What is Faith in Christ?

[Below, you'll find the message shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, this past Sunday, August 20, along with live stream videos of both our traditional and modern worship services.]

Matthew 15:21-28

Just before the event recounted in today’s gospel lesson, Jesus had an encounter with Pharisees from Jerusalem. They confront Jesus for allowing His disciples to break God’s Law that said good religious folks must undergo ritual cleansing before eating.

Jesus explains that it isn’t the things that enter our bodies from outside of us that make us unclean in the eyes of God. Instead, it’s the sinful nature inside each of us that leads us to commit sins that makes us unclean. Jesus says, “...out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person…” (Matthew 15:19-20)

Then, as if to demonstrate what He means about not being defiled by what comes from outside of ourselves, our lesson for today finds Jesus, the pure, perfect, holy, Son of God, going into territory that Jews deem unclean, the region of Tyre and Sidon. This area hugging the coast of the Mediterranean was a land whose people were notorious idolaters and sinners. The whole region is regarded by Jesus’ countrymen as evil.

And here’s Jesus going into this unclean land to encounter a Gentile woman with a saving faith in Him that the Pharisees and most of Jesus’ fellow Jews would reject.

We all know the central importance of faith in Christ. Every little child in the Church knows John 3:16: “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.” 

Romans talks about faith and salvation too. "...But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe [who have faith]." (Romans 3:21-22)

Our salvation in Christ isn’t based on what we do or even on what we are, but solely on what Christ has done for us and our faith or trust in Christ.

But what does it mean to have faith or to believe in Jesus?

The great Lutheran preacher of the last century, Bo Giertz, posed this very question and said that the Canaanite woman in today’s lesson illustrates exactly what it means to have faith in three ways. So, I want to take those three insights of Giertz and talk about each of them.

To have faith in Jesus means, first of all, to set all one’s hope on Jesus. That’s an enormous statement!

Faith in Jesus means that we trust that He, God the Son, is the author of “every good and perfect gift” (James 1:17), the supplier of everything we need, from our eternal salvation to our next meal. He is “our daily bread” in this life and the next.

We may wonder where this woman got her faith in Jesus. The gospel of Mark tells us in recounting this same incident, that the woman had “heard” about Jesus. (Mark 7:25) So, in some form or another the Word about Jesus had traveled from Capernaum, which is where Jesus’ ministry was centered at that time, to Tyre, about the distance from Dayton to Springfield.

This Word about Jesus had done its work in this desperate woman. By this second-hand Word about the Lord and Savior of the world, the mother of the demon-possessed girl, had come to believe in Jesus. She set her hope on Jesus.

The apostle Paul asks in Romans: “How…can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” (Romans 10:14)

And He says that once the Word about Jesus reaches people, the Holy Spirit can create faith in Christ within them: “...faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.” (Romans 10:17)

The Canaanite woman had been given the Word about Jesus and through it, had come to set her hope on Him.

To have faith in Jesus means also not to think much of oneself. I’m not talking about “self-esteem” here.

The Canaanite woman, a Gentile who stood outside of the covenant God made with His people, the Jews, through Abraham, knew that she didn’t deserve anything from God.

When she approaches Jesus, we’re told, “A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, ‘Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.’” (Matthew 15:22) And again she says, “Lord, help me!” (Matthew 15:25)

The woman acknowledges Jesus as Lord, that is, as Yahweh, God of all, and as the Son of David, the Messiah King, true God and true man.

She asks for His mercy. “I am a sinner, Lord,” she is effectively telling Jesus, “I don’t claim to be entitled to anything. I can’t claim to be a good person. But because You are good, because of Your grace, I ask, I beg. for Your mercy.”

As I’ve explained before, we sinners who cannot perfectly obey God’s Law nonetheless keep it when we acknowledge that we are rightly judged to be sinners by that Law–the Ten Commandments–and turn to Christ for mercy, grace, and forgiveness. This is what the Canaanite woman does!

