Our Rescue Requires Trusting in God's Promise Instead of our Performance...

Last week, we saw the Apostle Paul reveal for us a timeless truth that provides for us a timeless hope. And that timeless truth that provides for us a timeless hope is that God rightly rescues from rebellion through faith in Christ. We left off last week discovering that because it is God’s activity and not our activity that rescues us from selfish rebellion and sin, there is no room for pride.

However, just like today, for some readers of this letter, there seemed to be resistance to the idea that we could only be rescued by faith in what God has done for us and not by what we can do for God. Their resistance was due to the fact that they believed that the message of the gospel nullified the law; In other words the message of the gospel seemed to make the Old Testament worthless and irrelevant. Last week, we saw Paul respond to this resistance with the strongest negative response possible and explain that the the message of the gospel does not undercut the teachings of the Old Testament; faith actually reinforces the teachings of the Bible.

Today, I would like us to look at another section of a letter in our Bibles called the book of Romans. And in this section, we will see the Apostle Paul respond to this resistance by some of the readers of this letter by showing that the message of God’s right rescue from rebellion through faith in Christ not only reinforces the teachings of the Bible. In his response, we will see Paul introduce us to two people who played a prominent role in God’s activity throughout the history of the Jewish people. And through the lives of these two prominent people, we will discover a timeless truth that is essential to embrace if we are to experience rescue from the insurmountable problem that our selfish rebellion and sin creates for us. So let’s look together at this section of this letter, beginning in Romans 4:1:

What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, has found? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.

Paul begins this section of his letter with a question: “what then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, has found?” If Paul was here with us this morning and asking this question in the language of our culture today, this question would sound something like this: “Let’s talk about Abraham, who all religious Jewish people find their identity in as the father of the Jewish people. What did Abraham discover during his life about how to become right with God? How was Abraham declared not guilty of having a problem with God? What rescued Abraham?

Now to understand why Paul would even mention Abraham here, we first need to understand who Abraham was and his significance to the Jewish people. You see Abraham was the father of the Jewish people. He was the George Washington of the Jewish nation. Abraham was viewed with the utmost respect by the Jewish people. Abraham was the head of the family tree of the Jewish people. So this question would have grabbed the attention of every Jewish person reading this letter. The very people who were objecting to the idea that the message that rescue from selfishness and sin was by what God did for us instead of what we do for God. The very people who viewed God’s right rescue from rebellion by faith in Christ as nullifying the teachings of the Old Testament as being worthless and irrelevant. Because for those who were involved in the Jewish religious system, rescue from selfishness and sin came from what you did for God by keeping the requirements of the Law, which are the first five books in our Bibles today.

But notice what Paul states in verse 2: “For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.”? In other words, if Abraham was declared not guilty of having a problem with God by what He did for God, he has something to boast about. If Abraham was able to rescue himself by what he did for God by keeping the requirements of the Law, then he can take pride in his accomplishments. However, Paul then confronts the religious Jewish idea that our rescue from selfishness and sin came from what you did for God by stating that if Abraham was declared not guilty by his works, or what he did for God, he has something to boast about, but not before God. Paul is saying “well if Abraham was rescued and declared not guilty by what he did for God then he could take pride, but he wasn’t. Abraham was not rescued from his selfish rebellion and sin by what he did for God”.

And it is in this section of this letter that we see the Apostle Paul reveal for us a timeless truth about what rescues us from our selfish rebellion and sin. And that timeless truth is this; our rescue requires trusting in God’s promise instead of our performance. The Apostle’s point in verse 2 is that Abraham could brag and boast if his performance was what brought him rescue from selfishness and sin and brought him into a right relationship with God. But it wasn’t Abraham’s performance that rescued him and made him right with God. It was Abraham’s trust in God’s promise that rescued Abraham and made him right with God. And in the same way today, our rescue from the problem of selfish rebellion and sin cannot be achieved by performance. Instead, the only way that we can be rescued from our selfish rebellion and sin is by trusting in God’s promise. We see Paul reveal this reality through Abraham’s story, beginning in Romans 4:3. Let’s look at it together:

