“Abraham’s Faith…and Ours” ¹

As we continue to experience the Word of the Lord together, Let us Pray. Guide us, O God, by your Word and Spirit, that in your light we may see light. Send out your light and your truth, O God, and let them lead us. Amen.

Romans 4 is the Abraham chapter from Paul. In the whole chapter, Paul lauds the faith of Abraham and compares it to our life in Jesus Christ. Today, there are many Christians who would just as soon leave out the Old Testament, or at least portions of it. Granted, that was declared heresy by the church in the 2^nd Century, and you can Google the Marcian heresy to read up about it if you like. But even though randomly deciding which scripture you want and ignoring the rest has been considered, well, heresy for nearly 1850 years, folks still do it all the time. Some folks will talk to you over and over about this or that law, but forget that Paul wrote that the law was dead. Or they will talk to you over and over about grace, and ignore the fact that Paul wrote of cheap grace, where we take grace in but don’t live any differently.

But Paul, the writer of more of the New Testament than anyone but Luke, certainly does not make that same mistake. Paul doesn’t dismiss the Old Testament, in fact he embraces it and uses it as proof that Jesus is the Christ, that God does indeed love humanity, that God is good. In what became a pivotal letter in the New Testament, Paul uses a figure from the Old Testament so far back in history as to be considered the grandfather of faith. Paul goes all the way back to the Genesis of faith, to the beginning of the Old Testament to bring about his point of faith.

So, hear now The Word of the Lord as it comes to us in Romans. Listen for God’s Word for you today.

Romans 4.13-25.

¹³For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. ¹⁴If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. ¹⁵For the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation. ¹⁶For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us, ¹⁷as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”)--in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. ¹⁸Hoping against hope, he believed that he would become “the father of many nations,” according to what was said, “So numerous shall your descendants be.” ¹⁹He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. ²⁰No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, ²¹being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. ²²Therefore his faith “was reckoned to him as righteousness.” ²³Now the words, “it was reckoned to him,” were written not for his sake alone, ²⁴but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, ²⁵who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.

The Word of the Lord…Thanks be to God.

I don’t know how much you follow the Middle East, and the struggle between Palestine and Israel. And there is clearly no easy solution out there, and possibly no solution that will leave all parties satisfied. See, both groups think that God has granted them that land. But, what we find in Romans 4.13 that Paul writes something different. “For the promise that he would inherit the world…” (underline mine) Paul addresses more than just a strip of land, it is the whole world. This is the beginning of a completely transformed idea of land: that the whole world – in Romans 8 the entire creation – is claimed by God as hold land, and is promised to Abraham and his family as their inheritance. This is one of the most breathtaking revisions of standard Jewish thinking that is found in the New Testament. The privilege of geography, as of birth, counts for nothing in the new world ruled over by the crucified, risen and victorious Messiah.

God’s covenant justice was always designed to put the whole world in order; certainly, as the world’s creator and judge, God is under self-imposed obligation to do nothing short of that. So it should be no surprise that while Paul is explaining how Abraham’s descendants have been transformed into a multiethnic entity, Paul also insists that God’s real intention in promising Abraham the land of Canaan was to claim, rule, and renew the whole world. This is not the exclusion of the Old Testament, it is the fulfillment of it.

The main point of the first 3 verses is that the promises to inherit the world were not made upon the law, because, and you can do the math on this yourself, Abraham didn’t possess the law. Moses, who came along more than 500 years after Abraham, received the law. Hard to possess something that won’t come into being for more than 500 years.

But not only that, Paul gives a warning. If you introduce the law, and following the law as a prerequisite to receiving grace, you will end up with nobody inheriting at all; inheriting the world, grace, the kingdom of God, nothing. See, the law’s function is to point out sin and deal with it. And there is quite a load of sin to point out and deal with, not the least of which is within the covenant people themselves. Therefore, if the law were to be a defining characteristic of God’s people, God wouldn’t have a people at all, for nobody can live up to the law. There must be, Paul writes, a law-free zone to live and flourish within. Otherwise faith, including the faith of Abraham who hadn’t even had the privilege of being alive while the law was given, would be useless, and even bigger, the promises of God made to Abraham and to humans throughout time, would be useless. Meaning, God would be making promises that God couldn’t keep. Does that sound like God to you?

