Romans 4:18-25 (p. 1752)
Int.: In the epistle to the Hebrew Christians God tells us, “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for.” (11:1-2)
God himself defines faith as being sure and certain of things that cannot be seen, cannot be scientifically investigated, and cannot be proven rationally.
Such things include the history of our universe and knowledge of where all things came from and how they came to be as they are today. God tells us one thing, but our scientists have made up a lot of myths that tell a whole different story to explain today’s reality.
Even in recorded history, historians today tend to automatically discount the Bible’s stories of what happened in the history of this world and to accept the stories told by other nations, even when those other nations have been proven to tell lies in order to make themselves look good, while the Bible has always tested out to be 100% accurate. This means that historians, as well as many scientists today, spread myths and lies in the name of knowledge, all because they refuse to believe God and his word. But faith believes God because we know that as the Bible says, God cannot lie.
Faith is also being sure of things to come, whenever God tells us what is to be.
Thus the book of Hebrews points to Noah as a hero of faith, who started building the ark a century before it was needed, because he believed God’s threat to destroy the world with a huge flood. No one else on earth believed God, the result is that only Noah and his immediate family were saved from death in that ark.
Hebrews also points to Enoch, who walked with God by faith, and who was so devoted to God in love that he was taken to heaven without seeing death. Such devotion to God in love has not been seen on earth since.
Then Hebrews speaks of Abraham, who trusted God implicitly so that he left his home and family at the age of 75, and followed God’s guidance to a foreign land without even knowing where he was headed. Abraham also believed God’s promise to give him descendants more numerous than the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. And Abraham believed this promise from God before he had any children.
In the verses just before our text for this morning begins, St. Paul says that Abraham is the father of all believers, for he is the foremost example of those who believe God and are saved by their faith. Therefore, my friends, I urge you as does the Apostle Paul, to …
DARE TO BELIEVE GOD.
I. Abraham Believed God’s Impossible Promises.
St. Paul says in our text, “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.’”
When God first told Abraham that his descendants would become a great nation, Abraham was 75 years old. But years passed, and Abraham and his wife Sarah remained childless. Decades passed, and there remained only a promise from God to hold on to; no children to carry in their arms. It was 24 years after the first promise was made when God finally told Abraham that his wife would finally give birth to a son. 24 years! How many of you would have the patience to hold on to a promise for 24 long years, when there was not a sign of it coming true in all those years, and when physically, hope was fading away with each passing month?
“Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed,” St. Paul says. Abraham believed in the impossible because God had promised it. St. Paul also tells us, “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.” Abraham was 99 years old when God promised him that in a year he would he holding his long-awaited son, and Sarah, his wife, was 90 years old. Both of them were long past the age for having children. They should have had great, great grandchildren at that stage of life. In fact, God’s promise at that late time in their lives was so incredible that Sarah laughed when she heard God say it, and she thought to herself, “After I am worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?” (Genesis 18:12) But she did have the pleasure of holding her baby in her arms the next year, and she named that baby Isaac, which means “she laughs.”
Unlike his wife, Abraham never doubted God’s promises, not even a dozen or so years later when God asked Abraham to offer up Isaac as a burnt offering to the LORD.
Scripture tells us that Abraham was willing to do whatever God asked of him, even if it meant killing his only son. And yet at the very same time Abraham believed that descendants more numerous than the stars in the sky would come from that same son, Isaac. And so, Abraham was convinced that if he did offer Isaac as a burnt offering to the LORD, then the LORD would bring Isaac back to life again in order to fulfill his promises to Abraham. So when he went to offer Isaac as a sacrifice to God, Abraham told his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.” (Genesis 22:5) And Abraham was totally convinced that what he told them was the truth.
In what could be called the greatest coincidence of history, the hill on which God asked Abraham to offer his son Isaac as a burnt offering was either the same hill on which God offered his own Son Jesus as the sacrifice that paid for the sins of the world, or else it was a hill within easy sight of Calvary. Jewish and Christian traditions indicate that it was the same small hill outside Jerusalem. But there is no such thing as coincidence with God, and God did raise his Son back to life after he was sacrificed for our sins.
