“GOD SOLVES YOUR CREDIT PROBLEMS” (Romans 4:18-25)
How many of you have credit cards? How many of you have good credit? How many of you have bad credit? What does your credit report look like? Would anyone this morning like to share their credit history with the group?
The more bills you miss, the worse your credit. The more bills you pay, the better your credit. Did you know, that in order to get to heaven, you need to have perfect credit? Perfect spiritual credit. Before you walk through the gates of heaven, God checks your spiritual credit history. I’ll tell you what he looks at – there are two columns on your spiritual credit report: there’s the sin column – every time you sin, you get a big minus in that column. And then there’s the righteousness column – every time you do something perfectly, you get a big plus in that column.
What do you think your spiritual credit report looks like? How many minuses would you have? Remember, every time you sin, you get a minus, and I think we all know that we would have a lot of minuses on our spiritual credit report. We’ve all sinned, whether it’s with our thoughts or words, or even our actions. Even the smallest moment of selfishness is a big minus on our credit report. Lots of minuses in the sin column, but what about the righteousness column? Remember, every time you do something perfectly, you get a plus over there, but it has to be done perfectly. How many pluses would you have? Probably not many. To do something perfectly is very difficult – our pluses would be few and far between.
So how do you think your spiritual credit report would look in the eyes of God? Not very good. Imagine applying for a loan at the bank. Whenever you apply for a loan, as you know, they ask you all kinds of questions. Imagine if this were to happen – the bank says to you: “Have you ever missed a payment?” Yes, you say. “Do you have any loan collectors after you?” Yes. “Have you ever had any property repossessed?” Yes. “Have you ever been part of a foreclosure?” Yes. “Have you ever declared bankruptcy?” Yes. Do you think you would get a loan if you answered those questions that way? I don’t think so.
Imagine standing before God, as he looks at your spiritual credit report. He sees all the minuses in the sin column. He sees hardly any pluses in the righteousness column. “This doesn’t look good,” God says to you. “I know,” you say. God says to you, “Have you ever kept any of my commandments perfectly?” No, you say. “Have you ever been selfish?” Yes, you say. “Have you ever hated someone?” Yes. “Have you ever been greedy?” Yes. With that kind of spiritual credit history, what do you think your chances would be of getting approved to go to heaven? Not good.
In the Bible, God doesn’t promises to take away your earthly credit problems. He doesn’t promise to pay off your credit cards or cover your mortgage payments. But he does promise to fix your spiritual credit problems, and today we find out how. Today we meet a man named Abraham. Abraham, just like you and I, had spiritual credit problems. He had lots of sin, and very little righteousness, just like us. God entered Abraham’s life, and gave to Abraham some impossible promises – he told Abraham that even though he didn’t have any children at the time, he would become the father of many nations – his offspring would be as numerous as the stars in the sky. And from all of those people would come one special offspring, the Savior of the world, the one who would take away his sins and bring him eternal life.
Abraham believed these impossible promises from God, but time marched on, and those promises became more and more impossible. He and Sarah got older and older, until finally they were beyond the age of having children. The part of the Bible we are looking at today, Romans 4, tells us that even though he and his wife were way beyond the age of having children, Abraham still believed. Look at what it says: “Against all hope, Abraham believed… he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead, since he was about 100 years old, and that Sarah’s womb was also dead.” Abraham and his wife were very old - elderly people – the idea of them having children was ridiculous.
There’s been lots of information in the news in the last few years about fertility drugs. Sometimes people, for one reason or another, can’t have children, and so they try fertility drugs to help make it happen. Sometimes people have a difficult time because of their age. Do you think our modern-day fertility treatments would have helped Abraham and Sarah? If Abraham and Sarah would have walked into a doctor’s office today and said, “We want to have children,” the doctor would have laughed them out of the office. “You’re in your 90’s, for goodness sake,” the doctors would say. Physically, it was impossible for them to have children.
But Abraham still believed. God had said, that from him, from this old man, would come millions of people, and ultimately the Savior of the world. That’s what God said. And even though it was physically impossible, Abraham still believed. And it wasn’t a shaky belief. Look at what it says: “Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God” – Abraham didn’t have unbelief in his heart half the time – he really and truly believed that even though he was an old man, somehow, God would keep his promises. He “was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.” Abraham believed the impossible promises of God, and we call that faith.
