We preach a Gospel of light

Posted on February 12, 2025 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for midweek of Transfiguration

Matthew 11:25-27  +  2 Corinthians 4:5-6

This week of the Transfiguration, we’re still focused on the glory of Christ that is real, but that is hidden from the world. It’s hidden from our eyes, too, so that we can’t see it. But our joy as Christians is that God the Holy Spirit has revealed Christ’s glory to us, so that we believe it is real, so that we see it with the eyes of faith. He has enlightened us with the Gospel so that we believe that Jesus is true God and true Man, and also believe in Jesus, the God-Man, as the One who speaks the truth to us and saves us from wrath and condemnation by the power of His blood shed on the cross.

Tonight, with Jesus and with the Apostle Paul, we have to take a step back and simply say a prayer of thanks to God for giving us this light, and by light I mean knowledge, and by knowledge, I mean both the knowledge of Christ and the confidence that goes with it, which we call faith. And not just to us here, but to all true Christians who hear the preaching of the Gospel and believe in Christ Jesus as a result. Because that faith-knowledge is and always has been hidden from most—hidden, as Jesus says, from the wise and the prudent. Hidden, or “veiled,” as St. Paul writes just a few verses before the ones you heard tonight, veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them.

It’s not that we have some secret knowledge that we’re unwilling to share with “certain people,” like the lodges or the secret societies of the world claim to have. No, as Paul writes to the Corinthians, our preaching is like a bright light, unmistakable, not hidden at all. And we don’t shine that light on ourselves. We do not preach ourselves, Paul says. Ministers—true ministers of Christ—don’t highlight their own accomplishments. No, Paul writes, we preach Jesus Christ as Lord. We preach about Christ Jesus plainly and openly—that He is the Lord, the Son of God and the same God proclaimed in the Old Testament who came into the world and took on human flesh to take away the sin that we have done.

Our sin is exposed by a different kind of light, the light of God’s holy Law, that is, His commandments, which tell us what is right and wrong in His sight, commanding us to do the right and avoid the wrong, but also accusing us of doing just the opposite in many cases. Now, whatever the details are of your disobedience to God’s commandments, the Law reveals that you are sinful, and, therefore, unable to escape from the Law’s just condemnation. You’ve earned God’s wrath for yourself, and a place in hell. All people have. That’s what the Law preaches.

But the light of the Gospel is also revealed through preaching. It shines forth from a God who is good and merciful, who gave His Son to be punished for the evil you have done. The light of the Gospel shines from Christ, who is good and merciful, and who bore your sins in His body. The light of the Gospel lights up the mercy of God in the face of Christ and shows you where to find the mercy and the forgiveness that you so desperately need: in the ministry of the Word of Christ and the Sacraments of Christ. God the Holy Spirit is active in the preaching of the Gospel, shining the light of Christ Jesus out into this room, where He is being preached, out into the world wherever His Gospel is preached, and penetrating the darkness of men’s hearts with that light, just as He once penetrated the darkness of the universe with His command, “Let there be light!” So He has shone in our hearts, Paul says about himself and his fellow ministers, that we, in turn, might shine forth the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Not everyone sees it. To them the Gospel is veiled. Their minds are blinded by Satan, the god of this age. They don’t believe in this merciful God. They pretend that Jesus doesn’t even exist, or they twist the real Jesus into someone else, someone who “gets us,” as the ad campaign falsely portrays him, instead of portraying Him rightly, as the God who died for our sins and rose again, and calls us to repentance, that we may sin no more.

So what should we do? Is it a matter of saying just the right words in order to convince them, in order to lift the veil from their hearts and to cure the blindness of their minds? Not at all. Jesus and His apostles spoke all the right words. The Gospel shone forth brightly from their mouths. And most still didn’t believe.

What we do, all that we’ve been given to do, is, we preach Christ Jesus the Lord. Ministers preach Him, and you laymen speak openly about Him and show by how you speak and how you live that Jesus is, indeed, your Lord. And God the Holy Spirit will enlighten whom He will enlighten. Through His Spirit, Jesus, the Son of God, will reveal the Father to whom He wills to reveal Him, as He said in the Gospel. As for you, to whom the Holy Spirit has revealed the light of Christ so that you believe in Him and confess Him, rejoice in God’s gracious election, and in God’s mercy to you, that you should hear the Gospel rightly preached and have the Sacraments rightly administered, and that you should believe the voice of the Gospel and see the light of the Gospel unveiled. And we ministers will continue to preach Christ Jesus the Lord, even as you Christians continue to live in the world as children of God, as children of light, and as the very lights that God has strategically placed into this dark world, that Christ may be honored, that the faithful may be preserved, and that your neighbor may be helped, and even eternally saved. Amen.

