Abraham's Discovery

Okay, today we've graduated to Romans chapter 4, verses 1 through 3, and the entire section that you're in, which you probably already know, from 321 to 511, the whole theme is justification. What's justification mean? Well, make it easy. Give me a synonym for justification. What would we call it? Anybody? Is that a question too fast? Yeah, well, that's true. So, I'll come back and ask it again. Be thinking about it.

Justification is the whole chapter four. That's the only theme. And verses 1 through 8 are justification by faith alone and not by works. And verses 1 through 5, Paul uses the illustration of Abraham. So here are the verses. What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather, has found according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has whereof to glory, but not towards God. For what saith the scripture? And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness.

So the first thing I want to talk about is this word forefather is in the context is only, bless you, it's only physical. No spiritual connotations or overtones are here at all. It would be like, we would say George Washington is the father of our country, but not spiritually the head, he just is. He was the first one, the physical one, and he was the one that God put the promises in, and he is according to the flesh.

Now Paul, let's see if I can do this right. This has been a real learning curve for me. So the question that is asked right away was, Abraham, our fleshly forefather, what did he find? And Paul is putting himself, I think, in the company of Jewish believers. And as a Jew, he's pointing to the father of their race.

Whoops, that was a mistake. So what's going on here is that This word, what did he find is a word that we get our word Eureka from and that's why I put the big wow up there. It's like he was studying the scriptures and he went, wow, look what I have discovered. That's kind of the thought here.

So if you observe or make observations of what was going on here, God made promises to Abraham. He just showed up one day and started to talk to Abraham, right? Now, what do you know about the history of Abraham? Was he a particularly godly man to start with? Not at all. Not only were they idol worshippers, his father was a priest in the temple.

And God said to Abraham, I'm going to do some things here, through you and with you, and I intend to fulfill my promises. Now, in business, when you have a contract, usually it's between two parties, right? and we call it bilateral. I'm going to do something, you're going to do something, and we have a contract or a covenant. God went to Abraham and said, Abram, I'm going to do everything. I'm going to fulfill everything that I promised you. Was it required on Abraham's part to believe God in order to fulfill what God had promised?

What do you think? How many think yeah? How many think no? Most of you think no. Laban, go. Sure. I mean, you would think, the way we think about things, we would think, well, Abraham has got to do something, you know. And that's why the discovery is kind of interesting about Abraham.

God just said to him, if you go back and read Genesis 12 and the other chapters that have to do with him, you will see that God said to Abraham, Abraham, this is what I'm going to do. And it didn't matter whether Abraham believed him or not. in terms of whether God was going to fulfill the promises. But just because God says to Abraham, here's what I'm going to do, did that part of it make Abraham righteous? No. No. All he said was, here's what I'm going to do. So God was going to fulfill his promises whether Abraham believed them or not. The issue was the promise on God's side.

Did he promise to Abraham to reckon him righteous if he believed? There's no discussion about that. None at all. He didn't say, OK, here's what I'm going to do. Oh, by the way, Abram, if you'll believe me, I'll reckon you righteous. No. No discussion there. Now here's something interesting. Abraham was considered by the Jews to be righteous because of his works.

And if you look in, we don't have to go there, John 8.39, it's interesting. I got on a Jewish website this week and started nosing around. I got there by accident just doing my homework. It's interesting.

Specific in their liturgy is that Abraham was accounted righteous because he responded to God and did the works and got out of town. If he hadn't have done that, he wouldn't have left, he wouldn't have done all the things. So what they have done is they've attached Abraham's behavior with his righteousness. You see, not just the fact that he believed, but the fact that he did some things.

So they've made it legal. And what's the one big thing that Abraham did that the Jews hang their hat on? This was the huge thing in his life that he did. Remember what it was? He sacrificed Isaac. obeyed God and went out and did it. And so the Jews hang their hat on that. The reason that Abraham is righteous is because he was willing to obey God even to that extent.

That's my phone, isn't it? Jeez. Turn it off, idiot. Yeah, the Abrahamic Covenant. The two people. Well, I think you can have what are known as unilateral covenants, where I would come to you and say, now, Laban, I'm going to do these five things, and it doesn't matter to me whether you respond, whether you care, whether you believe me, or anything. I'm going to do these and I swear that I'm going to do them. And so we have a covenant and the covenant really is from me to you. Now, we have a deal. Most of the time in our society though it takes two people to agree. In this case it doesn't.

