Focus (Romans 3-4)

In our two chapters today, the underlying theme I kept seeing was focus.  Paul started off by discussing "Jewish insider claims" (the Message), and how the kept the law for so many years.  But in keeping the law, they showed it couldn't be perfectly kept, therefore all have sinned.  And all of us are guilty of sin, not one of us has been able to keep the law perfectly.  Woe to us!

But God, being the God who puts everything right, also wanted to put us right.  Therefore He sent His son Jesus to die for us.  Not because any of us were deserving, or followed the law more closely, but because He is a generous God. 

We continue on by reading how God made Abraham a somebody.  Abraham hadn't done anything special except to go when God called him to go.  It was that sort of reliance of God that made God promise all sorts of things to Abraham.  And Abraham took it in faith, with several false starts. 

God promised Abraham many children.  He had a false start with Hagar because Sarah wasn't willing to think that God was still going to use her.  That turned out to be a mistake that pains us still today.  But at the right time, to show that nobody but God was doing this, God gave Abraham a son when old Abe was 100 years old.  As it says in Romans, Abraham wasn't thinking that he was too old, he looked to God to fulfill the promise. 

We should show faith and cling to God to fulfill His promises to us.