Sermon Tone Analysis

Background on end of chapter 3

Explained how the "righteousness" or right-standing with God is not given to us because we have kept his holy laws.

The first three chapters of the book of Romans explains how God gave a set of moral laws to the world, and no man has been able to keep them.

He showed that every many in the world is guilty before God because of sin, because men have broken his laws.

But we learn in 3:21-26 that this righteousness is not given to us because we keep a set of laws.

Rather, it is given to those who believe in Jesus Christ by faith.

After explaining that God's righteousness comes by faith, Paul ends chapter three by confronting a Jewish thought regarding the law.

Culturally, Jewish people looked down upon Gentiles because Gentiles were not as privledged as they were with the law.

Paul Comes against this by saying, "If God's righteousness does not come through the keeping of the law, there is no grounds for boasting."

Jews and Gentiles are completely equal because they can both receive this righteousness by faith, regardless of if they know the Law or not.

Finally, with this thought in mind, Paul ends with a very natural question that readers would be asking at this point.

So if anyone can attain the righteousness of God by faith, does that make the Law pointless?

Should we just forget about the law all-together since we don't need to keep it in order to become right with God? Paul answers this question very emphatically.

He says, "May it never be!" (May that never be thought!)

This will take us into chapter 4

Have translator read the entire chapter

So now as we get into chapter four, Paul is going start with a very smart and powerful example of a man who was made right with God by faith and not by works.

Abraham.

Are any of you familiar with Abraham?

To the Jewish Nation, Abraham would have been considered the “father of the nation” for it was from him that the nation of Israel was birthed.

Now, since we are not Jewish, I will say that it is difficult to really see weight of Paul’s argument here, but to a Jew, what Paul is saying would totally go against what most of them believed about Abraham.

In verse two here, Paul says that “if Abraham was justified (or made right with God), based on his own works, he has something to boast about.”

So why would Paul even say this?

The reason for this is because many Jews did believe that Abraham was justified by works.

Many Jews looked at Abraham as an incredible man of God, who kept the law before the law was even given, for God had not even given the law until over 400 years later.

Are any of you familiar with Abraham?

To the Jewish Nation, Abraham would have been considered the “father of the nation” for it was from him that the nation of Israel was birthed.

Now, since we are not Jewish, I will say that it is difficult to really see weight of Paul’s argument here, but to a Jew, what Paul is saying would totally

But today I want to help you guys understand a little more about this man Abraham.

I want you guys to see that he was just an ordinary man like you or me, and he was far from perfect.

But because of the graciousness of our God, Abraham was made righteous.

I think looking at his life will be very encouraging for all of us today who are imperfect.

And I’m pretty sure that’s all of us.

So I’m not going to read through the entire account of Abraham’s life, but I would encourage you guys to go back later and read through -23

But the beginning of it all is really in

So Abraham was not originally called Abraham.

So Abraham was not originally called Abraham.

His name name was originally called Abram, which in the Hebrew language means “exalted father,” and then later in Abram’s life, God changed his name to “Abraham,” which means “Father of a Multitude.”

Names were very significant in early Hebrew culture, and at many times were given to children to describe the type of person that they would eventually be, or what they would accomplish with their lives.

That was definitely the case with Abraham.

To us it seems funny that Abraham means “father of a multitude” because for most of Abraham’s life, he was childless.

It actually wasn’t until he was a hundred years old when him and his wife finally had their son Isaac.

But this just shows how amazing our God is.

God can see the future perfectly, and he knew that Abraham would in fact become the father of a multitude, which we know of today as Israel, and so he could speak this way about him.

And on that note, did you know that the promises in the Bible work the same way in our lives?

God has given us thousands of promises in His Word, and though we might not be experiencing those promises now, God knows the future and he knows that those things are going to happen in our lives, so he can speak those things now as if they have already happened.

There is a great example of this in Romans chapter 8:30, when it says that “those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.”

I can understand that God has called me.

I am walking with the Lord today.

I can understand that he has justified me, because I have put my faith in Jesus Christ.

But it goes on here to say that he also glorified me.

Now that one doesn’t make a whole lot of sense when you think about it.

I’m not in heaven yet.

I still live in a fallen body.

But God is so sure of the promise that I will be in heaven with him that he can speak of it as if it is already a reality.

That’s amazing.

This is the case in Abraham’s life.

God was so sure of the promise to Abraham that he would become the father of the nation of Israel, that he could speak about it generations before it would actually happen.

But here’s my question for us to think about today.

Did God fulfill this promise to Abraham because he was such a faithful servant of God?

Did God look at Abraham and see something so special about him that he wanted to do this amazing work in his life?

No.

This is why God did it.

God did it because he chose to do it.

Simply that.

There was nothing special about Abraham.

He was a man just like you and me.

In fact, if you look at the life of Abraham in , you see some times when Abraham acted in faith and obeyed God, but you also see times when Abraham totally sinned and disobeyed God.

But God had a mission to accomplish through Abraham that he had promised all the way back in Genesis chapter 3:15

God promised that a certain man would eventually come into the world and defeat Satan, the serpent who deceived Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden.

God promised in that he was going to defeat Satan through a

God made a promise

And God chose this man Abraham to be the vessel in which he finally brought this man into the earth.

He said to Satan, the serpent who deceived them,

So what was Abraham’s part in all of this?

Genesis 15:1-

So the name Abraham just means “Father of a multitude”

So Abraham was called by God to leave