1. "Grand plans occur through specific events."

2. "Justification, even in the Old Testament, happened not by following the rules, but by believing the Lord in His promises. And nothing in that is a contradiction of the Jewish history and Scriptures."

3. "So Paul masterfully pointed out a detail in the story in Genesis, the account which completely undermined their case and established the gospel that Paul had preached of justification by faith alone, in Christ alone."

4. "So, friends, that's how you get from this Jewish Messiah in Palestine to the ethnic diversity of our congregation. We are composed of Jewish believers, but also of people from many other nations who believe, and we come in in the same status."

5. "Those of you who feel most unworthy and most guilty are in many ways the most spiritually mature among us. Those of us who feel a little more comfortable and self satisfied are in the danger zone."

6. "The most basic apparent distinction moves from the exterior to the interior. God's people seem to be being kind of reshuffled. The two long standing groups of circumcision or not now seem to be replaced with two new groups distinguished by their response to God's clear call to have faith, to believe."

7. "Friends, don't trust in religion. Physical conformity to religious rites is not enough. The signs should stand for the reality of heartfelt obedience, love for God resulting in self sacrificial obedience like we see in Abraham's amazing trust in the Lord."

8. "Why would he say that and then do nothing for days or weeks or months or years? Friend, I promise he's not doing nothing. Trust the Lord. Trust his timing."

9. "In Paul's day, some would have been using Abraham as a wall to divide them off, to keep them separate, but what Paul did here was grab the thing they had as a border and a boundary and a shield, and he pulled it down and used it as a bridge."

10. "Nothing more to be done. No barrier between God's love and you. As far as God is concerned, all sins are put away. He will accept you if you come in Jesus name, not on your own."

Observation Questions

1. Read Romans 4:9–10. According to Paul, was Abraham counted righteous before or after he was circumcised, and how does Paul emphasize this timing?
2. In Romans 4:11, what two things does Paul say circumcision was for Abraham (“a sign” and “a seal” of what)?
3. Still in Romans 4:11, who are the people Paul describes as “all who believe without being circumcised,” and what does Paul say will be “counted to them as well”?
4. In Romans 4:12, which group does Paul describe as “the circumcised,” and what additional description does he give to show they are Abraham’s true children?
5. Compare Romans 4:11–12 with Romans 1:16 and 3:21–22. Who does Paul say the gospel and the righteousness of God are for, and what common condition is repeated in these verses?
6. In Romans 4:12, what phrase does Paul use to describe the Christian life (“walk in the footsteps…”), and whose faith are believers said to be following?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why does Paul spend time stressing in Romans 4:9–11 that Abraham was counted righteous before he was circumcised, and how does this support the sermon’s point that “God’s plan is wide”?
2. What does it mean that righteousness is “counted” or “credited” (Romans 4:3, 4:5, 4:11), and how does this help us understand the sermon’s claim that “God’s mercy is free”?
3. According to Romans 4:11–12, what makes someone a true child of Abraham: external marks like circumcision, ethnic background, or something else? How does this clarify who is really part of God’s people?
4. How does the timing and order of events in Abraham’s life (promise, faith, counting as righteous, then circumcision) display God’s wisdom in preparing from the beginning to include the nations?
5. In light of Romans 4:12 and the language of “walking in the footsteps of the faith,” how does Paul guard against the misunderstanding that faith is merely mental agreement with facts?

Application Questions

1. If God counts us righteous on the basis of faith in Christ and not our religious performance (Romans 4:5, 4:11), how should this affect the way you think about your “good weeks” and “bad weeks” spiritually?
2. Romans 4:11–12 shows that believers from very different backgrounds (Jew and Gentile) share the same spiritual father and the same righteousness by faith. How should this shape the way you view and relate to other Christians in your local church who are very different from you?
3. Paul says true believers “walk in the footsteps of the faith” Abraham had (Romans 4:12). Where do you see your daily life (habits, priorities, use of time and money) clearly following those footsteps of faith, and where do you see a gap?
4. The sermon highlighted God’s wise timing in Abraham’s story. Where are you currently tempted to doubt God’s timing in your own life, and how might Abraham’s experience help you respond differently this week?
5. Because the gospel is simple, clear, and for “all who believe” (Romans 1:16; 4:11), what is one specific step you could take in the coming week to share this message with someone who doesn’t yet believe?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Genesis 12:1–3 — God’s first promise to Abraham that through him “all the families of the earth” will be blessed, laying the foundation for Romans 4’s teaching that God’s plan is wide.
2. Genesis 15:1–6 — Abraham believes God’s promise and his faith is counted to him as righteousness, the key Old Testament event Paul unpacks in Romans 4.
3. Acts 10:34–48 — Peter preaches to Cornelius and witnesses the Holy Spirit given to Gentiles, illustrating that God makes no distinction between Jew and Gentile who believe.
4. Acts 15:1–21 — The Jerusalem council decides that Gentiles do not need to be circumcised to be saved, applying the same theology Paul explains in Romans 4.
5. Romans 3:21–26 — Paul explains that God’s righteousness comes “apart from the law” and that God is “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus,” directly supporting the sermon’s emphasis on free mercy and justification by faith alone.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Beauty of God's Design in Creation Points to a Divine Author

