Sermon for Pentecost 6, July 20, 2025
Grace, mercy, peace, and abundant joy to you from God the Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Genesis 18:1-14 The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he was sitting by the door to his tent during the heat of the day. 2Abraham looked up, and he saw three men standing in front of him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them, and he bowed down to the ground. 3He said, “My lord, if I have now found favor in your sight, please do not pass your servant by. 4Now let me get a little water so that all of you can wash your feet and rest under the tree. 5Let me get some bread so that you can refresh yourselves. After that you may go your way. That is why you have come to your servant.” They said, “Yes, do as you have said.” 6Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah and said, “Quickly prepare twenty quarts of fine flour, knead it, and make some loaves of bread.” 7Abraham ran to the herd, brought a good, tender calf, and gave it to the servant. He hurried to prepare it. 8He took cheese curds, milk, and the calf that he had prepared and set it before them. He stood beside them under the tree while they ate. 9They asked him, “Where is Sarah, your wife?” He said, “She is over there in the tent.” 10One of the men said, “I will certainly return to you when this season comes around next year. Then Sarah your wife will have a son.” Sarah was listening to this from the tent door, which was behind him. 11Now Abraham and Sarah were old, well into old age. Sarah was past the age for childbearing. 12Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “After I am worn out, will I have pleasure, since my lord is also old?” 13The Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really give birth to a child though I am old?’ 14Is anything impossible for the Lord? At the set time next year I will return to you, and Sarah will have a son.” (EHV)
God promises the impossible that brings life.
Precious servants of the Living Lord,
In our three readings today, we see believers serving their Savior. In our epistle lesson, St. Paul was dutifully sharing what Christ has done for us all. The Gospel lesson reported that Mary and Martha were faithfully serving, though Jesus had to rebuke Martha when, in a moment of weakness, she felt that serving her Savior a meal was more important than hearing what Jesus was teaching. That lesson reminds us that hearing God’s message of grace is the most important thing.
In our sermon text, too, we see faithful believers serving their Lord. Abraham gladly welcomed three strangers with great hospitality. His wife hurried to serve their guests, as did their young servant who prepared the meat for the meal. Yet, this text is not so much about hospitality as it is about our Lord diligently serving us. You see, God promises the impossible that brings life.
Throughout history, our flawed nature assumed that God needs our help in carrying out His role of caring for us. Pagan worship was built on the false idea that one had to influence the forces of nature to gain a prosperous life. Still today, many teach that you have to do certain things to get God to help you. If you want God listen to you, they say, you must say the right prayer, the right number of times, in the right place, or it can be that you must show repentance in specific ways, or honor certain things, or do some contrived rituals so that God will credit you with good works. Sometimes, it is as simple as believing that because you attend church on Sunday, God must treat you well.
However, is it really true that God needs our help to accomplish His purposes? Does He really need our feeble efforts to save us? This text helps us understand that the Lord is behind every good thing, and we have very little involvement until after the fact of our rescue. For instance, we see Abraham being the ideal host here, but that had absolutely no role in saving his soul. In fact, Moses reported that before Abram ever did anything to serve his Lord, “Abram believed in the LORD, and the Lord credited it to him as righteousness.” (Genesis 15:6) Of course, some would object that by believing, Abram was contributing to his salvation. However, like all the rest of us, Abram became a believer when the power of God’s promise brought life to Abram’s soul.
Our sermon text tells of another time when the Lord came directly to Abraham. What was the purpose of this visit? It appears there were several, but the main one seems to be to help Sarah, who wasn’t so confident that the Lord would deliver on His promise to give her and Abraham a son. We know for sure that Abraham had told her God’s plan, since they had previously conspired to try to assist God with that promise through Sarah’s handmaiden, Hagar.
However, as it is for all of us, it was hard for Sarah to wait patiently for the Lord. She knew her womb had long since dried up. Sarah and Abraham had lived together as husband and wife for many decades with no child being conceived, so her hope for a child was dried up, as well. That was made clear when Sarah laughed at the Lord’s announcement that He would return the coming year and she would be holding a newborn son of her own womb. “Sarah laughed to herself, saying, ‘After I am worn out, will I have pleasure, since my lord is also old?’” Would she, at the age of ninety, finally give birth to a son? How foolish, Sarah thought; how impossible even to consider. Yet, The Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really give birth to a child though I am old?’ Is anything impossible for the Lord?”
“Is anything impossible for the LORD?” As always, when we find someone caught in a weakness of faith, it would be easy for us to look down on that person or puff ourselves up with the idea that we wouldn’t be susceptible to that type of fault. But, is that really true? Or, do we too, like Sarah, sometimes have trouble believing that the Lord will keep all His promises for us?
All around us, we find people who doubt that the miracles of the Bible could have happened, and because of their faithless arguments, believers are often tempted to doubt God. Miracles fall outside of our normal experience, so many people find it hard to believe they were done. At the very least, men search for ways miraculous things could have happened through natural means, as if our Lord couldn’t work outside of the laws of the nature He created.
