Father Abraham

When you think back to the Old Testament and men like Abraham, how was Abraham saved?

How was he justified? So what does the Bible say? The last part of verse 3 Paul quotes directly from the Old Testament scriptures and writes, Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. That is his faith alone was the means of justification. Justification is that legal act whereby God extracts from you your sinful record and imputes to you the record of Christ's righteousness. When we understand God's Word, one thing becomes clear and it's this. Salvation is not something we can earn or obtain through our own efforts.

Justification is by faith alone. Now in saying that, we need to know that the same is true for the Old Testament saints like Abraham. Today on Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey, we're beginning a series called Father Abraham but don't turn to the book of Genesis. Instead, turn your attention to the book of Romans. In today's passage from Romans 4, Paul uses Abraham as an illustration of justification by faith.

Here's Stephen. Paul has completed his introduction of this letter and he has stated his major premise which is the just shall live by what? By faith. Now in chapter 4, he will move out of the theological classroom and he'll, as it were, go outside and take a breath of illuminating air. He will move from simply the proposition of truth to the illustration of truth and Romans chapter 4 is nothing but a long illustration. Let's start with verse 1. What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, has found?

You could read it this way. What then shall we say that Abraham has discovered? What is the truth in the life of Abraham?

In other words, Paul is going to now use Abraham as an illustration of the truth of justification by faith and he's asking his reader, is this what Abraham discovered as well? Now why would you use Abraham as an illustration of justification by faith? There are several reasons why, I believe.

Let me give you five of them. Number one, Abraham lived 2,000 years before Paul wrote this letter. You might think, well, that isn't a good reason. It's a bad reason.

Well, actually, it's a good reason. Paul will use Abraham to counter the claim that he began to counter back in the early part of chapter 1 that the gospel of faith in the redemptive plan of God was new, that this was somehow some new creative fabrication of a man who used to be a Pharisee who is now a follower of Christ. This is some new thing. And Paul will say, no, it's not new. It goes all the way back to the time of Father Abraham. In fact, in Galatians 3, and we won't turn there for the sake of time, but Abraham, we're told, was given special revelation from God about Jesus Christ himself.

It's a stunning revelation. He writes in the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham. So hundreds of years before the law was given, hundreds of years before the prophet Micah told us where Jesus would be born in Bethlehem, that is, in Micah 5, 2, before Isaiah wrote about what the Messiah would look like and how he would serve in Isaiah 53, before David told us how the Messiah would die by crucifixion in Psalm 22, hundreds of years before any of this was written down, Abraham received the special revelation from God concerning the gospel of Jesus Christ. What that means then is the gospel hasn't changed for 4,000 years.

While the Old Testament saint would look forward to the coming of the Messiah and the New Testament saint would look backward to the fact that the Messiah has come, the gospel remains the same. So Abraham becomes a wonderful illustration for everyone. The second reason Paul uses Abraham is because Abraham is the forefather of God's chosen people. Abraham is, in effect, the first Jew, simply a transliteration of the word Judah.

From his loins will come the Hebrew race. So what was true regarding the forefather's relationship with God should then be fulfilled in the lives of the descendants of the forefather in relation to God. Paul said himself in Galatians 3, 7, therefore you can be sure that it is those who are of faith who are the sons of Abraham. So not only for the Jew, but the Gentile, those who are of the true faith are in effect related to the father of faith, Abraham. Romans 4, 11, there were, you're looking, Paul will say that Abraham is the father of all who believe. So in other words, we better figure out what Abraham believed. Third, along the same line, the reason Abraham was used is he's a perfect example because of the fact that he was known as the friend of God. The friend of God. Three times Abraham is referred to as God's friend. King Jehoshaphat prayed in 2 Chronicles 20, verse 7, did you not, O our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before thy people and give it to the descendants of Abraham thy friend? God is quoted by the prophet Isaiah saying, but you Israel, my servant Jacob, whom I have chosen descendant of Abraham, my friend.

Isaiah 41, 8. The third time is in James 2, 23, where we read that Abraham was called the friend of God. Imagine having that title, God's friend.

