Systematic Theology (part 36)

Last week, we looked at the confession, one of the confessions of one of the Puritans from Valley of Vision. I commend this to you. As I said last week, these guys were the masters of the English language, and they were the masters of the Scriptures.

And they had an ability to take the confession of their mouths and make it match the Scriptures. And when you read Valley of Vision and some of the things that these people had to say, you will say to yourself more than once in a while, that's what I thought.

That's what I feel. But I never was able to put it into words, okay? And so I can commend it to you. And I say that Puritan pastors used to recommend to their people, encourage their people to write their prayers, and I would say to write their confessions.

And of course, Valley of Vision, get it at Amazon. Or, I'm not getting a percentage, okay? But you can get it through Amazon. And maybe they'll deliver it with a drone. I mean, who knows? They started that, you know.

Probably your neighbor will shoot it down and he'll get the Valley of Vision and you won't. I just don't see how that drone thing is going to work, do you? Think about the number of Amazon packages. Have you ever seen an Amazon distribution center?

It is acres and acres. It's not a big building. It's a big building with little people scurrying around in there and machines getting all these packages together. Now let's put them all on drones and fly them to your house.

No way. No way. It's a physics problem. You can only put so much material in one space. Okay, enough of that. Listen to this. Listen to this. And see if you do not recognize you in it. For I recognize me in it.

In fact, in the front of my copy of Valley of Vision, I have a list of the ones so far most like me. And this is one of the principal ones that fits. O God of grace, Thou hast imputed my sin to my substitute and hast imputed His righteousness to my soul, clothing me with a bridegroom's robe, decking me with jewels of holiness.

But in my Christian walk, I am still in rags. My best prayers are stained with sin. My penitential tears are so much impurity. My confessions of wrong are so many aggravations of sin. My receiving the Spirit is tinctured with selfishness.

I need to repent of my repentance. Consider that line. I need my tears to be washed. I have no robe to bring to cover my sins, no loom to weave my own righteousness. I am always standing clothed in filthy garments and by grace am always receiving change of raiment.

It's Old English for clothes. For Thou dost always justify the ungodly. I am always going into the far country, always returning home as the prodigal, always saying, Father, forgive me. And Thou art always bringing forth the best robe.

Every morning, let me wear it. Every evening, return in it. Go out to the day's work in it. Be married in it. Be wound in death in it. Stand before the great white throne in it. Enter heaven in it, shining as the sun.

Grant me never to lose sight of the exceeding sinfulness of sin, the exceeding righteousness of salvation, the exceeding glory of Christ, and the exceeding beauty of holiness, and the exceeding wonder of grace.

And all of God's people said, Amen. Father, as we come to the Word this morning, we pray that we would see You often in it. We pray that the Lord Jesus would be seen in it. He is the living Word. The written Word has been breathed out through Him by the Holy Spirit.

We pray again this Sunday that You bear us along by Your Spirit, even as You bore along the prophets of old, as we look at what they have written by the Spirit and of what You have breathed out to us.

We pray to see Jesus in all of it. We ask in His name this morning. Amen. I said that we're going to look at Romans 5, 6, 7, and 8. That's a big deal. I think I have, you know, three or four Sundays to do that.

Donald Gray Barnhouse took 10 years to preach through Romans. I don't think we can do that. I don't think I can do that. I might not be able to do that before the funeral, you know. Who knows? Only the Lord knows.

But we're going to get to Romans 5 today. But as I was looking at Romans 5 this week, I realized that Romans 5, of course, starts in Romans 4. And Romans 4, of course, starts in Genesis 15. And so I think that it will be a blessing to us to go back and at least rehearse the events of Genesis 15, and then come to chapter 4, read through it quickly, and see if we can't get ourselves to chapter 5 before the hour is up.

Chapter 5 of Romans. Chapter 4 of Romans begins like this. 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? Genesis 15. Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him, credited to him, imputed to him. That's translated all those ways in English translations. No matter how it's translated, it is an accounting term.

It was credited to his account, okay, as righteousness. Now, let's go back and rehearse the events of Genesis for just a minute. Genesis chapter 12. The Lord appears to Abraham. He tells him to move from Ur of the Chaldeans to a place that the Lord will show him.

He moves up to just to stay on the, shall we say, the Iraqi side of the Euphrates River. He moves up to Haran. That's not even across the river. He hasn't crossed the river into the promised land. When all of this happens, he's about 75 years old.

