Second Sunday in Lent, Year B

¹ When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty. Walk before me and be blameless. ² I will make my covenant between me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly.” ³ Abram fell on his face. God talked with him, saying, ⁴ “As for me, behold, my covenant is with you. You will be the father of a multitude of nations. ⁵ Your name will no more be called Abram, but your name will be Abraham; for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. ⁶ I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you. Kings will come out of you. ⁷ I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God to you and to your offspring after you.

¹⁵ God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but her name will be Sarah. ¹⁶ I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her. Yes, I will bless her, and she will be a mother of nations. Kings of peoples will come from her.”

²³ You who fear the LORD, praise him! All you descendants of Jacob, glorify him! Stand in awe of him, all you descendants of Israel! ²⁴ For he has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, Neither has he hidden his face from him; but when he cried to him, he heard. ²⁵ My praise of you comes in the great assembly. I will pay my vows before those who fear him. ²⁶ The humble shall eat and be satisfied. They shall praise the LORD who seek after him. Let your hearts live forever. ²⁷ All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD. All the relatives of the nations shall worship before you. ²⁸ For the kingdom is the LORD’s. He is the ruler over the nations. ²⁹ All the rich ones of the earth shall eat and worship. All those who go down to the dust shall bow before him, even he who can’t keep his soul alive. ³⁰ Posterity shall serve him. Future generations shall be told about the Lord. ³¹ They shall come and shall declare his righteousness to a people that shall be born, for he has done it.

¹³ For the promise to Abraham and to his offspring that he should be heir of the world wasn’t through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. ¹⁴ For if those who are of the law are heirs, faith is made void, and the promise is made of no effect. ¹⁵ For the law produces wrath, for where there is no law, neither is there disobedience. ¹⁶ For this cause it is of faith, that it may be according to grace, to the end that the promise may be sure to all the offspring, not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all. ¹⁷ As it is written, “I have made you a father of many nations.” This is in the presence of him whom he believed: God, who gives life to the dead, and calls the things that are not, as though they were. ¹⁸ Besides hope, Abraham in hope believed, to the end that he might become a father of many nations, according to that which had been spoken, “So will your offspring be.” ¹⁹ Without being weakened in faith, he didn’t consider his own body, already having been worn out, (he being about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah’s womb. ²⁰ Yet, looking to the promise of God, he didn’t waver through unbelief, but grew strong through faith, giving glory to God, ²¹ and being fully assured that what he had promised, he was also able to perform. ²² Therefore it also was “credited to him for righteousness.” ²³ Now it was not written that it was accounted to him for his sake alone, ²⁴ but for our sake also, to whom it will be accounted, who believe in him who raised Jesus, our Lord, from the dead, ²⁵ who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification.