“By Faith Sarah . . .” Heb. 11.11–16 Pent 10C, Aug ‘25

 

1.                Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The message from God’s Word, as we continue our Summer Sermon Series, “What Can Faith Do?” is taken from Hebrews 11:11-16, it’s entitled, “By Faith Sarah,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

2.                Heb 11:11–16 says, “By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore. These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.”

3.                You heard any good jokes lately? (I said good jokes.) I enjoy a good joke. I like to laugh. Don’t you like to laugh? In the Bible, it looks as if God likes a good laugh too. In fact, as we read the story of Sarah, did you notice how many times there was laughter? I would say that is one of the main themes in Sarah’s faith story: laughter. And, you could say, the whole story of Sarah is really one big joke that God wrote and His servants delivered.

4.                Let’s try a joke ourselves. I say, “Knock, knock.” And you say . . . Who’s there? I say, “Three men.” And you say . . . Three men, who? Three men, who, indeed! This isn’t Abraham’s first encounter with these mysterious travelers, and by now Abraham recognizes the Lord when he takes on human form to walk with him. Genesis 18:1 says, “The Lord appeared to him.” These three men include the Lord—God, maker of heaven and earth, who walked with Adam and Eve, marked Cain, took Enoch, warned Noah, promised Abraham. And now the Lord comes again to Abraham and Sarah with two other “men.” (Later we find out they’re angels.) Three is a good number for God, eh? So, three men. Three men, who?

5.                They have a joke to share with Abraham and Sarah. At least, Sarah thinks it’s funny. Because she laughs. The Lord says to Abraham, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife shall have a son” (Gen 18:10). Sarah is out of sight but within earshot in the tent. What’s her reaction? “Sarah laughed to herself, saying, ‘After I am worn out, and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?’” (Gen. 18:12). The angel of the Lord might as well have said, “Did you hear the one about the ninety-year-old first-time mother?”

6.                It really is pretty funny when you think about it. Everyone knew, even then, that basic biology says if the female body isn’t producing eggs anymore, you can’t have a baby. Genesis says, “The way of women had ceased to be with Sarah” (Gen 18:11). It’s why she says to herself, “After I am worn out, and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?” All of the natural world is in disagreement with everything the angel of the Lord promises. Because it’s impossible, it’s pretty funny. (Like all the times Wile E. Coyote took an anvil to the head. A cartoon anvil, impossibly flat head that you just shake off and walk away from—that’s funny.) God says, watch me do the impossible, and we, like Sarah, laugh because it’s funny.

7.                We have our own impossibles. We have our own reservations about the power of God for one reason or another. For some, it’s the laws of nature: How could miracles happen in the closed system of nature? For others, it’s the problem of morality: If God is so good, why does he let this bad thing happen? For others, it’s the guilt problem: I’ve done so much sin; I’ve hurt so many people in my life; how could God ever forgive me? Still there are those with the forgiveness problem: I just can’t forgive them for how they treated me, so I can’t be forgiven. In one way or another, we all have those impossibles that we hold on to in our hearts. And while doubts don’t damn you—remember, even faith as tiny as a mustard seed saves—we can all learn from Sarah and from God’s actions in Sarah’s life to see what God can do with all of our impossibles.

8.                Just look at how God took a ninety-year-old woman and did the impossible. She conceived a son. It’s like the classic reversal joke: “You can tune a piano, but . . .” You know the rest? “You can tune a piano, but you can’t tuna fish.” That’s not where it was supposed to go, and because it did the unexpected, it’s funny. Aged Sarah has a baby boy. The unexpected becomes reality. The impossible happens.

9.                This is what always strikes me about this story: This child isn’t virgin-born. You following me? Just as Abraham’s living faith naturally required him to set out from his homeland, so Sarah’s faith required action. Can you imagine, Genesis 17 says Sarah was about ninety years old at the time (Gen 17:17), and she had the faith to trust the promises of this God so that she acted on that promise—and, as Hebrews puts it, “By faith, Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised” (Heb. 11:11).

10.             Which tells us what about God? Not only that he has a sense of humor, but also, as Jesus says in the New Testament, “With God all things are possible” (Mt 19:26). Nature isn’t a boundary to God. God created the laws of nature. He can do whatever he wants in it or to it. He’s the one who set how long “the way of women” lasted. He’s the one who created the whole process from a lump of clay and the rib of Adam. If God can make a living person and fruitful reproductive system from the rib of a man, don’t you think, in his plan, he can take a fully assembled, already-in-place reproductive system and give it life and fruitfulness? Of course he can.

