1. "Friends, what you believe and why you believe it are some of the most consequential things about you as a person. Your beliefs and reasons determine all the most significant decisions you've made which have landed you where you are right now, including being here in Washington and being here in this church this morning, and including even where you are sitting."

2. "But such an extraordinary claim and such a promise made by God Himself must at times cause even the most committed pew sitter to wonder and doubt."

3. "The main point is you and I are sunk. And God has delivered us in a way we could never deliver ourselves."

4. "God is regularly doing things that diminish the human contribution and exhibit his own power and glory, thus making it clear that he is the one who is acting."

5. "Young people, you're at a stage of life right now where your mind is being filled by your phone with all kinds of false promises. These promises don't come true. You don't understand right now how much of the materials for building the house of your life you're assembling right now."

6. "As a church, we want to know and believe God's word. That's what so much of our life together is built to help. Because the first step in continuing to believe God's promise is to recall exactly what God has said."

7. "Friends, in a fallen world, every promise God makes is set about with reasons to doubt it. Even the promises to our first parents in the Garden of Eden became the object of satanic undermining suggestions leading Adam and Eve not to trust God's word."

8. "We can always find reasons to disbelieve God and His promises, and not because he's unreliable, but because we are so untrusting of Him."

9. "So worldly circumstances partially set the stage for the show. They don't write the scripts. They certainly don't determine the ending."

10. "And friend, what that means, among other things, is that you are in a unique position to bring God glory. There are things about the circumstances of your life that are wonderful and deserve thanks. And things that are hard. And were everybody to know everything, would deserve explanation and praise of God that He has sustained you through them. You are in an absolutely unique position to bring praise to God."

Observation Questions

1. In Romans 4:18, what specific promise did Abraham believe, and how does Paul describe the kind of hope Abraham had?
2. According to Romans 4:18, what Old Testament quotation does Paul use, and what does it say about Abraham’s offspring?
3. In Romans 4:19, what two realities about Abraham and Sarah does Paul highlight that made the promise humanly impossible?
4. In Romans 4:20, what does Paul say did not happen to Abraham’s faith, and what did happen to his faith instead?
5. Still in Romans 4:20, as Abraham grew strong in his faith, what was he doing toward God?
6. In Romans 4:21, what was Abraham “fully convinced” of, and how does Paul connect that conviction to God’s promise?

Interpretation Questions

1. What does Paul mean by the phrase “in hope he believed against hope” (Romans 4:18), and how does this help define biblical faith?
2. How does the mention of Abraham’s age and Sarah’s barrenness (Romans 4:19) deepen our understanding of why his faith was so remarkable?
3. In what way does Abraham “giving glory to God” (Romans 4:20) explain how trusting God’s promises honors Him?
4. How does being “fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised” (Romans 4:21) show that the focus of saving faith is more on God’s character than on the strength of our own believing?
5. How does Paul’s use of Abraham’s example in Romans 4:18–21 support his larger argument in Romans that we are justified by faith in God’s promise in Christ, not by our works?

Application Questions

1. Where in your life right now do God’s promises in Scripture seem to clash most sharply with your circumstances, and what would it look like to “believe against hope” in that specific area?
2. Abraham did not ignore the reality of his and Sarah’s weakness (Romans 4:19); how can you honestly face your own weaknesses or obstacles this week without letting them weaken your trust in God?
3. Since Abraham grew strong in faith as he gave glory to God (Romans 4:20), what concrete practices (prayer, singing, testimony, thanksgiving, etc.) could you build into your week to intentionally glorify God in the middle of your doubts?
4. Thinking of the sermon’s “chair” illustration, what is one promise of God you struggle to “sit your full weight” on, and what could you do this week to know God better in that area so that trusting Him becomes more natural?
5. As a church family, how can you help one another persevere in faith when providences seem contrary to God’s promises (for example, specific ways to pray for, encourage, or remind each other of God’s Word)?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Genesis 15:1–6 — The original promise to Abraham about countless offspring and his believing response that God “counted… as righteousness,” which Paul is echoing in Romans 4.
2. Genesis 17:15–22 — God reaffirms the promise of a son through Sarah despite their old age, showing the very circumstances Paul summarizes in Romans 4:19.
3. Genesis 22:1–19 — Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac displays his confidence that God could still keep His promise, paralleling the “fully convinced” faith of Romans 4:21.
4. Romans 3:21–26 — Paul explains how God justifies sinners by faith in Christ’s atoning work, the doctrinal backdrop for his use of Abraham as an example in Romans 4.
5. Hebrews 11:8–19 — A New Testament reflection on Abraham’s faith, highlighting how he trusted God’s promises beyond what he could see, reinforcing the themes of Romans 4:18–21.

