Treasure in heaven
Commentary
Today's lessons contrast the emptiness of religion with the substance of faith. To put it that way is to indicate, as the prophet Isaiah does, that "religion," in and of itself, is not faith, but merely the outer shell. Faith is the living organism that may inhabit that shell and give it motion. Faith is grounded in God's future, in the promise of the kingdom (Luke 12:32). Faith in fact evidences and guarantees that future (Hebrews 11:1).
Walk along most beaches and you will find shells that were once inhabited by living beings. Even after the organism, the life, has left them, they may look pretty, but they no longer move. They're not going anywhere. They just lie on the beach and look pretty until, eventually, they turn to sand. So, Isaiah thinks, are the buildings and the ceremonies of those who have no faith. They may look pretty from the outside, but they're not doing the widows or the orphans any good (Isaiah 1:16).
Isaiah 1:1, 10-20
The Dietrich Bonhoeffer of his day, Isaiah of Jerusalem launches a memorable assault on an Old Testament version of "cheap grace." Israel, the prophet contends, has made a mockery of God's mercy through hypocritical observance of religious practices intended to facilitate their forgiveness.
The oracle first describes the emptiness of religious ceremonies which are designed to manipulate God (vv. 10-15). Then, it summons people to a more excellent way with the radical suggestion: "Cease to do evil; learn to do good" (vv. 16-17). Finally, it promises either salvation or destruction based on response to the preceding invitation (vv. 18-20).
The first portion runs through the gamut of liturgical ritual -- sacrifice, prayer, incense, offerings, festivals ... God hates such acts when they are not acts of worship. Isaiah is not attacking the cult as such, and we would misappropriate the lesson for today if we were to read it as a denunciation of complex ("high church") practices. If anything, it assumes the opposite. Ordinarily, such worship is what God likes best, but when the rituals are performed by those who are not truly worshiping, they become not merely innocuous but positively offensive. An abomination. A blasphemous caricature of what God holds dear.
The difference, apparently, is that the "worshipers" in this case are merely acting out a role in a religious game. They've come to view worship as a transaction. They perform the rituals and God forgives them their sins. If they perform these acts often enough, they need not worry about little things like not sinning. But God is too smart for them. There's a catch, Isaiah reveals. The sacrifices only bring forgiveness when they are truly acts of worship -- the insincerity of these participants has rendered their ceremonies null and void.
God is merciful and does not expect perfection. The summons is to learn to do good, to seek justice. The weakness of the flesh will surely overtake all who set out to do these things; all learners and seekers fail. In the Old Testament, the sacrificial cult was God's provision for such failings.
The timeless message in the oracle warns against trying to corrupt the relationship God offers by turning it into a system which will work to our advantage. "Come, now, let us argue it out," says the Lord (NRSV), using language that presupposes relationship. Old Testament or New, law or gospel, it is not a system. It is not about figuring out how to get God to give us what we need at the best possible rate. "God is not mocked," said Paul to Christians who thought this way (Galatians 6:7). No one gets the better of God. But we do get the best ... the best that God can offer us in the relationship of love.
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
Here we have what is probably the most famous text in the epistle to the Hebrews -- the definition of faith as "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen," followed by (a portion of) the roll call of faith, in which the writer appeals to great examples from biblical history.
The definition, better known perhaps in King James language ("the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen"), is poetic and stately, but what exactly does it mean? The point is not that when we finally get what we hope for and see what is not now seen then our faith will be validated. Quite the opposite. Our faith itself is the validation that the things we hope for are real. Where else would it come from? People cannot simply "psyche" themselves into believing; no one can fake it for long. Faith is a gift from God. If we have received the gift, this author reasons, there must be a Giver. The fact that human beings believe in something beyond this life is evidence that there is something beyond this life.
