Steven Lawson - Romans 4

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Abraham, Paul and David: Romans 4:1-8

OnePassion Ministries August 8, 2017
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What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, has found? 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 credited to him as righteousness.” Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due. But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing on the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works: “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven, and whose sins have been covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account” (Romans 4:1-8). It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. This is especially true in the profound theological doctrines of the Bible. As the apostle Paul teaches us about justification, he does not merely tell us this truth, but shows us. In these verses, we find Paul’s vivid illustrations of the doctrine of justification by faith. Paul will use the supreme examples of Abraham, David, and himself to make his point. If anyone has been made to have a right standing with God, it was surely these three men. Paul first makes his case with Abraham. Likewise, he uses David in verses 6-8 to establish Abraham. The apostle is making an argument from the greater to the lesser. If the supreme example, Abraham, was justified by faith alone apart from works, then how much more is everyone else who exercises faith in Jesus Christ enter the kingdom of heaven. These are some of the most important verses for clarifying the gospel in the entire Bible. We have already looked at two major paragraphs in Romans regarding justification by faith. In Romans 3:21-26, we saw the instruction in which Paul laid out the doctrine of justification by faith alone. In verses 27-31, we saw the implications of justification by faith, which demand our humility, unity, and obedience. As we come to chapter four, we move to the illustration of this core doctrine. We have gone from the instruction, to the implications, to the illustration of justification by faith. Our outline for Romans 4:1-8 will cover, one, what Abraham found, in verses 1-3. Two, what Paul taught, in verses 4-5. And three, what David declared, in verses 6-8. Here, Paul goes from Abraham, to himself, to David. This speaks to the unity and perfect harmony from one biblical author to the next writer within the entire Bible. The Scripture speaks with one voice, never contradicting itself. It is a seamless tapestry, every thread woven together perfectly to form one large tapestry of truth. I. What Abraham Found (4:1-3) Paul begins with what Abraham found in verses 1-3. The apostle writes in question form, “What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, has found?” (verse 1). Paul brings to our attention the chief example of one who has attained a right standing before God, namely, Abraham. It is noteworthy that Paul goes back to the Old Testament to make his case for justification by faith. This clearly establishes that there is only one way of salvation in both the Old and New Testaments. As Paul teaches justification by faith in the New Testament, he uses the Old Testament to make his point. This case is legitimate if there is only one way of salvation in both Testaments. Everyone who has ever been saved in the history of the world has been saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. What did Abraham discover regarding how to be right with God? This is the question Paul raises in verse one. This was the primary issue of every generation. How can a sinful man be made right with holy God? This is the very question that the gospel addresses and answers. How can we find acceptance with God? Not Justified By Works Paul next makes a hypothetical statement, “For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about” (verse 2). When Paul writes, “justified by works,” he is talking about Abraham’s self-righteousness, his own morality and self-perceived goodness. What did he do to contribute to his salvation, whether in full or in part? If Abraham was justified by works, then he could legitimately have a reason to brag that he contributed to his own right-standing before God and purchased his own salvation. This is merely a hypothetical statement, because the Bible clearly teaches that by man’s own works, he cannot be justified. Paul is following an errant line of thinking for a moment to show that it is a false premise. If Abraham could be justified by works, then he would have something to brag about. However, at the end of verse 2, Paul slams the door on this line of faulty thinking. He answers, “But not before God” (verse 2). Even Abraham’s best deeds appear as filthy rags to God. There is nothing he can do that will merit his favor before God. When he stands before God, there will be no boasting of what he did. God is a jealous God, and He will not share His glory with another (Isaiah 42:8). The idea that a man – even the best of men like Abraham – can be justified by his works cannot be true. If it were true, God would have to share His glory with man. But God will not share His glory, because He is jealous for His own glory. “Abraham Believed God” Paul continues to decry this line of thinking. He writes, “For what does the Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness’” (verse 3). Here, Paul uses the Scripture to anchor his point. He quotes from Genesis 15:6, showing that what he is teaching is not new, but goes back to Genesis. Who was Abraham? When God called him, there was absolutely nothing good in Abraham. He lived in the pagan land of Ur of Chaldees and was a pagan idolater who worshiped the moon god. The pollution of sin reeked in his life. Abraham had nothing good whatsoever to commend himself to God. When we think of Abraham, we think of Abraham the believer. But Abraham was not a believer when God first called him. He was Abraham, the idolater and blasphemer. Notice, “Abraham believed God.” The order that the words appear in the original Greek New Testament placed the word “believed” first in the sentence. It literally reads, “believed Abraham God.” When the biblical authors wanted to draw attention to a word, they put it at the beginning of the sentence in what is called the emphatic position. This placement draws the attention of the reader to the first word. Paul wants to emphasize the word “believed.” Abraham took God at His word and believed. What was the result of Abraham believing God? God had previously promised Abraham that a great nation would come from his loins. From this great nation would come the Messiah, who would be the Redeemer of God’s people. According to John 8:56, the gospel was preached to Abraham. Abraham knew the gospel, because God made it known to him. Abraham believed God. That is all he did to find acceptance with God. He did not believe and work, but simply believed God. Righteousness Credited to Abraham What was the result of Abraham’s belief? Paul continues, “And it was credited to him as righteousness” (verse 3). This word “credited” (logizomai) is found nine times in Romans 4. In verse three, “It was credited to him.” In verse five, “His faith is credited as righteousness.” In verse six, “God credits righteousness.” In verse eight, “God will not take into account,” that means ‘not credit.’ In verse nine, “Faith was credited to Abraham as righteousness.” In verse 10, “How then was it credited?.” In verse 11, “The father of all who believe without being circumcised, that righteousness might be credited to them.” In verse 22, “It was also credited to him.” In verse 23, “It was credited to him.” Finally in verse 24, “To whom it will be credited.” The word “credited” comes from the Greek word logizomai. You can hear the English word ‘logarithms’ or ‘logic’ in this word. It is a bookkeeping or accounting term that means ‘to post to the account of,’ ‘to credit to the account of,’ or ‘to put to the account of.’ It is when something is moved out of one side of a ledger account and transferred into the other side of the ledger. In the world of banking, one may take an asset out of one account and transfer it over to a different account. That is what the word “credited” means. God takes the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ and transfers it into the account of the sinner who believes. “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him” (verse 3). Note to whom it was credited – “to him.” Not to Abraham and Sarah. Not to him and his children. Not to him and his servants. Only to Abraham. This teaches that very person must believe on their own. Just because the father believes the gospel does not mean righteousness is credited to the whole family. Just because mom believes the truth does not mean all her kids are saved. It is only imputed to the one person who believes. The perfect righteousness of God was purchased by Jesus Christ and transferred into Abraham’s account. Abraham has done nothing to deserve it, earn it, or work for it. It is credited purely by the grace of God. The Meaning of Righteousness The word “righteousness” (dikaiosyne) means ‘perfect conformity to a standard.’ Justification gives a standing of perfect conformity to God’s own holiness. That is what was transferred into Abraham’s account. This transfer happened immediately. It was not progressive, like sanctification. It happened in the twinkling of an eye, at the exact moment that Abraham believed. Literally, one second he was spiritually bankrupt, and the next second he possessed all the riches of God’s grace transferred to his account. It was a complete transfer. It did not come in installments. It is also a present transfer, meaning it is a reality in this lifetime. There is a false doctrine taught by a man named N.T. Wright, who has a new perspective on Paul. Wright says that this righteousness is not transferred until the final day, at the final judgment, and your works will be evaluated on the last day to see if this transfer will take place. That is a false gospel. This righteousness is presently transferred the moment anyone believes. Look at the verb tense. “Abraham believed God and it was,” not ‘will be,’ “credited to him as righteousness.” Once the righteousness of Jesus Christ was transferred into Abraham’s account, it was an irrevocable transaction, never to be reversed. It will never be counter-transferred back to God’s account, where Abraham will then be without it. It is a once-for-all-time transaction, a finished transaction when righteousness was credited to Abraham. The Example of Onesimus The story behind the book of Philemon is that Philemon was a man in the ancient world who had a slave named Onesimus. Onesimus did not like being a slave, so he ran away illegally to Rome to start over in a new life. In the amazing providence of God, Onesimus crossed paths with Paul, who was there under house arrest. Paul preached the gospel to Onesimus, and Onesimus was converted to Christ. After his conversion, Onesimus asked Paul what he should do. Paul told him that he must go back and make things right with his master. He must return and serve his master. Just because Onesimus had become a Christian did not cancel out his moral obligation to Philemon. By way of example, if a man buys a brand new car and makes four of sixty payments, then he becomes a Christian, he cannot call the car dealership and say, “This wipes out my remaining debt. I do not have to pay you anymore money, because I am now a Christian.” To the contrary, this new believer is still responsible for his obligations. Therefore, Paul told Onesimus he must go back to Philemon to fulfill his obligation, but to take a letter from Paul to his master – the book of Philemon. Paul will speak on Onesimus’ behalf and let Philemon know what has happened in his life. Paul makes an important statement when he says to Philemon, “But if he has wronged you in any way or owes you anything, charge that to my account” (verse 18). Philemon can transfer whatever is owed by Onesimus to Paul’s account, and Paul will pay it. Onesimus did nothing to work for Paul in order to earn this money that Paul would give to Philemon. This is purely a gracious gesture on Paul’s part. That is what God has done for us in the gospel. In essence, God is saying, “I will pay it all. I will transfer from My account into your account the perfect righteousness that you need.” This is what Abraham discovered, that he was justified by his faith rather than by his works. I pray that you have discovered this as well. If you have believed in Jesus Christ, the righteousness of God has been transferred from His divine account to your account. By faith alone, you now have received the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ that you need to stand faultless before God. This righteousness does not come from you or anyone else. No other person, church, pastor, or denomination can transfer this deposit into your account. Only God can deposit what you need from His account into your account. II. What Paul Explained (4:4-5) Second, Paul explains this truth in the next two verses in order to show that Paul and Abraham are in perfect agreement. Verse four gives one scenario and verse five gives another. Paul will make a contrast between wages and a gift. Wages are what you work for. They are earned through hard work. A gift is freely given without anything done to merit the gift. Paul will use the general principle that the worker is worthy of his wages. The apostle writes, “Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due” (verse 4). If you make an agreement to pay someone twenty dollars to perform a service, when they have finished the job, you cannot say that you have a gift to give them. Not when they have worked for it. Rather, you are paying them the wages for which they worked. On the other hand, it could be that you see a man on the street corner, and out of the goodness of your heart you walk up and hand him twenty dollars. That would not be wages, but a gift based upon your own benevolence. Paul begins with this example of a wage that is due to the workman. Faith is Credited as Righteousness Paul next gives the other principle, which is how the gospel works. The apostle writes, “But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly” (verse 5). We cannot work to earn our salvation. It is a free gift of God. God does not justify the godly, because there are none who are godly. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). “Ungodly” (asebes) means ‘wicked’ or ‘irreverent.’ That is exactly what Abraham was when he believed the gospel. We see the result of his belief, “His faith is credited as righteousness” (verse 5). It is the idea of transferring into Abraham’s account from God’s account His perfect righteousness that was secured by Christ through His sinless life and substitutionary death. Abraham’s faith activated the transfer by which God credits the righteousness of Christ to his account. It is abundantly clear that our salvation is by faith alone in Jesus Christ alone. III. What David Declared (4:6-8) Finally, we see what David declared in verses 6-8. Paul uses one of David’s psalms as the confirmation for the case that he has made with Abraham. Paul writes, “Just as David also speaks of the blessing,” referring to divine favor in salvation, “on the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works” (verse 6). Then he quotes Psalm 32:1-2, that teaches that salvation is apart from works. “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven” (verse 7). “Blessed” is the opposite of being cursed. A person is either blessed or cursed. There is no middle ground. To be cursed means an unbeliever is under the wrath of God. To be blessed means he is under the favor of God and finds acceptance with God. Sins Forgiven “Lawless deeds” refers to the sin that breaks the Law of God. “Deeds” is in the plural, meaning this includes all of one’s lawless deeds past, present, and future. Paul stresses that our sins “have been forgiven.” This verb tense indicates that this forgiveness has already happened. It is not a progressive forgiveness that happens over time. It is not that one day in the future we will be forgiven. Divine pardon occurred the moment you believed in Jesus Christ. Some people think that when they were saved, God forgave all of this sins up until that point, but not their future sins But when Jesus died on the cross two thousand years ago, all of our sins that were laid upon Him were in the future. He paid for every single sin a believer would commit in the entirety of their life. The entire slate was wiped clean. “Forgiven” (aphiemi) is a picturesque word that means ‘to send away.’ It is actually used in the Scripture when a man would divorce his wife and send her away. In other words, she is put out of the house, no longer a part of his life. That is the idea for forgiveness. It means that God has sent away the debt of our sins. He has put away the curse of the Law by assigning it to Christ. God has canceled out the debt we owed the justice of God by having His Son incur the debt on our behalf. God has taken our sins and sent them away. He has buried them in the sea of His forgetfulness. God has taken our sins and placed them behind His back. God remembers our sin no more. Paul follows up with a parallel phrase, “And whose sins have been covered” (verse 7). Not only are our sins canceled out and sent away, they are also covered over, meaning God can no longer see them. They are under the blood of Christ. Again, “sins” is in the plural. It is not merely an isolated sin that is covered, but all of them. The whole package has been concealed from God’s sight. Paul repeats the same thought in verse 8 as he continues in David’s psalm, “Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account” (verse 8). This time “sin” is in the singular. David has already stressed the plural, now the singular. This is in reference to all sin, even each individual sin. God will not “take into account” (logizomai) the sin of the one who believes in Jesus Christ. Three Imputations There are three creditings that God causes to occur. The theological term is imputation, which means to charge to the account of another. The first imputation occured when Adam sinned. His sin was immediately charged to the account of every person who would ever live. Paul writes in the next chapter, “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12). At the moment that Adam sinned thousands of years ago, you and I also became a sinner. Adam was our representative. It is like in football when one man jumps offside, everyone on the team is penalized. When Adam jumped offside, the whole team, the whole human race, was penalized. Adam acted on our behalf. That is the first imputation. Adam’s sin was credited to your account. The second imputation was a another transfer of sin. This occurred two thousand years ago at the cross, when all the sins of all the people who would ever believe in Jesus Christ were transferred to Him. The Bible says “[God] made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf” (2 Corinthians 5:21). In that moment, Jesus bore our sins in His body upon the cross (1 Peter 2:24). In so doing, He was made to bear the curse of the Law for our sins (Galatians 3:13). The third imputation is the imputation of the righteousness of God in Christ that is transferred to everyone who believes. This is the truth of justification by faith. The righteousness of Christ, secured through His sinless life and substitutionary death, is credited to all who believe. First Adam’s sin was imputed to the entire human race. Then, the sin of all believers was transferred to Jesus Christ at the cross. Finally, the righteousness of God was credited to the account of all who believe the moment they put their trust in Him. This is the progression of salvation. Paul gives both a negative and a positive crediting in our account. In the act of justification, there is something that is credited to believers (verse 6). According to verse 8, the sin of believers is no longer credited to them. Instead, our sin has been credited to Christ at the cross. Jesus suffered, bled, and died in our place upon the cross. Our sin was credited to Christ, and Christ’s righteousness was credited to us. That is God’s accounting. That is God’s bookkeeping in salvation. We could call it the great exchange. The worst about you was credited to Christ, and the best about Christ was credited to you. You gave up the dirt of your sins to receive the diamonds of His grace. He gave the diamonds of His righteousness to us and received the dirt of our sins. This is a summary of the gospel. So What? There are many applications we can make as we wrap up this study. First, we see the importance of the Old Testament. As Paul makes his case for justification by faith, he repeatedly goes back to the Old Testament. This shows the Old Testament is still of great value in New Testament times. Even the moral law is of great importance to believers today. Though the ceremonial law has been abolished and the civil law is not in effect for us, the moral law is still binding upon us. We still need to have an understanding of the precepts, promises, and prophecies found in the Old Testament. Second, we see the importance of sound doctrine. Paul is belaboring this doctrine of justification by faith. Sometimes we get in the middle of theological sections in the Bible and question when we are going to get into something practical. We will eventually come to the practical section of Romans, but tall skyscrapers must rest on a deep foundation. All Christian duty rests securely upon sound doctrine. All behavior rests upon beliefs. There is not even an imperative verb given in Romans until chapter 6. We are not told to do anything until that point. So here, Paul is laying a doctrinal foundation, which should impress upon us the importance of theology. Third, we see the hopelessness of our works to save us. Our righteousness is not achieved by our own deeds. Not by our morality. Not by our religiosity. Christ paid in full for our salvation. Our works contributed nothing to our right standing before God. Absolutely nothing. Then fourth, we see the power of the gospel. God made Abraham, an idolatrous heathen, to be the premiere example of a true believer and to be the father of a nation. The gospel made him the father of the faithful. Through Abraham’s loins the Messiah would come into this world. This is the power of the gospel to take someone who is a nobody, and make them into someone of strategic importance through the merit, power, and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. This should encourage us, that God can bring to Himself people who are far away from Him and transform them into trophies of grace. Conclusion You may have a family member, work associate, or good friend from school who seems beyond the reach of God. Take heart that God delights in taking the one who is furthest away from Him and bringing Him near. That is exactly what God did with Abraham, and it is exactly what God did with Paul. No one could have been further away from God than Abraham and Paul. God loves to showcase His glory and power in those who are most sinful, and it is done through the gospel of Jesus Christ. This should be a great encouragement to us in our witnessing to other people. Abraham was not the one who grew up in a Christian environment. He did not attend a Christian school. He did not have Christian friends witnessing to him. Abraham was as pagan, as idolatrous as any person could possibly be. Yet the grace of God found him. Abraham believed God, and immediately God credited to him His righteousness. The same is true for each of us who have believed. May we tell others that it can happen to them as well.

