THE FAITH OF OUR FATHER

Bob Bonner
Romans 4:13-25
December 11, 1994

Faith is a very simple thing, yet, it is hard for many to understand. Many people are confused as to what faith is and how it works.

IN our study of the book of Romans, we have been looking at what it takes to become once and for all accepted and approved of by God. In addition, we have seen what it takes to be forgiven by God for our ignoring Him and for Him to forgive us of our sin. In a word, it takes “faith” for these things to be realized in our lives.

But if we don’t understand what “faith” is or how it operates, then we are going to have difficulty applying to our lives, everything we have learned thus far from the book of Romans. It would be like giving a person a car, who never having seen a car before and telling them about all the features of the car, then handing them the keys but never fully explaining to them what the key does or how it works. Faith is the key to everything. So what is “faith”?

Sometimes the best way for us to begin understanding something, is to first understand what it is not. So let’s begin by eliminating some misconceptions as to what faith is. For instance, “faith” is not the same thing as giving mental assent to a truth. Simply believing that something is true does not mean that you are exercising faith. For example, if you are a fireman and you know that the net they tell people to jump into from a two story burning building will safely catch someone, but when you find yourself caught in a fire with no way out but the net, and you refuse to jump into that net, you are not exercising faith. You are merely giving intellectual assent to the delivering safety of that net. So “faith” is not merely mental or intellectual assent of a truth.

Secondly, faith is not merely the feeling of deep confidence that something is true. Faith does not depend upon how one feels.

Furthermore, some believe that faith is a form of self-deception. In other words, if you have faith you have the ability to deny what you know to be true. Or if you have faith, you have the ability to believe what you know is not true. You talk yourself into believing something that you know is not true. People actually do that.

There are a couple of other misconceptions concerning faith that our text for this morning points to.

In Romans 4:13 the apostle Paul, points to Abraham, the “father of our faith”, as an example of what faith is. In doing so, he begins by showing us three things that were not true about faith and were not true about Abraham as it regards his faith. Beginning with verse 13, Paul writes, “For the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would be heir of the world was not through the law, but through the righteousness of faith...”.

God made Abraham several promises, as we saw last week. One was that Abraham would be the father of many nations, but more importantly that he would be the father of all true believers---both Jewish and non-Jewish believers.

That which moved God to make this promise to Abraham was that Abraham had come to realize that there was no moral standard that he could live up to that could earn him God’s approval. Once he realized that, God made Abraham a promise, that if Abraham put his complete trust and confidence in God’s promise then God would take care of Abraham’s sin problem and that He would take care of Abraham’s need to earn God’s approval. God promised Abraham that if he relied on God’s promises, then God would indeed grant Abraham forgiveness and approval.

In turn, Abraham put his trust or his faith in God’s promise, not in his own ability to live up to some moral law or standard. So, we learn from Abraham’s example that faith is not trying to live up to some moral standard to earn God’s approval.

And closely related to this... neither is faith basing one’s approval by God on one’s religious heritage, such as whether you were born into a Christian or Jewish or Muslim household. For the Apostle Paul explains in verses 14-15, “For if those who are of the Law [Jews] are heirs,... [meaning the only heirs to the promises of God made to Abraham, to be made righteous] then faith is made void and the promise in nullified; ...”

If you could earn God’s righteousness or God’s approval simply because you were born into the correct religious heritage--in this case the Jewish heritage--the condition of faith would make no sense. The condition of faith would be made void or would have no point and the promises of God would be worthless.

Paul doesn’t stop there. He goes on to verse 15 and says to the Jew, “For the Law brings wrath,”. What he means by that is being a Jew required that one live up to a rigorous set of religious laws. If you planned to base your approval by God on your ability to live up to those religious laws, like being at the temple at all the correct religious feasts, or offering the correct sacrifice in the correct manner, or your commitment to never violate one dietary law, and then you fail in any one of those religious laws, you will be rejected by God. Why? Because God is a perfect and Holy God, and if you think you can earn the approval of a perfect and holy God based on your own ability to live up to a set of religious practices, even ones prescribed by God, and fail just one time, then you fail completely. It’s either perfection or nothing because a perfect God can’t accept any failure. And failing completely means to be completely rejected by God, which is “God’s wrath.”

