Sermon: Sunday, 20th October, 2024
Speaker: Alistair Donald
Scripture: Romans 4
Some people are interested in history – they think it’s fascinating to find out what went on in the past. Other people: not so much. They think history is boring! Me – I’m of the first type. I didn’t do much history at school, but I’ve made it up for it since, through reading. History tells us so much not only about the past, but about how we got to where we are today.
But you may be that second kind of person who might answer, when asked if you’re interested in history: ‘To be honest, not so much.’ And you might have looked at the heading of today’s reading in Romans chapter 4: ‘Abraham justified by faith’ – and asked yourself: ‘Well, what’s that got to do with me? He lived nearly 2,000 years before Jesus. He lived in a tent and kept sheep and goats. What does the faith of Abraham back then have to do with faith in Jesus right now?’
Well, if that’s what you’re thinking, then do listen up! Because we’ll find that it has everything to do with proclaiming our faith in Jesus right now!
Abraham, the founder of the people of Israel as father of Isaac, Jacob and the 12 tribes – certainly lived hundreds of years before Jesus, but Jesus knew that Abraham had looked ahead in faith and foreseen his own day. It’s recorded for us in John chapter 8. When Jesus was disputing with the Jewish leaders in the Temple, men who were so very proud that they were Abraham’s physical descendants, Jesus had this to say to them: ‘Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day. He saw it and was glad!’ (John 8:56)
They didn’t like that. They liked it even less when Jesus went on to say, ‘Before Abraham was, I AM!’ (John 8:58) They picked up stones to stone him to death… but Jesus slipped away. How do you think people were put right with God during all those centuries before Jesus died and rose again? Because they, like Abraham, looked forward in faith to when the long-promised Messiah would appear. We have the privilege of looking back to what we know has already happened. They were looking forward in faith and it was that faith that put them into a right relationship with God.
We’ve been looking in recent weeks at the first 3 chapters of Paul’s letter to the Romans. Paul has patiently been setting out for us how to be reconciled with God. But before being reconciled with God – the No 1 most important matter in anyone’s life, by the way, as everyone will need to give an account of their lives to him at the end of their lives – we need to be shown clearly that all of us start off being estranged from God no matter our upbringing, no matter our background, no matter our nationality.
With some people, it’s very obvious: Filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They invent ways of doing wrong, as Paul writes in chapter 1. Isn’t that something like Scotland today? Estranged from God. Even thinking up new ways of doing evil.
But with other people, their estrangement from God is less obvious. The elder brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son was estranged from his father, even though he’d stayed on the farm and hadn’t gone away to live a wild kind of life like his younger brother. He was estranged too, as his curdled resentments on the return of his younger brother made clear. So even those who have not led wild lives are, by nature, just as estranged from our heavenly Father as the elder brother was from his father in the parable!
We’re just better at covering it up than the wild folk. Outwardly, we may be able to say, ‘Well, I’ve never murdered anyone. I’ve never robbed anyone. I’ve never stolen anyone’s wife or husband. I’ve gone to church when I can. I’m not such a bad person, really!’ But that, right there, is the problem. Pride. Thinking we’re better than other people. Yet when we remember that God looks on the heart, on our motivations, it gets worse. He sees our secret jealousies, our resentments, our self-pity and, above all, our defiant independence. By nature, we want to be ‘god’ of our own lives, thank you very much! We don’t want to let God have a say in how we live!
No wonder Paul writes in the first 3 chapters of Romans that there’s no difference in God’s eyes between those who are as wild as they can be, and those who are proud of being respectable and keep their sin and pride secret. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. That’s why we need a Saviour. That’s why Jesus came.
As we learned last week in the passage at the end of chapter 3, first the bad news, then the good: All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
How are we put into a right relationship with God? By believing that. By believing God. And that’s where the link with Abraham comes in. Please look in your Bible at the start of chapter 4 and ask yourself this: Was Abraham put right with God by striving to be a good person, being ‘justified by works’? No!
What does Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. Abraham knew that he was a bit of a failure. But when God came to him when he was a very old man and said that he would father a son – not on the face of it a very easy thing to believe – and not only that but he would have descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky, what was Abraham’s response? Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.
