Abraham's Very Great Reward

Abraham had trouble seeing a way forward. God had already promised him so much. But with the preacher of Ecclesiastes and with Jesus himself, Abraham agrees that whatever you gain in this life, you can’t take it with you, and when you die, all your efforts to attain things end up being meaningless. Something has to come after you, and your life, for there to be any meaning in any of it. And so, seeing this, Abraham hears God’s promise of a very great reward and Abraham sees that for it to be truly a very great reward, it needs to live on beyond him. It doesn’t quite seem fitting to pass along all that God has given him to his servant. And so God sees this and he promises further: “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” “So shall your offspring be.” And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness. The promise of offspring is an earthly reward. It’s the promise of meaning and someone to direct love to and someone to receive love from. It’s meaning in middle age and security in old age and hope all throughout.

And God did what he promised Abraham. He gave him offspring. He made him into a nation. A multitude of people. But when Abraham believed God, that belief would characterize the nation that would come from him. And through belief like Abraham’s, people outside of Abraham’s physical DNA were grafted into his spiritual DNA. The follower’s of the Chosen One of Abraham’s Chosen People would find themselves to be characterized by Abraham’s belief, his faith, and in doing so, Abraham’s descendants expanded from an already large nation, to as many stars as Abraham could look up and see in the night sky.

We can see in our passage that Abraham’s reward didn’t end with offspring. When Abraham believed, righteousness became a further reward. And when God made righteousness Abraham’s reward, Abraham’s reward became complete. He had it all. He had as big of an earthly reward as you could want and as precious an eternal reward as you could ask for. When Abraham received righteousness as a reward, he received something that would live on forever. It looked like Abraham’s reward was offspring, and it was, but when Abraham believed God, his reward expanded into the eternal, spiritual realm, untouchable by moth or rust.

And in that moment, God also made a path to Himself. Faith became a path to God’s promises and to God himself, as it pointed forward to the person of the Chosen One of God’s chosen people, Jesus Christ.

So Abraham’s reward was earthly, it was heavenly, and it would later become a path for others to take into God’s kingdom, as they became descendants of Abraham, descendants of Faith in God’s promises.

And today, one of Abraham’s descendants, one of the descendants of faith in God’s promises is going to officially enter the family of faith through the sacrament of holy baptism. Edmund has already professed faith, but he now follows Jesus’ command to be baptized, signifying union with Christ dying as he goes under the water, and union with Christ rising to new life as he comes out of the water. In this way he shows that he has been sealed by the Holy Spirit in union with Christ, and in a new way he shows himself to be a Christian, receiving his first official sacrament. As he walks through that door, he enters the sacramental life of the church where he will live out Christ’s death, the moment of our righteousness, in Holy Communion and in the rest of the Church’s sacramental life. So Edmund moves from being a child of faith, a believer in Christ, into a fuller life expressing the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus in the church, and in his kingdom.

Because of Abraham’s faith, Abraham’s descendants became even more numerous, having been given a path to God and his righteousness through faith, showing themselves to be God’s children. The adoption papers were signed when Edmund believed and trusted in Jesus Christ, but today his copy arrives in the mail and we get to celebrate with him as he moves forward in a fuller expression of faith in Christ through baptism. Like Abraham, this father’s hope is renewed today. But more importantly than my personal feelings, as we reflect on our adoption in Christ, we can all give thanks to God for the righteousness we’ve received, the blessing we receive in the faith of Abraham as it points to our only hope: the Chosen One, Jesus Christ the righteous, who forgives our sins, who grafts us in to the people of God, who commanded us believe and be baptized that we might be saved. So let us look back at our own baptism today and celebrate a new work of God in Edmund’s life, and reflect on what it means to be adopted into the family of God. We didn’t earn it, but we do receive it. And that grace, that eternal, untouchable, imperishable gift is ours, for those who believe and trust in God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.