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We Need a Little Christmas | Week 5 | Bill Bush · Rewind

Rock Point Church

70 min

Pastor Bill Bush · Dec 13, 2021 · 4 min read · 70 min listen

The big idea

We are made right with God through faith — believing God, not through a formula of good works, rituals, or law-keeping.

In this message

The big idea
Point 1 of 6We naturally default to 'Batman belief' — trying to earn God's favor through our own strength, mind, and effort.
Point 2 of 6Abraham was made right with God by believing God, not by doing anything to earn it.

Point 3 of 6Good works cannot make us right with God — they are a response to grace, not a payment for it.
Point 4 of 6Religious rituals like circumcision or baptism cannot make us right with God — they are signs that follow faith, not causes of it.
Point 5 of 6Keeping the law or having the right information cannot make us right with God either.
Point 6 of 6Faith is God's grace and power on display, resurrecting us into something new rather than improving our old selves.
Take it into your week
Transcript

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Scripture in this message

Genesis 15:6
Romans 4:4
Romans 4:9
Galatians 3:17-25
Romans 4:16-17

Rewind AI drafted the Big Idea and some point headings shown here from the sermon transcript. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

Pastor Bill Bush · Dec 13, 2021 · 70 min watch · 2 min read

We Need a Little Christmas | Week 5 | Bill Bush

In this message

Big Idea
Key points
Application

Scripture in this message

Genesis 15:6
Romans 4:4
Romans 4:9
Galatians 3:17-25
Romans 4:16-17

Big Idea Key points Application

Big Idea

We are made right with God through faith — believing God, not through a formula of good works, rituals, or law-keeping.

Christmas happened because none of us can earn our way to God by being good enough, religious enough, or knowledgeable enough — we are all Batman trying to outrace Superman, and we can never win. God's grace, shown through Abraham's example, comes to those who simply believe God, not just believe in Him, and that faith alone is what makes us right with Him.

Key points

1
1We naturally default to 'Batman belief' — trying to earn God's favor through our own strength, mind, and effort.
Pastor Bill uses Batman, an elite but merely human hero, to picture how we try to be made right with God through our own resources and effort. He points out that Batman can never beat Superman no matter how hard he trains, just as we can never become perfect enough to be right with God on our own.
2
2Abraham was made right with God by believing God, not by doing anything to earn it.
Pastor Bill walks through Genesis 15:6 and Romans 4, noting Abraham was 75, childless, and had done nothing to deserve God's promise when he simply believed God. He draws a key distinction between believing in God and actually believing God when He says something we don't like.
3
3Good works cannot make us right with God — they are a response to grace, not a payment for it.
Working through Romans 4:1-8, Pastor Bill shows that if we could earn righteousness through good works we'd have something to boast about, but Scripture says righteousness comes through faith in the One who forgives sinners. He contrasts David, who agreed with God and repented when confronted with sin, against Saul, who argued and justified himself, to show the difference between true faith and self-justification.
4
4Religious rituals like circumcision or baptism cannot make us right with God — they are signs that follow faith, not causes of it.
Pastor Bill shows that Abraham was declared righteous fourteen years before he was circumcised, proving the ritual only symbolized a faith relationship that already existed. He applies this directly to baptism and church attendance today, warning against treating rituals as the thing that earns God's acceptance.
5
5Keeping the law or having the right information cannot make us right with God either.
Pastor Bill notes the law didn't even exist until 430 years after Abraham was already declared righteous, so knowing and keeping rules was never what made anyone right with God. He explains from Galatians that the law's purpose was to reveal our need, not to give us a checklist to beat others with.
6
6Faith is God's grace and power on display, resurrecting us into something new rather than improving our old selves.
Pastor Bill highlights Romans 4:16-17, where Abraham believed in the God who brings the dead back to life and creates something out of nothing. He explains that Batman belief minimizes grace and maximizes self, while true faith maximizes God's grace and power and minimizes us.

Application

Pastor Bill's charge is to stop trying to be a Batman believer and simply believe God.

