God's One-Sided Bargain

Texts:  Genesis 15:1-18; Luke 22:14-30

TWO VERSES FROM OUR READINGS this morning sound the keynote for today's sermon.  The first is Genesis 15:17 and it says,

When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. 

The second is Luke 22:20, which says,

In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you. 

One verse that's familiar, one verse we may find to be obscure.  But both have to do with the covenant of grace that the Lord our God makes with us, not counting the cost to Himself, that you and I might be saved.

The making of covenants is fundamental to Biblical history.  Our God is a covenant-making God.  But let's not think that the making of covenants was some special Bible thing off in a category by itself.  No, it was basic to human life and civilization back in ancient times and it still is today.

People make different kinds of covenants with one another, for different purposes.  Treaties.  Bargains.  Marriage vows.  Contracts.  You name it.  All of these involve the parties promising to do certain things for one another.  Very often they stipulate the penalties the parties will face if either of them fail to live up to their side of the bargain.  The general form was, "Do this, and this benefit will follow.  Fail to do this, and this penalty will follow."  As you might expect, if one party to a contract was more powerful than the other, the weaker party incurred most of the obligation and most, if not all, of the penalties.  But what would you think of a covenant where the stronger party took all the obligations and all the penalties to himself, and all the benefits came to the party that was weaker?  That's not how it happened in the ancient world, and it's not how it happens today.  But that's exactly what the Lord God Almighty does for us in the covenant of grace He has made with us for our salvation.

Genesis chapter 15 begins with the word of the Lord coming to Abram in a vision:

"Do not be afraid, Abram.
    I am your shield,
    your very great reward."

At the outset, we see God conferring a benefit on the man Abram.  And who was Abram?  Was he some hero or demigod who had the right to deal with the Lord God Almighty as an equal?  No, he was a nomadic herdsman of Syrian descent whom God out of His own free grace had elected to be the one through whom all the nations of the world should be blessed.  God of His own choice gave Abram the right to expect something of Him.  So to this wonderful assurance Abram basically responds, "How will I know that You will keep your promise to me?  You've promised to make me into a great nation and look, I still have no children and a servant of mine looks to be my only heir."

  And does the Lord say, "Trust Me?"  He could have.  But in grace He responds that indeed, a son coming from Abram's own body would be his heir, and He gives him the sign of the stars of heaven as His testimony that His promise is firm and sure.

Does Genesis say, "Abram did this or that to deserve that God should favor him"? or "God required these actions and good works from Abram as his part of the bargain"?  No, it tells us that upon seeing this sign,"Abram believed the Lord, and it was credited to him as righteousness."  All the action was on the Lord's side; all the passive receptiveness was on Abram's.  Abram simply received God's grace, and by that grace he received the righteousness of God that made it possible for him to walk with God in friendship and peace and receive His blessings forever.

But God has not finished making His one-sided bargain or covenant with this man.  The Lord says,

"I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it."

Again, as in verse 2, Abram asks for a sign that this indeed will take place.  God, being God, had every right to say, "Abram, you trusted Me before; go on trusting Me now.  Isn't My word enough for you?"

But the Lord doesn't do that.  Instead, the Lord God of the universe condescends to a man and grants him signs and seals to ratify the bargain, exactly as if it were one man making covenant with another.

The Lord commands Abram to bring certain animals of a certain age, along with two birds.  Abram obeyed, cut the animals in two, and arranged the halves opposite each other, with the birds opposite each other, though not cut in half.  Then Abram sat down to wait, driving the birds of prey away from the carcasses, waiting to see what the Lord would do, waiting to see what the Lord wanted him to do.

This strange procedure was a standard way of ratifying and witnessing to a covenant in the ancient Near East.  What could it possibly mean?  It might help if we turn over to Jeremiah 34.  There the leaders of Judah have made a covenant before God to free their slaves, but they've broken it and taken the freedmen into slavery again.  So the Lord says,

The men who have violated my covenant and have not fulfilled the terms of the covenant they made before me, I will treat like the calf they cut in two and then walked between its pieces.  The leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the court officials, the priests and all the people of the land who walked between the pieces of the calf, I will hand over to their enemies who seek their lives. Their dead bodies will become food for the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth.

The covenant was sealed in the blood of the animals.  The idea was that the parties making the covenant would walk between the severed animal pieces, in effect saying, "If I break this covenant, may I be like this slaughtered animal.  May my dead body be food for birds of prey, with no one to drive them off."  Typically, it was the weaker party who passed between the pieces.  A weaker king.  The debtor who needed the money.  The people of a god.  The powerful party merely witnessed that all was done properly, to his benefit.

But what is this in Genesis between God and Abram?   It had been nighttime with the stars shining when the Lord first came to him in this vision.  It was now sunset of the day after   As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and "a thick and dreadful darkness came over him."  This was no ordinary darkness and no ordinary sleep, it was a sleep from the Lord.  Abram would not be asked to walk between the pieces; he would not be asked to do anything.  In fact, God wanted to make sure Abram wasn't capable of doing anything.  This treaty, this bargain, was going to be totally one-sided, and the one party making the promises, the one party obligating Himself to them was God and God alone.

In verses 13 to 16 the Lord sets forth the terms of the promise:  That Abram's descendants would indeed inherit the land, but not until the sin of the present inhabitants (here known collectively as Amorites) had reached its full measure and their judgement was due.

Now, we might think that doesn't exactly count.  If you tell me I've won the Publishers' Clearinghouse Sweepstakes but then tell me you'll make the check out to my great-great grandchild who hasn't even been born yet, and I'm getting on in years and don't have any kids in the first place, as a modern individualist I'm likely to say, hey, that wasn't what you promised before.  But our ancient ancestors were much more family and clan oriented than we are, and they understood that they lived on in their descendants.  A man like Abram would have taken no pleasure in receiving a blessing that would die with him.

So as Abram lies in deep vision-sleep, the Lord unilaterally declares what He will do.  And then, wonder of wonders, when the sun had fully set there appeared (verse 17) a smoking firepot with a blazing torch passing between the severed animal pieces. This was none other than a vision of the Lord God Almighty swearing an oath against Himself, saying, "May I be like these dead animals if I do not keep my promise to Abram my friend."

God Almighty Himself is conferring all the benefits!  And taking on all the penalties and obligations!  Most covenants then as now say, "Do this in order to receive that."  But God's covenant of grace says, "Believe this and receive that."  Or maybe putting it better, "Believe Me and receive this." God was witnessing blood against Himself if He should fail in any of His promises to His friend Abram.

What is this to us?  Everything.  Because in His grace, God's one-sided bargain with Abram set in motion the divine plan for our salvation.   He promised him a land to call his own, but the physical land of Canaan was only a sign of the kingdom of heaven that we, God's covenant people, will receive.  He promised him heirs like the stars in the sky, and physically, this came true, but even more numerous are those who are children of Abraham by faith, for all who, like Abraham, believe God and have it counted to us as righteousness.

