Session 10 – Romans; Romans 4:1-9: Mark Lanier, 06/15/25

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[Music] I'm kind of stoked about class today. Not going to lie, this is a pretty fun one for me because it just resonates in so many different arenas where I enjoy studying. Okay, I didn't hear that because oh, they're talking about other stuff. So, let me talk to you for a moment. In the mid 2nd century, so the mid 100s, there was a church pastor who decided he was going to pass off a writing Paul as if the writing were authentic. And so he wrote this story or book about Paul and a woman named Thckela. and he tried to pass it off as authentic. Well, he got caught. And even though he had the best of intentions, I actually think he had pretty poor theology, I should add. And I can tell you why if we ever want to digress into what the Acts of Paul and Thela says. But that was the name of the book, the Acts of Paul and Thela. And when it got discovered that it wasn't real and that he had made it up, uh, he he got kicked out of the church. So, he wasn't a pastor for long. But we still have this. And it's not only something we have, but it's something that the early church was very aware of. If you go to the ruins in Ephesus, there is a cave that is kind of uh attributed to early church stuff. You can't get in without special permission because they don't want you to ruin things. But in the fresco on the wall is what's left of a fresco of Paul and Thela. And so this is Paul. You can see his name. Um, this is Thela over here. This is actually Thela's mother who is really upset with Thela because of what she's doing. She broke off her engagement because she heard Paul preach and decided she should be celibate and wedded to the church rather than wedded to the fellow that she was going to get married to. And mama was none too happy with it. And the theology is pretty poor. But in the midst of this, a writing that's done within say 75 years or so of Paul's death, we have a description of what Paul looked like

in the Greek or Latin version of this book. And by the way, that's close enough to where the descriptions ought to be pretty good. I mean, if we were going to describe Abraham Lincoln, who's further back from us than Paul was to this churchman, it we wouldn't get away with describing someone who looks like Danny Devito. I mean, we we got to get some of it right. You know, Paul was a man small in size, baldheaded, crooked thighs, which means bow-legged, well-built with eyebrows meeting. He had that crow magnet thing, rather longnosed, full of grace, for sometimes he seemed like a man, sometimes he had the countenance of an angel. Now, we also have an early Syriak version of this. And the Syriak version gives us a little bit more description. The Syriak version says he was a man of middling size and his hair was scanty. His legs were a little crooked and his knees were projecting. He had large eyes and his eyebrows met and his nose was somewhat long. He was uh full of grace and mercy. At one time he seemed like a man, at another time he seemed like an angel. So, you know what I did? Oh, yeah. I did. I took those descriptions and I plugged them into an AI image generator and I said, "Give me Paul." You want to see?

It's kind of cool. Now, I got to tell you, Paul stuns me and he should stun us all, but not because of what he looked like. What stuns me about Paul is what he was on the inside, what he did with his life. Remember in Philippians when Paul's recounting all of these achievements according to his circles of influence in the midst of recounting those after saying he's a Hebrew of Hebrews he says as to the law kad naman as to the law he is a Pharisee. Y

what do we know about Pharisees other than they seemed to have been at least in many of the gospels people that weren't very friendly. What do we know about Pharisees? Actually quite a lot. So here's what I'd like to do. I want to time travel with you. I want to take you back for a moment to Jerusalem in 167 BC.

Now 167 BC, the Old Testament is finished. It's been written.

The Babylonian captivity is over. The Persian conquest is over. Alexander the Great has taken Hellenization, Greek, Greek influence, and spread it throughout the Mediterranean world. But he's dead. His empire is divided into four to five to four depending upon when you're looking at it and how different pieces. One of them contains the area of Judea where the Jews live.

And it came a time where we can look at a coin and get a decent look at Antiochus Epiphies decided he wanted to complete what Alexander had begun. And Antiochus Epiphanies wanted to helanize turn into a Greek state Judea. And so he commenced to do so. And that meant wiping out Judaism as it was currently known. And so Antiochus Epiphies outlawed circumcision, made it illegal. He outlawed honoring the Sabbath, made it illegal. He outlawed studying the Torah, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, the the scriptures for Judaism. That's not all. He then went to the Jewish temple and in the temple he proceeded to sacrifice pigs unclean.

