Abraham Heir of the World

[0:00] I want you, if you have a copy of the Scriptures, to open up your Bibles to the book of Romans, chapter 4. We have been in Romans now for a few months, and we're here in chapter 4.

[0:24] In the middle of chapter 4 this morning, we're going to be looking at verses 13 through 15. And so if you have your Bibles, open them up there. If you have one of the Bibles that we had sitting out in the chairs, then that's on page 941, if you want to just turn there.

[0:39] And I want to ask you guys, as you turn there in your Bibles, I want to ask you all to stand with me in honor of God's Word as we read together. Romans chapter 4, beginning in verse 13, the Apostle Paul writes, For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.

[1:03] For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law, there is no transgression.

[1:16] We give you thanks now, Father, for this Word. And pray again that you would give us light and understanding. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. You guys take a seat.

[1:28] I think that there is, within most people, if not within all people, a basic longing to be a part of something that is bigger than themselves.

[1:39] I think that everybody wants to be, in some way, connected to something that has a broader view than just their narrow lives. Because we live our days sort of consumed with a very narrow world, with making sure that our kids are fed and clothed and that they get to school on time, or that making sure that we get our things taken care of at work that we need to take care of.

[2:01] We live most of our lives in a fairly narrow bubble, in a fairly small bubble, but we have within us this desire, this longing to be connected to, and to be a part of things that are bigger than us, that are greater than us.

[2:17] And I think that that is part and parcel of what it means to be made in God's image. If you remember all the way back in Genesis chapter 1, Moses tells us that when God made us in His image, He also gave us a commandment.

[2:29] He told us to be fruitful and multiply. He made us, first of all, male and female, not just Adam by himself, but Adam and then Eve. He made us male and female, and then He gives to Adam and Eve the commandment to be fruitful and multiply.

[2:43] So, bound up within what it means to be a human, what it means to be someone made in God's image, is this idea of community, of a social structure in which we are related to other people.

[2:56] Even if it is just a social structure as small as our immediate family, we have this longing, this desire built into us to be connected to other people. And we know when someone totally isolates themselves, when they remove themselves from any meaningful relationships with anyone else, we recognize and see that something is wrong.

[3:15] Something has gone wrong in their life and in their thinking and in their heart, and we try in various ways to address whatever it is that has gone wrong. But then, of course, Adam and Eve were also told there to exercise dominion over the entire world, over all the earth, which means that this community would not have been originally limited to just their small little nuclear family.

[3:37] They were to really multiply. I mean, Adam and Eve could not have, on their own, exercised dominion over the entire world. They could not have done that. And so, in the very first commands that God issues to them, we have the seed sown for a larger view of the world, a larger view of our involvement in creation, which is why, even to this day, even as fallen human beings, people for whom the image of God has been marred and broken, even within us, we still have this longing to connect to something bigger than ourselves, to be a part of something larger than ourselves.

[4:14] And even if you find yourself as being sort of an introvert, someone for whom that longing is not as strong as it is for others, someone who is perfectly content to be by themselves, there is still within you a desire at times and on various levels to connect in some way, or to at least be a part of something larger than yourself.

[4:35] It's just built into who we are. And so far, as we have walked through the book of Romans, our focus has not been upon that larger connection to the rest of humanity and to creation itself.

[4:49] Our focus, the Apostle Paul's focus, has been upon how do you, as an individual person, as a fallen sinner, how can you get right with God?

[5:01] Because that's the fundamental question. That's the most important question that we can ask. All of us, the Bible tells us, will someday stand in God's judgment. All of us will face that day.

[5:12] It's coming for us whether we believe it or not, whether we like it or not, whether we want to ignore that reality or not. All of us will one day face God in judgment. And the most crucial issue in that moment, on that day is, are you right with Him?

[5:27] Are you in God's sight viewed as a righteous person, or does He see you as a sinner? And how can those of us who are sinners become a person who is, in God's sight at least, righteous?

[5:43] And the answer has been repeatedly, as we have walked through Romans, the answer has been repeatedly, you do not get right with God by performing good works. You do not get right with God by obeying God's law and checking off a list of all these things that you should do.

[6:00] You cannot be right in God's sight by simply trying to balance the cosmic scales, by trying to do more good than you do bad, by trying to be a pretty good person. That will not work. That does not work in God's economy.

