Romans four is where we're going.
So this passage is, is really, really.
Interesting.
'cause it, it talks about Abraham and for a lot of us we're like, why in the
world is God talking about Abraham?
Right?
Abraham lived so long ago, I'm not Jewish.
What does it have to do with Abraham?
Why does he have to do with my life?
Why does all that matter?
Well, the, the whole point that this passage is gonna make is that God
has always saved people the same way.
God has always saved people the exact same way from.
The time Adam sinned until you sitting in your seat right now.
God has always saved people the exact same way.
That's our main point tonight.
God has always and only justified people by faith.
Every single person in the whole Old Testament, every single person in
the history of the world is only made right with God is only good enough to
go to heaven if they trust God to give them the righteousness that they need.
Every single person is made right with God the same way.
Every single person throughout all of history who's ever gone to heaven
has gotten there the exact same way.
There's only one way to do it, and that is the way we're gonna talk about that
way that we've been talking about tonight.
Okay.
And so the, the whole reason we're talking about Abraham here is that
the, the Jews, the people that Paul's been talking with for a lot of this
letter, they thought that because they were related to Abraham, right?
If you, you know the song Father Abraham had many sons.
And that in the Old Testament was talking about the people of Israel,
the, the ethnic people of Israel.
Those were Abraham's descendants, Abraham's children.
And you see this a lot in the gospels.
You'll see in your small group questions, we'll read a couple passages like that
where people are arguing with Jesus and they're saying, Jesus, we don't,
we don't need what you're offering because we're children of Abraham.
We're good.
We're righteous.
We're gonna go to heaven.
We're part of God's people because we're related to Abraham.
That's the objection that Paul is trying to overcome here.
That's why we're talking about Abraham.
The Jews thought that their association with Abraham is what made them righteous.
And today there's a lot of other things.
Maybe you're not saying, well, I'm, you know, 2% Jewish, so I must be righteous.
But there's other associations that maybe you think you have that make you
righteous or things that you do that you think, that's why I'm gonna go to heaven.
Or things that you know, or things that you believe or people you're
related to and you think that's why.
God accepts me.
That's why I'm a Christian.
But in fact, there's only one thing that gets anyone into heaven, and that is being
made righteous through faith in Jesus.
So open up if you're not there already, to Romans chapter four.
We're gonna start in verse one.
So last week we talked about how faith kills pride, right?
We talked about how faith removes any ground we have for boasting
in ourselves because faith is the admission that I'm not good enough.
God, you have to make me good enough.
So, verse one, what then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our
forefather, according to the flesh.
So Paul's saying, Paul's Jewish, right?
He's saying, look, what about Abraham?
Right?
Abraham is, is supposedly this, this awesome person.
He's, he's this person that God bless.
So what about him?
He says, well, verse two, if Abraham was justified by works, he has
something to boast about, right?
If Abraham was made righteous with God, if Abraham was accepted by God because of
all the great things he did to follow God.
Then he could boast, right?
He could say, well, look at me.
I deserve it.
I earned this.
I earned this status with God.
But he says that's not the case.
He has something to boast now, but not before God.
Verse three, for what does the scripture say?
Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.
So what Paul is saying is that actually the Old Testament says
the same thing that I'm saying.
The Old Testament says that Abraham was made righteous, not because he was such
a great guy, not because all the things he did for God, but because he believed
God, because he had faith, because he trusted God to give him righteousness.
That's what that word counted means.
It means that you're seen as righteous.
Not.
You actually are righteous.
It's credited to you as righteousness.
He had faith, he trusted God, and that counted as righteousness.
Even though he didn't actually have his own righteousness, that he
could say, God, look at my works.
He couldn't do that, so he had to have faith, and that was
counted him as righteousness.
And then we keep reading.
Now, verse four to the one who works.
His wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due, right?
If you work for something.
You get paid for it, you earn it, you deserve it.
It's due right, but the one who doesn't work but believes in him,
who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.
So you don't work for it, but you get counted, considered as righteous instead.
Remember we talked about a few weeks ago that this was a big problem.
God justifies ungodly people, right?
That God lets sinners into heaven.
God lets people who murder other people into heaven.
God lets people who cheat on their spouse into heaven.
God lets people who cut you off in traffic into heaven.
God lets liars into heaven.
Why?
Why can he do that?
Because he can make them righteous.
