1. "This world, this life is not neutral space for you to simply please yourself as best you can for a few years and then die. This world is fraught with significance and importance that goes far beyond what we see with our eyes. Each day is meant to explode with brightness and beauty as we see it as it is a new creation given to us by God to be used for Him."

2. "We are humbled as we learn that life is not made meaningful by meaning we create, but by the one we humbly learn that God has given to it. Learning that the significance of life is not inside us, but outside of us humbles us."

3. "Speaking for myself, I have more problems with Mark Dever than with any other man I know."

4. "One of the hardest parts of being lost is coming to know that you are lost. You know, things maybe seem a little off or not as they should be. You don't have a clear sense of what to do, which way to go. And slowly it dawns on you, I'm lost."

5. "Our own imperfect obedience is like a broken down bridge. Nobody is getting across that to God, not one of us. Rather than boasting before God, Paul knows that there he'll not be finally boasting before the Lord, but bowing the knee before Him."

6. "Do you ever think of what our lives look like from heaven's perspective? Do you ever think about utterly silly our pride looks in things that we do? When God knows that every gift you use for him he gave you, there was nothing inherent in you that demanded God make you sharp or clever or strong or efficient or insightful."

7. "The best of humanity is nothing before God. Kids, Abraham shows you that the best person you know, the best person you know, needs a savior."

8. "Our faith doesn't save us. It's our faith in Christ, and it's Christ's righteousness that saves us. Our faith is simply the instrument by which Christ's true and full righteousness are grasped hold of and given to us."

9. "I love what Richard Sibbes said in his wonderful little book, The Bruised Reed and Smoking Flax: 'It were a good strife amongst Christians: one to labor to give no offense and the other to labor to take none. The best men are severe to themselves, tender over others.'"

10. "We're not a religion of saving ourselves by cooperating with God, but of receiving God's promises, given by his grace and believing and trusting him for them. That means that we encourage each other in our service of the same Lord."

Observation Questions

1. In Romans 4:1-2, what specific question does Paul raise about Abraham, and why is this question significant?

2. Looking at Romans 3:27-28, what does Paul say is "excluded," and on what basis?

3. According to Romans 3:9-20, what evidence does Paul provide for universal human sinfulness?

4. In Genesis 15:6, what specific action of Abraham's did God count as righteousness?

5. How does Paul use Abraham's example in Romans 4:2 to challenge common assumptions about righteousness?

6. Looking at James 2:21-23, how does James describe the relationship between Abraham's faith and his works?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why does Paul choose Abraham as his primary example when discussing justification by faith? What makes Abraham particularly significant for this discussion?

2. How does Paul's teaching about boasting help us understand the difference between justification by works and justification by faith?

3. What does it mean that Abraham's faith was "counted to him as righteousness"? How is this different from earning righteousness through works?

4. How do Paul's teachings about justification by faith align with the purpose of God's law as described in Romans 3:19-20?

5. In what way does Paul's argument about Abraham support rather than "overthrow" the law (Romans 3:31)?

Application Questions

1. When was the last time you found yourself trying to earn God's favor through your own good works? What happened, and what did you learn from that experience?

2. Think about your closest relationships. How might understanding that all your gifts come from God change the way you interact with family members, friends, or colleagues?

3. In what specific area of your life do you find it hardest to acknowledge your complete dependence on God's grace?

4. What "status symbols" in your life or community might be preventing you from fully embracing the truth that only Christ's righteousness can save you?

5. How could you practice showing the kind of humility described in the sermon this week? What specific action could you take to "be severe with yourself but tender with others"?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Philippians 2:1-11
   This passage deepens our understanding of true humility by showing how Christ himself modeled it perfectly.

2. Isaiah 64:1-9
   This prophetic passage powerfully illustrates our complete dependence on God's grace and the inadequacy of our own righteousness.

3. Galatians 3:1-14
   Paul further develops his teaching about Abraham's faith and its implications for how we understand salvation.

4. Psalm 32:1-11
   David's psalm provides insight into the joy and freedom that come from receiving God's forgiveness through faith rather than works.

Sermon Main Topics

The Significance of Status Before God

Life Matters: What You Do Is Morally Significant

You’re Lost: What You Do by Nature Can’t Save You

No Boasting: No Grounds for Pride Before God

This Is True for Everyone: Even Abraham Needed Grace

Living in Humble Faith Through Christ

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Detailed Sermon Outline

What does status mean?

What does it matter?

Well, if you're working in Congress or the State Department, you know that nations care a great deal about most-favored-nation status. That has implications for their ease of travel, their relationship with the U.S. in terms of trade, immigration, even military matters. If you're a sociologist or an anthropologist, you may think about questions more abstractly, like what is the status of women in Muslim countries? Or the status of marriage in our own? But leaving aside the big talk of nations and laws that some people in this city have to do with, what about more personally in the way it involves all of us?

