SYC 2015: Justified

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Southern Youth Conference

Chester Clark

Justified

We're gonna be looking at the book of Romans tonight, studying some more.

I'm a little bit at a disadvantage for not knowing what you've already covered this weekend, but the Holy Spirit's not at a disadvantage.

And so I trust that what we share in God's Word tonight will be a blessing.

It's always a blessing when we open God's Word.

You know, these are exciting times to be alive.

I tell you, I just get more excited every day.

You can't read the news without noticing that the final movements are rapid ones.

We are living in the very last days of Earth's history.

In fact, the news we see on a daily basis reads like an expanded version of the final conflict, the chapter in the great controversy, and or the aims of the papacy.

Several of these chapters are just right there with what's happening in our world today, and we've always said it's going to happen, and it's happening.

I'll tell you, I really believe that if we can't be awake, called to be awake in this hour of earth's history.

You know, I've heard people say many times as I was a younger person, you know, when I see the events happening, then I'll come back to the Lord, you know, then I'll get my life in order.

Well, listen, if we can't see them happening now, I don't know when we will.

I mean, this is just amazing, amazing time to be alive.

I want to share with you just a short passage from the book, Great Controversy, before we start our study tonight.

It's from the chapter, The Scriptures, a Safeguard.

If you want to read a couple of really good chapters and get a good idea, Just sort of soak in the principles, not all the specifics, but at least the principles of how these final movements are going to all play out.

Read the 36th chapter, the impending conflict, but don't stop there.

Read the 37th chapter, the scripture is a safeguard, because it tells us how we can be faithful in these last days.

Notice it says in here, it's page 593 in the Great Controversy, the last great delusion is soon to open before us.

Antichrist is to perform his marvelous works in our sight so closely, will the counterfeit resemble the true that it will be impossible to distinguish between them, except by the Holy Scriptures.

By their testimony, every statement and every miracle must be tested.

Those who endeavor to obey all the commandments of God will be opposed and derided.

Now, I know I'm a little off the topic here tonight, but this is just so on my mind these last couple days as we've seen yesterday, the Supreme Court judgment.

Now, it may not be surprising to us that this is going to happen, but let's remember that our understanding of end times events is not that the world is going to just keep getting more and more secular and more and more permissive.

This pushing the boundaries is going to be met eventually by a backlash from Christians who are going to go to the opposite extreme of trampling on rights.

If you read just the last few pages of the previous chapter, it tells you exactly how it's going to happen.

There are going to be great natural disasters, more and more frequent and more and more intense.

They're going to become more and more intense, such that we can't just blame it on global warming anymore.

It's going to be so disastrous that no thinking person is going to say it's just humanly caused.

They're going to say this is the judgments of God.

And who will be the ones who are called responsible?

Well I'm sure it's going to be those wicked ones, those ones that are pressing for immorality and vice and all the rest.

But the chapter also says it's going to be those who keep God's commandments.

In contrast to the great day of worship they're all promoting.

And so as we see these things happening, friends, it's all being set up.

The more they push the religious right, I was listening yesterday on the radio station, the Christian radio stations, and boy, they're gonna get active and they're gonna get upset And it's all a fulfillment of these prophecies.

We are pilgrims and strangers here, amen?

And we want to understand better tonight what it is that God would have us understand.

Your passage is Romans chapter 5 and verse 1.

Let's bow our heads for an additional word of prayer as we begin.

Father in heaven, I just thank you for this privilege of being here with my fellow believers, these young people.

They want to be prepared for the impending conflict.

And they want to be a part of helping many others know you and come to be ready for your soon return as well.

So tonight, Lord, we're gathered here not because we can give anything to you, but because we need you to give something to us.

We need your grace, we need your spirit, we need your presence, we need your power.

We come confessing that need and claiming your promise that you will supply all of our needs in Christ Jesus.

I'm sure that this part of Romans we all have memorized probably by now since this is Your theme, right?

Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now there's many different parts of this verse, many different relationships between these words.

We remember, of course, that therefore is 1 of those connecting words, right?

When you see the word therefore, you're supposed to ask what question?

When you see the word therefore, you ask what's it there for?

You're supposed to ask, why is this word being used?

It's not something that is just accidentally here.

It's used several times in this same passage, and Paul uses it because he's trying to connect our minds with 1 story and 1 illustration after another, and trying to help us understand this whole concept of justification by faith and peace.

You see, in Romans, Paul is making the argument really to the church.

He's trying to explain to the church why the gospel is now not just confined to the Jews, he's trying to explain to the Jewish Christians largely in Rome, and some of the Gentiles in Rome, the church in Rome, he's trying to explain to them how the Old Testament is fulfilled by the New Testament, much like the book of Hebrews, just on a little different level, a different approach.

He's trying to make this argument, and he's trying to make the gospel very clear.

He uses the Old Testament, He uses the New Testament, and he's trying to make this all fit together, because it all does fit together.

The truth is a harmonious whole from Genesis to Revelation, isn't it?

We see the themes and the truths of the Bible just fitting together.

And Paul begins in Romans 1, he begins by saying how wicked the world is.

There's all this permissiveness and promiscuity and there's perversions and sexual immorality and even, he even talks there in Romans chapter 1, doesn't he, about the things we're seeing today.

He's talking about homosexuality and the terrible sins that the church in Rome would have said, oh yeah, that's terrible stuff, that's stuff we would never think of.

But then you remember, Romans chapter 2, he sort of comes with a shocker, and he says, you who think you're okay, you're actually just as bad as they are.

And 1 of the reasons, I'll be honest with you now, a little tangent again into current events, 1 of the reasons the Christian church no longer has much credibility in our culture is because we discriminate between sins.

We have the sins that are unacceptable in the church, and we have the sins that are sanctified by the church.

And so the church has no credibility in the world because they see that.

And Paul's saying, look, Don't condemn the world out there when you yourself, you're guilty of different sins, but sin is sin and sin caused the death of Jesus.

Justified

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