“Peace With God” One Part Only

Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 882 -- taken from Closed Captioning Text

--Brother Phil Enlow: Well, I’m gonna launch out by faith on something this morning. Turn if you will to Romans chapter 5. And I’d like to read the…particularly the first three verses here…well the first two verses actually. I believe it’s a good jumping off point. I tell you, I believe that God wants to be, not just some great figure somewhere, but I believe He really wants to be someone that we know personally…

( congregational amens ).

…and that we come into a real relationship with, because nothing else is really Christianity…it’s not biblical Christianity. There’s a lot of religion that takes the name Christianity that doesn’t know anything about that. But I believe with all my heart God wants to enter into a covenant relationship with every individual in this place. And it needs to be real and it needs to be personal. And if it’s anything less than that then we just have a charade, at least to the extent that we have that.

I’d like to read beginning in verse 1, as I said. “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.” (NIV).

I’ll tell you there’s more in that than you could bring out in a message or two. But I believe that that is a description of what God desires to bring every one of us into. And, the greatest…I guess the central thought is ‘peace with God’…that’s what God desires to bring everybody to. And I believe when someone really comes into the relationship that God desires through the greatness of what Jesus has done, through His great grace and all of that…the ultimate, the end result is peace with God.

Now peace with God is the opposite of a state of war, isn’t it? You know, in the beginning God created the world, and He created it good, and He created it holy, and He created it with a purpose. He had a reason for what He did. It wasn’t just, okay, let’s see what happens. There was a reason. There was an end that He had in mind in what He created. But we know what happened. Our first parents said, “No, we’ve got our own ideas about what we want to do and we’re gonna go that way,” and so we see what has happened to our world as a result basically of man being at war with his Maker. And the fruit of that, the characteristic of that is simply that we want our own way and not God’s way. You know the prophet Isaiah said, for all we…all of us like sheep have done what?

( congregational response).

We’ve gone astray and we have turned everyone to what?

( congregational response ).

His own way…that’s the problem. We’ve got our way and God’s got His own plans and so there’s a conflict there. And there is just absolutely a war there until we give up or we continue in our own way and we wind up being judged and cast out. There is no other outcome that can happen. It’s one or the other. We either come into a place of total surrender to Him or we wind up in the camp of rebels. And there’s a judgment day coming, isn’t there?

And so, we are born into a race whose natural tendency, whose natural propensity is to be at war with its Maker and there’s…there’s just nothing else in us. There’s no power that we have to be any different. And it’s a humbling thing to come to a place where we recognize how desperate our need, how desperate our condition is before a God who has all power and all knowledge and who is a God of love…whose purposes toward us are loving and wonderful.

If we could even begin to imagine what He has for us, it would just blow our minds. But I believe God can reveal enough of it to where we can latch hold of it, we can take hold of it by faith. But that’s the thing. There’s got to be a peace with God. But what is it that separates, besides our tendency to our own will, what is it that separates us from God?

( congregational response ).

Sin, isn’t it? There’s not a person here who has not sinned against God. In fact, the truth of the matter is, in ourselves that’s all we are capable of. That’s all that comes out of us is something that is contrary. We don’t just miss the mark a little. We’re going the other way. There’s just such a propensity about us that we absolutely have piled up sins to heaven. And the worst of it is, there’s nothing we can do about it. There’s not a thing you can do.

I want to say it carefully…there’s nothing you can do. I didn’t say there’s no answer to it. I said there’s nothing you can do. Boy there’s people all over the place that struggle and try to be Christians. They’re trying to do better. They’re trying to resolve…oh God, I see this particular thing that’s wrong in me. I’m gonna try harder. I’m gonna go through the 12-step program. And there’s some good principles in that. I’m not coming against that as a practical thing for some things.

But, you know what I’m trying to say. That won’t make a Christian out of you. Coming to church all your life won’t make a Christian out of you. We need what He’s talking about here. We need to come into a place where our sins are out of the way. What does justified mean? We’re justified through faith. What does justified mean? It means to declare righteous! It has to do with being right with God, with there being nothing in between us and God, nothing to cause us to run and hide.

What did Adam and Even do when they were conscious of their sin? They realized…something happened on the inside. They had had an unbroken, pure, holy fellowship with God. Nothing had intervened. It was just wonderful. Hey, the Lord’s coming. Let’s go spend time with…this is wonderful. Oh Lord, look at the beautiful things You’ve made. Isn’t this…our hearts are overwhelmed with Your goodness to us.

And then one day, they made a choice to rebel. And the result was what? They ran and hid. They knew…they knew something had happened and it made them afraid when they heard the voice of God. They were afraid. They knew something was wrong, something was amiss. Oh my God, God wants to take a people beyond the point where we sense the barrier between us and God, where thinking about God doesn’t fill us with fear, but with joy!

( congregational amens ).

Isn’t this a description of somebody who’s come into that kind of a relationship. There’s peace, there’s a sense of grace, there’s a sense of standing, there’s a sense of rejoicing, there’s sense of hope…all of those wonderful things that you and I have no power to attain to. There’s not a thing you can do to take hold of God and say, oh God because of this thing that I have done, because of anything about me…I have attained to this relationship. No, no. We are dependant on God.

( congregational amens ).

There’s not…as I said, there’s not…we’re talking about justification now. I’m gonna ask the Lord to help me not to jump around too much here. But what’s the answer to sins? And, of course, we sang about it this morning! It’s…when you and I could do nothing about it, when we didn’t even know what was going on, before we were ever born, for one thing…when we were going hard the other way, God made a provision for our sins!

