Well, good morning, Englewood. How are you?
Good, not bad. This is an exciting Sunday,
getting to celebrate our graduates this morning.
Some of you, I know maybe guests with us, some of your guests,
because of one of these graduates, you came to be here
for them and support them this morning, I've gotten to meet
some of you. For those of you I didn't get
the opportunity to meet, my name is Dylan Anderson.
I'm a student pastor here at Inglewood.
It's been my pleasure to be able to work with these students over
the last number of years. And man, just super proud of
this praise band, too, leading us in worship.
All of these students are 9th through 12th graders.
Yeah, Drew, who many of you know is the only one that was on the
stage. That's not a 9th through 12th
grader, I feel. I feel that's obvious, and I'll
leave it at that. Love you Drew.
But it is an exciting day for us to be able to celebrate our
seniors. But to be honest with you,
that's not the primary reason why we're here.
And maybe you're a guest with us and you had no idea that we were
celebrating our seniors this morning.
You didn't know that. It's senior celebration Sunday.
And we do. We did celebrate our seniors.
We want to Commission them excited about this transition
time. We want to be there for them and
for their families during this season.
Many of you families went through this last year and so
maybe you can help out with some of the feelings and the emotions
that go along with sending a kid out.
Some of them are sending their first, some of them are sending
their only, some of them are sending their last, and some of
them it's somewhere in between. And so we got parents all over
the board, but it's a big transition point in their lives.
But this morning, we are here for one purpose.
And that's to worship. We talked about 7 essentials of
of a disciple here at Inglewood. And one of those essentials is
to respond in worship with all and surrender.
And that's what we're here to do.
We've been singing songs of praise to God, and we're going
to open his word up and look at His word together here in just a
moment. And if you haven't been here
with us in a little while, we're in the middle of a series that
Pastor John began a number of weeks ago entitled Justified
Walking Step by Step Through the Book of Romans.
And so if you have your Bible, go ahead and open it up to
Romans chapter 4. Pastor John finished up Romans
chapter 3 last week. And so we're going to we're
going to be in Romans chapter 4 together this morning.
And there's a great word in here for our seniors and for their
families, but really for all of us.
And because we're talking about school, let's go back to
elementary school for just a second.
Some of you, that's been a long time ago, but I'm going to help
you. Whenever your teacher asked you
a question. When you were in school, what
were you supposed to do before you answered?
Most of the time. Some of you remember that,
whether you did it or not. So we're going to practice that
a little bit this morning. I'm going to ask you a series of
questions and if you are want to answer affirmatively or if the
answer is yes, if the answer to that question applies to you.
Then I want you to raise your hand.
Let's see if it works. How many of you are alive this
morning? Great.
Want to start at a baseline and just make sure you're you're
tracking OK? Now, how many of you have ever
been broke before? How many of you have ever
desired to live a good or a blessed life?
How many of you have ever wanted to belong somewhere before?
How many of you ever have ever wished that you had really rich
relatives that would leave you a massive.
Inheritance at some point in your life.
Well, I think even if you couldn't identify with all of
those things that at least you've identified with a few of
them. And these are things that Paul
is addressing here with us in Romans chapter 4.
Romans chapter 4 a lot of times gets a lot of Flack because it
can be really deep. Pastor John and I were talking
about it before the 1st service man.
To try to cover a whole chapter of Romans in one sermon is hard
because every one of these verses by itself could be a
whole chapter. And so, but the main theme of
the whole book is justification. It's that we can be justified.
We have a need to be justified, and we can be justified in
Jesus. As Pastor John was finishing up
Romans chapter 3 last week, we were Paul was talking about how
nobody has any room for boasting.
No one group has an advantage over another when it comes to
justification and when it comes to salvation because
justification is available to all But Paul throughout his
ministry. Paul's the one who wrote the
book of Romans, the letter to the church at Rome.
And he was fighting all throughout his ministry with a
group that we refer to as the Judaizers.
And this was a group of people who were mad that all of these
people were coming to Jesus. And they were trying to add
things on to the gospel to get these new Gentile believers, the
ones that were not Jewish background, to try to to try to
look like Jews, to try to fit in with the Jews, to try to abide
by some of the the Jewish law and to say in order to really be
a child of God, in order to really belong, in order to
really be a son of Abraham, you have to be circumcised.
You have to abide by the dietary restrictions.
You got to do all of these other things instead of just believe
in Jesus. But in chapter 4, Paul is going
to show he's going to clarify the good news of the gospel of
Jesus Christ for all people. And he presses back against
these arguments of the Judaizers.
So let's look at Romans chapter 4 together this morning in a
message entitled Jesus Paid it All.
But before we jump in, some of you may have those ESV scripture
journals that Pastor John was talking about that we had at the
bookstore before we started this series.
Pastor John usually preaches out of the English Standard version.
I'll be preaching out of the Christian Standard Bible this
morning. And so if it's a little bit
different than what you've got in front of you, that's why one
of the biggest differences. That you'll notice in this
chapter if you've got the ESV in related instead of the CSB.
