Living Hope Church

Pastor Phil Steiger: All right friends, if you have your Bibles, if you would turn with me please. We are in the book of Romans, and we are in Romans chapter four this morning. If you don't have a Bible, feel free to use the one in the chairs in front of you beneath you. We'll also have scripture on the screen to help as well. In a few minutes, we're going to start reading in Romans chapter four starting in verse 17. Yeah, just a little juke there, a little Bible juke. Romans chapter four.

Sometimes friends, Christians are accused of making a blind leap of faith as we follow Jesus Christ. In fact, sometimes even Christians are guilty of making trust in Jesus Christ sound like a blind leap of faith, that all you have to do is kind of turn off your thoughts, turn off your mind, just believe, and everything is going to go well with you. This notion of a blind leap of faith. As we jump into this passage of scripture and Paul continues to use the story of Abraham to talk to us about trust in God, he wants the reader to know that Abraham was a man of faith and a man of hope, but none of it was blind and none of it was silly.

Friends, this is incredibly important for us this morning. Abraham did not have a blind faith and he did not have a silly hope, and we do not need to have those either. Abraham knew he could trust God to be who he is and to do what he promised to do. As a result, all of his faith and hope is grounded in reality, and more than just grounded in reality but grounded in the very character and power of the creator and the designer of all reality.

We are actually going to read several passages from the book of Hebrews chapter 11 this morning, what is sometimes called the Hall of Faith, and we're going to pick up Abraham and Sarah's story in Hebrews 11 as well. But as Hebrews chapter 11 begins, chapter 11 verse one says this, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." All of that language is sure and unshakable in the heart and mind and life of the follower of Jesus Christ.

In our passage of scripture this morning, here are some things that are going to kind of help us hold this together today. First of all, very straightforward, our faith is in the one true God. This simple statement actually helps us again to clarify what scripture means by faith. We're going to read that word a lot, we're going to talk about that term a lot. This notion helps us clarify what that means, to trust in the God who is there and to trust in the God who actually loves his people.

Christians do not put faith in faith. Faith is not a squinting of the eye and a stirring up of the emotions. We put faith in the God who is there and the God who we know still loves his people and is still involved in the lives of those he loves. Our faith is in the one true God. Then we're going to see this about hope; both of these terms are going to be so important to this passage today. Our hope is in the risen Savior.

Just as the resurrection of Jesus Christ is a real, physical, historical reality, Paul's going to tell us that Jesus was raised so that we would be justified, we would be made right with God. Just as that resurrection is an actual, physical, real thing, historical reality, so is our hope in Jesus Christ. Again, hope for the Christian is not a silly thing, it's not something we conjure, it's not something we don't know. Hope is something we know because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Our hope is in the risen Savior.

We're going to read through the end of Romans chapter four. We're going to see how far we get. But in Romans chapter four beginning in verse 17, friends, this is the word of the Lord. "As it is written, 'I have made you the father of many nations'—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. 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 his 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, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was 'counted to him as righteousness.'

But 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 raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification." It's an incredible passage of scripture, friends. As we read it, we kind of jump into the middle of Paul's conversation about Abraham and his faith in God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.

We recall that Abraham did not bring anything into his relationship with God except trust in him, that God would fulfill his promise, do the things he said he would do, that this God who created all things would be who he truly is. This is what Abraham brings into that relationship, and that's the foundation of his relationship with God. We pick up in the middle of that conversation in verse 17, which is where we ended last week, and Paul reminds us, as it is written, part of what God says to Abraham is "I have made you the father of many nations."

Paul makes use of this promise again in this passage of scripture and he attaches it to two really incredible things. If you go back into verse 17, he attaches that promise and he said essentially just as Abraham also believed that God could give life to the dead and call into existence the things that don't exist. Let those two concepts sit in your heart and mind for just a minute or two. Abraham believed that God could give life to the dead, he could raise the dead, and Abraham believed that God could call into existence things that don't exist.

You and I can make things, but we have to use stuff that already exists to make something new. Guess how God makes things? Out of nothing. Abraham believed these two really amazing things. Again, part of the point of reading a passage of scripture like this is to ask us the question, do you believe that? Do I believe that? That God can actually give life to the dead and that God can call into existence things that don't exist?

This belief that God gives life to the dead is an incredible thing in this passage of scripture, even the way that Paul uses it. We're going to talk about it the way I believe Paul uses these concepts. Abraham believes that God is able to give life to the dead. We're going to start in the center of that context, what Abraham and what's going on with Abraham, and then what the story of Abraham tells us about what that thought means and how Paul uses it.

We begin at the center and we sort of make our way outward as we understand what it means to believe that God gives life to the dead. First of all, for Abraham, Abraham believed that God could actually give life to his body, which he says he considered as good as dead. I'm not going to make any old jokes, I'm getting old, I feel it every single day. Scripture says Abraham believed his body was as good as dead, he's nearly a hundred years old.

He considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb. She's a year behind him. When they finally conceive and give birth to Isaac, he's 100 and she's 99. In Abraham's mind, this is as good as dead. Abraham believes that God is able to give life where he only sees death. God had promised them a son, a biological son, so Abraham believes that God is going to make what is dead alive.

When Abraham is given this promise, "I have made you"—and the past tense is great—"I have made you the father of many nations," Sarah's not pregnant. They haven't conceived, it's still yet in the future. This is Abraham's incredible belief, that God is able to make that which he considered as good as dead come alive. This is an important point I think that we need to make from time to time when we talk about faith as a follower of Jesus Christ.

In this context, I think something else is being told to us. Faith does not ignore reality, it knows who God is. Faith does not ignore reality, it just knows who God is. Friends, there are so many spiritual ideologies and traditions out there that are going to teach you things like you need to deny suffering, you need to ignore suffering, you need to put yourself in this little pocket of metaphysical positivity and speak into existence good things with the words of your mouth.

Avoid saying negative things because when you say negative things, bad things are going to happen. You speak good things, only good things are going to happen. Abraham believed his body was as good as dead. He looked at his wife and he said, "You're as good as dead too." This is actually one of the powers of the Christian faith, that you and I can clearly identify the pain and difficulty and loss and suffering of this life, understand it clearly, but then know who God is.

No matter how deep, no matter how difficult, no matter how dark, the God we worship is better, stronger, he's good, he's greater than all of that. Abraham's faith, what he believes in, is radical. It's as radical as this, that God made a promise that from Abraham's point of view requires the resurrection of the dead so to speak. In order for God to give them a son, he's going to have to make the dead come alive again. This is his belief. It's Sarah's as well.

This is not just in the story in Genesis when we actually read the story of Abraham and Sarah. Now it's in Romans as the Apostle Paul sort of grabs that, he's interpreting it, he wants us to understand what this means for us. Remember he says near the end of this chapter, these things weren't just said for Abraham and Sarah, these things were said for us as well. But then later on, the writer of the book of Hebrews is going to grab this same concept and is going to drill even further down and use the same vocabulary.

Hebrews 11 verses 11 and 12, "By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore." From a woman who had been barren her entire life and is now 99. She never imagined this is how it would go.

We are told in scripture that she trusted the promise of God and she had one son, and from that son comes a nation, as many as the stars and as plentiful as the sand on the seashore. If I can for just a moment or two, I want to speak quickly to women and mothers who struggle. On a day like this sometimes it is keenly felt, I know that. To speak to those of us who struggle with these kinds of things, however it is that we struggle, we see in this story and I want to be able to say, God has not forgotten you. He hasn't.

God has not left you behind, God has not decided that he just won't do something special with you. He has not decided that. Even if things are not as you imagined they would have been, God is still good and God is still loving toward you. Part of the point of this passage of scripture, and it belongs to us all really, but we're reminded at this point that what we do is we keep our faith in God, in his stability, in his goodness, in his everlasting mercy and power.

We keep our faith in him, in who he is, and the things that he has truly promised us. It's incredible what God does with Sarah's barrenness. Sarah's barrenness becomes a foreshadowing of the birth of the promised son himself, the birth of the Messiah. God gives a barren woman the power to conceive and she bears the son of the promise, the promise God gave Abraham and God gave Sarah. She bears this son.

2,000 some-odd years later, God causes a virgin to conceive, a woman who otherwise would not have had a child, and she gives birth to the Son of the promise. God does not leave any of us behind, God does not let any of us go. God is still at work, often even in the midst of our own pain and confusion. We see through that and we see just even reviewing the story of Abraham and Sarah. On one level, this belief is absolutely incredible, and incredible in the sense that it's difficult to understand why someone would believe that someone could be raised from the dead.

This is the belief that atheists mock, right? "Oh, you believe in the resurrection of the dead? I don't see anybody rising from the dead, do you?" It's mockery. Oftentimes progressive Christians do the same thing. "We don't really need an actual physical resurrection because we know that's a silly belief. He rose in our hearts and everybody is happy and everybody is great." It's a mocked belief so often. But from a better, deeper position, the belief that God can raise from the dead makes all the sense in the world.

If you believe that there is a God who created and designed all things, and if you believe that there is a God who cares about the lives of his children here on earth, causing a 100-year-old couple to have a son is child's play. Have you considered the Milky Way? Have you considered the complexity of the human cell? Do you understand what happens in the chemistry of your blood in what's called the clotting cascade when you cut yourself?

