Welcome to Waymaker Church! We are so excited to have you join us today! We exist to Encounter, Live for, and Advance the Kingdom of God!

Last week, Ps Joel started this 3 week series on Faith. We are looking at Salvation, Justification, and Sanctification. These are core elements to our understanding of the need of a God who redeems.

In last week’s message, Salvation was defined as the rescue from a state of danger and restoration to wholeness and prosperity.

We saw the fall of humanity through the decision of a one, and the redemption of humanity through the one and only Jesus. Even his name prophetically declared His mission and purpose!!
• God is a God of Salvation
• Salvation is of God alone and cannot be earned by works.
• Jesus is the source of our Salvation (and we see that)
• The message of salvation is contained in the scripture.
• And we are called to carry that message on.

Then we were challenged in the altar to respond.

What is the correct response to the message of Salvation?
Repentance (literally means to turn away from)
Faith
Proclaim

So we accept Salvation… what does that mean?

We often find ourselves in a internal tug of war. We said yes to Jesus but we suffer from “Did-I-Mess-Up-Too-Bad-This-Week”-initus…

You see… we have filters that we run our experiences through.

These filters are typically filters of experience in and of themselves.
If you grew up in a very legalistic home… it’s easy to see our faith from a very legalistic view.
“unless you do x, you won’t get y.”

If you grew up in a very rigid home… no one said, “I love you” because it showed weakness and WE AREN’T WEAK!…Show me you love me by doing something productive. Then, it’s easy to struggle with the idea of a loving, gentle and kind heavenly father.
You hear, “I love you,” but internally you hear, “I love what you can do for me.”

The list of filters can go on and on… but its safe to say that we all have something like this to overcome.

We know we have been saved, but to what extent and what do we have to continue to do to earn it???

Can i tell you plainly… God isn’t surprised by this understanding. When we step from us being kings of our lives to him being king of our life… there is some rewiring of the brain that needs to transpire.

And one of the first things that would benefit us is to understand Justification.

Let’s define it real quick… justification is the understanding of the manner in which God communicates Christ’s righteousness to believers so that they may stand as righteous before him and gain eternal salvation.

Maybe let’s put it this way… in judicial terms… Justification is a Christian’s judicial acceptance by God as “not guilty” because their sins are not counted against them. They are not counted against them because Jesus made the payment for those sins.

Maybe let’s put it in school loan terms… your debt has been paid by someone else… you’re no longer a debtor.

Paul is crying out for His own people… I wish they’d get it! I wish they’d recognize that it’s by grace they are saved, through faith… it isn’t of our works, because if it was… we would feel as though we had something to do with the outcome!

You know what is interesting… in reading the bible this year… I just finished Leviticus last Sunday, and I normally read this and simply feel thankful that we don’t have to keep all the sacrifices that were once prescribed to God’s followers. And I am still thankful for that, but God took my understanding a different route in reading it this year.

There was aha moment when the Lord told me, “I made a way for them to stay right with me WHEN they messed up.”

There were several types of offerings of which I don’t have the full measure of time needed to divvy up. Burnt offering, Grain offering, Sin offering, peace offering, guilt offering…

God wanted to be with his children… he was saying, “When you miss it, do these things.”

He also mentioned how to deal with being ceremonially clean and unclean as he is a Holy God. He laid out what animals could be eaten and which couldn’t. He laid out what made you unclean and what you needed to do to be clean again. God went as far as purification after childbirth and dealing with skin disease, and mildew and mold, dealing with bodily discharges to forbidden sexual practices and holiness (set apartness) in personal conduct.

Then he discusses what the discipline looks like if you don’t follow these things.

I want you to know that just because there is discipline doesn’t mean God is harsh, mean, uncaring… it doesn’t make him a jerk. If you think that is what is thought, that is a tell tell sign that we haven’t surrendered our lives fully to the rule and reign of God in our lives.
Hebrews 12:8 tells us why he disciplines...

But Jesus made us legitimate when he became our Justification...

And here is what God grabbed me with this year in reading Leviticus… God didn’t say, “Follow me and you won’t deal with any of these things...” No, instead he said, “When you deal with these things, this is how you are made right...”

God was making a way to get to him until he could finally make THE way to get to him.

Then Jesus comes and literally fulfills the purpose of those very offerings in his law.

You have to believe that too!!! What Jesus did is bigger than anything you could have ever done! His sacrifice is bigger than your sin! His victory is bigger than your defeat!

YOU are called to the same salvation… YOU are called to the same justification.

And here is the thing.... It is only through him, it is only by him that this is even possible because the moment you step into your own righteousness, you become self-righteous!

We cannot stand before God and declare our good works!

Filthy rags here literally means, “feminine hygiene product.” In the old testament… this was a time that the ladies were considered unclean. There was a purification process that had to transpire to be clean again.

We cannot earn this… but God chose to operate this way. He chose to save the world through his son...

God chose to impute(attribute, ascribe, assign, credit) the Righteousness of Jesus on us for simply believing that he is the Son of God, lived a sinless life, died on our behalf for the sin condition we live in, rose again defeating death hell and the grave, and that he is at the right hand of the father… interceding for us.

God chose to use the cross as the dagger through the heart of Satan, for he is a defeated foe… in the end of days… He will be done away with.

We have been given the way the be right with God… accept the salvation of God in Christ Jesus and accept the justification from that salvation.

We are imputed His righteousness- we define that as our justification. We stand just before God because of Jesus’ actions and His righteousness. We stand before God Just as If we had never sinned.

Does this mean we keep sinning to see more of God’s grace?
Quite the contrary… the grace of God frees us from the entrapment of sin.
Will we stumble? Yup...

Get up and continue to seek the father....

He will mold us, shape us, we will grow and learn how to sin less. He will show us things in and of ourselves we aren’t a fan of (and maybe things we like that he isn’t a fan of) and he will help us grow in that process...

That’s sanctification and Ps. Joel will be speaking on that next week.

“well, I don’t feel worthy!” Great!! join the club… none of us are. JESUS IS, and we come in his name.

You may not feel worthy of someone else paying the tab and making you right, but you can’t go back and pay for what Jesus has already paid for. You can’t. It’s impossible. The slate is wiped clean.

Jesus is our righteousness, Jesus is our Salvation, Jesus is our Justification…

Here is the only requirement… and this is God’s requirement and not mine… Believe… have faith. Trust him…

He isn’t only wanting to make us a tool in the heavenly tool box. He is calling us to relationship with Him. He is calling us into son-ship or daughter-ship with Him.

Are there things we will end up doing for His Kingdom? Yes… but not simply out of duty to the Lord, but out of overflow of his loving Kindness being show towards us. We deserve death, hell and the grave. In our unrighteousness… we deserve that, BUT GOD…

Have faith that what Jesus did is enough. Can you imagine being a church that functioned like that?

My heart today is that you don’t have to get saved 300 times before you recognize that you are justified in the eyes of God by the work of Jesus.

Remove the mental demand that you have earn this, you have to work for it, you have to prove it. I know James tells us faith without works is dead, but what he is saying is… what good is it to have faith and do nothing with it? He is saying, Our lives are different because of what Jesus has done, so let’s let others see that in our everyday actions that we are different.

And the only reason we can be different is because in Christ… we are justified before God… Amen?