Hi, my name is George Sinclair. I'm the lead pastor of Church of the Messiah.
! It is wonderful that you would like to check out some of the sermons done by Church of the Messiah,
either by myself or some of the others. Listen, just a couple of things. First of all, would you pray for us
that we will open God's Word well to His glory and for the good of people like yourself?
The second thing is, if you aren't connected to a church and if you are a Christian,
we really, I would really like to encourage you to find a good local church where they believe the
Bible, they preach the gospel, and if you have some trouble finding that, send us an email. We will do
what we can to help connect you with a good local church wherever you are. And if you're a non-Christian,
checking us out, we're really, really, really glad you're doing that. Don't hesitate to send us
questions. It helps me actually to know, as I'm preaching, how to deal with the types of things
that you're really struggling with. So God bless.
Let's just bow our heads in prayer. Father, gosh, your Word is hard to understand sometimes, and
Father, we often don't want to just acknowledge before you that that's the case, but it is. We
have trouble sometimes, Father. And so we ask that your Holy Spirit would lead us and guide us into all
truth, that your Holy Spirit would draw us into your presence, that we might know Jesus and what He did
for us on the cross, that we might know Him ever more deeply as our Savior and as our Lord, and that we
might live, Father, out of that knowledge. And we ask this in the name of Jesus, your Son and our Savior. Amen.
Please be seated.
So I have several hats. I'm the rector or the senior pastor of this church. I'm also, a year and a half ago,
the bishop of the diocese, like our movement in Canada, asked me if I would take over the
lead role to try to mobilize and initiate more church planting across the country. So I've been in that
role for a year and a half, trying to get something going. But anyway, once a year, there's people like
me scattered around the states, and they bring us all together for a couple of days for prayer,
for discussion, community building, networking, all of that type of stuff. And this year,
they decided to have it in Tucson, Arizona, at a redemptorist retreat center on the edge of a very
large national park in the Sonora Desert. Sonoma? Sonora? I can't remember which one of those two names
for it. Desert. It's very hard to get to Tucson from Ottawa. Not a very easy flight. Anyway,
on my way there on Tuesday, and on my way back on Friday, I had the trips from hell.
Or maybe just a very, very bad case of purgatory.
I almost said something about a particular airport, which I probably shouldn't say. I might get
sued for slander or something. I'll just say this. I spent two and three quarter,
I got up at four o'clock in the morning to catch a flight. Two and three quarter hours,
the flight was delayed. Most of that is spent sitting on a plane on the runway,
always being told we had another 15 minutes. Then we make it to the O'Hare airport. I of course missed
my flight. I now have, I am not making this up, an eight-hour layover in Chicago's O'Hare airport.
And let me guarantee you, being in the O'Hare airport in Chicago is far more like hell than it is like
heaven. And then, even when we're leaving, the flight's delayed another hour. So rather than
getting to Tucson at 11.15 on Tuesday afternoon, I pull in at 11.30 at night, 2.30 in my body's time,
and that's when I finally arrive in Tucson. Coming back, I think it can't be worse. Well, it wasn't worse.
But, delayed in Denver, missed my transfer in Toronto, in Ottawa, and rather than getting home at 9.15
on Friday evening, I pull into my house 2.30 in the morning because of delays to flights.
As I said, more like hell than it is like heaven. But in the middle, I had a series of remarkable
experiences. I mean, obviously there's work and all of that type of stuff, but the retreat center was on
the edge of the desert. And it wasn't perfectly still. There was a road that was clear and nearby. But
the first morning when I woke up, I woke up early because even though I'm jet lagged, it's still,
I'm still on Ottawa time, not the three-hour time difference in Tucson. And I have to have a cup
of coffee when I wake up. And I go in, I get my cup of coffee, no breakfast for a while, but I have a
a cashy bar and a protein bar. And I sit, I stand and drink my coffee and eat those two bars.
And it's silent and it's still. And you look over a plane and there's mountains all around you.
And it was just glorious.
You can see the mountains in the east in shadow. You can see the mountains in the west with the sun
fully shining on them. And there's several times while I was there, there was another time I was
talking to my wife. We had a bit of a team building exercise by going for a two and three-quarter hour
hike in the desert. And I come back from that and I'm having a coffee and I'm in the shade
and it's beautiful temperature. And I'm looking out over the mountains. I'm talking to my wife.
