In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes that all people, regardless of age or background, have a common desire to know how they can be justified with their Creator. He highlights the misguided belief that good works can earn justification with God, using the example of a mother sacrificing her baby to crocodiles in an attempt to please God. The preacher then explains that justification comes through accepting God's free gift of eternal life, made possible by Jesus paying the penalty for our sins on the cross. He emphasizes the importance of understanding Romans 3:26, which speaks of God being just and the justifier of those who believe. The preacher also discusses the tension between God's righteousness and mercy, highlighting the immense suffering and heartbreak God experiences due to humanity's sin, yet His desire to reconcile with them.

The question that every Catholic asks is how can a man born a woman be justified with God. The question that every sincere Baptist asks is how can a man born a woman be justified with God. The question that every sincere Christian scientist asks is how can a man born a woman be justified with God. The question that every sincere Presbyterian asks is how can a man born a woman be justified with God. The question that every sincere Buddhist asks is how can a man born a woman be justified with God. For man, whether he is old or young, whether he is Oriental or Western, has one common denominator with all other men, and that is he wants to know how he can be justified with his Creator. This morning, young people, listen, this morning, all around the world, people are doing good works, performing good deeds, hoping that they can earn justification with God. Somewhere this morning in this world, a mother brings a little baby whom she carried in her own body for nine months, and to for whom she entered into the jaws of death that it may live. She takes that little baby this morning, she goes to a river, and the crocodiles open their mouths. That little mother throws that baby this morning into the hungry mouths of those crocodiles. Why does she do that? In an effort to be justified with her God. Somewhere this morning, a child is being confirmed. And regardless of what we believe, or we may differ about confirmation, why do many churches have confirmation services? They do it because they are trying to become justified with their God. This morning in some distant land, a man is taking a knife and cutting his body, literally slicing his body, religiously, in religious ceremony. Why is that man lancing his body, and why is blood flowing from painful wounds? He's trying to be justified with his God. Somewhere this morning, a man lays his naked body down on a board through which protrudes nails and spikes, and he lies with his bare body on those spikes, and the points of the spikes pierce his back and cause blood and pain. Now why does that man, in religious ceremony, go through such a torture? Because he sincerely is trying to be justified with his God. Somewhere this morning, thousands of people are bowing in prayer, and they're bowing facing toward the east, toward the holy place, the holy city. Maybe it's Mecca or another place, and they'll do it several times today. Why do they go through all of those rituals? In sincerity, they're trying to become justified with their God. There's not a man, woman, boy, or girl in this room this morning who would not like to think that he is justified before the God who made him. Regardless of how wrong people are, regardless of how perverted a doctrine is, there is one thing that all of us have in common. We want someday to stand before our God and be justified in the sight and the presence of our God. Who's right? Are the Baptists right? Are the Catholics right? Are the Presbyterians right? Are the Buddhists right? Are the Church of Christ people right? Is the Christian science doctrine right? Who's right? Nobody's right. The Word of God is right. The Bible is right. It matters not what we have in our creed of First Baptist Church in Hammond. It matters what the Bible says about man being justified before his God. It matters not what the Buddhists might think. It matters what the Bible might think. It matters not what the Baptists or Presbyterians or the Catholics or the Episcopalians or the Christian science or the Mormons or Jehovah Witnesses or the Seventh-day Adventists. Ladies and gentlemen, all that matters is, what does God say? Listen, here's the thing. If man has sinned and if God has been sinned against, then it is God who must dictate the terms of reconciliation. Man has no right to dictate his own terms. Man may say, well, I think this is the way you get justified before God. But man has no right. Because God is the one who was sinned against. The sinner has no right to dictate terms of reconciliation. When my mother, who's here this morning, when I used to do something wrong, and she'd go out in the backyard. We had a peach tree in the backyard. Never did have a peach grow on that tree. She'd go out in the backyard and she looks very sweet and kind. These little people all look sweet and kind. But anyway, she'd go out and she'd grab that tree and she'd pull a limb down and grab a branch off that tree and strip it of all the leaves and come back toward the house and say, pull out your little britches. We wore short britches back in those days. Hot pants are not just intended in this generation. I wore them when I was eight. And by the way, they were hot pants when my mama got through with me. And so, pull out your little britches. And I'd pull up my britches and right across my thighs. That's one reason why I don't like miniskirts. I'd have you right across my thighs. My mother would wail me across and say, don't you do that again. And I'd say, I won't. I won't. She'd say, hush. Well, you just can't hush. And