Abraham as an Example of Faith

You know, that Peter said in Second Peter that Paul is sometimes hard to understand. And I don't know how you feel, but some of the stuff is not so easy. Right. We heard a lot about circumcision and him being Abraham, being our father and all this. And it takes a bit of digging to really get to what Paul is saying.

And perhaps, you know, if you're with us for the last few weeks, there were some dark messages in the last few weeks. And it's good you're still here. It shows that you're. You don't want just messages that will tickle your ears, but you're interested in the truth. And already last week we heard that we're justified by faith.

And today's message is really shows an example, Abraham, how it played out, what it means that we're justified by faith. But before I start, I want to give the context. I want to show the relevant verses and places in Romans that really play into what we just read.

We read in Romans 1 that the gospel is the power for salvation.

Do you know what that means? It does. It's not just that the words of the gospel are powerful. You know, in Germany we have a saying, we're kind of skeptical of words. We say, you know, words are hollow.

You know, they don't have much substance. They're a small smokescreen. But God's word is very different today. We will see in this text, in Romans 4 that the gospel and the promises of God change lives and bring salvation.

You know, we live in a very intellectual, rational world, especially here in the West. Well, we just like to dissect words. We like to dissect messages. Perhaps you are here today and you have already your iPhone out and you're going to fact check, you know, what the preacher is saying today.

But I want to give you this example, fire. You know, I could give you a definition, a smart definition of fire. Fire is a rapid exothermic chemical reaction known as combustion, where fuel reacts with oxygen to release light, he heat and smoke. You know, this is how we sometimes treat the word of God. We, we, you know, have nice words and nice definitions and think about.

And you say, oh, I would add something to this. And you know, I see it a little different. But if I may suggest to you, if we had a bonfire here and you put your hand in it, I would see a reaction, right? You would react to it. This is what it means that the Gospel of God is the power of God to salvation.

It's not just something we think about, something we we, you know, articulate and argue about. But do you believe the gospel is the power for salvation? And that's why we or the pastors have called the whole series Gospel Transformation, because we believe in this house that the Gospel changes everything.

And some commentaries talk about Romans as really what is the intro and the. The outro, the beginning and the end of Romans really shows what Paul is about. He says, Paul says, I really wanted to come to you, but I've been hindered so far. I couldn't come to you, but I wanted to come to you and share some spiritual gifts, share the gospel. What is the purpose of.

So that you will be strengthened. And strengthened really is in other places translated, and I think would be better translated also here as established. You would be built firmly in God. And that's how he ends. In the last paragraph in Romans 16, he says, Glory be to God who is able to strengthen.

It's the same word again. To establish you, to make you firm according to the gospel, according to the message about Jesus Christ, see, so that we would not be blown back and forth like tumbleweed. But we are rooted deeply in Jesus Christ. I believe that is the purpose of the whole letter of Paul of Romans and is to establish us so that we stand firm in Christ and we're transformed and we live in a time, you know, And I believe through the times, probably people always feel like, oh, this is the hardest time. This is so difficult.

But we live in a very confusing time, right? We're not clear anymore. Society is not clear about identity, sexuality, families break down. We don't know anymore what is right and wrong. And I believe this chapter today will give an answer that we can stand firm on Christ, what it means to have faith in Jesus.

And one more comment about Romans and about the gospel. See, I think many times, and Pastor Friends has mentioned it too. See, he talks about the gospel. When we talk about the gospel today, often it's like, that's the beginning. Teachings about our faith.

It's like the abc. But I believe the gospel is the A to Z or British Z. All right? It's for all of life. The gospel is to show us how God changes us and establishes us.

And then we read the righteous will live by faith. We're called righteous if we live by faith.

But. But then the dark chapters come. And I think the connection is that he says, this is not a nice to have to be righteous before God. It's not just like, okay, I'm righteous. Great, thank you, God.

Wonderful. The wrath of God comes on all Unrighteousness, this is not a light matter. It's important that we're righteous before God, because if you're not righteous, you are under the wrath of God. And it shows how this unrighteousness plays out. People do not recognize God, people do not honor God, not even thank God.

