children of the promise

​10th Sunday after Pentecost – A (Proper 13)                            LSB #’s 615:1, 3, 5-6; 570:1-5; 648
Text – Romans 9:8
 
This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring. 
 
CHILDREN OF THE PROMISE
 
 
Years ago, someone was going door to door soliciting contributions for a Christian orphanage.  The solicitor approached a house where an exasperated woman answered the door.  She was asked if she would like to give a donation to the orphanage.  The solicitor was surprised when the woman replied, “Yes, just a minute, I’ll get them.   They are ages two & three.” 
Christian parents certainly have moments of exasperation with their children.   Still, they recognize them as precious gifts from the heavenly Father.   And they are such precious gifts only because of the fact that the heavenly Father also gave His only begotten Son to us as a gift. 
For those who love their children that last statement may be hard to swallow.  Your child is only precious because Jesus, in His suffering, death & resurrection, took the place that your child, & you yourself deserve.  When Abraham was called to sacrifice his son Isaac, whom he loved, God substituted a ram at the last moment.  That ram pointed ahead to Jesus. 
Jesus, as our high priest, sacrificed His own life in place of ours.   He exchanged His perfection for our sin.  In receiving that gift we gain immeasurable value.  In receiving that gift you & I become children of the promise.  There is a thread of promises that runs all the way through the Bible back to the 3rd chapter of Genesis. 
Ironically, that 1st promise is spoken to the great Deceiver: “I will put enmity between you & the woman, & between your offspring & her Seed; He shall bruise your head, & you shall bruise His heel.”  (3:15)   As Christians, we tend to think of the Word of God as being written for us.  We look to it in times of trouble to find strength.  We look to it in times of sorrow to find comfort.  In times of despair we turn to Holy Scripture to hear of our Lord’s promise to lift us up.  There are helpful lists of Bible verses to look up when you need a specific word from God: “When you worry . . . when you feel alone . . . when you struggle with temptation . . . when you have financial problems.” 
The last thing we want, when a person is worried, is for her to open the Bible & read about God striking Ananias & Sapphira dead in their tracks, for lying to the Apostle Peter.  It’s much safer to open the Bible to a single, pre-selected verse & begin reading there.    Yet, as with all blessings from God, sinful human beings have a knack for getting off track. 
A list of passages can be comforting & has brought many people a word from God, who otherwise would be lost when opening the Bible.    The danger is that some people never get beyond this kind of reading.  They open the Bible, find a comforting word & then set The Book aside.  They never enter through this door into the deeper, richer life of the Holy Scriptures. 
Christianity becomes something it was never intended to be – a private, personal religion.  You turn to it not when you enter the world but when you retreat from it.  It’s something you read in your private devotional time & look forward to that moment when it is just “me & Jesus.”  We reduce God to our best friend, a person who supports us when times get tough.
We view Yahweh as someone who helps us accomplish our plans & fulfill our dreams. Getting off track in this way, we reverse roles with God.  Rather than us being servants in Jesus’ kingdom, we see Him as a servant in ours.   Rather than us being brought into our Creator’s greater & eternal picture, we bring God into our limited & very not eternal mortal life. 
Now, we do need God   in our limited & very not eternal mortal life, but we need Him there as the Great I Am, not as our servant.   We need the Word of God not simply as a self-help guide,  not simply as a Word that transforms every aspect of how we live,    but as a Word  that transports us  to the greater & eternal picture of the perfect existence of heaven.  As children of the promise, God Himself is giving each of you a story, but it’s the nature of sinful creatures to focus   mostly on our own story.  God is the One who was there at the beginning, creating all of the cosmos.  God will be there at the end, bringing about a new & glorious re-creation. 
Between the beginning & the end, God is here – Father, Son & Holy Spirit, working in love & ruling over everything that you & I have ruined.  Remember that 1st promise, the one spoken to the Great Deceiver?  Jesus is still speaking His promises to us who are also deceivers.  His promises call us out of the darkness of our self-centered lives into the light of Jesus Christ. 
