Amen, indeed. Good morning to you. It's good to be with you today. If you have your Bibles this morning, and I hope that you do, I invite you to turn with me to the book of Romans. There you go. Some of you have been listening for the past few months. We are in Romans chapter four. And this morning, our aim is to finish Romans chapter four. James and Evan have done a good job walking through Romans 4 and all that is in it as we've been looking at God's faithfulness, been looking at justification, repitiation, and just the work of Jesus, especially as we look to the life of Abraham. And so this morning we kind of turn our corners, we finish 4, and then of course next week we'll begin chapter 5. It's always a good practice to read ahead. So this week you can read chapter 5 and see how long we land there But this morning as we look to our passage in just a second, we are going to see again that faith is on display We're gonna see what God's Word has to teach us about faith Faith is one of those things we talk often about we talk a lot about and sometimes we think we have a grasp on it and sometimes we think we don't So what is faith and what can we learn of Abraham about faith? So let's jump in. Let's read our text. We'll pray and then we will see what the Lord has for us. Good? So Romans chapter four, we'll start in verse 15, kind of a transition. Last week, James ended in 17, the first part. We're really kind of starting to the second part, but let's tell you what, let's even back up to 16, just read this paragraph if we can. So we'll start now, Romans 4, 16. 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. As it is written, I have made you the father of many nations. In the presence of the God in whom he believed, he gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. In hope, he believed against hope that he should become the father of many nations. As he had been told, so shall your offspring be. He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead, since he was about 100 years old, or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was counted to him as righteousness. But the words it was counted to him were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. Let us pray this morning. Lord, I do thank you for this morning. I thank you for your word. I thank you, Lord, as we come to the end of Romans four, that you will lead us and guide us in this text, that you will help us to see faith on display and what that looked like for Abraham, what it meant for this original audience and what it means for us today. Give us eyes to see and ears to hear, Lord, this morning through the power of the Holy Spirit. In Christ's name, we do pray. Amen. You can see pretty clearly from our text this morning that the hero here is Abraham, right? He is a man of great faith, and we should be like Abraham. Hopefully you're saying, oh, John, I hope he corrects this. That is terribly wrong. That is wrong. We know that Abraham is not the hero, but we're going to see Abraham on display this morning. We're going to see again Paul point back to Abraham as he has been doing, and he'll do again in his letter to the church at Rome and different points. but we wanna see what Abraham is displaying for us this morning. And there are two things I would like us to see from our text this morning, and I'll just give you those two things. One is faith is rooted in the power of God. Faith is rooted in the power of God. And secondly, faith trusts the promises of God. So faith is rooted in the power of God and it trusts the promise and the promises of God. And so we must start with the power of God. Faith's foundation is God's ability to fulfill His promises. As we see that key verse here, God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. This is a really big deal that we can easily gloss over. But before looking at the promises of God to Abraham and how he delivered those, we need to look at the power of God, because faith, biblical faith, is rooted in the power of God. The foundation of Abraham's faith was in the absolute, undeniable power of God Almighty. His faith was not in the promise itself, but in the character and the ability of God who made that promise. Think about that. We don't put our hope in a promise alone. That would be silly. There are so many promises today, right? Promises for people and companies to do certain things. We don't put our hope in a promise, but on the character and the ability of someone to deliver. Let me give you a silly illustration that was recent in my life. As many of you know, I have become a golfer in these past six months or so. I don't know at what point you become a golfer. I am one who tries to golf. And so as many golfers do, you try to find gimmicks and try to find things that help your swing and all of these different things. And so there is this gimmick, if you will, that I saw a few months ago. In conjunction with this, I'm also a man on a budget now. And so I think very much about the things I buy. And so, OK, I got my birthday was in January. I had a little extra cash. I'm going to buy this thing. I was certain that I was going to buy this thing called the click stick. You may have seen it on Facebook. I buy so many things, or used to, before I was a man on a budget. Used to buy so many things from social media. And so, before I spent my hard-earned money on this, or my hard-earned given money to me for my birthday, I looked at it, and I found that although this promise of making me a better golfer was what I really wanted, as I looked into