And God hands them over to their lusts and sins. And it's kind of description of Berlin, right? Very hedonistic, very atheistic life.

But then we come to chapter two and we see the self righteous believer and he judges, oh yeah, Paul, right? Ah, these horrible sinners, these Gentiles. And he says, you know better, right? It's kind of shocking if we believe it. He says, your outward compliance to the law is not enough.

If your heart is not changed, that is not enough. And then he goes on. What we've heard then from Pastor Chad is no one is good, no one seeks God, no one fears God. I mean, that's a pretty dark description of humanity, right?

And as we heard last time, but we are justified through faith alone.

And so I want to talk about what kind of faith is described in the life of Abraham.

But before I do, I want to pray.

God, I pray that you would take my weak human words and you would speak to us today.

Open youn Word to us. Speak to us. Would it have a direct impact on our lives? We don't want to just argue and define and talk about make smart words. But we pray for the impact of youf Gospel on our lives.

We pray.

That yout power would come alive in us because you raised the dead to life. God, will we see how brilliant your glory is, how brilliant your grace, open our eyes to your goodness. Amen.

This is a long chapter, chapter four. And I want to give a quick overview. And then we look at the verses that really show us what kind of faith we're talking about that really is credited as righteousness. And we see it is not done by works. The first thing Paul says in this chapter is if you, if it was by works, it would not be grace.

Because if you're at a job and you do your job and you know, you work eight hours and you, it's not a gift from your employer to say, oh, I'm going to pay you. And you say, oh, thank you so much. No, you deserve it. I mean, that's, you know, that's, that's what you get for working hard. But he says that's why the salvation and the justification is not by works.

Otherwise it would not be grace, it would not be faith.

And then Paul takes David as an example and he quotes out of Psalm 32, he talks about that David was forgiven. And we know David had a lot of problems. He was a man who loved God, a man after God's heart, who wrote wonderful psalms, but who also failed miserably, who had committed adultery, took someone's wife and then had the husband killed. And it shows about how he experienced the forgiveness of God. Then Paul goes back to Abraham and he talks about how Abraham is our father, he's the father of faith, how God had promised that he would be a father for nations.

And Paul is arguing, is this only about the Jewish people, the second group in chapter two that he talked about, or, or is it also for the Gentiles? And he clarifies, when was Abraham justified by faith? It was before he was circumcised. It was before he was the father of the Jews. In a sense, it.

And with that it means that everyone, Gentiles, non Jewish people, and Jewish people are children, are descendants of Abraham. And he says, for if they become heirs of the law, faith is empty and the promise is nullified. So he shows also it's not the law that the Jewish people had that really gave them the justification, it was the faith. And then in Romans 4, 16, it says, Therefore the promise comes by faith, so that it may be grace and it may be guaranteed to all Abram's offspring, not only to those who are the of the law, but also to those who have the faith of Abraham. And with that he's saying, this faith, this salvation is for everyone.

Amen.

And now I want to talk about how this faith is described and what effects it has. And now in my script, something is missing. I'm very sorry. One second.

No, it's not sorry.

In Romans 4, 4, 5 it says, however, to the one who does not work but trusts God, who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness.

Isn't that remarkable? Our God justifies the ungodly. I mean, if I was God, I would not justify people who are against me, who hate me, who don't care about me. But our God, he justifies the ungodly.

And that explains no one seeks God, no one does good, no one fears God. And sometimes, you know, perhaps, I don't know if you've picked up on this, but a few years ago it was very popular in churches to talk about seeker friendly churches. We should all, you know, there's a lot of seekers out there and we need to make a nice service that they Come to our churches and are happy in our churches. And, you know, C.S. lewis said something he was very skeptical of this whole idea that people seek one.

Because Romans 4 already said it, you know, sorry. Romans 3 said it. No one seeks God. But he says, they talk cheerfully about men's search for God. They might as well have talked about the mouse search for the cat.

Mouse doesn't go after the cat. God is a holy God. God is an awesome God. A man who's sinful. He will not go after God, perhaps.