When Jesus tells her that it would be morally wrong to take blessings away from God’s people to give them to dogs (what Jews called Gentiles), outsiders, the woman fully understands. No parent would be right to scrape the food off the plates of His own children in order to feed dogs. This is, in essence what Jesus is telling the woman. The woman agrees with Jesus but says, “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” (Matthew 15:27)

Now, this incident occurs between two miraculous feedings by Jesus: the feeding of the 5000 in Matthew 14 and the feeding of the 4000 in Matthew 15. At both feedings, there were leftovers, 12 baskets-full at one and 7 at another.

“Lord,” the Canaanite woman is saying, because of her faith in Jesus, “don’t give me the choicest of Your blessings. I know Your grace is overflowing. Just give me the leftovers. Just give me Your crumbs. I know You and I know that will be enough!”

Faith means not to think too much of ourselves, but to always think of how great, good, gracious, and wonderful is the God we know in Jesus!

Finally, Giertz says, “faith holds onto Jesus even if He does not seem to answer.” Why does Jesus delay answering the woman’s prayer for her daughter? Why does He seem to delay or not answer our prayers? I don’t know. Like you, I’ve experienced God seeming to tarry in answering my prayers in Jesus’ name. And I’ve experienced things going completely differently from what I prayed would happen.

But, like the woman, our call is to keep praying and seeking from the God we know in Jesus the blessings we feel we need and trust Him to sort things out as He, in His grace and wisdom, sees fit. This is the point of our praying, “Thy will be done.” We trust and pray in the certainty that it is His pleasure to show mercy to those who cling to Him in faith. And when the answers to our prayers seem to be delayed, Jesus blesses us with His presence and places us in the comforting presence of His people.

The woman in our lesson trusted in Jesus as God and King. She acknowledged her sin and that she didn’t deserve God’s favor. She expressed faith in the enormity of God’s grace that could provide even for her, an undeserving sinner.

Friends, whether in this life or the next, Jesus loves to bless and reward such faith. It is people with this kind of faith that are meant when the Bible tells us, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

And so, Jesus tells the woman that the disciples wanted to send away: “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” We’re then told: “And her daughter was healed at that moment.” (Matthew 15:28)

How does one acquire such a faith?

You don’t decide to have it.

You can’t work to get it.

God gives it to us through His Word and His Word made visible in the Sacraments. He speaks faith into us.

Through the Word about Jesus, we know that Jesus is our God and King, that we are sinners saved by grace through faith in Jesus, that all our sins are forgiven, and that Jesus wants to give us His mercy. By the power of the Word about Jesus, you may believe that this is all true! Amen

The Word That Saves You

[Below, you'll find both live stream video of today's single worship service with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church and the text of the message shared today. Have a good and blessed week!]



Matthew 14:22-33

One of the joys of being a parish pastor, a joy that the Bible tells us can be shared by any Christian willing to be Christ’s hands and feet in the world, is in what’s called the Office of the Keys.

We exercise the Office of the Keys whenever someone, in the name and under the lordship of Jesus, confesses their sins, turns from them, seeks the assurance of God’s forgiveness from us, and we are able to proclaim God’s forgiveness of all their sins to them.

Jesus has given this office to the Church and, while all members of the Church can exercise it, the Church has given particular responsibility to pastors to do so.

Jesus does this, for example, in John 20:23, when He tells the Church: “If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

And Jesus also says in Matthew 18:18: “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

God, it turns out, is not against us sinners.

God is for sinners, like you and me.

He wants to free all sinners from the bondage to sin from which we cannot free ourselves.

That’s why Jesus, God the Son, came into our world and, enfleshed as the Man without sin, took our sins, all of our sins, into Himself, absorbing the death and condemnation we deserve, on His cross so that we could have His righteousness and life forever.

When penitent sinners are told, “Because of Jesus Christ, all your sins are forgiven,” they are hearing the Word from Jesus Christ Himself. They can believe that their sins are forgiven.

Nothing more needs to be said.

No questions need to be asked.

Through Jesus, we are free of sin, condemnation, and death.

“If the Son sets you free,” Jesus says of Himself, “you will be free indeed.” (John 8:36)

But I’ve noticed something that sometimes happens to sinners when God’s Word of forgiveness, His Word of absolution, comes to us.