Is there's a word that comes up often that we'll talk about that
the CSB translates to credit or credited, that the ESV
translates to count or counted. The words mean the same thing to
similar words. It's just two different
translation choices. So I just want to bring your
attention to that before we start reading the passage
together, but I'm going. To pray for us, and then we're
going to jump right into Romans chapter 4, starting in verse 1.
So let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you so
much for your word. God, thank you for revealing
yourself to us so that we don't have to worry or wonder about
why, why we were created, why we're here, what we're supposed
to be doing, or what's next. Lord, Your word outlines all of
those things, and thank you so much that you have made.
Justification available to anyone who would call upon the
name of Jesus. Lord, there's so many people
here that are justified, that have believed and trusted in
Jesus and that are followers of Him.
And so I pray that this morning as we look at your word
together, that those believers will be challenged, that they
would be encouraged, they would be edified, that they would be
built up. But then also, Lord, if there's
some here and in a crowd this size or even watching online, I
know there's got to be an individual who hears the sound
of my voice who does not yet know you.
Maybe they've heard the name of Jesus, or maybe they've been to
church before. Maybe they've been in church a
lot of their life. Maybe they've read Your word
before, but they don't truly believe in God.
So this morning Lord, would today be the day of salvation
for them. Lord, would you do what only you
can do by the power of Your word?
And Lord, would you remove distractions and by the power of
Your Holy Spirit, help us to focus and help us to learn what
it is that You would have us to learn from Your word in Romans
chapter 4. This morning in Jesus name,
Amen. So Paul here in Romans chapter 4
is going to go all the way back to the Old Testament, and he's
going to argue from the Old Testament that justification is
available to not just the Jews, but to everyone.
And the first argument that Paul's going to address is that
if justification is not by the law and the Jews really have no
reason to boast, then why is Abraham significant?
You'll see on the back of your a worship guy that you got this
morning or if you're following along in the app, they're going
to be 5 questions that we're going to look at together that
Paul addresses. And there's going to, I'm going
to give you the question and then I'm going to give you the
answer to that question. And the first question that Paul
asks is what about Abraham? What is the significance of
Abraham if the Jews really have no advantage or no reason to
boast, and if justification is available to all?
And so let's look at Romans chapter 4, starting in verse
one. What then will we say that
Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh, is
found? If Abraham was justified by
works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.
For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was
credited to him for righteousness.
Now to the one who works, pay is not credited as a gift, but it's
something owed. But to the one who does not
work, but believes on him, who justifies the ungodly, his faith
is credited for righteousness. Now, Abraham is one of the
patriarchs of the Jewish faith. It's held synonymous that if
you're a child of God, that you're a, you're a son of
Abraham. And so Abraham held a high place
in the Jewish religion in the nation of Israel because all of
Israel would come from the line of Abraham.
And so Paul says, you want to talk about justification.
Let's go all the way back to Abraham.
Let's go all the way back and let's see how was Abraham
actually justified? Well, I don't want to assume
that you've been here and you've been following us for the last
number of weeks. And so as we think about this
word justification, it's not one that we use very often in our
daily vocabulary, at least I don't.
But justification is just the act of being declared right or
righteous or in good standing. Just imagine for a moment,
because I know this would not happen to any of you, that
you've gotten pulled over for speeding.
You've been driving a little bit too fast and you see blue lights
in the rearview mirror. You pull over, you roll your
window down, and here walks Gary Wester up beside your driver's
window. Gary says.
Son, you know how? Fast you were going and you,
because you're a follower of Jesus, you're honest and you
tell the truth. Yes, I know how fast I was
going. Here's how fast I was going.
And then the next question he's going to ask is, why were you
going so fast? And then immediately, we're
going to start trying to justify the fact that we just broke the
law. We're going to try to find a
good reason for Gary to just drive off and pretend like this
never happened. And so we might say I just
wouldn't paying attention. Yeah, I just didn't notice I was
going that fast. Or we might say, man, I was, you
know, I was in a hurry. Like, I really had to get
somewhere. I'm running late.
Or, hey, I was just going with the flow of traffic.
Everybody else was doing it. So I just decided just to break
the law. Right, on with them.
Or maybe you're like, man, I really had to go to the bathroom
super fast and I already decided to get there and I was rolling
and you're keeping me from that. So let's get this moving.
But you're immediately going to begin to try to start justifying
your actions. But you cannot change the fact
that you broke the law and that you need to be justified.
You stand in a place where you are guilty, but you need to be
justified for breaking the law. And last week, if you were here,
we looked at Romans chapter 3. Towards the end of it in Romans
chapter 323 tells us that all have sinned and fallen short of
the glory of God. So the reality is that every one
of us is in need of justification because right now
we stand guilty before God, deserving of His wrath, and no
amount of explanations or excuses or perceived good deeds
can change that. We need justification.
The Bible says that Abraham was justified, but how?
Paul goes all the way back to quote Genesis chapter 15 verse 6
where God tells us that Abram believed the Lord and he
credited to him is righteousness. 3 crucial words
in this passage, Belief, credit and righteousness.
We'll talk about belief towards the end, but let's talk about
righteousness first. A couple of weeks ago, at the
beginning of Romans chapter 3, starting in verse nine, look at
what Paul says about our own righteousness.