He can treat them as righteous.
If they have faith, they get counted as righteous, even though they're not.
And that's how any of us can get to heaven too.
'cause we're in that same category.
We're in this category, we're all in the ungodly category, right?
That's what we've been talking about through Romans.
But the whole point of, of this first paragraph that we're looking at is
that if you worked for it, you would earn it, but you can't work for it.
It's faith, it's a gift, so you can't earn it.
And so if you're out here trying to, trying to deserve something from God.
Then you're going about your relationship with God the wrong way.
If your relationship with God is based on you doing things for God and getting
things back from him, you're going about living for God the wrong way.
You can't earn anything from God 'cause then God would owe you something
and you can't put God in your debt.
Right.
You can't say, I worked for you, God, and now you owe me this.
Instead, you can only receive gifts from God.
That's what we're getting at.
That's our first point.
Don't try to earn righteousness.
Don't try to earn righteousness, right?
You can't work for God and get paid back by being, oh yeah,
you did all these great things.
Great.
You deserve to go to heaven.
That's not how you can get into heaven.
You don't read your Bible enough or stop sinning enough or do enough good
things, or go to church enough or read enough Christian books or share
the gospel enough times, none of that earns you righteousness from God.
You can never do anything that would deserve God to, to pay
you for your righteousness.
Remember we talked about the wages of sin is death.
The payment that that we deserve isn't good things for righteousness.
It's actually punishment for our sin 'cause we're guilty.
The idea of like trying to get God to owe you something, you've probably
never thought about that, right?
You've probably never been like, you know what, I'm gonna do these good
things so that way God can be in my debt and he can owe me something.
But if you wanna think about it in a kind of funny way, trying
to get God to owe you something.
It's kind of like buying an Amazon gift card for this guy,
right?
Imagine that Christmas season's coming up.
You're trying to figure out what to get someone for for Christmas, right?
Imagine if for whatever reason, you know you've got your rich Uncle
Jeff, and you're like, what do I get?
What do I get?
Uncle Jeff for Christmas.
No idea, right?
He owns everything.
Oh, maybe I'll get him.
I don't know if to get him.
I'm not sure what he likes.
Default, right?
If it's a girl, it's a Target gift card.
If it's a guy, it's Amazon gift card, right?
That's just like the default gift.
I don't know you that well.
Here's what I'm gonna get you, right?
If you got an Amazon gift card for Jeff Bezos, he's probably gonna be
like, like, I appreciate it, but I don't really need this, right?
This, you're not really getting me something.
I kind of own this whole company, right?
Like you're not really getting me anything.
It's kinda like that with God if you're trying to, to do something for God so
that he can like pay you back for it.
Does God need you to do anything for him?
No.
Can you like put God in debt?
The fact that, oh, God would have to like now should give you something.
No.
Right.
You, God doesn't, God doesn't become in your service, right?
Because think about it.
When someone owes you something, you, you're, you're
in position over them, right?
You're saying that, oh, they, they need to give me this.
Right?
They're, they're in my debt.
When like, like you work for your, your job, right?
And you, they need to give you your paycheck.
I remember one of you was telling me you had to try to get your paychecks from
your job 'cause they wouldn't pay you.
I was hearing about this a few weeks ago.
That company is in your debt.
They owe you money.
That's not how your relationship with God works.
You don't say, Hey, God, look, I read my Bible every day this week.
Now you owe me this.
That's not how your relationship with God works, if that's how you're going about
your relationship with God, Paul says, you're living by works, not by faith.
You're trying to earn things from God, and that's not the way God's economy works.
We talked about last week, but faith is receiving, right?
Faith is not working or earning.
Faith isn't a transaction with God.
It's not.
I do faith.
He gives me righteousness.
Faith is the helpless posture of I don't have righteousness.
I'm not good enough.
I can't be good enough.
God, you have to do everything.
And so I'm just trusting you and begging you to do this for me.
There's no leverage going on.
It's not God.
I had faith, so you better come through.
You don't have any leverage in this transaction.
Faith is a complete dependence on God, right?
You don't go into to a negotiation with God and say, well, God,
look, I'm putting my faith in you, so you better do this for me.
Faith isn't a work.
Faith is a posture of dependence.
It's saying, God, I need you, not, I'm trying to get something from you.
Right.
