Do you think Abraham ever felt like he must be a fool? He left behind his family, his father’s house, never to see them again. He left his home to move to a strange and faraway land. And what was it all for? In this new and beautiful place there was not a single square inch of dirt that he could call his own. God said that his descendants would inherit this land. Really? How could he pass on land that wasn’t his? And to what descendants? The time went on. The years went by. The age for having children was long gone. There was this great and wonderful promise from God; “Abraham, you will be the father of many nations.” But then there was the scoffing retort of his and Sarah’s empty tent; “The father of many nations? Abraham, you aren’t even the father of one.”
I think we can all imagine feeling pretty foolish in Abraham’s shoes, asking, “What am I doing here?” But that is not at all what we see from Abraham. Instead, we see a man who doesn’t rely on himself, but only on God’s promise. A man who knows he deserves nothing, and yet even the things that seem most impossible he knows are sure because the God who promises them is sure. And by a great miracle of the Holy Spirit, we also see here in Abraham a picture of ourselves. Could you do what Abraham did? Could you follow in Abraham’s footsteps? You already are. Just like Abraham, you are credited righteousness by faith.
Our lesson for today comes from Romans 4. The Apostle Paul wrote this letter to the church in Rome to prepare them for the mission work that he wanted to do there and so the book is an overview of the whole Christian faith. Paul spends the opening chapters in an introduction to Law and Gospel, something that we as Lutherans love to emphasize in every part of Scripture. The Law is what God commands, as well as the consequences from keeping or breaking it. The Gospel is the good news of the undeserved love and promises of God.
Both the law and the gospel are necessary. The law shows us our sin and leads us to repentance. The gospel shows us our Savior. It isn’t really all that complicated – even a small child can understand it – but we as sinful human beings have a terrible and wicked habit of throwing out and twisting and distorting God’s word at every chance we get. We’ve done that ever since the first sin in the Garden of Eden where Satan tempted our first parents with the question, “Did God really say?”
And what we like to do most of all, something rooted deep in our hearts and our very nature, is to claim a righteousness all our own. We all want to say, “I am a good person.” We all want to say, “I deserve God’s love, God’s blessings.” And we all justify it by finding someone else that lets us pat ourselves on the back and say, “At least I’m better than him!”
But Paul begins his letter to the Romans by explaining just how hopeless this is. He addressed the Gentiles. It’s true, Gentiles, that you did not have the prophets the way that Israel did. You didn’t have the Ten Commandments. But you still knew, deep in your hearts, that God demands righteousness. You still knew that your greed and debauchery and wrathfulness were wrong, and you committed them anyway. Your deeds have not made you a good person.
And he addresses the Jews too. “You,” he says, “are the sons of Israel, the heirs of the teachings of the prophets. But what good does that do for you, when you don’t keep it! You should be ashamed of yourselves!” And Paul quotes Isaiah, “God’s name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.”
Nobody is safe from the accusations of the law. And that includes you and me today. We want to claim righteousness for ourselves. We want to call ourselves good people. But it’s all a lie. Every time I pat myself on the back, God’s law is right there, reminding me, “The soul who sins is the one who will die.”
If that was the end of the story there would really be no reason to go on living. Everything I do is sin. It’s all covered in wickedness. How could I ever please God? I can’t. “But now,” Paul says, “completely apart from the law, a righteousness from God has been made known. The Law and the Prophets testify to it. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all and over all who believe.”
That’s what the gospel is all about, and this is what makes Christianity different from every other religion and philosophy in the world. Everyone has ideas of what you must do to be righteous, to be a good person. Only the Gospel gives you a righteousness not of your own, but from Jesus, a gift not deserved but freely given.
So what does all this have to do with Abraham? Abraham lived a long time before the birth of Jesus, and the death of Jesus, and the resurrection of Jesus. But Paul brings up Abraham in chapter 4 to demonstrate that it was always this way. Righteousness was always from God. It was always his gift. It was always credited to those who believe.
