The Promise of God
Texts: Genesis 15:1-6; Galatians 3:1-14
Pastor Phil Hughes, American Fork Presbyterian Church, UT
May 21, 2023
Galatians is not a friendly letter. Paul, the Christian leader, evangelist and preacher is ticked. He is very upset with the people in the church that is in Galatia. Twice he calls the Galatians foolish. He says they have been bewitched as if some spiritual spell has been cast on them.
Here’s what has him so hot and bothered: he wants to know why they have stopped living by faith and have returned to living by the law. Instead of trusting what God has done for them they are trusting in what they do themselves.
Really, what we have read and heard this morning in chapter 3 is a continuation of the last verse of chapter 2, when Paul says that if we could be made right with God by keeping the law, then the grace of God is nullified and Christ died for no reason at all.
What is the point of Jesus Christ dying on a cross if we can make it on our own with God?
Paul calls the Galatians fools for thinking they can make it on their own with God by keeping the Jewish law and rules. In order to try and “wise them up”, Paul takes them to Abraham – the father of the Jewish faith.
If you want to go back to the father of modern science you go to Galileo. If you want to go back to the father of American democracy you might go to Thomas Jefferson. The father of modern art? Leonardo Da Vinci. If you want to go to the father of rock and roll you go to Chuck Berry or, maybe Bill Haley.
For Jewish people there is no arguing that Abraham is the father of their faith. To Abraham God gave a promise that a great people would come from him. These people came to be the Jewish nation.
But Abraham is the Father of Christian faith as well. In this passage in Galatians Paul says that the gospel was given to Abraham in advance when God promised Abraham that “All nations will be blessed through you.” And a main point of today’s passage is that Paul is saying that those who live by faith in Christ get it on the blessing of Abraham, too.
Abraham is mentioned in eleven of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, and he is mentioned repeatedly and prominently. In a sense Christian faith doesn’t start with Christ, but really begins with the first man to respond to God by faith - Abraham. (How do you like those bagels?) Paul uses Abraham as an example of living by grace.
Let’s do a little profile of Abraham. If you go back to Genesis 12, we find that the LORD came to Abram and told him to go from his country, his family, and his land and leave for a new land that the Lord would show him. The Lord promises to make of Abraham a great nation, to make his name great, and to bless him.
That great nation was to become Israel. The problem was Abraham and his wife, Sarah, had no children. And they were up in years and drawing social security. How do you become a great people when you have no one to continue your line?
Abraham did go. He left as the Lord had called him to do, stepping out in faith. In the New Testament book of Hebrews it says, “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going.”[1]
But as time went on he and Sarah still remained childless. God comes again to Abraham, tells him not to be afraid, that he is Abraham’s shield, and that Abraham’s reward will be very great.
Abraham says, “Yeah, about that reward, Lord…” and brings up the fact that he still has no sons. But the Lord says that Abram will have a son from his own bloodline. And that’s when the Lord leads him outside and tells him to look at the stars in the sky. It was one of the crystal clear, Middle-Eastern wilderness nights. No lights around to dim the heavens. The night sky was brilliant with stars.
The Lord promises to Abraham, “Your descendants will be as many as the stars you see.” And it says, and this is the key verse in Genesis 15:6, “And Abraham believed the LORD; and the LORD credited it to him as righteousness.”
God declared Abraham to be in a right relationship with him right then and there because he believed. He had faith in the promise of God. He took God at his word.
The word “credited” or “reckoned” is an accounting word. For Abraham, to believe God’s word that he would have children, and that from him would come as many people as many as the stars in the sky, was like opening a bank account. God transferred money into his account. And when Abraham got his first bank statement it read “Right with God. Approved. Good.” Abraham’s account was full of righteousness.
So is our account when we believe God’s promises, especially that we are saved by grace through faith.
Not because he performed any particular act, or kept a set of laws, or fulfilled an ordinance. God tells Abraham – “you believed me, so everything is gonna be all right between you and me.”
In Genesis 15 Abraham comes in not believing. He just doesn’t see this great nation thing happening. But by v. 6, he believes, and the Lord counts that as being good with him. What changes in Abram?
Walter Brueggemann, Old Testament teacher and commentator, puts it like this: “[Abraham] has now permitted God not to be a hypothesis about the future, but the voice around which his life is organized.”[2]
For how many of us is God merely a hypothesis? He is a possibility, a maybe-maybe not. We aren’t willing to commit. We might have our toe in the water. We might even go up to our waist. But we aren’t all in with him.
God as merely a hypothesis – a theory - is not the belief or faith of the Bible.
Abraham came to believe the word of God. He was all in. He no longer measured reality by what he could see, touch or control. Because he had faith didn’t guarantee there would not be problems or challenges. But Abraham responds with faith to what God has said. And faith is “a specific response to a concrete promise from a known promise-maker.”[3] Faith is responding to the promise from the God who is faithful. Abraham believes God and the promise that God has made.
Abraham’s faith wasn’t without questioning or wondering. He struggled to understand, but he came to a place where he settled that God is God, and if God is who he is, then it must be good.
Abraham had to wait. It took patient trust as years went by.
Abraham holds this faith in the face of barrenness. Sarah is too old to have a child. It looks like the resources have run out.