Sermon Main Topics

I. Introduction: Believing God's Promises When Circumstances Seem Contrary

II. We Recall the Promise (Romans 4:18)

III. We Recognize the Problem (Romans 4:19)

IV. We Rely on the God Who Promised (Romans 4:20-21)

V. Closing Application: Trusting God Through All Circumstances

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Detailed Sermon Outline

I can't believe that, said Alice. Can't you? the Queen said in a pitying tone. Try again. Draw a long breath and shut your eyes.

Alice laughed. There's no use trying, she said. One can't believe impossible things. I dare say you haven't had much practice, said the Queen. When I was your age I always did it for half an hour a day.

Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

Friends, what you believe and why you believe it are some of the most consequential things about you as a person.

Your beliefs and reasons determine all the most significant decisions you've made which have landed you where you are right now, including being here in Washington and being here in this church this morning and including even where you are sitting.

We've been studying chapter 4 of the remarkable letter of Paul to the Romans, and in it Paul has been arguing that your believing in Jesus Christ is the only way that your own miserable sin can be exchanged with God's very own goodness, His own righteousness so that You are not overthrown and undone forever on that last day of judgment when you stand before God, but instead you are justified. You are declared all right with God. Just as David put it in Psalm 32, your sins are not counted against you. How could that happen?

Friend, it happens through what you believe.

Through what you believe. But such an extraordinary claim and such a promise made by God Himself must at times cause even the most committed, pusillanimous to wonder and doubt. And that's why we have wanted to consider especially today, how can we believe God's promises when His providences seem contrary to them? That is when the circumstances of our life don't seem to affirm that those things He's pledged to us in His Word are true. How can we continue to believe them?

In Romans 3, Paul had said, All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by His grace as a gift. Through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith. It was to show His righteousness at the present time, so that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Paul then considered at the end of Romans chapter 3 the question, well, what about the Scriptures then? If it's all by faith alone, does this Does this overturn what the Bible teaches, what the whole Old Testament says?

To which Paul answers, Not at all. And here in chapter 4, we've watched Paul cite the examples of Abraham and David, both teaching justification by faith in Christ, by faith in God's promises. If you look at Romans chapter 4, you'll find it on page 942. In the Bible is provided. You open up to Romans chapter 4, chapter numbers, if you're not used to looking at them, the big numbers, verses are the small numbers.

We're in Romans chapter 4. In verses 9 to 12, Paul considered specifically faith's relationship with circumcision. And since verse 13, Paul has been considering faith's relationship with the law. He said in our verses last week that God's promise of salvation was not for those who had the law, but for all of those who shared the faith of Abraham. It's his belief in the promises of God that God used to justify him.

So if you look here in Romans chapter 4, in our passage this morning, Paul stops for just a moment to consider how remarkable Abraham's faith was. Those of us who've had the Bible read to us or read the Bible for a long time, we're kind of used to the story of Abraham. So here Abraham, for a few sentences, Paul rather, for a few verses, is just stopping to make sure we understand what an extraordinary thing it was that Abraham believed this promise. Paul wants us to understand so he recounts the dismal circumstances in which Abraham believed God's promise. And by so doing he heightens our estimate of exactly what Abraham did in believing.

God, and in a way that glorifies finally not Abraham the believer, but God, the one believed. So let's look at these verses now. Listen as I read our passage, Romans chapter 4 verses 18 to 21.

In hope he believed against hope that he should become the father of many nations. As he had been told, so shall your offspring be. He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead, since he was about a hundred years old, or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God. He grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced God was able to do what He had promised.

So friends, everything considered, the dismal facts and the power of God, what do you think? Was Abraham right to believe God's promise?

What do we do when God's providence seems to contradict His promises? Well, I think we follow the example of Abraham here. And I'll give it to you in three simple points. One, we recall the promise, that's verse 18. Two, we recognize the problem, that's verse 19.

And three, we rely on the God who promised, that's verses 20 and 21. And I'll give you those again. Number one, we recall the promise, verse 18. We recognize the problem, that's verse 19. And three, we rely on the God who promised, that's verses 20 and 21.

20 and 21. Now at this point I go into a very unusual sidebar in this sermon where I'm going to discuss how I'm approaching this text because you guys are a little sharper and pushier than many people that I speak to. 'Cause I know 'cause you email me and you talk to me at the door. And in case you haven't noticed, in the book of Romans there have been no commands. You can say some have been implied, but like in this whole chapter of Romans four, There's no imperative verb, there's no telling us to do anything.

It's all indicative. It's all statements of who God is, of what God has done. And because of that, we can wonder sometimes how we should approach a passage like this. So here I am with this passage full of what God has done and what do I do? I take it and tell you three things you should do because of it.

