Romans 4:18-25 *
In the name of Christ Jesus, dear friends:
Vacationing in a foreign country can be an intimidating
experience. You don’t know the
people. You don’t know the local
customs. You might not know the
language. And if you’re not careful, you
might end up paying some street vendor $50 for a $5 souvenir.
Some people overcome their fear of foreign travel by booking
a tour. If you’re not the adventurous type,
tours offer a nice alternative. You get to travel with a group. You get group rates. You have a set itinerary. And no matter where you go, you always have a
tour guide.
Tour guides know the language and local customs. Tour guides know where to go and where NOT to
go. Tour guides can tell you if you are
getting a good deal. And a good tour
guide will always be available to answer questions.
As we continue our “Summer In Rome”
this morning, we are blessed with an excellent tour guide. The apostle Paul knew
Last weekend we began our tour of Romans with this all-important
question, “How is a person saved?” This was Paul’s clear answer: “We maintain that a man is justified by
faith apart from observing the law” (
The next logical question, and the
question for today is: Who is included? Who
fits under the umbrella of God’s grace? Who
is saved by faith? Instead of answering
these questions directly in Romans 4, Paul used an illustration.
Abraham was heralded as the father of the nation of
Paul considered Abraham to be his spiritual father. In fact, he considered every Christian a
spiritual descendant of Abraham. This is
what Paul was talking about when he wrote to a mixed group of Jewish and
Gentile Christians living in Rome: “He
(Abraham) is the father of us all” (4:16).
Even though you are probably not Jewish, even though you may
not be a physical descendant of Abraham, Paul wants you to know that he is your
father too. And he encourages you to…
FOLLOW IN YOUR FATHER’S FOOTSTEPS
I. Abraham trusted God’s
promises
II. Abraham
acknowledged God’s power
II.
Abraham
received God’s blessings
“Against all hope,
Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it
had been said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be’” (18). The words that Paul quotes here come from
Genesis 15. The Lord had appeared to
Abraham in a vision. At the time Abraham
was childless, and it looked liked he would die without an heir.
To reassure Abraham that he hadn’t forgotten about his promise
to make him a great nation, the Lord took him outside and instructed him to
look up at the night sky. He said:
“Abraham, I want you to look up at the stars.
Try to count them. As many stars
as you see tonight, that is how many descendants you will have.”
Abraham believed the Lord.
Abraham trusted God’s promise, but God didn’t give him a son, at least
not right away. Why did the Lord do that
to Abraham? Why did he make him
wait? Was he trying to make him doubt? Was he trying to teach Abraham a lesson?
We don’t know. We
don’t know exactly why God does everything he does, but Paul identifies two
positives that came out of this for Abraham: “He did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but
was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God” (20).
Blessing #1 for Abraham: He was strengthened in his
faith. A stork could have dropped Isaac from
the sky, but he didn’t. Isaac could have
been born nine months later, but he wasn’t.
God wanted Abraham to carry those words around with him. God wanted Abraham
to anticipate the fulfillment of that promise.
And as Abraham’s faith was strengthened, he also gave glory
to God. By trusting God, Abraham was
acknowledging that he was totally dependent on God. And by
showing that he was in it for the long haul, Abraham was setting a good example
for his spiritual children.
The Lord hasn’t asked us to pick up everything and move to
the Promised Land. The Lord hasn’t
promised to give us millions of descendants either. But he does call upon us to trust in him, to
have a faith like Abraham, a forward looking faith that believes God will do
what he promises.
The Lord promises that he is always with us. We can’t see him, but we trust that he is
there. The Lord promises that he is
always in control. We don’t always see
the proof of that, but we trust that he is.
The Lord promises to make all things work out for our good. We may not understand how, but we trust that
he does.
If it were only that easy. If we could only latch onto the promises of
God and never let go. But this is
probably closer to the truth. The Lord
promises that he is always with us, but sometimes we wonder where he is hiding.
The Lord promises that he is always in control, but sometimes we think he is asleep
at the wheel. The Lord promises to make
all things work out for our good, but sometimes we wish we didn’t have it so
“good.”
Our weak faith is far from perfect, but we aren’t the only
ones. Our father Abraham wasn’t perfect
either. There were times when he doubted
God’s promises. There were times when he
tried to fast forward the fulfillment of God’s promises.