And there's another time I had just before I'm coming back. And I've just had a really,
really nice meal. And the temperature's perfect. And the sky is blue. And there's mountains all around.
And you just have one of those transcendent types of moments.
Like maybe some of you have had it maybe going canoeing. Maybe it's around a fire. Maybe it's a
good meal with really, really good friends. And you just have this sense of that things are right.
It's like you're taken out of yourself, but you're still yourself. And there's beauty. And it's just
so good. And you have a longing and a yearning that there would be more of this. And yet at the
same time, you know that what you're, like, even the desire to know that there must be something more
is in and of itself a type of pleasure. It's you're experiencing, I'm experiencing a type of yearning for,
well, in our secular world, we don't know what to say. And in fact, one of the things about the
secular world is what is really real in our secular world. My experience after having a really, really
wonderful meal in the desert, surrounded by the mountains with beautiful temperature and beautiful
sky and just really feeling at peace and at home with the universe, is that the most real?
Or is the O'Hare airport the most real?
And you know, from outside the Christian faith, there's no way to even try to figure that out.
But one of the things which is so wonderful is that the Bible, in just one little word,
it introduces a brand new category. And for us as Christians, we understand that that moment,
I mean, on one level, of course, the O'Hare experience of breaking down and not things working,
and nobody takes any type of responsibility for it, or offers to help you. Customer service
sucks. Like, all of that part of that experience, right? That's obviously real.
But for Christians, we understand that those senses, that type of longing or yearning for something more,
and as I said, it could be in different ways. Maybe, you know, I've also had that in a little
bit in a small way, singing in a certain type of context. I can well imagine that athletes have it
when things are just working perfectly. Maybe creatives get it too when the dance just works
perfectly, or the recital just works perfectly, and there's just something fitting and right.
And you have a sense that it opens up into something transcendent and big and real,
and that is in the background, the foreground in just one word, but in the background of what all
this text is trying to get at. And all I'll be able to do is just not, this isn't a, like a commentary
exercise where I'll try to explain every phrase, but just to try to get that aspect of the argument
as it flows through the text. So if you're with me, the Bible says something very profound about this,
and very hopeful. So if you take your Bibles, actually, I forgot to ask Claire, we're going
to begin at verse 7 of Romans chapter 4. If you have your own Bibles, please follow along.
And this is how it goes in Romans chapter 4, verse 7, and then we'll get to what Owen just read.
And he's quoting from Psalm 32, and he says,
Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man or woman
against whom the Lord will not count his sin. And this is this idea that, you know, if you think
about it for a second, you can't have that experience. If there is, in fact, a blessedness,
and there is something more, I can't be in that if I am the same person with my sin and selfishness
and the bad things I do. Something has to take that away for me to fully enter into whatever that big
reality is that's transcendent and just big and beautiful. And when you're in it, you have a sense
that I was made for this. I was designed and created for this. And if that is to be at all my experience,
then this whole notion, which is bringing to a close what we looked at last week, this idea that
somehow or another that the wrong things you've done are all been forgiven. When it says the sins are
covered, it doesn't mean that they're covered up. It's like if you go out to a really, really nice
bill and then a meal in it, and then you see to your horror how much money you've spent, and somebody
says, I'll cover that. That's the meaning there. I'll cover that. I got it covered. And then once again,
this whole idea of the God's not even going to count them against us. There's something else which
is going on. And then it goes here in verse 9, and here's where the translation isn't very accurate.
You get a sort of a hint at it, but it's missing something more foundational. In verse 9, it said,
is this, not blessing, is this blessedness? Is this blessedness? Then only for the circumcised or
also for the uncircumcised? I'll just read it, and then I'll go back. Why on earth does he go from
blessedness to circumcised? Like, what? If you're wondering that, that's good. You know, if you don't
have honest intellectual reactions and emotional reactions to the text, you'll never grow. Like,
go ahead and say, what? You go from blessedness to circumcision? Like, who in their right mind would
go like that? Go ahead and say that. But then let's pause with the text and see that actually, Paul,
the scriptures are in their most profoundly right mind because it's talking about something profoundly
human that makes us miss what God desires to give us. So I'll just read it. So is this blessedness
only for the circumcised or also for the uncircumcised? For we say that the faith was,
that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. I'll explain this in a moment. How then was it
counted to him? Was it before or after he was circumcised? It was not after, but before he was
circumcised. Abraham received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith
while he was still uncircumcised. And the word righteousness there, I'll talk about it more in a
moment. It means right with God. Just think of right with God. Not that you're perfect, but that you're
right with God. Then it continues, the purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without
being circumcised, so that being right with God would be counted to them as well, and to make him
the father of the circumcised, who are not merely circumcised, but also walk in the footsteps of the
faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised. Okay, this is all pretty crazy.
