Abraham‑Justified by Grace, Part 2

Romans 4:13‑17

It's a great joy tonight to be able to open the Word of God with you and I encourage you now to take your Bible and look into Romans chapter 4. And tonight we're going to study again; it really demands that of us as we look at the intricacy of Paul's argument in the Roman epistle. In fact, this past week as I was teaching at Dallas Seminary and I was teaching in a program for doctoral students, students earning a doctor's degree,* I basically used as my notes for teaching the material that I've preached to you. And that was kind of exciting because there aren't too many churches in the country where the people are so attuned and so open and sensitive and so thoughtful about the instruction of the Word of God that you can give them the same kind of information that you would give students in a seminary studying for a doctorate. But you are that kind of congregation and it's a tremendous joy to be able to open the Word of God and to study it in depth and know that your heart is there.

And that's why I think it's so much more exciting for me to preach here than anywhere else. I've preached a lot of other places, a lot of other churches, a lot of conference centers, a lot of great meetings of people here and there and to a lot of different audiences but there's no joy like preaching here because I know what you know and I know, I think, what you may not know because we haven't gotten to it yet and I know what your undergirding is in the Word of God and I know what your appetite is and it's just exciting to be able to just go into that kind of thing and feed you from the Word of God. And as well I confess to you that I feed my own soul.

      In fact, someone said, "How did you develop your style of preaching?" And I said, (I think it's not developed quite yet, but it's on the way) but I said, "Basically, the people are the victims, that's my basic theory of preaching ... they are victims of what I want to know and want to say." Basically, I want to understand every word in the Bible. I believe every word is true and every word is pure and every word is written by God and so I want to study every word and so we go in and do that and then you sort of just get the spill over of what happens. In fact I never study the Bible to make a sermon...never, I study, all week to understand the passage and in the process of understanding the passage I usually have some things to say that come out of that as a sermon that I can share with you. But the real goal is for me to understand the Word of God. That's my great hunger and desire. And as I say, you're kind of the victims of that and you have to kind of go along with me in my pursue it of knowing God's truth. And I'm so grateful for that appetite in you. Believe me, I preach some places and I preach‑my heart out and they just yawn their way through the whole deal. And you know, you have to have an appetite for the Word of God. If we gave them a little fundities, three points and a poem and a few tear‑jerking stories, they'd think it was profound. But we don't do that. Anyway...besides, I get invited back here...that's nice.

Romans chapter 4 and I want us to continue to look at the faith of Abraham.' Obviously Paul and the Holy Spirit, God Himself, ‑expected us to think about Scripture or he wouldn't have made it as profound as it is. You know, I remember when I preached a sermon one time and a person came to me afterwards‑‑I was young and I was preaching in a Youth for Christ rally‑‑and they said to‑me, "You know, you're just making it too complex. Don't you remember the little motto 'KISS'‑‑Keep It Simple, Stupid?"" And that's sort of the basic think you have to remember when you talk to people is keep it simple. And one other person told me, "You know, there's a phrase that I use in my ministry just to remind me, 'Keep your cookies on the bottom shelf so everybody can get them.'" And then when you read Romans you say, "That's not simple and that's not on the bottom shelf." And you must dig in a little more deeply and I believe the Lord has given us capacity to do that, so I'm excited to share with you. Particularly tonight we're going to be looking at verses 13 to 17 of this chapter.

This past week, I guess over a week ago, a missionary came into my office from India been there 34 years, and he said, "I want to show you the English‑speaking magazine of India. This is an issue from this year, January of this year. And I want you to see what's going on currently in India." And the entire magazine cover and first section was devoted to the largest religious ceremony in the world that occurs in India. It only occurs every six years and so there's a tremendous build up for this great event. It is called the "Ardkumella"‑‑and it is a Hindu event.