And we talked to the youth about this. You know, there's times, surely, when people in the war, and they're in trenches, bombs falling all around them, and they pray, God, if you save me, if you get me out here, I will follow you. Yeah. People will sometimes cry out to God and say, I will follow you. But it's not because they seek the good glory of God.

They don't seek the honor of God. It's. It's a selfish desire to go after God. And then we see in the next verses about David. So Paul changes the topic.

The example of Abraham, he goes to David and he says, David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the one to whom God credits righteousness apart from the works. Blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord will never count against them again.

David had great times, but he had also very dark moments in his life. And I believe he. This was a shout. This is a God forgives me. God covers my sins.

And even stronger God will never count my guilt against me. You know what that means? We're going to talk in a minute about how the faith is accounted as righteousness. But here he's saying, my sin is not counted against me. And he says, never.

Because God does not just forget and one day remember again and says, oh, I remember. Chad did this. I've done this with my wife. You know, I've forgiven her. She asked for apology, you know, asked for forgiveness.

And I said, yeah, of course I forgive you. A year later, like you said the exact same thing a year ago. Yeah. Don't we do that sometimes? We're like, now I remember, I forgot.

But now I remember. But God says, I blot out your sin. It's gone. There's no place to fish to find it again. God does not forget and he does not remember.

It's gone. That is our God. That's how he forgives. He forgives our sin. But then it goes on.

Sorry, Another point when it talks about here, blessedness. And this might sound a bit presumptuous for me as a German coming from the Bavarian countryside, simple guy. But your Bible translations are not so good here. So in the German it will say gluck seligkeit was also not great because it's a very old German word. It really means happiness.

Happy is the man. And if you have doubts, I'm happy to show you. In the Greek, in the. In the Hebrew, it really is happiness. It's not blessedness.

It's not that God speaks favor and power over us. It's really meaning blessings. Blessed. It means happiness.

And I. I just want to show the difference. I want to ask you, are you happy? Are you happy that you're saved? Are you happy that all your sins are forgiven? See, this is about the state of our mind, the state of our emotions.

This is. This is about how do you feel about things, you know, and this might be a bit rough to say in church, but this is a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher. He said, die Christen must mir allieder musten sieme sing wenig an ern alluzer glaubensolter. The Christians would have to look more redeemed. Better songs they have to sing.

If I'm supposed to believe in their redeemer.

A bit rough, but perhaps some truth to it. Can we really show the happiness of God? Can we show it's amazing what God did for us? I'm really forgiven. This is not just a concept, it's not just an idea.

This is the reality.

And it goes further in the next verse we read. We have been saying that Abram's faith was credited to him as righteousness. And Pastor Martin preached about it last Sunday. Is what we call in theology imputation, a very technical term. All right, what is imputation?

It means if God calls me when he justifies me and he calls me righteous, it's alien. That's not me, Jonathan. I'm not, from myself, a righteous person.

Christ's righteousness has been accounted to my account. And if you think about accounts, you know, forgiveness is that you had a huge debt that really, the Bible says you deserve to die. I deserve to die. But he erased it. He blotted it out.

That's forgiveness. But righteousness is even better. Christ's righteousness, all his goodness, and we see his goodness in the Bible, everything He's done for us, how he healed people, how he loved people, how he had mercy on people, how he cared about the poor, all that is accounted to your account. When. When God the Father looks at you, he doesn't look at you, he's like, oh, my gosh, he's messed up again in some sense.

He looks at you and says, I see the righteousness of Christ.

Is that amazing?

And you know, Luther was asked once by one of his monks, this monk wrote him and said, I'm struggling with sin. I have this. I'm just fallen again and again. What am I supposed to do? You know what Martin Luther wrote him?

Pray this, Lord Jesus, you are my righteousness. I am your sin. You took on you what was mine, yet set me on what was yours. You became what you were not, that I might become what I was not. And that is a good explanation of what it says in 2nd Corinthians 5:21.

For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Do you believe that you are called the righteousness of God? And of course, we don't want to be triumphalistic. It's like, oh, I'm going to go around. I'm going to go at work and say, I'm the righteousness of God.