Faith Alone – Romans 4:9-17

OnePassion Ministries September 14, 2017
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We are in the book of Romans, as you know, so I hope your Bible just naturally opens to the book of Romans. I’m going to start, just as the launching point, in Chapter 1, Verse 1, just to remind you of what this book is all about. In Romans 1:1, Paul really tells us where he’s headed with the entire book of Romans. He says he’s been set apart for the Gospel of God. That is the big idea of the book of Romans, the Gospel of God, which means the good news of salvation that God has provided in his Son the Lord Jesus Christ, how sinful man can be made right with Holy God. And the cornerstone of this Gospel is the doctrine of justification, justification by faith. Everything else will build out from the doctrine of justification. I want you to turn to Romans 4, and I want us to step back into the doctrine of justification. Paul has laid for us the doctrine of condemnation of the entire human race, who is under the wrath of God because of their ungodliness and unrighteousness. Beginning in Chapter 3 and verse 21 Paul begins to build his case for justification. The word justification means that God credits to the account the perfect righteousness of his Son Jesus Christ to those who believe in him, that God imputes – reckons to the account of guilty, hell bound sinners, who have no righteousness of their own whatsoever, the perfect righteousness of Christ, and it is on the basis of faith. As we come to Chapter 4, where we left off, we left off at verse 8, we’re going to pick up with verse 9. Romans 4 is really ground zero for justification by faith. This is where Paul presents his argument for justification by faith. And I want to just give you the flyover. I think it’s helpful to see the big picture of a chapter in the Bible without us being lost in the forest. I want us to see the big picture, and there’s four things that I want you to see by way of overview. The first three are negative; the fourth is positive. Paul will begin this chapter by telling us how someone is not justified. Then he will tell us how someone is justified before God. So the first three are negative. In verses 1 through 8 we are not justified by good works. I am going to come back to all this, but I want you to get the skeleton of this chapter. Then, in verses 9 through 12, we are not justified by ceremonial rites. And then in verses 13 through 15, we are not justified by law-keeping. And then, finally, he gets to the positive, and in verses 16 through 17 we are justified by faith alone. This is the mark of a very good teacher: negative denial, positive assertion. There is no room for misunderstanding. There’s no wiggle room. There is nothing can slip through the cracks in anyone’s thinking. This is crystal clear. If someone says, “Oh, I just can’t understand the Bible,” that’s just a smoke excuse. That’s just a smokescreen. No. It may be hard for you to accept; it’s not hard for you to understand. A child can understand this and receive this. I.               NOT JUSTIFIED BY GOOD WORKS So he begins in verses 1 through 8 – we’ve already covered this, so I’m not going to plow this back up, but to remind you we are not justified by good works. There is no amount of good works, small or large, that you can bring to the table and add to the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ that will in any way contribute anything to your salvation. In fact, if you are trusting in any amount of good works to what Christ has already done, you cannot believe in Jesus Christ. You’re still believing in yourself. You’re still trusting in yourself. As I look at verses 1 through 8, it just leaps off the page. verse 2: “If Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.” verse 4: “Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor of what is due.” In verse 5: “But to the one who does not work…” You remember when George Bush 41 said, “Read my lips. No new taxes”? All right. Paul could easily say, “Read my lips. No good works whatsoever.” All right. Say that with me. “No good works.” We are saved by good works. It’s just not our good works. It’s by the finished works of Jesus Christ on our behalf. He is the one who fulfilled the law in our place. He is the one who bore the curse of the law in our place upon the cross. He is the one who interceded on our behalf as he was nailed to the cross and bore our sin. We are saved by works, but it’s not our works. It’s by the works of Jesus Christ in his sinless life and substitutionary death. So that’s number one. It’s not by good works. And he appeals to Abraham in verses 2 and 3. He appeals to David in verses 6 through 8. It’s as if Paul wants us to know the entire Bible speaks with one voice on this. This is unmistakable. I think of Ephesians 2:8-9: “For by grace you have been saved, through faith – and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God – not as a result of works lest any man should boast.” II. NOT JUSTIFIED BY CEREMONIAL RITES Second, justification is not only not by works, but we advance the argument with Paul. It is not by ceremonial rites. And Paul now pulls out the chief ceremonial rite under the old covenant, which was the rite of circumcision. When I say rite, I mean R-I-T-E. So notice in verse 9 – and Paul begins with a question; then he answers the question. He’s the master teacher. This is almost like a catechism. In verse 9, he says, “Is this blessing then on the circumcised or on the uncircumcised also?” Now, when he says blessing, he is referring to verse 3, “the righteousness of God in Christ credited to those who believe,” and in verse 7, “the blessing is forgiveness of lawless deeds, our sins being covered,” and in verse 8, “our sin not being taken into account.” That’s the blessing he’s referring to in verse 9. “Is this blessing ” Is it on the circumcised or on the uncircumcised also,” and with this question Paul is pressing the issue of how this blessing comes to our lives. He answers the question at the end of verse 9, “For we say” – when he says “we,” he again is putting his arms around all the biblical authors and all of the other apostles. There is no equivocation. No one is saying one thing and someone else saying something else. We all say this together. “For we say” – and he now quotes Genesis 15:6 – “Faith was credited to Abraham as righteousness.” Now, you will note in verse 3 he’s just quoted the same verse slightly differently. He’s just transliterating it, and he now makes the emphasis in verse 9 on faith. Do you see how faith starts the quotation? “Faith was credited to Abraham as righteousness.” He is underscoring that it is not on the basis of being circumcised or not being circumcised. It is only on the basis of saving faith in Jesus Christ. He follows up now with a second question: How then was it credited? While he was circumcised or uncircumcised? That’s the $1 million question. Abraham was circumcised. When was he justified? Was he justified when he was circumcised, or was he already justified before he was circumcised? BACK TO GENESIS Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to go back to the book of Genesis right now. And if you have trouble finding it, it’s the first book. Turn back to Genesis 17. We’re going to do a little chronology on this just so that it is crystal clear in our thinking. In Genesis 17: 23-26 – we’re going to start at the end and work backwards. In Genesis 17: 23, this is when Abraham was circumcised. So he says, “Then Abraham took Ishmael his son and all the servants who were born in his house and all who were bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham’s household, and circumcised the flesh of their foreskin in the very same day, as God had said to him.” verse 24, “Abraham was 99 years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin.” verse 25, “And Ishmael his son was 13 years old when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin.” verse 26, “In the very same day Abraham was circumcised, and Ishmael his son.” So how old was Abraham when he was circumcised? He was 99 years old. How old was Ishmael? He was 13 years old. All right. Now turn back to Genesis 16:16. So Abraham was 86 years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to him. Look earlier now in Genesis 16:4. “He” – Abraham – “went in to Hagar, and she conceived.” So the chronology is crystal clear here. Abraham is 86 years old. He bears a son. Thirteen years later he, Ishmael, is circumcised, and Abraham is circumcised at age 99. Turn back one chapter earlier. We’re reading the Bible backwards here, okay? This is the reversed standard version. And so Genesis 15:6 says: “Then he believed in the Lord ” – referring to Abraham – “and he reckoned it to him as righteousness.” That’s when Abraham was justified before God. That’s when Abraham was saved. Thirteen years at least, if not more, before he was circumcised, he was already justified before God. He already had the righteousness of God credited to his account 13 – 14 years earlier, before he was circumcised. How could anyone think that a ceremonial rite would bring about justification? He was already justified. JUSTIFIED WHILE UNCIRSUMCISED So come back now to Romans 4. This is the case that Paul is making: Was he justified when he was circumcised or when he was uncircumcised? The answer is clear. Look at verse 10. “How then was it credited? While he was circumcised or uncircumcised?” Paul answers the question: “Not while circumcised, but while uncircumcised.” Circumcision adds zero to anyone’s standing before God, just like any other ceremonial rite adds zero to salvation. And for us today, it would be water baptism. Water baptism washes away zero sin. Only the blood of Christ can wash away sin. No one is saved by being immersed in water or sprinkled in water. Has absolutely zero to do with anyone’s eternal standing before God. And Paul will go on to tell us, in just a little bit, it’s just simply a sign. It’s just a picture. It has zero redemptive reality to it. So Paul is really making this – concerning the Gospel – crystal clear to us. So verse 11, “And he received the sign of circumcision.” Let me just pause there for a moment. It’s only a sign. A sign has no reality to it. Next week I’m driving to Memphis. I can go out here on Central Expressway and see the sign. That’s not going to get me to Memphis. That’s not even going to get me to downtown. The sign is merely pointing to the reality of I-75 and then I– 40 to take me to Memphis. The sign brings nothing to the table. The sign is, in reality, pointing away from itself to the reality. That’s what circumcision was. It was just a sign on the side of the road pointing to Jesus Christ. “And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while uncircumcised.” It was just a seal. It was just like an official document that would be written up and then rolled up, and a piece of wax put on it, and a seal to seal it shut. It was the authentication that what was on the inside is real. The seal is nothing. What’s on the inside of the document is everything. Circumcision is nothing. It’s just a sign and a seal. So is water baptism. It is nothing. It’s just a sign and a seal of the reality that it pictures. So look at verse 11. “He received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while uncircumcised.” And he makes the same point again. Abraham was already justified before he was ever circumcised. He had been right before God for 13 or 14 years. The circumcision was just an outward sign of the inward reality that had already taken place. So let’s continue to read. verse 11: “so that he might be the father of all who believe without being circumcised.” And when he says “father” here, the idea is forerunner, the one out ahead of all who believe. There is no other way for anyone to be made right with God except they believe in Jesus Christ. Circumcision is nothing. Water baptism is nothing. FAITH IN CHRIST IS EVERYTHING The reality faith in Christ is everything. He says at the end of verse 11, “that righteousness might be credited to them.” And the “them” refers to those who believe, and only to those who believe. Again, this is a banking metaphor when he says “credited.” The account of those who would believe in Christ, they have no spiritual capital in their account whatsoever. In fact, they are in a negative standing before God. They are in debt to God. They owe a debt they cannot pay. And when they believe in Christ, the riches of the righteousness of Christ are credited to their account. It would be like if someone handed you a check for $1 billion – and, as they say, that’s with a B – $1 billion, and you take your deposit slip and their check for $1 billion and go to the counter. That $1 billion is deposited into your account. You didn’t do anything to earn it, deserve it, work for it, or merit it. It was just given to you as a gift. It’s just your deposit slip and their riches into your account. That’s what Paul is saying, that the righteousness that you and I need to have to obtain a perfect standing before God with acceptance before God is deposited into our account simply by our faith in Jesus Christ. It is absolutely crystal clear. Nothing difficult to understand about this. Now, verse 12: “And the father of circumcision” – and that’s referring to the Jews – “to those who not only are of the circumcision” – meaning he is the father not only of Jews who believe but who also follow in the steps of the faith of our father Abraham, which he had while uncircumcised. This is just simply saying the same thing. Whether someone is circumcised or not circumcised, all that matters is faith in Jesus Christ. How is someone justified before God? verses 1 through 8 – it’s not by good works. verses 9 through 12, it is not by circumcision. We could say any ceremonial rite whatsoever. This obliterates the position of baptismal regeneration, that you have to be baptized in order to be saved. That’s a false gospel. You have no understanding of the purity of grace and how that operates. III.           NOT JUSTIFIED BY LAW-KEEPING Now Paul will give the third negative in verse 13. It is not by law-keeping. So verse 13: “For the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would be heir of the world was not through the law but through the righteousness of faith.” That means the righteousness that comes to us through faith. The promise to Abraham here refers to the Abrahamic covenant and the promise that God made to Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3, that there would be a nation and there would be a land and there would be blessing that would proceed from the loins of Abraham. But there is also another dimension, that through the loins of Abraham would come the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior and the Redeemer. GALATIANS SAYS THE SAME If we come to Galatians 3, the apostle Paul unfolds that for us in Galatians 3. In verse 16 he references this Abrahamic covenant to show that the pinnacle of the Abrahamic covenant was the promise of one who would be born of the lineage of Abraham, who would be a son of David, the Lord Jesus Christ. In verse 16: “Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed.” He does not say “and to seeds,” meaning plural, as referring to many, but rather to one – “And to your seed” – comma – that is comma – “Christ.” And so the promise that God made to Abraham was not just of the promised land, and not just of a nation that would live in the promised land, and not just of the salvation that would come to those of this nation who would believe and a salvation that would be made available to all the nations, but it spoke ultimately of the one who would secure this salvation, who would be born of a Jewish lineage, out of the loins of Abraham, the father of the Jewish people, namely Jesus Christ the Lord. In Galatians 3, this entire chapter really revolves around the person and work of Jesus Christ. Verse 13: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law.” What is the curse of the law? Eternal damnation. The curse of the law is the second death. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. He suffered our punishment as He hung upon that cross. As he bore our sins, he suffered the wrath of God in our place. Verse 14: “in order that in Christ the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles.” Look at verse 22. “But the Scripture has shut up everyone under sin so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.” Verse 24: “Therefore, the law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ so that we may be justified by faith.” Verse 26: “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.” Verse 27: “For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ.” Verse 28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Verse 29: “And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise.” This is phenomenal that everything is in Christ. If you have Christ, you have everything. If you do not have Christ, you have nothing. And the only way to have Christ is not by circumcision, and not by water baptism, and not by church membership, and not by taking the Lord’s Supper. The only way to have Christ is to put your faith completely in the person and work of Christ, to have both feet in Christ and not straddle the fence and have one foot on your baptism or on good works or on keeping the law and another foot on Christ and, “I’ll just play all ends in the middle.” No, you haven’t come to Christ until you put both feet on the Lord Jesus Christ and you abandon all other hope and you trust exclusively in the perfect life and substitutionary death of Jesus Christ. That is the argument that Paul is making. And Christ, by his death upon the cross, has suffered the curse for us. Now, as you’re in Galatians 3, flip over to Galatians 4 just for a moment. This flashes into my mind. In Galatians 4:4, he picks up Christ again. And this continues in the same vein of thought from Galatians 3. He comes now to Galatians 4:4: “But when the fullness of time came” – in other words, when the moment was ripe, when God had perfectly set the world stage for Christ to come into the world, everything was set up perfectly. The Roman Empire, the Greek language, the highway system, everything was set perfectly. In the fullness of time, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law. To be born under the law means that he would be accountable to obey the law, that he would be responsible to obey the law that you and I have broken again and again and again. Verse 5: “so that he might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.” We have broken the law. Christ perfectly kept the law. It was a part of Christ redeeming us out from under the curse of the law. I’ve just said a lot in a short period of time. I hope that it’s clear what Paul is saying. So come back to Romans chapter 4. THE PROMISE TO ABRAHAM This was the promise to Abraham in verse 13. “For the promise to Abraham or to his descendants” – and the descendants here refer to his spiritual descendants –”that he would be heir of the world” – meaning he would inherit the fullness of all that God has intended for those who are his children – “not through the law” – meaning not through keeping the law. None of us can keep the law perfectly, and that is what God requires is perfect obedience to his law – “but through the righteousness of faith.” Verse 14: “For if those who are of the law” – meaning if you’re trying to get to heaven by keeping the law – “for if those who are of the law are heirs, faith is void.” I mean faith and law-keeping are mutually exclusive, not mutually inclusive. It’s either/or, not both/and. You’re going to have to decide. It’s either exclusively by faith, or it’s exclusively by you keeping the law. You pick. But if it’s by keeping the law, you’ve already broken the law, and the curse of the law is your eternal damnation, forever, in hell. So verse 14: “For if those who are of the law are heirs, faith is made void.” You can’t have it both ways. You can’t have faith in Christ and trust in any good work. It’s either/ or, not both/and. And the promise is nullified. The promise of salvation is nullified if you have even one little pinky into the wading pool of good works, trusting in that to take you to heaven. It’s not until you cut the line and come all the way to faith along in Jesus Christ. Verse 15: “For the law brings about wrath.” If you want to go to heaven by keeping the law, there is only the fury of divine wrath that is resting upon your head. But where there is no law, there is also no violation. So God has given the law that we might know of the violation, that the law might point us and be our tutor to take us to Christ who kept the law on our behalf. So what has Paul said? We’re getting ready to shift to the positive now, but he said three negatives. A right standing before God is not by good works. It’s not by ceremonial rite. It is not by law-keeping. It’s not by being a good person. It’s not by honoring your father and mother. It’s not by not stealing. It is not by not telling a lie. Those are double negatives, I realize. IV.          JUSTIFIED BY FAITH ALONE Now we come to the positive in verse 16. After Paul has just knocked the feet out from under every other argument, he now comes to set the cornerstone in place. It is by faith in Christ alone. Verse 16: “For this reason, it is by faith.” Please note there is no and after the word faith. It is not faith and good works. It is not faith and ceremonial rites. It is not faith and law-keeping. It is by faith “in order that it may be in accordance with grace.” You see, faith and grace work together. “For by grace you have been saved through faith.” – Ephesians 2:8. Faith and grace can never be partners with law-keeping. Faith and grace can never be partners with circumcision or water baptism. Faith and grace can never work in partnership with good works in order to give us a right standing before God. Faith and grace are discriminatory. They will only work with each other. They work within the same economy of salvation – “so that” – in the middle of verse 16 – “the promise” – referring to the promise of salvation in Christ – “will be guaranteed to all the descendants.” The descendants here refer to spiritual descendants, those who have faith in Christ, whether you’re Jew or Gentile, whether you’ve been circumcised or uncircumcised, whether you’re male or female, whether you’re civilized or uncivilized, and whether you’re barbarian or Greek. Not only to those who are of the law” – that refers to Jews – “but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham who is the father of us all.” And the word all includes even Gentiles, even Gentiles who believe in Christ. ONLY ONE WAY OF SALVATION What we have underscored again for us is the exclusivity of salvation in Jesus Christ alone. There’s not one way for a Jew to be saved and a different way for a Gentile to be saved. There’s not one way for someone to be saved in the Old Testament and another way for someone to be saved in the New Testament. There is only one way of salvation. I remember back in the ’60s. That was the mantra – “One way.” On t-shirts and bumper stickers and buttons was just a fist with a finger up in the air, and it was a loud and clear message: one way of salvation. Well, that’s kinda been diluted over the last couple of decades in a spirit of tolerance, in that we’re told there are many roads that lead to heaven. No, there are many roads that lead to hell. There’s only one road that leads to heaven, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ alone. Verse 16 makes that abundantly clear. We’ll wrap this up with verse 17: “As it is written” – and he now quotes Genesis 17:5 – “a father of many nations have I made you.” What that is saying is that there will be, out of the many nations of the world, those who will believe in Jesus Christ for salvation, and they will have credited to their account the righteousness of God in Christ, and they will have their sins forgiven. This is not just a message for Jews. It is a message for Gentiles, and not just for Gentiles in the Middle East or in Europe. “For Gentiles out of many nations” – meaning out of all the nations – “in the presence of him whom he believed.” LIFE TO THE DEAD At the end of verse 17: “Even God, who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist” – now what does that mean? First of all, it refers to how Sarah was barren, and in the conception of Isaac, God created life in the dead womb of Sarah, and she miraculously conceived and gave birth to a son of promise. That’s the first fulfillment of this. But there is a second fulfillment on a spiritual level: that everyone who believes in Jesus Christ, who were spiritually dead in their sins, that God is the one who gave life to the dead and called into being that which did not exist, which was their faith in Jesus Christ. Also, please note the order. Regeneration precedes faith. Regeneration produces faith. Dead sinners do not believe. Dead men do not walk. God must first give life. Then he calls into being the saving faith of the one who believes in Christ. So this is Paul anchoring the Gospel in our understanding. And if you have believed in Jesus Christ, it is because God gave you life and God called faith into being in your spiritually dead soul. This is one more affirmation for the bondage of the will. This is one more log on the fire for the fact that no one can believe except God give life, and God gives saving faith, and God called that person to faith in Jesus Christ. It’s exclusively a work of sovereign grace. This is getting the Gospel right. WHAT IS THE APPLICATION? You remember I gave you the illustration of the professor who held up the sign, said he was gonna hold up a sign “so what”? What’s the “so what” here? What’s the application? The first application is: have you believed in Jesus Christ? Have you put all your faith in Christ, because if you’re trusting in anything except Christ alone for salvation, your faith is void, and the promises are cancelled. It is only by coming all the way to Christ. And for those watching by live stream, and wherever you are when you might watch this later, you must come all the way to faith in Jesus Christ in order to have the salvation that he alone can give. That’s the first obvious “so what.” The second is – and this should be a great encouragement to us – it doesn’t matter how old you are. You can be an old man. Abraham was in his 80s when he was converted. Some of you have lost parents. Some of you have lost older siblings. Some of you have lost grandparents, and you may think, “Well, they’re so far down the path, they’re never gonna be saved.” Well, we could’ve easily said that about Abraham. He was 80-something when he was saved. My father-in-law was saved on his deathbed two or three days before he passed away. Abraham should scream encouragement to us that someone who is advanced in age can still come to faith in Jesus Christ. And we need to keep on witnessing. We need to keep on praying. We need to keep on reaching out to them. Until the day they are dead and in the grave, there is still the hope that they can come to faith in Christ. And then the last thing that I would say is it doesn’t matter how far removed someone is from Christ. Abraham was an idolater. Abraham was a moon worshiper. Abraham couldn’t have been in any more darkness. He was living in Ur of Chaldees. That is spiritual nowhere land. You can’t even get there from here. And God called him out of that darkness to a place, an appointed place, at an appointed time that God had prescripted and that God had orchestrated, to bring him into the Promised Land, and it would be there that God would meet with Abraham. It would be there that God would preach the Gospel to Abraham. And it would be there that God would impart life to a spiritually dead soul. It would be there that God would give him saving faith and call into existence that which did not exist. No one is so far removed from Christ but that the grace of God cannot conquer their heart and bring them to faith in Jesus Christ. If there was someone we would have said that would never be saved, it was the man who wrote this book. It was Saul of Tarsus who was public enemy No. 1 of the church. And in a split second, God brought him down by the power of the Gospel. And God can do the same, and God does do the same in this day and in this age. So we ought to be encouraged by the mere fact that Paul is using Abraham, of all people, as the example, who grew up in a pagan land, who grew up with pagan parents, who grew up under a pagan religion, who lived a pagan lifestyle. He ends up being the one whom God saves and chooses to birth the whole nation, and it will be through his loins that the Messiah would come. God delights in taking those who are the furthest away from him and bringing them the closest to him and using them because he gets all the glory. And the hardest person to reach in the world is the person who’s the closest to the message of the Gospel but yet doesn’t know that they’re not converted to Christ. That’s the hardest person. This is an extraordinary chapter. I need to stop, and I need to open this up for questions, thoughts, comments, feedback, affirmation. There can be no disagreement, okay? We will not accept that today. QUESTIONS AND ANSWER Tell me your thoughts. How does this strike you? And I realize, in many ways this is bringing ice cubes to Eskimos. This is bringing truth that you know to people – to you who already believe this. I’m preaching to the choir in some ways, but you never know. You just never know who is among us. Even Jesus had one among the 12 who had not yet come all the way to faith in Jesus Christ. And because Paul belabors this, we’re going to belabor this. Whatever Paul makes into a big mountain, we’re gonna climb that mountain and look at what he has to say. We’re gonna major on majors, and we’ve just majored on a major. It takes me just a few minutes to kinda wind down. I’m putting the parachute out. The plane is skidding down the runway. The pilot’s standing on the brakes. There’s trees at the end of the runway. Participant: Well, I think even all of us who believe– you can’t hear this enough – God’s work. Still, our fallenness – you still have a tendency to think you’re something, but just considering again what God did to Sarah and his miraculous work, and what he does in all of our hearts is just – I don’t thing we can hear it too much. Amen. I agree. We can’t hear it enough that you can’t be trusting Christ and your good works to get you there. You haven’t come all the way to Christ yet. Participant: And the more I think we hear it, the more I appreciate it. And I can’t appreciate it enough, right? Yeah. Amen Participant: I want to keep enjoying it, appreciating it, thanking the Lord for it, and just – it’s coming back to the same sixes and sevens, you know, just the same thing. We gotta keep remembering. It’s the baseline. Posture, grip, alignment. It’s the basics. Yeah. Hey, thanks Kent. Somebody else. Participant: I feel like this would be a tremendous message to deliver to the Muslim group because of their like of Abraham. They love Abraham. Participant: Yeah. That’s a good point. Participant: Have you ever had an opportunity to present this to a group like that? I was in Berlin and got in a taxi. I knew I was gonna end up having a Muslim taxi driver. Sure enough I did, and I knew, sure enough, he wanted to know why am I here and what it’s about. I think he circled Berlin 12 times just to keep the conversation going. Yeah. This was just very recently. Yeah. He kept asking me, “What do you think?” I thought, “This is divine appointment. I can’t lay up short of the creek. I’ve gotta fire for the pen. There’s no mulligans here.” And so, yeah, I have, just even very recently. And I think there was more one person