death, and that you would write your word upon our hearts. Change us. And your name we pray. Amen.
Today is a holiday, actually, that is second only to to Christmas and Easter. In the holiday, the holiday is such that, you know, this morning I was walking yellow dog on Broadway. And as I began to think through the implications of this holiday, I began to weep with joy. I mean, I'm not the cowardly lion, right? So I didn't have a tail, so I was using yellow dog stale, you know, I was still moved. And then this morning as I was thinking, I was sitting in my office, thinking through my sermon, there's not many things that will keep my children from just barging in on me. And yet I had the piece from the interlude is actually parts of Mendelssohn's fifth symphony, which is, I'm Festa Burke, it's our God. A mighty fortress is our God. You see today is Reformation Sunday. And the girls walked up. They came barging up daddy. And I had this symphony blaring and I was standing at the window just crying. And it was for the first time. And I can remember the long time, they just stopped. As if there were a fourth field, you know, and it was almost like, hey, he's having a moment. Let's count, you know, today, the important holiday is not Halloween. Reformation Sunday, you notice on the beginning of your order to worship, it says that. And what is it? What is it a holiday of? You know, a life magazine put it up there is one of the top two or three events in the millennium. Besides the printing press, it should probably be number one. Why? How did it happen? What happened? Love you guys are going, come on, throw me a bone. What are you talking about? You see, 15, 10, 11 or 12, this young guy named Martin Luther was going to law school. And his whole life, he's pretty tortured, you know, by his conscience. And he always felt guilty. And he always felt terrible. And his family was superstitious. And, you know, he was driving, he was driving, he's riding home from law school on his horse one day, and a great thunderstorm came. And a bolt of lightning came and struck so hard that it knocked him from his horse and he screamed out, you know, saying to Anne, if you will deliver me, I will become a monk. And all of you are going, why saying Anne? Right? That's, you'll find out. He would ask that question later as well. And he went home and told his father, I know you've plugged down a lot of money for me to go to law school and my big textbook costs the family they're fortunate. But I promise, saying Anne, I'm going to become a monk. And his dad said, well, promises are promises. So you need to go become a monk. And Martin Luther was such a genius that he entered seminary, like a lot of people who don't understand the gospel and are looking for some kind of help. He entered seminary, but he's such a genius that he goes, he gets his, all his degrees and he very quickly becomes a doctor of theology. And as he said, this doctor of theology, he becomes angry and hateful. And he becomes angry and hateful because he starts reading his Bible. And he reads his Bible and he gets to this place in Romans. And you know, Romans 116, the apostle Paul says that I'm not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes, first for the Jew and then for the Gentile. And then the next line says, for in it, that is the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed. And Martin Luther writes his own story and he said, as I looked at that phrase, the justice of God, I hated it because when I thought of the justice of God, all I could think of was that God was just and holy and he punishes sinners. And I, even though I'm a monk, don't have what it takes. And who is this God who would call me to be holy and when he knows I don't have what it takes, he says, I hated that phrase. And he says, and I hated the God who wrote it. He's a priest guy, but then he reads the next line. And the next line says, for the righteous to live by faith. And what does that mean? Because the righteousness of God is revealed in it, the gospel, and the righteous to live by faith. What is the connection between the righteousness of God and me being righteous and living by faith and all of a sudden it hits him. The God's justice is not the justice which punishes, but it's a path of justice. It's a justice, a righteousness that he gives to me. How did he give it to me? By faith. But if I would just trust his promise, that I don't have to work for his righteousness, I don't have to work to be in that relationship with him, but he just gives it to me. He points it down, I'm free. It's great. He just lays it on me. And he says, as soon as he got that, he says, from then on, I looked at these words. He says, I became born again. He says, in the gates of heaven were thrown open for me. And every time I looked at these words, the justice of God, they caused me to weak for joy because of the justice or the justification, the righteousness that had been imputed to me. What he means by that is he finally figured out that what the Bible teaches is that you can't work to be in right relationship with God. You don't have what it takes if you're honest. So you need someone else's works. And what Jesus has done is he did those works, he lived the perfect life and he died on the cross many roads in the dead. And for anyone who's willing to believe him, God will impute to you or credit you. Jesus is righteousness. And Martin Luther said, if works can't get us into heaven and works can't get us better standing with God, but it simply is believing in the gospel, that changes everything. It's where he wrote down some thoughts. 