Sermon from April 25, 2010
"God's Promise, Man's Faith
Genesis 15:4-6

Have you ever thought you had outgrown your faith? Maybe a professor raised possibilities you had never thought of, and they made your faith seem inadequate, even infantile. Maybe you violated your moral standards but nothing bad happened to you as a result, and it made you think those moral standards were okay for little kids but not for someone who has come of age, a man of the world, a liberated woman like you.

I once sat with a Christian family, who had just buried their 20-year-old son. As we talked, his mom said to me, "You know there are days I just want to get in my car, go out on that road and drive into that telephone pole as fast as I can go. I just don't think I can bear to lose my son." She didn't do it, but nothing in her knowledge of God had made her think He would take away her son.

It is when faith seems inadequate that people reject God. I see it different. Hold on to God, and reject your childhood understanding of God. The only way to keep faith alive and growing is to test it. Challenges to faith rescue faith from childishness. They make possibilities a new understanding of God. You can refuse the new understanding of God; in that case your faith shrivels or dies. Or you can embrace the new understanding, and your faith will keep pace with the relentless twists and turns of life. You can see what I'm talking about in the life of Abraham.

The New Divine Purpose for the Failed Human Project
Last Sunday, I quoted the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." That amendment was drafted 221 years ago.

It is still relevant, because it still speaks to America's present, urgent concerns. It captures wisdom that can guide our nation's life. The well-being of 300 million people depends on how well the courts can define that wisdom and how well we the people can live out that wisdom in our religiously diverse society.

Genesis remains relevant for the same reason. It speaks to the world's present, urgent concerns, because it captures wisdom that can guide us. The well-being of seven billion people depends in part on how well the global Church can define that wisdom and how well Christians can live out that wisdom in our shrinking, uncertain, and dangerous world. Genesis 12:1-3 is central to that wisdom.

The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."

That summarizes the new divine purpose for the failed human project. Failed is a strong but apt word for what we saw the past two Sundays in Genesis 1-11. Depressing also comes to mind. What makes those chapters hopeful is that God did not put an end to the human project. He almost did at the flood, but He wants a relationship with Man. So, He continued the relationship but under the very different conditions of a downward spiral. Even then, trusting God is the heart of the human project. Without trust it is impossible to please God.

Trusting God was central in God's new purpose for the failed human project. The new purpose focused on one man, Abram, whose name was later changed to Abraham. That Abram, son of Terah, descendant of Shem, should be pivotal in the history of the world comes as a surprise and a shock. Nature was doing what nature always does, when something interfered with nature. What interfered was God's promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3.

His promise contains three constituent elements. Two are uniquely and exclusively Jewish, and one is completely universal. The two Jewish elements are land and nation. "Go to the land I will show you," and "I will make you into a great nation." The universal element is: "all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."

From the very start God build into the structure of the Jewish people their irrevocable calling: in ways the Jews could not guess and cannot always bear, all peoples on earth were to be blessed through them. That must have been too much for Abraham to grasp. It was too grandiose, too impossible to imagine.

The elements of land and nation were tough enough to grasp. Abraham had no land, and he had no children. Most of Genesis and all of the Old Testament tell how Abraham got land, increased land, and lost land. I won't say much else about land in these sermons, except to say that if you think Jewish land is an outdated, irrelevant idea, just pay attention to the tension between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu. The Middle East and perhaps the world live near the brink because of Jewish land.

The Child of Promise
We focus today on Abraham's children, or, more to the point, Abraham's lack of children. "I will make you into a great nation," says the Lord God. That was fine, but unfortunately, Abraham and Sarah, his wife, were childless. Childlessness is not necessarily insurmountable, but they did not seem able to surmount it. They remained childless, and matters came to a head in Genesis 15:1-6.

After this, the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision: "Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward."

But Abram said, "O Sovereign LORD, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?" And Abram said, "You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir." His servant, Eliezer, was the heir in question.

Legal documents that date from Abraham's time reveal that childless couples could adopt a slave, who would serve them as long as they lived and would inherit their estate on their death. However, if they had a natural son, the adopted servant would lose the right of ineritance. With that information in hand we can appreciate verses 4-5.

Then the word of the LORD came to him: "This man (Eliezer) will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir." He took him outside and said, "Look up at the heavens and count the stars - if indeed you can count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your offspring be." Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

I don't know if Abraham welcomed the news, but the news was that Abraham was going to father a child. Verse six is crucial: Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness. Remember: God wants a relationship with Man, even though Man does not want it. The heart of the relationship is always trusting God. Without trust it is impossible to please God.

