Justification - From Wrath to Resurrection - Sermons - JT English - 9.27.26

JT English (0:02)

Amen, good morning, Storyline, how you doing? Hey, I'm so glad to be with you, my name is JT. I'm one of the pastors here, but I haven't had the chance to meet you yet. Just glad that you're here. I want to invite you to open up your Bibles to Romans, Chapter 3 If you don't have a copy of God's Word, we have a Bible in the seat in front of you. If you don't have a Bible at home, we'd love for that to be a gift to you, just so that you can see what God's Word says for itself. I also want to say hi to our friends over in the Discipleship Center. I was over there a few minutes ago, lots of you just enjoying time over there. Thanks for making some space here. I also want to encourage you, it's a really great space. If you ever get a chance to go over there and see it during a service, it's just a great space to hang out and just ride across this wall. Just lots of overflow, kind of additional worship space. Just awesome. Glad you guys are here and hanging in there with us. Romans chapter 3 is where we're going to be. But before we turn there, I want to remind you why we're doing this series. We're in a series right now called From Wrath to Resurrection. And the idea of this is I really believe that evangelicals, even Bible-believing, gospel-centered, like Jesus-loving Christians, we tend to thin out the gospel. We tend to not see all of the beautiful benefits that Christ has accomplished and purchased for us. We maybe understand forgiveness a little bit or justification a little bit, but we almost see those things as synonyms or saying the same thing. And the goal of this series is to help you see the different facets of what Christ has accomplished for you specifically. So last week, we looked at the first aspect. We asked the question, is God angry with me? Dealing with the wrath of God. The Bible says that we are objects of God's wrath. Welcome to church. We're going to start with happy thoughts right now. Objects of God's wrath by nature because of our sinful disobedience that God is dispositioned towards punishment. And what we looked at last week was the two doctrines of propitiation and expiation, the idea that God's wrath is satisfied. What that means is that the wrath of God is placed upon another, but genuinely placed on another, our substitute, the lame of God, who's come to take away the sins of the world. That's propitiation. And then expiation, the idea that we are guilty, but that guilt has been removed. I want to highlight something for you before we turn to our next doctrine today, the doctrine of justification. It's very important to me as your pastor that you not just hear me say these things, but you ingrain these things into your heart and into your conversations, whether your grandparents or parents or whether your friends are here, Salt Company, we've provided a resource for you that is going to help you conversationally around these topics. And it's catechism cards. The church has been using catechism. It means teaching to help ingrain the good news of the gospel in our souls and hearts for hundreds of years. And so we have these cards right outside for you. Parents, you should be using these every single night with your kids, put them on the kitchen table, maybe put them on a bedside and just walk through them, remind yourself, rehearse the truthfulness of the gospel with each other. You could put this on your cubicle at work or you could put this on the dashboard of your car. Like this is a resource that we want to make for you. Not because we think it's a pretty resource, though. It's pretty. But it's just so beautifully designed. Like even I want you to see, you know, we're talking about the different facets of the gospel. Look how good these designers are. They make these different facets. Like that's the image of this. Look at all the beautiful facets of the gospel that we're looking at over the course of the next few weeks. So take those. Last week was, is God angry with me? Or has his wrath been satisfied? And this week is, am I innocent? We're looking at like judicial forensic terminology, kind of a courtroom idea. And before we turn to Romans chapter three, I do want to kind of help you imagine, like let's get an imaginative framework for a courtroom dynamic. I'm not sure if you've ever been in court before. The first time I was in court, I was in Louisville, Kentucky. I had accidentally, I didn't realize I was in a school zone. And apparently that's like a federal crime. Like it was a big, it was like it was like midnight. And I was going through a school zone. And it was like apparently always like you had to go this speed. I went like seven miles over. And it was like, we'll see you in court, buddy. I mean, it was like, oh my gosh, I didn't even realize it was that big of a deal. But I show up in court and I'm trying to kind of plead a defense. And of course, I'm found guilty. But being in this courtroom, I tried, I really tried.