Justification by Faith gives us Peace and Access to God.  Romans 5:1-2

Sermon by Pastor Dennis Gleason -- April 3, 2005

Long ago a man sought the perfect picture of peace. Not finding one that satisfied, he announced a contest to produce this masterpiece. The challenge stirred the imagination of artists everywhere, and paintings arrived from far and wide. Finally the great day of revelation arrived. The judge’s uncovered one peaceful scene after another, while the viewers clapped and cheered.

The tensions grew. Only two pictures remained veiled.
As a judge pulled the cover from one, a hush fell over the crowd.
A mirror-smooth lake reflected lacy, green birches under the soft blush of the evening sky. Along the grassy shore, a flock of sheep grazed undisturbed. Surely this was the winner.
The man with the vision uncovered the second painting himself, and the crowd gasped in surprise. Could this be peace?
A tumultuous waterfall cascaded down a rocky precipice; the crowd could almost feel its cold, penetrating spray. Stormy-gray clouds threatened to explode with lightning, wind and rain. In the midst of the thundering noises and bitter chill, a spindly tree clung to the rocks at the edge of the falls. One of its branches reached out in front of the torrential waters as if foolishly seeking to experience its full power.
A little bird had built a nest in the elbow of that branch. Content and undisturbed in her stormy surroundings, she rested on her eggs. With her eyes closed and her wings ready to cover her little ones, she manifested peace that transcends all earthly turmoil.  

What do you suppose would be the most sought after thing in the world?
Is it money?  A man believes that he will be happy if he saves up a thousand dollars. That would be really great; except for the fact that if he gets the thousand he will want five thousand. If he gets the five thousand dollars, he will want ten thousand, and then a hundred thousand. One day he thinks a million dollars would make him happy only to find that he wants ten million. The more he gets, the more he wants. After amassing more money than he or his family can ever spend, he continues to acquire his fortune. His frenzied efforts prove that he is not really seeking money, but something else which the possession of money has not brought him.

Consider another man seeking not money but power. He gets elected sheriff and then begins to think about running for the state legislature. Elect him to the legislature and he aspires to run for congress in Washington. If he reaches Washington as a congressman, he wants to go back as a Senator. If he becomes a Senator he will begin thinking in terms of being President. Elect him President once and he will want to run again. What does this prove? It proves that it is not the place of power that the man is seeking, but something else which he believes success and power will bring him.
Napoleon once said, “What a bore life is! It is a cross!”

Run the gamut of human effort and attainment and the story is always the same. People think the possession of things, power, status, education, wealth, or success will bring them what they really want. But it never does. Think of the number of successful people who commit suicide because they cannot attain what they continue to strive for.
What man is looking for is peace. He cannot really find it on his own, because what he is seeking is peace with God.

Our text today tells us this:  “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand. (Romans 5:1-2.
We must recognize that there is a war that exists between man and God because of sin.
The peace that is in view here is peace with God. Since the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary, people who believe God are no longer in a state of estrangement or hostility with God. There has been a cessation of hostility between the soul that has been at war with God and God himself.

Peace has been declared on God’s terms. God has imposed the terms that man must meet. God is the one who has established the standards man must meet.  But the man or woman who flings himself upon the promises of God discovers that the Creator reveals himself as a loving Savior who has made peace.
God has made peace with those who believe him and trust his Son Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord of their lives. This takes place only when we are justified by faith. That took place when I recognized that I was a sinner and threw myself on his mercy and grace. Once Jesus had died on the cross God could proclaim grace and pardon to all who would submit to him.

The Apostle Paul tells us in our text that the result of all that is that I am at peace with God.
The second thing we should note about our text is this:  we have access by faith into this grace.
Last week I suggested that God has always been in the process of letting us in. His grace and mercy have always been working to bring us into his presence and the blessings that he has promised us.

