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 Harran

Acts 7:2-8

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 Harran. 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 Harran. 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 enough ground to set his foot on. 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: ‘For four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated. 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.
Today’s title is “Abraham: The Father of Faith”

The first man on the earth was Adam. In the beginning, God created Adam and Eve after His own image. Therefore, all human beings are the off-springs of Adam. But not many human beings seem to take pride in being the descendants of Adam and Eve. Have you ever seen anyone who proudly claims that he or she is the descendant of Adam? Not at all. Instead, a lot of human beings attribute the root of their sufferings and pain to Adam and Eve. No children of Adam and Eve seem to respect or honor Adam and Eve. How unfortunate it is for them and their children and even for God! The history of humanity might have been all gloomy and dark if it stops there. Human history indeed looked so dark and gloomy in the latter days of Adam and Eve and their descendants in the early chapters of Genesis after the fall. Genesis 6:6 says that the Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled”. How sad! But God couldn’t and didn’t leave human history in such a failure. He raised a totally different generation who would live by faith as God had originally intended. We might call it the faith generation. Abraham was the forerunner of the new faith generation. Physically speaking, Abraham was a descendant of Adam too. But spiritually speaking, Abraham sows the seed of salvation and life even for Adam. Abraham with God’s sovereign grace started a new human history which we call “Redemptive History”. Only with the redemptive history in our view, we can have any hope in human history. No wonder, Stephen, the great man of faith, had a firm view of redemptive history that started from Abraham. Faced with the imminent death threat, he didn’t lose sight of the panoramic view of the redemptive history that started from Abraham and ended with Jesus the promised seed of Abraham. The panoramic view of the redemptive history is grand and great. What’s amazing about it is that it all started from one humble man of faith. As such life of faith of Abraham is wonderous, so is my and your humble life of faith. We are living in the same stream of faith nurtured and fed by the same grace and love of God. How marvelous it is! As long as you are flowing in the stream of such love and grace, the world is not worthy of them. Stephen’s life and death prove it. Are you glad that you are living and drinking in the same stream of redemptive grace?