Phil: How can God be both merciful and just at the same time? And look at a human judge, someone’s committed a terrible crime and they come before him and they know what the law says. Now if that man says, Well, yeah, but Judge, I’ve done a lot of good things, you need to weigh it all and I’m asking you to be merciful, to let me off. If he’s merciful, then he’s not just, if he’s just, he’s blocked from being merciful.
And yet we have a gospel, a good news that allows God to be fully just and yet to show mercy, why? Because the wrath that should have fallen upon me fell upon a willing substitute, a representative who represented all that was wrong with me and God’s wrath was pointed out, was poured out, justice was served and that leaves God free to show mercy to people that will repent of their sins.
Do you think under this condition, paint that picture for me or in your mind, is there any way that we can maintain an attachment to sin? This is all about delivering us from sin. Praise God, that’s what repentance is meant to be a hundred percent folks, and I just pray that God will help us to have that kind of a heart towards Him to realize what it cost Him, realize what it is, realize it’s in every one of us and we need deliverance, realize that he’s done that.
Oh, what He asks of us is not that we work for it, is that we believe in what He did, and that’s what he unlocks in chapter four. ‘Cause he asked the question, because we know that Abraham was a righteous man, right, in God’s eyes. So how did he become righteous? Did he work for it? No, he believed God. Now we need to unpack that a little bit, but he believed God.
And he uses the illustration for, some of you, many of you perhaps here, work on a job. When payday comes, do you say, Thank you for your gift? No, you worked for it, there’s a quid pro quo, whatever you wanna call it, where you provide work and he provides, or they provide pay.
That’s not the way it is with God, God does not owe you or me anything. He does it because His heart is one of love and mercy and reaching out and He has made a provision. But you think about what He did with Abraham, He made some amazing promises to Abraham. And He said, I want you to leave your country and your family and go to a land that I’ll show you, but I’m gonna take you and I’m gonna make you a great nation. And from you many nations will arise. And through your seed, all nations of the world will be blessed.
Who’s that seed, by the way? It was Christ, wasn’t it? Paul tells us that specifically. And the Word says, And Abraham believed the promise. Wait a minute, it says, “Abraham believed God.” There was something that was born in his heart where he had such a confidence, he had an unshakeable confidence in the truthfulness of the One who spoke that promise.
And what did faith mean in Abraham’s life? Was it just, Okay, I believe you? There was an obedience, and there was an obedience that went way beyond just sitting in a comfortable place and seeing it all unfold and, Okay, I’m believing you, everything’s great. Everything in the world rose up to say it can’t be so. And yet there was a persistence.
You go back to check Channel 2, Channel 2, chapter 2. (congregation laughs) Don’t mind me, Channel 2. Anyway, back to chapter two and you’ll see what God’s judgment is about, that people who persist in their sins, they’re gonna be judged, they’re not gonna like how it turns out, I can tell you that.
But what does it say about the righteous who inherit eternal life? There is a persistence in seeking after what is good. Salvation is not just about getting a ticket to heaven, it’s about a life that God enables.
You know, I’ve defined grace many times, but I’m just trying to put it in clearer words. Grace is God’s power at work to save sinners. It’s not just a kindly attitude, it’s not just overlooking things, it is the power of God for the salvation of sinners. I need power. If God didn’t seek after me, I would never seek after Him. So what do I need? I need God’s grace. I need Him to come and begin to speak to me and influence me and show me and reveal the truth about my heart.
And then either I say, Oh, no, and go my way, like the world does in general, or I say, Yes, Lord. But if He didn’t do that, I’d never go looking for Him. That’s grace, grace is God at work. But suppose He brings me to a place where, Okay, I agree completely about my need, I recognize my condition and my need before you. So now what? And that’s when he begins to unlock what Jesus did and His promise of eternal, of forgiveness and eternal life, a brand new heart, a brand new life, and He calls upon me to repent of my sins.
Well, where in human nature am I gonna find that? Yeah, I’m not gonna find it in here, God’s power gives me the power to repent. When He’s present and talking to me, I have the power to say, yes. I don’t get that from in here, I get it from Him.
But now He calls on me to focus my attention and to think about the need that I have. I live under this terrible power, I know I can’t break it, it is not just that I’ve sinned, but I live under that power. Oh God, there’s gotta be some answer that comes from outside of me. Says, Yeah, there is, Jesus, Jesus is your answer, ‘cause I didn’t just put him on the cross, I brought Him out of a tomb. And there was a power, there was a life that lived in Him, it was my life. And I have empowered Him to share my very life with everyone who will repent of their sins and put their faith in Him.
See, faith is again, what was it in Abraham’s case? There’s a whole lot of obedience, wasn’t there? It was walking out what God said that he was to do and believing in the face of all kinds of things, he goes into that in this passage. But all of that is a fruit of God’s power and God’s, I need his power, I need power beyond what I have.