II. God's Plan Is Wide: Abraham Is Father of All Who Believe (Romans 4:11-12)

III. God's Mercy Is Free: Righteousness Is Counted, Not Earned

IV. God's Call Is Clear: Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ

V. God's Work Is Deep: True Faith Produces Footsteps of Obedience

VI. God's Timing Is Wise: The Sequence of Promise Before Sign Was Purposeful

VII. God's People Are United: Jew and Gentile Together in One Family

VIII. God's Glory Is Displayed: The Gospel Reveals Both Justice and Mercy

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Detailed Sermon Outline

A friend of mine who teaches molecular biology summarized some of his work so that even I could understand it.

There is a set of stories too beautiful and too brilliant to have been written by any mere human.

None of us grasps them fully, yet each of us understands aspects of them well enough to be in awe of the author.

That author seems to have been content for us to marvel at His work in stages. Children delighting in simple distillations and applications. While the very wise delight in the realization that they will never master the deeper content.

I'm referring to stories written in the four letters A, C, G, and T, genomic stories, one for every created kind. How sad that so many insist these ingenious stories have no genius behind them.

Honest science consistently refutes that lie. Of many key results that testify to the truth, one is a measurement of the probability that a single gene from one of these stories, one brilliant sentence telling a cell how to make a single elegant protein, and that's what Doug did his work in.

Protein could have come together by accident.

This probability has been found to be less than one in a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion. To put that in perspective, if a single atom were hidden somewhere in our galaxy, it would be easier for someone to pick that atom by chance on the first try and for chance to produce a single protein. And this is just one sentence. The great author's stories bring thousands of sentences together with mastery that rises far above the level of sentences. We are fearfully and wonderfully made.

Friends, if you want to know more about reflecting on testimonies to the truth of God the Creator in the created world, Doug Axe has a book about this called Undeniable in which he talks about this, undeniable by Doug Axe. But I use this as an example simply that small ideas can be crucial for big ones.

Grand plans occur through specific events.

In the year 49 A.D., a number of Christians had met with the church in Jerusalem to settle the question, Do you have to become a Jew in order to become a Christian? And they had agreed that Jesus had taught them that that was not the case. Gentiles, non-Jews, could be saved not by adopting circumcision and temple sacrifices and all the food laws, but by trusting in Jesus alone.

Now eight or nine years later, Paul was writing to the Christians in the churches in Rome, giving them the theology that undergirded that agreement in Acts 15. He writes that theology in Romans chapters 1 to 11. And it's chapter 4 that we've been studying this year that zeroes in on the heart of this explanation that justification, even in the Old Testament, happened not by following the rules, but by believing the Lord in His promises. And nothing in that is a contradiction of the Jewish history and Scriptures. In fact, it's what those very Scriptures taught.

And in the two sentences are the two verses that we're looking at in chapter 4 this morning, one compound sentence. We find that Paul notices one particular fact. That completely undermines the circumcision party's idea that Gentiles had to adopt Jewish customs, like male circumcision, in order to be saved. They appealed to Abraham, the one to whom God revealed the covenant sign of circumcision. So Paul masterfully pointed out a detail in the story in Genesis, the account which completely undermined their case and established the gospel that Paul had preached of justification by faith alone, in Christ alone.

Look with me at our text. It's found on page 941 in the Bibles provided. Open your Bibles, if you would, to Romans chapter 4. We're looking at that one long sentence, the end of verse 11. And verse 12, Romans chapter 4, one compound sentence.

The purpose was to make Him the Father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well, and to make Him the Father of the circumcised, or not merely circumcised, but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised. There's Paul's argument laid out. We have two groups. Verse 11, all who believe without being circumcised, and verse 12, the circumcised who are not merely circumcised, but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had. So Paul is arguing here that both Gentile believers in Jesus and Jewish believers in Jesus would come to realize that they have the same father, Abraham, and of course the entailment of that then, that they are of the same family.

Now we've been looking at this slowly but surely in Romans chapter 4, Sunday by Sunday. Stepping back and viewing it as a whole, we can't help but be drawn in and taken up in admiring God in his wisdom and knowledge, his many excellencies. So in our time together today, since we've been rehearsing this argument Sunday after Sunday, I wanna take some time merely to meditate with you on some of the glories of God we see disclosed in the particulars of this argument. As he expresses it here. And first, I want us to note that God's plan is wide.

God's plan is wide. And you see that in that word all in verse 11 and the and in verse 12. All in verse 11 and and in verse 12. All those who believe without being circumcised and the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised, but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised. So what he's saying is that Abraham is the father of those who have faith, whether circumcised or not.

