This morning I read two accounts concerning faith, or lack thereof. One a huge disaster . . . the other precedent setting. One opportunity to exercise faith ended in abject failure . . . a promise missed . . . and resulted in forty years of wilderness wandering. The other call to believe resulted in a child . . . and a promise realized . . . and became the means for blessing to generations upon generations. And it seems that the key to both stories . . . the factor upon which faith failed or faith triumphed . . . the turning point for victory of defeat, hinged on how people responded to the glory of God.

“No distrust made [Abraham] waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was ‘counted to him as righteousness.'” (Romans 4:20-22 ESV)

The ESV reads a little differently here than the other translations in that it says “he grew strong in faith as he gave glory to God” . . . that little word “as” emphasizing a “cause and effect” dynamic between the active agency of faith and the response to God’s mighty deeds. Where glory is given to God faith increases . . . where that which should testify of the glory of God is ignored and unrecognized, faith fails. Two cases in point . . .

Numbers 13 & 14 . . . the nation of Israel on the border of the promised land . . . the territories which God had pledged to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob . . . the blessing for which God had delivered them from Egypt . . . “a land that flows with milk and honey” (Num. 14:8). There they were . . . it was theirs for the taking. Sure, there would be battles to be fought, but not alone . . . God promising to go before them . . . to deliver to them that which He had said He would make theirs. But they refused . . . concluding the battles could not be won . . . that the inhabitants of their promised land were too big to displace . . . in effect concluding that their God was too small to make it happen. How come? Because despite all that they had seen . . . from the ten plagues that led to their freedom . . . to walking out of Egypt . . . to walking through the Red Sea . . . to being fed manna from heaven . . . despite all they had been through with God, they refused to give him glory . . . and thus, their faith wavered.

And the LORD said to Moses, “How long will this people despise me? And how long will they not believe in me, in spite of all the signs that I have done among them? . . . truly, as I live, and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD, none of the men who have seen my glory and my signs that I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and yet have put me to the test these ten times and have not obeyed my voice, shall see the land that I swore to give to their fathers.” (Num. 14:11, 21-23 ESV)

They had seen the glory of the Lord, but refused to give the Lord the glory . . . and so they would die in the wilderness coming up short of the promise. How tragic. Contrast that with Abraham . . . the other “story” I read this morning.

In Romans 4 Abraham is the precedent setter . . . “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness” (Rom. 4:3). Unlike the desert dwellers of Moses’ day, Abraham fully entered into the promise . . . through faith . . . “in order that the promise may rest on grace” (4:16). Abraham being fully convinced that what God had said He would, He could do . . . growing strong in his faith as he gave glory to God . . . responding to past blessings and the previous evidences of God’s hand at work, and ascribing to God the glory. And it seems, as he recognized God in the call to leave his homeland for a destination unknown . . . as he saw God’s protecting hand upon him and his wife, even as they sometimes stumbled and faltered . . . that, as he gave glory to God, his faith grew stronger . . . becoming fully convinced that God was able to do what God had promised to do . . . Glory giving leading to faith filling

O’ that I might see Him in His awesome creation . . . that I might know Him and His hand in the details of my life . . . and that I might give Him the glory due His name and wondrous works. That I too, might grow in faith . . . fully convinced He is able . . . for my blessing . . . and for His glory . . . amen.