I want to study with you briefly about a wonderful, wonderful subject.  It is a subject that is so wonderful that the apostle Paul wrote whole books in the New Testament in which he concentrated on this subject.  I have some notes here from one of his books where he talks about this subject, but maybe instead of going into that in detail, maybe we will try to make it a little more simple.

I want to introduce what we are going to study, by saying what happened during that period in the Adventist Church when there was an attempt made to show that we were in error on what we had believed about 1844, about the Sanctuary, and about the Investigative Judgment.

So what came to be called a new theology was introduced into our colleges, our universities, and long before the year 2000 they were introduced in almost all of our churches.  This new theology, we discovered, had a radical new interpretation of righteousness by faith.  I want to talk to you a little bit about the subject of righteousness by faith.

I grew up in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.  My father was not a minister, but my parents were missionaries.  We were missionaries for a time in Rangoon, Burma—now the land of Myanmar.  My parents also worked at the Madison Sanitarium and Hospital.  So I grew up among Seventh-day Adventists and among Seventh-day Adventist physicians and ministers, going to Seventh-day Adventist schools. 

I studied theology at Walla Walla College and later at the Seventh-day Adventist Seminary at Berrien Springs, so rightly or wrongly, I thought that I knew something about what Seventh-day Adventists believed and taught. 

Several years before the major attack against some of our principal doctrines occurred, there were rumblings about some new ideas about righteousness by faith and what it meant.  I remember well when those things were going on.  I remember when my brother, Marshall, was attending Union College and I was a pastor at that time in North Dakota.  He came to visit me and we started discussing some things in Romans.  It was then I heard about some of these new ideas. 

Let me try to explain to you as briefly as I know how, the difference between what we were taught when I was growing up in the Adventist Church and the new ideas about righteousness by faith.

When I was growing up in the Adventist Church, we were taught the subject of righteousness by faith, but we were taught that the subject of righteousness by faith involved two things.  We were taught that the subject of righteousness by faith involved first of all, the forgiveness of sins, which is sometimes called “justification” or just pardon.  But it involved more than that.  It involved a second step.  Righteousness by faith involved not only forgiveness of sins, but also it involved the act of Christ imparting His righteousness to you so you were enabled to live a different life.  We called that “sanctification,” or sometimes living holiness.  We were always taught that righteousness by faith involved those two things.

But in the 1960s and 1970s we began to hear new teachings.  If you want to read a book on this, a book was written in 1976 by a man who was not a Seventh-day Adventist.  His name was Paxton, and he wrote a book called, The Shaking of Adventism.

He goes into detail and says that the Adventists did not believe the same about righteousness by faith as Martin Luther and the sixteenth century reformers.  It was said that these people in the sixteenth century, the reformers, taught, and they believed in a completely different idea of righteousness by faith than did Adventists. 

By the way, there was some truth in that.  It was not all true, but there was some truth in it.  He claimed that righteousness by faith was justification alone, the forgiveness of sins alone, and it was on the basis of the forgiveness of sins alone and justification that a person was saved. 

We not only heard tapes, we read articles, we looked in journals and I again started taking out my Greek New Testament and studying things word by word by word.  Is this really what it said?  Is this not what it says?

Now, friends, you know that God used Martin Luther to teach truth about righteousness by faith—you know that!  But here is what many people do not understand.  God has a particular truth that needs to come to His people at different times.  He has certain truths that He sends to His people at different times in world history.

Because you understand a certain truth at a certain time does not necessarily mean that you understand all truth for all time.  You see, it is not that historically we did not believe what Martin Luther taught about righteousness by faith, because we happen to believe that.  We believe what Martin Luther taught about righteousness by faith, plus we believe something more that was not revealed to him.

So rather than go through verse by verse in Romans or Galatians, I thought that we would study, very briefly, about righteousness by faith from the standpoint of the Sanctuary.  Maybe this will help you see, very easily and clearly, where it is that we are different from the sixteenth century reformers, even though we believe what they believed.