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A brief vision of life after death

Posted on February 9, 2025 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for the Transfiguration of Our Lord

2 Peter 1:16-21  +  Matthew 17:1-9

If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works. Assuredly, I say to you, there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.

Only six days had passed since Jesus had spoken those words to His disciples, and they were still ringing in His disciples’ ears as Peter, James, and John—some of those who were standing there when Jesus spoke those words—accompanied Jesus up onto the mountain of Transfiguration. And before Jesus spoke those words about the death—and the life!—that awaited His disciples, He had begun to tell them about the death, and the life, that awaited Him in the near future—death on a cross, followed by resurrection on the third day. They didn’t understand yet what Jesus meant about dying on a cross, or rising from the dead, and so the image of taking up their own crosses must have been especially confusing. Why did Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, have to suffer and die? Why did they? And what is this about finding one’s life after losing one’s life for Jesus’ sake? All these questions were buzzing in the disciples’ heads, but rather than explaining everything in detail at this point, Jesus decided that what they needed to see—and what we would need to hear about—was a brief vision of life after death.

Only three of the twelve disciples were allowed to see it. That was enough. They didn’t all need to see Christ’s glory and the life that Moses and Elijah were now living. Peter, who would become a prominent leader in the Church; James, who would be the first apostle to be martyred; and John, who would be the last living apostle to oversee the founding of the Church. Jesus determined that it would be especially helpful for these three to witness the transfiguration, which Peter himself would later write about in his second Epistle, as you heard this morning.

What did they see? Jesus was transfigured before them: his face shone like the sun, and his clothing became white like the light. They saw the Son of Man “coming in His glory,” even though this visible glory wouldn’t last. It would soon be hidden from sight again until Jesus’ coming at the end of the age. But for a moment, they saw Him as He really is. They saw Him as we will see Him after this life, the glorious, almighty Son of God.

What else did they see? They saw Moses and Elijah talking with Him. Somehow (we don’t know how) they were enabled to recognize these two Old Testament prophets. A saint who had died, and a saint who had never died but had been transported to heaven alive. Key figures among the OT prophets. Why these two? Jesus could have appeared with Adam and Eve, or with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Instead He chose Moses and Elijah, both of whom bore the cross Jesus had told His disciples about six days earlier. Moses bore the cross, trudging through the desert for 40 years, putting up with the Israelites’ complaining the whole time. And then he died without being able to enter the Promised Land himself, a wholly sacrificial ministry. Elijah bore the cross, too, being hated and persecuted by most in Israel, including its wicked king and queen. He began to despair. He wanted to be done with it, done with the ministry, done with this earthly life. But God comforted him, sustained him, and finally took him into glory in a chariot of fire. Both Moses and Elijah bore the cross, served God faithfully, gave up their earthly life (that is, earthly comfort, personal gain, selfish pursuits), and now—now, look! They’re doing just fine! They’re here talking with Jesus in glory. They know Him already, because they’ve been with Him in glory since the moment they left this earth. They gave up their earthly life, and yet they’re still very much alive.

Peter, James, and John were stunned, afraid, confused. Peter offered to set up three tents, for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. It was a foolish thought, but it shows how much they wanted this vision to last, how eager they were to remain up here on the mountain in that glorious state. But, no. Moses and Elijah had already stayed long enough here on earth. They have a far, far better place to live in now. They’re only here to talk with Jesus for a moment, because Jesus still has to finish the path they already finished. He has work to do at the bottom of the mountain, a cross to bear, a death to die. And so do Peter, James, and John. The glory comes after the cross, not before.

What did they see next? A bright cloud, the same kind of cloud the Israelites in the Old Testament saw on many occasions. They called it, “The glory of the Lord.” It’s how God communicated visibly that He was present in their midst. The Almighty Father of heaven and earth was there with them, with His Son, the ultimate, visible, stamp of approval on Jesus by the Father—a stamp of approval, not only on Jesus Himself but on everything Jesus had said, and would say.

