[Transcript may not match broadcasted sermon word for word, and contains extra material that was cut from the broadcast due to time constraints]

       This is the fourth installment in our study through the Book of Romans. Today we come to the marvelous section of Scripture that discusses Abraham and his relationship with God—how God made a covenant with Abraham because he believed with faith. And what did this faith accomplish for him? Well, as we will remind ourselves of today, God counted righteousness to him. That’s right. God viewed Abraham as completely right before him because he believed in God and what God had said. He believed that the promise given to him would be fulfilled.

       As we know, Abraham was where it all started for the Jewish people. Abraham was a Gentile, if we can use that word in this context, and God called Abraham to be the forefather of a great people—a group of people God chose for himself. We know this selection of people as the Israelites. However, God had more than just plans for Israel, for he had his eyes on the whole world. Remember? He said to Abraham in Genesis 12:3, “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (ESV). So, God knew from the very beginning that his beloved people, those whom he dearly loved, would in fact reject him. God knew that.

       In our text today, we are going to see the Apostle Paul use the example of Abraham in order to show that righteousness from God comes by believing in what God has said. Where do we see in the Bible the story of Abraham becoming righteous before God? If we go to Genesis chapter 15, we can see what happened. Verse 5 states: “And he [the Lord] brought him [Abraham] outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:5-6, ESV). Do you see that? That’s all Abraham had to do, to believe what God had said. It wasn’t that he had spent his life doing good things, and this somehow impressed God to give him this promise.

       So, navigate in your Bibles to Romans chapter 4. Starting in verse 1, we read: “What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.” (Romans 4:1-8, ESV)

       Carrying along from the last chapter, Paul continues to make his argument for the fact that salvation, or righteousness before God in God’s sight, is through faith, and not through works. Indeed, this was a huge issue for the Jewish people. The Jews back then, and even sometimes ourselves nowadays, want to be justified in and of ourselves. We want our works to make us right with God. We love that sense of accomplishment, the sense that we have something to do with the relationship we enjoy with God. If we earned our acceptance from God, that acceptance would be rightfully ours, for we earned it. And not only that, but also we would be able to brag about the fact that we are great friends with God. Hopefully by now, though, we have learned that our righteousness before God is not from our own doing.

       Even in this day and age, the Jewish people still want to be justified in themselves. They want the action of their works, the good things that are done in their lives, they want those things to be a credit to God. Jews want to justify themselves. I think we see this in the original rejection of the Messiah. Part of the reason the Jews rejected Jesus was because he was not a man of wealth and nobility. He was meek and mild, having little to no wealth to put forward. The Jews wanted a king who was powerful and well-to-do, like the Pharisees of that time. To submit to this man Jesus was an appalling thought to a Pharisee or Teacher of the Mosaic Law. “Submit to Jesus, this mild Jesus man, who’s a nobody from a small town, who’s not greatly connected with the people in the high-ups, we cannot do that,” the Jew would say. And so they didn’t. They rejected the real messiah and they are waiting on one who will fit their criteria, and him they will accept.

       Paul said God justifies the ungodly. Well, what does that tell us? This means that we have to come to God believing that we are not good, that our thoughts, our words, our actions are in great need of help. They don’t measure up. If we come to God believing that we are already good, that we are a person who does mostly good and who may have a little bit wrong with us, but in general we are good people—if we come to God with that kind of attitude we are in big trouble. God will not accept us. God’s not looking to take people in to himself who just want to add him to their ‘goodness.’ He isn’t looking for people who think they’re good already, who are humanitarians with little to no problems. Remember what Jesus said? He said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:31-32, ESV).