There is some confusing terminology even in the Bible about the Sanctuary.  Ellen White said that the same word does not always mean the same thing.  If you look back in the writings of Moses, then go forward in the Bible and study what it says about the Sanctuary, you will find something interesting. 

There are two different terminologies in the Old Testament for the two different apartments of the Sanctuary.  In one terminology the tent is called the Tabernacle of the Congregation.  In the Bible, that is a name for the first apartment.  When the first is called the Tabernacle of the Congregation, then the second one is called the Holy Place. 

Do you follow that?  Sometimes it is called the Tabernacle of the Congregation and the other apartment  is called the Holy Place. The second apartment is sometimes called the Holy Place in Leviticus.

But there is also another terminology; the one with which Adventists probably are more familiar, in which the first apartment is called the Holy Place and the second apartment is called either the Holy of Holies or the Most Holy Place.  So when you are reading in the Bible about the Sanctuary, you have to pay attention to which set of terms is being used: the Tabernacle of the Congregation and the Holy Place or the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place.

In these two apartments, there was some furniture.  In the Most Holy Place there was just one article of furniture, and that was the ark.  Of course, inside the ark were the Ten Commandments and the top lid of the ark we call, in English, The Mercy Seat.  In the first apartment there was an altar of incense, sometimes called the golden altar.  It was overlaid with gold.

The altar outside, in the court, was not overlaid with gold, it was brass.  There was the candlestick and there was the Table of Shewbread, Bread of the Presence.  Now, this is what the reformers understood.  We are not going to talk in their language; we are going to talk in the language of the Sanctuary.

The Roman Catholic Church had taught the people—now they say that they do not believe this, but this is what the common people believed.  In fact, Tetzel said, “As soon as the coin hits the bottom of the bucket, the soul will be released from Purgatory.”  And so they taught a system of indulgences—and, by the way, they still teach this.  If you look in a Roman Catholic Catechism, they still teach and they still believe in the doctrine of indulgences.

So in the Roman Catholic Church, the people believed that when you paid money, the souls of your relatives were released from purgatory.  If you paid money, anything could happen.  You could have your sins forgiven by paying money.  Now, think this through, if you can get your sins forgiven by paying money for a high mass or whatever it is, what is the difference between that and righteousness by works?

There is no difference.  That is righteousness by works.  Now technically, the Roman Catholic theologian would say to you, Well, no, we really do not believe it that way, we believe that you are saved by grace and the Church dispenses the grace.  But, of course, if the church will not dispense the grace unless you pay money, what is the common person going to think?  What conclusion is he going to make?

Technically they would say, No, we believe in salvation by grace, but if you have to pay money to get the grace, the average person on the street cannot tell the difference between that and salvation by works, or righteousness by works.  That is what Martin Luther attacked, this idea that you could be saved by works.  

A short time after Erasmus had first published an edition of the Greek New Testament, Martin Luther took that and translated it into German. 

About the same time, William Tyndale was doing the very same thing for the English people.  When William Tyndale was captured and put in prison, he sent a letter, a very pathetic letter.  He went to a public official who had a lot of power, and pled with him. For what would you plead, if you were in prison?

Well, he has to have a little bit warmer clothing because he was suffering from the cold.  But the main thing that he asked for was, “Could you arrange for me to be sent a Hebrew Bible and a Hebrew grammar?”  

You see, he was still trying to finish translating the Bible into English.  And when the common people in England and Germany got the opportunity to read the Bible in their own language and saw what the Bible said and saw that there was no such thing as salvation by paying money to the church, the Bible does not teach that, they found out that your sins are forgiven by grace alone through faith. 

That is righteousness by faith.  It comes to you through the grace of Christ, but it comes to you, not when you pay money to the church, but when you exercise faith in the Lord.  When that happens, the sinner is outside of the Sanctuary, in the court, the sacrifice was made outside of the Sanctuary.  The sacrifice was made in this world and when the sinner has faith in Jesus and puts his trust in Jesus, his guilt is taken away.  Where does his guilt go?  The guilt is transferred to the sacrifice.  