as well. I just need to think that through. But yes. This also speaks volumes, one, to Muslims – and I’ll say something interesting. Even Ishmael was circumcised, but Ishmael was never saved. So you can be circumcised; you can be baptized; you can be sanitized, you can be whatever-tized and not be right with God. Participant: And he was blessed, too. Yeah, with common grace, but not with redemptive grace. I mean, there’s a difference This also speaks volumes to Roman Catholicism and the mass and the Virgin Mary, and the sale of indulgences, and the treasury of merit, and church membership, and baptism, and last rites, and and and, that no – and relics and pilgrimages – there is no salvation whatsoever, except by faith alone in Christ alone. And that just pares the onion down to the essential message of the Gospel. And man’s nature keeps wanting to add, add, add. Every generation has to just strip it all away and bring it down to the bare truth of the Gospel. By grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone – period, paragraph. Yeah. Thank you, Bill. I’m gonna think of the other one, too, ’cause I just had another one. I thought, “Wow, being in Europe, this is everywhere.” Participant: The Mormon church too. Yeah, the Mormon church. Participant: They baptize relatives to save the past. That’s that whole Ancestry.com. That whole thing is the Mormon church. Yeah. It’s a false gospel. It leads to nowhere. Kent just reminded me people are watching by way of our live stream. Please understand. The Bible is crystal clear. It is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Son of Man, God in human flesh, born of a virgin, who lived a sinless and perfect life, who went to the cross, who died in the place of sinners, shed his blood, made the only atonement for our sin, was buried, was raised from the dead on the third day, has ascended to the right hand of God the Father, and whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved – that Jesus, not another Jesus, not Jesus the prophet, not Jesus the good teacher, not Jesus the moral example –  Jesus, God, very God, very man, the God man. Someone else. Participant: We got a question from online. Yeah, Jonathan, fire away. Participant: Ricardo Oliveras says, “Hi, Dr. Lawson. Is it possible that the ritual of circumcision is another type of foreshadowing of the work of Christ? And, if so, could you explain how? Thank you. Nice tie, by the way.” [Laughs] See he’s a tie affectionato. Well, circumcision is the sign of being set apart. The cutting of the male foreskin was a sign that one’s heart must be cut and set apart to God and that – Deuteronomy 30:6: “that God must circumcise the heart,” and the physical circumcision is but a picture of the spiritual circumcision that must take place. Deuteronomy 30, if I’m gonna reference it, I at least ought to read it, says, “Moreover, the Lord your God will circumcise your heart, and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, so that you may live.” It’s a metaphorical picture of even new birth and regeneration, God setting apart your heart to God. Now, there are different other secondary parts of circumcision, but that’s what’s primary, that your heart must be circumcised. And except your heart be circumcise, you’re on the outside of the kingdom of God. Participant: Well, I would think the Jewish would be receptive to this. Going back to Genesis 15:6, talking about when Abraham was justified while he was still uncircumcised. What’s their argument about that? Yes, well, there’s obviously different parts of Judaism, from orthodox to Haddisian (??), to all different kinds: those who believe the Bible, those who don’t believe the Bible, those who are strict, those who are just by name only. And, obviously, it’s a sticking point. I mean, Dan, you wanna add anything to that? Participant: I’m of Jewish faith. I came to know Christ when I was 13-ish. I mean, to me, growing up with family, it’s – I mean there’s truly a veil. There are scales over the eyes. So what’s so obvious – I mean it’s kinda like a parable. It’s obvious to the – we know what spiritual meaning is, but we don’t – but it’s confusing to those that don’t believe. So it’s kinda God-ordained. I mean you touched on it before. God calls us to faith. In our being, he calls us to faith. Then we fully – so that’s all of us, whether its Jew, Gentile, Muslim, Mormon. I mean it starts there, and then I think if it’s – I mean when we’re called, we’re called. When you believe, it’s just – to me, it’s just so obvious, but it’s just not to those that don’t believe. Doesn’t matter where. So that’s what I think. Yeah. Thank you. That’s perfect, Dan. In Romans 11:8, it says, “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes to see naught, and ears to hear naught, down to this very day.” Who did this? God. Just like God hardened the heart of Pharaoh, so God has hardened the hearts of the Jewish people. And Paul wept over this. Paul said, “My heart’s desire is for their salvation. I’d be willing to be accursed for them if they could be saved.” So it’s not a clinical thing. And we plead for their salvation. We pray for their salvation. At the end of the age all Israel will be saved, it says in Romans 11 later. It’s at the end of Romans 11. One of you can find it for me. I shouldn’t have even started. I’m staring at it, and God has blinded my eyes so that I will not see. Where is it? Participant: 26. Yeah, there it is. Yeah, so all Israel will be saved. I take that as physical Israel, and I take all to be in a hyperbolic sense. A large, vast number of physical Jews will be saved at the end of the age. And so God has hardened their hearts now, and God will circumcise their hearts at the end of the age, and there will be a great national revival among the Jew. I take that at face value for what it says. Well, Jonathan, what’s our time look like down there? Participant: We’re two till. Two till, okay. Anything else? Participant: Yeah. I could ask you that what’s with the Jew, but the same thing with the Catholic faith, and I think probably more so with the Jew, but tradition is such a snare. Oh, it is. Participant: You mentioned all those Catholic issues. So the Jews have even more traditions _____ _____. [Crosstalk] I don’t know. I think Catholicism has run the table on tradition. Participant: Well, I know I had a hard time being – yeah. That’s a good – you’re probably right, because I guess they probably apply more to a Christian perspective. That’s a good point. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, I tell you what: when God converts someone out of Catholicism, they become phenomenal believers. I will say that. They have an inherent fear of God. They have an inherent respect for Scripture and for God, and once they finally get the truth, they make phenomenal believers. They usually start the thing with a full tank of gas. Participant: Romans 9 – when I first accepted Christ, or left the church, I guess, is more correct – you have that same sense of – you want to just draw the Catholic ’cause you – you worship. You really do. You worship God. But I’ve seen where there is – yeah, you’re right. It’s probably more severe than the Jew. The Jews don’t – Yeah. I think it is. I think it is, and they just keep adding layer upon layer upon layer. And that’s what the whole Reformation was about 500 years ago. It was coming back to the message in the New Testament – and the Old Testament, as far as that goes. Well, I see that it’s 8:00. I would love to keep this going, but I know I need to respect your time and let you head to work. For those of you watching, please send us an e-mail at what’s underneath the screen. We’d love to hear from you. Let us know that you’re watching. It’s a great encouragement to know that you’re out there, so we wanna hear from you, even if it’s nothing more than just to let us know that you’ve been a part of this study today. Let me close in a word of prayer. Father, thank you for your grace that has been lavished upon us and your son the Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you that we’re not having to climb a ladder to heaven and to pull ourselves up by the rope of our own self-righteousness. Thank you. You’ve come down all the way to us, and you’ve gotten in our skin in the person of your son, Christ. And he lived in our place. He died in our place that he might take us to your place, to heaven. And so continue to give us clarity of understanding in the truth of the Gospel, in Jesus’s name. Amen.

The Nature of Saving Faith – Romans 4:18-22

OnePassion Ministries September 21, 2017
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This is going to be a great study. You are going to be glad that you are here. I’m glad that I am here. I think we need to begin in a word of prayer, so let us pray. Father, as we begin this time of study in Your word, we ask that Your Holy Spirit would be the Teacher. That He would guide and direct our every thought and that You would give us clarity of insight into Your word. And more than that, may we live out what we learn today. We pray this in Christ’s name. Amen. All right your Bible is open to chapter four. We are going to be in verse 18. This is all about faith, true saving faith. Put a title on this lesson, it is “The Nature of True Saving Faith.” We are in the larger section on justification by faith. In chapter three of Romans we were looking at justification. Chapter four is how justification is applied to our lives, which is by faith. Romans chapter four is all about faith. When I say faith, I am specifically referring to saving faith – the moment of your entrance into the kingdom of heaven. The big picture of this entire book, just to remind you, Romans 1:16-17 is the signature text and it is worth my repeating because what we are looking at today comes gushing out of this fountain. Romans 1:16-17, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes.” That is the same word as faith. It is just faith in a verb form. “To everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it” – referring to the gospel – “the righteousness of God is revealed” – now listen to this – “from faith to faith. Just as it is written, ‘The righteous man shall live by faith.’” So this whole book is about the gospel and justification, but it is made real in our life by faith. A lot of people think that they have faith, when in reality they do not have faith. Faith is more than just an intellectual body of knowledge that you have. It is more than something you feel deeply about. True saving faith goes all the way to the will. True saving faith makes the decisive choice to commit one’s life to Jesus Christ. In Romans four, where we find ourselves, Paul is drilling down on this aspect of saving faith. This is so important. Remember in Mathew 7 Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” True saving faith is not passive, it is not just verbal, it is not just talking a good game, true saving faith puts you into the game and you step into the kingdom of heaven. It is so important that Hebrews 11:6 says, “Without faith it is impossible to please God. He who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” Without faith you are not even in the game. Without faith you are not even in the stadium. It is only by faith that we enter into the kingdom of heaven. What we are looking at here today is critically important. This is where the rubber meets the road. This is where the reality of sound doctrine gets into our skin, gets into our blood stream, and becomes reality. This is where salvation gets off the shelf and gets into our life. As we look at these verses, come with me to Romans 4:18, just so your eye can even see this focus on faith, “In hope against hope he believed.” That is the word faith in verb form. Next verse, verse 19, “Without becoming weak in faith.” Verse 20, please note, “he grew strong in faith.” And then in verse 24, “But for our sake also to whom it will be credited as those who believe in Him.” That is the thread that is running through this tapestry in Romans four beginning in verse 18. Depending on how much time I have, I want to pull out of these verses some distinctive qualities of true saving faith. The first is in verses 18 and 19: saving faith is in God’s word. In verse 18 Paul starts off, “In hope against hope he believed.” Now when he says, “In hope against hope,” that is a seemingly paradoxical statement. Hope against hope. That is like hope lining up and playing against hope. Hope against hope. Actually, it is a collision that is going on here between hope and hope. The first hope is man’s hope. Kind of a wishful thinking. Kind of looking around and seeing what the situation is and just hoping that this will work out. The second hope is a God-centered hope that is rooted and grounded in the word of God. The first hope is our perspective in an impossible situation. The second hope is God-centered assurance that if we put our faith in God, God will come through and God will do what God says He will do. I.               SAVING FAITH IS IN GOD’S WORD That is where Abraham finds himself. He finds himself at an intersection, a crisis. His natural eyes tell him one thing, his spiritual ears are telling him something else. Which way will he go? Verse 18, “In hope against hope he believed.” Rather than going by what common sense would say, going by what rationality would say, he looked away from the circumstances, and those are going to be in verse 19, we are going to look at this, and instead he went with the word of God. His eyes were telling him one thing but his spiritual ears were hearing something totally different. Saving faith goes with what God says in His word. Look at it again in verse 18, “In hope against hope he believed.” It is implied he believed in God and he believed what God said. The word “believe” here means to trust in. To commit one’s self to. To rely upon. To rest in. That is where Abraham was and that is what Abraham did. It needs to be said that Paul is putting up Abraham here as the ultimate example of faith. He is setting forth a patriarch, Abraham, for saving faith. For us to learn what saving faith is. “In hope against hope he believed so that he might become a father of many nations according to that which had been spoken.” God said you are going to be the father of many nations. In verse 19 he looks at himself and he realizes, “I do not have much game left.” He looks at himself and realizes he is almost 100 years old. He is 99-years-old. He looks at himself and realizes Sarah is not getting any younger either, and Sarah is advanced in age. So Abraham is impotent, Sarah is barren, and as Abraham looks at himself in verse 19, it says that “he contemplated his own body, now as good as dead.” That is just another way of saying he is an old man, impotent and unable to sire an offspring or a descendant. Then he looks at his wife Sarah and he sees the deadness of her womb. Yet God said if you will believe in Me, if you will put your trust in Me, if you will commit yourself to Me, you will be the father of many nations. You will have more than a descendant, you will have descendants upon descendants, upon descendants all around the world. This was the crisis in which Abraham found himself. At this moment, he is unsaved. At this moment, he is unconverted. God has called him out of Ur of the Chaldeans. It has been a long circular route to come into the Promised Land. He is an idolater. He is a moon worshiper. He is a pagan. He is a heathen. He is separated from God. He is outside the kingdom of God. God comes to him and speaks this word to Abraham. A part of this lineage that will come out of Abraham, if he will believe in the word of God, out of this lineage will come the Savior, will come the Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ. Bound up in this promise is also the gospel itself. It is more than just a nation, it is more than just land, it is one whom God will send born of a woman in the