The Promise Keeping God

Scripture Reading

Will you please turn in your Bibles with me to Romans chapter 4. Romans chapter 4. This morning we'll be looking at verses 16 through 22. If you're using the New King James pew Bibles provided for you, you'll find that on page 1002. We'll start the reading at verse 13, though, just for a little bit of context. Romans chapter four, beginning at verse 13, hear now God's perfect word.

For the promise that he would be the heir of the world was not to Abraham or to his seed through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if those who are of the law are heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of no effect. Because the law brings about wrath. For where there is no law, there is no transgression. Therefore it is of faith that it may be according to grace. so that the promise might be sure to all the seed, not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all.

As it is written, I have made you a father of many nations. in the presence of him who believed, God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did, who contrary to hope, in hope, believed, so that he might be the father of many nations according to what was spoken.

So shall your descendants be. 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. He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully convinced that what he had promised he was able, also able to perform. And therefore, It was accounted to him for righteousness.

Prayer for Illumination

Well, in the reading of God's word there, brothers and sisters, the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for your word. We have read it and it is true because you are truth. And what you have spoken is true.

Sermon

Father, we pray that your spirit might work in our hearts that we might believe the smallest dot of the eye, no matter how small the tittle may be. Oh Lord, we pray that your spirit would not just help us to believe, but help us to live. Lord, I pray that you would please guide and guard the meditations of my mind and the words of my mouth that they might bring glory to you as I open your word for your people. Father, we pray that your spirit would use your word and the fallible, foolish mouth of mine for the building up of your people in truth and hope and love. God, we need you this morning. Please wield your living and active word, your sword, even as a surgeon's scalpel on our hearts. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.

Well, I'm only at Romans chapter four, and you know that after each book, I do a series of topical sermons. And this past week, I had a young lady ask me, she said, can you please do as your next topical series, what is faith? I thought, I'm not even through chapter four yet, and you want me to get to something at the end.

But I thought her question was really good. What is faith? And I said, well, go ahead and look at the Westminster Larger Catechism and the Confession of Faith on what is saving faith. And she said, yeah, but that's just words on a page. I need you to bring it to life. Okay, that's fine. But I think that's part of what Paul is getting at here in Romans chapter four. What is faith? And what does faith look like? And how is faith lived out? And what does it have anything to do with our relationship with God?

And so I hope that by the time you walk out of the doors today, that you will know that the God who makes promises to us, is the God who will accomplish those promises. That the promises God has made to you, He will do it. Because He's good, and He's truthful, and He's able. So first, look with me at this wrestling in verse 16. About the promise, and faith, and grace. The promise is by faith according to grace. Verse 16. 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, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all. Last week we looked at the just stark, uncomfortable, difficult thing that Paul says. That the law brings death. The outworking, the work of the law, doesn't produce life. It's the wrong tool. If you're trying to use the law to gain you eternal life, you're using the wrong tool for the wrong job.

That's not how the promise came. The promise is by faith. So when you look in the Bible and you come to the first word of a verse, and at verse 16 it says, therefore, you need to look at what came before it, right? This is the conclusion. The conclusion of the works of the law being death. Okay, so if the law can't bring you into right relationship with God, what does that mean for you? What means that it is of faith. The promise is of faith that it might be according to grace. God's unearned favor.

This is the whole point of what Paul has been getting at in Romans 1, 2, 3 and Abraham's example in verse 4. God's pleasure, God's promises have never been because his people perfectly keep the law. But it's because he's chosen to love us as a free gift.

Because He's breathed new life into our hearts, even while we were yet sinners. And it was the same with Abraham. Therefore, it is of faith that it might be according to grace. Because even as the Westminster Confession says, even the fact that we have faith, that faith is a gift from God itself. We believe because He's given us new hearts.

So, how did Abraham inherit the promises? how did Abraham inherit? how did Abraham become the father of many nations? well I hope you don't have it in your mind as we've been reading through the story of Abraham that you're like well because he did everything perfectly remember when he was with Abimelech? Well, I'm certainly glad he didn't lose the promises of God because of what he did, this horrible, like, hey, do me a favor.

When we go into all these lands and people might want to kill me, I care about my life more than your chastity, right? Just go ahead and say you're my sister. So that way anybody can marry you and take you, but I'll be okay. I'm just going to ask the honest question about you wives. Would you look at your husband and go, oh, he's a good law keeper there? No half-truths. self-protection, not sacrificially loving, right?