By the way, in the Hebrew language it is very interesting, the word sin offering and the word sin is the very same word.  Did you know that?  In the Hebrew Bible the word “sin offering” and the word “sin” is the very same word.  You have to look at the context to tell which way to translate it. 

Paul says, concerning Jesus, that God made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.  

What does that mean?  When you come to Jesus as your Saviour from sin, you confess your sins and you put your trust in Him.  Your sin, your guilt, is taken away from you and transferred to Him and His righteousness is taken and transferred to you.

Now we will not get into all the refineries of debate that the Protestants and the Catholics got into over the terminology of what we have just described.  But when you come to Jesus, your sin is transferred to Him.  How is it transferred to Him?  It is through His blood.  Without the shedding of blood, Paul says in Hebrews 9, there is no forgiveness.  You can also read that in Leviticus.

It is the blood that makes the atonement for the soul.  So when I come to Jesus as a sinner and I confess my sins, and I put my trust in Him, my guilt is transferred to Him.  Now He is up there in the heavenly Sanctuary.  My guilt is transferred to Him and through His blood, my sin is covered.  The blood atonement.  No atonement without blood is one of the main teachings of the Bible, in both the Old and the New Testaments. 

There is no atonement; there is no forgiveness without the shedding of blood.  That is why Jesus poured out His blood on the cross of Calvary, to pay the price of sin.  Notice what happens when I pray—I confess my sins to the Lord; I put my trust in Him; my guilt, the guilt of my sin, is transferred from me to Jesus, in the Most Holy Place. 

In the Old Covenant whenever the sinner came and put his hands over the head of the animal and confessed his sins, which was typical—the type—then the priest did one of two things.  You can read about this in Leviticus.  The priest either went into the Holy Place and ate part of the sacrifice, bearing the sin himself in type, or he took the blood and he sprinkled it on the mercy seat.  Now the reformers did not understand this as far as I know, in terms of the Sanctuary.  That understanding came later.  But we are explaining what they taught in terms of the Sanctuary and you are going to be able to see in a few moments how it is, that although we believe what they taught, we believe more than what they taught.

The guilt of the sin comes into the Sanctuary.  Daniel 7:9, 10 talks about the Investigative Judgment, and the Investigative Judgment takes place in the Sanctuary—that is where the books are opened—and those books, my friends, contain a record. 

The blotting out of the sins of the living, I do not believe has occurred yet.  And since that has not yet occurred, those books contain a record of every sinful thought that I have ever thought; they contain a record of every sinful word that I have ever spoken; they contain a record of every sinful feeling that I have ever felt, and they contain a record of every sinful action that I have ever done.  It is all recorded in detail. 

That is why, when the doctrine of the Sanctuary was attacked by the New Theology by Desmond Ford, people heaped reproach upon people who believed in the date 1844.  They had to attack the Sanctuary teaching, because the Sanctuary teaching is linked up with everything that Adventists believe.  In fact, Ellen White said that the understanding of the Sanctuary led us to a perfect chain of truth.  The reformers taught that our sins were transferred to Jesus, that He was our High Priest; that you did not need to go to a human priest, because Jesus was your priest and you could confess your sins directly to Him. 

The reformers would quote to the people the text where it said that there is one God and one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, as Paul wrote to Timothy.  So when that happens, my guilt is transferred from me to my Saviour.  He bears my guilt through His blood.  My guilt is in the Most Holy Place.  When you read in Leviticus 16 about the cleansing of the Sanctuary, if you look at verses 16 and 19, you will see that it was because of the sins and the uncleanness of God’s people that the Sanctuary had to be cleansed.

You see, if there is guilt, if there is sin in the Sanctuary, sin and guilt defiles and makes something unclean.  Therefore, it needs to be cleansed. 

In this Sanctuary in heaven, there are books.  I do not know what kind of books they have, far better than any kind of books we have in this world, but they are called books in the Bible, and these books contain exact records—until your sins are blotted out—those books contain exact records of every sin, of every kind, that you have ever committed.  The record of your whole life is in those books. 

In order for the Sanctuary to be cleansed, the guilt has to come out—the sin has to come out—and how is that going to happen? 