Now, what am I doing? Am I taking a great masterpiece of God's grace and am I like degrading it to moralistic message by turning it all and churning it into a bunch of to-dos? That's what some people in the last few years have been wondering and being concerned about. No doubt in this chapter Paul instructs us with the wonderful statements of glorious truth. I mean, the sheerness of God's promise and the provision is as striking as Yosemite or the Grand Canyon.

So why should I turn imperatives, this rather, into imperatives for you and I to hear and obey? Are you understanding my concern? I don't know if this is too academic. I just want a few head nods. If you're following the, yeah, okay, so I'm saying enough that I'm going to continue on.

Sorry, there's a kind of flash vote there. A straw poll, Ken.

Well, here's the way Mike Horton expressed it a few years ago. It was a good concern. Mike said, In law gospel preaching, that's the kind that Mike thinks is good preaching, in law gospel preaching the believer is faced with his inability to satisfy God and God's solution to the problem in the person and work of Christ. In moralistic preaching, and by that Mike means like bad normal evangelical preaching, in moralistic or practical preaching the believer is encouraged to satisfy God, or as is more often the case himself. By imitating the example of David, Solomon, Jesus or Paul.

The law is not as deadly and the gospel is not as free in this kind of preaching. And it leaves believers trusting a little in themselves and a little in God and largely unsure of the nature of their hope. Alright friends, this is a great concern to have and particularly for those of you from more either legalistic or fundamentalist backgrounds, what Mike is pointing out is super important to notice. The big thing in the Bible is what God has done. Yay.

But friends, if we derive from that and conclude that therefore there is nothing we should do, we make an error. A classic example of this is the story of David and Goliath. David and Goliath. How do we teach that story to our kids? Well, so often we teach it in a very moralistic way.

Hey, look at David. He stood up for the Lord. Look at that. He used everything he had. He got his little stones.

He used them. And look at how God used that. And so we use David as an example for us. That's not bad, unless it's presented as the main point. And then it misses the main point.

The main point is you and I are sunk. And God has delivered us in a way we could never deliver ourselves. He has sent his champion in and he's used, and in fact a very unlikely champion, because he is more obviously the hero then. And when we notice that he's done that with young David, we then begin to notice, hey, There's a pattern of this in the Bible. God sends like the people who are not the greatest number of people into slavery in Egypt, one of the greatest empires, and then God delivers them out.

God is regularly doing things that diminish the human contribution and exhibit his own power and glory by making it and thus making it clear that he is the one who is acting. This is a common pattern in the Bible all the way up to the cross of Christ himself, where apparent weakness is employed by God to do great things. So I agree with the concern that we should not get rid of this great story of God's redemption and obscure it with our actions. But people can wrongly take this kind of caution and dismiss one whole legitimate helpful level of Scripture's richness for us. And that is that even these things that are stunning stories of great salvation history that God alone could do for us, and that is the most important way to read them, have not exhausted the richness of the Scripture there for us.

There are many places I could go to here, but I still have a whole sermon to preach. This is just a sidebar. I could have done this any place in Romans 4, but this is like the sheerest of the whole thing. So this is the one I'm doing again in Romans 4, right here, but it stands for the whole series. Just if you turn with me over to 1 Corinthians chapter 10.

1 Corinthians and turn there. 1 Corinthians chapter 10. I think you'll see this, and I mean this to be a lesson for how you read the Bible the rest of your life. All right, 1 Corinthians chapter 10.

Look at what Paul says there, beginning of chapter 10.

For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them, God was not pleased for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Okay, he's talking about the generation that comes out of Egypt. And he points out there that in the book of Numbers, most of them literally die in the wilderness because they did not believe God's promise about giving them Canaan, the promised land. And so he had that unbelieving generation that had seen his great work with Egypt and the Exodus and they still didn't believe that they couldn't have victory over the small tribes.

And they showed by that that they thought they were the ones who'd gotten themselves out of Egypt because now they're thinking they're not up to this. They were completely misunderstanding what had happened and so God was going to judge them. So it's a unique thing in salvation history. It's a great event. If the great event in the New Testament is the cross, that's a great act of redemption.

In the Old Testament, it's the Exodus. That is a great act.

But look at the very next verse in 1 Corinthians 10. Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did. Wow! So they're both true themselves and glorious and important and significant, and at the same time, you and I are to derive moral and spiritual guidance from them. Okay?

You see that clearly in verse 6. Or if you go back over to the letter to the Romans, and we're done with 1 Corinthians right now, turn back over to Romans, in chapter 15, at the end of the letter, in verse 4, Paul writes, Romans 15:4, For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction. That through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures, we might have hope. So friends, back to our passage now. In Romans 4, we are considering Abraham's faith and we are both encouraged by what happened uniquely in Abraham's life and at the same time, we are instructed, we learn.

We trust God had multiple levels of purposes going on. So what do we do when we seem to have circumstances that contradict the promises God has made? Well, we follow the example of our father in the faith, Abraham. One, we recall the promise, verse 18. Two, we recognize the problem, verse 19.

