. Told you that if there were a Guinness book of world's records for how many times somebody could say the sinner's prayer, I know that I would hold that world record because it was like I just every single service I would like, I want to make sure that I'd ask Jesus into my heart the right way. That's how my church always talked about it.

The ones who go to heaven are those who've accepted Christ, the ones who go to hell are those that have it. And I'm like, well I got to make sure I have. And so I'd pray. And but every time I'd be like, was I sorry enough for my sin? Did I understand enough? Did my life change enough as a result?

Maybe not. I better do it again. And then in my church, we were the kind of church where you walk forward if you raised your hand as, you know, and so I don't want to invalidate the prayer by not going forward. So it was like a space of three years y'all that I walked forward. It felt like every single week. It was embarrassing. My dad was like, you got to cut that out son.

You gotta, you gotta get over this. I've told you I had my own locker in the baptismal changing area because I just was that frequent. And cause I got baptized four times during that, that season.

I don't know if that's like your struggle. Most people, if you ask them, why do you think God will let you into heaven? They feel like it has something to do with their behavior. If you're good enough, you're sincere enough as a Christian. If you believe enough, you go to church enough. You give enough people from other religions, by the way, use the same criteria.

They just switch out some of the, some of the specifics instead of going to church, it's going to mosque or synagogue or temple or something like that. It's like we are always trying to make a deal with God. God, there's a, you know, if I do this, if I do this, this many times, or I am good enough, then I expect you to give me heaven. Now we do that a lot in our lives. Don't we make deals with God?

I would say if you think about it, you probably make a lot of deals with God or try to. You're out really late. You're a high school student and you say, Lord, if you will just let my parents be asleep when I get home, I promise I'll start going to church for like a solid month.

I won't shoot. I'll go to Sunday school. I'll teach Sunday school. If you will let my parents just be asleep when I get home.

Have you ever done something like that? God give me this job and I'll start to be generous. God let her say yes to going out with me. And I will start reading my Bible. In fact, just so we're honest with each other, raise your hand. If you've ever made a deal with God, just say, raise your, go ahead and put it out.

All campuses. If your hand is not up, you are a liar. Okay.

You really are. We make, it's just kind of what we do. It's why we think God works. I made one when I was freshman year of high school before I became a Christian, I was on the soccer team and I wasn't that good. And it was one to one. And it was like three minutes left in the game. And I was like, Lord, if you will let me score the final goal, I will stop cussing. Cause I knew the cheerleaders were watching and I was like, let me score. And it was like 20 seconds later, it was total freak. I scored the goal. I think I cussed at the moment when I, when I made the call, but it was, I just, you make deals with God and you think like, Oh, God in heaven's like, Oh, you won't cuss. Oh, thank you. You know, like I got to get in on that action. You know, tell me how to, what do I do?

How can I refuse? Well, we think of going to heaven like a deal that we make with God. We give God obedience and God rewards us with heaven. But here's what the apostle Paul says.

What does scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. Abraham was about 90 years old and God told him that he was going to have a son and Abraham had never had any children.

He evidently was infertile. And so God says, you're going to have a son. And against all logic, against all evidence, against all hope, Abraham said, well, I believe it. And God saw his faith in God's promise and God credited to him as righteousness. Verse five to the one who does not work. You see as an illustration with Abraham, but trust God instead who justifies the ungodly. Their faith is credited as righteousness. I had a seminary professor who said that this is the most important verse in the Bible.

I'm inclined to agree with him. He said, and it all hinges around this one word here. If you understand this one word, then you understand the gospel. If you don't understand this word, you don't understand the gospel. The word credited.

It is the Greek word logizomai and it is an accounting term and it means to count one thing as if it were another thing. That's literally what it means. In fact, maybe it is easiest for me to explain it to you by telling you first what it does not mean. What that word does not mean is that Abraham's faith actually made him act righteously from that point onward.

Here's how we know that. Immediately after Abraham believes God in Genesis 15 in the very next chapter, he doubts God and thinks that God can't really keep his promise. And so he try, he sleeps with his, his house servant Hagar to try to have a son through her.

It was an immoral act. A couple of chapters later, there is what I like to refer to as the sister incident where Abraham is traveling and he finds out the king thinks his wife is hot. And so, um, Abraham is like, Oh, she's not really my wife. She's my sister thinking that he'll take her to be his wife and that's okay. As long as Abraham doesn't get killed. Yeah, that is a dirtbag maneuver in any culture at all. That's not something that was like they just did back then.