I couldn't. And I said, Mama, what can I do to make peace? What could I do to do better? I didn't say, well, here's what I think about it, Mom. It didn't much matter what I thought. I mean, she was the one against whom I'd sinned. I was the sinner. And the sinner does not dictate the basis of reconciliation to the sinned against. And man has no right to say what he thinks. All across this country, humanistic minds are saying, well, I don't believe a just God would send anybody to hell. Or I don't believe a just God would want anybody to die. There would be capital punishment because they sinned. Or I don't believe that a just God would punish people. I don't believe this or that. You have no right to believe anything except what God says. You're a sinner. You are the one who has sinned. It is the one sinned against who dictates the terms of reconciliation. Now, what does God say? Listen carefully, and I'll tell you a wonderful story. God says, being justified freely by His grace. Do you have to join a church? Being justified freely by His grace. Do you have to turn over a new leaf? Being justified freely by His grace. Do you have to get baptized to be justified? Being justified freely by His grace. Do you have to take the sacraments to get baptized? Being justified freely by His grace. Do you have to live a perfect life to get justified? being justified freely by His grace. Bildad asked the question thousands of years ago, How can a man born of woman be justified with God? And Paul answers back across the centuries, Hey, Bildad, justified freely by His grace. That's the way you get justified. Anybody who goes to heaven will get it because they've come to the grace of God and accepted God's free gift of eternal life because Jesus paid the entire penalty and price for our sins on the cross. Now, listen carefully to this. How is it? And please, you may spend eternity walking golden streets and through gates of pearl because you stay awake during the next 20 minutes of this message. Listen carefully. The Bible says in one of the great verses in all the Bible, Romans 3.26, that He might be just and the justifier of those that believe. That He might be just and the justifier. I'm going to personify for a few minutes two characteristics, righteousness and mercy. For God is both a God of righteousness and mercy. When God made man in the Garden of Eden, God made man to fellowship with Himself. Here, and listen to this now carefully. God wanted someone with whom He could fellowship. You like to fellowship, don't you? You like to be with other people, don't you? Would you want to live on an island somewhere all by yourself? Well, of course you wouldn't. You want it, you boys? Hey, sit up while I preach. You want to have someone with whom you can fellowship. And we're made in the image of God and God wanted someone with whom He could fellowship. And what did God do? God made Him a race. He made man. Somebody said He made Adam and He made the world and rested. He made Adam, or man, and rested. Then He made woman and neither man nor the world has rested ever since. But anyway, God made Adam and Eve and they had wonderful, sweet fellowship. But God gave Adam and Eve a will. God did not want Adam to love Him because He had to love Him. God did not want man to be forced to love Him. Brother Fisk loves me. You'd never know it, but he loves me. But if I could give Brother Fisk a pill this morning that would make him love me, I wouldn't do it. I want him to love me because of my charm and my winsome way and my handsome face and my big physique and the other many characteristics that I have. That is funny. But I want Brother Fisk to choose to love me. And God was that way. And so God made Adam and He made Eve and He said, Now I'm going to give you a will and I want you to choose to love me. And they had wonderful fellowship. As somebody has said, Adam looked at Eve and said, You're the only woman in the world for me. And she was the only woman in the world for him. And she said, You're the handsomest man in all the world. And he said, Thank you. I'm the only man in all the world. But God fellowshiped with Adam and Eve. And every morning God would come. Let's suppose when they woke up, God would come and say, Adam! Adam! Oh, Adam! And Adam would say, Eve, it's the Lord. The Lord is here. We're going to have fellowship with the Lord again. Eve, come on now. Let's go talk to the Lord. And the Lord and Adam and Eve would fellowship. And He walked with them and He talked with them and He told them He was their own. And the joy they shared as they tarried there, none other has ever known. They chose to serve Him. They chose to love Him. And the next morning, Adam! Oh, Adam! Eve! And He would say, Hey, honey, wake up! It's time to talk to the Lord. And Adam would wake up and they'd go talk to the Lord and have sweet fellowship with the Lord. And one day, one morning, the Lord came and said, Adam! Adam! Oh, Adam! Eve! Eve! Adam! And there was no answer. And the Lord said, Where's Adam? And where's Eve? How did it happen? The wicked serpent had come and caused them to sin. And that sin had broken their fellowship with God. Sin always breaks fellowship with God. And that sin had broken their fellowship with God. Now listen, man had fallen. Now God is righteous. And God cannot fellowship with sin. God will not fellowship with sin. Dr. Bob Jones, he used to say, God would let the stars fall before He had fellowship with sin and let sin go unpunished. And so now we have God this way and we have man this way, but God's a loving, merciful God. Oh, add all the heartbreak of every mother who has a gold star in her window, whose boy's been killed on battlefields, and all the heartbreak of every mother and father who's placed an infant in some little baby land somewhere, in some little cemetery, and have all the tears and broken hearts of the world