This second step of the cleansing of the Sanctuary, I want you to see that it is the opposite of what happened in the first part of the service.  In other words, what happens in the yearly service is the opposite of what happens in the daily service.  People who do not understand that say, Well, you Adventists, you do not believe at all what the reformers taught.

Well, we do believe what the reformers taught, but we understand that the Sanctuary service has two stages.  We believe what the reformers taught, but they only understood the first part.  The reformers did not understand what the Bible taught about the cleansing of the Sanctuary.  That was not the present truth yet for 1520.  It was present truth in the nineteenth century.

How is the Sanctuary going to be cleansed?  Notice, this is the exact opposite of what happens in the first part of the service, and both of these are taught in the New Testament as righteousness by faith.  I will use common language here.  In the daily service, the Sanctuary becomes dirtier and dirtier.  Is that not what happens?  If more people come and confess their sins and their guilt is transferred into the Sanctuary, it just keeps getting dirtier and dirtier, more and more defiled.

That is what happens in the daily service—the longer it goes on, the more defiled it becomes.  But in the yearly service, something different is going to happen.  That which has become dirtier and dirtier is going to be cleansed.   How much is it going to be cleansed?  It is going to be cleansed to the point where there will not be a single sin, or guilt, or anything defiling left in there.

Now let us look at this.  Sometimes theologians get to talking with such abstract theoretical terms that nobody can follow.  So let us try to put it down in real simple, concrete terms so that it is easy to understand.  In Hebrews, the apostle Paul teaches very clearly that we are to come boldly, he says, unto the throne of grace.

We worship down here in our churches today, but the church on earth and the church in heaven is all one, Ellen White says in Testimonies, vol 6.  While we are down here, our faith reaches clear up to heaven.  Is that true?  Yes, it is.  So actually, while we are down here in the body, we are in heaven in spirit.  Paul said one time to the Corinthian Church, I am absent but in the spirit I am with you.  I am even casting my vote.  I am with you in spirit.

Although we are down here in the world, by faith, our faith reaches clear up to the Sanctuary in heaven.  In fact, our faith reaches clear into the Most Holy Place.  

Now, let us think this through.  God’s Church, as you can read in Hebrews 12, is all registered in heaven.   God’s Church is registered in the Sanctuary. 

If you have professed faith in Jesus, and you are a Christian, your name is in a book.  Underneath your name is every single detail, or record, of your life history.  Every good deed that you have ever done; every kind and affectionate word you have ever spoken; every tender thought you have ever thought; every act of sympathy and courtesy that you have ever done, is all recorded in that book.

Also, every sin that you have ever committed, spoken, thought, or felt.  It is all in that book.  So here is a record, not only of the good things that men and women have done and thought, but also of the evil.  So you have all the sin. Now remember sin always defiles, so there is only one way that this Sanctuary can be cleansed.  The blood, of course, has to be sprinkled there. 

By the way, the blood is only sprinkled once.  In the old covenant the blood was sprinkled every year, but Paul makes it very clear in Hebrews 10 that in the new convenant, the blood is only sprinkled one time at the end of the ages to blot out sin.  And once that is sprinkled, Paul says, there is no more forgiveness.  That time is coming. 

Once your sins are blotted out, they will not be blotted out twice.  They will only be blotted out once.  That will be it.  There will not be any more forgiveness; there will not be any more plan of salvation.  Once that is done, once this blood is sprinkled, at the end of the ages, the plan of salvation is over.  It is only done one time.  

If that is the case, if the Sanctuary is going to be cleansed—just cleansed once at the end of the ages as Paul says.  The blood is sprinkled in the Most Holy Place, and as soon as Jesus is through sprinkling this blood, what does He do?

He comes out of the Most Holy Place, and we are going to see Him in a very few days in the clouds of heaven.  Once this occurs and this blood is sprinkled, one time only, some days after that happens, we do not know how many, there will be a number of days, Jesus will come out of the Most Holy Place and He will come, and we will see Him in the clouds of heaven.  But, think this through in concrete terms. 