The Father spoke from the cloud, This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. Hear him! Listen to Him! That includes every word that comes out of His mouth. It includes the word calling sinners to repentance, and the word calling the penitent to come to Him for healing and forgiveness, and the word about His impending death, and the word about His resurrection, and the word about the necessity for those who would follow Jesus to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Him, the call to abandon our earthly life and the invitation to find our true life with God, and with Jesus, His beloved Son, with whom He is well pleased. Yes, you must lose your life in order to gain a far better life. You must let go of your earthly life in order to gain the heavenly one. That’s what Jesus says. So, Hear Him, Peter, James, and John! And know that there is life after death.

And then it was over. The cloud disappeared. Moses and Elijah disappeared. Jesus was back to looking like just a man again. And Jesus told these three disciples not to tell anyone about the vision until after He rose from the dead. This vision wasn’t meant for all the apostles, to get them through the coming months. It wasn’t even much of a help to these three, because they still didn’t understand that Jesus was literally going to suffer and die and rise again. But after the resurrection, when the Holy Spirit brought all these things to their minds, then this other-worldly experience on the mountain would come back to them, and it would all make sense. And it would constantly serve to remind them of what they had seen and heard. It would prepare them to follow Jesus to the cross, and to take up their own cross, because they had seen a glimpse of the life that awaits on the other side.

Jesus gave three disciples this vision. But God the Holy Spirit almost never does anything for our faith by things that we can see. He uses His Word to bolster our faith. He uses His Word to give us the strength to face the cross, to hold on very loosely to our earthly life so that we’re ready to let it go, if need be, in order to follow Jesus. So the Word of God that you’re hearing today is just as good as being there with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, and even better, because the Word of God is even more dependable than your sight. As Peter wrote in today’s Epistle, Yes, we have the prophetic word as something entirely sure, and you do well to pay attention to it as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. You don’t need the light of Jesus’ glorious face right now. You need the light of His Word. And you have it! So, as Peter says, pay attention to it! You may not understand the road ahead of you any more than Peter, James, and John understood the road ahead of them. But you have been given this brief vision of life after death, the life that awaits all of you who remain faithful, who daily bear your cross as you trust in the One who bore His own cross in order to atone for your sins. By His cross, He has reconciled you with God. By His cross, He has shown you the way to glory, the way to eternal life with all the saints, the way to life after death. Hear Him! And follow Him! Amen.

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Focused faith for sinking saints

Posted on February 5, 2025 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Midweek of Epiphany 4

Matthew 14:22-33

This evening we pick up Sunday’s theme of miracles on the water. In that Gospel, we saw Jesus calming a storm at sea. In this evening’s reading, He does something similar, but only after performing two other miracles. Your Bible probably has a heading for this reading like, “Jesus walks on the water.” And yet, for as amazing as that was, the greater miracle was the second one, the fact that Peter walks on the water, at least for a few steps, before he begins to sink. The message in this Gospel is very similar to Sunday’s message. Even the winds and the sea obey Him. But this text is here to teach us an even more important lesson than that. God the Holy Spirit gave us this text to teach us how to stay afloat when the winds of life are at hurricane force and the waves of doubt threaten to sweep us away. Jesus knew long ago that his people here on earth would face one crisis after another on our journey toward heaven. He knew how quickly faith can turn into doubt as a result, how easily his saints can begin to sink. So He engineered this miracle, this walking on water event, and made sure you and I would hear about it so that our faith may always stay afloat. Here in today’s Gospel, Jesus offers A Focused Faith for a Sinking Saint.

It had been a very long day. Jesus had healed many, had taught the multitudes, had provided food for 5,000 people using just five loaves of bread and two fish. At the end of the day, He made His disciples get in a boat and go ahead of Him to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, and they spent most of the night rowing, but the boat was tossed by the waves because the wind was against it. Then, in the hours just before dawn, they looked back over the waters and saw what they could only figure was a ghost, because it was walking toward them on top of the water. They were afraid, but Jesus called out to them, Be of good cheer! It is I; do not be afraid.