He not only sacrificed pigs in God's temple, but he erected a statue of Zeus in the Holy of Holies.

He was seeking to destroy Judaism.

And the Jews rose up in revolt. And led by the Mcabes brothers, they fought for Jewish liberty. Let's put this back into a time frame. So this is 167. It took the Jews three years, but in 164 the Jews were able to retake the temple. They reurified it. This is, by the way, where Hanukkah comes about. The celebration of Hanukkah was a celebration of the fact that by God's miraculous intervention as they had the 7-day purification of the temple. Uh they didn't have enough oil, but the lights never went out. The oil was adequate and they were able to endure it. So you've got the festival of the lights or the Hanukkah festival that arises. Now it's shortly thereafter that the party of the Pharisees begin to coalesce. We can read about this from Josephus and others. But the Pharisees as a sect sct as a group began to organize. And this organization of the Pharisees during this time period centered around a core question, a question that should go to the heart and and and and significance of every Jew. And that was how do we prevent another catastrophe? because the Jews had had the Babylonian captivity. They had the the the Persian occupation. They had the the the Greek occupation. They've they've got they'll have ultimately the Roman occupation, but they've got all of these problems and they want to figure out how to stop it from happening. And so the Pharisees have to ask this question, what went wrong? Why did this happen? And to answer that question, they went to scripture and they found answers. You go to Deuteronomy chapter 28 and you have an exhaustive list of things that will happen if Israel disobys and breaks covenant with God. And there are curses including exile that are listed there. So, so they start saying, well, okay, it's clear what went wrong is we violated our covenant with God. Every word I'm using here becomes important in what we're going to read today. So, hang on to it. the Pharisees, Paul, we violated our covenant with God and that brought destruction and tragedy. It wasn't simply Deuteronomy. They were able to see in Jeremiah, which was written prophetically right on the cusp of the Babylonian captivity, that Babylon is God's instrument of judgment because of unfaithfulness to the covenant.

Israel was not faithful to the covenant. So God was sending Babylon in judgment even beyond the Jeremiah passage. They could see in Ezekiel another passage that came out of that Babylonian exile time that Israel gets scattered among the nations because of their defilement.

This explains the dispersion of Jews throughout what ultimately becomes the Roman Empire.

It's not even those. If you go to another book, Daniel,

Daniel's prayer acknowledges that the exile came about because quote, "We have sinned." close quote. So the Pharisees look at this and they say, "How do we prevent another catastrophe?" The Pharisees had a response.

The response is found in the Mishna a vote one. It's at the beginning of a vote. Make a fence around the Torah. That Hebrew word for fence can can mean a hedge. It could also mean a wall, but hedge like build a hedge around the Torah. Torah is inside the hedge. So that everybody honors the Torah, the law, the covenant.

See, they answered this question. How do we prevent another catastrophe? The answer of the Pharisees. Now, not all of Judea were Pharisees, but those strict, rigid Pharisees answered it by saying, "Meticulous Torah observance to ensure divine blessing." We should follow the Torah carefully, meticulously, in excruciating detail. This is why Jesus says, "Hey, you Pharisees, you're real good at even tithing your herbs. you grow. You go out and pick your mint for some mint tea. You'll take 10% of it and tithe it. Of course, Jesus is excoriating them because they've forgotten the weightier matters of the law.

But this is where Paul comes from. This is who Paul is. This is Paul's training, not just in being a Pharisee who believes that you've got to hold to the Torah to stop the catastrophes that have been inundating the people because they broke covenant with the Almighty.

But but but Paul is is zealous in his phariseism. He's zealous enough to where he thinks the Christians are violating covenant with God by ascribing to Jesus deity. And so he's he is not because he's just some mean old guy. He is persecuting the church and seeing them put to death because I'm sure in his mind it's for the greater good of Israel. We've got to purify. We've got to stop these people or the entire nation can be overrun.