Giving Abraham and Sarah a son is the easiest thing I've ever done. The question is not "I don't know how this can happen, can God do this?" The question is "Who is God?" That's the question. Who is God? Abraham believed that God was able to give him and Sarah a son even though they were as good as dead. That belief carries even more weight inside of the story of Abraham and the way that even the Apostle Paul uses it here in chapter four.

Abraham believed that metaphorically God could bring life to what was dead. Abraham also believed literally that God could raise the dead. We're told this in the book of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 11 verse 19. This is the explanation of the story of Abraham offering Isaac on the altar. God says "Go and sacrifice your son to me" and as far as the text is concerned, without hesitation, that's exactly what Abraham does.

As he raises the knife to plunge it into his son's chest, the angel stops him and there's a ram caught in the thicket and it acts as a substitute for the sacrifice of his son Isaac. We read that and we think what kind of father would do that? Well, this kind of father. Hebrews 11 verse 19, speaking of that story, "Abraham considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back." He was substituted for by that ram caught in the thicket.

Abraham believed that God was actually able to raise the dead. He believed that God was going to raise his son. This was the son of the promise, he's not going to let this son die, and God didn't. This is an incredible belief. Friends, do we believe that God raises the dead? Then even beyond that, if that same God comes to live among us, his resurrection from the dead is again an easy belief for those who follow Jesus Christ.

Who do we think God really is? Is he as big in your heart and mind as he is revealed to us in the word of God? God does not just give a son to Abraham and Sarah and make the promise of a family possible. God raises Jesus from the dead and makes the promise of eternal life possible. Look at the end of Romans chapter four verses 23 and 24. "But 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 raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification."

In one of Paul's sermons in the book of Acts, the book of Acts is full of sermons, Peter and Paul and others, all of them shorter than mine but all of them better, in Acts chapter 13 inside of one of Paul's sermons he puts it like this, "And we bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers, this he has fulfilled to us, their children, by raising Jesus."

Abraham believed that God was able to give life to the dead, and that has not just meaning for them but as Paul sees it, it has cosmic consequences because of the actual resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. He believed that God was able to give life to the dead, and that God was able to call into existence things that don't yet exist. Again for Abraham, this is God promising a son, something that did not exist. A son that nations would come from and that kings would come from his family.

Genesis chapter 17, we read this portion of Abraham's story in the book of Genesis verses five and six. "No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you." When God speaks this, none of it existed yet. Abraham believed God is able to call into existence the things that don't yet exist.

The promise of the son and the nation, and not just kings but the King of Kings who will come from this line. On top of that, it is God who called Abraham out of the land of Ur into relationship with him. The way this covenant relationship between God and Abram, the way that it actually starts in chapter 12, it just says and God talked to Abram and said, "Get up from this land and go to the land that I will later on show you that you are going to."

God called that relationship into existence. He's the one who reached out to Abraham, pulled him into relationship, and all of this gets started. God is able to call even that into existence. Your relationship with him is the result of God reaching out to you and drawing you to himself. Then other things that are going on inside of this passage of scripture, friends, and we need to be clear about stuff like this. God called absolutely everything into existence.

God created all things out of nothing by the power of his word. Out of nothing, literally nothing, the physical universe did not exist and then by the very power of his word, God speaks and everything comes into existence. Do you believe that God can call into existence things that don't yet exist? Paul's phrase here that God calls into existence is intended to remind us of that story in Genesis chapter one.

In verse three, that pattern begins, "And God said, 'Let there be light.' And God said..." This is repeated seven times for all seven of the days of creation in Genesis chapter one. "And God said, and God said..." Just the power of his word brings all things into existence. Again, the question is important to us. Do you actually believe that? Do you believe that that is the God that you and I follow and that is the God who cares for you even now?

If this is the God that exists, do I believe that he can take care of my future? My future is simply that which for me does not yet exist, but is firmly in the hands of the God who holds me. That's what my future is. Do I believe these things about this God? Abraham did and Paul says, "Look, all of this was written so that you and I can learn to have the same kind of faith in the same God." Abraham believed that God could give life to the dead and call into existence the things that don't yet exist.

Then in verse 18, yeah friends, we were all the way into verse 18 at this point, this crazy phrase in our Bibles, "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.'" In hope he believed against hope. It's an odd phrase inside of our Bibles, but here is what Paul intends to say by this: that Abraham had hope in God at a time when if you just looked at the situation from a purely human point of view, there was no hope.

If God does not exist, we're not going to have a son. There's no hope for a son of anybody's promise. If God does not exist, there's no hope here. The catch is, God exists. That's the difference. That's where our hope is. That's what Abraham had hope in. He had hope in God against all natural notions of what could possibly happen, of what hope looks like. If you look at it without God, the situation is impossible. But God himself called and promised Abraham.