What affects your status with your friends? Is it manly for you to leave your wife and child, if you're a young man, to show what you can do?

Are your values like the values of the majority culture here? Or do your friends care about what degree you have or what rank you are?

What communicates status, personal status, high status? What communicates it to you? The car someone drives? The clothes they wear? How they speak?

How large their family or their bank account is? What distinguishes one person from another. Do those distinctions really matter?

In our passage in the Bible this morning, we come to the New Testament and to Paul's letter to the Romans at a point in which Paul has completely evacuated the status that a lot of his fellow Jews cared about most. That is their status before God.

Among the Jews, it was widely understood that a person's status before God was even more fundamental and important than their status with others. And that's a fundamental realization. Status before God changes everything. For them, many had assumed that your status with God simply involved being a Hebrew and the signs of being sons of Abraham. But in the first three chapters of his letter, Paul has drained out.

I mean Paul has really wrecked traditional Jewish ideas of status, of what was to be desired and hoped in. So much so that Paul imagined people might be wondering, is Paul really just trashing the Bible? Paul has done radical surgery. He's gotten rid of the importance of all the things that we've thought stood for our being in good with God, so much so that it sounds like what we've read in the Bible and its rules, the people we've admired just don't matter, whether it's King David or even the heart of the Scriptures, including everyone in the stories of Moses, even back to the ancestor of the faithful, Father Abraham himself.

Are we really being told that none of these people are to be looked up at, are to be relied upon, are to be our guides? Could this be right? We plan to spend much of the rest of the year in our Sunday morning studies together looking at this question because we realize how important it is. Not the importance of our nice-to-have wishes for a new apartment or a new job, but our got-to-haves in the question of our status with God Himself. And Paul begins Romans chapter 4 with some pretty devastating clearing of the ground, really continuing the work that he had done so far in this powerful letter.

So if you would, take a Bible and open it up to the New Testament book of Romans. If you're here and you're not used to looking at a Bible, we provide them. Feel free and take one of those as a gift from us to you. Take it home with you. Keep it as your very own.

If you don't have one, you can read. And find the book of Romans. If you're using the Bibles provided, you'll find it beginning on page 939. Page 939. The chapter numbers are the large numbers and the verse numbers are the small ones inside each of those chapters.

In chapter 1, Paul greeted them, he shared his plans with them, he hoped to see them coming through on the way to Spain. And then he announced his thesis for the whole book in verse 17 of chapter 1. So if you look at chapter 1, verse 17, if you've got your own copy especially, maybe don't underline the few Bibles, but in your own copy, feel free and just underline verse 17 of chapter 1. The righteous shall live by faith. He's quoting the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk, and this is really gonna be his theme through the whole letter.

The righteous shall live, and here's the crucial thing, by faith. This is what this letter is about. Then in the second half of chapter 1, Paul set out God's wrath on all those who do what they should not, and encourage others to do the same. Chapter 2 continues to consider God's righteous judgment of all those who have God's law revealed to them and those who don't. In chapter 3, Paul's argument has come to a head in pursuing the question of who is truly okay with God, who is regarded as righteous by Him.

To use Paul's word, justified. And friend, that's a word if you're not used to, you're going to have to learn. Justified, that is regarded as right by God. So if you look there in chapter 3, the first paragraph, Paul sets forth the idea that every kind of person's coming condemnation is just. Paul's argument in chapter 2 seems to have eliminated God's special revelation to the Jews and therefore implicitly called into question any special revelation from God.

But if that's how they understood Paul, they had misunderstood him.

What Paul taught here was that God's people have been given God's law. Even if they hadn't kept it, they had been given it. And then in verses 9 to 20, Paul expresses the problem of total human depravity. Lest anyone think from chapter 2 that if we're all given God's law, then we're all okay. Whether we're given it explicitly as Hebrews the Hebrews were, or implicitly just with our consciences.

If we're all in possession of God's law, then we all must be okay. And Paul says no. Whether for Jews or Gentiles, the answer is no. While there's an advantage to being a Jew, he says in chapter 3 verse 1, they're not therefore automatically better. Merely having God's law does not bring righteousness, particularly when it's not obeyed.

And Paul then pulls together this powerful sounding out of the Scriptures. He shows that this is exactly what they taught from Psalm 14 to 53, from Psalm 5 to 140, from Psalm 10 to Isaiah 59 to Psalm 36. Let me just read that stretch there. I read it because it's bracing. This is not the kind of stuff you hear.

Psalm, I mean Romans 3, beginning at verse 9, what then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written. And then here Paul, as he does so often through this letter, just cites the Scriptures to show he's just saying what they say.

None is righteous, no, not one. No one understands, no one seeks for God. All have turned aside, together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave.

They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. In their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known.

There is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by the works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. Paul is proving here that God revealing His truth Sin didn't save us from sin, it revealed sin to us and exposed sin in us. So then, you have the last two paragraphs of chapter 3 which really set up what we're going to be looking at in chapter 4.

You can be forgiven following Paul's line here in the first three chapters if you're kind of deflated. Paul has really taking a room for pride out, it seems like for every kind of person you would imagine. Paul has just said in verse 20, By works of the Law no human being will be justified in God's sight, since through the Law comes knowledge of sin. So is there no way to be justified in God's sight? Is there no way for us to have any good status for us to be acceptable to Him.

And then here comes the good news. Barreling through in verses 21 and following, he says that God has provided a way for justification, that is, of sinners being counted right with God. That's what justification is, sinners being counted right before God. And he's done that by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. This is the one and only way for everyone, whether Jews or non-Jews, to be justified.

These verses are so important, and they set up chapter four we're going to be looking at. Let me just read 21 to 31 here in chapter three. Make sure you follow Paul's argument here. And again, friend, if you're visiting, these are some of the most important paragraphs in the Bible. These are some of the world-shaping paragraphs that have been written in human history.

I would say these two paragraphs, you'd have a hard time finding two paragraphs of human communication that have affected more, billions of people, more fundamentally. And I would not close my eyes, open a Bible, and say that about any paragraph in the Bible. I'm not just saying it because it's in the Bible. So here I go. Okay.

I love 2 Chronicles 33, but Manasseh's reign in Judah is not that significant. Compared to this, no lack of love toward Manasseh. But for visitors especially, I'm trying to make the point that these two paragraphs at the end of Romans 3 are the downtown of God's revelation. If you really wanna understand Christianity, this is the absolute gold mine. So you really wanna listen very carefully and make sure you understand what I'm saying.

Kids, this applies to you too. You've been sitting in church for 10 years and you're wondering what it's all about, it's about these two paragraphs. Let me just read this really clearly and then we'll get into chapter 4. Romans chapter 3 beginning at verse 21. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it.

The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

And friends, just right there, Christianity becomes so different than all the basically ethnically based religions in the world. It's for all who believe. Our identity is a cognitive and spiritual one. Our unity transcends nations and races. For there is no distinction For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

That's the bad news. And are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time. So that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

He might be holy and merciful of the one who has faith in Jesus. Then what becomes of our boasting? It's excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works?

No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith, apart from works of the law? Or is God the God of the Jews only? Is He not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith.

Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, We uphold the law. So just orienting yourself to this conversation, Paul has said that God's righteousness comes to us by faith. That's what he's saying there in verses 22 to 25.

He's arguing that justification is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ only. Paul asks in verse 27, Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works?

No, but by the law of faith. And Paul is dealing with the question of this, of the relation of this idea that Jews and Gentiles are both justified through the same faith. And so in the last sentence of the last verse in this chapter, verse 31, he asks the fundamental question about the Scriptures, Do we overthrow the law by this faith? So Paul knows that if people have been listening carefully to these first three chapters of Romans, that's the question they're going to have. Have?

Are you then overthrowing everything we've been taught as Jews? Luther's summary is great of these first three chapters. Martin Luther says, After the first three chapters in which sin is revealed and faith's way to righteousness is taught, Paul begins in chapter four to meet certain objections. That's exactly right. Paul ends chapter three with this sharp question, Do we then overthrow the law by this faith.

So if you've understood what he's been saying, you'd have to get to that question. Somehow you gotta get to this question. Does this overthrow the law? And Paul's response in verse 31 is, By no means, on the contrary, we uphold the law. And that by no means is a strong expression.

And when he says we uphold the law, Paul doesn't mean a kind of covenant of legal righteousness, whereby we justify ourself by rule keeping. That is not what he means by upholding the law. That is not in view here. No, Paul has seen that God has demolished that idea. No, by upholding the law here, Paul means demonstrate the truth of the Scriptures, demonstrate the truth of what we'll call the Old Testament.

Which is why then here in chapter 4 he turns to David in Psalm 32 and most of all to the father of the faithful, Abraham.

And that's what brings us to our passage today, because he's going to show not only does this not upset the Old Testament, this is what the Old Testament itself teaches. That's what chapter 4 is. Chapter 4, our text, verse 1. What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about.

