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.