A woman came to see me, mostly to confess a sin for which she felt guilty, a sin that had happened decades before.

I told her that her guilt for the sin was appropriate, but that, as she turned to Jesus Christ, she could be assured of God’s forgiveness.

I reminded her of biblical promises like, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners…” (1 Timothy 1:15)

“In Christ,” I told her, “all your sins are forgiven.” Her guilt, I assured her, was erased by the grace of God extended to us through Christ!

The woman wept for a few moments and then said, “I wish that I could believe that.”

There was little more I could say to her now. I’d given her Christ’s Word that she was forgiven, that Jesus, God the Son, had taken her sin away. But here she was taking it  back again!

At the end of our second lesson for today, the apostle Paul tells us, “...faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.” (Romans 10:17) That woman ignored the Word about Christ and so could not and would not believe that she was saved from sin and death and forgiven through Him. She insisted on believing the words of the devil, the world, and her sinful self that told her that forgiveness couldn’t possibly be that simple, that she needed to do more, that she needed to be more for her to be out from under condemnation and death. Jesus was offering her forgiveness and new life with God as a gift and she wanted to earn it.

That woman isn’t alone. Years ago, a man told me that he liked reading a particular Christian author. Why? “Because,” he said, “he always makes me feel guilty. And after I get guilty, I can get busy working on my salvation and holy living.”

The Bible tells us that Jesus, by going to the cross and rising from the tomb, has already secured our salvation, our justification, and our holy lives, our sanctification. Our call is to simply attend to His Word, given to us in the Bible and the Sacraments…to keep receiving these gifts, because it is by these gifts, that God gives us the gift of faith and strengthens that faith. (This is why regular worship with the Church is essential to being a follower of Jesus. There’s no such thing as a solo Christian.) Hebrews 10:10 says, “we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” You don’t have to do anything to make that happen.

We see a person like this woman and this man in the apostle Peter in today’s Gospel lesson.

After feeding the 5000-plus, Jesus sends the disciples away by boat, dismisses the crowd, and goes to a mountain to pray alone. Deep into the night, toward dawn, the disciples are still in their boat on the sea during a raging storm. Don’t confuse this with an earlier incident in which Jesus slept through a storm that terrified the disciples. Matthew tells us about that incident too. This time though, we have no indication that the disciples were afraid of the storm. They seem to feel they have everything under control. They’re competent, have it together, and they know exactly what they’re doing. Jesus is about to show them differently.

“Shortly before dawn,” Matthew says, “Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake.” When the disciples catch sight of this, they’re terrified!

A lot of people think they would have liked to lived back when Jesus walked on the earth. They think they would see Him and see His kind, sweet visage.

But, listen, friends: unrepentant sinners, like the disciples who had so recently suggested that, rather than helping the needy crowd around them, Jesus should send them away so they could buy their own food, never find it pleasant to be in the presence of the perfect, holy, righteous Son of God. That’s why they were terrified. But the New Testament says that, “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” (Hebrews 10:31)

Those who refuse to live in daily repentance and faith in Christ stand naked in their sins, unprotected from God’s wrath and condemnation. When the disciples see Jesus, they think He’s a ghost. They cry out in fear.

But then, Jesus tells them, literally, in verse 27: “Take courage. I AM. Do not fear.” “Take courage. Yahweh. Do not be afraid.”

Friends, although He is God and we are sinful human beings, Jesus speaks a Word that conquers our sin, sets us free from death, and gives us peace.

The disciples are right to initially feel terrified in coming face to face with Jesus. He is God. He is, as the theologian of the last century, Paul Tillich said, “wholly Other”: completely different from us, completely holy, completely righteous, completely perfect.

The disciples are seeing the Messiah Who will one day judge the living and the dead.

They see Jesus in His raw deity.

They recognize the distance between Him, in His righteousness and purity, and them, in their unrepentant, proud, arrogant, self-sufficient sinfulness.

But the God we know in Jesus has no desire to damn them–or us–for sin, no desire to see us die, separated from God, consumed by wrath from which He otherwise protects us.