But not before God. So you see what Paul is saying here. He is anticipating that some will object to his assertion that we are, as he says in 3:28, justified by faith rather than by observing the law. And he suspects that such religious objectors would very likely begin their objecting with Abraham, the father of their religion. Now, I think this is a little hard for Christians to understand these days.

I think 1900 years of hearing the New Testament has conditioned us to think of Abraham as Paul is gonna teach us here. But what I wanna do as your teacher today is to take you back to what people in the days of Jesus and Paul thought about Abraham and it's not the same way we think about him. And that's crucial to you understanding this. While it may seem strange to us, the Jewish traditions that were current in Paul's own day and that he was trained in saw Abraham as a model of obedience. That's how Abraham was presented.

They would very naturally throw up exactly the question that Paul presents at the beginning of chapter four, because if he's saying it's not about obedience, it's about faith, their first response is gonna be, hold on, What about the father of our faith, Abraham, because of his obedience? That's why Paul brings up Abraham here in verse 1. What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh? What had Abraham gained or what had he found out in his own life? What is discovered to us in the scriptural account of Abraham in Genesis?

And then Paul jumps to the point with verse 2. For if Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about, but not before God. Works, Paul is saying, are grounds for boasting. Boasting certainly in comparison to others. But even before God, in the sense of making himself not need to be justified because he was so obedient, because Abraham in such a case would have justified himself.

Here's the question. Did Abraham have such saving, such justifying works?

Did Abraham need a savior? Was Abraham's obedience perfect and complete? Paul, with the last phrase here in verse 2, anticipates his answer. Not before God. He knows he cannot boast before God.

He'd said up in 3:27 that boasting is excluded with faith. But people would naturally wonder, but wait, what about Abraham? So to translate this conversation from first century Christians to us 20th century leaders, I want to consider four simple ideas to make sure we understand Paul's important point here and what it means for our own status before God. Four simple ideas. Here we go.

If you're taking notes, here they are. But Mark, haven't you already like preached like half the sermon in your introduction? Yes, yes, I have. But don't worry, you know, it's, I had to, it's the beginning of a series, so it's, I've introduced you to Romans chapter four. Now here are the four points for this particular couple of verses and the message as we meditate on that.

Number one, life matters. What you do is morally significant. Life matters. Number two, you're lost. What you do by nature can't save you.

Number three, there's no boasting. No one has any ground for boasting before God.

And number four, this is true for everyone. This is true for everyone. Even the best people, like Abraham, are not justified by works. Life matters, you're lost, no boasting, this is true for everyone. I pray that as we consider these ideas, your own status before God will be clear, and the status you need, and how you can get it.

First, life matters. What you do is morally significant. This is really a kind of pre-point, an introduction to help you understand this passage if you're coming from a very different worldview. Maybe you've come in this morning thinking that there is no God, or maybe that if there is a God, he must be pretty impressed that you've come to church this morning. But the Bible tells us here that there is a God who has made us all and he gives us all life.

Were made in his image, and we're supposed to live and love like him, living in a way that reflects his goodness, his righteousness, his justice, his mercy, and that if your life isn't working right now, it's in no small part because you're not living like God made you to live. Each action, each moment is a gift from him and is to be given back to him in how we live. We are made in his image, made to be walking billboards of what God is like. Displaying the Creator to His creation by the way we live and love.

I wonder if you viewed your life like that.

Kids, have you thought that all of your actions, every one of them, will be evaluated by God? All of them. As Paul just said in Romans 2:6, He will render to each one according to his work.

The other day a friend showed me a short five or ten second video he had found on his phone. It was his six-year-old son who had been taught never to touch daddy's phone or play with it. But there on the screen, my friend found this video of his son looking into the screen and suddenly shaken when he realized it's recording. And he has no knowledge of how to stop it, let alone erase it. The innocent horror on his face was like staring into certain doom.

Friend, that could be you one day, and in much more serious circumstances. A certain knowledge viewed by a perfectly holy God with every right, indeed every demand to evaluate your life accurately. No excuses. This world, this life is not neutral space for you to simply please yourself as best you can for a few years and then die.

This world is fraught with significance and importance that goes far beyond what we see with our eyes. Each day is meant to explode with brightness and beauty as we see it as it is, a new creation given to us by God to be used for Him. Life matters. Think back just on this week that's now past.

Can you think of things that you've done that are good? Can you think of things that you've done that are bad?

Maybe get some of those things in mind because we are made in God's image to represent Him. There really shouldn't be any bad. None. Because He's not like that. The first thing you need to do to understand the Bible is to realize that our world is not morally neutral, being built only with materials that we supply.

No, we're in somebody else's story, and we're not the author. We're a character in a larger tale. Find out what the main plot line is.

And learning that you are not the main character of the show will actually help you in your relationship with others.

