What Is a Saving Faith?

2nd Sunday in Lent, 3/5/2023 Genesis 12:1-8 What Is a Saving Faith? I. It holds onto God’s promises. II. It acts on God’s word. III. It shares God’s salvation with others. Some years ago, I was at a circuit meeting. That’s a meeting of all the WELS pastors in Dayton, Cincinnati, and Columbus. We were talking about faith and one of the pastors asked, “What is faith?” Of course, he knew the answer, but he wanted to prime the pump of discussion. And then he revealed his reason for asking the question. He stated, “We talk about faith, we preach about believing, we encourage our members to trust the Lord, but what is faith?” Well, if I were to ask you, “What is a can opener?”, you might respond with something such as, “It’s a kitchen device for opening cans.” You didn’t describe with that device looked like or what it was made of. Instead, you described it for what it does. That’s one good way to describe faith. We describe it for what it does. And we have an excellent example of what faith does in one of the Bible’s great heroes of faith, Abraham. Here in Genesis 12, he still goes by the name Abram. God would later change his name to Abraham. And the remarkable thing about him in this text is his amazing faith. You can see it by what he does. So, let’s ask ourselves the question this morning, “What is a saving faith?” And let’s hear the answer from what our God tells us about Abraham. Part I. Perhaps you’ve heard the statement, “Seeing is believing.” If I recall correctly, that was the advertising theme for a certain automobile a number of years ago. The impression this ad wanted to make was that you can’t believe how wonderful this auto is and how wonderful you’ll feel driving it until you see it. However, that’s the exact opposite of the Bible’s definition of faith. The writer to the Hebrews states, “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (He. 11:1). Not seeing is believing. A little child needs to trust that her parents will remember to give her a birthday present. Once she has it in her hands, she no longer needs to trust that they will do it. And saving faith holds onto God’s promises. That’s exactly what Abraham did in the event described for us here in Genesis 12. And it wasn’t just one promise the Lord made to Abraham; it was an almighty arm-full of promises. Listen to them, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” That’s quite a list. They break out neatly into four promises. Let’s take a look at them. First, he promised to make Abraham into a great nation. That’s not so surprising to us. You’ve probably known for some time that Abraham is the father of the nation of the Jews. All those Jews trace their ancestry back to Abraham. But what’s remarkable about this is that, when God made this promise to Abraham, he and his wife were childless, and they were getting up in years. Later we hear that Abraham was 75 years old and his wife was 65—not exactly much hope for two people to produce a great nation. But that was God’s promise. He also promised, “I will make your name great.” Think of the billions of people who not only have heard of Abraham, but also revere him as a great man in history. All Christians, Muslims, and Jews hold him in high esteem. Thirdly, the Lord promised to bless those who blessed Abraham and curse those who cursed him. It didn’t take Abraham long to see the Lord’s protection in action. Time and again he faced bodily harm and the Lord spared him and destroyed his enemies before him. But the fourth promise is really the diamond among the rest of the gems. “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” There’s only one way to fulfill this promise, and that’s to send the world a Savior through Abraham. This was nothing other than the promise of a Savior for the world through Abraham. This was nothing other than the promise of a Savior for the world to Abraham. That Savior would be one of his own descendants. These promises must have blown Abraham’s mind. They seemed incredible. But later on we hear this about Abraham, “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness” (Ge. 15:6). That’s what a saving faith does. It holds onto God’s promises. God promised to send Abraham a Savior and about 2,000 years later he fulfilled that promise. He didn’t offer any proof that he would do it. He just gave Abraham his word. And, by the working of the Holy Spirit, Abraham believed it. You and I believe that the Savior was born 2,000 years ago. We don’t demand proof from God. By the work of the Holy Spirit, we believe it. So why don’t we believe God completely when he says that he will work everything out for our good? Why don’t we believe him when he says that he will give us what we need? Why don’t we believe him when he tells us that our present afflictions are for our good? Because as much as we believe, we’re still plagued by unbelief. We just can’t take God at his word. And that shows all the more how much we need a Savior, the very One God promised here to Abraham. A saving faith holds onto God’s promises. Part II. Did you ever take a trip to wherever? I’m not talking about taking a Sunday evening drive when the weather is nice just to get out of the house and enjoy a drive. I’m talking about deciding to take a trip and actually heading out of your driveway with no destination in mind. No limits of time or distance or money. You just went. I doubt any of us have ever done that. But Abraham did. God had told him, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.” And a little later we read, “So Abram went, as the LORD had told him.” The Lord didn’t tell Abraham where he was going. He just told him to go. “He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out.” He didn’t set out alone; he took his family with him. It makes you wonder what his family members thought about his travel plans. But this wasn’t crazy on Abraham’s part; it was trust. First, he trusted the Lord to lead him. We know that happened. The Lord led Abraham and his family to the land of Canaan, present-day Israel, the very place God intended to use as the birthplace of the Savior. Abraham didn’t sit on his hands and wait for the Lord to transport him; he acted and God led him. And as God led Abraham, Abraham also trusted the Lord to bless him along the way and when he arrived at his destination. Abraham didn’t press God for details before he set one sandal on the ground. He simply went. He acted and trusted the Lord to bless him. And that’s what happened. Have you ever taken a leap of faith in life? Maybe it was a new job opportunity or a relocation. Perhaps it involved a relationship. Maybe it was an investment opportunity. You processed as much information as you could, and then made a decision and trusted the Lord to bless it. And the Lord did as he saw fit. Why can’t we do that every day? Simply take the Lord at his word and act on faith. But we don’t. We tremble. We worry. But what good is your faith if you don’t act on it? God has called us to be people of action. So, let’s trust God and act. Shame on us if the Lord finds us sitting on our hands doing nothing as a congregation of people. Let’s gather information and act in the way that seems best and trust God to bless us. What is a saving faith? It acts on God’s word. Part III. Another way of stating that same thing is that a saving faith acts with God’s word. That’s exactly what we see Abraham doing. Listen to what he did when he arrived in Canaan, “Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. The LORD appeared to Abram and said, ‘To your offspring I will give this land.’ So he built an altar there to the LORD, who had appeared to him.” Do you understand what he did? He makes his way into a foreign country. He doesn’t own a single square foot of land. Yet, one of the first things he does when he arrives there is to build an altar to the Lord. Our text says he did it near the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. Obviously, this was a landmark. Shechem was an important city at that time. Abraham was making a bold statement to these idol worshippers. And then we read, “From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the LORD and called on the name of the LORD.” He built an altar and called on the name of the Lord. That doesn’t mean he built an altar and prayed. It means he built an altar and then proclaimed the name of the Lord. In other words, he shared the message of salvation from the one true God. Can you imagine the risk he took? He was a foreigner and a nomad. Would you like it if someone just showed up in your neighborhood and began telling you that your way of worship and your god were all wrong? But that’s what Abraham did. That took guts! More than that, it took faith. But that’s what a saving faith is. It shares God’s salvation with others. That’s what we do as a congregation. But we could do better. That’s what you are supposed to do as individuals. I know I could do better. How about you? So, let’s act on faith. First, ponder ways we can share our faith with others. But then let’s rely on our God to empower us to share it with others. Maybe that’s in a one-on-one setting. Maybe that’s with a group of Christians. Maybe you have other ideas. Let’s hear them. That’s what a saving faith is. May the Lord fill us with such a faith and with the zeal to act on it. Amen.