Hi and welcome to the Via Zion Sermon Podcast.
We are a local church based here in Chennai, India.
We are so glad you are with us and hope that this will
encourage, inspire and instill fresh faith in you.
We continue our series titled All Roads Lead to Rome, which is
a study in the book of Romans. As we study this letter written
to the Jewish and Gentile believers in the city of Rome,
we ask that you put yourself in their shoes, for our context is
not that different after all. Our hope is that through the
series you would experience the fullness of knowing who God is,
what He did for you through Jesus, and how you can live a
life that honours Him and blesses others.
Hi Church. It's my joy to bring God's word
to you. Today we're going to be looking
at part three of All Roads Lead to Rome.
As you know, we've been looking at the book of Romans.
We're looking at chapter 3, verses 24 onwards today.
And as I was reading these two chapters three and four, one
thing became very obvious to me that, you know, we Christians
should be the most generous people on earth.
You know why? Because so much has been given
to us free of cost, salvation, grace, just, you know, being
redeemed, being justified. We're going to be looking today
a little deeper along these lines.
And if anything, everything has been given to us freely by God
in Christ Jesus. And we need to be living with
our hands open, ready to, you know, do the things God created
us to do, ready to do the things God is calling us into.
And I hope that as we look at today's text, it'll spur you on
to do a greater thing for the Lord.
It will spur you on to actually lean into God and say, God, what
did you create me for? What do you want me to do in
this season? Because that's the purpose of
what we're going to be looking at today.
We're going to be looking at Romans chapter 3, verses 23 to
26. And this is what it says.
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and
all are justified really by His grace through the redemption
that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a
sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of His blood to be
received by faith. He did this to demonstrate His
righteousness, because in His forbearance He had left the sins
committed beforehand unpunished. He did it to demonstrate His
righteousness at the present time so as to be just and the
one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
So it's amazing because the crux of it is this.
We have all sinned. We've all fallen short of the
glory of God. But the beautiful thing is that
we through Jesus have been redeemed.
We through Jesus have been justified.
And you may ask me what does it mean to be justified?
If you were someone like me used to work a lot in Microsoft Word.
There was this command, I think it was control J.
When you press that, it'll align all the words so that the edges
were in a straight line. So you now you have right line,
left aligned and all of that. But back in the day, that's what
we would use. Now what that actually that has
it's, it's kind of, you know, reminiscent of what
justification looks like. Justification is basically you
and me being made right with God.
There's no longer any gaps between you and me.
We are presented and declared as righteous to God.
That is what it looks like to be justified.
He talks about this other word, redemption.
What is redemption? Redemption is nothing but being
bought back. We had been sold over to the
enemy of our souls. We belong to His Kingdom with
the way we lived before. But Jesus with his precious
blood, that was what atoned for us.
Sin made amends, appeased the wrath of God and bought us back.
And that is what redemption is. And here it talks about the
sacrifice of atonement. Atonement is nothing but a price
that is paid to bring us near God.
Again, another word that they use is propitiation.
Basically it is to appease or to reconcile with God.
When we look at what justification is, justification
is basically you and I, because we believed in Jesus, He
declared us as sinless. He said they are washed by the
blood of the Lamb, They are declared clean.
We are declared as righteous and what are the ramifications of
this? How does this work itself out?
Well, we are declared free of sin.
We are accepted by God, We are given eternal life.
And the important thing to remember about justification is
that was given freely. You and I cannot do even a
single work or or a good deed which will earn us
justification. It's so important to remember
that it is completely a gift from God.
It is an act committed by God for us.
No part of justification do we actually have a role to play.
All we have to do is accept Jesus.
All we have to do is believe in on on the name of Jesus and we
will be saved. That's what the word says.
Justification is what God does. It's a legal term.
It's a legal term when the enemy no longer has a hold on us.
He has no legal standpoint on which to accuse us because we
are declared righteous. So if we were to stand in a in a
courtroom where God is is the judge and the accuser, the
prosecutor is the enemy when he tries to accuse us, all that we
need to say is I'm justified. Jesus justifies me.
He's the advocate. He tells the Father they are
with me, he or she is righteous. Can you picture that?
What an amazing thing. When I kept thinking about it, I
couldn't believe that God made it that easy for me and for you
to stand before him today. And so today when we look at
Romans three and four, we're going to look at it with these
lens of what this actually means for us.
When you and I say we are justified, we are justified
because of our faith in Jesus. What does that look like?