I mean you can imagine the conversation when Sarah got back home, like what is wrong with you? You know that he does it. So he's not going to act righteously all the time from this point onward. He, um, uh, nor does the phrase mean that faith is actually righteousness in itself. A lot of people think that's what it means as if faith were the supreme of all the virtues, the only one that really matters to God. And as long as you have that virtue, it kind of covers up everything else and nothing else matters. Faith is not the supreme virtue. What is the supreme virtue?

Love. My first Corinthians 13, Paul says the greatest virtue above faith is love. Paul said, I can have faith so big that I could move mountains, but if I didn't have love, it would be absolutely worthless when Jesus summarized all of the law. He doesn't say all the whole law summaries have faith.

He said, the whole law summary is to love the Lord your God and love your neighbors yourself. So it doesn't mean that faith is so awesome to God that, that having it makes you righteous and covers up for everything else. No, what it means, what faith credited as righteousness means is that God counts our faith in Christ as righteousness, even though it is not. That righteousness is a gift that God gives to us that we do not possess in ourselves on the basis of something else. The best analogy I could come up with, and I'm sorry for this because it's not a great analogy, but it's like when you're playing cards and you have a wild card and say you're, you're in some version of poker and you got, um, you know, you want to put down a Royal flush and you need the queen of hearts, but you got jokers are wild and you know, you don't have the queen of hearts.

So you put the joker in there and it's not the queen of hearts, but you put it down and it counts as the queen of hearts, even though it is not the queen of hearts. What Paul is saying is that faith is like the wild card that God counts as righteousness, even though that is not. I'm not saying that faith in Christ is some arbitrary thing, simply that faith, listen to this, faith is not really a virtue per se. Faith is a declaration that you don't have virtue. Faith is a declaration that if you were going to be saved, it is going to be because of God's grace and not because of your worthiness. Faith is when you and I say to God, God, I have to trust you because I don't have anything else to offer. According to Romans four, five, the one who is declared righteous and who goes to heaven has three primary characteristics.

Here they are. Romans four, five, again, to the one who does not work, trust God who justifies the ungodly. Their faith is credited as righteousness. Characteristic number one is that you know that you're ungodly. There's an inherent admission in what Paul says here that I am ungodly. I cannot do anything to change that.

It's just admitting what is true. The second characteristic is you do not work, which means you don't think there's anything you can do to change that status. There's nothing you can do to earn heaven.

There's nothing you can do to make up for what you did. And then the third characteristic is that you trust God who said that he would take care of it. You trust that he did exactly what he said he would do. And Paul uses Abraham as the best example of this. So he introduces them at the beginning of chapter four.

He's going to continue it at the end of chapter four. So if you're there in Romans four, go down to verse 18, and I'll walk you through this. God declares to Abraham, he's going to be a father of a whole nation of people.

Abraham's 90. He's got no kids. Verse 18, so against all hope, Abraham in hope believed. I love that little simple, very, very discreet way of saying, I mean, when you're 90 years old and you're infertile, it ain't happening, right? Blue pill or no pill.

There ain't nothing that's going to change that. Verse 19, without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead since he was about a hundred and that Sarah's womb was also dead. He knew he wasn't fertile. He understood how things work. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, even though it was so clear, there ain't no way he was going to have a baby. Even in spite of that, he was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God. He just started to praise God for things that hadn't happened yet as if they were already done. Verse 21, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. This is why it was credited to him as righteousness. But you see those words, Paul says, verse 23, it was logizomai to him.

It was credited to him. We're not just written for him alone. They were written for us to whom God will also logizomai righteousness for us who believe in him, believe on him, who raised Jesus, our Lord from the dead. You see, Jesus was delivered over to death for our sins. And then he was raised to life because of our justification. In other words, God took our sin debt and he put it on Jesus and he put Jesus in the grave.

And then God raised him from the dead as a proof that God had accepted Jesus as the payment for our sins. And so when we believe that the resurrection happened and then it believes what God said it meant, which meant that the sin debt had been paid in full. When we believe that God credits that to us as if it were righteousness, he literally gives us Christ's righteousness. We don't just get forgiveness of sins.

We also get Christ's perfect record that is credited to our account. It means I become responsible for everything that Jesus did. Jesus, as I've explained to you, was not just a dying savior.