But that's the whole point here is that the promise was never given to Abraham because he was perfect. The promise was given because God is gracious. God would make him into a great nation because God had promised that the promise cannot be earned. The inheritance that Abraham and his descendants would receive was not Because they were storing up enough good for themselves to pass down to the next generations. It's because God gave them a land that they wouldn't have to work for. God would give them fields that they didn't have to plant. God would give them homes that they didn't have to build. God would give them all these things and they didn't earn any of it.

They weren't going to be the biggest people. They weren't going to be the strongest people. It's not because of anything you've done or anything you are. I'm giving you the promises because I'm good. It's not of works, therefore it is of faith that it might be according to grace.

So who gets this promise? Who are these seeds? Who are the descendants who get the inheritance? Well, notice verse 16 keeps going on. So the promise might be sure to all the seed. The seed being those descendants of Abraham. But notice, Not only to those who are of the law, that's kind of shorthand for saying all those people who would be following after Abraham according to the flesh and would be Jewish like we would think of them by their genealogy, right? They got Jewish blood in them, they're directly from the line, they have the law of Moses, right? Not just to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham. Who gets the law or who gets the inheritance? Those who keep the law or those of faith? Who gets the inheritance? Here's the thing.

Jesus teaches us just because you may have been born of Abraham Not good enough. You can't just say, but we have Abraham as our father. Unless you believe like he did. As Paul said previously, unless you're going to walk in the footsteps of Abraham, the footsteps of faith.

This is Paul's whole point. I keep trying to pull us back to Paul's thesis statement, what he's doing, and throughout the book of Romans. Romans chapter one, verse 16, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile, to the Greek, to the non-Jewish person, the ethnoi. both Jews and Greeks, those who have the same faith. So my question to you is, do you have the same faith as Abraham? This is a really important thing. Because I want to correct something that creeps into our Christian minds sometimes, right?

Oh, in the Old Testament, God was kept happy, and the people kept God in kind of a good spirit, and things were going well if they were a bunch of good law keepers. God's people became and were and continue to be God's people if they kept the law. But in the New Testament, it's all about faith.

And I would like to say that is a false dichotomy. Every time Abraham was walking well, was keeping the moral law, it was because he was walking by faith. Every time he was walking by the flesh is when you see the stuff with Abimelech and Hagar and etc. When he's trying to walk by his own works and by his own will, that's when things start to fall apart. That's when we walk by faith. It's always been about faith. from Genesis to Revelation.

Second Point

So my question to you is, are you of the same faith as Abraham? Are you walking in his footsteps? You might think, well, I don't know. What was Abraham's faith like? Well, I'm glad you asked. Let's look at point two. Let's explore Abraham's faith. Verses 17 through 21. Look with me there.

As it is written, I have made you a father of many nations. In the presence of him who believed, God who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did, who 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. 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 he did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief but was strengthened in faith giving glory to God and being fully convinced that what he had promised he was also able to perform see Abraham believed something specific Did you know on English coins there's something inscribed on it? It has a picture of whoever the monarch is at the time. So it was Victoria, or Elizabeth, now it's Charles. And it says, Defender of the Faith. It's a really old, old title given to the monarch from the 1500s by the Pope.

But it was interesting, when Charles, the reigning King Charles now, was a younger man, He said he didn't want to be called the defender of the faith, but the defender of faith. And by that he meant just people believing something. No matter what God, no matter what religion, he wanted to be known as the monarch who would defend all people's faith.

That's not the type of faith that's being spoken of here. A type of murky, shadow, ambiguous, can't put your hands around it type faith. That's not what Abraham believed. He believed something specific. Abraham didn't believe in a vague, ambiguous promise.

He believed in what God said. Did you notice that? Verse 17 starts with, as it is written. And this has endured for thousands of years. So we know that what God said specifically to Abraham, that's what he believed. The content of what God promised. I have made you a father of many nations. Coming straight out of Genesis chapter 17 verse 5. God promised him. God made a promise. Abraham assented. That's true. I believe it. But it goes on. Not just once, but twice.