So we're going to read Romans chapter 3, verse 28, and then we
want to look at verses 30 and 31 to understand this a bit more.
For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from
the works of the law. Since there's only one God who
will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised
through that same faith, do we then nullify the law by this
faith? Not at all.
Rather, we uphold the law. So basically what Paul is
writing here, when he talks about the circumcised and the
uncircumcised, he's talking with the Jews who had the law.
They had the Mosaic law, they had the Torah, they had all of
the books of the prophets. They had the law spelt out to
them over years. If they still chose to believe
in Jesus, then they were selected.
They were called justified. Now the Gentiles, that's us.
We didn't have the law. We we only came by faith.
And we also are justified by our faith in Christ, which equalizes
all of us. It's amazing.
And what he's trying to explain is it doesn't mean that we
abolish the law just because of our faith.
No, our faith upholds the law. What does this actually mean?
What how do you actually understand that in today's
context? Jesus himself said, if you look
at Matthew chapter 5, verses 17 to 20, he was teaching a a group
of people. He was teaching the disciples.
He was teaching the many multitudes and he was very clear
about saying, do not think that I've come to abolish the law of
the prophets, but I've come to uphold Him, uphold them, to
fulfill them. I want us to look at those
verses it says here Jesus says, do not think that I've come to
abolish the law of the prophets. I've come not come to abolish
them, but to fulfill them. For truly, I tell you, until
heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the
least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the law
until everything is accomplished.
Therefore, anyone who sets aside one of the least of these
commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least
in the Kingdom of heaven. But whoever practices and
teaches these commands will be called great in the Kingdom of
heaven. For I tell you that unless your
righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers
of the law, you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven.
So what Jesus was saying is you cannot live out your faith
without the element of Jesus at the centre of it.
The Pharisees and the Sadducees, the teachers of the law, upheld
the law to to great heights. They would, they followed every
letter of the law. There was no doubts about it,
right? But the problem was it had not
transformed their hearts, which is why Jesus called them like
whitewashed tombs. They were doing the right
things, but they didn't know why they were doing it, and they
were doing it for all the wrong reasons.
Their heart was distant from God, and so God was calling them
to a place of inner transformation.
And that's what he's saying. The Word of God, the living word
of God, was Jesus himself. Had they been reading the Word
of God with a greater understanding, with a greater
love for God, they would have realized when he sent his Son
down that this was what the law and the prophets pointed to.
This was the person. So today it's so important that
we don't get so caught up in only following the letter of the
law that we miss the person of Jesus.
And here Paul is very clear. He says we're not abolishing the
law. Jesus fulfilled it.
You need to believe in Jesus in order for you to be justified.
Obeying the word of God doesn't justify you.
Doing good works does not justify you.
Believing in Jesus justifies you.
That is the important thing. And what does this justification
amount to? Where does it lead?
It leads to this thing called imputed righteousness.
OK. Our faith in Jesus imputes
righteousness to us because we are justified.
We are declared righteous. This declaration of
righteousness over us is nothing that we have done because we
know exactly how unrighteous we are.
But it is an imputed righteousness that is credited
to us. I remember how it says in the
book of Genesis where it says Abraham believed God and it was
credited to him as righteousness.
What does that word mean? So when you understand it, you
look at it in Greek. It's actually logizo Mai.
Logizo Mai appears 40 times in the New Testament and 10 Titans
in this chapter alone. It's very interesting.
It actually means to impute or to pass to one's account
crediting. And basically it's saying you
take inventory and you settle the accounts.
So basically what happened in justification was God in Jesus
took stock of us and settle the accounts once and for all.
We are now made righteous. We are declared to be righteous
in Christ. You and I are righteous because
He has covered us. He has given us his
righteousness. It's an imputed righteousness.
It is not an inherent righteousness.
It is not something we have worked to or received or
deserved completely of God and the case study to understand all
of this, you know, to really put you know, get our teeth into it
is the story of Abraham. And I love that we have this in
in Romans chapter 4 talk so much about Abraham because he is
truly the father of our faith. He's the father of the faith for
those of us who are uncircumcised physically and
those who are circumcised physically because he what his
life demonstrates is faith. He just believed.
He believed in this God. He couldn't see, but he couldn't
hear. He walked with his God where he
led him. He eventually obeyed by
fulfilling the act of circumcision.
So today for both Jews and Gentiles, we look to him.
We look to him for he's not a just an ordinary man.
