ROMANS: The Necessity of Digging

This podcast is the Ministry of Grand Parkway Baptist Church.

For more information on our church, please visit grandparkway.org.

If you get a Bible, I invite you to take it and open it up to Romans chapter 4.

Romans 4 · chapter mention

Romans chapter 4.

Romans 4 · chapter mention

And I want to talk to you this morning about the necessity of digging.

The necessity of digging.

And that title comes from a quote I read years ago.

Mortimer Adler wrote a book entitled How to Read a Book, which should be required reading for everybody.

But in the book, he talks about, hey, don't just read books that are easy.

Read books that make you stop and think a little bit.

And he has this quote.

He says, raking is easy, but all you get is leaves.

Digging is a little harder, but you might find diamonds.

Think about that when it comes to the Bible, because Romans chapter 4, Paul makes these great statements in Romans chapter 3.

Romans 4 · chapter mention Romans 3 · chapter mention

He's talking about, hey, how does a person get right with God?

You get right with God through a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Not by works, not by keeping the rules, not by being good or moral or decent, but you're made right with God only through a relationship with Christ.

The Bible says at the end of chapter 3, he says, you know, that our God is one.

He says, since God is one.

And in a subtle way, what Paul is saying, since God is one, there's only one way to come to God.

And so he brings up, he picks up this train of thought.

Chapter 4 is really Paul demonstrating what he talked about in chapter 3 that salvation is by grace through faith.

Not being religious, not doing more good stuff than bad stuff.

And so he brings up in chapter 4 one of the central characters in Judaism, Romans chapter 4, verse 1.

Romans 4:1

He says, What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our father, according to the flesh?

For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.

What does the script for what does the scripture say?

Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.

Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due.

And to the one who does not work, but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works.

Verse 7, quoting David, Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered.

Blessed is a man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.

Is this blessing then only for the circumcised or also for the uncircumcised?

We say that faith with what faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness.

How then was it counted to him?

Was it before or after he had been circumcised?

It was not after, but before he was circumcised.

He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised.

The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well, and to make him the father of the circumcised who not merely, who are not merely circumcised, but also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.

And that's probably all you want to hear that word ever again.

That's a little bit awkward on Super Bowl Sunday.

Or excuse me, big game Sunday.

What do I mean when I say the necessity of digging?

This is one of those great passages that you read in the Bible, and if you're like me, you can read it and kind of go, okay, that sounds like really hard.

I think I skipped forward to a part that I understand.

But the reality is, is when you read something like that in the Bible, you need to kind of dig in because in this 12 verses is understanding that shapes all of Christianity.

There's four things in these 12 verses that I want to point out to you this morning by way of digging.

Number one is simply this the Bible establishes what is true.

The Bible establishes what is true.

Have you ever heard this phrase?

Well, they say, well, you know what they say.

Well, you know, that I heard someone said, and so the same thing was true back in Paul's day.

That's why he says in verse one, what then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh?

In other words, what was gained by Abraham just in his natural ability?

What did he, I mean, did he get right with God because he was a good man, a moral man, or what?

Verse 2 says, For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.

And then Paul appeals to the ultimate authority in verse 3, for what does the scripture say?

If you could just underline that in the Bible, when I say the Bible establishes what is true, when you see that question, what does the scripture say?

You need to learn to ask yourself this question.

What does the scripture say?

About whatever you come up against, ask yourself, what does the Bible say?

How does the gospel speak to this?

Because unless we have this objective standard outside of ourselves and our appetites and how we feel, then life's most pressing questions are really unanswerable.

And not only that, but there's no absolutes, therefore, there's no certainty.

And where there are no absolutes and no certainty, then the response to everything is it doesn't matter.

Let me say that again.

Where there are no absolutes, and then there can be no certainty.

And where there's no certainty, then it doesn't matter.

That's why you hear this, you can quote the Bible to someone and they'll go, Well, that's your opinion.

No, that the Bible is not my opinion.

The Bible is God's revelation of Himself.

