The following is a sermon preached at Randolph Baptist Church, July 25, 2021
We’ve
been studying the book of Genesis for the past several weeks and one thing that
keeps coming up is Abraham’s faith. My question this morning is, What does
Abraham’s faith have to do with us living 4,000 years later? This morning
I’m going to take a tangent for just one Sunday to talk more in-depth about
faith.
Among the scariest words in the Bible are
the words of Jesus recorded in Matthew 7:15-23. The scene is the final judgment
when people will stand before the judgment throne of God saying, Lord, we
prophesied, and performed miracles and cast out demons in your name; and he
will say to them, “Depart from me you workers of
evil. I never knew you!” These are people who think God will welcome
them into his kingdom. They will undoubtedly be shocked and terrified to find
that they have been rejected!
Way back when Moses and I were in high
school, I remember thinking that if heaven and hell are real, there could be
nothing more important than for me to know for myself how to go to one and
avoid the other. I mean, someday we will all stand before the judgment throne
of God and give account of our lives. The most terrifying thing in the world
would be to hear him say, “Depart from me…I never
knew you.”
That
began a lifelong study—off and on—of what it means to “believe” or have “faith”
in Jesus.
I’m
now 67-years-old. After a lifetime of study, and listening to countless
salvation sermons, I have come to the conclusion that much of what I was taught
growing up was confusing or misleading at best, and sometimes flat-out wrong.
One problem
is that most of the well-meaning preachers I heard, started with what Paul says
about being saved by faith, and then they came up with their own definitions of
what faith was—like “asking Jesus to come into your heart,” or “trusting
Jesus to save you like you would trust a chair enough to sit in.” They were
then puzzled when the Gospels seemed to teach something different. So in many
of the churches I grew up in, the preachers rarely preached out of the
Gospels. In fact, one of my pastors said, “There is precious little gospel
in the Gospels!”
But Paul called himself a servant of Jesus
Christ! He based his theology of salvation on the on Jesus, so if we
want to know how to be saved from the wrath of God at the final judgment, the
place to start is where Paul started—and that is Jesus! If you start
with Jesus, you will find that Paul’s theology of faith fits like a glove.
Before we delve into this further,
LET’S
PRAY
There are two places in the Gospels where
Jesus was specifically asked, What must I do to
inherit eternal life? One of them is in Luke 10:25-28. Starting in verse 25:
On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus.
“Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “What is written
in the Law?” Jesus
replied. “How do you read it?” The man answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and
with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your
mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” “You have answered
correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
So
in a nutshell, the expert in the Law of Moses asks Jesus, What must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus
asks this expert in the Law of Moses, What does the Law of Moses say?
And the man says, to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and
to love your neighbors. Jesus says he has answered correctly. That is what
you must do to have eternal life.
But
what does that have to do with faith? One of my favorite Bible scholars
is Dr. Darrel Bock from Dallas Theological Seminary. He is an expert on the
historical study of Jesus and on the Gospel of Luke. Dr. Bock writes that verse 27 is an
expression of total allegiance and devotion that in other contexts could be
called faith. Bock continues, “At the heart of entering the future life”—i.e.
eternal life—"is a relationship of devotion, a devotion that places God
at the center of one’s spiritual life and responds to others in love…”[1] According to Bock, that is “faith.”
Bingo!
Bock hits the nail on the head! According to Jesus, if you want to have eternal
life, you need unqualified loving devotion to God that springs forth in love
for others.
The
twist in the New Testament is that Jesus says, “I
and my Father are One.” To truly love God is to love Jesus
with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. And that is exactly what we see
in the next passage where Jesus is asked, “what must
I do to inherit eternal life?” We
find that story in Mark
10:17-22. This same story, by the way, is also found in Luke 18 and
Matthew 19, but we’ll just focus on Mark this morning. Mark 10 starting in verse 17 says:
As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his
knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal
life?” “Why do you call me good?” Jesus
answered. “No one is good—except God alone.
Now
when Jesus says, “Why do you call me good?”… “No
one is good except God alone” Jesus is saying that no one is always,
absolutely good except God. Reading between the lines, I think Jesus is implying,
“Are you just coming to me as a good teacher who can give you an answer to
your question? Or are you coming to me as the “Good One” who can grant you the
eternal life you seek?”
Jesus
doesn’t wait for an answer. He continues in verse 19, You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall
not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony,
you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’”
“Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.”
Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you
lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the
poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” At
this the man’s face fell. He went away sad because he had great wealth.
This
command to sell everything is puzzling because Jesus did not tell
everyone else to sell all they had in order to follow him. For example, in Luke
chapter 8 when Jesus cast demons out of a man, the man begged to follow Jesus.
Jesus didn’t tell that man to sell everything, or even to leave his
home. In fact, Jesus told the man to return home and tell all the good things
God had done for him. Jesus apparently didn’t tell Mary, Martha and Lazarus to
sell their home either, since their home always seemed to be available to
Jesus when he came to Jerusalem. Other examples could be cited but
the question is, Why did Jesus tell this man to sell everything when Jesus
had not made that demand of others?
The
answer is that Jesus was testing this man. The man had claimed to
have kept all of the commandments, so Jesus tested him on the very first
Commandment which says, “You shall have no other
gods before me.” Jesus was asking the man to demonstrate that he
valued Jesus (the Good One, or God) more than he valued his possessions. The
man’s response indicated that he valued his possessions more than he valued
Jesus, the Good One. Contrary to the man’s claim to have kept all the
Commandments, he failed on the very first one—he had other gods before Jesus.
So
how, according to Jesus, does one inherit eternal life? By having no other gods
before Jesus. In other words, by loving the Lord your God with all your heart, mind,
soul and strength, and loving your neighbor as yourself—which is exactly what
Jesus said in Luke 10.
But
that’s just two passages. Is this interpretation supported in the rest of the
Gospels? Indeed it is. Let’s look at Mark 12:28-34, on page 1005 in your
pew Bible. In Mark 12:28-34 a scribe came up to Jesus and asked, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” In
verse 29, quoting
from Deuteronomy chapter 6, Jesus answered, “The
most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is
one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all
your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second
is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other
commandment greater than these.” And the scribe
said to him, “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one,
and there is no other besides him. And to love him with all the heart
and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love
one's neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt
offerings and sacrifices.” And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he
said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”
Actually,
Luke’s version is more clear. Jesus responds saying, “do this and you will live.” On the subject of how
to inherit eternal life, Jesus gives a very consistent answer: Love God—and
Jesus says that he and the Father are One—Love God with all your heart, soul,
mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. And that is exactly what
the Old Testament taught.
And
by the way, loving our neighbor as ourselves does not necessarily mean having
warm fuzzy feelings for our neighbors. It is a heart attitude that leads
to behaving longingly toward others—Treating others the way we would
want others to treat us.
Now many scholars would say that it is impossible
to love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength and your neighbor as
yourself, therefore Jesus is simply pointing us to our need for him as a
savior. But that idea is a misunderstanding of Paul, and is simply not found in
any of the Gospels or the Old Testament. Jesus fully seems to expect
that people can and should love God with all their hearts and their
neighbor as themselves—not perfectly, of course. Only Jesus was perfect. And as
we’ve seen in Genesis, even Abraham’s faith faltered at times and had to
grow. But it is entirely possible to love God in such a way that he is first in
one’s life so that there are no idols coming before Him. This is not an
isolated teaching in the gospels. It is also found, for example, in Matthew 10,
Matthew 16, Mark 8, Luke 9 and John 12 among others.
Finally, in Luke 7:36-50,
Jesus accepted an invitation to dinner with some religious leaders. They were
probably eating in an open courtyard when a woman came in. She was known for
her sinful lifestyle. In fact, her sinfulness is emphasized 4x in this short
story. She comes to Jesus crying with tears streaming down her cheeks. She wet Jesus’
feet with her tears, wiped them with her hair, anointed them with perfume and
kissed them.
The
host—a religious leader named Simon—was indignant. If Jesus were really
a prophet as people claimed, he would know what kind of woman this was
and would not let her touch him! Sensing the host’s indignation, Jesus asked
him whether someone would have more love for a creditor who forgave a debt of
500 denarii, or a debt of 50 denarii. The host, Simon, said the one who had
been forgiven most would love the most. Jesus said that Simon was right. Jesus
then pointed out that when he came to Simon’s home, Simon, a religious leader,
had not even shown him the common courtesies that would be shown to any guest
in that culture—some water to wash the feet, and a kiss on the cheek. But this
sinful woman had shown amazing love and devotion by wetting Jesus’ feet
with her tears, wiping them with her hair, anointing them with perfume, and
kissing them continually.
