First Baptist Church of Crawfordville Florida - Sermons Teaching Preaching Inspiration Help and Hope

Let's open our Bibles to Romans 4:16-22.

Saving faith is rooted in God's grace, it rests on God's promise, it revels in God's glory, and it relies on God's power

Saving faith is rooted in God's grace,not in human performance

If salvation comes to us as a wage that we deserve because of our good works, then it is not by grace, which is undeserved favor

Faith (as opposed to Law or human performance) guarantees the promise of becoming an heir of righteousness by faith

Saving faith rests in God's promise, no matter how unlikely it may seem

Abraham was 99 and Sarah was about 90 and had been barren her whole life - they were past the age of conceiving a child

God changed Abram's name from Abram(exalted father) to Abraham (the father of a multitude)

Paul calls God the one who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist

God's promise of salvation is learned about only in God's word

Saving faith revels in God's glory, not in human effort or willpower

Abraham grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God

Abraham's faith was solidly God-centered

We grow in faith as we grow in our knowledge of the object of our faith

Study God's attributes and ways as revealed in His word

Act in faith and see God’s word and then your faith is strengthened

Saving faith relies on God's power to keep His promise, in spite of human inability

Abraham faced the reality of his and Sarah's complete inability to conceive the promised son

Circumstances often dash our hope, but we fight back with hope

God renewed Abraham's and Sarah's "dead" bodies to produce Isaac, the son of promise

We are justified or declared righteous by faith alone in God's promise, not by any works or merit added to it

Righteousness is credited by faith alone: Romans 3:22, 26, 28, 4:3, 5, 6, 8

Embedded in the fallen human heart is the idea that we can do something to commend ourselves to God

Salvation doesn't come through religious

rituals or the Law, but through God crediting righteousness through faith alone

The blessing of salvation doesn't come through keeping religious rituals, but through God crediting righteousness to us through faith alone (4:9-12)

God credits righteousness to the ungodly sinner who believes in Jesus Christ

Abraham was circumcised 14 years after he believed God in Gen 15:6

The Jews must enter through the gate of Gentile faith apart from circumcision

Religious rituals serve as signs and seals of the reality that comes through faith in Christ

A sign is not the real thing, but it points to the reality

Circumcision, baptism, and the Lord's Supper are all signs

A seal authenticates or attests to the reality of something

Circumcision, baptism, and the Lord's Supper are all seals

Salvation doesn't come through keeping the Law, but through God crediting righteousness to us through faith alone (4:13-15)

If you seek to be justified by keeping the law, you make faith void and you nullify God's promises

If you mix human works with God's grace, then grace is no longer grace

If you seek to be justified by keeping the law, rather than gaining the blessing of salvation, you actually incur God's wrath

There are two and only two possible eternal futures for every person:

Either you are an heir of the world as a true descendant of Abraham (v. 13)

Or you are an heir of wrath as one who sought to be right with God by keeping the Law (v. 15)

IMB Missionary Craig Stewart

Let's open our Bibles to Romans 4:6-8.

The supreme blessing of God forgiving all your sins comes through faith apart from any works

The greatest blessing of all is to have God forgive all your sins

We must feel the heavy burden of our guilt

A guilty conscience is a good thing - it alerts us to a problem

J.C. Ryle: Never does a soul value the gospel medicine until he feels the disease

Forgiveness is the greatest of all blessings

Blessed means happy, especially in the sense of receiving God's favor

Forgiveness doesn't mean the removal of all temporal consequences for our sins

The Bible doesn't talk about forgiving yourself; you need to receive God's forgiveness

Justification means that God credits Christ's righteousness to the guilty sinner and forgives all his sins apart from any good works

Justification means that God credits righteousness to the guilty sinner

To justify is to declare the sinner righteous - it's a judicial act of God

Justification means that God forgives all of the guilty sinner's sins

Positively, God credits the righteousness of Christ to our account

Negatively, God does not credit our sin to our account

Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven (4:7a)

To forgive means to "send away," like the scapegoat in the wilderness

Forgiveness means that God has sent away all of our sins

Blessed are those "whose sins have been covered" (4:7b)

Metaphorically, our sins have been covered by the blood of Jesus

"Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account." (4:8)

God takes our debt of sin off the books

God disciplines us for sins, but we do not need to fear His condemnation

Justification means that God credits Christ's righteousness to the guilty sinner and forgives all his sins apart from any good works

Faith lays hold of what Christ did for us on the cross

To obtain this blessing, we must cease from our own works and believe in God's provision in Christ

The only one God justifies is "the one who does not work"

Genesis 12:1-9

God chose Abram because God chose Abram

God shows his glory by choosing the most unlikely, as no one else could possibly do it apart from a miracle of God.

Abram is called (1-3)

God is calling Abram to leave everything he ever knew

God had already been preparing Abram's path to leave to his father's house, his family, and the land that was his

Abram's obedience was part of God's plan for salvation for humanity

Abram obeys (4-9)

This is a public display of Yahweh worship in a land that it was almost foreign

Moses gives the name of cities to show that this isn't a myth, but rather historical events that took place

Application

We do not deserve salvation

God might call us to do the unfathomable

If God calls us, God is faithful in fulfilling His side of the calling

We MUST be obedient to the calling of God.

Let's open our Bibles to Genesis 22:1-19

Many times we may come to church not out of righteous obedience, but as an obligation to receive a blessing.

I. Abraham is called and obeys (vs. 1-9)

Abraham's obedience is marked by immediacy

Abraham knows what to do because he had done it hundreds of times previously

Abraham expects God to be faithful to His Word (Genesis 12, 15)

Abraham's faithfulness was an example for his son Isaac

II. Abraham was, and will be, provided by God. (vs. 10-19)

God provides a ram

The Lord WILL Provide

Obedience begins today

Let's open our Bibles to Romans 4:1-5.

God justified Abraham by faith alone, not by his works.

Let's open our Bibles to Romans 3:27-34.

Justification by faith alone takes away all grounds for boasting and is the only doctrine that truly establishes God's Law.

Let's open our Bibles to Romans 3:25-26.

1. Jesus' sacrificial death satisfied God's wrath against us.

2. Because God takes sin so seriously, so should we.

3. If Christ offered Himself as the satisfaction of God's wrath against sinners, then any sinner can come to Him and find mercy.

Let's open our Bibles to Romans 3:21-24.