That's why 2 Timothy chapter 3, about verse 16, it says, All scripture, even the parts you don't understand, the parts you don't like, all scripture is breathed out by God.

2 Timothy 3 · chapter mention

It's God inspired.

Some people say, well, the Bible's just man's ideas.

No, it's not.

The Bible says in 2 Peter that no prophecy has its origin in the will of man, but men spoke as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

Men recorded the Bible.

God wrote the Bible.

You hear the difference.

Men recorded, they were just like the pen that God used to record his word.

And so when Paul says, hey, because for an Orthodox Jew, they would point to Abraham and say, Abraham's an example of works righteousness.

You get right with God by doing good works, or observing religious rituals, which we'll talk about later, where they say, Well, he was circumcised, and so we're circumcised, so we're sons of Abraham.

That's why when you read in the New Testament, and Jesus is talking to the Pharisees, and he says things like, Hey, don't even suppose to say to me that we have Abraham as our father.

My father can make from these stones sons of Abraham.

And they were like, Oh, what?

Because being sons of Abraham was a big deal.

And so he says, Hey, here's the controversy.

Was Abraham uh was his faith, was it about what his works, or was it about he believed God and it was credited as righteousness?

The Bible establishes what is true.

It's breathed out by God.

Hebrews chapter 4, verse 12 says that the word of God is quick and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword.

Hebrews 4:12

Don't bring a knife to a gunfight.

This is a canon right here.

Spurgeon, the great preacher from England, said this.

He said, Scripture is like a lion.

You don't have to defend it.

Just unchain it and let it go.

It knows what to do.

When you get in a conversation, you're not trying to win an argument.

You just just solely rest on what the Bible says and don't be haughty about it.

Don't be snooty.

Just know what the Bible says.

Open up your mouth and let it come out with a smile on your face.

You can say the right thing in the wrong way and make the right thing sound wrong.

Does that make sense?

You can say that you can quote the Bible, and if you're quoting the Bible like this, it makes a beautiful truth really ugly.

Last verse I want to give you to think about in the Bible as it relates to the Bible, it's just Psalm 12.6.

It says the word of the words of the Lord are pure words, like silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times.

The words of the Lord are pure words.

That's why the Bible establishes what is true.

And so Paul says, hey, well, we say this, and some say this, and some say this.

What does the scripture say?

Look at the next verse.

The scripture says that Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.

Second thing we see in the text by digging around, we see secondly that believing God is essential to faith.

Believing God is essential to faith.

Now, if you've got your Bible, stay in Romans 4, but turn back to the left to Genesis chapter 15.

Genesis 15 · chapter mention

I want you to see what he's talking about.

Remember last week we talked about our last core value of blessing, and we read in Genesis 12 where God said to Abram, I'll bless you, and you'll be a blessing, and through you all the nations of the world will be blessed.

Remember that?

Hello?

Yes, thank you very much.

I thought I was here by myself for just a minute.

But when Paul quotes Romans 4 and says, Hey, what does the scripture say?

He quotes the scripture.

He's quoting uh Genesis 15, 6 when it says, Abram believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.

Now look at Genesis chapter 15, verse 1.

Genesis 15:1

It says, After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision.

Fear not, Abram, I am your shield, your reward shall be very great.

But Abram said, Oh Lord God, what will you give me?

For I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus.

And Abram said, Behold, you have given me no offspring, and now a member of my household will be my heir.

And behold, the word of the Lord came to him.

This man shall not be your heir.

Your very own son shall be your heir.

Because God had made him a promise, hey, I'll bless you.

And he told him later on, he said, Hey, your descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky.

And Abram's in his 90s, and he's like, Listen, I'm so old, I go eat supper at like four o'clock, and I'm in bed by six.

Are you kidding me?

I don't even think about the process involved for having kids.

Much less am I gonna have a kid?

We don't need to talk about that, do we?

Some of y'all are like, no, I'm good.

I'm good.

It's Super Bowl Sunday.

Anyway, look at what he says.

Verse 5.

Verse 4, and behold, the word of the Lord came to him, this man shall not be your heir, but your very own son shall be your heir.

