1. "Promises matter. What we find in the book of Romans that we've been studying this year is that God's promises are more important to our salvation than even our religious practices."

2. "And find instead the Christian hope that can pervade life every day, not based on anything in yourself and your own flesh, but based on God and His presence, his promises."

3. "So if you want to understand what Romans the whole letter is about, that's the point. The goodness of Christ can become ours, be accounted as ours, only by faith."

4. "So this church right now, this gathering, this assembly is not here to tell us that we should make our own righteousness by our rule keeping. That's not what we're doing. No. Rather we are here to receive the righteousness of Christ by faith."

5. "One of the challenging things about Christianity for people is we have no message to non sinners. A lot of people like to think of themselves as morally good and upright and not really having any moral needs. And to them, other than Christianity saying, well, you're wrong about yourself, there's not a lot we have to say."

6. "And it is the very nature of faith to be, as it were, a kind of an empty virtue. Sometimes people think of faith as one of any number of virtues—God could have said we were justified by mercy alone, or by love alone, or maybe thriftiness alone—but that's not true, because faith specifically is there as an instrument to receive. It's there to receive the righteousness of another, the goodness and virtue of another; that's all faith is."

7. "Man centered theologies are always unstable and changing. But a God centered theology can guarantee us of God's good favor to us so we can come to have assurance of our salvation if we believe in Christ Jesus, our Lord."

8. "The Bible teaches that there are actually two eternal destinations. Two eternal destinations that lead in opposite ways in this life and then ultimately forever in heaven with God in his fellowship, or in hell under God's punishment."

9. "Because at the end of the day, we are most fundamentally not a church of doers, but a church of those who have been done for."

10. "There's something humbling about God's grace, isn't there? Self righteousness can be a very proud kind of religion, but an emphasis on grace always brings with it that sweet smell of humility. That's what's encouraged by the Lord's Supper."

Observation Questions

1. Read Romans 4:13. What specific promise does Paul say was given to Abraham and his offspring, and on what basis does he say it did not come?
2. According to Romans 4:14–15, what would be the outcome if those who are of the law are the heirs, and what does Paul say the law brings?
3. In Romans 4:16, what does Paul say the promise “depends on,” and for what two reasons does he give (look for the words “grace” and “guaranteed”)?
4. Still in Romans 4:16, to whom does Paul say the promise is “guaranteed”? How does he describe these people in relation to “the law” and to “the faith of Abraham”?
5. In Romans 4:17, how does Paul describe Abraham’s role (“father of…”), and what Old Testament quotation does he use to support this?
6. At the end of Romans 4:17, how is God described in two distinct ways, and what do each of those descriptions say that God does?

Interpretation Questions

1. Based on Romans 4:13–16, why is it important that the promise does not come through the law but “depends on faith,” and how does this support the sermon’s emphasis that salvation rests on grace, not religious performance?
2. What does Paul mean by calling Abraham “the father of us all” (Romans 4:16–17), and how does this help explain how both Jews and Gentiles can be included in God’s people?
3. How does understanding faith as an “instrument” (something that receives another’s righteousness) help clarify what Paul is teaching about justification in Romans 4:16–17?
4. What do the descriptions of God in Romans 4:17 (“gives life to the dead” and “calls into existence the things that do not exist”) reveal about why we can trust his promises, even when our situation seems hopeless?
5. How does Paul’s teaching here about Abraham and the promise connect with the larger biblical story of God blessing “many nations,” and how did the sermon link this to the spread of the Gospel rather than to military or political conquest?