[6:11] Because if you are a sinner, whether you are a sinner on the scale of an Adolf Hitler or a Saddam Hussein, or whether you are just somebody who tends to put others down at times, or someone who tends to covet and want what other people have, whatever the level of sin in your life happens to be, nevertheless, you are at that point a sinner.

[6:31] And Paul tells us, none of us is righteous. No one does good in God's sight. So if our fundamental need is to be righteous in God's sight and none of us is righteous, there must be another path to righteousness.

[6:45] And Paul tells us that that path is faith in Jesus. That if we will abandon our attempts to actually make ourselves righteous and do enough good to be acceptable to God, but we will instead trust in Jesus, trust that He has paid the penalty for our sins, trust that He has done all that is necessary in His life of perfect obedience for us to be counted and declared righteous by God.

[7:11] If we will but trust simply by faith alone, then we will be counted righteous by God. We will be, the Bible says, Paul uses the term, justified by Him. And he says that that happens by faith apart from any works that we do.

[7:27] So that the focus of the Apostle Paul and our focus as we've been walking through Romans has been upon the individual. How can you get right with God? How can I have the confidence to know that on Judgment Day, God will not see my sin, but instead He will see me as a righteous person?

[7:45] That has been our focus. But now we get a glimpse of a broader view in this passage this morning. The focus is not entirely on this broader view.

[7:56] It won't be until we get to chapter 8 that we really begin to see Paul's vision for how our justification, how our salvation connects with the entire universe. But we get a preview of that here in this passage.

[8:12] So I want you to take a look here in Romans chapter 4. I want you to notice the promise that Paul begins to talk about in these verses. His focus, in fact, in this paragraph is upon the promise.

[8:23] You see it in verse 13. The promise to Abraham. You see it in verse 14. The promise can be made void. And then on through the next paragraph. We'll see next week this idea of the promise dominates this part of Romans chapter 4.

[8:38] But when we ask the question, what promise? What promise are we talking about at this point in this letter? Well, the answer is made clear for us in verse 13.

[8:50] Notice how the promise is talked about. He says, The promise to Abraham and to his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.

[9:05] So the promise talked about here is a promise made to Abraham that he himself would become the heir of the world, the entire world, and through him his offspring, his seed, his descendants.

[9:20] So no longer are we simply narrowly talking about the individual and the individual's experience of being declared righteous by God. Now we're talking about Abraham and those who are his offspring inheriting the entire world, the whole world.

[9:37] And if you say, well, where is that promise? When did God promise Abraham that he would become an heir of the whole world? When does that happen? You will not find the promise stated in those terms anywhere in the Old Testament.

[9:53] You will not find it. In fact, if you want to look for what Abraham is specifically promised in terms of what will Abraham inherit and what will his descendants, his children and grandchildren and so forth, what will they inherit, it's far more narrow than the whole world.

[10:10] It's just a small, little, tiny strip of land in the Middle East. Call it the land of Canaan or the land of Palestine or the land of Israel. Call it whatever you want.

[10:20] Abraham is specifically promised in Genesis chapter 12 when God first called Abraham to leave his family and go to the land of Canaan, the land of promise. Again, in Genesis chapter 13, God reiterates that.

[10:34] And then in Genesis chapter 15 that we've been sort of focused on because Paul quotes from it a few times in Romans chapter 4, God promises to Abraham that he would inherit the land in which he stands.

[10:47] The land that extends from the Nile to the Euphrates. He would inherit that particular land. But nowhere are we told in Genesis or anywhere else that Abraham would inherit the entire world.

[10:59] So when Paul speaks of the promise to Abraham that he would become an heir of the world, we have to ask ourselves the question, where does that come from? Where does this idea originate?

[11:14] And there are a couple of things that we can say about that. You can see sort of the seeds of this idea sown even in Genesis. Because God not only promises Abraham that he and his descendants will inherit what we call the promised land or the land of Palestine, he also promises him that through Abraham's descendants, through Abraham's seed, all the nations of the world would be blessed.

[11:42] All the families of the earth would be blessed. So there is the idea that even though the piece of land, the piece of the world given to Abraham and his descendants is actually fairly small, there is this idea though that the blessing to Abraham is broader than that.

[11:59] It does in some way encompass more than just his descendants, more than just the people that live in this area. It in some way encompasses all the families of the earth, all the peoples that live in the world.

[12:11] And so you have just the seeds of the idea of inheriting the world in the promises in Genesis themselves. But then that's expanded upon.