So why on earth is he talking about circumcision? So on one hand, here I have to bridge two worlds.
On one hand, of course, there's this whole biblical argument that's going on, and one of my big points,
one of the big points of this text is that the heart of faith is believing, taking God at his word.
You take God at his word and you believe what he said. That's what faith is. That growing into faith
is just taking him at his word. So on one hand, we're going to take him at his word and look at this,
but he's also talking about a human problem that Christians share. You know why Christians share human
problems? Because we're humans. That's sort of a little bit of a no-brainer, right? We don't change
our species when we give our lives to Christ. And so here, what is the problem with it? The problem is
that people will choose appearances over reality. They'll choose image management over actually being
real. We choose the surface rather than authentic and substance. It's a constant problem. It's a problem
for Jewish people, for Christians, and for every single person who's trying to manage their image
rather than actually be something. And on one hand, we all know that we would rather be authentic
and be than merely appear. A lot of our interpersonal problems is because we're so worried about image
management that we can't and we don't trust the reality of who we are. We know that the reality,
we're embarrassed and ashamed about the reality of who we are, so we keep things at an arm's distance
and we're terrified and worried that people will pierce through that and we'll discover that,
well, we're not as good as we talked as if we were, that we're not as whole or holy, that there's
things shameful and bad and evil about us that we don't want people to touch. And so there's this
profound human tendency. And so what's going on here is that Paul goes through a biblical argument to show
that God makes a promise to Abraham and that he will provide this offspring that will be life for the
whole world and a blessing for the whole world. And when Abraham believes God and believes what God said,
God brings him into blessedness, a right relationship with him. And circumcision is used rather than the
word Jewish because that's something external to show that what Abraham has already got by faith.
And that's why he uses the word circumcision and all of the things around it. Because you see,
it becomes very easy for the Jewish people to focus on those external things and not actually say why
the external things are there. It's as if, you know, I want to go to Tucson, I want to get back to the
retreat center, and there's a sign saying the retreat center is that way, and I stop at the sign rather than
actually going to the retreat center. Like, don't stop at the sign. You go to where the sign is
pointing. Like, what is the sign promising? That's where you go. That's where the reality is. That's
where the substance and the authenticity is. And so, you know, just for people outside the Christian
faith and within, that's why, you know, most people spend more time trying to make themselves look good
in the morning than actually working on their attitudes and their thought life and their plans
and actually being good. Right? Sorry, that's maybe too pointed, but that's true. It can happen with
Christians, you know? You're more concerned with being in the right type of church that's either
completely not hip and progressive or just sufficiently hip or progressive or that has the right type of
walk and the right type of lingo. And, you know, they look at me and say, George, you're the world's
worst Christian. Look at that. This is a tiny, wimpy, little brown leather Bible. Like, real Christians
have big, black, floppy Bibles that open up and walk in a particular way. And we all have it.
And so, Paul is saying here in the Bible, there is this possibility of blessedness.
And blessedness is something that only the triune God can bring you into. Only the triune God can
bring you into blessedness. And blessedness is what this longing and yearning is for. Because,
you see, when we have a longing and yearning for the, when we have those times, you know, where the dance
is just perfect, the music is perfect, the acting is perfect, the math is perfect, the fire is good,
the canoe is good, the meal is good, whatever it is. And we enter into something that we realize is
bigger than us and we touch us. And we know that on one hand, it's more than us, yet it's somehow
another inside of us. And we hope and long that it's not that we have this sense that we're touching
something transcendent and eternal and good and beautiful and true, yet also something deeply
personal. We have this sense of it. And Paul is going to say time and time and time again,
if such a world exists, only God can bring you into it.
