Our Savior Lynchburg
Eve of Dispersion of the Apostles AD 2024
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, without faith it is impossible to please God. Without faith you remain in your sin. Without faith you receive the due reward of that sin. Without faith you are eternally dead. Only the needy can have faith. The one who has everything has no need and therefore has no need of faith. Only the hungry want to be fed. Only the helpless will ask for help. Christ comes only for sinners. In your sin you are helpless to save yourself but Jesus has died for you. Jesus is the gospel. You are a sinner and Jesus has come to help sinners. Jesus has come to help you. By faith you look to Jesus for help. By faith is the only way to receive His help. My St. Paul says that faith is necessary for salvation. Do you have faith? Can you touch it? Can you hold it in your hands? Faith is invisible. It is intangible and yet faith is real. Faith lives in the heart but can you see it? Can you feel your faith? How does faith get into the heart? Does it spontaneously appear? Is it something created by your effort? How does something come to live inside your heart? How does it get inside you? Well, it comes into your body through your senses. Faith does not get zapped into your heart but if faith is to live in your heart it must go through your body. Your soul cannot be touched but your body can. So the way to your soul is through your body, through sight, perhaps beginning as a little child seeing Christian art or a painting of Jesus blessing the children or even a crucifix. So you come to church and you see here the symbols of faith. This place looks like a place where God will implant faith in your heart through touch. The water of baptism, the hand of the pastor placed upon your head in absolution or in blessing and you receive the Lord's hand of blessing upon you through taste. The bread that is Jesus' body and the wine that is his blood which goes into your mouth. The forgiveness of sins comes into your body through these physical elements through smell. You smell perhaps the candles and the wine. Some churches use incense. It's from the Psalm that we sing at evening prayer. Let my prayers rise before you, O Lord, as incense. So when you come to church and smell incense, you're smelling what God smells when our prayers come before him. Church is heaven on earth and incense makes the church smell like heaven. But none of these things by themselves will give you faith. Light and touch and taste and smell these do not give faith, sight. What does the image of a man healing the sick have to do with me? What does it mean that he is carrying a sheep upon his shoulder? What good does it do me to see a beaten and naked man pinned to a cross and dying? How does it help me to see an image of this man ruling and reining over all things as king, something missing? Pastor tells the story of a child whose elderly relative had recently died. The funeral is at church. The child walks in and he stares at all the furnishings. He notes the immense side of the place and he wants to know who lives here. Something is missing. Touch. Having water poured on your head doesn't turn you into a Christian. A hand placed on your head or making gestures over you doesn't give you faith. Everything is missing. Merely tasting bread and wine doesn't save. Something is missing. The smell of church or of sweet burning incense isn't going to give you true knowledge of the divine. Something is missing. Faith does not come by sight. Faith does not come by touch. Faith does not come by smell or by taste. Faith does not come through experience. It doesn't grow on trees. You don't plant a seed in the ground outside and hope for some faith fruit. You can't go out into the fields and harvest it. Nor is faith for sale. You cannot find it at Walmart or Amazon. Cannot be bought or sold. Faith doesn't come by examination of yourself or through your own religious awareness or simply because you have the knowledge of all the right facts. By faith means it is not by sight. Did you hear St. Paul in our Epistle? Faith comes by hearing. Hearing the word about Christ Jesus. Faith comes from hearing the true word of God. Faith must have an object. Faith must have something that it believes. It makes no sense to simply say I believe or I am a believer unless you say precisely what it is that you believe. It's not as though all people who call themselves religious have a generic kind of faith and you can believe what you want and all believe what I want and in the end it's all the same because we each have our own way to God. No, there is only one saving faith that one saving faith trusts in the God man Jesus who suffered for our sins and was raised for our justification. The only true faith is the Christian faith. All other religions give false faith because all other religions are false. Some try to receive Jesus by reason or through their emotions but that Jesus will not save. Some try to contribute supposed righteous deeds as payment for salvation but those deeds are soiled, stained and dirty rags. Others try to bargain with Jesus to claim that they will receive him by faith but later. No, receiving Jesus by faith now is the only way he will benefit you. True faith does not bargain with Jesus. True faith does not tell Jesus how he is to be received. True faith recognizes that by faith means not by work. True faith receives what Jesus says. True faith is receptive. True faith believes the word adheres. We human creatures are not designed by God to be self-sufficient. We are to live by what we hear and receive. If what we hear is good and right then saving faith is created. But if we give attention to what is evil and what is wrong then false faith will be created. We will live by false hope, that's why it's so important that we give attention to the pure word of God. It's why it's so important that we not fill our mind full of false teaching. We'll hear more about this in particular next week when Jesus warns us to be aware of false teachers and to avoid their false doctrine. Saving word of Jesus is a gift. All that his word brings with it is also a gift. Faith is not of yourselves. The word of God gives the gift of faith. The word that Jesus speaks gives what his word promises, forgiveness, life, salvation. The benefits of his holy life and his innocent suffering and death, his righteousness, his sonship, his purity, his peace. But this faith proclaimed and given by the word is often rejected. Those who reject God's word reject the salvation that that word promises and delivers. Those who reject Jesus's word, who refuse to hear it, refuse to believe it, who ignore it and refuse to let it change them, they will be condemned. They reject the gift of faith. They ignore it and despise it. They mock it and profane it. And yet, even though many mock and despise the word, faith still comes by hearing. Whoever believes this salvation has eternal life, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. The word of God has created faith in your heart. You believe in Jesus. Faith lives in your heart. Confession lives in your mouth. Faith comes first and the confession of that faith follows. Faith and confession cannot be separated. Your faith in the heart must find its expression in the confession of the mouth. And when you open your mouth, you confess as you believe. How can one confess a gospel he has not believed? When the faith in that gospel does not reside in his heart, and how can one believe in what he has not heard? How can he hold to a promise that has not been spoken to him? How can he hear unless it is proclaimed? How can it be proclaimed if there is no preacher? And how are the preachers to go unless they are sent? We'll hear more about how preachers are sent next week too. But it all starts with preachers being sent. It's why Jesus sent his disciples out into the whole world saying, "Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned." Christ our Lord has graciously instituted this office of preaching. He has authorized and sent his men into the world to proclaim the gospel and to baptize in his name that many be here and believe will be saved. The word of God has been brought to you. You don't have to go back in time to 2,000 years ago to find the gospel, nor do you have to go and visit Jerusalem in order to hear that your sins are forgiven. The word of faith has come near to you. Faith has come to you by hearing and thus having heard you open your mouth and confess in the holy name of Jesus. The peace of God, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.