Paul's sharp statement here in the end of verse 2 about there is no boasting before God is so because God, our Creator, has also made Himself God our Redeemer. His whole creation is shot through with reminders of who He is and even intimations of what He's doing. We are humbled as we learn that life is not made meaningful by a meaning we create, but by the one we humbly learn that God has given to it. Learning that the significance of life is not inside us, but outside of us, humbles us, which is an important aspect of our passage. I love what the 20th century pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer said.

In his very worth reading little book, Life Together. The more we learn to allow others to speak the Word to us, to accept humbly and gratefully even severe reproaches and admonitions, the more free and objective will we be in speaking ourselves. The person whose touchiness and vanity make him spurn a brother's earnest censure cannot speak the truth in humility to others. He is afraid of being rebuffed in a feeling that he has been aggrieved. The touchy person will always become a flatterer and very soon he will come to despise and slander his brother.

But the humble person will stick both to truth and to love. He will stick to the word of God and let it lead him to his brother because he seeks nothing for himself. Has no fears for himself. He can help his brother through the Word because life matters.

But let's go on to something that we see even more clearly here, and that is number two, you're lost. You're lost. You are not able to find yourself. You're not able to save yourself. Here in our passage, Paul can present the hypothetical situation of Abraham being justified by works and thereby having something to boast about because, as Paul knows, as he said up in chapter 3 verse 10, none is righteous, no, not one.

This is the background for the way Paul then reads the account of Abraham in Genesis. All have sinned and Adam and all have kept sinning since Adam. Your situation is like Abraham's in at least a couple of ways. You're naturally a child of Adam. And so you are involved in his revolt against God.

And that's confirmed by the choices you've made, to do what God has told you not to do and not to do what God has told you to do. You've sinned.

You know what I mean when I say that? When I say you've sinned, speaking for myself. I have more problems with Mark Dever than with any other man I know.

And friend, considering your own sins, even your own good actions won't undo your bad ones. People sometimes use the image of the scales balancing good works and bad works, but that fails to convey the fact that our lives are supposed to be 100% aligned with the God who made us. And our sins against him and against others can only be very imperfectly made amends for by us. It's like you can't unsay words you've said. You can say, I'm sorry, try to fix the damage, but you cannot literally unsay them.

You can't undo actions you've done. You can't heal damages that you've inflicted. And honest self-assessment shows us that like Paul's assumption here with Abraham, we can't justify ourselves by our works. We, by nature, you, by nature, are spiritually lost. We are deserving of and headed for God's good and right judgment of us because of our sins.

We have to see that clearly. One of the hardest parts of being lost is coming to know that you are lost.

You know, things maybe seem a little off or not as they should be. You don't have a clear sense of what to do, which way to go, and slowly it dawns on you, I'm lost.

I wonder if that's been anyone's spiritual experience.

Maybe even today. What tips you off that you're lost, even spiritually dead according to the Scriptures? How do you learn that? What helps you see yourself more accurately, spiritually?

As Christians, we are helped so much by this.

In God's Word. Romans 3 has shown so clearly that no one is justified before God, that everyone is lost and dead spiritually. What that means is that hell is waiting for everyone who is not good enough and is not trusting in Christ alone. Well friends, no one is good enough. So our only hope is in trusting in Christ alone.

And that's a fully sufficient hope. And that's the only hope. Paul has shown very clearly in 3:20 that by the works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight. Parents, I wonder if you've clearly taught your kids this.

Have you clearly opposed the spirit of this age? Have you taught your children that no one is justified by their own obediences? To you or to God? Have you explained to them even why this is the case? That God's not being unusually stern here, it actually makes sense.

Have you helped them walk into the idea? I wonder, do you understand it clearly yourself? Or would you be helped to have a good conversation with one of the elders or with a good Christian book or a mature Christian friend on this point? Paul is assuming his readers understand this. That's how he can bring up the example of Abraham with no fear that it would confuse or confound people, rather simply knowing that the story of Abraham carefully examined will actually support and confirm what Paul had been teaching them about justification before God by faith in Christ.

This is why we as a church are so careful in trying to study Scripture. We've been studying the Old Testament in the passages in Genesis. We're carefully studying through Revelation in Bobby's series. On Wednesday night we're in Colossians chapter one. Because we believe that the Bible is God's Word and God's Word, read carefully and studied, will tell us the truth about God and about ourselves.

So, my Christian brothers and sisters, have you been finding that even these past few days? Has God been using reading His Word to resituate your heart, to help you understand something better? As we've studied through Genesis this spring, have you found yourself learning through Noah, understanding things you hadn't before that has implications for your own walking with God? A few lessons Could you learn from any character in the Bible more important than the simple lesson that by nature you are spiritually lost and dead and that you need to be found, you need to be saved, you need to be born again?