11.             Which also means that nothing else is impossible for God either. Working good from mankind’s own evils and corruptions—impossible for man, but nothing is impossible for God. Forgiving your worst sins—impossible for man, but nothing is impossible for God. Giving you the power to forgive even your greatest enemy—impossible for man, but nothing is impossible for God. Loving you, even when no one else would—nothing is impossible with God. Before you were even born, God knew you and your whole life. He knew the darkest sins that you keep locked away in your heart and mind, and even for those, he chose to send his Son into flesh just like yours and die upon the cross to forgive you, to cleanse you in his blood, so that you could know his love and mercy and power. Because nothing is impossible with God.

12.             If all things are possible with God, and you’ve been asking for something but it’s just not happening—maybe, you’ve been praying for healing or the wandering faith of a loved one and nothing has happened—that’s heartbreaking. If God is able to do it, why doesn’t he just do it already? Some have despaired at that point, saying either God doesn’t exist, or he’s not powerful enough, or he’s not loving enough. But let me say this: the God who is able to do all things also knows all things—and so he knows what’s truly best for you and for the ones you lift up to him in prayer. And he who is able and knows also loves more deeply than even you can love yourself or that person. He proved it by dying on the cross for you and for them. So if he’s not answering your prayer the way you want, don’t despair of God’s power and love but trust all the more that in his love and power and knowledge he’s doing what’s best—even if we can’t understand it—because he’s God and he loves you. Never forget that.

13.             This loving God brings this comedy to its conclusion with another joke. This time, a pun. Yes, Abraham and Sarah were punny pundits who made puns a part of the Christian faith. (So next time a pastor tells a pun, like, “How would you describe the price of tea? . . . Steep,” blame Abraham—because the pastor’s just carrying on the tradition.) As a pun, Abraham and Sarah name the boy “Laughter,” saying, “God has made laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh over me” (Gen 21:6). Sarah gets a laugh from joy. The people get a laugh at the impossible joke of God. And Isaac (Isaac is the Hebrew word for “laughter”) gets a laugh every time he hears his name—because he is God’s unexpected, exceptional, impossible surprise. All because God chooses to work his power by the faith of these faithful people. May God give you a reason to smile and laugh, as children of promise, because of his unexpected, undeserved love and mercy toward you this week. In Jesus’ name. Amen. Now the peace of God that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, until life everlasting. Amen.

 

“By Faith Abraham . . .” Heb. 11.8–10 Pent.9C, Aug. ‘25

 

1.                Please pray with me. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts, be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock, and our Redeemer. Amen. The message from God’s Word as we continue with our Summer sermon series, “What Can Faith Do?” based on Hebrews 11 is taken from Hebrews 11:8-10, it’s entitled, “Be Faith Abraham,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

2.                Hebrews 11:1 & 8 says, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. . . . By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going” (Hebrews 11:1, 8). Aside from Jesus, no one has been as fought over as Abraham. The Muslims have their take on him. The Jews have theirs. Jesus’ brother James and the apostle Paul even seem to disagree over how Christians should regard Abraham. Is it surprising that Christians today often clash over him? What’s the issue? It all really comes down to, “What saved Abraham?” Was it his works, his faith, a combination of the two, or something else?

3.                When you talk about the salvation of Abraham, his justification, people like to put Paul and James side by side to see tension there in the Bible. James 2:21-24 says, “Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness’—and he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.” It sounds like James is saying Abraham, and you and I, are justified by some combination of faith and works.

4.                But Paul, talking about the very same Abraham, writes in Romans 4, “What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.’ Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (Rom 4:1–5). And Paul says in Ephesians 2:8–9, “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.” Paul says Abraham, and you and I, are justified by faith alone apart from works.

5.                Do you see the tension? James says Abraham was justified because his faith produced works, and Paul says Abraham was justified because he believed apart from works. Which one is it? How should we understand the justification and righteousness of Abraham if the Bible seems to be painting these two completely opposite pictures?

6.                How can we be sure of our own salvation before God? If Abraham is saved because of his works, then you and I have to do the same works in order to be justified. God calls Abraham to leave his homeland and wander into a land promised to be his, trusting that his yet-unborn children would inherit it. It’s in the context of that work that the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” If you have to be saved by the same work as Abraham, you must leave everything to follow Christ. You must sell all you have, give your money to the poor, take up your cross to die, and follow Jesus.

