Romans Chapter 4:5-8

When I came to this understanding of grace, it totally changed my Christian walk. I was no longer walking around miserable.

I was walking around filled with joy that I'd been forgiven even though I didn't deserve it. Grace is what brings us into being God's children. When did God bestow this righteousness on Abraham? When he believed. Today Pastor David encourages us to look deeply into the love of God as he continues in the book of Romans chapter 4 with his teaching titled, Faith.

Let's go now to David. Let's look at verse 5. It says, but to him who does not work, but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness.

Believes on him who justifies the ungodly. Now some of us are going to go, oh, see, see there. So we do do something. We believe. We have to believe.

Well, I agree we have to believe, but you can't take any credit for that. You can't sit in there, well, I believe I had to come forward. I had to do this and I had to do that. Let me ask you a question. Were you just walking down the street one day and all of a sudden think, wait, you know what? I need to believe in God. Or did perhaps, friend, has the Holy Spirit been chasing you for quite a while before you desired to go to a church, before you desired to pray the prayer, before you desired to fellowship with the Lord? So that was the Holy Spirit wooing, convincing, convicting you, if you will, about your need for him.

And to establish that relationship with him, it has to be grace. It can't be works or you're living like a yo-yo. Friend, I used to live like that as a Christian.

I don't want to live like that anymore. When I came to this understanding of grace, it totally changed my Christian walk. I was no longer walking around miserable.

I was walking around filled with joy that I'd been forgiven even though I didn't deserve it. Grace is what brings us into being God's children. When did God bestow this righteousness on Abraham? When he got everything worked out and all his issues?

No, no, no. When he believed. When he believed is what the Bible says. Grace causes our standing to be God's children. Verse 6, just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works. Let's understand something.

We've all messed up. The Bible points that out. And once we come to Jesus and say, Jesus, forgive me, we begin to live this new life that the Bible talks about. As a matter of fact, 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 14 puts it like this. Whatever we do, it is because Christ's love controls us, motivated by love. 1 Corinthians 13 points this out too. Since we believe that Christ died for everyone, we also believe that we have all died to the old life we used to live.

This is important. Let's understand. You come to God through grace, you begin to die to the old ways, the old things, the old habits, the old ways of thinking.

That's what's supposed to happen according to the Bible. It's interesting, born and raised in the south. Some of you are probably aware of this. What you do with a dog or a hound who kills chickens because once they do that, they really, they have a tendency to do it more and more. And so you have to do something.

It's going to sound a little weird, but this is actually what you do. Once a dog does that, what you do is you take a dead chicken that he killed and you tie it around his neck and you leave it there for a week or two. And pretty soon, guess what? That dog doesn't want anything to do with chickens anymore.

Well, Pastor David, thanks a lot for that great visual. I'll think of that next time I'm at KFC. But I share that for a reason, because we're supposed to die to the old ways. And part of you really has to get fed up with the old ways.

And that's part of what the Lord does in our lives. Because after a while, you know, if you try to live the old life, you're going to be walking around. What is that smell? It's the old, dead you, you're still trying to carry around. Let it go. Let it go. Can you imagine this is a reality of somebody saying, no, I don't want to be set free from this corpse and carcass I'm carrying around. I'm quite comfortable with it.

I'd rather carry it around. Well, that's what it looks like if somebody doesn't die to the old life. That's what it looks like when somebody rejects Jesus says, justifies the ungodly. Well, we've already talked about chapter three, that there's no that are godly. And Jesus reminds us in Luke chapter 19, verse 10. He says, for the son of man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. So Paul's pointing out that it's not of works, but Pastor David, I thought Christianity was like a list of do's and don'ts.

Friend, it's much, much more than just that. We come to it through grace. And again, grace is the only way we can have any consistency in our walk. And you go, well, okay, well, that's true.

Well, we need the Bible for it's got all these things because the Bible points out how much we need saving. It always amazes me when I talk to somebody that says, well, I've kept most of the 10 commandments and amazes me. It's like, have you ever read them? Because if you've read them, you should know you've broken most of them.

That's somebody going, oh, not me. Yes, you have. I won't.

We do this often. I won't do it now, but you've broken most of them. Trust me. So it amazes me when people say, well, you know, how do you, how do you think you're going to get to heaven? Well, I keep most of the 10 commandments.

You ain't getting in because you've broken most of them. So why are the 10 commandments there? Paul says to bring us to a knowledge that we need a savior to bring us that place to go. You know, I can't do this on my own.