And so it's it's religious zeal that's driving him to persecute the church.

But Paul was trained in this. We know that his tutor, a Pharisee in the council, was Galial. And Acts 5:34 tells us Galiel was uh the leader of the Pharisees. Paul studied. He's like number two to the leader of the Pharisees. Paul's steeped in this. It's no wonder that when Paul's arrested or are getting arrested, but he perceives that that those who are calling for his head, half of them are s or some of them are one group are Sadducees, the other group Pharisees. He calls out in the council and says, "Brothers, I'm a Pharisee. I am a Pharisee right now." Echo A. I am right now a Pharisee. I'm the son of Pharisees. We go way back. We've been protecting the Torah. We've been taking care of the the the the teachings. We're the people who put a hedge around it. We're trying to keep people from violating covenant with God because we know what happens when you do.

I mean, Paul, as I already referenced in Philippians 3, says he's according to the law, a Pharisee. And and Paul, you say, "Well, yeah, but he was a Christian by this point." Oh, no. He's still a Pharisee. Do you remember in Acts chapter 15 when the church is faced with this big issue? Should we require Gentiles to become Jews before they can be Christians? Should the men have to be circumcised, before they become Christians? Should should the Goyam become Jews and convert to Judaism in order to be a Christian? And the Jerusalem Council ultimately decides no. By the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, as they prayed and debated and looked through scripture and studied and listened to testimony, the decision is no. But if you go back and read that account of the council of the the proceeding where they had the big debate, it's in Acts chapter 15. And you'll see some believers. These are Christian believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees. You had Christian Pharisees. Paul wasn't the only one. They rose up and said it's necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses, the Torah.

And that's part of the debate.

And so you've got this debate and and ultimately the church reaches the decision and they all agree on it. They send out a letter. It seemed right to us and the Holy Spirit that we should bind on you no more than the following. So this is all of who Paul is.

But this is the Paul who's on the road to Damascus looking to arrest the church and put a stop to them because they are teaching people to violate covenant and it's spreading so rapidly that it can destroy Judaism when God gets so upset with the people

and then all of a sudden we find this is the same Paul that embraces Jesus as Messiah and he does a 180 turn. He does a 180 turn in his life. He loses so much that he had which candidly as he says in Philippians 3 he just thought of regarded it as garbage anyway compared to the surpassing value of knowing Christ and being found in him not with a righteousness of his own but a righteousness that comes through faith in Christ and that's what Paul does. So, this is the Paul that's writing Romans. And in the 30 minutes we've got left, what I'd love to do is look at this passage in Romans 4 where Paul discusses Abraham being justified by faith. And then I'd like to talk about how he says God does the impossible. And then we'll sum this up with rejoicing with King David and our points for home. Now, if we're going to follow this, we got to take a step back to keep it in context. So, Abraham's justified by faith. In Romans 3:20, after Paul has recounted all of the ways that God's judgment will condemn Jew and Gentile alike, nobody can stand righteous before God based upon God's principles of judgment. Everyone is condemned. Paul says, "By works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin." Then in verse 21, he's got that massive hinge for scripture. But now, apart from law, the righteousness of Christ has a righteousness of God has been manifested. Although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, it's testified to in the Old Testament. The law testifies to this righteousness of God. We should be able to read in the Old Testament about the very righteousness that we have in Jesus Christ. Even though the Old Testament was written before the birth of Jesus, even in its latest parts by hundreds of years before. And so we've got this passage. And then Paul goes on to say that this righteousness of God through faith in Christ is for everyone who believes. There's no distinction. It doesn't matter if you're a Jew. Doesn't matter if you're a Gentile. So then skip a couple of verses. Paul says, "So if this is how we're all righteous before God, who gets to boast? Who gets to say, "I'm pretty good."

