Grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text for tonight’s proclamation is taken from Hebrews 11:3;
By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.
In the name of Jesus dear Christian friends, while looking at the Heroes of faith in Hebrews 11, one fact hit home, of all the members of the hall of fame of faith listed, one name seemed to be missing; mine. Where would I be placed within the halls of faith, if the author of Hebrews wrote this Epistle years after I was taken into heaven. Would I make the cut? Would I be mentioned at all? Then I thought about those mentioned already. What do each of the members of this group have in common? Are they without sin? No, for we know that they were all born in sin. What made them stand apart? Their faith? But I have faith, and as I will tell anyone, the amount of faith is not what saves. What saves a person is that faith exists at all, and that is faith in Christ and Him alone. So, even these giants of faith have something in common with you and I, a faith that was given to them, created in them, that saved them and will save us as we live it out. Tonight we focus in on a hero of faith that does not seemed to be emphasized as much those who follow, but without this hero, our faith and the faith of the others, would be useless. Tonight we focus in on the hero of creation, the creator Himself, God.
“It is impossible to explain the universe or anything about life as we know it without God.” This was a statement I bumped into while studying for this sermon. We can try to explain creation without God, but look at how the Old Testament begins, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Gen 1:1)”
The simple statement, that God created the heavens and the earth, is one of the most challenging ideas for anyone to understand. Think about the galaxy we live in; the galaxy is spinning at a speed of 490,000 miles an hour, however, even at that breakneck speed, our galaxy still needs 200 million years to make one rotation. And there are over one billion other galaxies just like ours in the universe.
God created all this. Some scientists say that the number of stars in creation is equal to all the grains of all the sands on all the beaches of the world. Yet this complex sea of spinning stars functions with remarkable order and efficiency. To say that the universe “just happened” or “evolved” requires, in my mind, more faith than to believe that God is behind these amazing statistics. God truly did create a wonderful universe.
My wife once told me that one of her students stated that the Bible proves that God created the world by the “Big Bang” theory. She asked him to prove that, and I was rather interested in the answer. I used to believe that God, in what ever fashion He felt necessary, created the world and everything in it, so the “Big Bang” theory and even a modified theory of evolution seemed to make sense to me.
Then I read Hebrews chapter 11, and I learned something fantastic about the first hero of faith listed. The Bible tells us, again, that God created all we see out of nothing. That’s what our text tells us, “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.”
There were no pre-existing materials for God to make anything out of. It happened, as Genesis tells us, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. ... And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. (1:1, 3)” The Psalmist also writes, “By the Word of the LORD were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of His mouth. (33:6)” Out of nothing, by His Word alone, all was created. All was good, very good, and blessed.
Why God is the #1 hero of faith? First, God created everything, out of nothing, by the power of His Word alone. Not by any of the Scientific methods and theories, but by the Word of God, as Scripture tells us. In all this creation, all God created was good, very good and blessed. But then trouble in paradise, Adam and Eve fell into sin and there needed to be another creation.
Yes, God could have started over, but God created our universe out of love. Almost every scientist has an opinion on the origin of the universe, but only the Bible shows God creating the earth out of His great love and giving all people a special place in it.
God did not need to create the universe; He chose to create it. Why? God is love, and love is best expressed toward something or someone else — so God created the world and people as an expression of His love. We should avoid reducing God’s creation to merely scientific terms. Remember that God created the universe because He loves each of us.
Because God loves us, He also created the plan of salvation. After the Fall, we were in need of salvation and forgiveness. God created our way out. God created a very simple plan, simple for us, not for His Son. God’s plan was to send Jesus into the world to die for the world. As the Gospel in a nutshell reminds us, “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. (Jn 3:16)”
And this was the plan, as Paul writes to the church at Ephesus, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will. (1:3 - 5)”
God’s creative power knows no boundary, and He is the number one hero of faith because He created all creation from the power of His word alone, and created the plan to save us all from our sins. But that is not all. We do not stop there.
The number 1 hero of faith created all we see by the power of His Word alone, and it is by the power of that same Word that we were brought to faith in Christ. God is THE hero of faith because it is He who created faith in the first place. Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses’ parents, Moses, the people of Israel, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, all are listed as heroes of faith. And we could add, from this year alone, those dearly departed from our misdt. In all these heroes of faith, that faith was created within them, and that was done by God, alone.
By the power of His Word, alone, God created all. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Gen 1:1)” God said, “”Let there be light,” and there was light. (1:3)” All this happened by the power of God’s Word. And “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.”
That faith came to us with the Waters of Baptism. While the waters of Baptism hit your head, my head, too, the words from Matthew were spoken, “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. (28:19b)” With the power of God’s Word, faith is created within us all. A faith that is in Christ, a faith that will save us from our own sins, a faith that will bring us to be with God in heaven, forever.
Most heroes that we see in movies, on the TV, read about in books and even comic books, have some talent that is unique to them. Superman could fly and use his amazing strength to help those in need. Spiderman had a web-like substance that shot from his hands that made him able to clime buildings and trap bad guys. Wonderwoman had her invisible plane, and the lasso of truth that made whoever she got caught in it tell her the truth. Batman had all the toys a rich guy with an eccentric butler could afford. All these heroes have talents and abilities, but none stack up to you or I because we, “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.”
And we are only greater than those superheroes because of the number one hero of faith, the creator of all, out of nothing, because He loves us, God. Amen.
“And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Amen.
