October 19, 2011
Abraham's Righteousness
Romans 4:4:1-25
I.) Abraham: The Forefather of Faith 4:1-8
II.) Abraham: The Father of All Who Have Faith 4:9-17
III.) Abraham: The Father of the "Fully Persuaded" 4:19-25
Kent Hughes tells the story about a preacher who had forgotten the truth of the Gospel. It seems that the faith, that the preacher taught from his pulpit, was one that would not have set very well with Paul. The preacher's story went like this: "one day, a frog fell into a pail of milk and even though he tried really, really hard, in every conceivable way, to jump out----he always failed. The sides were just too high----and because he was floating in the milk, he couldn't get enough leverage for the kind of leap that his legs had been made for. So, he did the only thing he could do-----he paddled and paddled and paddled-------after a while, his paddling had churned the milk into a pat of butter, from which he was able to launch himself to freedom. The message was, 'just keep on paddling, keep on working, keep on doing your best, and you will be able to make it.'"
At 1st glance, it's hard to see, what's wrong with this advice, until you realize that it leaves God out of the equation completely, and focuses, only on what mankind, can do for himself.
It's an exaggerated simplification, but it actually describes the type of Christianity that is cropping up in every church and every denomination, in our country, and in the world. It's kind of a down-home-folk religion. We say that Amazing Grace is our favorite hymn and we sing those beautiful words with such emotion and heart------but I'm afraid, that most people are just giving lip-service to the words, because way deep-down inside-----they are convinced, that if they can just do the very best they can, they will somehow get to heaven.
This isn't new, man has always had a problem with trusting in justification by faith, alone, through God's grace----it makes more sense, to us, to embrace the motto, "we get our salvation the old-fashioned way, we earn it!" It was the way the Jews thought in Paul's day and its the way too many people, in our day, think, too.
Abraham was and is the prime example of a man, who, if anybody was going to be justified by his works, it would have been him. In every bit of Jewish literature, Abraham is believed to be perfect-------the literature claimed that he performed the whole law before it was written (which was 400 years after Abraham died); that he was perfect in all his deeds and that he had no need for repentance. Hogwash!!!!!!
Everybody, even Abraham, is in need of forgiveness and repentance.
Paul, the lawyer of grace, acknowledges, that Abraham was righteous, but he denies, that the Jews or anybody, has any right to present him, as an example of righteousness by his works, just because he was able to meet the standards of the law, because, the truth is, the scripture teaches us that, he never did! In this passage, Paul disputes and completely deletes, the works-righteousness, from Abraham's legend, and sets him forth as an example of one who has been saved, not by works, but by faith alone.
*******Bottom of whole lesson--Cannot be saved by anything that we can do----and Paul uses Abraham as an illustration of that fact.*******
I.) Abraham: The Forefather of Faith 4:1-8:
Abraham is one of the most honored people in human history. There are few names that are honored throughout the world, like Abraham's name is-----he is revered as a patriarch in 3 religions: Islam, Judaism and Christianity. Abraham's story, with God, stands as a remarkable and clear picture of God's grace, because he lived a couple of thousand years before Jesus was born, but he received the free gift of righteousness, from God, just like we do, a couple of thousand years, after he was born.
Paul raised 2 important questions about Abraham, to his readers, so that he could start making his point: that righteousness comes only from grace, not ever, from good works.
1.) When was Abraham made righteous? (when he believed God and His promise of the one who was going to come and die for the sins of the world) and 2.) Why was Abraham, made righteous? (Aside from his personal salvation-----Jesus, the Savior of the world was going to come through Abraham and so were multitudes of spiritual descendants.)
Abraham could have chosen, to gain his sense of worth and right standing, before God, by the good works, that the scripture clearly teaches he accomplished. He wasn't perfect, but we can see that he was a good man, in the way, that the world sees good. But he didn't.
Abraham was first introduced to us in Genesis 11-------at the time, his name was Abram and he was living in the city of Ur, in the Mesopotamian Valley. We believe that He was a very pious, idolatrously, religious man, who worshiped, the Chaldean Moon goddess. While Abram was in that condition of ignorance, God appeared and spoke to him. He told him to go to a new and strange land, and to take his family with him. Abram believed God and obeyed Him. That is our first clue, that Abraham was different, and that he was looking for something more than good works. Stepping out in simple trust, Abraham gathered his family and his possessions and he set out on a journey. into the unknown, trusting God to safely lead them all, to a land that he'd never seen before.