He's a man that we can look to and learn from.
So we're going to look at this case study of Abraham and
understand how he was justified and called righteous and how
that actually was demonstrated in his life and how it can be
demonstrated in yours, your life and mine.
So often we live in this place of condemnation.
We think, oh, nothing good will happen for me.
I know who I am behind closed doors.
I know what I'm about, but God wants to tell you son, daughter,
you are called righteous When you invited my son into your
life, you are counted as righteous.
The question is if you invited his son into your life.
The second response sometimes we have is one of self
righteousness. I'm better than that person.
Oh, I don't sin like them. I'm better off.
I know God differently. I know God for longer.
I have all these rules that I followed.
That's what makes me righteous. And God today wants to come
bring us to a place of saying like the prophet Isaiah said,
our righteousness is like filthy rags, but the righteousness that
Christ has given us imputed to us is like a rich robe.
It covers us. It it brings us into the throne
room with confidence. And so when we look at Abraham's
life, there are three stages that I want to look at and just
picked three different passages that I want us to look at.
The first passage is Genesis chapter 12 verses one to four,
which is a call of Abraham. And the Lord said to Abraham, Go
from your country, your people, and your father's household to
the land I will show you, I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you. I will make your name great and
you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless
you, and whoever curses you I will curse, and all peoples on
earth will be blessed through you.
So Abraham went as the Lord had told him and Lot went with him.
Abraham was 75 years old when he set out from Haran.
Now this is the start. This is when he was called
Abraham and Sarah with with Lord left Haran and they just kept
following where God LED them. There is no definite map, there
was no destination. He just said come and along the
way they they go through Egypt. There's this tussle where he
actually almost loses Sarah because the Egyptian king wants
Sarah for his own, takes her into the palace.
Somehow they get him out, get her out, follows along.
Lot and him become both wealthy and then the land can't support
them. So they part ways.
Lot picks Sodom and Gomorrah and and Abraham moves in the
opposite direction. Eventually what happens is Lot
and his the whole city that he's in gets kidnapped by rival
kings. And so Abraham is Abraham feels
led to go and actually rescue Lot, rescue the kings of Sodom
and Gomorrah and, you know, restores them.
And, and this part of the, the story ends with, you know, after
that whole battle scene, there is plunder that has that has
been got. And Abraham tides 110th of that
to Melchizedek, a king of Salem, who is with them.
And the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah say, you know what, you
take the plunder, we'll take our people back.
But Abraham tells him, I don't want anything from you.
I don't want it to be said that you guys made me rich.
Because Abraham knew if anyone was going to enlarge him or
extend his territory or give him more, it was the God of heaven.
And God had already begun blessing him so much.
And when this is happening, it's about 11 years from his calling.
God speaks to him again. Genesis chapter 15 verses one to
seven. This is what it says.
After this, the word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision.
Do not be afraid, Abraham, I am your shield, your very great
reward. But Abraham said, sovereign
Lord, what can you give me, since I remain childless and the
one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus.
And Abraham said, you've given me your children, so a servant
in my household will be my heir. Then the word of the Lord came
to him. This man will not be your heir,
but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.
He took him outside and said, look up at the sky, count the
stars, if indeed you can count them.
Then he said so shall your offspring be.
Abraham believed the Lord, and he credited to him as
righteousness. He also said to him, I am the
Lord who brought you out of earth of the Chaldeans to give
you this land, to take possession of it.
And soon after this, after this conversation is beautiful
because God establishes his covenant with Abraham.
He promises on his own name that he will stick to his word.
You know what he does? Abraham is instructed to take
five different animals and, and cut them up, put them on this
altar, keep them, you know, facing each other on this altar.
And he waits. And in the evening, he's had a
terrifying dream. He wakes up and God comes in the
presence of a burning torch and an oven goes through the altar.
And what it actually means is a covenant is actually a cutting
of a covenant where the person, the two people who are who are,
you know, making the covenant together, they are promising to
each other that they will not go back on their word.
And if God himself moved through the altar, it indicates that God
was telling Abraham everything I promised you the countless
number of children that from your own body you will have a
child. All of that is true.
I promise you that I will keep my word.
That was what God was doing. And God has never done that
before where he he actually says, here's my word for it.
Take my word. And the beautiful thing is that
because Abraham believed the next season of his life opened
up. But the interesting thing is
there were there were a lot of vague instructions along the
ways. You will have a child.
