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November 12, 2006
Father Abraham
Genesis 15: 1-6/John 8: 39-48
November 12th, 2006
There was a rabbi who lived about the same time as the Apostle Paul who taught that there are three things important to know: “know where you came from, know where you are going, and know before whom you are about to give account and reckoning.”
Our dad used to tell us boys about an early Robertson who came to the aid of King Robert the Bruce at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. “Stout Duncan,” this early Robertson was called. He arrived on the scene in the nick of time. With his aid the Scots defeated the detested English King Edward I. So our Robertson forbears were awarded the tartan that has appeared on our Christmas wreathe at Faith Church for the past 20 years. Imagine that! These old memories undoubtedly grow with time, but this lore becomes precious. It matters to us where we have come from.
Jews and Christians remember fondly their connection with Abraham, a man who lived nearly 4000 years ago. For Jews it is a hereditary link because Abraham was the grandfather of Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel. For Christians it is a spiritual link. The Apostle Paul taught us that Abraham was the first one about whom it is said, “He believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” Christians point back to Abraham as the trail-blazer of the life of faith.
Who was this Abraham? We learn of him in the book of Genesis at the end of a genealogy that begins with Noah. Noah and his family survived the Great Flood. Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Genesis tells us of Shem’s family line into which Abraham was born. At first he was called Abram, but I’ll call him Abraham. We learn that his father, Terah, had planned to go to Canaan—later the Promised Land of Israel. He followed the Euphrates River north to Haran, perhaps because this way he thought he could travel by water all the way to his destination. There were no east-west waterways to follow. He stayed in Haran. We don’t know why. The chemistry of life mixes odd ingredients along the way for us. It did for Terah too.
No doubt Terah told his sons why he wanted to go to Canaan. They knew why he didn’t get there. Then Terah died and his son grabs center stage. The Lord spoke to Abraham, “Go from your country . . . to the land I will show you.” We know that the land God would eventually show him was Canaan, where his father intended to go. But Abram apparently didn’t know this would be his destination or he would have gone straight there.
I think of how the ambition that God may stir in a person’s heart may never be fulfilled in his lifetime. But God uses this unfulfilled ambition to speak to coming generations. God begins to lead in a child’s life as she hears of the unfulfilled longing in the generation before. There are stages we don’t see along the way of God’s leading a family.
In my own life I see how my father’s aspirations to know the Bible in its original languages led him to excel as a seminary student. I’ve seen his grade reports in seminary where he was a top student in Hebrew and Greek—straight As. As the years rolled on he became a missionary in India. He put his linguistic interest to work mastering India’s two main languages to do missionary work. He hadn’t the time to continue his studies in the biblical languages.
One of my cherished books is an edition of the Greek New Testament in which I read inside the cover: “Irvine Robertson, 3.6.90, in hopes of a resurgence of Greek.” Seven months later he died. My father told me of his desire to regain the biblical languages in our last walk together. At the time I was finishing my Ph.D.—with Greek and Hebrew as my principal languages. I see how God worked through my dad to foster in me a longing to know the languages of Scripture. That’s why I pester you with Hebrew.
If the tale were fully told, did God use the father’s longings to move the son?
After first telling Abram to leave home for an unknown destination his life became complex. God promised him a family and a land. But for many years he had neither. He wandered not knowing where he was going; he had no children. How hollow God’s promise must have seemed: “I will make of you a great nation.” Indeed!
Put yourself in his place. How we become discouraged when our dreams aren’t panning out. You maybe intended to go to college, but life’s circumstances interrupted your dreams. Or you began your studies with a vision of becoming a research scientist, or a doctor, or a professor, or a successful entrepreneur. But things didn’t work out. You’re not the lone ranger! The tapestry of life has many loose threads. Abram’s life was pretty low at the point we came to this morning. Then God said to Him words that have made a huge impact on world history. “Go outside on a starry night and look up; that’s how many children you’ll have.”
“Of course I will,” he thought with bitter irony. We read of his doubt. “O Lord God, Sarai and I continue to be childless and the heir of my house is a servant.” In the verses that follow we learn of great dread and darkness that came to Abram. Perhaps for the first time he began to realize how powerless he was to do anything but the next thing God told him to do. He could not affect his destiny.
We read Genesis 15: 6, “He believed the Lord; and [the Lord] reckoned it to him as righteousness.” But did Abram know he was righteous? For that matter did he care? It wasn’t righteousness that Abram wanted; he needed an heir and a place to settle down.
There isn’t time this morning to trace the story of his and Sarai’s life. But it’s interesting to see how Jews and Christians have remembered two different aspects of Abraham’s importance. The Jews remember the physical heredity, and keep on applying the sign of circumcision that God commanded Abraham’s descendents to put on their sons.
Christians remember that “He believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” Because we think how often we’ve heard of the importance of belief, belief in God, belief in Jesus.
