Other Scripture used:
Genesis 15:1-6
Hebrews 11:1-3(4-7)8-16
Luke 12:32-40
Psalm 33 or 33:12-15, 18-22
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my redeemer. Amen. (Psalm 19:14)
We all have it. Some more than others. Some people want more of it, while others try to deny having any of it at all. We rely on it to get us through each day, and it’s our key to eternal life.
Faith.
We have faith in our grain manufacturers, that our morning cereal is really made from the grain they claim to use, whether it’s wheat, rice, corn, or bran.
We have faith that our car batteries will provide electricity to our starters to ignite our engines so we can drive where we need to go.
We have faith that our world really exists and is not just an illusion. We have faith in knowledge and in science.
Even atheists have faith. They just don’t like using the word.
And some of us have faith in God.
There’s a book by Norman Geisler, Frank Turek, and David Limbaugh called I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. In order to believe sincerely, or in other words “have faith in the idea,” that God does not exist, we need to suspend belief in so many things that make sense to us. Our modern university system adds to the problem by stipulating that all beliefs are true and equal. The authors remind us that the term “university” is a composite formed by the words “unity” and “diversity.”
Students at a university are supposed to be guided in their “quest to find unity in diversity — namely, how all the diverse fields of knowledge (the arts, philosophy, the physical sciences, mathematics, etc.) fit together to provide a unified picture of life. … Instead of universities, we now have pluraversities, institutions that deem every viewpoint, no matter how ridiculous, just as valid as any other — that is, except the viewpoint that just one religion or worldview could be true.” (Page 19)
I remember a few years ago, when I was stationed at Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, some of the students had designed and created a satellite that was launched during one of the space shuttle missions. I wrote an article about it, and while interviewing the professor in charge of the aerospace department I learned that all orbits decay eventually.
The satellite they created would circle the earth for about four or five years, and then fall toward earth, burning up as the earth’s gravity pulled it into our atmosphere.
If every orbits decays, that means our own orbit around the sun will eventually decay also. Scientists are watching that carefully though, and we don’t seem to be slowing down just yet.
But I began to think about another orbit. Electrons. Everything in the universe is made of atoms. An atom is like a miniature solar system. The core, or nucleus, is made of neutrons, which have no electrical charge, and protons, which have a positive charge. A number of electrons with a negative charge, matching the number of protons, orbit around the nucleus at the speed of light.
An atom should implode. Logically, the gravitational pull of an atom’s nucleus should cause the electron orbit to decay, destroying the atom. Yet all the atoms throughout the universe are still spinning freely, in direct violation of the law of orbital decay.
It’s much easier for me to believe in a creator who can control these kinds of things, than in some random chance of evolution holding all these atoms together by sheer luck. I just don’t have enough faith to be an atheist.
But I do have enough faith to trust God and take him at his word. Throughout the Old Testament, God told his prophets that he would redeem the faithful by sending a savior, a Messiah. The probability of more than 400 prophecies concerning the Messiah coming true in one person before A.D. 70 is astounding. Since one of the prophesies claims the Messiah will preach at the Temple, the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem puts a time limit of A.D. 70 on the arrival of the Messiah.
That Messiah is Jesus. He suffered, died, and rose from the dead, atoning for our sins, paying our penalty so we wouldn’t have to pay it ourselves. But that’s just part of it. That saves us from punishment, but doesn’t bring us into paradise.
We focus on his 3 days of death, but it was his 33 years of righteous life that saves us. His righteousness is imputed to us, and we are declared righteous before the Father and welcomed into his heaven. Our faith in Jesus is two-fold, from eternal death, and for eternal life.
Many people claim that their faith is a personal matter, not public. So it’s OK to tear down the symbols of our faith, like a cross on Mt. Soledad, or removing a small cross from the official seal of Los Angeles, while leaving a large image of the goddess Pomona intact — a pagan image of the Roman goddess of fruit trees and orchards is OK, but a small cross apparently violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment.
Faith is not personal. Faith requires an external outcome. The actions of Jesus are recorded in the Gospels, not his innermost personal thoughts on his faith. Jesus did not consider faith to be a personal matter. He expects action from us as a result of our faith. His parables describe people’s behavior, not their thoughts or quiet reflections.