fullness of time, born under the law, it would be none other than the Savior of sinners, the Lord Jesus Christ. We know from John eight that the gospel was preached to Abraham. Abraham has to make a choice. He looks at himself, he looks at Sarah, and rightly concludes, impossible. He hears the gospel. He hears the word of God presented to him. Abraham looks away from himself. He looks away from how dead he is physically to bear a child, he looks away from the impossible circumstances, and he chooses to look to the word of God and to believe the word of God. Not based upon what his natural eyes tell him, but upon what his spiritual ears tell him. The spoken word of God that has come to Abraham. Abraham chose to believe God, and in that moment God credited righteousness to Abraham. That very defining moment, Abraham, as a true believer, was clothed in the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ and God reckoned the righteousness of God in Christ to Abraham. He becomes an incredible illustration for us of what true saving faith looks like. This is like Saul of Tarsus on the Damascus road. This is like Matthew getting up out of his tax booth and following Christ. This is exactly like the woman at the well who believed in the Savior and was saved. This is Abraham’s defining moment of faith. I think each one of us needs to ask ourselves, have we had such a time, such a moment like this? Has there come that time in our life when we take the step of faith and enter through the narrow gate that enters into the kingdom of heaven? You may look at yourself and say there is no way God could save someone like me. There is no way that someone like me could be of any value. But the word of God says, “whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” That is where Abraham was, and I trust that has happened in your life. II. SAVING FAITH IS IN GOD’S PROMISE Now the second thing that we see, not only is it in God’s word – and all saving faith is in God’s word. I need to circle back and just say this: Martyn Lloyd Jones says that saving faith is in the bare word and nothing else. It is in the bare, naked word of God. For us, it is recorded in Scripture. It is not Scripture and anything else. It is not believing Scripture and what your church says about your traditions. It is not what Scripture says and whatever your denomination has to say about anything. It is not what Scripture says and whatever some church hierarchy says, or your thoughts, or your whims, or your fancies. How you imagined your relationship to God to be and how you think it works out for you to enter in to the Kingdom. All of that does not amount to a hill of beans. All that matters is what God says, and what God has said is recorded in His word. Saving faith is exclusively in the bare, naked word of God. Now second, as we look at verse 20, saving faith is in God’s promise. Promise here becomes a synonym for God’s word. God’s word is a promise. God has said what He will do. God has said what He requires. If we will respond to what God requires, God is a promise-keeping God. God will deliver what He has promised to do. In verse 20 Paul says, “Yet with respect to the promise of God…” Now this word ‘promise,’ I want you to see this in the larger context, has already been mentioned three times, in verse 13, verse 14, and in verse 16. It is a parallel term for the word of God. We see in verse 13, “For the promise to Abraham.” We see in verse 14, “The promise is nullified if one does not respond by faith.” And in verse 16, “So that the promise will be guaranteed to all the descendants.” He picks this back up now in verse 20, “Yet with respect to the promise of God.” You see, God’s word is more than just objective facts. It is more than just data. It is more than just information for us to catalog and for us to bind up in a notebook. God’s word is a promise to us. God stipulates the terms of the promise. God guarantees to fulfill His part of the promise and God makes the requirement that is due from us for the promise to be fulfilled. The ball is severed into our court. The promise here is if Abraham will believe God, then God will deliver on His promise. God’s promise, first of all, is that Abraham will be credited righteousness. Second, he would have a son and his son of promise would have many descendants after him and would be a part of the messianic lineage that would flow through history until the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, who is the Messiah, the Mashua. Abraham must make the decision. Saving faith calls for action. If he will believe what God has said, then God will fulfill His promise. There has never been a promise that God has made, but that God will fulfill it, if man will act by faith. In verse 20 look at it again, “Yet with respect to the promise of God.” You need to know this is intentionally at the beginning of the sentence. In fact, the promise of God is even before “yet with respect to.” It is the way they emphasize something in the original language, you frontload it and put it at the very beginning of the sentence. It is called the emphatic position. The promise of God is put at the very beginning of this sentence to draw our attention to it. “So yet with respect to the promise of God, he did not waiver in unbelief.” He heard what God said. He believed in his mind in what God said. He chose to believe in what God said. He did not wavier, he did not stutter, he did not trip. No one trips through the narrow gate. No one just wiggles their way through the narrow gate. It says, “He grew strong in faith, giving glory to God.” That he grew strong in faith means it was strong from the beginning and it grew stronger as time unfolded. Whenever we take God at His word, believe what God says in His word, and choose to act upon what God says in His word it brings glory to God. When we fail to believe and act upon what God says, we rob God of His glory. That is how serious unbelief is. We are robbing God of His glory. We are bringing glory to ourselves because we are trusting in ourselves. We think we have a better plan. We think we have more strength in what we do and that we can pull this off. Faith actually gives glory to God because it looks to God. It takes God at His word. Faith is in God’s promise. We need to realize that everything that God stipulates in His word has His promise behind it, and God will execute it. God will come through in what He says He will do. When Abraham chose to believe God’s promise that he would be the father of many nations, did God come through? God came through big time. God came through in spades. God came through exponentially. God gave him a son when he was 99 years old, conceived when he was 99 years old. He got the son, I guess, when he was 100. Sarah may have been a bigger miracle. Sarah becomes pregnant and bares a son and lived through it. Then through Isaac, there came an entire nation and out of that nation would come even Gentile believers who would come into the kingdom of heaven. God did exceeding, abundantly, beyond what Abraham could have even dreamed at that moment. When you put your faith in God, you are giving glory to God. When you decisively act in faith and obey the word of God, it is the means by which you are magnifying the name of the Lord and you are honoring Him. Faith honors God and God honors faith. III. SAVING FAITH IS IN GOD’S POWER In verse 21 and 22, saving faith is not only in God’s word and in God’s promise, third it is in God’s power. Because faith believes that God has the power to do what God promises to do. In verse 21, “And being fully assured” – Let me stop there for a moment. Saving faith is fully assured. This verb is really a participle, ‘fully.’ ‘Assured’ means to be filled with certainty. It means to be fully persuaded. It means to be fully convinced. It is used later in Romans 14:5. I will just read it. Romans 14:5, “One person regards one day above another. Another regards one day alike. Each person must be fully convinced in his own mind.” It is the very same verb that is used there. Saving faith is fully convinced in one’s own mind. There is not equivocation, there is not hesitation, there is not doubt. One is fully assured that God will do what God says He will do in His word and that God has the power to bring it to pass. In verse 21, “Being fully assured that what God had promised” – and there’s our word promise again – “he was able also to perform it.” I do not know about you but I love that. It is one thing to be Mr. Big Talk. It is one thing to make all these outlandish campaign promises. It is one thing to talk a good game. Every one of us around this table can talk a good game. God does more than talk. God backs it up and what God says in His word, that He will do. If we will believe in Him, there has never been a time in the history of the world that God has not come through and executed exactly to the full what He said He would do. Abraham was fully assured in that moment of faith when he committed his life to what God said. That God is able. That is a great word, ‘able.’ That God is able to perform it. Our God is able. Verse 22 is kind of a conclusion, “Therefore it was also credited to him as righteousness.” Again, that is a quotation of Genesis 15:6. What I want you to see here in verse 22, this is the moment of his entrance into the kingdom of heaven. This is not Genesis 22, Abraham offering up Isaac – a later test of faith. This is saving faith, converting faith. This is the faith by which one enters into the kingdom of heaven. When one believes in Jesus Christ, it is with a faith that God has the power to do what God has said He will do. He has promised to wash away all of my sins. He has promised to clothe me with His perfect righteousness. He has promised to put His Holy Spirit within me. He has promised that I will be a new person in Christ and the old things passed away and new things have come. God has promised. As we believe in Christ, it is not with any waffling. We are fully assured that God is able to do what God says He will do. Now in the time that remains, I want to give you some words that flush out what true saving faith is. For you guys who are note takers, you are going to want to jot down these words. I’ve got several. Next week we will look at verses 24 and 25, which are really the heart of the Christian faith. Decisive Here we go, saving faith – and when I say saving faith I mean genuine, converting faith – number one is decisive. You cannot straddle the fence and come into the kingdom of heaven. You have got to cross the line. You step across the line. You step through the narrow gate. It is an all-out decision. When you come to the intersection, you are going to have to decide ‘Do I go left? Do I go right? Do I continue with the flow of this world, or do I step out of the world and decisively commit my life to Jesus Christ?’ Saving faith, number one, is decisive. Dynamic Number two is dynamic. It is never passive. It is always active. It is more than just emotional. It is more than just mental. It is volitional, in which you move out from where you are and from where you have been and you entrust your life to Christ. It is dynamic. It is active. Personal Third, it is personal. No one else can believe for you. You cannot hop in line with your youth group and everybody walk forward at the end of the service and everybody goes to the narrow gate together. It is personal. It is individual. There may be other people going through the narrow gate when you go through, but it is as though there is no one else in the entire world that is going through this narrow gate. It is you and you alone, and you own this decision. This is as personal as it can be and no one else can make this decision for you. Your parents cannot make this decision, your spouse cannot make this decision, your siblings cannot make this decision for you. Your pastor, your elder, the evangelist, no one else. You take a piece of chalk and draw a circle around yourself and everyone inside the circle is making this decision and that would be you. Cognitive Fourth, it is cognitive. There is a mental aspect to true saving faith. You have to know the truth of the gospel. You have to know the truth about God and about yourself and about Jesus Christ and what God requires. Saving faith never takes place in an empty intellectual vacuum. There is theological truth, doctrinal truth about the condition of your soul, the state of your soul before a holy God in heaven and the provision that He has provided in the person of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and what He requires in repentance and faith. Repentant Fifth, it is repentant. True saving faith has repentance in it and it reroutes the direction of your life. You turn away from the direction that you have been traveling and you do a 180, and you pivot and go in a totally opposite direction – that is what repentance is. Romans 2:2-3 says that we were going according to the course of this world. Well what direction do you think that was? We all like sheep have gone astray. Each one of us has turned to his own way. It was a course going away from God. But with saving faith you no longer go according to the course of this world. You turn around and now you come towards God and now you follow Jesus Christ who is going in a totally contrary direction. You were once walking towards unholiness, you now are pursuing holiness. You were once going towards hell, you are now going towards heaven. It is a repentant faith, a complete turnaround. Humble Sixth, it is humble. True saving faith comes to Christ with empty hands. We have heard the hymn, “In my hands no price I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling.” You bring nothing to the table except the sin that was laid upon the Lord Jesus Christ. You come with a broken spirit. You come declaring spiritual bankruptcy. You come knowing that you have nothing to contribute to your own salvation, that God provides it all. There is a humility that is involved that comes with that. I have told you before no one struts through the narrow gate. No one is high fiving their way into the kingdom of heaven. We all come with a loneliness of heart and a broken spirit into the kingdom of heaven. Priority Seventh, it is a priority. Saving faith is the priority. It is the most important decision you will ever make in your life. If you are wrong here, it does not matter where else you are right. If you are right here, everything else will line up in your life one way or another in the right direction. It is the most important decision you will ever make and it towers over every other commitment you will ever make. It towers over who you will marry, where you will go to school, what kind of job you will have. Those things are admittedly important, but they are nothing compared to the importance of this priority decision in saving faith. It is the defining decision in your life. Irrevocable Eighth it is irrevocable. True saving faith is a lifelong commitment. It is not a weekend journey. It is a long obedience in the same direction. You have burned your bridges behind you. There is no going back. A believer will never become an unbeliever. Just write that down. True saving faith will never become unbelief in the categorical sense. Your faith may grow weak at times, but it will never implode, it will never dissolve, it will never be eradicated, it is irrevocable. This is because God gives the gift of saving faith. God does not give you a crumby faith with which to believe. God does not give you a shallow faith for you to believe in the gospel. God gives you a dynamic, decisive faith in your spiritually dead heart in order for you to believe in Christ, and it is a faith that will keep on ticking. It will never run out of gas. It will never need to be renewed. Divinely Wrought Ninth, and I just alluded to it, it is divinely wrought – it is authored by God Himself. He gives it to His elect. We have no faith in the gospel except