Sermon for October 10: Faith and the power of God

Lessons: 2 Kings 5:1-3; Psalm 113; 2 Timothy 2:8-15; Luke 17:11-19

Last week I talked about how the righteous shall live by faith, how faith isn’t just a one time thing, but it needs to encompass every aspect of our lives. Over the next few weeks we will be looking at faith and how God demonstrates how His is worthy of our faith.

This week we are going to look at our need to see that God’s power is stronger than what we can see, that we need to have faith in his power. But in order for us to have faith in his power, we need to experience his power. Or rather, realize we have experienced his power. And we need to respond in the right way.

Our OT lesson tells us the story of Naaman. Naaman was in charge of the army of the king of Syria. Now things seemingly were going well for Naaman. He had favor with his king because he had won victories for Syria. He was a mighty man of valor, he was brave and a strong warrior. This is a surprisingly favorable image of a man who was leading a rival nations army.

And Scripture tells us a couple other things about Naaman. God used this Syrian to gain victory. The power of God is moving and using people even without their knowledge of it. Even those who do not profess Jesus as Lord of their life. God is not passive waiting for us to introduce people to him. He is active moving in the lives of everyone and wants us to come along side people and affirm what He is doing in them and through them.

The second thing we know about Naaman is that he is a leper. He is afflicted with some kind of skin disease that has put a stigma upon him. He needs help. And a Jewish servant in his household told him where he could get that help, a prophet in Samaria. So Naaman goes through official channels, he tries to work within the system, but is rejected. The king of Israel is worried that it is a trap.

But Elisha heard about the incident and sends for Naaman. Not just to heal him, but that he would know that there is a prophet, a man who speaks for God, in Israel. Namaan is told by a messenger to wash in the Jordan River 7 times and your flesh will be restored and you shall be clean. Not only will he be ritually pure, but he will be healed.

But Naaman doesn’t like how God chose to reveal his power. He expected Elisha to come out and pray a prayer and make a show of it! Then he says aren’t our rivers better than the Jordan? Aren’t our ways better? He stormed off angry. We would never do something like this right? Disapprove of how God would choose to reveal himself?

Thankfully his servants speak some reason to him. Healing is right in front of you.

So Naaman does what Elisha said. He goes and dips himself in the Jordan 7 times and his flesh was restored, like the flesh of a little child. And he was clean. His response is to go back to Elisha and announce that he knows that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel.

Naaman is declaring that the Yahweh is the only God. He has had an encounter with the power of God and he responded by turning his heart to the Lord, that he will only offer sacrifices to Him. This man believed. He had an encounter with the power of God and he responded by faith with thanksgiving.

And look at our gospel lesson this morning. Once again, Luke tells us that Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, and he passed between Samaria and Galilee. There he encounters a group of 10 lepers. They are off in the distance, away from anyone so they don’t make anyone ritually unclean.

When they see him, they know who he is, they know he is a powerful man of God and they call out to him “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us”. They know that Jesus is the one who can do something about their condition, they know that God is a God of mercy and so they do the only thing they can do, call out.

Jesus sees them and responds very simply, “Go and show yourselves to the priests”. The priest was the one who would declare if a person was clean or unclean. Now Jesus hasn’t said a prayer, hasn’t laid hands on them, anointed them with oil, just sends them on their way. But they know that there is something different about Jesus, so they go.

And as they go, they were cleansed. Obedience to Jesus, submitting to his way led to their healing. Just like with Naaman. But one of these lepers stopped and turned back. He saw that he was healed and he went back, praising God with a loud voice.

And when he gets back to Jesus, he falls to his face at Jesus’ feet, in a position of submission and gave thanks to Him. Because he knew that it wasn’t his walking down the road that healed him. It was the power of God. And then we find out something very interesting: this man was a Samaritan. Of the 1- lepers, the only one who returned was a Samaritan. A lesser person in the eyes of the Jews, and yet he had the proper response to the power of God. Worship.