We get all bent out of shape about who we know and what name we can drop and who knows us and how important they are. Imagine going down in world history as the man whom God had for a friend. And God says, Abraham, oh yeah, he's my friend.

Imagine that. Is the title just for Abraham? No, in the book of John chapter 15, we're told that Jesus came to lay down his life for his friends. He told his disciples, you're no longer called servants, but my friend. God can say of you and me, Stephen is my friend. Susan, Bill, Cindy, John, whoever, those who've placed their faith in the redemptive person and plan of God, God can say, oh, him? Yeah, he's my friend.

And you can say, here's the ultimate name drop. You can say, God is a close personal friend of mine. So the question would be, how did Abraham become God's friend?

If we can figure that out, maybe we can figure out how we can be his friend too. That's why Abraham is a wonderful illustration of Paul in Romans 4. The fourth reason I believe Paul chose Abraham is because Abraham was also revered as the model of faith. You want to talk about a man of faith? Talk about Abraham.

You want to talk to a Jew about faith, living? Talk about Abraham and they'll all listen up. John MacArthur wrote it in a powerful summary in his commentary on Romans. These words he wrote, by using Abraham as the supreme scriptural example of justification by faith alone, Paul was storming the very citadel of traditional Judaism. For if Abraham could be shown as not having been justified by keeping the law, then no one could be. Conversely, if Abraham was justified solely on the basis of his faith in God, then everyone else must be justified in the same way. Fifth, Abraham was chosen as the example of justification because he was considered by the nation already as a man possessing righteousness.

And this is one of the key issues, by the way, that Paul is going to want to clear up. By the time of Paul, the rabbis had so developed the myth of the legend of Abraham that they were believing all sorts of fanciful things. They believed and taught that Abraham was justified or made right with God simply because Abraham was already righteous. Several Jewish apocryphal books taught that Abraham was justified because he kept God's law. In one book called Ecclesiasticus in the 44th chapter, Abraham is said to have become right with God because of his obedience. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the foundation of all true error, if we could say it that way, all false religion. All those who claim to know the truth and have the truth but miss it by a mile, they seem to be close. But when you dissect their theology, it is a religion of works.

That's what they taught here. The book of Jubilee, written in 100 B.C., recorded, quote, for Abraham was perfect in all of his deeds with the Lord and well-pleasing in righteousness all the days of his life. In other words, he never sinned. So perfect was Abraham considered to be by the Jewish people that in another book, the Prayer of Manassas, it was recorded that Abraham never needed to repent. So you can see how over the years the legend of Abraham had grown. So Paul is going to show that this man around whom such a legend swirled, this man had to be justified by faith.

He wasn't good enough to earn it by works. If he can show it about him, it would certainly be true for all of us. So he's a perfect example. In fact, one rabbinical writing that was popular during the time of Paul claimed that Abraham was so inherently good that he began serving God when he was only three years of age, that he was going to be one of a handful of men who would bring back God's Shekinah glory to the tabernacle. So by the time of Paul, the majority of the people believed that Abraham was chosen by God to be the father of the nation because he was worthy of being chosen. So Paul was going to choose perhaps the leading candidate of human history to be considered worthy of salvation because if anybody can work his way into heaven, it's Abraham. If anybody deserves to be the friend of God, it is this righteous man. And so Paul writes in verse two of Romans chapter four, Now if Abraham was justified by works, well, he has something to boast about. Imply it and so do you. Then he adds, But not before God.

Now every Jew perked his ears up. For what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God, that it was credited to him as righteousness. Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due. But to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness. Now I want you to underline a very critical string of words. It's a phrase that we'll put to death all heresies and all religious imaginations.

It's a phrase that we read, in fact, all of it's critical, certainly. But it's a phrase here that Paul nearly shouts, as it were in verse three. What does the scriptures say? What do they say? What does the Bible say? How do you become a friend of God? What does the Bible say?

I don't care what your opinion is, and you shouldn't care what my opinion is. What does the Bible say? How can you have your heart cleansed of guilt?