Abraham’s faith wasn’t perfect, but the object of his faith was. The Lord gave him the faith to trust his
promises. And it was the same God-given
faith that enabled Abraham to acknowledge God’s power.
The promise of becoming a great nation is one thing. The promise of becoming a great nation
without having any children is something different. And the promise of becoming a great nation
without having any children at the age of ninety-nine is another matter
entirely.
This was Abraham’s predicament. He still had God’s firm promise, but he also
had to face the facts. He had to face
the fact “that his body was as good as
dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also
dead” (19).
Abraham and his wife were well beyond the normal age for
child-bearing, so they had a choice to make.
Do we continue to trust in God or do we give up? Do we continue to believe that God will give
us a son or do we forget about it and move on?
Do we listen to our heads or our hearts?
For Abraham the choice was easy. He trusted the God who created everything out
of nothing. He trusted the God who
rained down fire on
“Nothing is Impossible
with God” is a song my daughter learned in preschool this year. And when she sings it, I have no doubt that
she believes what she is saying. She
believes that God can do anything. He can still storms. He
can cure diseases. He can even raise the
dead.
The melody of that song is so simple that anyone of us can
sing it, but I wonder if we can sing it like a little child. I wonder if we can sing it with a child-like
faith. Do we believe that nothing is
impossible with God? Do we really believe
that God can do anything? Then why do we
worry? Why do we fret? Why do we doubt?
Perhaps we can learn a lesson from our spiritual
father. Even at the age of ninety-nine,
Abraham demonstrated that he had a child-like faith. He trusted God’s promises. He acknowledged God’s power. And he received God’s blessings.
All of this talk about Abraham’s faith can give the
impression that he was saved because of his faith. In a certain sense this is true, but we have
to be careful. Abraham’s faith was not a
good work. Abraham’ faith didn’t earn him
God’s favor. Abraham’s faith wasn’t any
more special than your faith or mine.
Abraham’s faith was simply the hand that received God’s blessings.
This comes out in the phrase, “it was credited to him as righteousness” (22). Did you notice the tense of the
verb? It’s passive. Abraham’s faith didn’t make him
righteous. Abraham didn’t DO anything to
become righteous. Abraham’s faith was
the channel through which God made him righteous.
But it wasn’t just Abraham who was on the receiving end of
God’s blessings. And it wasn’t just
Abraham that Paul was concerned about in this epistle. He writes: “The words ‘it was credited to him’ were written not for him alone, but
also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him
who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead” (23,24).
Maybe it’s not so easy for us to identify with Abraham. He lived two thousand years before
Jesus. We live two thousand years after
Jesus. He lived in the Eastern
hemisphere. We live in the Western
hemisphere. He was Jewish. We are Gentiles. We are different. But as different as we are, we still have
much in common.
Abraham believed in the Savior who was to come. We believe in a Savior who has come and will
come again. Abraham believed that God
could bring life from his dead body. We
believe that God did raise his Son from the dead. Abraham looked to the Lord for
forgiveness. So do we. Abraham trusted in God for his salvation. So do we.
If anything, we have the advantage over Abraham because we
know how the story ends. Paul concludes:
“He was delivered over to death for our
sins and was raised to life for our justification” (25).
Iron spikes nailed Jesus to the cross, but it was our sin
that put him there. Jesus suffered because
of us. Jesus died because of us. Jesus did it willingly for us. And when he said, “It is finished” (John
Jesus completed his soul-saving mission, and he added an
exclamation point three days later. God
raised Jesus from the dead. God will
raise our bodies from the dead. And then
we will experience the ultimate blessing of eternal life in heaven.
I grew up in
A couple things still stick out in my mind about that
game. Because my dad was so much bigger
than me, I had to jump from print to print.
And no matter how careful I was, no matter how hard I tried, I was never
able to follow in his footsteps perfectly.
It’s not snowing outside this morning, but our spiritual
father has left us some pretty big shoes to fill. It can be a humbling experience to compare
our faith to the faith of Abraham, but we need to remember that Paul didn’t draw
this comparison to humiliate us. The
purpose of the illustration is to encourage us, to help us understand and
appreciate the answer to this important spiritual question: Who is saved by
faith? The answer: Abraham was, and so
are we.
As Abraham’s spiritual descendants, we are proud to follow in our father’s footsteps. We trust God’s promises. We acknowledge God’s power. And we receive God’s blessings. Amen.