The Lutheran Hour
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"Faith Faces the Future with Boldness"
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Text: Romans 8:31-39
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Grace, and mercy, and peace be to you in Christ Jesus. Amen.
What does the future hold? What does your future hold? Today there are a lot of people who won’t even ask that question, let alone answer it. And I can understand why, just asking that question confronts us with real uncertainty, even the fear of the unknown. And with food prices, gas prices, prices in general rising, with housing prices, savings, and wages falling, people are hurting today and they don’t much want to talk about what tomorrow might bring.
Daniel Gilbert (a psychology professor at Harvard), blames people’s unhappiness on this uncertainty. He cites the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, which says… “that Americans are smiling less and worrying more than they were a year ago, that happiness is down and that sadness is up, that we are getting less sleep and smoking more cigarettes, that depression is on the rise.”
But the research uncovered an ironic cause, one that nobody expected….It showed that the real problem was for many not financial-not a lack of money, but something else: the problem was uncertainty. People didn’t know what was going to happen and that uncertainty caused their discomfort: that uncertainty made their unhappiness even more intense.
Gilbert summarized it this way, “An uncertain future leaves us stranded in an unhappy present with nothing to do but wait…..”
So, God’s Word today addresses the very thing that challenges us all. Today we learn how to face the future, whatever it might be, in the power of faith in Jesus Christ. For each one of us today, faces questions, and concerns, and fears about the future, and such challenges know no age limits, because whether you are young or old, we all struggle with what might be coming next in our lives. Now, I may not know specifically, day by day, what your future holds, but I know Who holds your future. That’s the message of this lesson for today.
For here, the Apostle Paul teaches us that one can boldly in all circumstances face the future because, “If God is for us, I am convinced that nothing, neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present or things to come….nothing in all creation…will be able to separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ.”
Paul says, “Count on it, bank on it, and begin to live your life boldly in that confidence in Jesus, God for us, today, tomorrow, and forever.”
The Book of Romans was written to budding congregations of believers in Rome to build their faith on the solid ground of a grace relationship with God, in Christ. Paul speaks of this Good News as the power of God for salvation, even in the midst of real suffering and trial. He also speaks frankly of the reality of the challenges, the fears, the sin in this world, their destructive power for us all. But, even here, at the moment of every human being’s greatest need, the moment of one’s greatest fears, he boldly proclaims Jesus Christ, the One Who acted on our behalf, Who literally took upon Himself our suffering and death, Who faced our sinful future, so that we might not only live now, but forever in Him.
Faith in Jesus, means that a believer can face the future, no matter what the future holds, because of Who Jesus is and what He has done. Jesus, the resurrected Lord, is the One who says that all who trust in Him are secure in His loving Hands.
But the uncertainty that we face daily still tempts us to fear, and our fears cause us to doubt that the love of Jesus is really true for us. And those fears are real too, aren’t they.
All you have to do is read the newspaper to see how unstable our world really is. Crime, senseless violence, incivility, with public leadership that seems incapable of solving even the most basic of human problems, these realities tempt us to doubt the confidence that comes by faith. Such fears hit home too. As we get older, we begin to realize how little control we actually have of our own lives. Such uncertainty can leave us fearful, angry, despondent, questioning what message could actually hold us there.
The Apostle Paul, though, might ask it this way, “When you are confronted by the most frightening things in this world, when you are reduced to just you and the love of Jesus, what then?”
This is actually the place that popular author and atheist Christopher Hitchens finds himself today. He was recently diagnosed with cancer. With his usual candor and clarity, Hitchens described his battle with the illness in an article he wrote for Vanity Fair. He said, “I am badly oppressed by a gnawing sense of waste. I had real plans for my next decade and I felt I had worked hard enough to earn it. Will I really not live to see my children married? To watch the World Trade Center rise again? To the dumb question ‘why me?’ the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: ‘Why not?’
“I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient. Allow me to inform you, though, that when you sit in a room with a set of other finalists, and kindly people bring you a huge transparent bag of poison to plant into your arm [his chemotherapy treatment] and you either read or don’t read a book while the venom sack gradually empties into your system. You feel swamped, swamped with passivity and impotence: dissolving in powerlessness like a sugar lump in water.”
