Pastor John Eich

Good Shepherd Lutheran Church

Alma, MI

Genesis 12:1-8

The Miracle of Faith and the Promise

Have you ever thought about how impossible faith is? How there is really no good, demonstrable reason that we should believe anything the Bible says? Think about it. None of us have seen with our own eyes the people and events on which the Christian faith is based. Have you ever seen one of the Great Lakes spilt in half leaving only dry ground? Then why do we believe it happened at the Red Sea? Have you ever seen a dead person come back alive? Why do we believe the several recorded instances in the Bible? If you stop and think about everything that is working against faith – it’s nothing short of miraculous that anyone living in 2026 has it. And so today we’re going to talk about the miracle of faith and the promise that comes with it.

Our text for today relates a portion of the life of Abraham, or Abram, as he was called at this time. God told this 75 year old man to pack up his belonging and family and move to a foreign country. God didn’t even tell Abram where he was going. He just said, “Go and I’ll tell you when to stop.” And we read that Abram packed his house, his nephew Lot’s household and all of their servants and flocks and set out. He went, not so much in obedience to a command, but because, as the Bible says, he believed that God was telling the truth – that God really would bless Abraham and give to him and his offspring that land, and much, much more.

What faith! Where did that come from? I’m not sure that Abraham would have been my first choice. Just think about everything that was working against him. He didn’t have a Bible like we do that is full of accounts of God’s faithfulness. He lived in a country that was idolatrous. We don’t know anything about his background as to whether he was raised in a believing home or not. It seems the Lord called him out of the blue. How quick would you be to pack up everything and leave based on literally nothing more than the promise of God? On top of that, the Lord told Abram that he would make him into a great nation – as innumerable as the stars in the sky (Genesis 15:5). And you know what obstacle stood in front of that promise, right? Abram was 75 and his wife, Sarah, was 65 – and they had been childless the entire time.

Certainly, by all appearances, it made no sense to believe God’s promises. And at certain times, Abram showed that he didn’t – at least not perfectly. He got impatient with God. He challenged God: you haven’t given me any children. He didn’t trust God’s plan or timeline. He tried to take matters into his own hands; sleeping with his wife’s servant to work around God (Genesis 16).

Do we ever get impatient with God – expecting him to act on our timetable – and when he doesn’t, we take matters into our own hands? Abram’s wavering is meant to comfort us. To show us that even the “father of faith” was by no means the perfect believer – especially in the face of real, seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle believers face today in holding onto faith is that they’ve been led to believe the wrong thing. For example, that when you put your faith in God then life will automatically get better (that having faith is like having an all-powerful genie on your side). Perhaps more believers have fallen from faith in recent decades because they believed this lie than any other single reason. The truth is that faith is not a guarantee that your life will get better – in fact it means that you will face more challenges in your life than you otherwise would. Don’t be surprised by this, because Jesus didn’t say “take up your La-Z-Boy and follow me.” He said “take up your cross and follow me” (Luke 9:23).

So how do we get faith like Abram to pack up and follow Him wherever He leads? Romans 10:17 tells “faith comes from hearing the message, and the message comes through the word of Christ.” Faith is a miracle because faith is totally God’s work since it doesn’t depend on reason or proof. If it did then it would be knowledge not faith. For most of us, that miracle first happened in baptism – which is a beautiful picture of this. There at the baptismal font, God used nothing but his Word and some water to adopt us into his family, to wash away our sins, to plant the seed of faith and write our names in the book of life.

Our conversion was worked entirely by God. It had to be, because by nature we were spiritually blind (Ephesians 4:18), but ”The Lord opens the eyes of the blind” (Psalm 146:8). We were spiritually dead (Ephesians 2:1), ”But God . . . made us alive together with Christ…” (Ephesians 2:4-5). We were enemies of God (Romans 8:7) and could not receive the things of the Spirit, for they were foolishness to us (1 Corinthians 2:14), but ”we have received . . . the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God” (1 Corinthians 2:12).

If it were not for God’s grace bringing us to faith in Christ, we would still be lost with the rest of the world which thinks the Bible is foolishness.

Thank God every day that He has come to you in His Word ”to open your eyes, in order to turn you from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that you may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in Christ” (Acts 26:18).

But we have done ourselves a disservice. We say, “I have faith.” But when the Bible speaks about faith, it never stands by itself. It is always faith in something.

Saving faith starts with a specific knowledge of what the one true God – the Father, Son and Holy Spirit – has said and promised in his Word. Then, saving faith agrees with those words and promises. Faith agrees or confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, the Christ, that his death has wiped away the sins of the world, that he did, in fact, rise from the dead after three days and will return again to judge the living and the dead. And finally, saving faith trusts these things, making them personal, uses them in life. Saving faith trusts that Jesus loves me, saved me, protects me, provides for me, leads me and so much more. Saving faith recognizes that all of God’s promises find their center and their answer in Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20).

This is faith that lasts. This is faith that is unshaken by challenges and obstacles because this faith is not rooted in me and my ever-changing circumstances. It is founded on God and what he has done for me in Christ. That will never change, not even when this body and this world are destroyed (Isaiah 54:10). You will be tested, of that you can be sure – just like Abram, just like the apostles, just like every saint who has gone before you. But this faith does the impossible: it trusts God’s promises despite challenging circumstances because it sees beyond the present to the ultimate, unshakeable proof of God’s goodness: the cross of Christ. The cross is the one thing you can, you must hold onto – because it will not move, even when the rest of life is falling apart around you.

And so when our faith is challenged, what do we need? Abram, we need to hear God repeat his promises over and over to sustain our faith. What promise does God attach to faith? Philippians 3:9 “and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, which comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God by faith.”

Abraham believed God’s promises, staked his life and his eternity on them – and through this hand of faith God gave Abram the righteousness that he needed to be saved from final judgment and receive the gift of eternal life.

You have God’s promise too that, solely on account of Christ Jesus – The Offspring of Abraham – God declares you to be righteous. God declares you to be forgiven and loved.

You who believe in Christ Jesus as your righteousness and innocence before God, you who know God to be favorable to you on account of Christ alone – you are, in part, God’s fulfillment of his promise to Abram. You believers make up the stars in the heavens that Abraham couldn’t possibly count. You are his offspring. You are his heirs, because you are in Christ, by faith – the same faith that Abraham had. Your baptism has brought you into that saving faith in Christ Jesus. Since Christ is Abram’s heir, and you are in Christ, you, too, have become Abraham’s heirs, heirs who will inherit eternal life in the eternal kingdom of the Son of Abraham.

Do you believe that? Then see how your perspective on life changes! You begin to see life on earth not as your goal, but as a pit stop along your way to your heavenly home.

Yes, this faith is a marvelous and miraculous thing. Not because you’ve got to be crazy to believe it, but because it is all God’s doing, from beginning to end, through his powerful Word. Amen.