Covenant of Faith | February 25, 2024

During this season of Lent, a common thread running through our Sunday Scripture readings is the idea of “covenant.” I was at the Quake youth conference for the first Sunday of Lent, but last week, our congregations heard Pastor Jon Jacobs speak about the covenant God made with Noah and his descendants, a promise never to flood the earth again. This Sunday, we hear the story of Abraham and the covenant God makes with him to give him numerous descendants and make him the father of nations.

At the time God makes this promise, Abraham is elderly and childless. This promise seems impossible for God to fulfill. But Abraham (mostly) has faith, and through God’s miraculous intervention, his faith is rewarded. The promise is fulfilled. 

This week’s Scripture readings are Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16; Romans 4:13-25; and Mark 8:31-38. Much of this sermon is adapted from my sermon on Abraham’s faith from February 25, 2018. Here’s the sermon podcast audio and the worship livestream from Living Hope.

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Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen

During this season of Lent, one of the common threads running through our Scripture readings is the idea of covenant.

I spent last weekend with some of our youth at the Quake conference in the Dells, so I obviously wasn’t here for the first Sunday in Lent, but I did listen to the sermon podcast when I got back, and Pastor Jacobs talked a bit about a covenant in his sermon.

The first lesson last week was the end of the Noah’s Ark story. The flood waters dry up, and once all the animals and people are out of the ark, God says to Noah and his sons, “I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you and with every living creature.”

The covenant, the promise is this: Never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. And the rainbow will be a sign of that covenant.

Covenant is one of those church words that just gets thrown around sometimes, but basically, it just means a promise, some kind of agreement. It’s a commitment God makes.

This week, we hear about another covenant, another promise, and this one is a bit more specific. It’s not with all of creation; it’s between God and this guy named Abram. God promises Abram that he will have many children, becoming the ancestor of many nations.

Now, this is not the first time Abram’s heard this promise from God. Way back in chapter 12, God promised Abram he would father a great nation, and then it’s repeated in chapters 13 and 15.

The thing is, it wasn’t happening. Abram and his wife Sarai weren’t having any kids, and in order to have your descendants become a great nation, you need to start by having at least one child.

Sarai thought maybe her husband had misunderstood God’s promise, or maybe God might need a little help, and Abram agreed, so in chapter 16, Abram has a child with Sarai’s maid, Hagar, and as you might remember, it doesn’t go well.

By the way, this is one of my favorite stories to talk about in confirmation class because kids sometimes think the Bible is this nice clean book about good people doing nice things. The Bible is a messy book about real people living messy lives, and Abram, Sarai, and Hagar are a great example.

Anyway, Abram has a son with his wife’s maid Hagar. He’s named Ishmael and he does become the father of a great nation, but it turns out he wasn’t the promised child God was talking about. Then, in our reading from Genesis 17, God reaffirms the covenant. By this time, though, Abram is 99 years old, and Sarai is 90. Basic biology says this isn’t going to happen.

And here’s where we get an example of another church word that we throw around a lot without really defining it: “Faith.” This is the other thread running through today’s Scripture.

So what is faith?

Basically, faith means trusting God. In fact, nearly any time you see the word faith, you can replace it with trust. But in today’s readings, we’re going to get a little more specific about what faith is, what it means.

In Romans 4, Paul uses Abraham as an example of faith. Listen again to what he writes in verses 18-21.

“Abraham did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.”

So what is faith? Faith is trusting God means what God says. It’s being fully convinced that God is able to do what God has promised, even when it seems hopeless. That’s Paul’s example for the early Christians in Rome.

Now, I actually have some issues with Paul here, in particular the line, “No distrust made Abraham waver concerning the promise of God.” That’s what should have happened, but Paul is glossing over a LOT of Abraham’s story. Yes, Abraham listens to God and follows where God leads him, but on the way he passes his wife off as his sister, not once, but twice, because he’s not convinced God will protect them.

