Explore how faith is not a human endeavor but a divine gift bestowed upon us. By examining Abraham’s experience, we uncover the profound truth that God seeks us out with the promise of spiritual inheritance. It challenges the conventional belief that we must find God, highlighting how God comes to us with the priceless gift of faith, extending the same promise to us as he did to Abraham.
So as I said yesterday, when Paul asks the question, what then shall we say that Abraham our father has found according to the faith, according to the flesh, that question in its larger meaning is the question of how does a person find God? Does he go searching after him? Does he go into a self-initiated religious exercise? Or does he realize that God comes to him? And the message that Paul is going to make clear here through the experience of Abraham, as he has already made clear, by the way, in the second part of chapter 3 of Romans, is that God comes to human beings. All false religions are man’s search after God. The true faith alone is the revelation that God has searched for mankind. You say then, well, Colin, what am I supposed to do, just sit around and wait for God to turn up? Let me put it this way to you. When you pray to God, Father in heaven, show yourself to me, that prayer wants the truth about what is known about God and what God does, that prayer changes. And it changes into this, O Father, thank you for revealing yourself to me. Well, how has God revealed himself to you? Well, of course, once again, through Jesus. Romans chapter 3, verses 21 onwards, says, But now the righteousness of God is revealed, and that righteousness of God is the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. And so Paul backs that up with this marvelous story or history of Abraham and shows how God came to Abraham with a gift. And that gift is that Abraham will be heir of the world, according to chapter 4, verse 13, for the promise that he should be heir of the world. Now God comes to you with a gift. And it is a gift that you also should be heir. Heir of the universe. Think of that. What does Romans 8 say? For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the spirit of adoption, by whom we cry, Abba, Father. And it says in verse 17, And if we are children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. We are heirs of the universe. God didn’t simply come to us with a gift saying you will inherit the world, but rather you will inherit the universe. This is the message of the gospel. So in response to your question, what do I do then, Colin? Just sit around and wait for God? No. You receive, you act on the faith that he has already given, and you say, Father, I have been searching for you. Well, so I thought, dear God. But in fact, you were searching for me, and you came to me in Jesus. And I praise you that when you came to me in Jesus, you came to me with a gift. You came to me with the gift of your righteousness, of his righteousness which is upon me. And I thank you that in him I’m counted as whole. My faith is counted as righteousness. You see, if you’ve been an addict of some kind, whether drugs or alcohol or food or sex or gambling or whatever, you may well have searched endlessly, O God, deliver me, O God, help me, O God, set me free. But that prayer in the light of the gospel now can change. You don’t go begging before God and saying, Oh God, help me and deliver me and set me free. But rather, Oh Father, thank you that you have come to me. I didn’t see it at the beginning. I thought I was coming to you. I thought I was searching after you. But you have been searching for me. And the reason I’m praying this prayer right now is that you have brought this prayer of faith to me by your Holy Spirit. Thank you, dear God, that you are coming to me with a gift. You are coming to me with a gift of freedom. Even though I may not know freedom from addiction right away, I thank you that I have freedom from the judgment of addiction. I thank you that I have freedom from the identity of addiction. I thank you that I can now identify myself as your child through Jesus Christ, who accounts me righteous. Do you see how all this changes things? It turns prayer over on its head. It is a wonderful reality. So, do get practical with this teaching. Don’t simply look at it as a theological nicety, as something you’re learning about how God works. Yes, once you know how God works, then you grasp a hold of him with all your heart. What then shall we say that Abraham our father has found according to the flesh? Now, how do you find anything? One might say, well, you search for it. Jesus himself said, ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find. Knock and it shall be opened to you. But there’s a paradox to what he says, because who is telling you that? Jesus. And where is Jesus? On the earth. And so he is telling you that God has already come to you. And when he says, seek and you shall find, he is actually coming to you in the name of the