Of course, this might not help the person who is struggling with doubt, but that's where the roll call comes in. Our assurance is not our own faith, but that of the community which surrounds us in time and space. So many people -- including those listed in Hebrews 11 -- have faced incredible adversity, willingly faced it and not backed down. They weren't superhuman people, but mere mortals like us. From whence did their strength come? From within them, but also from without. God had to give them that strength. As partners with them, as ones who share their mortal coil, we know it did not come of themselves. We know that because we know it would never come to us of ourselves. But the witness of history is that God places such strength as it is needed, in those we end up calling saints, and maybe even in us.
The roll call itself is not very politically correct from a modern perspective -- men get all the attention. In fact, verse 12 has got to be about the most chauvinistic passage anywhere in the Bible: "from one person ... descendants were born." Um, actually, I believe it took two persons. The old RSV had Sarah as the subject of verse 11 ("By faith, Sarah herself received power to conceive"), but the NRSV is probably correct to keep the focus on Abraham alone. Sarah's just a vessel and a barren one at that. Of course, we know this reflects the patriarchy of the time and we should be able to transcend such concerns without losing the message. The capable preacher can add sermon illustrations which provide more diverse examples of faith at work (Rahab does get mentioned in v. 31 -- next week's lesson).
We should note how fully faith is defined in terms of hope. The power of faith lies in its vision of the future. "All these," the text says, all these great ones died -- without having received the promises. But that is not a depressing thought. Rather, it is the whole point. They lived the promise before they received it!
Reinhold Niebuhr said, "Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love."
Luke 12:32-40
How neatly the Gospel ties in to the message of the epistle reading! At the heart of the text is a call to have treasure in heaven, that our hearts may be there also. We are to have the same attitude as those saints of old who knew of the heavenly country and desired it, thinking not on the land they had left behind (Hebrews 11:15-16). Can we, like them, confess that we are "strangers and foreigners on the earth" (11:13), that we are, in the words of the old hippie Christian poet Larry Norman, "only visiting this planet"? (Larry Norman was a long-haired Christian of the Woodstock era. The term "Jesus freak" was first coined with reference to him. He didn't mind. He also started that raised-index finger "one way" for Jesus symbol that was popular for awhile.)
The attitude is not one of resignation from this life. Rather, it is life fully alert, on the watch, aware of what is going on all around us. But this is shaped by an awareness of the bigger picture, by the vision of the life beyond this life and the world beyond this world. This is a vision that empowers. Jesus actually expects this vision to empower his followers to give up their earthly possessions! To give alms. And, not to be anxious. "Do not be afraid, little flock," he says. With hearts set on an "unfailing treasure in heaven," we can actually live without fear.
The latter part of the text gives specificity to the vision. We wait expectantly for the return of our master. In other words, we do not set our hearts on a place where we long to be, but on a person with whom we long to be united. He may arrive as unexpectedly as a thief, but for us there is no threat in his coming. He is coming to serve us, again, as before (Luke 22:25-27). Indeed, the image of Christ serving the servants who gather for a meal is strongly eucharistic, giving an eschatological focus to that worship event through which we experience already a foretaste of the feast to come.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Isaiah 1:1, 10-20
In the popular piety that so dominates American religious life, there is the saying that "God hears every prayer." The first seventeen verses from these readings in Isaiah contradict that sentimental belief.
Once again the lectionary has combined two separate oracles in this reading. Verses 10-17 form what is known as a Torah instruction, that is, an instruction given by God as his Word. Verses 18-20, however, are a rib, a summons from God to go to court with him.
It is clear from the first passage that Judah in the time of Isaiah (745-701 B.C.) loved to go to worship. They literally "trampled" the courts of the temple, a picture that always reminds me of the crowds in our churches on Christmas and Easter. But the Judeans worshiped not only on high festival days, but on sabbaths and new moons at the first of each month and with a multitude of daily sacrifices to the Lord. And assuredly, as with us, their frequent worship gave them the sense that they were right with the Lord.
The astounding message from God is that he rejects it all, and his rejection is given in a series of ever more serious tones: "I cannot endure..." (v. 13); "my soul hates..." (v. 14); "I am weary of..." (v. 14); "I will not listen." Judah's worship has become to God an unendurable, hateful, weary burden, and when the Judeans pray, God will no longer hear their prayers. God does not listen to every prayer! He shuts his ears against it!