The idea that you can somehow manufacture and make that all on your own by your own actions,
the more you think about it, the more ridiculous you realize that is, the more laughable you think
it is. Only God can bring you into that. You see, the word right with God might make us feel a certain
type of way, but at the end of the day, it would be a little bit like me saying, I'm right with the
Air Canada agent who really tried very hard when I was in Toronto to get me on an earlier flight.
And there was nothing she could do because all the flights were full, except this last one that was
supposed to leave at 12.30 after midnight, but didn't leave until after one, because once again,
that was my day. And I could say I'm right with her, but I don't even know her name. I don't really
care about her. And that's how most people might think about God. And that's why Paul introduces this
other concept, to say that in a sense, to be right with God, to be truly right with God, is to be in
blessedness. And you cannot be in blessedness without being right with God. And so Paul is saying that
when you only, if you understand that only God, only the triune God can bring you into blessedness,
then the question is, why do you and I time and time and time and time again choose image management
over reality, lies over truth, appearance over substance, external over depth, the inauthentic
over the authentic? Why do we stop at that? Why is that such a human problem? And when we realize
that that's such a human problem, that emphasizes even more that only God can bring you in to that
which our yearnings and longings point to, which is a blessedness in the triune life of God that is
transcendent and imminent and eternal and good and beautiful and true.
The next bit, once again, I'm not going to be talking about everything in the text. I'm going
to try to trace this argument through it. Like, why...
This next bit tries to get at the fact that we don't want to just trust that only God can do it.
There's still something within us that crazily thinks that even though we are so prone to image
management rather than reality and all of those problems, that somehow we can still get to that by
ourselves. So Paul looks at that in the next few verses. Look at verse 13.
For the promise... Now here's... That's going to be the key word here. The promise.
It's a promise from God. For the promise to Abraham and his offspring, that's ultimately referring to
Jesus, that he would be heir of the world, did not come through the law, that is doing religious good
deeds or religious rituals or your moral performance, but through the righteousness of faith, through having
faith in Christ and in God that makes you right with him. And if you're right with him truly, you're in
blessedness, and if you're in blessedness, you are right with God. For is... If it is the adherence of the
law that is doing the right things and the right rituals and the right religion, who are to be heirs,
then that means that faith... And here the word null and promised is void. It's actually a verb in the
original language. It means it's nullified. Every time you turn away from just trusting in God,
that only God can bring you into blessedness, and that it all depends on him promising to do it,
every time you turn away from that, you're completely and utterly moving away from faith and moving away
from promise. You're saying those things are irrelevant. And then when it says, for the law brings wrath,
but where there is no law, there is no transgression, I'm not going to talk about that. You can ask me about it at a coffee
hour, because it will take five minutes to try to explain, and this is already going to be a pretty big sermon.
What's going on here is this.
And this, you see, and the reason we begin with the Bible, but also bring it back to human experience,
is because Christians are human beings, and so we have this inbuilt tendency to misread
and mishear what God actually says to us. And so we have this tendency of reading the Bible as if it says,
obey the law, and I will bless you. Be good, and I will bless you. Do the right rituals, and I will bless you.
Learn mindfulness, and I will bless you. Learn how to pray like Allah tells you, and I will bless you.
Learn to meditate, and I will bless you. Learn yoga, and I will bless you. Become beautiful, and I will bless you.
All of these different versions, and that's the normal way, and Christians often slide into reading
the Bible in this way, but what God actually says here is this to Abraham. I will bless you.
Believe my promise. Whoa, that's so different. I will bless you. Only I can bring you into blessedness.
I want to bring you into blessedness. I have provided the way to bring you into blessedness.
Believe my word. Believe my promise. Believe my guarantee.
It begins with, I will bless you. I will bring you into blessedness. That's how it begins. Believe my
promise. And if you go the other way, I'm not going to believe your promise, God. I'm not going to
believe you're the one who can bring me into this. No, no. I'm going to work at image management. I'm going
to work at the right type of rituals, and I'm going to do all those things, because then you have to
bless me. The way you do that, all you're doing is walking away from what God desires to give you.
