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Newington Three Angels Church

Righteousness by Faith

Eric Walsh

Salvation 101

Righteousness by Faith: The Quest for Righteousness

Righteousness by Faith: Growing in Grace

Righteousness by Faith and the Three Angels Messages

Spiritual Warfare and Righteousness by Faith

Every it seems as if every every week is only in more and more chaos and more and more problems and So it is good to know that God is in control And I can't wait for that day.

That day is the day when finally we will be reunited with the loved ones we've lost.

And so on that day, that trial and difficulty will evaporate for good.

And like the song says, the things that make us tremble now, when we reflect on them then, they will only bring a smile.

This week if you if you've been watching what's going on in the world you've seen that there's some really terrible things happening and 1 of the things I saw was in Ecuador a country I visited and did missionary work in a peak 1 of the most peaceful countries I've ever visited Was Ecuador we went from Quito all the way down to the coast and felt More safe there than anywhere and the president.

I don't know if you guys see you saw this but armed gangs gang members stormed the national television station and Laid the journalists down the police were able to take over and take back control But the president Then announces that they have an internal conflict What that means basically is that the country has a war inside of itself A lot of people were amazed that this is happening in Ecuador, but they don't realize this is happening all across the world their countries were literally we think about war as country against country, but gang warfare is going on and The rise in violence around the world is frightening if you are following what's happening in prophecy you know when Jesus says as it wasn't the days of Noah the particular sin of the days of Noah was violence.

And we are watching this in Haiti, in Jamaica, in much of Central South America, there's a fear around violence.

The United States actually struck targets along with the United Kingdom, the British, in Yemen this week.

So we're living in a time where the war in the Middle East seems now to already be slightly enlarging and expanding there are those that I think want to draw the West into a war and We as Christians you can look at it and it might make you tremble But the song gives us courage 1 day we'll look back at these signs of the times, these things that make the world to worry, that cause CNN and Fox News and MSNBC to to ring the alarms and we will realize that this was God giving us ample warning that he is soon to return.

So we're going to continue in our series today.

We're going to Go to our scripture reading Galatians 5 4 and 5 says Christ is become of no effect unto you Whosoever of you are justified by the law you are fallen from grace For We through the spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith Our message This sabbath is the second in our series on righteousness by faith.

It is entitled the quest for righteousness The quest for righteousness.

We thank you for this opportunity to study a word And once again lord, I just ask that you make me a nail on the wall and hang a portrait of jesus christ on that nail I Do not need to be seen or heard today.

This message is truly a message that must come from the throne room of grace.

Send your Holy Spirit now, Lord, and Lord, bind the devil in this place.

Cast him far away, he and his minions, Lord.

Some of us have been focused on weird things all week and otherly things all week Lord now settle us that we might receive your word For Lord, this is the word of life It's our prayer in Jesus is precious and Holy Name.

Amen So we're gonna continue on the series on righteousness by faith and it's funny You know if you if you when you preach on the Sunday law everybody tunes in You preach on the beasts of Revelation and Daniel everyone tunes in but I want to submit to you that none of that means anything if you don't understand righteousness by faith None of that means anything if you don't understand how salvation actually works and what you need to do You can be all up and down on what the Pope is doing And if you don't understand righteousness by faith, you'll be swimming next to him in the lake of fire So we're gonna go to the book of Genesis The 22nd chapter and we're gonna go to Genesis chapter 22.

We're starting verse 1 1 of my favorite Bible stories And this 1 is the story of Abraham and Isaac I Genesis 22 verse 1 says and it came to pass after these things that God did tempt Abraham And said unto him Abraham and he said behold Here I am God spoke to Abraham like this.

We're gonna see the God and Abraham were actually quite close and Here it says that God tempted Abraham But if you go to the New Testament James says God doesn't tempt anybody Well, you got to go back to the Hebrew.

The word here is better translated tested God tested Abraham And that's what this story is about, Abraham being tested.

Verse 2, and he said, "'Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, "'and get thee into the land of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt offering upon 1 of the mountains, which I will tell thee of." And so here it is.