Application Questions

1. Where are you most tempted right now to “put confidence in the flesh” (your performance, morality, religious habits, reputation), and what would it look like this week to shift that confidence onto Christ and his righteousness instead?
2. Think about a specific area of anxiety in your life (health, work, finances, politics, relationships). How might remembering that God’s promise “depends on faith… rests on grace… and is guaranteed” (Romans 4:16) change the way you pray and think about that situation?
3. If you grew up in church, how can you discern whether your obedience and involvement are flowing from genuine faith in Christ or from mere conformity and self-protection? What is one honest conversation you could have this week to explore that?
4. The sermon said we are “not fundamentally a church of doers, but a church of those who have been done for.” How might that truth reshape your attitude toward Sunday worship, the Lord’s Supper, or serving in the church over the next month?
5. Consider someone in your life who seems spiritually “dead” or a situation that feels beyond repair. How does believing in the God who “gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist” (Romans 4:17) challenge you to persevere in prayer and hope for them?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Genesis 15:1–6 — God promises Abram descendants and Abram believes the Lord, who counts it to him as righteousness, providing the Old Testament foundation for Paul’s teaching on justification by faith.
2. Genesis 17:1–8 — God establishes his covenant with Abraham, renames him, and promises to make him “the father of a multitude of nations,” directly echoing Romans 4:17.
3. Genesis 22:15–18 — God reaffirms his promise that Abraham’s offspring will possess the gate of their enemies and that all nations will be blessed through him, enriching Paul’s phrase that Abraham would be “heir of the world.”
4. Galatians 3:6–14 — Paul again uses Abraham as the model of faith to show that those who are of faith, not of the law, are blessed along with Abraham and are counted as his true children.
5. Philippians 3:3–11 — Paul contrasts confidence in the flesh with gaining Christ and being found in him with a righteousness that comes through faith, reinforcing the sermon’s call to rest in Christ’s righteousness rather than our own.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Importance of Promises and God's Promises for Salvation

II. What Is the Promise? (Romans 4:16-17)

III. Who Is the Promise For?

IV. Who Makes the Promise?

V. What Does This Promise Mean for Us Today?

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Detailed Sermon Outline

Promises matter.

Companies are sued sometimes if their products don't do what they promise they will.

When we as a country weigh potential leaders, presidents and legislators, we consider what promises they make. If we agree with them how good they are. How likely we think they are to be able to fulfill them. At a wedding, we make lifelong promises to one we publicly claim to love.

At a baptism, we vow to follow Christ forever in the fellowship of His church. As a congregation, we make promises every time we give our church covenant together before the Lord and with each other that we will follow God. Promises matter. What we find in the book of Romans that we've been studying this year is that God's promises are more important to our salvation than even our religious practices. God's promises are more important for our salvation than even our religious practices.

According to what Paul has written in Romans, our religious practices are always even at their best incomplete and broken. So there's no ground for self-righteousness simply because we keep this command or break that one less badly than the next guy. There's no basis there for consolation for a holy God. As Paul said to the Philippians, Put no confidence in the flesh. Or as Jesus himself said to his disciples in John 6, when he was contrasting our flesh with God's Spirit as a means of gaining life, the flesh is no help at all.

That's Jesus, John 6:63, if you want to start your memorization plan.

The flesh is no help at all. Friends, the way out of the general and pervasive anxiety that marks our age is to turn from working so hard to cultivate a worldly self-confidence in your appearance or your health or your qualifications or your family. Or your connections, or your skills, or your resume, or your education.

And find instead the Christian hope that can pervade life every day, not based on anything in yourself and your own flesh, but based on God and His presence. His promises.

It said that Paul was writing this in the early sixth century, or sorry, in the early sixth decade of the first century. We think he was writing this around 57 A.D. He's writing this letter to set out the good news of Jesus Christ. In the first three chapters he's described the dark inadequacy of our own goodness. And then in chapter 3 Paul announced the good news that God's own goodness shown by the incarnate Son, Jesus Christ, could become ours.

And here's Paul's point: Only by faith. So if you want to understand what Romans, the whole letter is about, that's the point. The goodness of Christ can become ours, be accounted as ours, only by faith. That immediately caused the experienced Paul to anticipate objections. And so in chapter 4, Paul has been showing us that this is what the Old Testament Scriptures taught as well.

We've looked in chapter 4 in those first eight verses, both Abraham and David, he's shown, were justified, that is declared right with God, not by anything they had done, but by faith in God's promise. Then again, if you look at chapter 4 of Romans, you see a paragraph there verses 9 to 12, Paul zoomed into the example of Abraham and he looked at the timing of when God had said that he was declared righteous and he noticed that that happened before he had obeyed God's command for him to be circumcised. And then now as we've kept going in Romans chapter 4 verses 13 till near the end of the chapter, Paul is showing the efficacy of faith in God's promises, not as opposed to circumcision, which he did there in verses 9 to 12, but as opposed to just having the law. That's really what he's looking at here in verses 13 and following. So if you'll open your Bibles to Romans chapter 4, look there at the chapter.

If you're not used to looking at a Bible, the small numbers are the verse numbers I'm referring to. The large number is the chapter number. And here in verses 13 and following, Paul is showing the efficacy of faith in God's promise as opposed to having the law. So the law here in these paragraphs is referring especially to God's revealed law to Moses. But that would include other revelation of God's own will and standards for His people.