It won't be Eliezer. It'll be from your, it'll be
your flesh and blood. So what happens next is Abraham
and Sarah, engineer Ishmael, he's not the promised child.
He's he's a child that was born by planning, by earthly plotting
and planning. And notwithstanding, God still
works, God still does his thing. God still loves them, you know.
And it's amazing because thirteen years later, after
Ishmael is born, Ishmael is now 13 years old.
Abraham is about 99 years old, Sarah is 89.
God appears again, and this is what God says this time He gives
him a word. He changes his name at this
point. Only at this point does he
change his name from Abram to Abraham, exalted father to
father of many nations, from Sarai to Sarah.
He's finally handing over the promise to them, and in
preparation for them, he's changing their identity as well.
He's saying you're no longer Sarai, you're Sarah, no longer
Abram, but you're Abraham. This is what he said Genesis 17
verses one to two. When Abraham was 99 years old,
the Lord appeared to him and said, I am God Almighty, walk
with me, walk before me faithfully and be blameless.
Then I will make my covenant between me and you and will
greatly increase your numbers. It's amazing because right after
this God requires something of Abraham.
He says as a sign of this covenant, you and every male
descendant has to undergo the ritual right of circumcision,
same cutting covenant. The covenant now involved
Abraham's involvement. But if you look at this command
that he makes at the beginning of this chapter, it's obvious
that God had a two pronged approach.
Why he was asking Abraham and his earthly sons and you know,
the men who were, who were in his tribe and his camp, the
workers and everyone, he was calling them to a physical mark
of the covenant, saying, you know what, this you're actually
shedding blood in order to prove that you're in this covenant
with me. He's going a step further and
says, walk blamelessly before me.
He's already showing us an overshadowing or a foreshadowing
of what it looks like to have a circumcised heart.
Walk blameless before me, walk faithfully before me.
And that is what someone who has a circumcised heart walks with.
Our desire every day is to wake up and say, Lord, I want to be
faithful to you today. I want to walk blamelessly.
Even if I mess up, I know your grace will cover me, but help
me. Help me in my weakness.
That is what it's it is. It's a foreshadowing of what it
looks like to have a circumcised heart.
So unbelievably, one year later, like God said, he said, next
year at this time, Sarah will hold her child.
And a year later, Sarah holds Isaac the promised child.
God kept his word, every detail God kept his word and a few
things that I want to leave with you from Abraham and Sarah's
story, which is just an overarching story of all our
stories really the first thing I want you to remember is our
stories are really God's stories they are not about us.
I was recently reading this article where a famous composer,
composer and a He was an orchestra director, I think, not
a composer. He was somebody who conducted
orchestras and they asked him about how instruments were set
and how he put together music. And he said there are two sets
of chairs for the violinists and there's a first chair and
there's a second chair wildness. This first chair wildness play
the melody of the song and the second chair play the harmony
and the harmony is what gives fullness to the orchestra sound.
So they said which is the harder violin to play?
Is it first chair or second chair?
And he said it's always second chair because I can get anyone
who's ready to play first chair. It's a lot more prominent.
But the one it take, it's harder for people to play second
fiddle. And this is the story of our
lives. We very often put God in second
chair. We say, you know what, God, this
is my orchestra, this is my Symphony.
I want you to play second fiddle.
But look at how Abraham's life has been lived.
Romans chapter 4 verses one to three.
It says. So how do we fit what we know of
Abraham, our first father in the faith into this new way of
looking at things? If Abraham by what he did for
God, God, God to approve him, he would certainly have taken
credit for it. But the story we are given is a
God story, not an Abraham story. What we read in Scripture is
Abraham entered into what God was doing for him and that was
the turning point. He trusted God to set him right
instead of trying to be right on his own.
How that translates to us is we are entering into what God has
already done for us. So often we're trying to fit God
into our plans. We are still trying to earn His,
you know, His favour and His his face and his smile on us when he
says I love you so much. You stand righteous before me
because you've accepted Jesus in he entered into what God was
doing for him. Will you enter into what God has
done for you and what God is currently doing for you is
really not your story, it's his story.
Each of us must find our place in God's story.
It's such an important realization because we live in a
world which is so self focused. We're so aware of what our
abilities are, what our weaknesses are, where we need to
fit ourselves. We are groomed like that from
childhood, where our teachers we sent, we are sent for career
counselling by 10th grade. We need to know where we're
headed, what we're going to do. We forget very often that this
is God's story. And each child that is brought
into the world fits the puzzle of God's story.
