Living by Faith

This morning, I am going to step away from my usual practice of basing my sermon on the Gospel. The Epistles for last week and this week were taken from Hebrews 11. Hebrews 11 is the faith chapter in much the same way as 1 Corinthians 13 is the love chapter. Hebrews 11 is a grand gallery of faith and it invites us to examine the subject of faith.

The subject of faith can be very confusing in modern culture. Our culture often uses the word faith without supplying a context. You will hear phrases such as, “Have a little faith,” or “Ya’ gotta’ have faith” – faith in what or whom? The object of faith is left up to the hearer. We often receive the impression that a strong faith will simply bend the laws of the universe a little and make things turn out our way. It seems as though the current culture doesn’t really care what we believe just as long as we believe in something – just as long as that belief is sincere. It is as if our culture simply asks us to have faith in faith itself.

One really popular example of this is in the Star Wars movies. In one episode a young hero named Luke Skywalker travels to a swamp planet in order to learn from a master named Yoda. When Luke tries to retrieve his space ship from the swamp, he fails. Yoda, the master then retrieves the ship. At the end of the scene, Luke exclaims, “I don’t believe it!” Yoda replies, “That is why you fail.” The idea is that Luke can do the impossible simply by believing with all his heart that the impossible is actually possible.

Another example of this happens in the play Peter Pan. In one famous scene, a major character, the fairy Tinker Bell is dying, but will survive if enough people believe in fairies. In the play the characters make a plea to the children watching to sustain her by shouting out "I believe in fairies." Of course this works in the play and Tinker Bell returns to full power. Once again, the power of faith comes to the rescue.

Now, I am not asking you to throw out your Star Wars DVD’s or to stop reading fairy tales to your children and grandchildren. Watching movies and reading fairy tales is an enjoyable pastime. These activities can also help develop fertile imaginations.

Unfortunately, many people think that faith has the same power in the real world that it has in movies and fairy tales. They actually believe that mere faith by itself has power. Now, while the power of faith can be a potent force in the movie world of Star Wars or the fairy tale world of Peter Pan, faith in and of itself is not a source of power in the real world.

Do you remember the I-35 Bridge across the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. It collapsed during rush hour in Aug of 2007. 13 people were killed, 145 injured. Everyone who died on that bridge had faith. They had faith that the bridge would not collapse while they were crossing it. It would be safe to say that most people who were on that bridge had so much faith in it that they didn’t even think about the bridge. Perhaps they were thinking about their plans for the evening or thinking about the day just past. Perhaps they were making cell phone calls to husbands, wives, children, friends, and so forth. The people on that bridge did not know that their faith was misplaced until the bridge dropped out from under them and then it was too late. Their faith in the bridge provided no salvation from the tragedy that followed.

The power of faith is not in the faith itself, but in the object of that faith. In Hebrews 11 we read the names of Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, the Israelites, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, and Samuel. We see that their faith was in God’s existence, God’s Word, God’s Promise, God’s warning, God’s call. In short, God was the object of their faith.

In many ways faith is like a container. In one of my favorite books, The Fire and the Staff, Klemet I. Preus compares faith to a trick or treat bag at Halloween. As he wrote of his early experiences with Halloween, he remembered traveling throughout the neighborhood collecting goodies. Unfortunately, when he got home, he discovered a hole in the bag. It was empty. All the goodies that people gave to him were gone. He realized that the key to a successful Halloween was a trustworthy bag. The next year he took a pillowcase and made out like a bandit.

Faith is like a trick or treat bag. When you don’t have it you are lost. When you do have it, all you think about is what is inside of it. When a person does not have faith, we say, “They are lost. You can’t go to heaven without faith. Faith is necessary.” But when a person believes, you stop talking about faith and talk only about Jesus. When you confess your faith, you don’t talk about how important faith is. Instead you talk about Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

Faith is not a condition that a person must meet in order to earn salvation. Faith receives. Faith simply receives all the gracious promises and blessings of God. Faith is passive. It does nothing. It contributes nothing. It is like the trick or treat bag only instead of receiving sugary treats, it receives the gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation. Saving faith is the passive recipient of God’s service to us.

So what must we do to get this faith? That is the beauty of God’s plan of salvation. We do nothing. Remember when it comes to our salvation, God does all the work. That includes producing the gift of faith in us. It’s a good thing too because we do not have the ability to produce this faith in ourselves. We cannot decide to follow Jesus. We cannot put Jesus in our heart. The Holy Spirit inspired Paul to tell the Romans, [Romans 8:7] “The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.” Paul also told the Corinthians [1 Corinthians 12:3] “No one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit.” Martin Luther summarized these Bible teachings in the beginning of the explanation of the Third Article of the Creed, “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to Him, but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith.”

An understanding of faith as the Holy Spirit’s gift reveals more of the true meaning of Hebrews 11. Hebrews 11 is no longer a simple gallery of some of the heroes of the faith. Instead Hebrews 11 praises the God who worked such great faith in these heroes. In Hebrews 11 we see a God who is actively at work creating faith in the heart and then working through that faith in the history of the world.

By the way, notice that all of these heroes are from the Old Testament. If anyone ever asks you how God saved the Old Testament saints, this section of Hebrews is a good place to go. In the last verses of today’s Epistle we learn that Jesus Christ is the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. The faith that saved the Old Testament heroes of Hebrews 11 is same faith that saves us. It is faith in Jesus Christ who purchased our salvation by enduring the shame of death on the cross and declared His victory by His resurrection from the dead and ascension into heaven. The only difference is that the Old Testament saints looked into the future for their savior while we look into the past – to Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah, the Christ, the anointed one.

One of the other great things about Hebrews 11 is that many of the saints are tarnished. Abraham started his life as an idol worshipper and had a child with his wife’s servant. Jacob had children by four different women, two wives and two servants. There is Samson who sinned with Delilah and broke his vow to the Lord. There is David who sinned with Bathsheba and then murdered her husband. And of course Rahab the prostitute says it all.

If any of these sinners had to rely on their own character to save them, it would not happen. They would all be doomed. Never the less, the Holy Spirit worked faith in all these people and they all became heroes of the faith.

There are times that we think God cannot use us because we have made too many mistakes in our lives. The fact of the matter is that if God needed good people to do His work, then none of us would qualify. When we see that the list of Hebrews 11 includes some real scoundrels, we know that the Holy Spirit can work in anyone’s heart. God has the ability to transform anyone into a hero of the faith – even you and me. Amen.