Abraham appeared to be a man of good works-----and he could have patted himself on the back, for his obedient performance--------but God isn't impressed by the things that people think are impressive. God can see our hearts------He knows us------and He had a crystal-clear understanding, of what motivated Abraham's heart. God knows that grand performances are usually generated by selfishness and ego and greed. When we behave correctly and give the right performance and receive our applause and accolades, we will always experience a sense of worth. But sadly, it's only temporary------its not the true, lasting worth, that comes from possessing righteousness from God. It's a fleeting thing-------it evaporates as soon as the applause, is nothing more, than the memory of an echo, in our ears. It leaves us feeling empty and unfulfilled. Only God's righteousness can sustain us throughout our lifetimes and for all eternity.
Genesis 15:6 says, "Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness." This statement comes from the story, where God took Abraham outside one night, and told him to look up and count the stars and to know that his descendants, would be as numerous, as those stars. Abraham looked at the stars, blazing in their glory, and somehow, he believed what God told him was true. God was so pleased with Abraham's faith, that He not only credited him with righteousness, but that night-------God appeared as a "smoking pot and a blazing torch" and passed between the pieces of a sacrifice of animals, which Abraham had prepared.
This was an ancient practice between 2 men who were forging a covenant, which couldn't be broken. They would have walked through the sacrifice pieces, together. It basically meant, that if the promises weren't kept, then, the same spitting in-two, that had happened to the animals, should and would happen to the promise-breaker. This was a clear communication to Abraham, that the promises that God had made to him, were unconditional, from Abraham's perspective. That there was nothing he could do or not do, to change God's mind. God's promises would stand forever or God would have to separate and destroy himself, in the same way. It was all God-----there was no requirement, for Abraham, to walk through the sacrifice halves, too.
James, in 2:23, quotes Genesis 15:6, too, but he adds more to it, he says, ….and he was called God's friend." God didn't reward Abraham, with payment, for services rendered. He was his friend, He gave him a wonderful gift. If a person works, then they earn wages. Wages are not a gift------they are an obligation that has to be paid for services rendered. A worker is entitled to get the credit for what he's earned, but he can't take credit for what he's been given as free gift.
Its the same way in the spiritual realm. If we could earn our salvation by our good works, then we could take credit for our own salvation-------but our salvation is freely given to us, by the Lord God------so all the credit has to go to Him alone. When we place our faith in God, through the blood of Jesus, then our faith is credited to us as righteousness, not as wages earned. And we become the friends of God too. Faith is required for salvation, but it has no power, in itself, to save. Salvation is given by the power of God's grace, alone. Faith is the channel, that God works His redeeming grace through------Faith, is just simply, a convicted heart, reaching out to receive God's free and unmerited gift.
Paul confirms his belief by pointing to another OT forefather, King David------when David wrote the words of Psalm 32:1-5, he was expressing the same kind of faith. I told you last week, its truly remarkable, that David was given the gift of righteousness, from God, after his soul was stained by the murder, of Uriah the Hittite, and the adultery with Uriah's wife, Bathsheba. David had sinned grievously----but he came to God in faith and repentance, and God forgave his sins and it was credited to David, as righteousness. Samuel also, called David, a "man after God's own heart" and David, was anything, but perfect. Faith is not a virtue that has more power than other noble qualities, like honesty, kindness, humility and selflessness. And obeying God is a good thing-------its even necessary------but it isn't good deeds or wonderful, character qualities, that make us worthy of God's grace.
Nothing about us makes us worthy of God's grace-------only God, Himself, makes us worthy of His grace. God dealt with the problem of sin, once and for all, when Jesus went to the cross. But our transformation is not instantaneous. It is a lifetime process. We will continue to struggle with sin and failure, until the day we die. So it's important, that we understand the difference between our standing, before God and our position, before God. When we receive God's grace through faith, we are considered righteous, and we are treated that way by God, regardless of our spiritually, immature behavior. Positionally, we are free, because we are saved once and for all time, but conditionally, we are still trapped in this sin-filled world in earthly bodies------we are saved sinners, in a lost world. Someday, though, our position and our condition will match and we will live perfectly forever, with the Lord, in glory.