Each one of us picked the part that we are called and created
to play. So that's the first thing.
All our stories are God's stories.
You need to remember that. Remind yourself about that time
and again. Second thing, the Christian life
is a risky faith embrace. Risky faith embrace.
We talked about a gradient of faith on the 1st Sunday of doing
Romans. We talked about how our faith
keeps growing. But I want to ask you, how risky
is your faith? Are you believing for things
that are way beyond your scope for actually, you know, getting
done? A lot of times we're believing
for things that we can easily get done.
And God's saying, come on, give me a harder thing to, you know,
do for you. I want to do so much, but you're
asking me for this. Why are we not taking risks when
it comes to faith? What has God asked you to do for
his Kingdom that scares the daylights out of you?
That's what a risky faith embrace.
Some of us are so content to live safe.
You, you ask me, I am so risk averse.
I would love to live in a place, do the things that will get no
kind of attention, that will help me merge into backgrounds.
Stay away from anything risky. But God is calling us to not to
stop living so safe. He's like, will you step out of
the boat? The boat is your comfort zone,
but will you take you may you might feel like you're sinking,
but I'm with you. You may feel like this is
totally new. You may feel like you're going
to embarrass yourself, but he's saying I'm with you.
Will you make that risky faith embrace?
Romans 4 verse 12 illustrates this.
It says, and it means further, that Abraham is father of all
people who embrace what God does for them while they are still on
the outs with God as yet I unidentified as gods in an
uncircumcised condition. It is precisely these people in
this condition who are called set right by God and with God.
Abraham is also, of course, father of those who undergone
the religious right of circumcision, not just because
of the ritual, but because they were willing to live in the
risky faith embrace of God's action for them, the way Abraham
lived long before he was marked by circumcision.
I was recently in a theme park with my children and my husband,
and like I said, I'm risk averse.
So I look after all our bags. I usually just have the slushy
in hand and I just sit there. And I study people and a lot of
content for blogs and things is birthed out of these moments
when I'm just sitting there quietly and I'm invariably
seated right below the roller coasters on which my children
are and my husband are rolling around on.
And I was talking to my husband of how I realized what I don't
like about roller coasters. I like the thrill.
I don't mind it, but it's the abject lack of control on a
roller coaster that I hate. So what happened was we were in
this one theme park and my kids convinced me to get on one of
the rides with them. So we, we were standing in this
very long queue for it and just walking through and the kids
started, you know, getting very excitable and the three of them
kept laughing between each other and, you know, pokey nudging
each other. And I'm wondering what's going
on. And then just before we got into
the ride, they laugh and tell me, Mum, this is actually a
scary ride. It's not as simple as we made it
out to be. So good luck.
So we got on the ride and it was ridiculous.
There were so many abrupt twists and turns, drops.
And then at the end, at the end of the ride, we got a picture
of, you know, how the ride actually turned.
You know, the last part of the ride when there's a huge drop,
there's a camera which clicks a picture of you.
And when I looked at the picture, it, it explained what a
risky faith embrace looks like. So the drop is so abrupt and it
was so unexpected. All, all of us were lifted off
our seats and we were thrown down.
You know, we were still in the, in the carriage.
We were safe. We had a safety rod.
Nothing untoward happened, but in the picture, my arms are
tightly clicked, you know, wrapped around Geshom instead of
holding the safety rod. I'm literally choking him.
And even when I look at it now, it makes me laugh because
sometimes our risky faith embrace looks like that.
It looks like you're seated in this roller coaster of life.
You have your UPS, you have your down.
Sometimes their abrupt turns, their backwards slides and all
kinds of things. But as long as you're in this
faith embrace with God, you're holding God for all your worth.
It's OK because where he takes you, he will provide.
He will. He's promised to never leave
you, not forsake you. He's promised to not let your
head be put down in shame. So you cling on to him.
You cling on his promises. You sorted.
And so I want to ask you today, are you in a risky faith embrace
with God, or are you playing it too safe?
Has he been nudging you to do something, to leave a certain
place to, to jump into something new, to take up a new
responsibility, to get into that relationship?
But you've been saying God no. It feels too unsafe.
It feels too new. Maybe it's not for me, maybe
it's for someone else. God is asking, will you step
into that risky faith embrace? The third fact when we look at
Abraham's life is that God's fulfilled promises are a gift.