So why about all this talk about faith and belief? And then is it like trying to say that there's some
type of superpower? And is it just believing the right couple of words or having the right type of
experience? Well, let's look at verses 16 to 19. That is why it depends on faith. That is this being in
blessedness, being right with God. That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest
on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring. You see, when you are made right with God and enter into
blessedness, one of the images that is used is that it is as if I become God's child by adoption and grace.
I mean, one of the great truths, one of the takeaways from this sermon for us is that you can face any
situation you're in, both maybe a job interview or some other type of thing or a performance, or you can
look at any type of thing in your life, and you can know that because you put your faith and trust in
the Lord Jesus Christ, that he is God's provision for you to be brought into blessedness by him,
that you know that you can pray to your Father in heaven who is almighty God, and you are his precious
child.
with all your words, with all your problems, with all your shame, with all your weakness, with all your
doubts. I have all of those things. And part of the reason I so desperately need you and I desperately
need times of worship is to be reminded once again with all of you that I have a Father in heaven
who loves me, who is the God of the entire earth, and he is the almighty, everlasting, eternal God,
and he has made me his beloved child by adoption and grace.
I could not accomplish that. If you knew what I was really like, I could never make that happen.
And if you think you can make it happen for yourself, you are deluding yourself.
You are deluding yourself.
You see, faith
is losing delusions about yourself
to take God at his word
and believe his promises and guarantees.
I hope you want to leave your delusions behind
and take God at his word.
I'll continue reading.
Search 16 again.
That is why it depends on faith in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring,
not only to the adherents of the law, but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all.
It is written,
I have made you the father of many people groups.
In the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist,
in hope he believed against hope, in other words, against all appearances,
against all optimism,
against all types of self-confidence,
against all of his self-assessments,
if he's an optimist against all of his optimism,
if he's a pessimist against all of his pessimism,
if he's arrogant against all of his arrogance,
if he suffers from the world's worst self-identity and feels completely ashamed against all shame,
in hope against all of those other things he believed,
that he should become the father of many nations,
even though, as he had been told,
so shall your offspring be.
He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body,
which was as good as dead,
since he was about a hundred years old,
or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb.
You see, here's the other thing about faith,
is faith is never against reason,
but it's often against our feelings and appearances.
Faith is always against our delusions,
but it's never against being thoughtful and reflective and thinking.
And the image, so you see, in a sense,
to be, you know,
faith is taking God at his word
and believing him and his promise.
Faith is taking God at his word
and believing in him and his promise.
And so, in a sense,
we have to put to death
our own optimism,
our own pessimism,
our own self-trust,
and all of those types of things.
And it's not that we don't look at the world.
Blessedness,
why do we still look at the world?
Because at the end of the day,
we believe there is a God who does exist,
who's created all things out of nothing,
that is the author
and the giver of all life,
who has raised Jesus from the dead,
which we're going to get to in a moment,
and that's the real world.
That's the real God.
Scientists have never been able to show
how inorganic, lifeless matter
can create life.
What is more reasonable,
to think that a whole pile of chemicals
under a rock gives life,
or that God gives life?
What story is more reasonable?
Sorry.
Really?
Life comes from some chemicals
under a rock?
In a swamp?
Or life comes from God?
Think.
Reflect on him.
Blessedness is something
that only God can bring us into.
Only the true God can do this.
This is the real world.
And so you don't look at the world.
What we learn in faith
is to look at the world,
but do not let the world
circumscribe and limit
who the triune God is,
but let our knowledge
and our understanding
of the triune God
and his promises
and his great love,
that he desires you and me,
despite knowing perfectly
who we are,
that he would make us his child
by adoption and grace,
that he would take away
everything I've done wrong,
everything I'm ashamed of,
all would be laid on Christ
when he died on the cross,
and that the perfect relationship
of Jesus to the Father
and the Holy Spirit,
that that would somehow
be bestowed upon me
and clothe me,
not just in my externals,
but all the way through me.
It would clothe my mind,
my will,
my affections,
my creativity,
my desires,
my longings,
my yearnings,
my body,
my past,
my present,
my future,
all the way through.
Don't let the world
circumscribe what God can do,
but take God at his word
and believe that his promise,
and if the triune God
has made a promise
and guarantees it,
he has guaranteed it.
Why will I stand before God
one day
and be entered into his kingdom?
