Promise Believers: Abraham's People Part 2

Last week I gave you all some homework that I don't think I very clearly explained.

So I'm gonna we're gonna go back to that because it's it really is the framework for what we're trying to accomplish here.

This is uh part two, looking at Abraham's life.

Um Promised Believer.

So we're in the middle of this series where we we believe that God's called us to respond to him in faith.

We're followers of Jesus.

If you're not a follower of Jesus, what that means, uh the first step is this response of like, God, I'm believing what you've said about Jesus and what he's done for me.

It's a it's a step of faith.

And there are all these um implications that come from that believing, but we're not just called to believe the gospel to be saved, we are also called to continue walking by faith, to live by faith.

And so there are a lot of people, though, that become Christians and think that the Christian life or being a follower of Jesus means that he saves us, and now in response to that, we're coming to God almost on a daily basis, saying, God, I promise I will try my best for you.

And that's really not what it means to be a Christian.

Us making promises to God about how we're going to perform is not what God is looking to us for tomorrow morning.

Instead, he's looking for us to open up our Bibles and to hear what He has promised to us, what He said He will do for us, what He's gonna do on our behalf.

We're called to be promise believers, not promise makers.

We're believing the promises that God has made for us to live the life that He has authored.

We're looking to integrate our theology into our daily life.

If I could be a part of one thing, one kind of church, it would be a church that doesn't just know how to be followers of Jesus on a Sunday morning, but it knows it's full of people who know how to love Jesus and follow Jesus on a Monday morning, that we would know what it means to be followers of Him when we're living in the midst of our family and we don't feel good, or we're at work and we don't feel good, or we're in our neighborhood and something's not going right, but also when things are going really good, what does it mean to be a follower of Jesus?

That we would integrate our theology into our daily life.

This last week I asked you to consider the fallen condition, the fallen condition.

And um what I meant by that was there were these four specific conditions that it comes from this idea.

Let me show you.

Um well, I don't have it up here, but um in Romans 3.23, which is a verse that you um probably know, it says that all have fallen short of the glory of God.

That's where we get the word fallen, right?

We're fallen in the fact that we're human in the line of Adam.

But I I gave you this list of these four F's last week, the fallen condition.

And the first one is fallen, one's inner tendency towards temptation and evil.

The second one is finite, living with limits of knowledge, understanding, emotional capacity, or physical ability.

The third was fragile, which is not a specific sin committed by us, but having been sinned against or the effects of sin in general by circumstances of living in a fallen world.

And the fourth was faltering.

Faltering between what uh we profess, he or she professes, is true, and what actual living requires of truth.

So these are these are the the four um these are the kind of four conditions of living in a fallen world.

It's not just that we're sinful, it's that people sin against us, or that we're finite, or that we just we can't be what we want to be or what we profess.

And so what I I what I want wanted for us this past week, I guess as I was thinking about it more and reflecting on it, is what I what I want for us is to be able to identify the suffering in our own life and be able to classify it and identify it with one of those four F's.

Maybe you're struggling in a relationship, and it's like, are you struggling in that relationship because of fallenness of some kind of sinful pattern that you walk in, maybe a critical spirit or a bad attitude, or you've slandered the person, and so the um relationship is is breached, or there's a lack of trust because you've been dishonest.

That's the fallenness.

But maybe there's just there's pain in the relationship because they've sinned against you.

And it's not really your fault, it's just that somebody has wronged you.

Or maybe you're in a place where you just like don't know the future, and and you're just feeling your finiteness because you can't see ahead, and it's like, man, I can feel how finite I am, that I'm locked in time, whereas God knows the future.

And maybe that's causing confusion in your life and a sense of anxiety just because it's like I don't know what's ahead.

What I want is for you to be thinking like, what is it that how would I classify my suffering according to these four F's?

And then last week what we talked about was am I trying to run away from my fallen condition?

Am I trying to flee or remedy or fix it by attempting to be good and earn God's favor by doing the law, right?

