Peace Lutheran Church
Posts Tagged "Faith"
Second Sunday after Pentecost
June 07, 2026
Text: Romans 4:13–25
Theme: Believing Against Hope
Outline:
1. Abraham, as good as dead, believed God’s promise, even though world says cannot happen
2. We likewise trust God’s promises to us, though world says cannot happen.
Sermon
Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
My dear beloved flock, the text for our meditation is the Epistle of Saint Paul sent to the church in Rome the fourth chapter verses thirteen through twenty-five.
Beloved Lambs, I pray that you are doing well today. Why do you have the things that you have? Is it because of what you have done? Is it because you are such a good brother or sister? It is not because of what you have done but because your moms and dads show their love to you. You have to trust that they do love you. That trust is called faith. Moms and dads show their love for you in their words. They say, “I really love you.” They show their love through their actions by providing clothing, shoes, food and drink. They provide a roof over your heads. They shower you with lots of gifts. They give you these constant reminders of their love so that your trust grows in them. You know that they love you, no matter what happens upon this earth. In our text for today, we see Abraham trusting God’s promises. What promise does God give Abraham? How does Abraham show his faith in God? How does God help us to trust His promises today? Ponder these questions as you hear the rest of the sermon. You may go back to your seats and those who love you.
1. Abraham Righeous?
Most things that we do in this world happen because of our works and actions rather than by faith. If you have a final in Math, you prepare for it by studying math, the facts of two plus two equaling four, and memorizing a myriad of equations and formulas, not by trusting that a mystical understanding of the subject will just come to you as soon as you start to take the test. You can believe that the lawn is mowed all you want; but unless you go outside with a trimmer and mower, you can bet that the tall grass will still be waiting for you. If you need to clean your room, you can hope that the laundry fairies come out and put your clothes in the hamper; but quite likely you’re going to have to do it yourself. That’s how life works. Just about everything depends on work.
Saint Paul makes the argument in our text that this fact is true, except for when it comes to our salvation. He uses the example of the great Patriarch Abraham, the one whom all Jews pointed to as the most righteous of men upon the earth, to show how salvation is given by ones faith rather than by the works done.
If you remember the story, Abraham was a hundred years old and his wife Sarah was 99. Sarah was barren. Her womb had never been able to have children. She was well past the time of having children. To the century-old childless Abraham, the Lord promised, “I have made you the father of many nations.” The promise was made. It was a done deal. Abraham believed the promise because it came from God Himself. God is faithful to Himself. He cannot lie. Abraham believed in faith in what he did not see.
What’s more, Abraham believed in spite of what he did see: he and Sarah, after all, were no spring chickens. They were as good as dead. Imagine, someone having a baby at one hundred years old today. It is an impossibility even with all of our advancements in technology and science. But Abraham believed the promise. Abraham and Sarah were given a son, Isaac was born—a miracle baby. Isaac, named laughter because they laughed for joy and surprise at the Lord’s great blessings to them. Isaac became the father of Jacob. Jacob fathered twelve sons, the start of the nation of Israel.
This happened not because of Abraham’s works. Remember what Abraham was. When God calls Abraham, he was in the heathen land of the Ur of the Chaldees. No doubt he worshipped the gods of the land, the moon god especially. We are told that the God of glory appeared to him and called him out of this idolatry. When a famine came upon the land, Abrahm and Sarah traveled to Egypt. There, Abraham lied and said that Sarah was his sister rather than his wife, because he feared dying because of her beauty at the hand of Pharoh. It is true that Abraham did great works in service to his neighbors. When His nephew Lot needed help, Abraham mustered an army and went out to save him. When Abraham camped, the first thing he did was build an altar in worship to God. These were the result of faith, not the cause. God showed His love, grace, and mercy towards Abraham by giving Him faith.
Faith is always a gift and always clings to what God has done. Rather than looking at the bare reality of the world. Abraham clings to the promise that God has made. No doubt, Abraham was tempted to doubt the promise for the reasons given above—God was promising a child to an old barren couple well past having a child. If the promise depended on the work of Abraham and Sarah, it would be doubtful. It would be uncertain at best, since it depended upon the labors of a very elderly, weakening couple living under the wrath of the Law. But the promise depended on the Lord, and the Lord can do anything He wants. Thus, the promise was sure, because the Lord always keeps His promises. The Lord kept His promise to Abraham and gave Isaac. Eventually, from Abraham’s seed, through His line generations later, another miracle baby was born—conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ. The Son of God became flesh to be the Savior—not just of the people of Israel, but of all nations. Thus, Abraham became the father of many nations and a blessing to all the nations of the earth. God kept His promise, in spite of Abraham’s doubt and the reality of what Abraham saw.
2. Our Faith hopes in spite of what we see.
The same is true still for us today. As Saint Paul writes, “But the words ‘it was counted to him’ were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also.”