I have made you a father of many nations, verse 17. And then keep going in verse 17. In the presence of him who believed, God who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did. Who contrary to hope, in hope, believed. And then notice right here, "...so that he became the father of many nations." Again, quoting Genesis, Genesis 15, 5. That he would become a father of many nations.

Abraham's faith was in something that God had promised. It wasn't just like, oh, I kind of believe this vague God out there that I don't really know, and I don't really know what He's doing or saying or whatever. No, God said it. He believed it. Abraham, make no doubt about it though, notice here, it's not just the promises themselves, but the promises were backed up. Abraham believed in God Himself. Did you notice that in verse 17?

It's not just what God had said, I have made you a father of many nations, but notice in the presence of him who believed, God who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did. He believed that there was a God who he knew, who had called him out of Ur of the Chaldeans, who had brought him to the other side of the river, who had made promises to him that that God somehow was powerful enough to make things happen by the will of his own power. The same God who could speak into the darkness, let there be light. Who had that type of power, who could speak what theologians call ex nihilo, out of nothing. That same God could speak, could will, and the impossible could happen. Abraham believed that God was that powerful.

More than just that actually, the book of Hebrews, if you just flipped in your Bible with me to Hebrews chapter 11. This is a great hall of faith chapter in the Bible. And if we go to Hebrews 11 when it talks about Abraham, there's something radical that it says about Abraham's faith. Spoiler alert, Abraham does have a son. His name is Isaac. And it's not by a concubine, it's by Sarah. But notice that verse, chapter 11. Verse 8.

By faith Abraham obeyed... So why did Abraham obey? Because he had faith. By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called out to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. So why did he leave Ur of the Chaldeans? Because he had faith and he believed in the God who called him to do it. And he went out not knowing where he was going, Verse nine, by faith he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise. Isaac and Jacob here are listed also of heirs. And what are they heirs of? The same promise. They trust in the same God. They have faith in the same God, in the same promises.

For he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God. By faith, Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed. And she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged him faithful who had promised." Oh, notice there, Sarah. Sarah believes God who is able to do the things he promises. Did you notice Sarah's first reaction when we read through that last time? God himself comes and he makes the promise. And Sarah's at the edge of her tent. And what does she do when God says that she's going to have a child? She laughs. She laughs. And yet she believes. Why? Because it seems impossible. How is this God possibly going to be able to do this? Because the God who is able to speak of things as though they are not. And yet able to do it. That's the God who made promises so she believed.

Therefore from one man and him as good as dead. Same language that we have in Romans 4 here. Were born as many as the stars of the sky in multitude. Innumerable as the sand. which is by the seashore. If we skip down to verse 17, by faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac.

Whoa, hold on, this is the one son born of Sarah, the miracle baby. Actually, the title here, when it says, and he who had received the promise offered him up as his, notice what it says, Only begotten son. His one and only son. Unique. The only child of the promise. God commanded Abraham to offer up Isaac on the mountain. Why would he do that? Verse 18.

Of whom it was said, in Isaac your seed shall be called. So what was Abraham's faith? concluding that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead, from which he also received him in a figurative sense. Abraham believed God's truthfulness and God's promises And His power so much that even when He was told, take your one and only Son, the Son of the promise, take Him up, offer Him up as a sacrifice. When He was at the base of the promise, He said, He's got the wood, He's got the fire, He's got everything to offer up the sacrifice. And He says to His servants, you stay here, and we will go up the mountain, and we will return. The author of Hebrews tells us that Abraham believed so firmly in the promises of God that even if he did sacrifice Isaac, his one and only son, the inheritor of the promise, this miracle child, God would raise his son from the dead. That's the content of the faith, the quality of the faith that Abraham has. Abraham believed despite his present circumstances. That's what verses 18 through 20 are getting at in Romans 4. You guys flip back to Romans 4. Who contrary to hope, verse 18, who contrary to hope, in hope believed. He had no reason to hope about this. He had no reason, humanly speaking, Abraham, to think, you know what?

It makes total logical sense. God promises me I'm gonna have a baby. So, humanly speaking, that makes a lot of sense. No, it doesn't. It doesn't make any sense at all. Notice what it says. The text continues. And not being, verse 19, and not being weak in the faith, he did not consider his own body already dead. Or you might translate it, as good as dead.

