Service Sunday June 7, 2026
HIGHLAND HILLS UNITED CHURCH
Minden, Ontario
All are Welcome!
Worship Leader: Rev. Max Ward
Music Director: Melissa Stephens
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Message: “By Faith!”
Listen to an audio recording of the Message below or read it at the bottom of this page.
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Sermon 2026 06 07
“By Faith!”
Genesis 12:1-9 & Romans 4:13-25
Gracious God, be with us today in this place, in the Scriptures and in our words.
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts praise your Holy name. Amen.
“God helps those who help themselves.”
I am not sure where this statement came from, but it was not the Bible.
It’s an expression that we all have used, myself included, but what does it mean?
Well, for some it means that God helps but only if we get things started.
If we believe something needs to be done, we have to start it.
Then God will pitch in and help.
For others it means that God helps but only if we take responsibility for following through.
So not only do we have to start something we have to make sure it gets finished.
God in a sense is just there for moral support.
And for a few it means God doesn’t really help us.
Oh, it may look like God has helped someone who completed a huge task.
But the reality is that they did it all themselves.
No matter which of the aforementioned understandings you have, the basic idea behind “God helps those who help themselves”, is that we humans are ultimately responsible for anything we accomplish.
This is what the world believes.
You know, in the church, we have “Creeds” or “Affirmations of Faith” that are our statements of belief.
Well, the world has a creed too.
It is the Creed of self-reliance:
It states: “I believe in the human ability to begin and complete anything.”
“I believe that my initiative is at the center of the universe.”
“I believe that the power of my intellect and my will are the greatest powers in the universe.”
“I believe in the human spirit, the human will, in me!”
In the church, we have saints who are people whose lives are living examples of our beliefs in practice.
The world has “saints” too, people like: Henry Ford, Donald Trump, Ted Rogers.
Henry Ford began with an idea in a small workshop and before he was finished the automobile, which had been a plaything of the rich, became commonplace.
Donald Trump, a man who has built a corporate empire on casinos and entertainment and now the President of the United States of America for the second time.
Ted Rogers began with one FM radio station and built the company into a multimedia company that serves over 20 million people today!
Plus, he owned the Toronto Blue Jays - World Series back to back winning baseball team.
These are self-made, self-starters, who demonstrate the worldly belief that God helps those who help themselves.
Yet the Bible paints a different picture for us.
It holds up for us the example of Abraham.
Who was Abraham?
The Bible tells us that he was an old man; very old by the average life expectancy in those days.
All he had done in life was follow his father to Haran, marry Sari and grow old with no children.
Abraham’s only accomplishment in life is that he sat there!
Abraham was not a self-starter.
He had done little or nothing worth noting.
He had lived and grown old.
It was God who got Abraham started.
God came and I imagine Abram was sitting on his front porch in his rocking chair when God said,
“Get Up! And go to a land that I will show you.”
Not only was Abraham not a self-starter he didn’t have the ability to finish the job he started.
What was the job you may ask?
Producing a holy nation of decedents for God.
He wasn’t able to produce descendants; he was too old.
Sarah his wife was barren too.
Abraham didn’t start the job, he couldn’t finish it without help and he didn’t finish it.
God had to intervene and it was over 500 years after Abraham’s death that the job was finished.
Abraham was given the job of making a nation of righteous people for God.
The Bible says that his faith was reckoned unto him as righteousness.
In other words, he wasn’t really righteous by God’s standards but because of his faith God decided to give him the righteousness he needed.
He didn’t even do that part by himself.
Abraham was not a self-starter or a self-made man, but I don’t want you to get the idea that he did nothing.
He may not have started or completed his journey to the promised land, but he did journey.
Abraham didn’t start himself, but he did respond when God called him to start.
Yet he did more than just go, he went in faith.
In faith, he believed in the promises God made to him even when God asked him to sacrifice his only son.
Which fortunately he didn’t have to do.
Paul emphasizes this point in his letter to the Romans.
He writes (Rom 4:18-22) “18.
In hope, he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations; as he had been told,
‘So shall your descendants be.’
“ God had told Abraham that his descendants would be like the stars in the sky, but that seemed hopeless.
Yet because he believed in God and God’s word, Abraham and Sarah hoped anyway.
“19. He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead because he was about a hundred years old, or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb.”
Abraham and Sarah were near death, how could a nation be born from them?
Most people would give up but their faith did not waver.
As Paul said, “20. No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, 21.
fully convinced that God was able to do what God had promised.”
In conclusion the Bible says, “22. That is why his faith was ‘reckoned to him as righteousness.’“
Abraham was not a self-made man; he was a God made man.
God did not make Abraham the father of a holy nation without Abraham’s consent or participation.
Abraham had to first put his faith in God to receive the promises God made to him.
Abraham is an example to us.
The world may say, “God helps those who help themselves” but Abraham proved that God helps those who cannot help themselves but who have faith.
The problem is that there is a part of us that believes that if we only try harder, we will succeed; that only we can help ourselves.
Even in the church, this is true.
A person feels called by God to do something.
If they fail, their first response is to say, “I should have tried harder.”
A church or ministry feels called of God to take on a project and it falls apart and they say, “We should have applied ourselves more.”
The evaluation is always “we should have raised more money” or “we should have recruited more workers,” or “we should have done more research,” or we...we...we...
Maybe the truth is that we should have prayed more or simply trusted God or that we should trust God that even though we have not succeeded, God is not finished yet.
We think that it is by our intelligence, our wealth, our creativity, or our will that things are accomplished.
Yet the Bible tells us, it is by faith that God’s promises come about.
Trust in the God who is able to make the impossible possible.
Oh yes, we may seem to not make the grade in the short run.
We may not even see the fulfillment of the plan God has stared with us, but if we trust, God will bring it to completion.
That is true about all things.
You cannot do anything worth doing by your own power.
We cannot do anything worth doing by our power.
That is true in every part of our lives.
In our personal, family, business and religious lives.
We must trust God for God’s promises of blessing to be realized.
Then why try anything?
We try because God calls us just as God called Abraham and Sarah.
When God calls, go in faith and your faith will be reckoned unto you as righteousness.
God’s promises will be fulfilled in and through your life.
God’s promises are not dependent upon our goodness or strength.
God’s promises are dependent upon the goodness and strength of God.
So, follow the example of Abraham and just do as the old hymn says, “trust and obey.”
Think about it,...
Trump Towers, made by the power of humanity, is built upon human will and it will be dust in a few hundred years.
Yet the people of God have been around for four thousand years.
I think I will choose to be a God-made man not a self-made man.
What about you?
Thanks be to God. Amen.