We don't, the reason this is hard is because we don't want
to, to need righteousness.
We don't like the idea that I'm not good enough and I need
someone else to help me, right?
Because we're prideful.
And so I think even as a Christian, I know one I was having a conversation
with with someone even a couple of years ago, and I was talking with him
about the fact that I resented the fact that I needed God to forgive me.
I hated being forgiven.
I hated sending, 'cause I hated being forgiven.
It wasn't so much about personally offending God, it was actually about me.
I didn't like the fact that God had to forgive me and that
God had to make me righteous.
Right?
That's a really prideful way to approach your life 'cause that's really about
you and it's not about God, right?
You're, you're trying to get God to make you feel better about yourself.
That's what I was doing.
So maybe that's you.
You don't want to need righteousness, and so that's why faith is so hard for you.
Or maybe it's hard 'cause you want to deserve it.
You want to earn it, you want to say, oh yeah, I, I made
it, I did that, I got that.
That's me.
Like, that's mine.
I worked for that and I earned it because it feels good.
It feels good to say, oh yeah, I earned it.
And that's the problem is that faith is the opposite.
Faith is, I didn't earn this.
It's, it's a gift.
It's grace it.
God gave this to me.
I didn't do anything special to make God do this.
That's how faith works, and that's why faith is hard is
because we're naturally prideful.
We naturally want to earn things and we naturally don't want to
admit that we're not good enough.
And so even though the gospel is very simple, it's very hard, right?
Because righteousness is free, but it's hard to get because it requires humility.
You can't have faith without humbling yourself before God.
You need someone else to do it.
That's what faith says.
Faith says, you have to do it, God, not me.
Right?
Faith says, I don't deserve this, but I need this.
I don't need, right.
I don't, I, I don't deserve righteousness, but I need you, God,
to treat me like I'm righteous.
And that's why it's so hard, even though it's so simple.
It's, it's a free gift of righteousness, but it's so hard to receive.
We're naturally wired as prideful people to say, I want to earn it.
I don't wanna be gifted.
Or even after you become a Christian, maybe now you're trying
to feel like you've earned it.
So faith and earning are opposed to each other, right?
Faith and deserving are opposed to each other, and that's why, like
we talked about last week, faith and pride are opposed to each
other 'cause they, they can't mix.
But in this whole paragraph, it wasn't just Abraham who's
kind of righteous by faith.
Paul also talks about David, and so we'll pick up again in
verse five and we'll keep going.
So verse five again.
So the one who does not work but believes in him, who justifies the ungodly,
his faith is counted as righteousness.
And what Paul's gonna do is gonna say that idea of being counted as righteous.
It's not just something that I made up as a New Testament person, but
it's actually an Old Testament idea, and he goes and he talks about David.
David talks about the blessing of the one to whom God counts
righteousness apart from works.
So this idea that God makes people righteous even though they don't
deserve it, not a New Testament idea, it's an Old Testament idea.
And so he quotes Psalm 32.
Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered.
Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin, right?
You see that?
The idea of being counted as righteous, even though you're
sinner, you're a sinner.
David wrote this psalm after he sinned with Bathsheba, right?
You know this story.
David did all these horrible things, right?
He killed someone.
He lied about it, he tried to cover it up, all these things, and he
didn't really get punished for it.
He kind of did, but not really.
Right.
There's a, there's a meme, you know, the meme up, the guy standing,
like, it's the guy with glasses.
He's saying there looking angry at someone.
I don't, I don't have a picture of it, but there's a, there's a meme that's
like when you, when Uriah sees David in heaven, he's gonna be like, for real.
Like seriously, you did that, right.
If you were Uriah, you would be like, man, I don't know if
God should forgive that guy.
You, but David gets forgiven.
He, he doesn't get treated like he's guilty.
David gets to go to heaven.
His deeds, his lawless deeds are forgiven.
His sins are covered.
He's treated like he's not sinful when he stands.
When David stood before God, after he died and was judged, he
was judged as righteous because.
He had faith in Jesus, not because of anything he did.
David didn't work for his righteousness either.
That's what Paul's point is.
Abraham didn't work for his righteousness.
David didn't work for his righteousness.
It was given to them by God.
So there's two things I want you to see here about forgiveness.
I want you to see that it's a gift and I want you to see that it makes you happy.
That's what blessed means.
Okay?
