INTRODUCTION:

The scripture which we read a few minutes ago from Daniel describes a colossus. By definition a colossus is a huge statue, and that is what Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream.

One night the King of Babylon had a dream, like so many that we have had. It was spectacular and even disturbing, but when he awoke he couldn’t remember any of it. The only thing that he knew for sure was that it was spectacular and disturbing. Being the typical, irrational dictator which that part of the world has continually spawned, he ordered that his counselors and wise men tell him is forgotten dream and then to explain it. To make a long story short, Jehovah revealed to Daniel, who revealed to Nebuchadnezzar that this was a prophetic vision about some of the upcoming kingdoms of the earth. The head of this colossus was made of gold and represented the Babylonian empire. The chest of silver represented the people which would overthrow Babylon – the Medes and Persians. Then would follow the Greek and the Roman Empires. Each successor was represented by poorer and cheaper metals: silver, brass and iron, until the feet of the statue were made of iron mixed with clay. And when all was said and done, the colossus was going to be struck in the feet with a huge boulder And at that time the Kingdom of God would literally and directly rule over all the peoples of the earth.

This morning I would like to use Nebuchadnezzar’s image as a metaphor for "justification." I want you to remember that the head of that image was gold – typically, the most precious of metals. Then the breast was of silver, the belly and thighs of brass, the legs of iron and the feet of iron and clay. Try to keep that visual deterioration in mind this morning.

But first, I need to define once again the word "justification." This is one of those words, which really doesn’t have much use outside the world of the Bible, but it is so vital and important that we would be "justified" in preaching about it every 3 or 4 months.

To "justify" is to either make, or to declare something just – that is morally right or righteous. Biblical "justification" is the act of God, whereby He declares someone righteous. I believe that definition is made crystal clear in Romans 4:1-3 – Please turn to Romans 4. "What shall we say then that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found? For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God, for what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness." Justification is the act of God whereby He declares or counts a sinner to be righteous in His sight. Please understand this – this is very, very important: Justification is God’s declaration of righteousness in someone who is not righteous by nature.

And now I go back to Bildad’s question in Job 25 and try to answer it according to the Bible: "How can a man be justified with God?"

Sinners are declared righteous by God, by grace, by blood, by faith, and even by works.

There is a glorious statement made Romans 8:28-30 that thrills my heart every time that I read it: "We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them HE also justified: and whom HE justified, them HE also glorified."

Almost as much as I love Romans 8, I love I Corinthians 6:9-11: "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God." I could cite more scriptures but I don’t want to muddy the waters with mere verbosity.

Let it suffice to say that Jehovah God is the Source and the Head of justification.

This is so simple and necessary that I’m almost embarrassed to have to make it a point in my message. To be justified is to be "declared righteous." That means that some-one must do this work of justifying. It’s not like a smile that grows quite naturally all by itself. Justification is a very unnatural thing and it has to be done deliberately by Someone who has the authority to do it.

Last month in Oklahoma I used an illustration that I had used earlier here. I referred to Saddam Hussein’s unanimous re-election to the presidency of Iraq. That man was no more elected president than I was, and there may not be a single nation on earth who believes him. What he did was to declare himself elected president – which is no election at all. There is only one Being in, on, or above the universe which is perfectly righteous. Not even the holy angels are holy or righteous in the same sense as the Lord Himself. And since justification is the act of declaring a sinner righteous, and there is only one righteous – God. Only the Lord, only Jehovah, has the authority or the privilege to justify anyone.

A few minutes ago, I used Romans 4:1-3 to define the word "justification." Actually the definition goes on and gets more precise: "Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt, but to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works, saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin" – Romans 4:4-8.

To "justify" is to declare righteous, or to "IMPUTE righteousness," and to "impute" is to "attribute" or "assign" something. So the corollary to Bildad’s question is: "How can any but the righteous God impute justification to sinful men?" There is no one who can justify any of us, but Jehovah.

God is the golden head of the colossus of justification.

Turn to Romans 3:19 and let’s begin reading: "Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: 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."