And so we talked about legalism last week and how the how sometimes followers of Jesus can think that the remedy to their fallen condition is to go and do Moses's law, the Ten Commandments, instead of relying on God's grace, it's a different system.

There's two different systems that are kind of laid out that we see in Scripture.

We see like this legal, this pharisaical legalism, where people are depending on the law and trying to use the law to become righteous and be freed from the fallen condition.

And what Paul is saying in Galatians and pointing back to the life of Abraham and saying, no, no, no, that's not how it works.

What I want for you is to be walking by faith and trusting God for his promises.

And so we talked a little bit about the law, and I'm going to give you a contrast here in a second between the law and the old covenant and the new covenant, so you can kind of see this breakdown.

But I just want you to know this that you're living in a world where you're like, this is not how it's supposed to be.

Because your life, your heart testifies to a good.

Like you see a sunrise, right?

And you're like, that's good.

You have a good relationship and you're like, this is good.

You have success at work and you're like, this is good.

Why can't life always be like that?

Why can't my friendships always be this good?

Why can't my family relationships always be this good?

Why can't I always have this much money in my bank account or be healthy like this?

And people are oftentimes running away from the brokenness in their own relationships or in their life, not just through legalism or trying to be more religious, but sometimes it's through drugs or sometimes it's through career or relationships.

There's all kinds of ways that people are running away from the brokenness of their Monday through Friday, Monday through Saturday, seven days a week, running away and not turning to the resource that God has provided.

And so we're talking about the promises of God and integrating our theology around God's promises.

We're looking at the life of Abraham and saying, I want to be like Abraham, I want to trust God.

Like Abraham trusted in God.

I want to trust the Lord for his promises to be at work in my life.

Here's that chart that I was referring to.

We talked about the old covenant and the new covenant, but there's a bunch of synonyms, okay?

And this is what I want as just kind of let me put on the professor hat for just a second, because I want you as Bible readers to be able to recognize that the Bible is sometimes talking about the old covenant law and new covenant grace, but it uses different words.

So sometimes you hit read old covenant, new covenant, but sometimes you're reading, you see this idea of attempting to be good and earn God's favor by doing Moses' law.

Right?

We hear the word law, and that's synonymous with old covenant, an old covenant relationship with God.

Whereas the new covenant is we're being, we're good because Jesus put away, Jesus put away our guilt on the cross, and we believed in him.

So under the old covenant, it's we're trying, we're working hard to be good by living up to the law.

Under the new covenant, we are good because Jesus put away our guilt on the cross, and we're placing our faith in him.

Old covenant is working to be righteous.

New covenant, righteous by placing our faith in Jesus.

Do you see the contrast there?

Okay, here's the third one.

Legalism versus grace.

This is the idea of being like a Pharisee versus operating according to the system of grace.

The old brother in the prodigal son, right?

The older brother, in the story of the prodigal, he's condemning his brother who received grace, right?

He's like, he didn't do the right thing.

Right?

That's oftentimes kind of this idea of old covenant.

Whereas under the new covenant, you have a son who's forgiven and received back when he returns to his father.

You have kind of this statement, I'm going to be good, a good person by perfectly doing God's commands.

That's old covenant.

Under the new covenant, you have the statement, I am a good person because of Christ's work on my behalf.

Do you see the contrast between the two?

Do you see how that works?

This is what Jesus established.

When we in a few minutes celebrate the Lord's Supper together, and we celebrate who Jesus is and what we did, he enacted this lifestyle for us.

The tomorrow morning, God is not looking at you, waiting for you to make him some new promise and then perform the old covenant on um throughout your day.

Instead, he's looking for you to wake up and say, God, help.

Thank you for Jesus.

Thank you for what he accomplished on my behalf.

I am ready to walk in the grace of the new covenant that he's going to provide me with the ability to do what the day holds.

One last one.

It's this idea of being religious, like, hey, I'm showing up for church, I'm being a religious person, versus an authentic expression of faith in action.

So last week we began to touch on this, and what I want to do is I want to take you back to Galatians chapter 3, starting in verse 10.

Galatians 3 · chapter mention

Galatians 3 verse 10.