95 of them, to be exactly, to be exact. And he really wasn't trying to be a trouble maker. He just walked up to Whitonburg door, like any college where you have posters for keg parties and concerts. And he put the 95 pieces up there because he just wanted to talk about it. And the thesis basically said, hey, if the gospel is true, we can't sell indulgences anymore. If the gospel is true, we can't manipulate people by guilt because Jesus just proclaims them righteous and if they're righteous, they don't have anything to guilty about. And really the church at that time didn't do anything about it, but you know what caused them to have to deal with it. It's a printing press. You see, because people took those pieces off the door and they began to print them in German instead of Latin. And everyone began to read them and all the people's lives began to be changed. And they said, if the gospel is true, I don't have to be manipulated by the church anymore. And religions doesn't matter anymore. And as you can imagine, all hell broke loose. And the church called Martin Luther. And they said, Martin died of worms. They made him stand up and they had all his books. And they said, Martin Luther, your teachings have caused a lot of trouble. We want you to repent. We want you to rescind them because if you rescind them, the people respect you and they will all calm down. And Martin Luther said, unless you can convince me by reason or by the scriptures that I am wrong, I can do no other. And then he said, here I stand. God helped me. And from that point on, the history of the world has been different. It's been utterly different. You wouldn't be here in America. That didn't happen. And the beauty of it is, you can preaching through Genesis. The beauty of it is this. As we look at Martin Luther and we go, man, that's beautiful. He got that from the Apostle Paul. He studied the book of Romans. And that's where the gospel is. But you know what the Apostle Paul got it from? Abraham. The Apostle Paul, when the Apostle Paul starts talking about, you know what it means to believe the gospel, to be justified free without charge? He says in chapter 4 of Romans, he says, considering Abraham.
Well, that's what we're going to talk about today. Genesis 15, 1 through 6. It's sort of like the paradigmatic turning point almost in all the Bible, at least at that point. Look at your announcement sheet, or if you have Bible Genesis 15, 1 through 6, it says this, after this, the word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision. Do not be afraid, Abraham. I am your shield. You're a very great reward. But Abraham said, oh, sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate as Aliezer of Damascus? And Abraham said, you have given me no children, so a servant in my household will be my heir. Then the word of the Lord came to him. This man will not be your heir. But a son coming from your own body will be your heir. He took it outside and said, look up at the heavens and count the stars. If indeed you could count them. Then he said to him, so shall your offspring be. In verse 6, Abraham believed the Lord and he credited to him as righteous.
You know, verse 15, chapter 15 starts, it says, after this, the word of the Lord came to Abraham and says, Abraham do not fear. I am your shield and your great reward. Why would God come and say that to him? Remember a few weeks ago the historic Melchizedek sermon, right? Remember the king of Sodom and Cheddar, Ketter, Lair, Mar, all these things. They came in and they invaded Sodom where Lot was living and Abraham went in and he rescued Lot. He defeated all of these great kings. And he not only rescued Lot, but he gave up the stuff to the king of Sodom. And so Abraham has a problem for one. He has made many enemies. The people who he defeated would be his enemies and he would be afraid that they would retaliate. But also the people who he rescued, the king of Sodom and all those guys, they would be afraid of Abram. And so they would say, if Abram can beat these guys, perhaps we should kill Abram so we don't have to worry about him taking over us. So Abram would have had very real reason to fear for his life. And also if you remember, when he rescued Lot and the king of Sodom and all these guys, the king of Sodom says, hey, I'll give you all the stuff here. And what does Abram say? I'm not going to take anything. He gives up all of the reward. He gives up all the spoils, if you will. And so he's given up, he now has many enemies and he's given up all the money and girls, if you will. And God comes and he says, Abram, don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. I'm your shield and I'm your reward. And Abram's response is very interesting because if God came to you and said, you know, don't worry about anything. I'm going to be your shield and I'm going to be your reward. What would you say? It was me. I just a beautiful. I got nothing to worry about. What does Abram say? Look at the next few verses. Abram speaks and says, but Abram said, Oh, sovereign, Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless. And the one who will inherit my faith is Eleazar of Damascus. What happened? What is Abram getting out here? God says, I'm going to be your shield and I'm going to give you everything you need. And Abram says, what can you give me? Because I don't even have an heir. Why is Abram fixated on the heir? Why is the heir so important? Above everything else, above all the promises, Abram latches on to this promise of the heir. Why is that infinitely important? And the answer is this is because Abram has many, much bigger, much bigger problems. Then whether or not he's going to be attacked from the outside, Abram has a much bigger problem than whether he's going to be poor or not. Abram's big, huge, insurmountable problem is his sin. Abram's problem is his sin. And the problem started if you remember back in Genesis 3 with Adam and Eve. Remember, Adam and Eve, God put him in the garden and said, Adam and Eve, do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Or else you will die. What happened? They ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And guess what God says? Curse it, are you? And of course, you know, their response. The first was probably. But what does God say immediately? He says, Adam and Eve, I'm going to fix the problem. The seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent. That Eve, your seed, your offspring, through your offspring, I'm going to fix the problem of sin. And Adam and Eve believes God. You know how we know they believe God? Because at that point, Eve didn't have an anion yet. And Adam named her at that point and he said, your name is Eve. You know what Eve means? The mother of all living. Very hopeful name. And they do even get more hopeful because you know what the word can means? Their first son can. You know what that means? Here he is. That's what can means. You see? God said, I'm going to fix the problem with your offspring. And they had their first son and the first son was born and they named him. Here he is.
