Sermon Notes 7/22: “Our Father Abraham”

As Americans we tend to like things that are new more than we like things that are old. This is true for almost everything. As soon as you get something new you want to use it right away. How many of you have gone to the store and bought something that you’re running out of, like toothpaste or milk, and been tempted to use the new stuff even though the older stuff is still good?

This is good…

But this is even better, right?

The people who lived in Paul’s time were way different from this, especially when it came to religion. As we have seen, Paul has introduced some radical ideas to his readers in Rome. Again, following the progression of his argument, he started out telling the Gentile Christians at Rome that they were slaves to sin and deserving of God’s wrath. Then he probably shocked the Jewish Christians in Rome by pointing out that they had no advantage. As we have repeated over and over, the Jews relied on the fact that they were God’s “Chosen” people, as represented in the ritual of circumcision and keeping the Law of Moses. Paul pointed out to the Jews that even though they did have these things, they didn’t help, because the Jews were just as guilty of sin as the Gentiles, and so they, too, stood condemned by God. He concluded by declaring that all were sinners and all were deserving of God’s wrath. The whole point of this was to make sure that none of the Roman Christians – Gentile or Jew – thought they could rely on anything of their own to make them right with God.

Then last week we read what Paul wrote about the remedy. Yes, it was true that all were condemned and no one could stand in right relationship with God on their own merits, but as he had written to the Corinthian Christians what God had told Paul about his own struggle with affliction, “my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Cor. 12:9 NIV) What this means is that when all seems lost and hopeless, when people have come to the point that they are powerless, God can and does supply the needed power. The power to defeat sin so that people could be in right relationship with God, Paul told us last week, comes through the atoning sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus. So the way to right relationship with God is not through being “good” or counting on human strengths or attributes, but in surrendering to the cross and being reborn “in Christ.”

This is the gospel. Remember that the Greek word for gospel, euangelion, is translated into English as “good news” but in the ancient world it meant a lot more than just good news, it was a joyful proclamation of a great victory. If you were here last week I’m sure you remember that I used a clip from the movie “Lord of the Rings” to illustrate the great triumph of good over evil, and I mentioned that even though that scene was really dramatic, it was only a shadow of the victory that Christ won over sin and death. The news of that victory is really “great news.”

But all of that would have created another set of problems for Paul’s audience in Rome. For the Jewish Christians, the idea that their Messiah was a convicted and crucified criminal would have been nearly beyond belief. The Jewish community at that time was expecting a deliverer, but they were thinking in terms of a great King like David who would command powerful armies, maybe even armies of angels, to defeat the Romans and reestablish the earthly kingdom of Israel. They would never have expected that the Messiah could be a convicted criminal. And for the Gentile Christians, there was an automatic aversion to any kind of religion that was “new.” The way that a philosophy gained credibility was by being old. They would have thought of a new philosophy or religion as suspect. All of their traditions were old, going back to the times before anyone could remember. That was what gave them their power, the fact that they had lasted so long.

So Paul’s next task after laying out the basics of the problem and the solution was to show both the Jewish and the Gentile Christians that Jesus was the fulfillment of the ancient promises, the very thing that the Jewish scriptures had predicted thousands of years earlier. This is the purpose of what we read in Chapter 4 of Romans.

4 What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, discovered in this matter? ² If, in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about—but not before God. ³ What does Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” ^w

⁴ Now to the one who works, wages are not credited as a gift but as an obligation. ⁵ However, to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness. ⁶ David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the one to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:

⁷ “Blessed are those

whose transgressions are forgiven,

whose sins are covered.

⁸ Blessed is the one

whose sin the Lord will never count against them.” ^z

⁹ Is this blessedness only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? We have been saying that Abraham’s faith was credited to him as righteousness. ¹⁰ Under what circumstances was it credited? Was it after he was circumcised, or before? It was not after, but before! ¹¹ And he received circumcision as a sign, a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. So then, he is the father of all who believe but have not been circumcised, in order that righteousness might be credited to them. ¹² And he is then also the father of the circumcised who not only are circumcised but who also follow in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.

¹³ It was not through the law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith. ¹⁴ For if those who depend on the law are heirs, faith means nothing and the promise is worthless, ¹⁵ because the law brings wrath. And where there is no law there is no transgression.

¹⁶ Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring—not only to those who are of the law but also to those who have the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all. ¹⁷ As it is written: “I have made you a father of many nations.” ^o He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed—the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not.

