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

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

Pastor Bill Bush · Dec 13, 2021

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

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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.
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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.
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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.
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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

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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”
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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”

7-day devotional

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

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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.

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

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Topics

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

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