God's Gracious Promise is Available to You - Do You Believe?

Me - I absolutely hated it when in grade school we had to pick teams for dodgeball or kickball or whatever ball. First the two people who do the picking are the cool jocks.

Second, there is the painful process of waiting. It isn’t painful for everyone but for people like me, it is agonizing! Why? Because inevitably I was one of the last kids to be chosen. Why? I was anything but athletic. I was chubby, had braces, wore glasses, and had a throwing arm like a pool noodle! All in all, I was not impressive in the least and so I was often last to be chosen. Not fun!

We - Can you relate? I mean if you were a cool jock, you cannot relate - i still love you, but you cannot relate.

But seriously, when you compare yourself to God, the absolute best of us fall absolutely short! We have nothing to offer God. We are woefully inadequate! If the criteria to be picked by God were our abilities, we would stand waiting for an eternity.

None of us are good enough, no not one.

God - But God is not a cool jock! God is full of grace and mercy. God desires that we have community with Him.

God wants to have a relationship with you.

God desires for you to be made right with Him so that you can relate to Him.

And this relationship with Him is by FAITH ALONE through GRACE ALONE!

This is the drumbeat of chapter four of Romans.

And, if you remember God set up an example for us to look to so that we can understand what faith looks like - ABRAHAM

Abraham is exemplified and highlighted because of his FAITH in God’s promise to him.

What is the promise? Look at verse 13...

Romans 4:13 (ESV)

For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith.

By the way, it wasn’t just to Abraham that this promise was given, it was also to his offspring (that’s you and me).

And the promise was that he and we (if we are in Christ) are heirs to the world. No big deal. We just own everything that God owns! What???!!!

Listen to the words of Jesus in Revelation 3...

Revelation 3:20–22 (ESV)

Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. 21 The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne. 22 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’ ”

You and I become co-owners of the universe and beyond when we have a right relationship with God! What did you to deserve that kind of generosity? What kind of GRACE is that? It is amazing!

Verses 14 and 15 make it clear that if you follow the law you face God’s wrath because the Law, as beautiful as it is cannot save!

Romans 4:14–15 (ESV)

For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. 15 For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression.

God isn’t interested in His people earning their way into His Kingdom, that’s why it is all about FAITH!

What is faith? Dr. Tony Evans gives a great example of faith...

ONE time I was battling a cold and couldn’t shake it. I called my doctor, told him my symptoms, and he told me I didn’t need to come in. He was going to call in a prescription for me. He told me what medicine he was prescribing and how he wanted me to take it.Now, a number of things went into motion. First of all, I had to believe that I was talking to the person I thought I was talking to, because I couldn’t see him. It was just a conversation over the phone. So I had to listen to his voice. I listened to his voice and he told me how to fix my problem. Now, I could’ve lain in bed and meditated. I could have believed him, but stayed in my bed thinking about how good it was that I had a doctor who understood my problem and provided me with a solution. I could have lain there thinking how great it was that I had a solution, but all that lying around and thinking about the good words that the good doctor shared with me wouldn’t make me better. It may have given me warm fuzzies because he talked to me, but I’d still be sick as a dog.Guess what I had to do. I had to get up, get in my car, drive to Walgreens, and say to the pharmacist, “Do you have a prescription with my name on it?” There’s a lot of medicine in there, but I needed something with my name on it. I needed something that wasn’t generic but personal to me. The doctor told me it was there, and because I believed his word I acted on it and went to Walgreens.Taking this illustration further, I could have just received the medicine and looked at it. I could have gazed at it and made sure that it looked medicinally acceptable to me. But, I’d still be sick as a dog. The doctor’s instructions were not for me just to drive to Walgreens and get emotionally fixated on the look of the medicine. He told me to take it. By following his instructions to the T, my faith was matching up with my works and I began to feel much better.A lot of us are spiritually sick and every week we come to hear what the Doctor’s got to say. Some of us stop there and just think about how good it was to talk to Him. Some of us leave church feeling good about how great the prescription sounds, but still sick as a spiritual dog because we don’t take it and ingest it by acting on it. Therefore, we’re not transformed. Tony Evans Book of Illustrations: Stories, Quotes, and Anecdotes from More Than 30 Years of Preaching and Public Speaking (Faith) 274.