Romans 3, starting in verse 9. What then?
Are we any better off? Not at all, for we have already
charged that both the Jews and the Greeks are all under sin.
As it is written, there is no one righteous, not even 1.
There is no one who understands. There is no one who seeks God.
All have turned away. All alike have become worthless.
There is no one who does what is good, not even one.
Their throat is an open grave. They deceive with their tongues.
Vipers venom is under their lips.
Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.
Their feet are swift to shed blood.
Ruin and wretchedness are in their paths and the path of
peace they have not known. There is No Fear of God before
their. Eyes.
You may say, man, that's not me. I'm not, I'm not that bad, I'm
not like that. I hear all the time from people
that don't know Jesus, that have a hard time believing that Jesus
is the only way to salvation, that man.
How could God punish all of these good people in the world?
Our culture wants us to think that every person is inherently
or innately good. They want us to see the best in
everyone, but the Bible paints a very different picture for us.
The Bible doesn't tell us that everyone is good.
The Bible tells us that there is no one righteous.
None. Not one.
The prophet of Isaiah uses very strong imagery to get us to see
just how unclean we are. Isaiah chapter 64 verse 6.
All of us have become like something unclean, and all of
our righteousness, our righteous acts are like a polluted
garment. So what Isaiah is saying here is
if you think that you've got your own righteousness, if you
think that you're doing well, man, you're going to church,
you're praying the Lord's Prayer, man, you're doing all of
the things. You're being nice, you're
volunteering in the community, you're kind, you're honest to
the police officer when he pulls you over and you tell him how
fast you're going. You're doing all the things.
Isaiah says. Let me tell you what that's
like. It's like a polluted garment.
The word that he uses here is actually for a garment stained
by a woman's menstrual discharge.
That's how graphic Isaiah is getting to try to get his point
across. He wants to shock his readers
into understanding that you want to do this on your own.
This is what you've got to show to the Lord.
This is what your good works are.
As the old King James says, it's filthy rags.
That's all you have to offer. We are not good according to
God's Word. We need righteousness that is
not our own righteousness. In line with justification is
the state of being right or just or in line with the law.
And in this. Case the law of God you see,
we've all got a debt that we. Cannot pay unless someone puts a
credit on our account. Every time we get to this point
in the year and I'm thinking about graduations, I reflect on
my own time in school and and graduation.
And I graduated and went off to a big state school.
But I grew up really rural, middle of nowhere.
And part of graduation is you have graduation parties and
celebrations. You invite friends, family, you
invite church members to come over.
And a lot of people, they write cards and give you gifts, right?
So for me, when I went off to college, man, I had more money
in my bank account than I'd ever seen before in my life because
of gifts from friends and family members and church members that
had given money. Because back then gift cards
wouldn't weren't as popular as they are now.
And so I went off to college, I had all this money in the bank
and I thought, man, what can I do with this?
And so I started buying stuff for my truck.
I bought an iPod. Some of y'all don't even know
what that is. It's bad whenever I'm so old
that there are people that don't know because I'm still young,
right John? But I partied a lot of that
money away. But where the majority of my
money went is right across from my dorm was a Taco Bell right
across the street. And so man, multiple times a
week we were going across the street back and forth and
getting Taco Bell. Even though we all had money at
the cafeteria, we're spending our own money at the Taco Bell
across the street. And before too long, I logged
into my online banking account and I checked and there's a
there's a dollar amount in there, but there's a little dash
in front of that dollar amount. I'm like, man, what does that
mean? So I go to Taco Bell one night,
go to scan my card, and it doesn't work.
Like what happened? Insufficient funds.
I learned what it meant to overdraft my bank account, but
here I am and freshman in college away from home and I
don't have a job. I'm not working and so I have no
source of income. All that I had was the what was
in the bank and now I have no way to replenish that amount of
money that is now gone that I now owe.
That is a debt. I needed somebody to credit my
account. Paul in Romans chapter 4 verse 4
says now to the one who works, pay is not credited as a gift,
but it's something owed. Those of us who work, who are
employed, who have a job, we work for an agreed amount of
money. And so when payday comes around,
we are owed that money because we have worked for it by our
job. Does that make sense?
Well, where I was, I was not working and in fact I had blown
that money on really dumb things that I didn't have to spend that
money on. And so here I was, in debt, no
way to make income. I needed somebody to credit me
with a gift. So I did what any good freshman
in college would do. I called my mommy.
And it may not be good parenting, but it makes for a
good analogy. My mom and dad loved me so much
that they credited my account and got me out of the negative,
and then very quickly taught me a little bit about money
management. But if my parents hadn't bailed
me out, there was no hope for me getting out of that debt.
But what we learn about Abraham is that the righteousness that
he had was credited to him as a gift because of his belief in
God. He trusted in the Lord, and the
Lord put righteousness on his account that was not his.
He had a debt that needed to be paid that he couldn't pay on his
own. He needed somebody to gift it to
him. He didn't do anything to earn it
or deserve it. It was a credit.
And if you want to talk about what's fair or what we are owed
in this life or what we deserve, just wait a couple of weeks till
we get to Romans chapter 6. Because Romans 623 says that the
wages or the payment or what you are owed is death.
