What is Sunday Sermon? · All sermons
Not Knowing Whither He Went
Sunday, August 9, 2026 — Proper 14, Year C
By Shawn P. Cosner, J.D.
Last week in Luke a man had a good year. His barns would not hold it, so he built bigger ones and told his soul to rest. God called him a fool and took his soul that night. Keep that man in the corner of your eye.
Now watch another old man, folding up his tent. Seventy-five years old. Settled, landed, done moving. And a voice tells him to leave.
Get thee out — leave the country, the kindred, the father's house. Go to a land, and the sentence stops right where you need it to keep going. Which land? God does not say. That I will shew thee. Later. After you go.
"Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee:" — Genesis 12:1 (KJV)
He went. Hebrews tells you how.
"By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went." — Hebrews 11:8 (KJV)
Read the order of the words. He obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. Obeyed first. Knew nothing second. He trusted, and he started walking, and the road was his own two feet in motion.
Hebrews defined it one verse earlier.
"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." — Hebrews 11:1 (KJV)
Substance. Not a mood. Not a warm feeling you get in a good service. Substance is what a builder means when he asks what a beam is made of. Faith is the substance of things hoped for — the floor under your feet before the lights come on in the room. The ground you stand on before you can see the ground.
You want the route first. You will not back out of the driveway until the blue line has drawn the whole way there. You carry that habit into your walk with God. He calls a man out with no forwarding address, and you want a printed itinerary before you will tithe, before you will forgive the one who never said sorry, before you will say the hard true thing to your own son.
This is not a scolding. It is a diagnosis. You have made faith conditional on sight — I will obey once I can see it works out. That is the one thing Hebrews just told you faith is not. Here is the split you live in: you believe that God is — so do the demons, and they tremble. What you do not believe, down where you decide things, is that he rewards the ones who go. Sight is sight. Faith is what you have when the ground is not visible and you put your weight down anyway.
Watch what Abraham was actually after.
"By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." — Hebrews 11:9-10 (KJV)
He lived in a tent, in a country that was not his, on purpose. He did it with his eye fixed on an address no realtor could show him. A city which hath foundations. He gave up the address for the promise.
Now turn it over, because you have it backwards. You think the ground you can see is the safe ground and the unseen is the risk. It is the other way around. The visible ground is exactly the ground that gives way. The job gets cut in the fall. The health fails on a Tuesday with no warning. Everything you can put your eyes on is on its way to being taken from you. The one thing that cannot be taken is the country you have never seen.
The people Hebrews praises knew it.
"These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth." — Hebrews 11:13 (KJV)
Strangers and pilgrims on the earth. They confessed it. They did not pretend the tent was a house. They did not decorate the exile until it felt like home. They said plainly: this is not the country, we are passing through — and then they kept walking. A confession that does not slow the feet down. That is the whole thing.
And God meets that kind of walking with something staggering.
"But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city." — Hebrews 11:16 (KJV)
God is not ashamed to be called their God. Men who owned nothing but a promise, who died still waiting, who never held the deed — God ties his own name to them and calls it no shame. He would rather be the God of the ones still walking in the dark than of the ones who stayed home where they could see.
Strip the demand for the whole route down to the bottom and you find fear. Fear that God will not come through. Fear that if you cannot see it, it is not there. The fool built his bigger barns out of that same fear — a man does not wall up his grain against a world he trusts — and called it wisdom. You call your locks the same thing. It is fear wearing the coat of prudence. And Jesus knows the flock he speaks to.
"Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." — Luke 12:32 (KJV)
Fear not, little flock. Jesus does not answer the fear with a map; he answers it with a Father. It is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. The giving of it is already settled before you take one step toward it. You are not walking to earn the country. You are walking home to one already deeded to you.
And while you wait, he tells you how to stand.
"Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning;" — Luke 12:35 (KJV)
Loins girded. Lights burning. Dressed for a master who comes at an hour you were never given. That is the posture of the pilgrim who confessed he was a stranger here — a pilgrim travels light because he is going somewhere. You cannot gird your loins and hold your barns in the same hands. Faith is staying dressed for an arrival time nobody ever handed you.
And still you wait — this time to feel clean enough to come. You are waiting to feel forgiven before you will act forgiven. Isaiah's God turns it around.
"Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil;" — Isaiah 1:16 (KJV)
"Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." — Isaiah 1:18 (KJV)
Come now. Before the feeling. Wash, and obey, and the scarlet goes white in the doing, not in the waiting. God says come now, and the washing happens in his hands, not in yours. You have been standing outside a door that was never locked, waiting to feel worthy to knock.
So take the step you have been pricing out. You have run the numbers for a year, waiting for a guarantee that is never coming — because a guarantee would make it sight, and God asked you for faith. Abraham never held the land in his lifetime. He died in a tent, holding a promise, and Hebrews calls that a good report. The city has foundations. God is not ashamed to be called your God. Go out. You do not have to know whither. You have only to know whom.
Amen.
He went out, not knowing whither he went.
Lord, I have been waiting for the whole route before I would take the first step. You know what I have been pricing out, running the numbers on for a year, calling it wisdom when it was fear. I have wanted to see the ground before I would stand on it. Teach me the older way — the way of the man who obeyed, and then went out, not knowing whither he went. I am a stranger here, and I have spent too long decorating the exile to feel like home. Wash me, though my sins be as scarlet. Set my lights burning. Give me faith enough to move before I can see, because you have already been pleased to give me the kingdom. I do not have to know whither. Let it be enough to know you. Amen.
What is the one step you have been pricing out for a year, waiting on a guarantee God never promised — and what would it cost to take it this week, not knowing whither?
The charge committed to you for the week ahead. Carry it through. Return Sunday.
This week the charge is one step taken in the dark. Name the single act of obedience you have been withholding until the proof comes in — the tithe, the apology, the hard true sentence, the door you have been afraid to walk through — and take it this week before you can see how it turns out. Not the whole route. One step. And watch for the tell: the moment you catch yourself saying once I can see that it works, or when it finally makes sense, the demand for sight has you again, and the answer is not more information — it is your own two feet in motion. Abraham obeyed, and then he went out, not knowing whither. The knowing came after the going. It always does.
Each night this week, before you fall asleep, with your evening prayer or as you lay in bed, take five quiet minutes. Focus only on THAT day. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Bring the charge into your prayer. Ask: where did I keep it? Where did I miss it? Confess what is honest. Receive what is mercy. Then rest.
On Saturday night, before sleep, judge yourself as you would be judged. Look back across the seven nights. Did you pass the test? Or did the same failing return, day after day, with no change? This is not a place to feel horrible. This is a place to recognize what is real. The Lord knows already. The work is not perfection. The work is RECOGNITION. See where you stand. See where mercy was given. Then bring it all into Sunday. Not as shame, but as the thing that was committed unto thee. Kept, or to be kept again.
Get the Sunday Sermon
Anchored to the same scripture the global church reads that week. Written in my own voice. Free, forever. One email Sunday morning. Unsubscribe in one tap.
No tracking pixels. No sharing your email. One-tap unsubscribe.