Peter wanted to make sure he wasn’t just hearing things. “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to You on the water.” “Come,” Jesus said. So Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. It’s one thing for the All-powerful Son of God to defy gravity, but it’s another thing when a simple human being does it. And notice where the power was. Peter didn’t just hop out of the boat as soon as he saw Jesus walking toward him. He didn’t just believe he could defy gravity. He very wisely waited for Jesus’ command, for Jesus’ Word telling him he could come out and walk on the water, and then he had something to put his faith in.

That’s an important lesson about faith, as we also heard on Sunday. Real faith is always based on a specific word or promise of God. If God hasn’t said it, you have no right or reason to believe it. That would be an empty faith, a self-created faith with no power in it. But if God has said it, you can bet your life on it, even if it defies all logic, even if it defies the laws of gravity.

Peter was doing well for a while. His faith was focused on Jesus’ power, and on Jesus’ command to him, which gave him the power to walk on the water. A focused faith, a Word-based faith, will stay afloat. But when faith loses its focus, it sinks. When Peter saw the wind, he was afraid and began to sink. Peter looked at the wind, and faith took backseat to his logic. “The wind is so strong! How can I possibly stand against it? How can I possibly stay on top of the water? Oh, look. Now I’m sinking. It’s getting worse. I’m going to drown!”

Peter took his eyes off Jesus. He looked away. But the problem wasn’t with his eyes. Jesus’ power wasn’t attached to Peter’s eyes, but to his heart, and Peter’s heart looked away. It looked away and focused on the problem, on the crisis of wind and waves. That’s the definition of doubt: to stop trusting in what Jesus says, and to start trusting in something or someone else. In this case, Peter stopped trusting in Jesus’ word and started trusting his own senses and his own experience with wind and waves and gravity. That’s a formula for a sinking saint.

Crises are bound to come into every believer’s life. There’s a right way and a wrong way to handle them, and God used this extraordinary event on the Sea of Galilee to show you the wrong way: Take your eyes off Jesus. Look at the problem, focus on the problem, see the wind and the waves as bigger than Jesus, more powerful than Jesus, more real than Jesus’ Word. Turn the volume down on Jesus’ Word, and turn up the volume on the wind. And that’s when you start sinking down, further and further.

That almost happened to the writer of Psalm 73, part of which we sang this evening. He looked around and saw the righteous—including himself!—suffering in this world. Meanwhile, he saw the wicked prospering all around him, and it didn’t make sense. As for me, my feet had almost stumbled; my steps had nearly slipped. For I was envious of the boastful when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. The Psalmist was slipping, sinking down, too, when he took his focus off of God’s Word and looked at his suffering, and at the prosperity of those who don’t believe in God. But God corrected his vision and refocused his faith, just as He did for Peter on the sea.

Peter, when he began to sink, looked away from the wind, back to Jesus to save him. “Lord, save me!” he cried out. He may have doubted Jesus’ word enabling him to walk on the water, but Peter didn’t doubt Jesus’ ability and willingness to save him from going all the way under.

And Jesus did save him, in more ways than one. Immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and caught him. He didn’t let Peter drown. He didn’t make him splash around in the water for a while, gasping for air until he had learned his lesson. Immediately, He saved His sinking saint.

And then he refocused Peter’s faith. “You of little faith,” He said, “why did you doubt?”  “Don’t you know by now, Peter, that if I say something, it will always be the truth? That if I promise something, it will always come to pass? Don’t you know that My Word is more reliable than the laws of physics themselves?”

On Sunday, we attributed this kind of doubt among believers to our sinful flesh. What specific promise of Jesus gets obscured in your heart when your flesh gets the better of you? That He really is working all things together for your good? That He won’t allow you to be tempted beyond what you can bear? That He promises to provide all you need, so that you can seek first His kingdom and His righteousness? That He will be there on the other side of death to receive you into His heavenly kingdom?

The Holy Spirit had all of us in mind when He inspired this event to be recorded in Matthew’s Gospel. It all happened for a reason, to teach us how easily our faith can lose its focus on Jesus and start to sink, so that we know what to do when we do start to sink, to refocus on Jesus and His Word and call upon Him to save us, and, with the Lord’s help, so that maybe we can weather some of these storms without sinking at all! So that we can say, with the Psalmist, Whom have I in heaven but You? And I desire nothing on earth besides You. My flesh and my heart may fail. But God is the rock of my heart and my portion forever. Amen.

