249 - WHAT GOD THINKS OF YOUR RELIGIOUS PRIDEOctober 14, 1962
Pastor Henry F. Kulp
Romans 3: 23 - 27 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith.
The average person who has religion does not stop to think, but if he did, he would realize he has a God who is not a just God. The Social Gospel is not a just Gospel—it makes God wretch, not a just God who vindicates His name. This portion of Scripture that we want to study this morning, will show you that when God saves a soul through Jesus Christ, His death and resurrection, God is a just God, and vindicates His name in the way that He saves a sinner.
1/ Then, Paul takes for example—the Old Testament saint. How did God ever vindicate His name, by saving man in the Old Testament and count him righteous before Jesus Christ’s shed blood? Take, for instance, Abraham—we read that he was a man justified by God—thousands of years before Jesus Christ came to shed His blood. What manner of man was Abraham? We know he was a coward. He was willing to sacrifice the honor of his wife, Sarah, in order to save his own skin. And yet God classified Abraham the “friend of God.” What kind of God is the God of the Bible, who has such friends as this dishonorable man?
2/ Then, Take Moses—He was a murderer, and a fugitive from justice when Jehovah appeared to him and sent him off to Egypt as His representative. Calling him His servant, and setting him up as the leader of a great people. And God put into His bloody hands, the Table of the Law, containing the commandments—thou shalt not kill. This is hypocrisy—what kind of God would take a murderer to deliver such a message?
3/ If we did not have the New Testament we would not know the answer—we would be completely in the dark—but praise God, we do have the New Testament, and we do have the writings of Paul that clarify this for us.
4/ You’ll notice in Verse 25—which God talks about the remission of sins. God, of course, is talking about the Old Testament Saints here. Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; How is God just in calling Abraham the friend of God? How was He just in calling Moses to be the lawgiver, when he was guilty of that very sin of committing murder?
5/ You Say, Well Abraham And Moses Were Saved By The Shedding Of Blood of an innocent substitute, when they had their sacrifices and shed their blood. But let us take you for a moment to Hebrews 10: 4
Now, notice, for it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sin. Now, let me ask you a question in the light of this verse. How was it that God could pass over sin for 4,000 years when it was not taken away? And the words we want you to notice are “taken away.” The blood of bulls and goats could not take away sin.In The Old Testament Sin Was Never Taken Away. I like to think of Psalms 32:1 Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Here they were declared just— just what God did in the Old Testament. Notice, Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
6/ Now compare that thought with Hebrews 10: 4 For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. It is not sin taken away, but sin covered.
7/ Now, Again Compare That With Hebrews 9: 26 Now when these things were thus ordained, the priests went always into the first tabernacle, accomplishing the service of God.
Perhaps some folks say, you keep us turning the pages of our Bible so much. Yes, I recognize that—but still it is good for you—it is good exercise. It will get you in the habit of knowing where different portions of the Bible happen to be, and get you into the habit of studying your Bible.
So now, notice in Hebrews 9:26 But now Jesus Christ has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.
That isn’t covering sin. In the Old Testament sin was covered—that was all. God covered it up until Christ would come, and then God put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.
8/ Romans 3: 26 That He might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus Christ.
When God justifies a person—that means it make’s him absolutely clear before God— not just a pardoned sinner, not just a sinner with his sins covered, but his sins put away, and he is made just, or just as righteous as God Almighty. And when God does that, He has to be just—He doesn’t just do it and not consider the consequences, but God says He is Just in doing what He did.