We don't have anybody in the nursing homes or the care facilities right now. But when I first came, we had a number of people. And so my habit was every Friday afternoon, I would go and I'd visit those who were in the nursing homes. And I'd spend time with them. And I got to tell you, I spent a lot of time with people who are 80, 90, near 100 years old. And not a single one of them in their bed or on their recliner said, I can't wait to have a baby next year. They didn't say it, right?

Because it doesn't make sense. It's not humanly possible. And yet Abraham hoped despite that hopelessness. The reality of life is Abraham's a hundred years or about a hundred years old and Sarah's womb, this is almost offensive language, Sarah's womb already being dead. She was past that stage in life that this should ever happen. Physically, physiologically speaking, this shouldn't happen. Doesn't seem there's any way.

And yet notice what verse 19 says about the quality of Abraham's faith. And not being weak in faith, Abraham did not consider his own body already dead, since he was about a hundred years old and the deadness of Sarah's womb. Abraham was not weak in faith regarding the promises. Now, that's difficult for us to jive with when we read chapters like Genesis 20. Because it seems like there were times in which Abraham did fear, even fear for his life, concern that somehow he would die.

But I want to posit to you that that's no different than every other Christian's life. There are times when you are going to be weak in your faith. There are times when you're going to falter. Where you know in your heart of hearts that God is alive. His promises are true. The things that He said are trustworthy. And yet, you'll still kind of cut a corner here or there. Still give in to the flesh. Still try to take things into your own hands. But the core of Abraham's heart It was a trust in who God was and in the firmness of His promises.

Now we live in a world where we don't like complicated stories. We live in a world where we like having our own Christian media and our own Christian movies that really dumb down life and make everything kind of black and white, where the good faithful people always do these good faith things, and even when they sin, there's this rise and triumph even at the end of their life, that things always work out well. But it's not always the case in this Christian life. Sometimes you'll find yourself in impossible circumstances, with injustice abounding, Moral quagmires that you don't know how you're gonna get through, where you have to just plead with God for wisdom. Challenges of life where there just doesn't seem to be a solution. What will your faith be in? What is your hope? What is your confidence? Where will you find your strength? Notice verse 20.

He, that's Abraham, did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God. God sometimes says impossible, seeming to us impossible, crazy things. It happens all over the place in the Old Testament. Imagine Moses standing in front of the Red Sea. And God says, hey, go ahead and lift up that piece of dead wood, and watch what I can do. You might think, well, any sane person would think, we just need to find a different route, find an escape path. And yet Moses believes. God had made promises. He was going to make it good. He obeys in faith. And the sea parts. You can imagine the people of Israel as they cross over the Jordan River.

That in itself is a miracle, but as they're camped outside of Jericho, and God says, no, no, no. Don't get your battering rams. Don't get everything ready to go and fight against the city. Instead, I want you to be quiet. not a mouse peep, and march around the city one time, just one time, for six days. And then on the seventh day, get ready. But again, not with your battering rams and stuff. Walk around the city seven times, and then shout and blow the trumpets and see what happens.

And by a miracle, God does the impossible and makes the walls fall down. We could say this of Gideon with the armies against Midian. We could say this about Hannah praying that God would give her a child. We could say this about even more impossible things, like the Messiah coming from a virgin. Or what about Jesus being raised from the dead? God does impossible things. We believe it, not because of human explanations, but because God is powerful and He is able to do it.

Third Point

So what promises are for you? Point three, what promises are for you then? What has God said that you've latched onto in your heart and you have faith and you believe? I'm just going to give you a minute here. You've got your bulletins in front of you. I'm going to ask you, I'm going to only give you about 10 seconds of silence here, and try to think what is something that God has explicitly said, has written in His Word, that is yours?

Maybe for some of you, you wrote down Philippians chapter 1 verse 6, that God will bring about to completion that which He has started in the day of Christ Jesus. He won't leave you unfinished work. Maybe for some of you, you wrote down Romans chapter 8, that there is nothing that can separate you from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. Maybe for some of you, you wrote down Romans chapter 8 verse 28, that all things work together for the good of those who have been called according to His purposes. Maybe for some of you, you wrote down that Jesus is the resurrection and the life and whoever believes in Him shall not die but have everlasting life. Maybe for some of you, you wrote down John chapter 14 verse 3, that Christ would come again and that His people would live with Him forever. Maybe for you, you wrote down 1 John 1 verse 9, that if you confess your sins, He is faithful and just to forgive you of your sins and to cleanse you of all of your unrighteousness.