And so he moves up there. His father, Terah, dies up there, and then they start to move into the promised land. A lot of things happen. Genesis 12, 13, 14, then we come to Genesis 15. When we come to Genesis 15, about 25 years have passed.

Abraham is probably overnight. He may be pushing 100 by that time. God has promised him three things. Back in Genesis chapter 12, where God first appears to him, He says that he will have a family that will become a great nation.

He will have a land in perpetuity. And all nations of the world will be blessed through his family. OK? And by the way, let me just do this little parenthesis. I think those things are to be fulfilled literally.

I recognize that we are living amidst folks that are brothers and sisters going to heaven anyway, but they do not think that Abram's land is going to be given to his posterity as God promised literally.

In fact, they think we are his posterity. And I have no lot in Israel. OK? So either I get a lot in Israel, or else then we can say that the promise of God to Abram is not going to be fulfilled literally.

We make much at this time of year, do we not? We make much at this time of year about the literal fulfillment of prophecy that brought us to the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. And yet when some of our brethren come to this matter of God making good on his promise to ethnic Israel, we have a lot of our folks that we love that say, no, no, that's not true.

All of that's been transferred to the church. And so the church is Israel. I think I happen to fall into the camp that says, no, sir, the church is distinct from Israel. God has a program for his family.

If you are a millennial, the Lord bless you, you will be pleasantly surprised in the end. All right. Also, check the paper out in the morning, will you? And see where the navel of trouble in the world is.

It's right around Israel. OK? Say, no, no, no, it's around Donald Trump. No, no, no. He's a peripheral player to all of this. OK? And it's going to come back to be around Israel. All right. Enough of that.

Abram believed God. It was counted to him as righteousness. By the time we get to Genesis chapter 15, nothing has happened. No family. No nation. We don't know about all the nations of the world being blessed through him.

Abram doesn't. And no land. So Abram says to God, you know, 25 years now, you've made this promise to me. I've been being as faithful as I can to you. I've been obeying you. So what's the deal? Are you going to make good on the promise?

That's a paraphrase, not a quote. OK? Are you going to make good on the promise? And so God says to him, I am going to say to you again, Abram, your family is going to become a nation. And that nation is going to become as numerous as the stars.

In fact, come out here and look at the stars. If you can count the stars, then that's how big your nation will be. But you can't count the stars. And by the way, we still cannot count the stars, technology notwithstanding.

All right? That's how big your nation is going to be. It's going to be more than those stars that you count. And at that point, Abram has a choice to make. He can say, yeah, well, that's good. I heard that 25 years ago or so.

And you know what? I think I'm going to go back across the river, go back to Ur of the Chaldeans and take up the idol-making business again. The rabbis say that Abram and his father were idol-makers back in Ur of the Chaldeans.

Joshua sort of refers to it in a bank shot. In fact, there's a rabbinical story that goes like this. Abram one day went into the inventory, you know, the storeroom, the warehouse, the idol warehouse. And he took a stick and he smashed all the idols except one and left that one idol standing.

And his father, Terah, came in and said, who smashed all these idols? And Abram said to his father, the idol did it. And his father said, idols can't do that. To which I presume Abram replied, that's exactly the point.

Let's get out of here. Now, that's not in the scriptures. Don't look for it there. That's in rabbinical tradition. In any case, Abram now has a choice. We can go back to Ur of the Chaldeans and give up on this God who has called us, or we can continue.

And so the testimony of the Scripture there in the sixth verse of Genesis chapter 15 is, Abram believed God. And then the momentous thing that brings us up to Romans 4, Abram believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.

It was imputed to him as righteousness. You say, what did Abram do to deserve the righteousness that God provides? What did he do? He believed God. That's all he did. All of the things that he had done up to that time, including some sin that was involved, all of the things that had been done up to that time were irrelevant.

The righteousness of God came to Abraham by imputation, by crediting, by accounting, however you want to say that. It's an accounting thing. It came to him because he believed God. That principle now follows all the way through to where we are in the New Testament.

By the way, what Abram said to God right after the testimony of the Scripture is that Abram believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. Abram then said what you and I say. We have been saved.

We have come to Christ. The Bible says that we have eternal life. The Bible says the Holy Spirit dwells within us. All of those things have become true of us when we come to Christ. And yet we have days, don't we?

When we say what Abram said to God just after God reassured him that he was going to have a great nation, that he was going to have a land, that all the nations of the world were going to be blessed through him, we say the same thing that Abram said.