From cover to cover, the Bible teaches that we are all sinners before God. We have all fallen disastrously short of Jehovah’s righteousness. And the Law was given to us to shut our mouths about this matter. We have no room to argue the point.

But there is such a thing as FREE justification through God’s grace. Being justified FREELY by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus."

Theologians like to say that grace is nothing less than unmerited favor of God. Or to put it in non-theological terms, grace is the undeserved kindness of the Lord. And the emphasis should be on the unearned and undeserved aspect of this divine favor.

There are a lot people who think about their entrance into Heaven as some sort of gamble. They have their seventy years on earth, in which they do all kinds of things. They draw a new hand of cards every day, and they play those cards in a variety of ways. Some days they are sinful loosers and some days they win just a little bit. And then one day the dealer is replaced by the angels of God who count up the chips. These people think that if they’ve got enough chips they can buy their way into Heaven.

But that isn’t even close to the truth. As sinners we don’t have a righteous dollar with which to ante up in the first place. We can’t buy a single card and haven’t got anything with which to gamble. We are losers, always losing before the omniscient eye of the Lord. He is righteous and we are unrighteous.

Justification has nothing to do with our cards, or how we play our hand. Justification is by the unmerited favor of the righteous God. Justification is the gracious act of God whereby he declares us righteous

The head of this colossus is the Lord and just below that is His grace towards the sinner.

Now turn to Romans 5 and lets read beginning in verse 6: "For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him." The justification of the sinner begins in the Lord Himself, and comes to the sinner through His grace. But that grace took the form of blood – Jesus’ blood.

Here is something which the average person just can’t understand: If they believe in some sort of God, they often believe that He can do whatsoever He wants. That is one of the privileges of being God – absolute sovereignty. But what they don’t understand is that God can’t do anything which is contrary to His nature. For example, God cannot lie, because deceit is sin, and God cannot sin. Neither can God cannot hate wickedness and sin, but overlook that sin in people with whom He wants to fellowship. Despite God’s desire to be gracious towards sinners, and despite his desire to justify men, something must still be done with the guilt of those sinners. And the demand that God has placed against sin is death. He told Adam, "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Romans 6:23 says, "The wages of sin is death." And Romans 5:12 says, "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned."

The Lord had a huge problem to solve in His desire to justify guilty sinners – the punishment for their sin, but that problem was met when the sinless Son of God, died on the cross. As Jesus’ blood trickled down the staff of that cross, and dripped off His hands; as Jesus’ blood spurt out of his side when that spear was thrust into it, that blood, and Jesus’ death, met the demands of the law against the sinner.

Before the crucifixion, when He was showing the disciples about his death, he said: "This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins." Peter said, "Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot:." "The blood of Jesus Christ God’s Son cleanseth us from all sin." Truly "He loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood" – Revelation 1:5. "Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?"

In the death of Christ on the cross, there was blood shed sufficient to pay the penalty for everyone of those to whom the Lord chose to be gracious. Jesus died specifically and deliberately for all those for whom He intended to justify. And in this way justification is by blood.

Justification begins in God, and comes to us through grace and Jesus’ blood.

Here are three Bible verses which declare this fact: Romans 3:28 – "Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith." Romans 5:1 – "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" Galatians 3:24 – "Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith."

Is there much difference between iron and gold?

I wear two rings symbolizing my marriage to Judy, and they are both made of gold. These rings are not made of iron, but of gold, in order to express the value of Judy’s love. If I had bought Judy an iron wedding ring, do you think that we’d still be married after nearly 34 years?

I suppose, that there was some iron used in the building of my car, but I doubt that there is any gold.

Gold is far to valuable to be used to build a car.

Clearly, the Bible declares that sinners are saved by faith, but man’s faith is far less valuable than the silver of the grace of God, or the brass of the blood of Christ. In fact, without the blood of Christ, our faith would be useless and pointless. People around the world have a million uses and versions of faith. For example, many Americans have faith in the wisdom and intelligence of the President. There is religious faith and there is secular faith, but not even religious faith necessarily justifies anyone.

