I’m going to show you a list of some common English sayings on the screen.
Tell me you recognize them.
A thorn in the side
Eat, drink, and be merry
Handwriting on the wall.
The blind leading the blind.
Like a lamb to the slaughter
Do not throw your pearls before swine
Can a leopard change its spots?
The skin of your teeth
Feet of clay
Fly in the ointment
Salt of the earth
By the sweat of your brow
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone
There’s nothing new under the sun
Did you recognize all of them?
Good!
Now, what did they all have in common?
That’s right… they were all from Scripture:
A thorn in the side (2 Corinthians 12:7).
Eat, drink, and be merry (Luke 12:19).
Handwriting on the wall (Daniel 5).
The blind leading the blind. Luke 6:39
Like a lamb to slaughter (Isaiah 53:7).
Do not throw pearls before swine (Matthew 7:6).
Can a leopard change its spots? (Jeremiah 13:23).
The skin of our teeth (Job 19:20).
Feet of clay (Daniel 2:33-34).
Fly in the ointment (Ecclesiastes 10:1).
Salt of the earth (Matthew 5:13).
By the sweat of your brow (Genesis 3:19).
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone (John 8:7).
Nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9).
Lots of people use those terms and they'll often use them without realizing where those sayings came from. Most folks don’t realize how deeply Bible phrases and words have influenced our English language, and that’s especially true of the word we’re going to consider this morning:
JUSTIFY or JUSTIFICATION
Those sound like $20 words.
Many people would think no one ever uses those terms anymore.
But they’d be wrong.
These words are so interwoven into our culture, that even I was surprised how often people use them.
But before we get to that, let’s consider how God uses these words.
Romans 5 says “… we have now been JUSTIFIED by (Jesus’) blood” Romans 5:9
And “The judgment followed one sin (Adam’s) and brought condemnation, but the gift (Christ’s death) followed many trespasses and brought JUSTIFICATION” Rom. 5:16
And “the result of one act of righteousness (Christ’s sacrifice on the cross) was JUSTIFICATION that brings life for all men” Romans 5:18
So what does justified and justification mean to God?
It means that God took away our sins so that it would be “JUST AS IF I’D” never sinned.
You get it?
Justified… “just as if I’d" never sinned?
I wish I’d thought of that.
I could have patented it and retired a rich man.
It’s so simple and powerful and it rightly explains what justification is.
The blood of Jesus removed us from judgment by covering our sins.
Jesus made the sins “go away” in the eyes of God.
And because of the blood of Jesus I’ve been made “RIGHT” with God.
So Justification is when I am proved “Right” before God because of the blood of Jesus
As I researched how people use “justify” online I found phrases like these:
“The end doesn’t JUSTIFY the means.”
(Your objective doesn’t make your methods “RIGHT”)
Another phrase asks:
“How can you JUSTIFY what you’ve done?”
(You need to show me that what you did was the “RIGHT THING” to do)
You’ve heard those before haven’t you?
Both of them are basically saying:
“I am JUSTIFIED when I can prove that what I’ve done is the RIGHT THING.”
ILLUS: In fact, that’s why the word “justify” is used… even in Math class
You remember when they asked you to “Justify your answer” in Math?
They were saying: “Prove that you’ve arrived at the right answer in the right way.”
Show me that you did the RIGHT thing.
(Pause)
I always hated that!
In fact, most math students have hated that.
Why? Because they hated having to JUSTIFY their answers.
They wanted to guess at the answer.
They wanted to fudge on what the RIGHT answer was and they couldn’t do that if they had to show their work and justify how they arrived at the answer they gave.
But justifying their answer implied there was only one right answer.
Fudging wouldn’t work, and students struggled with that.
That’s justification meant in math class.
And it means the same thing in everyday life.
People struggle with this concept of justification because they know there is a RIGHT answer but they don’t like that right answer. They either have failed to measure up to that answer… or they don’t want to. And because of that, they can’t justify what they’ve done in their lives.
ILLUS: Years ago, in “Parade” magazine, I read comments like these about “Cheating” from teenagers:
Jason age 16 said “Cheating is not okay if there is a victim, as in cheating in a relationship. Cheating is morally wrong, but schools put a lot of pressure on students to succeed, and they don’t always look at a student’s effort. I only cheat in school and not in anything else.”