And not just physical death, but what revelation refers to as the
second death, eternal punishment, God's wrath against
your. Sin and mine.
You want life to be fair. That's fair because that's what
we deserve. I for one, am glad that life is
not fair. And that God has credited
righteous righteousness to my account, not because of anything
that I've done other than believe and trust in Jesus.
So true righteousness, Paul answers, only comes by credit.
True righteousness only comes by credit.
Abraham was gifted or credited with righteousness because he
believed in God. After addressing Abraham's
justification by credit Paul, then he brings up David.
Here's David, this other patriarch of the faith.
He was the man after God's own heart.
He was the king through whom which the Messiah, the promised
Savior of God's people, would come.
This Messiah from the Davidic line would sit on the throne of
David for all of eternity. Paul is going back to the
patriarchs of Jewish faith, and it's like, hey, guys.
Let's look at what David has to say now about those who are
credited with righteousness. And so first there's what about
Abraham? And now he says, what about
David? Let's continue in verse 6.
Likewise, David also speaks of the blessing of the person to
whom God credits righteousness apart from works.
Blessed are those whose lawless acts are forgiven and whose sins
are covered. Blessed is the person the Lord
will never charge with sin. You see, I asked you earlier how
many of you wanted to live the good or the blessed life.
I think every one of us would say that, and especially
parents. You say that of your kids, like
I want my kid to live up and have a good, blessed life.
But the problem is I think many of us might have different
definitions of what the good or the blessed life is.
Pew Research did a poll of parents within the United States
back in 2023 and I asked them, what do you envision the good
life? What do you want for your kids?
For your kids that you're raising?
What do you want for the? What is the highest thing that
you want for them 80? 8% of those polled said that
what I want for my kids is financial security.
So it's safe to say that for most of our country, the good
life is financial security. Well, we're one of the
wealthiest nations in all of the world, but we're also one of the
most unhappy. And for a whole bunch of wealthy
people, we sure are a bunch of unhappy people. the United
States has one of the highest rates of suicide among any
developed nation. It's one of the leading causes
of death in the United States, with one person dying by suicide
every 10 minutes. And it reported 12.8 million
people contemplated suicide in 2023 in our country.
If financial security is the key to living the blessed life, then
why are so many people so unhappy?
I'm afraid that we as believers have allowed our culture to
determine what the good and blessed life is and not looked
at Scripture to see what God's Word actually has to say about
what the good and blessed life actually is.
And we look around at the world around us, and we look around at
the people that live in our neighborhood and that we work
with, and we want to fit in with them.
We want to belong with them. We want what they have, and
before too long we find ourselves focused more on what
the world has to say about what the good life is than we do
about what God has to say about what the good life is.
And when we will read the word blessing in Scripture, we
immediately go to earthly blessings and things that we can
see that are tangible. We think of things like the
approval of other people or the balance in our 5O1K or 4 O1 Ki
don't have one of those. I have a four O 3B A4O1K or man.
Maybe it's our car or house or our family or the clubs that
were a part of the sports that we play.
We begin to look at all of these external things as blessings,
but then we turn around and we're living a pretty Dang and
happy life. And So what does God's Word have
to say about what it means to be blessed?
Next week we'll look at Romans chapter 5.
In the 1st 2 verses of Romans chapter 5, Paul writes,
Therefore, since we've been justified by faith, we have
peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
We've also obtained access through him by faith into this
grace in which we stand and we boast in the hope of the glory
of God. You see, what all these people
that are searching for the good life really need is Jesus.
And for those of us that believe and trust in Jesus, we have
available to us because of our justification, a peace that
surpasses all understanding and a hope for a future beyond this
place. If you want to talk about what
the good and the blessed life is, it's having peace and hope
because that's what everybody's looking for.
And the financial security is what they think is going to
bring that. They think, man, if I just get
my money in order, if I just get things in order, if my kid just
has a good education and a good job and their finances there are
in order, then they'll be at peace and they'll have hope for
a future because they got a nest egg.
But what happens if Iran starts dropping bombs on us?
What happens when the stock market crashes?
What happens when you lose your job?
What happens when you don't have that income anymore?
Then what is the good and blessed life?
We've got to ask man, where are we looking for peace and where
are we looking for hope? Because God's Word teaches us
where it comes from. True blessedness is not earned,
it only comes by credit. When we believe and trust in
Jesus and God credits righteousness to us and we are
justified, we also get the blessings that come along with
that. And so you want to know what the
true good life actually is? It's believing and trusting in
Jesus and living your life in the way that you were created
and called. To and then the peace and hope
that you've so desperately been searching for is there.
True blessedness only comes by credit.
It only comes to the one who the Lord will not charge with sin,
as David says, and it comes with peace and hope.
True blessedness is not found in the approval of others or in
financial security or anything else that this world has to
offer. It's only found in the
righteousness that comes through Jesus.
That blessedness only becomes by credit.
It can't be earned. But then you've got these
Judaizers, these people that are trying to convince these Gentile
believers that they have to do all of these other things.
You see, the Gentiles just wanted to belong, man.