But the greatest fulfilment of God's covenant with Abram came in the greatest of his descendants, who is Jesus Christ our Lord.  And so we see Him in the Upper Room, sharing a meal with His disciples shortly He is to die, and like God His Father so many centuries before, God the Son of God makes a one-sided covenant with those He loves and seals it in His own blood.  "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you," Jesus said.  For us He became those animals whose bodies were cut in two.  For us He walked the road to Calvary   Jesus did not bleed and die because He failed to keep His covenant of grace with us, He bled and died so that covenant could be put into effect.  His resurrection from the dead proves that this is true; because He rose, we know that we will rise with Him.

In this season of Lent, as we look forward to Easter and Christ's resurrection, let us remember that there is nothing we can do to deserve God's blessings of life and fellowship and forgiveness.  His covenant with us is like His covenant with our father Abraham, totally one-sided on God's part where it comes to action and obligations, totally benefitting us whom He has called to be His own.  Indeed, our new covenant in the blood of Christ is the ultimate fulfillment of God's promises to Abram, who believed the Lord and to whom that was credited as righteousness.  For as St. Paul says in Romans 4 says,

Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham's offspring--not only to those who are of the law but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all.

By faith we are the children of Abraham, the friend of God.  But even better, by faith in the shed blood of Christ, we are the children of God, who makes His extraordinary promises to us, and keeps them all.

Redemption Drawing Near

Texts: Jeremiah 33:14-22; Luke 21:5-36

A FEW YEARS AGO I WAS at a pastors’ conference where we were doing an in-depth study of the Book of Psalms. During one of the question and answer periods, one pastor gave his opinion that the psalms where God’s people complain of hardship, trouble, grief, oppression and so on simply shouldn’t be used in white middle-class American churches. Middle-class American Christians don’t have troubles like that, he said. Such psalms are irrelevant to our lives and we shouldn’t say them.

I wondered if he really knew what went on in his parish. True, we don’t tend to undergo suffering to the extent our brothers and sisters in Somalia or India or Saudi Arabia do. But we know what it’s like to have trouble. Especially with the economy as bad as it is and the future of our country as uncertain as it is, we find ourselves subject to worry, care, and for some of us, real hardship. The Psalms are given to us for our comfort, as is our passage from the Gospel of St. Luke.

. . . Comfort? Where’s the comfort in Luke chapter 21? It begins all right in verse 5, with the disciples pointing out the marvellous beauty of the Lord’s Temple in Jerusalem. Life was hard and uncertain when you were a poor Galilean peasant, and being a follower of Rabbi Jesus could make things even harder. The Temple, at least, was something solid and permanent. An ordinary Jew could rely on it and feel sure about things, even when life wasn’t so good. That’s because it was a sign of God’s covenant with His people Israel. The disciples and all the Jews could look at the temple and know that in spite of the Roman occupation and everything else they were going through, God was still with them.

So does our Lord Jesus confirm their confidence? No. He says, "As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down."

What a knife in the gut! Good on the original disciples--they didn’t contradict Jesus (for once) or say, "But Lord! That’s impossible!" Instead, they asked, "Teacher, when will these things happen?" By now they’d learned to trust Jesus to know what He was talking about.

Jesus doesn’t answer their "When?" question. It wasn’t His will to give them an exact year and day and hour. Instead, He revealed to them and to us the circumstances surrounding the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem with it. And at the same time, Jesus let us know how we can recognise the end of the age and the time of His coming as Judge and King.

We’re looking forward to that, right? His coming will be the end of all our trouble and the beginning of our eternal bliss. But before that Day comes, things on this earth will not get better, they will get much, much worse. Wars. Natural disasters. Pandemics. Terror. Cataclysms in the heavens and on the earth. Jesus said so, and He can be trusted to know what He’s talking about.

A lot of Bible commentators and ordinary Christians, too, get confused over this prophecy. Some say the whole thing applies to the time in A.D. 70 when the Romans marched in and destroyed Jerusalem and dispersed the Jews to the four corners of the world. While others say it all has to do with events that will happen sometime in the future, and the destruction of Jerusalem long ago has nothing to do with it.

But Bible prophecy again and again is fulfilled in a layered way. God revealed His will in pictures and mirrors. One event in the short term would serve as a symbol for something to happen thereafter. For instance, God’s great salvation in freeing His people from Egypt is a picture of what God would do in freeing us His people from slavery to sin by Christ’s death on the cross.

And here in Luke 21, the terrible events Jesus prophesied for Jerusalem were a picture of what will take place someday in the future when God’s judgement descends on all humanity when the Son of Man returns as King. We know from the text itself that the two events have been put together in one prophecy, for the Holy Spirit has Luke write very clearly in verse 24 that "Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the time of the Gentiles are fulfilled." These events couldn’t all happen at once, in the past or in the future. When Jesus talked about the destruction of Jerusalem and about the end of the age, He wasn’t talking about the same time. Rather, He was talking about the same thing. And that thing is the process by which our sovereign God will judge unfaithfulness and evil in this world, install Jesus the Righteous Branch of David as King on the throne of the universe, and bring relief and redemption to His faithful people.

Advent’s a lot like that. It also has two parts. We look for the coming of Christ, the King. We prepare ourselves to receive Him in memory as the human Child born over two thousand years ago. But we also must make ourselves ready for His coming again in glory. We don’t know when that will happen; our Lord didn’t give us the year or day or hour. But it’s all part of God’s sovereign act of judging unrighteousness, making Jesus King, and bringing us redemption that He started long, long ago.

Let this passage be a warning to us, not to load God’s symbols with our own meanings. The Jews thought the Temple would stand forever as a sign of God’s favor to them. We humans see the Christ Child in the manger and think it’s all right to make God out to be weak and manageable and subject to our wants and desires. We sinners can cope with Jesus as a helpless baby. We can even take the grown-up Rabbi preaching woe to the Pharisees-- as long as we think "the Pharisees" are always Those Other People. But in our rebellion and idolatry we cannot take the Son of God hanging on a cross; much less are we ready to welcome the Son of Man come to judge us and rule over us forever.

None of us can accept Christ as He really is-- until God by His own unfettered will and sovereign initiative moves in our hearts by the power of His Holy Spirit and converts us into His own people. But when He does, we become a whole new people! People of redemption, people of righteousness, people of hope! In our Jeremiah passage, verse 16 says, "In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. This is the name by which it will be called: The Lord our Righteousness." But if you go to Jeremiah 23, it speaks there as well of the Righteous Branch raised up from David, and says "This is the name by which He will be called: The Lord our Righteousness." The Jerusalem Jeremiah foretells is not the city destroyed in his day. It’s not the rebuilt city overthrown by General Titus in A.D. 70. It is God’s new Jerusalem, His new Israel, His Church, and we can bear the name "The Lord our Righteousness" because it’s the name of our Redeemer Jesus, the righteous Son of David. We now belong to Him and live in Him, and because we do, we will escape the eternal judgement that will come on the God-hating generation of this world.

In verse 28 Jesus says, "Stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near." Interestingly, this word "redemption" doesn’t mean "ransom"-- for the payment that bought us out of slavery to sin was the blood He shed long ago on His cross. Rather, the word means "release" or "deliverance." When all the world is melting in terror and hiding from the wrath of almighty God, His people can stand on their feet like free men and women liberated by Jesus’ blood and expect to be freed from the persecutions and hardships of those last days. Be of good hope, Christian people! No matter how terrible things may get, God is in control and will bring you through. You may give your physical body as a witness to Christ and His gospel, but as to your soul, not a hair of your head will perish.

