2nd September 2026

2nd September 2026


Pray (ACts)


Read (Romans 4:1-12 focus v4-8)


Message (Alan Burke)


I’ve been censored, that is by Scott. Any time I think I’m going to say anything too spicy, I send it to him to decide, and this time well, he ruled that the introduction was too spicy. He’s probably right again. So let’s use the imagery that is given here, that of wages. Paul says, “Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation.” That means when you work, what you get isn’t a gift; instead, you’ve earned it. Simple enough, isn’t it? Well, righteousness isn’t earned; it is credited, it’s a gift. Just so we don’t miss the point, Paul turns our focus from Abraham to David. 


Now let’s think on David. He was Israel’s greatest king; he united the tribes of Israel together, established Jerusalem as the capital, and expanded the kingdom significantly, creating a strong and centralised monarchy. His leadership even today among Jews is viewed as a golden age for Israel. Behind all his national achievements, David’s life showed his own moral failure; you need only think of David’s adultery with Bathsheba and how he had her husband Uriah murdered. You know, the law is clear; for what he had done, both adultery and murder, he should have been put to death (See Lev 20:10, Num 35:31). Yet David, v7, was able to say:  7 “Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. 8 Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him.”


It is not; “blessed are those who have obeyed the law”, or “blessed are those who’ve lived a good life”, or “blessed are those who worked hard enough”; No, it is “blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered… whose sin the LORD will never count against him”. Being blessed by God is receiving his favour. Think of the Aaronic blessing in Numbers 6; “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.” (Num 6:24-26). There what it is to be blessed is that the Lord’s face would shine on his people, meaning that they would have fellowship with him, they understood that blessing in terms of proximity to the presence of God. But we are confronted in scripture that God cannot look on evil, Habakkuk 1; Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong. Why then do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves? (Hab 1:13).


If God cannot look at evil, and we are evil, then unless our sin is covered, he will never make his face shine upon us. How is our sin covered? Our sin is covered through what the Lord Jesus Christ has done. The opposite of blessed is to be cursed. In fact, cursed are those whose transgressions are not forgiven, whose sins are not covered, whose sin the Lord counts against him. While he had no sin, Jesus Christ was cursed for us; God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor 5:21). For Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree (Ga 3:13). On the cross, our sin was imputed to him, credited to him, counted to him. As he hung there on the cross, he became sin for us; he became the most reprehensible sinner that ever was in the sight of a holy God, for upon Him was placed the sin of all whom He died for. All so that we might become the righteous of God, knowing what it is to be blessed by God. Brothers and sisters, marvel this day at what your God has done for you so that you may be forgiven.


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q55 What is forbidden in the third commandment?
A. The third commandment forbiddeth all profaning or abusing of anything whereby God maketh himself known.
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