For those who think they do God a favor when they go to church, that is a shocking message indeed. And for those of us who have a habit of prayer, it is incomprehensible. After all, we read over and over again in the Psalms the assertion, "On the day I called, thou didst answer me" (Psalm 138:3, et al.). And does our Lord Jesus not tell us in his parable that we "ought always to pray and not lose heart" (Luke 18:1)?
That which we overlook is another statement in the Psalms, however. "When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears" (Psalm 34:17). The assumption is that the Lord hears prayer only when it is uttered by those who are just in his sight. And of course that is the problem with the Judeans in our text. They are not just. Verse 15 tells us that when the worshipers spread forth their hands in prayer, that which God sees on their hands is the blood of the innocent poor -- the poor who have been denied justice in Judah's courts, the helpless who have been oppressed by those in power, the hungry who have not been fed, and the homeless who have not been sheltered.
That should give pause to all of us churchgoers, who have come into the sanctuary to pray to God. Is there blood on our hands, indifference to justice in our hearts, callousness toward the helpless in our society? Do we minister to those in need, or like the priest and the Levite in the parable of the Good Samaritan, do we pass by on the other side (Luke 10:29-32)?
Ours is a bloody, violent society these days -- just read the morning headlines. And far too often ours is a heedless society, sometimes even indifferent toward the plight of our own children, whose lives are scarred by divorce or left helpless by poor schools or trained only by television programs, or even ended before they are ever born by our epidemic of abortion. Does God, then, hear our prayers? Do we have any just claim to come before him?
In both passages of our reading, God offers us a second chance. "Cease to do evil," he teaches. "Learn to do good." "If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land." God holds out to us the possibility of repentance and the assurance that we can be forgiven, if we will only turn to be "willing and obedient" to his Word.
That second chance, that turning, is offered to us through Jesus Christ. Let's face it. If you and I can only pray to God and have him hear our prayers when we are just, then not one of us has the remotest possibility of being acceptable to him. The only prayer we can have on our lips is, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner" (Luke 18:13). But that prayer, offered through the mediation and in the name of Jesus Christ, will be heard by our God, because Christ has atoned for all of our shortcomings and sins and terribly human failings. And if we cling to Christ and his work on our behalf, God sees his Son's righteousness, and he hears and he answers.
More than that, however, God in his mercy grants us his Holy Spirit, to work in our hearts, so that we are gradually transformed and find that we are able to do the good and to cease doing evil. Christ's Spirit enables us to be willing and obedient servants of our God. Christ's Spirit can gradually make us new persons -- new persons who go out and work in our society to establish justice and give help to the poor and bring an end to the bloodshed that stains us all. So the invitation is offered us through the words of Isaiah. We have only in faith to accept it.
Lutheran Option, Genesis 15:1-6
This passage forms the beginning of what scholars have called the Elohist's writings in the Old Testament, and it sets forth the first version of God's promise to Abraham of a son (cf. Genesis 17:15-16P; 18:10J). As such, it is rich in theological possibilities.
First, the promise of a son to be Abraham's heir is understood in the context of God's promise to Abraham to make him the father of a great nation and to bring blessing on all the families of the earth through his descendants (Genesis 12:1-3; see the exposition of Genesis 18, Proper 19). God here now starts his centuries-long work of fulfilling his promise, that work which will finally result in the birth of Jesus Christ, "the son of Abraham" (Matthew 1:1). Through Christ, God will indeed bring his blessing upon all, as Paul asserts in Galatians 3:8-9.
The details of this story command our careful attention, however. When God speaks to Abram, his first word is "Fear not." That is often the first word that is spoken when God draws near to human beings, lest they be simply overwhelmed by the majesty and glory of the Lord. "Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people" (Luke 2:10 KJV).