God's plan includes the Jews who believed in Jesus and those from other nations who believed in Jesus, all of them, he writes here. Perhaps some of Abraham's Jewish descendants were using Abraham as a defense of their exclusive privilege a privilege that they thought that they knew that they had over against the other nations of the world. I mean, hadn't the Lord said to their forefathers through Moses in Deuteronomy 7:6, For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His treasured possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. Or as Samuel later put it, It has pleased the Lord to make you a people for Himself.

Yes, God had taken the descendants of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob to be a people special to Himself, but now in the coming of the Messiah, the illusion of the limited scope of God's plan began to be shattered. In the ministry of Jesus, as He dealt with people in those three years of public ministry, and then especially in the Great Commission pointing forward to all nations and in the pouring out of God's Spirit at Pentecost in Acts 2, and the calling of Paul to be the apostle to the nations, even in Peter's witnessing to the Roman Gentile centurion Cornelius and Cornelius becoming a Christian, these first Christians wrestled with and then began to understand clearly that in Jesus, There is salvation, and that there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. When Peter is reporting to the Christians in Jerusalem what had happened when he went to the Roman centurion's home, that they seemed to become Christians just in the same way that Peter had.

They responded, we read in Acts chapter 11, when they heard these things, they fell silent. That's a moment to think about. Why did they fall silent? Jesus had taught them this. They had been seeing evidence of this, but it looks like finally it may have hit home.

They fell silent. And they glorified God. Saying, Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life. Fifteen hundred years of perceived privilege, gently and gladly laid down in the sight of the larger plan of God, admiring the wideness of His plan. This, of course, is the conclusion that was confirmed at the meeting in Jerusalem not that long after that.

We read of this in Acts chapter 15. In many ways, Acts 15 is the kind of center of the New Testament after the cross of Christ and the resurrection. Acts 15 is where the early Christians once and for all sort out this question.

Acts 15, But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, 'Unless you're circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.' and after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question.

So, being sent on their way by the church, they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles and brought great joy to all the brothers. When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they declared all that God had done with them. But some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up and said, 'It is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the Law of Moses. The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter. And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, 'Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe.

And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them by giving them the Holy Spirit just as He did to us. He's talking about that time with Cornelius in Acts 10. And He made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith. Now therefore, why are youe putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.

And all the assembly fell silent. And they listened to Barnabas and Paul. As they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles. After they finished speaking, James replied, Brothers, listen to me. Simeon, that's Peter, has related how God first visited the Gentiles to take from them a people for His name.

Now even the way he says that is significant, to take from the Gentiles a people for His name. That's the kind of language God used about Israel in the Old Testament.

Now here, Peter is publicly, I mean, James is publicly using that language about the Christian Gentiles to take from them a people for His name. And with this, the words of the prophets agree, just as it is written, and then he quotes Amos, chapter 9. After this, I will return and I will rebuild the tent of David that has fallen. I will rebuild its ruins and I will restore it that the remnants of mankind may seek the Lord and all the Gentiles who are called by my name,' says the Lord, 'who makes these things known from of old.' well, friends, Paul writes the letter to the Christians in Rome several years later, and what he's doing is really nicely summarizing systematically and presenting the theology that underlay this perception that the disciples haltingly had when Jesus was with them. Understood increasingly after his resurrection, and then when he gave the Great Commission, and then much more in these early years of the church.

It fell to Paul in God's providence, writing out particularly these first 11 chapters of Romans, to lay out the theology that undergirds this fundamental decision in the New Testament that the New Testament gospel is for everybody. And in Romans chapter 4 is the chapter where Paul really turns his attention to what was apparently the circumcision party's main argument. They had Abraham. Abraham acknowledged to be the father of the faithful, the father of the Jewish nation, and the one who received the covenant of circumcision from the Lord. He was given this covenant of circumcision in Genesis 17.

And he is the father of Israel. But here in chapter 4, Paul shows that if you very carefully follow Genesis' own account of Abraham, you find a very significant detail. If you followed along, you'll find that in fact, Abraham was the father of the faithful before he was circumcised, before he received the sign of circumcision, before he was the father of the circumcised. So in fact, Abraham that was being appealed to was actually the father of the faithful who were not circumcised. Before he was the father of the Jews who were circumcised.

He actually had a prior role as the father of the faithful who were not circumcised, as Abraham himself was not, when he was justified by faith for believing the promises of God. Abraham had righteousness credited to him by faith, not earned through his obedience. So the uncircumcised believers actually had a prior claim temporarily on Abraham, prior to what the Jews did or do even still have.

So friends, that's how you get from this Jewish Messiah in Palestine to the ethnic diversity of our congregation. We are composed of Jewish believers, but also of people from many other nations who believe, and we come in in the same status. And this is a constant reminder that God's plan is wide. So let's pray that God makes our own congregation as outreaching and inclusive as God's own grace is. And thank God for how much such work He has already done, because His plan is wide.

Second thing we should notice in this sentence. Not only is His plan wide, but God's mercy is free. Number two, God's mercy is free. And you see that in that word in verse 11, counted, counted. This is the word that we've noted again and again in this chapter.

