I.
Welcome to the long season of Sundays after Pentecost. We will continue in this season through the end of November. The Gospel readings will come from Matthew, and the epistle readings from Romans, at least through the middle of September.
My intent is to preach through Romans.
Today’s reading is from Romans 4:13-25. In this reading Paul is talking about faith. His basic point is that you can only put your faith in God’s promises if you know what those promises are.
This explains the urgency in Paul’s message that is carried over into all Christian preaching. I’ve got to tell you what God has promised you so that you will know what to believe.
Paul makes this very point later on in Romans 10:14:
“How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?”
In churches where the members are riddled with doubts or where they seem to put their faith in everything but the Word of God, look no further than the pulpit for the cause of this unhappy situation.
II.
The Greek word for faith is pisteōs. In classical Greek it meant to have confidence or trust in something. For instance, an archer might have pisteōs, faith, in his skills as an archer.
Herodotus gives the example of the Mytilene army withdrawing from battle because they did not have confidence in themselves.
The Stoics thought of faith as fidelity and thought it basic to human nature. To be unfaithful was to act in a less than human way.
Judaism, Christianity, and the several mystery religions taught that faith was the highest form of knowledge. Jewish law came directly from God, not to put one’s trust and confidence in it was to belittle God.
In the case of Abraham, Paul tells us that it was not the law itself that justified Abraham, but Abraham’s faith in that law that made him righteous.
Paul’s argument needs some unpacking, especially if you haven’t studied it before. The immediate context is a debate he is having with Jewish Christians. Paul is defending the right of Gentiles to become Christian without also becoming Jewish.
If that sounds strange to you it’s because we’ve gotten so used to thinking of Judaism and Christianity as two different religions, which they are. But Paul is not talking about religion, he is talking about faith.
The specific law Paul has in mind is circumcision, which, to this day, is the badge of being a Jewish man. Paul is saying that it is not the badge that makes you righteous in the eyes of God, but your faith in the God who has asked you to obey His law.
Here is the thing about the word law when it is used in passages like this: you have to figure out what it’s referring to, and that’s not always easy. The Law, the Torah, is the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Yet only portions of those books contain what we think of as laws, statutes: “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy”; “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” etc.
When Paul writes, “It was not through the law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world,” he’s really referring, as I said, to circumcision. We know that from the context of the rest of Paul’s letter to the Romans and the New Testament.
There is an interesting play on words here that I want you to notice. Paul writes, “It was not through the law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise.”
Where did the promise come from? Specifically, where is the record of this promise to be found? We know the promise comes from God, but the record of the promise, as with the rest of Abraham’s story is found in Genesis, which is one of the five books of Moses, the Torah, the law. In other words, the promise is in the law.
The crux of Paul’s argument is this: if you take a step back from the legalistic application of circumcision as a requirement to be accepted by God you will find that the record of the promise and Abraham’s faith in that promise are part of the law too.
This is amplified in verse 17:
“Therefore, the promise comes by faith,” [the record of which is part of the law] “so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring—not only to those who are of the law” [i.e., the specific law of circumcision] “but also to those who have the faith of Abraham.”
This begs the question: how does one acquire this “faith of Abraham”? The answer is: by hearing the law of God preached. In Nehemiah 8 we read the story Ezra the scribe returning to Jerusalem with the exiles.
“And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people; (for he was above all the people;) and when he opened it, all the people stood up:
So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading.”1
Ezra wasn’t just reading the statutes and ordinances from Leviticus. He was reading the whole story of the promise of God to His people. We are God’s people, children of Abraham, whom Paul calls “the father of us all.”
Therefore, for us, every word of God is law. Every word of God is also gospel, which means it becomes grace for those who receive it by faith.
III.
Recently, someone characterized my preaching as being “too sure” and “too certain” for a world that is full of uncertainties.
Behind this criticism is, I think, a misunderstanding of what it means to have faith. I am certainly not preaching that you must have faith in things that you do not understand and that you are likely never to understand.
Neither is Paul.
In verse 19 Paul writes:
“Without weakening in his faith, [Abraham] faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead.”
If Abraham is sure of anything it is that 100-year-old men and 90-year-old women do not have children together.
Paul continues:
“Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God.”
Abraham is also certain that he understands God’s promise to him, to make him the father of many nations, through his wife Sarah.
What I want you to see here is that Abraham’s faith is both completely comprehensible and understood by him and rooted in reality. He had a realistic assessment of both his and his wife’s physical condition and he absolutely understood what God had promised him in spite of that condition.
Too often people think that becoming a Christian means taking leave of your senses. Abraham, on the other hand, was in full possession of his faculties. So was Paul. So am I.
On the other hand, humanistic faith is neither comprehensible nor rooted in reality. There is no more dogmatic statement than “Trust the science.” You must take on faith what you are not competent to understand. The experts have decided for you.
The experts are now telling us that we’ve invented something called Artificial Intelligence that cannot be explained by its inventors and that for the past 80 years the world’s militaries have been reverse-engineering advanced weapons systems from alien — as in non-human — technology.2
Confusion and delusion are common to all pagan myths, both ancient and modern. That is what our world is rapidly returning to: confusion and myths.
My point here is not to sort out each and every one of these myths from the pulpit — though there is a very good article in The Tablet that is worth reading about this very thing.3 My point is to say that you are regularly asked to and, in fact, that you regularly do put your faith in things that you can’t possibly understand because they are not meant to be understood. They are meant to confuse.
It was to this confusion that God first spoke, “In the beginning God created…”4 and His word, then as now, establishes law and order. It both frames reality and ensures that ours is a comprehensible world. This is not the inheritance of the so-called Enlightenment but part of the original deposit of faith: “In the beginning was the word.”5
The Christian faith is rooted in reality and is therefore capable of being understood. Abraham understood his body was as good as dead because, like all of us, he was under the curse of death and the penalty for sin, and he understood that he had been promised a son. We too have been promised a Son, the Son of God, Jesus Christ.