They wanted to be a child of God.
They wanted to be a part of the Kingdom.
They wanted a piece of the pie. They wanted to believe in Jesus
and to be called a child of God and a child of Abraham.
And the Judaizers are trying to build the wall high and they're
trying to Add all these things onto the gospel.
They're trying to Add all of these barriers to belonging.
They're trying to tell them, hey, you got to be circumcised,
you got to live by the dietary restrictions.
You got to come worship at the synagogue.
They're adding all of these other things, you see, every one
of us have. Has an innate desire within us
to belong somewhere. And the Gentiles just wanted to
belong, man. They wanted to be a part of the
Kingdom. Paul hits this argument head on,
says, man, you want to talk about barriers?
Let's go back and look at Abraham.
Let's go back and look at him again and look at his
justification. And so the third question is,
what about circumcision starting in verse 9?
Is this blessing then only for the circumcised, or is it also
for the uncircumcised? For we say faith was credited to
Abraham for righteousness. In what way then was it credited
while he was circumcised or uncircumcised?
It was not while he was circumcised, but uncircumcised.
And he received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the
righteousness that he had by faith while he was still
uncircumcised. This was to make him the father
of all who believe but are not circumcised, so that the
righteousness may be credited to them also.
And he became the father of the circumcised who are not only
circumcised, but also following the footsteps of the faith of
our father Abraham had while he was still uncircumcised.
You see, we've all got that innate desire to belong, but for
so many of us, that desire is misplaced and we begin to look
for belonging in communities we should never desire to belong
into in the first place. I tell our students all the
time, when you go off to college, some of the first
people that you meet and start interacting with are the ones
that are going to set the trajectory for the rest of your
time in college most of the time.
Statistically, that's true because the first people you
meet when you're in a new place, what do you want?
You want approval. You want to belong.
You want those people to like you.
You want friends and so the first people that you meet and
you start trying to find that community with.
You start trying to find that belonging with.
When I went off to college, I got.
Put in the athletes dorm and all the guys that were right around
me, we're all part of the football team and so I
immediately wanted to start fitting in with the football
players. Well then, down the hall, we're
all the frat. Guys and so between the football
guys and the frat guys, I wanted to belong.
I didn't want to be the odd man out.
I didn't want to be the only guy on the hallway that wasn't going
to parties and doing all the things that they were doing.
I wanted to fit in. Had a misplaced.
Desire for longing that caused me to compromise my integrity.
But you see, this isn't just a problem for our teenagers.
Parents, grandparents, if we'll be honest, every one of us have
desired to be accepted and belong in the communities that
we don't have any business being in or that are not the most
important. You see, I'm so.
Afraid that there are believers that care way more about fitting
in with the travel ball parents or the Dance Moms then they do
about fitting in and belonging in the body of Christ.
And so it changes the way that we make decisions.
These things are not inherently bad things, but when we got too
much of a bad thing or we are a good thing, it becomes a bad
thing. Austin Smith gave me a cookout
hat right before the service for my birthday.
I love cookout, but if I eat too many cookout milkshakes, it's
going to be a problem. Too much of a good thing is a
bad thing. And so if we begin to place our
desire for belonging in these external communities above the
body of Christ, then we're going to begin to suffer.
The church is going to begin to suffer.
You see, I long for the day that we care more about whether our
nursery is fully staffed then we do about the roster on our
child's softball team. Because we got a bunch of people
around here that are working in four or five different
ministries killing themselves when there are other members of
the body of Christ that are not fully fulfilling what God has
called them to. And so many people are searching
for belonging outside of here when God would say if you.
Believe and trust in me. You already belong in the only
community that's going to last. Eternal you're.
Already a part. Of the body of Christ, you're
already been grafted in, you're already a child of God, you're
already a child of Abraham. He says, hey, you want to talk
about Abraham? You want to say that
circumcision, that you've got to be circumcised in order to be a
part of this community. When Abraham was justified, it
was over 10 years before his circumcision.
And so stop trying to put these external barriers on to the
gospel. Have the faith of Abraham,
believe God and it will be credited to you as
righteousness. All of these other things are
just noise. In Genesis chapter 17 verse 11,
Paul and back in the book of Genesis referred to circumcision
as a sign or a seal. Circumcision was not required to
gain the credit of righteousness.
Abraham. Believed God and it was credited
to him as righteousness. Not Abraham was circumcised then
it was credited to him as righteousness, Circumcision.
Circumcision was an outward sign of the righteousness that
Abraham already had. But throughout the Scriptures it
points forward to a time where there would be an internal sign
and seal. And instead of an external sign
and seal for faith, in Deuteronomy chapter 30, verse 6,
it says the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the
hearts of your descendants, and you will love him with all of
your heart and with all of your soul so that you will live.
The circumcision of the heart or the inward sign and seal of the
righteousness credited by God to those who believe was fulfilled
at the coming of the Holy Spirit.
Paul writes to the Ephesians in Ephesians chapter one, verse 13
in him that's in Jesus. You were sealed with the
promised Holy Spirit when you heard the word of truth, the
gospel of your salvation, and when you believed.