But this doesn’t just apply to Abraham. ‘The words ‘it was credited to him’ were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness – for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.’ (Romans 4:23-24)
Abraham couldn’t rely on his family upbringing to put him in a right relationship with God. His family had been pagans in far-away Mesopotamia! He couldn’t rely on the Old Testament covenant seal of circumcision either, for the very good reason that the assurance of being ‘credited with righteousness’ was in chapter 15 of Genesis, while the covenant of circumcision was later in chapter 17. Paul writes: ‘Under what circumstances was it credited? Was it after he was circumcised, or before? It was not after, but before!’ (Romans 4:10)
Again, you might say, ‘What’s that got to do with me? I’m not Jewish, so circumcision doesn’t apply to me!’ And that’s very true. But Paul’s wider point is this: Circumcision was a sign of God’s covenant in the Old Testament, just as Baptism is the sign of the covenant for us in the New Testament. And simply relying on the sign (rather than the substance of the faith that the sign points towards), does not get us into a right relationship with God. Only believing God, believing in the Gospel promise of sins forgiven does that.
So, first of all, it wasn’t through the covenant sign of circumcision that Abraham was put into a right relationship with God. But if it wasn’t through the covenant sign that Abraham was put into a right relationship with God, that he was justified in God’s sight, neither was it though keeping God’s Law, the Ten Commandments. That is Paul’s next point.
As he writes in verse 13, it was not through the Law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith. What does the Law do? What are the Ten Commandments for? They lead people in one of two directions. The first is one of pride making us think that we’re better than other people if we keep them outwardly and others don’t.
Newsflash: we can’t even keep the first commandment in our own strength – to have no other gods before God. And that’s not to mention how Jesus tells us the SoMt that anger is the root of murder, and lust is the root of adultery. Our fellow-humans may look on the outward actions but God looks on the heart.
The second reaction people can have to the Ten Commandments is one of despair. ‘I’m just not good enough for God, I’ve broken so many of his commands. They are so demanding! I am crushed by them!’ Either way, the Law tells us that God is angry with sinners. ‘Law brings wrath’ as Paul writes in verse 15.
So what’s the Law for, in Christian terms? In the letter to the Galatians, we read that the purpose of the Law is as a teacher, to drive us to Christ. To show us our need of him, that without him we can never please God. We need Christ for the forgiveness of our sins, and we need to have faith in his death on the cross as paying the price of our sin if we’re ever to be justified, to be put in a right relationship with God.
It’s a funny thing, you know. You might think that all this Gospel emphasis on us being sinners has a down side; bad for our self-image, bad for self-esteem. But, in fact, it’s a paradox, it’s the very opposite – it’s very positive for our self-esteem! How come? Because it shows the immense value that God places on our individual worth, by sending Jesus.
Someone actually loved me so much that he gave his life for me on the cross that I need no longer fear meeting a holy God at the end of my days. For someone will be speaking up for me. Jesus will be my Advocate. Will he be speaking up for you? You see, it’s only by acknowledging our sin that we can then experience the blessedness of knowing our sins forgiven!
Paul has quoted the wonderful words from Psalm 32 in verse 7: Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered! Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord will never count against him. (Psalm 32:1-2)
There’s a real joy in knowing that Jesus has taken the rap for your sins! Gone are the guilty memories – paid for! Gone are the regrets that hold you back and can almost disable you – they’re all now in the past, and dealt with! Gone is the bad conscience niggling away at you, God has forgiven you and if you need to make amends to anyone you’ve offended then you can do that.
Now, of course, the Lord already knows everything but he wants to hear it from you! His aim is not to punish you but to pardon you! ‘The words ‘it was credited to him’ were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness – for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.’ (Romans 4:23-25)
And finally, this morning, we can answer the question I posed at the start: who then are the Children of the Promise? For Abraham, the promise was that he would have numerous physical descendants but beyond the Jewish people that in due course ‘All nations would be blessed’ through him, as Abraham looked forward to Jesus the Messiah.
For us, the promise is that, just as Abraham was justified in God’s sight by believing God, rather than by stacking up credits with God by our feeble efforts at obeying God’s Law so we can be justified by believing that we are justified in God’s sight in exactly the same way – by faith in the Gospel!
Let’s make absolutely sure that we have the faith of Abraham, by God’s grace.