We have to look back up our colossus to begin to understand the relation of faith to justification. Earlier we read a couple of verses which said: "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." Remember that we defined grace as the unmerited or unearned favor of God. Justification began in God Himself, and came to the sinner through the unmerited favor of God. The Bible teaches that when Jesus shed His blood on the cross, it wasn’t spilt at random. Jesus was dying in the place of, and for the sins of, specific sinners. He said "This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed FOR MANY for the remission of sins."

So did our faith make God decide to be gracious toward us? Or did your faith somehow telephone the past and speak to the Lord Jesus, convincing Him to include you as He died on the cross? No – the Bible teaches that justification was begun before us, and not by us.

So how is it then that justification is by faith? Permit me to use a rather poor, old, tired illustration: Let’s say that you gave some money to help feed starving children in Afghanistan. Ah, but you didn’t realize that the organization to which you gave the money was lying. You actually gave your $20 to an organization which supports terrorism. The FBI finds out about your gift, and since you have dark hair and bushy eye-brows, you are convicted of treason against the United States of America. The sentence against you is death, and you are locked into death row, facing electrocution next Friday, but you have a friend in the White House who convinces the President that even though you are technically guilty, you thought you were doing something good, and, after all, it was only $20.00. The President is sympathetic and grants you a pardon and orders your release from jail. But your friend is in Washington DC, and you are in Washington State – in Walla Walla. Your friend has the pardon in is pocket, but he has to fly from Washington to Washington. He flies first to Chicago, then Denver, then Seattle, then Spokane and then back to Pasco. Then he has to rent a car and drive to Walla Walla. In the mean time you are stewing in jail under the death penalty, only hours away from electric chair. Eventually your friend reaches the penitentiary with the news that you are a free man and you are released. But in reality you had been pardoned a couple of days earlier.

How does faith justify the sinner? Actually, faith is something after the fact. Faith brings the enjoyment and application of justification to the soul and the conscience. Faith permits the news of justification to thrill the heart of that believer, but it is the Lord who justifies us, not ourselves, and not our faith. Every justified soul will believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, but it is not his faith which brings about his justification.

There is a sense faith receives this justification.

Please turn to James 2 and lets read from verse 15 to the end of the chapter.

Please notice here that James is arguing that dry, useless, loveless faith, is dead. Faith which doesn’t make us want to help others, and bless others, and even save others is not Bible faith. He even points to Rahab in the Book of Joshua and says that Rahab was justified by works. In this James SEEMS to contradict the Apostle Paul, who said: "Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. – Galatians 2:16 " But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith." "What shall we say then that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found? For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God."

How can the Bible be true when it says that Rahab was justified by works, when Paul says that is impossible?

There isn’t the slightest bit of conflict between these two men. Rahab was justified by the grace of God, through the merits of the shed blood of Jesus Christ. And as we saw when we studied Book of Joshua, Rahab was justified by faith, trusting the God of Israel. But she was justified by works in that her faith changed her life, and she risked her life to save the messengers of God. In a sense God’s justification gave feet to Rahab’s faith.

Before God, she was justified by grace through faith, but she was justified in the eyes of Joshua and the nation of Israel by her works. God’s grace justified Rahab, but it blessed her heart by faith and it blessed Israel through her works.

Let me close with one other aspect of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream: Do you remember that a stone was cut out of a mountain without the use of any of men’s hands, and that stone was flung at the feet of the colossus and crushed them, bringing down the whole thing. I’d like to apply the illustration this way:

The man who thinks that by his works, he will somehow earn the justification of God – on the day of judgment that man will find that he is crushed. Justification is the work of God, through grace and the blood of the Jesus Christ. If we are relying on our works to justify us before God, we will be more than disappointed – We will be eternally crushed.

Justification and its resultant forgiveness of sin, is by the unmerited favor of God.

"Repent of your sins, and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou, too, shalt be justified." 

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