And three, we rely on the God who made the promise. I pray that God will help you to rely on His promise in Christ and that if you already are, God will strengthen you through this time together around God's Word. Number one, what do we do when God's providence seems to contradict His promises? One, we recall the promise. Look at verse 18.

Paul writes about Abraham, In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told. So shall your offspring be. So throughout this letter, Paul has been writing about God's promises and our believing. Throughout this chapter, we've seen him talking about the promise there. A few verses before, up in verses 13 and 14 and verse 16 and then here in our passage.

And of course, when God makes a promise, we are to believe it. That's the reasonable thing to do. Paul has been really pointing this out to us in this letter from the beginning. Look back in chapter 1, verse 16. Paul says, 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 Gentile. Or then in chapter 3, beginning verse 21, But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the Law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. Paul has been instructing these Christians on justification by faith, by belief on Christ's Righteousness being imputed, accounted to us by God's grace through faith. So here Paul points to the promise that Abraham believed, the promise that Paul had already referred to in this chapter back in verses, in the first three verses of the chapter. He's referring back to the promise specifically in Genesis 15 where we read, and the Lord brought Abraham outside and said, Look toward heaven and number the stars, if you are able to number them.

Then he said to him, 'So shall your offspring be.' and Abraham believed the Lord, and the Lord counted it to Abraham as righteousness. So now in Romans 4, this is the promise Paul has in mind. And you see how he begins Romans chapter 4. What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about.

But not before God. For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God. And it was counted to him as righteousness. And then a second time he alludes to it, look down in verse 9.

Is this blessing then only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. And now here in our passage for this morning, after Paul had just said in verse 17, 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, Paul again cites this particular promise from Genesis 15. In hope he believed against hope that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told. And then he quotes Genesis 15, so shall your offspring be.

That first phrase in hope against hope simply means it's hope against apparently hopeless circumstances. So this is not the hope that's talking about something that seems inevitable, like the sun coming up tomorrow or or this meeting ending. I mean, this is an extraordinary hope. And what was his hope particularly? Well, you see in the second phrase, that he should become the father of many nations.

Now, this is a helpful example to us about what the nature of faith is. Many people today think that this hope is a kind of spiritual force, kind of spiritual energy that rises up from within us. Our sort of urges, our desires, a kind of self-projecting will. But Paul is clear here that this particular hope that he should become the father of many nations was, just look at the next phrase he uses, as he had been told. Ah, Abraham was not the originator of this hope.

This hope actually originated in God and God told this to Abraham. Abraham had not simply decided to claim his own desired fortune. Rather Abraham hoped as he had been told. And what exactly had he been told? Well, look at the last phrase in verse 18, so shall your offspring be.

Friends, from the first time Abraham heard this promise to the last day of his life, Abraham could remember that the Lord had made this promise to him. He could remember standing there in no doubt the cool wilderness evening and being told by his Creator to look up into the night sky and count the stars. Friend, that's kind of a vain task. You can't do it. If you've ever been away from a city and it's not a cloudy night and you've looked up into the sky, every minute you stare, it's like the number of stars you can see doubles.

There are more and there are more and there are more and more. And you just know if you had better eyesight, there would be an almost infinite increase in the number of stars you would see. So when the Lord's telling him this, what he's telling him is that his offspring are going to be, he says, like this, that numerous. Friends, this is a hope against hope because God said so. You and I can hope against hope if God has said so.

So how do you know what God has promised you?

That's an important question to answer. People use this word faith today about all kinds of things. Just talk to people as you meet them. Ask them what they think God has promised them, what they can have faith in. Friends, the ground of our faith is not our simple reason, it's not our experience, It's not the church, as our Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic friends suggest.

No, the ground of our faith is God and His Word to us. It is His promises recorded for us by His Spirit in His written Word, as He had been told, we read here. That's what guided Abraham's faith. So we study God's Word to breathe life into our hoping against hope.

I was talking to one friend yesterday about exactly this, about faith in this passage and how our faith is not simply self-willed and subjective, but focused on what God has revealed to us in the Bible. So we help ourselves in two ways, especially. One, by reading the Bible. And two, by putting ourselves in a church where we know we'll be taught the Bible well, and being around people. Who also believe the Bible.

Friends, that's what's gonna help us to know what promises God has really made to us. So we thank God for giving us his word, for inspiring it to be written down, for preserving it through the centuries through neglect and opposition. And let's praise God as the God who can sovereignly cause it to come to even be translated into the language that we read. How many of us read Greek and Hebrew? How many of us are thankful that this is in English for us today?