For what does the Scripture say? "ABRAHAM BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS CREDITED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS." Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due. But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness,

Here we see the Apostle Paul point the readers of this letter, and us here today, to a story that is recorded for us in the very first book of our Bibles, called the book of Genesis. And while the Jewish readers of this letter would be very familiar with this story, some of us here this morning may not be quite as familiar. So let’s go back and look at this story together, beginning in Genesis 15:1:

After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, saying, "Do not fear, Abram, I am a shield to you; Your reward shall be very great." Abram said, "O Lord GOD, what will You give me, since I am childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?" And Abram said, "Since You have given no offspring to me, one born in my house is my heir." Then behold, the word of the LORD came to him, saying, "This man will not be your heir; but one who will come forth from your own body, he shall be your heir." And He took him outside and said, "Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them." And He said to him, "So shall your descendants be."

Earlier in the book of Genesis, the Lord appeared to Abraham and said “get up, leave your family and your country to go to a land that I will show you. Just get up and start walking. And once you get there, I will make you a great nation and make your name great”. Abraham was 75 years old at the time. Yet now, 11 years later, in Genesis 15, we see God remind Abraham, who is now 86, of His promise to him. Abraham responds to God’s reminder with a question “How is my reward going to great? There is no legacy. I have no children. I am getting old. You are going to have to give the reward to servant.” God then makes an amazing and seemingly impossible promise to Abraham. Your servant will not be your heir. No, Abraham, you will have a child. And you will not have a small legacy. Your legacy, your descendants will be too great to count. Now at that point, Abraham has a decision to make. What will he do with what he has just heard? We see what Abraham did in Genesis 15:6, which Paul quotes in Romans 4:3:

Then he believed in the LORD; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.

Abraham responded to God’s promise by believing God’s promise. Now the word believed here, in the language that this letter was originally written in, is the same word for faith. It conveys the idea of entrusting oneself to someone in complete confidence. Abraham placed his compete confidence in God and God’s promise. Abraham confidently trusted that God was a promise maker and that God was a promise keeper. And as a result of Abraham’s faith, as a result of his confident trust in God’s promise, it was reckoned, or credited to him as righteousness. To reckon or credit literally means to put credit to ones account who has no credit or account. God gave credit to Abraham, who had no credit or standing before God. And what God gave Abraham was righteousness, which as we discovered earlier in this series is the quality or state of being right with God. As a result of his confident trust in God’s promise, Abraham was given credit by God as being right with Him.

Paul then unpacks and applies the timeless truth contained in the story of Abraham to the members of the church at Rome, and to us here today, in verses 4-5. To help us understand what Paul is communicating here, let’s ask a question. Why do we work? Now, if we were to make a list of the reasons why we work, while there may be many different factors listed as to why we work, I believe that every list would have one common denominator; we work to get paid. And when we get our paychecks, we do not look at that paycheck as a gift, do we? No, we look at that paycheck as something that is due us, don’t we? I mean we worked hard for that money. For some here, you may feel like your paycheck does not reflect how hard you worked. However, none of us feel like our employer is paying us voluntarily as a favor, do we? Our employers would not pay us if we did not work for it, just out of the goodness of their hearts. Our employers pay us because they have to, they owe us that money; we earned that money through our work.

Paul’s point here is that in the same way, those who attempt to do things for God in order to get right with God, are only given what they have earned. To attempt to be rescued from selfishness and sin by trusting in our performance will only result in us receiving what we are owed for all our efforts. And as we discovered earlier our performance will never be able to rescue us from the problem we have with God as a result of our selfish rebellion and sin. However, the person who trusts in God’s promise through the message of the gospel will receive credit to their account that previously had no credit. When we trust in God’s promise to declare us not guilty of our selfish rebellion and sin as we believe, trust, and follow Jesus as Lord and Leader, it is that confident trust in God’s promise that God credits our account as being right with Him. Because our rescue requires trusting in God’s promise instead of our performance.

But Abraham was not the only prominent member of the Jewish people in the Old Testament that spoke of trusting in God’s promise instead of their performance. Tomorrow, we will see Paul introduce us to another prominent figure from the history of the Jewish people.