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I would like to take just a couple
of minutes, and I think providentially this is a tremendous blessing. Just as we sang about justification,
the Apostle Paul has introduced this great doctrine to us in
chapter 3 and verses 24 and 25 where he presented justification
in relationship to a number of other doctrines. And then as
he takes up the subject in detail in chapter 4, we saw that he
proved the doctrine of justification in the first
eight verses, and then beginning with verse nine and following,
he began to clarify the doctrine of justification. And of course,
the clarification was vitally important in light of possible
questions that especially some of the Jewish original hearers
and readers But maybe even God fearers would have had based
upon maybe a wrong emphasis in teaching on the Old Testament.
And Paul is establishing this doctrine on that clear and unmistakable
basis. And so as we arrive at verse
16, you'll see that the very first word is therefore. And
what he means as he comes to that word is that he is going
to now, on the basis of his arguments from the Old Testament and his
presentation about justification, he is going to declare the doctrine
for us. He's going to declare it in a
way that we need to see and understand it. And so it's my intent to
cover verses 16 through 25 in this message. There's a lot that's
here, and I'm not going to be able to go in the kind of detail
that we might like, but I want to present to you these three
declarations that the Apostle Paul makes that really give us
the essence of justification and what justification really
is all about. And what's interesting here is
that the Apostle continues this This presentation, even though
he says, therefore, he continues to expound and present justification
to us in the light of Abraham and Genesis chapter 15 and verse
6. And in that verse, what we see
is that Abraham is declared righteous by God because he believed the
word of God. And that's the basis that Paul
is defending the doctrine of justification. And so what I
would like to do, normally I will read a passage, the whole passage
at the start, but I'm not going to do that today. I'm rather
going to progress step by step through this and unfold these
three declarations individually as a result of the text. So let me just read verse 16
to start with where it says, therefore, It is of faith that
it might be according to grace, so that the promise might be
sure to all the seed, not only to those who are of the law,"
and by that he means those who are Jewish and grew up with the
law, but he might even include God-fearers at this point because
of the indeterminate way in which he says this. And then he adds,
but also those who are of the faith of Abraham, meaning those
who maybe never grew up with the law, but now have faith. And it happens to be the same
kind of faith that Abraham had back in Genesis chapter 15. And
then he adds this note about Abraham, which has already been
given to us previously, who is the father of us all. So what we see in verse 16 is
our first declaration being made by the apostle here, and that
declaration is, justification is according to grace. Justification is according to
grace. Now the way he argues this is
interesting. It's somewhat of a repeat of
what he has previously said in different terms. And so we need
not take long with verse 16. We all are aware that grace means
unmerited favor. But let me emphasize the meaning
of grace by saying that grace is anything that is a free gift. Grace is anything that is undeserved
and that is unmerited. Grace is something that is given
to us, and it's not something that we have earned merit for
in any way or that we deserve for some reason. Grace is unmerited
favor. Now, he brings out this concept
that justification is according to grace, by basing it upon two
Old Testament concepts here in this verse. And the first
concept is that justification is received through faith. And
what he's arguing here is very clear, is if you receive something
by faith, then you are receiving it by grace. Faith is not to
be viewed as a work or understood or exercised as a work. It is
to be understood as a believing in the promises of God as we
will see here. So when he says, therefore, at
the beginning of verse 16, he means for the reasons that I
have given in the first 15 verses of this chapter, justification
is through faith. And it is by faith in order that
it might be recognized clearly and unmistakably that justification,
therefore, is a gift of God. Justification is something that
is received And it's not based upon anything that we have done.