Ask where you need to believe God, not just in God
Pastor Bill asks everyone to look for the specific place where they believe in God generally but refuse to actually believe what He has said, and to name that gap honestly.
Stop arguing and justifying, and confess
For those choosing to defend or excuse sin rather than agree with God about it, Pastor Bill calls for the posture of David rather than Saul — agreeing with God and repenting instead of arguing.
Put your faith in the Christmas story to be made right with God
Pastor Bill invites anyone who hasn't to trust that Jesus lived, died, and rose to justify us, since that faith alone, not effort or ritual, is what makes a person right with God.
Trust God in the area you feel you can't
For those facing something God has asked of them that feels impossible, Pastor Bill urges believing God anyway, since His power shows up most clearly when we have run out of our own willpower.

Take it into your week

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

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Scripture in this message

From the transcript
“For scriptures tell us Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith. So right there. So so he's saying do good works. He says, no. If you could do good works, you'd be bragging. And then he quotes that quote is from Genesis fifteen six”
Read the whole chapter →
Paraphrase of the transcript
Look at verse four. When people work you know what? Let's let's make that relevant to the day. If people work. When people work, their wages are not a gift, but something they've earned.
From the transcript
“Let's look at verse nine. Now is this blessing only for the Jews? Because now he's kinda saying, because there's a lot of these Gentiles”
From the transcript
“If you go to Galatians, the book of Galatians, it has a section there where it talks more in-depth about this. Galatians three verse 70 through 25 actually explains what the purpose of the law was, its real purpose”
From the transcript
“these last two verses in verse sixteen and seventeen is to show us that we're made right with God through faith, believing God, not a formula, because in that, it demonstrates God's grace and God's power”
From the transcript
“Look at verse sixteen and seventeen. So the promise is received by faith. It is given as a free gift and we're all certain to receive it whether or not we live according to the law of Moses if we have faith like Abraham”

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

7-day devotional

A personal reading plan from this message — scripture, reflection, and prayer for each day.

Sign in to track your progress through this devotional.

Day 1

Pastor Bill opened with a question that cuts straight to the heart: what did Abraham actually do to get right with God? The answer Paul gives in Romans 4 is almost jarring — nothing. Not a single work, not a single act of religious discipline, not a single moment of moral achievement credited to his account. If Abraham had been justified by works, Paul says, he would have something to boast about. But before God, there is nothing to boast about. This matters because most of us, if we are honest, are quietly running a ledger. We weigh our good days against our bad ones. We think, surely if I do enough of the right things, God will be pleased with me — or at least more pleased than He was yesterday. But that is exactly the system Paul is dismantling. God does not grade on a curve. His standard is perfection, and no human effort reaches it. The good news tucked inside this hard truth is remarkable: righteousness is not something you earn. It is something you receive. The word Paul uses — credited — is an accounting term. God places something in your account that you did not put there. That is grace. Not a reward for effort, but a gift for faith. The invitation today is simply to stop performing and start receiving.

For reflection

Where in your life are you still trying to earn God's approval through effort or good behavior, rather than receiving what He has already offered?

Pray

Pray for honesty about the ledger you may be keeping, and for the freedom that comes from releasing it to God.

Day 2

There is a difference between believing in God and believing God, and Pastor Bill was careful to name it. Believing in God is intellectual agreement — yes, He exists, yes, He is powerful, yes, the story is probably true. But believing God is something entirely different. It means taking Him at His word, even when what He says seems impossible from where you are standing. Genesis 15:6 is the verse the entire chapter of Romans 4 hangs on. Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. At the time, Abraham had no children. He was old. His wife Sarah was well past the age of childbearing. And yet God had promised him descendants as numerous as the stars. Abraham did not resolve the tension between the promise and the circumstances. He simply trusted the One who made it. That kind of faith is not naive optimism. It is a settled confidence in the character and power of the God who makes promises and keeps them. It does not require you to understand how He will do it. It requires you to trust that He will. If you find yourself staring at a gap between what God has said and what you can see, you are in good company. Abraham stood in exactly that gap — and faith is what carried him through it.

For reflection

Is there a promise from God, or a sense of His direction, that you are struggling to trust because the circumstances seem to contradict it?

