Abraham, friend of God.   Romans 4.1-8

What is the big deal about Abraham?  Let’s go back…way back, like 4,000 years, and see if we can figure it out - His father had been a moon worshipper, but rather than follow the moon, Abraham heard the voice of God, and he listened to it.  He was every bit the renegade that Noah was, but instead of a big boat to show for it, he had a long journey to a far-off country, and a barren, elderly wife.  He too must have been ridiculed, as he packed upto leave his home, livelihood, and people behind. “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.”

Paul moves into Romans, using Abraham, patriarch of Judaism, to show the working out of great faith, which often leads to great works. 

“What then shall we say that Abraham our father has found according to the flesh?  For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.  For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.”  Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt.  But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness, just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works:  “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,  And whose sins are covered;  Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin.”    Romans 4.1-8

Abraham was a sinful man—like you, like me.  But what set him apart from you and me was that he heard the voice of God—or understood the leading of God—and he obeyed.  God did not ask simple things of Abraham either: ‘pick up all you own and move way off yonder; and oh yeah, now that your 99-year-old wife gave birth to a son, tie him on the altar—sacrifice him, Abraham’.  In both cases, Abraham responded in faith—great faith.  That is Paul’s point in holding up Abraham as an example to the Jews he was teaching.  After all, it couldn’t have been the Law that made Abraham righteous because he lived hundreds of years before the Law was given to Moses.  No, it was not his works, it was his great faith.

Are you like Abraham?  Do you take God at his word, trusting his promises to you?  Does your faith direct your responsive actions, or would you more likely be labeled ‘nonresponsive’ to the voice of God?    "What a man believes is the thing he does, not the thing he thinks."1         

Scripture refers to Abraham as the ‘friend of God’ three different times.  What a remarkable distinction!  Jesus told his friends, ‘you are my friends if you obey me.’2   So it had to have been Abraham’s great faith that led him to be obedient to God.

George MacDonald was a Scottish poet, preacher, novelist who boiled all of life's truth into a simple two-step process: realizing who God is, then obeying Him. "True faith, true belief, is not possible where there is not a daily doing of the things He says. They are what make faith take root and spring to life... obedience is not perfection, but making an effort."                Realize who God is, then obey him.

Back to Jesus’ discourse with his disciples, when he said, ‘you are my friends if you obey me…’ Ah, so God must have called Abraham his friend because of his obedience.  O that God will call you and me his friends because we have obeyed him!  Abraham-friend of God, John-friend of God, Ally-friend of God, Glen-friend of God . . . for these children of God obeyed their Father.

Christine