Now, the objects of their faith was a little misplaced if you know the history of can enable. However, the subject or what they were looking forward to, they weren't wrong. That it would be a seed of Eve. One of her children ultimately would fix the problem of sin. So it gets to the time of Abram and God comes and he makes all of these promises. And Abram latches on to one of them more than all of the others. What is it? The promise of the seed. Because remember God said, Abram, I'm going to give you an heir or a seed and through him all the nations in the earth will be blessed. All the families in the earth are going to be blessed. And so Abram, God has come to Abram. And he's made him these big promises to keep him safe from affliction and to provide for him. And Abram is worried about something much bigger. He's sort of like Robinson Crusoe, right? If you've read Robinson Crusoe, you've heard me tell this story before. Robinson Crusoe, there's this great passage. It's sort of written like a journal. And on July 4th, that journal entry, he has been through everything. He's been shipwrecked. He's had dealt with cannibals. He had to deal with cats. He was overrun by cats and then rats and everything else was terrible. And then he goes going to look through his old ship and he finds a Bible. And Crusoe begins to read the Bible and he begins to says that he becomes convicted of his sins. And then he reads about Jesus. And he says Jesus has delivered him from his sin. And he cries out, O son of God, please forgive me all my sins. And he says from that moment on, I was born again. And then he's just gears. And he says, now I add this part so that the reader may know that deliverance from sin is a much greater blessing than deliverance from affliction. That's what Abram is worried about. Certainly all of us want to be delivered from affliction but the big question is, are you delivered from your sin? And so Abram latches on to the promise of this heir because the heir will be the one who will deliver him. And what does God say to him? Look at verses 4 and 5, it says, then the word of the Lord came to him, this man will not be your heir. But a son will come from your own body will be your heir. And he took him outside and said, look up at the heavens and count the stars. If indeed you can count them. And basically God says, Abram, trust me, he's coming, the heir is coming. And then you have the most beautiful line, almost in the whole Bible, always God say to him. And what does the Bible say? Does Abram believe the Lord? And he credited it to him as righteousness. Why is this so beautiful? Think about it. God tells him the heir. I promise you the heir is coming. And it says, Abram believed God. What did he believe? He believed God's promise. He trusted him. He said, you know, I believe that you have the power to do with your promise, but it was even more. You know what Abram believed in? The heir. Jesus. Because it says next that says Abram believed and God credited it to him as righteousness. And most of us sort of make the mistake of thinking that the word the antecedent to the pronoun it or what it refers back to is Abram's faith. It doesn't. Neither in the Hebrew nor in the English language. It says Abram believed and God credited it. The antecedent to a pronoun can't be a verb. I hope that's not too complicated. What is it talking about? You got to take it back one more step. It's this promise of the heir. The God, God credited to Abram the work or the promise of the heir. The blessing of the heir was credited to Abram. And God credited it to him as righteousness. And we know that that heir was in fact Jesus. Remember when Jesus confirmed the religious leaders and they said, our father is Abraham. And what did Jesus say to them? He said Abraham long to see my day. He saw it and was glad. You see Abram believed in Jesus. He didn't know his name. He didn't know how it would happen. But God says one of your heirs one is coming who will take care of this whole problem. Trust me or not? Red pill or blue pill, Abram? Red pill, you heard sheep the rest of your life and keep your nose clean. Blue pill? I promise you nothing but the truth. And the truth is Abram, you will be as righteous as that heir because every single ounce of his righteousness will be credited to your account. You see Abram looked forward to Jesus. We look back to Jesus. Abram looked forward. He had very little information except the promise that through this heir God would fix his sin trouble. We look backwards and God says through my heir, through Jesus I will fix your sin trouble. Now we have much better situation in Abram. Why? Because we look back and we see this person of Jesus. We see his life. We see the fact that he went to the cross and then he rose from the dead. And then he comes and he says, when I am listed up, I'll draw all men into