When Melissa and I moved to New Jersey, there were many reminders of the early pioneers who arrived in a new and unknown land with little idea of what they would find. One of the ways I would take to school took me past a famous battleground from the Revolutionary War. In a 20 minute drive, we could pass the “Washington Crossing Park” a place to commemorate where George Washington famously crossed the Delaware. Once, when we were having lunch, someone from Texas was going on and on about state pride. My friend, who had grown up in New Jersey was saying that Jerseyans also have a deep sense of state pride. “Well, it can’t be as much as Texas pride.” I didn’t know it was a contest, but apparently it was. “We spend years studying state history in school, it’s mandatory. More than any other state. So you can’t have the pride that we Texans have. Do you study state history in New Jersey?” My friend quickly replied, in one of those moments where you actually say the right thing, instead of coming up with it two hours later. My friend replied, “We studied years of New Jersey history. We just called it American history.”

Melissa and I worshiped in a few churches, several of which were older than our country itself, having been formed in the 1600’s or early 1700’s. One such church was where I did my field education, like George and Jerrod & Ed before him did here. This particular church beat the Declaration of Independence by about 10 years. And all of the pews were split in the middle with doors on the end. We were told that the reason for this is that the church was built before heating units were invented. So, to keep warm during the winter, a family would bring a bucket from home, have filled it with coals from the stove / fire at home, and then keep it with them on the floor, close the pew door to keep the heat in as much as possible. The Pastor was not given any such luxury, in order to keep the sermons shorter. But alas, the Pastor would wear that heavy robe, keeping the Pastor warm enough to preach for an average of well more than 45 minutes.

It sounds like a tough existence, not just the long sermons, but having to carry around fire coals to keep warm. But, they hoped, they worked, they built families, communities, and a country. Somehow in there, and I know the correlation isn’t perfect, I think of the ridiculous faith and hope of Abraham. The Guinness book of World records has the oldest woman to give birth at 67. But we all know how incredibly rare it is to have a child beyond 50, much less 100. Yet God makes an extraordinary promise to a childless couple nearly that age. “Your descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky, or the sand on the seashore.” This was the faith at the heart of the covenant relationship established between God and Abraham, between God and us. Faith in the God who promises apparently impossible things and then accomplishes them. The phrase, hoping against hope, which we sometimes use to indicate that we’re clinging on even though it seems ludicrous to do so, comes originally from verse 18. It is Paul who coined that phrase.

As Romans 4 comes towards its end, we realize that Paul is writing, on a large scale, that the ancient dream has been fulfilled. God called Abraham to undo the sin of the human race, and this is exactly what has happened. God is the God of new hope, of new fruitfulness, because God is the God of new starts, of fresh creation.

Now, the new creation hasn’t happened through Abraham alone, of course. Paul has written already about how God will count that those who believe in Jesus are members of the covenant family. This is Paul’s whole argument, that God came to earth in Jesus Christ in order to defeat death, and to therefore leave to rest any claim sin and death have on us. Through this victory, we have been made right by God. God came to earth to win a war which humans alone were destined to loose. God has shown that death can be defeated, and in the end, will be ultimately defeated. Those who believe that Jesus is the Messaiah to do for humanity what it was incapable of doing for itself, are part of the single world-wide family promised to Abraham.

This does raise some questions, theological questions. But more importantly, I think it raises some personal questions. Do we share Abraham’s faith? Do we look in love, gratitude, and trust to the Creator God who promises impossible things and then delivers them? Have we learned to celebrate this God, and to live as one family with all those who share this hope?