9/ Now, God is able to do here, what no court in the land can ever do—no earthly judge can ever do this, a judge can let a culprit go, and pronounce a guilty man righteous, yet that doesn’t make him so. Only God can take the sinner and make him just, and He does it through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
10/ There is a remarkable thing that I was reading the other day, and it is in II Samuel and I would like to have you turn to that Scripture. It is a well-known event in the Old Testament, but there is an angle here that most people miss. In this Scripture we have the story of Absalom the son of David. I am pretty sure you remember the story, Absalom had committed murder—there had been a murder in David’s family, and Absalom had come upon his brother and killed him, and then had fled. Absalom was the son that David loved very much. Absalom was very beautiful, and all Israel loved him, but he was in exile, and Joab the leader of the armies also wanted him back, but David did absolutely nothing to bring him back. So, Joab got a woman, a very wise woman, as a matter of fact, she is called that, to present a story to David, with the plea to bring Absalom back. Now, it was a story—it wasn’t a true story. She said, I am a widow and had two sons. My two sons fought, and one of them slew his brother. Now the whole populace is up against my son, the remaining son, and they want me to kill him. But if they kill him, I will be left alone—I will be a widow worth nothing. She made her plea so strong that David said her son would be spared, not killed.
Then she made this plea, and I want you to notice, II Samuel 14: 13, 14 And the woman said, Wherefore then hast thou thought such a thing against the people of God? for the king doth speak this thing as one which is faulty, in that the king doth not fetch home again his banished.
She said, David you have made a mistake in what you have said. You said my son would be spared—how about your son? He is banished, and you won’t bring him back. Not only that, you sin against the people, and against God, for God brings back those who sin against Him are driven out. David, said, all right I will bring Absalom back. But Absalom had no atonement for his sin. He was a murderer, and David tried to do what God did, and what God does, and what was the result? Absalom was brought back, and he drove David out of his kingdom. David became a man away from his kingdom, and Absalom ruled the kingdom, having driven his father away, and it wasn’t until after Absalom was dead that David got back on his throne.
Here is the thing I want you to see. No one else can do what God does. God is the only one who makes him right. David thought he could do what God did, but he suffered for it. When you try to do what God does, when you try to devise a plan of salvation and make people just, you find that you get into trouble for you are not God and you cannot do what God does.
16/ Now let us look at the nation Israel under law when God declared them righteous and covered their sins by the blood of the sacrifice. Let’s see how righteous God declared them to be. God had delivered them from Egypt, made a path for them through the Red Sea, and all the while, they were blaspheming god’s Name, and they had idols of Egypt packet in their baggage while eating the Passover sacrifice and they were now surrounded by nations which had given themselves over to the control of Satan and worshipped various demons. Then the day came when the children of Israel arrived at a certain place in the wilderness journey, and they were camped in the plains of Moab, not far from the Jericho crossing of the Jordan. They had just destroyed the Amorites, and the people of Moab were scared to death. They thought that the children of Israel would advance on them and just mop them up. The King of Moab, was then called Balak, and in this emergency he turned to a man by the name of Balaam. And this man Balaam had somewhat of a local reputation as a prophet. And so the king said to Balaam that he knew his reputation, and whosoever was cursed by Balaam was really cursed, and whosoever was blessed by Balaam was truly blessed. And so Balak offered riches and honor to Balaam if he would curse the people of God. And the Lord appeared to Balaam and told him not to do what he had been asked to do.
Now, we don’t want to spend time gong through the time when the ass spoke to Balaam and all the different things that happened. I want to take you right to the very heart of the story, the whole point of the story. You will find that the heart of the story is that the people of Israel was a sinful people, and God blessed them in grace instead of cursing them in righteousness. It was the failure to understand the reason for this that kept Balaam seeking after a word of curse upon them.
Numbers 23: 21 Here We Have An Astounding Statement By Balaam. He, meaning God—He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath He seen perverseness in Israel, the Lord God is with him and the shout of a king is among them.
What an amazing verse! Of course, there was iniquity upon Jacob, but God refused to look at it, and, of course, there was perverseness in Israel, but God would not see it. As a matter of fact, He could not see it. It was impossible for Him to do it. God does not look upon the sins of those who put their trust in Him--He does not see sin in those who have been declared righteous by Him.
17/ Numbers 23: 19, 20 to get to the heart of what we are talking about. And he said God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?
Notice, I Balaam have received commandment to bless and the words from God to bless these people, and He, God, hath blessed, and I cannot reverse it.
God hath blessed Israel, God hath justified Israel. What a wonderful glorious fact is brought to our hearts here--God is the just and the justifier of them that believe in Him.
