Abraham's Example Of Faith Series

4:19

“And not being weak in faith…”

How’s your faith today? Let’s test it. Do you really believe that millions of years from this night you will still be alive and well? Do you really believe that Jesus rose from a grave, and that your body is going to do the same? Do you believe that because of Jesus’ work on Calvary, all your sins can be forgiven?

Then you are strong in faith. Because God said all those things and even went to the trouble to have it written down. Faith comes from hearing God’s Word. Believe God’s very words and you are strong in faith.

Faith, for us, does not mean believing everyone who stands behind a microphone or publishes a website. That’s called “credulity”. Persons who believe everything they see or hear are called gullible, not strong in faith. You are allowed to disbelieve a thousand things and still be strong in faith if you believe the right things. And the right things are recorded for us.

Prophecies fail. How do you know which ones are from God? You “feel” it? Then you are the source of truth? We should come to you every time a prophecy is given somewhere? No, false prophets have been among us

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from the beginning and they will be with us to the end. The true prophecies and teachings are in the Book God gave us. Cling to it as though your life depended on it. ‘Cause it does.

To be strong in faith means looking at and listening to the right things and ignoring the wrong things…

“…he did not consider his own body, already dead (since he was about a hundred years old),…”

What a thing to say about Abraham’s body! Already dead. There is an interesting difference between the KJV and the NKJV here: a comma. Now there are no commas in the original Greek. We put commas in to explain what is being said. Is Paul telling us that Abraham didn’t think his body was already dead, or is Paul commenting that Abraham’s body was indeed dead? The Greek doesn’t tell us. The context seems to…

I note that some of the modern translations try to help the Greek even more by suggesting that Paul was saying his body was as good as dead. I prefer to take “as good as” out, but leave the NKJV comma in. Too much liberty with a text is dangerous.

As far as Abraham was concerned, for all practical purposes, his body was now dead, in the same way as Sarah’s womb was dead. No life, humanly speaking, left in Abraham’s reproductive system, to pass on to the next generation, some descendant. I’m a hundred, for goodness’ sake. I can hardly see or hear or walk up a hill. Death has set in. My body has been dying a little at a time.

But God says I’m going to have a son. And God cannot lie. And God has all power. If he says old dead Abraham is going to have a son, then Abraham is going to have a son. And he won’t be diseased or imperfect in any way. He’ll grow to have children of his own who will also have children. Nations will come, rising up all over the earth. I believe you God. Now go ahead and do what is on your mind. I’m all in.

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Oh that we could have faith like that. Grabbing hold of a promise in the word and believing it, ignoring all that our senses tell us. What, live forever? Let me take you to the cemetery! People don’t live forever. Don’t look at the cemetery. Look at God’s promise. What, no sin, look at my past, how can it be? Don’t look at your past, look at God’s promise. What, I’m going to have a child at age one hundred? Well, that doesn’t happen. But I believe you anyway, God.

One word of caution. When you read the histories of God’s men and women, remember that you are not those people. Not everything that was promised to them will happen to you. I doubt that anyone listening is going to have a child at one hundred. We honor the faith of these people, based on the promise given to us, not to them. This is where Paul is going in this passage. Be sure you have found a promise that is directed to you before you start believing God for it!

Just for the record, men can, even today, theoretically go on having children until they die. The record seems to have been set for modern men in India, who had a child at age 96, then just decided he was done having children. That is a clear exception to the rules, and it must be noted that men who engage in child-production in later years run a serious risk of bringing a less than perfect baby into the world.