I've got to have help. That's what the Psalmist was talking about in Psalm 1970 says, the law of the Lord is perfect. Converting the soul. There's nothing wrong with the law of God. The law of God simply points out what's wrong with us. And then Grace comes in and says, here, you can be saved through this. But we need to understand God doesn't owe us salvation.

He does not owe us salvation. The next life lesson here is a right relationship with God is a gift that I do not, cannot and never will deserve. A right relationship with God is a gift that I do not, cannot and never will deserve. See, God is willing to give us something that we could never achieve on our own. And that's perfect righteousness, a right standing with him.

You can't achieve that. You can't do enough good where God will go, OK, you're good. If you could, you would have changed human history. If one person in this room, this state, this nation in this world, one person ever existed could have done this. Jesus never would have came and died. He wouldn't have had to.

But none of us could. And God is willing to give us grace. How much grace does a sinful person need to approach a holy God?

I'm thinking it's a whole lot. And I'm thinking we probably ought to be talking about it and probably ought to be looking at it because it's in the word of God so much. And yet we tend towards this spiritual pride.

Even right now, I'm talking about grace. Some of you are arguing, not out loud. If you were arguing out loud, we'd get one of the hushers to come get you. But you're going, no, no, no, no, I think it's this. I think it's a little bit of works.

No, it's not. Jesus told an interesting thing in the temple. There were two people. One of them looked at the other and said, God, I am so glad I'm not like him.

Thank you. The other one said, God, I don't deserve to be forgiven. But please have mercy on me, a sinner. Which prayer did God respond to? Which prayer moved God to forgiveness? Obviously, the God said, I don't deserve forgiveness. And yet let me ask you a question. Modern day Christianity.

Which one does it look like? All too often, it looks like one of us looking at somebody goes, oh, thank God I'm not like him. Thank God I'm not like her. Friend, you need to understand, that kind of spiritual pride is a stench in the nostrils of God. Verse 6 talks about this righteousness. And we talk about these terms of salvation, I'll give them to you again, because we're going to come across them a lot in the book of Romans. Justification, I was saved. Sanctification, I am being saved. Glorification, I will be saved. We'll leave those up for a second.

If you're taking notes, you might want to jot these down. Justification, just as if I never did it. That happens instantly when you come forward or ask the Lord to forgive you of your sins.

You're justified. You're righteous. Sanctification is a process.

I am being saved. That's where you're leaving the old life behind, embracing the new life, following Jesus, acting more and more like him and less like you used to act. And glorification is when you come into the presence of the Lord.

Like we sang that soon and very soon. Revelation 21, 4 talks about no more sickness, no more death, no more sin, no more sorrow, no more pain. That's glorification. All three of these are the works of God, not your works.

You can't be justified by your works. Sanctification is God working in you. And glorification, friend, that's the final work of God in our lives. Salvation is a work of God, not a work of man.

In the New Living Translation, Romans 4, 6 reads like this. King David spoke of this, describing the happiness of an undeserving sinner who is declared to be righteous. An undeserving sinner declared to be righteous. See, really, you have to understand that you're an undeserving sinner to be declared righteous.

Because if you think you're a deserving sinner, then you really don't think that you're a sinner. Thank you for listening to Cross the Bridge with David McGee. We'll return to David's teaching in just a moment. The tragedy in Benghazi, the bombings in Boston, and the current unrest in Egypt are all vivid accounts of terrorism. Each time an event like this occurs, it often causes us to respond with fear. But it doesn't have to, because God knows your future, and you can too. With David McGee's teaching entitled Know Your Future, Be Immune to Terrorism, you'll come to understand the realities of radical Islam while rejoicing in God's promises for your future.

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To help support Cross the Bridge and receive your CD or DVD copy of Know Your Future, call 877-458-5508 or go online to CrossTheBridge.com. And now let's return to Pastor David's verse-by-verse teaching in the book of Romans. Let's look at these next two verses. It says, Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered, and blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin. Blessed.

Blessed. Now, that was a word they used a lot back then, and we don't use it as much. What does it mean literally? Blessed means happy, to overflowing, filled with joy. It means healthy. It means whole in the Hebrew. In the Greek, actually, there's also meaning well-off.

That's kind of interesting, isn't it? Well-off, all of us think of well-off as financially well-off. No, no, just saying, blessed if your sins are forgiven. Not if you got this and if you got that, but if your sins are forgiven, you're blessed. It doesn't matter what the economy does. It doesn't matter what your job does.

It doesn't matter what the stock market does. You can be blessed by knowing your sins are forgiven. Again, another description for that would be happy. Happy.

Some of you may be believing the lie. I'll be happy when fill in your blank. I'll be happy when I get that new job. I'll be happy when I get the new house. I'll be happy when I get the new car. I'll be happy when I get that promotion. No, you won't.