18/ Then Notice The End Of Romans 3: 26 that God is the justifier of them that believe in Jesus, it is all in believing in Jesus. Where is boasting, then, it is excluded. But you know men with their religion cannot get away from the fact that they think they must do something for God. You have people who tell the sinner to give his heart to God. Let me ask you. What would God do with the dirty thing anyway? The heart is incurable and desperately wicked. No, the believer is not told to give his heart to God. What is he told to do then? He is told to believe God’s Word about the blood of the cross, and about the death of Jesus Christ. Only the believer, the one who is now saved, is told to give his renewed heart to God. In other words, it is necessary that we believe in God, we are not saved by giving up our hearts to God--we are saved by believing God’s record about His Son, His death, burial and resurrection.
19/ Now let us show you this very same thing in another portion of Scripture in the Gospel of John.
John 3:14, 15, 16 You’ll read that Jesus Christ said, As Moses was lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the son of man be lifted up that whosoever, now notice, believeth in Him should not perish but have eternal life.
That verse precedes the statement probably best known in the Bible in John 3:16. But now the example of Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness, illustrates the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith, being made just by believing, and only believing.
20/ The people had journeyed from the Red Sea to the border of Edom, they were much discouraged because of the way, and they began to murmur against God and against Moses, and God sent fiery serpents among them and they bit the people and many people died. The repentant people came to Moses, acknowledged their sins and ask him to intercede for them with the Lord, and Moses did so, and the Lord answered in a manner that seemed to be foolish, for Moses was told to make a serpent of brass and put it up on a pole, and God told him that it would come to pass that every man that was bitten by the serpent and he would look upon the serpent of brass, would be healed.
21/ Now let us notice something about this illustration—First of all, the people were not told to make for themselves any remedy. They weren’t to brew any potion, they weren’t to use any salves, they weren’t to get injections of any kind. There is nothing here that they had to do. They were to cease from home remedies and turn to the divine remedy. Men had been bitten by the serpent of sin. How are they going to be cured of its bite? There is nothing but death awaiting them as a result of their wound. Unless God Himself should furnish a remedy.
22/ Then in the second place—The men in the desert were not told to help each other —they were merely told to look at the serpent, fixed on the pole. In our day there would have been many recruits for social services to aid those who were bitten, but God didn’t say, you help one another. He didn’t say you form some sort of society to help each other—NO—they were merely to look on the brazen serpent.
23/ Then in the third place—the men in the desert dying of the snake bites were not told to fight the serpents, NO, they were merely to look at the brass serpent.
24/ Then the fourth place—the men on the borders of Edom, bitten by the serpents, were not told to pray to the serpent, we are not told to pray to the serpent on the pole. Nor is the sinner told to pray for salvation. Christ has died, and salvation is to be believed, not prayed for.
25/ Then in the fifth place—God did not tell them to get rid of the serpents, to go out and kill them all. He didn’t remove the serpents. He gave them a remedy in the midst of their dilemma, and it was the remedy that was theirs by just looking at the serpent on the pole--the brass serpent on the pole. You see, boasting is excluded. The men back in the days of Moses and the brass serpent had nothing to brag about, nothing to boast about. God hates boasting. What do you have to boast about anyway? He doesn’t want us to have any.
26/ There is a wonderful verse in Jeremiah—and I would like you to notice it. It is Jeremiah 9:23 Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches:
Now notice, Let not men glory, but men do in themselves. Let not a wise man glory in his wisdom, for what is human wisdom? It is soon gone, and it doesn’t solve very much, and let not mighty men glory in his might, we often have a spectacle of mighty men going down to defeat. We are not to glory in our might. Neither are we to glory in our riches. Of course, men do, but I am sure you only have to keep in mind 1929, the time of that awful crash. Where was boasting then? It is excluded.
All the work of salvation is by God, because He is the Just One and the justifier.
AMEN
Ref: 10/14/1962 / 249 - WHAT GOD THINKS OF YOUR RELIGIOUS PRIDE / 05/20/2021
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