Promises, Faith & Hope (Romans 4:13-25)

Theology can often intimidate people. Maybe it’s because the Bible is such a big book with a story that spans thousands of years and names that are really hard to pronounce. Maybe it’s because pastors are often people with tertiary degrees who have spent years learning so much theology that we think they are the only ones who can do it. Maybe we are worried about getting it wrong somehow, or someone once told us we were wrong so now we don’t want to risk it …

Whatever our reasons might be for finding theology intimidating, we don’t have to be scared to look for meaning in God’s word for ourselves. It is good to remember that Jesus spoke to people just like us in parables and stories they could relate to. When the letters of the New Testament were written, they were read out in gatherings of people just like us and discussed to explore what they meant for that particular church family of believers. Yes, the words of the Bible can be challenging to us in a range of different ways, but when we pull away the layers, usually there is a very simple meaning underneath all those words.

For example, this week’s New Testament reading from Romans 4:13-25 might sound confusing as Paul talks about Abraham, law, promises, faith and so on. When we distill his words to their basic meaning, however, he is communicating a pretty simple idea:

God’s promises, received through faith, bring hope.

Or, another way of saying that is:

God’s promises + faith = hope

Paul talks about Abraham, who lived about two thousand years before the birth of Jesus, to show how this simple theology works. God came to Abraham and promised him that he would be the father of a great nation (Genesis 12:1-3). This might sound crazy enough, but what made this promise more incredible was that Abraham was seventy-five years old and his wife, Sarai or Sarah as she was named later in the story, was about ten years younger. Both were well past the age of having children. As Paul tells us, Abraham “was fully convinced that God is able to do whatever he promises” (Romans 4:21 NLT). He trusted God’s promise to him, left his family behind, and began traveling to a land he didn’t know.

Abraham and Sarah waited twenty-five years for God to keep his promise, and for all that time, with a few ups and downs, they continued to believe that God would do what he said. Their faith in God’s promise gave them hope. Paul writes, “Even when there was no reason for hope, Abraham kept hoping – believing that he would become the father of many nations” (Romans 4:18 NLT). God’s promise to Abraham, received through faith, gave Abraham and Sarah hope through all the good times and bad, joys and struggles, for twenty-five years. Imagine clinging to a promise for two and a half decades, trusting something that seemed impossible, hoping that God would keep his promise and do what he said he would.

This is why Paul calls Abraham, “the father of all who believe” (v16). When we hear God’s promises to us and trust them, we become part of the great nation God promised to Abraham. This isn’t a political or geographical nation, defined by and limited to a particular time and place. We belong to a spiritual nation with our crucified and risen Lord Jesus as our leader which includes people of every time and place, all who have heard God’s promises, received them through faith, and found hope in them.

We can often think about God’s promises to us in Jesus as forgiveness and eternal life. Paul concludes this section of Romans by pointing us to Jesus who “was handed over to die because of our sins, and was raised to life to make us right with God” (v25 NLT). This is God’s greatest promise to us – that through Jesus’ life, death & resurrection for us, our sins are forgiven, we have a new and right relationship with God, and we will live with him for all eternity – but it’s not God’s only promise to us in Jesus.

Paul points out that the promise Abraham believed which made him right with God was that he would be the father of a great nation. God didn’t say anything to Abraham about forgiveness or eternal life in Genesis, but his faith still made him right with God. This tells us that while forgiveness and eternal life are two of the biggest promises God makes us in Jesus, they are not the only promises. Each time we read or listen to God’s Word, we can listen for the specific promise God makes to us through that passage. God promises us love (John 3:16), acceptance (Romans 15:7), peace (John 14:27), value (1 Peter 1:18,19), full and abundant life (John 10:10), and so much more! God makes all these promises to us because of what Jesus has done for us in his life, death, and resurrection. Theology shouldn’t intimidate or frighten us because at its heart, theology is about listening to the good promises God makes us because of what Jesus has done for us, and encouraging each other to keep on believing them, trusting them, and receiving them through faith.

It is so important to do this because faith in God’s promises to us in Jesus brings us hope! Even when life is at its darkest, when it looks like there’s no way forward, when there is literally no hope at all, our God is the God who “brings the dead back to life and who created new things out of nothing” (v17 NLT). We see God bringing light from darkness in the Genesis Creation stories. We see God bringing the dead back to life in the resurrection of Jesus. These and other Bible stories are God’s promise us that he did it there and then, so he will do it for us here and now as well because of his great love for us in Jesus. Trusting these promises, whatever words the Bible might use, gives us hope, just like Abraham and Sarah, both for this life and the next as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:19. God might take a year, ten years, or twenty-five years to keep his promises like Abraham and Sarah, or we might need to wait until eternity to see God fulfil his promises, but trusting God’s promises to us in Jesus brings hope, and if there’s one good thing the world needs right now, it’s hope. We can find the hope our world needs in trusting the promises of God.

Don’t be intimidated by theology. It is actually pretty simple. At the heart of every good theologian is an openness to listen to God’s promises in Scripture, to trust them, to find hope in them, and to share the hope his promises give with people who need it. You don’t need a theological education or degrees on the wall to do that. All we need is faith in God’s good promises to us and the hope that it brings, just like Abraham and Sarah.

More to think about or discuss:

• Do you find “theology” (whatever that might mean to you) intimidating or scary? Can you give some reasons why…?
• What do you think of the “God’s promises + faith = hope” idea? What might sound difficult about it? What might sound good about it?
• How might trusting in God’s promises to you in Jesus help you find a deep & lasting hope? How might it help you bring hope into the life of someone you know?