Do YOU have FAITH in God?

Do YOU take God at His Word?

Do YOU share the FAITH of Abraham?

If you do, you then have a right relationship with God

If you don’t you’ll face His wrath.

There is no middle ground on this friends. It is an either or proposition!

And this leads us to the passage and main thought for the sermon this morning.

I made a little poem to help you remember a profound truth from this passage!

Bottom Line - God’s Promise Depends on Faith Not Law! God’s Promise Rests on Grace for ALL!

Let’s walk through this passage and see how true this poem really is. The first thing we see is...

1. God’s Promise is Available for All People including You! (vs. 16)

Romans 4:16 (ESV)

That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring—not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all,

Friends, IT depends on faith! What is IT? IT is being an heir of God. Having a relationship with God is not based on following the Law because attempting to follow the Law only brings WRATH. The law exposes sin, it fails to deliver us from sin!

This is what Luther teachers...

“I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived’ (Romans 7:9). So it is with the work-righteousness and the proud unbelievers. Because they do not know the Law of God, which is directed against them, it is impossible for them to know their sin. Therefore also they are not amenable to instruction. If they would know the Law, they would also know their sin; and sin to which they are now dead would become alive in them.” - Martin Luther

Paul says “That is why it DEPENDS on faith...”

The CSB translates it a little better - “This is why the promise is by faith, so that is may be according to grace, to guarantee it to all the descendants...”

The promise IS by faith, not by following the Law.

I love what John Stott has to say about this language that the apostle uses.

“Law language (“you shall”) demands your obedience, but promise language (“I will”) demands our faith.” - Stott

Our obedience isn’t sufficient. We cannot follow the “you shalls” flawlessly and therefore are guilty of breaking all of His law.

So we must rely on God following through with what He said “I will do.”

I know God, and I know me, and to be honest, I believe God’s promises way more that I believe in my ability to follow His Law perfectly.

Thank God for His AMAZING GRACE! Why? Because it guarantees salvation to ALL the descendants!

Not just the Jews, but the Gentiles as well.

You! Sitting in this room CAN have eternal life!

God’s promise is available for ALL people, including you!

Why? Because Abraham is the father of all of us. Not simply the Jews.

Galatians 3:28–29 (ESV)

28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.

It is an interesting theological truth, for sure! But it’s also a very practical truth.

Practical how? You can have a relationship with God by Faith because it RESTS on His Grace!

Illustrate - Have you ever been given something? Like a large gift? I have. My parents several years ago sold their property and made a significant profit. They decided to give each of us five kids $10,000! They took us out to dinner and then bestowed the gift to us! What?!

Did they have to do that? NOPE! It was purely by their grace that they did this.

What did I have to do? Nothing - except accept it!

Apply - When I became a follower of Christ, I wanted to grab people by the neck (in love, of course) and shake them and tell them to believe! I finally, after 23 years understood the gospel and wanted others to understand it as well.

Why? Because their eternal destiny depended on it.

You have been given a promise by God. You cannot earn this promise. There is no way possible for you to acquire this promise in and of yourself.

You can receive this glorious promise however. It can be yours. It can be yours today!

How? By believing what God has said in His Holy and true Word.

Do you believe God’s promise?

He is holding it out to you for you to receive!

He promises to save you from the wrath of God...

He promises to give you an eternal, intimate relationship with Him through Christ...

He promises to make you new...

He promise to give you a new family! One in which you will enjoy forever...

The God, who cannot lie has made these promises and many more to you.

Do you believe HIM? Do you have faith in HIM? Do you believe Jesus.

Imagine if Jesus were to sit down with you and make you a personal promise. Would you believe Him?

1 Peter 1:8–9 (ESV)

8 Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, 9 obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

If you are struggling with this, simply pray right there in your seat that God would, through His Holy Spirit, open your heart! That He would give you the capacity to believe!

Review - God’s Promise Depends on Faith Not Law! God’s Promise Rests on Grace for ALL!

God’s Promise is Available for All People Including You!

2. God’s Promise Reveals God’s Life Giving Power for You (vs. 17)

We humans are a curious bunch. Most go about our days never giving a second thought to how we are able to have the power to accomplish anything at all. We simply take it for granted.