Abraham’s faith is in who the promise comes from. That is all Abraham has. He has the promise of God. He deems God able to come through.
For Abraham the issue was a child leading to a great nation. For us the promise in which we are to have faith is that we have peace with God by resting in Christ’s work for us. We are called to believe God when he says that he accepts us and we are credited as right with him by trusting in what he has done in Jesus Christ. We are made right with God not by our resume of works but by Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection for us.
God was not a possibility for Abraham. No, Abraham went all in and organized his life around what God had said.
Around whose voice is your life organized? Who are you believing these days? The commercials? The political pundits? The postings of social media? The Adversary? The Lord?
Abraham’s faith was in the promise of the Lord. Last week we heard Paul say, in chapter two, that he, himself, was living by faith in the Son of God. When we finally realize that our efforts are exhausted, that we can’t do it on our own, and we wholly trust God - the promise maker – then we are made right with God. As Paul says, we become children of Abraham. We become part of the family of faith, the legacy of those who trust God.
That’s right, being in Abraham’s line isn’t about whether you are circumcised, do various religious ceremonies, or are even Jewish by blood. It is about believing God: that what he says is good and he can be trusted.
Can we trust the promises of God? The promises of God fill the Bible. The Lord never promises that our lives will always be easy, or that we will never experience pain or suffering. The Lord never promises that we will be a success in the world, or that we will be rich, or that we will all have model good looks. (Some of us just have that naturally!?)
What does the Lord promise? He promises, “I will never leave you nor forsake you”[4] If you go back and read the context of that, it is a promise about not worrying whether we have enough or not. In our times of need God will always be with us. We may be tempted to believe God has abandoned us but we need to believe the promise that he will not leave or forsake us.
Jesus promised that all who believe in him, “I will raise them up on the last day.”[5] This is Christ’s promise of resurrection. We can’t see that yet. It is a matter of faith. At Lazarus’ tomb Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” And then he asks a question which usually gets left out of this statement. “Do you believe this?” When we face death, of those we love or our own, do we take God at his word that he will raise us up at the day of resurrection? That we go on to life eternal? That God has prepared something beyond this life?
In 1 John it says “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”[6] Do we believe God really doesn’t hold our sins against us when we honestly say we have blown it?
In Romans God promises, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”[7] Hard things may come. But God will work whatever comes for our good and for his purposes in our lives.
Peter preached at Pentecost for people to change the direction of their lives, be baptized, “so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off…”[8] The Lord promises to give us the Holy Spirit, who is also called the promise of the Father.[9]
Here in Galatians 3 Paul speaks of the Spirit being a result of faith in the promise of God. Twice he asks the Galatians if they received the Spirit by works of the law, or by believing what they heard? The rhetorical answer is that they have the Holy Spirit because they came to Christ by faith.
The Spirit is God with us and in us. The Spirit lives in those who believe in Christ. We can’t see him but we know he’s there when we think about God, desire God, feel moved to come to God, or are convicted that we need to be honest with God.
The Spirit breeds the life of God in us. He is God’s presence with us at all times and in all places. When you are filled with God you have all you need.
Paul writes that it is by faith that we receive the promise of the Spirit – the life of God in us. He can’t be bought, earned or manufactured. He is the gift of God who comes through faith. (We will hear more about the Spirit next Sunday on Pentecost.)
Faith is trusting in the promise of God. It is believing that God is for us and shares his life with us. It is believing God because God is good for his word..
No, we can’t see everything. No, all the evidence isn’t before our eyes. No, we don’t always know how it is going to turn out. That’s the way it was for Abraham – the proto-type of biblical faith. That is the way it is for us.
Paul reminds the Galatians that everyone who relies on doing works of the law is cursed. To not live by faith is a cursed life. But Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us by hanging on the cross. He redeemed us so that we could become children of Abraham, children of the promise, not the law. To be a child of Abraham is another of saying I am part of the people of God.
So when we see the cross, do we believe that that is enough? Do we believe God’s promise that through the life of his Son that we are made right with God?
Do we believe God’s promise about forgiveness and his love and grace as expressed in his Son, and say, “I am going to trust that?” That is to live by grace.
As we go through Galatians we find that the life of grace is not an effort on our part to achieve a goal we set ourselves. It is a continually renewed attempt simply to believe that someone else has done all the achieving that is needed. We are to live in relationship with that person – who is Christ, whether we achieve or not. “If that doesn't seem like much to you, you're right: it isn't. And, as a matter of fact, the life of grace is even less than that. It's not even our life at all, but the life of that Someone Else…”[10]
That Someone Else is the Lord Jesus Christ. We are asked to believe him and all God has done in him. And it will be credited in our account as righteousness.
Prayer: Lord, keep us from being foolish enough to think that our achievements can earn our way with you. Give us the faith of Abraham, so that when we gaze on the cross of Christ we trust that. Help us to live by faith in the Son of God and his love for us. And so may our lives be blessed. Amen.
[1] Hebrews 11:18
[2] Interpretation commentary on Genesis, p. 144
[3] ibid
[4] Hebrews 13:5
[5] John 6:40
[6] 1 John 1:9
[7] 8:28
[8] Acts 2:38,39
[9] Acts 1:4
[10] Between Noon & Three: Romance, Law & the Outrage of Grace