However, this is no time for complacency, Christian friends. As our Lord says in verse 34, both pleasure and hardship can weigh down our hearts so we lose faith in the goodness and saving power of God. At this season of the year, it’s doubly heart-breaking to hear someone say, "I’ve lost my job; at our house we won’t have any Christmas." Oh, no, no! You’ve lost your livelihood; does that mean you’ve lost Jesus the living Lord as well? You say you can’t give your children any Christmas this year? But my sad friend, God has already given Christmas to your children and to you as well! Tell them the story of the Son of God who became flesh, who died and rose for their salvation, and you’ve given your children more of a rich and blessed Christmas than most of the richest households will get around this fallen world!

Or there are hearts touched by tragedy, who say Christmas has been destroyed for them because of the grief that has torn apart their lives. If that is you, I beg you to see that this is the time for you to lift up your head, for your redemption is drawing near! Sorrow may have invaded your life, but the Son of God has invaded this world of sin and pain and death; His arm is stronger than the worse that can happen to any of us, and by His cross the victory is already yours.

The Devil wants us to be distracted and not be watching for the second coming of our Lord. He wants us to stop being faithful to Jesus in our everyday lives. For what is it for us to be on the watch? In every other place in Scripture where the return of Christ is described, keeping watch means to keep doing the work He has given you to do, cheerfully, in His name and to His glory. To watch means to endure the ordinary hardships of human life gracefully, drawing always on the power of your Lord Jesus Christ, so that when the greater trials come we’re used to depending on Him. And always, always, to watch means for us to seek and enjoy the means of grace-- reading His word, hearing it preached, praying in Jesus’ name, celebrating and sharing the sacraments He has given us, assembling and serving with His people, the church. In this way Christ Himself will prepare you to be a witness to Him, both in times of peace and in times of persecution and hardship.

After our sermon hymn, we will administer the sacrament of holy baptism to D---, daughter of S--- and L--- and granddaughter of C--- and J---. Do not be deceived: You may see only something being done to an adorable baby. But baptism is a sign of the great conflict between heaven and hell that Jesus describes in the Gospels. War is waged over the souls of little ones such as this, and by baptism we signify that we claim her for Jesus Christ. Greater than that, in baptism God claims her for His own, that she might not be in terror on the Day when Christ comes as Judge, but lovingly look up and hail Him as Her Redeemer and King.

This is God’s promise to us in all our baptisms. If King Jesus comes soon, we will undergo a baptism of fire we never could endure on our own. But our God is strong. He is in control. And just as He brought us through the waters of baptism to new life in His Son, He will also bring us through the deathly fire of that Day to eternal life and peace with Him.

Be of good hope. Your sin was judged and destroyed on the cross of your Lord Jesus Christ. In this Advent season, prepare yourselves to relive the coming of your King as the Babe of Bethlehem. And at the same time, keep watch and live prepared to welcome Jesus your King when He comes to receive you into His glory. In His name and by His power, you can stand and look up, for your redemption is drawing near.

24-Karat Faith

Texts: 1 Peter 1:3-16; Mark 6:6b-7, 12-29 5:21-43

WHEN I WAS IN FIFTH GRADE I decided when I was grown up I’d go to Africa and be a missionary. I imagined myself suffering hardship in the jungle, facing down a fearsome witch doctor, maybe being taken captive by cannibals (I’d been watching too many cartoons) and being in danger for my life, all in defense of the faith. Oh, yes, it seemed really romantic and exciting, the idea of suffering and maybe even dying for the cause of Jesus Christ.

But one evening I was up in my bedroom contemplating this. And I got into one of those silly poses kids do, and slipped and knocked my nose with my knee. Hard. Good golly, that hurt! It hurt so bad I could hardly stand it.

And that was the end of my missionary ambitions. I figured, if I could hardly deal with the pain of my own knee hitting my nose, how could I remain faithful if those cannibals started poking me with their spears?

Now that I’m grown I can laugh at my childish ideas about foreign missions. But today’s Scriptures bring out my real error, and it wasn’t just my ignorance about Africa and its people. My real mistake was focussing on my potential sufferings and my potential glory, instead of on the suffering and glory of my Lord Jesus Christ. I was thinking how I would win the victory over evil forces in this world, instead of rejoicing over the great salvation my Savior and God had already won for me.

I doubt that I’m alone. That’s how a lot of us picture of facing persecution for the faith. We imagine how we’re going to successfully stand up against it-- or maybe we dread how we might fail. We see ourselves as heros in the war against the world and the devil-- or we hope Jesus will let us stay behind the lines and not get into the fighting at all. But as Mark and Peter both remind us, in the war of God vs. Satan and good vs. evil, the true focus isn’t on us and what we will do, it’s on Jesus Christ and what He has done for us. Yes, we will benefit from what He has done. We will receive praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. But our victory will be ours only because first it is His.

But perhaps you think this has nothing to do with you. Maybe you’re sure you’ll never face persecution for the sake of Jesus Christ at all. I suppose, compared to what our brothers and sisters in Muslim and Communist countries are going through, we have nothing to complain of. But Christian persecution isn’t only having somebody put a knife to your throat and yelling, "Deny Jesus Christ or I kill you!" The spiritual battle against us is much more subtle than that, and if we don’t recognize our little skirmishes and cling to Christ and His benefits in them, we’ll certainly fail when more severe tests come our way. If you belong to Jesus Christ you face persecution for His sake every day, and the battle isn’t merely against the world and the devil, it’s against our own fears and desires as well.

The Apostle Peter notes in verse 6 of our reading that now on this earth we may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. The implication is that if we haven’t already, we soon will. This word "all kinds" in the Greek literally means "many colored." Some griefs and troubles are screaming red like fire, some are pale gray like ash. They are all part of our warfare against this world, the Devil, and our own indwelling sin. We don’t like them, we aren’t called to go after them, but God in His sovereign will allows them as the means to test and purify our faith in Him, so it will come through like pure, 24-karat gold.

Persecution for Christ’s sake is inevitable, since we’ve been born again, we’re new creatures, and what we are will always be at war with what we used to be. Don’t imagine that your part in the battle will always be clear cut and dramatic. For then you won’t recognise a trial of faith when it comes.

We see how trivial, how pedestrian the battle can be in our reading from Mark’s gospel, where he tells us about the martyrdom of John the Baptist. This is the man Jesus Himself called the greatest of those born of woman, and the culmination of the Law and the prophets. If anybody, you’d think John would go to his death in some glorious spiritual last stand.

But no. John is beheaded and his head served up like some exotic dish because of the everyday earthly lust and spite of one woman, Herodias, an amateur dance performance by her daughter Salome, and the lust, pride, and political fear of Herodias’ brother-in-law and unlawful husband, King Herod. Herod had put John away in prison so he couldn’t go around the countryside reminding the people of how he, Herod, was violating God’s law in running off with his brother’s wife. But he had no desire to torture or execute John for his message. Mark tells us Herod feared John, he was puzzled at him, but he liked to listen to him. We have no reason to believe that John in prison did not keep on proclaiming that the kingdom of God was at hand, that the Messiah had arrived, and that people should repent and obey the law of God. Being in prison was a form of persecution, of course. But from Herod’s point of view, he wasn’t standing against the Jewish faith when he imprisoned John; no, it was simply the best thing he could do politically. And when it came time for John to die, there was no crisis, John did nothing specific to make Herod behead him, it was just one more of those everyday situations when human selfishness wanted its way and nothing was going to stop it.