[12:23] As you move forward in the Old Testament, you see that the prophets began to think about the land as more than just that strip of land. They began to have a broader view of God's promise to Abraham concerning the earth, concerning the land itself.

[12:41] Which makes sense because when you think about that little piece of land that God promised to Abraham, it's a strategic piece of land. It makes sense that God would put Abraham where he put him if the intention is through Abraham and his descendants for all the world, all the nations to be blessed.

[12:59] Because in the ancient world, the land of Palestine was central. It was the place where the various trade routes passed through and met up.

[13:10] So that if you lived somewhere in Africa, whether it was Egypt or somewhere else in Africa, and you wanted to trade with someone in, let's say, Europe or Asia or anywhere else, if you wanted to trade with someone in India, you had to pass through the land of Palestine.

[13:25] If you were in Babylon or later Persia and you wanted to trade with people in Europe or Africa, you passed through the land of Palestine. So in a very real sense, this small piece of land is in some sense the center of the earth in that ancient world.

[13:41] And by that location, Abraham's descendants could come into contact with all the nations. So it's a strategic location. We know that for certain, but it's more than merely a strategic location.

[13:54] The prophets look at that, that central point of the earth where all of these nations cross one another and they see in it a bigger vision, something larger than just the land of Palestine.

[14:08] In fact, I want you to hold your place in Romans and I want you to turn all the way back to the Old Testament, to the book of Isaiah, to the book of Isaiah. If you can't find it quickly, it's okay. The words will be, I think, up on the screen.

[14:20] But we're going all the way back to Isaiah chapter 65. Isaiah chapter 65. God has, through the last few chapters of Isaiah up to this point, been talking about the redemption of Israel, the redemption of His people, the salvation of the nation of Judah and Israel.

[14:38] And He says, in verse 17 of Isaiah 65, He says, Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind, but be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create.

[14:56] For behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy and her people to be a gladness. I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in My people. No more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress.

[15:12] So He speaks of Jerusalem, recreating Jerusalem, creating a new Jerusalem, and yet He also speaks of a new heavens and a new earth as if these terms are in some way almost synonymous.

[15:24] I think in reality what's happening here is that Jerusalem stands for the people of God and the new heavens and new earth stand for the place that the people of God are going to someday inherit. So Isaiah, in the midst of a place where the concern is primarily with the redemption of Israel and getting them back into the land that God promises them, all of a sudden God through Isaiah reveals something larger.

[15:50] It's not just about that piece of land. I'm creating a new heavens and new earth. This is going to happen. Something bigger is going to take place. Jerusalem is at the center. My people are at the center of that, but something bigger will take place.

[16:05] In fact, if you look over to chapter 66, one chapter later, move down to verse 18. God is continuing to speak of this final day when He's going to judge the wicked and He's going to redeem His people.

[16:20] Verse 18, He says, I know their works and their thoughts and the time is coming to gather all nations and tongues and they shall come and shall see My glory and I will set a sign among them and from them I will send survivors to the nations, to Tarshish, Poole, and Lude, who draw the bold to Tubal and Jabin to the coastlands far away that have not heard My fame or seen My glory.

[16:46] And they shall declare My glory among the nations and they shall bring all your brothers from all the nations as an offering to the Lord on horses and in chariots and in litters, on mules, on dromedaries to My holy mountain, Jerusalem, says the Lord, just as the Israelites bring their grain offering in a clean vessel to the house of the Lord.

[17:09] So Isaiah says, we're going wider. God's speaking through Isaiah. He says, we're going big here. It's not just Israel now. I'm going to send you out into the nations to gather your brothers from among the nations and bring them in together.

[17:24] This is global. This is not small. So the prophets began to think in bigger terms than just the land of Israel. They began to see Jerusalem not merely as a city that stands as the capital of a small piece of land.

[17:38] They now see Jerusalem as representing the people of God who go out and draw in the other people of God scattered throughout the world as they preach the good news to them.

[17:49] This is now happening. We live in the age in which these things are beginning to take place. God has not yet created the new heavens and the new earth, but this scattering of His people among the nations so the nations are now being drawn in.

[18:05] That begins with Jesus' disciples. He told them to go and make disciples of all the nations and they began to spread out. That's exactly what you see in the book of Acts as the gospel moves from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria all the way to the farthest reaches of the Roman Empire.

[18:24] We see in Acts, we see in the New Testament the beginning of this expansion of the people of God and the kingdom of God. Something bigger is afoot here. Something larger is in view here.

[18:37] In fact, that process does not find its completion until the final judgment. Until the time when Christ Himself returns and sets all things right.

[18:52] Turn to the end of your Bible to the book of Revelation. I think this is important for us to be able to see some of these things from Isaiah and to see how they are thought about and spoken of in the New Testament.

[19:08] In Revelation chapter 21, we hear the words of Isaiah sort of echoed by John. He's speaking here of the return of Christ. He's telling us what He sees and what happens on that day.

[19:23] And He says, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

[19:39] And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them and they will be His people and God Himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

[19:52] Death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore. For the former things have passed away. That's the application of Isaiah's vision of the future to the ultimate future, to the end, to Christ's return.

[20:08] We see more of it in the next chapter, the last chapter of the Bible, Revelation chapter 22, verse 4. They will see His face and His name will be on their foreheads and night will be no more.

[20:21] They will need no light of lamp or sun for the Lord their God will be their light and they will reign forever and ever. The name of God.

[20:32] Remember Isaiah said, they haven't heard of my name, they haven't heard of my fame, they don't know my glory. It's going to now be taken out to the nations and now here at the end of it all, His name will be upon them, those who have trusted in Him.

[20:47] New heavens and new earth, a broader view, a bigger picture. All of that is hinted at in Genesis when Abraham is promised a piece of the world that will ultimately stretch out to reach all the nations.

[21:03] And so when I hear Paul speak of the promise made to Abraham that he would become the heir of the world, these are the things that come to my mind.

[21:15] These are the passages from other places in Scripture that resound, that echo in my head as I hear this phrase, the promise that Abraham would become the heir of the world.

[21:27] It's almost as if Abraham is given a small promise that's amplified into a much larger reality. In fact, I read a story online just a couple of days ago about Jay Leno.

[21:43] You guys know Jay Leno, Tonight Show guy and all that. One of the things about him that a lot of people you probably know, many of you know, is that he has a lot of cars. He's a collector of cars. I can't fathom collecting cars, but he collects cars.

[21:56] And he's got, I don't know how many cars he's got. He's got tons of cars and motorcycles, vintage ones and new ones and sports cars and old, I mean, he's got all sorts of cars. And he took a veteran, a wounded veteran, he took him for sort of like a joyride in one of his really expensive, really nice sports cars.

[22:16] The kind of car that you remember it if you see this car drive past you on the road, you remember the day that you saw it. It's that kind of car. It's not the kind of car you see every day. So he takes this, takes him for a ride in the car and then after they get back from the ride, he just hands him the keys and says, okay, now it's yours.

[22:31] This guy just thought that he was getting a nice ride in this really cool car that he would never really see much less get to drive and now the car belongs to him.

[22:42] I thought about it in these terms. What if, what if someone like Jay Leno, someone who had this vast collection of something that you really couldn't possibly, you couldn't afford one of those cars. And what if he said to you, I'm going to give you one of my cars.

[22:56] I'm going to give you this specific car. This is yours. You can have this car and I'm going to give it to you one day. And you think, great. This is a good promise.

[23:07] This is a good thing. And then you come, when the day comes to collect on what he's promised you, the day comes to get what he's promised to you, he comes to you and he doesn't give you the keys to the car. He gives you the keys to the garage and he says, they're all yours.

[23:20] Now would you at that moment say, I don't think so, Jay. You said I could have that car and I want that car. Well, you're getting that car. You're just getting all the cars around it.

[23:32] I think that's the idea. When the Apostle Paul says that Abraham was promised to become the heir of the world, I think what he's saying is, yes, he gets the land.

[23:43] That's true. Yes, that was promised to Israel. That's true. But there is a larger fulfillment in mind. There's something bigger in mind. The people of God get the entire earth.

[23:57] Renewed. Recreated. Sin is gone. Death is gone. Pain is no more. And you, as a follower of Jesus, get this entire world.

[24:08] It's yours someday. That's a promise. That takes care of the longing to be a part of something larger than yourself. If you find yourself tempted to join things that you ought not to be a part of or to be in on something that you think maybe not, there's something better.

[24:27] That longing can be satisfied by something else. I always find it curious that cults and false religions are able to so easily attract so many people.

[24:41] And if you ask yourself, why are they able to attract people? Why are they able to draw people in? I don't think that it's because they have really good arguments for what they believe. I've had conversations with some of them.

[24:54] Their arguments are not very good for the most part. They're just not. So how are they convincing all of these people? It's because they have an innate desire to connect to something larger than themselves and here's an opportunity.