It's a word that means calculated or credited or imputed, something that is not naturally mine, becomes mine, not by my deserving it or earning it, but by God's the merciful gift of it to me. Here Paul is writing about the free gift of God's righteousness in Christ accounted to us by faith alone in Christ. Our faith receives the offered gift. But look back up in Romans 3:21.

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. Friends, this is how those most extraordinary prophetic glimpses in Jeremiah's prophecy would come true. Jeremiah of all prophets.

I mean, the weeping prophet is God's special city, Jerusalem, is infested with lying prophets and Babylonian enemies. Jeremiah says this, the Lord says it through Jeremiah, In Jeremiah 23, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will dwell securely, and this is the name by which he will be called, the Lord is our righteousness. The Lord is our righteousness. What could that possibly mean?

It meant that he prophesied that God's righteousness would be counted as His people's own righteousness. His mercy is not extended to those who didn't need it, to the morally and religiously rich, but to those who were bankrupt. Friends, it is to us today that this call comes as an invitation. The Lord gave it beautifully even earlier in Isaiah 55.

Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat; come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, or your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to Me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear and come to Me; hear, that your soul may live, and I will make with you an everlasting I steadfast, sure love for David. Behold, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples.

Behold, you shall call a nation that you do not know, and a nation that did not know you shall run to you, because the Lord your God, and of the holy one of Israel, for He has glorified you. Seek the Lord while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

Friend, maybe you're here today and you yourself are not really that religious. You came with a friend. And maybe the friend you have is more religious by nature, someone who is more seemingly disposed and maybe the level of goodness or religiousness just seems to be beyond your reach. But maybe you would like to have the joy of those around you who you've heard singing so loudly, praising God for all blessings, all blessings flow from him, but it just seems beyond you. Friend, the good news about Jesus is what he demands He will provide.

What He demands, He will provide. If that sounds like a riddle, I promise it's more important to you than most riddles you'll ever hear. You want to come to understand what that means. What does it mean that He will provide for you what He demands? Ask the Christian friend you came with.

What Paul is telling these early Christians in Rome and what the Lord is telling us today through him is that the goodness that we need to stand before a holy God has been given us freely as a gift. Christ's own adherence to God's law, perfectly keeping the positive command that we heard earlier to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. It has been kept for us. And so we, like that Roman centurion Cornelius that Peter preached to in Acts 10, we can have Christ's own righteousness freely accounted to us by faith alone. So Paul here in this chapter's wonderful teaching of imputation is not showing God's indifference to sin, but his way of including us in the righteousness, the goodness of his very own Son through his incarnation, his obedience, His death and resurrection, His Spirit's being poured out on us now.

Friends, we haven't earned our place among God's people today. It's been freely given to us because it's been fully paid for by Jesus Christ.

I wonder, what other story are you tempted to believe?

What dark trials from your past have misshapen your own thoughts of yourself. They've led you to try to trust in other aspects of who you are or what you do for your right standing with God. Friend, try to find those things out. Turn a light on those things. Expose them to the truth of God's Word here.

Because we haven't earned our place. And anything else that would tempt us to trust in ourselves is lying to us. Friends, I don't care how good your obediences have been this week, they've not been that good. They've not been good enough. Maybe you wonder, kids, if your family will get you in.

You'll get in on the privileges of a good Christian family. They're always here every time the doors are open. Surely God will give you some kind of credit for that. Not a bit, not a bit. No, that's an imperfect action of obedience and it's not even yours.

If you were left to yourself, you'd often just stay home. You wouldn't give attention to God's word. You wouldn't sing. No, friends, everything we have that looks like virtue can be picked apart by the Spirit of God exposing our hearts. So, friends, don't even bother to walk down that dead-end road of self-righteousness.

It leads you nowhere good, ever. Those of you who feel most unworthy and most guilty are in many ways the most spiritually mature among us. Those of us who feel a little more comfortable and self-satisfied are in the danger zone. We are the ones who are tempted to be deceived. Our only reason for being counted among God's people today is found not in us, but in God's amazing free mercy in Jesus Christ, where Christ's righteousness, the Lord is our righteousness, where Christ's righteousness is accounted ours simply by our trusting in Him alone.

His mere mercy to us in Christ is costly to Christ, but it is free to us. Gloriously free.

A third matter to notice, God's call is clear. God's call is clear. It is to believe. Do you see that here in this sentence? The nation of Israel had obeyed God and distinguished itself from the nations around it by God's laws that they partially kept.

And as such, all important was the distinction between items in their own normal lives that were ceremonially clean or unclean. So from the very youngest of ages, the children of Israel learned that God cared about all of life and that there were distinctions that touched their lives annually, monthly, weekly, daily, even constantly. God left rules all over the place. To teach them that He was not morally indifferent and neither is anything in our lives. But now with the coming of Jesus Christ, the relation of God's people to such laws changed.

The most basic apparent distinction moves from the exterior to the interior. God's people seem to be being kind of reshuffled. The two longstanding groups of circumcision or not now seemed to be replaced with two new groups distinguished by their response to God's clear call to have faith, to believe. The important division now seemed to be not between Jews and Gentiles, but between believers and unbelievers. That's the crucial difference.