Galatians 3:10

Are you there?

Galatians 3, 10 says this for all who rely on the works of the law are under the curse.

Is law old covenant or new covenant?

Old covenant.

For all who rely on the works of the law are under the curse.

In other words, everyone who's trying to do their Christian life according to the old covenant law, they're under the curse.

Why?

Why are they under the curse?

Because if you place yourself under the law, are you able to perfectly do God's law?

No.

And so under that system, you are only cursed.

You're trying, you're trying to be a good person, you're trying to live up to God's standard, but you know, and I know that you can't.

And so, as much as you want to do the law, you're only under a curse because it is written.

Everyone who does not do everything written in the book of the law is cursed.

There it is.

If you don't perfectly do the law, then you're cursed.

Now listen, listen, this doesn't, this isn't just in how we relate to God, but we can relate to one another like this.

You maybe you have a relationship where it's a performance-based relationship.

And all it's doing is it's bringing in a curse to your friendship or to your marriage or to your parenting.

Everyone who does not do everything written in the book of the law is cursed.

It could be that there's relationships that you're instrumental to, where it just feels like this relationship is not going very good.

And it may be because the system is a system of legalism rather than a system of grace.

And there's people around us that do they need more law from us?

Do they need more law?

No.

They need grace, right?

You just think of like the compassion center, and and we got people that are standing two blocks down the street, and we get to the honor of feeding them Tuesdays and Fridays, right?

And if we if we related to them according to the law, we probably could go down that line one by one.

If we were standing in that line, would we deserve that food?

No.

We probably could come up with a reason of like, here, you don't deserve this food because you know if you would have done this, this, and this, then you wouldn't be needing food, right?

But yet, is that how Jesus works with us?

No.

When we wake up tomorrow morning, he's got grace for us.

Grace upon grace upon grace.

He doesn't want to relate to you according to the law.

He doesn't want you to experience that curse of the law.

He wants you to experience his grace.

And then we turn around and we pour out grace upon the people around us.

Oh, that we would be a gracious people.

And then verse 11 says, now it is clear that no one is justified by God before God by the law.

Because the righteous will live by faith.

But we so oftentimes think that God wants us to perform, to be righteous.

Right?

He wants us to kind of measure up, like we talked about last week.

And yet Paul says to this church, now it is clear that no one is justified before God.

No one stands in God's courtroom tomorrow morning or this very moment.

No one standing before God in his courtroom and saying, God, look at all the good stuff that I've done, therefore I'm justified.

Nope, it doesn't work like that.

In God's courtroom, he can look right into our hearts and see the pervasive wickedness of our hearts, our pride, our bad attitudes, our selfishness, and we're guilty before him.

We're not justified.

But instead, there is the righteousness of those who live by faith.

The righteousness of those who live by faith.

But the law is not based on faith.

Instead, the one who does these things will live by them.

The system of law is not based on faith.

Instead, it's transactional.

It's transactional.

Somebody's um vacuuming upstairs.

It's gonna be a very clean floor.

We'll be gracious to them.

The one who does these things will live by them.

Paul, what Paul's trying to do is he's trying to rescue this church from this mistaken way of doing life, trying to earn the favor of God.

They started, remember at the beginning of chapter 3, they had experienced miracles.

They'd experienced the Holy Spirit had worked powerfully in their life when they first believed in Jesus.

But some other group had come in and persuaded them that it wasn't good enough to just believe God's promises, but that they needed to perform the works of the law in order to earn the future blessings of God.

And so the temptation tomorrow morning is to be like, God, I'm gonna earn your favor.

And Paul's like, no, no, no, that's not how it works.

God wants you to live by faith.

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, because it is written, cursed is the one who is hung on a tree.

What God wants is a people who are believing what he has said and done.

People who are living by faith.

We're trusting in Christ who has redeemed us from what?

The curse, right?

He's redeemed us from the curse of the law.

When we stand in God's courtroom this very moment, we are guilty.

You're really a good husband, you're really a good wife, you're really a good parent.

