Father Abraham Series

A pastor in Kansas City was calling neighborhood grocery stores and laundromats to set up some community service projects for church members to show the love of Christ around town.

On one call, the employee who answered the phone hesitated, then said, “I'll need to ask the manager, but first, let me make sure I understand: You want to clean up the parking lot, retrieve shopping carts, hold umbrellas for customers, and you don't want anything in return.”

“Yes, that's right,” the pastor replied.

After disappearing for a moment, the employee returned to the phone. “I'm sorry,” he said, “we can't let you do that because if we let you do it, we'd have to let everyone else do it, too!” (Ann Jeffries, Kansas City, Kansas, "Lite Fare," Christian Reader; CT Pastors, Sermon Illustrations).

Oh wow! Wouldn’t that be great to have everybody clean up your parking lot? But I guess they didn’t want just anybody to do it. After all, you have to be careful who you trust to do that sort of thing.

The story is a little silly, but it does raise a serious question: Who do you trust to clean up your life? When you have made a mess of things, on whom do you depend to make everything right? Tell me. Can you even trust yourself? Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Romans 4, Romans 4, where Abraham and David, after they made a mess of their lives, show us who they trusted to make things right.

Romans 4:1-3 What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness” (ESV).

Abraham did not trust himself, especially after his lie to Pharaoh nearly lost him his wife and with her all of God’s covenant blessing. No! Abraham did not trust himself. Abraham trusted God, who had promised him as many descendants as the stars in the sky.

Now, that’s incredible when you realize that at the time Abraham and his wife Sarah were well beyond their ability to have children. He was in his 80’s and she was in her 70’s (Genesis 16:16). On top of that, did you ever try to count the stars on a cloudless night?

In the mid 1500’s, famous astronomer Tycho Brahe cataloged 777 stars with the naked eye. Several centuries later, using the Kepler space telescope, astronomers cataloged over half a million stars (or 530,506 stars to be exact). Today, astronomers estimate the existence of more than two trillion galaxies, each of which has an average of one hundred billion stars. Do the math, and that adds up to two hundred sextillion stars in the observable universe (Mark Batterson, A Million Little Miracles, Multnomah, 2024, pp. 4, 21; CT Pastors, Sermon Illustrations).

God promised an old, childless couple that they would have millions upon millions of descendants; and incredibly, Abraham believed God. Literally, in the Hebrew text of Genesis, Abraham said “amen” to God’s promise—yes, it is true—and God counted his faith as righteousness.

Had God counted Abraham’s works, God would have condemned him. For, on at least two occasions, Abraham lied about his wife to save his own skin. Then he schemed with his wife to have a child through her maid when God delayed his promise. Abraham was a sinner like the rest of us, but he believed God. As a result, God declared him righteous. In the same way…

King David, also a sinner, trusted God, as well.

Romans 4:4-8 Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin” (ESV).

This is what David said AFTER he committed adultery with Bathsheba and murdered her husband. Rather than condemning him, God covered David’s sin and removed his guilt. Now, the Old Testament Law required judges to condemn the ungodly (Deuteronomy 25:1). But here, God “justifies the ungodly” (verse 4) when they put their faith in Him.

In order to clean up the mess in their lives, both Abraham and David refused to rely on their works, which could only condemn them. Instead, they relied on the Lord to make everything right. You do the same. If you want to clean up the mess in your life, first…