Pray

Pray for the kind of faith that takes God at His word even when the outcome is not yet visible.

Day 3

Paul brings David into the conversation in Romans 4, and that is a significant move. David was not a man without failure. He was a man who had sinned deeply — and who, rather than arguing with God about it, agreed with Him. The Psalms are full of that posture: raw honesty, no self-justification, and a hand open to receive the forgiveness God was already offering. Pastor Bill named this directly: there is a difference between agreeing with God about sin and arguing with Him. We argue when we minimize, rationalize, or explain away choices we know are not right. We agree when we stop defending and start confessing. And here is what is striking about David's story — the blessing Paul describes is not reserved for people who never fell. It is credited to the one whose sin is covered, whose wrongdoing is not counted against them. That word covered is worth sitting with. God does not pretend the sin never happened. He covers it. That is not a legal technicality; it is a deep act of mercy. If there is an area of your life right now where you have been quietly justifying something God calls sin, the invitation is not condemnation — it is the same invitation David received. Stop arguing. Agree with Him. The forgiveness is already there.

For reflection

Is there something in your life you have been explaining or minimizing to God rather than simply bringing it to Him honestly?

Pray

Pray for the courage and humility to agree with God about whatever He is naming in your heart right now.

Day 4

Paul asks what seems like a narrow, historical question in Romans 4: was Abraham justified before or after he was circumcised? But the answer carries enormous weight. The answer is before — long before. Abraham was counted righteous in Genesis 15, and circumcision does not appear until Genesis 17. That means the outward sign came after the inward reality. It did not create the relationship; it confirmed one that already existed. Pastor Bill drew a direct line to baptism here. In the evangelical tradition, baptism is a public declaration of a faith already placed — not the moment saving faith is created. The ritual is meaningful. It is worth taking seriously. But it does not do the work that only faith can do. If you have been baptized, that act was a beautiful and obedient response to what God had already done in you. If you have put your faith in Jesus but have never been baptized, it is a natural and meaningful next step worth exploring. The broader principle is this: we are prone to lean on visible markers — rituals, habits, church attendance — as a kind of reassurance that we are right with God. These things matter, but they are signs pointing to a relationship, not substitutes for one. The relationship itself is the thing. Everything else flows from there.

For reflection

Are there any outward religious habits or markers you have been relying on for assurance, rather than resting in your actual relationship with God?

Pray

Pray for a fresh awareness of what God has already done in you, and for any next steps He may be inviting you to take in response.

Day 5

One of the most clarifying moments in the sermon was when Pastor Bill addressed what the law was actually for. It was never the ladder to righteousness. It was the mirror that showed us we could not climb one. Paul's argument in Galatians 3 is that the law came centuries after Abraham's faith was credited as righteousness — which means the law could not have been the thing that made anyone right with God. So what was it for? Paul calls the law a guardian — a word that in its original context described a trusted servant who walked a child to school, not to teach but to protect and guide until the right time came. The law was meant to lead us somewhere: to the end of our own sufficiency, to the honest acknowledgment that we fall short, and finally, to Christ. It was not the destination. It was the road that showed us we needed one. This is why self-effort is not just ineffective — it is a misunderstanding of what the law was designed to do in the first place. It was designed to expose, not to empower. Once we see clearly that we cannot keep it on our own, we are in exactly the right posture to receive what only God can give. The law's gift is humility. And humility, it turns out, is where grace finds room to work.

For reflection

How has encountering your own limitations — moral, spiritual, or otherwise — actually moved you closer to trusting God rather than yourself?

Pray

Pray for the humility to let your shortcomings point you toward grace rather than toward harder self-effort.

