Hebrews 11:13-16 “These all died in faith, although they had not received the things that were promised. But they saw them from a distance and greeted them, and confessed that they were foreigners and temporary residents on the earth. Now those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they were thinking about where they came from, they would have had an opportunity to return. But now they desire a better place–a heavenly one.”

I once spent a day with a man visiting the United States from China. We talked a little about our countries and their differences. “Here is one difference between Chinese people and Americans,” he said. “You Americans love your country.” He wasn’t saying that he hated his own country. But he recognized in Americans a pride and patriotism that citizens of China didn’t have for their own.

Maybe we should be careful of how attached we become. When the writer of Hebrews says, “these all died in faith,” he is not speaking only of Abraham and his family, who traveled around like people who had no country. He also means the earlier believers he mentioned, like Noah, whose entire world was destroyed by a flood, or Abel, who was killed by his own brother for offering God a sincere and heartfelt sacrifice. These all “confessed that they were foreigners and temporary residents on earth.” Faith teaches us not to put too much value on the place where we live now. We need to remember that “God and country” doesn’t put those things on equal footing. God comes first, first by a longshot. “Country” only limps along, and only for a time.

Faith values the homeland to come. “Now those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they were thinking about where they came from, they would have had an opportunity to return. But now they desire a better place–a heavenly one.” If you consider yourself a foreigner here, that implies a citizenship somewhere else. There is another place where the culture suits you better. There is another country where the people are all your own kind of people. There is a better homeland that truly feels like home. It goes by the name of “heaven.”

We should take a moment to note that this is where Abraham and Sarah’s journey was truly leading all along. This is why the Lord was moving them around. He was leading them away from families that practiced idolatry to keep them away from false religion in them. He kept moving them around as nomads in Canaan, the “Promised Land,” so that they wouldn’t get comfortable with the false faiths practiced there as well. He brought them to this place, however, because it would be the land in which the Savior lived and died, the Savior who descended from the miracle baby God had given them. In ways they could not fully understand, all these changes and experiences in life were God’s way of preparing the heavenly homeland they desired and making sure they made it there themselves. “Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.”

Somehow, someway, that’s the story behind our lives, too. We may look like simple people living simple lives. But by faith each twist and turn, every new chapter or strange episode, takes us further down the path that leads us home. Believe it.

Hebrews 11:11-12 “By faith even Sarah herself, when she was unable to have children, received power to conceive offspring, even though she was past the age, since she considered that the who one had promised was faithful. Therefore from one man–in fact, from one as good as dead–came offspring as numerous as the stars of the sky and as innumerable as the grains of sand along the seashore.”

At the ages of 99 and 89 respectively, Abraham and Sarah still had no children. Throughout their lives, they needed reassurances that they would have a child. Neither Abraham nor Sarah were physically capable of becoming parents by the time they reached this age. The natural effects of aging had ended that hope by all appearances.

But God had given them a promise. And by faith they held onto that promise. And their faith received God’s gift. When Abraham was 100, ninety-year-old Sarah gave birth to Isaac. Through him, their family eventually became an entire nation.

Imagine that you were a royal child, born into wealth, and power, and privilege. Literally nothing was beyond your reach if you needed it. How would your life change?

Imagine that you lived under the constant watch and protection of a person with unmatched super powers. Super-strength, speed, intelligence, ability to bend and suspend the laws of nature–Your unbeatable body guard had no equal on earth. Might you worry less and venture more?

Imagine that you were one end of a relationship in which you were loved with an infinite love. This love knew no limits, no conditions, no end. It was so deep, so intense that nothing you did could make it stop, and no request was too much to ask of it. Would you feel more secure, and perhaps live more graciously and generously yourself?

Stop imagining. Start believing. It may not always be obvious to see, but this is your life, your situation, under the love and power of the God who gave up his only Son to save you. By faith in this God Abraham and Sarah received extraordinary gifts and lived extraordinary lives, though they themselves were very ordinary people. By faith we can do the same.

You see, faith not only changes our way of life. It changes the content of our lives as God pours his gifts into them. By faith you receive answers to your prayers. By faith you receive your daily bread. By faith he gives you wisdom for life’s challenges. By faith you continue to cling to the forgiveness of your sins, and the cross from which it comes, and the confidence that death is now a gateway to life that never ends. Faith may not bring you a miracle like Abraham and Sarah’s baby, but it still changes your life with gifts that bless us, body and soul.

