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Session 1 Abraham

Alistair
Alistair
Cover Image for Session 1 Abraham

What is the Gospel?

The place I want to start is with a little verse in Galatians:

Gal 3:6 So also Abraham “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”

Gal 3:7 Understand, then, that those who have faith are children of Abraham. 8 Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: ‘All nations will be blessed through you.’ 9 So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

Or Galatians 3:9 So then, those who are of faith are blessed with the faithful Abraham (cf. Hab 2:4; Rom 1:17).

At the start of this little passage you probably felt at home: it’s saying you shouldn’t work for your salvation (in particular, you shouldn’t allow yourselves to be circumcised) and instead you need to have faith like Abraham who believed what God said and it was credited to him as righteousness. So far so good. Then Paul tells the Galatians that if they have faith they are children of Abraham. We might think at this point that Paul means that being a child of Abraham means that they are like Abraham in some way, perhaps a bit like John and James were sons of thunder. But actually, Paul is being more concrete in his thinking here. He’s saying two things here.

• To be a Christian is to have faith like the way Abraham had faith in God by believing in the promises he received.

• To be a Christian is to become a child of Abraham, and this doesn’t simply collapse into being another way of saying ‘we’re saved’. It seems that this is really what the dispute is all about.

Paul explains the goal of being a Christian, and that is to be a child of Abraham.

Gal 3:29 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

I think this verse might surprise some of us. I think we’d have expected it to be the other way round. “If you’re a child of Abraham, then you belong to Christ because, at the end of the day, that’s the most important thing.” But Paul puts it differently. It seems the point of our salvation is to inherit the promises given to Abraham.

And let’s not miss the other little surprise in this passage. The Gospel itself was proclaimed to Abraham by Scripture itself in advance, prophetically, says Paul.

Gal 3:8 Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: ‘All nations will be blessed through you.’

We’re used to thinking about the Bible as God’s Word, inspired by God, and containing the voice of divine author. Paul also thinks of Scripture having a voice of its own, one that serves the God of Scripture. “Scripture foresaw and Scripture announced the Gospel.” So, when we read the Bible, we’re looking for how it speaks of the purposes of God and how it points to Jesus. In this case, Scripture itself announces the Gospel to Abraham: All nations will be blessed through you.

Application: what would you say if someone got up to the pulpit (or the borrowed music stand from the guitarist), and said “I’m going to preach the Gospel to you: All nations are be blessed through Abraham.” It would at the very least sound odd; my point is that we have to back up from our routines and formulas about how we’ve presented the Good News and listen again to the voice of Scripture on its own terms.

Summary so far:

• The gospel is for the nations of the world to be blessed through Abraham

• The content of this blessing is to become a child of Abraham

• The means of becoming a child of Abraham is the faith of Abraham

This little reflection shows how biblical Paul’s theology is. He is not working with a doctrine or system but with a narrative, the biblical story. Whatever the Gospels contain, whatever Paul writes to his largely gentile churches, he’s clear that the Gospel is the fulfilment of a narrative that begins in Genesis where God commits himself with promises to Abraham that are fulfilled in Christ.

What does it mean for the nations of the world to be blessed through Abraham?

There are two things to work out here. What are these blessings, and how are they achieved through Abraham? The blessings themselves are basically the renewing of the promises and privilege given to Adam and Eve. In a sense it is the restoration of how the world was intended to be. I’ve quoted from a nice book by Matthew Emerson called The Story of Scripture, and he summarizes how the promises given to Abraham restore the plan of God with Adam and Eve and undoing the effects of the fall. Emerson writes:

• ‘Adam and Eve lost their dwelling place with God, but God promises Abraham the land of Canaan, the place where God will dwell with his family.

• Adam and Eve failed to rule over the [animals], but God promises that kings will come from Abraham’s line and rule over the [nations]…

• Adam and Eve failed to cultivate and keep the garden, and their sin resulted in the ground being cursed and bringing forth thorns and thistles. By contrast, Abraham’s family will dwell in a land flowing with milk and honey, and his line is charged with its care.

• Adam and Eve’s sin resulted in difficulty surrounding their ability to be fruitful and multiply, but Abraham and Sarah’s descendants will be innumerable, like the stars of the sky or the sand on the seashore.