And Paul in our passage is pointing out that hope will not come merely through having God's truth. It comes through our believing it. And so having faith in God and His promises. And so we come to our text for today, Romans chapter 4, verses 16 and 17. You'll find it on page 941 in the Bible's provided, if you want to look there.

Romans chapter 4, verses 16 and 17.

That is why it depends on faith. In order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all His offspring, not only to the adherents of the Law, but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all. As it is written, I have made you the father of many nations, in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. We'll meditate our way through these two verses with the aid of four questions. Here they are.

Number one, what is the promise? Number two, who is the promise to? Number three, who makes the promise? And number four, what does this promise mean for us today? Let me give you those again.

Number one, what is the promise? Number two, who's the promise? Two. Number three, who makes the promise? And four, what does it mean for us today?

And I pray that as we work through these, you'll understand what it means for you to be declared to be right with God by faith. First, what is God's promise? Well you look here in verse 16, God's promise is the same promise that He's referred to just up above here in the verses right above it. In verse 14, Paul is warning that it would be void, this promise, if the heirs were found to be those who had the Law. Here we find the promise then one verse further up, back in verse 13, he lays it out, that Abraham and his offspring would be heir of the world.

So that's the promise that God had made to Abram. Or as Paul quotes here in our passage in verse 17, You see him there in verse 17 saying, I have made you, that's Abraham, I've made you the father of many nations. Those are referring to the same promise, those two different ways of putting it, it's the same thing. This is the promise that Paul says Abraham believed and that was credited to him as righteousness. And it's really a summary of various promises made by God to Abraham in Genesis.

So if you go back and you look in Genesis for exactly this promise, air of the world, you won't find it. But you will find a number of promises which when you put them together, this is a good way to summarize, it was a common way in the first century to summarize the promises that God had made to Abraham. There are promises to give him many descendants, promise to give him the land, promise that all peoples would be blessed through him. There's even in Genesis 22 an interesting promise particularly where the Lord tells them, your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in you shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. Well, possessing the gates of your enemies meant you conquered them.

Perhaps you somehow had dominance over them. And so by the time of the first century, the Jews had come to think of that as there would be a messianic figure like David that would literally have sway over all the countries of the world, politically and militarily, which is why then Jesus was met like he was, with the expectations for him as a kingly conquering messiah. Anyway, these are all summed up in this idea that Abram would be heir of the world. And this promise really is not that different from the one we've been thinking about in chapter 3 about being justified by faith alone. And you go, well, how is that?

Like being heir of the world? Because justified by faith alone crosses cultures. It's not limited to simply those who practice circumcision or obey the law of Moses. Justified by faith alone is a blessing that will go to all nations through the preaching of the gospel. That's how Abraham and his descendants would inherit the world.

Through this blessing of all families on earth through them as the news of God's provision through the Messiah came through them to all nations. That's how they would be heir of the world. So heir of the world travels right on the back, as it were, of justification by faith alone in Christ alone. Because this is showing that justification was not coming through obedience to the law of Moses or following the practice of circumcision that Abraham was commanded, but rather it was coming through trusting, believing, relying on Christ. And so you see this emphasis that Paul has here as he's writing.

He's written so clearly about justification by faith alone in the second half of chapter 3. That's what he's defending here in chapter 4. And he's saying this is completely consistent with what we find in the Old Testament. This is why he cites David in Psalm 32. Referring to someone not having their sins counted against them.

That's why he says Abraham could be justified by faith in God's promise before he had received the sign of the covenant or the law of circumcision. So it is by the spread of justifying faith in Christ, not by military conquest, that Abraham would be heir of the world. That's what this promise is. And that's why Paul is saying that we need to understand here that this is not upset by the language in the Old Testament about circumcision or about having the law. But no, if we understand it in context, we understand that this is the message of salvation by faith alone that all people need.

Friend, if you want to understand this book of Romans, the one thing you've got to understand to begin with is that you and I sin. So if we read much of this just to the average person we find on the street today in Washington, DC, I think one of our basic gulfs we have to get across is this idea that we don't all start out in a good position with God simply because he made us, as if he is somehow by creation obliged to make sure we're okay in every way. He has given us responsibility for our actions and we will never live well enough on our own to merit God's favor. That's why we listen for news of God's grace coming to us simply by faith. So this church right now, this gathering, this assembly is not here to tell us that we should make our own righteousness by our rule keeping.