This is the message that Paul had been heralding in this letter. We look back to chapter 1, verse 16, For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. It is to everyone who believes. What are they called to believe then? To believe in Jesus Christ.

So again, my non-Christian friend, this is our call to you today. To believe in Jesus Christ, to believe that He is who He says He is, fully God and fully man, and that He's come to do what He said He came to do, give His life as a ransom for many, and that you could be among those many. If you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you will be saved. This is the message that Paul has been heralding throughout this letter. I don't know of an account that better captures the simplicity and clarity of God's call to believe than Charles Spurgeon's recounting of his own experience as a 15-year-old in Colchester, Essex, England, one winter day.

Let's listen to it in Spurgeon's own words.

I sometimes think I might have been in darkness and despair until now. Had it not been for the goodness of God in sending a snowstorm one Sunday morning while I was going to a certain place of worship. When I could go no further, I turned down a side street, came to a little primitive Methodist chapel. In that chapel there may have been a dozen or fifteen people. I had heard of the Primitive Methodists, how they sang so loudly that they made people's heads ache.

But that did not matter to me. I wanted to know how I might be saved. And if they could tell me that, I did not care how much they made my headache. The minister did not come that morning. He was snowed up, I suppose.

At last, a very thin-looking man, a shoemaker or tailor or something of that sort, went up into the pulpit to preach. Now, it's well that preachers should be instructed, but this man was really stupid. He was obliged to stick to his text for the simple reason he had little else to say. The text was, Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth. He did not even pronounce the words rightly.

But that didn't matter. There was, I thought, a glimpse of hope for me in that text. The preacher began thus, My dear friends, this is a very simple text indeed. It says, Look. Now, looking don't take a deal of pains.

It ain't lifting your foot or your finger. It's just look. Well, a man needn't go to college to learn to look. You may be the biggest fool and yet you can look. A man needn't be worth a thousand a year to be able to look.

Anyone can look. Even a child can look. Ah, but then the text says, Look unto me. Aye, said He in His broad essex, Many of ye are looking to yourselves, but it's no use looking there. You'll never find any comfort in yourselves.

Some look to God the Father. No, look to Him by and by. Jesus Christ, he says, look unto me. Some of you say, we must wait for the Spirit's working. You had no business with that just now.

Look to Christ. The text says, look unto me. Then the good man followed up on his text in this way. Look unto me, I am sweating great drops of blood. Look unto me, I'm hanging on the cross.

Look unto me, I am dead and buried. Look unto me, I rise again. Look unto me, I ascend to heaven. Look unto me, I'm sitting at the Father's right hand. Oh, poor sinner, look unto me, look unto me.

And when he'd gone to about that length and managed to spin out 10 minutes or so, he was at the end of his tether. Then he looked at me under the gallery, and I dare say with so few present, he knew me to be a stranger, just fixing his eyes on me as if he knew all my heart. He said, Young man, you look very miserable.

Well, I did, but I had not been accustomed to have remarks made from the pulpit on my personal appearance before.

However, it was a good blow struck right home. He continued, and you always will be miserable. Miserable in life and miserable in death, if you don't obey my text. But if you obey now, this moment, you will be saved. Then lifting up his hands, he shouted, as only a primitive Methodist could do, Young man, look to Jesus Christ.

Look, look, look. You have nothing to do but to look and live. And I saw at once the way of salvation. I know not what else he said. I didn't take much notice of it.

I was so possessed with that one thought. Like as when the brazen serpent was lifted up, the people only looked and were healed, so it was with me. I had been waiting to do fifty things, but when I heard that word, Look, what a charming word it seemed to me. Oh, I looked until I almost could have looked my eyes away. There and then the cloud was gone.

The darkness had rolled away, and that moment I saw the Son, and I could have risen that instant and sung with the most enthusiastic of them of the precious blood of Christ and the simple faith which looks alone to him. Amen. Friends, this good news is for everyone who believes. Everyone who believes, that's what Paul is saying here. You don't have to have this kind of family or that kind of job, this kind of talent or that kind of bank account, this kind of prospects for the future, friends.

Everyone should believe. If you don't, believe in Christ. It is the clarity of this wonderful message. It's freeness that strikes me as we look at this, considering it in its simplicity. And I think it's considering the simplicity of this message that also makes me feel the weightiness for those of us Christians here who are members of this church.

So, visitors, we're glad to have you today, but if I can just speak to the members of Capitol Hill Baptist Church, I think the simplicity of this message, if anything, makes our obligation heavier to make sure this message gets to others. Because it is not a complicated thing, it's not a graduate degree we need to get people to have. It is a simple message that if we don't tell them, they won't know. Paul gets to this logic a little bit later in his letter in chapter 10. How will they call on him in whom they have not believed?

And how are they to believe in him in whom they've never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? And as I prayed and reflected the last couple of months on our congregation, the Lord has ridiculously blessed us in terms of missionaries sent out in some ways. But I wonder how much it's really more us watching missionaries go out with our blessing and help.