the company and to the product, I realized that it was not indeed something that I should waste my money on. as the company had a terrible reputation online. As many people said, this product does not deliver. So I quickly abandoned the old click stick. A great promise, but I had a lack of confidence in the character of the company and the ability for them to provide. A promise is only as good as the one making it. The click stick failed because the company could not deliver. But God's promises are sure because he cannot and will not fail. Paul does not mention God's power here in the resurrection and creation. He doesn't mention these flippantly or unintentionally. He is rather very specific in these two aspects of God's power that he lists in this text. There are two things that are unique to God Almighty and essential to this discussion of Abraham. Two things that man cannot replicate. As we go back to verse 17, we see these two things, and 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. And sometimes we hear things in Scripture so often, we read them, and they don't really even register with us what we're reading. We don't think about the power behind certain truths in Scripture, and I think we may be guilty of this here. We're just kind of reading this to get to Abraham, to get to the point. But the power of God is demonstrated in these two things. He gives life to the dead, and He calls into existence things that do not exists, this first aspect of God's power, who gives life to the dead. God has life-giving power. He has life-giving power, and His ability is not only to create life, but to raise it from the dead. Now, of course, we know that God gives life, that He creates life. He is the only one who gives life. As our generation today, and as our science progresses, and as we think about the great things that mankind's going to do, one thing that mankind will never do is create true life. But God has this power. Go to Psalm 139, a very common and familiar two passages. Psalm 139, 13 and 14. Wonderful is your power. My soul knows it very well." So we know that life is created and is started and is sustained by God. He creates life, but He also has the power to resurrect life. Now, we get accustomed again to this language and this concept both in two very different things, both by reading scripture, and as we talk about the gospel so often, as we talk about the resurrection of Jesus and the resurrecting power of God, it can sometimes be lost on us, but also even through regular consumption of entertainment, right? So many things, movies, books, Things we watch and consume, just things die and they come back, things die and they come back. All this stuff and we almost become flipping with this idea of the power to raise someone from the dead. And this is a power that exclusively belongs to the one who creates life, God Almighty. Man cannot replicate this, whether it's through medicine or technology or false religions. No one has ever had the ability to raise someone from the dead. We will not see that in our technological future. There will be no pill for that. There'll be no process for that. Only God raises those from the dead. Dead means dead. It is both a reality and the finality of life, death. Yet God can, He has, and He will resurrect from the dead. We see this as we'll come back to it a little bit later. We see this in Christ who's resurrected from the dead. We see this in us as new creations will be resurrected from the dead to eternal life. Those who believe in Jesus and have placed their hope in Him. So we'll see shortly how God's power to bring life from the dead is essential even in the story of Abraham here. So while Paul mentions this ability and power of God, we'll see it very clearly in the story of Abraham. The second power that he mentions here, he says, who gives life to the dead and he calls into existence the things that do not exist. God creates that which was not. This is referred to, if you want a fancy word, ex nihilo, creation, out of nothing, something, creating something out of nothing. And again, this is not a point or power to overlook, to gloss over. Oh, this is God, he's sovereign, he can do all things, he can resurrect from the dead, he can create whatever he wants to, which he can, it's absolutely true, but we should consider this, we should think about this, as we're gonna see that Moses does in a moment, as he considers the promises of God, let us consider the power of God and what he's able to do, what he is uniquely able to do, to call into existence the things that do not exist. In our scientific world again, This aspect of God stands at odds with how we understand the universe. Scientists say that matter and energy cannot be created or fully destroyed, only changed. We won't get into all of that science, but it's like rearranging blocks that already exist. We say we cannot create something out of nothing, that it is possible in the realm of physics, but Scripture says that God creates from nothing. He did so in the very beginning when he said, let there be, and it was. We see a couple of moments in scripture where he does, but he has the ability, as Paul reminds us, to call into existence the things that do not exist. This is a power that uniquely God has. Physics explains the world that we see, but faith points to a creator far beyond it. The psalmist says, So as we think about the power of God, God has the power to create life, to resurrect life. He has the power to create something out of nothing. It is clear that we serve a