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Even the winds and the sea obey Him

Posted on February 2, 2025 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Epiphany 4

Romans 13:8-10  +  Matthew 8:23-27

We spend much of the Epiphany season focusing on Jesus’ almighty power, whereby He revealed His divinity during His earthly ministry: power to transform earthly elements, like water, into something else, like fine wine; power to heal diseases with nothing more than a word. Today’s Gospel reveals a third kind of power: power over the forces of nature. As His disciples realized with awe, “Even the winds and the sea obey Him!” And if that’s true, then it has some very real-life implications, both for those who don’t believe in Him, and for those who do.

Let’s set the stage for our short Gospel reading, which is in the same chapter as last week’s reading about the healing of the leper and the centurion’s servant. It’s still early in Jesus’ ministry, and He’s just spent the entire day teaching the multitudes with a series of parables. After a long day of preaching, Jesus is tired, and, as Mark and Luke tell us, He was the one who instigated this boat trip across the lake, saying, “Let’s cross over to the other side.”

What follows is a very short and simple story. Let’s take a moment and review it. Jesus lay down on a pillow in the back of the boat and fell asleep. Meanwhile, a great storm suddenly arose, and the waves started crashing into the boat and filling it up with water. The disciples panic, even though they’re experienced fishermen, and they go to Jesus, who’s just lying there asleep, and they wake Him up with their urgent plea, “Lord, save us! We’re perishing!” That’s how Matthew relates it. Mark puts it another way: “Teacher, don’t You care that we’re perishing?”

So Jesus got up and said to them, Why are you so fearful, O you of little faith? “Fearful” can also be translated, “timid” or even “cowardly.” Why are you so timid? Why are you so cowardly, O you of little faith? And then He told the winds and the sea, “Quiet! Be still” And the winds and the sea immediately obeyed Him and became completely calm, as if someone had simply turned off a switch for the storm. And then all three Evangelists tell us how the disciples responded: What kind of man can this be? Even the winds and the sea obey Him!

On the one hand, we can understand their question. Every miracle Jesus did was amazing, but when the storm is raging loudly all around you, when it seems like your very life is about to be snuffed out by the billowing waves, it’s a whole new level of amazing to watch a man stand up, speak two words into the air (two words in Greek), and watch the waves disappear and see the clouds evaporate before your very eyes, and suddenly the boat that was rocking back and forth and crashing into the water is still, and calm, and quiet. Who can do such a thing? Only almighty God.

On the other hand, the disciples had already seen a lot of miracles by this time. They had even witnessed Jesus raising a man from the dead. One of them had already confessed Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of God, the King of Israel. But in the face of the storm, afraid they were about to die, everything they knew and believed about Jesus was banished from their thoughts. It’s as if they had “turned off” the switch to their faith.

Is it so different with us? Most of you have confessed Jesus as both Lord and Christ for your entire lives. Many of you have confessed Luther’s Small Catechism since your childhood years, “I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true Man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord.” You know this Bible story in which Jesus spoke to the winds and the sea and they obeyed Him. And yet, when trouble comes, it’s as if you say to yourself, “I’m going to set all that aside for now and put it out of my mind, because I have a crisis to deal with. I have a problem to solve. God can’t help me. I’m going to just turn off my faith for a while.” If Jesus’ own disciples did it, while He was with them in the boat, it’s no great surprise that you and I do it, too.

Their faith, in the moment of trouble, in the moment of crisis, shrank to the point of imperceptibility. “You of little faith,” Jesus said to them. And His question reaches across the millennia to us as well: “Why are you so fearful? Why are you so timid? Why are you so cowardly?” Don’t you know the One in whom you have believed? Don’t you know that Jesus commands, not only the winds and the sea, but the entire world, the entire universe? And the universe obeys Him! If that’s true, and you say you believe it to be true, why on earth would you be timid or cowardly in the face of trouble?

