”"Look up at the heavens and count the stars--if indeed you can count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your offspring be."
Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.”
--Genesis 15:5-6
Has it ever occurred to you how weird it is that Moses writes down all these stories about Abraham? I mean, here’s Moses, the law giver, writing all this stuff about Abraham, the father of faith. God gives Moses the law. Moses gives the Israelites the law. God expects the Israelites and Moses to follow the law, but, oh by the way, here’s all these stories about your flesh and blood ancestor and his – FAITH? Why does God have Moses do that?
The answer to that question is in our passage. God gives the Israelites the story of Abraham so that they can see that faith in the Lord works. God promised Abraham; "So shall your offspring be", and there the multitude of Israelites stood. They were the partial fulfillment of that promise. God is faithful.
Why did Abraham believe the promise? Because of who had spoken to him – God! It’s not a stretch to say that Abraham wouldn’t have believed it if anyone else had said it. God is the only one who could have called Abraham righteous. Why did the Lord do that? Abraham had faith in God.
What does God expect from the Israelites when he gives them the law? He expects them to obey and trust just because He said so. If you look in your Bible, you’ll see that it’s the law of the LORD and not the LAW that is lord. God was speaking to the Israelites and that should have been enough for them.
What does that have to do with us today? Well, how do we know Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins? We have his word on it. How do we know that Jesus Christ rose from the dead? We have his word on it. That word may come to us in the form of the Bible, a testimony of Jesus, a preacher’s sermon, or the way a believer lives, but just as the Spirit of God spoke to Abraham all those hundreds of years ago he speaks today. The Spirit of Jesus spoke to us told us that what we heard was real, powerful, and effective for you and for me today. We believed it just because he said so, and the Lord gave us righteousness. So, then . . .
Faith is trusting Jesus Christ.
Now, you may say, “I know that.” Well then, let me ask you this – is that sentence you “know” in the past tense or in the present tense for you?
To be continued . . .