God has made the same promise to you that He made to Abraham: the promise of the Savior. To Abraham, God promised the Savior who was coming; to you, the Savior who has come. To both, God declares Jesus Christ and His work for you. Jesus “who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.” He was “delivered up” as a lamb to the slaughter. He was “delivered up” for our transgressions. He was “delivered up” by Judas. He was “delivered up” by Pontius Pilate. Faith believes that. It does not doubt. Because Jesus was delivered up, God promises that your sins are forgiven.
Your sins are forgiven not because of your works done under the Law. If it was because of your work, then your hope would be doubtful at best. It is not because God looked ahead and saw how great of a person you were going to be as the reason for your salvation. As Isaiah writes, your best works are the same as filthy dirty rags. If we should offer our own work, it would be like offering filthy rags for a debt so big that all the money in the world cannot cancel it. The banker to whom you might owe a sum of money would be offended if you offered him filthy rags in payment of your debt. How much more will our Father in Heaven be offended if we should offer Him our works, when He will accept nothing les than the precious blood of Christ as payment. We are cleansed. Our debt of sin has been cleared from our account because Jesus paid it all on your behalf. God does not merely overlook our sins as though we had never done any wrong. We have indeed sinned greatly in thought, word, and deed. Rather, our sins are covered by Jesus’ precious blood. We are saved solely by Jesus’ death and resurrection for you.
There’s more: as God declares that promise to you, He also gives you the faith to believe it. “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). Faith is God’s work, just like grace. And now that God has promised you grace and given you faith to believe the promise, He says, “You believe in My Son, who died for you! Therefore, I count your faith as righteousness. You are My beloved child.”
Just like Abraham was promised Isaac and God gave him the faith to believe in that promise. God does the same for you. God promised you salvation in and through Jesus Christ. God also gives you faith to believe that promise. Because you have faith. You believe in the promise, God declares you are righteous for the sake of Jesus.
Remember: faith is trusting in what you do not see, often in spite of what you do see.
For Abraham, it was the temptation to doubt because of their ages and because they’d never had children before. For you, it may be the temptation to doubt because the promises of salvation seem too miraculous, and you’ve never been raised from the dead before. You may be tempted to doubt because the worries or sicknesses of this life make eternal life hard to believe. You may be tempted because science, God’s great gift for understanding this world, only addresses what you can see and measure; and since science can’t confirm God’s favor in Christ, you’re tempted to believe it’s just a fairy tale. Prosperity and temporary pleasure will tempt you from heavenly treasure to come; poverty and pain may tempt you to doubt God’s presence or love.
This is what we see in our Gospel lesson, Jesus rebukes the Pharisees because they have fallen into he temptation that they did not need God’s love. Jesus promises that He is there to promise salvation and give faith to believe the promise. He is there for the sick and the weak who need the doctor the most. The Pharisees are so full of their own good works that they say, “We have no need or room for forgiveness or faith because we’re so good.” The tax collectors and sinners, however, say, “We’re beggars with empty sacks. We’ve no good works to impress God, so we’ll be happy to keep the forgiveness and faith that Jesus has given us today.” As Luther penned before his death, “We are beggers this is true.” We see this every time we pray. Notice my posture when we do the collect of the day or the prayers of the church. Standing with open hands, blessing God even before He has answered our prayers, waiting for the blessings that He alone can provide because of His goodness and mercy towards us.
Forgiveness of our sins, the salvation of our souls, and faith are entirely good gifts of God. God gives them to you; and because He gives them to you, He counts you as righteous forever in and though His beloved Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
The peace of God which surpasses all understanding, guard, and keep, your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
Second Sunday in Lent
March 01, 2026
Text: Romans 4:1-8,13-17
Theme: Justified, how?
Outline
1. Abraham justified by works? No, believed God credited it to Him as Righteousness
2. Promise through Faith, Blessing to all nations
3. Same with us, believe God’s promises in JC, Forgiven and live waiting for Life Everlasting
Sermon
Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. My dear beloved flock, the text for our meditation today is the Epistle of Saint Paul’s letter to the church in Rome the fourth chapter verses one through eight, and thirteen through seventeen.
Beloved lambs, I pray that you are doing well. Have you ever seen a sign like this before? It says one way. This means that as mom and dad are driving on the road, they can only drive the way that the sign is pointing. If they drive the opposite way they are breaking the Law and might cause an accident. In Romans, Saint Paul writes something similar. He states that we are justified, we are declared innocent of our sins, only one way. What is that one way? Ponder that question as you hear the rest of the sermon. You may go back to your seats and those who love you.
1. Abraham justified.
Saint Paul begins chapter four of his epistle with these words, “What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? ” What was gained? For that we have to go back to chapter three verse twenty-one, where he writes, “21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it .” How do we gain the righteousness of God and thereby justification, being declared innocent of our sins? These are the central questions that Saint Paul is posing to us still today.