Well, he goes on and talks about the blessedness of how God can actually impute righteousness. He can consider me righteous in His eyes even though I’ve done all this thing, I’m guilty, I’m a sinner, but yet, because I put my trust in what He did for me back then. I don’t base it on me, I don’t base it on any good thing in me, but I just base it on the provision of His love, He declares me righteous. Praise God!
How did I get that? I didn’t work for it, I believed in what He did for me. He revealed it to my heart and I embraced it and it becomes the defining characteristic of my life. I’m with him, I don’t stand with those who looked up at the cross and mocked, I stand with him on that cross. I embrace my own death to this life that is so polluted with sin. But I do it because I have a hope based upon the promise of God that there’s a new life that I can have in the inside.
I just pray for anybody that hears this, whether here or someplace else, that if God is speaking to you, you need to listen and you need to realize why He’s speaking because He loves you.
But then he quotes in the Old Testament about this blessedness in verse 7. Blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the one whose sins the Lord will never count against them. And you know, we’ve heard a lot about that in the past and it’s absolutely a glorious truth because the cross was absolutely God’s answer for sin, and it was a once-for-all deal, means, He’s died for sins that haven’t even happened yet.
But here’s the trick the enemy has pulled, no doubt here, but also in other places, and the reasoning goes a little bit like this, Well, I can’t be perfect, there’s no perfection. Well, that’s true enough. As long as we’re in this world, we’re gonna find that we come short of the glory of God in something, we’re gonna be learning about our weaknesses, we’re gonna be having to face the fact that I can’t do this, God’s gonna have ways of showing us, but He does it so that we’ll learn to rely on Him.
But thank God, there’s always a place to go, but the reasoning is, Okay, so I’m not perfect, God knows that, He loves me and it’s all taken care of anyway, so I have liberty. And so next thing you know, you’re using your liberty to kind of play with sin. Is that why God saves people? Does He save people in their sins or from them? There’s so much reasoning out there that just makes it possible for us to live careless. We don’t take sin seriously.
My God, you read Leviticus, that’s where I’ve been reading lately and it’s some sobering stuff. You should be holy for I am holy. And there’s all this, some of it was ritual, but all of it was designed to teach them, but there is a dramatic difference between God’s holiness and the condition of this world and anything outside of that and you don’t mix the two. Man, if somebody goes into the holy place, they’re gonna be dead, this is not something to play with.
God did not come to save people in their sins, but from them. Thank God He does know I have a need, thank God for His mercy and His patience, and the fact that there is a work that takes me all the way to the end and brings me to a certain hope, but my God, if I have truly repented of my sins, am I gonna be just playing with it and excusing it and just being careless? Or am I gonna come to a place and say, Oh, well, that’s just the way I am. See, there’s more to it, isn’t there? And I just pray that God will help us.
But anyway, now we’ve often used Abraham’s faith and the fact that he had to deal with a lot of opposition and applied it to life’s circumstances, I’m thankful that it does. You know, I have faced many difficult things, but nothing’s impossible with God and I’m gonna trust Him anyway, well, thank God that’s true enough. But think about the context in which he’s placing this. This is a righteous, this is a faith that causes a man to be righteous in God’s eyes, okay?
So he’s facing all kinds of obstacles to the fulfillment of God’s promise. Anybody here facing obstacles? You’re experiencing salvation in a measure, but you’re running into obstacles? It is a fight of faith, isn’t it? All right, so he makes the point that this isn’t just Gentiles or Jews, it’s both, okay?
Let’s go down, I wanna just get to one thing here because time’s running out here, But therefore, the promise comes by faith. Verse 16:4, why? It comes by faith so that it may be by grace. Again, it’s God’s power at work to save sinners, And may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring, not only those who are of the law, but also to those who have the faith of Abraham, and so forth.
And he comes down, the promise was, I have made you a father of many nations. That’s interesting how God said that, I have made you. He put that in the past tense, didn’t He? He says, I’ve already done it. He’s already saved us, folks. Do you see the parallel there? God’s declared that He’s already saved us, it’s already been done in Christ, and yet, here we are in terms of seeing that played out, seeing what He’s already done, literally lived out. Every one of us is in a place where we need that grace, we need that salvation, we need that power, don’t we? Thank God, okay?
All right, “He is our Father in the sight of the God in whom he believed, the God who gives life to the dead and calls things into being that were not.” Is that not a picture of salvation from sin? God is calling out something that we’re still experiencing and God has said, I’ve already done it. I’ve already taken care of all of this and I want you to walk in the reality of that.
The impossibility, how many of you sometimes feel, This is just impossible? Yeah, I just can’t be that. Well, guess what? That’s why it’s called salvation. You’re right, I can’t be what He wants me to be in my own power, that’s what salvation is about. That’s why it says, We have sinned and we fall short. Anybody here following a little short of the glory of God? Yeah, that’s why I need grace, I need something that just doesn’t wipe my slate clean and then turn me loose. I need a power that carries me through life and teaches me and changes me.