But I wonder how much as a congregation we've really felt that obligation to send to those who have never heard. I don't have more application of this for us. It's just a thought I've been having and praying about. I share it with you. I ask you, congregation, to pray with me in this, to see how we might take this freeness of the gospel, believe, and feel something of the obligation that puts on us and think, how could we be more obedient in this?

God's call is simple, it's clear. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. It's not keeping all the laws of Moses, even the circumcision practice of Abraham. It's simply believing on the Lord Jesus Christ. God's call today is clear.

Believe. Number four, a fourth matter that we can wonder at in this passage. God's work is deep. You see that phrase walking in the footsteps of Abraham's faith. You look there in verse 12, he parallels that with those who are not merely circumcised, meaning only circumcised in the flesh and not in the heart.

He parallels that circumcision of the heart with this walking in the footsteps of the faith of Abraham. So I want to make sure we understand the real and substantial work of God that Paul is envisioning and describing here. He is rejecting the idea that real religion is merely enduring some ceremonies and keeping some rules. Paul's talk of not being merely circumcised reminds us of what Paul had said over at the end of chapter 2. If you look back at the end of chapter 2, He says there in verse 28, For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical.

But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man, but from God. What Paul is picking up on is an idea that we find in the Old Testament itself that circumcision was never meant to be limited to a physical sign. It was a physical sign pointing to a spiritual reality. Having a sign without the thing it points to is useless.

You know, what's the point of having a mileage sign of how many miles are to the city if the city doesn't exist? Well, circumcision had always been a sign pointing to God and His promises. Without faith, the circumcised are not children of Abraham.

They are spiritual orphans. When God called Israel to love Him with all their hearts, one image used for this was to command them, like we heard Jake read to us earlier from Deuteronomy chapter 10, Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart and be no longer stubborn. So a lack of obedience to God command is characterized as stubbornness. And circumcision came to represent a heart submitted to God. So it's interesting, even in Deuteronomy, a little bit later, that command in chapter 10, by the end of the book becomes a promise in Deuteronomy 30:6, and the Lord your God will circumcise your heart, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, that you may live.

If you want to write those down and look at them later, it's Deuteronomy 10:16 is the command. Deuteronomy 30:6 is the promise. Fascinating to stare at both of those. One way that God used the prophets in the Old Testament was to expose the shallowness of the religious practice that wasn't backed up with sincere love of God and resulting faithful obedience like Abraham's. So the Lord in Jeremiah 9 says, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will punish all those who are circumcised merely in the flesh.

And all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in heart. Physical conformity to religious rights is not enough. The signs should stand for the reality of heartfelt obedience, love for God resulting in self-sacrificial obedience, like we see in Abraham's amazing trust in the Lord later in his life when he calls him to sacrifice Isaac. He believed God's promises. And so he was prepared for any obedience.

That's the deep, real, changing work that God is doing in the gospel of Jesus Christ when His Spirit is poured out on us. Friends, don't trust in religion. Don't trust in religion. In Luke 3:8, hear John the Baptist saying, Bear fruits in keeping with repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, We have Abraham as our father.

For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Friends, Abraham's true children are those with faith in God like his faith, which result in what Paul calls here in Romans 4:12, footsteps of faith. Paul is unpacking the richness of the account in Luke 19 of Zacchaeus, where this wealthy Jewish chief tax collector, though he was Jewish, he needed to be saved. And when Zacchaeus sincerely confessed his sin, and even began his repentance in earnest. Do you remember what Jesus said?

In Luke 19:9, Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. Zacchaeus' mere circumcision didn't hide from God his heinous sins, didn't prevent him from needing to be saved. Friends, your coming to church will not hide from God your sins. It will not hide your need to be saved. When Zacchaeus was saved, it was more than religious ceremonies that he practiced.

It was love of God that showed itself in love of neighbor, began to rule in his life, flowing from his very real trust in God. Friend, this is an example of the kind of deep work of those footsteps of the faith. That happened in Abraham's life and that happened in the life of anyone who's truly converted by the gospel. So much more we could say about that. But there's another matter we have to notice.

That's number five. God's timing is wise. God's timing is wise.

It was staring at this that really made this sentence unlock to me and just open up. Look at the very first couple of words, at least in the ESV, the purpose.

Crucial to understanding our verses is understanding what this is referring to. The purpose of what?

Circumcision? Not exactly. Look back at verses 10 and 11. These are the four sentences that we considered last week, and if you remember, It's four sentences that all make the same point. Paul is just clicking on it and again and again and again to make it clear.

Look at those four sentences right before our verse today, our sentence today, starting at the beginning of verse 10. How then was it counted to him? Well, what does he mean specifically? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? Oh, it was before.

It was not after, but before he was circumcised. Okay, now he said it. He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. So Paul is going all in on the timing of this justification happening before the signs of the promise.

God counted Abraham righteous before he was circumcised. So, what's the purpose Paul writes of here? The purpose of what? He sums it up the purpose of the timing of God's declaring Abraham justified before he received the sign of circumcision. Because God could have given him the signs before he gave him the promises.