My name and your name is in the Most Holy Place.   Below your name there is the record of every sin you have ever committed, and if you have committed any today, God keeps up-to-date records.  Any sin that you or I have committed today, is in the book already.  Now, if this Sanctuary is going to be cleansed, there are only two ways that this can happen. 

Here is the way that you do not want it to happen.  There is the record of my name and  all my sins, and as long as the record of all my sins is in the Sanctuary, it is defiled.  So one way that the Sanctuary can be cleansed is by just tearing out my page.  God can just take it out, tear out my page, take my name out.  My name is not in the book any more. 

But now that my name is taken out; the record of my sins is all taken out, my name is not even in the book any more.  That is one way the Sanctuary can be cleansed.  You see, the Sanctuary is going to be cleansed of all sin.  Whether you overcome or not, the Sanctuary is going to be cleansed of sin. 

The other way, the way that you want it to happen, is that your name is retained in the book, but your sins are blotted out.  So now your name is in the book and there is no sin there, and your name does not pollute or defile God’s Sanctuary any more. 

Now, of course, it would not do any good to blot out your sins if you sinned again the next day.  Does that make sense?  Would it do any good to blot out my sins if I sin the next day?  It would not do any good at all.  The plan of salvation would have failed.  So, before your sins can be blotted out, you must have an experience in living without sin, or overcoming sin. 

That is why, when you go to historic Adventist meetings, preachers are preaching so much about the necessity of overcoming sin, because we are living in the time, friends, when this is actually going to happen, and it is only going to happen once.  One of two things is going to happen—  either your sins are going to be blotted out, or your name is going to be blotted out. 

Look in your Bible in Revelation 3:5.  It says the one who conquers, the one who overcomes, this one will be clothed in white garments and I will most certainly not blot his name out of the Book of Life and “I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.” 

So Jesus says, If you overcome; if you overcome the world, the flesh and the devil; if you overcome, then your name will not be blotted out, your sins will be blotted out. 

That, my friends, is what the reformers did not understand, and that is why when somebody looks at the doctrine of righteousness by faith, they say, Well, you do not teach what the reformers taught.  No, we do not.  The reformers only taught that which had to do with the daily service.  There was nothing wrong with that, but that is just a part of the plan.  After the daily service, eventually there has to be a yearly service to cleanse the Sanctuary and to remove the sins and to remove all defilement. 

Remember, it is true that the yearly service does do something that is just the opposite from the daily service, because in the daily service, the defilement is constantly getting greater, but in the yearly service the defilement is going to be totally removed. 

Now, friends, this is the truth that God has committed to Seventh-day Adventists, which the rest of the Christian world does not understand.  This is why the devil has contrived to have us called cults and every kind of other name imaginable of a hated sect, because the devil hates the truth of the Sanctuary that God is going to deliver His people totally and completely from sin.  The devil has persuaded the majority of other churches that pardon is all there is.  There are a few other churches that understand Sanctification very similar to us, but not very many. 

The devil has persuaded people that they can be saved in sin and that they will just go on sinning and confessing their sins all of their lives and they lose total sight of the Bible teaching that we are to overcome sin.  Now the doctrine of overcoming sin, my friends, is not something that was to be confined to the last generation. 

We understand it, perhaps more clearly today than it was understood in past ages, but if you read what Paul wrote to the Romans, or what he wrote to the Galatians—when the apostle Paul writes about righteousness by faith, he always writes also about the necessity of overcoming sin.  Read Romans 6, Romans 8, Romans 12, Romans 9 and 10, Galatians 5 or 6, and you cannot miss it. 

When the apostle Paul writes about righteousness by faith, he does not only write about this, he also writes about overcoming sin and living without sin.  So righteousness by faith, involves this.  

We have no argument with the reformers, but it also involves more than they understood.  It involves not only obtaining a pardon, it involves a transformation of life where the Holy Spirit gives you the power to overcome.  As the Holy Spirit gives you the power to overcome, you can come to the place where the Lord can look down upon you, and He can say, This person is now, through the power of the Holy Spirit, living without sin and I am going to be able to blot out his sins.