Oh God, how shall I know that these things will be? Well, God said, all right, Abram, you go over here and sit in the corner. First, before you do that, you get me animals of sacrifice. You split them in two.

You lay them out half, half, half, half, half, half. But you didn't do that with the birds and so on. Later in the chapter we read that it got dark. There were the animals of sacrifice laying out. At this point, when people read Genesis 15, English readers, they are often saying, what?

Abram says, how shall I know that you're going to do what you said you would do, God? And then the next verse says, go get me a sheep, go get me a cow, go get me a whatever, an animal of sacrifice. Cut them in half, lay them out, and the English readers are going, yeah, what's all this about?

OK, well, here's what that's about. And probably you know this. But you know, I go to a lot of places, but I haven't got a clue what that's about, all right? And days gone by, days gone long by, to go clear back to the patriarchs, in order to seal a deal, in order to make a contract, in order to make a binding agreement, animals of sacrifice were laid out, cut in half, laid out, so that the parties to the agreement could walk down between those animals, saying, in effect, if I do not keep my part of this contract, if I do not do what I have agreed to do, then may I become, as these animals, dead.

Now, you've all been to the bank to sign a mortgage, or most of you, probably, OK? Probably glad that we're not doing that same thing today, because it would make banks messy, among other things. But that's what was going on.

Abram goes to sleep. Then it says, at the end of chapter 15, a smoking oven. That's how the King James put it. Puts it immediately, English speakers are going, smoking oven, Westinghouse, General Electric.

No, no. Then some translations say a smoking fire pot. Well, we're getting closer now. The point is that a flame went down between those animals. Say a flame, so what's that about? Think about the exodus, which was to come much later.

How were the people of Israel led? By a pillar of fire by night, pillar of cloud by day. Here we have a fire, maybe a pillar of fire, going down between these animals. Abram's still over here in the corner, and that is highly significant.

God did not say, Abram, you come here. We will walk down between these animals of sacrifice. We will make the deal, OK? Because he knew, God knows, that Abram could not keep the deal. And so God says, I keep the deal.

I bind myself to keep the deal. That's how you can know, Abram, that I'm going to make good on the land, that I'm going to make good on the family, that I'm going to make good on the blessing for all nations of the world.

And that is highly significant for us, is it not? For our salvation does not depend on our ability to be parties to a contract which we must keep. All right? And so Genesis 15 is one of the pivotal chapters of the Old Testament, and one of the most blessed chapters of the Old Testament at the same time.

That's the quickest time I've ever been through Genesis 15 in my life. And you were here to observe it. OK. Now we get to Romans chapter 4. Abram believed God. It was credited to him as righteousness.

Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due. And to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly. Justifies the ungodly? What does that mean?

To the one who counts to the ungodly, righteousness. OK? But believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted, credited, imputed as righteousness. And just in case you're thinking, you're kidding.

Come on, do we each have an account somehow or other in heaven? Don't I read at the end of Revelation? Don't I read, the books were opened. And in the books was found everybody's name. And in the books was found everything that everybody had done.

That's a terrifying opening of the books, would you not say? OK. And then another book was opened, the book of life. If anyone's name was found in the book of life, they closed the book of what he's done on him.

So to the one who believes, his faith is counted as righteousness. There's a little video. I don't know if you've seen that or not. It's called the Godometer. Have you seen that? Well, it ought to be shown here.

It's only a couple of minutes long, but it's about people arriving in heaven. OK? And when they arrive in heaven, there's someone there to interview them. And why should I let you into my heaven? And well, you know, I've been a serious church member all of my life, says one guy.

And so he says, well, you go over there. OK? And then the next person comes up and says, well, I have been a protector of the planet. And I have made sure that my carbon footprint is very small. And I've made sure that I drive an electric car.

That's a coal-powered car, by the way. OK? That I drive an electric car. And I've done all of that good stuff to make sure that I have cared for it. You go sit over there with the rest of those guys.

All right? And then finally, a guy, you know, they go through a few interviews like that. And then finally, a guy comes, and they open the book of his deeds. And they have looked at all of that for these other people, too.

And when they open that book, they go, oh, this does not look good. And the guy kind of bows his head and says, well, yeah, it's not good. You've done this, and this, and this, and this. Yeah, yeah, I've done this and this.

And then from over here, someone else stands up and says, excuse me, wait a minute. He's with me. And so the guy who had done it all wrong is with Jesus. You go over here with me. Hey, that's not fair.