Real fear, real uncertainty, real helplessness… But it is precisely here, that the Apostle Paul boldly says that “Christ’s love holds on to us.” And just so you know. Paul was not an ivory tower theologian. He was a believer and leader of the early Christian Church as it grew amidst persecution and trial. For Paul, these were not just “words.” He trusted in this love, this grace, in all circumstances. He went from being a persecutor of Christians, to one who was persecuted because of his faith in Jesus. He suffered beatings, imprisonments, and intimidations just because he was a believer, one who trusted in the love of Christ. And he wants you and me to know that faith in Jesus Christ is sufficient to face the challenges of each day, no matter what the day brings.
The Bible does say that the world is a sinful, rebellious place. There are uncertainties, real fears out there, and in every human heart. So, if you’ve ever been truly uncertain, truly afraid, if the challenges of tomorrow have left you broken and feeling alone and helpless today, Paul boldly writes to you, “What shall we say in response to all of this, ‘If God is for us who can be against us and who shall separate us from the love of God in Christ. Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness, danger or sword? No, in all of these things we are more than conquerors through Him Who loved us.'”
So, faith faces the future with boldness, as only faith can. Why, because true faith puts its trust in Jesus Christ alone!
Faith knows and trusts in Jesus, and Jesus knows the terror of this world. He has seen it at its worst. He has seen the depth of sin, of terror, of the uncertainties of this world in ways that you and I cannot even imagine. There is a black hole of evil that is beyond human description and Jesus has not only seen that reality, He has experienced and defeated it. When He promises you something, He makes those promises as One Who has overcome death and the grave, One Who out of His great love says to everyone who believes in Him, “Never will I leave you or forsake you.” “Nothing will be able to separate you from me.” You are forgiven from the real fear of your sin and guilt. And you are in the Shepherd’s hands, come what may in this world.
Faith trusts in Jesus and His love even amidst the uncertainties of this world because the believer is secure in His crucified and risen hands.
Remember, just after Jesus’ resurrection, He showed the nail marks in His hands and feet to Thomas. He said to him, “See these scars…..Stop doubting and believe.” Those scars were on the risen Savior. Those scars were from a death He suffered for you and me. Those scars mean that Hell, the one that He endured for you, because of your sin, is a hell that you don’t have to encounter. Those scars mean that eternal sting of death has already stung Him, so, it doesn’t sting you and me anymore.
A young mother took her daughter camping with the Girls Scouts. Rather than vacation at a restful spa, this mom was spending the weekend in a pitched tent out in the wild blue yonder. After a day of festivities and work, mother and daughter settled down in their tent for what mom hoped would be a decent night’s sleep. But, just as her daughter was trying to zip the tent door closed, a huge bee came buzzing in the tent. It haphazardly flew around, frantically trying to get out from its canvas prison, but to no avail. In its agitation, it began to dive bomb them mother and daughter. With nothing to swat at the bee except her hands, mom tried to catch it, to kill it, or at least get it out of the tent. With her daughter’s screams getting louder and louder, she swatted at the bee one last time and “wham” it stung her right in the palm. With that, mom told her daughter to calm down.
“Why Mom?” her daughter said, “The bee is still buzzing in our tent.” “I know honey, we’ll catch him soon, but, I don’t want you to be afraid of him anymore,” she said, “because, you see this stinger in my hand?” “Yes.” “Well the bee only has one stinger and he’s used it. He can’t hurt you and he can’t hurt me anymore.”
Well, when you and I are most afraid, Jesus, too, says, “Look at My hands.” I have taken the sting out of death, the eternal fear out of life. That doesn’t mean that you aren’t going to have troubles in this life, or that we aren’t afraid at times. What it does mean is that we don’t have to be incapacitated by those fears. We can confidently face the challenges of tomorrow knowing that the love of God in Jesus Christ is certain for us today and through it all.