We christians are often guilty of this in the spiritual sense. We go about our days never giving a second thought to the fact that we, by the power of God have been given new life.

2 Corinthians 5:17 (ESV)

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

Isn’t this a beautiful truth for us to NEVER GET OVER?

Paul, in verse 17 quotes Gen 17:5 where God, yet again, reiterates His promise to Abraham. A promise that if you really meditate on, is breathtaking.

Romans 4:17 (ESV)

as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.

God made Abraham the Father of many nations - Abraham had nothing to do with this. In fact, he kept messing things up along the way...

But it was God who promised and God who delivered and it is God who is still delivering!

What did Abraham do? Paul tell us plainly - “in the presence of the God in whom he believed.”

That’s what Abraham did, he believed. That’s it!

It isn’t about achieving - it’s about believing!

John 6:27–29 (ESV)

Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.” 28 Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” 29 Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”

Who is this God in whom we are to believe?

I’m a Marvel fan and I love the avengers movies. And if you know anything about the Avengers there is one character named Thor, the god of Thunder. Thor is from Norse mythology where there are all kinds of god, Loki, Oden, and so forth.

And Thor is impressive for certain. He can do quite a bit of damage with his hammer as well as the lighting he can summon whenever he’d like. Put it this way, I wouldn’t want to tangle with this god of Thunder.

However, look again at how Paul describes the One and True God...

Romans 4:17 (ESV)

as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.

Summoning lighting and thunder on a whim is pretty impressive. But GIVING LIFE to the DEAD and CREATING out of NOTHING? Who can compete with that?

The answer is NO ONE. NO one other than God. Only God can give life. Only God can create out of nothing!

Do you understand the significance of this?

God created you and gave you life - He is your creator and therefore your authority! The Creator gets to tell the created what to do!

God gets to tell you what to do!

And even though Gave you physical life when you were conceived and then born, you were still dead. You were born spiritually dead.

Ephesians 2:1–2 (ESV)

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—

And because you were dead in your sin and incapable of responding, God needed to give you spiritual life. He had to call into existence a relationship with Him that did not exist.

This was done strictly by God and by His grace.

God is in charge of giving and God is in charge of taking away!

Job 1:21 (ESV)

And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

God is in charge of this world. And God is in charge of you whether you recognize it or not.

And He has graciously given you physical life. For many of us here He has given us eternal life. All by His grace.

However, if you are not a Christian, He stands ready to give you eternal life if you repent of your sin (sin = the ways you have broken His law) and believe in Him and his promise to you.

Only God has this kind of power. Only God has the POWER to give life. Only God has the POWER to create out of nothing.

Illustrate - So, do you have a Thor, the god of thunder sized faith or a God of the bible sized faith?

A Thor sized faith = He is pretty cool and he can do some cool things. But I can’t trust him with everything.

A God sized faith in God = he is the authority over my life because He created my life and He is capable of saving me and reserving Heaven for me.

1 Peter 1:3–5 (ESV)

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

Apply - Do you have faith in this kind of God?

How do I know if I have my faith in the proper God? If you do, God makes it abundantly clear in you...

THE FRUIT/PROOFS OF AUTHENTIC/TRUE CHRISTIANITY:

A. Love for God : Ps. 42:1ff; 73:25; Luke 10:27; Rom. 8:7

B. Repentance from Sin: Ps. 32:5; Prov. 28:13; Rom. 7:14ff; 2 Cor. 7:10; 1 John 1:8–10

C. Genuine Humility: Ps. 51:17; Matt. 5:1–12; James 4:6, 9ff.

D. Devotion to God’s Glory: Ps. 105:3; 115:1; Is. 43:7, 48:10ff.; Jer. 9:23, 24; 1 Cor. 10:31.

E. Continual Prayer: Luke 18:1; Eph. 6:18ff.; Phil. 4:6ff.; 1 Tim. 2:1–4; James 5:16–18

F. Selfless Love: 1 John 2:9ff, 3:14; 4:7ff.

G. Separation from the World: 1 Cor. 2:12; James 4:4ff.; 1 John 2:15–17, 5:5

H. Spiritual Growth: Luke 8:15; John 15:1–6; Eph. 4:12–16

I. Obedient Living: Matt. 7:21; John 15:14ff.; Rom. 16:26; 1 Pet. 1:2, 22; 1 John 2:3–5

John MacArthur Jr., ed., The MacArthur Study Bible, electronic ed. (Nashville, TN: Word Pub., 1997), 2191.

