🦁 Lent 2-2

Readings: Psalm 22:23-31; Genesis 16:1-6; Romans 4:1-12. 

Reflection

Good morning. This is Tim Tribble, broadcasting from Sacramento, California. Today's readings come from Psalm 22 versus 22, 23 to 31. Genesis Chapter 16, verses 1 to 6 and the book of Romans Chapter four, verses 1 to 12. So we revisit again Psalm 22 today. And like I said yesterday, this is, you know, the precursor to the Psalms for the very well known. We memorized as children. Psalm 23. But this is again, this is another praise of God and how God helps us and in verse 24 four, he is not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted and is not hidden his face from him that he has heard when he cried to him. And that's a real comforting thing. God is there. God hears us. God knows our afflictions. He's not blind or deaf to them. He sees them, He knows them. And when we call out to him, he will answer us. 

A reading from Genesis today we continue is the Abrahamic Covenant. Those are the story of Abraham. Sarah and originally Sarah was known as Sarah. Sara, I. Sarah. I means thy the princess. My princess because she was the princess of her house and of her tribe. Later she was called Sarah, just Princess because she was recognized as such. 

But she comes to this is, you know, we're going to have offspring. It's Abraham now. We have offspring. My offspring, Romi is multiples. The skies are going. I know kids. We have children. I can't have children. I have not been blessed with children. The Lord has prevented me from bearing children. She actually says in verse two, So she has a servant. Some version say slave. 

Her name is Hagar. So Sarah comes to Abraham and says, I'm going to give you Hagar as the wife. This is back when polygamy was a thing, so you could have two people. It would be very common back then for men to have multiple wives. So Sarah, Sarah gives Abraham of Hagar, her servant. That was the wife. So. So Abraham will lay with her. He does. They have. She becomes pregnant. The child will then be Noah's Ishmael. But here's what happened. 

Hagar becomes with child and looks contempt with her mistress. Row, row. We have a problem. So now Sarah is upset because her servant slave looked upon her with content and she's not happy about that. So she goes to Abraham and says, Made the wrong done to me, be on you. So she's talking about it's Abraham for Abraham's fault. Hagar looked at contempt at Sarah, and may the Lord judge between you and me. Abraham puts a stop to this, though, and says, Hey, behold your servants. It's your servant. Do with her as you please. So Sarah dealt harshly with her, and Hagar fled. 

Well, the importance of this is in all three Abrahamic faith traditions. That's Judaism, Christianity and Muslim or Islam. All talk about Abraham and Sarah. Abraham or Abraham. And Sarah. Abraham and Sarah. They all have stories. There's variations to the theme. But we all, you know, we all feel that's where our faith came from. Abraham and Sarah are the parents of what became our faith and when Hagar and Ishmael ran, it is believed that they are the ones who became was known as the Arabic of the Arabs and Muslims trace their lineage to Hagar and Ishmael. No, understand that the Prophet Muhammad didn't come around till after Jesus. But there. So this is not. Unfortunately, sometimes they think they're Ishmael is the one that's there, that Muslims, they weren't Muslim at that time that hadn't come around yet. But they're the Arabic people. 

Some I've heard say they're the Canaanites, the story of the Canaanites and in the in the Bible. And so that is also where they could come from. But they went out in the desert and they're pulled away. And this is what happens when you don't trust God. Things go sideways, They go wrong. So now we have this union between Abraham and Sarah. And then so Sarah says, Hey, you know, lay with my servant, your second wife. And it didn't work out because God had a plan. And we didn't they didn't wait to see what God's plan comes to fruition. They kind of pushed things along on their own in Romans And the reading again, this is Paul's book to the church at Rome. 

Abraham justified by faith. And again, this is another one of Paul's defenses of God is for everyone, not just Jews. So the way, as it was known, is not just for a sect of Judaism. You have to be a Jew to follow the way. And in here he makes the argument in verse nine, Is this blessing? In blessing then only for the circumcised are also for the uncircumcised, for we say that faith was counted by Abraham as righteousness. You go down, it goes. How was then He counted for him? Is it before? After being circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised. So Paul's argument is that Abraham had the faith, had faith before he was circumcised. So therefore, the faith, faith in God as good for the for the uncircumcised and the circumcised, the circumcised being the Jews. 

And that simply being circumcised was just a sign of that faith. But you don't have to have it be circumcised to have faith and we talked about faith and works. You cannot be saved by works. You must have faith. But if you have faith, your works will show that faith. And that's something, as we go through today, challenge Jews. You go about your day to day, as are my works. The things that I'm doing, the way I'm treating people, the way I'm acting, the things I'm doing, and my being Muslim, I mean, everyone is or the things I'm doing today, the interaction I'm having, people in business interactions, personal interactions, are they showing my faith, are my works being well justified, justifying my faith? Are they showing, hey, look, you know, you seen this those of a certain age. We remember back in the early seventies, we had the first gas prices and gas jumped up to over a dollar a gallon. Everybody freaked out. And we had these gas lines and depend on your license plate number. You got even or odd days. You could buy gas and all the stuff you get in a gas line. And I remember his name was Reverend Wilbur Sanders. I was a pre-teen at that time. I remember the one sermon I was talking about being in the gas line and there's this guy had this Jesus sticker on his car and this guy because he was cussing and swearing, not being very Christlike. We need to remember that we have this wonderful, beautiful faith and grace that God has given us. And we got to remember to act like it and make sure our actions are showing forth that faith. Amen.