So point to find happiness in the gift of forgiveness.
So, two things I want you to see about forgiveness.
It's a gift, right?
You, you can't deserve it.
You can't earn it, you can't work for it, and it makes you happy.
So let's focus on the, the gift part first, right?
Gift related to faith, right?
Faith receives things.
Faith doesn't earn things.
You get forgiveness through faith.
That's how you get God to take away your sin.
You trust him and he covers your sin.
He treats you like it didn't happen.
One of the Psalms says that he puts it behind his back and he
doesn't remember it anymore.
God treats you like you never did any of the things that you've done wrong.
That's what forgiveness is, and it's not because of something you did.
It's because it's a gift, and faith is that posture of receiving that
gift, and that's the only way that you can get your sin taken away.
The only way you can get your sin to really actually go away is forgiveness.
Right.
You can't sometimes.
Right.
We rely on time to take away our sin.
Right.
Well, maybe if I just forget about it, maybe if I just wait.
Sometimes even Christians can do this, right?
We can say, oh yeah, I know I sinned.
I don't feel like I can come to God about and talk to him about it right now.
And I feel guilty.
I feel too far from him, so I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna come to come to God.
I'm gonna wait a little bit.
And we kind of wait a few days and then we don't feel as bad, and
now we feel like, oh, I sinned.
It's kind of gone away now that a, according to God, your
sin has not gone away, right?
God doesn't forget about your sin until he forgives you.
That's the only way to get rid of it, right?
You can wait weeks, months, years.
That's not going to really deal with your sin, right?
Time doesn't really get rid of your sin.
Only going to God and asking for forgiveness will.
So even as a Christian, if you, if you sinned, go to God, right?
If, if you are really made righteous by Jesus, waiting two days is not gonna
change your acceptance before God.
You don't feel as bad about it.
Sure, but that's, that's on you.
That's that's not because your sin got any better or worse, go to God right away
with your sin because your righteousness doesn't change if it's in Jesus.
So don't rely on time to take away your sin.
There's other things that you maybe use to take away your sin.
Maybe you try to hide it.
You try to cover it up.
Oh, no one else knows about it.
It's okay.
It's not a big deal.
Maybe you think about you just distract yourself, you hear a
convicting sermon, and you just try to move on with your life.
Play your video games, scroll on your phone, forget about it.
Or maybe you compare.
We talked about this in our small group last night or last week, about how, um,
we make our sin feel not as bad when we look at other people who are worse, right?
We say, oh, well, they're not as bad as that person.
So, and we use that to, to get rid of our sin.
That doesn't really get rid of your sin, right?
It just makes you feel better about it.
But when you stand before God, your sins still gonna be there.
The only way you can get your sin taken away is forgiveness.
God has to forgive you.
The only way you can do that is by faith, right?
It's really hard to get rid of your sin.
The only way you can get rid of your sin is God has to forgive you.
Any other way you use is not gonna work, right?
It's kind of like trying to get rid of.
Skunk spray.
Right.
Have you ever been sprayed by a skunk or someone you know, or
your dog got sprayed by a skunk?
I served at Women's Retreat.
Um, I was doing tech.
I wasn't like at Women's Retreat.
I was just to be clear, um, no, I was, I was helping with the tech team and,
um, my partner in crime showed up on Saturday morning to help with tech and
that morning his dog got sprayed by Skunk.
He walks into the room and everyone is like, is there a skunk?
And he thought, oh, my dog got sprayed.
Not me.
It's okay.
Not, not the case, right?
So literally I felt so bad for him.
Like everyone, as soon as they walk in the room, oh, it smells weird.
Is there a skunk in here?
What?
Like for like probably the first hour of the day everyone's wondering
where the skunk is and it was.
My friend next to me, um, and I got to sat next to him the whole day.
Um, so it was fun.
But people will always tell you, you know, especially at Women's Retreat, right?
There's all these really helpful ladies who will tell you how to
get rid of the skunk smell, right?
All these really helpful people will come up to you and be like,
oh, well have you tried this?
Or, oh, well, when my dog got sprayed by a young, we did this.
And they give you all of these different options, right?
And, you know, you hear about tomato soup or whatever and how
that takes away skunk smell.
I have no idea if that's actually true or not.
Um.
The whole point is that like you could shower, probably
still not gonna go away, right?
You there, there's people will come up to you with all these different options.