Abraham, as you will remember, has waited almost 50 years for the promised son to arrive.

He has messed up so many times in the interim.

In fact, his wife did not trust God, Sarah, and so she actually told Abraham to marry her handmaid.

Some people think he just had a child with Hagar.

He married Hagar, and he had a son named Ishmael.

In fact, the struggle you see in the Middle East to this day is a struggle born out of Abraham's sin.

It is the division created between Hagar and Sarah, between Ishmael and Isaac that lives on to this very day.

So he messed up because they didn't trust God.

Abraham is 100 years old, when they finally have Isaac.

I mean, In modern terms, they would be great-grandparents, at least.

And can you imagine Sarah giving birth to a child, the shock that went through the camp and around to the people when they lifted Isaac up after a 90-something-year-old woman gave birth, and you could hear Isaac scream?

Now the story is that God is saying I Need to test you and I need to test you on the point of your child I watch this verse 3 and Abraham rose up early in the morning and saddled his ass and took 2 of his young men with him and Isaac his son and Claimed the wood for the burnt offering when he cut it down and took it and rose up and went into the place which God Had told him so He saddles his donkey.

He gets the wood and he begins to walk on the third day The Bible says in verse 4 Abraham lifted up his eyes took him 2 days to get there and saw the place of far off the spirit of prophecy tells us that Abraham Had sleepless nights on this journey yet He still woke up early to continue and do what God said verse 5 and Abraham said unto his young men Abide ye here with the ass and the lad will go yonder and worship and I and the lad will go yonder and worship and come again to you.

He knew what God was asking, and he did not want his servants to see it.

So Abraham tells them to stay behind, and he takes his son, and he keeps going.

Verse 6, and Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it upon Isaac, his son.

And he took the fire in his hand and a knife, and they both, and they went both of them together.

He is obeying God and the child he's been pleading for is now old enough to walk with him and carry things.

And as Abraham is walking up Mount Moriah, as he's looking to the destination, he's left his servants behind, everything he needs for a sacrifice is in his hands.

And all he has to sacrifice is the son God promised him.

It didn't take long for Isaac to figure this out He's walking I say wait a minute we missing something Isaac spake unto Abraham his father and said my father and he said here am I?

My son and he said behold the fire and the wood But where is the lamb for a burnt offering?

Isaac said wait a minute We got everything we need but we going up into the mountainside and and we didn't take a lamb out of our flock.

1 without spot or blemish like we're supposed to.

It seems like this is an incomplete journey.

How are we going to sacrifice and we have nothing to sacrifice?

Now, you have to understand, Isaac was, at this age, strong enough and quick enough that he probably could have Dropped everything and took off running and his hundred plus year old father would I had a hard time keeping up?

This story is not simply about the faith of abraham.

It is about the faith of isaac And here is the gospel given in verse 8 in a way that ought to excite you in genesis 22 in verse 8 the bible says this and abraham said my son God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering.

Here, Abraham doesn't even realize what he's fully saying maybe he understands that he's going to trust God that when he gets to the top of the mountain that God is gonna do what needs to Be done that if he has to sacrifice Isaac, he will sacrifice Isaac in fact the Spirit of Prophecy says that Abraham thought in his mind and actually could read this in the New Testament that even if he did sacrifice Isaac God could raise him from the dead.

This is not the faith Abraham had when he took Hagar.

Abraham had grown, his character had developed, he was a different person now.

He trusted God implicitly so much so that even his most precious possession his child of promise Abraham was ready to take him to the mountaintop to be sacrificed Now when I was in Israel studying Jewish history, I remember this story coming up and 1 of the things my Jewish professor says is that Abraham was testing God I don't believe that but many of the other people groups around did practice child sacrifice And so this was not as crazy a story as it might seem.

It was crazy to Abraham because Abraham did not see God that way and he knew that his son had been promised and so he says here, my son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering.

If you take that phrase, I heard a preacher do this years ago, and you move that phrase backwards, you can say, my son, God will provide himself a lamb.

Who is the lamb slain from the foundation of the world?