It is received by grace. The second concept that he bases
justification as being by grace is that justification is here
said to be received by all as promise. It was given as a promise,
and it's received on the basis of it being a promise. Now, that's
the big detail as it relates to Abraham and the whole context
that's found in the book of Genesis. But it's interesting the word
that is used here, the word promise. We've noted this word in other
studies at other times, but here it comes in again, and we have
to remind ourselves that literally the word promise, like the word
justify, is a legal term. And it refers to an officially
sanctioned promise, a promise that's given not by just anybody
on the street, but someone who's in a position of authority, has
some kind of jurisdiction, and is making a promise to the people
that are associated with the one that's in charge and in such
a position of importance. And so every time, I shouldn't
say every time, almost every time in the New Testament this
word promise is used by the writers of the New Testament, it points
back to some official promise given by God in the Old Testament. Either a specific promise or
the general concept that the gospel is a promise that is being
unfolded in the Old Testament narrative bit by bit until when
Christ comes, we see it in all of its fullness and majesty and
splendor. But so the Old Testament, I mean,
we can summarize the Bible this way. The Old Testament is promise
given and the New Testament is promise received. Literally,
we can do that because that's how big, that's how significant
and how important the concept of promise is. So our first declaration
that Paul gives us is that justification is according to grace. Now, the second declaration that
he gives us, he's going to spend quite a bit more time developing.
It's found in verses 17 through 22. And the declaration that
these verses teach is that justification is the fulfillment of the promise. to Abraham. Justification is
the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham. In other words, what
God did when he he gave a promise to Abraham and then Abraham believed
it, then he declared Abraham righteous. based upon Abraham's
believing the promise that's there. But that's like a little
portrait, a little illustration of all the thousands of people
after Abraham who would also believe the promise of God concerning
a Savior, and they would be also given righteousness. They would
have righteousness imputed to their account based upon their
believing of the promise Now that's the essence of what is
said to us in verses 17 through 22. But we want to work through
these verses because otherwise I'm fearful and I base this fear
upon my own experience. I'm fearful that we might just
read through these verses and not fully appreciate actually
what is being communicated to us here. And let me say that
what's being communicated is glorious, it's wonderful, and
it's very helpful to assure us and to give us confidence as
the people of God concerning our relationship with God as
we see Abraham in his relationship with God. So what we're looking
at here is that faith in God and in the promise looks beyond
the obstacles that might be in the way. There are obstacles
that everybody faces in their thinking or in the world, and
we look by faith beyond these obstacles to God's ability just
as Abraham did. That's the essence. So, there
are three basic concepts in these verses that we need to see. The
first concept is in verse 17 where it says, as it is written,
I have made you a father of many nations in the presence of him
whom he believed. In other words, what that first
half of the verse is saying is Abraham was in the presence of
God. God was speaking to Abraham. God said to Abraham, he gave
him this promise, I'm going to make you a great nation. Now
to be a great nation, you had to have one son at least. And
then that son had to have children, and those children had to have
children, and so forth. God made a promise, and Abraham
believed it in the very presence of God. He believed what God
said to him. And then he tells us a little,
the writer Paul tells us a little something about this God that
Abraham believed. God who gives life to the dead
and calls those things which do not exist as though they did. He calls things that didn't exist
into existence, into being. So the first concept that we
see at this point is that the promise is from the all-powerful
God. the promise that Abraham believed
and that justification is the fulfillment of that promise given
to Abraham, that the promise is from an all-powerful God.
Now this is a very important piece of the information that
we have to have if we're going to understand what God is teaching
us here. Think with me for a second. nations,
or we might say governments, corporations, agencies, individuals,
maybe even groups of individuals of various sorts, all make promises
on a regular basis that they do not always fulfill. Now, we all know that. We hear promises and sometimes
the instant we hear them, we don't believe them because we
know that the promise that's being made is impossible. It
cannot come to pass. Now, the primary reason for this
failure in the world in general to fulfill all of their promises. Many of their promises are fulfilled,
and including ourselves, we fulfill some, but we don't fulfill all.