How do I get rid of this smell?
What do I do?
It's really hard to get off right?
And if there was one like magic D skunk smell, that would be awesome.
But with sin, there is a sure way to deal with your sin.
Maybe you're out there and you feel so guilty, right?
You, you hate coming to true North because you always feel convicted.
There's that sin that you either just keep going back to you.
Maybe you, maybe you're a Christian.
You, you keep on doing the same sin.
You hate it, you're so guilty about, and you don't wanna tell anyone.
You can get rid of your sin.
You have to come to the light.
You have to confess it and humble yourself and say, God, I'm a sinner.
I'm not gonna hide my sin.
I'm gonna come to the light with my sin, and I'm gonna ask you God to take it away.
I can't get rid of it on my own.
I can't cover it up.
I can't hide it.
I can't distract myself from it.
The only way for you to get rid of your sin is to bring it to God and
have him deal with it on the cross.
One of the reasons we don't like that is because it's a gift, right?
Self-righteousness is the enemy of receiving forgiveness because to
get forgiven, you have to admit that you need it, and that's why we don't
like it, because to get forgiven, we have to say that I messed up.
I'm a sinner, and you have to, to put it all in black and white.
You can't sugarcoat it.
You can't minimize it.
You have to call it like it is.
I'm a sinner.
I deserve God's wrath.
I need forgiveness.
Maybe you just resent the fact that you need forgiveness.
Maybe you were like me a few years ago and you, you don't, you just hate the
fact that you need to be forgiven so much.
That's the sign of a self-righteous heart because you don't like God's grace.
You don't like needing God's grace.
You don't like needing God's forgiveness.
One person.
That I was reading this week.
He said, this is a really good quote, so I thought I'd share it with you.
You'll never celebrate grace as much as you should when you think you're
more righteous than you actually are.
You'll never celebrate grace as much as you should when you think you're more
righteous than you actually are, as long as you have an inflated view of how
righteous you are, you'll never enjoy God's forgiveness as much as you should
because you're always gonna deep down not like the fact that you need grace.
That you need forgiveness.
If you have an inflated view of how righteous you are,
your sense of self-righteousness is actually gonna keep you
from enjoying forgiveness
and enjoying forgiveness is, is where I want you to be.
I don't want you to enjoy sending, I want you to enjoy forgiveness.
Forgiveness makes you happy.
Did you see that in our, in our verses, this word blessed, blessed, it comes up
a lot and that just, that means happy.
It means you're.
Joyful.
And the reason forgiveness makes you happy is not just because you're forgiven.
The reason forgiveness makes you happy is because you get God, right?
If you think about this, let's say, um, you and your best
friend get in an argument, right?
And then you guys hate each other for like a day, and you can't say each other.
You don't wanna be around each other.
Like, why am I friends with the person?
This person's the worst.
You hate each other, you can't do it right.
But it stinks, doesn't it?
You lost your friend there.
You got in an argument.
You've, you're, there's a barrier now, right?
There's this, there's this wall.
You can't talk to them.
You're going through it.
You need to get them back.
You want your friend back.
And so you go to them and you say, Hey, I'm sorry, messed up.
I was a terrible friend.
Please forgive me.
And hopefully, right, they're gracious.
They forgive you.
Guess what?
You have your friend back.
That's the point of forgiveness.
It's not, oh, yeah, now I'm forgiven.
The point is, I got this person back.
The point of forgiveness is you get God.
Forgiveness makes you happy because God makes you happy.
God gives you the most amount of joy for the longest amount of time.
That's what Psalm 16, eight says, at your right hand are pleasures
for evermore, God gives you the most happiness for the longest amount of time.
That's why forgiveness is so awesome.
It's not because now you don't have to go to hell.
It's because you get to, you get Jesus.
And Jesus is where your joy, the most joy is.
Jesus will make you happier than anything else, and that's
why forgiveness is so good.
The unforgiveness.
Sin is a happiness killer because it keeps you from God, right?
Even as a Christian, the reason that that we as Christians want to
grow in holiness is because then we get closer fellowship with God.
You get a closer relationship with God, there's less sin in the way,
so you get to enjoy more of God.
That's why forgiveness for Christians, it's such a big deal.
That's why if you're holding onto sin or you're slow to bring your
sin to God, as a Christian, you're actually making yourself less happy.