Jesus was also a doing savior and before he died the death that we were condemned to die, he lived the life that we were supposed to live. And so when his account has been credited to me, God looks at me not only as if I'd never sinned, he looks at me as if I'd actually live the life of Jesus himself. It's what we call gift righteousness and it's what separates Christianity from every other religion in the world.

God's righteousness, Jesus's righteousness credited to us as a gift, not because our faith deserves it, not because our faith equals it, but because God has declared that faith in his promise is the instrument, the wild card, if you will, through which he will credit righteousness to our accounts. You see, there is no deal. There is no deal that you can make with God ever.

Here's why I'll walk you through Paul's logic. Here's why you can't make a deal with God. Number one, like Abraham, we're dead in our ability to please God. Like Abraham, we're just as dead in our ability to please God. That's why this illustration with Abraham and Sarah is so important. Abraham was totally unable to please God or excuse me, totally unable to have a kid. I mean, he couldn't have one when he was young. Now he's 90 or a hundred years old.

He's doubly dead. In the same way, we are utterly unable to be righteous and we don't think of ourselves that way. Do we? We think of ourselves as like kind of sick. I just need a little bit of help, you know, a little, if I just try a little bit harder, if I take a few religion pills, read the Bible a few times, resolve to do better, then I'm going to be able to be okay.

Get a little harder and I can get a passing grade on the final exam. God says, you are so, so off. God's, God's, God's measure of goodness is the 10 commandments. Listen, recently I was reading something by Martin Luther who said, if you want to stimulate your relationship with God, then for a month, just every morning, go through the 10 commandments in your mind and pray through them. And I thought, well, Martin Luther recommended it.

I'll try it. It has been absolutely devastating for me in the mornings as a part of what we call our quiet time. I've been going through the 10 commandments because I just realized that there is not a single one of these that I just instinctively and naturally keep. For example, you shall have no other gods before me. I asked myself, do I really love and cherish God more than everything else in my life? Is he the most important? Does he occupy my first thoughts? Is he the most valuable to me?

Am I more concerned about his opinion than anybody else's? You shall make no graven images of me. Am I satisfied with God the way that he is or am I constantly wishing I could make God into something else? Am I saying, God, why don't you do it this way? You know, God, if you were really good, why don't you give me this or why don't you do that? God, if I were God, this is what I do and I think you should probably do what I think you should do. How about this one?

Just skip a few. Honor your parents. I asked myself, have I always been submissive to the authorities that God put in my life?

That's part of what that commandment's about. Was I submissive to my parents naturally? Am I submissive always to the police, to my teachers, to a boss?

In fact, let me rephrase that. Have I ever been naturally submissive to the authorities God has placed in my life? Thou shalt not steal. How many times do I try to appropriate things that don't really belong to me? And when I say that, of course you got the obvious things like cheating in business or, you know, your taxes or something like that. But how often do I take credit that's not mine and not give credit for an idea because I want somebody to think I'm smarter than I actually am. Do I listen to illegally downloaded music and say, well, it's going to be okay. Do I steal? Thou shalt not lie.

How often do I exaggerate the truth to make myself look better or bend the truth to avoid a difficult situation or an awkward encounter? And then I come to thou shalt not commit adultery. And I'm like, oh, I'm feeling pretty good about that one because I've always been faithful to my wife until I see what Jesus said about that one. And Jesus said, yeah, if you've ever looked at somebody who's not your spouse and lusted after them in your heart, then it's like you've committed adultery. And then I come to thou shalt not murder. I'm like, okay, finally one I can put in the W column. Then Jesus says in Matthew, if I've ever desired to see somebody else harmed, then I think about how many times I've rejoiced when somebody I don't like suffered or made me mad. And I thought, well, I can't wait to see what happens to them.

I'm getting a meteor or something. In fact, there's a grit. There's a German word that I'm trying to teach my kids because it's, it's like the only German word I know. Um, uh, schadenfreude.

You know what that word means? Schadenfreude. It means when you rejoice in somebody else's misfortune. And I'm trying to tell my kids, you should not rejoice when your brother or sister gets in trouble. But actually I look as I'm telling them this saying, this is exactly what I do. I rejoice when somebody else goes through pain, sometimes because I have a spirit of violence and murder in my heart. Even if I don't commit the act, thou shalt not covet. Am I always fully satisfied with the situation that God has me in right now and never craving somebody else's income or privileges or talents or success or family situation. And y'all, I'm telling you, when I get done with this list, I realized that I am over 10.