Will age 15 said “Cheating is okay as long as you don’t get caught. I’m a pretty average student with generally B-pluses and A-minuses. When I come home, if I’m tired, I won’t study for a test the next day. Teachers are so stupid, you can just lay a book on the floor opened to the right page.”
(Parade Magazine 10/17/99 “Fresh Voices”)
Do you see what these kids were doing?
They were “justifying” their actions.
But theirs was a DIFFERENT KIND of justification.
They knew they were not supposed to cheat… but they do.
And they can’t justify their actions based on what they know is RIGHT, so they move the goal post.
They create an excuse - or a JUSTIFICATION - for why they should be allowed to cheat.
The teachers are stupid, they’ve been up too late to study, the school doesn’t judge them on effort but on performance… and on and on and on.
They can’t justify their behavior based on what is right, so they create a NEW standard of right. And then they use that “new” standard they JUSTIFY why they should be allowed to cheat.
ILLUS: I remember seeing a cartoon years ago, where the character shot an arrow at a wall (pause) and then he went up to the wall and painted the target around the arrow.
That’s what those kids are doing.
They’re painting the target around their behavior so they can JUSTIFY themselves and say that they hit the mark.
And it’s not just teenagers who do this kind of thing.
Adults do it too.
And why do they do it?
Well, Romans 3:23 tell us “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…”
Everybody has failed the test.
Now this creates a problem for most people because we don’t like failing.
But we do
We sin. We fall short. We mess up, etc.
And deep inside us it bugs us to realize we’re never really going to get to the point where we can JUSTIFY ourselves before God! He’s perfect and we’re not!
The title of the sermon this morning is: “How can you justify that?”
Well you can’t.
You’re never going to.
You and I are never going to get to the point where we can JUSTIFY ourselves with God.
We’re never going to get to the point where we can prove that we are RIGHTeous before Him.
And it frustrates us!!!!
And you know WHY it frustrates us?
Because it throws us off balance.
ILLUS: Years ago I knew a young man who worked in a factory.
It was a noisy place and they required the workers to have ear plugs.
Then some company got the bright idea of pouring liquid gel into people’s ears to form a custom fitting ear plug.
Sounds like a good idea doesn’t it?
Well, not for this young man.
Something went terribly wrong and the process damaged his inner ear.
Do you know what happens when you damage your inner ear?
You lose your balance.
This man couldn’t walk.
He was nauseated all the time.
His inner ear was damaged and threw off his balance
Now the Bible tells us we have a MORAL “inner ear”.
It’s called our conscience.
If we do something that we shouldn’t be doing or if we engage in sin that we can’t fix on our own, then our conscience can get damaged … and it can throw us off. It will unbalance our lives.
Because we can’t “justify” our own lives.
We can’t line up our lives with what we know we should do, with what we know is right.
Now people to this reality in one of two ways:
• They either move the goalposts (they redefine normal).
• OR they try to balance things out by compensating
They try to do enough good things to compensate the bad things.
I mean, they’re still a little off balance… but they feel better about themselves.
It’s kind of like - now they have crutches and they can at least walk fairly normal.
But even when they convince themselves that that’s working, there’s still this nagging doubt, this underlying discomfort, this occasional feeling of failure that sweeps over them because they can’t quite line up their morality with the RIGHTNESS they know they should be doing.
.
If only there was a magical way of line up their lives with what we know is RIGHT.
A way of lining things up so that even when we don’t do what is right we could still find peace.
That’s what Romans 5 is all about.
It’s all about God lining our lives up with His rightness.
We can’t justify ourselves… so God offered to do it for us.
“… we have now been justified by (Jesus’) blood” Romans 5:9
And “The judgment followed one sin (Adam’s) and brought condemnation, but the gift (Christ’s death) followed many trespasses and brought justification” Romans 5:16
And “the result of one act of righteousness (Christ’s sacrifice) was justification that brings life for all men” Romans 5:18
By that one act of righteousness we have been made “just as if I’d never sinned.”
Through the blood of Jesus our sins/failures/stupidities have all been covered.
They don’t exist anymore
And God has made it so that our lives now line up with Him.
As I was looking at how our culture uses the term “Justify” I found our world actually uses the word just like God does in Romans 5.
There is a setting where “Justify” means:
“To make it so that everything lines up as it should.”
