Sermons 2025

Text: Genesis 18:1-14
 

Theme: God’s Grace

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ

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    My Dear Christian friends, the text for our meditation today is the Old Testament Lesson of Genesis chapter eighteen verses one through fourteen.

    If Children: Boys and girls, I pray that you are doing well today. Have you ever had something that seems to good to be true? If I promises to give you a dollar for free, but I give you ten dollars instead, would you be happy or would you wonder what you have to do? in our text for today, we find that God gives freely with no strings attached. His promises are not too good and it is true. How can we like Abram and Sarah trust in His promises? Ponder that question as you hear the rest of the sermon. You may go back to your seats and those who love you.

If no children: Have you ever heard of something that seems so ridiculous and impossible that you are instantly skeptical about it? Maybe someone has said, “If you give me a dollar, then you have a 90% chance to get ten thousand dollars.” It seems too good to be true. As humans, we are often skeptical and pessimistic when something seems too easy or impossible to happen. As the old adage states, “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.” Yet, in our text for today, we find something that flies in the face of this statement and says ‘No, it is too good, better than you deserve and it is true.” The Lord’s grace and mercy, shown both to Abraham and Sarah in this promise given, as well as to us. Let us look at our text and see what it tells us about God’s grace.

We see the grace of our God first toward Abraham in the fact that He comes down in a physical way to visit with Abraham. Abraham is sitting in the shade of his tent and suddenly there are three men in front of him. One of them Men is the Lord as Abraham addresses him as Lord. God shows His grace in His visiting. He did not have to come and visit, He did not have to leave Heaven, yet Our Lord does so to repeat once more the promise that He made before concerning Isaac. 

Even more than simply repeating the Promise of Isaac, the Lord deigns to eat in Abraham’s presence. Abraham says that he will bring a morsel of bread, yet he brings a feast! Abraham had Sarah prepare three seahs of flour to make bread, roughly twenty-one quarts of flour total for only three people. He chooses the best lamb for them to each. Meat with a meal is a rarity reserved only for highly special occasions. Abraham then makes curds with milk to set before them. Our text states simply, “they ate.” What condescending love those two words describe! The three guests ate Sarah’s fresh bread and tender veal. The scene reminds us of what Jesus did when he appeared to his doubting disciples a week after his resurrection. When those frightened men imagined they were seeing a ghost, Jesus lovingly asked for something to eat and actually ate a piece of broiled fish. He was showing them that He was physically alive again as well as showing that there is no longer any barriers blocking fellowship with God.  

This fellowship is shown when they ask about Sarah. No one would have asked about his wife. Yet, these Men ask so that they might inform her of the promise that she will bear a son. We see what Sarah’s reaction was when she heard God’s promise. She laughed! She thought that it was impossible due to not only her advanced age, but also the fact that she was barren as well. Yet, our Lord states, “I will return and you will have a son.” This is a miracle, as is every birth, but especially this one because of Abraham and Sarah’s advanced age, only God can provide them a child, and provide He does. Sarah bears a son whom they, very fittingly, name Isaac which means “He laughs”. A laughter over the joy of a promised son but also one that would remind Abraham and Sarah to trust God in the midst of their doubt.

How often do we doubt God in the midst of His promises? Our sinful nature loves to doubt God. It is the attack that Satan used with our first parents, “did God really say that you could not eat of this tree?” Even today the attack is the same, “Can God really keep His promises? Can God really forgive you? You are too deep of a sinner for God to do that!” In sin, we doubt that God can keep His promise. It simply seems too impossible.
Yet, our God is a God of the impossible! Nothing is too impossible for Him to do. Just as He kept His promised and gave Isaac to Abraham and Sarah in their old years, so too does He keep His promise to us. God keeps His promise through Isaac. Because Isaac, this promised child, is the ancestor of the ultimate Promised One, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Through both of these men, God shows His grace to us in the fact that He keeps His promises. He fulfilled the promise of a Son and of a Savior from our sins. Jesus suffered, bled, and died so that we could have our sins forgiven. Through His rising from the dead, He secures for us a heavenly feast, one fit for a king greater than Abraham’s, His own body and blood.  He gives this freely to us, we cannot do anything to earn this great gift. As God Himself states nothing is impossible, since He has done it, we are free and redeemed!

May we always not doubt or laugh at God’s promises. Rather, let us always take God at His Word and trust His promises, knowing that through the Word incarnate, Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, nothing is impossible when it comes to God’s grace and mercy towards us.

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard and keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Amen.