Could have done that. He couldn't give him the signs along with the promise, right? When he made the promise in Genesis 15. Could have given him the signs, but he didn't. He waited after he had given him the promises and he had believed, he waited for years and then gave him the signs.

What was God doing there? I'm sure many things we don't understand, but at least one of the things he was clearly doing was building a foundation much larger than he needed for simply the salvation of the Jewish nation. He wanted the special sign of circumcision for the distinction of the Jewish people from the nations, which would have a purpose for centuries. But he was building this larger foundation even from the very beginning because he was always planning to bring in the nations. He was always planning to bring in all of those who believed from all nations to form a people for himself.

That's why this timing is so important for us to notice. God in His carefulness gave the promises to Abraham long before the sign of those promises, circumcision. And now with the passing of the ages from the great distance of time, Paul could look back and see that the years that separated Abraham's believing the promises of God from the sign and seal of his believing, the sign and seal that circumcision was, Those years of separation actually had a purpose. God was managing to distinguish a particular people for Himself from the nations around them, people who were given the very physical sign of circumcision, that distinguished themselves from others, showed that they were set apart for God's special purposes, and were given a reminder, an image to use in their own lives and their own hearts that they should not be uncircumcised and stubborn, but they should be circumcised and submitted.

To God and to His designs, to love Him and trust Him like Abraham had done. The exactness of the timing of God in all this is worth staring at. God's providence in Abraham's life, as God waited so long to give Abraham such an amazing promise, God waited until earthly reasons for His promise would seem most unlikely to be fulfilled, and then when it would be clear that any fulfillment was from God, Then he makes the promise. And even then he waits for a long time, years, before he fulfills the promise. You look back in Genesis, that well-known story.

This is what he's referring to. In Genesis 12, at the very beginning, when he calls him out of Ur of the Chaldees. Do you remember? Even then he has his eye on blessing all the nations of the earth. Now the Lord said to Abram, Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.

And I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you, I will curse. And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. So Abram went as the Lord had told him and Lot went with him. Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran.

And friends, then you turn over a few chapters to chapter 15 and we read after these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, fear not, Abraham, I am your shield and your reward shall be very great. But Abram said, 'O Lord God, what will youl give me, for I continue childless? That is, that promise youe got me to leave Ur for hasn't been fulfilled. And the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus. And Abram said, 'Behold, youd have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.' and behold, the word of the Lord came to him, 'This man shall not be your heir.

'Your very own son shall be your heir.' and he brought him outside and said, 'Look toward heaven and number the stars, if you are able to number them.' and he said to him, 'So shall your offspring be.' and he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness. How many times would Abraham have questioned God's promises or his plans? Yet he believed.

Saints, consider the wisdom of God. He was preparing for the coming in of the nations even by the separation in time from His making the promise to His giving the sign and fulfilling it. God declared Abraham righteous before he was circumcised. And then God gave Abraham the sign and seal of circumcision. So God was therefore able to distinguish His people from other nations.

And this account of a saving work in Abraham's life before the sign, preparing the ground to demonstrate that God credits righteousness by faith apart from circumcision. Friends, if you just keep staring at this, you'll see the wisdom and knowledge of God even in the way he orders events, things that may seem pointless to us. Why would he say that and then do nothing for days or weeks or months or years.

Friend, I promise He's not doing nothing.

Trust the Lord. Trust His timing. Why one who promises to provide would allow poverty, or who rejoices in resurrection would allow sickness and even death?

My Christian friends, the sufferings you and I undergo in this life are not the foretastes of the punishments that we're entering. They are the last gasps of the judgment that we're being delivered from. Our sufferings are limited in time. They'll expire, as we sang earlier, in glory land, in the full glory of our being taken into the very presence of God forever in His own time. So note here the wisdom of God's timing in the exactness of his ordering of events.

Another matter we have to notice here, if we're to rightly appreciate what Paul sees that God is about in all this. Number six, God's people are united. God's people are united. You see that there in verse 12? Paul is calling Abraham our father Abraham.

Interesting. Whose father?

Certainly not the unbelieving Gentiles. No sense would Abraham be their father. But what about the Jews like Paul who shared Abraham's faith, whose bodies and hearts were circumcised? Paul's definitely talking about them, our father Abraham. But who else is Paul arguing here that Abraham is the father of?

He said it in verse 11, the father of all who believe without being circumcised. Friends, this is really the other end of the universal extent of the gospel's reach now as it expresses itself in the life of the local church. This kind of unity, the fact that we can all together address God as our Father. That universal extent shows itself in the unity of the local congregation.

This is the all in verse 11 and the and in verse 12 brought to life in our own life together. In Paul's day, some would have been using Abraham as a wall to divide them off, to keep them separate. That was, I think, the main argument of those who were against Paul's message. But what Paul did here was grab the thing they had as a border and a boundary and a shield, and he pulled it down and used it as a bridge. He said, actually Abraham is the one who brings us all together, all who will trust in Jesus, all who believe Jew and Gentile.