The presence of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer is the
sign and seal that your account has been credited with
righteousness. Now, but the Holy Spirit is an
inward sign and seal, but it's an inward sign and seal that
should have external realities. If we truly believe in God, if
we truly believe the gospel and we have His Holy Spirit living
inside of us, then there should be evidences, there should be
fruit of that bore out in our lives.
Now those evidences, those fruits, those works, they don't
add anything to the righteousness because it's not
our righteousness to begin with. It's Jesus that was given to us.
And so it's not the works that somehow add something on to the
righteousness. It's an outworking of the belief
that brings the righteousness. And so true belonging is
something that comes by credit. It's something that's given to
us. It's not something that can be
earned. You may be here and you may not
be a follower of Jesus. You may have been coming and
thinking, man, this place is weird.
These people are weird. It feels uncomfortable.
Every time I come here, it's because you don't belong yet.
It's because you've not placed your faith and your hope and
your trust in Jesus yet for your salvation.
You're not a part of the family yet, but that can change today.
If you put your faith in Jesus, if you believe God in the way
that Abraham did, he will credit righteousness to your account.
And you won't just receive the righteousness, but you'll
receive the blessings that come along with it, and you'll also
receive belonging. You'll be a part of the family
and you can quit searching for belonging and all of the other
places that you're trying to find it in your life right now.
And if you're here and you believe in trust in Jesus, and
you've been looking for love and all the wrong places, come.
Back because you belong to God, you belong as a part of his
family. You're a part of the body and
the body needs you way more than those other communities
externally do. And if you'd place the belonging
in the in the community of Christ first, then you can
utilize those other communities for the gospel and the Lord can
use you as a light in these other places that he's sending
you to. So the presence of the Holy
Spirit in the life of a believer is the sign and the seal of New
Testament faith in Christ. I want to know when are we going
to decide that enough is enough and we're not going to care
about the external pressures. We're not going to care what the
parents down the street are doing, but we're going to decide
As for me and my house, we serve the Lord and we're going to care
more about belonging as a part of the body of Christ than we do
about any external pressures that we're getting in the world
around us. I don't care what any of these
other communities are saying or doing.
I belong to Jesus and that's going to impact and influence
the way that I interact with all of these other communities.
And so along with the gift, the sign, and the seal of the Holy
Spirit that's given to us when we believe in trust in Jesus.
The Holy Spirit, Paul says in Ephesians 114, actually
functions also as the down payment of our inheritance.
So what is an inheritance? Traditionally your parents, all
of their assets, all of their resources would be passed down
to their children. That would be the inheritance.
And traditionally there wouldn't be any kind of qualifications or
anything that you would need to receive that inheritance other
than just being a child of your parents.
Now I've realized that there's, there things can work
differently today. There can be stipulation.
Just parents can decide they want to bestow their their
inheritance somewhere else. But traditionally you just got
to be a child. There's nothing that you have to
do to earn it. You just got to be a child.
And what Paul is saying is he's going back and he's looking at
all of these Old Testament evidences and specifically this
time at the promise to Abraham. And he says, hey, all of those
who have been justified, who believe and trust in Jesus,
there's actually a promised inheritance for you that's
coming. And so #4 what about the
promise? Let's keep reading in verse 13.
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.
If those who are of the law are heirs, faith is made empty and
the promise nullified because the law produces wrath.
And where there is no law, there is no transgression.
This is why the promise is by faith, so that it may be
according to grace to guarantee it to all the descendants, not
only those of the law, but also the one who is of Abraham's
faith. He is the Father of us all, as
it is written. I've made you the father of many
nations in the presence of the God in whom he believed, the One
who gives the God who gives life to the dead and calls things
into existence that do not exist.
And so Paul says here that the descendants of Abraham have an
inheritance coming to them, and that inheritance through the
promise is the whole. World Don't matter how rich your
parents are, I promise you, you aren't inheriting the whole
world. There are three aspects of the
promise that God made to Abraham in the Old Testament that are
passed down through his descendants.
First, God promised Abraham that he would make him the father of
many nations. This is fulfilled kind of in
two, in two ways. First of all, he made a great
nation come out of him by ethnic Israel, Abraham.
Israel came from Abraham. A few 100 years later, they're
in captivity and Egypt. And 400 years after that, all of
a sudden this nation that was once just of one family is now
millions and millions and millions of people.
So God made a great nation through Abraham out of one man.
But God doesn't just promise Abraham that he's going to make
him the father of a nation, that he's going to make him a great
nation. He says he's going to make them
the father of many nations. And so if if you go all the way
to the New Testament and go to the book of Matthew and you
track backwards the genealogy of Jesus in the book of Matthew,
Matthew strategically tracks it all the way back to who Abraham
you see by faith. Abraham becomes the father of
many nations because anyone who would choose to believe and
trust in the same God that Abraham believed in now becomes
a child of Abraham because of faith.
And so he's not just the father of the nation of Israel, but
he's the father of all. Who would believe, not just the
father of a great nation, but the father of many nations.
Secondly, God promised Abraham's descendants a promised land.