And verse 5, and he, God, brought him Abram outside and said, Look toward the heaven and number the stars if you're able to number them.

Then he said to him, So shall your offspring be.

And he, Abram, believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.

Now, every once in a while I take my kids outside here in Sugarland and Wall and look up at the stars, and I tell them, if you want to see stars, you gotta go to the country, okay?

And they're like, We got stars in Sugarland.

No, you don't, okay?

You mouthy, disrespectful kids, you're getting more and more like your mother.

Now knock it off.

Because I grew up in the country, okay?

And this is how you knew you lived in the country in my town.

I grew up in a town so small that if you lived outside the city limits, you did not have cable.

And so somebody would invite you to spend the night and you would say, Do you have cable?

Because if you didn't have cable, you couldn't watch wrestling, which came on at nine o'clock.

If you didn't have cable, you got three channels.

And you didn't have a remote control.

I was a remote control.

Get up, turn the channel.

Six, seven, and three.

ABC, NBC, CBS.

That was it.

And my kids are like, Well, Dad, you die, you act like you listen.

If you want to see stars, you need to go out in the country.

Uh my kids are like, How far out of the country did you live?

We didn't have street lights.

And they're like, Oh, shut your mouth.

I'm like, no.

But you can see things in the country you can't see in the city.

And they're like, What?

Come on my kids think they go out, we live right over here.

My kids walk outside and go, look, we got stars.

I'm like, there are stars up there that all this man-made light keeps you from seeing.

You want to see stars, go out in the country where they don't have cable and lay down on a round bell of hay out in the middle of a field and look up.

And that's what God said to Abram.

They didn't have street lights.

Abram lived down the street from me.

And God said, Look up.

You see all that?

Your descendants are gonna be as numerous as the stars in the sky.

You can't even get your head around this son because the promise of God, remember, is rooted in the nature of God, not in the circumstances of God's people.

And so God could say things that seemed unfathomably impossible.

Why are they possible?

Because God, with God, everything's possible.

And so God says to him, hey, go outside and look.

And here's what the Bible says.

And Abram believed God, and then it was credited.

It's an accounting word.

It was reckoned to him.

It's righteousness.

Two things you need to know about Genesis chapter 15, verse 6.

Genesis 15:6

Number one, it's the first account of believing God in the Bible.

It's the first time the Bible talks about someone believing God.

Secondly, it's the first reference to justification by faith.

It's the first reference to someone saying, This is how you get right with God.

You believe God.

He didn't believe in God.

He didn't believe there was a God.

He believed what God said about him.

I've been studying this for a couple weeks, and even so, I came to staff meeting this week on Tuesday.

It was my turn to do the devotional.

And I've been thinking about this.

Now, God, am I believing you?

Am I believing everything you say about me?

And so I asked the staff, is there anything God's saying to you that you don't believe?

And they're like, Well, that's a weird question.

Yeah, it's a weird question.

Help me think about it, because I'm like, because it's really easy for Abram to kind of go, well, yeah, I mean, I I heard what you said.

You told me that back in chapter 12.

It's now chapter 15.

It's been more than three days, by the way.

Just so you'll know.

I mean, periods of time go by.

The Bible doesn't count.

And then Abram brushed his teeth, and he had bread and cheese for breakfast, and then there's there's a there's a time that is elapsed.

And he's just kind of like, God, you said this and now it's not coming through.

And so what does God do?

Just to remind him, God says, I'm gonna make a covenant with you.

I I didn't give this to the first people because they were asleep in the first service.

But skip down if you would.

Skip down about verse uh, oh, I I I don't I don't I don't know, about verse 12.

As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram.

And behold, by the way, when God gets ready to do that for which he doesn't want man to ever take credit, he puts them asleep.

Just think Adam.

Uh as the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram, and behold, the dreadful and great darkness fell upon him.

And then the Lord said to Abram, Know for certain, know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and and and and will be servants there, and they'll be afflicted for four hundred years, think the Exodus.