Having assured Abram, God promises him, "Your reward shall be very great," that is, your posterity shall be numerous. Abram, however, is very much like we are. He does not believe that promise! In fact, his response to the Word of God is almost blasphemous. God tells him, "You will have many descendants," and Abram replies, "No, I won't." Obviously, it is not Abram's great faith which causes God to give him the promise, any more than it is our great faith which inspires God to give promises and good to us. God acts toward Abram and us simply out of his grace and mercy.
Abram believes that because he is an old man, the son of his slave-woman must be his heir. That is the law of the time, which finds its parallel in ancient Nuzi tablets of the fifteenth century B.C. Apparently it was a practice known throughout the ancient Near East.
But when God works to fulfill his promise, he takes little notice of human custom and law. Nor is he bound by what we call natural law and the seeming impossibility of an aged man and his wife having a son. Instead, God takes Abram outside in the night, and tells him to look at the stars and to number them if he can."So shall your descendants be," God promises -- as numerous as the stars of the heavens. Out of an aged couple will come a "great nation," in fulfillment of God's word (Genesis 12:2). The people Israel will exist on the earth only because God will bring them forth, and they will continue to exist on the earth, no matter how often or much they are persecuted, because they are God's people, created by him.
Having been told by God that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the heavens, the author of this passage records, "And (Abram) believed the Lord; and (the Lord) reckoned it to him as righteousness" (v. 6). Here we have in the Bible for the first time the doctrine of justification by faith. Abram is counted righteous in God's eyes because he believes God's promise.
We should note therefore the nature of faith. We often say that we are justified by faith alone, but what is faith? Here in our text we see clearly that faith is believing the promises of God and then acting accordingly. Faith is hearing what God promises and then clinging to those promises, believing that they will be fulfilled, no matter what happens. Faith is committing one's whole life to acting according to what God says he will do.
God has given us lots of promises in the Bible, and our Lord promised us many things, according to the New Testament. "I will not leave you desolate. I will come to you" (John 14:18). "He who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die" (John 11:25). "Lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age" (Matthew 28:20). There are many examples. And our faith consists in believing those promises and acting as if we know they will be fulfilled, no matter what happens to us and no matter what the times bring upon us. God always keeps his promises. To that we can always say, "Amen."
Walk along most beaches and you will find shells that were once inhabited by living beings. Even after the organism, the life, has left them, they may look pretty, but they no longer move. They're not going anywhere. They just lie on the beach and look pretty until, eventually, they turn to sand. So, Isaiah thinks, are the buildings and the ceremonies of those who have no faith. They may look pretty from the outside, but they're not doing the widows or the orphans any good (Isaiah 1:16).
Isaiah 1:1, 10-20
The Dietrich Bonhoeffer of his day, Isaiah of Jerusalem launches a memorable assault on an Old Testament version of "cheap grace." Israel, the prophet contends, has made a mockery of God's mercy through hypocritical observance of religious practices intended to facilitate their forgiveness.
The oracle first describes the emptiness of religious ceremonies which are designed to manipulate God (vv. 10-15). Then, it summons people to a more excellent way with the radical suggestion: "Cease to do evil; learn to do good" (vv. 16-17). Finally, it promises either salvation or destruction based on response to the preceding invitation (vv. 18-20).
The first portion runs through the gamut of liturgical ritual -- sacrifice, prayer, incense, offerings, festivals ... God hates such acts when they are not acts of worship. Isaiah is not attacking the cult as such, and we would misappropriate the lesson for today if we were to read it as a denunciation of complex ("high church") practices. If anything, it assumes the opposite. Ordinarily, such worship is what God likes best, but when the rituals are performed by those who are not truly worshiping, they become not merely innocuous but positively offensive. An abomination. A blasphemous caricature of what God holds dear.
The difference, apparently, is that the "worshipers" in this case are merely acting out a role in a religious game. They've come to view worship as a transaction. They perform the rituals and God forgives them their sins. If they perform these acts often enough, they need not worry about little things like not sinning. But God is too smart for them. There's a catch, Isaiah reveals. The sacrifices only bring forgiveness when they are truly acts of worship -- the insincerity of these participants has rendered their ceremonies null and void.