Not because I have lived
a good life,
not because I am a minister,
but purely and utterly
because I believed God
at his word
and I believe him
and the promise he has made
to bring me into that blessedness
and right relationship with him
when I put my faith and trust
in what God has done
to bring me into that,
and that is what will...
That's it.
The next part,
it's easier to understand
the next little bit
if you think of the Bible story
about Peter walking on the water,
but I'll read the text
and then I'll show you
how it's easier to understand
if you remember that story.
Look at verse 20,
and in verse 20 it says,
no unbelief
made Abraham waver
concerning the promise of God,
but he grew strong in his faith
as he gave glory to God,
fully convinced
that God was able
to do what he had promised.
That is why his faith
was counted to him
as righteousness.
So what this is sort of getting
and going back with the hope
and everything like that
against hope,
it's a little bit like
when Peter was walking on the water,
he saw the storms
and he saw the waves
and he saw the wind,
and he's very aware of that,
and he's a fisherman,
and he knows roughly
how deep the water is,
and he knows all of those problems,
but he hears Jesus promise,
ask him to come over to him,
and he believes Jesus at his word,
and so he steps out of the boat
and walks on the water,
and at some point in time,
looking at the water,
he takes his eyes off of Jesus
and looks at the water,
and then he sinks,
but he does not drown
because Jesus has called him
to himself,
and even when Peter's faith is weak
and his eyes waver and wander,
it is the strong word
and promise of Jesus
which is our guarantee
so that even as Peter sinks,
the strong arm of Jesus
reaches out and grabs him
and brings him into the boat.
Jesus brings him into the boat.
That's so beautiful.
That is the Christian hope.
So why all this language of counting?
I talked about this more last week
because the fundamental way
that we tend to think of
how we're going to be made right with God
is that, you know,
I went to church these many times,
and I read my Bible.
As a Christian,
I read my Bible these many times,
and I repented of these sins
these many times,
and I'm making all of these things
over here,
and that's sort of how I think,
and then over here
is the bad things I've done,
but you're pretty confident
at the end of the day
when you die,
the good things in your life
all get added up,
and the bad things get added up,
but the good things outweigh the bad,
and now God has some type of obligation
to get you in,
to allow you into heaven,
and then, of course,
I said last week
we used the analogy
that God doesn't even think
in those categories.
He says if you put your faith
and trust in Jesus,
and in a sense,
it's like a person
who's completely and utterly impoverished
and is being chased
by all sorts of people
marrying a billionaire,
and all those debts are covered,
and here there's a different,
you know,
a different type of,
and the problem with all of that
type of language
is that we think we can control
and obligate God
by our good deeds.
I haven't told this story in a while,
but back when we were still
in the building
and we were taking a stand
on certain issues
of biblical faithfulness
and the guy was opposed to it,
and he said to me,
would you change what you do
if I told you
I'm going to stop giving money
to the church?
And as soon as he said that,
his wife,
who was drinking coffee,
had one of those experiences
where the coffee went the wrong way
and she snorted it out her nostrils,
and she laughed and said,
honey,
you're going to have to give
a lot more money
if you think
that's going to have
any impact on him.
I mean,
he probably gave $20
every four months
when he showed up
and thinks he was giving us
a big deal.
But we're like that with God.
Really?
Oh, wow,
I am so impressed.
You went to church 25 times
like in 2016.
Like, really?
Really?
How's that going to give me
blessedness?
That doesn't make any sense.
Only God can bring me
into blessedness.
And all he asks
is that I believe,
take him at his word
and believe him
and believe what he promised.
And look again
at what he promised.
It can be seen
in the last verses,
23 to 25.
This is now us.
Oh, sorry,
I'm looking at the wrong here.
23 to 25.
But the words,
it was counted to him,
were not written
for his sake alone.
In other words,
when we just believe God,
so the normal human way
is to think of,
you know,
he's adding up the good and bad
and all of that.
But no, no, no, no.
What we need to understand
is this.
It's when you put your faith
and trust in Jesus
and you believe,
because God has promised
that if you put your faith
and trust in Jesus
who died the death
that you deserve
and lived the life
you cannot live
and suffered death
and tasted all there is
to taste of death
and then rose from the dead,
and if you believe
that that is God's provision
for you to enter
into blessedness,
then he takes you.
Only he can bring you
into blessedness,
and all that counting
doesn't matter.
What matters
is that God has brought you
into blessedness.
That's what matters.
But the words,
verse 23,
it was counted to him,
were not written
for his sake alone,
that's in Genesis 15,
but for ours,
yours and mine.
It will be counted to us
who believe into God,
who raised from the dead,
Jesus our Lord,
who was delivered up
for our trespasses
and raised for our justification.
And that's the image
that I was trying to get,
is that when we believe
that God has provided this way
and we believe him,
we believe his promise,
and we accept that
that's the way
by trusting Jesus
as our Savior and Lord,
and he guarantees
bringing us into blessedness,
it begins on this side
of the grave
in little tiny seeds,
and on the other side
of the grave,
it will be seen
in all of its fullness,
and as I go through
the trials
and the problems
and then temptations
of this world,
I am invited time
and time and time again
in the midst of it
to remember
that I have to
take God at his word,
there's nothing I can do
other than take God
at his word
and believe his promise
and live out of his promise,
and when I live
out of his promise
in gratitude,
I will start to live
in very, very, very
different ways,
even to the point
of every time
I had those experiences
while I was in Tucson,
I just said,
God, you are such
a good God,
and I'm not saying this
because I am
particularly holy,
but because we live
out of the promise
of God to us,
and when you live
out of that promise,
you begin to live
out of gratitude
and see the world
in a different way,
you begin to live
in the real world,
and this image
of the death
means that everything
bad has been covered,
has been dealt with
in a way that is just,
we'll talk about that
more in coming weeks,
and this idea
of being justified,
it's the same word
as rightness,
the rightness of Jesus
comes upon me
and into every level
and part
and nuance
and crack
of me
and all my depths
and in all my future
and all my breadth
and all my width
and all my height
and my lower,
it comes
and clothes
all of me.
All of me
is his,
I belong
to him
when I take him
at his word
and believe his promise.
Just want to say
one other thing
before we close.
If you just look
at verse 20 again,
yeah,
20
of chapter 4,
there's a really
good lesson here
about how to grow
in our faith.
Look what it says.
It says here,
no unbelief
made him waver
concerning the promise
of God.
So part of it
is just remembering
the promise of God.
But here,
look at the main thing.
He grew strong
in his faith
as he gave glory
to God.
He grew strong
in his faith
as he gave glory
to God.
Give him glory.
Think about
who he is.
Think about
his attributes.
As you read
the Bible,
look at
what the truth
he wants us to know,
the promises
he wants us to believe,
the wisdom
he wants to share,
and ask him
to make it more real
in your heart
and the heart
of your loved ones
and thank him.
Give him glory
for the precious promises
and his wisdom
and the truth
and for who he is.
And in all things,
just say,
Father,
I do not deserve
your favor,
but you are so kind
and so loving
and so good
and so gentle
that you would call
me to hear
your promise
and that you,
by your Holy Spirit,
would enable me
to take you
at your word
and believe
your promise
to believe
in Jesus
as the way
that you
will bring me
at the end
into blessedness.
I invite you
to stand.
Thank you.
bow our heads
in prayer.
Father,
I give you
thanks and praise
that you know
each one of us
so perfectly.
You know
each
false front
that we have,
each illusion
and delusion
that we
wrap our minds
around
or we hide
behind
and to hide
from ourselves
and hide
from other people
and you know
everyone that we've
ever used
and everyone
that we will use
and you see
through all of those
things,
knowing them all
to see us
as we really are
and you loved us.
You love us.
and you did not
turn your face
away from us
when you see
all the false
identities
and idols
and arrogance
and wounds
and our excellence.
Father,
you don't turn
your eyes away
from us
but still you love us
and sent your son
and promised
that when we put
our faith and trust,
when we take you
at your word
and believe
in your promise
and put our faith
in Jesus
that Father,
you may
make us right
with you
in a way
which means
that we will dwell
and be in blessedness
for all eternity,
blessedness
of new resurrection bodies,
the blessedness
of a renewed
earth and heavens
and you do
all of that
for us
and so Father,
we ask that you
would promise
that we would
help us
to believe
that promise
and then live
out of that promise
day by day.
And so Father,
we thank you
and we ask
that you would
do this work
in our lives
and we ask
all of this
in the name
of Jesus,
your son
and our savior
and all God's
people said,
amen.