Now we still fail. And I think that's why I find Luther's claim really good. He called it simmer justus et peccatur. At the same time, in some sense, I'm a sinner. I will till the end of my life.

I will sin, I will fail. I'm a sinner. And in some other sense, I'm righteous, I'm justus. I'm a righteous person before God. And it's an alien righteousness.

It's Jesus righteousness. But I will grow into that. And that's what we will hear more about in sanctification, how that happens, how we have more and more of the righteousness of God.

My wife always says after 20 minutes, you need to shake things up. So I'm gonna do that right now. So there's a evangelism explosion is, you know, evangelistic organization in the States. And they have this question when they meet new people. And I'm going to ask you in a minute, so pay good attention, how you would answer.

Okay, suppose you were to die tonight and stand before God, and he, God, were to say to you, why should I let you in into heaven? What would you say? I'm giving you three answers, and you think hard. Which one would you answer? Because I've tried my best to be a good Christian.

I hear no. Okay, good. Because I Believe in God and try to do his will a bit better. Because I believe in God with all my heart.

It's a bit of a trick question because all three are not really right. All right. The first, I've tried to be a good Christian. That's of course, salvation by works. I believe in God and try to do his will.

That's salvation by faith, plus some works. And the last one, because I believe in God with all my heart. That is salvation by faith as a work. And we will talk about it. What kind of faith did Abraham show?

And I want to read this scripture again. This is the central place where we look at how did the faith of Abraham look like? So Abram, he is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed. The God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not against all hope. Abraham in hope, believed and so became the father of many nations.

Just as it had been said to him, so shall your offspring be. Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, and that Sarah's womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God.

And I want to.

I think we think highly of Abraham. He's clearly, you know, he's presented to us about his faith. But in reality, what Paul is doing Here in Romans 4, he's really deconstructing what Jewish people believed at that time. There's a quote, Jubilee. Do I have it?

Yes. Abraham was perfect in all his deeds with the Lord and with well pleasing in righteousness all the days of his life. This is the book of Jubilee. This is a book written about 150 years before Christ. But this is what the people at that time, the Jewish people, believed.

He was perfect in all his deeds, well pleasing in righteousness. He was righteous in himself.

But what does the Bible say about Abraham? I want to just quickly go through his life. Actually. Joshua 24 tells us Abram was originally an idol worshiper.

And when God had called him to go from Ur to the promised land and to leave his father's house, he went from Ur to Haran with his father's house. And only when his father Terah died, he really moved on to the promised land. Incredible faith, huh?

And then we read the story, you know, God had promised him descendants as many as stars in the sky and as corns of sand on the beach.

And when he comes to Egypt. What does he do? He gives his wife Sarah into the palace. And to be very clear, the palace, that's the harem. It's not just a nice palace, it's the harem.

He gave him her away to the harem.

But you know, it gets worse because when we read in Genesis 18, when God promised that Sarah was going to have a son, that finally the son of promise, the son that would fulfill everything that God had promised to Abraham in that year, Chapter 20, Abram lives in the area where Abimelech is king. And he gives his wife again away into the harem.

When I just read it, when we read together as a church, I was like, what? In that year, God says in a year you're going to have a son. In that year, Abram gave his wife again away.

That gave me chills.

And still it talks about his faith. So now let's look. What does it mean?

It does talk positively about his faith. He hoped against all hope. He hoped against human hope. Humanly, it was impossible that he would have kids, but he hoped in God.

See, in our world, belief, faith is often portrayed as something blue eyed, naive, irrational, doesn't make sense.

Abram was very calculated. It says he faced the facts. He was not like, okay, God, you said will happen.

He says, I'm a hundred years old, I'm too old for this.

My wife is barren. And in the Hebrew, really, it has this literally, it says, her womb was dead. It was just showing everything was dead. He was almost dead. His wife was almost dead, her womb was dead.

There was no way forward humanly, nothing possible. But why did Abram believe? He says, I believe in a God who brings life to the dead. He brings life to the ones who cannot do it themselves. And he says also he creates out of nothing something.