This is the guy who tries to take things into his own hands, who sleeps with his wife’s maid because he doesn’t quite believe what God said. Abraham doubts enough that God needs to not just give him the covenant, but then remind him of this covenant three different times.

So Paul is being pretty generous in using Abraham as an example of strong faith. And that’s pretty encouraging for us. If Abraham, who makes some pretty big mistakes, can be held up as an example of faith, then we’ve got a chance too.

But the point is faith means trusting God and believing God’s promises are true, sometimes despite the evidence. When you look around at the world, having faith can be hard. There’s a lot of evidence against God’s promises. For Abraham, it was the many, many years waiting for the promise to be fulfilled with nothing to show for it.

Historically, the stories in Genesis were likely written down centuries after the fact, during a time when Israel, God’s chosen people, were in exile, with their military defeated and their nation destroyed. They wrote down these stories to remind themselves to trust God’s promises, even when they seemed impossible.

We today are faced with all kinds of evidence of the world’s brokenness. It’s easy to believe in the reality of sin when we hear about new fighting in Ukraine, people suffering in Gaza, flooding and mudslides in California. It’s easy to trust in the reality of death on a day when many of us are going to a funeral this afternoon. It’s harder to trust that God has defeated sin, to have faith that God is the giver of life, working to reconcile the world.

The good news is this trust, this faith isn’t something we get on our own. Instead, we believe faith is a gift from God.

Paul says in verse 22, Abraham’s faith was reckoned to him as righteousness. Not only did Abraham not do anything to earn God’s promise, his very ability to believe it is only possible because the Holy Spirit gives him faith. God reckoned it to him.

In Martin Luther’s explanation of the third article of the Apostle’s Creed, he writes we cannot believe in Jesus Christ as Lord or come to him by our own understanding or strength, but the Holy Spirit calls, enlightens, and keeps us in faith.

Faith is not something we do or earn; it’s something we receive from God, a gift from the Holy Spirit.

Another way of thinking about faith is that faith means relying on God. In the gospel reading from Mark, Jesus says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

Denying ourselves-that sounds a little like giving up something for Lent, choosing to go without chocolate, or tv, or maybe denying yourself a new car or something, and that’s true, but what Jesus is talking about is more significant than that.

Denying yourself to follow Jesus means renouncing your claim on your life. It’s about relying on God for life rather than on anything you own or anything you’ve accomplished. It’s giving up control.

Perhaps more accurately, denying yourself means recognizing the reality that you already depend on God for life, not just eternally, but here and now in this world. Life itself is a miraculous gift from God.

Back in Romans, in verse 14, Paul makes this point as well. If we could rely on ourselves for life, he writes, if we could do enough good works to earn God’s salvation or to live on our own without God, if our ability to follow the law made the difference, then faith would be null, and God’s promises wouldn’t matter.

But we know that’s not reality. We can’t rely on ourselves. We can’t do enough, and so, Paul continues in verse 16, it all depends on faith, and the promise of God rests on grace.

God’s promise is a gift not only to Abraham, but to all his descendants, including you and me. All we can do is rely on God’s grace. God’s covenant depends on God’s faithfulness, not Abraham’s.

So faith is trusting God’s promises, faith is a gift from God, and faith is reliance on God.

Finally, faith changes things. Living in faith, living as if God’s promises are true makes a difference. Faith gives us the strength to make it through the times in life when God’s promises are hard to see.

The first verse of Hebrews 11 defines faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

Faith opens our eyes to God, allowing us to realize there is more to this life than what we can see. Sin turns us inward to worry about ourselves, but faith turns us outward, setting us free to love others, to care for our neighbors.

As we continue in this season of Lent, I invite you this week to reflect on faith. Give thanks to God for the gift of faith. Live as if you believe God’s promises are true, because they are.

Allow the Holy Spirit to change you, to help you recognize and accept that you’re not in control, and that’s ok, because God is faithful. And may the peace of Christ, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Amen