¹⁸ Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” ^{t 19} Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. ²⁰ Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, ²¹ being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. ²² This is why “it was credited to him as righteousness.” ²³ The words “it was credited to him” were written not for him alone, ²⁴ but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. ²⁵ He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification. (Romans 4:1-25 NIV)

The first thing we want to do here is to think about the story of Abraham. Some of us may know the basics of the story but it is important to consider him here for two reasons. The first is, obviously, that Paul assumed his readers knew about Abraham and so what he wrote here was based on that knowledge. For us to understand what his readers would have seen, we have to know what they probably knew.

But secondly, after Jesus, Abraham is probably the most important person in the Bible. It was through him that God initiated his plan to free the world from sin and corruption. Abraham is considered the progenitor of both the Jews and the Arabs. Abraham would become the father of three religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. There are many important characters in the Bible, but none of them other than Jesus himself compare to Abraham in terms of importance in God’s story of salvation.

So who was Abraham? Abraham actually started off with the name Abram and it was later changed to Abraham. Abram was a very wealthy man who lived in what was then the center of civilization. The Bible calls it Ur but it is in what we today call Iraq. It was a very fertile and sophisticated place. Abram’s wealth was mostly in his flocks because wealth at that time was mostly measured in agricultural goods. Living in Ur would have been for him like living in La Jolla or Rancho Santa Fe for us.

But in Chapter 12 of Genesis we see that God spoke to Abram. He said, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Gen 12:1-3 NIV). Now Abram was 75 years old when this happened. So you might think that Abram was just settling in to enjoy his prosperity when all of a sudden he gets this call. We don’t know how God spoke to Abram; all we know is that Abram responded without questioning. The Bible just tells us “So Abram went.” (Gen. 12:4 NIV).

This tells us a lot about Abram because the journey he went on wasn’t like hopping in the car and driving to L.A. Here’s a map that shows the probable route of Abram’s journey. He travelled from Iraq to where Israel is today. If you go straight from Iraq to Israel it’s about 500 miles. That’s about the distance from San Diego to San Francisco or to the Grand Canyon. So you have to think about what God was telling Abram when he said to go: it’s like, “take all of your relatives thousands of farm animals and everything you own and walk to San Francisco. Or more like walk to somewhere in the desert between Phoenix and Santa Fe, because the country he was going to was mostly a desert. I’m pretty sure that if I came in here today and told you guys to do that you’d just laugh it off. But that’s not what Abram did. The Bible just tells us “So Abram went.” (Gen. 12:4 NIV)

Abram believed the promise. But there was a big problem with this promise, and that was that God had said he would bless all peoples of the earth through him, but he was childless, and his wife Sarai was barren. So even though Abram keeps hearing from God that he will be the source of blessing for the whole earth, he has to have doubts because he is getting really old and his wife does not seem to be able to have children. One day the Lord appears to Abram in a dream and reminds him of his promise, and Abram expresses his doubts to God. He essentially tells him, “You keep telling me that, but I’m not seeing any kids here. And I’m not getting any younger and neither is Sarai.”

And it is here, in Genesis Chapter 15, that God tells Abram, “’…a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.’ ⁵ He took him outside and said, ‘Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’ ⁶ Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” (Gen. 15:4-6 NIV).

Now here’s the kicker. Later, when Abram is 90 years old, God again repeats his promise to Abram, this time changing his name from Abram to Abraham. This happens in Chapter 17 of Genesis. Abram, by the way, means something like “esteemed father,” and Abraham means “father of many.” And it is here, in Chapter 17, that God makes the covenant of circumcision with Abraham. The covenant is a physical sign of God’s promise that all male descendants are required to do, even to the present day. For the Jewish people it is like Baptism for Christians: an outward, physical sign of an inward, spiritual reality. In the case of baptism, it is a sign that we have surrendered our lives to Jesus; in the case of circumcision, it is a sign that someone is heir to the promise. What promise? The promise that God made to Abram when he told him to leave Ur in Chapter 12.

And this is Paul’s point. Between the time that God called Abram, and the time that he established the covenant of circumcision, God reassured Abram of his promise. And, “⁶ Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” (Gen. 156 NIV).

Now here’s where we have to be really careful. It’s really easy to fall into the trap that the Jews of Jesus’ time had fallen into and that many people after that including many Christians today fall into also, and that is the idea that in this incident there is some kind of an exchange between God and Abram. The wrong way to read it is to think, “Well Abram believed, and as a reward for that, he was made righteous.” But if that was true, that would mean that all of the things we have learned from Paul up to now are wrong. Because Paul has been telling us that humans can’t do anything to make themselves righteous, and if Abram could be made righteous by believing, Paul’s argument would be false. That would be what we call a theology of works.

Paul has been telling us all along that the righteous shall live by faith, not works. What does that mean? It can’t mean that we reach deep down inside ourselves and find something called faith and bring it up and give it to God, and in return God gives us righteousness. Paul even says that in his letter to the Ephesians “⁸ For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Eph. 2:8 NIV). What does it mean when Moses writes. “Abram believed the Lord…”? Abram believed that God would fulfill his promise.