This hope of his, it's not a silly feeling. It's not a sense of desperation or last-ditch effort. It's the realization of who God is and what he can do. Friends, biblical hope is not a feeling, it is the certainty that God will do what he has promised to do. These are wonderful and powerful terms for the believer in scripture in the New Testament. It's good for us to spend a moment or two in what these mean and how they have their way in our lives, how they work their way out in our circumstances and in our lives.

We think about hope in the New Testament and the way that it's taught to us. I love this passage of scripture, 1 Peter chapter 1 verse three. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." This is the verse of scripture that the name of this church comes from. He has caused us to be born again to a living hope.

Through our squinting of our eyes and our clutching of our fists and the gathering of our resources, we're going to do our best to make this happen? No. He actually grounds our hope in what? The resurrection of Jesus Christ. What did Paul say at the end of chapter four? This is why Christ was sent to the cross, this is why Christ was raised from the dead. Our hope is as sure as the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The truth of our hope is grounded in the truth of the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Another magnificent passage in the New Testament as Paul talks to another church about hope and what it's like and how it works. In Colossians chapter one verse 23, he tells them, "Christ our Savior is going to present us holy before God, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister."

Part of what I love about this is Paul says everywhere the gospel is preached, it's a gospel of hope. The gospel that you have is the same hope of the gospel that they have. Friends, when you and I receive the gospel of Jesus Christ, our hope is the same hope as our brothers and sisters in Christ 2,000 years ago in the city of Colossae. The hope that we pass along to future generations is the same hope that we have and the same hope that they had. It is in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, our sure and coming King.

It's a beautiful thing. Let's make sure we're clear on this. Christians do not put faith in faith, we do not put our hope in feelings and in our personal desires. We place all these things firmly in the reality of who God is and of the risen Savior Jesus Christ. Look at verses 20 and 21 again and see what it does in the life of Abraham. "No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised."

Abraham endured in the promise of God even when to his eyes it looked impossible. Notice this too, that in the strength of his belief as time moves on, Abraham grows stronger in his relationship with God. The text says "as he gave glory to God." This is going to be a wonderful thought in the first section of Romans chapter five. If you haven't read ahead to the first section of Romans chapter five, it's going to tell you and me how to suffer well.

Part of what we learn from Abraham is that they're barren, they're barren, they're barren, they're barren, but Abraham doesn't waver. Sarah has faith and he even grows stronger in that confusion, he grows stronger in that difficulty the more he worships God, the more he gives glory to God. Friends, it's a powerful thing. We're going to dig into that more next time as well as we get into chapter five, but it's a powerful thing. Abraham is convinced that God was able, that his God was a big God, and this is where his hope came from.

I want to give you this notion about hope. This I believe is a decent way of understanding how biblical hope works. As the text moves on, we'll get to talk about this more, but I think this is coming clear to us in this passage of scripture, what it means to hope. Christian hope bases our present in the faithfulness of God in the past, and it pulls the certainty of our future into our present. Our hope bases our present-day lives, what we face now.

We place our hope in God's faithfulness in the past so that we know that he will be faithful today. Then we learn something really amazing about Christian hope: it actually pulls our future into our present. God has been faithful and God will be faithful. God has not changed and God will not change. We often struggle with our present and with our future because honestly, we don't know.

We think, we try, we work, we give effort to this, this, and this, but we don't know. We don't control our futures. Again, we try to guide and be wise and do things well, but we literally do not control our futures. Guess who does? The God who has faithfully brought you to this point will faithfully carry you through today and will faithfully carry you into his presence for all of eternity. That is my hope, that is where my hope sits. With God, our future is secure even if we struggle in this present age.

In the epistle of 1 John chapter three verses two and three, he puts it like this, "Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure." Because I know that day is coming, that truth makes its way into my life now. Because I hope in that, I purify this life now. I follow Jesus now. I place my hope in him now.

You see our hope in our secure and eternal future with God pulls itself into the way that we live today. I still remember this illustration years ago, it's a story that my dad would tell. He was a pastor at Radiant a very long time ago, but he tells this story illustrating this. He said there was a young lady in church, they were a military family and the husband had been deployed. She was coming to church and after a while, folks began to realize that she had lost a little bit of weight, she had started to kind of put herself together, she changed her hair.

As folks kind of noticed what was happening, they would talk to her about it and she would say, "It's because my husband's coming home." Something she knew was going to happen was changing the way that she was living now. That's a beautiful thing, just that actual moment. Your King is coming, your Savior is coming. Jesus Christ will return. Are you and I making ourselves ready for that? You see that hope changes who I am now.

If all of this is true, if Jesus is risen and you are his son or his daughter, if he has conquered and he is the King of Kings, and if you're going to find yourself with him for all of eternity, no matter what happens to you in this life, what does that change about the way you live now? Let's pray.