God says this is what I'm doing and I'm going to do So why do you think Paul, if he's going to talk about this incredible issue, why does he select Abraham? Why that guy? One is that all of the promises to Israel were resonant within him. He said, here's what I'm going to do. And the other thing is that if you study Abraham's life, he's a very interesting character. In some ways, he's just an amazing man in what he does.

In other ways, he is the biggest failure ever. I mean, he messes up all the time. He's unfaithful. He even pawns his wife off as his sister to Pharaoh, and Pharaoh gets mad at him and kicks him out of Egypt because of that. What's that? Yeah, but she was also his wife.

And what's interesting here, this is the most important part. As great a man as Abraham was, he was not exempt from the way in which God always made men righteous, which was by faith. And no matter what Abraham had going for him, no matter what he did, he still wasn't exempt. from being made righteous by faith alone. That's an important part because Abraham is probably the premier Old Testament guy in terms of a man having a relationship with God. Even if you study Moses, Isaac, Jacob, David, Joseph, very few of them had as many encounters with the Lord and as much time with him as Abraham did and did as much as Abraham did. He's an amazing man in that respect. But what's interesting is he still, God doesn't change his equation because Abraham is a pretty cool guy.

In other words, maybe I can make this simple. When God goes to Abraham and starts giving him orders, I want you to take your family and I want you to leave town and when you leave town I'm going to show you where you're going to go. And here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to make you a great nation. I'm going to make your offspring as many as the stars in the sky and the sand. And Abraham packed up and left.

Did that demonstrate his faith? Did the fact that he just left mean that he was faithful? And here's another interesting thing. How far did he go? Did he leave the Ur of the Chaldees and go right to the Promised Land? He stopped at Haran. Why? Because that's where his dad wanted to stop.

That's a very interesting thing to me. Still, in this man's life, the influence of his father, even after meeting the Lord and engaging in this interaction and transaction with him, His father, when his father says, I don't want to go any farther, he says, OK, I'll stop. It's so indicative of we as believers when God makes these incredible pronouncements about us, about our position in Christ, about who we are and what we have, and we get about halfway there and for some reason we stop. Because something in our lives that's more important to us seems to cause us to stop.

Isn't that interesting? That's why I say Abraham is such a a great character because although he is tremendously blessed and just a godly man, when his father says, I don't want to go any farther, he says, okay. He's not necessarily disobeying God at that point, but he's not moving on like he should. And he doesn't leave until his father dies. So that's an interesting point to me.

So what did Abraham discover? Boy, I've got to stop fooling with this thing. So what did Abraham discover? Or what has he found? The verb is in the infinitive perfect tense, which means it had completed action in the past, but the benefits of it extends into the present. Abraham made a discovery once, with results extending into today and forever, not only for him, but for anybody who is a, like we are, the spiritual sons of Abraham.

He found negative and positive things. The negative things he found was that he found out about his own deficiency, that he could not make himself righteous before God. He had no grounds, as the verse says, to boast before God. He couldn't go to God and say, I have done this, therefore you must bless me. He found that God compares men with himself, not with each other.

I was listening to a tape a couple of weeks ago and the speaker described it as this. If everybody in the room stands up and we sort of gauge the heights, you know, if I stood next to Ruthie, you know, we could gauge heights like that. And here's the example the guy used. He said, if you're standing on the top of the Empire State Building and you're looking down, can you tell whether Ruthie is taller than me?

You can't. And that's what God does. He looks at men from that perspective rather than horizontally. He looks vertically. And so who does he compare him to? If God is going to make a standard, what's the standard going to be? I'm sorry? It's himself.

It has to be himself because the way God has set things up, Anything that isn't of Him or isn't righteous like Him is considered, the term in the Word of God is, you're ungodly. It's not whether you're good or bad. It's not whether you've done a lot of terrific things. It's whether you're godly or not. Well, what makes you godly? You have to be like God.

On the positive side, he found the total sufficiency and supply in God, and he found that righteousness was through faith alone. Now, on the negative parts, Abraham, these discoveries that affect us today, and the same things that we discover in Scripture. Judaism believed that Abraham was justified by his works, and you can look that up in Genesis 22. And they believed that they were God's sons through Abraham.