See, my question to you is not just to give you Abraham's life, but Abraham, as it says in the very beginning of Romans chapter 4, that he is the forefather. He's being used as the example here. That he believed in the God who made promises, and he believed because of the God who made those promises, that those promises were true. So my question is, what promises has God explicitly made that you by faith say, I believe that?

Maybe it's that He's a good Heavenly Father and you don't need to worry about what you're going to eat or what you're going to drink or what you're going to wear because your Heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. Or, conversely, are you believing things that you want God to have said? It is absolutely essential that if we are going to have true faith that we believe in what God has actually said, not just what we wish He had said.

And my explicit question for you this morning is, do you believe, do you believe that God would even be willing to send His only begotten Son because He would love a sinner like you? Do you believe The God who is powerful, and is able to do things beyond all comprehension, would even send his own son, the second person of the Trinity, and would rend space and time and all things understanding, and have a God-man who would bear your sins on a cross. Who would pour out his life as a ransom for you.

Do you believe that you were redeemed by the blood of Jesus? Do you believe in something crazy? That there is still a man who lives in heaven, a resurrected body, Jesus Christ, sitting at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, as king of the universe today. Do you believe that he is your Lord and that God raised him from the dead? Do you believe the impossible?

There is a practical effect. Verses 20 through 21, our faith in God does strengthen us to do the work of God. Abraham did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God and being fully convinced that he, what he had promised, he was also able to perform. Abraham and Sarah Believed God and did the impossible and saw God do the impossible things. Because He who had promised was able to perform it. And they gave glory to God.

You know, I normally ask people if I can use their example before sermons. But this, I'm just going to say this one, right. Olivia is not yet 40. And when we had our last baby, when we had Judah. I remember just, I was so scared. because I had never seen her in so much pain, screaming for God to please give her strength and help. I can't imagine a hundred year old woman giving birth to a child and being sustained through that birth. And yet she believed God's promises. She believed that God who made those promises was able to do it.

And God brought forth that child of the promise. Isaac himself, they gave glory to God in their obedience that came from faith. God is able to do what he promises. That's what verse 21 is getting at. And being fully convinced that what he had promised, he was able to perform. Do you actually believe that God is able to do the things He's promised you? Do you have that type of faith? That even though there may be present circumstances, or even though there may be difficult things in your life, is the base reality, the truth of your heart, that God is able to do it because God is God?

And He's good, and He's true. This is the whole point of what Paul is getting at. That type of faith is why Abraham was right with God. Notice verse 22. And therefore it was accounted to him for righteousness. Abraham was righteous because he believed.

Abraham It was not accounted to him for righteous because he was a perfect law keeper. It was not accounted to Abraham that he was righteous because he had the sign of circumcision. It was not because he lived the perfect moral life. It is not because he had all the strength and virility of a guy who could really have a great broad seed of progeny.

No, it was that he had faith. Abraham believed. And God accredited it to him for righteousness. It was an alien righteousness. It wasn't a righteousness he earned because of a perfect life he lived. The righteousness was something outside of himself that God wrote in the ledger books. So when God would open up the books, and he would look at Abraham's name, It wasn't read with debt, but it was credited to him as righteousness.

Reason, note in the ledger, because he believed. When God opens up the books for you, he goes down the list and he sees your name in the ledger books. Make no doubt about it, all of our ledger books are dripping in red debts. My question is, is there anything in the black next to it? And the black is the righteousness of Jesus, credited to you. And does the note say, she believed.

He trusted me. The God who makes promises, makes good on his promises. Our God is true and good. He is gracious and kind. And the same righteousness that was offered out to Abraham is offered to you. Will you trust? Will you hope? Will you cling to God's promises? Because he's good and true.

Closing Prayer

Let's pray. God, we thank you for your word. Father, I pray that your Spirit would please help us. Lord, by the power of your Spirit, so convince and conform and change our hearts. Make us new creatures. Encourage us, Lord, that you are good and true. And the words you say are perfect. and let our hearts latch on to you and hang on every word that comes from your mouth. Lord, we thank you. We thank you that our standing before you is by grace because of faith, by faith because of grace. Lord, you are so kind. Thank you for your unearned favor. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.