No, you won't. You will not find happiness in those things. I've known people who had best jobs in the world, best cars in the world, best houses. They weren't happy.

I believed that lie for a while. Younger in life, I thought I would be happy if I achieved a certain success in the music world. Well, I got a degree of success and I was miserable. So those things, whatever you're chasing, they're not going to bring you happiness. That's the bad news.

New girlfriend, new boyfriend, new husband, new wife, that's not going to bring you happiness. The awesome thing is you can be blessed today. You don't have to go and do this, that, and the other.

You can be blessed today. If you walked in here without really knowing that your sins have been forgiven, oh, friend, you can walk out of here so blessed. I'm not talking about you changing your behavior. I'm talking about you coming to the Lord, changing what you think. See, if you think you can earn it, you're going to keep trying.

You're going to be miserable. But if you understand you can't earn it, then you'll come to him and you'll be blessed. So the question really is, are you blessed? Are you blessed? And if you're blessed, let your heart know. If you're blessed, let your face know when you go out in the public. Understand that you're blessed. And this might be tough, that might be, oh, but my sins are forgiven.

And don't play the victim card. Oh, someone else did this and somebody else did that. You know what? You've done more sins than you've been sinned against. I promise you that.

I promise you that. Now, Jesus is wanting to bestow this grace on us, wanting to give us this joy. Now, Paul brings up Abraham. Now he brings up David.

Now this is kind of interesting. Where did he decide to forgive David? Was it, you know, and David, awesome guy, awesome man of God, you know, and incredible songwriter and all these things. Most of us are familiar with the story, though, that David didn't always do what was right.

As a matter of fact, there was one time when it says, interestingly enough, all his guys were out fighting a battle and David was in his palace. The story starts out not looking good. Here's why.

He should have been out fighting. It always concerns me when somebody says, well, I want to take a break from serving. I go, man, this is probably not going to be good, or worse yet, I want to take a break from attending church.

Because what happens, friend, is we get in a lot of trouble when we take those breaks. I heard people say, well, I'm just afraid of getting burned out. Yeah, I'm glad Jesus didn't look at it like that.

I'm glad he didn't look at that hill in Calvary and go, oh, man, I think bad things might happen up here. I'm just going to stay here. I might get burned out if I go up there.

That's our model, guys. And yet, you know, what happens is we go through life, and in the name of avoiding burnout, we play it so safe that we're no longer living a radical Christian life. But we're safe from burnout. You know what I found in ministry? And, guys, I've worked long days. I've had some days that were really hard. But here's what I found. If you're doing what God has called you to do in his power, it's impossible to get burned out.

It's not going to happen. When I look at the life of missionaries and all these people that did all these incredible things, they never got burned out. If you're doing what God has called you to do in the way he's called you to do it and in his power. So, David, he's, you know, hanging out, and, you know, he goes up, and he's on his roof, and he's looking around, and, you know, and he's, oh, who's that? And I think the servants kind of knew something was wrong because they said it's Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, David. And if David would have had good common sense, he went, oh, she's married, okay.

He didn't bring her over here, went downhill from there. Not only did he commit adultery, but then he conspired to have her husband killed, and he was. So he's caught up in murder and adultery and other things, and then this man Nathan comes to him. Nathan was his friend. Nathan was a prophet. Nathan came, told him a little story.

He said, hey, there was this guy with a bunch of lambs, and then there was this guy with one lamb, and the guy with a bunch of lambs, he stole the one lamb this guy had. What should we do about that, David? David said, man, we should take him out.

We should execute him. Nathan turned to him and said, you're the man. Nathan continues, 2 Samuel chapter 12, verse 11. Thus says the Lord, Nathan speaking to David here, says, thus says the Lord, behold, I will raise up adversity against you from your own house. I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this son, for you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel before the son. Look at verse 13. So David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said to David, the Lord also has put away your sin. You shall not die. No sacrifices, no offerings. Simply coming to the Lord and saying, I've sinned against the Lord. And Nathan says, your sins are gone. They're covered. What an amazing thing.

What an amazing thing. Keep your finger in Romans chapter four. We're going to close in just a couple of minutes, but go with me to Psalm 32. This passage is quoting Psalm 32.

Because I think it would help us to kind of look at this Psalm a little bit. Psalm 32 says this. It quotes those first two verses. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. Look at verse three. When I kept silent, my bones grew old through my groaning all the day long.

For day and night your hand was heavy upon me, and my vitality was turned into the drought of summer. I acknowledge my sin to you and my iniquity I have not hidden. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin, Selah. Turn back with me to Romans chapter four.