If you look at John 8.38, the Jewish leader said to Jesus, Abraham is our father. and so therefore God is our father. So their viewpoint was that because Abraham was the head of the race and God made the promises to Abraham and he was righteous, then they automatically were righteous and God was their father.

It didn't matter whether they had faith or not. Abraham discovered that when it came to standing before God, he and of himself, he didn't have any. He had nothing. And though his accomplishments were great, they were not up to God's standard of righteousness.

So, as I said, by comparing men with men. Do we do that? I mean, how many people, non-believers have you run into in your life who've said this to you? I've done enough good things that when I face God, He's probably going to accept me because I've done enough good things. Don't they think like that? Don't you think like that? We do. And we do now. Don't we?

I mean, you think about it. We put people in the sphere of influence that we live in. First thing we say is, well, the good guys are all over here and the bad guys are all over here. And then we categorize the good guys as to how good they are and the bad guys as to how bad they are. See? And it's interesting.

We engage in that conversation and that interaction with people and it's not even the issue. It's not even the issue. The issue is How do you relate to God? And what I find interesting is that God is not a compromiser, even in the Old Testament. The standard really is the Lord Jesus Christ, Him alone. So if you don't measure up to Him, you don't measure up.

Well, that puts you in a dilemma, doesn't it? Because as you extrapolate that going forward, and you start to look at, as believers, you start to study your Bible and you learn and you grow, especially if you're under some sort of a legal environment, what you try to do is you find yourself on this ladder of holiness. And, you know, as you look up, there aren't a whole lot of guys above you, but as you look down, there's tons of people below you. So you think you're doing pretty well, right?

When in fact, the ladders like this, and everyone in Christ is the same. The remedy to that viewpoint is learning through the Word of God who you are in Christ. You see that? The thing about the Lord Jesus Christ and the way the Word of God displays him is magnificent and then there is the demonstration of what's true of him is also true of you because you're in him. So you've arrived at the standard positionally because the Holy Spirit of God put you in him. So God looks at you and me now as being in the one who is the standard. Do you see that?

So position is really important to us as believers not only for understanding, but for relationship and also for when you're stuck in the condition of your life and it isn't measuring up. The condition is not the standard. Your position is the standard and you already have it. And therein lies where your faith is focused. It's focused on your position, not your conditions. It makes sense? Explain that adequately enough? I'll read a quote from Newell.

To discover that the greatest saints have no other standing than the weakest saints is a lesson that is difficult for all of us. So now, for the Jews to find that great Abraham has nothing in the flesh but must be justified by simple faith like any sinner is a great shock. That's why Abraham and Paul and those that were studying or reading the letter to the Romans, it was a shock to them. Do you not see, no matter how informed or uninformed you are about the Jewish society or man society, that what Paul is saying to these people that they have no standing outside of Christ. None. It's a surprise, I think. It's a real surprise. And I must say, too, that the surprise is something that we have to learn as we grow in our Christian life.

Paul the Apostle, at the end of his life in 2 Timothy, says, I'm the chief of sinners. You would have thought after 35 years he would have said something like, boy, I've sinned a lot less this year than I did 35 years ago. But he says I'm the chief of sinners.

Why would he have that viewpoint? Why would he see things that way? No clue? Why would he view himself as being the chief of sinners at the end of his life in ministry That's right. The comparison is always there. And so why would the Holy Spirit do it that way? Why does he, as he reveals Christ to the believer and all of the glories of the position that we have in Christ, why does he also at the same time continually reveal the depths of what a wonderful dog we are? Why does he do that? Why do you think he does it that way? It eliminates self-righteousness. How about on the positive side? What would it do on the positive side? It would make you appreciate the grace that much more. See that?

So, you know, I have people who come to me and say, boy, you know, I'm not sure that God is going to, as I grow, He's going to show me, like Hal likes to say, peel the onion of the old man. And I say, well, that's a mistake, because you're going to find out more about yourself as you're capable of, because you know more and more of who you are in Christ. qualifies you to recognize grace greater than you know today. Grace is the one thing we never stop learning. Never stop learning. To the very 15 seconds before the Lord takes you home, you'll still be learning what grace is. And one of the ways to learn it is by contrast. Okay, positive things.

