The Call for Faith
Faith Alone • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 40:33
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· 6 viewsBy faith, Christ calls dead sinners from the city of sin to the city of God.
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Call to Worship
Call to Worship
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
For by it the people of old received their commendation.
Adoration
Adoration
Oh give thanks to the Lord; call upon his name; make known his deeds among the peoples!
Sing to him, sing praises to him; tell of all his wondrous works!
Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice!
Confession
Confession
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving
I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah
Message
Message
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.
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.
I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.
And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan,
Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land.
Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him.
From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord.
And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negeb.
As is our custom, our Reformation series always begins with a figure from Church History.
We are commanded…
Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
We celebrate the Reformation during October because it was October 31st, 1517 that Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the Castle Door at Wittenberg.
But today we will consider another foundational figure from the Reformation.
Luther is like a hammer, Zwingli like a knife, but Calvin was like a swordsman.
Calvin was born in France in 1509.
He was the son of an ambitious father who worked as an administrator for the local cathedral.
Calvin trained initially for the priesthood, but at his father’s insistence, began training to be a lawyer.
In 1530, he was radically converted.
He was forced to flee from Catholic persecution.
And in 1536, he published his monumental work The Institutes of the Christian Religion.
Faith Alone—The Doctrine of Justification: What the Reformers Taught … and Why It Still Matters Chapter 3: John Calvin on Justification by Faith Alone
“Now we shall possess a right definition of faith if we call it a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit.”
—John Calvin
Calvin wrote often on Abraham…
By faith, Christ calls dead sinners from the city of sin to the city of God.
By faith, Christ calls dead sinners from the city of sin to the city of God.
A call of life for a “dead” family.
A call of life for a “dead” family.
The mandate from Genesis 9, which was a recapitulation of Genesis 1:28, was for multiplication over all the earth.
God’s desire from the beginning was for image bearers to spread over all the earth.
This backdrop makes the situation of the Tower of Babel so tragic.
Backdrop of Babel: “a name for ourselves”
Backdrop of Babel: “a name for ourselves”
Instead of dispersing over all the earth, mankind was gathered together with one goal in mind…
“Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”
The Object – An exalted tower in the heavens.
The Object – An exalted tower in the heavens.
The tower represents their name and purpose.
Their pride is embodied in this tower which is a project of self-sufficiency.
The Aim – A name for themselves.
The Aim – A name for themselves.
The people of Babel desires to “make a name for ourselves” they longed to be remembered as great in the whole earth.
Pride wasn’t their only motive, they feared being “dispersed over the face of the whole earth”, which is what God had commanded they do (Gen 9:1).
The Purpose – Gathered for their own glory.
The Purpose – Gathered for their own glory.
God desired for image bearers to fill the whole earth, but man’s desire was to make a name for himself and build a city.
Instead of spreading for God and His glory by having image bearers over the whole earth, they want to gather.
“[The tower of Babel] tells a unified humanity using all its resources to establish a city that is the antithesis of what God intended when he created the world. The city builders see themselves as establishing their own destiny without any reference to the Lord.” (ESV footnote)
This backdrop serves as a dark canvas that God will begin His mosaic.
In His kindness, God scatters their language so they would not be successful in their rebellion.
Remember that the judgment of God let’s people go into further rebellion, whereas the mercy of God stops them.
And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.”
The nations spread over all the earth, and we see the generations stream downward from Noah through Shem.
Genesis begins with one man and woman, Adam and Eve and spread to the whole world.
But now we’re going to see a narrowing again to one man and his family.
If you trace the phrase, “Now these are the generations of…” (Genesis 11:27), you can see a clear patterning within Genesis as a whole.
Brokenness and barrenness within one family.
Brokenness and barrenness within one family.
We’re often quick to pass over the genealogies because we cannot pronounce the names.
The biblical authors are spending extra energy to show us a connection.
The genealogy from Shem to a man named Terah, who was the father of Abram.
Now these are the generations of Terah. Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran fathered Lot.
Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his kindred, in Ur of the Chaldeans.
Terah lived in a placed called “Ur of the Chaldeans” which was likely located in modern day Iraq, sometimes referred to as Ancient Mesopotamia.
The people in this region were unquestionably pagan.
Star-worshippers that sacrificed their children to appease the deities of their day.
And Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods. Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan, and made his offspring many. I gave him Isaac.
Abram wasn’t a “good man.”
Instead the Bible tells us that he was a star worshipper Joshua 24:2.
And Abram and Nahor took wives. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran the father of Milcah and Iscah.
Now Sarai was barren; she had no child.
To be unable to have children in the ancient world was seen as a curse.
It was seen as a sign of displeasure from ‘the gods.’
They didn’t have modern interventions for dealing with inability to have children.
It meant that their lineage would die out in one generation.
Application to unbelievers
You’re living in the land of Ur.
A land far from God.
Just as God called a “dead” Abram to life, He is calling you today to live!
Turn away from the doomed city, and trust Christ today!
It’s here that God calls one man and his family to leave everything.
Despite his horrible position, Yahweh will make him into a great nation.
In our time, people move great distances often.
But in former days, it was uncommon for people to leave their homeland to live in a far off country.
But it’s not so here with Abram…
He didn’t go on a little vacation…
He wasn’t pursuing another career…
It is the call of God that beckons him.
A promise to bless: land, seed, and blessing.
A promise to bless: land, seed, and blessing.
Pay mind to something that I think is often assumed here…
Call from the Divine Sovereign
Call from the Divine Sovereign
Abram lived amongst a pagan people, himself a pagan star-worshipper.
All this until the Sovereign One “freely stretches forth his hand to bring back the wanderer” (Calvin, Genesis).