What if you were Abraham? What if you were, let’s say, 90 years old, and your wife is 88. God appears to you, and tells you that someday, you and your old wife are going to have a child. Would you believe him? Would you have faith that God would do this for you? That was Abraham’s situation. This teaches us what faith really is. Faith is when God gives you a promise that seems impossible, and you believe it. That’s faith.
God has given you an impossible promise, just as he gave to Abraham. Actually, in many ways, it’s a promise that’s harder to believe than the one Abraham had to believe. Here is the impossible promise that God gives to you – it’s summed up in the last verse of our text: “he was delivered over to death for our sins, and was raised to life for our justification.” That’s God’s impossible promise to you. Think about it – God says to you that his Son, up in heaven, put aside his crown, and became a human being, a peasant. And while he was on this earth he allowed other human beings to torture and eventually to kill him. But he did this for you, as a payment for your sins. Do you believe that? And if that’s not enough, God tells you that he was raised to life because of your justification. In other words, when Jesus rose from the dead, it was God’s way of saying to you, “I forgive you for all of your sins. Even though you don’t deserve it, even though you ignore me and often don’t care about me and sometimes even pretend I don’t even exist,” God says, “I love you and forgive you because of my Son, Jesus Christ has taken all your sins away.” And God doesn’t just say this to you with words – he says it to you with a miracle – raising his Son Jesus from the dead. “Believe it,” God says to you. “Believe that these things happened, and that they all happened for you, and you will have eternal life.”
That’s the impossible promise that God makes to you. Really, it’s even more outrageous than the promise God gave to Abraham. Think about it – it’s illogical – why would God do this for you? It’s unscientific – how can someone rise from the dead? It’s really unfair that God would punish his Son for your sins instead of punishing you. It’s really too good to be true. Do you believe this impossible promise?
If you do, then you are just like Abraham, who also believed the impossible promises of God. That’s what faith is.
Now what does this have to do with credit problems? Remember, at the beginning of our sermon for today, we had talked about how we all have spiritual credit problems? We all have too much sin in the sin column, and not enough righteousness in the righteousness column. What does faith have to do with that? The answer is, everything. You see, when God sees that you believe in him, even when he makes impossible promises – when God sees your faith, he fixes your credit. Look at what he does for Abraham. When Abraham believed God’s impossible promises, the Bible says, “it was credited to him as righteousness.” Do you see what happens here? The Bible tells us that God fixed Abraham’s spiritual credit. When God saw Abraham’s faith, he credited that faith to Abraham as righteousness. Picture it this way – God took Abraham’s sin column and covered it up with the blood of his Son. And then he took Abraham’s righteousness column and filled it with good things. Abraham didn’t deserve it – God did this for Abraham as a gift.
This is what God does for every person who believes his impossible promises. The Bible says, “These words ‘It was credited to him’ were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness- for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.” This is the solution to your spiritual credit problems. Instead of making you earn righteousness by being perfect, something you can’t do – God gives you a break. He sees that you believe in him, that you believe in his Son, and, as a gift to you, he credits your account with righteousness.
Imagine getting a statement in the mail from your local bank, and instead of the usual bank balance, you see that the bank has credited your account with 5 million dollars. You have a balance of $5,000,300 in your account. At first you are tempted to keep the money, but you know that it wouldn’t be the right thing to do, so you go to the bank and inquire about what had happened. Maybe they’ll reward me for my honesty, you think. “We’ve been expecting you,” the bank people say to you. “You’re right – we made a mistake. We took the money out of your account. You have a balance of $300. Have a nice day.”
And so you walk home disappointed. For a moment, you were a millionaire, but you knew that it was too good to be true.
Imagine getting a statement in the mail from God, your spiritual bank statement, and you open it up, and you see the two columns – the sin column and the righteousness column, and you are surprised at what you see. There’s no sin in the sin column, and there’s all kinds of big numbers in the righteousness column. According to this statement, you are a spiritual millionaire. Seems to good to be true, you say to yourself.
You go to the Bank of God, and inquire about this statement. God calls you into his office and says to you, “I know it seems to good to be true, but it’s true. I see that you believe in me, that you believe that my Son took your sins away. I see that you believe my impossible promises. And so I decided to do something for you, as a gift. I’m in charge of your account, and so I took all the sin out of your account, and, even though you have done nothing perfectly, I credited your faith as righteousness. That’s my gift to you.”
As you walk home, it still seems too good to be true, but it’s true. Your spiritual bank statement shows that you are a millionaire, big numbers in the righteousness column, you own a mansion in heaven, your sin has been taken away. It’s all a gift from God, made possible by your Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