It's not His obligation to you. He's not obligated to give you
the promises that have been given that to fulfill the
promises that you have claimed for your life.
But it's a gift. And like any gift, it's given at
an opportune time. And like any gift, it will bring
you the greatest joy. And He knows when to give you
that gift. He knows when to unwrap it for
you. He knows how to give it to you.
You may have pictured something about this gift, but He will
give it to you in a way that will blow your mind.
Bottom line is, he's not under any obligation to do so.
He loves to do it is because that's who he is.
He's a promise keeper. He made the promise.
He will keep the promise. That's all.
Romans chapter 4 verses 16. This is why the fulfilment of
God's promise depends entirely on trusting God in His way and
then simply embracing Him and what He does.
God's promise arrives as pure gift.
That's the only way everyone can be sure to get in on it.
Those who keep the religious traditions and those who have
never heard of them. For Abraham is father of us all.
He is not our racial father. That's reading the story
backward. He is our faith father.
God's promise arrives as pure gift.
It is nothing you and I have done right to receive it.
It is God's gift. Many times we go into this place
of disappointment because we think, God, I'm doing everything
in a way I think is right, and yet you have not come through
yet. The promise has not been
fulfilled yet. That promotion hasn't come yet.
That child has not arrived yet. I'm not married, God, why?
I am doing everything in my power to to live in a right way.
But why? And that's when we need to turn
this on its head and realize that God's promises are a gift,
but the fulfilled promise is a gift.
It is not because of anything you or I do.
It is purely a gift. He's not obligated to do what we
ask for Him. Instead, he is faithful to do
what He has promised to do. So how do you and I live this
righteous life now that we know that we, like Abraham, are
justified and declared righteous?
Imputed righteousness. We have been given and assigned
and credited this righteousness not because of anything we have
done, purely because of Jesus. How do you and I live this life?
You can confidently now say I am righteous.
Why? Because of what Jesus did.
But how do we live this righteous life?
First thing is know that God makes somebody's out of
nobodies. When you look at Hebrews Chapter
11, it talks about the Hall of Faith and all these great men
and women in the Bible who lived by faith and who accomplished
great things for the Kingdom of God.
It's very simple. All of them were nobodies.
There was nothing outstanding about them.
They were born into ordinary families, raised by ordinary
parents, but there was something in them which caused them to
lean towards God. And in that moment, faith arose.
And because of that faith, they were called righteous.
They were they were called into greater purposes.
So it's important for us to remember that God is the one who
makes somebodies out of nobodies.
You may be feeling like nobody. You may be saying in my office,
no one knows me. In the school where I teach, I
just fit in with everyone else. I don't stand out.
Or maybe you feel like you've gone through a season of shame,
of disgrace, and you're saying no one even looks at me.
No one turns. God is saying I'm the God who
makes somebody's out of nobody's.
Will You trust me? The righteous life is one which
has lived with this knowledge, knowing that God, I'm ordinary,
I'm almost boring. And yet you can do great things
with me, Lord, You can do something with me.
And it's coming to this place of giving yourself into the
Porter's hands so that he will shape you as he sees fit.
Look at the stories of Gideon and Barack and Moses and David,
ordinary men, shepherds, people who just would be missed by
others. God hand picked them.
God makes somebody's out of nobodies.
And that it'll be important for us to remember that, that when
you look at another person in the body of Christ, remember
that they too are justified. They too are standing righteous
before God and that God can use them.
You may look down on them, but God doesn't.
So it's a wake up call for every one of us.
The second thing, how do we live this, this righteous life, this
imputed righteous life, Dare to trust God to bring something out
of nothing. Many of us right now have
nothing in front of us. We outwork.
Look, we have these jobs, but in terms of passion, in terms of
vision, we don't have much to work with.
It's like feels dead end. Many of us are in marriages
where Vadnais seems to be the theme.
Many of us are are in relationships and friendships
which are going South. And you're thinking there is no
way I can revive this. And I think that's the best
place to come because that is when we come to this God.
And it says this very clearly in the book of Romans chapter 4.
It says more. It says Abraham believed that
God could raise dead things and speak into existence things that
were not. What does that look like?
Only God can create from nothing.
When you look at the creation of the world, Genesis one, it
should blow your mind that from nothing the Spirit of God just
hovered over the waters and from that God spoke into being
everything that was created. You look at the book of
Colossians, Colossians chapter one, it says everything that has
been created came through Christ.
Everything. Just a word.
Today your situation can turn around by just a word from God.