Many sceptics and scholars claim God couldn’t have created the world in just six days; some swear that it isn’t possible for Jesus to put His body and blood in the bread and wine of His Supper, while others argue that the Holy Spirit couldn’t give life and faith through the water and Word of Baptism, but “Is anything impossible for the Lord?”
Some people teach that faith in Jesus as your Savior is a decision you make. Yet, Scripture clearly teaches, “Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message comes through the word of Christ.” (Romans 10:17) Likewise, God’s promise of a son to Abraham and Sarah would happen whether Sarah believed God would allow her to become pregnant at her age or not. In the same way, saving faith isn’t something you do, or choose. Rather, “God, because he is rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in trespasses. It is by grace you have been saved!” (Ephesians 2:4-5)
Another problem many people have is the idea that we must deserve God’s forgiveness. That’s one of the devil’s most powerful temptations. If he can get us to believe that it is impossible for God to love us, then Satan can keep us trusting his lies instead of God’s kind Word. In medieval times, that misunderstanding led monks like the young Martin Luther to whip themselves, to do all kinds of menial labor, to make pilgrimages to so-called holy sites, to starve themselves and withhold any pleasure from their lives, and actually to do any silly thing someone would imagine as a work to satisfy a vengeful god. Still today, multiple religions continue to teach such devious lies. They might call it earning karma, or submitting to their god, or simply doing your part. But, God promises the impossible that brings life.
The Lord visited Abraham and Sarah to remind them that there is nothing outside of His control and nothing that could stop Him from carrying out His salvation plans. That God would make it possible for a ninety-year-old woman to give birth to a son from a hundred-year-old man shows the world that it is just as true that God brought His Son into the world by a virgin birth. Since God could resurrect Sarah’s long-dead womb, why would anyone doubt that He could raise His own Son from the grave after being three days dead? Especially, if God could forgive His chosen people like Abraham and Sarah for their weak faith, can He not forgive you too? If God could call to faith His most ardent enemy, a man named Saul who had been breathing murder against Christians throughout Palestine, could He not also call you to faith without your help?
Dear friends, the Bible is filled with the accounts of sinners who didn’t deserve God’s forgiveness: King David—guilty of adultery and murder, Adam and Eve—guilty of abandoning holiness for the whole human race, Sarah—who wasn’t confident God could deliver on His promise, a whole nation of people that continually strayed from God’s loving care, the prophet Jonah—who heard God’s call to rescue a large city of sinners and ran the other direction, Peter—denying His Lord and Savior three times in one night, Saul—doing everything in his power to stop the spread of the Good News of Jesus Christ. The story goes on and on telling us of how everyone needs a Savior, and of how God has provided the perfect One in His Son.
This plan of salvation isn’t something man could ever dream up. We always expect retribution for our guilt. That’s why we have so much trouble believing that we are forgiven. We know we have sinned. We know others sin too, and we find it hard to forgive them, which makes us think that God doesn’t want to forgive us. Yet, that thought simply isn’t true, is it? God wants to forgive every sin. He wants to heal every hurting soul. He wants everyone to return to Him in faith and live. That’s why God chose to send His own dear Son to be our Savior at the perfect time and place in history.
Could God love a sinner like you? Jesus declared, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) In His Son, God loved us all: the bad, the worse, and the very worst. Isaiah wrote, “Each of us has turned to his own way, but the Lord has charged all our guilt to him.” (Isaiah 53:6)
Still, what if you are feeling really guilty, filthy on the inside and the out, could God really have a forgiving heart for you too? The Bible answers all objections. “God made him, who did not know sin, to become sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.” (2 Corinthians 5:20-21) Can this really mean you, too? The Bible assures the terrified soul, “ Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household.” (Acts 16:31) But don’t I have to do something to help the Lord save me? Jesus says, “ Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved.” (Mark 16:16)
We started out today talking about hospitality and serving the Lord. Those are things that we naturally want to do only after we have been brought to faith in Jesus. Before we had that faith, we couldn’t do anything good, nor did we truly desire to do so, for everything about us was corrupted by sin. Now, though, as believers sanctified by faith, “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared in advance so that we would walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:10) This is what we do as we walk in faith; we serve our Lord, just like Mary did when she sat at Jesus’ feet and soaked in every word He had to say; as Peter did when he wept and repented of his betrayal. Like the prison guard who fell on his knees in terror saying, “What must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:31) When he heard, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved,” he rejoiced to take those preachers to his own house so that his whole family could hear the Good News and live. For them and for us, God promises the impossible that brings life.
Dear friends, the Gospel of our God—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—makes it clear that there is nothing that could deter Him from saving those He has chosen. The devil, the world, and our own flesh couldn’t stop God from carrying out His promises to send a Savior, nor stop Him from working faith in our hearts. Therefore, may our lives of service give thanks and praise for the forgiveness, eternal life, and salvation that Jesus has graciously given to us, for the prayers He answers, and for the comfort His abiding presence gives us, because God promises the impossible that brings us life. Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.