Unilateral Promise

Scott Wall

Nov 9

Written By Kevin Borst

Sunday, November 9, 2025

Scriptures: Genesis 15

Summary: In the fourth sermon of our series, Big Promises, Small Steps, Scott examines God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 15. Here, Scott says we find an aging Abraham whose expresses fears, questioning, and eventual trust in God’s promises. Scott emphasizes that faith often forms in struggle, not certainty. He argues that Abraham’s interaction with God is not blind obedience but a deeply human dialogue, modelling a faith that wrestles and discerns through the material realities of life. Scott encourages us that God's covenant is upheld by divine faithfulness, not human perfection. Finally, Scott invites us to, like Abraham, recognize signs of grace in our everyday life.
Base of Fear: Genesis 15 opens with God telling Abraham not to be afraid, revealing Abraham's deep anxiety about his legacy and future. Scott emphasizes that fear often arises from uncertainty, perceived failure, or the sense that time is running out. However, these emotions are met with God’s reassurance.
Where Faith Forms: Abraham responds to God's reassurance with honest questioning. Scott shows how dynamic dialogue with God is faith made manifest, in contrast to “faith by rote” or “blind acceptance.” Scott highlights that true faith takes shape in wrestling with God, and that questioning is not a threat to faith but a part of its formation.
Ways Forward: When God reiterates the promise, Abraham suddenly trusts. This trust, Scott argues emerges through “sacramental discernment”—finding divine presence in the physical and ordinary, like the stars, offering a way forward. He emphasizes that even without miraculous signs, small moments in daily life can guide us toward hope and trust.
A Sure Sign: God makes a unilateral covenant with Abraham, symbolized by God alone passing through the sacrificial pieces. Scott explains how this underscores that divine promises rest on God’s faithfulness, not our human ability, and invites us to live with trust in a future that may extend beyond our own lives.
Community is shaped by the conversations we share. These questions and reflections are a tool to help you meaningfully engage with the themes of this week's teaching.
Connect: Part of Scott’s message focusses on the ways that our physical surroundings and experiences can help us reckon with God’s promises in a way that allows us to take the first steps forward.
Q: If you feel like sharing, has there been a time in your life where the natural world helped you think through
Share: Share your thoughts about Abraham talking back to God. Abraham encounters God a number of times throughout Genesis and Scott pointed out that although can certainly be understood as simply a literary function of dialogue in the text, it also offers a significant point for spiritual reflection. There’s a dynamic aspect to Abraham’s faith in God.

Q: How might comfortably bringing your questions and frustrations to God in prayer alter the way you view your role in God’s work in the world?
Reflect: Engage with this idea of faith being the place between God’s big promises and our next steps. Abraham, Scott argues, sits in this gap—bringing his fears and questions to God. Consider Scott’s words,
“The text tells us that Abraham trusted God, and then it goes on to say that God promises Abraham the land he’s standing on as he’s looking up at the sky.
And Abraham responds to that promise with another question. He asks how he’s supposed to know if this is true.
Which, I’ll just reiterate, illustrates how “faith” isn’t a static reality in our lives. This story literally embodies the gap that’s often there between big promises and next steps. That’s what the story’s about.”
Q: What does this type of faith look like to you? Is it something you’re familiar with?
Engage: Engage with this idea of “sacramental discernment”. How might you discern your small steps from God’s big promises through ordinary, tangible, experiences—like Abraham pondering the stars. Reflect on the following quote,
“Then this story tells us that God appears to [Abraham] in a vision.
And that later the word of the Lord comes to him like it would to the prophets.
And then it says that God walks him outside and tells him to look up at the stars to catch glimpse of his future.
And to be frank, all of this feels mythic and inaccessible, given that I haven’t had visions or encounters like this.
It can feel like the model being described for how to receive and trust divine direction is obscured, maybe even impractical.
And this is why I love how scholar Walter Brueggeman points to how this episode isn’t an account of how God offers a sign or a miraculous proof to Abraham when he walks outside and sees the vaulted heavens above him.
No, Brueggeman argues, this is an example of how we all find our way, using what he calls ‘sacramental discernment.’
And what does he mean by this?
Well, he’s referring to how Abraham’s trust in God seems to emerge from his ability to discern the connection between “the concrete visible”—the night sky —and what he believes to be divine promise—his extended family.
Said differently, Abraham shows us how the elements of our material world— where you rest, eat, and work—that these can guide our small steps toward renewal.
That sacramentally, the physical and geographical elements of your life hold the signposts and markers of grace you need to move forward.”
Q: What thoughts do you have about this quote?
Take away: Scott modelled it a bit for us already, so if you remember it during your week, try to take stock of the physical, tangible, concrete elements in your world (the places where you rest, eat, and work) and the ways they might be markers of grace in your life—offering you a way to move forward.
Prayer from the sermon:
God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob,
To you our hearts are open and all desire known.
And it’s from this place of being seen that we pray today, bringing our whole selves into this moment.
Which is why we pause and we ask for grace to sense the ways that you continue your faithful work in us.
We ask for your peace to come and still the frenzy of our worry and our distress.
And we ask that, as we turn again to ancient words, to unfamiliar images, to these deeply human characters, that your spirit would come and remind us of the ways you inhabit our world.
The ways you’re present in our story—faithful to a thousand generations—as the scriptures say.
We ask this in the name of Christ, who is our hope.
Amen.
CALL TO WORSHIP Psalm 100
MUSIC Curated by Curt M.
CAIN - Jesus Lifted Me
Brooke Ligertwood - Ancient Gates
Commons Church - Restore My Soul
Brooke Ligertwood - Desert Song

PRAYER FOR PEACE
Written by Bobbi Salkeld

All over the world, in times past and present, there have been struggles for power and justice.
In peace and in war, God, you are near.
We know that there are countless women and men who have paid for that struggle with their bodies and lives.

We do our best to remember those who were and are forever changed by violence, trauma, and death due to conflict and struggle.
We lament the abuse of power, the disruption of community, and the fear of the other that tramples the vulnerable and ignores the cry for peace.
In this moment of silence, we remember and lament together.

[moment of silence]
And now, we consider how we might take action to work for peace.

If we have power, Jesus, show us how to share it.
If we have peace, Jesus, show us how to uphold it.
If we have resources, Jesus, show us how to share them.
Together Lord we pray for peace, Amen.

SERIES BUMPER
Big Promises Small Steps