It was during my early teenage years that my parents gave me a devotional book by Chuck Swindoll entitled “Abraham…The Friend of God.” As I typed this sermon preview for the mid-week email that same dog-eared copy sits on the desk next to me. I read it through during my teenage years, and then once again during my Senior year at Houghton college. Looking back on it now, it seems obvious that God wanted me to spend time with Abraham’s story during those formative years when I was stepping out from under my parents’ authority and venturing forth not knowing where the adventure of following God would take me. The lessons to be gleaned from the life of this man, which sometimes comes as a shining example and other times as more of a cautionary tale, are one’s I revisit often in my mind. Abraham’s story is ancient, multi-faceted, at times controversial, but it is also chock-a-block full of powerful lessons for God’s people today. For the next eight Sundays, God willing, we will be spending time with the story of this extraordinary God-follower. I’m looking forward to seeing how God uses this study in each of our lives individually and in the life of our church.
You can find Abraham’s story in the book of Genesis, and in the coming weeks that’s where we’ll be hanging out, but we are going to begin our study of Abraham in the fourth chapter of Romans. The question at the center of that chapter is this; If Abraham was a sinner, and he most certainly was, how could he be saved when he lived and died thousands of years before Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross? If we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, was Abraham, who never heard the name of Jesus, saved on the basis of something else?