• Adam and Eve failed to trust God and instead listened to the serpent. As a result they were cut off from God, counted as sinful. By contrast, Abraham believes God, and it is counted to him as righteousness (Gen 15:6).

• Adam and Eve’s sin resulted in the fall of all humanity and the abuse of creation, but from Abraham’s seed will be the one through whom God will redeem humanity and the cosmos.

We’ll have many opportunities to develop this kind of thinking as we go along in future studies, and we’ll do a bit more later on this morning. But it looks like Genesis is straining forward towards someone who will fulfil these blessings by becoming Abraham’s offspring, his seed. What we’re doing here is starting to read the NT text in light of the OT. This is good biblical theology.

Context of Abraham’s blessings and promises

Let’s think now about the biblical context (what we can also call the canonical context or the literary context) of Abraham. What I mean is, where in the story does all this happen? Abraham’s calling by God splits the story of Genesis in two. In the first part (Genesis 1–11) you have the cosmic creation and the account of the flood and the genealogy of the nations and the Tower of Babel, and the second part (Genesis 12–50) is the patriarchal history of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. That first part, sometimes called the primeval history, ends with the 70 nations listed as they spread out into the whole world. Von Rad says that the calling of Abraham concludes this section and begins the next,

The end of the biblical primeval history is therefore not the story of the Tower of Babel; it is the call of Abraham in Gen.XII.1–3: indeed, because of this welding of primeval history and saving history, the whole of Israel’s saving history is properly to be understood with reference to the unsolved problem of Jahweh’s relationship to the nations.

From a literary point of view, God chooses Abraham in response to three worldwide problems. The story of the Bible has built up three huge crises, and Abraham arrives as God’s solution to these crises.

• The first and most important is the worldwide problem of death introduced in the Garden of Eden through Adam and Eve’s disobedience.

• The worldwide problem of the spread of evil in the hearts of humanity and the possibility of global destruction in the flood.

• The confusion of the languages and the worldwide spread of the nations after the rebellion at the Tower of Babel.

At this point in the story, as you’re reading your Bible, you might have expected God to act in another dramatic, worldwide way, rather like the flood. Maybe he sends in twelve legions of angels; maybe he destroys the world with fire. With global problems, we expect another global solution. The amazing thing is that God’s response to these global concerns is to choose one man to leave his home, his people, and his land and to go somewhere else. The choosing of the one man Abraham to fix global problems is typical of God’s style.

Typology of Abraham

We said earlier that Abraham seems to fulfil some of the hopes and plans for Adam and Eve. He is also similar to Noah. We’ll see how Abraham fulfils the pattern in the Scripture of God’s chosen person to be blessed.

Abraham is another Adam and Noah in being blessed

Adam and Eve were given a calling and mission to be fulfilled in the Garden of Eden and beyond.

Gen 1:28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

This first blessing given to human beings refers to multiplying, filling the whole earth, subduing it in a way that reflects God’s own power and authority, and ruling over the other living beings on the brand new earth. This blessing is echoed when Noah finds himself on top of the renewed landscape after the flood, surrounded by the animals that have survived in the ark.

Gen 9:1 Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. 2 The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands. 3 Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.

When God first speaks to Abraham in the land of Ur, he calls him to leave his country, people and father’s house to go to a land he will show him. Then first thing that Abram hears from God is that he will be a blessing over the whole earth.

Gen 12:2 “I will make you into a great nation,

and I will bless you;

I will make your name great,

and you will be a blessing.

3 I will bless those who bless you,

and whoever curses you I will curse;

and all peoples on earth

will be blessed through you.”

So, imagine you’re Paul: you read this, and you’ve met the risen Lord Jesus, and so you know that whoever Jesus is, he must fulfil this worldwide hope. For Paul, any Gospel message worth its salt must be a fulfilment of this promise to bless the world through Abraham because God gave it as a response to the global problems of the world. The good news of Jesus Christ is not an alternative to this promise but a fulfilment of it.

Abraham and Noah are another Adam in the way they’re tested

If Abraham is like Adam in being given a blessing, is he like Adam in falling for temptation? Adam, famously, was tempted in the Garden by the serpent and proved to be faithless to the commission God had given him to serve and guard the Garden. He allowed the serpent to tempt Eve and went along with her decision to take the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.

Gen 3:6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

There are deliberate echoes of this story in Noah’s narrative.