God gives us that faith to believe. Faith is the gift of God. Hebrews 12:2, “looking at Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith.” Philippians 1:29, “It is granted unto us not only to believe in His name but to suffer for it.” It must be given to us to believe. It is divinely wrought. It is a supernatural gift that God must give to us. Life Changing Number ten, it is life changing. Saving faith always changes the life. No one can believe in Jesus Christ and their life not change. If you tell me you have met Jesus and your life has not changed, I want to promise you that you have never met Jesus. Because Jesus is too full of grace, He is too powerful, He is too dynamic for you to meet Him but your life not change. We can put it this way: wherever saving faith is the root, a changed life will be the fruit. It is a packaged deal. Saving faith is never unaccompanied by a life that is unchanged. Obedient Number eleven – I have two more – number eleven, it is obedient. Saving faith is obedient. We introduced that at the very outset of this book in Romans 1:5. Paul says, “To bring about the obedience of faith,” which means the obedience that faith produces. All saving faith is obedient faith. The gospel is a command – you either obey or you disobey. It is in the imperative verb – repent, believe, enter, come, eat, drink. Those are all verbs that are used in the gospels of what is synonymous with true saving faith. It is more than just an offer. It is more than just an invitation. It is that but it has more teeth in it than that. It is actually a command. In Acts 17:30-31, “God has commanded that all men everywhere repent.” If the gospel is a command, then to respond to it is obedience. To remain in unbelief is disobedience and defiance and it is rebellion against God. True saving faith is obedient. It obeys the imperative command to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. The final thing I would give you, and I guess I could have kept this list going, but I want some guardrails around this. Saving faith is used so vaguely today. It is associated with so many things that are outside the boundaries of what true saving faith is. We need guard rails on the side of the road that keep us hemmed in to a focused, clear understanding of what saving faith is. Confident Number twelve, it is confident. True saving faith has assurance that God will receive sinners, that God will save sinners. That where sin has abounded, grace does much more abound. That God is able to take our sins and bury them in the sea of his forgetfulness. That God can take our sins and place them behind his back and see them no more. That God can remember our sins no more. That God can wash away all of our sins. That God can cloth us with the perfect righteousness of His Son, Jesus Christ. When a person responds to the gospel it is not an unbelieving belief. It is with confident faith that I know I am a sinner and I believe that Christ is a Savior and that if I will entrust my life to Him, He will openly receive me and make me His own. True saving faith that God grants as a gift has in it assurance and confidence that God will receive sinners. When I take that step of faith, I genuinely believe I have crossed the line and have entered into the kingdom of heaven. These are the distinguishing marks of true saving faith. One more cross reference under confident – Hebrews 11:1, “Faith is the assurance” – did you hear that? – “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for. The conviction of things not seen.” True saving faith has assurance and conviction embedded in it. I think we did pretty good to get through all that. So we have a record amount of time left. I want us to be able to talk about this because this is a very important subject that we are talking about. This is who is in and who is out. This is a defining subject matter. I mean, we can define justification till we are blue in the face. We can be a theological encyclopedia and regurgitate the party line, but it becomes real in our life when we exercise true saving faith. I want to open it up for discussion and I forgot to say at the very beginning that we will be having discussion and if anyone has any questions to let us hear from you. But let us start in the room and then Jonathan, you can tell me if anyone has any questions. What do you like about this? What do you not like? How does this hit you? How does this impact you? How does this affect your evangelism? How does this affect you talking to your kids? How does this affect your own life? Audience Member:      I had a guy call me wanting to come see me. He kept calling, calling, calling and he wanted me to use his tile company. So I finally said all right come on by. He comes in and has a yarmulke on his head, he’s an orthodox Jew about 30-35 and we end up speaking for an hour. I had been in Israel and we had seen orthodox Jews but what this guy does living in Dallas to try to be saved is unbelievable. Goes to the synagogue three times a day. He can only eat at seven or eight different restaurants because they have to be kosher. He went into all the details – he undid his shirt showed me what he was wearing underneath it. It is unbelievable. On Saturday he cannot drive his car. He has to be able to walk to synagogue. On and on and on and he said, “You will never convert me to Christianity.” And I said, “Maybe one day God will show you grace. I will not be able to convert you, but God can.” I’ve never met anybody that it was so incredibly visible how they were trying to work their way to heaven and they were headed to hell. It was just overwhelming to see his kids. What he was trying to do and as earnest as he was trying to be. Dr. Lawson:   That is a lot of hoops. Audience Member:      And he’s headed to hell. He knows the Old Testament, but yet he will not believe it. So here’s the point, I was convicted that this is true saving faith and how so many people are headed a different direction. At one level or another trying to work their way, good enough God will accept me. I’ve never seen anything like it. Dr. Lawson:   Well you are right God has to convert. God has to do it but it is incumbent upon us to do what you did and witness to him and tell him the truth. This is true faith. Audience Member:      And yet he’s looking at Abraham and he’s not seeing it. He’s not seeing it. You can sit there and have it right in front of you and you cannot see it and be going to hell. Dr. Lawson:   That is a great point. Thank you for sharing that. Somebody else. Audience Member:      What always impresses me about Abraham as he’s assessing himself is that promise that he believed – it was almost ten years before. So it wasn’t just the moment in time where he’s like “oh Sarah’s not going to have a kid.” He believed that for a decade before God blessed him with that next step. So he lived that faith for a long time. Dr. Lawson:   That is a great point which shows faith does not implode. It grows stronger and we press on. After we’ve come into the kingdom we continue to believe and trust God. Mark what were you getting ready to say? Audience Member:      Well you’ve always said “So what,” going back to seminary. So in verse 18, you said saving faith is in God’s word. You quoted Martyn Lloyd Jones, “Saving faith is in bare word.” It is Romans 10:17, “so faith comes from hearing and hearing by the word of Christ.” So the “so what” is what Paul told Timothy – preach the word. Unfortunately in much of the evangelical church today less and less time is given in every Sunday service on preaching the word, which is the very means by which God draws His people to Himself. So that is number one. Number two, you kept banging on the point about saving faith, genuine faith, it is active faith, it is dynamic faith, it is obedient faith. Then you cited it, James builds on this in James 2, that the proof of Abraham’s faith is when he offered up Isaac on the alter. That was the fruit. As James calls it – was he not justified, declaring something, about his faith? Genuine faith, as you have said, has a different affection and a different direction. It results in something – a changed life. To the point you made earlier, much of the professing church, specifically where we are at, does not seem to have a changed life. Dr. Lawson:   Yes. And they make excuses to continue to live in this way by deluding the essence of what true faith is and negating repentance, obedience, things like that. They want to minimize what true faith is, but it is so minimized that it loses its genuineness, its authenticity. Thank you, Mark. That is a brilliant point. So what? There’s got to be a ‘so what’ to this. I think another ‘so what’ for us around this table, because I would assume that most of us in this room, and I say most not all because only God knows, I would say most of us have exercised saving faith. How thankful we should be to God that we are believers today because we would have never been believers if God had not wrought this gift in us. It is truly a work of grace, and I think another ‘so what’ is that we really should not be naïve, but be looking for fruit in other people’s lives. Because we really may need to be witnessing to them, even if they say they’re a believer. It does not mean they are a believer. There will be evidences of faith. Online Audience Member:      Can you show that you have faith without the works that come after? Dr. Lawson:   Can you show that you have faith without works? No. Faith without works is dead. It is not a true saving faith and that is quoting James 2. I mean, you can talk, but “not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” There will begin to be evidences of a changed life as you now begin to walk down the narrow path. There’s not a gap between the narrow gate and the narrow path. There is not like this chasm that separates the narrow gate and the narrow path. It’s not like you can come through the narrow gate and then for ten years nothing and then you finally get to the narrow path. I mean that is silly. They’re just budded right up to each other. There’s the narrow gate and it immediately leads down to the narrow path. The first step, you are on the narrow path now. You are beginning to walk with new affection and a new direction. So there will begin to be some evidence even if it is initially in a humility of heart and a brokenness of spirit and a desire to glorify God and honor God and now walk with Christ. There will begin to be the evidence of this flushing out. It does not mean you end up in the mission field the next day. And it does not mean that you are this highly visible, dynamic Christian that the whole city knows about, but as the train pulls out of the station you are on a new track. You are headed in a new direction. Thank you for that question. Someone else, we’ve still got five more minutes here. Audience Member:      Dr. Lawson, one of your favorite axioms that I always hear when you preach is that high theology always equals high doxology. And with everything that has already been said here and the discussions in the past that we just covered, we see Paul’s utilization of Abraham as an example of saving faith. But every time we look at Scripture, I just think of ‘what this is telling about who God is,’ right, because it is going to fuel our walk of life. I think if we understand the nature of His faithfulness to keeping the covenant – I mean we see Abraham, it takes us back to the Abrahamic covenant – and we see God’s covenant faithfulness. If we understand that God’s always faithful to His obligations to the covenant, versus man’s inability to keep his obligation to the covenant, that will bolster our confidence and the efficacy of God transforming our life and our confidence in God to keep the covenant. Then also that is going to motivate us to be more diligent in pursing the glory of God in our own life. Understanding that God is faithful, immutably faithful, to keep the covenant that He made, to enter into by His own prerogative. That ought to fuel us in our walk of life. It ought to give us confidence – His ability to change our life, to conform us to the image of Christ. I think that changes everything. We understand that the covenant-making and covenant-keeping God is our motivation and the source of the way that we live our life. Dr. Lawson:   Amen. That is so well spoken. For all us around this table and for those watching, whenever you teach a passage, one thing to always be looking for is where God is in this and who is God. James Montgomery Boice, who we all love in this room, preached a sermon on verses 18 through 22. I think it was on the attributes of God – what do we learn about God? Just like what you are saying. He is the God of truth as He makes this promise. He is omnipotent. He’s able to back up his promise. He is faithful, as you said. He is immutable. Boice walks through this passage and highlights the attributes of God. For those of us who teach Sunday School lessons or occasionally preach a sermon, that is one paradigm to always be looking into a passage, whether it is the sermon outline or whether it is just the application at the end like what we are saying here. It has been well said that in every narrative God is the principle actor. Whether He is seen or standing in the corner unseen, the object of the word of God is to reveal the God of the word. Thank you that is tremendous. One more. Audience Member:      One thing, this was about God’s promise, His grace and His mercy, but on the other side of that there’s a wrath. But that is a promise that we forget about. This is a sermon of great things and how to change and all the positives that come with being a Christ-follower. Well people are motivated really by two ways, fear or pull right? You need to know that God has a promise in the Scriptures that hell and damnation will follow. You have a choice. When you do not receive the free gift, you are making the alternative choice. That is a promise as well. You said it here about life changing – I thought about that, no one can accept a free gift and their life not change. You haven’t accepted it. So you are choosing the alternative promise. Dr. Lawson:   That is so well put, Chris. I am so glad for you to say that because to not make a choice is to make a choice. If you do not commit your life to Christ, you’ve made a choice and God has a promise for you. If you die in unbelief, Romans 1:18 says, “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” God is a promise-keeping God either way. I think that is a great way for us to wrap up our study and we are so thankful that you have joined us for this Bible study. You must believe upon Jesus Christ. You must commit your life to Him and if you will commit your life to Christ, He will forgive you of your sins and He will clothe you with His perfect righteousness. But if you die in unbelief, you will be the object of His eternal wrath forever and ever. There is a real place called hell where you will suffer throughout all the ages to come. So flee to Christ. Run to Christ. Today is the day in which He receives those who come to Him by faith. Men, what a great study. The nature of true saving faith. Next time we will look at the last two verses, which are very important and we will meet next Wednesday. Please make every effort to be here because these last two verses are so good I just did not want to hydroplane over those. I want to dig down into this and it may even spill over a little bit into chapter 5. Let’s close in a word of prayer. Father, thank You for the word that we have heard today in Romans four. I pray that everyone of us in this room has genuinely exercised true saving faith and have committed their life to Christ. If there are any here today who have not, Lord, may You win their heart over today and may You draw them to Yourself. For those who are watching, we pray the same. May the message of this lesson go out far and wide. We pray this in Jesus name Amen.

