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Statues don't perspire. The characters portrayed in stained-glass windows don't blink. And so we are tempted to forget that the people they so nobly represent were human beings, just like us. In the statue's solidness and in the window's beauty, they cannot do justice to the blemishes and the frailties of the men and women they depict.

We have seen so many of our biblical heroes portrayed in art: in glorious stained glass, in noble statues, and in sweet portraits on Sunday school room walls. Those depictions have so often been glorified and idealized. Long before contemporary magazine covers were offering us airbrushed images of celebrities, Michelangelo carved for us a perfect David and a magnificent Moses.

The portraits painted by scripture, however, are not so touched-up. While men like Moses and David are celebrated, they are not romanticized. We see the men and women of scripture through a very candid lens. Moses is remembered as peerless (Deuteronomy 34:10-12), yet his epitaph comes to us from outside the borders of the promised land because of his own sin and failure. David symbolizes both a golden age past and a messianic age to come, yet the biblical author does not protect his reputation from the lust, the deviousness, the foolishness, or the pettiness he exhibited along the way. While Solomon is remembered for his splendor, his fingerprints are left forever on the tragic division of the kingdom after his death.

Likewise in the stories of Jacob or Elijah, of Joseph or Mary, of Peter or Paul. They rank among the great heroes of faith, but the Bible does not pretend that they were perfect. On the contrary, it is generous with the evidence of their humanness and imperfections. And so it is, too, with the character at the center of our Old Testament reading today. Four thousand years after he lived and died, Abraham is remembered and honored by untold millions around the globe. So many of the pivotal promises of God trace back to him. And from him come nations and faiths that remain at the center of current events so many centuries after his sojourn in the holy land.

Abraham is a towering figure on the world's stage. The particular episode that we read from the book of Genesis this morning is one of the watershed events in Abraham's life and experience. But not only for Abraham, it is a watershed for us, as well. Four thousand years later, that event in Abraham's life proves to be a landmark in our experience, too. For the apostle Paul points back to this episode as a crucial turning point in understanding the salvation that you and I have in Jesus Christ.

The issue at hand is no less a question than how it is that we are saved. How is it that a sinful human being can be put right with a holy God? The standard assumption within the contemporary Judaism of Paul's time was that the key to righteousness was compliance with God's law. Perhaps it was just a formal ancestor of the "just try to be a good person" emphasis that prevails in so many of our churches today. The Jews recognized that God's law articulated God's will and his covenant with his people, and so they understood that thorough conformity to that law was the definition of righteousness.

However, Paul, who was himself a Pharisee -- zealous in his adherence to the law -- had discovered that the law was unable to make him truly righteous. The law could only serve to diagnose our sin; it couldn't cure our sin. Consequently, the law could not make us right with God; it only proves our unrighteousness before him.

Paul looks back to this moment in Abraham's life, and he sees there the real key to real righteousness. The writer of Genesis reports that Abraham "believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness" (v. 6).

"The Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness." So it was that Abraham, hundreds of years before the Mosaic law was even given, was somehow made righteous before God. How? He believed God. And that, Paul realized, was the answer to our relationship with God and to our righteousness: believing God. In a word, faith.

In his letters to the Christians in Rome and to the Christians in Galatia, Paul makes repeated reference to this moment in Abraham's life. He sees in it profound proof that our salvation is by faith. We are not made right with God by our works, by our circumcision, or by the law. Rather "we know," Paul wrote, "that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law" (Galatians 2:16).

So here is Abraham: this immensely important figure, whom Paul identifies as "the ancestor of all who believe" (Romans 4:11). The Lord comes to him one night in a vision, and that night continues to endure for four millennium as a defining moment in salvation history. Given that it is such a vitally important event -- and that Abraham himself is such a considerable figure -- let's zoom in and take a closer look.

We observe that just three sentences are attributed to Abraham in this momentous scene. Two of them are questions. The other might best be described as a complaint -- or at least a statement indicating concern and dissatisfaction.

The scene begins with God's initiative. That is almost always the case in our relationship with God. In this particular instance, we read that the word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision and told him, "Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great" (v. 1).

What a marvelous word to hear from God! It is encouraging, it is reassuring, and it is generous. We might reasonably expect Abraham to respond with some psalm of thanksgiving or hymn of praise.

But not so. Instead, Abraham responds with a question. In fact, combined with his subsequent statement, it amounts to a rather pointed question. "O Lord God," Abraham replied, "what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus? You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir" (vv. 2-3).

Is this the quote we have from the hero of faith? Is this the response from our paragon of righteousness? In candor that seems to border on irreverence, Abraham presumes to question God's future plans by questioning God's past performance. The Lord has made a grand and generous promise to Abraham, yet the pragmatic old man responds with a rather negative calculation. "What good will any gift from you do me," Abraham asks in effect, "since you haven't given me an heir to whom I can leave it?"

Long before, the Lord had uprooted Abraham from what had been his homeland and the land of his ancestors. He moved Abraham to a foreign land and promised that he would give him much land and many descendants. To date, however, he owned no land, and he had no descendants.

I don't necessarily hear bitterness in Abraham's voice. But he does have a concern, and he is not reluctant to voice it to God.

Meanwhile, the only other words ascribed to Abraham in this scene form another question. The Lord says to him, "I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess" (v. 7). And in response, Abraham asks, "O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?" (v. 8).

It's an interesting response on Abraham's part, because he seems to be missing the point. The Lord is simply identifying himself. We recognize the format, for it is essentially the same as the Lord's opening words in the Ten Commandments. Just before listing his commandments, he says, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery" (Exodus 20:2). He is identifying himself to the people. He is saying who he is in light of what he has done for them, and that forms the context for the commandments that he gives to them.

Likewise here in this episode. God is identifying himself to Abraham in terms of what he has already done for Abraham: "I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess." But Abraham humanly fixates on one part of that statement of what God had done for him: namely, the part that wasn't done yet. He had not yet possessed the land. Not even an acre of it, really. And so he wants to know: "How am I to know that I shall possess it?" He's looking for a little proof, a guarantee, a sign.

That concludes the words of Abraham in this watershed moment. Two questions and a complaint. That's it.

We think of far more heroic and exemplary words by other characters at other times. We think of Joseph's integrity when he was seduced by Potiphar's wife. We think of Joshua and Caleb among the whining spies. We think of David before Goliath or Shadrach and company before the fiery furnace. We think of Stephen being stoned or Paul on trial. There are so many marvelous statements of faith and faithfulness in the face of trouble. Yet here, presented with the generous promises of God, all Abraham can muster is two questions and a complaint.

We are inclined to ask, "What's so great about Abraham? How is it that he ranks so high?"

Simply this: Abraham believed God in spite of past disappointments and future uncertainties. In spite of all the questions and laments he may have felt in his own soul, Abraham believed. In spite of his own human inability to connect the dots from his present circumstance to God's promises, still he believed God. And the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.

Statues don't perspire, and stained-glass characters don't blink. But heroes of faith do have doubts. True believers have their questions. Paragons of righteousness have some concerns. We discover from Abraham -- as well as from Jeremiah, Habakkuk, the psalmist, the importunate widow, and others -- that the candid expression of those doubts, questions, and concerns to God is itself an act of faith. We have faith that he cares and faith that he can and will do something about it. For in the end, though perspiring and blinking, Abraham believed God. Amen.