Let’s go back to the time of the fall of Adam and Eve. They had chosen to eat of the fruit that had been forbidden them. After they had sinned, they did nothing to seek out God. No, God sought them out by coming into the garden and calling out:  “Where are you?” Genesis 3 tells the story. God is seeking to establish a relationship between himself, a holy God, and man who has been estranged from God, by his disobedience and sin.
God sets up an altar by himself and sacrifices animals for a covering for the man and woman. Blood was shed to provide a covering for the man and woman. This is the first hint that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin.

The Bible begins to unfold this truth for man to see and understand that man is to come to God through the shedding of the blood of a sacrifice provided by God.
Cain hated the idea of the requirement of a blood sacrifice so much that he killed his brother Abel who believed the idea and practiced it. The lamb Abel presented to God in sacrifice was a faint picture of what was later provided by God through Jesus Christ.
With Abel it was one lamb for one man. That was the sacrifice God required.

By the time of the Passover (Exodus 12) a lamb was killed for an entire household. The blood of the lamb was spread on the door posts of the believer’s house and the angel of judgment passed over those homes where there was a public manifestation of their faith in the lamb of God.

As God unfolds his revelation, and the day of Atonement is established for Israel, the people of Israel are set apart from the other nations as a witness of God to the world. And now the sacrificial lamb is for the whole nation.
This signifies the fact that God intends to save Israel and govern the world through his people whom he chose for this very purpose. (Leviticus 16)
As you follow on through to the New Testament and the coming of John the Baptist, you find that when he identifies Jesus of Nazareth as the Savior it is to show God’s purpose for the whole of creation.

“Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”
Have you noticed the progression here?
A lamb for a man.
A lamb for a family.
A lamb for a nation.
A lamb for the whole world.
With peace comes access to God.

Almighty God, Creator of the Universe no longer looks upon us as guilty once we have believed His Word about Jesus. You and I have access to God the Father through Jesus Christ.
This is why you don’t pray to Mary, or any of the Saints. You don’t need to.
You and I have received everything we need for life and godliness already through Jesus Christ. And we have access to God, openly and freely can we come to Him. We don’t need to go to Mary, or the Saints, or a priest or anyone. Scripture makes it clear that the dead are unaware of what is happening on earth; so they wouldn’t be of much help any way.
We might look at what I mean by this very human illustration: 

During the American Civil War, a soldier from the South had been wounded so severely that he could not return to bearing arms for the Southern Confederacy. He came to Washington, D.C. to appeal to Abraham Lincoln for the release of his brother from prison. He had been captured and was imprisoned. The appeal was that his brother was the only support for his widowed mother and she needed him at home.
The problem was that the soldiers guarding Mr. Lincoln would not let him in to see the President. One day the man was seated on a bench outside the White House and was crying because of his inability to see the President. Tad Lincoln happened by and saw the man. He asked him what was wrong. The man told him that he was trying get in to see the President and why. Tad took the man by the hand and led him past the guards into the presence of his father, the President of the United States.

That is your privilege…the Son of God has taken you by the hand and he will lead you past the angel guards in heaven and into the presence of God our Heavenly Father. You have access to the Father through Jesus Christ His One and Only Son.
You and I have direct access to the Father, through the Son because we have believed what God has said in His Word about Jesus His Son.
The Bible makes it clear that “Whosoever does the will of my father in heaven…” has power to prevail in prayer. That person has this direct access to the Father and James tells us that the “effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man accomplishes much.”
The issue for us then is this:  If we have believed in Jesus Christ, we have been justified. That is we have been made before God just as if we had never sinned. Because we have been justified, we are at peace with God. Because we are at peace with God, we have direct access to God through Jesus Christ His Son.

What are we doing with that access to the Father?
We have access to all the fullness of God and all the treasure of Heaven. That is potentially ours. How often do we have so little when we should have access to so much?

Whose fault is it if we are empty and the fullness of God is available to us?

--Dennis Gleason