Faith Story (blog)

"Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you." (Genesis 12:1) Abram's story, as we know it from Genesis (chapters 12-25), began when God called him out of everything he had known before and into something new, something unclear but certain, the details of which God would reveal and reaffirm along the journey. These details, about how Abram's story would fit into another larger story, were of epic proportion and described events extending far beyond the patriarch's lifetime: "To your offspring I will give this land" (12:7); "I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth" (13:16); "Look up at the heavens and count the stars - if indeed you can...so shall your offspring be." (15:5) And more immediately:"...your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac.  I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant." (17:19) Though Abram was advanced in age and childless at the time God made these promises, "Abram believed the Lord, and he (God) credited it to him as righteousness." (15:6) This is key to Abram's story, because it's through this faith in God's promises that Abram's story fits into the larger story of God's redemptive plan, set in motion by The Fall (see last week's blog post). Through Abram's faith in God's promises, the Lord changed the course of his life and gave him a new identity, and with that a new name - Abraham, which means "father of many". Look closely at the details of the Redemption Story as God revealed them to Abraham: "I will make you into a great nation...I will make your name great; and you will be a blessing...and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." (12:2-3) It's here, in the words "...all peoples will be blessed through you", that the story of Jesus Christ comes to light again in Genesis. Do you see it? Jesus, a a descendant of Abraham, was born into the world to bless us, to redeem and restore us to God through his suffering and death on the Cross for the sins of all people. He died in our place and then rose again to life, so that we can be forgiven by God and be in an eternal relationship with Him again.  Jesus calls people out of their old lives and into new lives of faith.  Through faith in Jesus, God gives us a new identity as his very own children." You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus..." the Apostle Paul wrote, in his letter to the Galatian Christians (Galatians 3:26). And in his Gospel, the Apostle John also wrote about how faith in Jesus changes people's life stories: "Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God - children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God." (John 1:12-13) Do you see how God's promise of blessing, given so long ago to Abraham, was about Jesus, and was ultimately for all who believe in him? Jesus himself testified to this when Abraham's descendants questioned his authority: "Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad." (John 8:56) Jesus was talking about Abraham's faith in God's promise of blessing to all people. In faith, Abraham looked beyond the difficulties of his present reality and believed that someday God's promise would be fulfilled and that all people on earth would indeed be blessed through him!  Through who? Through Jesus, whose larger story Abraham fits into. In his letter to the early believers in Rome, Paul explains how all the stories fit together: "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 are of the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all.  As it is written: 'I have made you a father of many nations'.  He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed - the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were." "Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said about him...being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. This is why 'it was credited to him as righteousness'.  The words, 'it was credited to him' were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness - for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification." (Romans 4:16-25) Our faith in Jesus makes us right again with God, and brings us back into the blessed relationship we had with Him before sin entered our story (Genesis 1:28). In Jesus we see the extent of God's love and care for all people. Read on in Genesis, chapters 24-50, to see how Jesus' redemption story continues in the lives of Abraham's biological descendants (Isaac, Jacob, Joseph...), all with the same epic details of God's promise of blessing for all people, and of covenant relationship between them and God, and of their witness (their own stories) of what God had done for them. Read closely and you'll see a pattern emerging, of God's people identifying Him in terms of what He had done for them - like Abraham, who assured a servant of God's faithfulness by telling the man his story: "The Lord, the God of heaven, who brought me out of my father's household and my native land and who spoke to me and promised me on oath, saying, 'To your offspring I will give this land'..."(Genesis 24:7)