Friends, one of the remarkable things about the Reformation is that when the people in Europe began for the first time ever in hundreds and thousands of churches in towns and cities to hear the Word of God, not in the ancient Latin of Jerome that few people spoke, or understood, but in their own languages. Someone stood up in church sometime in the 1520s and for the first time read out in German what God had said, or in English, or in Dutch, or in French, or in Swedish. What an electrifying event was that in the church that morning. Friends, the Reformation was basically a change of what happened on Sunday morning at church. And the biggest thing that changed is God's Word was read in the language of the people.

They could hear and understand what God said to them. What a privilege to hear and to have God's Word in our own language. Young people, you're at a stage of life right now where your mind is being filled by your phone with all kinds of false promises. These promises don't come true. You don't understand right now how much of the materials for building the house of your life you're assembling right now.

But you just need to trust me, trust your parents. This is the time for you to be reading your Bible, to be in places where the Bible is being brought out and people are understanding and teaching it in a way you can understand. If you need help doing this, talk to your parents at lunch. Ask them what the promises of God are that you should be learning and getting to know. See what God has to say in his word yourself.

Read it. Try to find those things that you're having a hard time believing and talk about them. The most important promise God has made is that he will make all of us children of Abraham through our faith in his promises. It is to know that you can be considered a child of Abraham, a fulfillment of this very promise we're looking at right here. Father of many nations.

We are some of his descendants if we share his faith, by sharing in the faith of Abraham, by believing the promises of God as Abraham did. And for us that means the promises of God that he shows us about his righteousness today like Paul said in 3:26, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. That's what saving faith looks like today. Friends, that's the good news. The good news is that the sins that you and I really have committed really can be forgiven by a God who really is good because of what he has done in his son.

He took on himself the sins of all those that would ever turn and trust in him. And then he died for them on the cross, ransoming us if we truly believe in him. And so giving us an acceptance with God that we could not have on our own merits. That's the good news. Friend, I pray that you understand and believe this good news today.

So kids, back to you. If you need help in finding God's promises in the Bible, like I say, talk to your parents or Tell your parents that you really want them to go at four o'clock this afternoon downstairs to see my wife, where she has a whole bunch of books laid out in the hallway downstairs that specifically will help you know what the promises of God are. Good resources, especially for kids, four o'clock this afternoon. And she did not even tell me to put that in the sermon. As a church, we want to know and believe God's word.

That's what so much of our life together is built to help because the first step in continuing to believe God's promise is to recall exactly what God has said. But what do we do when we know that God's promise, providence, seemed to contradict his promises? Two, we recognize the problem honestly. Number two.

Look at verse 19. The more we know, the more amazing the promise was that God made to Abraham. There was certainly a problem in Abraham believing this particular promise. Abraham was physically beyond hope of such a promise being fulfilled in his own strength. Sarah was old.

She had never had children. Paul gives a frank summary of the challenging providences they faced in this one verse in verse 19.

He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb. Friends, in a fallen world, every promise God make is set about with reasons to doubt it. Even the promises to our first parents in the Garden of Eden became the object of satanic undermining suggestions leading Adam and Eve not to trust God's word. So today, circumstances often conspire against our faith. Can you feel some of the fingers of the evil one that he's used for you these last few months, these last few weeks, maybe even this last few days to get you to not believe this promise?

That's what he's about. That's his work. Feels like his raison d'etre to get us not to believe. But we read here Abraham's faith was not weakened even when he considered how physically worn out already kind of dead he and Sarah were. We just mentioned up in verse 17, he knew God who as we sing, make the dead alive and the lost found.

And now this summary of Abraham's faith we see here in verse 19.

What do you think about it? I mean, if you've read Genesis recently, you may think this is a little bit on the generous side. You know, there's a little bit more color and texture to Abraham's life of faith. One friend wrote this week, Genesis 15:3, what about this? Where Abram responds to God's command not to fear by asking why he's still childless.

Or in chapter 16 of Genesis, where Abram takes Hagar as his wife in order to conceive offspring. Or in chapter 17 of Genesis where Abraham falls to his face and laughs and questions when God says he'll give Sarah a child. We'll think about that more tonight, Lord willing, when our brother Dom preaches to us from Genesis 17. Whatever these individual undulations may have been, Abraham's trajectory was one of seeing and believing in God's faithfulness even in his most extraordinary promises.

Thus Abraham leaves Ur when he's called. He believes the promise of many descendants and so much so that God says he counted it to him as righteousness. He obeys the call to circumcise and even offers his own precious son Isaac as a sacrifice. Friends, even as we take in these details from Genesis, Paul can accurately summarize the whole by pointing to that faith with which Abraham not only believed God's initial extraordinary promise to him, But Abraham was also willing to wager his whole life, to wager his son's life, through which all of the promises were to be fulfilled as he gave Isaac up. Friends, imperfect faith Abraham may have had, but even more surely he had real and enduring faith with God.