That's not what we're doing. No, rather we are here to receive the righteousness of Christ by faith. And everything we do in our time together is calibrated to help us understand our need and God's provision in Christ and to trust Him, to lean into Him fully. The songs that we sing, the prayers that we pray, the scriptures that we read, the messages that we hear. So Romans 4:16 and 17, with all this, listen again to our two verses.

That is why it depends on faith. In order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring, see that's his point, Paul's point there's that word all. To all his offspring, not only to the adherent of the law, and that word adherent is just not only to those of the law, it's what it says in the original, those of the law. So he's meaning the Jews, but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham. So whether or not they're Jewish, all of those who share the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all.

So that's how Abraham becomes the father.

Of Gentiles and Jews who have this shared faith that He is. As it is written, I have made you the father of many nations so that many nations, that's being fulfilled in the all. So the ones who are brought to know God through faith in Christ, the many nations, the Jewish believers and the non-Jewish believers, the many nations, that's the fulfillment of that. So that's what we see here. In the presence of God in whom He believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.

So the promise was for Abraham to be the father of many nations and the fulfillment of that promise implies that those who believe God, who share the faith of Abraham, are counted as righteous. That's really the promise, sort of two sides of the same coin. God's promise is that we can have life. If we will trust in Christ alone. On the cross, he bore the penalty that our sins required.

We've sung of it in our hymns already today. And as a result of Christ's substitutionary death and resurrection, we who believe in him are justified. So brothers and sisters, part of our challenge every day as a Christian is to live as if this is the most important hope we have. And we're in a time and a place where people are trying to get us to have other things as the most important hope. So for some people, it's gonna be something political that happens this week.

But then soon that'll be gone from your minds, and then it's the Christmas shopping season. It'll be other more individual consumeristic things. And then again and again, then it's New Year's goals. And friends, do you not see how the world constantly kind of rolls you along, trying to get your ideas, your idea, your images, your thoughts, your hopes off of your greatest need. And your greatest hope.

But as Christians, as a church, we're here to get you to focus on what is most important, what is most significant, what is in line with the promises that God made to Abraham and through Abraham to all the world. That's what we are about. Laser focused on that. And through that, we trust blessings for every aspect of our lives as we follow Christ most. God's promise is that you can know the same life if you will believe in Him and trust His promises as Abraham did.

But now let's notice who the promises are for. And these first two points are very much like each other. First, what the promise is, but in the way I've said it, I kind of told you who it's for, but let's just stare now specifically at who it's for. The promise is that He mentions there heir of the world, and it's paralleled with the justification by faith alone in Christ alone. Now let's note who it's for, and it's particularly for those who sin, so they're in need, but among the sinners it's a subset, those who trust in Christ.

One of the challenging things about Christianity for people is we have no message to non-sinners. A lot of people like to think of themselves as morally good and upright and not really having any moral needs. And to them, other than Christianity saying, well, you're wrong about yourself, there's not a lot we have to say. If someone is self-satisfied, we would understand them to be in a kind of moral delusion, in a kind of moral sleep and slumber. But once someone wakes up with their conscience or from reading the Bible or having some friends who are Christians or something pricks their conscience about the way they're living, then they begin to understand, oh, there is moral need that I have.

So it's not just the things I see wrong with others, but I have things that are wrong. I need help. With a good God, I need forgiveness. Now we're in the category where we, as Christians, have something to say to them. And we can talk to them about what God has done for us in Christ and that's what our passage here is about.

You see, he says that this hope that we have is not for those who are merely circumcised, merely following the religious practices commanded to Abraham, not for those who merely have the law, that is, who identify themselves as Jewish. No, faith is the subset of those for whom the promise is, those who have faith. And it is the very nature of faith to be, as it were, a kind of an empty virtue. Sometimes people think of faith as one of any number of virtues God could have said, We're justified by mercy alone, or by love alone, or maybe thriftiness alone. But that's not true, because faith specifically is there as an instrument to receive.

It's there to receive the righteousness of another, the goodness and virtue of another. That's all faith is. In that way, it's best not to speak of faith even as a condition, as some theologians have, it's better to speak of faith as an instrument. This is a way that God brings us the righteousness of Christ. And so that's why we see here that this promise is for faith and saying it is for those who have faith implies and necessitates the gracious nature of it.

