Sermon for 3-17-24

GENESIS 12: 1-3

Hebrews 11: 8-11

Acts 7: 2-4

Lent 5, 2024

The Call of Abraham.

 

OPENING PRAYER:  Heavenly Father, help me to place all my trust in You and Your promises.   In Jesus’ name I pray.  Amen.

+In the Name of Jesus+

 

Some have suggested that to believe in the Bible involves taking a “Leap of Faith.”     What do you think?      By dictionary definition, a “leap of faith” is “an act of believing in or attempting something whose existence or outcome cannot be proved.”      Keep this thought in the back of your mind as we go through the texts about Abraham this morning.

 

Abraham and his faith are the subject of the discourse in our Gospel text for this morning.    The crux of the argument of the Jews was that their “faith” was modeled after the faith of Abraham.    So, they challenge Jesus: “Are you greater than our father Abraham.”   Notice how the Jews claim to possess the faith of Abraham.    This morning, we are going to parse that faith of Abraham to set ourselves, not on something unfounded, but on an eternal solid foundation.     We turn our attention to this truth:

 

THE COMFORT IN TAKING GOD AT HIS WORD.

 

Abraham took God at His word and obeyed the Call.

Abraham took God at His word and believed the earthly promise.

Abraham took God at His word and believed the spiritual promise.

 

THE CALL.

 

Picture, if you will, that Abraham would have been 75 and his wife Sarai 65 who was barren.      At the age of 75, the Lord said to Abram: “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”    Notice that this is a command; this is not a request.

 

Abraham is told to leave his family and his home in Haran to go to some unknown land.       Abram was to leave those most closely bound to him by ties of blood, with the likely prospect that he would never see them again.  And then, as the writer to the Hebrews says: “And he went out, not knowing where he was going.”    Abram is called by the Lord to venture out in Faith.

 

But faith in what?   The Lord did not give Abram a certified legal document with a money-back guarantee backed up by the government     Humanly speaking, there was nothing for Abram to build his future on.   But true faith is never a “leap in the dark,” It is solidly based on God’s promise.  In the case of Abraham, “to the land that I will show you.”      It was by faith that Abram would leave and go to the land of promise.

 

But now, picture this, if you will, Abram’s wife Sarai is barren.  This is extremely significant for both Abram and Saria and for all generations.    At the age 65, Sarai had not had children and age was against her and now prohibited her from having any children.  This must have been a dark time for both Abram and Sarai.  But the Lord says to Abram, “And I will make of you a great nation.”   

 

But Abrahm had no family.   He had left family behind and Sarai was barren.    It took faith, not blind faith, but faith in the solid promises of God to believe this promise of God.    Later the Lord would promise he would have a son and at this some of the most famous words in all of Scripture are spoken: “Abram believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.”

 

Our Lord has called each of us leave behind this world and all of its relationships all of its pleasures and take a journey to a land yet not fully known to us.      Yet, your Lord Jesus invites you to believe in His promise that He will bring you into a Land flowing with milk and honey, that is, a home where they will be pleasures forevermore.    He does not ask you to take a leap of faith but gives you the guarantee in His Word that your sins are forgiven and that promise is signed with the blood of Christ on the Cross.

 

Yes, times will seem dark.    But God has made a promise to you in Baptism.   As St. Peter says, “Baptism is the Guarente of a good conscience before God through the resurrection of Christ.”      In this journey Jesus invites you to bring your troubled conscience to the cross for Christ has taken care of your sins there on that across.  God has nailed your sins to that cross, not with physical nails, but the nails of His holy blood which Satan cannot undo.

 

THE EARTLY PROMISE.

 

Embedded in the call to Abram was also the promise of an earthly nature.   “And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you,” as Abram and His family were led to the Promised Land.   This was the purpose of the Call.    Once again, the words of the writer to the Hebrews are vital here: “And he went out, not knowing where he was going.”    Abram was promised that the Lord would make of Him a great nation.     And remember again, Sarai was barren.     Abram’s life would bear out this promise.    The Lord would crown his life with earthly benefits even riches.

 

Now put this against the Land Abram was to receive as a promise: Canaan.   This is the Land which God promised to give to Abram and his descendants.    But the Land of Canaan was controlled by Canaanites, heathens, who practiced wicked and evil rituals.

 

In other words, Abram was told to live in a land hostile to the true God.    Still Abram believed the Lord as we also learn from one of our texts: “By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise.”        Abram was called to venture forth entirely by faith.    He took God at His Word.

 

But has not our Lord also made a promise to us regarding earthly matters?   “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”    Through Holy Baptism, your Lord has called you to live in a foreign land.   I don’t mean another country.   The foreign land God has called you to live in is this world.   It is a world hostile to Christianity.

 

As God placed Abram in the midst of a heathen world, so also are your placed by God into a hostile land.   Yes, the “Canaanites” to a large degree control our world today.   Your Lord has made you a promise that He will take care of you as you sojourn and await entrance into your Promised Land?

 

But do you always take God at His Word in regard to this life?     The words of Jesus in Matthew can be understood to say: “See to it that you let Me alone be your God, and never seek another.”  

 

The desire for wealth clings to our nature all the way to the grave the desire to accommodate ourselves to this world and adopt its practices are all around us and we do give in to them.   We need to repent for wanting to bring the worship of this world’s idols into our life: gossip, revenge, discontent, selfishness, jealousy, anger, which are all characteristics of idol worship.   Dear Child of God, in His love for you, He bids you to take Him at His word.   As Luther reminds us in his morning and evening prayers: Into Your hands I commend myself, my body and soul and all things.

 

THE SPIRITUAL PROMISE.

 

Now, picture if you will, the Lord says to Abram:  In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”    In the Hebrew language, the word for “earth” is A-dam, the same word for man.   A-dam is often translated “ground.”        This means that in Abram all the sinners of the dust of the ground will be blessed.

 

Abram believed he would have son born to him and that his descendants would be as numerous and the stars of the heavens.    It is at this that the Word of God says: “And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.”    We must remember that Abram’s faith is what accounted him as righteousness in the sight of God, not his moral character or perfect conduct.

 

Your Lord has made a spiritual promise to you in the Offspring promised to Abram.   God points you to that Offspring who went to the cross.  You did not personally witness that event.    And you have no absolute scientific proof that the death of Christ atoned for your sins.       But God does not ask you to take as leap of faith into some unknown abyss.    He invites you to take Him at His Word of Promise.   He shows you the cross on which He died and where He said “It is finished.”    Here is the comfort your Lord wants you to have in His Word:

 

• That is the Word of Forgiveness.
• That is the Word of the promise of eternal life.
• That Word is of life spoken to you each week in the Lord’s Supper.
• That Word says that there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.
• That Word says You are in Christ Jesus not through your feelings or your goodness, not through an act of your will, but through the promise of Holy Baptism.

 

Do not put your hope in your feelings.     The foundation of your faith is not how you feel but the solid foundation of the Cross.    Do not place your hope in how well you have kept the commandments.   When you are at your weakest, the devil will parade your sins before you placing you back on yourself and your unholy life.   Remember, he is a liar and the father of lies.    Look rather to the promise the Lord made to you in your Baptism.       It is no leap of faith when your Savior invites you to His Holy Table.   He promises forgiveness and eternal life in the elements of bread and wine as He places Himself in those elements for your salvation.   Go in peace.   Amen.

 

SOLI DEO GLORIA