       Jesus beautifully illustrated what Paul is saying here in one of his parables, comparing the two differing views of how people see themselves. Turn over, or tap, to Luke chapter 18, and go to verse 9. This is the Parable of the Pharisee and Tax Collector. You remember. They are praying to God and we get a good picture of their differing attitudes toward themselves, and toward God. Verse 9: “He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 18:9-14, ESV)

       You see the difference? How did the Pharisee act toward God? He justified himself as being righteous, and therefore worthy to come before him. He thanked God that he wasn’t a sinner. He told God how good he was in his good works, which in this case were fasting and giving of money to God. So, he did the exact opposite of what Paul tells us we must do in Romans chapter 4. He sees himself as not ungodly, and as a great doer of good works. What about the tax collector? Recall the tax collector was the scum bag of Jesus’ day. He was the one people despised and dreaded seeing the sight of. They were known to be untrustworthy and extortioners. But what does the tax collector say? “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” And he wouldn’t even look up at God when we made this statement. He approached God, how? Humbly. The Pharisee exalted himself before God, and the tax collector humbled himself. How do we approach God? Which one are we most like?

       When we recognize as humans that we are separated from God, what are we to do? How do we fix this? Again, there is nothing we can do to make ourselves right before God, that is, no works we can do. Paul tells us that the only thing we can do is believe “in him who justifies the ungodly” so that our “faith is counted as righteousness” before God. Our belief in God’s saving grace is what makes us right before him. Our faith. We have to believe that God can make us right with him. God is able to do this because of what Jesus accomplished on the cross. By Jesus dying on the cross, his death provides an acceptable sacrifice for sins to completely justify us. By counting on that sacrifice, having faith in it, and not some man-made sacrifice, some good works, we are made right before God. What our faith is toward is very important. A proper faith, as David said, makes us blessed before God.

       The second man Paul puts forth here is David, another one of God’s greatly beloved servants. David’s the next part of his argument. I want to consider here the second half of the cited verse from David. David said, “blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.” When you really stop and think about that verse there, that’s an amazing thing. No matter what we have done in our lives, under Jesus Christ God doesn’t count our sin against us. He wipes it out. The Prophet Jeremiah tells us in Jeremiah 31:34, which is also cited in Hebrews chapter 8: “And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (ESV). Every sin, all sin. The Lord forgets them all. That’s how we are able to enter perfect fellowship with him. That’s how we are able to enjoy our relationships with him. If God constantly saw our sins before his eyes, when we go to commune with him, when we spend time with him, he wouldn’t be able to do so.

       Continuing on in Romans 4: “Is this blessing then only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. How then was it counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised. He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well, and to make him the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised” (Romans 4:9-12, ESV)

       Is Christ’s saving power, is belief in Jesus’ work on the cross then, only for the Jewish person? This is an important question that Paul purposes. Paul very cleverly points out the fact that Abraham himself was not circumcised when he believed in God, when he was counted as righteous before him. This, again, shows that salvation is not by works, by some outward act. The Jewish man cannot be saved just because he is circumcised. (And, as an aside, the Christian no more if he is water baptized. Water baptism doesn’t save a person either). But, you see, this was, and is, the likely argument of a Jew. The Jewish man takes pride in his circumcision, just as we as Christians, or anyone else, can take pride in something else as saving us. A Christian can take pride in the praying a prayer of salvation said to Jesus thirty years ago, but if that person’s heart since then doesn’t line up with his saving faith, then we have a problem. The heart is what matters, not the outward action.

       So, Abraham, as Forefather, covers both Jews and Gentiles. He bears both conditions, that of being uncircumcised and of being circumcised. Both Jews and Gentiles can look to Abraham as their father. If we go back to Genesis chapters 15 and 16, we can see that God declares Abraham righteous while he is uncircumcised and before, before Ishmael (the Gentile) is born. So, Abraham isn’t circumcised until after Ishmael, many years after actually. The Jew cannot exclude the Gentile then on this basis. He cannot say that the Gentile has no right to salvation. God made provision from the very beginning even for the Gentile to be saved. While the Jews are God’s chosen people first, this does not exclude the Gentile. Again, this strikes at the pride of the Jewish man.

       I think Paul puts this best in his letter to the Galatians. He told them in chapter 3, “Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” (Galatians 3:23-29, ESV).

       Moving on. Back in Romans 4, verse 13: “For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith. For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression. That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring—not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” (Romans 4:13-17, ESV).