You're making your life worse by not bringing your sin to God.
So don't hide.
Don't wait.
Don't try to clean yourself up first.
I'm like, well, maybe I've sinned, but once I start
doing better for a little bit.
Then I can come to God.
That's you relying on yourself.
Come to come to Jesus.
He wants to forgive.
He's ready to forgive.
His death is more than enough to pay for your sin, so don't shy away because
you feel like you're not good enough.
Feeling like you're not good enough is the qualification to coming to Jesus.
If you don't feel like you're good enough to come, that's right where you should
be because that's when you should come.
If you feel like, oh, I deserve this, then you're not ready to come to Jesus yet.
But once you feel like, oh, I don't deserve this, that's when you're ready.
So Paul has been establishing that God has always made people righteous by faith.
Right?
We talked about Abraham.
We talked about David, but one objection that might come up in the Old
Testament is if you were going to follow Yahweh, you needed to join his people.
Right?
In the Old Testament, you think of, um, their conquering the Promised Lamb.
There's Rahab, the Spy, right?
She's from the, um, people in, she's from the, you know, all the, its right.
The Canaanites and the Moabites and the Ammonites and all those,
all the, its, she's one of the, its, she's not an Israelite, right?
She's the other.
Its, and so she has to become part of God's people.
Now.
She can't just, it's like, oh yeah, I follow Yahweh, but I'm
gonna go do my own thing over here.
She has to become part of God's people.
That's what you did in the Old Testament, and the only way to do
that was to become an Israelite and then start obeying the laws, right?
And do all the.
The don't eat this kind of seafood and, and don't eat this animal
with a split hoof and whatever.
You know, all that stuff, right?
That's what you had to do to follow God.
That's what it looked like in the Old Testament.
You had to become part of God's people.
And one of those things, one of those marks of being part of
God's people was circumcision.
And that's why it was such a big deal in the Old Testament and the New Testament.
That's why it comes up so much.
You're like, what's the big deal about this thing?
The whole reason is it was like the marker of God's people.
Kinda like how baptism in the New Testament is the marker of a Christian.
That's, that's how you know someone's a Christian, is they got baptized.
That's their public announcement.
I'm a Christian.
That marker in the Old Testament was circumcision.
So that's why Paul is talking about circumcision here in verse nine.
It's this sign that said, I'm part of God's people.
Okay, so that's to set all this up.
So verse nine is this blessing, right?
Forgiveness.
Is that only for the circumcised, or is it also for the uncircumcised?
Is it only for the people who are visibly associated with God's
people, or is it also for anyone?
Well, faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness, but what someone
might say is, well, that's because Abraham had this promise from God.
He was part of God's people.
And Abraham, that's, that's the first time that, that this
marker was given was to Abraham.
Verse 10.
How then was it count him?
Was it before or after he was circumcised?
It was not after.
So faith Abraham was made righteous by faith before he was visibly
part of God's people, right?
It's kind of like today you trust Jesus and then you get baptized, right?
We ize people who are already part of God's people.
By faith, we don't baptize you, and then you can become
part of God's people, right?
You get baptized and then.
That's after you've already become part of God's people.
So verse 11, Abraham received the sign as a seal of the righteousness that he had
by faith while he was still uncircumcised.
So the big picture here is that Abraham had faith before
the signs of faith showed up.
Abraham had internal trust in God before the external things happened.
And what a lot of these Jews are doing in this that Paul's talking
to is they're saying, well, I have the outward signs, so that must mean
that inwardly I'm right with God.
It'd be like, today you talk to maybe someone and they'll say, well, I was
baptized, so I know I'm a Christian.
That's backward, right?
You become a Christian, then you get baptized.
The baptism, the sign doesn't make you a Christian.
What makes you a Christian is the internal faith.
Then the signs come after.
And so this confusion is what I want you guys to avoid too.
Okay.
So point number three.
Don't confuse faith with signs of faith.
So the people that Paul's writing to, they thought that because they
had the outward signs of being in a relationship with God, that meant that
they definitely were in on the inside.
They were going backward.
They were going outside in, not inside out.
So they confused the outward signs of being part of God's people with
what actually makes someone part of God's people, which is faith.
They'd be like saying, well, I go to church, so it must mean I'm a Christian,
or I read the Bible so it must mean I'm a Christian, or I know that I know
who Jesus is, so I must be a Christian.