I was sharing with my wife the other day, with all the things that are coming at us from all sides, through all the challenges of transition that we are experiencing at the moment, that one thing always keeps things sane, even joyful for me and that is knowing that I’m sharing this life with the ones I love, my wife and my daughter. Even more, I know that their love is there for me in the middle of it all, no matter what is coming next. Trusting in the power of the love that we share together can be a real great blessing, can’t it? Well, just try to imagine then what faith in the enduring love of Jesus means for our very lives today and forever!
Paul says then, “When the world seems strongest, when fear seems the greatest, when you are at a moment of change, going out on your own, when all you have is Jesus and faith in His love,” Paul tells us all, “That’s enough. That’s enough.”
But there is even more in our text for today. We’re not just supposed to be unafraid of the present or the challenges of the future; no, we are given this confidence, this boldness for a reason. We are sent by God to be agents of faith’s confidence to others who are incapacitated by life’s uncertainties and fears.
Into the world’s chaos and fear, we are called to share a message of the love of God that sees through this world’s brokenness. We proclaim the power of Faith in Christ, the certainty of the love of Christ with a boldness that can only come from Christ, so that others might come to know and believe in Jesus, too.
Michael Ramsden, a co-worker with Ravi Zacharias, shared the following true story about a minister from Iran who overcame his fears one day, and simply shared the confidence that comes from knowing and believing in Jesus Christ as one’s Savior.
On a trip with his wife, this pastor stopped in a small Iranian village to purchase some water. Before entering the store, the minister noticed a man holding a machine gun and leaning against the wall outside by the door. The minister’s wife looked at the man’s face and the gun, and then put a Bible in her husband’s hand and said, “Give this man this Bible.” Her husband looked at the man-his menacing beard and his machine gun-and replied, “I don’t think so.” But she persisted: “I’m serious. Give it to him. Please, give him the Bible.”
Trying to avoid the issue, the husband said, “Okay, I’ll pray about it.” He went into the shop, purchased the water, climbed back in his car, and started to drive away. His wife looked at him and said, “I guess you didn’t give him the Bible, did you?” Looking straight ahead, he replied, “No, I prayed about it and it wasn’t the right thing to do.” She quietly said, “You should have given him the Bible,” and then she bowed her head and she started to pray. At that point, he turned around and told his wife, “Fine! If you want me to die, I will.”
When the minister returned to the store, the man with the machine gun was still standing against the wall. The minister approached him and placed a Bible in his hand. When the man opened it and saw that it was a Bible, he started to cry. “I don’t live here,” he said. “I’ve had to walk for three days in order to get to this village. But three days ago an angel appeared to me and told me to walk to this village and wait until someone had given me the Book of Life. Thank you for giving me this book.”
The minister became later a courageous witness for Christ in all things. Eventually, along with many other co-workers in the Iranian church, he was later martyred for his faith, but not before sharing the Good News of eternal life, faith to face the future with thousands who had never heard of it before.
You see, as believers in Jesus, we’re not just called to make it through the day by faith. Faith calls us to trust in Jesus Christ, to face the challenges of the day in His Name. Not only for ourselves, but for others. In fact, we are called to be agents of His confidence and trust, proclaiming His enduring love, His eternal kingdom amidst the uncertainties and the hopelessness that are so real in our world today.
Like Paul says, nothing can separate us from His love because of Who He is for us. And then with faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, all things, both blessings and the challenges of this world, are opportunities to live as conquerors in His Name for others.
Faith’s power is in its object, and the object of true faith is Jesus Christ and His enduring love; faith’s certainty for eternal life and salvation is in the fact that Jesus earned and delivered that for all by grace and faith’s confidence to face the future, no matter what the future holds, rests in the knowledge that Jesus will have the last say in the lives of all who trust in Him.
My prayer today is that you have faith’s confidence to face the future in the Word which says, “If God is for you, who can be against you. Be convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come, nor anything else in all of creation, nothing will be able to separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Amen and Amen.LUTHERAN HOUR MAILBOX (Questions & Answers) for July 24, 2011
Topic: Capital Punishment?ANNOUNCER: Now, Pastor Gregory Seltz responds to questions from listeners. I’m Mark Eischer. Today a listener says, “Dear Pastor, how can we support the death penalty, when, after all, someone like the Apostle Paul was a “murderer.” When we put someone to death, don’t we deny God the opportunity to change them and make them a blessing to others?”