But I will bring judgment on the nation they serve, and afterwards they shall come out with great possessions.

As for yourself, you shall go to your fathers in peace, you shall be buried in a good old age, and they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.

God says, I don't just control everything that has anything to do with you.

I control these nations called the Amorites that don't even worship me.

Verse 17 When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch pass between these pieces.

See, God's always led his people with a pillar of cloud by day or smoke and a pillar of fire, but this flaming torch will pass between these pieces.

On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying to your offspring, I will give the land from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, land of the Kenites, the Kinesites, the Cadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, and Rephrim, and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Gergeshites and the Jebusites and all the other sites you can think of.

Now, what why am I telling you this?

Because God makes a covenant.

Earlier in the chapter, God told Abram, Hey, get these animals, get this and this and this and this, and get some birds, and don't touch the birds, but these other animals, take them and cut them in half, and put half here and a half here, put a half here and a half here, and a half here, and a half here.

And that's the way people would make a covenant.

They would walk between those animals that had been cut in half.

And what they were saying was, may what happen to these animals happen to me if I break this covenant?

It's called a conditional covenant.

It's conditioned upon the behavior of two people that are agreeing to enter into a covenant.

If you got married, you entered into that kind of covenant.

That's why you have a center aisle in a marriage ceremony.

That's why if you do it right, you stop those numbskulls at the door and say, bride or groom.

They go, Oh, it doesn't matter.

Yeah, it matters.

Because you're about to witness a covenant.

And you were honor bound by God to speak up.

If you see this man or this woman, whoever's guest you are today, you see them living in violation of this covenant.

So bride or groom.

You ain't just here for free cake, son.

That's a covenant.

You cut the covenant.

That's a conditional covenant.

It depends on two people living up to the conditions of the covenant.

Why did God make Abram fall asleep?

Because it's an unconditional covenant.

It only depends on one person.

God set it up where the whole thing depends on him.

Because can you imagine being in a covenant with God and it depended on you?

Oh, you know yourselves, don't you?

Good.

You're getting the idea.

That's the way God set it up.

What does God say?

Believing.

See, that's why you gotta dig when you read things in the Bible, you go, I don't understand what that's talking about.

The guy said circumcision nine times.

I don't like that word.

It makes me uncomfortable.

Well, great.

All you gotta do is believe God because that's essential to faith.

Abram believed God, and it was reckoned, it was counted to him as righteousness.

What does it believe in God?

It simply means this: taking God at his word and living like it.

Taking God at his word and living like it.

God said, Listen, I don't want you to live under religious pressure and determination the rest of your life.

I'm gonna put a deep sleep on you.

If you ever want to do an interesting study, look at all the times in the Bible where God put a deep sleep on people and then did something when they woke up they couldn't take credit for.

Because God said, I don't want this to I unmistakably, without a doubt, I want you to know who's responsible for what's about to happen.

Me.

It's an unconditional covenant.

And Abram believed God, what God said.

He didn't believe in God, that there was a God.

He believed what God said about him, and he lived like it.

Believing God is essential to faith.

Third thing is what I call the blessing of never.

The blessing of never.

If you're ever reading sometime and you're reading the book of Hebrews, about chapter 10 of Hebrews, don't turn there, but you'll see you'll hear hear this phrase.

By the way, there's nothing in the Bible that that's not there for a reason.

In Hebrews 10, you'll read this phrase.

He says, If in the time of Moses a person died on the testimony of two or three witnesses, what they're talking about is in the Jewish culture, the way you established a fact was by calling two or three witnesses.

And Paul wants to establish to these people, he's writing to in Romans, hey, the way you get right with God, what it means in our vernacular, he says, what it means to be a Christian is not that you were circumcised or you had some ritual, but that you have faith in God, a relationship with God through his son Jesus.

And so he calls two witnesses.

The first witness he calls is Abraham.

And then look in verse 6.

He says, just as David, which is a second witness he calls, if you want to get a Jewish person's attention, talk about Abraham or David.

And he says, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works, blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered.

Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will never, will not count his sin.