If you look in verse Verse 2, it says, For if Abraham was justified by works, he has whereof to glory, but not towards God. That word but there is Allah, which is a very strong word used in the Greek of contrast. And so it's not just either or, it's a really fine line of demarcation.

If Abraham had something to boast of before God, he has whereof to glory, but not towards God. So with all of his qualifications, he could not be justified before God. Abraham discovered that even though he was totally inadequate, that God had all of the supply and all of the sufficiency.

And one of the things that you're going to learn next week in verse four is one of the great verses in the Bible where Paul brings in grace. And the interesting thing about grace, in my mind there are two stellar words that define grace. The first one is that it's unmerited. It's totally unmerited.

So if we were going to talk about Abrahamic covenant, excuse me, one-sided. What God said to Abraham and promised that he was going to do through him was totally grace. It was totally unmerited. Abraham had nothing to do with what God said he was going to do through Abraham. And Abraham was, by believing God, didn't effectuate the promises. They were going to happen no matter what. His righteousness was based on whether he believed what God told him or not. The fulfillment of the promises had nothing to do with what Abraham believed or not, because it's done on a grace basis.

You see that? It's totally unmerited. If, in the process of living under grace, There's any thought of your contribution, it's not grace. Here's the other thing. It's not only unmerited, but it's unlimited. And when you get down to study in Romans chapter 5, that's where you're going to see it. Where sin did abound, grace did overflow or much more abound. You and I as Christians cannot out-sin grace. You know that? Once you believe in the person and work of Christ, and you live under this umbrella of grace, you cannot make God mad. You can't do it. Because He operates in grace only.

Where sin did abound, because the law came in next to it, grace abounds. Super abounds over it. So, you would think, well, as sin increases, grace increases, and that's why you get to 6.1, it says, what shall we say? Shall we sin that grace may abound? Well, you know, the natural man would think like that. I'm going to sin, and the more I sin, the more grace... The thing that most believers don't understand about grace is that it is the greatest motivator in your life. It motivates you not to sin because it's so super abounding.

So Abraham is learning grace, the supply of it and the sufficiency in God, and he's learning that it's unlimited. and that it's unmerited. Paul, on the positive side, says about Abraham, he only appeals to the scripture, not to how anybody feels about it, no matter what people do or not. And the other thing Abraham discovers is that there is a way of righteousness before God.

By the way, what does righteousness mean? It's one of those 25 cent Christian words. A right standing. Does righteousness mean relationship? I think it's a relationship word. If you and I are righteous, it means that we have a relationship. Do you see that? We fellowship. If we weren't righteous, we wouldn't.

So if God declares you righteous before Him, it means that you have a relationship with Him and you can interact with Him. Right, with God. Righteousness is one of those words that I think people sort of stick over here as a very complicated Christian word and they don't understand it really simply all it means. If you have right standing with God, what does that mean? That means that you can, to put it simply, run down the hall, jump in his lap and stay there. That's what it really means.

Isn't a relationship an ongoing thing though? How do you mean? position condition our position is because of our belief in the Lord Jesus Christ we have a positional righteousness in Christ before God that can never be touched but conditionally we can live in Christ, walk in Him, and have that fellowship, or we can walk in the flesh in which there is no connection. Yeah, there's no question. But we're still declared righteous even when we're not.

Yeah, because your position never changes. See, that's the cool thing about understanding position and condition, is to get your arms around the fact that no matter what your condition is, no matter what your sinning is, no matter what your thought processes are, no matter what you're doing, it never affects your position. Never. Because your position wasn't something that you garnered with your own efforts.

It was something that, and as we move on here, talk some more about faith, exactly what faith does and what it is. Because you live in grace. And once you believe in the person and work of the Lord Jesus and are placed into him, that's a settled issue. Now you can live and function as though you weren't in him, and you suffer those consequences conditionally, but it does not change your position.