This call of God is what older theologians would describe as “Monergism” or “the work of one.”
It is God’s initiating call that brings life to a sinner.
Why would God call Abraham and his family?
Many much later extra-biblical accounts try to answer this question to give some kind of rationale for why God would choose Abraham.
They try to answer this question by giving a long backstory for the pagan people among where Abraham lived…
“God chose Abraham because he was better than all his contemporaries!”
“God chose Abraham because he was putting forth a good effort!”
So much of extra-biblical writings focus on Abram before he is called because they want a story to hold onto.
But if you take the text of Scripture, God is the One who comes near to Abram.
Not the other way around.
Abram wasn’t seeking after Him.
Application to the Christian
It was not anything in you that made God love you in Jesus Christ.
There was no prior condition that made God love you.
There was nothing in you that made God think you any more special.
Commentary on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis Chapter 12
For he [Abram] is an example of the call of us all; for in [Abram] we perceive, that, by the mere mercy of God, those things which are not are raised
God takes that which is less than nothing and forms it into something for His glory!
The cost of the promise.
The cost of the promise.
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.
Yahweh comes to Abram in a foreign land, himself a pagan among a pagan people, and calls.
He calls him to “leave” all that he’s ever known.
He calls him to leave all that is visible before him.
He calls him to put down and go to another land.
Abram was to exchange all that he knew for all that he did not know.
The call of faith is costly.
Application to Christians
Certainly you understand what this means, not exactly like Abram did here, but truly.
If you’re a Christian you have been called to give up your former life of sin.
And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.
For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?
If a person wants to follow Jesus, they must deny themselves and pick up their “cross.”
The cross here represents the death to a former way of life with its “rights”, “authority” to take control.
If we want to save our life, we have to lose it.
1 Corinthians 6:19–20 (ESV)
You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
Application for easy believism.
Abram heard the promise, believed, and followed.
I can hear someone reasoning within themselves…
“I made a decision once, so I’m good to go!”
Faith is the radical evacuation from Ur!
Faith is not merely the addition to living in Ur!!
Not only is it costly, it is also unseen.
The call to trust even when unseen.
The call to trust even when unseen.
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.
In the midst of the judgment at Babel, God brings salvation by one man and his household.
They were trying to “make a name for ourselves” (Gen 11:4) at Babel, but God tells Abram that He will “make your name great” (Gen 12:2).
I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
God’s desire is to make from Abram a people who will bless the whole earth!
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Faith doesn’t see what is promised.
Faith doesn’t observe reality and act.
Faith hears the call of God and trusts His Word despite circumstances.
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.
By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise.
For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.
Commentary on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis Chapter 12
For it is better, with closed eyes, to follow God as our guide, than, by relying on our own prudence, to wander through those over-engineered paths which it devises for us.
Faith is not blind in the sense that we have no good reason for it.
Faith is trusting the Word of God.
But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”—
these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.
An obedience from a living faith.
An obedience from a living faith.
Genuine faith always acts.
It’s not that the behavior is the cause, it is the fruit of the cause which is faith.
So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.
And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan.
“We are saved by faith alone, but the faith that saves is never alone.” ― Martin Luther
When they came to the land of Canaan,
Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land.
Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him.
The object of living faith.
The object of living faith.
Unlike all the pagan world that was judged and scattered from Babel, Abram and his family were received the word of salvation that day.
But he wasn’t saved because of who he was, but because of whom he had believed.
If a man were falling from a building and a rope was tossed for him to grab, we wouldn’t look and say,
“Look! That man’s arm saved him!”
We would say,
“Look! That rope saved that man!”
That man’s arm is his faith.
It is the instrument by which we hold on to the object of our trust.
The object of a man’s faith saves him.
Application to Christian
God does not save us because our faith is strong; He saves us because the Object of our faith is mighty.
Notice that Genesis 12:7 refers to the “offspring” who will receive the land, the word here is for “seed” or “offspring” is singular.
Paul uses this to remind believers that we are Sons of Abraham.
So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.
But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian,
for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.
For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.
All of the promises made to Abraham are true for you and me in Jesus Christ.
Those connected to Christ by faith are inheritors of the promises!
Application to us as a church body…
We are passing through this world, but we are pilgrims.
By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise.
We, like Abram, are looking…
For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.
The fruit of living faith.
The fruit of living faith.
From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negeb.
The fruit of living faith is obedience.
But we must see something about the kind of obedience from living faith.
Though it is genuine.
It’s not perfect.
Martin Luther said,
“simul justus et peccator”
“at the same time righteous and sinner.”
We often feel that the opponent of faith is something exterior to us.
But what Abram reveals to us is actually how closely our enemy resides within us.
Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land.
Egypt was a global super-power.
Abram does not believe that God can or will protect him in Egypt.
When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife, “I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance, and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me, but they will let you live. Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake.”
Rather than trusting God’s provision even in sending him to Egypt, he allows his wife to be vulnerable.
As Adam in the garden passively abdicated, here Abram abdicates out of fear of death.
Application to weary Christians
“If I struggle with fear, then I’m a lesser Christian!”
“I’ve failed, my faith must be fake.”
Many of you live under the crippling guilt of a past life.
Or even your day to day walk with the Lord, you live under shame of your sin.
Even when our faith falters, God's covenant faithfulness preserves us.
When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful.
And when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house.
And for her sake he dealt well with Abram; and he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels.
Despite Abram, he is blessed by Pharaoh and all of Egypt.
But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife.
So Pharaoh called Abram and said, “What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife; take her, and go.”
And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him, and they sent him away with his wife and all that he had.
By faith, Christ calls dead sinners from the city of sin to the city of God.
By faith, Christ calls dead sinners from the city of sin to the city of God.
Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.”