He charged Someone else with everything you’ve ever done! You think of the things that make you feel the worst, the lowest, the dirtiest…and then know from the Word of God that God took those things, things that nobody else knows about, no other human being knows the corruption that’s gone on in the inside, things you’ve done that nobody knows about, but God does! And He took those things and He put them on His Son. He became the guilty One and He did it willingly. He said, “Charge Me. I will bear the wrath that is justly due because of sin.”

I tell you, for God to declare us righteous, something had to happen to take care of the sin question. There’s no other answer to sin but the wrath of God. He cannot just say, oh well, okay…we’ll overlook it. There is a wrath that is poured out upon those who set their wills against Him. But Jesus won it all. Jesus stepped into that gap and He took your sins and He took mine upon Himself and He opened a door where God can…where the sins are gone. Oh praise God! “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.” (KJV). Oh my God…do you deserve that?

( congregational response ).

No. I don’t either. But He’s done it. And that state of justification, of being right with Him, of being in a condition where we could stand before Him, and Him say, “That’s a righteous man,” that condition comes about, not because of anything I do. It comes about because of what He did. And I come to believe, my whole hope, my whole trust comes to rest in that and in that alone. Praise the Lord!

You know sometime we need to learn to sing that song, “In Christ Alone.” We had a group sing it at one of our sings. But oh my, what a rich message…in Christ alone I stand. Bless the Lord. There’s no other hope…and of course the old hymn. “On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.”

Some of you know about that sinking sand. You’ve tried, you’ve struggled, yet you’ve sunk. It hasn’t held, it hasn’t done the job. But I’ll tell you what, there’s a place where we can stand before God and we can look up and know that there’s nothing between us. In spite of all of our weakness and all that we are, we can have a perfect peace with God. Praise God. Praise God!

And it’s through our Lord Jesus Christ, isn’t it? And it’s through Him, through whom we have gained access. There’s a place here now…think of this in a sense as a place in the Spirit that we, in ourselves, we can’t get in there. The door is barred. There’s no…we don’t have the key. We have no way to get into this place. We need access. See God, through Christ, has given us access into the very holiest.

There was a place in the temple in the Old Testament where atonement was made for the people. It was called the Holy of Holies. Only the priests could go in one time a year and he made a sacrifice for the people. It was a type of something that was yet to come. That came when Jesus went to the cross. He was our High Priest. He carried His own blood into the sanctuary, if you want to call it that, in heaven. I’m sure that’s just figures of speech. But the reality is real. What He did is real. And the Word says we have access through the blood of Jesus into the holiest place in heaven. Praise God! Think of what you are and think of what heaven is like and the holiness, the purity of it all. And yet God has opened a way to have access to a holy God and to be able to come before Him with confidence and to know that there’s nothing between us.

You know, I remember I used to hear a song, I guess probably when I was growing up. It was one of those songs that tended to be sung as a solo. “Nothing Between My Soul And The Master.” Some of you may remember the song. Livera, you know it. Some of the ones that have been around a while. It’s a great old song. Nothing between my soul and the master…I’ll tell you, that’s peace with God, isn’t it?

( congregational response ).

That’s peace. The state of war is gone. We’ve laid down our arms and we’ve said, Lord it’s your way and Your way alone. Yes, I know there’s a lot wrong with me. There’s a lot You’ve got to do to fit me for heaven, but Lord, that’s the way I want to go. I’ve left the other behind. I’ve turned my back upon it. I’m Yours and I’m Yours alone. I’m in Your hands. I can’t do what needs to be done. All I can do is cast myself upon You and You’ve promised to do the saving. And Lord, I believe You’re able. You’re able to save completely, to the uttermost, those who come to God by Christ. Oh, praise God for His provision!

( congregational amens ).

Praise God! We’ve gained access into this place. And what He says…it’s grace, it’s access into grace. Now grace is…it’s many things. It’s certainly an undeserved favor. That’s the traditional definition of it. It’s something that we don’t deserve, but it is a favor that God shows us even though we don’t deserve it. But He’s letting us know that if you don’t know it already, that you don’t have a right to be there in yourself. There’s nothing about you that qualifies you to be in this place. It’s a state of grace where God shows you a favor. He calls you His child. He receives you on the basis of what His Son did. It’s grace that He extends to you.

But what do we have to do to get access to that? That’s the thing. And he says, in which we now stand. Oh, praise God! I need a place to stand, don’t you? I can look back on this past week and know I need it. There’s plenty of things that happened where I needed a place to stand. Lord, if I had tried to rest upon me and my efforts and all my perfect walking with God, I would have fallen in the…I would have sunk. But so would you.

( congregational amens ).

Every one of us…it’s not to encourage that. God’s bringing us out of that, but He’s not done with the process yet. But oh, I stand, not because of anything that I am. You know the ensemble has sometimes sung the song about standing. “We wrestle not with flesh and blood, but the powers of all darkness.” And then the line, “…oh we shall stand.”

My God! God wants us to have a rest and a confidence. That’s a description of a New Testament Christian. That’s the reality that God wants to accomplish in our lives. And I’ll tell you, I just have a sense today that there’s still people in our midst that need this, that haven’t entered into real spiritual rest. God desires to enter into a state of peace, of hope, of love shed abroad in your heart, that’s also in that passage…of a joy that carries you through the darkest times and gives you a certain hope for the future. God wants to do that for you.

And so I’m gonna put you in God’s hands. I’m gonna say the same kinds of things that…praise God…the prince of preachers, I forgot…Spurgeon would tell people. If God’s dealing with you, don’t you leave your seat. You cry out to God right where you’re at. But wherever and however it happens…if you’ve got to get alone in the middle of the night and you wrestle with God, you wrestle. You fight. You contend. You do whatever you’ve got to do to make yourself available for God to do this supernatural work. It is a supernatural work.

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