This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome back to our look together through Romans chapter 4, our fourth day
together in this incredible chapter. And we are not finished with Romans chapter
3 verses 21 to 26. This chapter of the Bible and specifically these verses in
Romans 3 are filled with incredible pictures of our salvation.

In Romans 3 beginning in verse 24, the Bible says we are justified, that's a
picture, justified freely by His grace through the redemption, another picture
that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Him as a sacrifice, another picture of
atonement through faith in His blood. He did this to demonstrate His justice as
another picture because in His forbearance He left the sins committed beforehand
unpunished.

He did it to demonstrate His justice at the present time so as to be just and
the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. We're going to look
together in these next few moments at three of those pictures of salvation that
are given in these verses. The picture of redemption, the picture of
propitiation, sacrifice, and the picture of justification.

First the picture of redemption. Redemption is a picture of a slave market. The
Greek word for redemption refers to slaves being purchased in the marketplace.

In the spiritual sense, all of us were slaves to sin until Jesus purchased us
out of the slave market and set us free from sin's bondage. Because He bought
and He paid for us with His blood, now we belong to Him. We serve Him.

This picture behind the word redemption, it's the picture of a busy marketplace
in a huge city. The courtyard is packed with merchants. They're selling
vegetables and pottery and meat and wine.

At the center of this market, there's a very different kind of sale going on.
People are being sold as slaves. To really understand this picture, you must
visualize yourself up on that slave block.

Perspective buyers, they're eyeing you, they're talking about you as if you were
a thing instead of a person. You can smell, as you're standing on that slave
block, the smells of the market that's around you, but also of the desire that's
in all those buyers. And then they begin to bid on you.

And as each successive bid is shouted out, you look at the faces of those that
would enslave you. Whether their faces seem kind or cruel, you know that they're
bidding to use you for their own purposes. Just as the auction is winding down
to an end, a stranger stands up.

And he puts in a bid a thousand times higher than the last, greater than anyone
could match. And the crowd gasps. As the auctioneer hastily accepts this bid,
you look into the stranger's eyes and you realize he's the only one here who's
not bidding to use me.

He's bidding to set me free. That's the picture of redemption. Jesus paid the
price for your redemption.

Jesus paid the price to set you free. And that's not the only picture in these
verses. There is also the picture of something called propitiation.

Now I dare you to say that word three times as fast as you can. This is a
picture from the temple. And it's the most unfamiliar word of these words that
we're looking at.

When we say that Jesus was our propitiation, it means that he completely
satisfied all of God's righteous demands. Jesus' sacrifice was enough. It was
sufficient for God.

All my best efforts can't come close to being enough or sufficient to meet God's
standards, God's demands for holiness, for perfection. Jesus covered us with his
blood. He brought us into God's presence.

When we trust him, that is enough. This picture of propitiation in the Old
Testament is the picture specifically of something called the mercy seat. That's
the cover of the Ark of the Covenant in first the Tabernacle and later the
temple where the people worship God.

This is the place where the blood was sprinkled as an offering for the sins of
the people. The picture in this word is a portrait of something that took place
at the temple, at that altar where the sacrifices were made. Once a year,
according to God's instructions in Leviticus chapter 16, the high priest was to
sprinkle the blood of a sacrifice on the cover of the Ark of the Covenant that
was in the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle.

This cover was called the atonement cover or the mercy seat. There are three
elements specifically involved in this offering, the high priest who gave the
offering, the blood of the sacrifice, and the mercy seat on which this offering
was placed. Jesus in essence becomes all three of these for us.

He is the high priest who makes an offering for our sins. He is the sacrifice
who gave himself, shed his blood for our sins, and he is the place of mercy
where we find forgiveness for our sin. That's the picture here.

Jesus is the mercy seat, the place of mercy. Jesus fulfilled every picture in
the Old Testament system of sacrifice, a system that God put into place to look
forward to the sacrifice of his son. In 1 John 2, verse 2, the Bible says, "He
is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for the
sins of the whole world.

