Questions and Covenant: Day 2

You are going to need your Bible today.
I've often heard people say that if someone had told them years ago that they would be where they are now they would never have believed it.
Imagine someone saying to you that in 5 years you will be a missionary in Senegal (that's in Africa). It's possible that some of you might be thinking "bring it on!" but most of us would have a hard time wrapping our brains around the idea. If we look around at our lives it would be hard to believe that we would quite our jobs, move or leave our families and friends and travel half way around the world to a country that we know very little (if anything) about. In fact some of you (like myself) are incredibly thankful that this is a hypothetical situation because it's more then a little scary.
Lets read Genesis 15:2-6.
At 75 years old Abram had been told that he would become a great nation, a great man, he would be blessed and he would be a blessing (I love that God always seems to start off a little vague in His promises. It's so much easier to say "Okay, God's gonna do something with me." than it is to believe He going to make you a missionary, or a preacher). Now Abram is somewhere in his 80s (maybe 90's I'm not sure) and God tells him that he's going to father a child.
I have no problem imagining that Abram stood there a little stupidly trying to comprehend what God had just told him. He had been resigned to the idea that his most trusted servant, Eliezer would inherit his estate since clearly he and Sarai were past their fertile prime. Being told that a son from his own body would be his heir must have been hard to wrap his brain around.
Yet he believed God!
The Hebrew word used for believed in verse 6 is aman. It means; to trust, believe, rely, to be enduring.* It meant more then just Abram believed God's Word to be true, but that he believed God's specific word to him was reliable. It was a faith that led to action.** Abram believed not just that God could do what He said, but that He would do it.
"Abram believed the LORD, and He credited it to him as righteousness." Genesis 15:6
This verse is a big deal!
This verse it the foundation of Paul's teaching in Romans and Galatians, Salvation through faith alone. It wasn't Abram's works that made him righteous, in fact he wasn't any more righteous than you or I am, it was his faith that that covered over him with righteousness. The Bible says it was "credited" to him.
If you think about it, credit is an advance. When you take out a loan, you are given the money up front, but the intention is that at a certain point the loan will be repaid. Abram was given righteousness "on credit" but instead of him being responsible to repay the debit (which he could never do) Jesus paid the debt on the Cross thousands of years later.
On the other side of the Cross, we draw upon the righteousness that Jesus already paid over 2 thousand years ago. Salvation on both sides of the Cross is through faith alone. Faith that God's Word is True, not just in an intellectual factual way, but in a life altering, changing who I am and how I live kind of way.
"It was not through 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." Romans 4:13
"Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had the power to do what he 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." Romans 4:20-24
How awesome is that! Abram could only look forward to the fulfillment of God's promises, not knowing what exactly they would look like. We have the luxury of looking back on the full revelation of God's love in the form of Jesus nailed to the Cross to pay our sin debt.
Abram was given a glimpse of a future that should have been unbelievable to him. At 80 something years old, with a wife in her 70's it should have been ridiculous to think that he was going to father a child, yet he embraced it! He believed that God could and would keep His promises. That is an awesome kind of faith.
"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for." Hebrews 11:1 & 2
"Without faith it is impossible to please God." Hebrews 11:6a


* Hebrew-Greek Key Word Study Bible NIV. Chattanooga, TN. AMG Publishers. 1996. pg. 1504
* Arnold, Bill T. Encountering the Book of Genesis. Grand Rapids, MI. Baker Books. 2008. pg. 93