It’s the same with us, disciples of Jesus Christ who bear His name. Your struggles and trials as a Christian will most likely not be spectacular. Those who oppose you may not have any idea they’re causing you to suffer for Christ’s sake at all. But you should be aware of it. Think of those times when you feel pressure to compromise what is right because your boss thinks it’s good for business. Think of situations where a little voice inside tells you to give God the glory for something good that had happened to you, but you hear your own voice taking credit for it yourself, because you don’t want to seem "too religious." Call to mind those times when popular opinion on certain political and moral issues goes against the will of God as revealed in the Scriptures, and you’re ridiculed or called a bigot when you stand up for what you know to be the truth. These are the trials of your faith in Christ, allowed so it will come out more pure than 24-karat gold.

Think, too, of those times when pressure from other people isn’t involved at all, when the grief is in your own situation. Some of you may be struggling with financial hardship at this time, even unemployment or impending bankruptcy. You may have learned that you or someone you love is facing a deadly or painful chronic disease. How is your faith in Jesus Christ? Does this trial make you rely on Him and His faithfulness all the more? Does it make you search out the depths of His love for you and move you to love and trust Him for all you are and all you will have? Or does your trouble cause you to doubt Christ and His benefits-- or even, sometimes, to forget Him altogether?

These kinds of grief seem so ordinary and earthbound, hardly anything to do with being a Christian at all! But these everyday trials are the beginning of the refinement process for your faith, and if your faith turns out to be only 2-karat gold or no gold at all, where will you be when the ultimate trials come?

And they will come. Already our Congress is contemplating legislation that would make it hate speech for Christians to stand up for Biblical moral principles. Already in countries like Great Britain and Canada Muslim sharia law is allowed to hold sway in some areas, and Muslim leaders declare it’s their goal that sharia be in force throughout the world.

What shall we do about it? Expect the government to rescue us? Certainly, whatever we can do as citizens we should do, just as St. Paul appealed to his Roman citizenship whenever the time was right. But we must never expect the United States government or any other human institution to stand between us and the persecutions that will come because we bear the name of Jesus Christ. They will come, they must come, "so that your faith-- of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire-- may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed."

It is Christ who brings us through the fire and Christ alone. His heavenly Father and ours has given us new birth into a living hope in Him, through Christ’s resurrection from the dead. This hope is not like the earthly wishing that says, "I hope it rains before my flowers die" or "I hope I get a new job before I start missing mortgage payments." This hope is in the person and work of the deathless Son of God. It teaches us to look beyond our earthly troubles to the sure and solid inheritance He has won and preserves in heaven for us.

Our brother Peter reminds us that no matter what happens, in this life we are shielded through God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. Individually we have already been saved and justified through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, and when our Lord comes in glory and takes us to Himself, His work of salvation will be perfected in us and in all creation and the total victory will be His.

Even now we see the evidence of that coming victory. We see it when the Spirit of Christ in us enables us to do things we thought we never could and certainly never could without His aid. We see it when we find ourselves coming to the assistance of someone we have feared, not through compulsion but out of Christian love. Maybe you’ve taken a stand for Christ and you were nervous about it, but then you found it wasn’t so hard after all, and you found yourself caring about the person you were speaking to and wanting them to know Jesus and receive His heavenly inheritance, too. Maybe you said No to that business compromise or refused to be depressed by the current economic situation, because the Holy Spirit had filled you with the inexpressible joy He gives in Jesus Christ. This is the power of Jesus Christ working in you.

Jesus’ apostles witnessed the first fruits of Christ’s victory over sin and Satan when Jesus sent them out in His name to preach repentance, to heal, and to drive out demons. His power in them was so great that King Herod thought John the Baptist had been raised from the dead. Herod thought that when John’s headless body was buried, the Baptist and the power that was in him were dead and gone. But the power of God manifest in Jesus Christ our Lord can never die. Our hope in Him is living and sure, and our inheritance in Him can never perish, spoil, or fade.

24-karat faith trusts totally in Jesus Christ and what He has done for us. God our loving heavenly Father permits griefs and trials and persecutions in our lives , to prove to us and the world that our faith is not in ourselves or our own boldness, not in human systems or governments, but in Christ alone. 24-karat faith maintains us in an attitude of obedience to God, focussed on Him and His will, confiding only in Him.

To this goal, Peter admonishes us to prepare our minds for action. Be sure that grief and trials will come to you, some because you belong to Jesus, some simply because of your human condition. Meet them as one who belongs to your faithful God and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Study God’s word; know what He has done for your ancestors in the faith, so you also may be ready to meet trouble honorably and courageously in the strength Jesus gives. Set your hope on the grace He gives you even now, grace that will be fulfilled when He is revealed in glory. Through Him you can renounce the ways of Herod, Herodias, and Salome-- through Him you can stop being impelled and hemmed in by your fears and desires and instead live free in the holiness of Almighty God.

It was easy for me to give up my grade-school dream of being a Christian missionary because it really wasn’t about Christ at all. The truth was that I’d recently started at a new school, some of the kids were picking on me, and I figured that if I was going to suffer persecution, I may as well do it in a good cause. But now I understand that my mission field back then wasn’t someday in Africa, it was right there, right then, on that school playground.

And now my mission field and yours is wherever we are and in whatever situation we might be. Our field of battle is wherever the world, the devil, and our own sin set themselves up against the Kingdom of God. Our faith will come through the fire like 24-karat gold, because Jesus who died and rose again empowers us, protects us, and keeps our heavenly inheritance secure for us. Trust in Him like Peter, believe in Him like John, for He is your risen Lord and your gracious, living Hope.

To Him be all glory, honor, and praise, with God the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit, now and forever, amen.

Our Perception, God's Reality

Texts: Psalm 46; Luke 24:13-35

THERE’S AN EXPRESSION OUT THERE in the world: "Perception Is Reality." I’m sure you’ve heard it. You may even have had it aimed at you. The idea is, it doesn’t matter if something is true or not, if people think it’s true, it may as well be true.

"Perception Is Reality": We see this idea work in the world in economics. The economy may actually be in pretty good shape, but if enough people think it’s bad, they’ll act like it’s bad. We see it in politics. A politician may be a very wise man, but if the Press catches him in a momentary error, the public can perceive him as stupid and treat him as stupid, and never listen to him again.

We see it operating in the world in our jobs. I once served a church in a tiny village in the Midwest, where the executive presbyter told me I should always drive wherever I went, even if only for a block or two, because if anyone saw my car parked at the manse, he said they’d think I wasn’t working. That would jeopardize my ministry, he said, because after all, "Perception Is Reality." And I’m sure you can supply examples of this from your own job.