We're no different than others in a sinful world. But the primary
reasons for this failure is flawed character and feeble strength. Flawed character is some people
just flat lie. They speak untruth. They have
no intention. And this is one of the breakdowns
in our governmental system today. People run for office and make
promises all day long. They crank out so many promises
at the end of the day, they couldn't even make notes on all those
promises they've made. And people seem to like being
lied to, but the fact of the matter is, that's flawed character. It's flawed character. And we
have to, and we do, we recognize it, and we're concerned about
it. We want to, you know, not believe People who are speaking
untruths. But another thing, they're insincere,
maybe, right off the bat, in their promise. But there are
many people who make promises, and some of them might even be
politicians, who actually are sincere. They actually desire
to give the thing that they have promised, but they have feeble
strength. Now, he chose the word feeble
to give in contrast to the Almighty God because we're all feeble. We're feeble in the sense that
we're not able to do everything that we would sincerely desire
to do. This is why it's very important for those of you who
have children in your home to be very careful about the promises
that you make to your children because circumstances happen
that prevent us as finite people in this world from fulfilling
our promises, no matter how sincere or desirous we are to fulfill
them. But what's so important about
this description and this piece of information is that God has
a perfect character and God has an almighty power. Therefore,
if he promises something, he's never lies, he's perfectly truthful,
and he's perfectly sincere, he's going to fulfill the word that
he has promised. He's gonna do exactly what he
says. So if you're having any struggles in your life believing
anything that God has said, what you need is not a new experience
or some other thing that the world might offer or religion
offers. What you need is a deeper knowledge
of God. You need a greater appreciation
for who God is. You need to see more significantly
how powerful, how glorious, how majestic, He is to see that His
character is perfect without any sins or flaws and He is all-powerful. Nothing can hinder Him from doing
His will. Nothing. Not you, not me, not
all the people of the world, not nations, not dictators. Nothing can hinder God from doing
His will. He's perfectly righteous and
he is infinitely powerful. This is the God who, as the text
says, calls light out of darkness. And what we need to note is that
Abraham, not even in Genesis 15, but later in Genesis 22,
will believe in his heart that God can raise the dead. And there's
nothing that we have given to us in the Bible up to the time
of Abraham to say that God was going to resurrect the dead.
But what we see is that Abraham believed that God could do so
based upon the almighty power of God. And actually, that's
going to come into play in verses 24 and 25. So the first concept that we
see bringing to light the justification is the fulfillment of the promise
made to Abraham is that the promise comes from or is given by an
all-powerful God. The second concept comes in verses
18 through 21. And that concept is that the
promise is believed by Abraham. The promise is believed by Him
when it's given to Him. Now, we need to dissect these
verses and not just note that because they communicate some
very experientially beneficial facts. So the first one is in
verse 18, it says, who, speaking of Abraham, contrary to hope,
in hope believed so that he became the father of many nations according
to what was spoken, so shall your descendants be. Here we
see that the promise was believed in hope. And that hope was contrary
to natural hope. It was a special kind of hope,
all right? So what we're recognizing here
is that there was no human hope on the part of Abraham that he
could have a child. We'll see that more specifically
in the next verse. But Abraham had hope anyway,
because he believed that God could do anything, that God was
all powerful. So let's note this, faith, does not ignore, we might say,
reality. But through belief, and specifically
through belief in God, faith is able to move mountains. I'm taking that from the words
of Jesus. I believe that it's true without
a doubt. I understand that it needs interpretation, but notice
that I'm using it in light of the fact that Abraham believed
that he could have a child when he was not physically able to
have a child and that all the other promises that he was believing
that came from God to him are all inseparably connected to
his having a physical prodigy. So he believed in hope contrary
to natural hope. And we have kind of an oxymoron
here, contrary to hope in hope. It was impossible to have a child,
but he had hope that he would have a child. He expected that
he would based upon God's promise. Then verse 19 adds, And not being
weak in faith, he did not consider his own body already dead, since
he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah's
womb. So the second fact we see is