That is to say, faith, it's by faith alone, is to make it clear, this salvation is nothing that we earn or deserve on our own, but it is what we would call of grace. It is not earned by us. It is not merited by us. It's given to us. So the last people in the world that should ever be self-righteous are Christians.

Because we are the ones who are admitting that we are in such deep debt we ourselves could never pay it. Our only hope is that there is a God who has somehow paid this for us. And that's of course exactly what we see that Jesus has done. I think Matthew Henry summed up this section well when he said that God had made the promise by faith so that, one, it might be by grace, Two, that the promise might be sure. And three, that the promise might be for all.

Let me just work through those just for a moment. I think you'll appreciate the faith a little bit more as you see this, that it's by grace and that God's promises might be sure and the promise might be for all. First of all, God's promise is by grace.

Now maybe you're the kind of person who's always here. You just don't miss Sundays. You plan your travel so you get back on Saturday night, even if it's more expensive. You just try to make sure you're here on Sunday and maybe you've been like that for years. Maybe you're tempted to rely on your church activities as a way of thinking that God is okay with you because you have been so faithful to God.

You have been so faithful to his people. The truth is that the faith that Paul writes of here exposes the radically resting on grace alone nature of our reliance on Christ. The promise that he lays out here is not for the self-confident, it's for the Christ-confident. This promise is for those who have faith in God and His promises. You see here in verse 17 how Paul describes God as the God in whom he, that's Abraham, believed.

That's what he means when he says in verse 16, it depends on faith. If it were something else, if it were circumcision or the law or your righteousness or mine, then we would still have our sins counted against us. Our sins would be uncovered before the Lord. Our lawless deeds would be unforgiven because there would be no mediator between sinful us and a holy God. If this promise were based on works, It would fail and we would fall.

We would be unransomed still, captive to our sins, the punishment in hell deserved from a good God. Just go back through our hymns that we've sung and reverse everything. Just see what would be the case if there were not a Christ that we could rely on as we can. But in this word to Abraham, we see God breaking through and giving hope to a world in a hopeless rebellion against him. In Abraham's belief we see not a virtue full of its own goodness, but an empty, humble receptor of the goodness of another.

One who relies on God's unmerited grace, who trusts in His promise of blessings, who can rely on Christ's righteousness. Or as Paul put it in the previous chapter, chapter 3 verse 22, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ, for all who believe. You see why Paul sometimes uses faith and grace almost interchangeably, because for faith to work, it has to depend entirely on God's goodness. And that's what grace is. Grace is relying on God's unmerited favor for us.

It is this faith. It is God's grace which shows that the universal promise to Abraham This promise that He was given that His faith would be counted as righteousness is still the pattern for all people today, Jewish or Gentile, how we're to respond to the news of God's provision in Christ. So it's this rest and repose that allows us to have our confidence in our Savior be so sure and steady that it can be said here in our passage to be guaranteed. That's the word here in the ESV. Think of how unsure and uncertain our promise would be if it were not based on Christ's righteousness.

If it were based on our own, we would have good days and bad, good weeks and bad, good months and bad, good years and bad. We would be less certain of how God would feel about us this morning when we got up. But friends, our hope in God's salvation is based on what Christ has done, His record. As Ryan put it when he was leading the service, is our record from Colossians 2. That's the good news that we have.

So God's promise is by grace, and that makes the second thing then his promise sure. God's promise is sure. In fact, it's because it is a gift of grace that can be guaranteed. And again, particularly if you are a young person, you were brought up here in church, I think you can be very easily finding yourself confused about this because for so many years your goodness to your parents and obeying them is shown in your compliance and coming along here and sitting through something like this right now. So thank you young people for doing that.

But don't mistake your compliance in doing this as relying on God and His promises in Christ. It could be, it could be part of it, but you'll know that best. And that's what you need to investigate. Your compliance to the rules, are they because you understand what God has done for you in Christ and you rely on Him alone, or is it still some way for you to make sure that you are okay with God? That is so worth you talking about with your friends, or with your parents at lunch today.

Try to think through what it means to be okay. Man-centered theologies are always unstable and changing, but a God-centered theology can guarantee us of God's good favor to us so we can come to have assurance of our salvation if we believe in Christ Jesus our Lord. Friends, this is why the Protestant Reformation just lit up Europe 500 years ago. Because for centuries in Europe, people had been taught through the Roman Church that you can't know if you're saved. You can try to do what the church tells you and work along with it and hopefully lessen your time in the fires of purgatory when you die to cleanse you.