If you have a $20 bill you use it to buy things because you believe the bill has value. But the fact that you believe the bill has value doesn’t give it value. The value is in the bill itself, or in the government that backs it, not in your belief. So if I were to pull out a blank piece of paper and try to spend it, I couldn’t, because the paper has no value, whether I believe it or not. Same thing with God’s promise to Abram. Abram was able to hold on to the promise because he believed it to be true, but his belief didn’t make it true. Its truth came from God himself.

So when the text says the Lord “credited it to him as righteousness” what is Moses talking about? What is “it”? It can’t be Abram’s belief, because the promise doesn’t get its truth from Abrams belief. Where does the promise get its truth? From God himself. And what do we as Christians know the fulfillment of the promise to be? Jesus. So when Moses writes “he credited it to him as righteousness,” he is writing the same thing about Abram as Paul writes about us when he writes “it is by grace you have been saved, through faith.” Abram looks forward in time to the fulfillment, we can look back. But it is the same promise. And this is just one more illustration that everything in the Bible points to Jesus.

So to the Gentile Christians, who don’t want to follow any kind of new-fangled religion, Paul can say, this is nothing new. This goes back to very beginning of the Jewish faith, which is ancient. And to the Jewish Christians, who have invested their hopes and identity in circumcision and the Law, Paul can say, Abram was made righteous before either the covenant of circumcision or the covenant of the Law. Abram’s righteousness, his justification, to use the theological term, was in Jesus, just as the Roman Christians’ righteousness, Gentile and Jew, is in Jesus. So Abraham is the father of us all, as Paul tells the Roman Christians.

So what does all this mean in practical terms for Abraham and for us? The last part of today’s reading in Romans talks about how Abraham expressed the faith that he had in God’s promise.

¹⁸ Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” ^{t 19} Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. ²⁰ Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, ²¹ being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. (Romans 4:18-21 NIV)

We can’t blame Abraham and Sarah for being skeptical. There must have been many times when both of them were tempted to give up on God’s promise and some of them actually are recorded in the Bible. But both of them hung in there until the end.

Do you remember the example I used of faith with the $20 bill? Remember how I said that we use the $20 bill to buy things because we believe it has value. But our belief doesn’t give it value. At the same time, we don’t try to spend blank pieces of paper because we know they don’t have any value. Abraham’s faith would have been more like God giving him a blank piece of paper and telling him to use it to buy a new car. Abram would have really had to scratch his head because it wouldn’t seem possible that you could use that blank piece of paper to buy anything, let alone a car. But instead of giving up, he did what the Lord told him, and set God’s plan of salvation in motion.

In the same way I think that we are all faced with times when we have to be skeptical of what we think God is calling us to. We know how hard it is to trust God. Let me tell you a story about my own personal life that might illustrate. After I got out of the Navy I went to school and became a software engineer and finally got a job working at Hewlett-Packard. By the middle of the 1990s you could say that I had achieved the American Dream. I had a good job with a good income. I was married with a child. I had a condo in La Costa. I had a minivan and a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. If you looked at me from the outside, you would have called me a success.

But I was restless. I decided to o back to college and get a degree in history. I did really well. I was on the Dean’s list the whole time I was doing my undergraduate work and eventually got a full scholarship for graduate study at the University of California. As I pursued that, it became more and more clear that I was not going to remain in my position at HP.

The funny thing about a degree in history is that you can’t do much with it. You can teach. Some people use it as a stepping stone for law school. You can tell interesting stories at parties. But you’re never going to make any money. I came up against a crisis where I had to make a decision to either quit working at HP and finish my Ph.D. or quit school altogether. It wasn’t going to be possible to work and continue school. It was a really difficult decision. To most people it looked easy, you go with the job that gives you security and a good income. But I believed that God would not have led me to the place where I was if he did not intend for me to finish. So I quit working for HP. Everybody, including me, thought I was crazy.

That was over ten years ago, and God has taken care of me so far. I’m not rich but I have everything I need. And you can see I’m not missing any meals. I don’t know what might have happened if I had stayed at HP. But I believe I would not have ended up here. I would not have finally heard and learned to obey God’s call to preach the gospel. So when I quit HP I was really taking a leap of faith, trusting that God would lead me where he wanted me, and that he would provide what I needed along the way.

How is God challenging you? How is God calling you to spend your $20 bill? Does it even look like something you can spend? Are you willing to listen anyway? Like Abraham, like Paul, and even like Jesus, God’s calling to us is going to bring us way outside of our comfort zones. Our faith lies in obeying the call, no matter how crazy it seems. Here’s what I think is a really good illustration of that.