So, Jesus speaks a comforting Gospel Word to you and me even now: “Do not fear. I take the wrath you deserve into myself. Your sins are forgiven.”

So, to the first disciples, terrified in the boat, Jesus speaks His Gospel Word of promise. That should be enough to calm the fears of all.

But, there in the boat is one who still isn’t sure: Peter, out stand-in.

Even after Jesus’ Word of absolution, Peter is unbelieving. Peter doesn’t trust Jesus or His Word. Like the man who told me he liked the author who left him feeling guilty, Peter wants Jesus to give him a program by which he, not Jesus, can overcome his guilt, sin, and fear. He wants Jesus to prove He’s the Messiah Peter wants and he wants to prove what a righteous person he is even without the Messiah, Jesus.

And, so he says, “Lord, if it’s you,...tell me to come to you on the water.” (Matthew 14:28)

“Come,” Jesus tells Peter.

Jesus, in effect, is saying, “OK, Peter, you won’t believe that My Word is enough to save you? You need proof that My Word can even save an unrepentant sinner like you? Come out here and take a walk on the water.”

Of course, as soon as Peter turns his attention to the wind, he’s back to feeling terrified again and begins to sink. Jesus catches Peter and upbraids Him: “You of little faith,...why did you doubt?”

Friends, do not doubt!

You were saved from sin and death at Holy Baptism, when Jesus fished you from the water and claimed you as His own.

Your salvation is confirmed every time you are able, by the power of the Holy Spirit, working in God’s Word, to confess that Jesus is your Lord.

The Word has come to you again and again during sermons, family devotion times, Bible studies, and Holy Communion.

This Word has spoken through God’s Law to show you your sin and through Christ’s Gospel to give you the gifts of repentance, saving faith, forgiveness, and new life.

Jesus tells us, “...my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.” (John 6:40)

Friends, this morning it is again my joy to exercise the Office of the Keys and tell you who repent and turn to Jesus, “Do not be afraid. You are not condemned. Christ died and rose for you. In Him, you are forgiven!” Amen

Our Great Reward

[Below you'll find the message shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. Also here you'll find live stream video of both our 8:45 AM traditional and 11:00 AM modern worship services. A highlight of the day was welcoming five new members into the fellowship of the church!]

Matthew 10:34-42

At the start of today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus tells the twelve apostles He’s sending with His Word–and He tells us: “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” (Matthew 10:34) These are jarring words.

But Jesus goes on to be even more jarring, claiming words from the prophet Micah for himself: “For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’” (Matthew 10:35-36)

These words seem strange to us in two ways, I think.

First, we remember that the angels sang on the night of Jesus’ birth: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” (Luke 2:14) Didn’t Jesus, God the Son, come into our world to make peace between God and we sinful human beings?

Second, didn’t God make families fundamental to human life, giving the family first billing in the second table of the ten commandments: “Honor your father and your mother”?

The answer to both of those questions is Yes.

But not everyone wants God’s peace.

As Christians, we know and cherish what Paul talks about in our second lesson, from Romans 7: that by the grace of God given to us in Christ under which we were washed at Holy Baptism, we “died to the [condemnation of the] law [for our sin]” and belong to Jesus, Who will one day raise us up to live with God forever. (Romans 7:4)

God has already done this for us as a gift that we are simply called to receive in faith.

And even the power to believe–to have faith–in Christ is a gift from God, given in His Word. The Bible says, “Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.” (Romans 10:17)

But sometimes, even members of our own families will resist the Gospel Word about Christ. They will refuse to trust in Christ.

When I was a teenager, already an atheist myself, I watched my aunt break down in tears as one of my cousins told her he didn’t need God. He had heard the Word about Christ many times. He had seen the peace that the adults and even friends in his life had through faith in Jesus. But he wasn’t buying it.

For many people, the Gospel doesn’t make sense.