Now, we should be clear about what it is we’re supposed to believe. Let’s take Jesus’ disciples first, on this voyage across the Sea of Galilee. What did they have to believe in? What special reason did they have not to be timid or fearful during that particular voyage? Well, they had Jesus’ own words, “Let’s cross over to the other side of the lake.” Clearly implied in Jesus’ words was the fact that they would actually reach the other side of the lake. What else did they have? They had Jesus’ word to them all that He would make them “fishers of men,” preachers of His Gospel. But they hadn’t begun their ministry yet. So those men actually had Jesus’ assurance ahead of time that they wouldn’t perish at sea. And for that reason, even in the midst of the storm, they should have had faith that they would not, in fact, perish, as they wrongly believed they would.

You and I have no word of God like that to cling to. We have God’s promise to deliver us in the day of trouble, to “deliver us from evil,” as we pray in the Lord’s Prayer, but we also have His word that teaches us, throughout the Scriptures, not to understand that “deliverance” as a guarantee of bodily safety in every situation. In that terrible plane crash on Wednesday night, and in the other terrible plane crash on Friday, no one was given any promise from God that He would bring those flights safely to their landing. And if God hasn’t promised something, we have no right and no reason to believe it. Whereas, if He has promised something, we have no right or reason to doubt it!

So why do we? People who don’t believe in the true God (the God of Bible) at all, who don’t accept His Word as true in the first place, don’t believe God’s promises because they can’t. They’re still dead in their trespasses and sins, still hostile to God with every fiber of their being, still under God’s sentence of eternal condemnation. They blasphemously blame God for every tragedy, for every bad thing that happens in the world. They don’t trust in their heavenly Father because He isn’t—yet—their Father. He hasn’t yet given them the right to become children of God, because they haven’t yet received the Son of God in faith. To them, God doesn’t say, “You should trust Me to take care of you in times of trouble.” To them, God says, “Repent of your idolatry and turn to Me, the true God, and to My Son Jesus Christ, that I may heal you of your wickedness and bring you to life!”

But for those who do believe in the true God, who have come to know that He is good, who have repented of their sinfulness, who have been baptized in His name, who have been made children of God and heirs of eternal life, like Jesus’ disciples in the boat with Him in our Gospel, like all of us here today, why is it so easy for us to “turn off” our faith in the midst of a storm, in a moment of crisis?

You know why. It’s part of the weakness, part of the frailty of our sinful nature. The Christian usually rules over his or her Old Self, usually keeps it in check as we walk according to the New Man, the new, spiritual person God created in us when He brought us to faith in the Lord Jesus. According to the New Man, we trust in God to care for us, to do what’s right, to deliver us in the way that He knows is best, whether it’s keeping us physically safe from danger, which He often does, or whether it’s allowing troubles to come into our life while preventing those same troubles from doing any real damage to our souls. But the devil takes advantage of troubles and crises. He uses them to get the attention of our sinful flesh, like a red cape being waved in front of a bull. And in those moments, the flesh sometimes gets the better of us. It shouldn’t, but it does.

And so the Holy Spirit holds this Gospel before our eyes today, to fortify your New Man, to build you up, to make you see again how foolish it is to forget that even the winds and the sea obey the One whom you call Lord, the one who calls you a beloved member of His own body. Even the winds and the sea obey Him. And so does everything else, down to the very molecules that make up the world around you. So you have no reason to be cowardly in the face of danger. You have no reason to be timid or fearful. The next time you find yourself in danger, in trouble, in crisis, your flesh may cause you to forget about the power of the Lord Jesus for a moment. But let today’s Gospel serve to shorten the amount of time between panic and a return to trust. “Call upon Me,” God says, “in the day of trouble. I will deliver you, and you will glorify Me.” Amen.

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The certainty of faith

Posted on January 29, 2025 by Rev. Paul Rydecki
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Sermon for Midweek of Epiphany 3

Hebrews 11:1-16

We were shown two shining examples of faith in Sunday’s Gospel of the healing of the leper and of the centurion’s servant. Do you remember the qualities of their faith that we highlighted? Humble, bold, matter-of-fact trust in Jesus’ goodness and in His authority over human bodies. The centurion’s faith seemed to have come out of nowhere, and yet it was so great that Jesus praised it. This evening we continue that focus on faith with the “faith chapter” of the Bible, Hebrews 11, where the author gives us a working definition of faith, as well as a litany of believers in the Old Testament who exhibited such faith.

