Faith of Our Fathers

March 25

(Acts 7:1-16 NIV)  "Then the high priest asked him, "Are these charges true?" {2} To this he replied: "Brothers and fathers, listen to me! The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran. {3} 'Leave your country and your people,' God said, 'and go to the land I will show you.' {4} "So he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. After the death of his father, God sent him to this land where you are now living. {5} He gave him no inheritance here, not even a foot of ground. But God promised him that he and his descendants after him would possess the land, even though at that time Abraham had no child. {6} God spoke to him in this way: 'Your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. {7} But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves,' God said, 'and afterward they will come out of that country and worship me in this place.' {8} Then he gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision. And Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised him eight days after his birth. Later Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob became the father of the twelve patriarchs. {9} "Because the patriarchs were jealous of Joseph, they sold him as a slave into Egypt. But God was with him {10} and rescued him from all his troubles. He gave Joseph wisdom and enabled him to gain the goodwill of Pharaoh king of Egypt; so he made him ruler over Egypt and all his palace. {11} "Then a famine struck all Egypt and Canaan, bringing great suffering, and our fathers could not find food. {12} When Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent our fathers on their first visit. {13} On their second visit, Joseph told his brothers who he was, and Pharaoh learned about Joseph's family. {14} After this, Joseph sent for his father Jacob and his whole family, seventy-five in all. {15} Then Jacob went down to Egypt, where he and our fathers died. {16} Their bodies were brought back to Shechem and placed in the tomb that Abraham had bought from the sons of Hamor at Shechem for a certain sum of money."

Stephen lifts up the early fathers of faith found in Genesis. Abraham believed God and went where he was told to go. Faith and obedience go hand in hand. His son Isaac became a child of the promise after years of waiting. Isaac’s son Jacob, was drawn out of his deceit and into faith, and was given a new name. Jacob’s twelve sons eventually grew into that new name, becoming the twelve tribes of Israel. One of them, Joseph, was despised and rejected by his brothers. Sold into slavery, but blessed by God, he rose to become a great leader, and with grace, provided a salvation for the very brothers who had tried to kill him. Believing God; faith and obedience; becoming a child of the promise; getting a new name; finding grace and salvation in one who was thought dead… all these are pictures of faith in Christ. It’s a faith we are called to emulate today -- the faith of our fathers. -- Friar Tuck’s Word of the Day