Jesus went around healing the sick, feeding the hungry, reaching out to those who were suffering. He didn’t just go to the synagogue once a week and keep his religion to himself, did he? Of course not!
Many people, including clergy, use Paul’s statements that we’re saved by faith and not works to argue that any behavior, sinful or not, is OK because our behavior is what we do not what we believe. Martin Luther despised the Book of James because he felt it focused on deeds.
But faith in Jesus results in our receiving spiritual gifts through the Holy Spirit, which results in a change in our behavior. We don’t all become St. Francis or Mother Teresa, but we become better Austins or Marys or Helens or Lilys than we were before.
Our actions display our faith to the world. Abraham’s faith resulted in his external display of trust in God when he was willing to sacrifice his own son, which was a foreshadowing of God’s own sacrifice to come centuries later. Noah’s faith in God resulted in accepting the ridicule of everyone else while he continued doing the work God wanted him to do.
But doing things in faith is much different from doing things for faith. Abraham did not bring his son up the mountain to sacrifice him in the hope of getting more faith; and Noah did not build an ark to get God’s attention. Faith causes works; works don’t cause faith.
We need to understand that the Holy Spirit has a one-way valve. Works do not cause faith any more than perfume causes flowers. It just doesn’t go in that direction.
When we have faith, we become willing to listen to God’s voice in our lives, and do the things he wants us to do, even when they don’t seem to make sense.
Last Sunday, around 4 p.m., I noticed a lake near Lake Murray Blvd. I guess it’s Lake Murray, but since Orange St. doesn’t have any oranges on it, I don’t take anything for granted.
I decided to walk along the paved bicycle and jogging road about 30 feet from the edge of the lake. I walked about a half mile, enjoying the quite solitude and conversing with God — thanking him for the various aspects of the scenery and the beautiful day.
As I walked by toward where I’d parked, the scripture verse “Cast your bread upon the water” kept popping into my head. Knowing that I had no bread, and that the water was about 30 feet away through dirt and shrubs, I kept on my path. The words got stronger, and I finally decided to walk toward the water, thinking that since “cast your bread on the water” was a metaphor in Ecclesiastes 11, maybe I’m supposed to just look out on the water.
When I was about three steps from the water’s edge, I looked down and saw some crumbled pieces of bread at my feet. As I looked back out on the water, I saw some ducks floating 50 or 60 yards away. So I cast my newfound bread on the water, expecting the ducks to swim over and feed on it.
Nothing. No reaction from the ducks at all. They continued floating in place, completely oblivious to the culinary delight floating a few feet from the shoreline. So I thought, “This is worthless. Thanks a lot, God. I ‘cast my bread upon the waters’ and couldn’t even get a reaction from hungry ducks. Way to build up my ego.”
Suddenly, dozens of plopping sounds came from the water, and it looked like someone was throwing rocks in the water in front of me. But there was no one around, and I didn’t see any rocks hitting the water. Something was making the water react that way though.
So I looked closer, and saw that a large school of almost transparent fish were popping up to the surface of the water, and grabbing the pieces of bread. I thought it was a weird time of day for fish to be in a feeding frenzy, since all the fishermen I know leave for the lakes way before sunrise.
It was an awe-inspiring and unexpected experience for me. God had treated me to a wonderful result of listening to him and following his will.
Abraham obeyed God, even when he didn’t know how God would fulfill his promises. Remember, Abraham and Sarah were old enough in that culture to be great-great-great-great grandparents, and God promised they would have a huge family, starting with their first-born child a few years down the line.
Most people their age already had a clan with five generations of free labor to work the fields and tend the livestock, but Abraham had none of that. And God promised to give him more descendants than there are stars in the sky.
And God’s promise finally arrived in Isaac, Abraham and Sarah’s son.
After raising the boy to almost adolescence, Abraham is told by God to sacrifice Isaac. The only event in Abraham’s life that we or Paul knew about that demonstrated Abraham’s total faith in the Lord and obedience to his will is Abraham’s action regarding the sacrifice of his only son.