ILLUS: I have a computer in the office.
I type out the sermons and newsletters and correspondence.
I used to type that stuff out on a typewriter, and it was always going to look like this:
(I showed a paragraph where the text lined up on the left margin)
That’s all I could do.
And it has been so much a part of how we used to do things, it’s still the default setting on Word processors in computers.
Now notice in the picture ALL THE LETTERS line up on the left margin (or the left side of the page). But on the right side the words don’t line up. All along the right margin… everything is ragged.
Now, on the computer, all I have to do is punch a few keys and
(I showed the same paragraph on the screen where the text was aligned on the right margin)
I can make all the words line up on the right side of the page, or the Right Margin.
Notice how straight the right side is?
But all the words on the LEFT are ragged.
Now nobody ever writes papers like this – it’s just weird.
Now, I can punch a few more keys and I can center all the text.
(I showed the same paragraph centered)
Notice how BOTH sides of the paragraph are ragged now.
Isn’t that neat?
I really didn’t do all that… it was the computer that did it.
But did you know that Newspapers and books you get at the Library… they don’t do any of that?
That’s right.
Take a look at this copy of the Pharos Tribune and tell me what you see?
(I showed a copy of an old newspaper page on the screen)
What’s different here?
That’s right, the words line up perfectly on both the left and right side of the page.
Do you know it’s called when they do that?
It’s called “JUSTIFYING the text.”
Everything LINES UP perfectly.
(Purists say it looks neater, creates a perfect shape and is easier to read).
With just a few strokes of the keys on my computer… I can justify any text.
(I showed the same paragraph – this time justified).
And now, my point is this: even in my Word processor I found that the world around me understands what justification means:
Justification is when all sides LINE UP perfectly.
When a text is not justified…the edges are ragged.
And in the same way, when our lives are not “justified” at least one part of our lives is going to show the raggedness of sin.
It’s this raggedness that causes people to experience nagging doubts and discomfort.
It’s this raggedness that overwhelms them with a feeling of failure… because people KNOW can’t quite line up their morality with the RIGHTNESS they know they should be doing.
And so they struggle with guilt and shame and self-hatred and loathing.
And they can’t figure out how to make it GO AWAY.
And you know why they can’t figure out how to make it GO AWAY?
Because they (in and of themselves) they can’t make it GO AWAY
God knows that.
He created us in HIS image.
He knows how we’re supposed to function.
And He knows that sin gums up the works.
So… He did for us, what we couldn’t do for ourselves.
He stepped in and justified the margins of our lives with blood of Jesus.
ILLUS: I want to close with the words of a song by Matthew West
(© 2012 Songs of Southside Independent Music Publishing)
"Hello, my name is REGRET - I’m pretty sure we have met
Every single day of your life I’m the whisper inside that won’t let you forget
Hello, my name is DEFEAT I know you recognize me
Just when you think you can win I’ll drag you right back down again ‘Til you’ve lost all belief
Oh, these are the voices. Oh, these are the lies and I have believed them for the very last time
That’s how life is without Jesus… regret, defeat and constant doubting of God’s love for me.
But once God has justified us… once the Blood of Jesus has covered our sins… that changes
Hello, my name is CHILD OF THE ONE TRUE KING
I’ve been saved, I’ve been changed, I have been set free
"Amazing Grace" is the song I sing
Hello, my name is CHILD OF THE ONE TRUE KING
I am no longer defined by all the wreckage behind
The one who makes all things new has proven it's true
Just take a look at my life
What love the Father has lavished upon us that we should be called His children
I am a child of the one true King
What love the Father has lavished upon us that we should be called His children"
(At that point I played a video of the song)
CLOSE: My point is this…
This isn’t about church attendance or church membership.
This is about realizing what God has done for you.
Neither you nor I can ever “justify” ourselves.
God did that for us.
When we died to our sins, and were buried in the waters of baptism, we rose up to be a new creation. A child of the king.
Now, after we’ve become Christians, we’re still going to stumble once in a while.
We’re still going to sin and fail.
But God has an answer for that as well.
Just confess your sins to Him.
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9
The key thing to remember is this: you will never be righteous enough to be able to justify yourself before God. None of us will ever be that good. But God has promised that, by the blood of Jesus, HE will justify us and make us His children.
INVITATION