If you're a Christian here this morning, you've learned this lesson and it has humbled you.

Let's go on to an even clearer message that we see here. Number three, no boasting. No boasting. No one has grounds for boasting before God. That last phrase in verse two can seem a little abrupt.

If you are reading through the passage, trying to think it through carefully, there's a little bump right there. And anybody who stares at this passage much will see that. You would think that the conclusion if Abraham were to be justified by works would be that he would have something to boast about. But then what Paul does is he just grabs the logic and runs it backwards. Knowing that Abraham could have nothing to boast about before God, he knows also that Abraham was not justified by his works.

That's kind of how it goes. Paul takes it as a given that none of us can boast before God. So when he starts down that line to that hypothetical, he then just runs to the end. So this is kind of how I think Paul is reasoning here. I'm going to give you four sentences.

Number one, were we to be able to justify ourselves, or four phrases, were we to be able to justify ourselves by our works? Number two, we would have something to boast about. Number three, but we are not able to justify ourselves by our works. And four, therefore we do not have anything to boast about. What Paul has done here is he's restated one, two, and four.

You know, he said, Were we able to justify ourselves by our works, we would have something to boast about. And then he jumps ahead to number four, because he's just spent chapter three saying the third. So he says, Therefore we do not have anything to boast about. And that's how we can know that we're not able to justify ourselves by our works. And Paul just doesn't repeat all of chapter three here.

He's just assuming that in. Paul had argued back in chapter three, verses 27 and 28, that boasting was excluded because we are justified by faith apart from our works. Now, if you've read your Bible some, you know that Paul himself does boast. He boasts sometimes because of his work for God. But such boasting that Paul does elsewhere is not this kind of final eschatological boasting of the basis of his acceptance with God.

The boasting we see Paul doing elsewhere is more of a rejoicing in the privilege that he's had of doing work for Christ or having done it.

It's like the happy boasting of the child who has a big smile on his face when he hands his mom his Mother's Day card that she gave him the money to buy. I mean, it's real boasting, but it's not the same kind of thing. No, Paul does that kind of boasting with the ministry that the Lord's given to him, but he's not boasting before God that he has lived in such a way that he has justified himself. And this is why Paul wrote to the Galatians in Galatians 6:14, But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. Friends, Paul knows that our own imperfect obedience is like a broken down bridge.

Nobody is getting across that to God, not one of us.

Rather than boasting before God, Paul knows that there he'll not be finally boasting before the Lord, but bowing the knee before Him. That's why he can almost interrupt his own argument and simply close it off there in verse 2 with, But not before God. Because of all beings, God knew that Abraham was not justified by works, but by faith. Abraham's obedience was not the basis of his relationship with God.

So Paul wrote to the Ephesians that even their faith was a gift of God, Ephesians 2:9, not a result of works, so that no one could boast. So I say again, were we to be able to justify ourselves by our works, we would have something to boast about, at least in the sense that Paul is talking about here. But we are not able to justify ourselves by our works and therefore we do not have anything to boast about. Our status before God that we need, the status of being accepted by God, is not a status that you and I can earn. It can only come to us by God's gift.

As Paul asked simply and sharply to the Corinthians, what do you have that you did not receive? And if then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?

Do you ever think of what our lives look like from heaven's perspective? Do you ever think of how utterly silly our pride looks in things that we do? When God knows that every gift you use for him, he gave you. There was nothing inherent in you that demanded God make you sharp or clever or strong or efficient or insightful. No, that's all God's work.

Are you good with words? Are you kind to people? Are you tall? Just the right height for every seat on an airplane to feel like first class because you're so short? All of these things are the gift of God.

He gives them all. There is nothing you or I do that we can take pride in, in an ultimate sense. Anything you do at the end of the day, when you use it as you should, what are you but a servant? Who's used the gift entrusted to him or her for a brief time. Rather than boasting then before God, Paul knows that there will be no boasting because of these gifts that he's given to us.

Brothers and sisters, this is why we as Christians of all people should never brag or exalt ourselves. Very soon we will all be at home with the Lord. There will be no pretense. There will be no hypocrisy. There will be no taking credit for gifts as if we somehow had them in within us, and they are from us as if they reflected our own merit.

Friends, not one of us has perfectly fulfilled God's will. Only the Lord Jesus has done that. And he died exactly because we haven't. My non-Christian friends, don't be tricked into following religions which will tell you to base your relationship with God upon your becoming religious or holy or spiritual. Those religions are false.