      Let me tell you how it functions. There is a place in India where the Ganges and the Jummura River come together. And the fabled waters of these rivers‑meet in a conflex known to the Indians as a prahague and it is at this conflex of the Ganges and the Jummura called the prahague that the Ardkumella takes place. It begins with a parade of stark naked Indian holy men, who by the way are not too holy or they wouldn't be stark naked. They are known as Degamber‑Sadus and they lead this stark naked parade to the water followed by literally millions of Hindus. It is the world's largest single religious event and these millions of people follow the Degamber‑Sadus down to the river to dip themselves in the waters of the prahague.

      Now, it involves heavy expense. Some of these people are poor and they have to come by foot and they begin the journey many months in advance to make sure they arrive on time. It is January and the weather is cold and the water is freezing. They come from everywhere, rich and Door, all caste barriers are set aside in this event. And as they gather around the waters of the prahague, there are fakirs (f‑a‑k‑i‑r‑‑s) those who sit on the bed of nails , those who walk over the glass and those who walk and lie down on the hot coals. One of the common sights that you would see at the edge of the Prahague is worshipers taking long knives and piercing their tongues to sentence themselves to eternal silence as a way to appease their gods.

Some engage in killing the use of their limbs by atrophy such as one man who was depicted there who had had his arm in the air for eight years, his fingernail descended down here about two and a half feet off the forefinger, the others were growing all kinds of strange ways, and he had held his arm up in some effort to appeal to his god for over eight years and it was utterly atrophied in that position.

Others willfully stare at the sun until they burn their eyes and are blind. The photographs that I saw of the Ardkumella in the magazine, to put it mildly, were shocking-- a literal sea of millions of people on the river bank. And their holy writings say this, quote, "Those who battle at the conflex of the black and white river, the Gangia and the Jummura, go to heaven." Quote again, "The pilgrim who bathes at this place wins absolution for his whole family and even if he has perpetrated 100 crimes, he is redeemed the moment he touches the Gangia whose waters wash away his sins," end quote.

Now along the water's edge there are little booths and these are "shaving booths,"' And the deeply devout people strip themselves bare and they go into the shaving booth and they are shaved from tip of the head to the tip of the toe, every hair on their bodies including their eyebrows and their eyelashes, shaved off. And every hair that is shaved is collected. And all of this hair from all of these people is thrown into the filthy water. And their religious writings say, and I quote, "For every hair thus thrown in, you are promised a million years residence in heaven." This is last January, folks, not five thousand years ago.

Now, one of the most acceptable gifts to offer, if you want to go even further than having your hair shorn is to offer your life. And religious suicide at the Ardkumella has been somewhat common, The writings say! "Whoever wishes to be born in heaven ought to fast to a grain of Tice and then drown himself in these waters." They believe, according to their holy writings, that "bathing in these waters washes away all the pollution of sin."

And the article closed with this comment, "Millions who come with spiritual hunger depart with peace in their hearts and renewed faith." Quite a comment. Peace in their hearts and renewed faith. What a hellish damning illusion from Satan. But it is illustrative of the systems that Satan designs that are built around the idea that you can redeem yourself, have your sins washed away and gain heaven by some ceremonies, or some religious rites, or some religious rituals, or some works of an external nature.

Now we are shocked at such paganism. We are shocked that anybody would believe that you would have your sins washed away in the filthy water that would be in a place like that. You would never be able to understand from your vantage point how someone, could think that every piece of hair dropped off their body into the water would gain for them a million years residence in heaven. And we are shocked by that kind of behavior.

     I submit to you that you should be no less shocked at any religious system that says you can gain heaven and the forgiveness of your sins by some religious ceremony or some work of the flesh. They're all the same. They may take different forms. They may be more sophisticated and more cultured, but they are all the same.

Jesus faced a very sophisticated kind of religion in His day that was no different than that kind of Hinduism. It was the religion of the Pharisees in which they believed that by external rites like circumcision, which is a kind of shaving of its own, and by certain kind of religious works on the outside they were buying their way into heaven and having their sins forgiven. No different at all. You see, there are only two kinds of religion in the whole world: the religion of divine accomplishment‑‑and that is Christianity, and the accomplishment was Christ on the cross‑‑and the religion of human achievement and that covers every other religion there is. Jesus faced it and so did Paul.