myself. And God says you have the same responsibility as Abram. Will you trust my heir? Will you? Will you trust Jesus? That's the question. And if you do, you know what it says? Tommy believed God and it was credited to him as righteous. And he believed God and it was credited to him as righteous. How much work did Abram do to be credited with righteousness? You know just the text say Abram considered God's promise and he went home and he looked up a bunch of books about apologetics. And he really wanted to try and figure out whether or not there was a first cause. And if there was, and he would work himself forward and then maybe he would believe or doesn't take the Abram went home and he decided that he would really get his act straight. That he would stop sinning and if he could just stop for a good long while, he would prove to himself that he was good enough to be accepted by God. And at that point he would step in and say, okay, God, now I'm ready to deal with you. I'm a much better person. You know, it doesn't say that anywhere in the Bible, quite frankly. It says that Abram believed in the midst of all of his nastiness and the midst of all of his sin and the midst of all of his brokenness, he believed and it says that God simply credited to him or imputed to him righteousness. God made him righteous. And it doesn't mean that he infused him with some kind of righteousness and Abram started acting better. It means that God just gave him the account of someone who is not his own. And that's what God does for us in Jesus on the cross. But if you trust Jesus, all of your sin is imputed to him. Every bit of it, everything you've ever done or will there's imputed to him and every bit of his goodness is imputed to you. Paul says in that 1 Corinthians 5, it says that on the cross he became sinned, Jesus said, so that we might become the righteousness of God in hand. So that on the cross, think of any nasty kind of sin you can imagine. Pedophile? No problem. On the cross, Jesus becomes, he takes on all the sin of the pedophile and the pedophile becomes as righteous as Jesus. Sexual deviant on the cross, Jesus becomes that person. Why? So that you can become like him. On the cross, you know, Jesus says, I was Peter that liar, I was Jacob that denier, you know, all of these people, Jesus becomes why? So that we can become like him. And if you really understand the gospel, this is the core of every bit of it. That you don't do anything. And God comes and he says, because of the work of my son, I am willing to take you home gratis. And the biggest problem we all have is not wondering whether or not we are sinners, but whether or not we really believe that God could actually take us home gratis. And if you don't believe that all you have to do is look at the cross. And every time you think that you are not worthy, look at the cross and you say, yep, I'm not. But I've ever been against righteousness and that's the most beautiful thing in the world. And the more you grasp this, the God simply imputes to you or gives you the righteousness of Jesus, the more you're like will change, right? Because first of all, you become more humble. You look at yourself and you say, man, I thought I was all that, but really I'm not. I was so wicked that I had to have the righteousness of someone else imputed to me. It had to be given to me. You become very humble. On the other hand, you become very bold, right? Why? Because you're as righteous as Jesus. You walk around and you say, you're walking around these streets, these people should be glad I live here. I was righteous as Jesus is. And if you're as righteous as Jesus, what does that mean for your life? Think about this. Have you ever thought about what would happen if you won the lottery? Right? Everyone has. You know, if I won the lottery or you sit around, you know, you're playing some party games, right? I'm not excited about party games, but nonetheless, you're in. And you say, oh, what would you do if you won the lottery and you begin to ponder it? Or what happens if you did win the lottery? What would be the first thing you did? If you won the lottery, not only would you be extremely happy, but you would have a very extreme attitude adjustment I'm guessing. Why? Because then you would say, I'm free. All my worries are gone. I can do whatever I want now. Well, you know what Jesus says? In the cross, you win the lottery. You win. You are as righteous as Jesus. Everything that he has has been given to you. And it's sort of like Tommy Alley, you are as righteous as Jesus. What are you going to do now? Not going to do any world. I'm going to do whatever I want. Why? Because once God embraced me and given me the righteousness of Jesus, He would just assume kick his own son out of the house. You see, the beautiful thing about the gospel is that God pursues you and testers you until you