[25:07] We need to be giving people the opportunity to connect to something larger than themselves that's true though, that's real and that's authentic. We need to not limit our proclamation of the gospel merely to you can be saved.

[25:21] That's the most important aspect but we need for them to understand you can be a part of something larger. When the judgment day comes, God is going to set all things right. His people are going to inherit the entire world and you can be a part of that.

[25:38] And then those temptations to be drawn away into these other groups, into these other activities with other people that we ought not to be a part of, that temptation can be hollowed out because that great need of our hearts as human beings is met in the one place where it's meant to be met.

[26:00] Becoming an heir of the promise along with Abraham and heir of the world. And so the question, the real central question is how do we become heirs along with Abraham?

[26:13] Or you might ask it in this way, because the promise is made both to Abraham and to his descendants, to his offspring, to his seed. So how do we become a part of Abraham's descendants?

[26:25] How do we become a recipient of the promises made to Abraham and his offspring? How can that happen for us? Well, that's why Paul wrote this paragraph.

[26:36] This paragraph is aimed to show us how can we become a part of that inheritance? How can we become co-heirs with Abraham? Notice, the promise to Abraham back in Romans, verse 13.

[26:50] The promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.

[27:04] Now, I think it's, it seems to me significant here that the Apostle Paul says, this promise did not come through the law, but came through the righteousness of faith. Instead of saying, as he could have said, this promise did not come through the law, but it came through faith.

[27:21] No. He says, receiving this promise, becoming an heir of the world, comes along with the righteousness that comes to you by faith.

[27:31] So, the most essential thing here is first to have the righteousness of faith. That's the first thing. That's the most important thing. You don't become an heir of the world. You don't get to participate in the New Jerusalem.

[27:44] You don't get to be a part of any of that unless first, you have the righteousness of faith that Paul has been talking about throughout this chapter. You need to trust in Christ and in Christ alone in order to have His righteousness counted as yours.

[27:59] And you must have that righteousness if you want to be a recipient of this promise. If you want to become an heir of the world. So, the most important thing is to make sure to establish that you have simply trusted in Christ.

[28:15] That you're not trusting in your own abilities. That you're not trusting in the good things that you do. That you're not trusting that it will all weigh out in your favor at the end of it all. But that by faith in Jesus alone you're taking hold of God's promises.

[28:31] and that you receive righteousness credited to your account by that faith. When that has happened then you become along with Abraham an heir of the world.

[28:46] But the emphasis in this particular paragraph though is not so much on how we become heirs as on how we avoid not becoming heirs. In other words, His focus is upon it's not by the law.

[28:59] That's His focus here. He's been talking about faith. We've gone to Genesis chapter 15. He's quoted Genesis 15 6 that faith was credited to Abraham for righteousness.

[29:10] We've seen that over and over in this chapter and even in chapter 3. We know that. That's well established by this point in Romans. And if you missed those sermons I encourage you go online go to our website look up the sermons and you can listen to any of the sermons from this series on Romans.

[29:26] Listen to them. Hear what the Apostle Paul is telling us about justification about how to get right with God. We have heard that message. Now he's going to shift his attention to the promise to the broader view and to helping us to clearly understand how do we how do we avoid not receiving the promise?

[29:46] It's not by the law. You can hear it over and over. He became an heir of the world not through the law.

[29:58] Verse 14 if it's the adherence of the law who are to become heirs faith is null the promise is void. He's already established that faith is the way to righteousness in God's sight but if now we try to obtain this promise by obeying the law then faith is null.

[30:15] The promise is made void. It doesn't count anymore it won't work anymore if you begin to try to pursue things by obedience to the law but no he says it is not by the law.

[30:30] Why? God gave the law to Moses for a reason didn't he? We have all those commandments in Leviticus and Deuteronomy they got to be there for a reason why do we have the law?

[30:44] Why do we have the ten commandments and why can't they help us to obtain the promise? why can't obeying the ten commandments get you some kind of credit in God's sight?