Is this, then he goes on, is this blessing really for but let me just stop right there.

What do I mean when I say the blessing of never?

David says, hey, there's this blessing, and he says, Blessed is the man.

And he says three things.

Number one, blessed is the man whose sin was forgiven.

It's it's the Greek word, Aphia me.

A fea me.

And what it's the word Jesus used in the New Testament when he sent the crowds away.

He didn't say, All right, I'm all out of talks for today.

Y'all leave now.

The disciples and I got to watch the Super Bowl.

No, Jesus would just say, A fea me, and people knew, all right, we gotta go.

Because a person that has the authority to tell us to leave has told us to leave.

It's the same word that Paul uses here to say, hey, or David, excuse me, he's referencing, by the way, the 32nd Psalm.

The 30-second Psalm to understand the weight of what the Bible is saying right here.

You have to understand the context of the 32nd Psalm.

David was a man after God's own heart, and David did some horrible things.

You know that?

Like he is most known for the fact that he committed adultery.

He slept with another man's wife.

The woman was named Bathsheba.

David saw her, and for the first worst reason possible, he did it because he could.

He was the king.

He sent for this woman.

He slept with her.

She got pregnant.

He tried to cover his own sin.

And so what do you do?

He said, Man, I can't have her husband finding out.

He sent her husband up to the front lines at the battle, had him killed.

Uriah is killed.

David thinks I'm home free.

And God sends a prophet named Nathan to tell him a story.

And David's incensed that this man would act this way.

And he says, This man's gonna pay fourfold.

And Nathan points his finger at the king and says, You're the man, sir.

And so David is a murderer and he's an adulterer.

And he doesn't have a leg to stand on.

And it's against that backdrop.

He says, Blessed is the man whose sin has been forgiven, a fee of me, whose sin has been sent away.

You say, Well, I don't quite get it.

Some of you do this even to this day.

We all have episodes in our life that we could look back on and kind of go, you know what, that's not my bright shining moment.

The way the ancients would punish people for the crime of murder, one of the things that they would do is they would take the per the body of the person you killed and they would tie it to your back.

And you would carry that person around until their corpse rotted away.

And what would usually happen is the person that was carrying the corpse would be infected by the rotting corpse, and they themselves would die.

It was a horrible picture, but a beautiful image of what it's like to have our sin always hanging on to us, clinging to us, infecting the way we think and do life.

Some people will tell you that's what Paul picks up on in Romans chapter 7 when he says, Oh, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of sin?

Romans 7 · chapter mention

Who's going to get this monkey off my back?

David, the adulterer, stands up and says, Hey, blessed is the man whose sin is forgiven.

And then he says, second part of the blessing, whose sin was covered.

See, David tried to cover it himself, and he couldn't cover it up.

And so he says, Blessed is the man whose sin was covered.

It's a reference to the temple sacrifice.

They would bring an animal, sacrifice it, pour the blood over the Ark of the Covenant, over the mercy seat.

The Ark contained the law of Moses.

Everyone had broken the law.

When God looked down and innocent blood was shed, his wrath was averted or turned away, and that person was forgiven.

That's why Hebrews says that day after day, every priest stands and performs his religious duties.

Hear this which can never take away sin.

They just covered it.

They didn't take it away.

They didn't have the authority to send it away.

David says, Blessed is the man whose sin was forgiven, whose sin, secondly, was covered.

And then thirdly, put a star by this in your mind, whose sin will never be counted against him.

Look there in verse 8.

He says, Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.

That's a bad rendering of the Greek word.

The Greek word is Ome.

Ome.

And I'll tell you what it means in just a minute, but you've all had the experience of Ome before in your life.

Like, for example, three years ago I had a surgical procedure, and I didn't realize I went to see a doctor and I had a visit and another visit, and then we planned surgery, and then I went in and they put you in the little gown thing, they put a little cap on you, and they have a little hairdryer on the wall, and they say, if you get cold, plug this thing in and turn it on.

Do that.

Because if I was a millionaire, I'd have one of those in my house.

It's like hot or cold, and I'm gonna brrrrrr.