The Jews held that they obtained the righteousness of God, and were justified, in His sight, because they were the physical descendants of Abraham, and held to the Law of circumcision that the Lord gave to him. Many Jews looked to Abraham as the classic example of a man who pleased God with works. After all, he left his homeland and followed God’s leadership to the Promised Land, as we heard in our Old Testament lesson for today. Abraham obeyed God and would have sacrificed his son Isaac if God had not stopped him. This “friend of God,” as he came to be called (2 Chronicles 20:7), looked to them like a prime candidate for salvation on the basis of works and personal performance.
Saint Paul refutes all of the Jewish thinking by asking a simple question, when did Abraham receive his own justification? Was it before he was circumcised or after? If it was after then Abraham could point to his own work and boast in what he had done. His righteousness was a wage that was due to Abraham because he worked for it. Yet, if it was before then it was given freely as a gift by God.
Which is the answer? Look at the context of Genesis. Our Old Testament reading plainly shows that Abraham, when he was 75 years old, listened to the Lord. He left the city of Haran, and departed for lands unknown, simply trusting that the Lord who had talked with him would show him in due time. Later, Abraham receives the promise of Issac and the seal/sign of circumcision when he is 99 years old! 2. Promise held by Faith The answer is before he was circumcised. God called Abraham while he was still a Gentile, that he might indeed be the forefather and a blessing to all nations. God gave Abraham faith to believe and trust solely in God’s promises. Abraham trusted solely in God’s promise with every step he took.
Even in spite of his faults, his lying about being married to Sarai to Pharoh, his desire to take things into his own actions to produce a son through Hagar rather than Sarah, Abraham is still upheld as one righteous before God because he trusted in His promises given to Abraham. That is what faith is, as we state in the Defense of the Augsburg Confession, “50 Now, that faith signifies, not only a knowledge of the history, but such faith as assents to the promise, Paul plainly testifies when he says, Rom. 4:16: Therefore it is of faith, to the end the promise might be sure. For he judges that the promise cannot be received unless by faith. Wherefore he puts them together as things that belong to one another, and connects promise and faith. [There Paul fastens and binds together these two, thus: Wherever there is a promise faith is required, and conversely, wherever faith is required, there must be a promise.] 51”.
2. Our Faith
Just as Abraham was justified solely by his faith rather than His works, so are we. We can uphold Abraham as our father, not in the flesh, but in the spirit. Unless we share Abraham’s trust therefore we are not his descendants; and unless we are his descendants, we cannot share the blessing promised to those descendants. But one becomes a descendant of Abraham, in Paul’s view, only by sharing his trust, not his genes As we sing in that lovely children’s song, “Many sons had Father Abraham, I am one of them and so are you.”
Humanly speaking, the chance of Abraham having many descendants seemed impossible, but the more impossible it became from a human point of view, the more Abraham relied on God’s promise and his power to do what he had promised. Abraham reasoned that, if necessary, God could even bring life from the dead—which is, of course, what God in his good time did. Isaac was truly a miracle baby, born from “dead” parents. Abraham’s faith, with its disregard for human weakness and its unflinching confidence in God’s power, “gave glory to God” and as such “was credited to him as righteousness.”
We hold to Abraham as our Father in the faith, who, though a sinner, God still redeemed and kept the promises He had made to Abraham. God kept His promises to give Abraham and Sarah a son. Though that son, Issac, God richly blesses all nations by sending His Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Through the incarnation of Jesus Christ, God in the flesh for us. Jesus takes upon Himself Abraham’s sin, my sin, your sins, the sins of all the world. Jesus dies our death upon the cross. He covers our sins with His holy and precious blood. Jesus crushes the head of the Devil beneath His nail-scared feet. By dying, Jesus destroys the power of death, rising again from the dead, Jesus gives to you and me, life everlasting. All of this Jesus did for us. We cannot point to any of our works. We are sinners, the best of our works, as we saw last week in Psalm 32, are nothing. This wondrous salvation is not given to us as a reward for our hard work. It is given solely by God’s mercy and grace, God’s Riches at Christ’s Expense, as a gift to us.
The human exercise of faith is simply the prerequisite response of trust in God and His promise. Since faith and grace go together, and since the promise is by grace, the promise can be received only by faith, not by the Law.
Our Faith, like Abraham our father, latches onto Jesus, as the source and object of our faith. Faith holds fast to His promises and trusts that what He has done, He has done for you and me, for our salvation. We live out our lives, secure in the promises of God, because of the faith He has given to us in the waters of Holy Baptism, and strengthened in His blessed Eucharist, that He has indeed forgiven all of our sins by Jesus death and resurrection from the dead.
We cling in faith, no matter what happens upon this earth. In the face of many obstacles of the world, in the face of the assaults of the Devil, the temptation of our flesh, our faith clings to God and His promises given in His Word that He has made us righteous. He who opened barren Sarah’s womb, restored Abraham’s dead seed to life, blessed them with Isaac, so that He might bless all the nations of the world with everlasting life, through the death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, has indeed continued to richly bless us and sustains us unto life everlasting.
The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard, and keep, your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.