This is kind of interesting. David says, I just felt old and felt dried up and I was not happy. Do you understand that some people feel depressed because either they've not been forgiven or if they're a believer, they don't keep that as a core statement? Because how can you be depressed at the same time you're going, my sins are forgiven? Some people are anxious because they don't recognize their sins are forgiven, or maybe they've not been forgiven. Some people get upset.

Some people are miserable. But here's David. Now, if you're going through life and you're thinking, well, if I get enough power at work, if I'm this, if I'm that, if I'm running my own company, then I'll be happy.

Wait a minute. You think power is going to do it? David was a king over all of Israel. If power could have brought him happiness, he would have been a happy camper.

That's not it. Stuff. I think stuff will make me happy. David had lots of stuff. Some of you guys out there may be going, well, if I had women or the right woman, I'd be happy. David had lots of women to make him happy.

Well, if I was popular with more people like me, man, they sang songs about David as he walked down the streets. That didn't bring him happiness. What brought him happiness? Knowing his sins were forgiven.

This passage points out a couple of things. Number one, God forgives sin and he gives righteousness apart from works and for believers, God is willing to no longer count our sins against us. God is willing to no longer count our sins against us. It doesn't say blessed is the man who's really trying hard.

It doesn't say blessed is the man who's mostly doing things right. Blessed is the man whose sins are forgiven. David said when he wasn't forgiven, he felt dried up, dusty.

Well, I tell you what, been there, done that. Because whenever I've wandered from the Lord, boy, that's a good description. I feel dried up and dusty.

I feel miserable. But the moment I come back to the Lord, all is forgiven. And we're looking at David. David, a man guilty of adultery and murder. And because he was willing to come to the Lord and say, I've sinned against the Lord, he was forgiven.

Now, if you're sitting here this morning or maybe you're in Greensboro listening to the teacher or maybe television or internet or the radio, maybe, maybe you've committed these things. The Lord says, if you come to me, I'll forgive you. He was willing to forgive David of these things. What was the high price David had to pay before he was forgiven? Just to come to the Lord and say, I have sinned. Now, yes, there were still some consequences to his behavior.

But he was forgiven in an instant. Jesus in John chapter 4, he's talking with this woman at the well, Samaritan woman. She's there to gather water. She's there in the middle of the day, which tells you, you don't gather water in the middle of the day in the desert. She didn't want to see anybody.

She didn't want to be around anybody. And Jesus pops up and he tells her, anybody who drinks from this water, they're just going to thirst again. They're going to be thirsty. Friend, a lot of the things that you engage in in life, they just leave you thirsty.

It's like eating salted popcorn or salted peanuts. It just leaves you thirsty. Life itself kind of leaves you thirsty, as a matter of fact.

It's not going to satisfy you. And then Jesus says, I can give you water where you're never going to thirst again. Another place in John chapter 7, he says, if anybody's thirsty, let him come to me. I'll give him the living water and out of him will flow streams of living water. Not only will your thirst be quenched, but God will use you to quench the thirst of others.

As a matter of fact, the whole Bible winds up in Revelation 22. Jesus says, the spirit and the bride say, come, come and drink freely of the waters of life. Friend, are you sitting in here this morning and you're thirsty?

You're a little dried up? There's good news. Your thirst can be quenched. You can be forgiven. And I don't know if you walked in here blessed, but I guarantee you this. You can walk out of here blessed by coming to the Lord and saying, God, please forgive me. Friend, do you know for sure that your sins have been forgiven?

You can know right now. I lead you in a short, simple prayer, simply telling God you're sorry and asking him to help you to live for him. Please pray this prayer with me out loud right now. Dear Jesus, I believe you died for me that I could be forgiven. And I believe you were raised from the dead that I could have a new life. And I've done wrong things. I have sinned.

And I'm sorry. Please forgive me of all those things. Please give me the power to live for you all of my days. In Jesus' name.

Amen. Friend, if you prayed that prayer, according to the Bible, you've been forgiven. You've been born again. Jesus said he would not turn anybody away who comes to him. And he came for those people who knew they needed forgiveness.

Those who were sick, not the righteous. So congratulations, friend, you just made the greatest decision that you will ever make. God bless you. If this was your first time praying that prayer with Pastor David, we would love to hear from you. You can call us toll free at 877-458-5508 to receive our First Steps package with helpful resources to help you begin your walk with Christ. Also, if you've been blessed by Cross the Bridge Ministries, would you consider supporting us with a financial gift? When you call with your gift, make sure to ask them about this month's special offer entitled, Know Your Future, Be Immune to Terrorism.

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