put together, and you just come, don't even come close to even getting the suffering and the anguish and the heartbreak of God who loved man and who made him. He was his creature and God left a fellowship with him. And now man is chosen to turn his back on God. And God's mercy said, I want him back. I want him back. And mercy said, I want to take Adam back. But righteousness said, I can't take him back. God's justice, God's righteousness said, The soul that sinneth, it must die. And a stern, righteous God said, I must have sin paid for. But the mercy of God said, But righteousness, I love Adam and I love Eve. And God's mercy said, Please let me take him back. But God's righteousness said, I can't take him back. He's a sinner. He's separated from me. I will not let sin go unpunished. But the mercy of God said, Please righteousness, please justice, let Adam and Eve come back. And justice said, I will not yield. I will not yield. I cannot fellowship with wrong. I could not be God in fellowship with wrong. Sin must be punished. And mercy said, Please righteousness. And righteousness said, No, mercy. But mercy said, I love Adam and I love Eve. Oh, please let them come back. And righteousness said, I can't. I wouldn't be God if I let them come back. And so mercy says, Righteousness, is there any way, any way that you can let them come back? I'm the mercy of God. Oh, righteousness of God. Is there any way, any way that we can let Adam and Eve come back? And righteousness said, No way unless sin is paid for. And the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, steps up and says, Mercy, I can help. Righteousness, I can help. And righteousness and mercy listen intently as the Son of God begins to speak. And the Son of God says, Are you listening, ladies and gentlemen? Your eternity depends on this. Jesus says, Father, I'll go to earth. I'll take upon myself the body of a man. And I'll live for thirty-three years away from you, Father. And I'll not sin. And after I've been there thirty-three years, I'll go to the cross. And I'll heap all the sins of Bob Billings and Jack Hiles and J.C. Sizemore and C.W. Fisk and John Colston and Jim Vineyard and this other fellow over here, Max Helton and all the sins of all the people that ever lived, or ever will live. How, Father, I'll put all of them on me. And oh, the blessed Son of God through whose lips never came a vile word, into whose mind never came an evil thought, whose feet never trod a wicked path, whose hands never took a wicked thing, whose eyes never feasted upon that which was sin, and whose ears would not listen to that which was wrong. The perfect Son of God. We have a cross here. You Catholics wear crosses around your neck. And what does the cross mean? It doesn't mean that a man died to show us how to die. It doesn't mean that a man died to show us how we ought to someday die. It means that Jesus Christ stood before God the Father and had all the sins of all the world heaped on Himself. He put your sins on His record and my sins on His record. And all the sins of all the people of all time were placed on the record of Jesus Christ. And don't you recall how that God's justice had to turn its back on Jesus and Jesus looked up and said, My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? And in that moment, the Son of God bore your sins as your substitute, as your sacrifice, as your Lamb. And don't you recall how that the earth did shake and how that the stars did fall and how that the graves did open and how the sun blushed in anguish and wouldn't shine and the moon turned as black as sackcloth of hair. Why? God's Son was paying for your sins and my sins. Paid is done. The great transaction is done. I am my Lord's and He is mine. Jesus paid it all. All to Him I owe. And Jesus stood and said, Righteousness, are you satisfied? And righteousness said, Yes, I'm satisfied. It's been paid for. Jack Hiles' sins have been paid for. Adam's sins have been paid. The debt has been paid for Adam. The debt has been paid for Colston. The debt has been paid for Sizemore. The debt has been paid for Broadway. The debt has been paid for all the whole world. And the mercy of God said, Oh, righteousness of God, can we take them back? And righteousness said, We can now, because in Jesus and His payment on the cross, I've been satisfied. And Psalm 85 says, That righteousness and mercy and peace kissed each other. I mean, mercy said, I'm so glad that you can take Adam and Eve back. And righteousness said, I've been satisfied. Now then, man can be justified. How can man born of woman be justified with God? By joining a church? No, that isn't it. It's by faith in the perfect penalty of Jesus. Listen to me for a minute. Here's righteousness. Dr. Billings, stand here, would you please? Would you be righteousness for a minute? Here's the righteousness of a God in Heaven who cannot let sin go unpunished. Now, righteousness, you see that cross over outside Jerusalem? You see that? And you see Jesus dying on that cross? You see that? You know why He's dying? He's dying to pay for all the sins of all the world. You understand that? Now, righteousness, would you accept that so all these people here this morning can be saved and justified with God? You accept that? Okay, righteousness, some of these people don't want to come that route. They want to get baptized. Would you accept that? You won't accept that. Then you can't be justified with God by getting baptized. Righteousness, we have some folks out here that like to drink a little cup of juice and take a little wafer, and they think that will get them to Heaven. Will that satisfy you, righteousness? That won't satisfy you. Well, we have some people out here that think they're going to Heaven because they live a pretty good life. They're good neighbors, good fathers, good husbands, good wives, and good friends. Will you accept