The whole record is going to be blotted out.  The whole record of sin is going to be blotted out.  And, my friend, when you get to heaven—this to me is one of the most marvelous and amazing things about the character of God—throughout eternity, God is never going to hold up your sins before you!  He is not going to do it! 

He is not going to parade your sins out for other people to look at; He is not going to embarrass you by all the sinful things that you have done; He is going to have blotted it out.  It is all taken care of, it is all finished. 

When we talk about this subject, and we show that righteousness by faith involves not only the first part, but the second part, people cannot believe.  

One of the things that happens in our generation is that we are living in a pessimistic age.  Since the development of the atomic bomb, the world has become very pessimistic.  The world was optimistic until about World War I.  People used to say, We are getting better and better.  They are not saying that any more. In Ellen White’s time one of the problems they used to have was people going around saying, I am sanctified.  I am perfect.  Ellen White said that we should never say that.  We should never teach anybody to say that.  In my whole ministry, I have never had a problem with people saying, I am not a sinner, I am perfect, I am sanctified, and I am holy.

We have just the opposite problem in our day.  We have people who, just as soon as you teach that you can overcome sin and they are in bondage to some sinful habit that they have tried a thousand times to overcome and they cannot, they say, in effect, Pastor John, I guess I will have to be lost.  I have had people come and say this to me.  Pastor John, I cannot overcome, I guess I will just have to be lost.

What do you say to a person who is feeling like this?  The reason they feel like this is because they do not understand the subject of righteousness by faith and how it works.

I do want to read to you a brief account that explains how righteousness by faith works, and this is in Romans 4.  We will start reading in Romans 4:16–20.  “[On account of this] Therefore, it is of faith that it might be according to grace, so that the promise might be made sure to all the seed, not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all (as it is written, ‘I have made you a father of many nations’) in [that he] the presence of Him whom he believed—God, who gives life to [the one making alive] the dead and calls those things which do not exist as those that did [that are not as those that are].” 

I love that verse.  God calls the things that are not, as if they were.  “Who, contrary [against] to hope in hope believed, so that he [might be] became the father of many nations, according to what was spoken [as it is written, as it was said, like this] so shall [be your seed] your descendants be.  And not being weak in faith, [neither accounting] he did not consider his own body, already [having been] dead (since he was about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah’s womb.  He did not waver [and not staggering] at the promise of God through unbelief, but was [being] strengthened [empowered by] in faith giving [he gave] glory to God.” 

Now this, friend, is a story that the apostle Paul tells from the Old Testament to explain what righteousness by faith is all about.  And the story is about Abraham and Sarah.  God promised Abraham and Sarah a son when Abraham was approximately 75 years old, and Sarah was about 65.  Abraham and Sarah, oh, they were so excited when they heard that promise.

Each month they were expecting Sarah to be pregnant.  “She is going to have a son.  We know it, because God has promised it.”  But month after month after month went by and Sarah did not get pregnant.  Month after month, year after year until finally, over ten years had gone by and Sarah went through menopause.  She could not get pregnant any more, so She said to Abraham, “I guess I am not ever going to be able to have a son.” 

Abraham could not figure that out.  God had promised him a son and now it looked like it was impossible.  But Sarah had a way to figure it out.  She said to Abraham, Look, I have a servant girl here.  Her name is Hagar.  She had not gone through menopause yet. 

It is easy for us to criticize people of other generations and cultures, but polygamy was common in those days.  So Sarah thought, I will give my servant girl to Abraham and that way I will have a son.  Later Leah and Rachel did the very same thing to get more children.  So, she gave Abraham her servant girl because she knew that she could not have a son any more and she knew that God had planned for Abraham to have a son, so she was going to help God out. 

Have you ever tried to help God out?  Do you know what God often allows to happen when we try to help Him out?  He lets us get into a worse mess than ever!  And God let Abraham get into a worse mess than ever.  Now Abraham and Sarah both knew that Sarah could not have children any more, she was too old to have children.  God said, We will just wait a little longer. 