God is merciful and does not expect perfection. The summons is to learn to do good, to seek justice. The weakness of the flesh will surely overtake all who set out to do these things; all learners and seekers fail. In the Old Testament, the sacrificial cult was God's provision for such failings.
The timeless message in the oracle warns against trying to corrupt the relationship God offers by turning it into a system which will work to our advantage. "Come, now, let us argue it out," says the Lord (NRSV), using language that presupposes relationship. Old Testament or New, law or gospel, it is not a system. It is not about figuring out how to get God to give us what we need at the best possible rate. "God is not mocked," said Paul to Christians who thought this way (Galatians 6:7). No one gets the better of God. But we do get the best ... the best that God can offer us in the relationship of love.
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
Here we have what is probably the most famous text in the epistle to the Hebrews -- the definition of faith as "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen," followed by (a portion of) the roll call of faith, in which the writer appeals to great examples from biblical history.
The definition, better known perhaps in King James language ("the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen"), is poetic and stately, but what exactly does it mean? The point is not that when we finally get what we hope for and see what is not now seen then our faith will be validated. Quite the opposite. Our faith itself is the validation that the things we hope for are real. Where else would it come from? People cannot simply "psyche" themselves into believing; no one can fake it for long. Faith is a gift from God. If we have received the gift, this author reasons, there must be a Giver. The fact that human beings believe in something beyond this life is evidence that there is something beyond this life.
Of course, this might not help the person who is struggling with doubt, but that's where the roll call comes in. Our assurance is not our own faith, but that of the community which surrounds us in time and space. So many people -- including those listed in Hebrews 11 -- have faced incredible adversity, willingly faced it and not backed down. They weren't superhuman people, but mere mortals like us. From whence did their strength come? From within them, but also from without. God had to give them that strength. As partners with them, as ones who share their mortal coil, we know it did not come of themselves. We know that because we know it would never come to us of ourselves. But the witness of history is that God places such strength as it is needed, in those we end up calling saints, and maybe even in us.
The roll call itself is not very politically correct from a modern perspective -- men get all the attention. In fact, verse 12 has got to be about the most chauvinistic passage anywhere in the Bible: "from one person ... descendants were born." Um, actually, I believe it took two persons. The old RSV had Sarah as the subject of verse 11 ("By faith, Sarah herself received power to conceive"), but the NRSV is probably correct to keep the focus on Abraham alone. Sarah's just a vessel and a barren one at that. Of course, we know this reflects the patriarchy of the time and we should be able to transcend such concerns without losing the message. The capable preacher can add sermon illustrations which provide more diverse examples of faith at work (Rahab does get mentioned in v. 31 -- next week's lesson).
We should note how fully faith is defined in terms of hope. The power of faith lies in its vision of the future. "All these," the text says, all these great ones died -- without having received the promises. But that is not a depressing thought. Rather, it is the whole point. They lived the promise before they received it!
Reinhold Niebuhr said, "Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love."
Luke 12:32-40
How neatly the Gospel ties in to the message of the epistle reading! At the heart of the text is a call to have treasure in heaven, that our hearts may be there also. We are to have the same attitude as those saints of old who knew of the heavenly country and desired it, thinking not on the land they had left behind (Hebrews 11:15-16). Can we, like them, confess that we are "strangers and foreigners on the earth" (11:13), that we are, in the words of the old hippie Christian poet Larry Norman, "only visiting this planet"? (Larry Norman was a long-haired Christian of the Woodstock era. The term "Jesus freak" was first coined with reference to him. He didn't mind. He also started that raised-index finger "one way" for Jesus symbol that was popular for awhile.)