Don't believe people who say you can change.
You can manifest things in your life.
You can change it with your words.
You can't do anything. You and I are not capable of
creating anything. But when we harness the power of
God and we go to God and say, Lord, I know that in this barren
situation, in this dead situation, in this dry season,
only you, only you can breathe something out of nothing.
When we come to this place, we are truly living in the fullness
of that justification with truly living that imputed righteous
life, because I know I can't do anything in this situation, but
God can. And that's important.
Would we trust God like Abraham and Sarah did?
Because it's so important to understand.
And in, I think it's in the book of Hebrews where it says for
Sarah, the way of women, women had ended.
She didn't have a monthly cycle. There was no way to detect if
she had even gotten pregnant. In the message version of Romans
4, it says Abraham in did not look at his impotency.
And that brings me to the Third Point.
Sometimes we look at our in capacity, our inability, and we
write God off as well. But it's important that we focus
on what God has said he would do and not on what we cannot do.
Sometimes the inabilities we have when there are ailments
that hit us out of left, we then we realize our home remedies
aren't working. Our doctors don't know what to
do. Our friends who who have some
knowledge don't know what to do. My parents who could be in the
medical profession don't know how to help me.
I come to this place when I'm at the end of my rope and that's
the best place to remember. God, what did you say?
What did you say you will do? Because it will come to a place
for all of us when we will. Our incapacity, our inability
will be glaring at us straight in our face for a long time.
For a long time I've had a skin ailment where it marked my legs
completely and it came to a place where so many doctors
checked me, so much medication was given, so much was done,
nothing helped. But it's come to a place.
Now where have you completely handed this off to God and said,
God, I'm yours? The doctors don't know what to
do. I don't know what to do.
I don't know if it's food related, environment related, I
don't know. But you know, and so the best
place to come is to focus on what God's and this is what
God's word to me at the beginning of that journey was it
said, I will restore your health and heal all your wounds.
And so I keep going back to that promise and saying, Lord, this
is what you said. I didn't say it, Your word says
it. So I believe it and healing has
happened in Jesus name. I believe this.
I'm still being healed. And so this is the important
thing. We don't focus on our inability,
but we focus on God's infinite ability.
He can do what we cannot imagine.
He can do it in ways we have never been dreamt of.
He can bring the provision through roots you never
anticipated. That is God, and that is what
this righteous life looks like because it is looking at God
through the lens which you've never looked at before.
It is believing that the One who gave His Son for you and who
justified you is capable of carrying you through this life.
That is what it should do. So when you stand before people
and you keep reminding yourself, I am justified, I am righteous,
you're actually saying here, I am only because of faith.
And I will continue to live in this faith.
I will continue to believe these great things about God no matter
what the situation around me looks like.
So even as I close, I want to remind you of this.
God loves you as you are. You know what's and all He loves
us as we are. It's not like he only tolerates
us. You know, when we are clothed
with the the robes of righteousness, it's not true.
He loves us. He loves us all.
But if you want access into the holy of holies, if you want
access into the very presence of God and you want to build your
relationship with him, you need to be saved.
And salvation comes through Jesus.
You have to make the choice. You have to say, Jesus, I invite
you in. You have to invite him in as
Lord and Savior. Because when that happens, this
righteousness I've been talking gets credited to you.
You are justified. You can stand before the Lord in
all honesty, in all openness, You are counted as blameless.
And so it's important to remember that our God is so
holy. He's so just and only the only
person who could appease his wrath was the perfect sacrifice
of Jesus. And because of that, today you
and I have access. So for you and me, access is so
important. We must remember that we stand
righteous. There's nothing to worry about.
Stop discounting yourself. Stop saying I don't want to talk
to God about it. He will not understand.
No, he will understand. But will you take the time to
come into His presence? Maybe you've been condemning
yourself so much because the enemy has put his license saying
he's not going to turn and look at you.
You are such a Sinner. You are beyond hope, but I want
to remind you, you are righteous because you have been justified
and you can stand in that boldness before God today
because of the robe of righteousness.
Jesus talked about this in the parable of the book at the
wedding banquet and that he talks about how all are invited
to this banquet from everywhere. And finally, people are brought
in from the highways and the byways, the by by lanes and all
of that. But there's one person in the
wedding banquet who is not wearing his robe, the wedding
garb. And so the the person in charge
of the banquet says, why is this person coming dressed
insufficiently throw him out. And what he's talking about is
all of us have been invited into a relationship with Jesus For
the ones who refuse and turn away from him, they've refused
the the garment of salvation. They have refused the robe of
righteousness and they will be turned away at eternity.
