“Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead…”

One of the things I love about the Lord is his willingness to make sure we don’t stay where we are.  That applies across the board: spiritually and character-wise for sure, but sometimes vocationally, geographically, ministry-wise and educationally.  It is this latter respect that I speak of now, and I’m not talking about the kind that adds letters behind your name.  I’m talking about the insights God gives us about his Word, and the innumerable ways he uses to get those insights to us.

Recently I attended a conference on orality and world missions.  Orality?  What’s that?  About the time I graduated from high school, sociologists realized that describing people who couldn’t read as “illiterate” implied that these people were ignorant.  Well, in one way they were: they were certainly ignorant of reading and literacy.  But “illiterate” people had a lot going for them that literates were ignorant of as well.  So scholars coined a new term for such literacy-challenged folks: orals, in contrast to literates.  Thus there were literate and oral cultures. Today’s politically correct crowd really loved it.  The Church, operating on the typical warp-speed that it does, didn’t catch on until decades later.  Indeed, the conference I attended was only the fifth of its kind.  And boy, did it shed some light on things!

For example, let’s take our focus, which is God that raises the dead, and our primary character, Abraham.  Hebrews 11, the “Hall of Faith” chapter, tells us, “Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead.”  Now if you’re like me, you probably pictured Abraham as something of a culturally savvy, fairly literate and knowledgeable person, maybe not unlike a Renaissance man.  He “reasons” things out.  He’s probably a good student of the Word.  At least he reads it, right?  Would it shock you to learn that ol’ Abe was probably a simple, illiterate — oops! I mean oral — shepherd who only had a voice to respond to?  Think about it: Abraham had unsaved parents and relatives, came from a completely pagan culture, and lived 500 years before Moses began writing down God’s Word!  All he could do is wait for an unpredictable God to speak in an audible voice, and then obey.  That’s it!  No text to read, no commentaries to consult, no pastors to speak with, no predecessors in the faith like Job, the prophets or godly kings like David, no apostles or reformers like Luther, et al.  Without warning, God spoke.  And Abraham responded.

While oral people tend to be simple, they’re not stupid.  They typically don’t think in the abstract, but in concrete terms.  If this describes Abraham, what would God — initially only a voice out of nowhere to Abraham — need to do to convince him of his power, deity and trustworthiness?  He’d need to do something powerful, an on the ground, in-your-face kind of event that would capture not only his faith, but also his imagination.  So God promises him a son through Sarah when she’s 65 and he’s 75.  Then he waits 25 years to make sure that they’re really ready to see his power.  And over that time their faith in the person behind the voice grew.  They “considered him faithful who had made the promise” (v. 11).  Then God “raised” their “dead” loins as fully operating organs for procreation.  And out popped Isaac 9 months later!

This doesn’t happen just once in a while, or even once a century.  It doesn’t happen at all!  What can reverse the Law of Entropy, which states that everything wears down, breaks, gets old, disintegrates and eventually dies and/or falls apart?  Nothing short of a God that is beyond this life, more powerful than everything our eyes see and our hands feel, and not subject or captive to the evils of this world.  And how would Abraham and Sarah come to understand this?  Not through just a voice, or a book or teaching.  No, only through a miracle right in front of their eyes that defied the power of this fallen world!  A resurrection of sorts.  And that is precisely what God did.  That’s what it takes for oral people to get it, and get it right.

So when we get down to verse 19 of Hebrews 11 and read, “Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead” when his voice said, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah.  Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about” (Genesis 22:1-2), sure!  He got up early the next morning.  “If God could give us Isaac, he’ll give him back.”  Don’t you love simple people who know enough of God to trust him, I mean really trust him?

What has God raised in your life?  Are you one of God’s simple people who really trusts him?