Trinity 1
Gen
15:1-6
6/2/13
During the course of catechesis a
basic truth has been drilled in our confirmands with the subtlety of a jack
hammer. They have heard it again, and
again and again. And as a result I am
confident that it is something they will continue to remember during the coming
years.
This truth is the basic distinction
between Law and Gospel. Again and again
they have heard that the Law is what we must do and the Gospel is what
God has done for us in Christ. This
basic distinction is of course a central insight into Scripture of the Lutheran
Church and the Reformation. It is also
the basic truth that separates Christianity from every other religion in the
world.
Every
other religion in the world is a religion of the Law. They are all based on what human beings must
do in order to achieve salvation with the god or gods. Even Buddhism in which there is no god works
in this way, because it calls upon each person to achieve the understanding that
this is existence is nothingness. Only
in the Gospel of Christianity do we find that salvation is based solely on what
God has done. Only in Christianity is it
a gift that cannot be earned.
The catechumens have learned that
the Gospel stands at the center of all that we believe. They have learned that
the Gospel runs the show in the Lutheran Church. And that brings us to an irony of the
catechesis they have just finished. You
see, something that has been about teaching the centrality of the Gospel sure
has involved many things they had to do. For something about the Gospel,
it sure has involved a great deal of law.
The
confirmands had to come to catechesis and Learn by Heart for nine months, two
years in a row. They had to learn by heart texts from Scripture and the Small
Catechism and be able to say them in class.
They had to read the catechesis material and prepare for class by
answering questions. They had to pass
quizzes. Finally last week they had to
go through their pastoral examination.
All of this is necessary because we are still fallen people with the old
Adam in us. And so catechesis is much
like the seminary, which one of my professors once quipped is “an institution
of the Law in the service of the Gospel.”
There
has been much that the confirmands have had to do during catechesis as they
learned about the Gospel. Yet here on
Confirmation Sunday, we have a text that once again emphasizes that the Gospel
is not about our doing. Instead,
it is about what God does. It is
about the gift that God gives to us in Christ.
Our
text finds Abram in the land of Canaan – the land that will eventually become
Israel. Originally Abram (whose name God
would later change to Abraham) had set out with his father Terah as they made
their way from Ur in modern day Iraq towards Canaan. For some reason, they never made it to
Canaan, and instead they settled in Haran in what is today southeastern Turkey.
Abram
was in Haran, when God called him. God
said, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the
land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will
bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will
bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you
all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Abram believed and obeyed God’s word. He set out for his original destination,
Canaan. When he arrived there Yahweh appeared to Abram and said, “To your
offspring I will give this land.” God promised to give the land of Canaan to Abram’s
offspring, and then a little later God promised, “I will make your offspring as
the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your
offspring also can be counted.”
Yahweh
made a threefold promise to Abram. He promised to make Abram into a great
nation – to give him numerous offspring.
He promised to give the land of Canaan to Abram’s offspring. And he promised that in Abram’s offspring all
nations of the earth would be blessed.
This
all sounded great. There was, however,
one small problem: Abram and his wife Sarai were aged and had no children. They were far beyond the point in life when they could ever hope to have
children. It did not appear that there
was any way that what God said could be true.
And beyond this, Abram had just had an experience that reminded him of
how dangerous his world could be. His
nephew Lot had been taken captive by one of the local kings in the area and
Abram had to lead an armed rescue mission in order to free Lot and his
household.
There
was reason to fear about the future.
There was reason to fear about the present. After these things happened
the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision saying; “Fear not, Abram, I am
your shield; your reward shall be very great.”
However,
in response Abram pointed out the problem when he said, “O Lord GOD, what will
you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of
Damascus? Behold, you have given me no
offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.” Abram had no child of
his own, and so someone who was part of his broader household was going to be
the heir – not Abram’s own offspring as God had promised.
And
then God responded: “This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall
be your heir.” He brought Abram outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and
number the stars, if you are able to number them. So shall your offspring be.” Then we are told
that Abram “believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness.” Abram trusted God’s promise and because of
this trust – this faith – God considered Abram to be righteous. God considered Abram to have a right standing
before him.
