SERMON STRUCTURE: By Faith Alone!

Romans 4:1-8,13-15

CIT (Central Idea of the Text): “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness” (4:3).

SERMON FOCUS: Honest, simple faith on our part is likewise reckoned by God to us as righteousness.

Major Objective: Devotional

SO: Reaffirm your belief in the promises of God to you!

TITLE: By Faith Alone!

Then … the completed sermon should be evaluated in terms of how well it adheres to the CIT and SF, and accomplishes its SO.

INVOCATION

OUTLINE OF Romans 4:1-8,13-15

1. Abraham’s example of righteousness (4:1-3)

1. If Abraham was justified by what he had done, he would have reason to boast. (4:1-2).

2. But “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” (4:3).

2. The outcomes of work and faith (4:4-8)

1. “Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due.” (4:4)

2. “But to one who … trusts him who justifies the ungodly, … faith is reckoned as righteousness.” (4:5)

3. David also speaks of the righteousness of faith (quoting Psalm 32:1) (4:6)

   1. “Blessed are those whose iniquities are forgiven, whose iniquities are covered;” (4:7)

   2. “blessed is the one against whom the Lord will not reckon sin.” (4:8).

3. The contrast between the law and faith (4:13-15).

1. God’s promises to Abraham did not come about because of what Abraham did, but because Abraham believed God. (4:13)

2. “If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs [of the promise], then faith is null, and the promise is void.” (4:14)

3. “For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law, neither is there violation.” (4:15).

SERMON DEVELOPMENT

By Faith Alone!

Romans 4:1-8,13-14

Introduction

1. Last week’s sermon was more complex than I intended.

1. In the first place, the Scripture itself is one of the more difficult passages in all of the New Testament.

   1. Not only are the ideas complex and interwoven, but

   2. In order to understand what Paul is getting at, we had to jump around from one verse to another in order to follow his thought.

2. It was easy to get lost in what Paul is saying to us.

3. Paul was passionate about what he was writing, and his words flow out like a strong stream running over rapids.

4. But I hope in the end the central message is clear: God’s grace, extended to us in the person and work of Jesus Christ, is greater and more powerful than our human sin.

2. This week our Scripture is likewise from Romans, and on first reading, it seems simple and straightforward.

1. You have certainly heard it said that “still waters run deep.”

2. And that surely is the case with today’s passage.

   1. On the surface, these waters are calm and still.

   2. But underneath, there is great depth.

   3. And with that depth comes the power and strength that great waters possess.

3. Years ago, as a much younger person, I had the opportunity to go rafting on the New River in West Virginia.

1. That experience was a lot of fun!

   1. I’d certainly like to go back and see that place.

   2. But I’m much too old and much too out of shape to go down that river again!

2. Rafting the New River carries you through long stretches of deep, calm, and peaceful waters, and then brings you suddenly and unexpectedly into the rapids.

   1. In the quiet still waters you can swim if you like.

   2. But in the rapids — and one of them in particular — the river guide warns you not to be thrown out of the boat under any circumstances!

4. Last week was kind of like riding the rapids. Now we are in calmer and more peaceful waters.

5. So let us row out into the middle of these waters, and when the surface has calmed a bit, we will lean carefully over the edge of our small boat and look down for a few minutes into its depths.

Scripture

1. Our passage is from Romans 4:1-8,13-15. I’m reading from the New Revised Standard Version.

[Read here Romans 4:1-8,13-35.]

2. The central idea in this passage is found in verse 3: “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” (Central Idea of the Text)

3. And in the same way, God reckons our own honest, simple belief in God’s promises as righteousness. (Specific Focus)

4. And so immediately we begin to see the depth of water that we are in.

1. What does it mean simply to believe in God’s promises?

2. And how does simply believing in God’s promises make us “righteous”?

Exposition

1. The Scriptures talk a lot about believing in God.

1. This passage, and many other places in Scripture, cites Abraham as someone who simply believed in God.

2. Here, for example, we read, “the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith.” (4:13, emphasis added).

3. And the 11th chapter of Hebrews recounts the faithful response to God of Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, Moses, the people of Israel, and countless others who are unknown to us.

2. Faith is such a simple word, and we use it so easily and so readily.

1. But what does it really mean?

2. And where does faith really come from?

3. And how is it that God reckons our faith in God’s promises as righteousness on our part?

3. The Scriptures equate believing in God with the word “faith.”

1. In his classic book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis defines faith is “accepting or regarding as true the doctrines of Christianity.”¹

2. Hebrews tells us that faith consists of holding onto one’s convictions in the absence of any substantiating evidence: — “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (11:1).

3. And if you’ll pardon a personal illustration of what “faith” means, here’s one of my own:

   1. For me, faith is what it takes to blow the leaves off my roof in the fall.

   2. Our house is mostly in the woods — and we love it.

   3. But getting the leaves off the roof and out of the gutters in the fall is an annual chore.

   4. Now I don’t mind climbing up the ladder to the roof.

   5. And I don’t mind stepping off the ladder onto the roof (though I used to make a habit of chaining the top of the ladder .to the fascia boards).

   6. And I don’t mind walking around on the roof — it’s not a steep roof, and our house is all on one level.

   7. But stepping off the roof onto the ladder is definitely an act of faith for me!

      1. I have this vision of the ladder going one way, and me going the other way!

      2. And until both my feet are firmly on the ladder I am still uncertain about how this task will end.

4. So I think it’s fair to say that faith is an act of commitment — commitment without any tangible or measurable guarantee of a favorable outcome.