7.                Did you catch that? This is where Lutherans start to get nervous, since all of that sounds exactly like what Jesus said in the Gospels, doesn’t it? The good work of Abraham is the good work that God expects of the sons and daughters of Abraham. Even in the New Testament, Jesus says, “A good tree produces good fruit”; “Sell all you have and give to the poor”; “Take up your cross”; “Turn the other cheek”; “Give your tunic, your mite, your tithe”; “Whoever loves father and mother more than me is unworthy of me”; “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mt 7:17; 19:21; 16:24; 5:39–40; 10:37; 22:39). Good works are not optional for the Christian. That can make a lot of complacent Christians uncomfortable with themselves and their lives, because a simple review easily shows that you haven’t been living and working a very Abraham-like, faith-filled kind of life.

8.                We Lutherans are a little too quick to jump over to the apostle Paul and cry, “Salvation is by faith apart from works,” as an excuse not to do works—or, at least as a means of pardoning our own consciences for the works we know we should’ve been doing. Which also brings up the question: Would Abraham have been saved if he hadn’t done the works? If we’re justified by faith apart from works, as Paul says, then Abraham wouldn’t have needed to leave his home, his family, and his farmland. But if he was justified because of his good work, then he wasn’t really saved until he left his homeland. Folks ask that question most often because we really want to know is “If I just believe, but never do the things Jesus says, will I be saved? Can my neighbor be saved? Can I have faith without works?”’

9.                Do you know the Lutheran answer? The Augsburg Con­fes­sion, Article XX paragraph 27, says, “We teach that it is necessary to do good works.” Surprised? Well, that is the Lutheran answer. You know why? Because it’s the Bible’s answer. Not only does James say it, “Faith without works is dead” (see James 2:17), but Jesus says, “A good tree produces good fruit,” and “he who is in me bears much fruit” (see Mt 7:17; Jn 15:5). Even Paul says it, in, of all places, Ephesians 2:10, which follows immediately after 8 and 9: “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works.”

10.             We must do good works if we have faith. But not to earn God’s favor—Abel’s witness a couple of weeks ago showed us that—but because faith naturally must produce works, just like a living and healthy tree must bear fruit. Faith alone saves, but, as Luther famously said, “Faith is never alone.” Abraham left his homeland because of his faith. If he hadn’t, it wouldn’t be an issue of faith without works. It’d be a matter of no faith versus faith, of dead faith versus faith. When James says a man is justified by what he does and not by faith alone, to read James, you understand that he means a man is justified by the kind of faith that produces works and not by some faith that’s really dead. You’ve either got faith or you don’t. But Scripture also tells us that even a tiny mustard seed of living faith still saves.

11.             That’s why I said that there was a tension between Paul and James, not a contradiction. Faith without works is dead. Dead faith can’t save. It simply won’t justify. Dead faith can’t produce godly works. Living faith, however, does save—even faith as small as a mustard seed. Such faith alone does justify. And it does works. “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” Or, as Hebrews 11 put it, “By faith Abraham” did this and that. Again, “Faith alone saves, but the faith that saves is never alone.” We can understand that Paul looked at Abraham from God’s perspective, judging faith in the heart. James looked at Abraham from the perspective man can see, judging faith bearing fruit. Both are really concerned about the only thing that saves: faith. Dead faith can’t save, but faith alone in the living Jesus for you saves.

12.             What was Abraham’s living faith, the faith that moved him to such bold works? The same faith that will save you. Jesus says in John 8 that Abraham rejoiced to see the day of Christ. And what Abraham could only see through prophecy we now see fully of that day. Jesus, the God who called Abraham to leave his homeland, would die on that cross 2000 years later to save Abraham and all of his children of faith. Jesus would lay down his life in perfect obedience to his heavenly Father to give to us the perfect work of faith, his blood, so that by no work of ours but solely by faith in the power of his blood to cleanse us, we would become children of God. For which we daily cry, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mk 9:24). And he does. By his Word and Sacraments, he strengthens even our mustard-seed faith throughout our lives so that we cling to the blood of Jesus alone as our justification and righteousness.

13.             As we cling to that saving faith, the faith of Abraham, we, like him, by faith will live as a people looking forward to a city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God—the place that Jesus has gone before to prepare for us in the new heavens and the new earth, the home of righteousness, a seat at the marriage supper of the Lamb with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all who believe in Jesus. Until he comes again, we pray, “Come quickly, Lord Jesus.” Amen. Now the peace of God that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, until life everlasting. Amen.