That’s what he begins to unfold in this, that’s the other part of salvation. We’ve talked about this morning of salvation, part one. But think about the power, think about the faith that he had, think about what Jesus said when he was talking about how hard it is for rich people and what are the disciples ask on that question, Who then can be saved? What was Jesus’ answer? That’s right, With men, it is impossible, but not with God. There’s nothing impossible with Him.
And God deliberately brought Abraham to a place where it says, His body was as good as dead, and his wife’s womb was definitely dead, it was impossible. Folks, is there anyone here who has the power to save themselves? No. So it’s impossible, isn’t it? So if we’re gonna look at natural conditions, we’re gonna have to say salvation is not possible, we might as well turn the lights out and go home, live our lives.
But yet we have the promise and the provision of God who said He’s already done it, and He calls us to put our faith in that, in the face of everything we feel and experience. Time and time again, Abraham was called on to believe God even when it made no natural sense at all. How many of you know what I’m talking about? God, I know your salvation is real. Right now, it doesn’t feel like it, it doesn’t look like it, I’m still having battles, sometimes they’re the same battles, God, is this impossible?
And what’s the Lord’s word to us? With God, all things are possible. God’s gonna continue to work in all of us that call upon Him that repent and put our faith in Him. But you talk about being able to enter into this. That’s what we’re talking about, salvation part one, even to believe that we can be righteous in God’s eyes and look at the impossibilities that He faced.
“Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as has had been said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be,’ without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead.” Folks, when we come to Christ, we’re gonna have to be fully aware, we need to be fully aware of our need, not making excuses, not soft pedaling it, not comparing ourselves with other people, but a full facing of the facts of our need before holy God.
But then in the face of that reality, we’re gonna have to be willing to listen to God’s voice and see what He has done about it, and surrender ourselves to what He has accomplished through His Son on that cross.
Do you see what Abraham did? He refused to believe in the power of, in this case, his inability to produce a son, he didn’t believe in that anymore, He believed the promise of God. We’re gonna have to come to Him and just believe in His promise that He is able to literally take somebody like me and He show me what I am and I’m not gonna argue with Him, I’m not gonna make any excuse, I’m gonna face the facts, but I’m gonna put my faith in His power and believe that He can take somebody like me and make me His child and bring me all the way through to be able to live with a holy God and be a part of something eternal.
What an amazing gospel! And this is just part one. What an amazing thing. You know, I know it’s become quite a tradition, I guess in many places, and I’m not gonna criticize anybody who’d do that, but giving invitations, I want the Lord to do something that doesn’t depend upon me trying to make it happen. I want God to convict anybody who needs this. I mean, it should encourage all of us to see the reality of what God’s doing, to face what we are and to face Him and to see the amazing love that has made it possible for us to know him and to be counted as righteous in His eyes, and then the promise to take us all the way home.
But if there’s somebody here that’s never really come to that, will you face the facts, but then He’s shown you and He’s called you. Isn’t it interesting how in the beginning, chapter 1 he talks about those in Rome who were loved by God and called. Starts with love, doesn’t it? You know, it’s hard for us when we see what’s wrong with us, to realize, to think about a God who, What must he think about me? Oh God, we project so many human ideas upon Him.
But oh, to be able to see past all of that and to see His love and to humble ourselves before that, to be willing to recognize, to face the facts, and yet embrace His hope and His promise and surrender and become His property where He is the one, He is Lord, and He is Savior.
And if there’s somebody that God is speaking to, I just pray that God will give you the grace, not only to face the facts, but to repent and to turn from that and to say, God, I have no power to save myself, but I’m putting my hope into a hundred percent of what You did through Jesus Christ, and I’m willing to confess that.
Maybe there’s somebody that needs to come and talk to somebody, if the Lord ever wants me to do the other, I’m gonna ask him to gimme the faith. But I want God to do something that I don’t have any part in engineering. I want him to reach out by His Word and save the ones He’s gonna save. And I believe He’s gonna do it, don’t you? Amen.
Isn’t that what He said? It’s His word, I don’t remember Paul ever gave invitations, and yet God opened people’s hearts in many places. So I just put this in the Lord’s hands today, salvation part one, I guess, and I don’t know what the Lord has planned, whether He wants to continue with this at some point, but I’m just gonna look to God, but I just pray.
Let’s just have a word of prayer. Lord, I believe you’ve been here in spite of the vessel. Lord, I need your salvation as much as anybody, and I thank You that in spite of what we are, Lord, the hopeless condition in which we find ourselves, You have given us hope, hope beyond imagining because You’re motivated by the love and it reaches out with such mercy and such patience. You extend the divine strength, the divine power that meets every aspect of our need and has the power to take us all the way and you’re willing to do it.
Lord, encourage all those who know you to stand fast and to look to you and to believe you. But if there’s someone who doesn’t know you, oh God, call them into your kingdom, God bring them through into your kingdom, I pray in Jesus’ name. We just put all this in your hands and thank you in Jesus’ name, amen.
