Today's reading.
Here goes Abraham again. This is the second time in the book of Genesis that we've seen him pass his wife off as his sister. The man who "believed God," can't seem to trust him.
Which is why what God says to Abimelech is crazy: "return the man's wife, for he is a prophet, so that he will pray for you, and you shall live" (20:7). How embarrassing for the Lord! Abe is his prophet, one who is supposed to speak God's words, but he can't even tell the truth about his marital status. "You know the guy who just moved here with his 'sister'? Yeah, he was lying. She's his wife. But you'd better give her back now, or else. He's one of my guys."
I don't know about you, but I don't want to be on Abraham's team after reading this chapter. If I were Abimelech, I'd be tempted to think God didn't know what he was doing.
That is the brilliant thing about God's plan: Abraham's work has nothing to do with it. God accomplishes his purposes in spite of him.
Abe is supposed to be a blessing to all nations, but here he has brought threats and curses on the house of another man. How many times have we as Christians brought shame to our Lord and curses to those around us? Yet, God's purposes in Christ carry on.
The gospel enlists weak, sinful people in the service of the Almighty. God uses weak people like us to prove that whatever good we do do gets attributed to him and not to us. Abe was a prophet (clearly!) not because he was such a good, moral guy. He was the originator of the wife swap.
No, he was a prophet because of God's call. That's it, and that's all. Likewise, we aren't Christians because we are so good. It's because of God's call, his choice. No matter how good we look or embarrassingly we may behave, we are Christ's because of what he has done, not what we could do.
No comments:
Post a Comment