Now, there hopefully are commendable things in the way that we do those things, but we're not perfect before him.

Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, so that we can be counted as righteous before him.

You see, righteousness is the wellspring of God's blessing.

And what we saw through Moses' law is like look, if you do these things and you're obedient, you will be blessed, right?

That's what comes out of the Mosaic law.

If you do these things, you will be blessed.

And yet, if you disobey, you will be cursed.

And all that we see that unfolds through the story of Israel is that they disobey and they keep experiencing the curse of the law.

Look over at Romans 4, 13 and 14.

Something similar.

Do you see this?

For the promise, this is basically the same idea in another letter written by Paul.

For the promise to Abraham, for the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would inherit the world was not through the law, but through the righteousness that comes by faith.

When God came to Abraham and said, Abraham, I'm going to bless you, he didn't make that blessing contingent upon performing the law.

The promise to Abraham or to his descendants that they would inherit the world.

It was not through what?

The law, but it was through the righteousness that comes by.

That's right.

He goes on in verse 14, he says, if those who are of the law are heirs, faith is made empty and the promises nullified.

In other words, if it if the blessing comes through doing the law, then there is no role for faith any longer.

There's no role for faith.

So the question for you and I is how do we want to relate to God?

Do you want to try to stand in God's courtroom on your own two feet and say, look how good I am?

Or do you want to trust in Jesus as the one who already stood in God's courtroom who is credited to your account?

Which one do you want?

Jesus or you?

I'm gonna go with Jesus, right?

Me and Penny, we're gonna be in with it, we're gonna stay with Jesus, right?

What we are hopefully seeing as we go through this study, or the question is this, is Josh, what does this have to do with the promise, the idea of the promises of God or being a promised believer?

And this is it.

We are talking about our interaction with God's promises.

We're hopefully seeing through this this exchange that occurred between God and Abraham.

God made promises to Abraham, and Abraham believed God for those promises.

He believed God.

Abraham was he when God promised him in Genesis 12, I'm gonna make of you a great nation, did Abraham's performance earn that blessing?

What did he do?

What's like the whole second half of Genesis 12 to leave the promise?

Land where he was supposed to be to run away from the famine and lie about his sister or about his wife, saying that she's his sister, and to deceive Pharaoh, right?

Instead, and what is what was it's like Abraham.

God says to Abraham, I'm gonna use you to be a blessing to the nations.

And then he goes and he interacts with the nations within a matter of verses.

And is he a blessing to the nations?

No, he brings a curse on Pharaoh.

Right?

Isn't that crazy?

Like God's like, hey, I want you, a blessing is gonna, and it's like, no, through disobedience, the opposite results.

And yet that does not nullify or put away the work that God wants to do in his life.

Okay, so in the the remaining couple of minutes here in this sermon, I want to talk about what uh Paul continues with with this idea of inheritance in Galatians 3.

Jump over to verse uh Galatians 3.18.

Galatians 3.18 says this.

For if if the inheritance is based on the law, if the inheritance is based on the law, it is no longer based on the promise, but God has graciously given it to Abraham through the promise.

Why?

Why, dear saints, why is he calling this an inheritance?

Why does this idea of inheritance come in here?

The first is that the inheritance implies the concept of family.

Children are first in line to be the heirs.

Second, it implies the concept of an organized and planned endowment.

The parent or grandparent has intentionally designed their will to be executed after their death.

So back here in Galatians 3, he says that there is this inheritance.

If the inheritance is based on the law, it's no longer based on the promise, but God has graciously given it to Abraham.

Why is God talking about an inheritance being given to Abraham after his death?

What's the inheritance that Abraham gets?

He gets the promises of God fulfilled.

Do you see that?

Paul is calling the fulfillment of God's promises in Abraham's life his inheritance.

Isn't that fascinating?

Think about that for a second.

When God says to Abraham, I am going to bring, I'm going to turn you into a great nation, and the nation that comes from you is going to bring about a blessing to the whole world.

When that is fulfilled in Abraham's life, that is called an inheritance.