But the ones who choose Jesus are now clothed with his
righteousness and we have access to God.
We have the gift and the promise of eternity.
As I close I want to read Malachi chapter 3 verses one to
three which says I will send my messenger who will prepare the
way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are
seeking will come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant
whom you desire will come, says the Lord Almighty.
But who can endure the day of his coming?
Who can stand when he appears? But he will be like a refiners
fire or a launderers. So he will sit as a refiner and
purifier silver. He will purify the Levites and
refine them like gold and silver.
Then the Lord will have men who will bring offerings and
righteousness. Why I'm reading this words to
you is because of this. So we stand righteous.
Righteousness has been credited to us thanks to us, thanks to
our faith in Jesus, right? But it doesn't end there.
So we are justified. We stand righteous for all time,
but every single day the Holy Spirit and the Word of God walk
in conjunction to sanctify us. And sanctification is an
everyday process. And every day we are shaped to
the other until eternity, when we're actually being mold,
molded into the image of Christ. So I want you to remember this
justification, which means that you are set as a righteous for
eternity. But sanctification is an
everyday thing where the Holy Spirit has room to work in us
through situations, through the ups and downs of our life.
He works on us so that we grow in holiness, grow in holiness so
that we become more like Jesus. And so I wanted to want to
remind you of this, that this refiner, this launderer soap, it
requires that we submit to God completely.
I love what Eugene Peterson writes.
He says the only thing we can do is submit to the soap and suds,
which means you and I ultimately, now that we know we
are righteous, is that we submit ourselves into the hands of the
refiner and say, here I am, Lord, do with me as you will.
I know that I'm already righteous.
But now I want to grow in holiness.
I want to become more like you. And he begins the cleansing on
us and he works on us and shapes us to be more like Jesus.
So even as we close and as we get into this week, I want to
encourage you that you would live your life confidently
because you are righteous. You have the righteousness of
Christ. You are righteous before God.
That you would live remembering that God makes nobodies
somebodies, that God brings something beautiful out of
nothing, that God will take our inability and turn it into
something beautiful because of His infinite abilities.
If we could remember that we are playing a role in God's story.
It's not our story, it's God's story.
If we will remember that every promise is yes in Amen in Christ
and that God is faithful to give us that promise at the right
time. He's not late, he's right on
time. And that we would remember that
the Christian life is a risky faith.
Embrace that you would stop being so safe and that you would
say, Lord, I'm ready to take that leap of faith.
Help me, here I go. If you can do that, I believe
that you will live this righteous life to the fullest.
Can I just pray for you? Father in heaven, I just thank
you for what you are doing. I thank you Lord, that you call.
Each one of us were chosen, your son Jesus as our Lord to be
righteous. I thank you that we are declared
righteous before you and Father, we come with that boldness
before you today asking that you would work on each one of us.
Lord, I pray where there are areas of darkness, where there
is cloudiness or gloominess, that Father your sunlight would
just come in and shine. Dispel the darkness Lord, set us
free in Jesus name. Father, we pray that as your
spirit and as your word work in us, that God we will be like
clay in the hands of a Potter, that we will be so amicable to
you working on us. Father, I pray for any of us who
are struggling with self righteousness that God, you
would forgive us if we have shown contempt to others, if we
have ridiculed others. Forgive us lot.
Forgive us For those of us who are living in condemnation,
forgive us for that. Father God, we thank you that
you didn't come to condemn us, but to save us.
Father, I pray that in the coming days we will experience
your redemption in our lives. That Lord, things that we
thought the enemy has stolen, you would bless us back with
that. You would buy it back for us.
We believe that you're going to do amazingly more than we could
ask or imagine. I pray right now for every
promise that you have given your children that they will hold on,
they will stay embracing you as they wait for the promise to be
fulfilled. We believe that you will do it
and we thank you for that. In Jesus name I pray, Amen.
Amen. God bless you.
Have an amazing faithful week. Thanks for listening to this
message. We hope you are blessed to hear
more messages like this. Make sure to subscribe and check
out our podcast channel for past episodes.
If you like what you are hearing, consider rating us,
subscribing and even sharing it with friends.
That would really help us. For more content from Via Zion
and to connect with us, go to Via Zion dot in.
Remember, whoever finds Jesus finds life.