And so, Paul writes in Romans 3, beginning in verse 21 and through Romans 4 and on into Romans 5, he writes about that saving faith that comes by grace, He is showing here that salvation and the forgiveness of sin and heaven is not available to men through ritual, ceremony, self‑sacrifice, religious works of any kind, but only by grace through faith in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's the only way. There's no other way.

You say, "But aren't those people sincere?" Yes, they're probably sincere but they're damned to hell forever because they're wrong. Salvation comes only by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, he has stated that in marvelous terms in the third chapter, verses 21 to 31. He's given us a statement of justification by faith. Now he gives us an illustration in chapter 4. And the illustration is Abraham. And he's illustrating the message that he gave in chapter 3. Abraham is the model of justification by grace through faith. And as I told you some weeks ago, it's a wonderful choice that he makes because Abraham to the Jew was the model of justification by works. They said Abraham was justified because he was circumcised. That's an outward cutting away. And he was justified because he kept the works of the law. That's personal self‑righteousness, And Paul says ‑ Contrary to what you've taught about Abraham, he was justified by grace through faith. And he proves it in the chapter, doesn't he?

Now, the reason that I'm taking time with this is because, people, this is the heart and soul of the Christian faith. We must understand salvation, ‑right? This is the blueprint. Now, Paul approaches Abraham from three perspectives. First of all Abraham was justified by faith not works‑‑that's verses I to 8. Then he says he was justified by grace not law‑‑that's verses 9 to 17. Then he says he was justified by divine power not human effort‑‑that's verses 18 to 25. And they overlap and they crisscross but those are the basic threads or themes in each section. He was justified by faith not works, by grace not law, by divine power not human effort.

Now we already looked at verses 1 to 8 and we saw that Abraham was justified by faith not works. There are no works involved. Verse 3 is the sum of it, "Abraham believed God and righteousness was put to his account." Because he believed. And that's the essence of it.

Now we're looking at the second section, verses 9 to 17. And the key to this section is found in verse 16. The first section‑‑it was by faith not works‑and here it was by grace not law. And verse 16 says, "Therefore it is of faith (as we saw in the first 8 verses) in order that it might be by grace." You see, if salvation is a‑matter of simply believing and you can't do anything then it has to be a gift from God, doesn't it? It has to be by grace. Salvation is not earned. If you can't earn it if it has to be by faith, then it has to be a gift of God's grace. What is grace? It is God's absolutely free favor to an undeserving sinner. God's absolutely free favor to an undeserving sinner. Abraham was justified, that is made right with God, Abraham was brought into a right relationship with God because he believed. And that because God was gracious to him.

How was God gracious? God gave him a promise and that's a key word in verse 16, it was by grace to the end that the promise might be sure to all the sea. God graciously offered Abraham a promise‑‑that was the grace. Abraham received it‑‑that was the faith. So, salvation is not earned, it is offered by God, an act of His free favor to an undeserving sinner. And it is received through faith‑‑faith becomes the means by which it is received.

Now, as we look at verses 9 to 1‑7, I'm just going to remind you of a thought. As the Apostle shows that salvation came by grace not law, the first thing he points to is circumcision. And in verses 9 to ‑12 we saw this last week, and I really think that's probably one of the most important messages we'll ever have in Romans, But what he says there is that Abraham was not Justified by circumcision, And that's very important because the Jews believed that that's exactly how he was justified‑‑by circumcision. In fact, they believe that's the way everybody ought to be justified. But Paul shows in verses 9 to 12 that Abraham was declared right with God and it was 14 years later that he was circumcised. So, circumcision becomes only a symbol. A symbol of what? A symbol that says to every other generation: what you are doing on the outside is what I want to do where? In the heart. That's why the prophet said circumcise your hearts. Circumcision marks out a Jew, but more than that it is a symbol on the outside and every time a father went through that throughout all the history of Judaism, he was giving a symbol of what God wanted to do on the inside ... cutting away the flesh, as it were. So, Abraham was not justified by circumcision and that flies in the face of everything the Jews taught. They believed they were saved by having circumcision....much as people today believe you're saved by infant ... what? ... baptism. And baptism, like circumcision, is only a symbol. It symbolizes on the outside what God wants to do where? In the heart.