Abraham becomes the one who doesn't divide but who brings together.

That's our experience locally here, as people from Jewish and Gentile backgrounds come together, people from different races, different ages, different classes, different backgrounds, different nations. As this gospel is for all of those who believe without being circumcised, we see in verse 12 Paul writes, and the father of the circumcised who not merely circumcised, but who also walk in the footsteps of faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised. That's what we experience here. We have much in common. We're all alive at the same time.

That's something. We don't have immediate fellowship with the members of this church from 110 years ago, though we appreciate the building very much.

We all live within a close enough distance we can walk or at least drive here. We can assemble regularly here. At the same time, we use the same language.

We all profess to have this faith in Christ and so be indwelt by His Spirit. We say we believe fundamentally the same things. We've covenanted to live together in such and such a way in our church covenant. Sunday by Sunday we intermix our lives with each other as we sing and we pray together, as we listen and learn, as we serve and give together, as we try to obey Scripture's command to love, even by our friends who are sitting downstairs today because of this weekender, very palpable way to show love. We give time to try to remember to to show care, to stir one another up to love and good works, we pray for one another through the membership directory, through other relationships.

I wonder how many invisible lines of loving intercession bind this congregation tightly together. If our prayers for each other could be seen from today, from this last week as little lines between any two people. If they became as visible to us as they are to God, we begin to see how tightly bound this group of people is in unity. God has been so kind and patient with us as a congregation. He's overlooked our sins against Him and against each other, and He's drawn us together.

He continues to sanctify us and to wash us and to grow our understanding of Him and His gospel work among us. We realize that part of the important witness God has left for Himself here on Capitol Hill is the love that we have for each other. It's a very practical way the Lord intends to reach people here on Capitol Hill. Think of Jesus' words in John 13, A new commandment I give to you that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.

By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another. And the strong word from 1 John 4:20. If anyone says, 'I love God and hates his brother, he's a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. Our love for the invisible God is proved by our love for our brothers and sisters sitting around us today.

And that's the problem with trying to go lone ranger as a Christian. You're turning your headlights off and you're driving at night. You have no way to have assurance, no way you're not fooling yourself. The local church is the normal means God has set for us to be able to know if we love Him, and we can tell by the way we love each other. Finally, number seven, Through all of this, God's glory is displayed.

Reflecting on all of this, God's plan and His mercy, God's call and His work, God's timing and His people, in all of this, God's glory is displayed in the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God, as Paul will later put it in chapter 11. You see what God is doing in all of this? Think of those promises He made back in Genesis 12. All the families of the earth will be blessed through you. And then think of the distinguishing righteousness that He was given through faith in His promises in chapter 15, and then the sign of circumcision in chapter 17.

And then think of what happens through the history of the Old Testament. The Jewish nation is entrapped in Egypt, initially they're saved from starvation, but they grow into bondage. They're delivered by the great power of God from the most mighty empire on the earth at the time. And do you remember then how God revealed Himself there in the Exodus, what He said to His people in Exodus 34? The Lord passed before Moses and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty.

How does that fit together? Friends, that's the riddle of the Old Testament. How could God really be so holy and so good in the same time? So loving and so merciful? The answer is prepared throughout the rest of the Old Testament through the laws and the sacrifices, the signs and the symbols, the kings and the prophets and the priests, but the answer only really comes with the coming of the incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ.

As He tells the people that He came not to be served but to serve. And to give His life as a ransom for many. In Jesus Christ we see both God's holiness and His love on full display. That's why Paul could describe Christ's death for our sins in Romans 3 and explain Christ's actions, saying in Romans 3:26, so that God might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. It's like he's grabbing Exodus 34.

He might be just, always justice, but at the same time be the justifier of who? The one who's perfect? No. The one who has faith. The one who believes.

The one who looks to Jesus. He is both just and the justifier. Friend, it is this compact gospel of salvation from our sins deserved punishment through the substitutionary death of Christ that Paul lays out in this letter to the Romans. And it's the accessibility of this good news to Jews and Gentiles alike that stokes Paul's praises and fuels Paul's mission. And in all of this, the glory of God is displayed.

And so much of it comes tumbling out from the little detail of the timing in God's purpose that he notices here in chapter 4. See the carefulness and the intricacy of God's plan of salvation. This is how God's name will be glorified in all the earth. How will you be a part of it? Only through our sins, not in part, but the whole, being nailed to the cross and us bearing them no more.

Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord, O my soul. Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways. To Him be glory forever.

Nothing more to be done.

No barrier. Between God's love and you. As far as God is concerned, all sins are put away. He will accept you if you come in Jesus' name. Not on your own.

If you come humbly in Jesus' name, you are welcome. Let's pray together.

Lord God, our souls are instructed in youn holiness and in youn mercy.

We see something of youf goodness and youd love. Lord, we pray that we would see more. Help us to see all that you've done for us in the Lord Jesus Christ. Give us the eyes of faith, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.