Without Abraham’s action, we have no example of faithful obedience to follow. If Noah had not obeyed God, and built an ark, God could have allowed him and his family to tread water for the duration, but that would show us God’s benevolence, not Noah’s faith.
We can only see someone’s faith through their actions. When they cast their bread upon the waters in faith, the results are often unexpected. Without their actions though, those results would not occur. And while our works don’t cause faith, they do reinforce it for us.
God could have caused a strong gust of wind to blow those pieces of bread into the lake for the fish to eat. But he didn’t. He chose to have me do it. He also knew that I would delay responding to his call and wouldn’t go immediately to the edge of the water. I’d keep walking about 60 feet or so before finally turning toward the shoreline and walking where he wanted.
Faith is not some intellectual agreement to doctrine, or blind optimism, our believing something despite evidence to the contrary. True and holy faith is just confident obedience to God’s will instead of our own, regardless of the situation and circumstances.
Corrie ten Boom was a courageous Dutch woman who was interned in a Nazi prison camp during World War II because her family helped to hide Jewish people from the Gestapo. During her imprisonment, Corrie endured some of the worst degradation a person can experience. Her sister, Betsy, died in the camps. But through all her suffering, Corrie never lost her faith in God. She defined faith as:
F antastic
A dventuring
I n
T rusting
H im
(Richard Burkey)
Sometimes our circumstances seem to make faith more challenging for us. It’s a lot easier to have faith when everyone supports what you’re doing. When our circumstances and surroundings are against, maintaining our faith get more difficult.
“The 1989 Armenian earthquake needed only four minutes to flatten the nation and kill thirty thousand people. Moments after that deadly tremor ceased, a father raced to an elementary school to save his son. When he arrived, he saw that the building had been leveled. Looking at the mass of stones and rubble, he remembered a promise he had made to his child: “No matter what happens, I’ll always be there for you.”
Driven by his own promise, he found the area closest to his son’s room and began to pull back the rocks. Other parents arrived and began sobbing for their children.
“It’s too late,” they told the man. “You know they are dead. You can’t help.” Even a police officer encouraged him to give up.
But the father refused. For eight hours, then sixteen, then thirty-two, thirty-six hours he dug. His hands were raw and his energy gone, but he refused to quit. Finally, after thirty-eight wrenching hours, he pulled back a boulder and heard his son’s voice.
He called his boy’s name, “Arman! Arman!” And a voice answered him, “Dad, it’s me!” Then the boy added these priceless words, “I told the other kids not to worry. I told them if you were alive, you’d save me, and when you saved me, they’d be saved, too. Because you promised, ‘No matter what, I’ll always be there for you.’””
(Dennis Lawrence)
Like Arman, we can have total faith in Christ’s promise to come rescue us from this world. We don’t know when he will arrive, just as Arman didn’t know when his dad would arrive, but we know he will come for us.
And we also know that we can share our faith with others, because the joy those other children felt at their salvation outweighed any sadness Arman may have felt while they criticized him for his unwavering faith in his father.
Arman believed his father, he had faith in him; and Arman shared that faith with his friends. Jesus also tells us that he will always be there for us in Matthew’s Gospel (28:20).
Warren Weirsbe points out that our holy faith in God works quite simply. “God speaks and we hear His Word. We trust His Word and act on it no matter what the circumstances are or what the consequences may be. The circumstances may be impossible, and the consequences frightening and unknown; but we obey God’s Word just the same and believe Him to do what is right and what is best.”
H.L. Mencken was a well-known, and cynical, editor. He described faith as “illogical belief in the occurrence of the impossible.”
Faith is not a feeling or emotion that we create. It’s our total response to what God has revealed in His Word. It’s our obedience to God.
It’s the light that shines forth from within us that allows others to see Jesus in everything we do.
It is the hope for a fallen and sinful world; we are a life ring for a world drowning in a sea of self indulgence and despair. By our faith, our obedience to God, we are the means by which they may see Jesus.
If we really have faith in Jesus, we can’t help but become his disciples and follow him. If we live as Jesus lived and do what Jesus did, the world will see Jesus in our actions. Our faith in Christ will lead others to have faith in Christ themselves. When you think about it, that may well be the most important role of a disciple.
Amen.