• Noah is described as ‘a man of the soil’, or in Hebrew אִ֣ישׁ הָֽאֲדָמָ֑ה (Gen 9:20 WTT) which more literally means a man of the ground (like Adam is named after the ground: you could call him ‘Rocky’).

• Noah plants a vineyard and gets drunk from the fruit of the vine and was uncovered in his tent by his son Ham. Adam and Eve’s sin was from the fruit of the tree, and they realized they were naked.

• Afterwards, Noah’s other two sons cover their father’s nakedness just like Adam and Eve had tried to do for themselves and then God covered them more properly with animal skins.

When it comes to Abraham, that testing story is repeated, but with variation. Abraham is famously tested in Genesis 22 in a passage called the Aqedah (the binding) after the binding of Isaac. The parallels with the fall narrative of Adam and Eve are interesting.

Gen 22:9 When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”

• There is wood (the same word for tree) and Isaac on the tree as a sacrifice.

• In the Garden, Adam and Eve ate from the tree with fruit bearing its seed.

• Here is Isaac, Abraham’s seed, lain on a tree for sacrifice.

However, the test for Abraham is an inversion of the sin in the Garden; there Adam and Eve were told not to eat from the tree (and Eve says they were not even allowed to touch it), but here God has told Abraham to kill his beloved son on the tree. It is only when Abraham sends out his hand and takes the knife (וַיִּקַּ֖ח אֶת־הַֽמַּאֲכֶ֑לֶת ,Gen 22:10) that the angel of the Lord says ‘do not send out your hand to the boy’.

The author uses a play on words to make this point: the Hebrew word for knife and the verb ‘to eat’ contain the same three letters (the same triconsonantal root). “In Genesis 22, Abraham nearly uses a ma’ăkelet to kill his son. The text implies that he uses this same instrument to kill the ram that fortuitously appears. This word for a cutting instrument comes from the root ‘kl, to eat.” Jacobs cites Rabbi Hanina saying the term מאכלת is “a present participle of the hiph’il of אכל, ‘to eat’’, with the meaning of ‘causing to eat’, or simply, ‘feeding’.”

• Eve took from the tree and she ate, and brought in death to the world

• Abraham took the knife to kill in order to bring death to Isaac.

• Although Abraham was willing to be obedient and kill Isaac, God says not to reach out to Isaac like Eve reached out to take the fruit and eat.

The way the story is written is to show that, unlike Adam and Eve, Abraham passed that test, and that as a result he will bless the world through his offspring. It is a terrible story, Isaac’s near death experience on an altar of trees. God says after it that he now recognizes that Abraham was ready to give to God his only son. Having passed the test of faithful obedience, there on Mount Moriah God repeats the blessing:

Gen22: 15 The angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven a second time 16 and said, “I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, 18 and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.”

The fall brought death, the flood brought fear, and Babel scattered the nations over the whole earth. However, through Abraham, his trust and faithfulness, God has promised to bless all nations on the earth through his offspring (seed). The blessing is ‘life’, ‘unity’, and ‘peace’, undoing the curses. At the start we read that God would bless the world ‘through him’, but now we understand what ‘through him’ means: it means through his offspring. Originally, Israel might have thought that meant all the people of Israel, but Paul is pretty clear that he thinks this is a messianic prophecy.

Two additional features of this story

There are two extra things that the NT picks up about this story. The first is about the sacrifice of the ram, and the second is understanding who is the seed of Abraham.

This story of the testing of Abraham introduces the idea of a substitute sacrifice. When Abraham and Isaac are on their way up the mountain, Isaac asks about where the sacrifice is, and Abraham answers that God will provide a lamb.

Gen 22:7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?”

“Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.

“The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”

8 Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.

As it turns out, at the point where Isaac’s life is spared, Abraham looks up and there is a ram, caught by its horns, which they duly offer as a sacrifice. But this presents a bit of a tension in the text; Abraham said that God would provide a lamb, but instead he provides a ram. This suggests either that Abraham got it wrong (misheard God?) or that we should continue to hold on to that promise of Scripture that a lamb is yet to come. I think this is why John’s Gospel describes John the Baptist, when he sees Jesus, crying out ‘behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’.