And the doctor comes in.

First of all, I saw two people.

I saw an anesthesiologist who said, I'm Dr.

So-and-so, I'm gonna be putting you out.

You got to open your mouth, and I saw a doctor.

After the surgery, I got bills from 18 people.

I mean, the nurse sent me a bill.

Ah, take your temperature.

That's$169.

And I mean, I was just livid.

I was like, hey, I saw two people and I maxed out my insurance.

This is all taken care of.

And it went on for about six months.

And finally I was just saying, hey, are we done?

Because y'all keep sending me bills.

Sir, you were all paid up four months ago.

I had the procedure three years ago.

Four months ago, I got a bill from somebody I didn't recognize.

And they said, we are gonna turn this over to collection unless you pay this right now.

And I was at my mailbox, I opened it up because when I saw the name, I just thought, this better not tell you what, by God.

It better not be about that surgery at three years ago.

Because what I was thinking was, ooh may.

And I walked back to my house because it was Friday afternoon.

I called them.

Our officers are closed.

Of course you go home Friday because you think of ways to steal money from people, okay?

Takes all weekend to come up with new ways.

And so you probably don't do this, but I jotted down some bullet thoughts I was having in the moment that I could share with this medical billing service on Monday morning.

We opened at 8 o'clock at 8.01.

Guess whose happy voice was on the phone?

And I said, I need to speak to the person in charge of corruption and collection.

Well, uh, uh, I'm Diane.

Maybe I can help you.

I think you can, Diane.

I said, uh, I don't recognize this guy.

I've never seen him.

I called a friend of mine that works in medical building, and she said, ask him these four questions.

I said, I'd like to like you to send me a list of the services you provided.

I'd like you to send uh uh my patient record where I have a relationship with this person.

I have no idea who this is.

She goes, Well, sir, why are you asking this question?

Because I think you're used to just billing people who have a lot of money and they just pay.

I don't have a lot of money and I don't just pay, okay?

Somebody's in danger of hellfire here, ma'am, and it's not me.

How's your Monday going?

Well, I can tell you're having a bad day.

No, you're gonna have a bad day called Judgment Day.

Because God is gonna lay the wood to people like you that steal from people, okay?

I'm not saying everybody in the medical profession is a fraud, not at all.

Good, godly people in this church work in the medical field.

But let me tell you something.

God hates a dishonest scale.

And whatever field you work in, if you're stealing from people, you're gonna get it.

You can get away in this world, but in the next, they're gonna have a record of that.

And so I just, with a smiling voice, told her, now if this man performed a service on me, I'll gladly pay you the$169.

And if not, I'm gonna show up at your office tomorrow with an axe and a clown mask and a t-shirt that says, if you believe in the hereafter, you know what I'm hereafter.

And finally, she asked me what I did for a living, and I said, I'm not gonna tell you.

No, I told her, I said, believe it or not, I passed her a church, and she goes, I wish my pastor was this honest.

Well, what's his address?

I'll show up at his house with a clown mask.

Now, why am I telling you all this?

Not so you kind of go, Well, our pastor is a redneck, not at all.

That lady laughed and she said, I would love to come to your church.

You sound like you are hilarious.

I don't try to be hilarious, I just don't like being taken advantage of.

And she goes, Well, obviously we've made a clerical error.

Maybe you gotta tell yourself, Diane.

Now, why do I tell you that?

Here's why.

Take all that indignation and use it on the right thing.

Because the Greek word, when it says your sin, will not be counted against him.

The Greek word omé means never, certainly not, not at all, by no means.

I'm walking back from my mailbox just in a twist.

Never, certainly not, not at all, by no means.

I do not know this person, this person did not treat me.

And so, why'd I tell you that?

Because the Bible says in Romans chapter 4, verse 8, blessed is the man against whom the Lord.

Romans 4:8

The ESV says, will not.

That's not the right word for Umay.

It's blessed is the man against whom the Lord will never.

Certainly not.

Not at all.

By no means count his sin.

What what what what what does that mean?

Here's what it means.