God deserves the praise for a miracle like this. He is the only one who deserves praise. Naaman didn’t jump out of the Jordan and start saying, Oh yeah I made my self clean. He didn’t look at the river and think, oh wow, this is a special river. He knew it was God. Just like this Samaritan here. He knew that it was Jesus who healed him, that Jesus had the power. And he praised Jesus for doing it.

The other nine were healed. And they continued on to the priest who declared that yes, they were clean and that they could join society. But it was the one who returned that Jesus says, your faith has made you well, literally has saved you.

Two stories of two men, both healed of leprosy, both respond by worshiping God who healed them, both of them outside of the people of God.

What is our response as people of God to the power of God? Do we respond like the Samaritan when we encounter God is his power by praising him spontaneously? Or do we respond like the other 9 here, just continuing on with out giving God the praise that is due him?

My suspicion is that no one here has been healed of leprosy. But maybe you have been healed of another physical condition. Or an emotional one. Or maybe you are crying out to God to have mercy on you because you are currently suffering, physically or emotionally or spiritually.

All of us, at least I hope all of us can point to a miracle that God has done in our lives. He has given each and everyone of us, who are in Jesus, a new heart. When he went to the cross to take our sins away, and he rose to conquer death, he did it so that all who believed would have a new life.

That God would be in a relationship with sinful men and women is the biggest miracle you can possibly imagine. It is literally take a dead person and making them alive.

If you have experienced that in your life, if you have been made alive, then your response should be to praise God. Not just Sunday mornings at church but with every part of your life.

If you haven’t experienced that in your life, if you have never been made alive by saying yes to Jesus, I am a sinner and can’t come to you on my own, then I invite you to do that today. If you have been made alive but it doesn’t feel like it. If you life has been stagnant, dry, empty, come to Jesus again today. Ask him to restore you.

God wants to make all things new. That is the goal of His story, to make all things new. We can’t do it ourselves. God has to do it, the good news is that he wants to. In you and in others. And he is already moving well ahead of us. He is at work in the world and in us to accomplish His purpose.

Our response is to step out in faith that God’s power is at work and join him. When you do that, your life will never be the same again. And you will want to do nothing but praise God because of that!

Sermon for October 3: "The Righteous Shall Live By Faith"

Lessons: Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4; Psalm 37; 2 Timothy 1:1-14; Luke 17:5-10

Habakkuk is an interesting man. We know little about him. He was a prophet of the Lord. He was a contemporary of Jeremiah in all likelihood and was writing to warn the people of God about the invasion of Judah by the Babylonians, well before they rose to power. And he struggled with a moral dilemma.

There was sin going unpunished, the oppression of Judah by her leaders. He has been pleading for God to act, for the God of justice to show justice, but he hasn’t seen it and he wonders why God is being idle. I’ve got to admit, I know where he is coming from. All you have to do is watch the news and you can wonder, where is the God of justice.

Now the section in between our lessons today is God’s response to Habakkuk. He says, basically I am doing something even though you don’t notice it. I am at work right now, but you aren’t going to like what I’m doing. God says that he is raising up the Babylonians to come and deal with the injustice in Judah.

Now a word about the Babylonians. This was no lover of justice or of the Lord. They were a cruel and violent nation. This made no sense to Habakkuk.

Why would you use a wicked nation to punish a less wicked one? How can you even look at that sinful people, let alone use them to judge a people who still had a righteous, faithful remnant? How can God allow His people to suffer?

Again these are difficult questions.

God responds again in chapter 2. He tells Habakkuk to write down the vision that he will give so that all can see, but while the vision will be revealed, it will have to wait for its completion. It may take a while, but be patient. God’s people are going to have to trust him.

Why?

Because the righteous shall live by faith. The author of Hebrews tells us that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. The righteous are those who have been made right with God.

In effect God is telling Habakkuk, and telling us, that my people will trust that I haven’t abandoned them even though it seems like it. Even though you have had hard leaders and I am going to bring in even worse people to judge them, trust me.

Now this verse takes on a whole new meaning in the NT. In fact, 3 times it is directly quoted by NT authors. And each time it helps our understanding of this verse, of how we are to live by faith.

