Sermon for Lent 5, Judica, March 21,
2021
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed
us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Amen.
You are blessed by
faith in God’s promises.
Dear friends in Christ,
We love
role models; at least, you would think so if you consider the amount of money
spent on celebrity endorsements, media influencers, sports stars, and other
such public figures. Our news media and
social networks overwhelm us with a constant barrage of what this person, or
that one, is doing, what they said, who they love, what products they use,
their voting preferences, and their personal opinions on a thousand other
subjects. Yet, in the end, it is all
just noise.
For a truly worthy role model, one might
consider emulating perhaps the most famous role model in the history of the
world—the patriarch of the Christian Church who lived about four thousand years
ago, and the subject of today’s sermon text—Abraham, or here, still known as Abram. If you walk in Abram’s footsteps you will learn
that You are blessed by faith in God’s promises.
There are likely very few people alive today
who will be remembered even four hundred years from now, much less four
thousand, so why Abram? Why did God
choose Abram for this unique and amazing blessing? If you want the answer, you won’t find it in
Abram, but rather, in the Lord.
Now, many have extolled Abram’s great faith,
and certainly, we would want to have the same trust in the Lord, for “Abram
believed in the Lord, and the Lord credited it to him as righteousness.”
(Genesis 15:6) Still, this doesn’t
answer the question of why God chose Abram?
Did God make the choice because Abram had such a great religious
background? No, for it is a fact that
his father’s family, though believing in God, also worshipped idols. Did God pick Abram because He knew Abram
would have a great faith? Well, that’s
not possible, either, because on more than a few occasions, Abram’s faith was quite
weak. At least twice, Abram allowed his
wife to be romanced by foreign kings to protect his own hide, so his faith in
the Lord was not always all that strong.
Then, perhaps, you think Abram was an
exemplary, holy man, and that is why the Lord selected him. Again, see the previous example, along with
his listening to his wife’s idea to start a family by sleeping with her servant
girl, in addition to accusing God of failing to keep His promises.
Therefore, we must conclude that the answer is not
found in Abram or anything he did, but in God alone. God picked Abram in exactly the way He chose
to save us, by grace. As Paul notes in
his letter to the Ephesians, “Indeed, it is by grace you have been saved,
through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by
works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9) No one can boast—not even faithful Abram. At the same time, we do well to imitate
Abram, because he did believe God, and in a great demonstration for us, Abram
was richly blessed by faith in God’s promises.
Therefore, Abram’s greatest value to us as a
role model is not in how we should live, but rather, in seeing how great God’s
promises are, and seeing how the promises work to give us faith and eternal
blessings. You see, Abram’s faith truly
was a work in progress. Abram had his
spiritual struggles just as any Christian believer will. Yet, here is the point, the promises God made
to Abram served to make that man believe, and he was richly blessed through
faith.
It is the same for you and me, for Paul wrote, “I
am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation to
everyone who believes—to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is
revealed by faith, for faith, just as it is written, ‘The righteous will live
by faith.’” (Romans 1:16-17) God’s
promises to Abram are Gospel, they told Abram what God would do for him, and it
was the promise that worked faith in Abram and kept him looking to God for the fulfillment. Likewise, God has promised us that through
faith in Christ Jesus, our sins are forgiven, we have citizenship in His
kingdom of grace, and we will be given a home in the glorious Promised Land of
heaven, which brings us to God’s covenant with Abram.
At a point in history when so much of mankind
was forgetting the promise of a Savior that had been handed down from Noah, God
revealed the family through which He would bring the Savior into the
world. When He chose Abram, God also
chose to set his family apart for something special. God would be with the descendants of Abram in
a special way, protecting them, providing for them, and through them carrying
out His plan for bringing redemption and reconciliation to the world.
The Lord commanded Abram to go from his
father’s house, but Abram didn’t earn any of the blessings by doing as he was
told. Rather, he was moved to go by
those incredible promises. To a man who
had a baren wife, God promised a multitude of descendants. What wonderful news that must have been to
Abram and Sarai. No doubt they had
longed for children, but none had been begun in her womb. So, when the Lord said, “Go,…and I will
make you a great nation,” do you think it was hard for Abram to convince
Sarai to move? Though Abram and Sarai still
had to wait for God’s chosen time to fulfil His promise of a large family,
after four hundred years, their descendants numbered in the millions, and four
thousand years later, Abram’s nation has grown exponentially.