The second thing about this story is that God has said ‘through your offspring all the nations of the earth will be blessed’. How should we understand the word seed? Paul reads it as a singular term, meaning singular descendant.

Gal 3:15 Brothers and sisters, let me take an example from everyday life. Just as no one can set aside or add to a human covenant that has been duly established, so it is in this case. 16 The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say “and to seeds,” meaning many people, but “and to your seed,” meaning one person, who is Christ.

But, the same way that in English ‘seed’ can mean one or many, Paul also sees that seed as being Christians because we are all one in Christ.

28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

What this means is that in Paul’s mind, Christ alone is the seed of Abraham, but, if you are ‘in Christ’, you too are the seed of Abraham, and therefore through you too all the nations of the world will be blessed. We’re involved in this Gospel message if we are ‘in Christ’. We see this at the Great Commission when Jesus tells his disciples to go into all the world and make disciples. That’s how the whole world will be blessed through the seed of Abraham. This is the fulfilment of the promise to Abraham. Through Abraham’s offspring, Jesus, we and all the nations of the world are blessed. This is the Gospel.

Resurrection Hermeneutic

The last thing that I want to cover in this first study is the difference that the resurrection makes to our reading of Scripture. So far we’ve seen how Paul is a careful reader of Genesis, understanding from the narrative itself that the Gospel must be a fulfilment of the promises given to Abraham that through him all nations of the world would be blessed. We also read the binding of Isaac story carefully, picking out how images and themes were repeated from Adam and Eve, and Noah, and this showed us that the Abraham story is woven carefully into the one unified story of Scripture. Now I want to show you how two passages (one in Hebrews, one in Romans) seem to reread the story of Abraham in light of Jesus’ resurrection.

Hebrew 11

The writer of Hebrews brings in a resurrection interpretation of the Abraham story of the Aqedah, the binding of Isaac, where Abraham almost kills his son.

Hebrews 11:17 By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, 18 even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.”[c] 19 Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death.

In the Genesis story, we don’t read anything about what Abraham is thinking, and we might assume that this is actually a test of Abraham’s faithful obedience to God’s command. But the writer of Hebrews says that the sacrifice of Isaac was not simply a test of Abraham’s obedience: it was a test of Abraham’s faith in the God who can raise the dead. “Are you willing to kill your son, trusting that I can bring him back from the dead?” And even though Isaac never actually died, the writer of Hebrews still wants us to read it as a metaphorical resurrection.

Romans 4

It would be really good to read the whole of Romans 4 after we’ve done this study because it should help understand Paul’s strategy in writing it. But we’re going to focus on verses 18–25. In this passage Paul also reflects on the content of Abraham’s faith, but this time from before Isaac was born. When God gave him promises that he would be the ‘Father of many nations’ (Gen 17:5), we might think that Abraham’s faith would be that this God is the God who can make the barren woman fertile. Think about Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Hannah, and Elizabeth all going from barren to child-bearing. But Paul rereads the story of Abraham in the light of Jesus’ resurrection and says that Abraham’s faith was actually in the God who raises the dead and bring life.

Romans 4:18 Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” 19 Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. 20 Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, 21 being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. 22 This is why “it was credited to him as righteousness.” 23 The words “it was credited to him” were written not for him alone, 24 but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. 25 He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.

This is how Paul makes Abraham’s faith relevant to us. He shows how Abraham must have believed in resurrection since he viewed his own body as good as dead (see the same phrase in Hebrews 11:12), and the birth of Isaac was an example of God bring resurrection life from a lifeless old body. Paul is showing us how our faith in the risen Lord Jesus helps us to reread OT stories in a Christian way. The content of our faith is in the God who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, and Paul draws that message from a rereading of Abraham.

Summary

In our first Troas Fellowship Study, we’ve considered Abraham in Scripture.

• He is the one that God chose to fix the global problems of Genesis 1–11

• He is the one to whom the Gospel was announced to in advance

• He is pattered after Adam and Noah

• And he is an example of someone who believes in the God who raises the dead.

• And if we believe in the God who raised Jesus from the dead then we are justified by that faith.

Discussion

We’re going to spend the rest of our time together discussing what we’ve learned and then giving a bit of feedback. Please help yourself to tea and coffee and biscuits.

• Which aspects of studying Abraham were most helpful or interesting?

• What struck you as surprising?

• Is there anything from this Bible study that you might want to study more?