Paul completes this thought by stating, “but where there is no law, neither is there violation.” In other words, if I am a non-Jew who never heard of the Jewish dietary Laws and I eat bacon, which was prohibited by the Jewish law, God is not going to hold me accountable for violating a Jewish dietary he had never heard of before. All that the religious law brings to one who is trying to earn God’s approval is more opportunities to lose God’s approval by failing in more known areas.

So, what has Abraham’s life shown us so far? He has shown us that Biblical faith is not our attempt to follow all religious practices, whereby we can earn God’s acceptance. Abraham never earned God’s acceptance by living up to some standard. Abraham didn’t find value and worth from his job or from the approval of his friends and family.

Up to this point, we have seen what faith is not, according to Abraham’s example. Let’s look at verses 16-25, where faith is demonstrated for us. Allow me to begin by first stating a principle, then illustrating, then, we will look back at our text to see this fleshed out in Abraham’s life.

For instance: Today, after this service, I may go out to my car with the utmost faith, that when I get into my car and drive into the street, everything will operate just fine. But it may be that while I was in here teaching someone took off all the lug bolts which hold the wheels on my car. I don’t notice it but with the utmost confidence or faith, I get into my car, drive down the street and the wheels fall off. As a result, I may end up dead--literally killed by faith.

On the other had by the time I get out to my car after this study, I may be worrying as to what dastardly though I had planted in someone’s mind here, so I check out my wheels before I leave. Even after checking out the wheels, I still may be a little timid to drive normally. I know what a treacherous lot you all are, so I drive down the street very slowly for a while. But, if no one has tampered with my car, I am perfectly safe, regardless if I have little faith or a lot of faith because it isn’t so much my faith that needs to be strong for me to travel safely, it is the object of my faith, my car in this instance, that has to be reliable.

It was the same for Abraham. For Abraham, the object of his faith was reliable, it was God. That’s why it didn’t matter as to whether Abraham’s faith was little or big. The question was, how reliable was the object of Abraham’s faith? How reliable was Abraham’s God? What kind of God is He?

Verses 16-17 reveal what kind of God Abraham worshipped. It says, “For this reason {it is} [the promise of God’s gift of righteousness] by faith, that {it might be} in accordance with grace, [a gift not of works or religious heritage or one’s morality] in order that the promise may be certain to all the descendants, not only to those who are of the Law, [again, to the Jews] but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, [meaning to Jews and non-Jews] (as it is written, “A father of many nations have I made you”) in the sight of Him whom he believed, {even} God, who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist.”

The object of Abraham’s faith was His God, in whom Abraham had learned was able to give life to the dead and was able to create out of nothing, things that did not exist.

I believe that Paul wants us to understand a double meaning here, concerning the promise of God giving life to the dead. At the time of this promise that God made to Abraham, that he would finally have children, Abraham was 100 years old. His body was dead in the baby making sense. But if God could give life to his dead child producing ability, then He could give spiritual life or make alive anyone who is spiritually dead.

Furthermore, if God can do that, then God can certainly take a life filled with hardship or tragedy or moral failure, leaving the person physically alive, but spiritually and emotionally dead, hopeless and frustrated and transform that life into one that is spiritually alive, full of hope, purpose and direction.

So the first thing we learn from Abraham is that Biblical faith or Abraham’s faith was placed in his dependable God.

Now let’s go back to verse 16 and look more closely at what Paul wrote concerning true faith, as it was modeled in Abraham. As we look back at this verse, the word used to describe that which Abraham specifically placed his faith was in the word, “promise”.

Can God ever break a promise? Never. Therefore, a promise from God is equal to a fact or as good as a done deal. You can take it to the bank as being the truth. God promised that what we could not do by our own efforts, to earn His approval by living up to some standard, He made possible by believing that Jesus accomplished on the cross for us what we could not accomplish ourselves. By Christ’s death and resurrection, He paid for our sins and made us forever acceptable, approved and pleasing to God. That’s the promise, the truth from God that is dependable. That is the truth that we can have full confidence in. When our faith rests in that truth, it is true Biblical faith. Faith is always based on a fact or promise of God.