I mean, I understand God has a lot of mercy or he wouldn't love a lot of y'all,

but for some of us, it doesn't really take that much mercy.

Can anybody say that? Paul says, "No, it's excluded. Are we going to boast because of law? Law of works?" No, we walk by a law of faith. We hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of law. You do not merit God's love, his mercy, his attention for by anything you do. It's true to get saved, to get into a relationship with him, and it's true till the day you die.

You don't start out. He says in Galatians, he says, "Oh foolish Galatians, who's bewitched you? Who cast a spell on you? Before your eyes, Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. I told you the gospel. I explained the grace of God publicly. I did it. I told you Jesus died for you. So if you started by faith, are you going to try and end it by works? That doesn't that doesn't compute. That's not logical. He says in essence, so he says, "Is God the God of Jews only? Isn't he the God of Gentiles also?" Well, yes. He's the God of Gentiles also. And God is one. And he will justify. See, one God, God of Jew, God of Gentiles, same God. He will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. Both Jew and Gentile alike. Remember Paul's writing to a church. Started out a Jewish church. Gentiles came in. Jews got kicked out by Emperor Claudius. They're gone a few years and the Gentiles are running the whole church. Then the Jews come back and they're ready to take back over. And it's into that situation that Paul's writing this book and he's saying there's one God and he justifies the Jews that were here and and the Gentiles that were here and it's all but the same way. It's by faith. And Paul says, "So have I just overthrown the law? Am I a bad Pharisee? Have I done what the Pharisees fear? Have I taken the hedge, the wall around the Torah and just ripped it to shreds? Have I said that the Old Testament is useless and wrong? May goto heavens know. May it never be. This this Hebrew or Greek phrase may goto is an idiom. It means it's a it's just an expression that was commonly used, but it's got more impact than just, oh, don't let it be. I mean, it's it's got punch. So, it's like no way. Absolutely not. Heavens no. There was a fellow who translated the Bible into Georgian farmer dialect. It was called the cotton patch version. He did it for his PhD in Greek. And so I mean like he puts in Atlanta instead of Jerusalem. Uh where scripture says can anything good come out of Nazareth? He says can anything good come out of Valdasta?

I won't tell you how he translates make noto, but Georgian farmers have a pretty profane way of saying this with punch. It's like not heaven's no, but that's the way he translated it. Not me. No, I'm not throwing the law away. I'm upholding it. I'm a Pharisee.

I believe we build a fence around the Torah, but we need to understand the Torah, right?

Do we overthrow the Torah by this faith? Heavens know. And Paul is not abandoning the Torah. Paul is demonstrating that the Torah is in harmony on this core issue of how we stand before God. And this is the setup right here for Romans 4 as we try and roll into it. Now I want to pause. This word law in the Greek is nomos. It's in the form noon here but it's nomos. Paul is saying do we overthrow the law? Now the New Testament was written in Greek. Paul wrote Romans in Greek. But good scholars, especially Dich, have taken the Greek New Testament and put it back into Hebrew so that we might see what the Hebrew would have looked like had Paul decided to put it into Hebrew. And this is a passage where he says in Hebrew, "Do we overthrow the Torah?" Torah. And I illustrate that because Torah can mean law or principle. But by this time that Paul's writing to and which we have to translate into the English as law from the Greek nomos but nomos or Torah was Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Also called the penta 5 toque the pentatuk. And so you find over and over Jesus for example refers to the entirety of the Old Testament as the law and the prophets. See law is Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Prophets is everything else. You do have one time Jesus calls it the law and the prophets and the psalms with psalms being a designation for what later becomes the other parts of the Hebrew scripture in modern classification. But at the time the law are these books. So this is real easy for Paul to write. When Paul says shall we we throw out the Torah? He's saying, "Should we just throw out Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy?" No. Well, what about Abraham? Abraham's a very logical extension of that question because Abraham is in Genesis, the law, the Torah. So, he says, "Well, what are we going to say?" Paul was good on rhetorical questions. Here's a rhetorical question. What then, shall we say, was gained by Abraham, our forefather, by what he did physically, by his life? Now, Paul wasn't abandoning the Torah. Remember, he's demonstrating its harmony with justification by faith. And he goes to Abraham as his example.