get it. You know that. I don't know if some of you may have read the Travelling Mercy by Andalaman. That is a beautiful book. She's a sort of, she's raised in a sort of 60s, extremely liberal, San Francisco, atheist household where her parents are into all sorts of liberal activities. And when I say liberal, I mean, sort of like communist, I'm almost, you know, that kind of thing. And she's raised to believe that there is no God and all these kinds of things. She becomes an adult and she's sort of just this sort of wild woman. You know, she has a very lascivious life. And she's pregnant. At the point in the book, I'm getting ready to talk to you. She's pregnant. She smokes a lot of pots. She drinks scotch all the time. And on Sunday morning, she goes to the flea market in San Francisco just so she can hang out with all the freaks. You know, these are her words, not mine. And while she's at the flea market, she begins to hear music coming out of an African-American church. Just sort of gospel tunes. And she's drawn to it and she'll always listen, but she'll never go in. She goes home. She listens and never goes in. And she listens and never goes home. And then one night she and she simultaneously thinking to herself, I've got to be a better person. I'm a terrible person. I've got to be a better person. I'm a terrible person. And one night she wakes up and she has a vision of Jesus sitting at the end of her bed. And she's scared. I do scared. And she says, go away. I don't want to have anything to deal with you. And he leaves. And then she says, for the next three weeks, everywhere I went, I felt like someone was looking over my shoulder and there was a cat biting at my ankles. She says, then I woke up again one night and Jesus was pregnant. And he said, can I come in or not? She uses a bad word. She says, blank it by quit. That's where most of us are here. Whether you're a Christian or whether you're not a Christian. My guess is that most of us spend our lives striving to be acceptable and striving to have other people accept us and striving for some kind of affirmation. God says, you don't have what it takes to get that affirmation. But I want to give it to you. Take it. Take it. Take it. Take it. Take it. And we're going, no, no, I'll do it myself. I'll do it myself. What most of us need to do is simply say, and not quit like you're leaving the faith, but I quit in order to get into the faith. And once you do that, then you start to, you start living life, sort of like my daughter, Mercy, right? This week, I often tell you stories and the girls often make me cry. This week, the big thing I'm working on, you know, if my two older daughters, I got them right when I walk in and I say, who's your daddy? They reply always. You're the man. And for Mercy, I had been working on that over and over and over and over and over and I say, who's your daddy? And she'll do it. Like the cat, someone that Judy makes or made all, she's made all of our children. Mercy says these mommy and daddy tapes. Really, Mommy does the whole thing and daddy comes in at the end and says something, you know, with him and things and Mercy listens to it. And on Mercy's dad, mommy, daddy tape, I don't remember, I don't remember even saying this, but at the end of it, all I said was Mercy, all I want you to remember is that daddy loves you. And no matter what you do to me, you can never get kicked out of the house. And anyhow, I walked in her room the other day to help her with something and I walked in the room and she had that tape on and my voice came on and said, Mercy, but before I could say it, she looked at me and said, I'm not at the house. And I said, what do you mean? She says, I'm in the house. I said, Mercy, do you think you can ever get kicked out of the house? And she's like, yeah. And you know, I'm certainly disappointed about who's your daddy thing, but I was very excited about this. And I went down, I ran downstairs, I said, Judy, Mercy, get that, I can't get kicked out of the house. You see, if God imputes to you, the righteousness of his son, what he is saying is that you are as dear to me and you are as beloved to me as Jesus. You are not neutral. You're not neutral. You're not just forgiven and now you walk around and keep your nose clean. You are dear to God. And because of that, I'm not only will I never let you go, but he will pursue you. God thinks about that. Go out and celebrate that Reformation day. Let me, let me pray. Jesus, I thank you that you would seem fit to go to the cross, that you would live the life we should have lived and died the death we should have died so that we might be credited with all of your work, with all of your righteousness. And because of that, God, the Father, would be pleased with us and would reign benediction and blessing upon us. We thank you for that and praise you. And your name, amen.