It was Abraham’s absolute trust in God and his promises that made Abraham the father of believers. Like Abraham, we are saved by faith, because it is faith that makes God’s promises our reality. As Scripture tells us, …
II. Abraham’s Faith Was Credited To Him As Righteousness.
Many people point to Abraham’s unquestioning obedience to God’s instructions as that which made Abraham righteous before God – his works.
In fact, the Jewish religion at the time of Jesus did make a big issue out of Abraham’s works of service to God and obedience to God’s will as the source of Abraham’s righteousness and as the right example for everyone to follow. They were partly right, for Abraham’s obedience to God is the right example for all believers to follow, just as Noah’s was. But those Jewish theologians put the cart before the horse. In fact, they tried to invent the horse-less carriage way before its time.
The problem with viewing Abraham’s works as righteousness before God is that this ignores the whole question of motivation. God does not view our works in a vacuum, but he judges our works based upon our motivation. For example, both Cain and Abel offered what they had raised as burnt offerings to the LORD, but God was pleased only with the offerings of Abel. God rejected the offerings of Cain because Cain’s motivation was wrong. Right actions but wrong motivation equals unacceptable works. Or think of the day that Jesus and his disciples were watching people put money into the temple treasury to help the poor. Many wealthy people put in large sums of money, and then a poor widow came along who dropped in two small coins that together amounted to less than a penny. Her gift was virtually meaningless for helping the poor, but Jesus told his disciples, “I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.” (Luke 21:3-4) It was her love for God and the fact that she put other people ahead of herself that made that widow’s gift worth more than those of more wealthy people.
In the same way, Abraham’s works were motivated by his trust in God. That is why the Bible tells us that Abraham’s faith was counted as righteousness, not his works.
But if we look more deeply into the story of Abraham as the Bible recounts it for us, we see that God included in his promises to Abraham this particular one: “through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed.” (Genesis 22:18) And God gave that promise to Abraham more than once. St. Paul points out in his letter to the Galatian Christians, “The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The Scripture does not say ‘and to seeds,’ meaning many people, but ‘and to your seed,’ meaning one person, who is Christ.” (Galatians 3:16) All the nations on earth would be blessed through the promised Savior, who would be a descendant of Abraham.
Right here we come to the well-spring of salvation. It was not just trust in any promises of God that made Abraham righteous, but his trust in the promise of a Savior who would be one of Abraham’s own descendants. So Abraham’s faith in the Christ to come is what God counted as righteousness for him. Today also, …
III. Our Faith In Christ Is Counted As Righteousness By God.
It is not faith in God’s commandments that will save you, nor simply acts of service to God without the right motivation behind them.
God’s commandments are the epitome of clear statements of right and wrong for human living. Those commandments were carved into stone by God himself to indicate that his rules applied to all people everywhere, throughout all of time. But God’s commandments, right and lasting as they are, cannot save anyone. As St. Paul tells us, the law of God can only make us conscious of our sins and set our conscience ablaze with guilt.
And meticulous acts of service to God even in the small things of life cannot save, either. Think of Jesus’ story of the Pharisee and the tax collector in the temple. The Pharisee prayed,
“God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.”
“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God.” Jesus tells us. (Luke 18:11-14)
Saving faith, faith that is counted as righteousness by God, is faith that acknowledges your sins and trusts in Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord.
When the people of Capernaum asked Jesus after he had fed the 5,000, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” Jesus answered them, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” (John 6:28-29) It is easy to miss Christ’s point here – they asked him what they must do, and Jesus responded by telling them what God does in them by creating faith in Jesus in people’s hearts – faith that they lacked. They saw Christ’s miracles and they followed him everywhere to hear his teachings, but they would not trust him a their Savior or serve him as their Lord.
True faith, saving faith, is faith like Abraham’s that dares to believe God’s promises about our Savior Jesus Christ, and that then serves Christ in loving devotion and obedience because that is the inevitable response of faith. As St. John says in his first epistle, “We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19) That love in the Christian’s life is sacrificial giving to God and doing for God, because it trusts God implicitly and dares to believe God as he speaks to us in his word. So my friends, …
Con.: DARE TO BELIEVE GOD.
Abraham Believed God’s Impossible Promises.
Abraham’s Faith Was Credited To Him As Righteousness.
Our Faith In Christ Is Counted As Righteousness By God, and will lead us to righteously live for God. Amen.