When you're over 10 on the final exam, you're not going to pass the class, pass the class. You say, Oh, I'm pretty good except for being instinctively a lying, hateful, pilfering, rebellious, adulterating blasphemer, except for those little details. You really feel like you're a good person. Jesus said, if so, you're just looking at the wrong standard. Unless you're righteous, like your father in heaven is righteous, you'll never enter heaven.

Which brings up another thing. Some of you don't trouble yourself with the 10 commandments. You just come up with your own standard of what it makes for a good person. Then you think, well, as long as I live up to that standard, God's going to let me in. Two problems with that. First of all, you made it up.

Seriously, come on. Where does that, where else does that work in life? Imagine you show up at Duke University as a freshman and you sit down and the teacher says, I don't have you registered. And you say, I didn't apply. And your teacher says, well, we require this on the GPA and this on your SAT. And you're like, I didn't do any of those things, but I'm just wicked good at ballet. And I thought I belong at Duke University and that's my standard. I mean, it's not going to work.

Why would you think that in heaven, God's like, Hey man, just whatever works for you. Yeah. Oh, you passed your own standard. Awesome.

Come on in. You know, of course not. Here's the other problem with that. You don't live up to your own standards.

If you were honest, you'd give yourself an F half the time at your own standard. The way I've described that to you is if you had a little invisible tape recorder or just some kind of recorder, since nobody knows what tape is anymore. If you had an invisible recorder around your neck that only activated when you said the word ought, she ought to do that. He ought to do that and they ought to do that.

And that's all it recorded. And then at the judgment seat, God only judged you by whatever you said somebody else ought to do. There ain't a single one of you in here that would pass that judgment. You see, we like Abraham are utterly unable to please God because the problem is not ignorance. The problem is not that we need a little religion pill. The problem is we are dead and we are sinful and there's nothing we can do to actually change that. The second reason we can't make a deal with God. Number two is that we don't really have anything to offer God anyway. Here's how Paul explained that in verse four, the one who works, wages are not credited as a gift.

They're given as an obligation, right? If a plumber comes over to my house and works on something and hands me a bill for 80 bucks, I don't say, man, here's your gift. I say, here's, he's like, this is what I, he did the work. I owe him and we think of heaven in those terms that God is going to owe us heaven because we paid all this good works. Here are two problems with that. First, we don't have anything that God needs.

I alluded to this at the beginning, but think how foolish our negotiating sounds. God, you want some obedience? I'll go to church. And God's like, Ooh, good. You go to church.

I love church. How can I say no to that? You know, I can't refuse. Of course not. We don't have anything by which we can put God in our debt.

Second, being good in one area, it doesn't erase the fact that we broke God's laws in another area. I mean, imagine if you were on trial because you've been caught for assault and battery and breaking and entering, and the judge is about to bring down the gavel and you're like, Whoa, wait a minute. I know I'm guilty of assault and battery and breaking and entering, but, but judge, I only use paper straws that are made from recycled paper. And I always get paper, not plastic. It's better for the environment.

I never drink bottles of water and I have my own compost pile and I drive a Prius and you know, I just, I'm so environmentally calm. He's going to say, well, that's awesome, but that doesn't change the fact that you broke and entered and hurt somebody. It's irrelevant. So we can't put God in our debt by just covering up disobedience to his standards by some other arbitrary standard that we make for ourselves. Number three, here's the reason Paul says you can't work your way there. This is God alone.

We'll get the glory. God alone has determined he's going to get the glory for all this. Here's how he explains it. Verse two, if in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about, but not before God.

Let me re-translate that. If Abraham had been able to impregnate Sarah by his own power, then he would have boasted to everybody, man, I was 90 and I pulled that off. He said, but here's what, let me translate this, but God will never let that be. God will not let all the credit for the work that he does on earth and specifically the work of building his kingdom and bringing people to heaven.

He's not going to let that be credited to any human being. And if we earn heaven based on what we did, then we would spend a lot of our time in heaven talking about what we did to get ourselves there. We walk up to each other in heaven and say, well, what did you do? Oh, you were faithful to your wife for how long? Ooh, you prayed how much? You read how many chapters of the Bible?

You wrote how many books? Oh, God must be lucky to have you here. No, the book of revelation is very clear.

I love this. The book of revelation says that there is one, we were a name tags in heaven. Did you know that? All right.

Yeah. Book of revelation says, you wear a name tag, but it's actually on your forehead. It's tattooed there and the name that you wear on your forehead is not going to be your own. It's going to be the name of Jesus Christ, which means that when somebody walks up to me and says, why are you here?