Now the second thing the Jew leaned on not only circumcision but the second thing he leaned on was the keeping of the law. He believed that you were saved by circumcision which was the first act of a life of lawkeeping. And they also believed that Abraham was justified by keeping the law. And so, as you come to verse 13, in 13 to 17 Paul deals with the issue of the law. Now listen carefully, here's what he's saying in the text and this will give you the overview and then we'll look at it in detail.

First he says Abraham was not made right with God by circumcision because he was circumcised 14 years after God said he was Tight with Him. Secondly, listen now, he was not made right with God by keeping the law because the law came 430 years later. Now that's a fairly devastating argument, wouldn't you say? You see, the Jews believed these two things were that which brought a man into right relationship with God.

In Acts chapter 15, you remember, it says, "There rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees who believed, saying it was needful to circumcise them and command them to keep the law of Moses." Right...that's exactly what they believed that you were saved by circumcision and obedience to the law of Moses. And what is Paul saying? He's saying this; you don't come into a right relationship to God by an outward ceremony or by an outward observance of laws. When Abraham was declared right with God he had no circumcision. And when he was declared right with God he had kept no law because the Mosaic Law hadn't even been given yet.

How then was he made right with God? Verse 13 says God gave him a promise and when God gave him a promise, he believed it. That's all. He just believed it. He was justified by believing God's promise. And that makes salvation a grace gift. It's no different than when God comes to you and says ‑ Here's My promise, if you'll believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, I'll grant to you eternal life. And you say ‑ By faith I receive that gift. That's all...that's what Abraham did. God said ‑ Here's a promise, if you'll believe that promise and demonstrate your faith by acting on it, I'll take away your sins and I'll redeem you and fulfill My promise. And he believed it. And so, justification is not only by faith but it is borne in the grace of God.

Now, let's look at the text. Verse 13, and follow as we study it together. "For the promise that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham or to his seed through the law but through the righteousness of ... what? ... faith." The righteousness that comes by faith. Now notice the word "the prom" or the words "the promise." What promise is this? Well, it's the Abrahamic covenant. It was given to Abraham in chapter 12 but was repeated in chapter 15, it's repeated in chapter 18, it's repeated in chapter 22, and God said to Abraham ‑ I want you to go out of this land of Ur of the Chaldeans and I want you to go to a land that I've planned to give you and I'm going to make of you a great nation and whoever blesses you will be blessed and whoever curses you will be cursed. And He said to him ‑ I'm going to give you a seed like the sand of the sea and they'll number like the stars of the heaven. And you see, at that time he and Sarah didn't have any children at all, in fact she was barren. And they were already approaching 100 years old. And God gave a promise.

But Abraham saw beyond the physical posterity. He saw beyond having a son, Isaac. And Isaac having a son and Isaac's sons having sons and multiplications of nations...he saw beyond being a father of many nations. He knew that there was in that promise a spiritual reality because he had heard the promise "In these shall all be blessed." And so, he knew that God was talking about a spiritual promise and that's why Hebrews 11:10 says he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. You see, he saw a spiritual reality. Oh, he saw a physical seed, he saw a physical element but he knew out of that physical seed would come a spiritual fulfillment.

