The Lutheran Hour
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"Walking by Faith"
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Text: 2 Corinthians 5:7
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Christ is risen. He is risen, indeed! In a world where truth quickly becomes falsehood, where promises are often broken, where the certain can become unsure, the angel’s resurrection message remains God’s unassailable truth, the risen Savior is the truth which allows us to walk by faith. God grant this faith to us all. Amen.
It has been a long time since I was in a fight. By that I mean considerable time has passed since I was in a knock-down, drag-em-out battle. Now there’s a reason why that is. Mostly it’s because I have learned to stay away from controversial subjects; it is because, as I have gotten older, I have decided to avoid making statements that are guaranteed to get people’s blood boiling, trip their triggers, and set them off like skyrockets.
How would you respond if I, or anyone, were to say, “American workers are overpaid and the things they produce are of inferior quality, unable to compete with imports from China”? I imagine that would bring more than a few people out of their seats.
It’s pretty easy for a speaker to get a strong reaction from his listeners. If you doubt me, try to endorse vegetarianism when you’re in the middle of Texas cattle country; try talking about hand-gun control at an NRA meeting, or encourage the adoption of government-funded vouchers for private education when you’re attending a convention of the National Education Association. Go to the annual convention of the National Association of Retired People (I’m one of them) and, in a crowd of card-carrying members say something like, “I believe the government ought to try and decrease its deficit by reducing Medicare and Medicaid payments.”
At this point in the message I probably ought to give you a few minutes to calm down, get your blood pressure under control, and your heart rate back to normal. If you’re with someone as you’ve been listening, you probably picked one of those statements and are venting your opinions. If you’re not with anybody, you’re probably getting ready to call a friend and vent your ire. Which is why I’d better say, this message isn’t about any of those things. No, this message wants to say, “Most of us feel pretty strongly about these subjects. On one, more, or all of these topics most of us have some intense feelings.” Those feelings are grounded on our perspective of life, our point of view, on that where we put our faith.
And if you’re saying, “That may be true of others, but my faith is based on facts”, I can only reply: we all walk by faith, not by sight. Consider, most of us have gone to physicians. At one point in time that MD was a stranger to us and we didn’t know much about him. We didn’t know if he was at the top of his class in medical school, or whether he managed to barely squeak through his exams. We went to him because we had faith in his sign on the door. If the doctor had been recommended to us, we went because we had faith in the person who suggested him. What happened when you went to see the doctor? If you were ill, he might have given you a prescription. Could you read his writing? Probably not, but you had faith the pharmacist could. You didn’t watch the druggist fill your prescription; you had faith he was going to give you the medicine that would heal and not poison you. From start to finish, you walked by faith. You took that medicine because you had faith in the doctor, the drug manufacturer, the pharmacist, the entire system. When you went to the doctor, did you have to have surgery? That was faith, wasn’t it? Under anesthetic, unable to think or do anything, you allowed someone to cut you open. You had faith that the surgeon, the anesthesiologist, the staff all, knew what they were doing; that they were going to accomplishing that which would help you.
We walk by faith. When you invested in the stock market, you had faith your investment would go up, not down. Have you looked at the numbers lately? Was your faith well placed? You had faith when you got married. You had faith the person to whom you were making a pledge of faithfulness, loyalty, and support was going to keep the vow which he or she was making to you. When you eat at a restaurant, you have faith the chef knows what he is doing; you have faith the food hasn’t been contaminated, faith it will be prepared properly. When you go out to start your car, you have faith old reliable Betsy will turn over and take you to your destination. When she doesn’t turn over and you don’t get to where you wanted to go, you’re disappointed to find your faith has been misplaced. When you turn the handle on your shower, you have faith the “Hot” will be hot and the “Cold” will be cold. You have faith the lights will go on and the bulb won’t burn out when you throw the switch. When you go to work and put in a full-day’s labor, you have faith the company will be there when pay day rolls around; you have faith the business will have enough funds to reward you for your work. Should I go on? Can you think of anything that is not founded on faith?
