Bible Passage: Genesis 15:1-6
Pastor: Joel Jenswold
Sermon Date: August 7, 2022

Bulletin August 7, 2022

In the name of, and to the eternal glory of, Jesus,

At the center of every religion is something called “righteousness.”  For our purposes let’s define “righteousness” as the condition of being right with God.  The goal of religion is to answer the question in the heart of man, “How can I be right with God?”

Answers will vary.  Some religions will teach that you must perform extreme acts of devotion and self-denial to please your “god.”  They will demand very strict obedience to a set of rules – pray at the right time each day, pray with the correct body orientation.  Some religions, and here we are thinking of some of the eastern religions, are more “thought-based.”  You must meditate and work yourself into a “right” way of thinking, and this is “righteousness.”  Others will teach social-justice as the path of spiritual righteousness.  But the answer is always the same – DO something to be right with your God.

Christian, how do you answer the question?  How are you right with God?  Do you have “righteousness”?  Our text today contains the answer.  It may be an unlikely place to find the answer to the question, “How am I right with God” because our text is a little snippet from the life of Abraham.  How can that possibly help you answer the question?  Well, tucked into this text by the Spirit of God is this sentence:  Abram believed the Lord and the Lord credited it to him as righteousness. (v. 5)  Abram’s righteousness, his “rightness with God” – your and my righteousness – is a Credited Righteousness.

A little background will be helpful.  Right before our text, Abram had gone on that rescue mission to rescue Lot and the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah who had been carried away by a coalition of kings. Abram had armed all the men in his household and gone out and won a tremendous victory over those kings and saved all these people.

Right after this happened the Lord comes to Abram in a vision with the reassuring words, Do not be afraid, Abram.  I am your shield, your very great reward. (v. 1)  Abram had just defeated a number of kings.  Would they regroup and come back to attack Abram?  The Lord said, I am your shield.  After the victory, Abram had turned down the opportunity to collect tremendous “fortunes of war.”  Would he regret not taking any plunder?  The Lord said, “I am your very great reward!”  “Abram, you’ve got me!”  But Abram was struggling.  His answer is sort of shocking.  It’s almost as if he says, “None of that matters because I don’t have a son!  The one who will inherit my estate is a guy from Damasus, Eliezer!”

Here we see that Abram is no “teflon-coated” saint.  He did not glow with a sanctity and piety that caused people to “ooo” and “ahhh” when he passed by.  He was a man.  A man who struggled and wobbled.  A man who had great moments, like defeating an alliance of kings, quickly followed by bouts of fear and melancholy.  We know from the other information in the Bible on Abram’s life that he is a man capable of lying and deceiving and having poor judgment.  He was a man, like all of us, who did not, could not, supply his own righteousness!

But the Lord does something with his friend.  We are told the word of the Lord came to him. (v. 4)  The Lord is going to deal with Abram with WORDS.  God said, This man will not be your heir, but instead one who will come out of your own body will be your heir. (v. 4)  The Lord speaks a PROMISE to Abram.  And then, he doubles down!  He takes Abram outside and shows him the stars and says, This is what your descendants will be like. (v. 5)  A second PROMISE!

And those promises of God “speak” faith into the heart of Abram!  Abram believes the Lord.  The Hebrew word for “believe” is the word that gives us our English word “amen.”  That’s really what believing is, isn’t it?  It’s saying, “Amen!”  The Lord said, “You are going to father a son.”  And Abram says, “Amen!  It shall be so!”  The Lord says, “Your descendants will be as many as the stars.”  And Abram says, “Amen!  It shall be so!”  That’s faith!  And we are told the Lord credited it to him as righteousness. (v. 6)

What gracious bookkeeping!  Abram was no holy man.  He had not completed some obstacle course that showed his “fitness” and “worthiness” to God.  He was just a struggling, weak, sinful man who trusted the gracious promises of God.  And God says, “He trusts me.  He is righteous.”  He was righteous through faith. Faith is the complete “un-work.”  It is the “non-work.” It is the “anti-work.”  It is the “un-work.”  It is simply taking God at his Word.

Here we should read a verse the apostle Paul wrote to the Romans.  In chapter 4 of that glorious letter, Paul wrote:  Now the statement “it was credited to him” was not written for him alone, but also for us to whom it would be credited, namely, to us who believe in the one who raised our Lord Jesus from the dead. (Romans 4:23-24)  This verse was written for us, today!  That we might see that “righteousness through faith” has always been God’s way of dealing with man!  And that is the way we have righteousness too.

Let’s just unpack the word “credit” for a moment.  Think about your credit card.  How does that work?  You go out to dinner.  The check comes and you give the server your credit card.  Mind you, you have given them NO money whatsoever!  You give them a piece of plastic worth $.07…maybe.  And the restaurant accepts that as payment!  Why?  Because back of that piece of plastic is a CREDITOR – a bank or credit union – who has said, “This person has the money because we are giving them the money!”

That is what has happened with you and me.  We don’t possess the holiness, the absolute goodness, the righteousness to get a table at the eternal, glorious banquet feast of heaven.  But we do, by God’s grace, have faith in Jesus.  And faith in Jesus is like having a credit card from the “First Bank of God.”  It’s like having a credit card in your pocket with a cross on it.  You’ve got no money, but you’ve got the cross!  And back of that cross is the almighty Creditor, God, who says, “This person has the righteousness because I am giving him the righteousness.”  It is the righteousness through faith in Jesus!  It is the payment of our debt of sin.  It is the deposit into our account of the righteousness of Jesus.  It’s all Jesus!  It is…credited righteousness.

And there is just this one way to have righteousness in God’s sight.  Righteousness is not attained through works – no matter how extreme or devout or pious or impressive they may seem.  Righteousness will come in only one way…God’s way.  He credits it…for Jesus’ sake…through faith.

Amen.