How can you have your conscience cleansed? What does the Bible say? How do you get to heaven? What does the Bible say?

Paul is pulling them back to the text of scripture. All of the fanciful imaginations are worthless in light of one little piece of inspired text. I was in the grocery store last night picking up some aspirin for one of our sick children. I was doing my favorite thing in the line there looking at all the tabloids. It's amazing. Dear baby born, here's a picture of a little baby with antlers.

Must have been a painful delivery. It's amazing people actually buy that stuff. Near the counter were a series of smaller books and one caught my eye. The cover said, how to find God.

That's exactly what I needed to see. Picked it up, opened it, and my eyes fell on these words, there is no one formula for finding God. He is everywhere and in everyone.

There's no one formula for finding God. Isn't that wonderful? Everybody gets in. Doesn't matter what you believe, what you do, what you say, what you hold to, you're in. He's everywhere.

He's already in you. You know, the biggest problem that I have with that is not that that's what the world is teaching. I expect the world to believe that. They want to get in. They want a God that's comfortable to them. One that they can, through their own convoluted theology, create to meet their own set of needs.

That's the kind of God the world is always pursuing. But what really bothers me is that that kind of biblical illiteracy has crept its way into the church. You ask the average churchgoer what they may believe about some religious topic and they'll give you their opinion. But then you ask them, well, what does the Bible teach? And they'll say, well, that's not for me. I'm not a biblical expert.

That's for you. I don't know what the Bible teaches, but I got an opinion. The average Bible study today is a scenario where people sit around in a group, read a verse or two, and then spend an hour talking about what it means to them. It doesn't matter what it means to you until you first discovered what it means, right? In fact, what it means to you may lead you so far away from what it means. You could be led in all sorts of delusions and deceptions. I have had homosexuals, lesbians, adulterers, fornicators, all tell me at some point in my brief years of ministry that God was on their side, that God was in their lifestyle, that God was blessing them, that God was confirming in their heart that their choices were not sinful. So self-deceived. I remember one woman who admitted to me after repenting of her immorality with a married man that they had been so self-deceived that after they would sneak away and meet, they would actually get on their knees and pray together and thank God for their relationship and then turn out the lights. What does the Bible say? The further you get away from the Word of God, the more open you are to that roaring lion who roams about seeking somebody to discredit, somebody to destroy, somebody to devour, to chew up and spit out.

We have on this campus today probably four or five hundred students who are about to begin a new year. Let me ask you a question. Who's going to run your life?

Are you going to justify cheating, lying, promiscuity in general, a rebellious heart or are you going to say, I'm going to live by what the Bible says? Dear man, dear sir, who governs your financial dealings? Who's involved in the contract you're trying to get somebody to sign?

Who oversees your telephone conversations? Who is honored by your work? What does the Bible say? God happens to have told every one of us to become workmen in the Word. Get out your pick.

Get out your shovel. Become a workman in the Word so that you will not be ashamed, not discredited. You'll be able to interpret, to divide, to understand the Scriptures. The Word of Truth, 2 Timothy 2.15.

Apart from what the Word of God says, we can believe anything. I remember some time ago a woman coming into my office who didn't attend here, but she had an armload of books on divorce. She'd left her husband. She was involved immorally with a man who was married and she just wanted to come in and get my blessing, I suppose. She brought her books in and set them on the edge of my desk, convinced that I should be able to tell her that what she was doing was right.

I looked at the books. They were all encouraging, of course, her choices written by clergymen and pseudo-scholars and told me a lot about their opinion but nothing about the Word. So I just perused one quickly, set it back down and began to talk to her about her own relationship with Jesus Christ. She claimed to be a Christian. God was blessing this, but we began to share the Gospel with her. I'll never forget the Spirit of God penetrating her heart. After an hour or so, tears of repentance streamed down her cheeks. She said she wanted to give her heart and life to Christ, to become truly born again. She did that day. She left that immoral relationship. I recommended a church nearby where she was baptized and discipled.

