OT Grace (Part 1)

Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Abendroth. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the scriptures, verse by verse, with No Compromise.

Old Testament Salvation by Grace Alone Through Faith Alone

As a professor, I love to give Bible quizzes, Bible exams, pop quizzes, tests. I have a question for you, class. How were people in the Old Testament saved from their sins? By faith alone. It's interesting.

Lots of people say, well, you know, the God of the Old Testament, wrathful, just, had a lot of vengeance. But the God of the New Testament, mercy and kindness, and just very gracious. And what they do is they forget that there's only one God and there's continuity between Old and New Testaments.

Same God of the Old Testament and the same God of the New Testament. The New Testament God is wrathful and loving and the Old Testament God is loving and wrathful. People think the same thing with salvation.

You're saved by grace alone through faith alone in the New Testament, but in the Old Testament you're saved by keeping the law. Let's throw our Bibles to Romans chapter 4 this morning and ask and answer the question, how were people saved in the Old Testament?

And thankfully the resounding answer is by faith alone, just like in the New Testament and just like today. How were people in the Old Testament saved? By grace alone through faith alone. One day Abraham's walking along the Ur of Chaldees worshiping the moon God, and the next day this uncircumcised person has faith.

How does that work? We're going through the Bible chapter by chapter for this particular series, the book of Romans, and so today is all of chapter 4. What's been going on though in the book of Romans up to this point?

Chapter 1 basically says this along with chapter 2 and most of chapter 3, that we have no righteousness. Whatever God requires for us to get to heaven, whatever He accepts, whatever He is pleased by that we would have, we don't have because of Adam's fall.

And so Gentiles, chapter 1, have no righteousness before God. Gentiles are slaves to sin. They're under sin's domination, caged up by sin, and they don't have any personal righteousness. That goes for us as well.

Chapter 2 and through chapter 3 verse 8, Paul then addresses the Jewish person who says, well, we have the Mosaic law, we have the oracles of God. We're not really like the Gentiles. We're not as bad as they are, but then Paul says in chapter 2 and chapter 3, when you distill it all down, you are just as bad as they are because you need a perfect righteousness to get into heaven, and you, along with the Gentiles, have no righteousness because after all take a look at chapter 3 verse 20, for by the works of the law, no human being can be justified in his sight since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

So Paul basically says this, if you have natural revelation, the sun and the moon and the stars, and stiff arm God, with no response to those things that should be responsive, you should be responsive with praise and adoration, or if you're a Jew and you stiff arm the law of God by not keeping it perfectly, you need righteousness from the outside.

You need the righteousness which comes by faith, and then we see in chapter 3 verse 21, everything turns. It's like in Ephesians 2 for a moment, 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, there is no distinction. Now like a good teacher, Paul says there's an abstract thought of justification.

Let's make it concrete by giving an illustration. So what was abstract in 3 .20 and following, chapter 4 makes very easy to understand through an illustration, and that illustration is through Abraham.

How was Abraham counted righteous in God's eyes? Did Abraham keep the law? How was Abraham saved? And that is chapter 4, a great illustration of Abraham and how he responded to the initiative of God. All right, let's take for our outline this morning, I almost called you class.

I almost said class. What's the difference between teaching and preaching? Well, if you ask that question, you've never heard preaching. Okay, back to class, all right. To me, teaching is I'm trying to tell you what the Bible says, and preaching is you have to believe it.

You've got to believe this truth. Justification by faith alone saves, that's teaching. Preaching is you've got to believe this, every person here. And this is such a good chapter for all of us, why? Because the problem Paul attacks, which is Jewish misunderstanding of the law, if I keep the law, God will give me favor.

That problem exists today too. Oh, it exists in Jewish circles, unbelieving Jewish circles, but it also exists in churches today. If I keep the law, God is pleased, versus God has kept the law, God has done that through the person and work of Christ Jesus.

And my response is just, I take God at his word, I believe it. Just this week, I've talked to people about on campus, the church of Christ comes and says, yes, we believe that Jesus is God, that there's a triune God, that Jesus died on the cross for sinners, he was raised from the dead, the Bible's authoritative, the Bible's sufficient, the Bible's inerrant, but you have to also be baptized to get into heaven.