II. Abraham: The Father of all Who Have Faith: 4:9-17
God chose circumcision as a symbol for His chosen people---and He gave it to them for a specific purpose. Paul makes 2 important points about circumcision, in this passage: the first is----- that rituals, like circumcision, have no power to save. Abraham was circumcised, years after God pronounced him righteous, by faith.
Abraham was God's friend, long before he was circumcised. Clearly, the ritual had absolutely no saving value, whatsoever. Paul underscored this point, because some of his Jewish readers still believed that you had to be circumcised in order to be saved. He had to silence their reasoning, and help them to understand that circumcision is not what made them acceptable, to God. (When God commanded for Abraham and his male family members and servants, to be circumcised, as a symbol of their relationship with Him--------they had the choice to obey or disobey. Submitting to circumcision, made a man, one of the chosen, with all the privileges and rights, of the Hebrew society. But, if a man refused to be circumcised, he was put out of the community, because, basically, he would have been rejecting God. With so much emphasis placed on circumcision, its easy to see why. over the years, the Jews enlarged its significance. Many of them reasoned that if refusing circumcision, condemned a man, then yielding to circumcision must save him. They totally forgot that circumcision was just an outward sign, of what was going on in their hearts! They came to believe that circumcision and observance of the Law were the exclusive path to salvation----so many of them, tried to make it a requirement for belonging to the church too.)
Paul's argument, also cancels out any modern analogies to circumcision----like baptism or church membership, or observing communion. People are justified; made righteous and accepted in God's sight-----not by being baptized or by participating in the Lord's supper or by joining a church------ but by having faith in the sacrificial death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus.
The 2nd point that Paul makes about circumcision, is that is was to be seen, as no more and no less than, a sign, a symbol and a seal. There is a reason that the Lord chose this particular place on a man's body to place His sign-----and its obvious. God wanted them to remember what the the rite of circumcision stood for, so He placed the sign on an organ, that the man would see, several times a day. God made sure that His sign on human flesh, was impossible to overlook.
It's also the place of procreation---------it was the symbol for the many, many generations of people that would come behind Abraham, who would inherit the legacy of God's promises, temporally and spiritually, as they were passed down from father to son.
And it was a seal----Paul says that, "the sign of circumcision, is a seal of righteousness". A seal is a guarantee of permanency. Circumcision, the removal of the foreskin, of the male organ, is an unchangeable act------once its done, it cannot be undone. It's God's way of saying, in visible and indelible terms, "You have been accepted by me and that acceptance will never change"!
It's the same way for us, as Christians-------when God cuts our salvation, into the flesh of our hearts, He is cutting, into it, His permanent seal of acceptance----- and once its done, it cannot be undone-----it will never change-------we can mess up and we can disappoint Him and we can fail to act like His children-----but that will never change the fact, that we are His, because He has carved His permanent seal there. Ideally, a believer's conduct will make our relationship with the Lord, plainly evident, to the watching world-------but even if it doesn't always, in our own strength-------that doesn't change the fact that from God's perspective------it is permanent-----for all time and for all eternity.
God, also had another reason for making Abraham righteous, beyond Abraham's own need for personal salvation. The gift of being made acceptable before God, was given to Abraham, not only to save him, but to make him the father of many more to come. God promised Abraham that he would be the father of many spiritual descendants, more numerous than the stars in the heavens, and that promise is still in the process, of being fulfilled.
This has been accomplished through Jesus, the child of promise, the Savior of the world, who though His earthly mother, is a descendant of Abraham.
When we receive righteousness from God, through our faith in Christ Jesus, we become spiritual descendants of Abraham too. And this is true whether a person is Jew or Gentile; circumcised or uncircumcised.
This is the great secret of life----the great truth-----we don't have to earn God's love and forgiveness! It's already ours everyday. There's no more liberating truth than that. We may have been Christians for a long time, and we may know, in our heads, that its true, but unfortunately, we get caught up in the pressures of our lives, and we forget, and try to take care of things, our way----- so, its important for us to hear what Paul is saying and be reminded of it, in our hearts! We don't have to live for the fleeting sense of worth that comes and goes, from the applause and praise of other people-----we have an eternal sense of worth, that comes from our right standing before God.