Hebrews 11:8-9 “By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed and set out for a place that he was going to receive as an inheritance. He went out, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he stayed as a foreigner in the land of promise, living in tents as did Isaac and Jacob, coheirs of the same promise.” (CSB)

I hate moving. I hate the packaging and boxing, the lifting and stacking. I hate deciding what to throw and what to keep. I hate the way your stuff seems to multiply while you are packing it up, and a room never seems to get empty. I hate the idea of starting from scratch, and relearning everything in a new place.

I think that part of the reason I don’t like moving is because I like to be comfortable…too much so. I let myself become attached to things and places in a way that is not spiritually healthy. Like Lot’s wife, I want to look back and long for things that God says need to be left behind. “Do not love the world, neither the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him,” John writes. Moving makes me let it go, at least some part of it, and my sinful nature objects.

By faith, Abraham moved, and what a move it was. He moved his ranching operation five hundred miles across a desert without roads and without trucks. He packed up and moved even though he didn’t know where he would end up. God gave him no address to enter into his GPS. He didn’t tell him why the move was necessary. “Leave your country, your people, and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you,” he says in Genesis 12.

When Abraham finally arrived, what did he find? Have you seen pictures of the Holy Land? The man was leaving the area known today as the Fertile Crescent, some of the best farmland in the ancient world. He was leaving the area we call the Cradle of Civilization, a place with culture, technology, and refinement. He settled in a land of rocks and scrub and just enough grass to keep your sheep alive.

Abraham lived there on a camping trip that lasted the rest of his life, one hundred years of it, and then continued for two generations to follow. “By faith he stayed as a foreigner in the land of promise, living in tents as did Isaac and Jacob, coheirs of the same promise.” I like camping, but a week or two is usually enough. And Abraham wasn’t living in some thirty-foot RV with water and electrical hookups. He lived in tents, with hundreds and thousands of sheep and goats around him.

Abraham made all these changes, and he lived this life, without demanding God explain why he chose this place and life for him. There were no clear advantages in living here. It’s not as though this new life represented an obvious upgrade by earthly standards. Still, by faith he accepted and lived the life God chose for him.

Take a moment to look at your own life. I’ll bet that much of it seems hard to explain. The people you have buried, the injuries or sickness you have endured, the jobs you have had to work, the mistreatment you have suffered, the opportunities on which you had to pass, the sacrifices you have been forced to make, the battles you have had to fight–why? Why this life? Why trust God when so much seems wrong or out of place? Why accept the life he gives me, the life and place to which we have been called?

Why? “For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” Abraham had God’s promise. Abraham trusted God’s promise. And faith changed everything. The Lord promised him a future with foundations, a life with permanence. No one has that now. You can’t stop the clock and stand in the way of change. It will run you over.

God promised him a place, a city, the Lord had designed and built himself. It’s not like the place the Lord designed and built here, a world now spoiled and ruined by sin. It all works right all the time. It’s a life with God the way life was always meant to be. It’s a life God gives as a gift of his grace. By faith Abraham accepted…no, Abraham embraced the life God chose for him now because Abraham believed God’s promise that a perfect life would follow. Faith changed his life now because faith would change his life to come.

Jeremiah 23:28-29 “Let the prophet who has a dream tell his dream, but let the one who has my word speak it faithfully. For what has straw to do with grain? declares the Lord. Is not my word like fire, declares the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?”

Unless God’s word is preached faithfully, all the life-giving power is drained from it. The dry and empty straw which is left has no power to change people’s lives or eternities. To the degree that God’s word is not being spoken faithfully, it ceases to be God’s word.

But God’s word has real power. Like a hammer, it can break through even the stoniest heart. It can soften it, and make it humble, and loving, and useful again.

Like a fire God’s word can consume our wickedness, and purify us from our sins. It warms us with his promises of forgiveness and life in Jesus Christ. It makes us shine with the light of God’s love.

Doesn’t Jeremiah’s message help us to understand the proper Christian concern for faithfulness to God’s message? You are just as aware as I am that those who make a fuss about the purity of God’s word, as Jeremiah did here, are perceived as being narrow minded and self-righteous. When Christian people will tolerate no compromise with error, many are inclined to say, “You just think that you are better than everybody else.”