" See, this is personal. Jesus Christ gave himself for you. Martin Luther said,
"You have taken upon yourself what is mine, and given me what is yours.

You became what you were not, so that I might become what I was not. " That's
what happened at the mercy seat. There's a third picture in these verses.

Redemption, the picture of a slave market, propitiation, the picture of a temple
sacrifice, and then justification, a picture that comes from the courtroom.
Justification is a legal term that meant acquittal. And Jesus, by giving himself
for our sins, makes it possible for God to bring the gavel down and declare us
not guilty.

And when God declares us not guilty, he not only chooses not to hold us
accountable for our sins, he wipes out every record of your sins. And don't miss
this. Do not miss this.

God then applies the record of Jesus's righteousness to our accounts. The Bible
tells us he did this as a demonstration. God demonstrated his justice on the
cross.

It's demonstrated in that God is both just and justifier. Very important phrase
in verse 26. He is just and he is justifier.

You see, God is just. He is holy. And this created a dilemma.

God and his holiness cannot endure sin. God is holy and yet sin is real. And
God, because he is holy, can't just say, "Oh, I'll forget it.

I'll pretend like it's not there. " But neither did he want to let sin just run
its course and ruin all of humankind. Jesus is the answer.

This is how God solved the problem of him being a holy God, us being unholy, and
there being a gap between us. God does not ignore or wink at sin. Instead, he
himself takes the just penalty for our sin through the willing sacrifice of
Jesus.

He justifies us by taking the penalty for our sin. Do you ever find yourself
taking your salvation for granted? It's all too common to think with greater joy
about some daily occurrence in your life than about your eternal salvation.

Why do we do that? One reason is that we can't see. We can't really see on this
earth the depth of what happens when we're saved.

We don't see how lost, how truly in need of God we are. Before we come to
Christ, we tend to think of ourselves as almost there when it comes to a
relationship with God. The truth is, our sins have separated us from God by a
distance that couldn't be measured in light years.

And here in chapter 3 verses 24 to 26, God's plan of salvation is shown to us.
God is righteous because his plan takes into account both the ruined condition
of man and the righteous character of God. God is both just, he is holy, but he
is also justifier, the holy God gave himself for us.

Second Corinthians chapter 5 verse 21 says, "God made him who had no sin," Jesus
never sinned, "who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become
the righteousness of God. " When you and I just begin to get a hold of what that
truth means, it is overwhelming. This is the heart of the gospel, and this is
also the ground of our assurance.

Even though you know you're a Christian, you might struggle at times with
assurance. You're filled sometimes with doubts and uncertainties. And there are
times when you have a sneaking suspicion deep inside that maybe, despite all
these wonderful words of the Bible, God is still not quite satisfied.

And if something should happen to you, you'd be lost. Pay attention to what
God's saying here. He is satisfied by what Jesus has done.

You are justified by what Jesus has done. There's the answer to our struggle.
When you feel doubts about your salvation, don't look at yourself.

Look at Jesus, what he did for you. You look at these words, atonement,
justification, propitiation, righteousness. Some of these words are new words,
maybe, to you as you listen to this, but you put all these words together and
they come together in a name.

These words come together in the name Jesus Christ. Jesus is your Savior. He's
your Lord.

He's your best friend. And so as we take some time to pray together today, focus
on Jesus. Talk to him as a friend and just say to him in your heart, "Jesus
Christ, thank you.

" Thank you for setting me free, for paying the price. I know it's a greater
price than I could ever imagine. The suffering that you endured on the cross,
physical, emotional, spiritual, I can read about it in the Bible, but I can't
imagine how deep it really was.

I thank you. Thank you that you gave yourself for me, so that I could be freed,
redeemed, so that I could be forgiven at that mercy seat, so that your
righteousness could be applied to my life, justified. Thank you, Jesus, for your
love for me.

In your name I pray, amen. Tomorrow we're going to end this walk together
through Romans chapter three with a look at Romans 3 verses 27 to 31.