I'm not going to talk about JD's name and how awesome he is. I'm going to point to my forehead. I'm going to say, that's why I'm here because I never sinned. Not one time when I lived. And I actually had so much faith that I walked on water. And and the devil tempted me for 40 days in the wilderness.

And I would not succumb to his temptation, not even one time. And I was on the cross. And instead of giving hate back to the people that were crucifying me, I said, father, forgive them for they know not what they do. It is not my name and the record of my deeds or my reputation that is going to earn me my place in heaven. It is Jesus's name that is going to be attached to me. And the righteousness associated with his name, the fact that he died the death I've been condemned to die and live the life I was supposed to live. That's my name that gets put here. And when people say, why are you in heaven?

I'm just going to point to my head and say, that's why I'm here. That's how God has set it up. We get the grace. God gets the glory. We don't earn it. God doesn't owe us. We get the grace. God gets the glory.

Period. The only kind of people who go to heaven are those are those that know they don't belong there, who know that there is nothing they can do to fix that or change it. But trust that God, who said he was so gracious that he'd do it for us, actually did what he said he'd do. You cannot earn heaven. You cannot make a deal with God.

In any shape, form or fashion. What this passage tells you is that righteousness, and by righteousness, I mean, full acceptance by God is a gift that God gives to us while we are still sinful. That it is possible, Paul says to acknowledge that you are more guilty and more worthy of condemnation than people could ever imagine. The problem is not that people don't know the real you. The problem is if they saw the real you, they would know that you'll never get to heaven. You are simultaneously more worthy of condemnation than people have ever imagined. And yet you are more sure that you are loved and accepted by God than anybody ever dreamed possible.

Because that status was given to you, not on the basis of what you've done or what you deserve. It was given to you on the basis of Jesus Christ, not you. Martin Luther called this the most important and probably the most misunderstood doctrine in the Bible. It is the doctrine he says on which the church rises or falls. It is the doctrine which separates true Christianity from its, in its essence from every other religion on earth, because every other religion on earth, all of them, you can put into one category, you spell them with two letters.

And those letters are D O D O. It's what I do that is going to earn me a place in heaven. Religions are going to substitute out various things for the do part. It's whether you go to mosque or the eightfold path or whether you're nice to people, whatever, right? But it's all characterized by, it's what I do that earns me a place in heaven. The gospel is the only one spelled D O N E. It is what Christ has done. Jesus in my place.

It is his record that gets attached to me and it's because of his righteousness that I have assurance before God. And so Paul says in light of that, here's what you should do. How ironic that we have a message on done that I'm going to give you three things to do, but just there it is. Letter A, Paul says, you got to stop negotiating.

You got to stop negotiating. You see, there's the old hymn that we don't ever sing here because it's got a really goofy tune in it. It was written by John Newton and I'm like, man, you wrote amazing grace. You wrote the tune for that. So why couldn't you come up with a tune for this one?

But, but, but the words are awesome. The words say, lay your deadly doing down. What it means is that there is a kind of doing in Christianity that is deadly.

It looks good from the outside. It involves praying and going to church and giving money and taking communion and all those little things. But it is deadly because you think you're thereby putting God in your debt.

Every religion in the world teaches some form of this deadly doing. They say you're broken, so you better fix yourself. The gospel is, yes, you are broken and you and I messed it up, but God fixed it.

And we can never fix it ourselves. We can only receive his salvation as a gift and then spend the rest of our lives giving him the glory. You see that it's different than every other religion. I have a friend who says, told me that he explained that he was at home, in his home office. And it was a guy meeting with him there.

And the only other person that was home was his, I think 12, 11 year old daughter. He said, as a middle of this conversation with this guy, I hear a wave of plates beginning to break. He said, not one, not two, not 10, not 20. He said, it sounds like just, he said, it must've gone on for 30 seconds.

He says, and it sounded like, I mean, it just sounded like just, you don't know. So I jump up and I run out there into the kitchen and there's my 11, 12 year old daughter. She's standing in the kitchen and probably he says 10, 12 feet around her in every direction is just shards of crystal and China and plates and glass.

He said, what? And she's crying. Her legs are kind of cut up from, you know, the, the, he said, she was trying to get something on the very top shelf off and she climbed all the way up. She wasn't supposed to do it.