Question: Is the fact or promise of God still true even if we have some doubts or questions, or feelings of shame or of being unworthy?

Yes. Because the reality of a fact or promise or truth doesn’t depend upon you, your feelings or the amount of your confidence in that truth. Reality depends upon what God says is the truth.

There are many days that each of us wake up hearing the lie of the evil one that says, “You are really an unworthy person of God’s love. Just remember what you said to your spouse just before you went to bed. What about that person you cheated at work yesterday? How about that exam you cheated on? You really should be ashamed of yourself for calling yourself a Christian.”

Because you may believe those lies and fell unworthy, does that in fact make you unworthy? NO! That which makes you worthy or unworthy has nothing to do with your feelings. Your feelings may lie to you just as often as they tell you the truth. Never, never, never base reality on your feelings! Base your reality on facts. Your feelings are only correct as they line up with the truth that God declares in His word.

Verse 16 tells us something else about the nature of Abraham’s faith. It says, “For this reason {it is} by faith, that {it might be} in accordance with grace.” In other words, biblical faith introduces us to the principle of grace. “Grace” is a word that literally means “gift” or something you can’t earn. It is a word that stands indirect opposition to the word “Law”, because the “law” stresses works, your ability to live up to something or to earn something by following the Las. These two words do not cancel each other out; they simply do two different things. The law shows us how far we fall short. In the end, when we try to live up to the law, it condemns us.

Grace, on the other hand, is being made fully acceptable to God by receiving His acceptance as made possible through Jesus Christ. Later, as we discover in this book, grace further enables us to live as God would have us to live by his resurrection power. It’s God’s riches at Christ’s expense, passed on to us. It is the principle of “all of Him, and none from me”.

In these next verses, 18-20b, Paul point out some obstacles to faith that Abraham and we must overcome, if Biblical faith is going to be realized. Paul says, “In hope against hope he [Abraham] believed, in order that he might become a father of many nations, according to that which had been spoken, so shall your descendants be. And without becoming weak in faith he contemplated his own body, now as good as dead since he was about one hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah’s womb; yet, with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief,...”

Whenever we are called upon to exercise faith, there will always be obstacles. Abraham had to face two horrendous obstacles of faith, in order to trust God. The first is given to us in the first part of verse 18, the obstacle of hopeless circumstances. “In hope [based upon God’s promise] against hope, [as the physical data that Abraham had to work with, his own impotency and his wife’s barren womb] Abraham believed.” [Believed that God would give them a son.]

Birthdays came and went for Abraham---eighty-seven, ninety-two, ninety-five, ninety-nine, and year after year another candle was blown out on his baklava---and then God promised him his son would be born the next year. And through it all he never vacillated. He kept on believing God, even though the odds of reality were that it could never happen. But it did!

I like the way the New International Version translates verse 19. “...without weakening his faith, he faced the facts.” Many of us think that faith is evading the facts---escapism, some kind of dreamy idealism that never looks at facts. It is never that! Abraham looked at the facts and faced them head on. He saw reality, and reality said that this was a hopeless situation. Yet, he looked at the fact of his “dead” body and remembered that he had a God who raises the dead, and chose to believe God, regardless of his feelings or the facts.

The second promise to Abraham’s faith is revealed in verse 20. The promise itself had such staggering unbelievable possibilities that no one, in their right mind could conceive of them as being possible. It was too good to be true... to make him the father of many nations, when he had no children and had so desperately wanted a son for a hundred years; to receive a promise that his spiritual family would be heir of all the world as well as to give him a right standing before God which he knew that he did not deserve and could never earn. That was staggering good news.

Let’s say that you had a horrendous medical bill that ran in the millions of dollars, and I came to you and said, “Somebody came by the church, who heard of your problem and gave me this anonymous cashiers check for a million dollars to pay for all your expenses.” What would be your response? “No way! I don’t deserve this. This is too good to be true!” You might even throw the check away thinking it is a bogus check. it. the $1,000.00 gift check from Jacksonville Chapel.