that? Righteousness, what is the only thing that you'll accept so that these poor people out here can be justified with God? Just that way. Alright, now, if these people out here, righteousness, if they look to that cross and say, I'm not trusting my own good works, I'm just trusting what Jesus did on the cross, and if they'll put their faith in that, will you justify them in the sight of God? Oh, that's wonderful. Thank you, righteousness. Don't you see what I'm saying? Listen to me, ladies and gentlemen. Listen to me. You've got to die. You've got to face God. I'm not concerned this morning about whether you and I like each other or not, though I want you to like me, and I want to like you. But I don't want you to go to Hell when you die. You don't know. You don't understand. Last night, before I went to bed, I did what I do every Saturday night. I got the picture of my dad, and I knelt over the picture of my drunkard dad and laid my hands on it and said, Oh, God, tomorrow morning, there are going to be several thousand people who are going to come and they're going to hear me preach. And many of them don't know what it is to be justified with God. Many of them don't understand what it is. Oh, my God! Don't let anybody leave without knowing how to be justified with God. That's the way it is. You say, but Brother Hiles, I belong to a certain, certain church. That doesn't justify you before God. May I tell you the story of the Jewish Old Testament lamb? A Jew. Here's a Jew who had sinned. I'm going to let you be, Brother Hilton, a lamb. I've always wanted to do this. Here's a Jew who had sinned. What did that Jew do? How did he get his sins? How did he get justified with his God? He took a lamb. This lamb is not a very good type because it was supposed to be a perfect lamb. And this is one of the little scrawny, sickly ones. But we'll give him a B-12 shot right quick and see if we can sort of perk him up a little bit. And so, here's a lamb. Now, I'm a sinful Jew. Say, as the Sizemore said this morning, the Bible says, without the shedding of blood there's no remission of sin. That means either my blood must be shed or an innocent sacrifice, an innocent substitute. And so, what did the Jew do in the Old Testament? He took that lamb and he killed that lamb. And he laid that lamb on the altar and the blood sprinkled. Stay on the altar, lamb. You're dead. Dead lambs can't get up. And he sprinkled the blood on the altar. Now, watch me. That Jew placed his hands on the head of that lamb and confessed his sin to his God and God saw the sin of that Jew transferred to that lamb and the lamb became the sacrifice. And now I don't have to die. Why? Because I have a sacrifice. A lamb has died for me and God has seen my sins transferred to that lamb. Don't you remember how John the Baptist stood on the banks of Jordan announcing the coming of Jesus? He didn't say, Behold the King! He was a king, but not yet. He didn't say, Behold the priest! He would be a priest, but not yet. He didn't say, Behold our example! He would be an example, but not yet. The first thing and the most important thing about Jesus is, Behold the Lamb of God! Now, we don't need these lambs anymore. God's Lamb has come. And anybody who will look to that lamb on the cross and say, Jesus, I know You died for me. And I know that You took your sins and paid for them. Jesus, I trust You as my Savior. You say, how could it be that easy? Because God wants you back. God wants to justify you. But you say that all I have to do is in my heart, trust Jesus! That's all you have to do. You say, that sounds too easy. Let me ask you a question. If you had a child that was away, would you make it easy or hard for them to get back home? Would you put a ten foot wall out in front of the house and make them climb that wall to get back home? No. You'd want to get them back and God wants to get you back. Years ago, and oh, you've heard this again and again, but years ago, a little lady was dying in a southern city and her pastor was called to her bedside. I never get used to that. Last night I talked to one of our young men, 22 years of age, who has what the doctors think, unless God intervenes, an incurable cancer. One of our boys grew up in our church here. I talked to him last night for 35 minutes. We prayed and hugged and cried and asked God to heal him. A pastor was called to her side, but the pastor was out of the city. Her pastor was out of the city. And a friend said, I'll call my pastor. And this pastor came and the little lady was on her deathbed and the pastor said, Little lady, could I forgive any sins for you before you die? And this little dying saint of God said, Can you what? He said, Can I forgive any sins for you before you die? And she said, I don't know. You'll have to qualify first. And he said, What can I do to qualify? And she said, May I see your right hand please? He held his right hand up. She said, Now sir, may I see your left hand? And he held up his left hand. And as she died, she said, Oh sir, I don't mean to hurt you, but sir, you can't forgive my sins. My Savior has scars in His hands. And that's why, that's why I want you this morning to quit trusting your church membership and quit trusting your good works and quit trusting your denomination and quit trusting your goodness and quit trusting ritual and quit trusting the sacrament and quit trusting your baptism. And why don't you say, All to Jesus I surrender. All to Him I freely give. I will ever love and trust Him in His presence daily live. Oh! My name is Dilvan! Hey Paul! Down through the centuries! How can a man born of woman be justified with God? Dilvan, this is Paul talking back through the centuries. Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption of His Son. And that's the only way anybody born of woman can be justified with God. Would you bow your heads for prayer please?