In Genesis chapter 17, verse 8, he said, God says, and to you
and your future offspring, I will give the land where you are
residing, all the land of Canaan as a permanent possession, and I
will be their God. And so we know throughout
history that Abraham, after Abraham and then the nation of
Israel started to grow. They went into captivity in
Egypt after they came out of Egypt.
God says I'm going to bring you to that promised land.
That I promised to your forefathers to Abraham all of
those number of years ago. They disobey him.
They have to wander in the wilderness for 40 years.
But then after 40 years they're able to enter into the promised
land and take control of the land that God had promised to
Abraham. And so they take the land.
But the the New Testament paints a much bigger picture for us,
way bigger than a small strip of land in the Middle East.
Because you remember what we read from Paul, what was the
inheritance? The whole world.
In Matthew chapter 5 verse 5, when Jesus is preaching the
sermon on the mountain, he's talking about believers.
He says blessed are the humble for they will inherit the earth.
The the New Testament, the Book of Revelation specifically
paints a beautiful picture of us, of Jesus recreating the
whole world of the old passing away in the new coming, a new
inheritance for his people and a new holy city.
In Revelation chapter 21 verses one through 3, we've been
talking about this on Wednesday nights.
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the 1st heaven and
the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.
And I also saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down
from heaven, from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her
husband. Then I heard a.
Loud voice from the throne. Look, God's dwelling is with
humanity and he lives with them. They will be his peoples and God
himself will be with them and will be their God.
We have a promise if we are a child of Abraham by faith that
there's an inheritance coming for us in the future.
That one day all of this is going to pass away, that Jesus
is going to come back, He's going to make all things new and
we get to rule and reign beside of him and his Kingdom over the
whole world for all of eternity. I don't care how good your
inheritance is. God promised Abraham Canaan, and
he promises to all of us the cosmos.
It's not just the strip of land in the Middle East, but it's the
whole world. This is the inheritance that
only comes by credit. It's not something we can earn.
It's not something we can work towards.
But if we have the faith of Abraham and we believe in the
God that Abraham believed in, then we're gifted righteousness
and we're gifted blessedness, and we're gifted belonging and
we're gifted an inheritance, a hope for a future beyond this
place, way better than any financial security that you can
give your descendants. And so there's a promised land,
but then third, there's a promised that all of the
families of the world would be blessed through Abraham.
Genesis chapter 12, Three, God tells Abraham, I will bless
those who bless you. I'll curse anyone who treats you
with condemned, and all the peoples of the earth will be
blessed through you. You see, God from the very
beginning has always had his eyes on the nation's.
We articulate God's mission here as God bringing great glory to
Himself, but us joining Him in redeeming the nation's.
God has always had the desire from the very beginning to
redeem the nation's. We see this through His promise
to Abraham here where God says Abraham.
Through you, one day there's going to be a Messiah that's
going to come, there's going to be a savior that's going to come
for my people. And one day, anyone who believes
and trusts in the same God that you believe and trust in is
going to be blessed and have access to the same inheritance.
That your descendants have, through Jesus, a descendant of
Abraham. All of the families of the earth
can be blessed. But true inheritance only comes
by credit. And so righteousness and thereby
justification, blessedness, belonging, and this promised
inheritance are all only accessible by credit.
So the question becomes. How can I get this credit
applied to my account? I can't call my mommy like I did
in college. She has the same righteousness
that I do. She's holding the same filthy
rags, polluted garments that I am.
And so how do we receive this credit?
Romans chapter 4, starting in 22.
Therefore it was credited to him for righteousness.
Now it was credited to him, was not written for Abraham alone,
but also for us. It will be credited to us who
believe in Him, who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.
He was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our.
Justification. And So what about the credit?
The application of this credit only comes through belief in
God. You see, Abraham believed God
and it was credited to him as righteousness.
We too can receive this credit like Abraham if we believe God.
God tells us in His Word through Jesus, that Jesus is the way,
the truth, and the life, that no one comes to the Father except
through Him and John 14/6. Pastor John on Friday night was
talking to our high school seniors and was telling them,
hey, this is a season of your life where when you go off away
from home, you're often personalizing or finally taking
ownership of your faith because you're not up under your parents
anymore. You're not riding the coattails
of their faith anymore. And so for me, I get to watch
seniors graduate and move on to all kinds of things.
And some of them we don't ever see again.
Some of them never step foot in church again because the rubber
met the road and they were now responsible for their own faith.
And sometimes they realize I didn't have true faith.
I was just going along with what my parents wanted me to do or
what my peers wanted me to do, or I was just I was looking for
belonging and I found a false sense of it around this
community. I didn't truly belong, but I
felt like I did. But what about the faith, The
belief that Abram had in Romans chapter 4, starting in verse 18,
The verses we skipped, says he believed hoping against hope so
that he became the father of many nations according to what
had been spoken. So will your descendants be.
He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body to be
already dead since he was about 100 years old.
And also the deadness of Sarah's womb.
He didn't waver and unbelief at God's promise, but was
strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God because he was
fully convinced that what God had promised he was able to do.
Therefore it was credited to him is righteousness.
True, faith changes things. God told Abraham that he was
going to make him a great nation, but the problem was that
he and his wife were almost 100 years old.
