Old School Faith (Part B)

God looks at the heart with the whole story with David and Samuel. You know, God doesn't look at the outside. He looks at the heart.

That's what he's after. Hebrews 10 22. Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, overcoming doubt. But who believes? Who believes him who justifies the ungodly?

Wait a minute. Who saves the ungodly? The pronoun is in reference to God.

Christ. God must be regarded as holy. The irreverent give space again to those verses that they like.

And the silent treatment to the ones they dislike. May God always find us with lofty ideas about him. According to the Scriptures. Isaiah 57 verse 15. For thus says the high and lofty one. Who would want a lesser God?

Who would want, you know, the low and measly one? And yet people are making them up all the time. Hey, look at this.

Where'd you get that? I just made it up. Well, creativity is not what God is looking for when it comes to understanding who he is. Obedience. For thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy. I dwell in the high and holy place with him who has a contrite and humble spirit to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. He's saying there, my people are going to get beat down and I will revive them. But they see me as holy regardless of their feelings. They are inspired more by truth than circumstances.

I want to be that guy all the time. Now that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. You'll be hurting very much. I think Job was hurting very much when he said the Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. He wasn't singing that. It was a lamentation.

But it was also a declaration of faith. And he never departed from it. But he came real close.

He came close. I want God to be lofty. You can hear the inspiration in Isaiah's voice. Thus says the high and lofty one. That's my God. Those who come to God must see him as holy.

As pure, undefiled. May we never surrender our high opinion of God to anyone, not even to our treacherous affinities, our flesh. Abraham believed God. Not Abraham behaved and God liked him. He believed God. There were times that Abraham got it wrong too.

Abraham answered when God called, I believe. And it was accounted to him for righteousness, more attitude than action. Interesting, the Greek word used here by Paul for accounted is where we get our English word log. Not like a log of wood, of timber, but a log like putting it into a book, an entry into a book. Abraham believed God and God logged it into the Lamb's Book of Life.

You could say it that way. You could see it that way when you put the New Testament into the equation, which you have to do. Verse 4, now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace, but as debt. Well, you seek to earn salvation by doing good deeds, you're saying God owes you.

And he's already made that clear. God's not going to be indebted. The wages are not counted as grace and that's what they should be counted as. Saving grace is not earned, but it is given and it is either received or rejected. Belief receives it. Salvation is free for all or not at all if you come to receive it. Only Christ can secure it from us.

And that's what he says. If you have your Bibles, you look over at Romans 3, verse 24, being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. But Paul said, you know what, that's not enough. They want a short little letter, they want a short little sermon.

I can't do that. There's too much information, there's too many things going on that have to be dealt with. So he kept writing. Repetitive, some of it, from different angles, but all of it necessary, all of it beneficial to those who would avail themselves of it. But as debt, if you think that God owes you, actually you're the one in debt. By this standard of ones failed, by this standard of God rewarding me for what I do good, by that standard, then what happens when you don't do good?

Is it subtracted from the account? That's fair. I don't want fair with God. Not when it comes to my judgment. I want mercy. I would not ever want to see myself, give me what you got.

That would be it for me. I just want pardon. I want God to not impute my sin. Any system of payment and debt is one sinners cannot afford.

And that's what Paul is making. But the Jews, again, many of them, they didn't see it this way and there was so much going on. We haven't even got, you know, many slaves were coming to Christ. What would have happened if the slave was said, you told the slave you can come to Christ, but you still have to honor the Sabbath and be circumcised. Well, how would his master ever allow those two things alone to take place?

I'm going to be off of work for about a week or two. I have to have this right of circumcision and I'll be out of the picture. The masses wouldn't put up with that. Could you imagine a slave going to his master? I've given my life to Christ and I'm off on Saturday.

Wouldn't work. Paul could see that. God showed him that. But many of these Jews were holding that tight in their fist.

We're not giving this up, but then how can you reach the world? Abraham was to be a blessing to all peoples. Well, he can't be a blessing if you're holding on to the ritual over faith. That doesn't mean all the rituals were useless.

They were symbols and signs, but they weren't what got the work done. Faith is what does that. And so, verse five, but to him who does not work but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness. His faith is logged into the Lamb's Book of Life, but to him who does not work.

Now, of course, Paul was a dynamo when it came to working. He's certainly not saying we can all be lazy. The Bible rebukes, in fact, until he writes to the Thessalonians, if someone doesn't work, he doesn't eat. That's a form of a death sentence, is it not?

Don't feed him if he's lazy. That's pretty straightforward. But the believing ungodly are to be reckoned as righteous by faith while they're still ungodly.

That's what it says. But to him who does not work but believes on him who justifies the ungodly. Otherwise, no one would get saved. God doesn't say, you know, if you could just clean up your act, I can get you into heaven. I know a guy.

It doesn't work that way. If you can just believe me, I can clean you. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all this basic Christianity. That is so difficult to share with people in such a way that they get saved.

This is the fact. This fact makes it the gospel that the ungodly are the ones that God saves. Now, there are other ungodly ones that will not be saved because they won't come by faith. And I'll quote Jude later on where he says that. Let me just make sure I have the right place.