Let me put it down where we live and we'll be done this morning.

Look at me.

Everyone in this room has something in your life.

You could have the you could be having the best day of your life.

You could be on cloud nine.

Man, I went to church.

I went to Sunday school.

I even tithed today.

Whoa, man, today's a great day.

I'm gonna go eat some lunch, like lunch, because I'm gonna commit heinous gluttony around the Super Bowl.

You could be on cloud nine, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, this little voice says, Remember 1972?

And you're like, whoa.

Yeah, but I've been going to church for a long time.

Yeah, but remember that first marriage?

Oh, yeah, but God, I mean, I've been trying to do so good.

Remember that visit you made to the clinic and you made the problem go away?

Look at me.

The Bible says never, certainly not, not at all.

God never looks at you and says, Yeah, you're doing good, but I got the bill right here.

That's why the only word David can use to describe this state of being towards God is blessed.

This blessed is a person whose sins are forgiven, whose sin is covered, whose sin will never, certainly not, not at all, by no means be counted.

That's why God says in the Old Testament, in Micah chapter 7, he says, I throw their sin into the sea.

Micah 7 · chapter mention

He says in Psalm 103, verse 12, as far as the east is from the west, that's how far he's removed our transgressions from us.

Psalms 103:12

You don't have to worry that you're gonna stand before God and say, Well, you and I both know that I wasn't perfect, but I did the best I could.

And but you know, but we kind of both know there was a period of time there I kind of fell off the wagon, and I'm sorry for that.

And I worked in the children's ministry and everything to try to pay you back for that, and God's gonna go, I got nothing.

What are you talking about?

Because your sin is never, ever, ever gonna be counted against you.

It's gonna be held up to kind of go, yeah, but I know what you really did.

See, that's what makes God loving you even more mind-blowing, is that he does know.

And he doesn't count it against you.

That's the beauty of the gospel.

Fourthly and finally, when you dig into Romans 4, you see that it's relationship over ritual.

Verse 9, then Paul asks this question Is this blessing, this state of never having your sin loom over you, having it tied to your back like a decaying, rotting corpse?

Is this blessing to be freed, uh uh just just liberated?

Is this blessing then only for the circumcised or also for the uncircumcised?

We say that faith was counted, reckoned, put in Abraham's account as righteousness.

How then was it counted to him?

Was it before or after he had been circumcised?

It was not after, but before he was circumcised.

He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still circumcised.

Let me stop right here.

Some of y'all aren't with me.

How many of y'all are thinking about way back something happened a long time ago?

Put your hand up.

Hold it up.

Real high.

I'm not being funny.

Look at me.

Never means never.

Never.

Ever.

He's never gonna come to you and say, Yeah, but I got the goods on you.

That's not God.

That doesn't have any power over you.

One of my favorite things to do is to go back to my hometown and people come up to me, rednecks that I used to drink beer and race hell with, come up to me and go, Yeah, boy, I tell you what, what are you doing, McClendon?

I'm like, great, here go.

Here comes some story from 1981.

And sure enough, remember that time we got locked up in jail, boy.

That's right.

That's right.

I've been to jail.

I was on probation in the eighth grade.

One night, me and my friends got so hammered drunk, we took the beer bottles off our with the labels off our beer bottles and spelled out bud on the back of my buddy's back window of his truck.

And then the cops pulled us over and we were like, Why are they pulling us over?

And then the guy's like, You boys want to tell us something?

It's cold out here, officer.

I got out, I was so lost my mind.

I was like, if I laid down the ground, will you draw my picture with that chalk?

And I lived in such a small town that the man said to me, You should get back in your truck and follow me to the jail.

And we did.

And like Otis O'Neill Griffin, we just let ourselves in.

And I said, Hey sheriff, is your wife cooking tonight?

Because she sure is a good cook.

How did I know that?

Now look at me.

I'm not bragging about that.

I just believe the gospel that God justifies the ungodly.

I know what it's like to be ungodly, but I also know what it's like to be made right with God, to have it reckoned, counted to me as righteousness.