See that? And I know legions of believers that don't understand that concept. That they think that 1 John 1, 9, you know, confessing your sins, that they have to feel sorry, and they've got to go through all these gymnastics in order to be restored. And that's not the point at all. The point is that Restoration is the restoration of what you already are. When the prodigal son came back to the father, did he have to reinvent his sonship? Or prove to the father that he was worthy of being a son to be blessed? No. Just coming home was enough. And the father saw him and ran after him. So Abraham found that righteousness was by grace through faith alone.

So now let's talk a little bit about faith. What is faith? Hebrews 11.1 says that faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. If you look at that verse, you could say that faith is assurance of the things hoped for, a conviction of the things not seen, or assurances that hypostasis, a confidence from a compound word that means hupo, and I don't know the other word, support, means to sit under. What happens with, to make this definition of Hebrews 11 as simple as possible, it means absolute confidence in the evidence of the things of God. The point is this.

God says to you and me in his word, I have blessed you with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus. Fact or not? True? Is it true? You believe it's true? So, what's the evidence that makes it true? The fact that God said it, right? What makes it true to you? What makes it subjective? What makes you absolutely confident that it's true? Just because God said it?

I mean, that could be enough. I think there's another element here, and I think, and I didn't put it up here, but it's the next verse in Hebrews, Hebrews 11, 2. It says, by it, I think the fathers received witness. And what's interesting about that verse is it says that they believe God, the Old Testament fathers believe God, and because of that, God, the Spirit, witnessed to them that what they believed was not in vain.

You and I as believers, when we became believers, we were indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and He has certain jobs that He's been sent to do, and one of them is to reveal Christ to the believer and to assure you confidently that, one, God loves you because He sheds abroad the love of God in your heart, but He persuades you that what you believe in the Word of God is true.

Now, let me give you a concrete example. The day that you were saved, a month later, were you convinced? The next time you sinned early on in your Christian life, or you found yourself depressed, or revisiting old habits that weren't exactly godly, did you question your salvation at any time? I did. We all do that. Do you question it today? How come? Now, I can't convince you that I'm saved eternally, but I'm convinced. I'm convinced and have been for years. There's nothing I can do to lose my salvation, because the Spirit has persuaded me beyond the shadow of a doubt over time.

So what you find is, A Christian's going along, gets to Romans 6, it says, your old man was crucified with Christ. The body of sin could be put out of business. You should no longer serve sin. You look at it and you say, I understand and I believe it. Thursday, you're sinning and you're thinking, wait a minute, that can't be true. Because if it was true, I wouldn't be sinning. Over time, what happens? The Spirit persuades you that that fact is true. And then you begin to understand, wait a minute, sinning is spiritual insanity. Christians don't sin. That's not what they do because of the life they have. You see that? How are you living? You're living by faith in the facts and faith in the person who is the fact. You see how that goes?

So there's time involved in the persuasion process. But what faith really is is confidence and evidence in the evidence of the things of God. And Abraham over time learned that. And here's the best example. He had enough faith the first day to pack up and leave.

How many years after that, if you study Abraham's life, when God came to him and said, I want you to take your son up on the mountain and I want you to sacrifice him to me. Did Abraham argue with him? But he argued with him about Isaac, didn't he? I mean, he didn't believe God so much about Isaac to the point where he and Sarah worked out a deal with Hagar.

Right? Gee, the son of promise thing isn't going to, God's not going to pull this off. We're getting kind of old. We better do this ourselves. Right? But when God said to Abraham, 35, 40 years down the road. I want you to take your son up in the mountain and sacrifice him to me. His faith was so strong by then, in the evidence of the things of God, he went without question, didn't he? If there's ever a demonstration that faith is a growing thing, that's the best example I know of. That's why Abraham is such a good example. Now, what time does the class get over? I'm usually stuck in a room in there. Does God look at faith and then say, the values in your faith? Where's the value? Is the value in the act of your believing? Or is it in what you believe? Or who you believe?

So, I stated it as the one who is behind the facts. What's interesting about I've got a page out of space here. I think I'm on that page. When you say, where would you say then lies the value of your faith? Is it in the act of believing? Now trust me, there's a lot of believers that think the first one is true. That their believing is where the value is. Because if they look at it, that the value is to them, for them. But the value is in what is believed or in the one who has made the statement.

The great thing about faith is, it's something that a man can do he can't take any credit for. If you contributed anything to what Christ did on the cross, what did you contribute? You put him there. It was our sin that put him there. That was your contribution.