The one true God that really exists will not accept you on the basis of the virtues that you cultivate by any religion, even if it calls itself Christian. Realize that the righteousness of Christ is what you need, His perfect goodness, and it's what you can have accounted to you. Simply because of your faith in him. And so we quote the Bible, as Paul said to the Philippian jailer, Simply believe and be saved. Believe and be saved.

Friend, if you are convicted about your own sins today and you know that you're accountable before God and that everything is not as it should be, the answer is to turn from your sins, repent of them, and trust in Christ. He is a good enough Savior even for you. And if we're saved, we know that we have nothing to boast about. The last idea for us to make sure we're understanding Paul's argument here is this is all, number four, true for everyone. This is true for everyone.

Even the best people, like Abraham, are not justified by works.

Again, Paul was talking about Abraham, a real historical figure, as he says here in verse 1, According to the flesh, his forefather, his ancestor. But Paul is pointing out that even the bodily, fleshly, obediences of famous Abraham were not the basis of his salvation. If you read the Scripture clearly, Genesis 15:6 clearly teaches that Abraham believed God and the Lord counted it to him as righteousness. What is unclear there? Genesis 15 tells us that Abraham believed God and the Lord counted, credited, imputed it to him as righteousness.

We'll think more, Lord willing, about Genesis 15 with our brother Ryan Korek's help this evening. In all of Abraham's obediences from leaving his hometown and journeying with his family to a land promised to him, to a promise of Isaac, to circumcision. It was Abraham's belief in God that is pointed out by Moses in Genesis. Friends, Paul is reading Moses carefully and well here. He is showing us how to read our Bibles.

In all of Abraham's obedience, we never see him to use Paul's language in Philippians 3, putting his confidence in the flesh. Abraham never does that. No, there's never the sense that Abraham's obedience merited his status before God.

That's why Paul could set out this hypothetical here in verse 2. If Abraham was justified by works, because Paul had said so clearly in 3:27 that boasting is excluded now. But Paul anticipated that one of the chief questions among the Jewish Christians would be the question, Oh, hold on then, what about Abraham? People were very impressed by Abraham. Now, I've said that a couple of times, why were they so impressed by Abraham?

Well, because Abraham was understood to be the father of the nation, and because Abraham was commonly understood at the time to have kept the whole law before it was revealed at Sinai, and rabbis would base that on the statement the Lord makes to Isaac, in Genesis 26, verse 5, because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws. That's Genesis 26:5. That was a hugely popular memory verse among the rabbis of Jesus and Paul's day. That's what they saw Abraham as being. Father Abraham had many virtues.

Many virtues had Father Abraham. He was the one who was the model. He was the example for us all. That's the most moving story about his son. I mean, how could we not be moved by such obedience?

Some rabbis even taught that Abraham had a surplus of merits that they could actually supply to others, his descendants of the flesh. But friends, this kind of worksy way of understanding Abraham is never the way the New Testament presents him. You know, people stress the differences between James and Paul, but the difference Faith is in the emphasis, what point they're making, not the theology. If you were to turn over to James chapter 2, he talks about Abraham and he talks about Abraham and faith. James chapter 2, verse 21, was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his own son Isaac on the altar?

You see that faith was active along with his works and faith was completed by his works. And the scripture was fulfilled that says, believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. You see what James is doing there, he is not saying that Abraham was saved by his own righteousness. James was simply making the point that the faith which alone saves is itself never alone. In Genesis we find not simply Abraham's obedience but his obedience as the fruit of his already existing faith.

Which faith, God says in Genesis 15:6, he counted as righteousness. So Paul agreed that Abraham was exemplary, but what he was an example of was an example of faith. And all his obedience just came from his faith. It's like what he says over in Galatians, chapter 3, verse 6. When he says, Just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness, know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham.

And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, 'In you shall all the nations be blessed.' so then those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. You see, the point here It's not for Paul to be all defensive and say to the objectors, oh, you're right, Abraham. Okay, that's a good one. That's a good one. But he's an exception to the general rule of justification by faith alone.

No, not at all. It was just the opposite. No, Paul was teaching us to see the example of Abraham as exactly that which Moses had set down in Genesis. Exactly that which Paul had been teaching in Romans 1 to 3. The universal truths that Paul had taught in Romans 1 to 3 were not undermined by the contrary example of Abraham.

They were instead illustrated by the example of imperfect Abraham having God's own perfect righteousness accounted to him because of his faith in God's Word.

So, friend, what you learned from this passage is that no one can justify his or her self on the basis of our own holiness. We can't even do that with our own faith. Our faith doesn't save us. It's our faith in Christ, and it's Christ's righteousness that saves us. Our faith is simply the instrument by which Christ's true and full righteousness are grasped hold of and given to us.

The best of humanity is nothing before God.