God
had made promises to Abraham – great and wonderful promises. He had promised
him numerous descendants like the dust of the earth and the stars of the
heavens. He had promised to give the
land of Canaan to his descendants. And he had promised that in his offspring
all nations of the earth would be blessed.
Now
the thing that tied all of these promises together was the fact that Abraham could
not do anything to make them happen.
They were all promises about what God would do. They were all promises that only God could
make happen. Abraham had only two
choices. Either he could believe and
trust in God’s promises or he could choose not to believe them. Either he could
wait in faith to receive these blessings or he could live in fear.
As
our confirmands have learned, God’s promises to Abraham were fulfilled in the
nation of Israel and the One who descended from Abraham, Israel, and King
David. They were fulfilled in Jesus Christ. He is the One in whom all nations
of the earth are blessed because he died on the cross and rose from the dead in
order to fulfill God’s first Gospel promise – his promise after the Fall to
Adam and Eve that a descendent of Eve would defeat the devil.
He
is the One who did it and there is nothing we can do. All that we can “do” is to receive the
forgiveness and salvation through faith in Christ. In fact the apostle Paul wants us to know that
faith is the opposite of doing. Paul
wrote in Romans, “For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to
boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? ‘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.” Faith is, as we said in catechesis, the open hand
that simply receives what God gives.
Now,
it’s not as if Abraham was perfect. It’s
not as if he was always faithful and trusted God. Sometimes he decided to do things in his own
way instead of God’s way. In fact in the
very next chapter, when Abraham and Sarah
had been in Canaan for ten years and still had no child, Sarah suggested that
Abraha should take her servant Hagar and had a child with her. Abraham did this and Ishmael was born. It was an action bin which Abraham and Sarah
decided to do things in their own way, and the result was pain and hardship in
their family.
There
are times when we do this too. We decide to do things in our own way, instead
of trusting in God’s way. We decide to
live life in the way we see fit instead of the way that fits God’s ordering of
his creation; the way described in the Ten Commandments.
As
I think about this on Confirmation Sunday when I have five young people in
front of me who will start high school next year, one of the first areas of
life that comes to mind is sex. One of
the single greatest challenges you will face as a Christian young person is the
pressure and temptation to use sex in a number of ways outside of marriage. The world will bombard you with the message
that sex is just something to use in any way you want, especially in the
pornography that now saturates our culture.
It will tell you that a virgin in high school, or college, or in the
years after college is a loser – is someone to be mocked or pitied.
But
you have learned that God is the Creator.
He is the One who set things up.
He is One who ordered how things work.
And in his word he tells us how to live according to that ordering; how
to live well; how to live in ways that will be a blessing. You have learned from God’s word that it is
only in the one flesh union of husband and wife that sex can be the blessing
that God intends and not a source of sorrow.
Like
Abraham we fail to trust in God’s way.
Yet during his life the foundation, the center to which Abraham always
returned was faith in God’s promise. And
like Abraham we do this too. We
repent. We confess our sin and we return
in faith to the forgiveness found in the death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ.
In
the face of our sin; in the face of the various challenges we continue to turn
in faith to Jesus, because in him we have victory over sin, death and the
devil. Paul went on to say about Abraham:
“In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many
nations, as he had been told, ‘So shall your offspring be.’ He did not weaken
in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he
was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's
womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong
in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do
what he had promised. That is why his faith was ‘counted to him as
righteousness.’”
This
is our faith too. We believe that because of the death and resurrection of
Jesus Christ we are forgiven and will be raised up on the Last Day. We listen to our text today and hear that
Abraham believed God’s promise and it was counted to him as righteousness. Yet when we hear these words, we recognize
that they aren’t only about Abraham. Instead,
as Paul tells us, “But the words ‘it was counted to him’ were not written for
his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him
who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our
trespasses and raised for our justification.” This is our faith. This is the
faith that our confirmands confess today.
And this is the faith in which we will share in Christ’s resurrection on
the Last Day when we appear before the judgment seat and hear him declare the
we are justified – counted as righteous before God.
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