And that is where we encounter the Apostle Paul in the reading from Romans 9.  God literally called him out of the darkness of his self-centered life into the light of Jesus Christ, knocking Paul to the ground on the road to Damascus.  Now, the Apostle is agonizing over his fellow Jews who were left behind because they refused to receive the light of Messiah. 
Paul even wishes he was accursed & cut off from Christ for the sake of his brothers, his kinsmen according to the flesh.  (Romans 9:3)   I don’t know if you’ve ever come before God on behalf of someone you love, someone you care about, yet someone who will have nothing to do with the faith.  
You love that person.  You know that God loves them.  You know God desires that they be saved, yet that person wants nothing to do with God.  That leaves you alone, not because you don’t believe in God, but you’re alone because you’re without your friend, your mother, your son whomever has walked away from the faith.  
God certainly is present for every individual person, able to be found in a single Bible verse a person reads in a lonely hotel room.  Yet, God’s vision is much greater than that.  He has come in Jesus Christ not only to save you, & each person in the entire creation, but also to join you to a people, a people who live by His promise & for His purpose in His kingdom.  Speaking of the nation of Israel, Paul writes, “…to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, & the promises.  To them belong the patriarchs, & from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever...” [1]
As spiritual descendants of Abraham, as children of the promise, that is now our history.   It is God’s desire that each of us be joined to the entire history of salvation, not just to our own little tiny piece of it, not just to a couple of different Bible verses here & there.   Because Jesus died for you, & joined you to all of salvation, your value went from zero to infinite at Baptism. 
To be a child of the promise is to have value beyond gold or silver or diamonds.  It is to have value beyond all the world’s wealth.  As we live our lives, we can easily lose sight of this larger story.  Faith can become a personal matter, reduced to a private experience that helps us get through the week.  That kind of faith loses much of the power that God intends for us. 
In spite of all the arrogance & self-righteousness we see in our culture, behind it is often individual human beings who feel worthless & unloved.  They recognize that on their own they have no value & thus find it difficult to respect themselves or to respect others.  Though they were not there, they still feel the curse of being banished from the Garden of Eden. 
In truth, they are far from being unloved or undervalued.  The lifeblood of Christ is the treasury which defines personal worth; your worth, my worth.   It’s a good thing that a parent’s love for their child is not what defines that child’s worth, because no sinful parent can ever love enough to overcome the inborn sinfulness of any child. 
Adam & Eve, Abraham, Isaac & Jacob, David, Solomon, Isaiah, Malachi, Mary & Joseph, all of them were children of the promise, right down to each of you here today.  The Holy Spirit is constantly at work bringing people out of darkness & into the eternal story of His people.  If you come to the altar today, for the body & blood of Christ, know that He died in order to bring you into all the company of heaven, along with the angels & archangels, to bring glory to God’s name for rescuing you from sin. 
Paul’s goal in his letter to the church at Rome is to encourage our obedience & by that he means to put our faith into action.  Disobedience is unbelief.  Belief during suffering is true faith.  Jesus demonstrates that true faith on the cross, not as an example to follow, but as the One to exchange His righteousness for our sins.  That is what gives infinite value to each of us. 
As children of the promise, those who believe & cling to the promises of God, our lives have infinite value regardless of anything we have done or left undone.  Because of that value that God has bestowed upon us, we trust that our Lord can work through us to accomplish good even during those times of life when we do not see results.  As St. Peter wrote:
“You know you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your fathers, not with perishable things  such as silver or gold,  but with the precious blood of Christ,  like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.”  (1 Peter 1:19)   That is what makes any human being a precious gift from God above, & it’s what gives every human life its value.  In the name of Jesus.  Amen. 
 
 
 
Just as I am,  though tossed about  with many a conflict,  many a doubt,  fightings & fears within,  without,  O Lamb of God,  I come,  I come.   Just as I am,  Thou wilt receive,  wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve;  because Thy promise I believe,  O Lamb of God,  I come,  I come.  Amen.  LSB 570:3, 5. 


[1] Romans 9:4-5 ESV