You may have a friendship with somebody, maybe something in your own marriage, or the other person has done something that really throws you. They've sinned in a way that confuses you. Friend, I would just encourage you, keep watching. Time will tell. What is the pattern of their life?

You see that here in Abraham. Abraham considered God was able even to raise Isaac from the dead, from which figuratively speaking, Abraham did receive back. So still today, you and I can learn from Abraham to trust God in all His promises. Abraham's record is like many of ours, marred by sin. But also marked by true and life-altering faith.

I love the way John Flavel reflected on God's ways with His children. He said, Remember that this God in whose hand are all creatures is your Father and is much more tender of you than you are or can be even of yourself.

I don't know about you, but I found it encouraging to reflect on God's assessment of Abraham here, that even with his faults and sins, his doubts and questions, Scripture presents Abraham as trusting God. Maybe you feel your standards are a little higher than God's. If so, then they're wrong.

I pray that that's an encouragement for some here today who, because of their very real doubts, wonder if they have any real saving faith at all. Friend, if that's you, look at God's dealing with Abraham here. Look at how he talks about it. If you can truly say that you are trusting in Christ for your salvation, then you can say without doubt that you are saved. Continuing in faith brings assurance.

In this life, our sanctification is partial and progressive and real. And our perseverance and faith in Christ It's what our church's statement of faith calls the grand mark that we really are Christians. Article 11 of the Perseverance of Saints. We believe that such only are real believers as endure unto the end; that their persevering attachment to Christ is the grand mark which distinguishes them from superficial professors; that a special providence watches over their welfare; and they are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation. So members of CHBC, I'm not sure how you are currently trying to obey Hebrews 10:24 in the command to consider how to stir one another up to love and good deeds, but we're directly commanded to do that in Hebrews 10:24.

Part of my personal strategy in this is by giving time every morning to take our membership directory and praying for a couple of pages. Praying for you and your children as I go through this. And I assume many of us are doing this. And as I pray through the directory, I think of challenges and struggles that many face. Sometimes I look and I don't know the person at all or know them very little.

Other times I know their life pretty well. But friends, whatever the doubts or discouragements are that you face, There's a reason you can trust God through them. We ask God to lead us on to the light, to lead us home. We pray for opportunities for ourselves and for each other to trust the great promise of God in our lives. We can always find reasons to disbelieve God and His promises, and not because He's unreliable, but because we are so untrusting of Him.

Whatever strange and special providence may seem to hinder God fulfilling His good promises in your life, I pray that you'll be able to look back at His faithfulness to all His people throughout the generations, recorded in His Word here, and especially in the ways He's provided for you like no one else ever could, especially at the cross of Christ. And you see what He's done for you, and see in that your confidence, your certainty that He will fulfill all of His promises and that you can trust Him through whatever afflictions, crooks or crosses He may allow to fall across your own path. This is what we so often affirm in that song we sing, He leadeth me. When we sing sometimes mid scenes of deepest gloom, sometimes where Eden's bower's bloom, bower just a shady place, Powers blooming. So it's like, it's like a bad thing, deepest gloom, a good thing, Eden, Garden of Eden.

And then again, by water still or troubled sea. Again, it's the comparison. Water still, it's like Psalm 23, troubled sea, oh, that's bad. Whichever it is, still, 'tis his hand that leadeth me. The opposite is showing that we can trust God through all of the circumstances of life.

Friends, that's what we affirm. So, this past Tuesday was the eighth presidential election that I have watched from this unusual perch on Capitol Hill. Four of these contests were won by Democrats, four of these contests were won by Republicans. And I can testify from personal experience that none of them has presented such circumstances to us as a church that were so challenging that it made it impossible for us to follow God and hope in His promises to us in Christ.

The changing political winds are not matters indifferent to us. They have real consequences in people's lives. Many of you work for people in the government, or you are the people in the government.

But friends, as with all other earthly circumstances, they never really stop us from serving the Lord. They merely set the stage for the circumstances in which we will serve the Lord. So Paul could serve the Lord preaching in the Areopagus outside in Athens or writing in a Roman prison. He could serve the Lord regardless of his circumstances. So worldly circumstances partially set the stage for the show.

They don't write the scripts, they certainly don't determine the ending. God's promises are neither created nor destroyed by our votes. God does not derive his ability to fulfill his promises from any government and certainly not from the one that sits down the street from us. True faith in the promises of God can honestly consider the challenging circumstances that we face. What do we do when God's providences seem to contradict His promises?

Number three, we rely on the God who promised. We rely on the God who promised. Notwithstanding the difficulties we've just noted, we see that Abraham says, look at the beginning of verse 21, he was fully convinced. So against all odds, he was fully convinced. Figuring out why that is so is important to us in nourishing our own faith.

So look at these last two verses in our passage, verses 20 and 21. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God. He grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced God was able to do what He had promised. Just remarkable. For years Abraham has this promise unfulfilled.

And yet we see here he did not weaken, but he grew stronger. How? How in those circumstances would you grow stronger? Because, my friends, Abraham was a realist. What do I mean by that?

Well, it's an extraordinary promise to make to such an aged couple, but then realism is dealing with all the facts, including who it is who's making this promise to you. See what I mean there? Look, if you get a check from me for a million dollars, yeah, you can question that. If you get a check from Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, it's celebrating time, you know. Now what's the difference?

It's based on who's making the promise. So it's not the nature of the promise merely, yeah, it's an extraordinary promise, but if the creator of the world is making that promise to you, ah, well then that's well within his ability to fulfill. The most fundamental question here isn't about Abraham's strength, it's about God's. Some people have thought that Christian faith is a leap in the dark, but Paul presents Abraham as quite a different example than that. Abraham's faith and trust was based on knowledge, knowledge of the promise, and more importantly, of who made the promise.

So yes, Abraham was old and childless, but God said he would have many descendants. But God said he would have many descendants. Abraham had only one son, and God said sacrifice him. But God could raise the dead. While this particular promise is unusual, believing God is in no way unusual.

Indeed, it's supposed to be typical of our life in Christ. God's words are always to be believed, and believing them honors God as trustworthy. God often seems to make promises to His people that are unlikely in the flesh, if fulfilled, that will demonstrate that it is God who's been at work, God who As Paul just said in verse 17, gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. So friends, God accomplishing great things through people like me and you, weak and sinful, but truly repenting and believing people, is a kind of hallmark of the God of the Bible, drawing straight lines with crooked sticks. In fact, isn't that so often the way it is throughout the story of the Bible?

When God's people rely on themselves, they lose. When they rely on God, they win. From the Exodus to the conquest to David and Goliath we were thinking about earlier to the Assyrian invasion of Judah, where they're surrounding Jerusalem and Jerusalem's thinking, oh no, we're done for. No, no, you're only done for if you're relying on like that broken reed Egypt. But if you're relying on Yahweh, the God who made heaven and earth, you're fine.

You don't need to worry about those 185,000 Assyrian troops around your gates. You're going to be absolutely fine. Friends, that's typical of the way God acts. So especially when it comes to this matter of salvation, we can trust God. As Jesus said so often, All things are possible with God.

Brothers and sisters, I wonder what circumstances in your life are making God change or disabling God. What sickness or disability in you can defeat God's good purposes in and through you? If even our death is precious to him, as he says in Psalm 116:15 and comes only at his bidding, surely every other circumstance of our life is within his power. Abraham's faith continues and grows stronger only by more fully relying on the very one who made the promise in the first place. You see, Paul's logic here was that Abraham actually grew stronger in his faith by his God-bragging, God-glorifying confidence, not in himself, but in the unwavering strength of his own faith, but his own confidence in the God, not rather in his own faith.

But his confidence in the God who had made the promise and in that God's all-powerfulness and all-ableness. At this point insert illustration that Sam Lamb mentioned of antifragile, which some of you will understand and I leave it to the engineers among us. Paul had to say back in verse 16, he pointed to the power of God, the power of God for salvation. For the salvation of everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. So again, this idea of faith is not like you getting a spiritual power that you kind of learn to use for your own purposes and wield.

No, it's your relying on God and Christ on what he has promised and his ability to fulfill all that he has promised. That's what the faith is here that Paul says is saving.

So theologically, it's that last phrase in verse 21 that you find the pop located in these verses. All right, this is, if you get one phrase out of like 12 phrases in these four verses, that's where it's all located, verse 21. This is where the hinges hang and turn. God was able to do what he had promised. So if you want to understand this verse in and kind of suck the good out of it for your Christian life.

This is what you've got to understand, that last phrase. It's about God's ability. Don't think a sermon on faith has to do with your kind of working up some mental or spiritual receptive gullibility. No, it's all about admiring the truth. Friends, I've always been a big guy.

When I walk in the room, chairs frown.

And I have an honest relationship with chairs where I will look at them and assess them and think, Can you do this? Because I have more than once found ones that couldn't. Now listen, when I'm in a situation like that, I'm at your place and you've offered me a somewhat rickety chair, which I could take as some kind of sick flattery of me, but anyway, I come to the chair, what am I supposed to do at that point? Am I supposed to just work on myself and my own sort of faithiness and hopeiness and boy, if I really think this is gonna work well, this is gonna work well, this will be great if I can just think of it right, then it's gonna be a fine chair for me. That's not a good way to go forward.

What do I need to do? I need to seriously assess the chair. I need to think about the chair. What is the truth about this chair? Tell me about this chair.