5. And if we understand faith in this way — that it is an act of commitment, not just an idea in our heads — then the relationship between faith and works, or faith and what-we-do-with-faith, becomes much clearer.

   1. The book of James tells us, “so faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” (2:17).

   2. Faith is not really faith, therefore, until you are ready to do something with it.

   3. Each of the examples of faith listed in Hebrews 11 is an account of actions taken in response to commitment:

      1. “By faith Abel offered a better sacrifice to God than Cain did….” (11:4)

      2. “By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear [i.e., respect for God] built an ark to save his family.” (11:7)

      3. “By faith, Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went….” (11:8)

      4. “By faith Abraham, even though he was past age … was enabled to become a father….” (11:11)

      5. “By faith, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice….” (11:17)

      6. “By faith, Isaac blessed Jacobin regard to their future….” (11:20)

      7. “

4. Our Scripture today features Abraham as a chief example of faith — making a commitment without any visible guarantee of a favorable outcome.

1. Paul draws his account of Abraham’s faith from Genesis 15:1-6, which says,

“¹After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. ‘Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.

²But Abram said, ‘O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue to be childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?’

³And Abram said, ‘You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.’

⁴But the word of the Lord came to him. ‘This man shall not be your heir, no one but your very own issue shall be your heir.’

⁵He brought him outside and said, ‘Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.’ Then he said, ‘So shall your descendents be.’

⁶And he [Abraham] believed him [God], and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.”

2. It is this last verse that Paul quotes in his letter to the Romans.

5. Our second question was, where does faith really come from? Paul emphasizes here, and in many of his letters, that faith comes to us as a gift from God and it is not something that we earn on our own.

1. He says, “But to one who without works [i.e., without doing anything outwardly] trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness.” (4:5).

2. In all his letters, Paul continues to stress the way in which faith is something that comes from God and not from ourselves.

3. We are especially familiar with what he wrote to the church at Ephesus:

“⁸For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourself; it is the gift of God, and not your own doing — not the result of works, so that no one may boast.

⁹For we are what God has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” (2:8-9, emphasis added)

6. So, if faith is an act a commitment without any visible guarantee of a favorable outcome, and if faith comes to us as a gift from God, and is not something we can do for ourselves, that leaves us with only the third question: how is it that God reckons our faith in God’s promises as righteousness on our part?

1. For a little insight here, we turn again to CS Lewis and his book Mere Christianity.

   1. This concept of faith depends upon a deeper understanding of faith as a gift from God.

   2. That understanding of faith becomes real only after one has tried to live by the moral and ethical standards of Jesus, and discovered that in human terms it cannot be done consistently.

   3. Lewis writes, “The main thing we learn from a serious attempt to practice the Christian virtues is that we fail.”²

   4. And, what is more, all of our human ability, our human compassion, our human imagination, our human desire to love God and serve God are themselves gifts from God.

   5. So Lewis writes, “If you devoted every minute of your whole life exclusively to His service, you could not give Him anything that was in a sense not His own already.”³

   6. So in a very deep sense, we become acutely aware of our own “bankruptcy” before God.

      1. We are hopelessly in debt before God, and

      2. We are hopelessly unable to help ourselves or rescue ourselves from our own shortcomings.

   7. The role of the “Law,” especially the moral code that God gave to the Israelites at Sinai, is to bring each of us to this sense of moral insufficiency before God.

   8. And God has been patiently waiting for each one of us to come to that moment in our lives when we are ready to say to Him, “I can’t do this on my own. Please help me.”

   9. And it is only when we come to that point in our lives that we are able to acknowledge and accept the gift that God offers to us in Christ Jesus.

   10. The words from the familiar hymn “Amazing Grace” capture this thought so well:

“’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear / And grace my fears relieved….”

2. But now comes the second half of faith, and how faith makes us righteous before God.

   1. The moment of decisive change occurs when we give up our confidence in our own efforts and leave our destiny in the hands of God, where of course it belongs in the first place.

   2. At that point the Christian

“puts all his or her trust in Christ, trust that Christ will somehow share with him [or her] the perfect human obedience that He carried out from His birth to His crucifixion; that Christ will make the man more like Himself, and, in a sense, make good on his [or her] deficiencies. In Christian language, He will share his “sonship” with us, will make us like Himself, ‘Sons of God.’”⁴

3. It is God’s expressed purpose — God’s specific intent — to create in me and in you the very likeness of God’s own son.

4. And God gives to each of us the gift of faith so that God can accomplish that divine purpose within us.

Reflections and Conclusions

1. The central idea in our Scripture this morning is, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”

2. How this happens is still something of a mystery to us, but today we have looked briefly but deeply into its depths.

1. We have discovered that faith in God is an act of commitment — commitment without any tangible or measurable guarantee of a favorable outcome.

2. We have discovered that faith is a gift from God — a gift which both brings us to God and persuades us to commit ourselves to God by believing God’s promises to us.

3. We have also discovered that faith is the means through which God creates — or re-creates — His own righteousness within us.

3. The season of Lent is a time of reflection on our human mortality and a time of repentance and renewal in our relationships with God and with each other.

4. Is God creating — or re-creating — his presence within you today? Do you know that for a certainty?

5. Is this a day to reaffirm or renew your belief in God’s promises to you?

6. Or have you perhaps never made that commitment — that commitment that has no tangible or measurable guarantee of a favorable outcome for you — save for the assurances of God’s word?

7. It is by faith alone that each of us enters the Kingdom of God.

8. So will you embrace God’s promises to you today by declaring or reaffirming your faith in him?