Maybe one place to start with such people would be confessing our sin. Yes, we have been guilty of thinking we are better at times. We have been sinfully prideful about the purity of God’s word, as though we could take the credit for it. We are imperfect people, and sometimes we are more concerned about our own “rightness” than we are about God’s reputation or the spiritual welfare of souls. For this I am ready to say, “I’m sorry.”

But in the end, we are not the issue. We are not better people. Concern for the truth about God is finally not about us, it is about him, and about the people whom he wants to save. If the truth about God in his law is diminished, then people will not know how much they need a Savior. If the truth about God in his Gospel is diminished, then people won’t be able to know him as their Savior.

When gross immorality is condoned as just an alternate life-style or a personal choice, people will fail to grasp God’s forgiveness for such sins. When God’s gifts of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are no longer perceived as gracious acts by which he promises forgiveness and life, but merely human acts of obedience, people will perceive God’s loving goodness and the faith-building power of his promises that much less. When we love God, love his Gospel, and love his people, we will care about the faithful preaching and teaching of his word as much as he does.

Don’t be afraid of what God’s word will do if we tell the whole truth. Let his fire burn. Let his hammer strike. Let hearts be touched by the full force of his word. Only good will follow.

Jeremiah 23:26-27 “How long will this continue in the hearts of these lying prophets, who prophesy the delusions of their own minds? They think the dreams they tell one another will make my people forget my name, just as their fathers forgot my name through Baal worship.”

God is concerned that people not forget his name. That does not mean that he fears that the words “God” or “Lord” or “Father” or “Savior” are somehow going to disappear from memory. God’s name is all that he has revealed about himself. His name is his reputation–everything that we know about him. It is the glorious and gracious reputation of God which is at stake when false prophets preach their false messages.

This makes false preaching and teaching a sin against the Second Commandment: “Do not misuse the name of the Lord your God” (or “Do not take it in vain”). The Catechism points out that doing so not only involves cursing and swearing. It is also a matter of lying and deceiving by the use of God’s name. This leads people to see him as a different kind of God.

Unless God’s law is preached with a hard edge that convicts us of our own sins, we lose sight of the fact that the true God is a God who hates sin so much, he will not let a single sin go unpunished. If that happens, how will people appreciate the fact that every single sin was placed on Jesus’ shoulders and punished by his death on the cross?

This is how we know his greater reputation as the gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger, abounding in love, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin is more than empty words. It is proven in the life and death of Christ himself. How incredibly gracious God has been to me to sacrifice his own Son in payment for my sins!

Do you see that this not only affects God’s reputation, but the faith and salvation of human souls? God’s people are led to trust him when God leads them to understand how much they need a Savior. Then he leads them to see that he is their kind and loving Savior. This was just as true in Jeremiah’s day as it is for us today. Something infinitely precious was at stake if the prophets didn’t get the message right.

Jeremiah 23:25 “I have heard what the prophets say who prophesy lies in my name. They say, “I had a dream! I had a dream!”

It was bad enough that the rival prophets of Jeremiah’s day gave the people false comforts, and distorted the words of God. Worse yet, they did it all in “God’s name,” as though the Lord himself approved of their messages. What they were trying to pawn off as God’s own message was nothing more than their own dreams. It may have sounded good to the people. It may have been interesting, fun to listen to, even uplifting. But it wasn’t a message in which God was revealing himself. It wasn’t the message in which people could come to know who God is and what he demands or promises.

I realize that it’s not a popular thing to say, but such prophets are still around today. For many years I received a monthly mailing from an organization trying to foster good relations between various faiths and their houses of worship in my community. They sponsored some fine charitable activities and programs. Across the top of their letterhead was the Jewish star of David, the Christian cross, and the crescent moon of Islam. They put these and other faiths on the same footing. They believed that all religions are just different ways to the same God.

One year they sponsored an anti-violence Sunday. Among the sermon texts they suggested were some from the Quran, the Talmud, and Hindu Scriptures. It seems that the Christian churches which were members–and they were many–did not believe God wanted their Jewish, Muslim, or Hindu friends to convert. They didn’t believe the Christian Bible can make us any more certain of who God is or what he is like than these other religions could.