mighty God, one who is all powerful and without limitation. Our faith in God is rooted in our understanding and the confident belief that he is able. So how can you think about the promises of God if you do not consider that the same God is able, He is able and worthy to deliver that which He says He will do? So faith is rooted in the power of God. If you remember years ago as we went through the book of Hebrews and walked through the Hebrews chapter, we replaced faith with the power of God. By faith, by the power of God, He does all of these things. But not only do we see that faith is rooted in the power of God, secondly, as we continue in our text here, faith trusts in the promises of God. So Paul starts with that. He starts with the power of God, that he's able to do these things, to give life to the dead and call existence to things that do not exist. Then in verse 18, in hope, he, being Abraham, believed against hope that he should become the father of many nations. Why would he do this? Why would Abraham, as we'll see in just a moment, why would he think that he'd be the father of many nations? Because he'd been told by God, as he'd been told, so shall your offspring be. And he did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God. but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God. In verse 21, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. We see even there in verse 21, the power and the promise of God. Faith, trust, and the promise of God. Abraham, being fully convinced in the power of God, he trusted that God would deliver on his promises. Now let's look at this promise a little more specifically. Go to Genesis chapter 12 with me. I'll pick up just a few verses here in Genesis 12 and then one and a couple in chapter 18. But Genesis 12 1 through 3. This is before his name is even changed to Abraham. It's Abram. That's the call of Abram. The Lord said to Abram, this is before again, he's done nothing. He's just this guy, if you remember Terah as his father, you can see in 11 verse 31, he's just a nobody on the scale of anybody. He's just a son of a pagan. He says, the Lord said to Abram, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you, and I will make you a great nation. and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you I will curse and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed." What a promise to Abram here. who doesn't know God yet at all, but yet God is telling him. He calls him. He chooses him. He says, Abram, here is this promise that I'm making to you and your family. A few chapters over, Genesis 18. Starting in verse 9, we'll read these kind of fast. Now Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years. The way of women had ceased to be with Sarah. So Sarah laughed to herself. Remember that because it gets funny here in just a second. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, After I am worn out and my Lord is old, shall I have pleasure? The Lord said to Abraham, Why does Sarah laugh and say, Shall I indeed bear a child now that I am old? Is anything too hard for the Lord? Going back to His power, at the appointed time, I will, here's His promise, I will return to you about this time next year and Sarah shall have a son. It's a very clear promise that I have not just some subjective time in the future, but sometime in the next year, I'll be back and you're going to have a son. But Sarah denied it, saying, I did not laugh for you, for she was afraid. He said, no, you did laugh. And so we talked about this years ago in Genesis, just that funny kind of interchange. Who laughed? I didn't laugh. Yes, you did. It was you telling God you didn't laugh. So here is Sarah in her unbelief. and Abraham here. And so we know that there's this journey of trust now in this next 12 months. At some point they will have a child, they will have a son, because God who is able has promised. Faith trusts the promises of God. So Abraham has this promise, but he also has a problem, more than one problem. He has a promise that has some problems with it. God promised that he and his wife would have a child, and then from that child, other children and grandchildren, and eventually a whole nation would come. That sounds like a great promise, but God, there's a problem. I'm old. My wife. Sorry, honey. You're old. We're both old. We can't do this. This is not biologically possible. They even understand this and their lack of modern science. They knew that this could not happen. And yes, he is old. He's almost 100. And not just that he is too old, but Paul adds, and it seems kind of comical, but we know it's not. But he says he's as good as dead. His body is as good as dead. There in verse 19, did not weaken the faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead since he was about 100 years old. Now, I don't want to speculate too much, but I would think it's more than just his age. There are clear reasons why Abraham would say, I cannot father a child. But yet, God, you are saying that I will. And so I'm going to believe in your promise because I know your power. So there's this problem. that it seems it's very clear that Abraham cannot have children. He is too old. His body is near death. Whatever the reason, it's clear that he should not be able to father a child. It is a matter of human impossibility. And not only is there a problem with him, but there's also a problem with his wife. It says that she too is old. Not just that she's old, but she's never had children and she is barren. And so this promise of God is