Paul, in exploring the nature of Abraham's faith, explained what authentic faith is and what it isn't. Faith is not trying to obey and fulfill a law. Faith is not, doing your best and living up to a moral standard. Faith is not, hoping against hope that something is true. Faith is not, closing your eyes and stepping out into the unknown. And Faith is not, taking a leap across the great divide, praying that you will make it to the other side.
Faith, as the scripture presents it, is a very rational and logical entity and experience. Faith often transcends and supersedes anything, that can be proven with our sight, but, Faith doesn't call us to shut off our brains, and to ignore logic, and to blindly believe, what we hope is true. To make this clear for us to understand, we can substitute the word "trust" in place of faith. When we exercise the kind of faith, that is described in the Bible, we are making a choice to trust the something or someone. (We exercise faith every time we board an airplane or allow a doctor to perform a procedure on us, while we're under anesthesia. Having a reasonable expectation that the airplane is designed and built correctly and has enough fuel and that the crew is competent to operate it, we walk on board, with every expectation that we will land safely at our destination. And---- having the reasonable assurances that our doctor is both knowledgeable and experienced and has good credentials and a good reputation-----we submit our unconscious bodies to his or her care, expecting to be better off than before. No one can prove that our travel will end safely or that our medical condition will be healed.
But, what we can know to be true is, that, that which we've seen, has allowed us to trust what we can't see. And, in time, experience reinforces our decision to have trusted. Eventually, repeated experience will allow our faith in air travel or medicine to grow strong.)
Faith----or trust----allows us to move beyond what we see, step by step, in order to experience, what we can't see. So you can clearly see that----faith is not a leap and it is never blind.
Abraham's life, was a journey in faith. His faith, started out, relatively small, when God chose him from among the idolatrous Chaldean nation, to be the father of his chosen people. No one knows why God selected Abraham, from all the people in the world, we just know, that He did. The Lord promised him a large parcel of land, millions of descendants and an everlasting blessing and Abraham set out in obedience.
Decades later, Abraham despaired of seeing the promises fulfilled. He was nearing the age of 100 and Sarah was almost 90; his promised land was sick with famine; his family was divided by greed; his peace had been shattered by bad kings in the land; he had been caught twice in a huge lie about his wife's identity, which sadly, had tarnished his reputation; and even though he had Ishmael, he was still waiting on the child, by Sarah, that had been promised by God.
To encourage Abraham, the Lord appeared to him in a dream, and confirmed that all his promises were still true. Abraham couldn't suppress an incredulous laugh. And later when Sarah overheard the same information from the visiting, Angel of the Lord, she couldn't help but laugh too. Her limited, nature-bound, perspective, would be the same as ours----ninety year old women just cannot have babies! But God is not bound by the limitations of the natural world---He is supernatural----above nature-----both able and willing to accomplish what no one else can.
So, we shouldn't be too hard on Sarah and Abraham about their laughter and their missteps!!!!!! We have the bible, so we already know that God is the all-powerful creator of the universe and can do anything that defies our human logic. But they knew almost nothing about Him, in the beginning. Then, as the Lord revealed more and more of His character and power, their faith grew in response. Far from a blind leap, theirs was a journey of faith, led by the Lord, where trust was required, in small measures. Each choice to trust, was rewarded with blessing and a greater understanding of God.
When Paul used the term, "hope against hope" in 4:18 he was trying to explain how we have to separate natural hope from supernatural hope. Abraham placed his natural hope, in the supernatural power of God, to accomplish what is hopeless, by any other natural means. His hope though, was not a blind leap of faith. It was very reasonable for him to believe in God's supernatural power, because he had seen it in action before, and, God's faithfulness allowed Abraham to trust Him, without having to know, specifically, how the future would unfold.
Abraham and Sarah experienced a long period of waiting, which might seem mean, from the world's point of view. But the Lord used the delay to accomplish two important objectives. 1st, He wanted Abraham and all of his descendants to understand that His covenant was divine in its origin and supernatural in its fulfillment. 2nd, He wanted---through their personal experience--to cultivate Sarah and Abraham's faith as they gained greater knowledge of His holy character and limitless power.