Perhaps a more subtle example of the thing Jeremiah was confronting takes place when law preaching loses its hard edge. Some preachers may be riveting speakers. They make you laugh. They make you cry. They tell entertaining stories. But they don’t call people to repentance. They make no attempt to convict people of their sins. If that is the case, what sense will a gospel of forgiveness make to anyone?

This is a danger for our own church, too. I once met a lady who left the Lutheran Church over 60 years earlier because her pastor would not preach repentance. When she noticed this, and asked him about it, he indicated that he knew on which side his bread was buttered. He told her that if he actually preached against the sins he knew were common, members of his church would leave.

I must admit that it is tempting to skip past a text like this one from Jeremiah. False teaching inside the Christian church is an uncomfortable and unpopular subject among Christians today. But the spiritual health of God’s people depends on becoming aware of the problem and able to recognize it. If we lose our ability to distinguish truth from falsehood, what will happen to our faith in God’s grace? We need preaching that isn’t afraid to identify popular sins and lead people to find forgiveness at the foot of the cross, not happy dreams that distract us from the real dangers to our souls.

Jeremiah 23:23-24 “Am I only a God nearby,’ declares the Lord, ‘and not a God far away? Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?’ declares the Lord. ‘Do not I fill heaven and earth?’ declares the Lord.”

True or false? People can know what God is like. Before we look at how Jeremiah helps us answer that question, perhaps we should take a moment to consider a more basic question: Is there a God at all? Does he really exist? How we answer that question will determine how we judge Jeremiah.

In this chapter, Jeremiah has some harsh words for other prophets who claimed to speak for the Lord. If God is just a figment of our imaginations, just the collective good ideas and sincere wishes of good people, then shame on Jeremiah for criticizing them. Why couldn’t their ideas be just as good as his? But if God really does exist–and we all agree that he does, I believe–then some things are true about him, and others are false. Then people shouldn’t say just anything they want about him.

But that seemed to be the way it was in Jeremiah’s day. The prophets that Jeremiah was criticizing were not the prophets of some pagan gods like Baal or Molech or Asherah. They were prophets who, like Jeremiah, claimed to be prophets of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob–the God who delivered his people from Egypt and promised to send them a Savior.

These prophets weren’t denying all the most important teachings of God’s word. They didn’t deny that God had promised to send his people the Messiah someday. They didn’t speak against the sacrifices at the temple, or the celebration of the important feasts.

But they did pick and choose which parts of God’s message to deliver, and they added something of their own. One of the most serious problems was their refusal to call the people to repent. They told them what they wanted to hear. Jeremiah warns in verses 16-17: “Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you…They keep saying to those who despise me, ‘The Lord says: You will have peace.’ And to all who follow the stubbornness of their hearts they say, ‘No harm will come to you.’”

You see, Judah had been through two “revivals” in the last hundred years under Kings Hezekiah and Josiah. Outwardly the people seemed much more religious, much more devout about going to the temple and worshiping the Lord.

But inwardly little had changed. The people still worshiped the false gods on the side. There was still a laundry list of sinful attitudes and behaviors which they cherished. Maybe these other prophets didn’t worship the false gods themselves. “But,” the prophets thought to themselves, “who are we to tell these very religious people that they were wrong?” Who were they to judge someone else, and tell him that what he was doing is a sin?

It seems that these prophets had forgotten what God is like. Maybe they themselves didn’t believe that anyone could be sure. That’s why God sent Jeremiah with these questions: “Am I only a God nearby,’ declares the Lord, ‘and not a God far away? Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?’ declares the Lord. ‘Do not I fill heaven and earth?’ declares the Lord.”

The point of each question is the same, isn’t it. Since God is everywhere, there is no place anyone can go to hide from him. People can hide their sins from others, but every time they sin, God is an eyewitness. He is right there with them. So prophets who claim to speak for him should not think that God is unreal, or somehow unaware of the message which they preach.

Can people really know what God is like? Yes! True! He reveals himself here, but this was nothing new. How he feels about sin, or the fact of his holy presence in all places at all times, was nothing new. He had revealed it in his word time and time again in the past. These things remain true today, and will continue without end.

Romans 4:14-16 “For if those who live by law are heirs, faith has no value and the promise is worthless, because the law brings wrath. And where there is no law there is no transgression. Therefore, the promise comes by faith…”

God’s law is good for the purposes he gave it. But if keeping God’s law was the only way to possess God’s promise, that would introduce some big problems.

