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Hillside O’Malley SDA Church

Blessed Assurance

David Shin

Blessed Assurance: The Existential Reality of Justification

Today we begin a three-part series of messages for the next consecutive weeks, including today, of a sermon series that I've entitled, Blessed Assurance.

It is 1 that I've wanted to do for a long time, and I pray that as we go through this journey together, that our hearts will be warmed in confidence in the surety of salvation that we can find in Jesus Christ.

Our Father in heaven, we thank you for this Sabbath.

It's the first Sabbath of the new year, 2017.

There's nothing that we can do about the past.

As we look into the future, perhaps there are some here that are dealing with anxiety, fears, uncertainty.

We pray that you would bless us with your peace that passes all understanding.

Father, I come to you today, My lips are made of clay.

And Lord, as I, with my human frailty, endeavor to deliver this message that I believe is so critical to the Christian experience, I pray that you would hide me behind you, that I would get out of the way, that Jesus would be uplifted, and Christ would be seen.

We ask these things in Jesus' name, amen.

In our community of faith, We have a whole generation of members that are recovering from what I call spiritual abuse.

We have a whole generation of individuals in our community, members, attendees, people that have been Seventh-day Adventists a long time that are recovering from spiritual abuse tied directly to legalism.

And the fallout of this psyche and this just dealing with the burden of trying to work our way to heaven, trying to merit salvation through good things, but endeavoring to use those things to feel good enough to be accepted by Jesus, There are these lingering questions that arise in the consciousness of many individuals that are a part of our community, questions like, am I good enough?

And there is always this anxiety, this angst that goes something like this.

And I can't help but wonder sometimes in the whole fallout to Desmond Ford, that there are some parts of our community of faith that have reacted so heavily that the pendulum has swung to the other extreme of emphasizing certain aspects of the gospel that are important, but to the denial and rejection of other aspects of the gospel.

Now, if you noticed our sermon title this morning, It is, Blessed Assurance, colon, The Existential Reality of Justification.

Now, someone said, what in the world is that?

And I apologize for the obtuse nature of that.

But as I tried to come up with a sermon topic, that was what I came up with.

And what existential means, it comes from the root word exist.

It not only deals with the thoughts of existence, but the feelings of existence.

And when we talk about justification, we have done a good job talking about the theory of justification, this transcendent reality, the theology from above, which we should process and understand.

But we have not done a good job of addressing what the existential reality of what that means.

What is the experience, the thoughts, the feelings, the emotions, the framework of someone that is justified?

What is their frame of reference and what are they processing?

So this morning my humble attempt is to not only talk about what justification is the theology from above, but I also want to talk about the theology from below.

And how does that relate to the notion of assurance and trusting in Jesus, while at the same time recognizing our fallenness and our insufficiency.

Now, I want to point out from the very beginning that I believe in justification, sanctification, and glorification.

Our message today is an emphasis on justification.

I don't want anyone coming out of here and saying Pastor Shin does not believe in sanctification.

I have preached sermons on sanctification.

But I have been in communities of faith where I have heard sermon after sermon after sermon on sanctification And I have not heard 1 sermon on justification.

Because what we're doing is we're setting up something that we need to be without providing the solution and the hope.

So today, I want to emphasize justification.

Now in the future, we'll talk about sanctification and how that relates, but today, let us just engage in this conversation.

Immerse ourselves in the beauty of justification, what that means from a theological perspective, and what that means for us existentially, experientially.

Some people say it is the imputed righteousness of Christ.

What Jesus does for you, the objective gospel, Christ's robe of covering, God's declaration.

These are what theologians have used as a synonym for the term justification or to justify.

Here's a text from scripture, Isaiah chapter 61 verse 10, I will greatly rejoice in the Lord.

My soul shall be joyful in my God, for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation.

He hath covered me with the robe of righteousness.

Justification is related to the robe, to the covering that God gives to us.

When a baby comes to us, or a child comes to us that is dirty and naked, what is the first response to address the situation?

First, you cover the child to deal with the immediate nakedness.

And then, as you have opportunity, what do you do?