       When I enrolled in college to obtain my bachelor’s degree, I enrolled with the promise that as long as I met a minimum standard by the end of my studies, I would obtain the degree. The university didn’t tell me that I had to perform perfectly in all of my classes to receive my degree, I just had to meet a minimum requirement. If I would have had to obtain straight A+’s in every class, a hundred percent across the board, everytime and always, no matter the class, that would have been a problem for me. That’s something I couldn’t accomplish no matter how hard I would have tried. In the same way, adherents to the Jewish Law could not perform perfectly. In fact, if they would have been able to, Paul says “faith is null and the promise is void.” God could not give a promise toward something that was impossible for anyone to accomplish.

       Now, Paul says “For the law brings wrath.” Through people’s inability to keep the law, but rather sin’s opportunity through knowing the law, unrighteousness before God increased. People sin when they know what they’re not supposed to do. And this sin, abounding more and more, brought God’s wrath upon individuals. And, as we read a little bit ago, when we try to approach God in our own righteousness, and try to prove ourselves before God, that we are worthy, this makes God angry. We can create all kinds of rules to try to be more sin-free, to try to gain God’s acceptance, and come into closer relationship with him. But, it’s not going to do what we think. So, while sin definitely makes God angry, so does an incorrect attitude about ourselves, a prideful attitude, an attitude that views ourselves, without Christ’s provision, in a positive light. It is like Isaiah said, “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away” (Isaiah 64:6, ESV).

       Paul states, “That is why it depends on faith.” Our righteousness depends on faith. We must have faith in Christ, and not depend on the works of ourselves. We must believe that we are one hundred percent righteous before God in Christ alone. In Christ alone. That is how God sees us. Now, this faith that we have is an active faith, a continuing faith that lasts until we leave this earth and are united with Christ in Heaven. We use it daily; we depend on it daily. Jesus said, “But the one who endures to the end will be saved” (Matthew 24:13, ESV). We have to endure, we have to keep fighting the good fight of the faith, staying true to the confession that we have made before others.

       With all that’s going on around us in our lives, no doubt temptation is going to come for us to give up our faith. And you out there who are preachers and teachers of God’s Word, the temptation is going to be tremendous, at a higher level than the norm. Satan wants to push people out of the ministry. It can be easy to become discouraged due to the rising of evil in our world. Discouragement can come from a seeming lack of response to preaching or even personal witnessing to others. Discouragement can also come from seeing enormous trials and difficulties in the lives of those around us. Perhaps there are some of you out there who feel there’s no point in going on anymore. You feel that your faith is gone. The way to continue, the way to keep one foot in front of another, is to always keep your faith in God. God will give you the encouragement you need, the answers to your prayers, the ability to go on when you feel like you can’t, whatever it is, when you keep your belief in him. Give that up, throw in the towel on God, and there’s no point.

       Back in Romans 4, another thing we need to note is that the promise rests on grace, just like the preacher's ability to preach—the ability rests in God’s grace, his enabling. But here, we’re talking about the promise. What promise? The promise of righteousness through our faith. So, our right standing with God is not something that comes and goes. It’s not that our new relationship is held up by our performance, but we are “guaranteed” our salvation, the fulfilment of the promise. That’s a familiar word, isn’t it? Guaranteed. Again, though that doesn’t mean we perform perfectly in following God’s ways for the rest of our lives, though God will surely press us on to do so. Even though we are guaranteed our salvation from our sins, we still have to endure this world, and seek to be obedient to him in our lives.

       Paul also stated that God “gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” Gives life to the dead… well, we know he’s given us new lives, for we are new creations in Christ. He has transformed us spiritually already, even though we are still waiting for our physical bodies to be transformed after we die or are Raptured. Nevertheless, Paul also said that God “calls into existence the things that do not exist.” What is one way in which God has done this? You can recall the famous verse from Philippians chapter 1, and verse 6: “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6, ESV). Fits in with our theme here. And this attitude that God displays before us is the same attitude we need to adopt in our own lives. We need to make sure we are looking into the future, believing and speaking right now, for good things for our lives. Our mouths need to be calling for prosperity in regards to our work for the Gospel. That’s the bad word, isn’t it, ‘Prosperity’? What is the main funnel of prosperity, though? It’s being able to accomplish the work that God has set aside for us to do.