Let's go to a commercial while I look at this. Okay, since I'm here, might as well. To execute judgment on all, to convict all who are ungodly, one, among them of their ungodly deeds, two ungodlies, he continues, which they have committed in an ungodly way and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him for. Four ungodlies. In that section, Jude is talking about those who opt to remain ungodly without God's touch on their lives. Paul is saying here, those who are ungodly, who believe in the Lord, God will cleanse.

But those who opt to remain ungodly, well, they made their bed. It's not rigged. You have a say so. Those who hear the gospel have a say so. What's the point of hearing the gospel?

It is not rigged. He says here, but to him who does not work but believes. There's another reason why infant baptism has nothing to do with salvation. An infant cannot believe. Maybe the infant doesn't want to believe when they become a grown-up person.

You have to wait until they're old enough to be able to answer the question, do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God, Savior of the world, sitting on the right hand of the throne of God, coming again? God looks at the heart with the whole story with David and Samuel. You know, God doesn't look at the outside. He looks at the heart.

That's what he's after. Hebrews 10, 22, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, overcoming doubt. But who believes? Who believes him who justifies the ungodly?

Wait a minute. Who saves the ungodly? The pronoun is in reference to God, Christ. Again, notice that it is the ungodly that God justifies or else none of us would be loving the Lord as we do.

God's salvation is received by the individual sinner and not a saint. This goes against natural thinking. But as I started out, we're not to think naturally. We think spiritually when it comes to spiritual matters. You can think naturally you're going to fix a bicycle or something. Sure, think naturally all you want. Although when I go to fix something, I'm very spiritual because I'm asking God's help every step of the way. I don't know what I'm doing. I hope this doesn't set anything on fire. So, while I'm sensible enough to leave those things, I know this about electricity.

I don't know anything about it. So, anyway, it is his growth in grace, the individual's growth in the grace of God that comes through God saving the believer. And our failures in life, they're going to remain, but the Lord knows how to take care of those things and we know that he does. And that helps us have drawn air to him in full assurance of faith with a pure conscience, as the verse continues to say.

We're cleaning out what is wrong in our thinking. We may not be able to achieve our goals, but we understand that his way is right and that's the way we would like to have it also. And yet there are many that put their hope in a sinner's deeds. That's what you do if you say, I'm going to earn my way to heaven. You're putting your faith, your eternal destination in the hands of a sinner. You, you're the sinner. And you think those sinful hands of yours can fashion salvation for yourself. That's foolish and it's against the scripture and it will damn your soul.

And if you cherish that thinking, if it is to you a sacred cow, then again, you made the bed that you're going to lie in. But God offers you a better way and it is the old school way when it comes to salvation and it is through faith. It was not circumcision that gained approval from God for Abraham. It was his trust and it will be the same for the Gentiles. That's what he's telling the church in Rome.

God accepted Abraham on faith, not circumcision. And God is going to accept all these Gentiles coming to the church also the same way. His faith is accounted for righteousness and everyone is ungodly until they come to Christ. Every single person is ungodly until God puts his hands on their life and God initiates salvation and he provides the opportunity. Verse 6, just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works. Now this is an interpretive rendering or summary of Psalm 32 verses 1 and 2. What did David do wrong?

Well, we know the big ones with Bathsheba and her husband Uriah. We know about that. What did he do to get out of it? He submitted. When he was finally busted, he submitted. He just trusted.

Let's develop it a little bit. Verse 7, blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Thank you, that be me.

And I pray it would be all of you. So now he points to King David, the greatest of Israel's human kings and one of the greatest Old Testament sinners. He's showing that no human being needs to be excluded from God. If David can be saved, Paul is saying, then anybody can be saved. If Abraham could not be saved by his deeds, then nobody can be saved by their deeds. If David could be saved by faith, then anybody can be saved by faith. Why does this not appeal to everybody who hears it? Why doesn't a sinner hear a Christian say to them, God wants your heart, the rest will follow, but give him your heart. You can't earn your salvation.

You're a sinner and you know it, I know it too. So let's stop pretending. You would think, you would think they'd say, you got me. Well sometimes they do, they'd get saved. But many times they don't want to hear it, change the subject, attack you, clam up.

We know it. This is part of the fight. I think of these things when I say to myself, would I have gotten saved if a Christian approached me with the gospel? Would I even have understood what he was saying? Because the carnal man cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God. They're foolishness to him, nor can he know them. And again, I don't want to be repetitive, but for my salvation, the Christian witness did nothing but irritate me to the point where it drove me to the Bible. And that's where I got saved.

But that's me. It's very complicated stuff. And so my point for bringing this up is when we pray for the lost, pray with fervency of spirit. Understand that you are in war when you are praying for lost souls. You are interceding on their behalf.

They don't have to know it, they don't have to care, they don't have to like it. Between you and the Lord and the spiritual war that we wage. Verse 7, blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Now he's quoting Old Testament, and of course in the Old Testament the sin could only be covered, and not until Christ died on the cross were sins washed away. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Everything else was kophar, covered before that. And so, pointing again to David, both Abraham and David experienced God's undeserved kindness. What's a single word for undeserved kindness in the context of God?