surrounded by problems. Another way to state the problems Abraham is facing is he is facing the problem of death. In verse 19, we see that his body is as good as dead. Going back to remember verse 17, where God has the power to resurrect. He has the power to bring life from death. Abraham is counted as good as dead in his body and his flesh. Sarah's womb is barren. You may have a footnote in your Bible that says deadness. The Greek word here is the word necrosis, which means deadness or death. And so Paul is pointing very clearly to the problem that Abraham faces. He is surrounded by death, his own death and the death of even the womb of his wife. But yet the promises of God will prevail because of the power of God. The perceived problem in receiving the promise of God was this obstacle of death. And not only were these things true, but they were not lost on Abraham. These weren't things that we know as readers. These weren't things that just the Roman church knew because they were reading this or the people who read Moses's books knew this. But even Abraham knew this because it said he considered these things. He considered his body. He considered the barrenness of his wife. So these things were very present with him, these problems that he encountered. And in the midst of Abraham considering his and Sarah's ages and their bodies, his faith did not waver because his hope was not in his ability, but his hope was in the promise and the power of God. Faith trusts the promises of God because they are rooted in the power of God. This does not mean that Abraham and Sarah did not have difficult days, and we don't see these days spelled out. Days in which they had to remind one another that God was able, had to remind one another that God visited them in their time of need and made this promise. And we understand that, do we not? We understand that today, in the midst of life, as we strive to walk by faith in the Lord, as we strive to walk in the Spirit and trust the Lord, that there are days in which we struggle. There are days that we struggle with faith. There are days that we struggle clinging to the promises of God and being reminded of the power of God. But let us not be those who lose hope. But surely, let us be those who place our hope in the power and promise of God, especially on days that we don't feel faithful, because there will be those days. Abraham and Sarah, they might have felt unfaithful at times. They might have felt despair at times. But in the midst of that, it says that Abraham still believed against hope. He did not weaken. He did not waver. He was fully convinced. in the promise of God, that God was able and would deliver. But how could he? The ability to deliver on a promise is not based on how much someone believes, but on the one who said he will deliver. I love this definition, this little excerpt from this commentary I read that I wanted to read directly. on this idea of our faith and the hope and the object of our faith. And therein lies the secret of faith. Faith is always strong or weak depending on how we perceive the object of our faith. Is the God to whom we look weak in our eyes? then we will have a weak faith. Is our God strong in our eyes? Then our faith will grow strong accordingly. There is nothing in Abraham that gave him strong faith, but there is everything in God that gave him strong faith. It is the object of our faith. It is God Almighty that we look to, who not only has the power to deliver, but the character to deliver of his promises. When he promises, he will bring it about. And this is why we often talk about a big God theology. We mentioned it this morning in our Sunday morning Bible study. The bigger God is in our eyes, the more powerful we understand him to be, and the more we understand who we are to him, how much he loves us, and the stronger our faith grows. So as believers, we walk in life and we read God's Word and we pray to the Lord, always striving for a bigger view and a bigger understanding of who God is. Job testifies to this. He says, I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours will be thwarted. Jeremiah says it, he says, And the Song of Moses, we hear that we are God's portion in Deuteronomy. In Peter, we see that we are a chosen race and a people for God's possession. The idea that we are God's portion and possession points us to his love and the value that he has for us, chosen and treasured by God Almighty. This God who is able, this God who is powerful, this God who makes and keeps his promises. He does so because he loves us. We are his portion. We are his treasure. We don't deserve that love. But he has showered that love on us, and he continues to do so. God does not just choose us and declare us as his portion. He actually purchased us, the Bible says. We are bought by the blood of Jesus. We are secured by the resurrection of Jesus, and we are sealed by the promise of the Holy Spirit. So these are not flippant truths that we've seen. as God demonstrates himself to Abraham, as he reveals himself to Abraham, as he demonstrates his powers, he makes his promises, as he fulfills his promises. It is important to see this whole picture of the power and nature of God. God loves us. This points us to God's why. We know that God does all things for his glory and for the good of his people. But it points us to his why. God can do all things. And it points us to the how. He is all powerful. So when you know why God would do something, and you know that God can do something, our faith and his promises should be