You can take it back 1 more word and it says, God will provide.

This church is righteousness by faith in a statement of a father taking his son up Not knowing what's going to happen and and the message for the parent is this you must be willing to give your child over to God because God will provide.

And they came to the place which God had told him of and Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son.

Can you imagine what this exchange must have been like?

Can you imagine what it would have been like for Isaac to stay there and let his father wrap him in rope?

Can you imagine what it would have been like for his father to lift him tenderly and place him on top of the altar bound in rope as if he was a lamb to be slaughtered.

The Bible says he laid him on the altar upon the wood and of course what would happen if it was an animal is that the next verse would come to fruition.

It says, and Abraham stretched forth his hand and took the knife to slay his son.

And if it was a lamb, the knife would come down, the fire would be set, and a sacrifice would be made.

And here you have Abraham, who once was so faithless that he lied about his relationship with Sarah more than once.

So faithless at 1 point that Abraham took Hagar and created all the problem and division that it created.

The knife is held up and he's ready to plunge the knife into his only child And when I say only child is only child of promise This is partly why Abraham is called the father of the faithful Abraham is where we say father Abraham how many sons remember song we used to sing how many sons has father Abraham I am 1 of them And so are you so let's just praise the Lord Because when we are in faith, it is Abraham's faith that we look to So what is the definition of faith Hebrews 11 says this now faith 11 and 1 says now faith is the substance of things what?

Hopes for the evidence of things not seen in fact The Bible says what sense does it make to hope for something that you have?

There's no reason to hope for that You have to hope for what you don't have when it speaks of salvation the Bible says that that there's a helmet of salvation and in Thessalonians says it is the helmet of the hope of salvation Faith and salvation are connected righteousness and faith are connected And so you have to Understand faith is believing when even you do not have the evidence Abraham stepped out in faith to climb that mountain with a knife and wood and rope and Holding a fire they went all the way up the mountain.

They built the altar there was no evidence that they were going to get out of it, yet he believed.

Now if we're going to talk about righteousness by faith, then the next question becomes, what does it mean to be righteous?

Well, the general definition we give as Christians in general is that righteousness is right standing with God It also means to be just to be able to stand before God Justified meaning That your sin has been dealt with to be in right standing with god means that your record has been taken care of Somebody ought to say amen.

So when you're when we think about righteousness, we first often go to deeds But you must understand that Righteousness itself means that it is a condition also that you are in You are in right standing with God.

Here's how Christianity that I calm has some good definitions that uses the Webster Merriam-webster dictionary first righteousness is divine to Define today as acting in accord with divine or moral law free from guilt or sin good definition morally right or justifiable there's the word just there a Righteous decision arising from an outraged sense of justice or morality But here's the here's here's the difference righteousness of man and the righteousness of God are different Righteousness by human standards is defined as the quality of being morally true or justifiable The justification is Made according to the conformity of behavior with the regulation like the constitution or laws of the nation that is man's righteousness Right, so you could be right on earth by just keeping the law of the land But there's a deeper meaning In its deeper spiritual meaning Righteousness is the quality of being right in the eyes of God Including and look at what it says including your character Your conscience so your nature your character Your conscience your attitude.

Series

Righteousness by Faith

Righteousness by Faith: The Quest for Righteousness

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Heaven’s Wardrobe

39m

The Sanctuary

Blood, Bronze, and Blessings

1h

The Everlasting Gospel

5. Righteousness by Faith

48m

Revelation Made Simple

6. Revelation’s Peace Maker

46m

Justified

53m

Out of the Dark Ages: Escaping Righteousness by Works

9. Righteousness Without the Law

36m

Father Abraham

54m

Christianity 24-7

1. Buried Alive

1h 15m

Jesus On Prophecy

Bible Prophecy and the Last Conspiracy

52m

Great Characters of the Bible

Great Characters of the Bible: Abraham

28m

The Parables of Jesus

The Parables of Jesus: Authenticity. Period!

28m

SWYC 2006 Plenary Sessions

What was Accomplished by the Death of Christ

58m

Sound Doctrine