Father, and bringing that seeking spirit to you already. Seeking is not a human initiative. How do I know that? Because Paul says in Romans 1.18 that man is not seeking after God, but suppressing God. Humanity has no desire to search for God, in fact is frightened of Him and is running away from Him. And yet God comes to us in his uncanny, clever, subtle ways, and sometimes very blatant ways, and he says, and he shows up. He shows up on a dreary, dry, sunny afternoon, and he brings himself to us and says, I have a gift for you. And it is that you shall inherit the world, the universe, through my son Jesus Christ. And so you by faith respond to him, you see. So Paul says in verse 2 of chapter 4, if Abraham was justified, that is declared innocent, by works, he has something to boast about before God. Now you see, the person who is addicted… and who does not yet know the gospel, but is a Christian, yet he doesn’t fully understand God’s good news and what God has done, thinks that he found God himself, and therefore he will often think that he loses God by himself when he gets into another drink. And he will think, oh, Lord, I lost you. I thought I’d found you, but I lost you. Please help me to find you again. And this is what I call anxiety praying. No, don’t pray anxiety prayers. They are faithless prayers, prayers without faith. Rather, pray this way, Lord, I lost you, but Father, you are the shepherd. You seek after me, and you find me, and I praise you, dear God, that I am found by you. That is a prayer of faith, you see, because you don’t feel found. You’re still struggling with your drink, but you are to let God know, Lord God, I believe you have found me. You have found me in my drink. I think I told you the story, well, I know I’ve told you often, but many, many years ago I was teaching a seminar about all this, and I was saying, listen, do not wait to get sober before you come to God, but come to God in your drunken state and let God know that you believe that you have been found by him. Well, do you know, someone came up to me After I gave this presentation, he said, I know this is true, Colin, and I’ll tell you why. Because when you came here several months ago, I was sitting on the back row drunk. and you said what you said, a similar kind of thing, and I accepted Jesus Christ as a drunken man while I was on the back row listening to what you said about God giving the gift of Christ without any works. I received it, and it changed my life. Do you see what I’m saying? This is really true stuff. So don’t just think of this as, oh, that’s a nice, interesting doctrine. I see I’ve been seeing it the wrong way around. I need to see it the right way up. No, don’t just give some intellectual assent to this. Rush to God and say, Lord God, you have come to me. I thank you that you came to me in the night season. I thank you that you came to me in the darkness of my bedroom as I lay on my bed, terrified and full of anxiety. And you led me to say, Father, thank you that you are here. Jesus, thank you that you are here. Thank you that you have received me. This is how this works. That’s how Abraham found God. He wasn’t searching for him. The finding is the effect, not the cause. The finding is the result. God comes to Abraham and says, get up. leave your country, go to a foreign land, I will bless you there, and I will make you the father of a multitude. And Paul understands that by saying that God came to him and offered him the world. What an amazing thing. And so God brings the gift, and with the gift brings the faith to believe it. That’s verse 3. For what does Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. Why was it counted? Why was faith counted to Abraham as righteousness? because it didn’t come from him. What God counts as ours is not originally ours. It’s attributed to us. It’s reckoned as if we had done it when we haven’t done it. We have faith because God has given us the gift to believe. And that gift to believe enables us to praise and thank him that he is here. Lord, you are with me in the darkness, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, dear God. I thank you that you are with me, and you do not forsake me. You even prepare a table for me, a food in the presence of my enemies. For those who believe and have faith in what I am saying, I need to tell you that the operation for Mark’s kidney in Nigeria, well, the stent has come loose. I don’t know why. I think that’s the proper termination for it. But he has to undergo another operation. I need your help. If you believe, please send a donation. Don’t bother if you don’t believe. I have no burden to share with you. But if you believe, please send your donation through the website faithquestradio.com. Thank you so very much. And thank you for all your support. This radio program keeps going because of you. Some of you have been donating all through the years, some for a few months. Thank you so very much. I’ll see you next time. Cheerio and God bless.