As God proved faithful, time and time, again----their faith, grew and matured. It is no different for us as believers----our walk toward maturity, gets deeper and deeper, each time the Lord proves faithful to His word, and we experience it.
III. Abraham: the Father of the Fully Persuaded: 4:19-25
Paul's divinely inspired commentary, on the faith of Abraham and Sarah, is encouraging to us------its encouraging to everybody who believes. As we read their story, we can see multiple examples off their wobbly-legged faith but we can also see how God didn't look at their slow and faltering growth, but that He looked at their ultimate destination and He saw that they arrived, regardless of the earthly hindrances. They may have laughed, but their laughter didn't mean that they didn't trust God. The elderly couple took their decaying bodies and waning sexual potency, into full account, as they chose, together, to believe God and His promises. Abraham's mind was undivided-------he might have been weak in understanding, and he might have tried to help God along, but he never stopped trusting that God would do, what He said that He would do.
Gradually, Abraham's experience with God, gave him a greater ability to trust God, despite the seeming contradictions, which surrounded him, as he walked through his life. His trust, over his lifetime, was empowered to the point, that he was able to believe, without reservation that God would fulfill everything that He promised. The last trial that Abraham suffered-----that was his greatest test of faith; that proved his absolute trust in God's sovereignty, was when God asked him to sacrifice Isaac, the precious child of promise. Without hesitation and immediately, (although I have no doubt that his father's heart was filled with anguish) the scripture tells us that Abraham, obeyed. As the father and son approached the place of sacrifice, and Isaac asked his daddy, the obvious question, "where is the lamb…" ------you can hear in Abraham's words, a choice to trust, in the goodness of God, without having to understand when and how He would fulfill His promise-------"God will provide for Himself, the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." Abraham had seen God do supernatural things before--he knew that God could raise Isaac from the dead, if that is what He chose to do. Abraham acknowledged the impossibility of the circumstances, but he trusted in the greatness of his God.
It that had been Abraham's first experience with God, his faith could have been considered a giant leap. Instead it was the culmination of a journey that had been initiated by God and completed by God------with Abraham's willing, but weak participation. We think that Abraham's faith was an extraordinary one-----but it wasn't, it was an ordinary one, no different from yours or mine------- what made his faith so great, was his trust, in an extraordinary God.
Genuine faith is strengthened, when we have to wait on God's promises to be fulfilled. When we have to wait to receive something that the Lord has promised, we will gradually turn our eyes off of our circumstances, and turn them on God, and then, we are able to see God' great faithfulness, and our trust will increase exponentially. Genuine faith can be measured in direct proportion to our knowledge of God-----as we understand more and more his nature, our faith cannot help but grow and mature.
Abraham is the father of the Jews, but he is also the father of anyone who will receive God's grace though faith and are declared righteous, through no merit, of their own. He is thought of as the father of all Jews and the father of all Muslims----but the truth is---Abraham was a Gentile, when God first called him, to be a believer and counted his obedience as righteousness, so he is also the father of all Christians. So, if we believe, it doesn't matter who we are or where we come from-----all that matters is that we have received grace in the way that God has ordained for us to receive it.
Just as wages are obtained through work and failure to obey the law reaps God's wrath--grace, is received though faith. Grace and faith have to go together because grace is utterly alien to our world. It's a supernatural, miraculous act of God-----like parting the red Sea and raining down bread from heaven and raising His son from the dead.
Faith grasps the promises---- Faith lays hold of what God offers---- and Faith leads anyone who will believe, to cross over from death to life.
"Faith"
"What you gonna do, when the river overflows?"
I'm gonna sit on the porch and watch her go.
"What you gonna do, when the hogs all drown?"
I'm gonna wish I lived on higher ground.
"What you gonna do, when the cow floats away?"
I'm gonna throw in, after her, a bale of hay.
"What you gonna do, with the water in the room?"
I'm gonna sweep it out with a sedge-straw broom.
"What you gonna do, when the cabin leaves?"
I'm gonna climb on the roof and straddle the eaves.
"What you gonna do when your hold gives way?"
I'm gonna say, "Howdy Lord, its judgment day!
