We've been talking about "and God said.....". Well, what did he say? Did he say he was going to send another flood to kill all the ungodly people? Noooooo we already heard that one. This is a new chapter. God told Abraham something that sounds very simple but isn't. He said, "leave home and go to a place that I, God will show you." Now I'm sure most of you have heard it explained that it was almost inconceivably more difficult for a man of ancient times to leave his roots then it would be for a young man today, when all young people are expected to leave home. For a man of Abraham's time it was nothing short of crazy to set out from home for no economic reason, just because God said so.
But there was a promise attached to the command of God:
I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great..... And by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves." (Verses 2-3)
This isn't primarily a promise to Abraham at all. It's a universal promise, a promise reaching to the ends of the earth and to the end of time as we know it. The offspring of this one man Abraham will be blessed by God, and through those offspring all other families who will ever live will be blessed by God. This is the promise that Abraham lived on for the rest of his life. But isn't this rather odd, to say the least, that an elderly man and an elderly, infertile wife should be promised gazillion's of descendant? Have we really thought about this? Why did God choose Abraham for this unique role? Why not someone younger? Someone who already had a child or two? And by the way, remember that after this first call from God, Abraham and Sarah continued to be childless for decades. There was absolutely nothing concrete to show for their long, long waiting.
The reason for this is that God is demonstrating the power of his promise. This is not a story about human potential. This is a story about what God did in the life of a man and woman who had no human potential ---- that's the whole point. This is a story about a God who makes a way out of no way. That is the way the story of redemption begins: with the God who promises to do what is humanly impossible. Only God can do what Paul the apostle said: the God of Abraham "raises the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist" (Romans 4:17). God promises that he will make Abraham's name great. It is the power of God and no other power that makes this no-name couple famous over the millennia. They would have been lost in the dust of Mesopotamia for all these thousands of years if God in his majestic purpose had not caused them to be revered today as Father Abraham and Mother Sarah.
Now listen to the rest of Paul's words concerning Abraham:
He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead because he was about 100 years old, or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb..... He grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised,,,,, (Romans 4:19-21)
What God had promised. What is the power of a promise? President Obama has discovered that promises are easy to make but hard to keep. That is the reality that all politicians have to face when the campaigns are over. Have you had the experience of wanting to promise something and then being unable to do it because you didn't have the ability to follow through? Imagine being able to promise your friend with cancer that she will be healed. Imagine being able to promise a hard-working jobless man that you will definitely be able to find him a good position so he can support his family. Imagine being able to tell a child with a drug-ridden mother and an absent father in a poverty-stricken neighbourhood that he will have a brilliant future. Imagine being able to promise a person with early Alzheimer's that the disease will get better instead of worse. We want to make promises to people, and sometimes you want to make them so much that we do make them, and then we fail because we can't follow through.
This is the reason that it matters so much that God actually speaks. Preposterous as it may be, humanly speaking. But here are the words that the Church lives by: "God is able to do what he has promised." In spite of all the deconstructionists and the sceptics and the scoffers there is something about the Word of God in the Bible that eludes them all. There is a mysterious life in the Scriptures that renews God's people generation after generation.
How can this be?
It's because God is real, and he is our God, and he speaks the Word of life, and his Spirit cannot be quenched, and he - is able to keep his promises of blessing and redemption and abundance and righteousness and fullness of joy and eternal life in his presence.
Amen.
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