The God Who Saves – Romans 4:23-25

OnePassion Ministries October 5, 2017
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Father, as we look into Your word now, I pray that Your Holy Spirit would be the teacher; you would work through me, and work through all of us as we look at the passage and as we talk about it. We want it more than in our mind; we want it in our heart and in our life, we want to live this out. Father, make this a great Bible study that will glorify Your Son. We pray this in Jesus’s name, amen. Okay guys we are in Romans four; we are going to wrap up Romans four today. Romans four and we have the last three verses to look at, Romans 4:23-25. I want to begin by reading the passage. And for those of you who are curious what translation I use, I am a New American Standard guy. So beginning in Verse 23, “Now” – and there is a real summation feel as he begins with the word ‘now.’ He is bringing this whole chapter down to a summation, based on everything that he has said. “Now not for his sake only” – referring to Abraham – “was it written that it was credited to him” – and the ‘it’ refers to the righteousness of God in Christ. Verse 24, “but for our sake also, to whom it will be credited, as those who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.” Verse 25, “He who was delivered over because of our transgressions, and was raised because of our justification.” There is a lot of theology in these verses, and therefore a lot of application as well. There are different ways to look at these verses, but the angle that I want us to look at is to see that God the Father is so actively involved in our salvation. When we think of our salvation, we normally think of the Lord Jesus Christ, who John 4:42 says is the Savior of the world. The very name Jesus means Jehovah saves. Jesus is the Savior, but we need to also understand that God the Father is the Savior and God the Holy Spirit is the Savior. All three persons of the Trinity are the Savior. That is why when we baptize, we baptize in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. That is not just to make a Trinitarian confession. It is to acknowledge that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are all three involved in our salvation. To truly understand the work of grace in our life that delivered us from eternal destruction, we really have to think about it on three different levels: the work of God the Father, the work of God the Son, and the work of God the Holy Spirit. In this particular text, what really captures my attention is the activity of God the Father. As we look at this today, rather than just coming up with a grammatical outline, I want to have a theological outline as we walk through these three verses. There are six truths about God the Father that I want you to see as it relates to our salvation. To make it more personal, as it relates to your salvation. Now I am going to give you a point of application on the front end before we even look at this. Why this is so important: as we worship, we need to give praise not just for God the Son, but we need to worship God the Father, and we need to ascribe honor and glory to God the Father. Because God the Father is so vitally at work in our salvation. Before we look at these verses, and I give you these six things, if you would just turn back to Romans 8 for a moment. This will set the parameters for this. In Romans 8, these verses with which you are very familiar, verse 29 and verse 30, “For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined.” And in verse 30, “and those whom He predestined, He also called; and those whom He called, He also justified; and those whom He justified, He also glorified.” Here is the million dollar question, “Who is He?” The He is none other than God the Father. He is the one who foreknew us. He is the one who predestined us. He is the one who called us. He is the one who justified us. He is the one who will glorify us one day. That is very clear, because in verse 29, the He is distinguished from His Son. In verse 32, “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all.” The He is distinguished from God the Holy Spirit in verse 26, and 27 and verse 28 when he says, “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good.” God refers to God the Father in this text, so what we see in verse 29 and 30 is how everything is flowing out of God the Father. It is God the Father who is the author of the Gospel. God the Father is the architect of the plan of salvation. God the Father is the one who has sent His Son in to this world to be our Savior. God the Father is the one who has sent the Holy Spirit in to this world in order to convict us of sin and call us to faith in Christ. Everything is flowing out of God the Father. And so as we look at this passage in Romans four, I want us to always have a God centered focus as it relates to our salvation. Not just God the Son, but also God the Father. It is really impossible to believe in Jesus Christ without also believing in the Father. There is no way to come to the Father, except by believing in the Son. They are inseparable. Having said that, come back now to Romans four, and we want to look at the end of this chapter, and I want to give you six things that God the Father does in your salvation. If you want to put a title on this Bible study, it would just simply be, “The God Who Saves.” I.               GOD CREDITS RIGHTEOUSNESS The first thing that we see in this text that God the Father does is that God credits righteousness to believers. In the act of justification, it is God the Father who imputes the righteousness of His own Son to us. So we see that in verse 23 and the beginning of verse 24, “Not for his sake only” – referring to Abraham – “was it written that it was credited to him.” Now the word ‘credited’ is a Greek word from which we derive the English word logarithms (logizomai) and it means to count to our account; to impute to our account; to reckon to our account. So the question is, “How does this righteousness come to be deposited to our account, posted to our account?” Verse 24, “but for our sake also, to whom it will be credited.” In the larger context, we will note that it is God the Father who takes the perfect righteousness of His Son and credits it to our account. God the Father is actively involved in our justification. Verses five and six earlier in the chapter make this clear, especially verse six. Look at verse six, “just as David also speaks of the blessing on the man to whom God credits righteousness.” We do not credit it to ourselves, obviously. The guilty do not impute Christ’s righteousness to themselves. In this larger sense, even Jesus is not the one who is crediting His perfect righteousness to us. It is God the Father who takes the righteousness of His Son and credits it to us. So therefore, as we worship, we need to give praise not only to Jesus, who accomplished our righteousness, but we must also give honor and glory to God the Father, who is active in crediting the righteousness of Christ to our account. That is the first thing that we note in verse 23 and the beginning of verse 24. II.             GOD MUST BE BELIEVED AS THE AUTHOR OF SALVATION It is not directly stated there, but it is implied, and it is stated in the larger context earlier in the chapter. Now the second thing I want you to note, not only does God credit righteousness to believers, but second, God must be believed as the author of salvation. In verse 24 it continues to read, “to whom it will be credited, as those” – now watch these next four words – “who believe in Him.” The ‘Him’ is distinguished from three words later, “Jesus our Lord.” The Him refers to God the Father, and so please note it is not just that we believe in Jesus Christ; we believe in God the Father who sent Jesus Christ. God the Father who delivered Jesus over to die on our behalf. God the Father who raised Jesus from the dead. God the Father who has seated Jesus at His right hand. It is impossible to believe in Jesus Christ apart from believing in God the Father. It is very clear here in verse 24. You’ll note in verse five earlier in the chapter, Paul has already said this, “But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him” – you see the ‘Him’ – “who justifies the ungodly.” That Him, H-I-M refers to God the Father. So it is a package deal. You cannot believe in Jesus Christ without believing in God the Father. And you cannot believe in God the Father without believing in His Son, Jesus Christ. The two in that sense are one, as John 10:30 says, Jesus said, “I and the Father are one.” Not one in person but one in mission, and one in enterprise. That is the second activity of the Father. He too is the object of our faith. III.           GOD RAISED JESUS FROM THE DEAD Number three, in verse 24 also, God raised Jesus from the dead. In verse 24, as we continue to read, “but for our sake also, to whom it will be credited, as those who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.” God the Father actively, powerfully, dynamically raised Jesus from the dead. Jesus also raised Himself from the dead. John 10:17-18, “I have authority to lay my life down; I have authority to raise it back up again. This commandment I received from the Father.” God the Holy Spirit also raised Jesus from the dead, and we saw that in Romans 1:4. It says, “Jesus was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of Holiness.” Which is a Hebraism for the Holy Spirit. The resurrection is really a Trinitarian resurrection. All three persons of the Godhead were involved in the resurrection. In that sense, all three persons of the Godhead were involved in creation; the virgin birth; the crucifixion; the resurrection; the ascension; the enthronement. All three persons of the Godhead are vitally at work in every aspect of, not only creation, but recreation or salvation. We should give praise to God the Father for raising His Son powerfully from the dead. IV.          GOD DELIEVERED JESUS TO THE CROSS Now let’s continue to walk through this. Number four, God delivered Jesus unto death. As we look at verse 25 it says, “He” – referring to Jesus – “who was delivered over because of our transgressions.” That is what we call a passive verb; Jesus was delivered over. Now there was also the sense that He laid His own life down, and He took it back up again. Jesus did deliver Himself over to death. But greater than that was, it was the will of the Father. It was the Father who delivered Jesus over to death. So often it is easy for us to have a limited perspective of the cross that it was the Romans who delivered Jesus over to death. It was the Jewish leadership who delivered Jesus over to death. It was the crowd that cried out, “Barabbas, Barabbas,” and, “Crucify, crucify Jesus.” They were but really secondary causes; the primary actor at Calvary was the invisible hand of God. As God the Father was delivering over His Son to the cross that Jesus would die for us. It was the Holy Spirit who was strengthening Jesus as He went to the cross. As He hung upon the cross, it was the Holy Spirit who empowered Jesus in His humanity to fight through the conflict of the cross and to remain steadfast to give up His life for us. Verse 25 is very clear that Jesus was delivered over. In that sense He was passive, it is a passive verb. The ultimate one who delivered Jesus over was none other than God the Father. We should give praise and thanks to God that God the Father took my sins and transferred them to the Lord Jesus Christ. God the Father is the One who delivered His Son over to die for our sins. I do not want us to have the concept that Jesus is the good guy and the Father is the bad guy. Or that Jesus the Son had to save us from God the Father. Or that Jesus had to step in and intervene. Yes He did, but it was the Father who sent Jesus. It was the Father who delivered Jesus over, and it is the Father who raised Jesus. We must remember the centrality of the Father, even in our salvation. V.            GOD DEISNGED THAT JESUS DIE FOR OUR SINS Now there is one more aspect that I want you to note. Number five, in verse 25 God designed that Jesus would die for our sins. In the middle of the verse it says, “because of our transgressions.” It is not directly or explicitly stated, but it nevertheless is implied from the larger context of Scripture, how did Jesus become sin for us? It was God the Father who took all of our transgressions and transferred them to His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. There is also a sense in which Jesus took them to Himself. But in a greater sense, it was God the Father who gathered up all of our iniquities and all of our transgressions and laid that heavy burden upon His Son. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says that God, “made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf.” That is God the Father who made the Son to be sin for us. What I want us to see is the driving activity, the initiative, of God the Father in our salvation, and it comes through loud and clear in this text. VI.          GOD WAS SATISFIED WITH JESUS’S DEATH FOR OUR SINS Now there is one more aspect that I want you to note. In number six, God was satisfied with Jesus’s death for our sins. We see that in the last seven words of verse 25, “and was raised because of our justification.” Let me tell you what this is not saying and what this is saying. This is not saying that we are justified by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. We are justified by the life and the death of Christ. What this is saying is that the life and death of Christ, the sinless life and the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ provided the righteousness that is imputed to us in justification. This says we were raised, not in order to have justification. This says we are raised because of our justification. The resurrection of Christ from the dead becomes the Father’s validation that the life of Christ and the death of Christ was a perfect righteousness that has been imputed to us. If Jesus had remained in the grave, it would have told us that His life and His death was an insufficient provision of righteousness. But the fact that the Father raised Jesus from the dead is the Father’s authentication, stamp of approval, that the death of Christ made a perfect atonement for our sin. Jesus’s life perfectly fulfilled all of the demands of the law on our behalf. Look at it again, at the end of verse 25, the wording of it, “He was delivered over because of our transgressions, and was raised because of our justification.” We are justified by the life and death of Christ. The resurrection validates the success of that mission. So the Father was – to use a theological word – propitiated, and we saw that word in Romans 3:25. The Father was satisfied; He was appeased; He was placated; those are all synonyms for the satisfaction that Jesus accomplished to satisfy the wrath of God towards us. Jesus, in taking our sin, stood in our place in the judgment at the cross, and Jesus bore the wrath of God in His body upon the cross. The physical suffering, in reality, was nothing compared to the spiritual suffering of Jesus bearing our sins and being crushed by the wrath and the judgment of God upon Him for our sins. It has been well said that only the damned in hell, this very moment, can even begin to scratch the surface of understanding what Jesus suffered upon the cross. There were thousands who were crucified upon crosses. That is not the uniqueness of the death of Christ. The real suffering was not the physical torment. It was Jesus bearing the curse on our behalf and suffering the damnation that was due us. The full fury of the wrath of God was unleashed upon Jesus Christ, and what we would suffer in an eternity in hell was compressed down to three hours upon the cross. It was so concentrated and so intense that at high noon the sky became pitch black. It was at that moment that our sins were transferred to Jesus. It was at 3:00 in the afternoon that He said, “It is finished.” It was from high noon to 3:00 that our sins were laid upon Him and the wrath of God came down hard upon His Son. The Father held back nothing; He – as I said – unleashed the vengeance of His holy character upon His Son as He bore our sins upon the cross. He was taken down from that cross, He was buried in a barred tomb, and because the Father was fully satisfied with the sufficiency of that death, therefore the Father raised Him from the dead. These are six things that the Father does as it relates to our salvation. Now in the time that we have that remains, I want to walk us through some verses that speak to this resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Go back to the book of Acts. When we study the book of Acts, we see the prominence of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The resurrection of Christ needs to be very prominent in our thinking. Matt, one of the last sermons I heard your dad preach at Grace Community was on a Sunday night several months ago on the resurrection. As I came to church that Sunday night, I thought, “Oh I know exactly what your dad’s going to say. I know his sermon on 1 Corinthians 15.” I am clicked in for automatic pilot on this like I am going to finish the sentences for him. I know this message. As your dad preached that night, it was a blockbuster sermon, and he began by saying, “Christianity is a religion of the resurrection.” We are a religion of the resurrection. He went through a litany of verses, and it just blew me out of the water how powerful it was that God will raise everyone from the dead. God will have the last say in human history. Everyone will be raised to stand before God, and there will be no escaping God. That is a powerful truth of Christianity – we are a religion of resurrection. In Acts 2:22, “Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God” – that refers to God the Father – “with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him.” The greatest miracle God performed in and through Jesus Christ is found in verse 24, it is the miracle of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Verse 22, “you nailed Him to a cross,” Verse 24, “But God raised Him from the dead.” God had the last word. You nailed Him to a cross; God raised Him from the dead. Now we know that it was ultimately God the Father who delivered Him over to the cross. But God worked through human instrumentality. God worked even through reprobates to carry out His eternal purpose and plan as He worked through those Roman soldiers who drove the nails in to His hands. He worked through the Jewish leaders who delivered Him over to death. It was God the Father who did this, but verse 24 says it was God who raised Him from the dead. The ultimate purpose of that is in verse 22: He was “a man attested to you by God.” The resurrection is the attestation from God the Father that this is my Son; you must believe in Him. It is a far greater attesting by the Father than even the voice that spoke at His baptism, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” It is an even greater attesting than on the Mount of Transfiguration when Jesus was on the Mount with Peter, James and John, and the voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son; listen to Him.” Even greater attesting by the Father than “this is My Son,” is the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It is the ultimate validation that Jesus is exactly who He claimed to be. Every other religious leader, their body is still dead and in the grave. Mohammed is dead and in the grave. Buddha is dead and in the grave. Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, their bodies are dead and in the grave. There is only one who has been raised from the dead, He is the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. Second, look at verses 31 and 32 – David looked ahead in verse 31, “and spoke of the resurrection of Christ, that He was neither abandoned to Hades, nor did His flesh suffer decay.” This resurrection of Jesus was prophesied in the Old Testament, in Psalms 16. This is not just a New Testament truth, this is an Old Testament truth as well. Then in verse 32, “This Jesus God raised up again.” It was the resurrection that put steel in to the backbone of the disciples. They scattered at the cross, but they rallied in the upper room because they saw the resurrected Christ. Now look at Acts 3:15, you “put to death the Prince of life, the one whom God raised from the dead.” Then at the end of the chapter, in verse 26, “For you first, God raised up His Servant.” All of this really begins in verse 13, “The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified His servant Jesus.” What the resurrection does is it validates that God the Father is the God of the Bible. He is the true God of heaven and earth, because He raised His Son from the dead. He is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and He is the One who raised His Son from the dead. Now Acts 4:10, “let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead – by this name this man stands here before you in good health.” The resurrection validates that God is the God of salvation. That God has raised His Son from the dead. A dead savior is no one’s savior; a dead savior cannot even save himself. A dead savior has no power to save. But a risen savior has power and eternal life to give to all those who believe in him. It is the resurrection that demonstrates that God has the power to save. If He has power to raise His Son from the dead, He also has power to take our sins away from us and bury them in the sea of His forgetfulness. Come to Acts 5:30, this repeated emphasis upon the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Here the resurrection demonstrates that we must obey God and not men. Look at verse 29, “But Peter and the apostles answered” – well let me begin in verse 28. “We gave you strict orders” – this is the Sanhedrin speaking to Peter and John – “We gave you strict orders not to continue teaching in this name, and yet, you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and intend to bring this man’s blood upon us. Peter and the apostles answered, ‘We must obey God rather than men.'” In other words, you can tell us to stop preaching, but we will not stop preaching because God has commanded that we be His witnesses in the whole world. Now verse 30 follows up verse 29, “The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you had put to death by hanging Him on a cross.” The resurrection means we must obey God and not men. Our greatest allegiance and loyalty is to the God who raised His Son from the dead. Even if the world tells us that we cannot witness in the name of Christ, we must obey God who raised His Son from the dead. It is the resurrection of Christ that makes obedience to the Father binding upon our lives. Now come to Acts 13:30, and we are just cherry picking these verses on the resurrection in the book of Acts. This was a dominant theme in the preaching of the apostles. It was a reoccurring note. Let’s start in verse 29, but verses 30, 33, 34, and 37 are what I want you to see. Verse 29, “When they had carried out all that was written concerning Him” –  and isn’t that an interesting statement, as they executed Jesus Christ they were simply fulfilling what had already been prophesied and written in Scripture – “they took Him down from the cross and laid Him in a tomb. But God” – and I love how Martin Lloyd Jones says, “Praise God for the buts in the Bible.” “But God” – whenever you see a ‘but God,’ you know whatever follows is turning in the right direction. Momentum just changed jersey’s. So in verse 30, “But God raised Him from the dead; and for many days He appeared to those who came up with Him from Galilee to Jerusalem, the very ones who are now His witnesses to the people. And we preach to you the good news of the promise made to the fathers, that God has fulfilled this promise to our children in that He raised up Jesus, as it is also written in the second Psalm” – and now he quotes Psalms 2 – “‘You are my Son; today I have begotten you.'” Verse 34, “As for the fact that He raised Him up from the dead” – he won’t let it go. Then down to verse 37, “but He whom God raised did not undergo decay.” What that means is God raised Him on the third day, before the decaying process could even begin. In our Christian faith and in our Christian witness, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is a chief cornerstone. As we talk to people about Jesus – that Jesus died for our sins – we must also then follow that up with, “But God raised Him from the dead, and He is alive, and He is seated at the right hand of God the Father. And whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” The resurrection gives strength to our witnessing, to our teaching and to our preaching. Now I have a great verse you must come to. All this was a warm-up, okay, this was pre-game. Now is kick off. Acts 17:31, this is a killer verse on the resurrection. Now look at this, “He” – referring to God the Father – “has fixed a day” – there is a day that is fixed on God’s calendar. It is written in indelible ink. It cannot be removed. It cannot be erased. “He has fixed a day” – a point in time in the future – “in which He” – God the Father – “will judge the world in righteousness” – there is a payday coming, there is a final judgment for the world – “through a Man” – and we know who that Man is, capital M, none other than the God Man, the Lord Jesus Christ – “whom He has appointed” – God the Father has appointed His Son to carry out the judgment – “having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.” You know what this means? There will be a final judgment, because God has raised the judge from the dead. The irony is every Easter there are so many CEOs in church, Christmas and Easter only. Many of them do not know the Lord, and they are coming to celebrate Easter and coming to celebrate their own judgment that God has raised the judge from the dead. Now today, if you want to escape standing in court, you can actually escape standing in court. You can catch an airplane and go to South America and never be found. You can take an airplane and go to Africa and we will never hear from you again. You can go to the Florida Everglades and go find some snake-infested place and you can escape your day in court. But this day in court is inescapable for two reasons: 1) God has raised the judge from the dead and He has fixed a day in which this judge will preside in judgment over the world. And 2) God will raise every living soul from the dead to appear in court, the supreme court of heaven and earth on the last day. The judgment is guaranteed by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. This is a powerful truth, the resurrection. The resurrection of Christ guarantees the resurrection of every lesser person who has ever lived on this earth. My body will be resurrected unless I am alive when Jesus comes back. Your body will be raised from the dead. Every funeral grave site that I have ever performed, that coffin is going to be blown open and that body is going to be raised from the dead. Every lost person’s body will be raised from the dead and reunited with their soul and spirit. For our body in heaven, we will be given a body perfectly suited for our new environment in heaven. It is a body that will never grow tired and never grow weary in our worship of God, in our praise to God, in serving God. No need for sleep, no need for rest, we will have glorified eyes to behold the Lord Jesus Christ, a glorified tongue to sing His praises, a glorified knee to continually bow before Him, glorified feet and hands to carry out service for Him. It will be a body perfectly suited for our new environment in heaven. We will eat from the Tree of Life. We will drink from the River of Life in a glorified body that will never grow tired. We will have an intensified capacity to enjoy pleasure in heaven and to rejoice in heaven in this glorified body. On the other hand, souls in hell will have a new body in which they will feel the suffering of the torment of the damned with even greater capacity to suffer and a greater feeling of the inflicted pain in hell. There will be a resurrection at the end of the age. 1 Thessalonians 4:16-18, “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the trumpet of God and the voice of the archangel, and the dead in Christ shall be raised first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. Therefore comfort one another with these words.” It is this resurrection that Paul emphasizes at the end of Romans four that is a cornerstone and a hallmark of our Christian faith. I think every so often we need to have this solidified in our understanding, that it is by this resurrection that Jesus Christ is alive. He is alive today. He is alive this moment. We can know the risen Christ. We can follow and serve the risen Christ. And on the last day even, we will stand before the risen Christ and give an account to Him at the judgment seat of Christ. We talked about that last time. Also those without Christ will be raised for their day in court, and every sin will be exposed, and every sin will bring a just punishment. Then they will be cast down into the bowels of hell to suffer eternally in the lake of fire and brimstone. It is the resurrection that guarantees that all of this will take place. These are great verses that we have looked at today, and I trust that they will elevate your faith and your walk with the Lord. So let me just throw it open – give me your insight, give me your thoughts. What strikes you about what we have looked at today? Whatever that is will be a source of encouragement for the rest of us. Audience:        So do you believe at our physical death here on earth we will be immediately in heaven? Dr. Lawson:   Absolutely. Audience:        Then you talk about the body reuniting with this soul, with the spirit. So how is heaven different, I guess, before and after for us? Dr. Lawson:   That is a great question. 2 Corinthians 5, beginning in verse 1 addresses that. At the moment of our death, our body is placed in the grave – or a day later. But at the moment of our death, for the believer, our soul goes immediately into the presence of the Lord. Our soul will be in heaven before our loved ones even know we are dead. Our body will be placed in the grave. At the end of the age there will be a resurrection, and our body will be raised to become like Christ’s resurrection body. So the question is, what kind of a body will we have in heaven before the resurrection? It is represented in a metaphorical way as an earthly tent, that we live in an earthly tent. Now an earthly tent is a temporal housing until the permanent body – or building that we move in to. It is somewhat veiled to us exactly what it will be like. 2 Corinthians 5:1-3 says, “For we know if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down” – well that is our present body – “we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For indeed in this house we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven, inasmuch as we, having put it on, will not be found naked.” When we get to heaven we are not going to be a ghost or a spirit, and in that sense, naked. God will clothe us with a temporal – and the best we can say is “body” – whatever that is, we are not completely told. Verse 4, “For indeed while we are in this tent, we groan” – referring to our present body – “being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life. Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave us the Spirit as a pledge.” We have the Spirit in us. The word ‘pledge’ there can mean either like a down payment or an engagement ring. We have the Holy Spirit given to us as a pledge of what is to come. Verse 6, “Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord.” Right now we are at home in this body. We are absent from the Lord. Verse 7, “for we walk by faith, not by sight” – verse 8 – “we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.” So it is the moment I am absent from this body, I will be home with the Lord. Verse 9, “Therefore, we have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him.” To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord immediately, and I believe we will recognize one another. Spurgeon said, “we know one another down here, will we be bigger fools up there?” The answer is no, we will really know one another up there. It will be more than just a recognition on the outside, we will know one another even on the inside, as far as there will be no misunderstandings. At the end of the age will be the resurrection. It is somewhat veiled as to what our spirit will be in, but it will be some kind of a temporal body. That is the best we can say on this, but that is a great question. I will say this, God does all things well. Whatever that is going to be, it is going to be extraordinary. It is going to be great. It is going to phenomenal. In a sense, we will be glad to finally get rid of this old decaying tent and finally upgrade and move into something better. It is certainly going to be a better neighborhood and a better house that we live in. Great question. Someone else, what strikes you? Help us with application. How should this change our life? Audience:        I know that a lot about heaven is unknown, and there are a lot of different theories. But you were talking about how we would have no need for rest. Equate that with how God rested on the seventh day. Dr. Lawson:   Well first of all, God did not need to rest. God is eternal strength, and so the fact that God rested is really just an example for us that we should rest one day out of seven. It is not that God needed to rest, like God got tired or God needed to recharge His batteries. It was simply an example to us that we would have a Sabbath rest. In this life, I think the Sabbath principle is still in effect, yet without the ceremonial and civil requirements of the Old Testament. I think you can eat in a restaurant on Sunday. I think you can mow your yard on Sunday. I do not think we have all of the Mosaic requirements attached to the Sabbath. And the Sabbath was Saturday, and we, as Christians, worship the Lord on the first day of the week, which is Sunday. Having said that, salvation is entering into the rest of the finished work of Jesus Christ upon the cross. In heaven there is a sense in which we will rest from having to work in this world by the sweat of our brow, under the curse in Genesis 3, “Working in a world in which there are thorns and thistles.” We will enter in to the new Jerusalem, the new heavens and the new earth. There will be no curse in that world. I believe we will work and serve the Lord there and derive great fulfillment and satisfaction from that work. But we will not be taking off one out of every seven days in heaven, because there is no curse in the world to come from which we need to rest. We will have turbo-empowered bodies that will just worship and worship and worship, and fellowship and fellowship and fellowship, and serve and serve and serve. What that is, I have no idea what that will be. But it is a part of being made in the image of God that we work. We don’t want to get out of work. I don’t understand people who want to retire and not do any work. You were made to work. Now you just have to transfer that work, maybe from your career to the church or to ministry. But as long as you are on planet earth, there is work for you to do. When your work is finished, God will take you home. In Ephesians 2:10, God has foreordained good works for us to walk in, and we are to carry out those works as long as we are alive. So I think it would be an awful thing for me, and I think for you, just to sit at the beach and look at seashells in retirement. I mean, what kind of satisfaction is that? You will just have to do a honey-do list anyway when you get to that point. We want to serve the Lord. We want to serve God. We want our life to count for time and eternity. We do not want to just twiddle our thumbs. And we are not going to just twiddle our thumbs in heaven either. Angels are not going to just be dropping grapes in our mouth while we are on a cloudbank. That does not sound like a good deal to me. Being made in the image of God means we do something with our life, and we derive enormous satisfaction. We glorify God with our service in what He has called us to do. Right now for you men vocationally, it is your career, it is your work that you are glorifying God with. The integrity and honesty and with the provision that comes from your labor. I know I went beyond your question on that, but we are not just going to go to heaven and sit. It will not be a spectator game in heaven. I don’t know that I would want to go there if that is it. We will be with God, but we want to do something throughout all eternity, and we will have a glorified body with which we can do it. There is still yet a lot unanswered, obviously. Audience:        Since the damned will be resurrected in physical bodies for eternal punishment, will the nature of the lake of fire be physical as well? Dr. Lawson:   Absolutely it will. I believe it is real – it is a real lake of fire. Here’s the deal, let’s just play with this for a moment. If it is symbolic, the symbol never measures up to the reality. The picture of your wife never represents the full beauty of who your wife is. The symbol is always weaker than the reality. If it is only a symbol, you should hope it is only a symbol, because whatever it is representing is far worse. So that is not an end run. Having said that, I take the Bible at that point at face value. I realize there are figures of speech that are used in the Bible. When Jesus says, “I am the door of the sheep,” He does not mean He is a piece of wood, it represents something – that He is the door. I understand that. I am the light of the world – I understand that. But having said that, we have no reason to believe that this is anything other than literal fire in a real place on God’s map known as hell. I think the lava that comes spewing out from the center of the earth is about as close of a picture of the lake of fire and brimstone as there is. Thank you for that question, and it gives us opportunity to answer that. I would take it as real until we find out otherwise. If we find out otherwise, it will be far worse than what is pictured. Audience:        And there is no annihilation. Dr. Lawson:   No, there is no annihilation. Audience:        Some would say there is annihilation. But there is a body that will not, cannot, be in annihilated. Dr. Lawson:   Yeah, it is a body that cannot be annihilated. It will be ever being burned, but never consumed. Hell will be as long as heaven will be. The very same words in the book of Revelation are used for the length of hell that are used for the length of heaven. If you want to argue annihilation in hell, then you are going to have to be consistent and argue for annihilation of saints in heaven as well. That does not get you anywhere in the argument. It is forever and ever, the ages unto the ages to come without end. There is no annihilation. That is just a pagan myth. Audience:        Do you think in what we are talking about that we can say that God keeps the books, Jesus opens the scrolls, and it is all together that this judgment takes place? Dr. Lawson:   Yes and no. In John 5 Jesus said the Father has given all judgment to Him. So Jesus will be the executor of the Father’s judgment. In Revelation 20:11-15 is the great white throne of judgment. One who sat upon a throne from whose presence heaven and earth fled away and there was no hiding place. The sea gave up the dead which were in them, and etc., etc. If Jesus will be that judge on the last day, as He will carry out on behalf of the Father the execution of the Father’s judgment. And the Father is keeping impeccable books – every idle word, every thought, every deed, everything we should have done we did not do, everything we did we should not have done, every motive. The unsaved man will give an account for that on the last day. It is a terrifying scene in Revelation 20:11-15. Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men. We must be about the business of telling people about the Lord Jesus Christ, starting with our loved ones, starting with those who are closest to us at work, etc. Well men, ours is a religion of the resurrection, and it is the resurrection that guarantees that the Father is pleased with the Son’s sacrifice. It is the resurrection that validates Jesus is the Son of God. Father, thank You for this study that we have had. Seal to our hearts now the truth that has been sown in to our hearts. Give us opportunities today to tell others about what we have looked at today. Thank You that You will give us a glorified body one day in heaven – never be sick, never be tired – with which we will be able to praise You forever. We long for that day and we groan for that day, even right now as we live in this earthly tent. In Jesus’s name, amen.
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