The time came when Abraham became impotent.  So now you have a double problem.  Sarah cannot have a son any more, she is too old to become a mother, and now Abraham is too old to become a father.  Now you are stuck.  You are stuck on both ends of the line.  You cannot do it. 

That is when God came to Abraham and said, “Abraham, next year about this time according to the time of life, you are going to have a son.”

Abraham said, “Oh, that Ishmael might live before You.” 

God said, “No, that is not what I am talking about.  Your wife, not the harlot girl that you made a harlot, but your wife, is going to bear to you a son.”  And when Sarah heard that, she had passed her menopause so long before that she started laughing in the tent.  That was crazy.

The Lord said to Abraham, “How come Sarah laughed?”  

Then Sarah was embarrassed.  She had just been laughing silently; she did not want the Lord to hear, and she said, “Oh, I did not laugh.”

The Lord said, “Yes, you did laugh.  You were laughing at Me, but I am telling you next year you are going to have a child.”
That is why they named him Isaac, because Isaac means laughter.  Sarah said, “God made me laugh.”

Paul said that is what righteousness by faith is all about.  Do you understand what it is?  Can anybody living in a body, a temple of sinful flesh like you and me, can we ever be righteous?  Can we ever live a righteous life?  We cannot do it any more than Abraham and Sarah could have a son.  But God said to Abraham, You and Sarah—not some other man, not some other woman—you and Sarah are going to have a son.  And Abraham started thinking about that.

Abraham had known the Lord for quite a while by now, and he had found out that when the Lord said something, the Lord always told the truth.  He knew Who he was dealing with and he said, we just read it in Romans 4, If God says that we are going to have a son, we are going to have a son.  I do not know how, but God said that we are going to, so we are going to.  

And they did.  And Paul said, when he talks about this again in Hebrews, By a man that was as good as dead and by a woman whose womb was dead, there came forth a multitude as the stars of heaven of number of people!

That is what righteousness by faith is all about.  People say to me, Pastor John, it is impossible.  I guess I will have to be lost.  I cannot overcome.  No, you cannot overcome unless you understand righteousness by faith!  Righteousness by faith is when you trust God to work in your life and do something that you cannot do.  Oh, I cannot control my thoughts.  Ellen White says you cannot control your thoughts, you cannot control your passions or your affections, either.

The Bible says that no human being can tame the tongue.  No, you cannot.  People are looking for a New Theology because they do not understand what righteousness by faith is all about.  Righteousness by faith means that you are trusting God to work in your life and that He is going to work in your life to make it possible for you to do something that you cannot do! 

Oh, I hope that you will study this story.  Study it in Hebrews, in Romans 4.  Forget about all the big words that the theologians talk about.  You cannot figure out the difference between imputed and imparted and all these different things.  Just trust God that He will work a miracle in your life and He will enable you, if you follow the directions, to do something that you cannot do, just as much as Abraham and Sarah could not have a son. 

She could not become a mother and he could not become a father, but God said, This is what is going to happen, and when Abraham trusted in God, it happened.   When you trust in God, things that cannot happen are going to happen, too.  I have seen it happen over and over again and I love to tell people about the victories that I have seen happen in other people’s lives. 

I have seen people who were absolute slaves to tobacco, slaves to alcohol, slaves to drugs, slaves to the wrong kind of language, slaves to the wrong kind of music, slaves to all kinds of sin—and I have seen God deliver them.

I do not know what your besetting problem in life is, but whatever your besetting problem is, what you need to understand, friend, is righteousness by faith.  That is the illustration that Paul gave to explain what it is all about.  It is trusting that God will do something in your life that you cannot do, and you know you cannot do it, but He can! 

If you put your trust in Him, a miracle is going to happen inside, and one of these days, when Jesus is in the Most Holy Place, and He sprinkles that blood, your sin, the record of your sin, is going to be blotted out.  When the record of your sin is blotted out, you are going to be sealed and you are going to be on your way, in a few days, to the New Jerusalem. 

Do you want that experience?  Do you want to experience the righteousness that comes by faith?  You can.  Let us ask the Lord that we may each one have this experience.  We must have it if we are going to go to glory soon.