These guys over here say, we'll show it to you sometime. It's a great little video. You can probably get it online also. So the one who believes has righteousness credited to him. The one who believes has, at the end of time, somebody stand up and say, he's with me.

So stop reading all of the dirt that's in the book, all right? Now we have to skip if we're going to get where we're going today. So we see that righteousness comes by imputation, having believed God, and it is credited to us as righteousness.

Now I'm going to skip down to verse 13. A lot of stuff here that occupied Donald Gray Barnhouse for a lot of time, all right? But we're not doing that this morning. The promise to Abraham, verse 13, and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law, but through the righteousness of faith, through imputed righteousness.

For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be heirs of the world, faith is null and the promise is void. God's promise cannot be void. Why? Because way back there in Genesis chapter 15, God bound himself to be the one who carries out the promise to Abraham, which is all wrapped up now in righteousness imputed to him.

When Pastor Mike gets to the high priesthood of Christ in Hebrews, which will be a blessed time, we're going to see that at one point it says that God, who swore by Himself to do all of these things, cannot be...

I've got to turn to it. It's Hebrews chapter. I can't remember that. It's hard when you're over 30, you know? Some of you understand that. OK, let me go here to Hebrews chapter 6. Surely I will bless you and multiply you.

God had said to Abraham, verse 15, and thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise. For people swear by something greater than themselves. And in all their disputes, an oath is final for confirmation.

So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of His purpose, He guaranteed it. He, God, guaranteed it with an oath. So that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.

The hope set before us, which comes by our justification by the righteousness imputed to us because of Christ. That hope that we hang on to and that we cling to, that hope rests on two things. One, the promise of God that He will do what He said.

But even when we are saying, oh God, how will I know that you really are going to do that? Oh God, how do I know that I'm really saved? And all of that, God says there is a second thing upon which this rests.

And it is the oath of God. And it is impossible for Him to lie by His promise. He cannot lie about His promise. And He cannot lie concerning His oath. OK? Back to Romans. We are going to stay there. That is why verse 16, oh wait, verse 15.

For the law brings wrath. But where there is no law, there is no transgression. Now that's an important little phrase. Where there is no law, there is no transgression. It's going to be repeated over in chapter 5.

So just tuck it in the back of your mind. And we'll get to it, assuming we get to chapter 5. All right? 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 adherent of the law, but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, which was these Romans that Paul was writing to, 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, calls into existence the things that do not exist. That's an important little, yeah, that's just kind of a bank shot there at Romans chapter 4.

It's an important phrase. God calls into existence the things that do not exist. Let me give you an example of that. Let there be light. And the universe sprang into being. That's the God that we're dealing with here.

All right? 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 100 years old, or when He considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb.

No distrust made Him waver concerning the promise of God, but He grew strong in His faith as He gave glory to God. You get that? He grew strong in His faith as He gave glory to God. We're talking about that same thing right now.

We say we proceed along to Christlikeness. We proceed in that direction. We grow in Christ. We become mature in Christ by our confession of the truth. And the confession of the truth certainly fits into that Abram proceeded to grow as he gave glory to God.

He grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God. Fully convinced that God was able to do what He had promised. Why was he fully convinced? He was fully convinced because, yes, he knew God makes promises and He must keep them.

The writer of the Hebrews says it's impossible for God to lie about His promise. But also, Abram saw God commit Himself by an oath to carry out what He had promised. So he was fully convinced. Fully convinced that God was able to do what He had promised.

That is why His faith was counted to Him as righteousness. So we say this morning, when we talk about our sanctification, when we think about our sanctification, we say our faith is counted to us as righteousness.

How can I become fully convinced? By giving glory to God. By confessing the truth of the Scriptures. God breathes Scriptures. OK? And then, that which is counted by faith to us as righteousness will grow and blossom and we will become fully convinced people.

You remember some week ago, I think I talked about being all in for Jesus. Here's the place we come to. We come from, you know, I thought I'd try Jesus. I watched Oprah for a while. That didn't seem to do a lot of good.

I gazed at crystals. I even took a pilgrimage to the east and learned my mantra and sat around and went, ah, and all of that kind of thing. And it didn't seem to work. So I thought I'd try Jesus. So I'm trying Jesus.

There's a lot of that on the landscape. No, no, no, no. Salvation is all in for Jesus. If the righteousness imputed to me by the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ is not true, then I am lost. There is no place else to go.

