[There is no video of the service for 6/11; the text of the sermon follows.]

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Have you ever wondered about that saying, “You can’t have your cake and eat it too?” Obviously, in one sense, you have to have the cake in order to eat it. But the saying reminds us that once we’ve eaten it, we no longer have it. We cannot both keep it in front of us and eat it. It is one or the other: you can eat it, but then it’s gone. Or you can leave it sitting on the table in front of you, but then you don’t get to eat it.

Paul is telling us that we cannot have our salvation cake and eat it too. We cannot earn our salvation and have it given to us. It is one or the other: either we can and must observe the law perfectly in order to receive what God promises us, in order to inherit eternal life; or it is a free gift promised by God, which we receive purely by faith.

God gave Abraham a promise, that all the nations of the whole world would be blessed through him. God would make Abraham the father of many nations (that’s what his name means), who would be blessed because they would all be God’s people. Abraham’s descendants would be like the number of stars in the sky, or the number of grains of sand on the shore. And those descendants would be the heirs of the promise God made to Abraham: they would be the ones to receive what God handed down to them through Abraham and his family line.

But Abraham could not see how that would work. At the time God made the promise, and for many years afterward, Abraham did not have the son whom God had promised. He couldn’t have many descendants if he didn’t even have one. And he couldn’t have the promise cake and eat it too. He and Sarah tried their own way to make God’s promise happen, to work it out for themselves. But God said, no, Ishmael, the son of Hagar, would not be the son through whom God would keep His promise. Abraham would not be able to work to make the promise happen and receive it as a promise.

This tells us something about God’s promises. They come to and through us, but they are not our work. Abraham was, Paul says, “as good as dead.” And Sarah was too, because she was barren. Dead things do not do any work. Neither Abraham’s body nor Sarah’s body could do the work to produce the promised son. Only God could do it, and He did it only according to His merciful gift, not because of anything Abraham or Sarah did. God’s promise brought life out of death twice: first from Abraham and Sarah’s old and barren bodies, when He gave them Isaac their son. And second from the altar, when God stopped the sacrifice of Isaac and provided a ram instead.

This is how God’s promises worked for Abraham and Sarah, and it is how they work for us. Apart from Jesus, He says, we can do nothing. Not do just a little, and God will do the rest. Not do half and God will do the other half. Not that God will give us a little grace to get us going and then we can work with that to keep getting more grace. No, apart from Jesus we can do nothing. And that does not mean that once we believe in Jesus, we will then be able to work on our own to do more. It is, Jesus says, that He is the vine and we are the branches. Branches only grow from the vine. They only live from the vine. They only bear fruit from the vine. We cannot have our cake of grace and also eat it by works. It’s all or nothing. Jesus or nothing.

We know we’re saved by grace alone through faith, so it’s easy to kick works out of the front door. But so often we let works get in through the back door. Where do we put our trust? How do we judge others? How do we know if we’re really Christians? Is it in and by Jesus, or something else? Which is another way of asking, how do you become an heir? Can you work your way into a family and get the inheritance? Maybe some have done so in human families, but if so, it is because they are then treated as family. In God’s family, though, there is only one Son and He is the only heir. He is the eternal Son, as well as the only obedient one. Since we can’t become Jesus, we can’t work your way into His inheritance. The ones who tried, according to Jesus’ parable, killed Him.

We can’t become the living Jesus because we are dead in ourselves. And dead things do not do any work. But God brings life out of what is dead: first, when He gives the living and eternal Son into the womb of a virgin; and second when He raises that same Jesus from the dead. And then He puts us into Jesus’ death and resurrection by baptism, and that’s how He raises us up from the death of sin. It is by faith in His promise, not by doing enough. Jesus was delivered for our trespasses and raised for our justification. Since we’re talking salvation, that’s as good as it gets for us. Because otherwise, we would always have the doubt in our minds about whether we could eat the cake and still save a little for ourselves. Maybe God still requires something of you in order to be saved, or for you to stay saved. Or maybe we need to finish what He started in Jesus, either by working to be more and more like Jesus, or by following His example so that we could make ourselves worthy heirs of the Father of Jesus. But how much like Jesus do we have to be, and have we been? How closely do we have to follow the example of Jesus, and have we done so?

God wants no doubt in Abraham’s, Sarah’s, or our minds about whether we are going to inherit eternal life. This is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring. God makes a promise and keeps it in Jesus, and He gives it to us. And so we are Abraham’s offspring, because we believe God’s promise, as Abraham believed. God raised Jesus from the dead, and He counts us righteous because of Him. It’s not nothing; it’s everything! And He gives us Himself, the whole cake, to eat and rejoice. But this cake does not get used up in the eating. It is for all people everywhere, and for you and for me. So faith receives what the law can only demand, and where there is faith in Jesus, there is no more transgression. There is no more condemnation for us who are Christ Jesus, alive and well, waiting for the full inheritance to be revealed.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7, ESV). Amen.

— Pr. Timothy Winterstein, 5/31/23