Readings for today: Psalms 70-72, Romans 4
One of the things I love to do when I read through the Bible in a year is to read the passages from different versions. My preferred version is the ESV. But I read from the NIV and the RSV and when I am looking for a more contemporary version, I might go to the CEV. Today I read Romans 4 from the Message version that Eugene Peterson wrote and I found his words incredibly compelling. Especially when he gets to verses 13-25.
“That famous promise God gave Abraham—that he and his children would possess the earth—was not given because of something Abraham did or would do. It was based on God’s decision to put everything together for him, which Abraham then entered when he believed. If those who get what God gives them only get it by doing everything they are told to do and filling out all the right forms properly signed, that eliminates personal trust completely and turns the promise into an ironclad contract! That’s not a holy promise; that’s a business deal. A contract drawn up by a hard-nosed lawyer and with plenty of fine print only makes sure that you will never be able to collect. But if there is no contract in the first place, simply a promise—and God’s promise at that—you can’t break it. This is why the fulfillment of God’s promise depends entirely on trusting God and his way, and then simply embracing him and what he does. God’s promise arrives as pure gift. That’s the only way everyone can be sure to get in on it, those who keep the religious traditions and those who have never heard of them. For Abraham is father of us all. He is not our racial father—that’s reading the story backward. He is our faith father. We call Abraham “father” not because he got God’s attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody. Isn’t that what we’ve always read in Scripture, God saying to Abraham, “I set you up as father of many peoples”? Abraham was first named “father” and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing. When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn’t do but on what God said he would do. And so he was made father of a multitude of peoples. God himself said to him, “You’re going to have a big family, Abraham!” Abraham didn’t focus on his own impotence and say, “It’s hopeless. This hundred-year-old body could never father a child.” Nor did he survey Sarah’s decades of infertility and give up. He didn’t tiptoe around God’s promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God, sure that God would make good on what he had said. That’s why it is said, “Abraham was declared fit before God by trusting God to set him right.” But it’s not just Abraham; it’s also us! The same thing gets said about us when we embrace and believe the One who brought Jesus to life when the conditions were equally hopeless. The sacrificed Jesus made us fit for God, set us right with God.”
You see, I struggle with faith. If I were Abraham, I am quite sure I would focused on my impotence or Sarah’s age and infertility and simply given up. I would have had a very hard time believing God would deliver on what He promised. This is what I love about Scripture. As I read about Abraham plunging “into the promise and coming up strong, ready for God, sure that God would make good on what He had said”, the Holy Spirit goes to work inside my own heart. The Word of God - which is living and active - begins to stir up faith deep in my soul. I find myself inspired to follow Abraham’s example. I find myself remembering all the promises God has given me. Promises for my children. Promises for my church. Promises for my friends serving Christ around the world in some of the most dangerous places. The Holy Spirit keeps working, reminding me that faith is a gift and not something I muster up on my own. He keeps placing the gift in front of me, encouraging me simply to receive. To embrace. To believe. And every time my fears or doubts begin to creep in, the Holy Spirit plays the ultimate trump card…the resurrection of Christ. He takes me back to the most hopeless moment in human history when evil seemed to have finally gained the upper hand once and for all and He shows me an empty tomb. Resurrection is the promise we plunge into when we believe. Christ dying. Christ rising. Christ coming again. This is the gospel and it is what sets us right with God.
Readings for tomorrow: None