The background of Abraham’s story rests behind Jesus’ encounter with the Pharisees. They tell Jesus, “Abraham is our father.” They meant their biological father. Jesus replied, “If you were Abraham’s children—meaning his spiritual rather than merely biological children—you would do what Abraham did.” What did Abraham do? “He believed God.” Of course, they believed in God but they did not accept that Jesus was sent by His heavenly Father to be the Messiah. This was one thing they did not believe. Indeed, in the blanket belief we bring to our trust in God there are ingredients in what we are asked to believe that we little know are there. The Jews to whom Jesus spoke did not see that their belief in God should include trust in Him, who addled them at every turn.
The Jews could rightfully claim God as their Father. When God told Moses to get the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, he was to tell the king of Egypt, that Israel was God’s first-born son. But Jesus spoke harshly to these fellow Jews who challenged Him: “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires.” It was like when Jesus said to Peter, “Get behind me Satan.” Jesus did not tar all His fellow Jews for all time with one brush even as He did not mean Peter was the devil. The word “Satan” means adversary. For a moment Peter was Jesus’ adversary, albeit unintentionally. And in their opposition to Jesus His fellow Jews acted against aspects of the faith in God that they could not comprehend.
It did not seem obvious to the Jews that Jesus was the Son of God—as we understand. It seems obvious to us because we’re used to the idea. But there is an anesthetic effect of knowing something so well without taking to heart its implications. Generation after generation of Christians have spoken of believing in Jesus so that it seems the stress on belief has numbed the will to obey Him. Obedience sounds too much like good works—which Paul said were not able to secure for us salvation.
Even though Jesus’ fellow Jews did not then believe He was the Son of God many of them were obedient to the way of life that had been passed on to them from Moses. Obedience to God’s command was important to Abraham’s belief-system. And obedience was important to the Jews’ way of life. But they missed trusting something essential: Jesus was the promised blessing that God promised would come through the seed of their father, Abraham. But we Christians have minimized obedience as a specific ingredient in the faith by which we are saved.
I remember the parable Jesus told of a man who had two sons—because my father reminded me of this parable a number of times. It haunted him as he watched the trials and tribulations of Christendom. The father said to the first son, “Go work in the vineyard.” The son replied, “No.” But he went and worked in the vineyard. The father said to the second son, “Go, work in the vineyard.” He said, “Yes, dad,” but he did not go. Jesus asked, “Which one did the will of the father?”
Two perceptions capture my interest here. First, Paul tells us that there was considerable benefit in being a physical descendant of Abraham because through his family line came a knowledge of the will of God in the law given through Moses. But second, as Jesus and then Paul made very clear, it is even more important to have Abraham as a spiritual ancestor.
How is Abraham our spiritual ancestor? Because of what went on inside his head? Maybe, just a bit. He believed, but his belief was not just a head-thing. We know Abraham believed because he did something. He left the comfort of home as an old man to obey a command which God gave without even telling him why He gave the command. Abraham believed God; that is, he left home, not even knowing the end point of his destination.
At the time we read of Abraham’s life in Genesis 15 there was very little content to his belief. It was blind trust that God would lead him somehow. We point to our belief in Jesus and all the other things we believe as though this fulfills God’s intentions for all who are heirs of Abraham’s faith.
But we must notice that Abraham worked out his faith day after day for many years. And so must you and I. We get tired, sometimes very tired. I get bone tired, thinking sometimes that Christianity may be an impossibility in the way Jesus taught us. The unfaithfulness of others hurts. Indeed, sometimes it seems Christians use unfaithfulness as a means of hurting others whom they no longer care for. How wearying the chemistry of the Body of Christ can get.
But God never told us we have to feel rested, or that it is bad to feel tired, or that the Body of Christ will always appear ideal. The New Testament picture of the early Church shows a well-flawed Body of Christ. God says to you and me, “Keep on believing and do the deeds that belief causes to happen. Never quit believing; that is, never stop obeying. “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it is God at work in you to will and to do of His good pleasure.” The same apostle who wrote our salvation is “not of works” said, “work out your salvation with fear and trembling.”
We are so easily distracted. So was Abraham.
When we think of belief we often have a fairly specific idea of what we are to believe. We think we must know of God and Jesus Christ, His Son, correctly. But it is obvious that Abraham knew little of God when he began to obey God. His son knew of God only that this deity was the God of his father, Abraham. And Isaac’s son and his son’s extended family only knew that their God was the God of their fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It was not till more than 450 years after Jacob died that God revealed His name to Moses: “I am the Lord.” “Lord” is our English translation of the name of God, too sacred for the Jews to pronounce.
Aspire to be faithful much more than to know the details of God’s identity—details that are simply beyond us to know. Let faithfulness guide you and when your days come to a close, you will see that the God made known to us in Jesus Christ guided you to the extent you were faithful. When our lives are over, God will continue in the next generation what he has begun in ours. I pray God will be known to our children and our children’s children as the One before whom you and I lived in righteousness.
Let us pray: O God, grant that we may so follow you in the life before us, though we cannot see the way ahead. Grant to us to trust you and to obey. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at November 12, 2006 09:30 AM