We see "Perception Is Reality" at work in the world in our relationships. How many couples get married, how many get divorced, how many parents and children become estranged and alienated from one another, due to perceptions each had of the other that might or might not have been true? But when they were in the middle of the situation, it didn’t matter whether their impressions were true, because, after all, "Perception Is Reality."

I hope you noticed: we’re not talking about true perception at all. True perception has to do with really getting to the bottom of things, truly discerning what’s going on. But this kind of "perception" is all about making up our minds by what appears on the surface.

That’s the way we naturally operate in the world. Our whole human-based world system says we should trust the testimony of our senses and feelings, whether we have the facts straight about the matter or if our conclusions are based on a lie. It’s the way of this world to make lies into the truth, or rather, to make decisions about people and things and act on them as if lies were the truth.

But it’s not the way of the Lord our God. And it shouldn’t be our way as followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. As followers of our Lord Jesus Christ, we should look to God’s truth, to God’s reality, regardless of what our senses and feelings tell us. For His reality is the only firm ground we have to stand on in this shifting and shaking world.

This is especially true in times of disaster, difficulty, and grief. If Perception is truly Reality, when things go wrong we’d have every right to question God and His goodness and power. "Where is God? Why doesn’t He help me? How can these things happen and a loving, all-powerful God still be in control?" But our human perception is not God’s reality; and if we act as if it is, we’ll miss the comfort and benefits that our Lord would give us in distressing times.

Psalm 46, verses 2 and 3 describe a situation where we might well be tempted to let our human perception influence our view of God. The earth caving in under us! Whole mountains sliding into the sea! Tidal waves in the ocean, undermining and toppling more mountains! Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, nothing trustworthy we can see.

When I read these verses, I can’t help but think of events in our recent history.

Like seven years ago, when the mountains of the World Trade Center towers came peeling down like monstrous gray mouldy bananas. And three years ago, when New Orleans and the whole Gulf Coast were inundated, washed away by the wind and water of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Whether we want to or not, we haven’t forgotten and we do remember. We remember loved ones lost, injuries suffered, property and livelihoods wrecked and ruined. Such disasters happen; they happen to us, they happen to people we love, and to people we come to love, when we go to help them pick up the pieces.

When things like this happen the follower of Christ does not rely on his human perceptions. No, he says with the psalmist, "God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble." God is our help, even while we’re trapped in the burning tower. He’s our comfort even as the waters are rising and we’re trying to break a hole through our attic roof. He’s there with His hand holding ours even when we learn our teenaged son or daughter has a drug problem, even as the doctor tells us our cancer is terminal. Even at the moment of our death, right there in the midst of trouble, God’s reality is that He is our refuge and strength. Despite what seems like every reason to fear, His truth is that we need not fear at all. He is wholly trustworthy and will never fail us at all.

Some people might say, "What’s the use of that? I’m still in pain, I’m still going through agony, I’m still in distress." Is trust in God just wishful thinking? No, because the trustworthiness of God depends on His eternal character, on who and what He is. He is the Most High, the creator of heaven and earth. He made us to love and worship Him, not just in the time of our earthly lives, but all through eternity. God is He who calls us into covenant with Him and brings us to dwell with Him in His holy city. These verses 4 and 5 are partially talking about the earthly city of Jerusalem, as it was known in the days of the Sons of Korah. But they look beyond that to the eternal Jerusalem that will never be shaken and can never fall. Nations may be in an uproar, kingdoms will fall, but the Lord protects His city and His citizens day after day and forever. He is not controlled by the evil forces of this world: He is Lord over them and He can even use them as He wills to bring us safe through fire and flood and disaster to the holy place where we will dwell always with Him.

We can rely on God’s trustworthy reality despite our human perceptions because He is not a tame god. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is not a nice god.

Does that shock you? But think about it. If by "nice" we mean being a pushover, God is not nice. If by "nice" we mean overlooking things that are wrong because He doesn’t want to offend anyone, God is not nice. If by "nice’ we mean He just wants everyone to be happy and satisfied, no matter what we do to each other or to Him, no, God is not nice.

The Lord God is not nice, but He is good. He is good with the purifying goodness that sees sin as a parasite on His creation and judges our sin for our own good. As it says in verse 8, He is good with the overwhelming goodness that will allow hardship and even desolation to come into our lives, if that’s what it takes to get our attention. He is good with the fear-inspiring goodness that commands our foolish warfare to cease, that makes us stop babbling about our shallow perceptions and start facing up to His awesome reality.

These verses 9 and 10 remind me of a fight going on among a group of squabbling children, and dad or the principal walks in and everything just goes quiet. Suddenly whatever it was they were fighting over is no longer important; the important thing is that they have incurred the righteous wrath of their father. His presence straightens out their perceptions. What’s odd thing is how some people misquote verse 10, and show how sinful and human their perception is still. They quote it, "Be still and know," period, the end. Do they believe we can magically gain wisdom simply by quieting ourselves, maybe by practicing some form of meditation? Be still and know what?

But the verse actually reads "Be still, and know that I [the Lord] am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth."

This Scripture has nothing to do with anything we can do for ourselves or perceive for ourselves; it has everything to do with God breaking in from outside of Creation and replacing our misperceptions with His rock-solid reality. Do we think God is somehow low and ordinary until we exalt Him, as if human praises were the gas burner in a hot air balloon? Oh, no, friends, God will be exalted because He is the Exalted One. Exaltation is simply the response His reality commands and deserves. In these days, it is given to us His people to truly perceive something of His praiseworthy power and glory. But there will come a day when all peoples of the earth, all nations will perceive and recognize that He is high and lifted up, and give Him the honor and praise that He deserves.

In the meantime, we who belong to Him, we who bear His name can be confident that no matter what happens, no matter what our perceptions might be, "The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress." He is called the "God of Jacob," for by that name we are reminded of the covenant He made with His chosen people Israel. We are the heirs of Jacob and Isaac and Abraham, and the promises God made to them He also makes with and keeps to us.

We inherit those promises through the new covenant sealed in the blood of His Son our Saviour Jesus Christ. Whenever your perception tempts you to doubt God’s faithful reality, remember what happened on the Road to Emmaus. Cleopas and the other disciple thought their perception was reality. Once, they’d perceived that Jesus might be the Messiah, but that’d been destroyed by His crucifixion. So they replaced it with another human perception, that their hope in Jesus was over and done and they may as well give up and go home.

But our Lord comes alongside them and replaces their faulty human perceptions with God’s perfect reality: "Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter His glory?" Yes, He did. It was ordained for our Lord to die for our sins and to be raised for our life. The death of Jesus Christ calls us truly to perceive God’s view of our situation. For whatever sorrow or trouble we might experience in this world, our worst trouble is our own rebellion and warfare against God. It was always planned by God that the sacrifice of Jesus the Lamb of God would propitiate the wrath that God justifiably felt against our sin. God had willed from the beginning that the heinous murder of the incarnate Son of God, the worst disaster in human history, should result in the greatest and most lasting and most glorious blessing for the children of Man, eternal life and unity with God.

The crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord call us to recognise how God brought life out of death, strength out of weakness, and joy out of sorrow. The world’s perception could never discern that divine reality, not in a million years. We could never perceive it, if the Holy Spirit did not invade our lives and turn us from our own lying perceptions to God’s holy reality. We need to be still and know how Jesus willingly allowed Himself to be judged for our sins that we might become citizens of God’s holy city. Our perception must be divinely cleared and corrected, that we might recognize the risen Christ and enter His presence and have fellowship with Him.

