Pentecost 16 - Sept 16

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

“Father Abraham, had many sons, many sons had father Abraham. I am one of them and so are you, so let’s all praise the Lord.”

I hope that many of you know that old Sunday School song. It was one I learned when in Sunday School as a kid, but I had forgotten it in my many years of being outside of the church.

Today’s Scripture is just one small, but very, very important part of God’s great big story of the bible. Today we hear about the faith of father Abraham and the God who gave him his gift of faith.

To catch you up, last week were heard the opening story of Scripture: God in the garden with Adam and Eve. They did not trust God, they trusted in their own ability to know good from evil. And so God sent them out of the garden. The story of Adam and Eve is a template for all of Scripture: God gives a gift, humans misuse it, God has mercy and deals with them somehow.

This week we have probably the most important story about faith in all of Scripture. This is the story of Abraham and Sarah, or Abram and Sarai as they are known at first. It wasn’t until the 90 year old Sarai and Abram were given the gift of a son, Isaac, that they got their new names. Sarai and Abram laughed a big “ah ha!” at the thought of being pregnant at 90 years old and God stuck a big old “ah ha” in their names to remind them that God can do the impossible.

Abraham and Sarah were barren. Genesis 11:32, “Now Sarai was barren; she had no child.” Just after we hear about the barren womb of Sarai, God makes a promise to Abram and Sarai and says that they will be given the gift of a bunch of land and that his children and their children and their children and their children, and so on and so on, will be a great nation.

As many of you well know, when you are unable to have kids, the idea of actually having kids someday seems pretty far off. So, when God promises a great nation Abraham and Sarah are naturally a little skeptical.

Getting to our reading for today, God again promises a great reward for Abraham’s faithfulness. But, Abraham reminds God, “I don’t have any children. I’ve got this boy here who is my servant; do you want him to be my child? Do you want to give all that land to him and his children?”

“No,” God says, “You’ll have your own kids someday. And it will be you and Sarah, your wife who can’t conceive. I am making my promise to the two of you.”

God makes the promise in that first sentence of our reading for today; take a look at it again. “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward will be very great.” And then after Abraham complains and mistrusts God, God makes the promise again, but this time he grabs him by the shoulder and drags him outside in the middle of the night to give him a sign.

God drags him out to look at the stars and says, “Look, Abram! You see all those stars? The ones you can’t even count? That’s how many children I will give you and Sarah. You’ll have all kinds of little rug rats, from now until the end of time.” And Abraham believed the LORD, the reading says, and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness. God declared him righteous. In other words, God made him faithful, created him new. God gave him faith in that moment.

Wow! What a gift! One Bible scholar says the stars were like a sacrament for Abraham: a sign with a promise from God. Like bread and wine are a sign with a promise from God for forgiveness. And God gives us the gift of faith in a sacrament. God blesses us with faith; he declares us righteous. He makes us whole. He makes us his people.

In the New Testament, the apostle Paul starts talking about this a little bit. Romans 4 is a whole speech from the apostle about how Abraham is the father of our faith, not because we are his flesh and blood, but because God make a promise to him to give him many nations. God made that promise before Abraham and Sarah had a child so that we would know that it’s not flesh and blood that make us God’s children, but God’s promises made to us.

With a barren womb, Abraham and Sarah were given the gift of God’s promise. God pointed to the stars in the sky and said, “Look! I am making you my children. You are mine and I promise that you’ll always be mine.”

And that promise is for you all. God has reached down in the flesh and blood of his only Son, Jesus Christ and given you his promise. That you are his and you always will be. You are a child of God, and heir of the promise. “For I am convinced,” says the apostle Paul in Romans 8, “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

And God declares you his children. You are children of the promise.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.