But to actually know that you are saved, that you are completely delivered from the penalty of sin because of what God has done in Christ, that was unknown. And that's what was understood all of a sudden. By some Christians from the Word and began to be taught. And that's why it just ran all across Europe like this incredibly good news. Wait, I can go to bed tonight knowing that I'm okay with God.

Yes, that is the wonderful news. You can not only be saved by faith, but you can know that you are saved by Christ through faith alone in Him. That's the news that's resident even in these verses that we're looking at. Abraham's status is not limited to being the father of the Jews only. Because Abraham was justified by faith, remember, before he was circumcised.

That's how he becomes the father of all people who have faith, all who come to have faith in Jesus Christ. Friend, that could be you today. If you understand your sins and that you need a savior, that's who Jesus Christ can be for you. If you'll turn from your sins and trust in Christ. If you want to know more about what that means, talk to any of the pastors at the doors on the way out.

Maybe talk to the people you came with. There's great good news that we have for hope that will pervade every day, every week, every month of our lives because of what God has done for us in sending His only Son to live a life of perfect trust in His heavenly Father, to die taking on the penalty for the sins of all that would trust in Him, and then be raised showing that God had accepted His sacrifice. Friends, Paul summarized this in Galatians chapter 3, so if you want to write down a kind of parallel passage to what we're looking at. It's over in Galatians chapter 3 verses 7 to 9. 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. So God's promise we can see here in these verses is by grace, it's sure, and it is for all, all of God's people. Now I wonder how you're doing with this as a Christian. This can be a very tricky point for Christians because they have consciences that are alive because of the Holy Spirit. They want to grow in Christ.

And yet Christians know by their own experience that they can be thrown off guard when they stare at themselves. And they stare at their own sins. How are you to understand them? Well, as with so many things in life, I found great wisdom at this point from my brother, C.H. Spurgeon.

Here's how he gives a summary of this at one point. He says, the believer may grow in grace, till he becomes fully assured of his own salvation. Yes, and he may become holiness unto the Lord in a very remarkable manner, being wholly consecrated to God in body, soul, and spirit.

But you will never hear the believing man speak of his experience or attainments or achievements as a reason for glorying in himself or as an argument for becoming more confident as to his safety. He dares not trust his works or states of feeling. For he feels that by faith he stands. He cannot get away from simple faith. For the moment he attempts to do so, he feels the ground going from under him, and he begins to sink into horrible confusion of spirit.

Therefore he returns unto his rest and resolves to abide in faith in his risen Savior. For there he abides in the grace of God. You see what he means? When we begin assessing ourselves, yes, we'll see real signs of hope. We'll see God's work in our lives.

But our perceptions won't be perfect and our perceptions will probably also see some real problems in our lives. Some ways we have sinned, some ways we have turned against God. And we won't find a good basis for assurance and so we go back to faith in Christ, his righteousness. That's where our solidity is. And the funny thing is, in staring Christ at his righteousness, we can actually grow better in our own as we rely on Him and not simply our current assessment of ourself.

Well, it's because of this promise being through faith that this promise is for all who believe. That's the second major point, third major point. Who made this promise? Who made this promise? Well, we see here very clearly in our verses, it's God.

Who made this promise. God wants us to rely on Him alone. We come together to begin each week to celebrate, not what we have done, we come together to celebrate what God has done. So you see the beginning of verse 17, Paul naturally turns to prove this from the Scripture, verse 17, As it is written. And so for the third time now, just in this chapter, Paul turns to the Bible to prove a doctrine, and he cites Genesis 17.

And he cites that promise from Genesis 17:5, I have made you the father of many nations. Who is the I? That's God. That's God speaking to Abraham, I have made you. The Lord appeared to Abraham, we read in Genesis 17.

This is who makes the promise. So who has blessed all nations and given new life to those from every tribe and tongue? God. And what promise has this God ever broken? Friends, if this is a promise from God, this is a promise that is utterly reliable.

You can go back through your own Rolodex or what would be a modern thing, some program or some computer app, I don't know, on a phone, I don't know. You can go back on whatever you keep records on and think of your dealings with God and try to search For some promise He's broken to you.

Spend time on it. Try to think of some promise He's broken. Now, you may say, Ah, Mark, here's a prayer I've prayed that I've not seen answered. Ah, that's different. No, we pray things sometimes for a long time.