Your faith had nothing to do with the value of the work itself. The work is done by God and the value is in the work. My believing and having confidence in the evidence of the things of God doesn't add anything to the work. So faith is not part of the price. You alright with that? Because we live in a society where a lot of people think that faith is part of the price.

So does God look at the faith and say, I'll look at faith and I will count it as righteous." In other words, did he look at Abraham and say, I'm looking at Abraham's faith, so I'm going to count him righteous because of the faith? What do you think? It seems that's what it says, doesn't it? Let's see if I can explain this right.

The word eis means leading to or unto or resulting in. The reckoning to him as leading to righteousness. If you look at this word, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto or leading to salvation to everyone that believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

In Romans 3.22, which you've already discovered, even the righteousness of God through faith in Christ Jesus unto all them that believe, for there is no distinction.

Sorry about the spacing. 10.10. For with the heart man believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. So the Word of God does not say that faith is righteousness. Understand the point that I'm making here? The Word states that faith leads to righteousness, or is a condition upon which there is righteousness. Is the righteousness of God available to every man? Is there a condition for him to be declared righteous?

Yeah. Faith. But the cool thing about faith is that he doesn't get any credit for believing. It's got to be a cool God who figured it out that way. Because if God's whole purpose is to glorify himself, he has to come up with a plan where men can exercise their wills and believe without any credit, but he can declare them righteous. That's pretty cool. That means that grace is functioning accurately all the time. So faith is the act a man can do that is not a work, nor can he take credit for it, nor can he incur a debt by doing it.

You buy all three of those statements? Were your pages correct? Were they out of sequence? I did this on my desktop and to get it over to the laptop was a lot of brain damage. Thanks to Randy Peterman last night. Faith is not a work. Are you alright with that? Because if it was a work, and you'll learn next week, in four and five and six, if it was a work, then you could, if faith was a work, you could go to God and say, I've done the work, you owe me. Then it wouldn't be of grace. See that? Can you take credit for your faith? Can you go to God and say, I believe, your turn? Can you do that? What do you think? Again, it wouldn't be gracious if you could. Is it in any way incurring a debt?

If I say to God, okay, I've read Romans 6, I believe it, now let's get busy. I need to be entering into the fullness of what that is. Have I put God in a position where He owes me? Answer, no, because God is the one who's done all the work. I'm just believing Him. Do you say that faith isn't a work? Do you have to say that it's a gift? No, faith isn't a gift because every man has it. Every man can do it.

Non-believers have faith. They get on I-25, they have to have faith. There's no honor, no merit in Abraham's believing the faithful God who cannot lie. The honor was God's. When Abraham believed God, he did the one thing that a man can do, without doing anything.

That's Newell. That's what Newell says. And you know, faith is a frustrating thing because we are such people who want to take credit for what we do and we feel depressed by what we can't accomplish. Well, the great thing about faith is that you're believing in something that's already been accomplished, you had nothing to do with, but you get all the bennies. It's pretty cool. I like the system. So believing is a non-meritorious act on my part.

Now, the next part is that the faith was reckoned unto him for righteousness. When Abraham believed, what is the word used to show that God did what God did when Abraham honored him by believing his promises? The word was reckoned. We see this word a lot in Romans. The root word of that is logizimai, to count or to take an inventory. to conclude or to lay to the charge of another to treat them accordingly. The example I came up with, if a man is dead broke and he owes a lot of people and somebody comes and gives him a bunch of money, his creditors reckon him to be rich now. Are they right? Yeah, they're right. The other example, as you see the word reckoning in The other example was in Corinthians. You guys watch The Great Race? You ever watch that show? They're an amazing race. The people this time were in Greece. And one of the things they had to do was they had to bungee jump off a bridge that was over the top of a canal. And the canal was Corinth. And what's interesting is, The Greek peninsula comes down like this, and Corinth was here.

There was another town over here, and this was like, I don't know, this space here was 11 miles, something like that. Well, the ships had a choice. They could stop here, unload all their goods, or have the boat towed across the land, or unload all their goods. That would take a week, or they could sail all the way around to here, which would take two months. So Corinth was a very wealthy city because of this. When these people were bungee jumping, they were bungee jumping over the canal that they built between those two cities.