And so as he goes to Abraham, he says, "If Abraham was justified by works, then he'd have something to boast about, but he wasn't before God." What does scripture say? Scripture says Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Now, I want to pause for a moment and just not miss this. This is I just this is something that touches me and so I'm throwing it out there. What does scripture say? Le um is in the present tense and you can certainly use Greek. I'm not suggesting that it it means this totally. You can use things that happened in the past in a vivid present tense to to give them a vividness. But that vivid idea in the Greek is something that we can best understand perhaps by saying that the present tense scripture still speaks. Paul's referencing scripture that's telling a story that's placed 2,000 years earlier. And Paul's saying it still speaks to us today. But what does it say? What does scripture say? I love that present tense. So, I stuck a little poster on it. What does the scripture say? It says, "Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness."

Abraham had faith in God and God counted it to him as righteousness and he believed the Lord who counted it to him as righteousness. Says it again. Now, if you know the backstory to this, the backstory is in Genesis 15, and it's a pretty cool story. Genesis 14, Abraham has gone after Lot, his nephew, and all of his possessions and all who've been captured by kings. Uh Abraham galvanizes his men. They go out there, they capture the kings, they fight them, they recover not just Lot, but a lot of booty from the kings. This is a painting of Abraham then having the encounter with MelkiseDC where he dedicates a tithe to the the MelkiseDC. Um and and there's lots of imagery and all of that, but at the end of that, you just kind of get the impression reading it that Abraham was like, "This has been brutal. I mean, I had to go military conquest to get my nephew back. I've had I mean, this I'm worn out. We're worn out. And accompanying the physical wear out is almost a kind of spiritual wear out. You This is Abraham. He still doesn't have a son to carry on. And God had said he'd take care of this stuff, but he hadn't. You could just see this deflated post fight fatigued spiritually and physically Abraham and God comes to him. And scripture says in Genesis 15:1, after these things, linking it up, the word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision and said, "Fear not Abraham. I am your shield and your reward will be very great. And as this is recounted, Abraham believed the Lord. Genesis 15:6. This is what Paul quotes. And and and he counted it to him as righteousness. That's the passage that's quoted. And it's fascinating because then God establishes it with a covenant. He has Abraham slice this stuff up and in the middle of the night, God passes through the middle. It's a unilateral covenant. It's a covenant that God says, "I'm going to do." And Paul's not missing that when he references this story. This is a covenant that God set up and God unilaterally did with Abraham where God declared his faith would be counted to him as righteousness. And this word counted right here, legitim, it's an accounting word. I saw Mike over there. How many accountants do we have in here? Or people who've taken accounting type courses? Yeah. Yeah. Or financial planners, Dale Hearn. Or or people who deal with bankers. We got any bankers?

Boy, no bankers. So basically, it's easier for a lawyer to get to church than a banker.

Just saying. I got asked the other day what my favorite lawyer joke is. And and it was a a doctor, an engineer, and a lawyer were arguing about who had the world's oldest profession. And the doctor says, "Well, it's got to be me. After all, God did surgery on Adam to take that rib out and make Eve. And the engineer said, "Oh, no, no, no. Before that, God brought order out of chaos. That's engineering work." The Lord just looked at both of them stunned and said, "Who do you think caused the chaos?"

What does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was counted to him. Look, counted to him. That's an accounting term. It means it was stuck into his bank account. Do any of y'all Vinmo?

Vinmo is Vinmo is is is where you can just like send someone money off an app on your phone. And people do it all the time. They just Vinmo. They don't say, "Here here's $10 for my share of the pizza." They say, "I'll Venmo you $10." Now, sometimes you Venmo because you owe people, but sometimes you Venmo as a gift.