Now, the lineage of Abraham, they get the promised land, they get this blessing just poured out on their life in an amazing way.

But even more so, they are the line that Jesus comes through, and Jesus brings about the true blessing over the true over the whole world.

And that is this inheritance.

As God is extending himself to you and I in this system of promise and then fulfillment, what you and I are receiving is this idea of inheritance.

When God makes a promise to you and I, and we receive his promise, and it's like manifest in reality, that is our spiritual inheritance.

What was your inheritance this last week?

What was the inheritance that God gave you this last week?

Was he with you?

Did he provide for your needs?

Did he hear your prayers when you prayed?

Did he tell you that he has a plan?

Did he promise you that he would give you wisdom when you ask for it?

All of that is your inheritance.

Now, I don't know what your lineage is.

I don't know if you're like thinking if you have like wealthy parents and you're like, man, you know, this is what I'm going to inherit when my parents pass on.

But I can tell you this tomorrow morning, this very moment, actually, you and I are recipients, we are inheritors, we're heirs of the promises of God because of what Jesus did on our behalf.

And if you have this ability to integrate your theology, your understanding of what Jesus accomplished on the cross into your daily life, and to go back and read what God's promised.

Like just go and read Psalm 21, 121.

I mean, there's enough there to live off of this whole next week.

He's going to protect you, he's going to be with you, he's like, what else was in there?

I mean, there were some good promises in there.

Like you can live off, you can just go and take that stuff to the bank this whole week and inherit the promises of God.

And what God has put on display through Abraham, the reason why the life of Abraham is so potent and why Paul is taking these followers of Jesus and saying, look at Abraham, is because he's a demonstration of what it means to inherit the promises of God.

Let's jump down to the bottom of Galatians 3 because there's a whole section in Galatians 3 where he's looking at um, he's he's talking about the role of the law.

So if you wonder, like, well, why did God even do the law with Moses?

Then read verses 19 through 26 and you'll see kind of Paul work through that and explain it.

But I just, for the sake of this study, I want to look at Galatians 3, 27 through 29.

For those of you who were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ.

For those of you who have been baptized into Christ, if you have placed your faith in Christ and entered the waters of baptism, you're clothed with Christ.

You have this position in Christ.

There's no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, since you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Do you see that the term with Christ, in Christ?

In this next verse, 29, you see he talks about belonging to Christ.

If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, heirs according to the promise.

You belong to Christ.

If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed.

You're of the lineage of Abraham, right?

And heirs.

What's an heir?

Somebody who's in line to receive an inheritance.

You're heirs according to the promise.

You and I are called to be like, kind of like yesterday I went to the farm, right?

And when we went to the farm to go and pick apples, you start out and they give you a bag, right?

And the process of getting the apples is you go to the tree and you pick the apple and you put it in your bag.

And then you get another apple and you pick it off the tree.

Now, to go and get apples, that did not mean that I needed to go to the farm and grip my teeth and produce an apple.

It was literally as simple as like, oh, there's a good one.

Pick it off the tree, put it in my bag.

Oh, there's another good one, pick it off the tree and put it in my bag.

And the way that our life, our Christian life is to work is that we go tomorrow morning.

We get up in the morning and we say, God, I'm gonna give you a little bit of time here this morning.

I'm gonna give your word some time.

I'm gonna read your word, and I'm gonna let you speak to me through your word.

I'm gonna take it in, just like going to the farm, and I'm gonna take these promises and I'm gonna put them in my bag.

I'm gonna just collect these promises and I'm gonna trust in you and the promises that you've made.

He's promised that he will never leave us or forsake us, that he hears us when we pray.

He's promised to give us wisdom.

He's promised to protect us.

He's promised to provide for us.

He's promised that he's gonna give us a future and a hope.

Like we are a wealthy people.

Like that farm had a lot of apples, way more than my bag and about 500 other people could fit into their bags at that one time.

And we still left that farm, and everything that farm closed down at the end of the night, and there's still people going back today for more apples to get more and more and more.

And that is the promises of God.