When we come to Jesus, we come just the way that we are, we come naked, wretched, and defiled, God covers us with his robe.

Then he brings us through a process called sanctification, the process of cleansing and making us more like Jesus.

I want to point out that this notion of covering is the first thing that you do when a child comes to you naked and dirty.

And that is exactly the metaphor that the Bible uses as his robe of righteousness.

Now I want us to process and understand this.

When that covering comes upon us, there is nothing within us that is righteous.

Martin Luther says it is an alien righteousness.

It is unmerited, unfavored, it is something that God gives to us.

He places this robe over us and the next thing that he does after he places his robe on us, This is a beautiful aspect of justification.

Romans chapter 5, verse 1 through 2 from Young's literal translation, having been declared righteous, then by faith.

We come to Jesus just the way that we are sinful fallen defiled and he takes his robe and covers us and in covering us we are declared righteous Just like that.

He covers us with His robe of righteousness and we are declared righteous.

Which means, when I accept Jesus as my personal Savior and I say, Lord, come into my heart, I accept You as Savior, that in that moment, you are justified.

You are covered with His robe of righteousness.

And your name is written in the Lamb's book of life, no questions asked, instantaneously, justified.

And when God looks at you, He doesn't see you.

He sees the righteousness of Jesus Christ, and you stand before him as though you have never sinned." That's what the Bible teaches.

Faith I live by, page 112, having made us righteous through the imputed righteousness of Christ, God pronounces us just.

Moving on, our high calling, page 51, the sinner's defects are covered by the perfection and fullness of the Lord our righteousness.

Notice the phrase, the perfection of whom?

Blessed Assurance: The Trend of the Life

On the screen, imagine that on the screen, is a photograph of a four-year-old boy named Luke.

His mother posted the testimonial on the website of the Children's Hospital in Philadelphia.

She tells the story of how Luke was born 5 pounds 7 ounces and immediately was transferred to the NICU unit because he had breathing problems and ever since his birth he was struggling with complications that seemed to crop up over and over again.

And at the age of 3, he was diagnosed with a condition that doctors call a failure to thrive.

Now, Johns Hopkins Medical School defines failure to thrive as a decelerated or arrested physical growth.

In other words, not gaining weight, not getting taller.

The issue was that Luke was refusing to eat.

On February of 2012, Luke was hospitalized with dehydration and diagnosed as hypoglycemic and had to have a feeding tube inserted.

And as you can imagine, his mother devastated.

She quit her job to put all of her energies into Luke's recovery.

Luke was admitted to the Pediatric Feeding and Swallowing Center and received therapy and treatment.

And praise God, today Luke is not only surviving, but he's thriving.

And here's a direct quote from Luke's mother.

We are so happy to watch our growing, thriving little boy running and playing just like any other four-year-old.

And today we are continuing in our second installment of our three-part series of messages that we've entitled Blessed Assurance.

And last week we talked about justification, that is being born or being born again.

Today we want to talk about sanctification, and That is talking about thriving after you are born again.

Being born is 1 thing, thriving after you're born is another thing.

This is a question that people have asked in regards to these words that we throw around.

And last week we talked about justification.

By the way, if you did not hear last week's message, it's on our website, www.omaliesta.org, or I have a friend that's a web guru and he's actually given me my own URL, pastorshin.com.

I guess there's not another Pastor Shin out there, alright?

So you can get the sermons there as well.

Anyways, this is a comparison between justification and sanctification.

I want to read through it very quickly here.

Sanctification, growth, thriving while you're alive.

He covers you with his robe and declares you righteous.

It's an alien righteousness totally outside of yourself.

He covers you and declares you righteous.

He looks at us, he doesn't see our fallenness, he sees the righteousness of Christ, the robe that covers us.

Justification is Christ's imputed righteousness.

Sanctification is Christ's imparted righteousness.

Sanctification is like, or I should say, justification is like getting married.

Now, some people have asked this question and it is debated ad infinitum in the Christian community, it's justification or is it sanctification?

And there are these theological soul battles that go back and forth over and over again with different emphases.