We walk by faith. The greatest but not the only problem with walking by faith is this: all too often the focus of our faith proves itself to be unreliable, untrustworthy, undependable. Men and women, who are elected to public office; who are swept into their position because their constituency had great faith in them, prove to be a disappointment when campaign promises aren’t kept and moral compasses are misdirected. Faith in man’s wisdom proves to be flawed when today’s facts are overturned by new information; when that which everyone knows to be true today, is proven false by tomorrow’s reality. We walk by faith, but the high cost of malpractice insurance says physicians aren’t perfect; a high divorce rate says the sacred promises made between husband and wife are all too often broken; the number of jobless says companies regularly prove themselves unreliable, and the erosion of retirement and college accounts indicate our trust in tomorrow’s profits may have been misguided.
We have no choice but to walk by faith. Even so, life quickly shows us that walk is fraught with danger and our path is filled with detours leading to a discouraging dead-end. Little wonder so many people are convinced the sun will not be coming out tomorrow. It’s not surprising many are no longer sure every cloud has a silver lining. We are no longer surprised or shocked when we’re told people don’t believe their children’s future will be better and brighter. Disappointed, disillusioned, discouraged, the faith of many sees tomorrow as being filled with an ever-increasing darkness, escalating despair, and mounting hopelessness.
In the 1930s, in the midst of the Great Depression, a rather sickly lady found herself and her five children abandoned by an unreliable husband. He left her to take care of their mangy dog, a run-down second-floor apartment, and a fistful of unpaid bills. One night the lady went to bed, but she didn’t sleep because the baby was colicky. She awoke to find the dog had used her only good pair of shoes as a gnawing bone. As she prepared breakfast, because of an unpaid utility bill, the power was shut off. A few seconds later the dog decided the table cloth would make for an excellent tug-of-war. The food and dishes all ended in a pile on the floor. The woman stopped picking things up, cleaning things up, when she heard a noise out on the street. She hobbled to the window, threw it open, and the fellow down below called up, “Garbage man!” Without a pause she called back: “Okay, send it up.” Sound familiar?
If so, I’d like you to hear another story, a story that also happened during the Depression. This story deals with a man who, after months of searching, had finally been given an interview for a job. The only thing that slowed him down in getting to his appointment was a frozen river — a river without a bridge near by. Not knowing the thickness of the ice, the man was afraid to make the crossing. Even so, it had to be made. Slowly, tentatively, reluctantly he started out. Every crackle and crack of the ice underneath his feet increased his dread. Finally, the man, trying to distribute his weight, dropped down so he might crawl forward on his hands and knees. He had made it halfway across the river when, behind him, he heard singing. With considerable anxiety he looked over his shoulder to see the source. He was shocked to see a singing man holding the reins of a sledge that was drawn by two great percherons. The unafraid man sang loudly as his vehicle, filled with pig-iron, slid across the ice. With newfound confidence in the ice, the man stood up and with undoubting faith proceeded to his interview.
Two stories of two poor people. Still there is a great difference between them. The woman had faith her life would always be filled with garbage and more garbage. The man was given faith he could move forward, safe and secure. Having heard those stories, I have no doubt which of the two you would prefer to be, would love to be. But there is a problem, a very great problem. You need proof your ice is safe; you want evidence that the things in which you believe can be trusted. And, as this message has shown, experience has told you, there is nothing in life that can be trusted completely, totally, absolutely.
But that’s not quite right, is it? There is something, more properly, Someone who can be trusted. That Person is Jesus, your Savior. And this is the point in the message where I may lose many of you. Because of life’s reverses you have become committed to the conviction that nothing is worthy of faith — especially Someone like Jesus whom you have never seen. Like a lot of the world’s skeptics you laugh at Christians who walk by faith in an unseen God, and a Savior Who seems to be out of the picture. You laugh at our belief in sin, in angels, in heaven, hell, and a Redeemer Who has, through His perfect life, His innocent suffering, His unfair death and glorious resurrection forgiven and saved all who believe on Him. You think of Christians as being foolish, irrational, and ridiculous for having placed their faith in the sinless Son of God Who said He will be with us always; Who promised He had come to seek and save the lost; Who continues to help us every day we live on this earth and offers us an everlasting, tear-free, pain-free, joy-filled eternity with Him in heaven.
You snicker at us and boast, “I will put my faith in that which I can see, that which is provable, testable, easily discerned.” If that is what you believe, then I encourage you to listen to the only man who ever won an Oscar and the Noble Prize for Literature: the learned George Bernard Shaw. Before he died in 1950, Shaw made this confession: “The science to which I pinned my faith is bankrupt. Its counsels, which should have established the millennium, have led directly to the suicide of Europe. I believed them once. In their name I helped to destroy the faith of millions. And now they look at me and witness the great tragedy of an atheist who has lost his faith.” An atheist who has lost his faith. I can’t think of any person who could be sadder. Still, it is the condition in which doubters find themselves this Lord’s Day.
