Welcome to a year in the Bible with daily grace. My name is Kristen and my name is Katie and we want to spend a few minutes a day with you walking through the New Testament one chapter at a time.

This year we will fix our gaze upon Christ so that we may know

him, not only with our minds but with our hearts. Together we will learn that

who Jesus is changes everything.

Welcome back to a year in the Bible with daily grace. My name is Kristen Schmucker and we are journeying through the New Testament

and we are currently in the book of Romans. Today we are going to be studying Romans chapter 4.

So far in Romans, Paul has established that everyone, both Jew and Gentile is a sinner in need of Jesus.

We are all deserving of the wrath of God for our sins,

but in God's great mercy, he sent his sinless son Jesus to bear the wrath that we deserve.

For those who believe and place their faith in Jesus, their sins are forgiven and

they are declared righteous as Jesus is righteous. This salvation cannot be earned or achieved. It is a

free gift from God by grace through faith. In Chapter 4 Paul proves that even from the origin of God's covenant people, it was faith, not keeping the law or circumcision that made man write us.

Consider Abraham, the founding father of Israel's faith.

If we flip the pages of our Bible back to Genesis 15, we will read the account of God making a covenant with

Abraham to fulfill the promises he made with him in Genesis 12

2 through 3 that Abraham would be made into a great nation and that all nations

would be blessed through him.

Again in Genesis 15, God speaks to Abraham in a vision and calls him to look up at the sky.

God tells Abraham that his descendants would be as many as the stars in the sky and Abraham

believes though he is aging and does not yet have a son of his own. God

confirmed his promise with a covenant ceremony where animals are split in half.

The tradition called for both parties of the covenant to walk through the path between the animals,

...