Happens all the time, Galatians 1 speaks of that, but Romans chapter 4, we see an illustration through Abraham, that whether you're in the Old Testament or New Testament, or you're alive today, there's only one way God saves, and he saves through Christ's finished work, through faith alone.

So let me give you four truths that I want you to believe regarding God's way of saving people, Old Testament or New. Four truths designed for you to believe in God's way of saving, after all, that's the only way.

In verses 1 to 8, first truth, believe that all the Bible, including the Old Testament, teaches salvation by grace alone, through faith alone. I want you through the first eight verses to believe that whether it's Old Testament or New, it is salvation by grace alone, through faith alone.

Now, we're not going to see the word alone here, but it's implied because Paul is attacking works. You either get to heaven by works, or by faith, completely obeying the law, do this and live, or by faith in the one who did this and lived, Christ Jesus, the risen Savior.

So when Paul says faith, he means not works, he means faith alone. Let's take a look at chapter 4, verses 1 to 8, and see this through faith alone doctrine. No meritorious act, no law keeping, no circumcision for us today, no baptism, that doesn't save.

Why? Because the law always condemns. The law is like a mirror, see your sin, see your sin, see your sin, how can you get to heaven through something that just shows you your sin? And Paul, in his wonderful way, it's a very Jewish way, it's a very excellent way of asking questions to someone who is going to have perceived objections.

And he says in verse 1, in this diatribe, we technically call it, notice all the questions in this section, what then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? Talk to any Jew back in those days or any Jew today and I think they would say, Abraham was a wonderful man.

And so Paul says, what then shall we say, what then in light of chapter 3 shall we say? It's a rhetorical question, Paul is a good teacher trying to illustrate this truth. What about our forefather Abraham?

Remember these verses in John 8, Jesus said, I speak the things that I have seen with my father, therefore you also do the things which you heard from your father, meaning Satan. But the Jews answered and said to him, Abraham's our father.

Remember the song the kids sing, Father Abraham, had many sons, that one? That's what they were basically singing here with better musical ability than I have. If you would have told me in seminary that once in a while I would actually sing from the pulpit, I would have denied that to my deathbed.

I know that wasn't really singing, it was talk singing. The Old Testament never taught you're right with God through what you do, but through sin and through the ages, Judaism has now, in New Testament times, spiraled down into a works righteousness.

Rabbinical literature at the time said Abraham kept the law and that's why God chose him. The Mishnah says we find that Abraham, our father, had performed the whole law before it was given him. So we have Abraham first, chronologically, then Moses, and before Moses ever got the law, Abraham kept the whole law by intuition and other means.

That's why God chose him. By the way class, after all, why did God choose Noah? And if you're not thinking, you'll say, well because Noah, what? He was blameless in God's eyes and righteous before God?

That's a verse. But the verse before it says Noah found what? Grace in the eyes of the Lord, our favor. Noah was just as bad as everybody else. Abraham's just as bad as everybody else. And bad people, because their lives are so indwelled with sin, can't do anything but sin.

If I was going to try to teach a youth group or some junior high kids, if you could get your hands all stuck with pitch and tar, you'd go to the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles and then you'd see somebody else's white shirt that needed adjustment and you'd try to do that.

Everything gets all over and it just makes a huge mess. The prayer of Manassas in rabbinic literature at the time said, Oh Lord, you're the God of the righteous. You have not appointed repentance unto Abraham.

He didn't need to repent. The book of Jubilees, about a hundred years before Jesus said, for Abraham was perfect in all his deeds. And friends, at the bottom of all this, if you do something so God saves you and says, you know, because you've done that, I therefore give you favor and I save you, then you know what you get?

You get to go to heaven and say, I did it. You have something to boast of. If it's heaven through baptism, then I got baptized and this other guy didn't. And you can boast before God. You can stand right in God's face and say, I earned this for myself.

That's exactly what verse two says. For if Abraham was justified by works, of course he has something to boast about, but not in the face of God. Can you imagine? Just think about this for a quick second.