Kids, Abraham shows you that the best person you know, the best person you know, needs a savior. Maybe there's somebody you secretly look up to at school.

Maybe it's a friend of yours who's in a different school, but you know him. Maybe it's one of your pastors. Maybe it's even your parents. And you somehow think that they are good enough to know God on their own.

There's nobody like that. Maybe sometime this week you'll confess to a friend who you looked up to that much. Maybe you'll tell your parents about it even. Confess to God at some point. Some people that you are tempted to think don't need His grace because they're so good.

Talk to God about that honestly. Ask Him to show you the great truth that God alone is perfect, that none of us have any right to boast. That's why every week in our service we do what Marco led us in doing today. We confess our sins to God because everyone sins. Everyone needs a new status with God.

So friends, the status, the standing we need with God, comes not from our works, but from our faith in Christ. And Abraham is an example of such faith, not of works, as some people wrongly understood him, but they needed to read their Bibles better. We Christians understand that we're saved not because of our works that we can boast of, but because of our faith in Christ despite our own sins. There's an account of Francis of Assisi turning from his prayers in the wood one day and Brother Masseo met him and wishing to test how humble he was in a mocking manner, Masseo says to him, why after you? Why after you?

Why after you? Francis replied, what are you saying? Brother Masseo answered, say, why is it that all the world comes after you? Everybody desires to see you, to hear you, to obey you. Hear not a man either comely of person or of noble birth or of great knowledge.

Whence then comes that all the world runs after you? Hearing this, Francis, filled with joy in his spirit, raised his face towards heaven and remained for a great while with his mind lifted up to God. And then returning to himself, he knelt down and gave praise and thanks to God.

And then with great fervor of spirit, turning to Brother Maccio, he said, Would you know why after me? Would you know why after me, why all the world runs after me? This comes to me, because the eyes of the most high God, which behold in all places both the evil and the good, even those most holy eyes have not seen amongst sinners one more vile, nor more insufficient, nor a greater sinner than I. And therefore to do that wonderful work which He intends to do, He hath not found on earth a viler creature than I. And for this cause He elected me to confound the nobility, and the grandeur, and the strength, and beauty, and wisdom of the world, that all men may know that all virtue and all goodness are of Him, and not of the creature, that none should glory in his presence.

But that he who glories should glory in the Lord, to whom all is all honor and glory and eternity. Why you go to Cambridge or Pastor Ogle town or start the church in Chapel Hill? Here we go.

It's because of the Lord's love for you and knowing your weakness and knowing that as you are made, he will get glory.

By doing great things through you. Abraham was no exception to the general run of the sinning sons and daughters of Adam and Eve and you and me.

What we do that's good can't undo what we've done that's bad. Our works can't save us.

Just like they couldn't save Abraham. And that's why Christianity is to be marked by boasting in another. We boast, but we boast in Christ. We're to be marked by humility when the topic in question is ourselves. We're not a religion of saving ourselves by cooperating with God, but of receiving God's promises given by his grace and believing and trusting him for them.

That means that we encourage each other in our service of the same Lord. I'm guessing there's some others like me who agree with the missionary William Carey when he said, if God uses me, none need despair. And yet people read biographies of William Carey and they get intimidated. Ironic, isn't it? John Piper observing that tendency said, Comparison with others can be a crippling occupation.

When it comes to heroes, there is an easy downward slip from the desire for imitation to the discouragement of intimidation to the deadness of resignation. But the mark of humility and faith and maturity is to stand against the paralyzing effect of famous saints. The triumphs they achieved over their own flagrant sins and flaws should teach us not to be daunted by our own. God never yet used a flawless man.

Save one, nor will he ever until Jesus comes again. Friends, our humility is intended to throw a spotlight on the one to whom we do rely before God. Rely alone, Jesus Christ. Paul writes of it so beautifully over in Philippians chapter 2 when he says in verse 3, Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests but also to the interests of others.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not account equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself. By becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. So, friends, if all this is true, what are you and I to be like this week?

If, like Abraham, we have no ground for boasting before God, we should be humble. We should be humble before the Lord and gentle with others. We shouldn't be proud. I love what Richard Sibbes said in his wonderful little book, the Bruised Reed and Smoking Flax. It were a good strife amongst Christians, one to labor to give no offense, and the other to labor to take none, the best men are severe to themselves, tender over others.

We are as dependent on God and His grace as Abraham was, as Paul was.

May God make us to know it, and may we act like it this week.

Lord, God, all of our ways and thoughts are open to youo.

We thank youk for your humbling work that yout law and youd Word do. We pray that yout would pour out yout Spirit on us. To complete that work of humbling by giving us a true and lively faith in Christ. We pray that for each one here in Jesus' name. Amen.