God Made a Way

Grace and Peace to all of you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

We begin today with a promise made by God to Abram, “And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing” (Genesis 12:2).

It is a divine promise of a holy work to be completed by God, whereby Abram and his offspring will be blessed and set apart from all others, that his name would be seen as great, and that his blessing from God would somehow be a blessing for all the families of the earth, or put another way, all the world!

This is one of many “I will” promises God makes in Holy Scripture, revealing a God who is active and working in the lives of his people. Revealing a God who is faithful to his promises.

When God says that he will do something, he does the very thing he promises and carries it to perfect completion within the fullness of time, all for the purpose of bringing His people to Himself in faith.

That we might, as imperfect as we are, Fear, love, and trust him above all things.

Abram was seventy-five years old, and God said Go. Go from your country, you and your family! Scripture doesn’t tell us what happened next in Abram's tent that night, when he began preparing to get everyone out and moving. Whether there was conflict or concern would only be speculative on my part.

What we do know is that Abram didn’t argue with God; he went as God had called him. Paul reminds us in his letter to the Romans, “Abram believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness." (Romans 4:3)

But for us, it may not always be that simple. We like to believe that we would all respond to God with such urgency and faith during times of great change—times that can undoubtedly cause significant distress and upheaval in the way we have been living, especially when the paradigm has changed.

But leaving familiarity–walking toward the unknown versus the known is not at all easy. It isn't comfortable. To God’s promise of “I will,” we almost instinctively push back with our own, "Yes, Lord, but what if.”

Why? We confessed it earlier. “We are in bondage to sin, and cannot free ourselves.”

No matter how great or small. No matter how young or old a person is, we need God's help to trust Him. We need deliverance from our original sin. We need the Lord to bring us out to a new place, a place of promise, that no matter where we are on earth, we can live in confident hope that the Lord is moving his people (you and me) to himself – to the truth, to the promise that one day, and indeed now, that where He is, we will also be.

King David, who wielded immense power and wealth and was renowned for his greatness in name and stature, proclaims in his psalm this morning. “I lift my eyes to hills; from where is my help to come? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.” (Psalm 121:1-2).

David scans the horizon, as far as he can see to the hills, and declares that his help is in the one who made the hills, who made all things, the one who gives life to the dead and calls into existence things that previously did not exist.

David knew that he needed help, not just from enemies he could see in the form of nations and men, but from the things that truly seek to kill and destroy us. Sin, death, and the devil!

He confesses in the 51st Psalm, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!” (Psalm 51:1-2)

David knew his transgressions and trusted God to deliver him from them, to be his help when he cried out to him in faith.

Because where our earthly eyes see the hills and valleys, the eyes of faith reveal its true maker, and He is revealed as a God who seeks to help you, protect you, who is always on watch for you, who never sleeps nor slumbers, never tires, and promises to preserve and deliver you.

Considering this, we may recall the words Jesus taught us to pray to the Father. “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.”

For this is the mission of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, as John articulates so beautifully, and so succinctly in this morning's gospel lesson.

In his gospel, John invites us into an intimate meeting of two teachers. The first, a ruler of the Jews, a teacher of Israel, Nicodemus, who comes under the cover of darkness, to meet a teacher from Galilee, as he puts it in his own words, “a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs unless God is with him.” (John 3:2)

Nicodemus seems sure about this, that God is with Jesus. The miracles and signs that are occurring are not things the Pharisees or other teachers can do! They have never seen anything like it.

Something about Jesus is different. But it wasn't just the signs Jesus was doing that were different; it was the words He was speaking, the good news that he was preaching.

Everything Nicodemus would hear from Jesus that night was going to be different!

It would challenge him, and Jesus’ words would cut through his earthly understanding like a two-edged sword, revealing not dead religious practice but a Father's love, not just for the lost sheep of the house of Israel but for the whole world. The “I will” promise of God to make Abram into a great nation and that through him all the families of the world would be blessed, was sitting right in front of Nicodemus.

Jesus told him, "Unless one is born again, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven." One must be born of water and spirit. Jesus’ teaching confounds the teacher of the Pharisees, as it makes no earthly sense to him. We cannot go back into the womb and come out again, and none of us has a hand in our own births. It is by God’s grace that anyone is born at all!

So the teacher asks Jesus, “How can these things be?” How can one be born again? How can one be made a new creation? How can one be born from above?

One of the things I love about Abram is that it seems he didn't overthink the things God said; he simply believed. My impression of Nicodemus is a guy who tends to overthink things a bit.

We are not born again in the ways of the flesh, but born of the Spirit from above, through Christ. We are not born again by our offerings or by our own works, or our own words. It is not about how well we have kept and understood the law that we enter into the promise of the kingdom of God.

It is through Christ that we enter the kingdom. By God’s holy and divine grace, He makes the way through His only Son, that the sinner might look to the Son for salvation and be saved.

As Jesus illustrates for Nicodemus and for us, just as Moses lifted up the serpent on the pole in the wilderness, so that those Israelites who looked at it would be healed and saved, God’s only Son was lifted up on a cross and has made a way for the whole world. (Point to the Cross)

And so Jesus teaches Nicodemus, and all of us who come out to him from the darkness.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” (John 3:16-17)

For God so loves you that He made a way for you to be reconciled to Him, through his beloved Son–through His death and resurrection, by being baptized into Him.

Instead of putting our focus on distant hills or faraway locations to find answers about where our help will come from or which way to go for the promise. We need only fix our eyes on the cross.

(Point to the cross) As we come forward to receive the Lord’s Supper, lift your eyes to the cross and be assured of the way in which God made for you and the whole world, that we would not perish but have eternal life. - Amen

Our Gospel Hymn is “My Faith Looks up to Thee” #479 in your Hymnals