Psalm 16

You Will Not Abandon Me to the Grave

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A miktam^[a] by David.

You Are My Lord

You Will Not Abandon Me to the Grave

The Call of Abram

12 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Get out of your country and away from your relatives and from your father’s house and go to the land that I will show you. ² I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great. You will be a blessing. ³ I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse anyone who dishonors you. All of the families of the earth will be blessed in you.”

⁴ So Abram went, as the Lord had told him. Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. ⁵ Abram took Sarai his wife, Lot his brother’s son, and all the possessions they had accumulated and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to travel to the land of Canaan. Eventually they arrived in the land of Canaan. ⁶ Abram passed through the land until he came to the Oak of Moreh at the place called Shechem. The Canaanites were in the land at that time.

⁷ The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “I will give this land to your descendants.”^[a] Abram built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

⁸ He moved on from there to the hill country east of Bethel and pitched his tent there, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the Lord and proclaimed^[b] the name of the Lord.

⁵ So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the piece of land Jacob gave to his son Joseph. ⁶ Jacob’s well was there. Then Jesus, being tired from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.^[a]

⁷ A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” ⁸ (His disciples had gone into town to buy food.)

⁹ The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)

¹⁰ Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

¹¹ “Sir,” she said, “you don’t even have a bucket, and the well is deep. So where do you get this living water? ¹² You are not greater than our father Jacob, are you? He gave us this well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his animals.”

¹³ Jesus answered her, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but whoever drinks the water I will give him will never be thirsty ever again. Rather, the water I will give him will become in him a spring of water, bubbling up to eternal life.”

¹⁵ “Sir, give me this water,” the woman said to him, “so I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

¹⁶ Jesus told her, “Go, call your husband, and come back here.”

¹⁷ “I have no husband,” the woman answered.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say, ‘I have no husband.’ ¹⁸ In fact, you have had five husbands, and the man you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true.”

¹⁹ “Sir,” the woman replied, “I see that you are a prophet. ²⁰ Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews insist that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

²¹ Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will not worship the Father on this mountain or in Jerusalem. ²² You Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know, because salvation is from the Jews. ²³ But a time is coming and now is here when the real worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for those are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. ²⁴ God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.”

²⁵ The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (the one called Christ). “When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

²⁶ Jesus said to her, “I, the one speaking to you, am he.”

Abraham, an Example of Justification by Faith

4 What then will we say that Abraham, our forefather, discovered according to the flesh? ² If indeed Abraham had been justified by works, he would have had a reason to boast—but not before God. ³ For what does Scripture say? “Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.”^[a]

⁴ Now to a person who works, his pay is not counted as a gift but as something owed. ⁵ But to the person who does not work but believes in the God who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited to him as righteousness.

Abraham Received What God Promised by Faith, Not by Law

¹³ Indeed, the promise that he would be the heir of the world was not given to Abraham or his descendants through the law, but through the righteousness that is by faith. ¹⁴ To be sure, if people are heirs by the law, faith is empty and the promise is nullified. ¹⁵ For law brings wrath. (Where there is no law, there is no transgression.) ¹⁶ For this reason, the promise is by faith, so that it may be according to grace and may be guaranteed to all of Abraham’s descendants—not only to the one who is a descendant by law, but also to the one who has the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all. ¹⁷ As it is written: “I have made you a father of many nations.”^[a]

Abraham’s Faith Was a Firm Trust in God’s Promise

In the presence of God, Abraham believed him who makes the dead alive and calls non-existing things so that they exist.^[b]