Friends, God is our chair. He is the one who's made all these promises. You don't grow in faith by trying to like exercise my faith. Now friends, you grow in your faith by reading about God, by understanding who God is, by understanding what God is like, by coming, God is the only being in the universe who just by telling the truth about you're praising, you're worshiping and admiring him just by describing him. So, friends, if you want to grow in your faith, grow in your knowledge of God, and the more you know Him, the more you will be able to trust Him.

I love the way John Piper put it in this one quotation where he said, God manifests His righteousness in keeping His promises to those who believe. For in this, He displays the value of His glory by blessing those whose stance of faith renders His glory most conspicuous. You understand that? Noah building the ark brings praise to God. He built that ark for a long time.

Every time he stands there and oversees the crew or himself drives some nails in, He is showing his belief in what God said. So whatever credibility Noah has in his life, he is putting all in on trusting the promise of this one who said to do this. Friends, that's what you and I do when we believe God's promises. We are reflecting to people around us that this one who said this is this reliable that I can live this self-denyingly, consistently, lengthfully toward this somewhat unlikely by the world's standards promise. And every step we take brings glory to God.

It redounds to His honor. That's why Piper goes on to say, But he also manifests his righteousness in punishing those who remain in unbelief, because unbelief is the gravest assault on God. And to bless it indefinitely would be to deny the infinite value of God's glorious trustworthiness.

Friends, what do we do when our providence, when the circumstances around us seem to contradict God's promises? We just trust the God who's promised. We trust the God who's promised.

Would you tell me please which way I ought to go from here? Well, that depends a good deal on where you want to get to, said the cat. I don't much care about where, said Alice. Well, then it doesn't much matter which way you go, said the cat. Well, so long as I get somewhere, Alice added as an explanation.

Lewis Carroll again, this time from the original Alice in Wonderland. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Does it matter which way you go today?

Do you want to share in the faith of Abraham and walk believing the promises of God? Have you heard the promise of God in Christ?

Do you believe God?

Should you?

Today is Martin Luther's birthday.

He was born 541 years ago today in Eisleben in Germany in a small house. Some of you may have been there and seen it. Luther had humble beginnings. He was himself a deeply humble person, at least in the sense of having a very tender conscience. At one point in life early on, in fear of his soul, he became a monk.

And he said, if anybody could have ever been saved by being a monk, I was the monk-iest of them all. But he couldn't find a piece of conscience that way. No, it was one day when Luther was studying this letter, the letter to the Romans, and he was in the first chapter in verse 17, God helped him to see the truth of what it means, that it is God's righteousness given as a gift. And when it says in 117, In it the righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written, He who through faith is righteous shall live.

Luther said, I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives as a gift from God, by faith, that it's God's righteousness given to us by faith. He said, When I understood that, it was as if the gates of heaven had opened and I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself. For when Luther came to understand that our salvation came through God's righteousness given as a gift, not earned by our work, but received only by faith, just as Father Abraham had believed the promises of God and God had through his faith counted Abraham righteous.

So again, thank God for Martin Luther. Thank God for his faith in God, bringing God glory. Just as Abraham's trust in God had glorified the Lord. But, friend, it all comes down now to you. What about you?

Just like your location right now, in all the universe, you are unique. No one else is in exactly the location you're in.

And friend, what that means among other things is that you are in a unique position to bring God glory. There are things about the circumstances of your life that are wonderful and deserve thanks and things that are hard and were everybody to know everything would deserve explanation and praise of God that He has sustained you through them. You are in an absolutely unique position to bring praise to God. You are in a position to bring praise to God you won't be able to bring tomorrow by trusting him. There's praise and honor that he gets today by you trusting him.

It's available only now. Friend, will you trust God? He is trustworthy. He is able.

To do all that He has promised. Take your bulletin and turn to page 15.

Listen as I read this great hymn of the faith written by a young man in his twenties in Germany in the middle of the 17th century as he trusted God through cold days of homelessness and want and need, even up to near starvation, And then he saw God provide, and that's when he wrote this hymn.

If you will only let God guide you and hope in Him through all your ways, whatever comes, He'll stand beside you to bear you through the evil days, who trusts in God's unchanging love built on the rock that cannot move. Only be still and wait His leisure, In cheerful hope with heart content, To take what e'er the Father's pleasure and all-discerning love have sent. Nor doubt our inmost wants are known to Him who chose us for His own. Sing, pray, and swerve not from His ways, But do your part in conscience true. Trust His rich promises of grace.

So shall they be fulfilled in you. God hears the call of those in need. The souls that trust in Him indeed. Let's pray.

Lord God, we thank youk for the example of Abraham. We thank youk for the righteousness of Christ even more. We thank youk that that could be counted hours by faith in Christ. Give that faith, we pray. Show the power of youf Holy Spirit's work, even in the lives of each one here, we ask.

Sustain us through every day of discipleship. You call us to follow youw here, below, until youl call us home to be with youh forever. We ask in Jesus' name, Amen.