The attitude is not one of resignation from this life. Rather, it is life fully alert, on the watch, aware of what is going on all around us. But this is shaped by an awareness of the bigger picture, by the vision of the life beyond this life and the world beyond this world. This is a vision that empowers. Jesus actually expects this vision to empower his followers to give up their earthly possessions! To give alms. And, not to be anxious. "Do not be afraid, little flock," he says. With hearts set on an "unfailing treasure in heaven," we can actually live without fear.
The latter part of the text gives specificity to the vision. We wait expectantly for the return of our master. In other words, we do not set our hearts on a place where we long to be, but on a person with whom we long to be united. He may arrive as unexpectedly as a thief, but for us there is no threat in his coming. He is coming to serve us, again, as before (Luke 22:25-27). Indeed, the image of Christ serving the servants who gather for a meal is strongly eucharistic, giving an eschatological focus to that worship event through which we experience already a foretaste of the feast to come.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Isaiah 1:1, 10-20
In the popular piety that so dominates American religious life, there is the saying that "God hears every prayer." The first seventeen verses from these readings in Isaiah contradict that sentimental belief.
Once again the lectionary has combined two separate oracles in this reading. Verses 10-17 form what is known as a Torah instruction, that is, an instruction given by God as his Word. Verses 18-20, however, are a rib, a summons from God to go to court with him.
It is clear from the first passage that Judah in the time of Isaiah (745-701 B.C.) loved to go to worship. They literally "trampled" the courts of the temple, a picture that always reminds me of the crowds in our churches on Christmas and Easter. But the Judeans worshiped not only on high festival days, but on sabbaths and new moons at the first of each month and with a multitude of daily sacrifices to the Lord. And assuredly, as with us, their frequent worship gave them the sense that they were right with the Lord.
The astounding message from God is that he rejects it all, and his rejection is given in a series of ever more serious tones: "I cannot endure..." (v. 13); "my soul hates..." (v. 14); "I am weary of..." (v. 14); "I will not listen." Judah's worship has become to God an unendurable, hateful, weary burden, and when the Judeans pray, God will no longer hear their prayers. God does not listen to every prayer! He shuts his ears against it!
For those who think they do God a favor when they go to church, that is a shocking message indeed. And for those of us who have a habit of prayer, it is incomprehensible. After all, we read over and over again in the Psalms the assertion, "On the day I called, thou didst answer me" (Psalm 138:3, et al.). And does our Lord Jesus not tell us in his parable that we "ought always to pray and not lose heart" (Luke 18:1)?
That which we overlook is another statement in the Psalms, however. "When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears" (Psalm 34:17). The assumption is that the Lord hears prayer only when it is uttered by those who are just in his sight. And of course that is the problem with the Judeans in our text. They are not just. Verse 15 tells us that when the worshipers spread forth their hands in prayer, that which God sees on their hands is the blood of the innocent poor -- the poor who have been denied justice in Judah's courts, the helpless who have been oppressed by those in power, the hungry who have not been fed, and the homeless who have not been sheltered.
That should give pause to all of us churchgoers, who have come into the sanctuary to pray to God. Is there blood on our hands, indifference to justice in our hearts, callousness toward the helpless in our society? Do we minister to those in need, or like the priest and the Levite in the parable of the Good Samaritan, do we pass by on the other side (Luke 10:29-32)?
Ours is a bloody, violent society these days -- just read the morning headlines. And far too often ours is a heedless society, sometimes even indifferent toward the plight of our own children, whose lives are scarred by divorce or left helpless by poor schools or trained only by television programs, or even ended before they are ever born by our epidemic of abortion. Does God, then, hear our prayers? Do we have any just claim to come before him?
In both passages of our reading, God offers us a second chance. "Cease to do evil," he teaches. "Learn to do good." "If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land." God holds out to us the possibility of repentance and the assurance that we can be forgiven, if we will only turn to be "willing and obedient" to his Word.
That second chance, that turning, is offered to us through Jesus Christ. Let's face it. If you and I can only pray to God and have him hear our prayers when we are just, then not one of us has the remotest possibility of being acceptable to him. The only prayer we can have on our lips is, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner" (Luke 18:13). But that prayer, offered through the mediation and in the name of Jesus Christ, will be heard by our God, because Christ has atoned for all of our shortcomings and sins and terribly human failings. And if we cling to Christ and his work on our behalf, God sees his Son's righteousness, and he hears and he answers.
