Part of an Old Testament series working our way through the key figures and stories, in which Abram looms large. Based on Genesis 15:1-6

May I speak and may you hear through the Grace of our Lord; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen

‘Look towards heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.’

A promised reward, a question of lineage, a vision of progeny, a silent indication of trust and a recognition of righteousness. In these six short verses lie the nub of the three great Abrahamic faiths. To date adherents of these number some 3.8 billion people in all the corners of the world, of which we are but a few. However, we first need to go back almost to the beginning, to understand why this one man would be so important both to God and to ourselves.

Our Old Testament reading begins with us needing to know after what things ‘the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision’. Here is a man with an impeccable lineage, whose eight times Grandfather was Shem, the son of Noah. His father, Terah, had set out with their family from Northern Mesopotamia to travel to the land of Canaan, what would become the promised land of Moses and the Israelites, but only got a far as Haran in Eastern Turkey.

However, God called Abram to leave behind his kindred and strike out once more towards Canaan, with the promise that ^‘I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing’ (Genesis 12:2). Having reached Canaan, the question of progeny is affirmed, ‘To your offspring I will give this land.’ However, Abram and his wife Sarai remain childless, and a famine forces them into Egypt, where Abram’s sense of self-preservation allows him to use Sarai as a bargaining pawn with Pharoah. Deceit uncovered, they are sent out of Egypt, where the now wealthy and prosperous Abram is once more travelling, and whose destination of the land of Canaan is literally decided by Lot.

God again gives an insight into the breath and length of Abram’s future prolificacy, ‘I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth; so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted’ (Genesis 13:16). Yet, Abram and Sarai remain childless, blessed only with the offer of more riches and accolades by the King of Sodom, which Abram rejects, but receiving the blessing of the high priest Melchizedek. Now God offers Abram a vision, not only has he acted a shield and protector of him, but his ‘reward shall be very great’. For Abram though, there is only one reward that will do – an heir, a natural heir of his own.

Being childless can be a painful and heartbreaking process to go through. As human beings we inherently desire to reproduce, to leave a small part of our DNA embedded in our children and children’s children. Abram’s deepest desire to produce offspring allows him the tenacity to question all the promises God has already made to him.

God’s blessing though is not just to produce a physical miracle. The body can be a frail and vulnerable organism, but the divine Spirit is vital and lifegiving. Having promised an incalculable number of descendants comparative to particle of the dust of the earth, he now get’s Abram to look heavenward towards the stars.

For us looking up at night we can not imagine the vastness of the that promise, with our few pinpricks of light moving across the sky, but for Abram in a land where light pollution doesn’t exist, the stars almost smother the darkness.

Yet none of this would have meant anything without Abram’s unshakeable faith that God would deliver. The enormous compassion of God in responding to what Abram desperately wants is only matched by Abram’s trust that God will deliver it. God sees his trust and ‘reckoned it to him as righteousness’ (Genesis 15:6). 

This willingness on the part of God to accept our trust in him as the equivalent of actual goodness is an abiding characteristic. We see it over and over again; ‘your faith has made you well’ to the haemorrhaging woman, the ten lepers, the blind beggar, but no more so than Jesus’ response to the penitent thief on the cross.

Here, as Paul will later refer to in Romans (4:3) and Galatians (3;6), is the first instance of justification by faith. Faith here is not based on the performance of good deeds or religious devotion – although they may be important ways of expressing our faith. Rather that faith is trusting God’s promises and acting as if it will be fulfilled. Throughout the bible God makes many promises – specifically in the New Testament, Jesus promises that he will be with us always and ‘whoever lives and believes in me shall never die’. For us, genuine faith holds on to those promises whatever life throws at us and acts accordingly believing them to be true.

At Abram’s calling God tells him that ‘all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’ because of him. Whatever, your description of family covers, a brother, a sister, a mother or father, adopted or fostered, church or community, you are blessed to be a part of it, and by placing our trust in God, we too can be a blessing to others, for he always keeps his promises.

The 200 billion trillion stars in the universe testify to the magnitude of his greatness, our faith in him testifies to our willingness to always look upwards and outwards and be beacons of hope in this world.

Amen