Now, this is not to say that we should not emphasize 1, but we should never emphasize 1 to the negation of the other.

Because which is more important, to be born or to thrive after you're born?

But you need to be born first, all right?

And Sometimes we get a little bit confused because individuals may emphasize sanctification and they curiously leave out justification.

It's like putting all of these high callings upon someone that hasn't even Been born.

But justification precedes sanctification.

We need that assurance that it's his robe that covers us.

And as long as we're in this relationship, he continues to work in and through us.

Now my brother up there, can you turn on that monitor real quick so I can see the slides?

Now 1 of the ways that we can look at this is as we discussed last year, we talked about Johannes Kepler back in 1605 was looking at planetary motion.

He was looking at Mars motion or orbit around the Sun and he came to the conclusion that it was not in the Copernican model.

The Copernican model assumed that the orbit was an exact circle, but he observed that it was something else.

The difference between an ellipse and a circle is that a circle centers on 1 central point and ellipse centers on 2.

Alright, imagine that you're seeing it there.

That there is a circle that has 2 central points in it.

Alright, so you can actually do this at home.

You can have a circle with 2 central points.

Now when we look at justification and sanctification, pardon and power, we need to look at it in terms of not 1 central point, but 2, because both are essential.

You need both pardon, justification, and power, sanctification.

When you center your theology on 1 to the exclusion of the other, that is when we start going down a road that becomes imbalanced.

You need to hold these 2 in a wonderful tension.

And you see this tension all throughout scripture.

First John 1, 9, we quote this all the time.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, that's justification, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, that's sanctification.

You can see this elliptical principle coming through Scripture.

These 2 are upheld for the Christian experience.

1 Corinthians 6, verse 11, such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, there you have sanctification, power, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the power or in the spirit of our Lord.

All right, so You have this element of justification and sanctification.

You look at the words of Jesus in John 8, verse 11.

And Jesus said to her, neither do I condemn you.

Now that was not so much a command as it was a promise the power was within the promise now if Jesus just said to the woman, go and sin no more, that would have been overwhelming.

But he says to her, look, I don't condemn you.

Blessed Assurance: Works Without Merit

In 2003, the Wall Street Journal published a compelling piece on the perils of what is called maximum effort weightlifting.

They told the story of Michael Logan, and I quote, as a fitness trainer and health fanatic, Michael Logan knew that weightlifting would strengthen his bones and protect his heart.

What he didn't know was that it could be lethal.

Logan had a bulge in his primary artery, the aorta.

Knowledge of that bulge or aneurysm would have prompted doctors to allow only light weight lifting, but like the vast majority of people with aneurysms, Mr.

Logan didn't know he had 1, so he continued weightlifting until an aortic aneurysm killed him last June at the age of 46.

It's very surprising that something he did for his health might have hurt him, says the late Chicago trainer's son.

Wall Street Journal article went on by saying heavy weightlifting can spike blood pressure to dangerous heights.

In maximum effort lifting, studies have shown that blood pressure rises to as high as 370 over 360 from a resting rate of 130 over 80.

Conventional blood pressure monitors can't even measure levels above 300.

At that level, nobody would be surprised if you had a stroke, says 1 health professional.

And the Wall Street Journal goes on by saying, doctors have long suspected that the steep blood pressure spikes arising from heavyweight lifting could trigger ruptures of already weakened vessels.

Now suspicion is growing that such lifting can damage healthy vessels." Wow!

And if there was ever a word that raises the blood pressure of a congregation enough to cause a spiritual aneurysm, it is the word perfection.

How do you feel when we talk about Christian perfection?

The reality is that there are some who are straining under the crushing weight of trying to be, quote, perfect Christians, And could it be that we are lifting a burden that God has never called us to bear?

Jesus said, to come to Him all you who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Biblical perfection is not a call to self-righteousness, it is a call to claim Christ's righteousness.

And I want to quote this from the book Steps to Christ, page 63, our only ground of hope is in the righteousness of Christ imputed to us in that wrought by his spirit working in and through us.

And as we're going through our series, today's our last installment of our three-part series of messages that we've called Blessed Assurance, and we use this analogy of a child.