More than that, however, God in his mercy grants us his Holy Spirit, to work in our hearts, so that we are gradually transformed and find that we are able to do the good and to cease doing evil. Christ's Spirit enables us to be willing and obedient servants of our God. Christ's Spirit can gradually make us new persons -- new persons who go out and work in our society to establish justice and give help to the poor and bring an end to the bloodshed that stains us all. So the invitation is offered us through the words of Isaiah. We have only in faith to accept it.
Lutheran Option, Genesis 15:1-6
This passage forms the beginning of what scholars have called the Elohist's writings in the Old Testament, and it sets forth the first version of God's promise to Abraham of a son (cf. Genesis 17:15-16P; 18:10J). As such, it is rich in theological possibilities.
First, the promise of a son to be Abraham's heir is understood in the context of God's promise to Abraham to make him the father of a great nation and to bring blessing on all the families of the earth through his descendants (Genesis 12:1-3; see the exposition of Genesis 18, Proper 19). God here now starts his centuries-long work of fulfilling his promise, that work which will finally result in the birth of Jesus Christ, "the son of Abraham" (Matthew 1:1). Through Christ, God will indeed bring his blessing upon all, as Paul asserts in Galatians 3:8-9.
The details of this story command our careful attention, however. When God speaks to Abram, his first word is "Fear not." That is often the first word that is spoken when God draws near to human beings, lest they be simply overwhelmed by the majesty and glory of the Lord. "Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people" (Luke 2:10 KJV).
Having assured Abram, God promises him, "Your reward shall be very great," that is, your posterity shall be numerous. Abram, however, is very much like we are. He does not believe that promise! In fact, his response to the Word of God is almost blasphemous. God tells him, "You will have many descendants," and Abram replies, "No, I won't." Obviously, it is not Abram's great faith which causes God to give him the promise, any more than it is our great faith which inspires God to give promises and good to us. God acts toward Abram and us simply out of his grace and mercy.
Abram believes that because he is an old man, the son of his slave-woman must be his heir. That is the law of the time, which finds its parallel in ancient Nuzi tablets of the fifteenth century B.C. Apparently it was a practice known throughout the ancient Near East.
But when God works to fulfill his promise, he takes little notice of human custom and law. Nor is he bound by what we call natural law and the seeming impossibility of an aged man and his wife having a son. Instead, God takes Abram outside in the night, and tells him to look at the stars and to number them if he can."So shall your descendants be," God promises -- as numerous as the stars of the heavens. Out of an aged couple will come a "great nation," in fulfillment of God's word (Genesis 12:2). The people Israel will exist on the earth only because God will bring them forth, and they will continue to exist on the earth, no matter how often or much they are persecuted, because they are God's people, created by him.
Having been told by God that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the heavens, the author of this passage records, "And (Abram) believed the Lord; and (the Lord) reckoned it to him as righteousness" (v. 6). Here we have in the Bible for the first time the doctrine of justification by faith. Abram is counted righteous in God's eyes because he believes God's promise.
We should note therefore the nature of faith. We often say that we are justified by faith alone, but what is faith? Here in our text we see clearly that faith is believing the promises of God and then acting accordingly. Faith is hearing what God promises and then clinging to those promises, believing that they will be fulfilled, no matter what happens. Faith is committing one's whole life to acting according to what God says he will do.
God has given us lots of promises in the Bible, and our Lord promised us many things, according to the New Testament. "I will not leave you desolate. I will come to you" (John 14:18). "He who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die" (John 11:25). "Lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age" (Matthew 28:20). There are many examples. And our faith consists in believing those promises and acting as if we know they will be fulfilled, no matter what happens to us and no matter what the times bring upon us. God always keeps his promises. To that we can always say, "Amen."
