Prosperity and a Half-Baked Abraham
This morning, as I ran on the treadmill, I revved up one of the podcasts on my iPod and listened to a sermon on Abraham. The preacher is known as a Word preacher and he is the pastor of an immensely huge mega-church.
The sermon actually started out in Romans 11.16:
For if the firstfruit be holy, the lump is also holy: and if the root be holy, so are the branches.
From there the preacher went over to Genesis 14 and tied Romans 11.16 to Abraham’s tithe of the spoils of Sodom to the high priest, Melchizedek. The rest of the sermon dealt with bringing tithes into the storehouse so the rest of the lump would be holy.
Personally, I believe that many of the Word preachers[ing] have missed the real import of Abraham because of their focus on material prosperity (I don’t know that I’ve heard an Abraham/Jesus sermon anytime in the last 10 or 15 years but just once). In Galatians 3.6-9 it stands written:
Even so Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham. The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “All the nations will be blessed in you.” So then those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham, the believer. (NASB)
From this passage, we see that the gospel, the good news that Jesus Christ was coming to save mankind, was preached to Abraham and he believed it. It was for this belief in the gospel that Abraham was reckoned righteous by God (compare Romans 10.17 - faith comes by a word of God). Jesus, during his earthly ministry, also acknowledged Abraham’s faith in the gospel:
Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad. (John 8.56, NASB)
Consequently, the momentousness of Abraham’s story for us as New Testament believers should have much less to do with his natural wealth than his spiritual faith. While God no doubt delights in the prosperity of his servants, we should look for support for that teaching in other New Testament scriptures such as Matthew 6.33:
But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. (NASB)
[Note to self: All Old Testament preaching should be viewed through the prism of New Testament scripture and all of it should point to Jesus’s work of redemption.]
Amen to your entire take on Abraham. As to the note to self, I agree with the hermeneutical framework, but would love to see some flesh and bones on it if you get the time (it’s an intrinsically interesting point of view to a preacher!).
slw,
Thanks for the comment. Time? Whose got time? Actually, I’ll put some flesh on those bones.