If you can get to heaven by being good, then God was horribly unjust to Jesus. You're going to kill Jesus on the cross when people could earn their way to heaven. And so you kill Jesus on the cross. It's unheard of.

May it never be. What the Bible says about this. What's the plain teaching of scripture? And that's what we get in verse three. Paul cites a singular scripture. Therefore it's what does the scripture say?

He could say, what did the scripture say? That would have been true. The Old Testament teaches this very thing, but he's got a verse in mind. Genesis 15, six for what does the specific scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was counted to him, credited to him, reckoned to him as righteousness.

He didn't work to get righteousness. He trusted God for righteousness. And the way it's set up in the original language is quotes the Old Testament and he throws the word believe to the front of the verse.

So it's extra highlighted. Abraham was committed to this truth. He adhered to this truth. He relied on this truth. This Greek word corresponds to Genesis 15, six is word, which is a man, which means amen.

Abraham said, you know what, God, what you said about salvation, amen. I believe it. God gave a promise. Abraham's response was, amen, firmly convicted of this truth. And it was counted to him as righteousness.

Faith isn't the ground of justification. It's just the channel. And don't you like that word there, counted, logizima, it's a bookkeeping term. It's a calculation term. It's an HP computer calculation calculator term.

One-sided transaction. Somebody takes something on this side of the ledger and puts it there. And it's not Abraham, it's God. This is the kind of language when Paul writes to Philemon about Onesimus.

If he has defrauded you and if he owes you anything, put that down to my account. And God says, this person is righteous in my sight. It's not because of faith. Lots of times when you read these verses and it says faith, it's somehow faith itself is counted as righteousness versus Christ righteousness.

This is just shorthand for faith in an object, not faith in faith. Faith includes the object. And we're going to see that in the verses to come. But let's pick it up now in verse four. Now, to the one who works, Eragon, keeps on working, present tense.

His wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due. If you work, you get compensated, don't you? How many people here have to clock in to work? Many. I've had to clock in to work before and you go in, you clock in and you clock out.

And then, you know, the really good thing is after 40 hours, you go in to get paid and then the boss hands it to you and says, this is just my gift for you. Just have a little gift for you today. You've been a good worker.

Here's my gift. Gift? What would you say? I earned it. I put in my 40 hours. I don't know who you are. You have a debt to me. I worked, you paid, we have a contract. That's exactly what would happen if Abraham or anyone else said, I did these things.

I got baptized. I got catechized. I got consecrated. I got all these things. I was good. I was better than another person. And God, you owe me. Hand me my wage. I work for this. You don't want what's deserved by you.

I don't want that. That just nullifies grace. That turns justification into a wage. That means you get a boast. Next, verse 5, see how the theological shorthand is expanded a little bit here. It's not just faith counted as righteousness.

It's faith in Him. Because it's Christ's righteousness credited to our account. And to the one who does not work, what's the opposite of that? But believes in Him, trusts in Him, commits to Him, belief and work starkly contrasted, who justifies the ungodly.

You can't do something to make yourself godly, then God justifies you because you're ungodly. His faith, His faith in Him is counted as righteousness. Who but God would justify ungodly people? Just think, whatever God is, ungodly people are the exact opposite.

Holy, unholy, just, unjust, and the list goes on. The one who practices the opposite of what God does. So because of Adam's fall and then consequently our own sin, we do everything opposite of what God does because without faith it's impossible to please the Lord.

And then God still figures out a way to justify people who do exactly the opposite of what He made them to do. So He gets all the praise. This is called sola fide, the doctrine of faith in Christ Jesus alone.

You want to know what Paul teaches across all his epistles? God justifies the ungodly. Edwards put it this way, God in the act of justification has no regard to anything in the person justified as godliness or any goodness in him.

But that immediately before this act of justification, God beholds him only as an ungodly creature so that godliness in the person to be justified is not so antecedent to his justification as to be the ground of it.

In other words, God doesn't see anything in us, it's because of what's in Him, His grace and mercy He saves. Wait a second though, two witnesses in Jewish law, I don't want just one, I want another. You may have got me on this one, I want another witness.