Before she slipped off my radar screen, I heard that she was in the process of reconciling with her husband. You see, Paul is saying to this audience, you have all these fanciful ideas, you can do anything you want to do, anything that makes you feel good, but they're dangerous beliefs that in reality will lead you away from the God of Abraham, not toward him. So what does the Bible say?

The last part of verse 3, Paul quotes directly from the Old Testament scriptures and writes, Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. That is, his faith alone was the means of justification. Justification is that legal act whereby God at one moment in time extracts from you your sinful record and imputes to you, deposits into you the record of Christ's righteousness. In the midst of extracting from you your sinful record and washing it clean and imputing to you your righteousness, in between that point in time that happens in a second of time, you cannot do anything for him.

You can't get baptized, you can't give any money away, you can't join the church, you can't do anything. It's the legal act of God where he slams his gavel down upon his divine desk and he says, you are no longer viewed by me as a sinner, but as one covered by the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Now, was Abraham made righteous because he deserved it? What does the Bible say?

Well, let's take the remainder of our time and just go to Genesis and find out what the Bible said about Abraham's life. Was he a man of such sinlessness that he never needed to repent? Was he a man of such great faith that he was worthy to be called the father of the faithful?

Is that why he got that title? I want you to look at chapter 12, verse 10. Look there. Now there was a famine in the land. This is after Abraham follows the Lord away and out. And Abraham then went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land. Now that's a problem. Rather than trusting God, remaining there where God had called him, he decides to go to Egypt. That's a mistake. And it came about when he came near to Egypt that he said to Sarai his wife, see now, I know that you are a beautiful woman and it will come about when the Egyptians see you that they will say, well, this is his wife, and they will kill me, but they will let you live.

Please say that you are my sister so that it may go well with me because of you and that I may live on account of you. Now this wasn't necessarily a lie. It was, but it was halfway true. In Genesis 20 we're told that she was his half-sister. They had the same biological father.

This is hundreds of years before the law was given. This was also in an economy where God didn't have the penalties for those marrying the family members and certainly not the biological problems related to it. In fact, this was the way it had to be because where did Cain get his wife? His sister. All of human history came from Adam and Eve. By the way, that's one of the great miracles to me of the early days, that a sister would ever be willing to marry her brother.

That's an amazing miracle. But what an embarrassment to the one who considered Abraham to be an incredible man of faith. Here he is not trusting God immediately after being called. He now goes to Egypt and now he's lying. He's telling his wife, you know, I want to live so I'll put you in jeopardy, the one who would be the woman of the Hebrew nation, the mother.

You can't help but sympathize a little bit though. We know that the common practice in this day was if Pharaoh wanted a married woman, he respected the institution of marriage enough to kill the husband to get her. That was what would happen. So verse 14 tells us that when Abram came into Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. Pharaoh's officials saw her and praised her to Pharaoh. Abraham knew that would happen. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house. Now Abraham didn't necessarily anticipate that.

He just wanted to live. But now she's been taken. We know from the custom of the day, especially that delineated in the book of Esther, that she would be in the harem for 12 months at least before she would be touched by the Pharaoh and an official member of the harem. So in the meantime, here's Abraham wondering what he does now. His wife's gone. She's a member of the harem.

She's being prepared for 12 months. And in the process, he keeps getting these gifts from Pharaoh, cattle and clothing and jewels. And I can imagine in my mind him getting another shipment of cattle. And there's a note attached from Pharaoh saying, oh, hey, I'm so glad you came to town. That sister of yours. Wow.

In three months she's mine. He didn't expect this. Here's the great father of faith. The great man of faith.

Is it? Or is he just an ordinary human being that God chose by his grace to justify? He had failed miserably in his faith. He was dishonest. And now he was in deep trouble. The hope comes in verse 17. But the Lord, that's a great phrase there. But the Lord. He had to intervene. What could Abraham do? Go to Pharaoh and say, by the way, I just kind of lied. I'd like my wife back. We'd like to leave. And I'd like the cattle you've given me, too, if you don't mind.

No. The Lord intervened and struck Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarah, Abram's wife. Then Pharaoh called Abram and said, what is this you've done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say she is my sister so that I took her from my wife? Now then, here is your wife.