My mom is famous for Venmoing the grandkids 20 bucks when they do something that accomplishes something. She just sends it to them as a gift. Venmo. Faith is not your righteousness. You don't get your righteousness because you have faith. Faith is the means to a free gift. God's going to Venmo into your account your righteousness because of your faith. You don't even earn it by your faith. Your faith does not earn God's love. It is through your faith he gives you the love that he had for you before you even had any faith. Remember, he didn't die for you after you asked him to. He did it before you even knew, before you were born. Is there anybody in here who predates 33 AD? No. Now, to the one who works, if if if look, I I have a law firm. I got like 175 people that every other week expect to be paid. They get a direct deposit. Those wages aren't a gift from me. They earned them.

Wages are not put into your bank account as a gift if they're direct deposit from your wages. The gift, by the way, that Paul uses here, there are two basic Greek words for gift. Doron which is a like happy birthday and kice which is also grace same word as grace it's uh ker in in uh Ephesians 2:5 when we were dead in our trespasses he made us alive together with Christ by grace you've been saved that was the gift God did for us that's a buzzword for Paul the death of Christ was a gift that God gave you. He credited this. This is not counted as a gift if you earned it. If you earned the love of Christ, it's not a gift, but you didn't earn it. And that is an Old Testament teaching that Abraham was justified by faith. Now, we got to go rapidly because we got about 10 minutes to get through these next two points. So, let's shoot for five a piece and then we'll have points for home. God does the impossible. Paul continues, "To the one who does not work but believes in him, who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness." Here's what he said. Look at this carefully. To the one who doesn't work to earn God's love, but has a relationship with God that is rooted in his faith, believes in him, who justifies the ungodly.

That should stun readers.

Justifies de uh deont tone acly

but it is a word with punch. I mean this is a very strident word. It's a harsh word. It's translated ungodly, but it means irreverent, impious, violating the norms that are owed to a deity. It's not a good word. It's a really, really harsh word. It's not just, "Oh, I'm a little ungodly." It's someone who is adamantly opposed to God, who is irreverent to God, who can mock and make fun of God, who can walk in the most unholy ways. And Paul says God justifies even those who actively oppose are opposed to him. Sorry about my grammar. Now, there's a paradox here that we need to see. You know, it's one of those things where you can't quite figure out how it's all working.

Let me put it back up there. Here it is. Isolated. God justifies from deyios. God dyo um verb form doio. God justifies the impious, the ungodly.

Now, do you know what God said in Exodus? I'm going to put it up in the Greek. Exodus 23:7. I want you to see the Greek. Even if you don't read Greek, God says, "I will not acquit the wicked." Well, that looks very different in our English version, but if you're reading it out of the Greek, not I will justify the ungodly. It's the exact same word. It's the exact same word.

God justifies the ungodly, Paul says in Romans 4. But in Exodus 23, he says he won't.

And not only will he not, if you go to Isaiah, Isaiah condemns in God's name those human judges who are justifying the wicked. Isaiah 5:23, these are judges who acquit the wicked. It's the same words. Proverbs 24:24 is wisdom literature. It says no on justifying the wicked.

God is doing something here. Paul says, and if we take a running start at it, what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.

And to the one who doesn't work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

I like what FF Bruce said about this. FF Bruce said, "God forbids in the law what he in fact does in the cross.

It only makes sense if we understand that Jesus bore our ungodliness. God did not forgive the ungodly. God transferred the ungodliness onto Jesus Christ.

and put it to death.

The forgiveness we have is in the resurre comes through the resurrection of Jesus. We're not we're not taken into Jesus pre-cross in the sense of that's where we live now. Our new life is the new creation of Jesus, the resurrected one. Our old self was crucified with Christ. Christ bore our sins. He bore our ungodliness. God didn't justify it. God put it to death. That's why in Galatians 2:20, he says, "I have been crucified with Christ."