What does it remind us of? That's how God created with just a word. And here we see it again. The word of God is so powerful. God doesn't need materials, he doesn't need things out of nothing, ex nihilo.

He creates everything that is our God. That's why Abraham could believe. I have no way forward. But I believe in a God who does. I believe in a God who can bring life where there's death.

I believe in a God who will speak a word and everything exists.

And it says he believed. And the word, really, when you look at the Greek and also in the Hebrew, there's a sense this is not. You know, sometimes we take faith as something just assenting to doctrines. Don't get me wrong. I love doctrines.

Doctrines are important. I'm very convicted of my doctrines. But it's faith is not just a. To certain belief systems. This was very personal to Abraham.

This was very real. This is about his future. This was about his life, his family and everything. He trusted God. He threw everything on God.

You're the only way forward. So let's have doctrines. But more than that, we need a personal trust. He will take care of us.

And then it says he was strengthened in his faith, giving glory to God.

Some translation ESV that normally is a bit more correct, a bit more literal, has grew in faith. But I don't that. That's not the Greek. In Greek, it really says passive. He was strengthened in faith.

You know, I grew up where you believe that, you know, you're saved by faith and by grace, but then when you believe it, it's really on you. And I remember missionaries come to our church and some of them told these crazy stories of how they gave everything up and how radically they served God and I. It's like in awe. It's like, wow, I could never live like that. That man is amazing.

But if you're strengthened by God's grace, and if it's the trust in God, it's not about you. It's about God. And that's why it says, this is what honors God. When we put our trust in him, that is what brings glory to God. Not when you live a mighty and glorious Christian life.

But just like we've heard of Abraham, that was faulty. His walk was pretty bad at times, right? But it did end good. And I know this is a. Is a really hard story, but you know what, why I believe he was really strengthened.

He grew in this faith. In some ways, you could say he grew in his faith because the story, when he offered up his son, it showed I trust God, he says in Hebrews 11, it tells us when he offered up Isaac, he knew this is the son of promise. And I will figuratively, in some sense, I will get him back. Because he God's promise is on that son, even if I give him away. This is the Son of promise.

And that's how strong his faith in the end was. But it was invigorated. It was strengthened by God.

And I come to the close.

In the end. We read how this whole story of Abram really addresses us, because these words it says in verses 23 to 25, it was credited to him. This is not just about Abraham. This is about us. They were written not for him alone, but also for us.

To whom God will credit righteousness for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification. So he's now bringing it all together and says this is for us. All that God has done with Abraham, this is for us because Jesus died. Because again, someone died in our place for our sins and was raised to life for our justification so that we're justified, so that his righteousness would be accounted to our account.

This is what it means to us.

Can I pray to the end?

God, I thank you for your amazing gospel. I thank you for it. It's all on you that you have done this for us. And I'll walk again and again. We will try to follow you to honor your but we're rich in men and women.

But it's your goodness. God, will we never make light of your gospel? Will we never think I've heard it so many times. But we always value and have such a pleasure in your word.

And God, we thank you. Jesus, we thank you for your death that you justified us, that you have given us new life. And God, I pray that if there's anyone here who doesn't know you that he would come from death to life. God, I pray if there's anyone here who's past lived a good Christian life but cannot say I found this rebirth, being born again, finding new life, eternal life in God that you would speak today and they will come to you. God, we bless you.

We thank you for your goodness. Amen.

Well, by faith, God brings dead things to life. Hallelujah. Yeah. The gospel will prevail. And I'm thank you, Jonathan, for your message this morning.

The clarity that we stand in grace. We're gonna hear more about that next week, but thank you. I think our teens are blessed to have you. Yeah, just stick around for a little bit, but not too long. Today.

Evidently we. There's a. Pff. Has something at 5 or I think we need to be out by 5pm I think they have a concert. So just a reminder, if you could just clear the sanctuary by 5pm today, that would be really helpful. I just want to remind the preschool parent don't forget about our meeting.

And you know, Steve Dye used to love this benediction. I thought it was fitting today to use this benediction our last Sunday in Hootenburg. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

Thank you so much for coming today. We hope you have a great day.