Take her and go. Here's a pagan correcting a believer. How tragic. So he goes back and he goes back to Bethel and he calls upon the name of the Lord. The next chapter tells us that as he repents, he confesses his sin. Does this sound like a man is justified by means of his perfect life? What does the Bible say?

He is justified in the same way we are. By the act of God through means of faith in his word. There are several consequences, by the way, from Abram's sin.

I can't help but go to this passage as I do, at least tell you this much. You probably know the story, but first of all, he missed the experience of faith. He missed the reward of faithful living for this period of time in his life. If he had stayed at the altar in Bethel, even though he was in the middle of a famine, the angels were ready with their recipe for manna. There were rocks there ready to gush forth water. He missed that.

And so do we, ladies and gentlemen. When we choose our own way, when we do the exact opposite of the scripture we read, when we lean on our own understanding, we miss some of the great triumphs of faith. Another consequence was a marked increase in possession.

You say, how is that a consequence? Well, unlike the mantra of today, especially in the church, it could be a curse. It would cause in Abraham's life a terrible rift where he and Lot were unable now to take care of their possessions and their cattle and they had to leave one another. Don't ever think it's inevitable that when you grow rich, it is the blessing of God. In the middle of Canaan, in the midst of a famine, living hand to mouth, Abraham was experiencing, as it were, the rich blessing of God. In the middle of Egypt, out of the will of God, he was growing rich.

One more problem I just want to mention and we'll leave it. When Abram and Sarai left Egypt, they weren't alone. They took a number of people with them. Among them was a little maiden girl who helped Sarai in Egypt and her name was Hagar.

Uh oh. Later, in another moment of unbelief and distrust in the promise of God to provide a son, Abraham would take matters into his own hands. He would have relations with Hagar and she would bear a son and that son would grow up and be the father of the Arab peoples who 5,000 years later are still troubling Israel in the newspapers every day. Why was Abraham justified? Because he was perfect, because he was sinless, because he was in no need of repenting. Was he continually faithful? Rabbi or no rabbi?

Scholar or no scholar? What, Paul says, does the Bible say? Look over at chapter 15 of Genesis verse 6.

Here's where Paul quotes the text of scripture. Then Abraham believed in the Lord and he reckoned it to him as righteousness. See, Father Abraham is a wonderful illustration of the grace of God and simply calling out by the choice of God, redeeming by the grace of God, the means of is of that transaction being the faith of that one called of God. And so Abraham placed his faith in the word of God and God's redemptive plan and maybe we'll take a little more time next time to talk about the gospel which came to Abraham and how Abraham believed in Jesus Christ but he was justified the same way you and I are justified today. By faith in the redemptive plan and person of Jesus Christ. Father Abraham is a wonderful illustration of the truth.

I have been reading widely for these studies and while you put your things away, I'm going to read you just the words of a poem written in the 1800s that I think sums it up so well. The poem says this, Not what these hands have done can save this guilty soul. Not what this toiling flesh has borne can make my spirit whole. Not what I feel or do can give me peace with God. Not all my prayers and sighs and tears can bear my awful load. Thy work alone O Christ can ease this weight of sin. Thy blood alone O Lamb of God can give me peace within. Thy grace alone O God to me can pardon speak. Thy power alone O Son of God can this sore bondage break. I bless the anointed one of God. I rest on love divine and with faltering lip and heart I call this Savior mine. With that poem we end this lesson from Romans 4. This is Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey.

Today's lesson has the same title as the series, Father Abraham. One of the things that we enjoy most here at Wisdom International is hearing from you, our listeners. If you have a few minutes today, send Stephen a card or letter. You can address it to Wisdom for the Heart PO Box 37297 Raleigh, North Carolina 27627. I know it's hard to write that fast, so I'll give you the address again. It's Wisdom for the Heart PO Box 37297 Raleigh, North Carolina 27627. You can also communicate with us electronically. We have a form on our website that you can use to send us a message, and our website is easy to remember. It's wisdomonline.org. Or you can email us at info at wisdomonline.org. Join us next time for more Wisdom for the Heart.