Well, the word reckoning is really important because when they took all the goods out of the ship to transport it across, there was a CPA standing there, you know, 14 bushels of whatever. What was he doing? He was reckoning. Was his reckoning making the truth of the 14 bushels true? No. He was accounting what was already true.

Abraham, by believing God, God reckons Abraham to be righteous. By believing God, Abraham was simply extending credence to the one who can't lie. Therefore, without being himself righteous, his faith is reckoned to him as righteous. Do you see what I mean by that? He himself wasn't righteous, but God declared him to be righteous.

Are you righteous in yourself? I can ask it two ways. One, are you righteous? In yourself? No. Why are you then? Why are you righteous? Only. And whose righteousness is it? Yeah. It's interesting. We are the righteousness of God in Christ. See the sequence? The righteousness of God in Christ.

Is that the same thing as Abraham being declared righteous by God? What do you think? How many think it is? Do you think that you and I have the righteousness of God in Christ? Is the same thing as Abraham being declared righteous because of his faith? How many think it's the same thing? How many think it's not? How many are too chicken to raise their hand? I had to get that in. It's not the same thing. And let me tell you why.

The Lord Jesus Christ has a unique righteousness with the Father that's unique to Him. Right? And you are not declared righteous by God by believing. You are put in Christ. And whatever His righteousness is before God, you have. See the difference? Does that make sense? Your standing before God is exactly the same standing that the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God has. John 17 talks about being one. Father, that they may be one as we are one, that they may be one in us. This oneness that we have in Christ means that our righteousness is different than God just declaring Abraham to be righteous because of his faith.

Do you see that? You see that? It is different. Because of position. It's a difficult concept, I think, to grab. I've always wondered about the Old Testament saints who believed in the Messiah, though, and the promise of the Lord. And declared righteous because of it. Absolutely. And given life. Isn't that a different standing than Abraham, anyway? Because he didn't know of the coming of the Lord.

Well, Abraham, of the promises, knew that all the nations of the earth were going to be blessed through his seed. And if you study it, it says not as one seed, seeds, not as many, but one. And so he knew what the one seed meant. The thing about the Old Testament saints, which is really cool about them, they are accounted righteous by God because they believe God. But they believed whatever God revealed to them. I mean, he didn't reveal Romans 5, 6, 7, and 8 to them, or Romans 3 or 4, you know. Abraham studied what God told Abraham, and he believed God, and he was accounted righteous. David knew more, Adam knew less. I think Adam is righteous because he accepted God's remedy for his sins, which were the skins. You see that? And they're given life, but they're not in Christ. That's the difference. What is the ground upon which this reckoning is based?

In other words, God doesn't do things just out of the goodness of his heart. He always has a reason and has always made it possible for him to do what he's going to do based on a work that he's done. So what's the work that he did that he can reckon Abraham righteous? It's the work of Christ on the cross. God knowing and looking forward to the work of Christ on the cross, when Abraham believed him, he could account him righteous. So, the ground of such reckoning is the work of Christ on the cross only. That's the only ground.

How can God give unmerited grace then to those who deserve nothing but condemnation? How can he do it? I mean, if you're God, you wouldn't have come up with this plan. If I was God, I wouldn't have. I'd have made you do a lot more push-ups than you're doing now. How can He declare righteous or extend His grace towards somebody who only deserves condemnation?

Let me ask you a question here maybe that will help. Is that the first one or the second one? Are we done? Alright, I'll finish up with this. If there was no work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross, if that was not ever in the plan, could God have accounted anybody righteous? Old Testament, New Testament? Would His love have superseded that and said, oh, I love these people, I'm going to forgive them anyway? No. No, as wonderful as His grace is, His holiness must be satisfied first. in order for him to act graciously.

Okay? So, I don't think we ever can get away from the fact that everything that happens to us graciously is based on the completed work of Christ. Okay. Well, the rest of this I think... We got the main points done. Next week you're going to have really cool verses, one of the coolest verses in all the Bible, I think. So, let's close.

Dear Father, how we thank you for your grace and your love towards us. We are so undeserving, yet at the same time expect you to bless us. So we rest in the fact that we are the righteousness, your righteousness in Christ. And we thank you, we pray in his precious name. Amen.