What happens next in chapter 16 is enduringly human. From Lady Macbeth to Sarah and forward to private domestic conversations in the Brandywine Valley, women often think their men are not getting what they deserve. They think their men are too slow to act, too cowardly to act, too indifferent to act. And so, (fatal initiative!) they take matters into their own hands. You can see it in Sarah in Genesis 16:1-4.

Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; so she said to Abram, "The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her." Abram agreed to what Sarai said. So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. He slept with Hagar, and she conceived. When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress.

Other legal documents dating from Abraham's time actually obliged the wife, if childless, to provide her husband with another woman by whom he could father a child. And as the saying goes, now you know the rest of the story. Ishmael was born, Abraham's flesh and blood. God's promise is fulfilled. Right?

You could say that until you read Genesis 17:15-19. God also said to Abraham, "As for Sarai your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai; her name will be Sarah. I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her."

Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, "Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?" And Abraham said to God, "If only Ishmael might live under your blessing!"

Then God said, "Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him."

You might say God was fussy. Abraham's heir will not be an adopted son; the heir will be Abraham's natural son. But the heir will not be Abraham's son by just any woman. He must have Abraham for father and Sarah for mother. You might say God was fussy. You might better say God was faithful. God does what He promises, and He does not accomodate the desperate rationalizations of those who still lack faith that is adequate to the purpose of God.

The Test
You pragmatic types will say, "So Abraham has fathered a nation of one. That will distinguish him in the Guinness Book of Records, but it scarcely does justice to God's promise: "I will make you into a great nation." It's good to remember that God's first concern is not with babies but with belief. God's promises matter more than Sarah's pregnancy. Abraham's growing faith was about to be gravely tested.

Genesis 22:1-2: Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied. Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about."

Many people find repugnant God's command to kill Isaac as a religious sacrifice. I find this repugnance somewhat hypocritical in light of the destruction of 45 million children in American abortion clinics and the lofty language in which it is justified.

Nevertheless, Genesis 22 is chilling. I urge you to keep your eye on the ball here. This is Isaac, the promised son, offspring of Abraham and Sarah, the one on whom their hopes of someday becoming a great nation were riding. God made that promise and made good on that promise and now bids fair to destroy that promise.

Romans 4:20-22 captures the meaning of Abraham's whole experience: Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. This is why "it was credited to him as righteousness." Now he had a faith that was adequate to the purpose of God.

God spared Isaac in a story you don't want to miss. The salvation of the world had firmly taken root in the promise of God, the faith of Abraham, and the child Isaac. By the way, child sacrifice among the Jews is hereafter condemned throughout the rest of the Old Testament. Only pagans destroy their children.

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
So, what do we do with what we've heard today? First, let's learn a verse from the New Testament that expresses the centrality of faith in God. Without faith it is impossible to please God - Hebrews 11:6.

Second, here's a prayer that you might work into your daily prayers in the week ahead and the years ahead. "I believe; help my unbelief - Mark 9:24.

Finally, how would the people around you know that you are a person of faith? Maybe you can talk about God easily and without embarrassment. Maybe you can talk a person through the first halting steps to becoming a Christian. Maybe you can express your own story of faith in Christ in 100 powerful words or less. I hope you can do all that. It may not be enough to persuade people that you are a person of faith. Talk is cheap. Can you, like Abraham, show your faith by the way you live over a long period of time?

What behavior would you point to? Going to church? I think that counts. I think it's going to count even more in the next decade. Too many Christians are too casual about their involvement in the life of a local church. The children's sports or their own issues keep them away. Just being here is one of the simpler sacrifices we will be called on to make in the next decade to show that we are people of faith.

Besides going to church, how do the people who see you everyday know you are a person of faith? Does your faith in Christ express itself persuasively in how you treat people or handle adversity or rear your children or in the personal sacrifices you make?

It's not a matter of getting it right every time. Abraham got it wrong most of the time, but he got one thing right every time: he trusted God to make him into a great nation, and that trust led him to act, even if he acted badly.

Here's the deal. Are we going to be church of Sunday consumers, who talk to each other in a religious ghetto; or will we live in such a way as to engage our culture with its moral consensus that so often contradicts biblical, moral teaching? The jury is still out. How will we respond?