That's what all in for Jesus is about. And that's where Abram came as his righteousness was imputed to him, credited to him as a result of his faith. The words, this is precious now, and it leads us right into chapter 5, OK?

The words, it was counted to him. Were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in Him who was raised from the dead, who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord.

It will be counted to us. Righteousness will be counted to us who believe in Him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord. And that was these Romans. They were like us. They were a bunch of Gentiles. Paul had never met them.

He said, I'm coming, because I'm coming as a missionary with my hand out, and I expect you to send me on my way to Spain. And so I'm going to share a few other things with you in the meantime, and this is one of the things he shared.

He raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses, and raised for our justification. If Jesus had not been raised from the dead, there would be no possibility of righteousness being imputed to us, because Jesus would be just another dead guy like all the rest of the dead guys that we see in the cemeteries all about us in New England.

Therefore, chapter 5 begins, and the first 11 verses of chapter 5, probably not going to get too much further than that, the first 11 verses of chapter 5 are fodder for confession. We've been talking about the confession of my lips, the confession of my mouth, the confession which leads to and promotes salvation, i .e. sanctification.

All right, Romans 10 .10. Paul has now, up to this point, only considered justification, that part of salvation. In the first three chapters of Romans, he indicts the world of works. He indicts the world of works.

And in chapter 4, he invites belief in Christ by which righteousness is imputed, which works can never do. At chapter 5 now, he says, therefore, because all of this is true, works won't do it. It is imputed righteousness that comes through faith.

That's what reconciles us to God. So therefore, is in the perfect place at the beginning of chapter 5. Since we have been justified by faith, notice he's talking to the Romans. We have been justified by faith.

He assumes that they are believers. This is not an evangelistic message, particularly, to those who are unbelievers, although there probably were a few scattered through the crowd. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

We need to be careful that we are not caught up in our own culture here. When we read a verse like that, in our culture, which is very touchy-feely, very warm and fuzzy, very addicted to being in a very safe place, okay, where nothing could be heard that would disturb me, all right, we may read a verse like that and read it this way.

We have peace with God. Oh yes, that's us. We Americans, we love that. We're in the safe space with waves of tranquility breaking over us. I feel a warmth in my chest as if there was a big wool blanket on me.

It is wonderful. That's not what that verse means, all right? Since we have been justified by faith, since righteousness has been imputed to us, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. That means this, God who rightly and justly ought to kill on the spot every sinner, God is no longer after those of us who believe to kill us.

That's a good thing. I don't care how warm and fuzzy or not warm and fuzzy, it makes you feel it is a good thing. And it is worthy of confession, is it not? I am at peace with God. Why? Because I have been justified by faith.

That'd be worthy of rehearsal on Monday, all right? Through Him, we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand. And we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. A few things there to rehearse tomorrow, right?

I have obtained access into grace. I am standing in grace. That ought to be rehearsed. Tomorrow you'll think, I am standing in snow that the plow left in front of the house. No, no. You are standing in grace.

You're dealing with snow, but you're standing in grace, OK? We have obtained access to that by faith. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Rejoice behind the snowblower. Not for the snowblower, although if it works, that's a little minor point of rejoicing.

No question, all right? But we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Now here, we have to skip ahead to Romans chapter 8, which we're going to come back to. But we get a picture of what it is to rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

At Romans chapter 8, beginning at verse 18, I read these things. I consider that the sufferings of this present time, eight inches of snow, somebody giving me a bad time at work, whatever. I consider the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

Some translations say, in us. You Greek scholars will have to look at the preposition. It's ais. And I don't know if that's to, or in, or what. But anyway, it's glory that will be revealed to us, or in us, for the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.

That's us. I read to you from 2 Thessalonians chapter 1, I think. I think it was you. Hard for old guys, OK? I think it was you that I read. Paul writes to the Thessalonians, the day comes when these who persecute you are going to be avenged by the great avenger himself, the Lord Jesus, when He comes to judge the quick and the dead in the words of the old English.

And you will be displayed before the universe. And God will receive glory. 2 Thessalonians 1 .10. You can look at that on your own. All right? For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.

The day comes when we are revealed to the creation, to the universe. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope. In hope of what? In hope of the glory of God that's to be revealed in us.

All right? In hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. There we are, glory again. And guess what? The glory of God, in the end, overcomes the second law of thermodynamics.

You physicists, it's all over at that point. OK, right now the second law of thermodynamics says what? What does it say? I don't know. Increasing entropy, that means nothing to most people. What does it mean in sidewalk terms?