You this very moment, you are inheritors of this incredible wealth, promise after promise after promise, and we are yet we are dumb enough to wake up tomorrow morning and want to do life on our own, ignorant of the promises of God, trying to solve our own problems and prove to God that we can get our own act together, that we can produce our own righteousness, that we can figure out life on our own, independent.

God, I got it.

And yet God has done all of this work through Jesus Christ so that we can inherit the promises.

Can I close with Hebrews chapter 6, verses 10 through 12?

Hebrews 6:10–12

For God is not unjust, he will not forget your work and the love you demonstrated for his name by serving the saints and by continuing to serve them.

Now we desire each of you to demonstrate the same diligence of the for the full assurance of your hope until the end.

Keep going, keep walking in the grace that God's provided you.

So that you won't become lazy, but will be imitators of those who inherit the promises through faith and perseverance.

You see that?

Keep going, saints.

Keep going in your relationship with the Lord.

It's a perseverance and it's an inheritance of the promises of God.

Jesus died on the cross so that you could be a wealthy person, not monetarily, although that's not a bad thing, but wealthy in terms of the promise and the provision of God.

Like God's grace is that idea.

When Albert prays, he prays, open up heaven.

When God opens up heaven and he pours out things from heaven, it's called grace.

It's patience to work with difficult people.

It's a heart that's overflowing in the context of hatred.

It's forgiveness when people have wronged you.

It's a diligence when you're weary.

It's a perseverance through the hard projects at work and when homework sucks.

Like that is the grace of God in our life.

It's the demonstration of God's power in our life to do real life as he's called us to.

Jesus paid for you and I to live a life with his abundant provision.

I was talking with a guy last Monday.

We were talking about the emotion wheel.

He's in the recovery process, and uh he's in a residential recovery process, and he's doing really good.

And um, one of his classes, they teach there he's they're teaching uh the guys in recovery to identify on an emotion wheel um what emotion they're feeling, right?

Because uh sometimes you just kind of grow up in a family of origin where you just kind of are operating off of emotions and not realizing how much those emotions are dominating um your life.

And addicts uh especially are prone to this.

And so the emotion wheel identifies five emotions surprise, sadness, fear, anger, uh, delight.

That's kind of like the idea.

And then there's subcategories, and it looks like a big giant pie, right?

And I asked him, what's kind of the one on your on that emotion wheel?

What do you identify with most?

He said, frustration.

That's for him, that's kind of like his default emotion that he goes back to.

And for me, it's like different fear or anxiety.

And yet the Lord knows those things about us.

I don't know what you would point to on the emotion wheel, which one you're prone to, but he knows that about us, and Jesus died on the cross so that in our life, he the promises of God meet and integrate in exactly with how we feel and how we're doing life.

And your Christian witness, the idea of conquering and being victorious, flows out of that intersection between your life and what God's provided.

And it's it's for us to respond to the Lord.

And so let's let's pray in closing.

Let's just ask that the Lord would be real in our life, that we go back to Him for the provision.

Lord, you know, you know our weakness.

You know how we are fallen, we're finite, we're fragile, faltering, Lord.

You know the sins that have been committed against us, you know our lack of understanding, not knowing the future.

Sometimes the the future's fuzzy.

Lord, you know that we aspire to great things and then we fail ourselves and our own expectations.

Lord, you love us.

You sent your son to die on the cross for our sins.

We're so grateful for that work.

Lord, we would ask that you would find in us a people that are responding in faith, that we're trusting in you.

Trusting in you today.

Lord, would you work in us and through us?

I pray, Lord, for each person here.

Lord, I know that the Bible and Bible reading can be daunting, but I pray, Lord, that we would be a church where we are learning our Bibles, learning what it says, and that it's a part of our spiritual journey, that we're eating and chewing on your word, and it's affecting who we are.

We may not understand it all, but we're giving it space and place throughout the week this week.

As we come before your table, we are grateful for the sacrifice you made so that we could be in this new covenant relationship with you.

Lord, prepare our hearts, forgive our sins.

We just want to receive from you all that you have for us.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.