       Speaking of having this attitude, let’s continue on here in Romans 4, and verse 18: “In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.” He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.” (Romans 4:18-25, ESV)

       In line from the last section, when Paul said that God “calls into existence the things that do not exist”, we see, if we go back to Genesis chapter 17, that God is calling into existence his promise to Abraham. Here, we can see how he did this. In verse 5, God said, “No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations” (Genesis 17:5, ESV). Do you see what is going on here? God renames Abraham so that every time his name is called, not just by himself, but by others also, it is calling into existence the promise God had made. Our tongues are powerful, aren't they? And he said the same thing about Abraham’s wife. Verse 15: “And God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name” (Genesis 17:15 ESV). This is why it’s so important for us to memorize Bible verses. They help us call into existence good things for our lives that aren’t in them yet.

       And so Abraham and Sarah had to wait a long time for their son, Isaac. And everything around wasn’t looking good for God to fulfill this promise in his life. His body was getting really old, and so was Sarah’s. No matter how much they tried to have a son, nothing was happening. But Paul tells us that Abraham hoped against hope, that he didn’t get discouraged, but kept his faith until the end. I think a lot of us can relate to this type of issue in our lives. And Paul doesn’t mention Hagar here, or Ishmael. Paul presents a positive view of Abraham’s accomplishment of hoping against hope. We don’t always have to bring up the bad with the good. To say that you can only look at the whole entire picture with the bad too or it’s not an accurate picture, that saying is not what God says. If that were true, then the Spirit of God and Paul both made an error here. And we know that’s not the case. Besides, if we were to look at the story of any Christian, anybody’s life, there would be bad things we could point out alongside the good things. But God doesn’t always look at it that way.

       Can I share something on a personal level? As many of you know, I’m not married and I have been waiting for a wife for a while now. And I’m not getting any younger; I’m 34 years old. It was some four years ago now, but I was vacationing out at Arches National Park in Utah, and I remember I got into a pretty heated discussion with God (to put it mildly), in regard to not being married yet, while I was there looking at the Arches. When you’re in a place like that, a place that is quiet and serene, it gives you time to think, and in this case not about a good thing. Anyhow, I was expressing to God my frustration with this matter of not having a wife. And as I recall it, after my heated words—these heated words being inside my mind—as my father and I got into our rental car and began to drive out of the park, there was a giant rainbow off to left side of the car, right there behind the open fields with the arches. And I knew, I knew that was God’s promise to me that one day he would give me a wife. Some of you out there are in the same situation, or a similar one. You are waiting on God to do something in your life. Maybe you're waiting on a spouse, or a child, or something else, and you have a promise from God. Remember, God always does what he says he’s going to do, though at times he doesn’t do things when we think he should do them.

       That’s why I love this passage of Scripture. It’s such an encouragement to us. Abraham waited and he obtained, just like God said. It encourages us to continue to believe in what God has said, in his goodness, just like Abraham did. It encourages us to be fully convinced in our own minds that we will receive from God what he has told us he is going to do. Let’s continue to praise God, and give him glory, as we wait for him to do what only he can do. I cannot stress enough, either, how important it really is for us to surround ourselves, to surround our daily lives, in an atmosphere of praising God. When we go about our days praising God for his goodness, however we decide to do that, it makes us feel much better and, and, note this, it protects us and preserves us from demonic activity, demonic power, in our lives, demonic lies, but this is a whole ‘nother topic altogether. And Satan, through his demons, will whisper lie after lies to us, that what God has promised us is not going to happen.

       Paul finishes the chapter here, “It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification” (Romans 4:25, ESV). And so Paul gets back to the main focus here, which is Jesus Christ. He has already been explaining how he “was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification” and now, in the next chapter, he’s going to explain how Jesus has given us our peace with God.

       Anyone out there today can have this forgiveness from Jesus for all your trespasses against him, and receive God’s justification from sins, by Christ standing in our place. All you have to do is believe, have faith, that Jesus Christ has accomplished this for you, on your behalf. You can go to God today in prayer and tell him you want that.

-Daniel Litton