Faith Like Abraham
Lenten Season: Second Sunday in Lent, 16 March 2014.
Rev. Bruce Skelton, Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Highlands Ranch, Colorado
Once a grandfather took his young grandson, Billy, up to the woods for vacation. When they entered the cabin, they kept the lights off until they were inside to keep from attracting pesky insects. Nevertheless, a few fireflies followed them in. Noticing them first, little Billy whispered, “It’s no use, Grandpa. The mosquitoes are coming after us with flashlights.”
Now that’s what you call persistence – when the mosquitoes start coming after you with flashlights. Well, in a strange way that gives us a good example of the Christian faith, because that is the same kind of persistence God is looking for when it comes to our faith. He wants us to keep seeking His out with the flashlight of His Holy Word, never giving up or letting go.
In other words, our faith is not just a vague knowledge about who God is. Instead, it’s a firm trust and confidence that God will do right by us, even when all the evidence points to the contrary. It means not giving up on Jesus’ promises, when the chips are down, but continuing to go after God’s Word and grab hold of it, in spite of the doubts and insurmountable odds that the devil throws in our face!
Such was the persistent faith of the man spoken of in our Old Testament and Epistle lessons for today – Abraham. Abraham’s faith was filled with a tireless and dogged determination. But it was based on the fact that the mercy and kindness of our God is even more tireless and dogged and determined than we are. His forgiveness and grace pursue us with a persistence even beyond that of mosquitoes, because His forgiveness and grace never give up! And it is that sure and certain hope on which the faith of Abraham rested.
However, Abraham did not always possess such faith. In fact, he did not always possess that name. He was originally called Abram (without the ‘H’). Abram means: ‘exalted father.’ It was a very proud and arrogant name, a humanistic name indicating that man himself was the center of glory and honor. That name reflects the culture from which Abram came. He lived in the city of Ur in Mesopotamia. Thus, he and his father, Terah, would have been pagan idol-worshippers who belonged to the religion of Nimrod. Nimrod was a mighty, warrior/god who had to be appeased through offerings and sacrifices.
This religion was the forerunner of the Babylonian mystery cult, which paid homage to the devil by trying to gain power and success, wealth and happiness through the dark and secret forbidden practices of magic and the occult. Strangely enough, it is that Babylonian mystery religion which is at the heart and core of the New Age movement that has greatly impacted our increasingly pagan culture today.
At any rate we might well ask why would God choose a man like Abram, a man who followed such a false religion and why would He choose such a man to be the ancestor of the Messiah? In our text, St. Paul indicates that it was as a sign of God’s grace. In other words, it was on account of God’s free and undeserved love that He chose Abram to be His servant. And to prove it, God changed his name to Abraham, which means: ‘the father of many nations.’ This was God’s promise that Abraham would have many descendants, and that one of them would be the ultimate descendant, the Messiah, and through him, all the nations of the earth would be blessed.
We know that promise was fulfilled in the coming of Jesus Christ our Savior, who gave us His righteousness to cover up and blot out our unrighteousness. That’s what St. Paul was talking about in our text, when he said:
“Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness,
Now by nature credit is a gift, like when you go to the store and get something on credit. They give it to you, even though you can’t pay for it. Of course, they assume you will eventually pay for it. God assumed no such thing. He knew that we could not pay the debt of our sins. So He sent Jesus who paid off that debt for us and cancelled it out completely by nailing our sins with Himself to the cross and destroying them once and for all. And all of that is ours simply by faith in Jesus Christ. Interestingly enough, the word credit comes from a Latin verb that means: ‘to trust or believe.’ And it is by putting our trust in God’s grace through faith in Jesus that we are saved.
In other words, like Abram, we too were once under the spell of the devil, following his dark and wicked secrets, believing the lie that we could exalt ourselves or save ourselves by our own efforts, thinking we could achieve power and success, wealth and happiness, by listening to his advice. Jesus broke that spell once and for all, and conquered the devil when He died and rose again. But you know Satan is not about to give up that easily. He continues to exert his influence over us, because he wants to get us back. And we fall under that influence, whenever we forget to put our full confidence and trust in God and try to please Him on our own, or when we fail to daily repent of our sins and lean upon God’s grace to save us.