Oh, people too. Grace. Grace is undeserved kindness. If you deserve the kindness, it's not grace, you've earned it. But grace is what we call it, and it is not picking on unbelievers to disagree with them about God. So let's not be ashamed about that.

We're likely their last hope, but don't expect them to make it easy. Verse 4, blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin. So David said to Nathan, when Nathan said you're the man, David said I have sinned against the Lord. What if David said, yeah, you better get out on my court. Well, he would have been like all the other kings that remained evil, but that's not what happened. David said, I have sinned against the Lord, and Nathan said to David, the Lord has also put away your sin. You shall not die.

Man, that's pretty serious stuff. Can you imagine the look on David's face? Can you see the intensity in the eyes of Nathan? Nathan was unhappy with the whole thing that David, the sin that David committed. But he was certain, he was David's friend, as well as the prophet, David's spiritual leader. And imagine David, the man who wrote scripture, had a spiritual leader too.

That's quite impressive. And yet, I'm sure Nathan was rooting for David. Verse, I would love to, you know, anytime I think about a teaching from the Bible that I would want to teach, it's always David, the life of David.

It's always my first thought. I see so much Christ in his life, in my life. It acted out, the New Testament acted out in the life of David. It's just a man who just loved God, but had this flesh like the rest of us. Well, verse 9, does this blessedness then come upon the circumcised only or upon the uncircumcised also? For we say that faith was accounted to Abraham for righteousness. Well, God, Paul made it clear in chapter 2 that real circumcision is a matter of the heart, something that Old Testament prophets also said. And that fact applies to water baptism also.

It's an act of the heart. Anybody can get wet, but not anybody can be wet in the name of the Lord, linking it with the context of scripture and all of its meanings. Anyway, for we say that faith, he says here in verse 9, was accounted to Abraham for righteousness. Abraham trusted God when everyone else didn't seem to trust God. In fact, his house was in such a spiritual shambles, God said, get away from your father's house and from your people to a land that I will show you. And it didn't, you know, Abraham, he set about to do it, but he did drag his feet a little bit. Well, how, I mean, it must have been very difficult. I'm not judging him.

This is a reality that goes along with our Bible heroes and we should rejoice in that because there's a reality that goes along with our lives as born-again Christian. But what causes Abraham to be approved by God? Was trust and trust alone. That's what did it.

There were no supplements. Well, I'll trust you and I'll also go ahead and give you a sacrifice. How about that? I'll throw that in as a bonus, God. Aren't you impressed?

No, it was just sheer trust. In fact, it would be another 17 years before Abraham was circumcised. That's pretty, that's remarkable. That, you would think the Jews would hear that and say, wait a minute, that's a good point. He was accepted by God 17 years before the circumcision. Yeah, Gentiles, come into the church.

You don't have to do this. Verse 10, and we'll take that to verse 12. How then was it accounted while he was circumcised or uncircumcised?

Not while circumcised, all right, I'm going to have to say this word a few times, but while uncircumcised. Verse 11. And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while still uncircumcised, that he might be the father of all those who believe, though they are uncircumcised, that the righteousness might be imputed to them also by faith, that is. Verse 12, and the father of circumcision to those who not only are of the circumcision, but who also walk in the steps of the faith which our father Abraham had while still uncircumcised.

Actually, I said 17 years, it was 14 years, so there, you don't have to correct me, I beat you to it. Some 450 years before the Mosaic Covenant came along, before the law of Moses, you know, from Exodus on, delivered, codified by Moses, upheld by the prophets, Abraham had been walking with God, obeying and pleasing God without ritual. He sacrificed out of just the love of his heart for God. But that didn't make him righteous, it just demonstrated that God was already working in his heart within grace. The rite had nothing to do with his salvation. And, actually, he was, as Gentile Christians, without the law of Moses and accepted by God. So circumcision did not contribute to his salvation. It attested to it, but it was more of a personal thing.

I mean, it was something that he would have to tell you, talk to you about. Like a water baptism, for instance, we get baptized and then we go around unbelievers. We don't show them, here's me getting baptized. I mean, it's deeper than all of that. No pun intended, but water baptism deeper. The point is that I know I've been baptized.

That's what I need. My head needs to wrap around the spiritual things before I can be used. Okay, what happened when the Jews were sent to conquer the Promised Land under Joshua's leadership? It's one of the first things they had to do, just turn the knives on themselves.

The troops had to follow this rite of circumcision, and nothing has changed. Let a man examine himself to see if he is in the faith or not. And so the principle is irreversible. God accepts souls based on belief. It is by grace you are saved through faith, and we don't tamper with that. And it is faith alone, nothing else. And if you try to say, I'm going to trust you, Lord, but I'm also going to do this, you cancel out the faith. You're not trusting in the work of Christ. When Christ said it was finished, he was very serious about that.

There were no jokes made from the cross. Everything he said was profound. And the last thing he said, it is finished. Into your hands I commend my spirit. Thanks for joining us for today's teaching on Cross-Reference Radio. This is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia.

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