Day 6

Pastor Bill leaned into verses 16 and 17 as the theological heartbeat of the whole chapter. Righteousness comes by faith so that it can be by grace — and so that it can be available to everyone, not just those with the right lineage or the right record. The God Paul describes here is not adjusting an existing reality. He is speaking into nothing and creating something. He calls into existence things that do not yet exist. He gives life to the dead. That is not a poetic flourish. It is the actual mechanism of salvation. You do not come to God with a mostly-good record that He rounds up. You come with nothing — or worse — and He makes you entirely new. The Batman illustration Pastor Bill used lands here: Batman is impressive, but he is still just a man in a suit running on his own resources. Superman's power is a different category entirely. When God saves, He is not upgrading you. He is resurrecting you. If you are somewhere today that feels like a dead end — a marriage, a habit, a sense of calling you cannot imagine having the strength to answer — the promise of verses 16 and 17 is not that God will help you try harder. It is that He is the God who makes things alive. That is not a pep talk. That is a resurrection promise.

For reflection

What dead end or impossible situation in your life might God be inviting you to hand over to the One who raises the dead?

Pray

Pray for faith to trust God not just with manageable challenges but with the things that feel genuinely beyond you.

Day 7

Over this week, Romans 4 has walked us through the same territory Abraham walked: the slow unraveling of self-reliance and the gradual, sometimes difficult discovery that faith is the only ground that holds. Good works cannot get us there. Religious rituals cannot get us there. Law-keeping cannot get us there. Not because those things are meaningless, but because the destination — being made right with God — requires a power that none of them carry. Pastor Bill closed with three places to land, and they are worth returning to at the end of the week. If you have never placed your faith in Jesus, that is the beginning of everything, and it is still available right now. If there is somewhere you have been arguing with God, the door to agreement and forgiveness is still open. And if God is asking you to step into something that feels beyond your strength, your resources, or your faith — you are in exactly the right place. That is not a disqualification. It is the starting line. The goal was never a stronger version of you. It was always a wholly new one, made possible only by the God who spoke light into darkness, called a childless man the father of many nations, and raised Jesus from the dead. That same grace and power is at work in you.

For reflection

Looking back over this week, which of Pastor Bill's three closing invitations speaks most directly to where you are right now — and what would it look like to take one honest step in that direction?

Pray

Pray for the courage to act on whatever God has been stirring in you this week, and for the people around you who need to hear that this grace is available to them too.

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

Small-group discussion guide

For leading a group conversation about this message.

Open

This message puts a surprising question on the table: What if our best efforts to be good enough for God are working against us rather than for us? Take a moment to share one thing from the message that stuck with you — a phrase, an image, anything at all.

Discussion questions

1
In Romans 4:1-5, Paul argues that if Abraham had been made right with God through his works, he would have earned something — and God would owe it to him. What is the difference between a relationship built on earning and one built on gift, and why does that distinction matter?
2
Pastor Bill drew a distinction between believing in God and believing God. What do you think that difference looks like in practice — and how did Abraham's response to God's promise in Genesis 15:6 illustrate it?
3
Paul brings in David in Romans 4:6-8 as a second witness. David was someone who had clearly failed morally, yet Paul says God's blessing rested on him. What does David's example suggest about how God responds when someone agrees with Him about their sin rather than arguing against it?
4
Pastor Bill made the case that religious rituals — circumcision in Paul's day, baptism today — are outward signs of an inward relationship that already exists, not the thing that produces it. How does Romans 4:9-12 support that reading, and how might that reframe the way we think about outward expressions of faith in general?
5
Romans 4:16-17 describes God as the One who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that do not yet exist. Pastor Bill connected that to the way God works in a person who feels like they are at the end of themselves. What does it mean for salvation — and for everyday faith — to rest on that kind of power rather than on our own resources?
6
Pastor Bill closed by describing three places people might find themselves: someone who has never trusted Jesus, someone who is currently arguing with God about something, and someone who feels completely unequipped for what God is asking. How might the vision of God's grace and power in Romans 4 speak to each of those situations — and how could we as a group help one another live out of that reality rather than our own effort?

Pray together

The God who brings the dead back to life and makes us entirely new by grace

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

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Go deeper

Continue the series

We Need a Little Christmas

Week 5 · 6 messages

Where these passages are preached

Genesis 15 Romans 4 Galatians 3

Explore related topics

Abraham's Example Believing God Grace vs. Works Justification by Faith Surrender and Trust

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