Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness. Genesis 15:6 (CSB)
The biblical narrative of Abraham and Sarah is such a familiar one that it can be hard to study, teach, and discuss, especially among others who have familiarity with Scripture. Creation, the fall, the flood, Babel…then Abraham being singled out. We know it all well.
But there’s something about Abraham’s story that I have taken for granted. I haven’t really thought much about how much he knew.
Think about it. The Bible’s focus is God’s communication with us as His people. It’s not a history or science text. It doesn’t explain how the world was created or how exactly the flood covered the earth. We don’t get to know what happened in the cosmos when the sun stood still for Joshua or the shadow moved backward for Hezekiah. The star that appeared at Jesus’s birth remains a mystery to us.*
No, those stories do not tell us the how. But they do make it clear that Almighty God was directly involved with His creation in so many ways. And it’s not just the big, unexplainable events. There are also details that show He has chosen to be intimately accessible to His creation and His people. That accessibility only grew with His sending of the Holy Spirit in Acts, and we as modern Christians have 2000 years of church history giving testimony to the fact that His interaction with mankind didn’t stop with the writing of Revelation. It continues to this day!
We have so much. So very much.
We still struggle sometimes in our belief that this invisible God who exists beyond our ability to know or imagine truly wants to be in relationship with us. But, we have so very much evidence to support that truth.
What did Abram have? When he chose to believe the Lord at this moment in life — this moment when he and Sarai were childless and too old to imagine that would ever change — what evidence did he have about God to convince him that God’s promises could be trusted?
Did he have more than what we find today in the first eleven chapters of Genesis? Had he heard personal stories of God’s presence in the lives of people since the flood? Maybe he did. But, we also know that, while Noah was personally chosen to be the one to ensure that humanity continued after the flood, Abram was the one at the front edge of the grand narrative of God’s intimate and personal plan for salvation. Most of the action in the salvation story starts with him.
Abram had a flood story. He had knowledge of God’s judgment. But, he didn’t have all of the stories of God intervening on behalf of the children of Israel, his descendants. He didn’t know that God Himself would come to earth in the form of a baby. He didn’t see the expansion of the church after Pentecost.
All he had was a call and a handful of visions amid years of silence.
Yet he believed. And that belief, that allegiance to this unseen God, was credited to him as righteousness.
That’s the kind of belief I want. The kind of belief that says yes to the God who has proven His desire to interact with little ol’ me. Honestly, I wonder if that’s what Abram saw. Having lived in a society that believed in distant gods who held themselves aloof from mankind, he encountered something different. Almighty God talked to him. Chose him. Directed him. Instructed him. Spoke to him.
God does the same with me. Even if there was never another miracle, never another answered prayer, God talks to me. Me! Someone who has no reason to stand out. This Father God sent His Son to earth, His own essence incarnate, to ensure an eternal restoration of connection between mankind and Himself. He wants us to know Him. Not just to worship Him, although that is important. Not just to recognize Him as God, although that is critical. But to know Him. Personally. Intimately.
Even me.
What a tremendous reason to believe Him.
*I do love Patrick W. Carr’s interpretation of the star in his novel The End of the Magi. Fascinating idea, even if it is still just the product of one author’s imagination.
Not Quite Ordinary 