It was against the rules. She knew it and she tried to grab hold of the top shelf and pull herself up. And so when she did that, it broke that shelf, which dumped everything. And she said, these are like family heirlooms that have been handed down. It was thousands of dollars worth of crystal and China that just one shelf at a time just broke all of them until every single plate in there was just in shattered pieces on the floor. And she's standing there.

She can't walk away because her legs are cut or feet are cut and there's this 10 feet of glass on either side ever. He said, and I looked at my 12 year old daughter and I just shook my head. I said, well, you have done it now. Look at the mess you have gotten yourself in, but you have broken something that's really valuable and you got to figure out how to clean this up.

And then when you get done, you come to my office and we'll talk about what your punishment is going to be. Then he said, of course I did not say that. He goes, suddenly I felt my compassion for my daughter and yes, she'd really messed up. He said, I said, hold on, sweetheart. He said, now I went and got a broom. And I said, just hang on there.

I'll be to you in a second. He said, not cleared away all those things. And I, I fixed it. He said, you know, every religion in the world teaches that the way that God relates to us is essentially the first way I explained that I was, you know, said I related to my daughter, which wasn't true. He said they, because religion says you really made a mess of things and what you broke was really messed up. You better fix it and then show up at heaven and see if I let you in.

He said, but why would, why would we think that that God would be a worse father to his children than we would be to our own kids? What God did is he saw that we were in a situation and his heart broke and he said, you can't fix it. What you broke was priceless.

You can never put it back together, but I am so gracious that I will come and do it for you. You just hang on there and you sit back and you let me rescue you. Why don't you stop negotiating? Why don't you lay your deadly doing down?

Because every step you take, you're just cutting yourself up more and more and more. You see, God does not want anything from you. He doesn't want you to write a check or throw your lunch money in the plate today. You don't have anything you can give him anyway. He has something for you. It is an inestimable gift. Let me give you the sign that you have finally understood this.

Here it is. When you have finally understood this, you will feel sure of your salvation. The sign that you don't get it is that you're still negotiating, right?

And you're still unsure. Well, I hope I've done enough to get in. I hope now I've done it.

I've had a good year. When Jesus has become my salvation, then I am as sure of heaven as he is. Y'all, I don't hope I'm good enough for God to let me in because I know that Jesus was good enough and I'm going to get in under his name. When I walk up to heaven, if God does ask me that question, why should I let you into heaven? No disrespect to God.

Please understand what I mean by this. I'm not even going to break stride. I'm not going to pause. I'm going to stop and I'm going to point to my head and be like, because Jesus did it all and I believe you did what you said you did and he said it was done. He said it was my righteousness.

I don't have to even answer that question. Why should I let you in? You let me in because of what Jesus did on my behalf.

Stop negotiating, which leads to letter B. You'll cease boasting when you do that. Christians who understand the gospel are the least self-righteous people you'll ever meet. And I know that you've met a lot of ridiculously self-righteous Christians, which just shows you they never really understood the gospel.

They think they do what they haven't because once you understand the gospel, you stop boasting. Imagine if you were Abraham, somebody was like, Oh, new baby. Whoa, Abraham, you know, I still got it in you. I didn't know you had it. You're like, I didn't, I didn't have it.

God did it. When you understand the gospel and how lost you were and that Jesus Christ gave it all to you as a gift and my only hope, my only plea, my only boast is his righteousness. Then all of a sudden humility replaces pride and a sense of gratefulness replaces a sense of entitlement and then gratefulness leads to gracefulness. And listen, that's the soul of Christianity. The soul of Christianity is I am so grateful to what God has done for me that it just spills out and how I treat everybody else. You want to know what Christian generosity is? Christian generosity is not people who give the God because they think they're earning their way to get into heaven.

Christian generosity, people who give radically generous as Christians are simply people who say in light of what Jesus has given up for me, this is what I want to do for my neighbor as they've been to, as he has been to me, I'm going to be to them. You want to know what Christian marriage is? Christian marriage is not two people who start to treat each other better because they think that God's going to let him into heaven because of that. Christian marriage is when two people say, I'm going to be to you.

I'm going to treat you the way Jesus has treated me. And then you start arguing, but you're not arguing about the normal stuff. You're arguing about who gets to out surrender and out serve and out give the other one.