If you were to run through this church naked and dirty, What would be your first response?

Your first response is to cover the child, and then, as you have opportunity, give the child a bath.

He covers us with his robe of righteousness and declares us righteous.

We are perfect in him And then we go to the bathtub for cleansing, and that bathtub experience, I should say the bath, it's a long bath.

And the beauty of the gospel is that you are secure in Christ as soon as you are covered.

You're declared righteous, you're saved, and as long as you're in that relationship with Him, you go through that cleansing process.

And as we said last week, it's not about how far you get, it's about how being, how, about staying in the process.

Now when we talk about perfection, there are 2 aspects of it that should not be confused.

When he covers you with his robe of righteousness, you are perfect in Christ.

And when Jesus sees you, He doesn't see you, He sees the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

This is the imputed righteousness of Christ, and it has nothing to do with who we are or what we are prior to that point.

He covers you, you are declared righteous, God sees you, He doesn't see you, praise the Lord.

He sees the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

I love this quote from Our High Calling, page 51.

The sinner's defects are covered by the perfection and fullness of the Lord, our righteousness.

It is God's perfection that covers you and he sees the perfection of Christ.

This is the security that we have, the existential peace that we can have in Jesus in our Christian experience as we walk with Him that it is His robe, not our robe, that is our security.

And by embracing and accepting the righteousness of Christ imputed to us by faith, we can have peace because it's never about our vision of ourselves.

It's believing by faith God's vision of us because of his robe of righteousness.

Now when we talk about this notion of character perfection in sanctification, the cleansing process, he covers us, then we go through a cleansing process.

And character Perfection is not static, it's not absolute, it is relative perfection.

And as we said last week in the book Christ Object Lessons, page 65, at every stage of development our life may be, What does it say?

Our life may be perfect, yet if God's purpose for us is fulfilled, there will be continual advancement.

Sanctification is the work of a lifetime.

A perfect baby, a perfect adolescent, a perfect adult.

And I praise God, the thief on the cross is just as saved as someone that has been a Christian for 40, 50 years.

It's not about reaching a state, a nirvana, it's about being in the process.

It is the justification, the robe, that is our security.

Moving on, our characters are not set times and occasions, but by the spirit and trend of the whole life.

The characters revealed not by occasional good deeds and occasional misdeeds, but by the tendency of the habitual words and acts.

The perfection of his character shines through them.

By the grace of God, as we walk with Jesus, covered with his robe, Jesus begins a process, And it is a process where His grace, His love, shines through us.

It is a process of reproducing the character of Jesus in you and me, to be Reflected to the world.

That's the beauty of the gospel and I praise God that I can look back on my Christian experience.

I Was just as saved the moment I accepted him but as I've journeyed with him by the grace of God there has been a refinement that took place and is taking place in my life.

Now as I look to Jesus, I'm nowhere near where I need to be, but I praise God I look back I'm nowhere near where I was.

I praise God I'm a lot more happier and easier to live with today by the grace of God and His character is beginning to form in you and I in this process of sanctification.

Now as we talk about sanctification, can we ever claim perfection?

Can I say, look I've been a Christian for 50 years, been in the church, studied the Sabbath school lesson every week, faithful in my stewardship, volunteer, I've arrived?

Look at this, Acts of the Apostles, page 561 through 562.

Let the recording angels write the history of the holy struggles and conflicts of the people of God.

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Series

Blessed Assurance

Blessed Assurance: Works Without Merit

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

It Was Night

38m

The Hebrew Mind

49m

The Power of Perspective

Two Covenants

57m

Acts: First Generation Lessons for Last Generation Believers

2. Discipline

1h

Being True to Our Trust

What the Law Could Not Do

50m

Encounters With Jesus

Jesus’ Encounter with Martha and Mary

36m

Professedly Christian

45m

Don’t Lose Heart

50m

Plenary

Are We First or Last?

57m

Morning Worship

One Thing is Needful

31m

Allied Health

Grace in Action: Sharing Christ in Every Aspect of Life

39m

Lessons From The Reformation

27m

Sound Doctrine