Like me, Abraham faced a promise that was too good to be true. But because God promised it, Abraham believed it and it came to pass.

In the rest of verse 20, Abraham models for us two other principles about Biblical faith. When Paul states that Abraham “...grew strong in faith, giving glory to God,” Paul is teaching us that faith grows only when it is exercised. Faith is nurtured and cultivated through obedience to what God says. God knows that a consistent response of faith from us is not achieved by one experience we may have with God, no matter how impressive. This was true of Abraham as it was of the whole nation of Israel, as it is true of us. Each of us, regardless of our maturity level in the Lord, when we are squeezed or tested or pressured, we have this ingrained habit that is too near the surface of our being, of squealing like a pig, when times get difficult and we have to trust God.

To often, we ignore God, and take matters into our own hands. Only later, do we learn or our mistake, grow from our mistake and develop in our faith. So that the next time we face a similar situation, we obey or trust God and watch Him deliver. After He does, our faith is strengthened.

Obey God and your faith will grow. Abraham believed God, obeyed and his was strengthened.

One more thing verses 20-22 teaches us about faith it says that Abraham “... grew strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what He had promised, He was able also to perform. Therefore also it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” Abraham’s life teaches us that when true Biblical faith is practiced, the evidence of it ultimately glorifies God, not man. It is God who acts, not man. We rest, by faith in His moving through us to do His will. God therefore is the object of our thanks and glorification.

Finally, we can make one last observation about Biblical faith, in verses 23-25. Paul writes, “Now not for his sake only was it written, that it [righteousness based on faith] was reckoned to him, but for our sake also, to whom it will be reckoned, as those who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, {He} who was delivered up because of our transgressions, and was raised because of our justification.”

We look at Abraham’s faith and think, “Wow! That is extraordinary faith.” But really, Paul says it wasn’t. It was ordinary faith. The faith that anybody can exercise. And when anybody does exercise genuine faith, it becomes an encouragement to others to believe. It can encourage others to put their trust in Jesus Christ or it will encourage those who already know Jesus to continue to trust Him and to walk by faith. The faith of men like John Mitchell, Francis Schaffer, Harry Ironside, Ray Stedman are a tremendous encouragement to me personally. I realize that like these ordinary men, I too can have righteousness. I too, can be a friend of God, used mightily in another’s life. And so can you.

The implications of these verses are numerous. If God is who He says He is, (and He is!), then none of His promises will fail. When they have not yet happened, we can be sure that it is not due to His forgetting us or that our situation is beyond Him. For all of our lip service about trust in God, many of us stifle our growth in faith, when we depend chiefly upon what we can do ourselves. Faith can be stifled when we depend chiefly upon ourselves.

Some of us need to grab a hold of the truth we say we believe and rest in it. Just look at your worry list. How long is it? The length of that list reveals the need for growth in our lives. It reveals that we are taking responsibility for every potential problem that may occur in our lives, rather than turning the end results over to an all protecting and all providing and all loving and wise God.

A second implication that we see from this passage and from Abraham’s life story has to do with when he and Sarah finally had their first son. You remember, Abraham first believed God’s promise, but after a period of not having any children by Sarah, figured that he would help God along, so he had relations with his maid servant and had a child. But that wasn’t what God promised. God promised Abraham would have a son by Sarah.

It was only when he admitted and faced the facts that he and Sarah couldn’t do it, that both their bodies were dead, that God went to work in Sarah’s body and gave to Abraham a son through Sarah. Likewise, it is only when we finally admit we are “dead” (powerless to do God’s work) that God’s power, released by faith, can go to work in our lives.

How do we perceive the object of our faith? Money? Or, personal strengths or capabilities? Or God? Hopefully, it is the God who is known for giving life to dead things and resurrecting dead lives.

How do we perceive the obstacles to our faith? Again, hopefully with realism and reason, weighing human impossibilities against God’s promises found in His word.

What are the objections of our faith? To gain personal comfort or safety? Hopefully not. Hopefully, like Abraham it is to point others to Jesus and to glorify God.

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