Abraham is the prefect example for a number of reasons. The Pharisees and Judaizers always tried to find righteousness in the law of Moses. So Paul says, “Do you want to go back in history? Great, but let’s not go back to Moses, let’s go back even farther.” About 500 years before God gave Moses the law on Mt. Sinai, what was he saying to Abraham? Abraham was the father of Israel, the man from whom every Jew was proud to trace his ancestry. And on top of that, Jewish rabbis considered Abraham to be a very righteous man. Some even claimed he was perfect, which is certainly a stretch when you read his account in Genesis. He wasn’t perfect, but Paul doesn’t argue about that. Instead, he asks, “This man Abraham, this man you consider righteous— where is his righteousness found? Was it in his works? Was it in his personal goodness? What does Genesis actually say?” Paul says,
18Hoping beyond what he could expect, [Abraham] believed that he would become the father of many nations, just as he was told: “This is how many your descendants will be.” 19He did not weaken in faith, even though he considered his own body as good as dead (because he was about one hundred years old), and even though he considered Sarah’s womb to be dead. 20He did not waver in unbelief with respect to God’s promise, but he grew strong in **faith, giving glory to God 21and being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. **22This is why “it was credited to him as righteousness.”
The promise that God made to Abraham seemed like utter foolishness. Who has children at such an advanced age? A hundred years old? How could this old childless man become the father of many nations? Abraham watched the years go by. Where was God to keep his promise? Instead, as time went on, by every human measure, it became more and more foolish to believe that he would ever have any children.
But what’s truly amazing in the Genesis account is that even when Abraham struggled with various fears and doubts, we don’t know of any time when he doubted that God would keep this promise. God tested him, with great tests of his faith. Calling him to leave his father and move to a strange land was a great test of his faith. There were times he was afraid for his life. There were times he was afraid for his nephew Lot. And one of the greatest tests he faced was simply the years of waiting.
Isn’t it like that for us sometimes? How great a test it can be to have to wait! Here I am with my troubles and suffering, my doubts and fears, the guilt that weighs on my heart, and where is God? Why must it continue like this? Why do my prayers go unanswered? Where is Jesus, with his healing and his salvation?
Tragically, many people have turned away from God or left the church over this. “O Lord, come quickly to help me,” they pray. And if he is not quick enough? “What use then is God for me?”
That wasn’t what Abraham did. Abraham instead “grew strong in faith, giving glory to God.” In spite of what he saw, he was fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. This is why “it was credited to him as righteousness.”
Dear children of God, you have great promises from him as well. God has promised to you that death is not the end, but that you will rise again. He has promised that you have a mansion in heaven prepared for you. He has promised that your sins are forgiven by word and by sacrament, and that you have true righteousness before him not by your works but purely because of his undeserved love and goodness.
What reason on earth do you have to believe him? Don’t you still fall into sin? Don’t you still carry the weight of guilt? Don’t you still fear for yourself and those you love? What signs do you have that God hears your prayers, or that he could ever love someone like you? Doesn’t the grave await us all?
The reason we believe is Jesus, the Offspring of Abraham, the Savior of the World. Jesus came to eat with tax collectors and sinners. He came to lead us out from sin and from the futility of self-righteous works to the forgiving love of God and the righteousness that is ours by faith. He is that righteousness. He is the one who takes away the sin of the world—who takes away our sin, on himself on the cross. He is the eternal gracious Lord who comes to us in Word and Sacrament and gives us a faith to trust in him just as he did with Abraham.
It is not foolishness to trust in the promises of God. Not when we have Jesus, who was handed over to death because of our trespasses and was raised to life because of our justification. By God’s grace, you too have a faith like Abraham. Your hope is not in this world and in things that are seen, but in the promises of God. Your righteousness is not from yourselves, but from him, credited to you by your Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
— Pastor Seth Georgson