strengthened. And what Paul tells us here in Romans 4 is that why Abraham's faith was counted to him as righteousness. Abraham believed that God could and that God would do all that he said he would do. Faith trusts in the power and the promises of God. And lastly, all of this is not just for Abraham. It's not just for Sarah. It is for us today, for those who believe. Let's go back to our text. It says there in verse 21 that Abraham was fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. In verse 22, that is why his faith was counted to him as righteousness. But the words it was counted to him were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in Him, who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. So this was not just for Abraham. It's not just for the children of Israel. Paul's delivering this to the church, to those who are of Jewish descent, to those who are Greek. And to us today, this truth of God is for us today as well. The story of Abraham and Paul's use of it, it points us to what true faith looks like. That faith is not about the individual, but about the object of that faith. It is about the power and the promise of God. Abraham's faith was rooted in the power of God, the God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not and have not existed. For Abraham and Sarah, God brought life from a barren womb. For believers, God brings life from an empty tomb. For Abraham and Sarah, God promised a son. For believers, God brought forth his perfect son. Abraham believed what God could do. Today, all who put their faith in Christ can trust God too. And what do we trust God for? We are not looking to the Lord to provide a physical promise in this life. He had promised Abraham and Sarah a very physical promise and delivered on that, but that is not the promise that he gives us today. We look to the Lord in faith, believing in the power of God that he has sent Christ in our place who lived a perfect life, who died a sinner's death, who was resurrected from the dead and will return to end sin once and for all. This is the ultimate promise that we can look to God as fulfilling. That is our greatest need to be saved from our sin, and God promises that He will do so to all of those who look to Christ and believe. As Paul will say again in Romans 10, for those who look to Jesus, believe in His resurrection, believe in the power and promise of God, they will be saved. This is why a big God theology matters. The bigger our view of God's power and love, the stronger our faith becomes. Whenever we understand that we are God's portion, his treasured possession, bought by the blood of Jesus, and we are secured by his resurrection, we are sealed by the spirit, our faith is no longer a vague hope. But our hope becomes a confident expectation, a trust in the God who cannot fail. Abraham's story teaches us that faith is not about ignoring the realities of our situation. Abraham saw the deadness of his situation. He saw the death in his situation. He saw his dying body. He saw the dying woman body of his wife and their age. Yet he did not waver because he was fully convinced that God was able to do what he said he would do. In the same way, we face the realities of life. We face the weight and the severity of sin, the certainty of death. We face the brokenness of this world that we live in. But our faith looks to the one who has already conquered all of these things and promises that he will return and end it once and for all. So today, let's take hold of the promise that was written for us, that by faith in Christ, we are counted righteous. This idea of justification that we've been walking through for a couple months now, and we'll continue to look at. that he has saved us and he has made us righteous by the work of Jesus, not by our work, not by how much faith we can generate, but made righteous by the work and will of God. Let us rest in the truth that our faith is not in our ability to hold on to God, but in his power and promise and faithfulness that he will hold on to us. So in those moments where you're feeling down, those moments where you don't feel close to the promises and presence of God, you believe and hold on to that he is faithful, even whenever you don't feel faithful. that he is able whenever you're not able. And this is the good news of the gospel, that the God who makes promises is the God who keeps them. The God who loves us is the God who is able to save us completely. And the God who calls us his portion has already proven his love towards us by sending his son, Jesus Christ. So may our faith be strengthened as we fix our eyes on this big God, who can do all things for those that he promises will never fail. Let's pray. Lord, I do thank you for this morning. Again, I thank you for this opportunity to open your word, to be reminded of your promises to be reminded of your power. In order, there's one here who is never trusted. and your promise and power, may even now, may you make it so clear to them their great need of you. For those in here, Lord, who are struggling to remember your promise, to remember your power, may we be reminded of who you are this morning. Or as we come to this communion table, and as we remember what Christ has done for us, We think about how you have purchased us as your people. You've chosen us as your people. You have redeemed us as your people and that all that you have promised will come about. So Lord, in these next few moments, would you have your way with us and we respond in faith to you. We pray these things in Jesus name.