Now, the promise is described in a marvelous way in verse 13. It says the promise to him was that he would be the heir of the world, I mean, that's a pretty...that's a pretty magnanimous promise, isn't it? To be the heir of the whole world. What an incredible statement. "Abraham, I promise you'll inherit the world." Now what is He saying? Well, what is in this massive kind of statement? Well, first of all, if we look at the promise back in Genesis we find the full element of the promise was that he would inherit the land of Canaan, Genesis 15:18 to 21 talks about that...that there was the promise of God that there would be this unique land given to him, that it would be his land and it was the land of God's covenant and God's promise and he would inherit that land. "The Lord made a covenant with Abram, Genesis 15:18, unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaims, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites." It's all yours.

And, by the way, the book of Joshua tells us the story of him taking possession of that promise. Abraham's descendants took the land under the direction of Joshua.

And then the promise also incorporated a nation, or a people. Not just a land but a people, a physical nation. In fact, nations for out of Abraham came not only Israel but the Arab nations as well. In Genesis 13:16 it says, "I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth so that if a man can number the dust of the earth then shall thy seed also be numbered." He gave him a seed. And Exodus shows us the realization of the seed, the birth of the Semitic peoples and their history.

And then thirdly, inherent in the promise was the blessing of the world. Not just the land and not just a people, even nations of people, but there would be spiritual blessing. Genesis 12:3 says: "In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed." Now, here we come to a very important point. You've got a land‑‑the land of Canaan. You've got a people‑really the people of Israel, the covenant people. And then this huge statement about the whole world getting blessed. And he is even called, and if you look down in verse 17 of Romans 4, the father of many nations.

How is this? How could he be the father of many nations? How can he be the heir of the world? How can one man be so significantly related to so many? The answer comes in what I think is the fourth element of the covenant‑‑the land, the nations, the blessing of the world and fourthly, the redeemer. I'm convinced without a shadow of doubt that in the promise given to Abraham, he saw beyond Isaac to a redeemer. And the reason that I'm convinced of that is because that is in fact what our Lord Jesus said verbatim in John 8:56: "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day and he saw it and was glad." Now I do not know how much he knew of it, but he saw the day of the redeemer ... he saw it. Maybe he saw it in the typology of the ram provided in the thicket when he would have needed to take the life of Isaac. I don't know where all he saw it but he saw the redeemer. And the reason, listen carefully, that Abraham could bless the world, as it were, and be the father of a world of people and inherit the world, as it were, is because there would come out of his loins a redeemer who would redeem from all the nations and tongues and tribes and people by faith. And all those sons of faith would be the sons of Abraham.

And this, I think, is stated by Paul in Galatians 3:16, look at it. A very important statement, and we're going to be looking back at this third chapter so you can stick something in there to find it readily in a moment. "Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made." Now listen to this. "And when He said this," when God made the promise, "He said not and to seeds (plural) as of many, but as of one and that seed is ... whom?... Christ." Now when God made the promise to Abraham, He said the ultimate promised seed is not seeds, but Christ. So, the real seed in Abraham was Christ and it is in Christ that all the people are blessed.

Look at verse 29 of the chapter, Galatians. "If you be Christ's then are you Abraham's seed and heirs according to the Abrahamic promise." Now the promise said that all the world will be blessed in you, Abraham. That could only be true because out of the loins of Abraham came the seed who is Christ and all who put their faith in Christ become one with Christ (1 Corinthians 6:17 "He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit") so we are one with the seed and thus by faith we become the spiritual seed of Abraham.

Now listen, that wasn't written for simple‑minded folks. Paul tells us some very profound things. If you're still in Galatians 3 you might notice verses 8 and 9 while we're there. "The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles through faith, preached before the gospel to Abraham saying, In these shall all nations be blessed. So then they who are of faith are blessed with the man of faith, Abraham."

In other words, when it says "in these shall all the families of the earth be blessed" what does that mean? There's the commentary. It means that when you put your faith in Christ who is the seed of Abraham, in fact that's what it says in the genealogy in Matthew 1, son of David, son of Abraham. If you put your faith in the son of Abraham, in the seed of Abraham then you become a child of faith and in that sense spiritually a son of Abraham who is the model of faith for all the world.