And those arguments are awesome, right? Because it's just you beginning to argue. It's you beginning to love as you have been loved. You see, when Paul says in verse five that a Christian declared righteous does not work, it doesn't mean that Christians don't do good works. Oh, on the contrary, what he means is that the reason that we do good works has changed. We no longer do good works in order to be accepted by God. We do good works because we have been accepted by God. And that puts a joy in our works that replaces a fear that we used to do good works for because we thought, if not, God's going to reject me. Now we do it because we're so sure he has received us that we can't help, but let that spill out. And we want to be generous to everybody the way that he was to us. So Paul says in first Corinthians 15, I worked harder than everybody, but it was not because I was trying to get God to accept me.

It's because I was responding to this incredible grace of God that he had given to me, which leads me to see final thing here. Paul says, you just got to trust him. You got to trust him. You got to trust that.

He did what he said. He did watch this to the one who does not work, but trust God, just trust him. Who justifies the ungodly. It's his faith. It's their faith.

It's credited. It gives them eyes, righteousness. Some of your translations for the word trust right here say believe in, and I don't like that translation because believe in in English to us means like, I believe in, I believe that George Washington existed. I believe in Jesus, that he was the son of God. I believe he died on a cross. He raised from the dead as a historical fact.

That's not what Paul is talking about there. In fact, the Bible says that even the demons believe like that. The demons, you know, the demons are better theologians than you. They know that Jesus raised from the dead. They know every one of his mirror.

They were there when it happened. So of course they believe it better than you. It's not talking about believing in. Some translations say believing on, and that's better.

My favorite is just the word trust because it shows you that there is an action that's going with this mental decision that you've made. The illustration I've used over the years with you is it's like sitting down in the chair that you're sitting down in right now. When you came in, there was a decision process. You probably don't remember the decision process, but subconsciously you decided that chair that you're sitting on right now at any of our campuses, you decided it would hold the weight of your body, right? And at some point you said, I'm going to transfer the weight of my feet off the weight of my body, off of my legs and my shins and my feet, and I'm going to shift it onto this chair. If you did not think the chair would hold you up, you would not have done that, right? Because that would have been embarrassing and people would have been laughing and pointing and taking YouTube videos and you wouldn't have gone through that. But at some point you said, I believe it. And, and, and, and you started to sit again.

This is all we're putting in super slow motion. We're sitting down and at some point you committed, right? Because all of a sudden the weight went off of your, your, your, your legs. And you started to fall just for a second. You started to fall. And then you sat down, right? And the weight was no longer there.

It was there. That is what the Bible would call trust. What it means to become a Christian is when you say, I believe the chair, I believe that Jesus did what he said he did. I believe he was crucified for my sin. I believe that God raised him from the dead as proof that he'd accepted Jesus as a payment for my sin. And all of a sudden you say, I trust it and it's mine and you sit down in it.

And the moment that you transfer the weight of your salvation off of yourself and onto him at that moment, Jesus record is transferred to you. That's what that means. Okay. Now you're like, well, you've used that illustration a bunch. Come on man. Give us some new stuff. Okay. So I'm watching the star Wars trilogy times two with my kids. Cause I felt like it's a rite of passage for every teenager.

And I felt like they're old enough. And so of course we're starting with four. Then we do number five, empire strikes back. Then you go back to number two, you skip one, just don't even. And then, and then number three. And then you go back and end with number six, return of the Jedi.

Well, okay. So number six, return of the Jedi. The basic plot, I'm not gonna ruin it.

I mean, duh. Like you don't know what happens, but I'm returning the Jedi. They're trying to blow up the death star for the second time. But the problem is is the empire has gotten all smart and they know that they need a big force field around it.

So the planes can't fly in. And so they, you got to get the force field down. And so they say that Han Solo and Chewbacca and that whole crew is going to go tear the force field down with the Ewoks on Endor and all the other ships are going to come in and the moment they tear the force field down, then they'll blow up the death star. But if the force field doesn't come down, then they're just going to hit the force field and all blow up. And so you get this like climatic moment where they're all racing toward this force field.

And if that force field doesn't come down, it's gonna, it's just gonna hit it one by one and start exploding. And if you have actually start doing that, cause Han Solo is late. And so Han Solo, one of the pilots actually says in the movie, one of the pilots says something like this, I cannot believe we have trusted our lives to that swashbuckling smuggler or whatever Han Solo. And when he says that, I think that is the perfect definition of what Paul talks about when he means faith. Because it means that I am headed this direction and I know that he's going to do what he said he'd do. I know that he is going to take down that force field of God's righteous judgment. And I know that when I walk into heaven, it's going to be that I'm going to walk there and I'm going to say, you did it.

You did what you said you do. And the resurrection was the proof that you did what you said you would do. And Abraham, Abraham, Abraham trusted God.