The beautiful thing is, Jesus Himself makes sure this happens. He will not appear physically and walk with us along the road. But He gives us His Scriptures, that tell of Him from Genesis to Revelation. And He gives us His Holy Sacraments, where we can truly perceive Him in the living waters of Baptism and the bread and cup of Holy Communion. He is here with us, guarding us, guiding us, redeeming us. Our human perception does not create that divine reality. Rather, the Lord Himself has promised that He will be present in the witness of His Word and in the breaking of the Bread. The Holy Spirit blesses our hearing of Christ’s Word and the receiving of His Body and Blood, sanctifying our perception, that we may lay hold of the truth that is our crucified and risen Lord.

Human perception is not necessarily reality, and believing a lie does not make it the truth. But beyond all our limited perceptions lies the reality of God: Who He is, What He is, and what He has done for us in Jesus Christ. Be still, and know that the Lord is God. He will be exalted among the nations, He will be exalted in the earth. And may His holy Church say amen, and praise and glorify Him with confidence and joy, now and forever.

The Treaty of Calvary

Text: Romans 4:13-17; 5:1-11

WHEN I WAS A KID IN SCHOOL STUDYING American History, we learned about April 19, 1775. That was the date of the famous "shot heard round the world." That’s when our colonist forefathers stood up to the British troops at Lexington and Concord, and the Revolutionary War was begun.

Of course we also learned about July 4, 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was ratified in Philadelphia. And October 17, 1781, when the British surrendered at Yorktown. And of course, we learned about September 17, 1787, the day our Constitution was adopted by the Constitutional Convention.

But somehow we never heard much about September 3, 1783. Anybody here remember what happened that day? No? That’s the day of the signing of the Treaty of Paris, when Great Britain and the brand-new United States of America agreed to terms of peace. That’s the day the Revolutionary War officially came to an end, and we had won.


It’s easy to overlook the Treaty of Paris. For one thing, it happened, well, in Paris, France. Here in southwestern Pennsylvania, it’s not too hard to visualize the battles and struggles of the Revolution itself. We don’t have to go that far to see where they took place. And every time we travel the Washington Trail, Route 68 in Butler County, we remember the exploits of the man who would later lead our forces to victory. But Paris, especially Paris in 1783 is so far away-- it’s hard to get our imaginations around anything that happened there.


And then treaties are basically about politics and diplomacy and legal affairs. Terribly dry and boring, not exciting like battles and sieges and deeds of heroism. No wonder September 3, 1783 doesn’t stick in our heads!


But the Treaty of Paris was essential for the birth of our nation. Without the Treaty of Paris, we’d still be at war with Great Britain. At the very best, we’d only have a cease-fire. And if the Crown of England ever felt it was worthwhile to resume hostilities, they could do that. It would just be the same war going on and on.


George III agreed to the terms of the Treaty of Paris because we, the American colonists, had won the war. He was the head of the greatest nations in the world at the time. But after six and a half years of struggle, he simply couldn’t keep pouring in men and money and materiel and munitions to put down those pesky colonials across the Atlantic. So he had his ambassadors sign the Treaty.


Like most treaties, each side got something out of it. We got the best of it, of course: We got our independence and the rights to the land claimed by the thirteen former colonies. But the British got some benefits, too, like the right to navigate on the Mississippi River, the right of pro-British combatants to be free from American prosecution, and the right of pro-British colonists to sue for the recovery of confiscated property.


But suppose a rabble of rebellious revolutionaries and terrorists declared war against a great superpower, a high and glorious Emperor or King. Suppose unlike our colonial ancestors, these rebels had no excuse or cause for war. Suppose under the King’s rulership, they’d been free and responsible citizens with everything they could ever want or need, but they rebelled anyway. Suppose even that the great King had delegated much of the rulership of His empire to these ungrateful wretches, but it wasn’t enough for them, they wanted to put down the King and be kings and queens themselves.


Suppose this war of rebellion had gone on for years, decades, centuries. Suppose the cruelty, brutality, treachery, and desecration of these terrorists was without boundary or limit. And suppose the great King had all the men, money, materiel, and munitions to put down the rebellion whenever He wanted.


Will such a King conclude a treaty of peace with such a gang of bloody rebels? Will He not stop waiting for them to surrender and destroy them altogether, just as they deserve?


You’d think so, wouldn’t you? You’d think He’d bring all His power to bear and be done with this war, once and for all. He could. He’d have the right to. He’d have the power to do it. Let Him wipe them out those terrorists, and let His loyal subjects stand up and cheer!


But what if that’s not what the great King did? What if, instead, He drew up a treaty of peace with those rebels, and it was all in their favor-- life and health and property and riches and high places in His kingdom forever more! What if He sealed it with the blood of His beloved and only Son?


And what if-- what if-- the only thing required from the rebels was that they lay down their arms and accept all the good things promised by this amazing treaty? What if they’d be breaking the treaty if they insisted on trying to do good things in order to deserve the King’s offer of peace?


You’d think that King was either out of His mind-- or that He was the most loving, gracious, caring, merciful, and glorious King the world has ever known. But surely, such a King, such a superpower, has never existed-- has He? And such a treaty, could it ever be offered? How could anything like that be imagined?


St. Paul answers these questions in his letter to the Romans. In the first three chapters, the Apostle convicts all humanity of being in vicious, unexcusable rebellion against our Lord and King. That includes every man, every woman, every child; rich and poor, Jew or Gentile, slave or free, knowing God’s law and not knowing God’s law. We are all guilty of waging war against our gracious Lord, and He has every right to destroy us in His wrath.


But beginning towards the end of Chapter 3, Paul reveals how the Lord God Himself intervened to end the hostilities between Him and us. In Chapter 4, he gives an example of one man who accepted the King’s terms and inherited His promises-- our father Abraham. And in our portion of Chapter 4, Paul outlines the glorious terms of the treaty of peace our Lord and King has made with us, for our benefit and His eternal glory.


We can call it the Treaty of Calvary, and by all calculations, it was ratified at 3:00 in the afternoon on Friday, April 3rd, in the Year of Our Lord 33. On that day and at that hour, Jesus Christ the Son of God died on the cross of Calvary to seal our peace with His own innocent blood. And simply by laying down our arms and accepting His grace through faith in Him, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.


The rebellious world looks on and says, "Impossible!" And it is amazing, overwhelming, almost too good to be true. As St. Paul says in Chapter 5, verses 6 and following,


For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.


"While we were still sinners Christ died for us"! While we were still rebellious, blaspheming, self-righteous, cold, cruel, careless sinners, our God and King made a unilateral treaty with us and signed it with His own blood!


Amazing, but not incredible!


Something you may have noticed, that's going around these days in popular American culture: The constant use of the word "incredible." "Incredible" means "not to be credited" or "not to be believed," and people use it for everything. I’ve even heard Christians use it, about things that you’d think they’d want you to believe. The other day, I heard an advert telling me to send for "This incredible set of Scripture cards!" Excuse me, if it’s unbelievable, why should I bother?