Why?

Because there was a point where I believed God.

And I stopped trusting in myself.

I stopped trying to do more good things than I did bad things, and I just embraced what a wretch I was.

That's why the love of God never loses its effect on me.

Don't don't let your mind get stuck back there.

Because never means never.

Ever, ever, not gonna be.

You're gonna stand before God and you're gonna be like, oh, well, well, and what's worse than standing before God and fearing what you shouldn't fear is to live from now to then with uncertainty.

Say relationship over ritual.

Let's go back to reading about circumcision.

What do you say, huh?

Verse 11.

He received the sign of circumcision because they're like, hey, well, well, well, I mean, I mean, because the Jewish people who love ritual, they like to say, well, circumcision is that's what made him right with God.

No, no, no.

Circumcision did not confer upon him righteousness, it confirmed that he was right with God.

It's like for us, well, we'll we'll get to that in just a minute.

Look at verse 11.

You still with me?

It says, He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised.

He had faith with God.

He didn't have to go through some ritual to get it.

The purpose was to make him the father of all who believed without being circumcised.

So that people that don't know the rules, that didn't grow up in church, that didn't have church clothes, that didn't know what the Bible said, that didn't own a Bible, they could look at Abraham and kind of go, hey, there's hope for me.

He goes on and says, so that the righteousness would be counted to them as well.

Verse 12, and to make him the father of the circumcised, the Jewish people, the religious people who knew the law.

Make him the father of the circumcised who are, listen to this, not merely circumcised, but also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.

See, that's what I mean when I say not relationship over ritual.

You can't just say, Oh, well, we're circumcised, we're sons of Abraham.

That's why in Matthew 3, John the Baptist is baptizing the Pharisees and the Sadducees come out there, and John says, Who told you to flee from the coming wrath, you brood of vipers?

And John could read their mail.

He knew what they were fixing to say.

They're fixing to pull out their union card and go, We're sons of Abraham.

Checkmate.

Before they could even get the words out, he said, Don't even suppose to say that we are sons of Abraham.

You go forward.

You go and bring forth fruit and keep with repentance, and then I'll baptize you.

Why?

Because you don't need another empty ritual to base your life on.

And it's easy for us to look at the Jews and go, yeah, they think they're sons of Abraham because they're circumcised.

Hey, we live in a world full of people who think they're going to heaven because they were baptized as an infant.

Same ritual thinking.

And if that's if you believe that, and the Bible does not teach that, but if you think you can go to heaven, you can know God because you observe a ritual, then you have no need for Christ.

And that's what Paul is saying.

We love rituals, we love confirmation, we love catechism.

We love to see, see, because here's the deal: it is human nature for us to seek out a ritual that once observed allows us to live like we want.

We love.

And by the way, the baptist is no different.

Well, I prayed the prayer.

I prayed the prayer when I was nine.

I remember it was Easter.

My mom nudged me and said it's time.

And I went forward and the preacher prayed with me, and I got baptized.

What's your life been like since then?

No, pretty much the same person I've always been, but I know I was baptized.

I got a certificate.

No, you got a ritual.

You don't have a relationship.

And Paul is saying to these people in Rome and to these people in Sugarland, hey, it's about a relationship.

It's not a ritual.

Blessings belong in the context of relationship, not some ritual.

Because if you can just observe some ritual, being baptized here, or being baptized as an infant, or going to some class and learning some things about God and filling in some workbooks and go, all right, now I'm in.

Give me the seal of approval.

You have no need of God.

And we love to say, give me a ritual that I can observe, a box I can check, and then I can just go on living like I want.

And that, beloved, is not Christianity.

I'm not disparaging anybody's religious heritage.

I'm just telling you what the Bible says.

And so the question before us today, that's why Abraham says, hey, it's not that you've been circumcised, do you walk in the footsteps of faith?

Do you live like Abram did as a man that had faith and believed God?

And he lived like he did because of his relationship with God.

So the question before us today is do you have a relationship with God?

Stand to your feet if you would.

Hold your hands out and speak a blessing over you.