Bible Talks - Family Church (9:45am)
Series: Lean On Me - Sermons From Romans
All About Abraham
Sunday, 10 March 2002
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The problem all people have is working out how to be made right with God!
For people who have no interest in being made right with God, which seems to be the case with the majority of Australians, there is no problem. They simply believe that because their spouses, parents and friends still accept them, is spite of their imperfections so too WILL GOD.
But when we become serious about being right with God we soon discover that it is not so easy. When we check what God says, we find the reality is as Jesus said, (Matthew 5 :48) “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” That is a big call!
To get a feel of how difficult it is to be perfect try to succeed at always loving others and speaking the truth with them. It will not take long to see that we are imperfect.
We live in a society where people tend to excuse imperfection in themselves and their friends. People say things like,” Don’t be silly, no one is perfect” (Therefore let me off - let my son off- YOU have the problem because you expect perfection!) This attitude can work when we are thinking about recreational activities or sometimes when it is necessary to stop our children being perfectionists. But it does not work when it comes to relationships and to activities like telling the truth. If it didn’t matter then we wouldn’t need to seek someone’s forgiveness and reconciliation with them.
Moltmann analyzed the imperfection of our society with a diagnosis beyond that open to psychology. He said that godless people have a compulsion to justify themselves and substantiate themselves because they have left the ground of their being, that is they ignore God. This leads to deep primal fear of nothingness that is joined with hate of their own existence. They therefore seek to substantiate themselves by depreciating the other. This need finds expression in racialism, sexism and defensive reactions towards the handicapped, as well as in many other inhumane phenomena. This primal fear makes people constantly seek new 'possessions' to which to cling.
So when it comes to relating with God, being perfect does matter. Christian leaders who have gone before us wrestled with the question of how to overcome their imperfections. Consider John Huss, Martin Luther, and John Wesley.
John Wesley sought to make himself better through discipline. He developed a method of seriously keeping the church rule, keeping the daily office, celebrating the church holy days and festivals -it didn’t work. Luther, a brilliant thinker, desperately sought God’s forgiveness for his moral and spiritual failures. He longed for God’s forgiveness. He became an Augustinian monk, he then went to Rome, did penance but he could not achieve forgiveness. How did these two very influential men find what they were looking for? They found God’s answer and Luther went on to translate the Bible into German, wrote inspirational hymns that are still sung today, he exposed the corruption and false teaching in the church of his day and developed the Lutheran church that paved the way for the many denominations that followed.
And Wesley went on to become one of the most effective English evangelists there has been, leading to the Evangelical revival in the Church of England the formation of the Methodist Church.
Romans is the book that exposes the true depth of the human problem of our refusal to see that we are imperfect and that we are completely helpless to make ourselves perfect.
Romans chapter 4 looks at the one man who, if perfection could be gained by one’s effort, could have made himself perfect. (Romans 4: 1-4) That man was Abraham: God called him to leave his home and culture to a land “I will show you.” “I will make you a nation, and great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. (Gen 12; 1-2) But his obedient works, his military victories, and his success in becoming prosperous and rich, his entering the promised land did not make him right with God. He was imperfect even as we are. But he believed God and God pronounced/accounted him righteous. Had his works been able to make him right with God then his righteousness would have been earned, not accounted to him by God. (Romans 4:4-6)
This principle of achieving God’s righteousness also occurs in other parts of the Old Testament. This principle of gaining righteousness with God is a principle of the Old Testament. Paul provided another example from a Psalm of David: Psalm 32:1-2, which makes clear that the blessed person is the one whose sins the Lord will keep no account of.
God is the only one who is able to make us right with himself, it is only by his gift that we are counted as perfect, or righteousness.
Paul wanted the Jews to know that non-Jews did not have to become Jews to benefit from Jesus’ death on the cross. Before Jesus’ death and resurrection, people had to enter God’s covenant with Abraham by becoming Jews. However, Abraham entered into that covenant with God prior to his circumcision. That proved that God’s grace, his righteousness was obtained by faith because the law had not been given then. Therefore, it followed, non-jews could enter the covenant to be righteous with God by faith in Jesus’ death alone! (Romans 4: 9- 12)
Notice the quality of Abraham’s faith. God had said he would become the father of many nations. And when Abraham had looked at his aged body and Sarah’s non-reproductive capacity he had continued to believe in God’ power to fulfil his covenant. (Romans 4: 16- 22)
However, the words “Abraham , through faith,’ was accepted as righteous by God’” (Romans 4: 22- 24) were given for our benefit.We are challenged to believe God’s promises in Christ no matter how impossible they may seem to our experience or condition. We are neither too good to need God’s help nor too bad to benefit from Jesus’ death on the cross. The only way to be made right with God is to believe in His way of salvation through Jesus.
Conclusion:
In our society we tend to look at the seriousness of people’s imperfections. Because rape is such a serious assault on a person’s integrity we rightly see it as an horrendous act. In the same way because we know the damaging effect of paedophilia on young children we correctly judge paedophiles as reprehensible. But the message of Romans is that no person can achieve the perfection to come into a relationship with God. The good person who is benevolent with their money and who may be an activist for gender equality is no closer to being perfect enough than those terrible people whose acts fill us with revulsion.
Perfection really does mean perfection. So it will be by faith or not at all.