The first problem would be this: “For if those who live by the law are heirs, faith has no value and the promise is worthless.” If God’s promises are something we possess through keeping the law, then we have lost the promise, and it does us no good for God to make it. If I said to my grandkids, “I will take you out for ice cream, but first you must solve this problem in quantum physics,” or “first you must dunk this basketball,” what would be the use? It would be a waste of my breath. The promise would be useless to them. My grandkids have their own gifts, but none can do anything like that.

If God were to say to us, “You can have my promises when you keep all my commandments,” He may as well just say, “You can all go to hell.” We don’t keep his law. That’s is just the reason that we need his promises of grace and forgiveness.

The second problem is this: far from bringing sinners like us closer to possessing God’s promises, the law produces the opposite: “…because law brings wrath.” The law itself isn’t a bad thing, but it doesn’t make for a happy relationship between God and man. People get mad at God because his law puts things off limits that they want. They get mad that he demands a perfect keeping of his law that they can’t achieve. Jesus said in the sermon on the mount: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Thomas Jefferson said, “That kind of God is a monster.” Unitarian minister William Channing said, “The God of the Bible is the kind of a God in whom we ought not to believe. We could not believe if we wanted to, and if we do we ought to be ashamed of ourselves.”

On the other side, our law-breaking makes God mad. In chapter one of this letter to the Romans, Paul had begun this whole discussion, “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men…” God’s wrath is not exactly what we hope to obtain.

Is that any less important for us to understand today than in the past? Is this any less practical for Christian faith and life? One popular Christian author would like to skip past this kind of theology and get right to the details of daily life. “I’m not called to…expound on deep theological doctrines or disputes that don’t touch where people live,” he says.

But doesn’t this touch us right at the source of Christian life? We can talk until we are blue in the face about good behavior, but what good will it do if we don’t understand its failure to bring us closer to God and his promises? We may as well try to teach people how to breathe in outer space without a space suit. That’s the problem with performance-based religion. The law lacks the power to enable us to claim and enjoy God’s promises.

If not the law, then what? Faith fits the bill: “Therefore, the promise comes by faith.”

A righteousness that comes by faith is a righteousness that starts outside of us. It is not an innocence, an absence of guilt, we produce. Then we would be back to keeping a law of some kind. It is something we receive. It begins outside of us.

Everything that I have ever received existed outside of me before I ever received it–gifts, money, applause, affection. The same is true of God’s gift of righteousness. Jesus produced it on the cross before I even existed. There, the forgiveness he purchased produced a sinless image of me that God gives as a gift. When God led you and me to faith, that sinless image became our very own. And with that gift comes every other promise he has made.

Only faith in Jesus’ performance—his perfection and sacrifice—can make us confident God’s promises belong to me.

Colossians 3:9-10 “Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self. You are being renewed in knowledge according to the image of your Creator.”

I want you to note a couple of things here that give us the confidence to slay our sins. First, note the tense of the verbs. You have put off the old self. You have put on the new self. That’s in the past, isn’t it. These are accomplished facts. You are not who you used to be. Your sinful nature died with Christ. You are a renewed, holy person God sees with him in heaven. You have been given power to live a different kind of life.

Someone has well said that we aren’t human doings, we are human beings. And the key to living the godly life we want to live is not so much in what we do, but in the new people God has made us to be by his grace. You are a new self.

Second, look at how that new self is described: “…being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.” You may remember that when God first made Adam and Eve, they were made in the image of God. Morally and spiritually, they were little copies of God. They didn’t look like him physically. They thought like he thought and wanted what he wanted. If there were such thing as a spiritual mirror that reflected what goes on in the soul, it would show Adam and Eve’s souls to look like the love and holiness of God himself.

As we slay our sin in repentance, as we believe the good news that God forgives us and decrees us his holy people, that is exactly what is happening to us. The Lord is making us into little spiritual and moral copies of himself, with a mind that works like his own. And that means we can live a new life.

Someone once told Yogi Berra about a Steve McQueen movie, to which Yogi replied with one of his famously obvious statements, “He must have made that before he died.” That would be right. Less obvious, perhaps, is that the Christian life does not begin until after we have died, died with Christ to sin and raised to a new life of faith. Then we can live like those who truly live in Christ.