So we have this to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly is faith. Now don't get balled up over the difference between faith and belief because they're the same word in the Greek. I'll show you that in a minute if we've got time. But let's move on to rejoicing with King David. Paul finishes this section by saying just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts loads is the verb counts as righteous apart from works. David speaks of the blessing of a God who would do this. Now this is interesting. Uh uh first of all, we shouldn't get lost on the fact that the lawyer in Paul calls two witnesses to verify that the Old Testament is not being disregarded. He always in Hebrew court had to bring two witnesses. He's got Abraham and he's got David. He's got two witnesses. But aside from that little side note, just as David also speaks of the blessing, this word blessing, uh, macarismos is is the word that's used, by the way, in the, uh, biatitudes, but it is used in a Hebrew sense of someone who's blessed. There's no doubt about that. But it also has a Greek meaning that his Greek audience would know. It's the greatest level of felicity of joyfulness that the Greeks had in their vocabulary. Happy, fortunate, blessed is the person to whom God counts, enters into the ledger book, puts a deposit his righteousness apart from works of law. And then he quotes the psalm that David wrote after he had sinned with Basheba, murdered her husband, and violated at least three of the big 10, coveting his neighbor's wife, committing adultery, and murdered. And that's the King David who says, "Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man happy, rejoicing, felicitus is the man against whom the Lord will not deposit into the bank account his sin.

And Paul takes that word counted, an accounting term to use it for David. So he's hooked up faith through Abraham and accounting counted through David. And Paul says, "Is this blessing only for the circumcised? Isn't this also for the uncircumcised?" We say faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. His faith pistus, his faith, that's the same word as if I go back to Romans 3, believe. It's the same word. It's just a noun instead of a verb. And we lose it in the English. It looks like two different words. It's not the same word. So when it says Abraham believed God, it means Abraham fathed God. And so how was his faith counted to him? Was it before or after he'd been circumcised? That doesn't come till Genesis 17. Abraham receives this promise. He receives this covenant. Abraham is this is 20 years before he's circumcised.

So when Paul says he received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness he had by faith, he's saying the circumcision 20 years later is a sign, a milepost of what God had already done 20 years earlier. It's a seal of authentication. It verifies what God has done. But the purpose was to make him the father of everyone who believes without being circumcised. Now, if you're reading this as a first century Jew, that the whole purpose of this, the reason God justified him by faith 20 years before circumcision was so that people would understand Abraham is the father of everyone who believes without regard to circumcision. That means we by faith are children of Abraham even though we're goyam. I say that some of you are Jewish. But there's no difference. And if you were a first century Jew reading this, you would be like, "What?"

Because the first century Jews were so proud of the fact that Abraham was their father. And you see that in the gospels over and over and over. And the idea that Abraham is also the father of the circumcised, but also of the uncircumcised. And even with the circumcised, not merely those who are circumcised physically, but who walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised. It's amazing. It's amazing. I love this letter. Love Paul. But here are your points for home. By the way, next week I'll be back. We'll do one more week in Romans before we start the Philippians series. And either David Capes, is he first? David, Pastor David Capes is first and then you come and anyway, you got great people coming this summer. But here are your points for home. First of all, the Bible speaks present tense. We read this because it should be God can use the scripture to speak into your heart and mine. All in the video thoughts that I try and post, I always try and put a scripture in each one because the scripture is has the power. God's word will not go out and return empty, null or void. Next, we do worship a God who does the impossible. There is zero zero to keep you from the love of God.

He calls. He woos. He's to quote the poet, the hound of heaven who's going to track you down. And when you find that grace and that mercy by faith, we rightly rejoice and have joy. Amen. Amen. Let me pray over you. Lord, in the name of Jesus Christ, Lord and Messiah, resurrected King of Kings and Lord of Lords,

bearer of all of our sin,

the genesis of a new creation.

in his name. Father, I ask your blessings on all who hear this that no one will be estranged from you, but that they will feel the tender touch of your complete and total forgiveness through faith in Jesus Christ. And that from that faith will gush a wellspring of joy and blessedness. Amen. See you guys next Sunday.