SELTZ: Wow, what a good question. But, before I answer that, there are a few things that need to be clarified.
ANNOUNCER: And, what might those be?
SELTZ: Well, the statement that Paul was a “murderer” is not exactly Biblically accurate. He was at the stoning of Stephen and he confessed that he was a violent man, breathing out murderous threats; Paul didn’t actually personally kill people that we know of. He had a part in people’s arrests and imprisonments, that’s for sure.
ANNOUNCER: You’re not exonerating St. Paul, though, are you?
SELTZ: No, no, no, not at all, not at all. He was guilty of causing people to be wrongly imprisoned and he sure didn’t stop Stephen’s stoning, so he would be the first to tell you that he was totally guilty. The difference, though, is that he didn’t act as a judge and jury. So, he didn’t act as if he personally had the right to take another’s life, like murderers do.
ANNOUNCER: Now why is that an important distinction?
SELTZ: Well, it is. It’s important because God does give the state the right and the responsibility of not only protecting innocent life, but also of executing justice for the sake of the community on those who wrongly take innocent life.
ANNOUNCER: OK. So, in this sense, the state acts as God’s temporal or earthly authority for those who break His Commandment that says, “Thou shalt not murder.”
SELTZ: Exactly. So, the state can’t change a person’s heart, but they can curb wrong behavior by executing temporal earthly justice fairly.
ANNOUNCER: Fairly. Is it fair to allow capital punishment?
SELTZ: Well, the Bible says that it is, because human life is precious and so the sanctity of human life demands that there be just punishment for those who take it wrongly.
ANNOUNCER: But couldn’t that be life in prison instead of capital punishment?
SELTZ: Absolutely, it is not that a government “must” execute the criminal, but the willful heinous destruction of human life just for pleasure or personal power, it would be hard to argue that it is just to let that person live a full life in view of that kind of crime.
ANNOUNCER: But what about our listener’s concern that putting such a criminal to death is stifling God’s ability to change their hearts and later make them a blessing to others?
SELTZ: Now it is true, there is nothing more final than capital punishment and standing before the eternal judgment throne of God. That’s why it’s vital that there be certainty beyond any doubt that this person is guilty of murder for capital punishment to be just. But, our listener makes the assumption that capital punishment is not “God’s work,” while conversion is.
ANNOUNCER: Can they both be?
SELTZ: Absolutely, fair, just punishment is God’s work to keep temporal peace and safety even for sinful humanity. God does that work though through justly constituted governments rather than His Church. So, the Bible says that the governments bear the sword for that reason. And, you might even argue that when the government makes law breakers feel the weight of their just punishment that might actually be opening their hearts for repentance.
ANNOUNCER: But, you don’t mean to say that punishment could bring people to faith do you?
SELTZ: No, no, no, not at all. Only the Gospel and hearing the Good News of the Gospel brings people to faith. But, what I am saying though, is when temporal justice is honored, when punishment is feared, or people sorrow over their crimes and public sins because the state is doing its job, this is God’s work too. There is no doubt it isn’t God’s main work, of bringing people to repentance and faith, but it is an important one in regard to that as well.
ANNOUNCER: So, you can’t shirk justice and only talk about God’s mercy can you? It seems we have to be careful when talking about what is and what is not God’s work.
SELTZ: That’s right, because for every Apostle Paul who saw the error of his ways, there are hardened criminals who would personally murder others and joyfully continue to do that if they had the chance. So, we’ve got to keep things like the sanctity of life, the need for just punishment, and the gift of God’s mercy in proper balance to get it right.
ANNOUNCER: All right. Thank you Pastor Seltz, this has been a presentation of Lutheran Hour Ministries.
Music Selections for this program:
“A Mighty Fortress” arranged by Chris Bergmann. Used by permission.
“Precious Lord, Take My Hand” arr. Henry Gerike. Used by permission.
“Oh, That I Had a Thousand Voices” arr. Jeffrey Blersch. Concordia Publishing House/SESAC
“How Can I Keep from Singing?” arr. Robert A. Hobby. From Thine Is the Glory by Robert A. Hobby (© 1997 MorningStar Music Publishers)