What say his wife had been barren, not able to have a kid?
But Abraham trusted that if God said it, it was going to happen.
That God could do the impossible in his life is.
That the kind of faith that you have, do you trust?
That God can do the impossible? Do you trust that He's actually
in control of your family? Do you realize that you have a
debt that you cannot pay? That you desperately need
righteousness credited to your account?
There was a lady. In 1865, at Monument Street
Baptist Church in Baltimore, MD, her name was Alvina Hall.
She was a member of the choir there at that church.
And on one Sunday morning, she had a hymnal much like the one
that I'm holding in my hand as she was sitting in the choir.
And she was thinking about this debt that had been paid for her
by Christ, and she was captivated by it.
And the Lord began to impress on our heart, on her heart.
Some words that she bent, she began to scribble in the margins
of her hymnal, and she pinned these words that morning.
I hear the Savior say, Thy strength in deed is small child
of weakness. Watch and pray find in me thine
All in all, Lord, now indeed I find thy blood, and thine alone
can change the leper spots and melt the heart of stone.
For nothing good have I whereby Thy grace to claim.
I'll wash my garments white in the blood of Calvary's lamb.
When from my dying bed my ransom soul shall rise.
Then Jesus paid it all shall rend the vaulted skies.
When and when before the throne I stand in him complete, I'll
lay my trophies down all down at Jesus feet.
Miss Hall, after the service was over, kind of partially
embarrassed, walked up to the pastor and said, pastor, I'm
sorry, I wasn't paying attention to your sermon at all.
And he's like, yeah, I'm used to that.
Everybody falls asleep, don't worry about it.
She says, no, I was captivated by what Jesus has done for me.
And I wrote, these words are worth this poem I want you to
take a look at. And she handed him to him.
What Miss Hall didn't know is that earlier in the week the
choir director of the same church had written a musical
refrain that he had entitled All to Christ IO, but he didn't have
words for it yet. And so the pastor took the poem
of the hymnal, He took the the musical score that was sitting
on his desk, and he put the two things together and to his
surprise, they fit perfectly. He called Miss Hall and he
called the choir director and he brought them in that week after
that Sunday service. And he showed them, and as they
were amazed, and as they sit there playing and singing
through those words, they decided that there needed to be
a refrain written. And so that week the three of
them sat down and they wrote the refrain of one of the most
famous and most well sung, well known hymns over the last 100.
Years, Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe sin had left a Crimson
stain. He washed it light as snow.
You see, in just a few moments, we're going to sing the words to
this song. And it's my prayer in my bones
that you can sing Jesus paid it all and that it would be true
for you. Because the reality is every
single one of us have a debt and we're all have to stand before
Jesus one day, holding our polluted garment of our own
righteousness. And some of us, without belief
in God, are going to have to take that polluted garment, and
we're not going to be justified. The only justification is for us
to be able to pay for our sins by bearing the wrath of God
against our sin for the rest of eternity.
But for some of us, not because of anything that we have done,
not because we deserve it, not because we've earned it, but
because we believed in God and it was credited to us as
righteousness, we'll be able to answer.
Jesus paid it all, all to him. Sin had left a Crimson stain,
but Jesus, he washed it white as snow.
If you're here this morning and that's not your refrain of your
life, it can be today. You have a debt that needs to be
paid and all you have to do is believe in God, trust that His
word is true and that Jesus's sacrifice was enough for you.
And then righteousness will be credited to your account.
Those blessings that come along with that will be credited to
your account. That belonging and that and that
inheritance, all of those things will be credited to your
account. And for those of you that are
believers in the room, we need to start living like we have
those things, like we have the righteousness of God in our
life, like we know because God's Word tells us what the good life
actually is. Like we belong to a community
that is eternal. And so however you need to
respond to Jesus this morning, it's my prayer that as we sing
these words that you'll do that. There'll be pastors down front,
there'll be volunteers in our Next Steps room that would love
to be able to have a conversation with you.
You can take the Next Steps card out of the the worship folder.
And you can write, hey, I need to talk to somebody about the
debt that I owe. That Jesus paid, and we'd love
to reach out to you and have a conversation with you about what
it looks like to believe in Jesus.
Let me pray for you. And then we're going to stand
and sing this song together and you respond how you need to.
Heavenly Father, thank you so much for your love for us.
Thank you for this time that we've got to spend together.
Help us not to rush past this moment because no response to
Your Word is a response to Your word.
Help us to respond in the way that we need to, in the way that
You're calling us to. For those in the room that have
a debt that needs to be paid that's not been paid yet, Lord,
would they believe and trust in Jesus this morning for their
salvation? Would they trust that You will
credit them with righteousness and they'll find blessing and
belonging and inheritance that comes with that?
And then for those of us that are followers of Jesus, some of
us have gotten distracted. Some of us have let the world
tell us what the good life, the blessed life is.
Some of us are looking for belonging in communities.
We have no business searching for belonging.
In and we need to refocus this morning.
We need to be reminded that Jesus paid it All in all to him.
Aye, oh so Lord, as we respond in worship this morning, help us
to respond the way that we need to.
In Jesus name, Amen, we stand.