That's the illustration. Abraham trusted God when God said, Hey, you're going to go live in a land that you don't even know where it is yet. And Abraham said, where is that?

I'm not going to tell you, but you get out there and I'll show you. And Abraham trusted God. And then Abraham, God said, Abraham, you're going to have a kid.

You're a hundred years old. And Abraham said, how am I going to do that? And God said, I'm not going to tell you. And Abraham trusted God and kept going forward. He kept marching toward it, believing that God would do what God said he would do. And what God told you and me that he would do is that he would take care of our sins because he was so gracious and so loving. And when you and I believe that and we trust it, then Christ's righteousness becomes ours.

That's what it means. It's just you believe he'd do what he said he would do the words. It was credited to him. We're not written for Abraham alone. They were written for us to whom God will credit righteousness for we who believe on him, trust him, who raised Jesus, our Lord from the dead, because see, Jesus was delivered over to death for our sins. And then he was raised to life for our justification. And when you believe that God has torn down the force field, the way that God said, God would do it at that moment, you are declared righteous. Paul said, because Romans 10, nine, he summarizes it for with them, for with you, confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord.

In other words, that he is who he says he is. And you'll believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, which means that he did what he said he'd do. Then you will be saved, not might be saved or one day could be saved. Or if you try real hard to be saved, but you will be saved at that moment because see it's with, uh, it's with the heart that a man believes unto righteousness and it's with the mouth that you make confession unto salvation. And then Paul, my favorite verse, Romans 10, 13, and this whole little deal for whosoever, we'll call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. That last verse used to trouble me because I would say, well, what do you have to ask him? What do you, when you call up to him, what do you say?

Like, hello, Jesus, uh, take me to heaven. Or what do you say? You're missing the point. The point is not what you say to him. It's simply that you call Jesus by the right name. You call on the name of the Lord.

Here's what I mean by that. Friend of mine says that you can tell a lot about your relationship to me based on what name you call me. Right? So if when I answer the phone at home and the voice in the other end of the line says, may I speak to Mr. Grier? I'm like, okay, you don't know me at all.

This is clearly a telemarketer. I call me Grier. If they say, may I speak to Mr. Grier or may I speak to James? I know, okay, they know how to pronounce my name, but they obviously don't know me cause nobody calls me James. Um, if they say, may I speak to Dr. Grier or pastor JD?

I'm like, well, okay. They know a little bit about me because they're, you know, call me by whatever. Um, if they say, can I speak to JD? Then I'm like, this is obviously a person that knows me on a personal social level. Um, there was a brief time in my life when a very close group of friends of mine began to call me Jay Dizzle.

So if the voice on the other end of the line says, can I speak to Jay Dizzle? I'm like, I know exactly. This is somebody that's really close to me from that particular Epic of my life.

Right? Um, there are four people in the universe who, when I answer the phone, they will say, daddy, my daddy, only four that can do that. And there is one person in the universe who calls me mega man and I can tell your relationship with me based on which name you call me. What Paul means when he says, whoever will call him the name of the Lord, listen, is that you just learned to call Jesus the right name. And that name is my savior, my savior, not because I've earned the ability to you to save me, but because I just believe you did what you said you did. I believe that when you died, you died for me. I believe that when you raised, God was saying, I accept Jesus's death as JD's punishment for sin. I believe that when he was dying on the cross, he was thinking about me. And when I say my savior, my savior, I just call him the right name. Christ's righteousness becomes mine at that very moment because my faith that I believe he did what he said he did and he is who he says he is, that faith is credited. It's little kids of mine is righteousness.

Here's the question. Have you ever called Jesus by the right name? I don't mean, could you answer it on a quiz, but have you ever said, my, my savior, my Lord, he's the boss of me.

He's the one that saved me. It is believing that Jesus is who he says he is and that 2000 years ago he did what he said he'd do. It is believing that and sitting down in that, that leads to righteousness credited to you as a gift by your heads at all of our campuses. If you don't know for sure that you've ever trusted Christ as personal savior, you could, you could do it right now.

It would sound something like this. Jesus, I know, I know, I know, I know I can't save myself, but you did my savior. Jesus, I know that you're the Lord. You're the Lord. You're my Lord. Father, I pray for every person at all of our campuses who right now for the first time trusted Christ as their savior. God give them courage in the weeks to come to do and follow through with what will absolutely change their lives. I pray in Jesus name. Amen.