Some see the hatred, prejudice, injustice, suffering, and death in this world and can’t imagine that there is a loving and omnipotent God Who, they imagine, does nothing to change things. They don’t realize that God has already done everything necessary to change things, to give us life and peace, one person at a time. He’s done this through Jesus, Who says: “​​Everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life…” (John 6:40) This isn’t a call to wait for the sweet by-and-by. It’s a declaration from God that as you trust in Christ, you are set free to live life to the full without fear of condemnation, setbacks, or even death! You can even fight things like hatred, prejudices, injustice, suffering, and death without fear of the world because you know you belong to Jesus Christ for all eternity!

Others can make no sense of the Gospel–the good news of new and everlasting life with God through Christ–because they’ve been schooled in the ways of a hard world. They’ve been taught that anything worth having must be bought, earned, stolen, or swindled. They think the project of their lives is to keep themselves–and maybe their kids–as comfortable as possible until they die. That’s it. There is no room or desire for Jesus in such a worldview.

Still others can’t imagine that any of their sins–from gossip to sexual intimacy outside of heterosexual marriage, from petty dishonesty in personal business dealings to using God’s name as a punchline–could possibly concern a holy God they’ve never seen.

For people like these, Jesus’ will sound like nonsense when He says, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near. [literally, the eternal reign of God is here now in Me and the Gospel Word about Me].” (Matthew 4:17)

They’ll find it hard to believe that Christ is as close as His Word or as close as the water of Holy Baptism or the bread and the wine of Holy Communion.

His emissaries–parents, pastors, friends, family–will tell these folks, “The kingdom of heaven has come near [in Jesus]” and they’ll resist. (Matthew 10:7)

Or turn a deaf ear.

Or maybe lash out.

Or maybe even betray you!

Of course, no Christian filled with Jesus’ compassionate Spirit will be satisfied knowing that we have everlasting life with God and not want to share it with others. We won’t want to let others’ negative reactions to Christ’s Gospel keep us from sharing it!

So, Christians will want to see their children and grandchildren, all the children in their families, baptized. In Baptism, children are covered with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Their spirits are crucified and raised and the Holy Spirit is unleashed in children’s lives that they may come to the point where they confess Jesus as their Lord. “Baptism…” the apostle Peter says, “saves you…It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ…” (1 Peter 3:21)

Christians will want to let family members see that Christ is their hope and their life. Peter also told Christian women that their disbelieving husbands “may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives…” (1 Peter 3:2)

And Christians will also want to be able to share the hope of Christ’s Gospel with family members when they have the chance. Peter also writes, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect…” (1 Peter 3:15)

In our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus tells Christians, “Whoever welcomes a prophet as a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes a righteous person as a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward.” (Matthew 10:41)

Considering just the prophets for a moment: If you’ve ever read the Old Testament, you know that God’s prophets weren’t always rewarded in enjoyable ways. (Neither have those been made righteous by God’s grace in Christ, by the way.)

When we, like the prophets, speak God’s Word, we must first speak His Law that all people are sinners, deserving of eternal punishment and separation from God, before we speak God’s Word of promise, His Gospel, that our sins are forgiven and we have everlasting life with God through Jesus.

These words call us, and all people, to repent–to turn from sin–and to believe in Jesus as our only God and Savior.

The prophets were often slighted, hunted down, condemned, killed.

That was how the world rewarded them for their faithfulness.

It’s how the world today, even the worlds of our families, often reward Christians. Jesus doesn’t sugar coat that truth and neither should we.

But God has another reward for our faithfulness to Christ.

It’s the reward of which the prophet Isaiah spoke seven hundred years before the birth of Jesus, pointing to Jesus, God the Son, Himself, Isaiah wrote: “See, the Sovereign Lord comes with power, and he rules with a mighty arm. See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him. He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young.” (Isaiah 40:10-11)

Jesus promises us, “the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.” (Matthew 24:13)

In Jesus Christ, all your sins are forgiven, friends. That’s your reward from God.

And in Jesus Christ, you know, intimately and personally, the God of all Creation Who saves you to be His forever. That too is your reward from God.

And in Jesus, you know that God is with you always. He will never abandon you. That also is God’s reward to you.

In the end, Jesus is your reward, friends!

And He is all the reward you and I could ever want or will ever need.

Amen

[I'm grateful for the scholarship of Drs. John Hoyum and Steve Paulson and others in the development of today's message.]