Wednesday, April 13, 2016How could they miss it? Because instead of trusting God, they took matters into their own hands.
The stone was Himself, God indwelling man. 1TI 3:16 And by common confession great is the mystery of godliness: He who was revealed in the flesh, Was vindicated in the Spirit, Beheld by angels, Proclaimed among the nations, Believed on in the world, Taken up in glory.
We began a series of messages from this section on the Righteousness and Justice of God, the First Adam and the Last Adam, the
Doctrine of Imputations, which we have now completed 18 hours upon, and now our final doctrine, the Doctrine of Justification.
Doctrine of Justification.
Point 1. Introduction; ROM 4:13-25.
If those who get what God gives them only get it by doing everything they are told to do and following the rules and regulations found in the Mosaic Law, then faith is meaningless and we must live by works.
ROM 11:6 But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace.
That's not a holy promise; that's a business deal.
The law was designed to reveal our hopeless and bring us to Christ bring us to Christ.
This is why the law is said to be an unbearable yoke. (Acts 15:10) .
The Law reveals sin but cannot fix it. (ROM 3:20).
If the law worked then faith would be irrelevant. (ROM 4:14) .
The law brings wrath upon those who follow it. (ROM 4:15).
The purpose of the law was to increase sin. (ROM 5:20)
This means that Christians are not under the law. (ROM 6:14) .
Christians have been delivered from the law. (ROM 7:1-6).
The law is good, perfect and holy but cannot help you be good, perfect or holy. (ROM 7:7-12).
The law which promises life only brings death through sin. (ROM 7:10).
The law makes you sinful beyond measure or "utterly sinful." (ROM 7:13).
The law is therefore said to weak, not because it is weak but because we are weak. (ROM 8:2-3).
Where there is no law, neither is there a violation or if there is no contract in the first place, but simply a promise‑‑and God's promise at that‑‑you can't break it, why?
This is why the fulfillment of God's promise depends entirely on trusting God and His way, and then simply embracing Him and what He does.
It means both to those who keep the religious traditions and those who have never heard of them.
Abraham is not our racial father‑‑he is our faith father, the father of our faith.
Abraham is called the father of our faith because his life was one that was characterized as having faith.
We call Abraham "father" not because he got God's attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody.
Abraham was first named "father" and then became the father of our faith because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, or He calls into being that which does not exist.
When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw "he couldn't do" but on what God said "He would do."
ROM 4:18 In hope against hope he believed, in order that he might become a father of many nations, according to that which had been spoken, "So shall your descendants be."
The point is that Abraham didn't focus on his own impotence and say, "It's hopeless, instead he focused in on God's omnipotence, and said, with God all things are possible.
His hundred‑year‑old body could never father a child nor did he consider Sarah's decades of infertility and give up.
The same thing gets said about us when we embrace and believe the One who brought Jesus to life when the conditions seemed to be hopeless.
His resurrection was the validation of the sacrifice of His spiritual death and the proof of our acceptance with God.
Point 2 in the doctrine of justification is the Etymology of the word which is the origin and historical development of a word and how it was originally used in its earliest known use.