Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.
Genesis 15:6 (NIV)
It’s not about faith in doctrine, or faith in a religion, or faith in ourselves. It is specifically about believing a promise God made to us, and living life as though we believe the promise is true.
God has to intervene.
So many lessons here.
This is broken.
I’ve often argued that Paul’s “war against works” was never intended to be used the way the reformers wield it, and that Paul was pushing back against a pious self-righteous boasting about accomplishments and holiness.
In Genesis, it seems like God looks for good works.
After Ham does something (we’re not really sure what) to Noah, the text says that Ham’s brothers address their father’s shame by taking a garment and covering him, shielding him from further humiliation.
But the Hebrew language hides a clue here.
But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it on both their shoulders and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were turned away, so that they did not see their father’s nakedness.
Genesis 9:23 (NASB)
While we read “Shem and Japheth” in English, the Hebrew uses an idiom that doesn’t translate well into English. It’s not “they.” It’s “he,” and it points to Shem as the initiator.
The focus is on Shem.
(Gen. 9:23:) THEN HE, SHEM AND JAPHETH, TOOK A GARMENT. R. Johanan said: “Then they took” is not stated here, but THEN HE TOOK. Shem first showed his courage [in the worthy act] and afterwards Japheth. Ergo: THEN HE, SHEM AND JAPHETH, TOOK A GARMENT.
Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Noach 21:2
Without seeing this, the resulting blessing by Noah makes little sense. While the fate of Ham’s son is repeated, we are told that Shem is God’s man, and Japheth will be blessed by Shem’s abundance.
Why is Shem singled out? The text gives one answer: his good deed.
He also said,
“Blessed be the Lord,
The God of Shem;
And may Canaan be his servant.
May God enlarge Japheth,
And may he live in the tents of Shem;
And may Canaan be his servant.”
Genesis 9: 26-27 (NASB)
And the good deed here is God’s own heart: to defend those who are shamed. We can quibble about drunkenness and nakedness, but the focus is Shem honoring his father and defending the vulnerable from shame.
This is the work God desires. Perhaps this is why God uses Shem.
When God saw Abel’s sacrifice in Genesis 4:4, this is the word used to describe God seeing his offering.
שָׁעָה shâʻâh, shaw-aw’; a primitive root; to gaze at or about (properly, for help); by implication, to inspect, consider, compassionate, be nonplussed (as looking around in amazement) or bewildered:—depart, be dim, be dismayed, look (away), regard, have respect, spare, turn.
H8159: שָׁעָה (šāʿâ)
The word is used again later in a story linked to something important: it’s the word used when Sarah drives out Hagar.
And she said to Abraham, “Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.”
Genesis 21:10 (NIV)
While we wrestle with Sarah’s unkindness and Abe’s foolishness and Hagar’s slave-status, there’s something that Paul says later about this story that we have to understand. These characters represent something.
For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. His son by the slave woman was born according to the flesh, but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a divine promise.
Galations 4:22-23 (NIV)
There’s so much talk about “works” and “faith,” and Paul links these concepts to slavery and freedom as it relates to God’s promise to us.
When Sarah demands that Abe “get rid of” Hagar and the boy, she is using this same word of “banishing” as Genesis 3.
The link should be viewed through an eternal lens: God is banishing the slavery of works and our own attempts at attaining status and relationship from the garden. The Garden is Holy.
He’s not kicking US out. He’s kicking out the works of the flesh.
How do we know this?
Because if you read the text closely, God only banishes Adam from the garden, and not Eve, who represents Life. The spirit. The one through whom God promises to bring redemption. Not through through One born of the flesh, but born of the spirit.
And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
Genesis 3:22-24 (NIV)
God is greater than our doubts. He’s so great that He can even use our doubts to grow us into a faithful people.
There are two lessons that jump out.
Then he proceeded from there to the mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord.
Genesis 12:8 (NASB)
And he went on his journeys from the Negev as far as Bethel, to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Ai, to the place of the altar which he had made there previously; and there Abram called on the name of the Lord.
Genesis 13:3-4 (NASB)
First, repeating things is a way to highlight the story. It’s underlined, bolded, italicized and blinking: REMEMBER THIS! A great famine will drive the people of God into Egypt, where a Pharaoh will take what is not his. But remember God’s mighty hand; you will be rescued. Remember!
Second, the rabbis say that “called upon the name of the Lord” can mean that Abram preached. He told people who God was.
But imagine how different his preaching was before and after being in Egypt. What lessons has Abram learned? Experience, suffering, seeing God rescue… these things change a person. They grow a person.
After the first altar, Abram is still willing to let his barren wife be taken away, fearing for his own life.
After the second altar, he is willing to accept a barren land, allowing Lot to take the fertile plain of the Jordan, trusting that God can turn barrenness into fruitfulness.