If that describes your life and situation, I would encourage you to hear the Holy Spirit’s call and see your Savior. Look upon Him in whom you can place your faith. And if you wonder why He is worthy of such confidence, I will tell you this: You shouldn’t put your faith in the Savior because I say so. You don’t know me. You have no reason to trust me any more than you might any representative of any other religion. Don’t put your faith in the Savior because there are a billion people in this world who have done so. You know, as well as I do, that big, enthusiastic crowds can be easily mislead and are all too often wrong. Don’t put your faith in the Savior because His is an old religion. There are other faiths which are almost as old. Do not put your faith in Jesus because He spoke as no other Individual ever has; because He did signs and wonders only the Son of God could do. They are amazing proofs, but they are not enough to make you sure. And, although you would be right in doing so, don’t put your faith in the Savior only because He is unique and His message of salvation by grace through faith is totally unlike that of any other religion.
Today I encourage you to put your faith in Jesus because He alone has proven Himself to be faithful; put your confidence in the Christ because He, and He alone, has shown Himself to be trustworthy; put your confidence in the Savior because He has done for you what neither you nor anyone else could or would do. Look at the facts. Search the Scriptures which testify about Him, scrutinize those words, study them and dissect them. What you will find is this: when humankind fell into sin, our gracious God took pity on us. Knowing we would never be able to rebuild the bridge that separated our sinful souls from Him, God promised to send a Savior. For thousands of years our heavenly Father gave information that would help humanity identify His Son when He was born. No other religion can say that. Let me say that again: No other religion can say that. Only Jesus could have fulfilled the prophecies made about the Redeemer.
It was predicted the Savior would be born in Bethlehem. Jesus was born there. It was promised the Savior would be true God and true Man. Jesus, conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary met that criterion, too. The prophet Isaiah said the Savior would be beaten for us, bruised for us, unfairly tried and sentenced to death. That same prophet said Jesus would die with criminals. One promise after another was made; one prediction after another was fulfilled. Beyond coincidence, happenstance, or accident Jesus fulfilled all prophecies both large and small. Look at your Savior.
Look and know that Jesus alone is worthy of your faith. Hundreds of years before He was born it was promised that He would be murdered, crucified, hung upon a cross. But it was also promised that His dead body would not decay and He would rise from the dead so all might be sure and certain His work of saving them was complete. (Psalm 16:8-10) And if you’re thinking, “myth and legend, smoke and mirrors,” then I point you to Jesus’ disciples who felt the same way. A once-dead, but now living Lord was too much for them to accept. Still, they became convinced. A walking, talking, eating, breathing Jesus convinced them. Doubts were pushed away as Jesus held out His nail-scarred hands and said, “Here, touch me and see.” In the living Christ the disciples found the one Person in whom they could believe, whom they could trust, whom was worthy of their faith. The living Lord Jesus was the Savior they followed the rest of their lives, past martyrdom and into a blessed eternity. Theirs is a walk of faith that many millions continue to follow.
Not so long ago I was told of a good Christian lady who had gone through a great deal during the course of her life. In spite of her trials she always seemed to keep her faith and showed to others the peace that comes from knowing Jesus. One day another woman, who had also carried her share of scars, showed up at the woman’s house. She knocked, and when the door was answered, the visitor asked, “Are you the woman with the great faith?” “No,” came back the reply, “I am not the woman with the great faith; but I am the woman with the little faith in the great God.” That is what we at The Lutheran Hour pray for you today. That you be given faith in our great and wonderful Savior Who has earned your trust. To that end, if we can help, please, call us at The Lutheran Hour. Amen.
LUTHERAN HOUR MAILBOX (Questions & Answers) for June 14, 2009
Topic: How Do I Know?ANNOUNCER: Now, Pastor Ken Klaus helps us look for answers. I’m Mark Eischer.
KLAUS: Looking for answers assumes we have a question.
ANNOUNCER: And indeed we do. As you know, we live in an age when more and more people have become more and more politically correct.
KLAUS: Being politically correct can be a good thing.
ANNOUNCER: Sometimes, but not always.