Now listen, when you put your faith in Christ and are identified with the seed and you become an element of that seed joined to Jesus Christ, it's one seed because we're one in Christ, we then, along with Abraham (back to verse 13) inherit the world. We are the heirs of the world. I mean, it's marvelous. All of us who are in Christ are one with Christ, we are therefore the seed of Abraham by faith, the true spiritual seed, and we are part of the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham which was to inherit the world and therefore we inherit the world. Now if you have trouble with that, remember Romans chapter 8 where the Lord says that you are heirs of God and joint heirs with whom? Jesus Christ. So, as heirs of God we inherit what God grants... as joint heirs with Christ, we inherit what God grants to Christ and what does God grant to Christ? "I will give Him the kingdoms of...what? ... of the world." So, in Christ we inherit the world.

I think Paul spells it out in 1 Corinthians 3 in a very marvelous way. First Corinthians 3:21, listen to this: "Therefore, let no man glory in men," now here it comes, this is a benediction of grandiose proportions, "for all things are yours whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or things present or things to come, all are yours and you are Christ's and Christ is God's." See, that's really saying the same marvelous mysterious thing. You are Christ's and Christ is God's and everything's God's and everything's Christ's and everything's yours. Does that make you feel good? So, don't go around thinking you're a pauper, you've inherited everything God possesses and everything He will grant to Jesus Christ as His inheritance. And it all happens because when you came to Jesus Christ in faith you became one with the seed who is the seed of Abraham.

And all of this came to Abraham, it says in verse 13, not through the law but through the righteousness of faith...the righteousness of faith. And that's an important point that Paul makes over and over again,

Now, let me just give you a little footnote here. You notice the phrase "it didn't come through the law"? The "the" is not there. We call that an anarthrous construction, there's no "the" there: "... through law." It didn't come to him through law. What do you mean by that? Through the lawkeeping principle, through the principle of works, of keeping some rules by your own effort. It didn't come to him through ceremony, circumcision. And it didn't come to him through works, or lawkeeping. It came to him as a promise...a promise. God said to him one day, "Abraham, if you get up and get out of town and go where I'm sending you, I'll do all this for you." There was no conditions ... people say, "Was the Abrahamic covenant conditional?" It wasn't conditional. You just do it. And you know, when God made covenants in those days He demonstrated the uniqueness of the covenant in a marvelous way with Abraham. The fifteenth chapter says that He was conversing with Abraham and all of a sudden He put Abraham to sleep, He just shot him with a divine anesthetic and Abraham was out.

But before Abraham was out, he had collected a series of animals and God said ‑ Now you collect these animals, the heifer, a ram, and turtledove and a pigeon, and so forth. And He said When you collect all those animals, you take the large animals and cut them in half and you put one half of the animal over here and one half over here, another animal over here, half over here and you don't cut the birds because a bird cut in half is not much left, you know, so just put one bird over here dead and one bird over here. So, you've got two dead birds and in‑half animals.

Now, Abraham knew exactly what He was doing and he knew why. And then God put him to sleep and he just flopped down sleepy, sound asleep.  And then a burning lamp and a smoking furnace descended and went between the pieces. You say, "What is that?" In those days, when you made a covenant with somebody, you sealed the covenant by splitting an animal in half and together you both went between the pieces. And what you were saying was: "If I break my covenant, so do to me as we have done to this animal." I would say that's a binding covenant, wouldn't you? But when God made      the covenant with Abraham, He didn't let Abraham go between the pieces because the covenant was never with God and Abraham, it was with God and God. And God said, "Here's My promise, I make this promise to you. And it doesn't depend on anything   you do, only that by faith you believe it." And therefore faith cannot be a meritorious work; it is only an instrument to receive a promise. And so he was not made the heir of the world because he had earned it. God didn't look down and say, "Look at that fellow go! Is he something? I mean, he's so righteous I'm going to give him the world." No. It came not through the law but through the righteousness of faith.

Now, I might add as a footnote here that we look at Galatians 3 again because it's really important. Galatians 3, verse 10 s