If you are an authentic follower of Jesus, Jesus will change you to be more and more like Him. You can believe that!

Okay, remember our poem?

You - Review - God’s Promise Depends on Faith Not Law! God’s Promise Rests on Grace for ALL!

Where are you at with this truth?

Are you trusting God this very minute with your eternal soul?

If your doctor sat you down and said you only had 5 weeks to live, would you rest in the fact that because of faith in Christ, you would be soon with the Lord?

Do you trust what God has promised to you?

Do you believe Him and take Him at His word?

Do you rest in His promise?

Or do you love this life and this world more?

A person who wholly trusts in God’s promise (that his children will be heir of all things), what kind of person ought they to be. Christian, in light of God’s amazing, gracious promise, what should you be like? Peter has an answer for us...

2 Peter 3:13–14 (ESV)

But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. 14 Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace.

Does Peter’s description describe you? Are you growing in holiness and peace? Are you less and less enamored with this world and more and more resting in the gracious promises of our God?

You see, faith in God’s gracious promise should not leave you the same. Is God changing you? Are you expediting the change or hindering it?

We - I get excited when I think about this church body, each one of you being changed by God because of your faith in God and His amazing promise!

Can you picture what this faith filled body could accomplish for God’s glory as we are changed from one glory to another?

Can you imagine the impact will have as a church on our community if we really believed the promise of God - that we own everything God owns - I gotta believe we would be a Spirit Saturated powerhouse

But it will never happen if our faith is minimal. Jesus won’t do much with us if our faith in Him and His promise is small.

Matthew 13:58 (ESV)

58 And he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief.

Do you want to be known as that kind of church? God was willing to do mighty works there but did not because of our unbelief? I don’t

Friends, some of us need to repent this morning of our functional atheism. We give lip-service to God, but in our daily lives we don’t really think He can accomplish all that much.

And so we live the way we want instead of the way He has commanded.

Is this you this morning? Then you should repent now! Ask God to forgive you and give you a fresh vision of Him.

That He isn’t some make-believe, puny “Thor-god”, but that He is the everlasting, all-powerful, all-knowing, everywhere present, creator God of all that seen and that is unseen and that only being that brings the dead to life.

By the way, Jesus is that creator, life giving God!!

John 11:21–27 (ESV)

21 Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.” 23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” 24 Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” 25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” 27 She said to him, “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.”

It is my earnest prayer that everyone within the sound of my voice believes like Martha professes.

Do you believe? Not just in anything, but have you placed your faith wholly and solely in Jesus Christ and His promise to you? I truly hope you have...

A BLIND girl, one day, was caught in a fire on the tenth floor of a building. She could make her way to a window, but she couldn’t see anything. She felt the heat and smelled the smoke of the fire. Then she heard a fireman yell, “Jump, jump!”She said, “I’m scared to jump. I can’t see.”The fireman said, “If you don’t jump, you’re going to die. Take the risk, and jump.”It’s bad enough to jump from ten stories high, but to jump when you can’t see where you’re jumping—that’s terror. In the midst of the chaos and confusion, she heard another voice, “Darling, jump, I’ve got you.” She smiled and said, “Okay, Daddy, I’ll jump.”Jesus Christ is inviting us to jump. He knows we’re nervous, but just jump. He knows you’re scared, but just jump. Remember, we’re talking about your Daddy. We’re talking about Somebody you know. You’ve seen what He can do.

Tony Evans Book of Illustrations: Stories, Quotes, and Anecdotes from More Than 30 Years of Preaching and Public Speaking (Faith, Acting In) 276

Connection Group Reflection Questions

1. What do these verses teach me about our character?

2. What do these verses teach me about God and his character?

3. Because these words are from God, they are TRUTH! What truth is he asking me to believe?

4. What do I need to do to obey him?

5. With whom can I share these truths?