KLAUS: I’m thinking today’s question deals with one of those times when being politically correct isn’t good.
ANNOUNCER: We’ll find out. You know political correctness is supposed to make us tolerant of other people and their beliefs.
KLAUS: Tolerance is OK — as long as it doesn’t get in the way of truth.
ANNOUNCER: I think you need to explain that.
KLAUS: Well, tolerance of others is fine. Up to a point. If somebody says, “I have the right to drive down the wrong side of the road,” I’m not going to be tolerant. If my child comes home from school believing 2 + 2 is 7, I’m not going to be tolerant. You get the idea. I’m tolerant, but not at the price of believing a lie. Make sense?
ANNOUNCER: It does.
KLAUS: Mark, what is the question?
ANNOUNCER: One of our listeners has a best friend who says Christians are Christians only because they were raised that way. Furthermore, Buddhists are Buddhists because they were raised that way. And Muslims are Muslims…
KLAUS: …only because that’s how they were raised.
ANNOUNCER: Well, this friend says that all of these religions are true for the people who believe in them.
KLAUS: What a wonderful idea.
ANNOUNCER: Really?
KLAUS: No, not really. That kind of thinking is political correctness gone nuts.
ANNOUNCER: And this is where you have to explain.
KLAUS: Glad to. There are, from what I’ve been told, a few thousand religions in the world.
ANNOUNCER: And each of them has their own set of beliefs. Beliefs, I might add, that somebody thinks is true.
KLAUS: Excellent. Now, logically speaking, these different religions with different beliefs can’t all be right. Those religions could all be wrong but they can’t, because of their conflicting beliefs, all be right.
ANNOUNCER: So when this person says, “those religion are true because they person was raised that way….”
KLAUS: That would be wrong. A person can believe his religion is true, but that doesn’t make it so. You can believe you can fly like a bird, but that doesn’t make it so. You can believe you can eat an Oldsmobile, but that doesn’t make it so. Even if you really, really, really, really believe something, that doesn’t make it so.
ANNOUNCER: So what can we say?
KLAUS: If you’re going to find the real truth, the whole truth and …
ANNOUNCER: Nothing but the truth….
KLAUS: You’re going to have to find that which really is true.
ANNOUNCER: Well, in the words of Pontius Pilate: “What is truth?”
KLAUS: There is such a thing as absolute truth. It is true if people believe in it. It is true if people don’t believe in it. It is true because it is true. It’s how a thing really is.
ANNOUNCER: So, going back to what you said earlier…
KLAUS: …if I say 2 + 2 = 7. If I believe that, really believe that, it still wouldn’t be true.
ANNOUNCER: Your belief would not have resemblance to the mathematical facts. The same would apply to religion?
KLAUS: It would. You have to find that religion which is true.
ANNOUNCER: I assume you’re saying, “Christianity does that.”?
KLAUS: I am. And there are reasons why. What other religion can point to more than a thousand years of prophecies about that religion’s central Figure? Other religious leaders may say wise things, but no prophet ever predicted in advance that these leaders were going to appear on the scene. On the other hand, prophets gave many signs to help people identify Jesus, His work, His passion, His life and death. No other religion can say that.
ANNOUNCER: There’s more?
KLAUS: There is. Only Christianity says God sent His Son to live, suffer, die, and rise so we might be given hope. Only Christianity says we are saved by grace through faith. Every other religion says we have to work our way to God; we have to divest ourselves of sin. Sadly, we can’t do that. We are too weak to get rid of our sin. My sin is real; my need for a Savior is real. In short, I need a Savior. I need Jesus who is the Truth.
ANNOUNCER: This has been a presentation of Lutheran Hour Ministries.
Music selection for this program:
“A Mighty Fortress” arranged by John Leavitt. Concordia Publishing House/SESAC
“We Walk by Faith and Not by Sight” arr. Kenneth Kosche. MorningStar Music Publishers / Birnamwood Publications.
“Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven” performed by Dan Suelzle.
“Oh, That I Had a Thousand Voices (Fantasia)” by David Cherwien. From Hymn Interpretations, vol. 2 by David Cherwien (© 1997 Summa Productions, Minneapolis)
“Preludio” by Arcangelo Corelli. From Charles Callahan Plays the Organ of the Church of the Holy Family, New York City by Charles Callahan (© 1997 Charles Callahan)