The first place is in Romans 1:17. Paul is talking unpacking the gospel and God’s righteousness. He tells us in verse 16 that the gospel is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes. The gospel is more than just a mere message, it is the power of God revealed to everyone, the revelation that God is in control.

And in the Gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed, that is goes forth from God and as it is given to sinners who believe, it shows his nature, that it begins with faith and is lived out by faith, because the righteous shall live by faith.

Our right standing with God begins and is continued by faith in what Jesus did for us not by what we do. And since it is lived out by faith, we need faith to live each and every day. So often I think we think that when we came to Christ we believed by faith and we set that up on a shelf in our hearts but we don’t allow that reality to transform how we live.

And that is what God truly desires, transformed lives. People who don’t live the same way they used to and are seeking to depend on Christ daily for everything in their lives.

So let’s look at the second quote of this, Galatians 3:10-14.

Paul says that if you want to follow the Law for your salvation that you are going to be under a curse if you can’t fulfill all of it. And none of us can. Even one sin nullifies all of the right stuff you have done. You can’t be justified then by trying to keep the law, but “the righteous shall life by faith”. Faith that Christ is sufficient to make you right with God.

So to live by faith here is to depend not on what you can do to measure up to the law, but to rely on what Christ did in fulfilling the law and by taking up the curse that we deserve on the cross. We are able to receive the Holy Spirit, the presence of God himself in us through what Christ did for us on the cross.

Now let’s look at Hebrews 11:38-39. Again, faith in Jesus Christ is not a one time thing. It is a way of living and because of that, we are called to persevere. We all go through rough patches in our life. Seasons where we look that our situation and we wonder where is God in the midst of this.

And all too often we have to make a decision in those situations, will I walk by faith or will I shrink back and depend on my flesh? Will I remember what Christ has done for me or will I only look at my situation and act based on it?

The righteous shall live by faith. They will push through those hard times and honor God in them. They will have faith that even though it doesn’t seem like it, God is with them.

But how much faith do you need? How much faith is enough? Jesus tells us in our Gospel today.

The disciples were complaining once again, this time that they needed more faith. Jesus tells them “if you have faith as big as a grain of mustard seed, you can tell a mulberry tree to get up and plant yourself in the sea and it would obey.”

Here Jesus is saying that if you have even the tiniest bit of faith, the amount of faith it takes to say yes to him and to follow him, than you can tell a tree to replant itself. You can do anything. Well almost anything.

Because as Jesus continues on, he tells us that servants do what they are commanded, they do their duty. What is our duty? What are we obligated to do?

As we learned, it isn’t to keep the law. It is following him daily, embracing out salvation daily and persevering daily. In short it is being obedient to him, not to save us, but because of what he has done for us.

Each and every day we are called to live by faith, to trust God, for our salvation and for all the needs of our life. We are called to trust him in the good times and the bad times.

It is much easier to do that when it feels like everything is going your way, when you are certain that God is pouring out blessings on you. It is much harder to do that when things aren’t going so well.

It is hard to walk by faith when life is a challenge, when work is difficult, when your family life seems more like a battle ground than home, when the thought of dealing with others makes you want to hide.

In those hard times and hard places and difficult decisions in your life, be obedient. Weigh everything against Scripture and seek good Godly council.

That is what Habakkuk did. He went right to the source, God, and called out to Him and God answered him. Not in the way he hoped, but he answered. And what was his response? Was it to sulk or to keep looking for another answer?

No, he rejoiced in the Lord. And that is what we are to do. Have the faith that God will act in what ever situation we are going through and rejoice not in the situation, but in the faithfulness of God.

This is the final 3 verses of Habakkuk:

Though the fig tree should not blossom,

nor fruit be on the vines,

the produce of the olive fail

and the fields yield no food,

the flock be cut off from the fold

and there be no herd in the stalls,

yet I will rejoice in the LORD;

I will take joy in the God of my salvation.

GOD, the Lord, is my strength;

he makes my feet like the deer's;

he makes me tread on my high places.

To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments.

(Habakkuk 3:17-19 ESV)

Take joy in the God of your salvation.