Jesus
then says, “Therefore I tell you, her sins, which
are many, are forgiven—for she loved much” (ESV). In other words, because
of her repentant heart and the loving devotion she demonstrated toward Jesus,
her sins were forgiven. When Jesus then said that her faith had saved
her, he was defining “faith” as her repentant heart coupled with her loving
devotion to Jesus.
Passages
like these and others are why I define saving faith as a repentant heart
attitude of loving devotion, dedication or allegiance to Jesus as our savior,
lord and king above all else. But that’s a mouthful! Instead of giving such
a wordy definition each time, the New Testament just uses shorthand words like “faith”
or “believe.” So when the Gospel of John talks about “believing” in Jesus, or
when Paul talks about faith in Jesus, that is kind of a shorthand for what
Jesus taught about a repentant heart attitude of loving devotion to Jesus as
our savior, lord and king above all else. This is why Paul wrote in First
Corinthians 16:22, that “If anyone has no love
for the Lord, let him be accursed.”
Perhaps
Darrell Bock even put it better when he wrote, “At the heart of entering the
future life is a relationship of devotion, a devotion that places God at the
center of one’s spiritual life and responds to others in love…”[2].
Bock said that in other New Testament contexts that heart attitude of
devotion is called “faith.”
This
raises some questions. First is, “Why should we love Jesus?” The
biblical answer is because he first loved us. He died a torturous death on a
Roman cross to pay the penalty for our rebelliousness and sin. Jesus himself
said that his death would be a ransom for many. In other words, his
death was for you, and for me! Our reasonable response should be loving
devotion or faith in him.
My
next question is Why would we believe someone who would demand absolute
devotion and allegiance to himself? —Someone who claimed to be One with
God! This sounds like a malignant narcissist or megalomaniac with delusions of
grandeur! So why would anyone believe someone who talked like that? The fact
is that most people didn’t believe him. Some thought he was nuts. Some thought
he was a blasphemer. Some thought he was demon possessed.
But
he did have a lot of followers, so why would ANYONE believe him? First,
they believed because he didn’t talk or act like a crazy person. He was a very
good teacher and could hold his own and even defeat his very educated opponents
in rational debate.
Second, they believed because they were
convinced that he had fulfilled prophecies about a coming Messiah—Prophecies written
long before he was born.
Third,
they believed because of the phenomenal miracles he did—things that no one had
ever done! No one in Jesus’ time denied that he did such amazing miracles.
Those who did not believe just tried to explain them away as sorcery or
demon possession, but no one denied that he did them.
Finally,
they believed because they saw him alive after his death—in a fully healthy,
resurrected, physical body. In fact, they not only saw him; they touched him, talked
with him and even ate with him. They were saved because of their heart of loving
devotion, dedication, or allegiance to Jesus. In other words, they had faith.
They believed in Jesus.
This is the kind of faith or belief a
soldier has when they have a deep devotion and respect for their commanding
officer and would willingly follow him anywhere—right into the valley of the
shadow of death if necessary!
So back to the question I asked at the
beginning of this sermon, “What does Abraham’s faith have to do with us
today.” The answer is that it is the same kind
of faith. God came to Abraham, living in one of the most advanced cities of his
time, and told him to go to a land of uncertainty. And Abraham believed God—and
went. His faith moved him to obedience. Abraham’s faith journey had ups and
downs, was often scarry and sometimes life-threatening, and his faith was not
perfect, it sometimes faltered.
God
is calling us to follow Jesus as he called Abraham. The journey will be
uncertain, often scarry, and maybe even life-threatening. Like Abraham, our
faith will not be perfect either. It will often falter. But according to Jesus,
if you want to have eternal life, you need unqualified loving devotion to Jesus
Christ that springs forth in love for others. The Bible calls that “faith.”
I’m
not preaching this sermon because I think you all need to get saved. I’m
preaching it because the better you understand the Gospel the better able you
will be to share it.
But
it is likely that in any group this size, there will be some who have
never turned their hearts and lives over to Christ. I urge you by the sacrifice
of Jesus on the cross for you, confess your sinful rebellion to God, and give
your heart and life to Jesus Christ in loving devotion—as expressed on the back
of your bulletin. In other words, repent and believe in Jesus. And then be
baptized to demonstrate that you mean business with God and that your faith is
genuine.
If
you have questions or want to know more, please ask. If you’re not comfortable
coming in person, my email address is in the bulletin.
LET’S
PRAY