We know from the Bible that sometimes God is very long in answering prayers. Sometimes weeks, sometimes years, sometimes beyond your own lifetime. God is long in answering prayers. But there is no day in which that prayer is as yet unanswered that God's promises are unkept. God knows exactly what He's doing.

He has His purposes and we need to trust Him because this God, look how He's described here. This God is the God who gives life to the dead, who calls into existence the things that do not exist. I'm not sure those two phrases are just the same thing restated. I think they're meant to be slightly different. That the God who gives life to the dead, you know, what is Paul thinking of there?

Maybe Abram and Sarah, when they were beyond childbearing years, being given a son when they were old. Maybe Isaac, when he was born, being delivered from that sacrifice. Because in Hebrews it says Abram reasoned in his confidence in God knowing that God could raise him from the dead. So that's being alluded to. All of this of course points to the bodily resurrection of Jesus, which we'll come to at the end of chapter 4.

So friends, we know that this is a God who does not have the same limitations of fate that you and I know from this world. This is a God who raises the dead. We're used to those lines from the service book at the funeral or at the graveside, In the midst of life we are in death.

But as Christians, we know to anticipate the far stranger words, In the midst of death we are in life. We know that God brings about life where there was none, which brings us then to this This other phrase that he uses at the very end of verse 17 to describe God, he's the one who calls into existence the things that do not exist. Well, it's kind of like the gives life to the dead, but it's even more than that. God calls into being that which was not, and our minds begin to flood with the great acts of God we see in the Bible primarily creating the world from nothing. There was nothing.

And then there was all that is. Or you think of the call of Abram. He was simply a pagan in Ur, and God calls him. Or that promise of Isaac in his birth, or that promise when he was sacrificed, we were thinking of a moment ago. Or you think of the call of Israel as a nation.

In the prophet Hosea, he says, you, who were not a people are my people. God makes a people out of those who were not. And what He did with Israel is what He's done with us here today as a church. From many nations, we who were not a people have now been made a people because of what God has done for us in Christ, individually giving us the new birth, making us new creations together, pulling us together. God can impute Christ's righteousness to those of us who have none of our own, even as he imputed our sins to the sinless Christ who bore them on our behalf.

Friends, one small bypath right here because of very odd ways this phrase is commonly used today, which get us off what the passage is about, but because it's so common, I just want to bring it up to you. That last phrase in verse 17, calls into existence the things that do not exist. If you were to read some study Bibles, maybe one by a teacher like Joyce Meyer, you might find her saying something like this.

We should confess things into existence. We should just take this as a positive look at the possibilities of the future. Speak of those things that are non-existent as though they do exist. Think and speak about your future in a positive way according to what God has placed in your heart, not according to what you've seen in the past or seeing even now in the present.

Now that's a very clever falsehood. It participates in some of the Christian truth, which is there's hope where there is no hope based on ourselves, but it distorts it. You see what God is doing through Paul in this passage, he's getting us to admire God because he's referencing something that God has done that we cannot do. So yes, some things God is like, they're models for us to imitate. Love, mercy, goodness.

But other characteristics of God, we're not meant to imitate. We're only in awe of creating something out of nothing. That's not something we can do. That's not given to us. That's given to us to make us to be in awe of God and to trust Him fully.

That's the point of this characteristic that's mentioned here, to give us hope for where we would otherwise not have hope. Friend, you should consider this as a characteristic of God and let it enliven your prayer life. Think of ways God has in the past shown Himself to do things where you assumed things were pretty much gone pointless, hopeless, those are the very places where God can get great glory to Himself by doing for His good and for His glory. Amazing acts of regeneration, of sanctification, of hope, of understanding, of truth coming out. So friend, if you're here today and you're not a Christian, there's a hope for you you haven't even imagined.

You may even at this point lack categories to understand.

How fully known, intended and loved you are of God. You've been playing on a level with your life, which for whatever reason with your circumstances now you've come to find unsatisfying and even concerning. The good news for you is God made you in his image, exactly in part so that you would feel empty when you are apart from him. He knows what he's doing, even with the misfortunes you've experienced. Turn to God.

Find out the truth of why you are made like you are. Turn to Him to see what He's done in Christ for all who've sinned and turn and see what He could do in your life even today. There is hope here for you because it is this God who has given us this promise. Well, that really brings us to a fourth question: what does this matter for us today? I wonder what kind of promises you've given up hope on this morning.