[30:57] Why can't it somehow connect you with the promises? Why is that the case? Why? Well he tells us explicitly verse 15 he's already said it's not by the law that won't work and now here's why for or because for the law brings wrath but where there is no law there is no transgression because it's not the role of the law to give you righteousness it's not the role of the law to provide a way for you to be right in God's sight it's not the purpose of the law to help you to become right before God that's not what the law is given for that's not in fact what the law does the law cannot accomplish that in the life or in the heart of a person who is a sinner it cannot do it the law does the opposite the law doesn't bring righteousness to you if you are a sinner the only thing the law can accomplish in the life of a sinner apart from

[32:06] Christ is to bring wrath and then he has this strange statement for where there is no law there is no transgression what does he mean by that what's the point of that saying does he mean that if we don't have a commandment then god doesn't count us to be sinners no that's not the case at all because he's already told us previously in chapter 2 that those who don't have the law will be judged apart from the law so judgment still comes for sin for those who don't have say the ten commandments it still comes why because Paul also tells us in chapter 2 that those who don't have the law of Moses do in fact have the law of God written on their hearts it's universal every culture knows murder is bad they may define murder in a different way they may justify murder by various means but basic to every culture in the world is that murder is a bad thing taking something that belongs to somebody else is a bad thing the moral law is written on people's hearts it's there engraved but

[33:13] Paul says where there's no written law like we have in the ten commandments in the law of Moses where there's no law of that kind there's no transgression now you can highlight or underline or circle that word transgression whatever you want to do in your bible but you need to know that it's a different it's a distinct word from sin he does not say where there is no law there is no sin he says where there is no law there is no transgression because a transgression is more than just a simple sin a transgression is a breaking of the law you transgress when you break God's law that's what a transgression is so obviously if you don't have a commandment you can't break a commandment but if you give a commandment to a sinner he will break it eventually it's going to happen if you give a sinner a collection of commandments he may not break every commandment but he's going to break some of the commandments it's going to happen it's who we are as fallen sinful human beings which means that the only thing that the law can bring is wrath because if you're given the law you'll eventually break the law and then you become not merely a sinner now on top of that you are a transgressor and the wrath that you deserve has only increased all all the more turn over a page or two in your bible to romans chapter five i'll show you this so you don't have to take my word for it romans chapter five verse twenty now the law came in to increase the trespass which is a similar word to the word transgression but where sin increased!

[35:01] the law came in and it increased it it increased it it increased it look over in chapter seven what shall we say in light of these kinds of things that the law increases transgression it increases our guilt before God what shall we say the law sin he says by no means yet if it had not been for the law I would not have known sin I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said you shall not covet but sin seizing an opportunity through the commandment produced in me all kinds of covetousness for apart from the law sin lies dead Paul says that the law has a positive function it shows me what sin is but when the law comes into contact with a sinful human heart which by the!

[35:56] you have and I have and when the law comes into contact with a sinful human heart the law does not simply curb! and restrict that sin ultimately the law turns simple sin into transgression when we break the law and sin is thereby increased it is made all the more bad so if you ask the question why can't I have righteousness by the law why can't I receive the promise of inheriting the world through the law why won't that work the answer is because you are a sinner and when the law comes into contact with sinners!

[36:31] the law only produces! for sinners! So you must abandon all of your attempts to earn God's favor! You have to abandon any hope that you have placed in thinking I'm a pretty good person!

[36:44] You have to abandon all thinking that says the good outweighs the bad for me! You cannot think like that because you and I are sinners!

[36:57] And even when we have a law from!! our sin has increased! The law doesn't solve the problem! The law was never intended to solve the problem that we have!

[37:10] The law was only intended to show us how bad the problem is and how desperately we need a redeemer! We need a savior! Abraham received righteousness through faith in the one who was to come!

[37:27] Abraham received righteousness through faith in the coming redeemer in the seed that was promised to him! And we receive the righteousness that comes by faith by believing in the redeemer that has already come!

[37:45] Salvation does not work and function differently under the old covenant than it does under the new covenant! We just know more about the redeemer! We just have more details and more information about him and his!

[37:59] work! But Abraham received the verdict of righteousness in God's sight because he trusted in the promise concerning the coming redeemer! And we receive righteousness, we are declared righteous by God when we trust in the work the redeemer has accomplished on our behalf!

[38:14] God! And there is no other way! No other way! Not even by means of God's law can you become right with him!

[38:27] But if you will trust in Jesus! But if you will put all of your hope in him! If you will trust in him alone! Not only will you receive righteousness not only can you have the hope of knowing that when you stand before God in judgment He will declare you on that day to be righteous and acquit you of all sin.

[38:46] Not only can you know that, but you can know and be certain that you are tied into something much larger. You become, along with Abraham, an heir of the entire world.

[39:00] Let's pray.