So now we see David show up completely in harmony with what happened to Abraham. Verse 6, just as David also speaks of, not the cursing, that's what he deserved, that's what we deserve, speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works.

Oh, it's not just Abraham, but the Jews love David as well and David speaks of this blessing too, blessing the approval of God. You want God's approval? How about verse 7, blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, whose sins are covered.

That word there, forgiven, we have different words in the New Testament, forgiven, this one means to be sent away. How about your deepest, darkest secrets that only you know about, how would you like them to be just gone?

Same language in Leviticus with the scapegoat, it just runs out there far, far, far away and God doesn't even think about it anymore. You can't earn that, God has to do it. This word forgiven was used of cancellation of criminal proceedings, to release, to pardon.

No wonder Micah said, who is a God like you who pardons iniquity? He doesn't even think about it anymore. That's one missionary's translation for the word forgiveness and Eskimo doesn't think about it anymore.

I will forgive their iniquity and their sin, I will remember no more, Jeremiah 31. And then, not only that, to have it covered, look at the text, to put a shroud over it, to put it under some big tarp so no one sees it.

And then we come to verse 8, friends, this is the verse that Augustine had at the bottom of his bed, so every night this man who used to be a frequenter of prostitutes and many other horrible things, every night he went to bed, this was the bedpost verse.

We should start a new ministry here, making these bedposts. This is the last thing, we're not sick, we don't have diseases, we're not kind of ill, we are rotten sinners, but God, here's what he had at the post of his bed.

Blessed is the man, should be getting curses, but now, divine approval and happiness and everything else that goes along with it, blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin. Lord, if you were to count iniquities, who could what?

Stand. He doesn't count them because they've been counted to Christ's ledger, that's called justification and Christ's perfect obedience has been counted to ours. That's called imputation. First truth we've seen in verses 1 to 8 is that all the Bible, including the Old Testament, teaches grace alone through faith alone.

Salvation Apart From Ordinances or Sacraments

Secondly, the second salvation truth I want you to believe, because of Romans 4, verses 9 to 12, is believe that all the Bible, including the Old Testament, teaches you are saved apart from divinely given ordinances or rites or sacraments.

You're saved apart from sacraments, apart from ordinances. Some people make up laws. You're even saved from laws that aren't made up, they're in the New Testament, they're in the Old Testament. Now, here's what Paul's going to do, he's going to say this, what comes first, Genesis 15 or Genesis 17?

It's a hard question, isn't it? They're forgetting something. Of course circumcision is going to be given in Mosaic law as a sign and a seal of some other truth. Tonight there's going to be a baptism, Lord willing, right there in that water.

The person getting baptized is going to make a testimony that says this, Lord, you have saved me, you have made me born again, you have justified me, you have redeemed me, you have made propitiation for me, you've done everything, you're the Savior, you've granted me faith in Christ Jesus, the risen Savior, I've repented of my sins, and in light of that, I'm going to show you about that internal belief that I have through an external means confirming what I already believe, and that is through baptism.

For some reason, if that person tonight begins to say, once I get dunked underneath this water and come up, I'm saved, then I might hold them under longer than they might expect. Actually, I was at a very large church in Louisville, one of the largest, and they have a baptismal font, and this particular church teaches you have to be baptized to go to heaven.

And so the font was beautiful. The font was well lit and plexiglass so everyone could see, and actually if this is the porthole of salvation, you'd make it gaudy too. And so this person gave their testimony, and so far everything is right.

Monotheistic, Bible, Jesus, cross, resurrection, you can have almost all of it right. But as I would say to my kids, how small a thing of dog dropping do you put in the brownies before you won't eat it?

I didn't mean for you to laugh, but it's very effective. Romans 11, 6, any little bit of work contaminates the grace of God and renders null the cross. So when that person dunked the other one into the water in Louisville and came out and that person said, welcome to the kingdom, what would Paul say?

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 8 .30 and 11 a .m. and Sunday evenings at 6 p .m. We're located on Route 110 in West Boylston, Massachusetts. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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