IV.
There are two reasons for doubting the Christian faith. The first is that the gospel has been poorly preached. That’s on us preachers. On Judgment Day many of us preachers will be condemned by what we said, the precious time we wasted (yours and ours) in the pulpit, but also (and perhaps more so) by what we did not say.
The second reason is a willful unbelief, which is rooted in the denial of God’s goodness. That one is on you. On Judgment Day many life-long churchgoers will be condemned because they chose not to believe the promises of God.
Do you see how Paul’s circumcision argument now ties in? In an age when church-going was the norm, when it was socially expected and accepted, when it was, after a manner of speaking “the law,” then just showing up, mere membership, even volunteering for Coffee Hour, was never going to save you. If that’s what would make God happy with you then, as Paul says, “faith means nothing and the promise is worthless.”
But why do I say that the second reason for doubt “is willful unbelief, rooted in a denial of God’s goodness”?
Because when you have had the promise clearly preached to you, preached to you so that you understand it, and you still refuse to believe it, then you are holding God in contempt. You are denying His goodness and love towards you.
Paul writes:
“Yet [Abraham] did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.”
What has God promised to you and me? He has promised to save us from our sins and to raise us from the dead.
What is the guarantee of this promise? The guarantee is that He raised His own Son from the dead and the testimony of the many witnesses who saw the risen Lord Jesus has become part of God’s Word, part of God’s law.
Will God keep His law? Yes. He is the faithful party in this contract. We are the law breakers.
What do we have to do? Like Abraham we have to acknowledge that our bodies are as good as dead, and that we will die in our sins, unless we put our faith in the promise of God’s goodness towards us. I don’t know about you, but I find it very hard to deny God’s goodness towards me when I know that He sent His own Son to die in my place.
V.
I’ll end the first sermon of this Romans preaching series with five applications of Paul’s teaching on faith.
The first is that faith is not the mere knowledge of God, but of putting your trust and confidence in Him. In this sense faith truly is the higher knowledge. It is knowledge with certainty. I would rather you know less about God yet know full well that you can trust Him.
Second, faith is limited to what God promises in His Word. We don’t need to “fill in the blanks” and concern ourselves with what the Bible does not say. John Calvin writes, “faith can bring us no more that it has received from the Word.” Are you nourishing your faith? Are you in the Word? A good study Bible is all you need. I recommend the ESV Study Bible.
Too many of you are looking, looking, looking, yet never finding, finding, finding. You are looking for something deeper, more profound than the simple explanation that you are a sinner, and that God has promised to cure you of your sins.
That statement is both entirely realistic and easily understood. That’s all you are asked to put your faith in. Tim Keller put it well when he said: “You are more sinful than you ever thought you were, and you are more loved than you ever dreamed you could be.”
Third, if you want stability in this life, you will only find it in the goodness of God. Paul writes, “the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring.” God’s goodness is the only stable thing there is. Next week we’ll explore more how this stability is experienced by a believing Christian.
Fourth, to hesitate and to doubt is to deny God’s goodness. You may say, “But what about all the evil in the world and the bad things that have happened to me?” and my answer is the fifth application of Paul’s teaching: death is transformed into life by faith in the God who raised Jesus from the dead.
Is there anything you have suffered that Jesus did not suffer more? Is there anything that grieves you that does not grieve God more? Yet nothing you can do will ever put things right. Faith is believing that God already has. Amen.
Preached on June 11, 2023 at St. Peter’s Lithgow, Millbrook, New York.
Proper 5 - Year A
Romans 4:13-25
Questions for reflection and discussion:
1. Paul’s main point is that you can only put your faith in God’s promises if you ____________ what those promises are.
2. Explain what drives the urgency in Paul’s (and in all gospel) preaching.
3. Name three things law can refer to in the Bible.
4. Where is the promise to Abraham found?
5. Every word of God is ____________. Every word of God is also ____________.
6. Abraham was sure that he and his wife, Sarah, were too old to have ____________.
7. Abraham also clearly understood God’s ____________ to him that he and Sarah would have a son.
8. Confusion and delusion are common to all ____________ myths, both ancient and modern.
9. The Christian faith is rooted in ____________ and is therefore capable of being understood.
10. What are two reasons for doubting the Christian faith?
11. How is circumcision like volunteering for Coffee Hour?
12. “You are more ____________ than you ever thought you were, and you are more ____________ than you ever dreamed you could be.”
Parents and Grandparents, you are responsible to apply God’s Word to your children’s lives. Here is some help. Young Children – draw a picture about something you hear during the sermon. Explain your picture(s) to your parents or the minister after church. Older Children – Do one or more of the following: 1) Count how many times “promise” is mentioned. 2) Discuss with your parents how you can only believe in what you know.
(1) know; (2) knowing what promises God makes to you is the basis for your belief; (3) the five books of Moses (Torah), specific statutes (“Thou shalt not…”), cultural badges (circumcision); (4) in the Law of Moses, specifically in the Book of Genesis; (5) law/grace; (6) children; (7) promise; (8) pagan; (9) reality; (10) poor preaching and the sinful denial of God’s goodness; (11) neither volunteer work nor circumcision will make God like you; (12) sinful/loved
Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean, 2023, “Intelligence Officials Say U.S. Has Retrieved Craft of Non-Human Origin,” The Debrief, June 5, 2023. https://thedebrief.org/intelligence-officials-say-u-s-has-retrieved-non-human-craft/.
See: Jacob Siegel, 2023, “A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century,” Tabletmag.com, March 28, 2023. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/guide-understanding-hoax-century-thirteen-ways-looking-disinformation.