It’s rather like an incident from the life of the famous preacher, Dwight L. Moody. At a certain church where Moody had been invited to preach, he was warned that some of the members usually left before the end of the sermon, especially if it got too long. So when Mr. Moody rose to begin his sermon, he announced: “I am going to speak to two classes of people this morning; first to the sinners, and then to the saints.” After which, he proceeded to address the “sinners” for a while; then he said they could leave, while he would continue to talk to the saints. Not surprisingly, for once every member of the congregation stayed to the end of the sermon.
That, of course, is a facetious idea – that there are two classes of Christians – the sinners and the saints, the not-so-holy and the super-holy. The Bible indicates that we as Christians are simultaneously sinners and saints. Which means that the only difference between us and unbelievers, is that we are forgiven sinners. The problem is that Satan is constantly trying to convince us that that’s not true, that we really aren’t sinners, that we’re good enough to save ourselves. That’s why St. Paul wrote our text in the first place. He was speaking to people who had that very idea. They even pointed to Abraham as their example. They said that Abraham was a righteous man who always obeyed God, even to the point of being circumcised, and that’s why He found favor in God’s eyes.
As a matter of fact, to the Jewish audience that Paul addressed, circumcision was so essential for salvation, that some Rabbis even said: if a Jew was bad enough that he had to be condemned by God, then there was an angel whose task it was to make him uncircumcised again before he entered into punishment. So to the Jew, circumcision was one of the key works a man must do to please God and enter into His kingdom. But as Paul so aptly points out in the Book of Romans, Abraham received the promise of God’s blessing a full 14 years before he was ever circumcised. Thus, circumcision was not a righteous act that Abraham performed in order to earn God’s favor. Rather, it was the outward sign which showed that he had first received God’s favor as a free gift. It was not the gate by which he got into God’s kingdom, instead it was the seal which verified that he had already entered in.
So it is for you and me. In the book of Colossians, Paul tells us that circumcision finds its fulfillment in the sacrament of Baptism. For just as circumcision is to some extent a physical measure which improves sanitation and can prevent the spread of disease, so Baptism is a purifying spiritual measure which removes the filth of sin and prevents eternal death. Baptism is the sign and seal of our covenant with God, just like Abraham was in covenant with God. In fact, we see that in Abraham’s name. The ‘H’ that was added to Abram’s name was taken from God’s own name, Yahweh, so that God was putting His name on Abraham, much in the same way that a woman will take on her husband’s last name when they get married. It was a reminder that God and Abraham were now inseparably bound together in an everlasting covenant, where God would always be there for Abraham, to rescue and deliver him, to help and befriend him. Well, in our Baptism God has placed His name upon us as well, We have all been baptize into the Name of the Triune God, The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, which shows that we are bound to Him in an everlasting covenant, where He will always be with us, to rescue and deliver, to help and befriend us.
This was very much the case with St. Patrick whose day many of us, Irish and not so Irish will celebrate tomorrow. Patrick was 16 years old in about the year 405, when he was captured in a raid on Britain, his homeland, and became a slave in what was still radically pagan Ireland. Far from home, lonely and afraid he finally began to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, whom he had ignored up until that time. Even though his grandfather had been a priest, and his father a town councilor, Patrick in his own words, "knew not the true God." But forced to tend his master's sheep in Ireland, he spent his six years of bondage mainly in prayer until he was able to escaped and return to Britain.
In his mid-40s God moved that once frightened slave to return to Ireland and to preach the saving Gospel and to baptize people in the name of the one true God, the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit. Intimately familiar with the Irish language and the clan system, Patrick converted the chieftains first, who then converted their clans. He was very successful and made many missionary journeys throughout Ireland and even though he was not solely responsible for converting the island, by God grace and through faith in Christ, he was able to spread Christianity so widely that Ireland soon became a stronghold of Christianity and they sent out missionaries throughout western Europe.
Beloved, the good news for us is that St. Patrick’s God is our God as well. God the Father who sent his Son to die on a cross for our sins; God the Son, Jesus Christ who willingly took our sins upon himself and destroyed them and the power of death and the devil over us on Calvary and announced it with his glorious resurrection from the dead; and God the Holy Spirit who has worked and continues to work faith in our formerly faithless hearts. Not because of anything we have done, or could ever hope to do, but simply because of the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Such was the faith of Abraham, and such is our faith too. May God through His Holy Word and Sacraments continue to bolster us in that faith all of our days! In Jesus Name.
Amen. 