that the promise was believed in spite of the impossibility
of his having a child. It was not possible that he could
have a child naturally. That was past. He sees that. Now, I want to... And I don't
wanna break our train of thought here, but I do have to be honest
with the text of scripture. And I have to point out to you
that in this verse, there's a textual variant. And some of you might
not know what that means, but what it means is we have a lot
of manuscripts, texts of the book of Romans, and there are
differences in some of those. And the difference is that basically,
Some of them have two knots and some of them only have one knot
in this verse. And the second knot, I don't
think belongs in the text. I think the Greek manuscripts
that we have that don't have the second one are correct. That's
my opinion. So verse 19 would read this way. And not being weak in faith,
he did consider his own body already dead since he was about
a hundred years old. And he considered also the deadness
of Sarah's womb. Basically, the difference here
is, if we leave the second knot in
here, is that he didn't, you know, he did not consider his
body, but I think the whole meaning of the text clearly is he did
consider his body, and what he considered when he looked at
it is, I can't have a child. It's impossible. It's physically
impossible. And Sarah, 90 years old, it's
physically impossible when it eventually comes about when she
has a child. I mean, even at this point when
he believes God, he's not able to. And he's going to go years
after this before eventually he and Sarah do actually have
Isaac. So his reproductive capacity
is gone, and Sarah's womb has passed to the ability to conceive
and bear a child. A child was promised to him,
but they were physically and naturally unable to have a child. It was impossible. And so this
second fact is very important. The promise was believed in spite
of the impossibility of it. Now, maybe we should stop here
and make just a little bit of application. I think we would be misunderstanding
the whole Bible if we thought that from Genesis 15, that Abraham
never had struggles or with this. Now, the fact of the matter is
you can be a genuine believer in Jesus Christ and have true
saving faith in him and still struggle. And all of us have
felt and known struggles at different times and in different ways as
we have been walking with God through life. And what I want
you to understand today is this. Abraham probably had struggles
even though he believed what God said and he believed that
God was able to do it and he believed that God would do it.
That's all a part of his belief here at this instant. But the
fact that he struggled and the fact that we might struggle does
not mean that we don't have faith. It means that we might have weak
faith or we might have small faith, but isn't faith, even
if it's small and weak according to Jesus, still actual faith?
It very much is. And so making this distinction
and seeing this is very important. But somebody might go back and
look at the text of Genesis and say, well, look here, Abraham
seems to be struggling at this point. Yes, he's struggling.
We're not denying that. But what we're saying is he believed
God and he continued to believe God even in his struggles. And
what I would say is we can actually believe God and struggle. But
the fact that we're struggling doesn't mean that we have stopped
believing God. That brings us then to verse
20, and the first half of the verse says, he did not waver
at the promise of God through unbelief. So the third fact that
we see is that the promise was believed while not wavering,
which is basically the same thing as what I've been saying. But I think that we need to note
it specifically. Paul is telling us in very practical
terms here that Abraham didn't do this kind of thing. A lot
of people do this. You'll take a piece of paper
and draw a line down the middle and put all the pros and cons
of something to decide what to do. Or we might say decide what
to believe based on those. A lot of people that don't believe
in God or They believe in God, but don't necessarily believe
in Jesus have done that they've weighed things like this They're
weighing, you know that what their science teacher said and
and what the philosophers say and all that and then they're
weighing over here Oh the Bible and what it says and they're
saying yeah, I can't I can't go with the Bible thing Okay
that Abraham did not do that. I He didn't do that. He didn't weigh issues here.
If he had weighed issues, he would not have believed. It was
impossible for he and Sarah to have a child. He didn't weigh
the issues. He didn't put the pros and cons
down and decide what to do. He believed without wavering. He believed it in spite of the
evidence, in spite of all the information that was available
to him, he believed. Because see, in believing, we
saw at the very beginning, the promise, he believed God was
able with his power. He ignored, what I'm trying to
say is Abraham ignored the physical evidence and believed the word
of God. And then the second half of verse
20 says, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God.