The marvellous love that God offers us in the Treaty of Calvary is not incredible. In fact, the only requirement laid upon us is that we do credit and believe it. The only thing we have to do is be like Abraham and reach out in faith and simply accept God’s promises offered to us in Jesus Christ.


And yes, God’s promise to Abraham that he would inherit the world finds its fulfillment in Jesus Christ. The promises of the Treaty of Calvary are better than a pledge of earthly territory and property and fishing and commercial rights. They extend from this world to the world to come, and their blessings and benefits to us will never end.


Let’s look at the terms of this treaty, here in Romans Chapter 5.


First of all, now that we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Peace with God! That means your sins are forgiven! That means that your conscience can be calm and clear!


I know what it’s like to remember some past sin, and feel unsettled about it. Maybe I’ve asked forgiveness of the person I offended, but I just don’t feel forgiven. The Holy Spirit here tells me and tells you to believe God, not our feelings. The blood of Jesus has covered our sins. We have God’s peace-- let’s enjoy it!


And through Christ we have access to God’s grace and we can stand in it. We can stop acting like it’s up to us to please God in our own paltry power. We can stop trying to put God in our debt by observing the law. Our standing with our King is all by His grace. It comes simply and solely because we belong to His righteous Son, Jesus Christ. He fulfilled the law perfectly for us, and makes us worthy to come into His Father’s presence.


And through Christ, we may boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. This boast has nothing to do with what we are or have been in ourselves-- it totally has to do with what Jesus did for us.


Under the terms of the Treaty of Calvary, we can even boast in our sufferings. For now our sufferings have meaning. Now we are fighting on the side of our Lord, the most glorious and gracious God and King, and our wounds come in His service. In Christ, our suffering does not defeat us, it makes us more like Him, in endurance, character, and hope. For in all our sufferings, the Holy Spirit pours the love of God into our hearts, the love that Jesus knew when He bore the sins of the world for our sake.


Under the terms of the Treaty of Calvary, now that we have been justified by Christ’s blood, we have been saved through Him from the wrath of God. It’s not nice or popular or modern to talk about the wrath of God against sin. But deep inside, we all know our rebellion against Him deserves it. So we excuse ourselves. Or we try to heap up good works to balance out our bad ones. Or we try to run away into pleasure or depression or busyness, anything to escape facing the wrath of God. But in Christ, that threat is removed! For the sake of Jesus’ shed blood, God our King has ceased His war against us and we have nothing to fear from Him, ever again.
That reconciliation came to be while we were still God’s enemies! So now that we have been reconciled to God through the death of His Son, how much more will we be saved by His resurrection life!


For under the Treaty of Calvary, peace with God gives us so much more than His war against us being over. He doesn’t just march away and leave us on our own. No! Peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ makes us heirs of all the gracious promises first offered to our father Abraham, for all those promises are Yes and Amen in God’s crucified and risen Son. Power and glory, wisdom and strength, honor, glory, and blessing: All these are ours through Jesus Christ, who defeated death and brings us with Him to His Father’s throne.


We can boast in God, because He is no longer our divine Enemy; rather through Jesus Christ, He is our Father and our eternal Friend. He has reconciled us to Himself, He has concluded His treaty of peace with us, and nothing will ever be the same.


Think what this can mean for your every day life and for mine! We have peace with the great King: how can any enemy now have any lasting power over us? And that includes the enemies that attack us within our own thoughts and minds! God has reconciled us to Himself: now we can courageously and lovingly offer reconciliation to others. He has converted us from rebels and terrorists into His loyal subjects and royal children: now we can serve Him humbly, gladly, and willingly. We can take His direction and offer the love and peace of Jesus Christ even to people we think could never deserve it.


For we did not deserve for God to make peace with us, yet He did. We didn’t force Him to give us these blessings by winning the fight against Him or by earning them by our own good works. Yet here we are, enjoying all the joys of life and hope and peace with Him.


Rejoice in that peace! Live in it! Boast in it! And more than that, offer and extend that peace to everyone you know. For when you do, though Jesus Christ your Lord you are ratifying and keeping the Treaty of Calvary.

Open-Eyed Faith

Texts: Genesis 12:1-4a; 15:1-6; Romans 4:1-5; 13-17

IMAGINE YOU’RE A MAN OF 75 YEARS, living outside a small city called Haran in Aramea, in the plains of southern Turkey. You haven’t lived there all your life: several years ago you left your native land a thousand miles away and came here with your father, your wife, and your dead brother’s son and his wife. Your father always talked about pushing on to a land farther to the west, but somehow, you never did.

Imagine that you’d never heard of Christianity, or Judaism, or Islam-- because they didn’t exist. Imagine that you’d always worshipped a myriad of gods and goddesses. Imagine that you’d heard about a divine entity known as the Most High God, but you’d never had anything much to do with Him. Imagine that you and everyone knew the Most High God had created the world, but he’d delegated all the god duties to deities like Nannar the moon god and Ishtar goddess of fertility and Shamosh, god of the sun. Imagine that you believed that even the moon god and the sun god were too high and mighty for you, that your personal gods and goddesses were spirits of rocks and trees and hills. And imagine you believed that if you went to a new country, you’d have to start worshipping new gods, because each little deity had his own turf and didn’t have any power in another land.

And now imagine, just suppose, that one day, or one night, you become aware that God Most High--the Most High God- is talking to you. Imagine that He identifies Himself as the Lord Jehovah, the God Who Was and Is and Is to Be, the Maker of heaven and earth and all that is in them. Imagine that God Most High, the Lord Jehovah, makes it clear that those other gods and goddesses you’ve been worshipping are really nothing, and that from now on, you’re to listen to Him and Him alone.

And imagine that this exalted Jehovah, the Most Exalted God, the Great Creator, tells you directly that He has a unique and world-changing plan especially for you, but you have to trust Him totally to get the benefit of it. Imagine He commands you, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house, to the land that I will show you."

But now imagine it’s not easy for you to up and leave, just like that. Suppose Haran is your forefathers’ ancestral home, even though you weren’t born there: the place where your people had always lived even though your branch had roamed off east for awhile. Suppose you fit right in back here in Haran, that you’re part of a big extended family, a tribe, and now it’s just you and your little clan that’s supposed to go blinding off into the blue with no idea where you’re all going. Suppose you’ve just become the head of your little clan, and you’re loaded with the responsibility for all your relatives and servants and slaves. And what about all your sheep and cattle? Will there be grass and water for them where the Lord Jehovah wants you to go? Where He’s taking you, will there be bandits or defensive landowners? Will the kings of those nations demand taxes or tribute from you? You have to consider all these things. It’s not a trivial thing, just to pack up and go.

So, what will you do? What’s going through your mind? Do you doubt your sanity? Do you tell yourself, "Aw, I was just hearing things!" and stay where you are? Or are you convinced you’ve really heard from the Most High God, Jehovah by Name? Will you believe He is who He says He is, and will you obey and go?

If you’re Abram son of Terah, somehow you obey. You pack up your goods and your livestock and your family and you go. You go, even though you don’t have a clue where Jehovah Most High is leading you. You go, even though the only thing your really know about Jehovah Most High is that He’s the Maker of heaven and earth and that He’s spoken directly to you. You go, and that takes a degree of faith the world has never known before or since.