Right.
Those are all.
Good signs, but they don't actually necessarily mean that you
definitely are a Christian, because if you don't have faith, you can
still do all those things, right?
There's people who don't have faith that go to church.
There's people that don't have faith that get baptized.
There's people that don't have faith that read their Bible, right?
So don't confuse faith with signs of faith.
The signs of faith aren't
the cause of justification.
Faith is, it's kind of like when you have.
You know, when you're sick and you Google the symptoms, figure out what
you have, and it's always cancer.
Like every single time you're like, oh, I have, you know, a fever and I
have a swollen like thing on my neck.
Cancer, right.
Definitely cancer.
Or you go, you know, every time you're sick you Google
like three different symptoms.
You go like WebMD, oh, it could be cancer.
Thanks.
So just because you have the symptoms of that thing.
It doesn't mean you have that thing, right?
Just because you have the symptoms of cancer doesn't mean you have cancer.
Just 'cause you Google your symptoms and you have these three symptoms,
oh, those are symptoms of this super rare disease that only 0.0%,
zero 1% of the world has.
Well, you have those three symptoms, so that's you, right?
Just because you have the symptoms doesn't mean you have the disease.
And I think especially in, in a church like this.
There's a lot of people who have symptoms of Christianity without real
Christianity because you grew up doing the things or your friends do the things.
So what I want you to to make sure is just because you see people with symptoms
doesn't mean they have the disease, right?
Just because you have the symptoms of Christianity doesn't mean
you have the disease of faith.
I don't want you to be confused about that.
Just because you're associated with Christian parents, just because you come
from a Christian family, just because you read the Bible, just because you know
the gospel, just because you like church, just because your friends are Christian,
just because you don't say bad words.
Those are all things that are symptoms of, of faith, but they aren't faith itself.
Maybe you even know you're a Christian.
Does that mean you're a Christian?
Not necessarily right?
Maybe you have emotions about being a Christian, right?
You, you had an experience at at camp or you, um, get really sad
about your sin doesn't necessarily mean that you're a Christian, right?
The symptoms are different than the actual disease, so don't put your
faith in the signs of your faith.
Don't put your faith in the symptoms of Christianity.
Put your faith in Jesus.
Jesus is who the one who takes your sin away.
Jesus is the one who gives you righteousness.
So don't put your faith in your signs of Christianity.
Put your faith in the Christ of Christianity.
It's easy to, when you share your testimony, when you
think, why am I Christian?
You're doubting your salvation.
You turn immediately to, well, look at all the things I've done.
Look at my spiritual resume.
That thing that your spiritual resume is, is not where you wanna put your trust.
You wanna put your trust in Jesus.
'cause his righteousness never changes.
Yours goes up and down, right?
Sometimes throughout the day.
Maybe you wake up at 8:00 AM and you just read your Bible and you feel great, and
then by the time it's 2:00 PM and you've been around all these people at school who
make all these bad jokes and say all these bad words, your own righteousness, even
in in a day can go up and down, right?
But Jesus righteousness never changes.
And also don't put your faith in your faith.
Your faith isn't your, the, your faith is only as good as
what you put your faith in.
So don't put your faith in your faith.
Put your faith in Jesus, right?
The, the point of of faith is who you're trusting in, not how much faith you have.
So don't put your faith in your faith.
Put your faith in Jesus.
Let's pray and we'll go to small groups.
God, we are so thankful that you make it so simple for us.
We come to you in faith.
We admit that we don't measure up.
We need you.
We're helpless without you,
and we trust you, and you give us righteousness.
You give us forgiveness.
You give us yourself.
And so we're grateful that we don't have to do all these crazy things
to to be in a relationship with you.
We don't have to be super smart.
We don't have to know the Bible perfectly.
We don't have to live perfectly, but we can be confident that we have a
relationship with you if we trust Jesus.
So I pray that you help all of us to trust Jesus more.
Just like that song we sang on Sunday, it's so good to trust you.
Life is so much better when we trust you.
So I pray that you give all of us greater faith in you.
And I pray specifically for people who are relying on themselves, that you would show
them that they're unreliable, that they are, um, not a, a good place to put their
faith, but rather that you are a rock, a fortress, you are strong and trustworthy.
We pray all this in Jesus' name.
Amen.