The Faith of Abraham

Order of Service

• Call to Worship — Psalm 2:7-12
• Hymn — All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name
• Prayer of Invocation
• Confession of Sin — Daniel 9
• Silent Confession
• Assurance of Pardon — Matthew 11:28-30
• Apostles' Creed
• Pastoral Prayer
• Offering
• Prayer of Dedication
• Hymn of Preparation — Breathe on Me, Breath of God
• Scripture Reading — Genesis 15:1-6
• Sermon
• Lord's Supper — O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus
• Benediction — Numbers 6:24-26
• Doxology

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Sermon Title: The Faith of Abraham

Scripture: Genesis 15:1-6

I. The One True Faith Is a Drawn-Out Faith

• A. God takes the initiative, coming to Abram in a vision in the midst of his fear, saying "Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great" (Genesis 15:1).
• B. Saving faith does not begin with us climbing a ladder to meet God — moral, life, age, or family ladders — but with God descending to meet us where we are.
  1. Romans 4:4-5 teaches that God justifies the ungodly; faith is not a precondition we fulfill but a gift God draws out.
  2. Thomas, locked behind doors out of fear, did not seek Christ — Christ came and showed him his hands, saying "Do not disbelieve, but believe" (John 20:27).
• C. This drawn-out character of faith applies not only to conversion but to ongoing, sanctifying, maturing faith — God continually meets his people where they are.

II. The One True Faith Is an Objective Faith

• A. Abram's questioning of God in Genesis 15:2-3 is itself an act of faith — his heart is fixed not on his material riches or military glory but on the objective covenant promise of offspring made in chapters 12 and 13.
• B. True biblical faith is not a subjective feeling or a vague inspiration; it has a definite object: the promise of God.
  1. Abram's faith was waning — he was old, his wife was old — yet it is God, not Abram, who takes the initiative to strengthen it.
  2. God draws Abram's eyes to the stars as a confirming sign of the promise: "So shall your offspring be" (Genesis 15:5).
  3. This mirrors the father of the demon-possessed boy in Mark 9:24: "I believe; help my unbelief."
• C. When faith is waning, the remedy is not self-generated positive thinking but the means of grace God has ordained — Word and Sacrament — by which he draws our eyes to his covenant promises.

III. The One True Faith Is a Justifying Faith

• A. Genesis 15:6 — "He believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness." The word counted (imputed/reckoned) is legal, courtroom language: Abram is declared righteous before the judge of all the earth.
• B. The righteousness counted to Abram is not the quality of his faith itself but a righteousness outside of him, received through faith as an instrument.
  1. Romans 4:5 says God justifies the ungodly — spoken by Paul explicitly in the context of Abraham and Genesis 15:6.
  2. Abraham's defining marks in Genesis are tent (pilgrim) and altar (sacrifice for sin) — altar-building is a confession of ungodliness and a looking forward to an atoning sacrifice.
  3. Genesis 8:20-21 shows that the altar and its pleasing aroma remind both God and the offerer that man's heart is evil from youth — sacrifice points to the need for atonement.
• C. The righteousness credited to Abram comes through faith in the one offspring of Abraham, Jesus Christ, who became a curse for us at the cross.
  1. Galatians 3:13-14 — "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us… so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles."
  2. The Lord's Supper table is not a new altar or a perpetual sacrifice, but a table that points back to the altar of altars at Calvary, where the offspring of Abraham was offered so that we might be accounted righteous.
• D. The sola fide ("faith alone") of the Reformation is not a sixteenth-century invention but the consistent confession of the church, attested by Hilary of Poitiers and Basil the Great, and grounded in Scripture throughout.