This, of all things, this, having a right relationship with God should not be one of those promises you've given up hope on. Have you ever heard the many paths, one destination comment? I get this all the time. When I'm talking to somebody who's not in church about God or, you know, some poor Uber driver is subjected to me, you know, then, you know, I started to share a little bit and he'll say inevitably something like, ah, well, yes, you know, there are many paths up the mountain, but they all lead to the same destination. I just want you to be really clear.

The Bible does not teach that. I want to be really clear. The Bible teaches the opposite of that. The Bible teaches that there are actually two eternal destinations, two eternal destinations that lead in opposite ways in this life and then ultimately forever in heaven with God in his fellowship or in hell under God's punishment. But the little glimmer of truth that you can tell maybe the non-Christian is seeing is that it is true that there is one way for all people.

From wherever they're from, whatever their religious background or their national background, there is one hope we can all share of how to get to God, and that is Christ. That one hope is for all who will turn from their sins and trust in him. So whoever you are, wherever you are, there is this same way to God. Whether you're Jewish or not, God has made a way for your sins to be counted, not against you, but for them to be covered, for them to be forgiven, for you and God to be reconciled forever. And that way is not so much what many people think of as religion as it is through the simple heartfelt hearing and believing that God came through Christ reconciling the world to himself.

This promise, believing it, rehearsing it each time we're together is at the very heart of our lives together as a church. That's what we're doing here right now. That's what we're doing in studying through Romans chapter 4. Because at the end of the day, we are most fundamentally not a church of doers, but a church of those who have been done for. Does that make sense?

We're not fundamentally a church of doers, though many of us may be very active, we don't understand those actions of ours to be our most fundamental identity. We're most fundamentally a church of those who have been done for. And that's a great kind of double entendre because it's both, you know, we're done for, oh no, we have no hope, which is great, apart from Christ, we have none. But we're also, we have had things done for us. We are those who have been supplied for in a way we could never supply for ourselves.

That's who we are. And if you want to come back tonight, you'll see it.

Visitors, if you were to come back here at 5:00 p.m. this evening, you would see a sight that might surprise you. Here in this same room, the members of this church who are here right now will return in order to celebrate together a drama specifically devised and commanded not by the elders of this church, but by Jesus himself. It's a simple, non-exact reenactment literally commanded by Jesus. So the two dramas we regularly do that Jesus commanded are called ordinances because Jesus ordered them. They're sometimes called sacraments because that's the Latin word sacramentum for mystery.

Mystery is a New Testament word about the gospel now that it's been opened up. So we will reenact the core moments of the Last Supper that Jesus had with his disciples this last night of his earthly ministry. And in that supper, the Reformation pastor, John Calvin, said, God nourishes faith spiritually through the sacraments whose one function is to set God's promises before our eyes to be looked upon. That's what happens when we gather at five. God's promises that we've been considering here in Romans 4:16 and 17, God's promises will be set before our eyes because Jesus knew visual aids help us.

And so he specifically told his disciples to do this in remembrance of him. He reminds us every time we have the supper that we're coming together not fundamentally as cooks and chefs, but we're coming fundamentally as guests. Loved family members, the meal has been prepared for us by God. Isn't He kind?

There's something humbling about God's grace, isn't there? Self-righteousness can be a very proud kind of religion, but an emphasis on grace always brings with it that sweet smell of humility. That's what's encouraged by the Lord's Supper. That's the very thing that I think George Herbert got so well in the poem, I'm sure I've shared with you before, it's the last poem in his collection, the Temple. Very simple poem called Love.

Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back, Guilty of dust and sin. But quick-eyed Love, observing me, Grow slack from my first entrance in, Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning if I lacked anything. A guest I answered, worthy to be here: Love said, you shall be He. I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear, I cannot look on thee.

Love took my hand and smiling did reply, who made the eyes but I?

Truth, Lord, but I have marred them. Let my shame go where it doth deserve.

And know you not, says love, who bore the blame?

My dear, then I will serve. You must sit down, says love, and taste my meat. And so I did sit and eat.

That's the Christian picture of our fellowship with God. He supplies for us.

Have you realized today that love has come to serve you like this in a way that you could never serve yourself? I pray that you have. Let's pray together.

Lord God, we understand that yout promise depends on faith so that it may rest on youn grace and so that all youl offspring, Jews and Gentiles, all people around the world who would trust in youn, may come to know youw, may be forgiven of our sins, may be made alive when we had only known spiritual death, may be given the new birth. O Lord, glorify Yourself by working even now among us by your Holy Spirit, we ask. In Jesus' name, Amen.