There’s a reason that St. Paul calls Abraham the father of all of us who believe. We take it for granted that there’s only one God. We just assume that His power extends over the whole universe and beyond, and there’s nowhere we can go away from His presence. We know of all the mighty acts Jehovah God would do for Abraham and his descendants. God willing, we have personally experienced the saving power of the Lord when He rescued us from sin by the blood of His Son Jesus Christ. We know all this. We assume it.

But Abram didn’t assume all this. He couldn’t assume it. Until the Lord Most High called him, Abram didn’t know a thing about it at all.

One of the neatest things I learned in seminary was that all the idol-worshipping nations in the ancient Near East had some concept of a Most High God who had made the world, even though they had all sorts of bizarre ideas about Him having wives and children and doing all sorts of ungodlike things. And a neat thing I learned when I was studying for this sermon was that Abram’s people weren’t originally from Ur of the Chaldees, which is to say, from southern Iraq. They were nomadic Arameans, and though they pitched their tents wherever conditions were good for their sheep, that region up in southeastern Turkey around the headwaters of the Euphrates were their ancestral home. As Arameans, they were Semites, and they would have heard of Jehovah God, the Lord God whom alone we worship today. But their knowledge of Him would have been corrupted. Arameans like Abram would have thought that Jehovah was just another territorial or national god.

So again, think how revolutionary, how earth-shattering it was for Abram the Aramean to have Jehovah God reveal that He and God Most High are One and the Same. And not only that, but also to have Him make Abram promises that revealed that He the Lord had power over all the nations, not just the Arameans.

It took faith for Abram to pack up and go. He could have said, "Jehovah, how do I know You have any power beyond my own country? You might abandon me!" He could have called on another god to frustrate God Most High in his plans-- after all, some legends said that the sky and the earth were the sons of this god, and they’d gotten away with rebelling against him. Abram could have tried to bribe the Lord with sacrifices to make Him change His mind and let him stay in Haran.

But Abram took the Lord God at His word. He didn’t quail, he didn’t debate, he didn’t demand signs and wonders and evidence. Abram simply believed that Jehovah God was Who He said He was, that He was a righteous God, and that He had the power to keep the promises He had made to His servant Abram.

That is faith. That is the faith that pleases God. As it says in the letter to the Hebrews, "Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him." We can argue that Abram wasn’t really seeking Jehovah when Jehovah called him. So much the more we should look up to our father Abraham, because he trusted in the Lord’s existence and His power to reward as soon as the Lord revealed Himself to him.

But was Abram’s faith was some meritorious deed that the Lord had to reward him for? Not at all. Abram merely did what we all ought to do, he trusted God implicitly. But even though Abram didn’t "earn" anything by his faith, the Lord by His free grace chose to reckon or credit it to him as righteousness. God declared the sinner Abram worthy to be His servant and to walk in friendship with Him. For unless God has imputed His own righteousness to us, none of us sinners can stand in His presence.

We read in Genesis 12 that the Lord promised to make of Abram a great nation. That means children, descendants of his own body. But several years later, Abram and Sarai still had no offspring. We see that by chapter 15, Abram is bold to question the Lord on how He is going to keep His promise to make him a great nation. Will it be through an adopted son, a slave like Eliezar of Damascus?

Does this mean Abram was wavering in his faith?

No, not really. For again, he demands no signs and wonders, no miraculous proof. The Lord simply assures Abram that the sons and daughters of his body will be like the stars of heaven, and again, Abram simply takes God at His word. As the Scripture says, "And he believed the Lord, and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness."

Is that blind faith? Maybe for Abram it was. But if you’re blind and you put your trust in a faithful guide, that’s not like putting your faith in nothing at all. The path is still there and the destination is still at the end of it, even when you have to rely on someone else to get you where you have to go.

It’s like I was telling the children. A blind person with a guide dog trains with that dog. He gets to know that dog. He lives with that dog twenty-four hours a day. He relies on that dog to keep him on the right path, to get him around obstacles so he won’t bark his shins or step out into traffic. Our blind friends may not be able to see the road ahead, but the eyes of their hearts are very open to the trustworthiness of their faithful dogs. And so they snap on the leash and step out in faith.

Our God is much greater than any Seeing Eye dog. But He is not less than a Seeing Eye dog. Whatever trust a blind person can have in her dog, Abram had exponentially more trust in the Lord Jehovah, God Most High. Whatever trustworthiness a trained guide dog might have, the trustworthiness of the Lord God of heaven and earth is infinitely more.

Abram believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. Abram knew he was blind to what would happen to him in the future, but he put his life and the life of all he had in the hands of the God Who Sees.

And because he did, we do not have to rely on blind faith. We don’t have to screw up our guts or our emotions and believe in believing. We don’t have to generate "faith" as if it were some force to keep Tinkerbell alive. We don’t have to manufacture faith as if faith itself were a form of work that God has to pay or reward us for. We can simply look at everything our Lord Jehovah did for Abraham and his descendants. We can receive the testimony of what He did for centuries to save and defend His people the Jews. We can trust in the overwhelming power of what Jesus the Son of God did for us on the cross.

We still need faith, but our faith is not blind. We trust in the sure word and working of our Lord Jesus Christ, who loved us and gave His life for us. We trust that we are spiritual children of Abraham and Sarah, reckoned through their blessed offspring Son Jesus of Nazareth. And because we are their descendants in Christ, we share in the promises that the Lord God promised Abram from the very beginning. We inherit the promise of belonging to a great nation-- which is the kingdom of God. We can claim the promise of God’s blessing-- the blessing of being made a child of the eternal Father Almighty. The promise of a great name-- the great name of Jesus our Lord, at whose name every knee shall bow. The promise of many sharers in our blessing-- people of every language and nation and tribe whom God shall call into the fellowship of His Church. The promise of ultimate vindication-- the final defeat of death and the devil and of all those who follow and serve Satan, the Enemy of our souls.

All these blessings we share, because Abram that day in Haran long ago believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. All these blessings we share, because we walk in Abraham’s footsteps and believe God when He tells us that faith in Jesus alone is the only way to please Him. All these blessings we share, because we trust in the blood of the Cross to wash away our sins so we can be reckoned righteous in His sight.

What is our brother Paul’s concern? His concern is that we stop trusting in our own works to make us pleasing to God. He doesn’t even want us to have faith in faith, as if that were a work we did to make us pleasing to God. No, our brother Paul wants us to open our eyes and simply receive the gift that God is giving us, the gift of eternal life and righteousness won for us by the saving death of God’s Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

It’s true, we can’t see the consequences of trusting God and receiving that gift. But we see Jesus, who bore the cross for our sake. We see what God did for us through Him. We can have open-eyed faith that Christ is trustworthy and will fulfil all God’s promises to our father Abraham in us. We can have open-eyed faith that He is the One true God, the righteous Lord Jehovah, God Most High. And we can trust Jesus our Lord to bring us at last to the Promised Land, to the very heart and arms of our Father in heaven.

To whose Name be honor and power, blessing and glory, through Christ, with the Holy Spirit, One God, now and forever. Amen.