Still, God promised to bless Abram so much more. The Lord’s hand would be over Abram and God
intended to pour out multitude blessings on that nomadic shepherd and
cattleman. After Abram followed God’s
instruction, it wasn’t long before Abram had great herds and flocks and a small
army of servants who gladly worked and fought for Abram’s family. Yet, it is interesting that some of the
greatest fulfilments were not going to happen for hundreds of years, perhaps
thousands, but Abram believed and the longer he believed and the stronger his
faith became, the more the promises and the blessings poured out upon him.
God also told Abram, “You will be a
blessing.” Thus, Abram became a
blessing to his neighbors, and a rescuer for Lot and his friends. Abram even interceded for his neighbors which
led to Lot and his family being saved from the destruction of Sodom and
Gomorrah. More important, Abram became a
blessing to multitudes of generations because it is through Abram that God was
bringing His Son into the world to rescue poor sinners like you and me. God could have picked any family into which
His Son would be born, but Abram was chosen, and we are blessed to know it.
God put a special promise and protection over
Abram: “I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse anyone who
dishonors you.” Because God was
singling out Abram for this great honor of being the patriarch of the Savior of
the world and because Abram believed God, the Lord always made sure that Abram
was blessed. Even when those kings might
have had reason to demand retribution from Abram for his deception with Sarai, they
were moved, instead, to pour out prodigious gifts to make sure there was no
offense against Abram.
We see God’s protection and care displayed
throughout the history of Abram’s family.
When they called out to God from their desperation as slaves in Egypt,
God came to their rescue and destroyed their idolatrous overlords. When the people were faithful to the Lord, He
interceded on their behalf, and when they wandered away from the true faith,
the Lord disciplined them as those He loves.
And the psalmist’s words are confirmed, “The Lord says, because he
clings to me, I will rescue him. I will
protect him, because he acknowledges my name.” (Psalms 91:14)
The most important promise God made to Abram,
for all people of all time, is this: “All of the families of the earth will
be blessed in you.” This was not the
first promise of a Savior, but it was the first time anyone knew through which
family the Savior would come. It was
another demonstration that God keeps His promises.
In Abram, God was promising an end to our
separation from God. In that one
descendant God would eventually give to Abram and his family, all the sins of
the world would be removed. No other
person could ever do what Abram’s descendant would bring. Because God was working on His plan to save,
every detail would be revealed in its proper time, and every promised blessing
would come our way. Thus, just as Abram
was blessed so too You are blessed by faith in God’s
promises.
Through faith in Jesus, we have promises that
equal or exceed those given to Abram. It
was eventually revealed to Abram that his family would inherit a homeland in
Palestine. God has promised all who
believe in Abram’s distant great grandson a home in the eternal paradise of
heaven. Abram was promised riches of
earthly blessings. We are promised the
riches of forgiveness and life everlasting.
Abram was promised a large family, and through faith, we are members of
his great nation, not a nation on earth, but a kingdom of glory and freedom
from sin, death, and the devil with Jesus as our King. St. Paul wrote, “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. As it is written: ‘I have made you a father
of many nations.’” (Romans 4:16-17)
Abram’s faith was great, not because it was
always so strong, but because it was always in God the Lord. Abram believed God’s promise that He would
send a Savior for the world through Abram’s descendants, and in that faith,
Abram died and was received into glory before God’s throne. We have the same promise. Jesus said, “Amen, Amen, I tell you:
anyone who hears My word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life.” (John
5:24)
Just as God told Abram that he would be a
blessing, so God tells us that He preserves us as blessings to the world. Through Peter, He says, “You are a chosen
people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, the people who are God’s own
possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of
darkness into his marvelous light.” (1 Peter 2:9) God chose us by faith before any works on our
part, just as He chose Abram. Yet, like
Abram, God has purpose for us, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for
good works, which God prepared in advance so that we would walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:10)
Dear friends, as God made Abram a blessing to
all, so He also empowers and blesses us to be a material and physical help for
lives here on earth, but especially to be an eternal blessing to those we meet
as we share the Good News of all Jesus has done to take away the sins of the
world, how He lived and died to bring peace with God to all mankind, and gain
for us all the forgiveness of all sin so that any who believe in Jesus will be
saved to enjoy life everlasting in heaven.
When you consider the magnitude of what God has given us through faith
in Abram’s descendant, our Lord Jesus Christ, we can say nothing less than, You
are blessed by faith in God’s promises.
Amen.
The peace of God which passes all
understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life
everlasting. Amen.
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