Now, if I understand the way the text is flowing and the information
that's given to us, what we're seeing here is that the promise
was believed in the fourth place while being strengthened in faith. If you're, I wish I'd gotten
down to ages in my mind this morning, but if you're 80 some
years of age, and God promises you're gonna have a child, and
then you get to be 90-something, it would almost be like, okay,
maybe it could've happened when I was 80-something, but now that
I'm 90-something, that possibility has been eliminated. That's not
what Abraham is doing. Actually, in the period that
he waited from the time he believed the promise until he had the
child, his faith actually strengthened. It didn't diminish any. It didn't
dissipate at all. It was strengthened. God continued
to work in his heart and life. in such a manner that instead
of his faith weakening, it actually grew stronger. And as his faith
strengthened, he was able to do what? He was able to glorify
God, the verse tells us. He was able to glorify God in
saying, I'm going to have a child. I'm going to have a son. And
he's going to become a great nation. And God is going to bless
all the people of the world through this son and through this nation
in some glorious way, because he's promised to do so, I believe
that he will. And so his faith was strengthened.
And then verse 21 adds, and being fully convinced that what he
had promised, he was also able to perform. And so the fifth
fact we see is that the promise was believed while being fully
convinced. He was fully convinced of it.
He had no doubt. He believed beyond a doubt that
God who gave the promise was able to perform exactly what
he had promised. So our second concept, the first concept is
that the promise is from the Almighty God. The second concept
is the promise was believed by Abraham. And we must believe
the promise also concerning Jesus Christ. The third concept in
verse 22, it says, and therefore it was accounted to him for righteousness.
So the third concept is that the promise was received with
all of its benefits. Now, when we give, there are
many benefits. to being the children of God.
Abraham could have made a long list. We could go to Abraham's
life and make a long list. We could look at other saints
of God through the ages and we could make a long list of the
benefits. But there's one benefit that really trumps all the other
benefits, we might say. And when we consider that benefit,
we understand that all the other benefits flow from that one benefit.
And that benefit is the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ.
Because we are guilty sinners and we deserve wrath and judgment
because of our sins but God who is rich in mercy has promised
to save all of those who would believe in his son. And if you
believed in the son, your sins taken and placed on Christ as
he suffered on the cross of Calvary and his righteousness is put
to your account when you believe the message concerning the Lord
Jesus Christ. And so that's really in essence
The second declaration, justification, is the fulfillment of promise. And specifically here, the promise
given to Abraham, but it applies right across the board, equally
and perfectly to us in this present time. That brings us then to
verses 23 through 25. And I want to read these as a
unit. It says, Now it was not written for his sake alone that
it was imputed to him, but also for us. It shall be imputed to
us who believe in him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead,
who has delivered up, excuse me, who was delivered up because
of our offenses and was raised because of our justification. Now, I hope you can see with
me why it was so important for me to cover verses 16 through
25 all in one message, because the third declaration is that
justification is obtained by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The resurrection of Christ is
brought in here at this point to really put an accent upon
Christ accomplishing all the work of God. Now I'm not saying
here that the resurrection is more important than the crucifixion.
I'm not saying that the death of Christ is more important than
the incarnation of Christ. I mean you have to have all of
those things. They all go together, they're all connected, they're
all vitally important. But in the way that the Apostle
Paul is arguing to us and presenting this information to us, and this
is done also in 1 Corinthians 15, it's done in other places
in the Scriptures also, the resurrection shows the verification that Christ
accomplished our salvation. And so imputation is brought
in here again at this point in verse 23. And justification is
also brought in here at this point in order for us to see
the significance of the fact that Jesus Christ is salvation. He's the only way of salvation.
And the fact that God raised him from the dead is proof that
his atoning sacrifice and his sinless life that He was indeed
the incarnate Son of God and that He accomplished the plan
and purpose that God had given to Him in eternity past, what
we call the covenant of redemption. He came and He accomplished this
work on our behalf. That's how we're justified. Our justification is obtained
for us by Christ, sealed as it were by His resurrection. It's not enough to look to Jesus just as a good teacher or a possible
savior, but we must understand and believe that he actually
delivers sinners from their sin by his atoning sacrifice. All
kinds of people today have reverence for the name Jesus and no content
as to who Jesus is or what he did. It's just become religious
jargon. We have to be sure that we understand.
And this is where the doctrine of justification, as the reformers
saw, as we see today also in conjunction with them, that the
Christian faith rises and falls on the doctrine of justification. The resurrection was the proof
that God received the sufferings of Jesus as a satisfaction for
our sins. The death, burial, and resurrection
of Christ, it must be believed without reservation. So when
you tell somebody that and they say, I don't believe that or that's
impossible that somebody was raised from the dead. If you
throw in the virgin birth, this is impossible to have a virgin
birth. You can just say to them, if you can't think of anything
else to say, you can just say to them, faith requires you to
believe the impossible and you would be right on track. right
on track. That's exactly what Paul is telling
us in this passage. And Abraham, this was written
about Abraham. Verse 23 tells us this was written
about Abraham, not just for his sake, but for us also, because
we're, we're have to, there's only a few people that, that
knew Jesus in his life and after his death and resurrection, a
few of them, they were select witnesses who preached that message.
The rest of us have to believe the impossible. And what did
God say to Thomas, who couldn't believe it on the day that the
disciples told him, today we saw the resurrected Jesus? He
says, I will not believe it until I put my hand in the print of
the nails and in his side. I will not believe it. And when
Jesus appeared to him, remember what Jesus said? Blessed are
you, Thomas, having seen and believed, but more blessed are
those who believe not having seen. Because the whole world
is asked to believe this message today in order to be saved. And
there is no salvation in any other name other than the name
of Jesus Christ. No one will be saved. because
of any suffering that they've gone through, unfairness, injustice,
lack of anything in this world, or religious performances and
doing good works for others, only those who believe that Jesus
Christ died for their sins, was buried and rose again the third
day, only those who believe that as the very word of God and accept
it as true are going to be saved. You see, really and truthfully,
the gospel message is rather simple. There are some who believe that
we accept Jesus as our Savior, and at some later date, accept
him as our Lord. This is one of those verses of
scripture here that is extremely helpful with regard to that division
that people have made. And I think the reason that they've
developed that is because you can accept Jesus as Savior, but
then not really follow him and obey him and serve him. And none
of us believe that we can follow, serve and obey him perfectly,
but they just think that it's okay to continue to live in rebellion
just like you were before you supposedly accepted him as your
Savior. But notice who it is that we
receive here that God has raised from the dead in verse 24, Jesus,
our Lord. was raised from the dead. He
is Lord. We don't make Jesus Lord, Jesus
is Lord. And this is exactly what Peter
preached on the day of Pentecost. And so that kind of dichotomy
is inconsistent with the teaching of scripture. So to receive the
resurrected Jesus as your Savior and we might say and Lord requires
that you receive him as Savior and Lord and that you believe
and trust him fully and completely. And so if you're not a believer
in Christ, you've never received the work of Christ. Today is
the day of salvation. Now is the accepted time. Flee
from your sins. Flee from your self-sufficiency. Flee from your ideologies and
your other securities. Flee to Christ and to Him alone.
The Bible promises that if you come on His terms, repenting
of your sin and believing in Christ, you will be saved. And so I exhort you, trust Christ
today. Turn to Him in faith. Believe
in Him. And what's interesting is these
three declarations capture the essence of the popular slogan. Justification is by grace alone. through faith alone and by Jesus
Christ alone. Let us pray. Dear Father, we
thank you so much for your holy and precious word that you've
given to us. May it feed our souls. May it
cause us to rejoice and to be full of joy and thanksgiving
today. May we indeed join with Abraham,
our father, and give glory to you because you are the promise
making and the promise keeping God. And we can trust you even
though the obstacles may seem impossible, nothing is impossible
with you. Give faith to those who do not
have faith today to believe this message. I pray in Jesus' name.
"Justification Declared"
Series Romans
"Justification Declared"
Romans 4:16-25
| Sermon ID | 52624024231574 |
| Duration | 39:40 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - AM |
| Bible Text | Romans 4:16-25 |
| Language | English |
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