What is faith? Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Now, that definition works for any kind of faith. You can be assured in your heart that your team is going to win the Super Bowl, because that’s what you hope for, and you hope for it so strongly that you’re convinced it’s going to happen. It has to happen! That’s a kind of faith. But no matter how sure you are, you may still be wrong. You may be assured that a person you trust in will keep his or her promise to you. And you may be right! But you may also be wrong.

Biblical faith, on the other hand, can never be wrong, because it’s always based on a word or promise of God, who can never fail, who can never change, and who can never lie. You heard such a word and promise of God in the first lesson this evening from Jeremiah 33, where God promised the people of Jerusalem, who were already being besieged by the Babylonians and who had already seen their city destroyed, that He would heal their land, rebuild it and restore it, and forgive them for their sins against Him. There wasn’t a single outward indication that such a thing could ever happen, as the Babylonians prepared to haul them off into captivity. But God promised it, and so faith had something to cling to.

Hebrews 11 gives us many examples of faith, this assurance of things hoped for, this conviction of things not seen—not seen, but spoken by God, either as something that He had already done when they weren’t there to see it, or, in most cases, as something He would do, although they did not yet see it.

Take the creation of the world, for example. No human being was there to see it. Even Adam and Eve could only take God’s word for how they and the world got there. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. By faith we believe the words of the Psalm we sang earlier this evening: By the Word of the LORD the heavens were made; and all the host of them by the Spirit of his mouth. Unbelievers have come up with their own explanation of the origin of the universe, and they, too, have to take it by faith, because they weren’t there to see it. But when the question is whether to believe the fallible science of fallible men or the infallible word of the infallible God, faith will always take the side of God and His Word.

God’s word had proved reliable to Adam and Eve, and so Abel, although He didn’t interact directly with God as his parents had before the fall into sin, gladly and willingly offered to God, by faith, a better sacrifice than his brother Cain offered, trusting not only in the fact that God existed, but that God was good and worthy of his worship, whereas Cain lacked such faith. And through his faith, though he died, Abel still speaks. In other words, the example of Abel urges us to trust in God, as he did, and urges us to believe that even if we lose our life on this earth as he did, God is still worth trusting in, because He has something even in greater in store for us after we die.

Then we’re given the example of Enoch, the 7th generation from Adam. By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. How do we know that faith had anything to do with it? The next verses are important: Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God. And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. In other words, faith holds that God is good, that God is merciful, and that God is worthy of our worship. Abel’s faith teaches us that God is worthy of our worship, even if we die for it. While Enoch’s faith teaches us that, for those who believe in God, there is a way to escape death.

Noah comes next. By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. God told Noah that a cataclysmic flood was coming. There were no outward signs of it, not even rain clouds gathering in the sky. But because God said it, Noah believed it and acted on it and was considered righteous by God, not because he was sinless, but because he believed in God’s promise to save him and his family.

Abraham’s faith is our next example. God told him to move his whole family to an unknown, unseen land, where God promised to bless him and take care of him. Isn’t it remarkable that Abraham simply took God at His word and did it? How could he do that? How could he willingly become a foreigner in the land of the Canaanites, giving up his permanent residence for a life of moving his tent from here to there, for the rest of his life, living in a land that would never be his? As it says, He was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. By faith he looked beyond this world, beyond this life, to the permanent life with God in heaven. Now, there is zero evidence for such a place, for such a life. But faith itself serves as the evidence, concluding that, because God has promised it, it must be true.

Sarah is the final example given in the verses before us. By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore. It wasn’t faith that gave Sarah the ability to conceive in her old age and sterility. It was faith in God’s promise that connected her to God’s ability to carry out His promise.

These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but, having seen them afar off, were assured of them, embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. They desired a better country, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.

These examples of faith are recorded for us in Holy Scripture, both in the Old Testament and in the book of Hebrews, to show us what true faith looks like, how it behaves, and how it enables a person to do remarkable things, even things that defy human reason, not because of how wonderful faith is, but because of how reliable and dependable God’s word and promises are.

So when God says that Jesus truly took your sins to the cross, died for them, and rose again, even though you weren’t there, even though you won’t find any scientific evidence to prove it, you should believe it. And when God says that the waters of Baptism washed you clean of sin in His sight and made you His beloved child, you should believe it, even though it appears to be just water. When Jesus says that bread and wine are His body and blood, you should simply believe that, too. And when He says that He reigns over all things for your good, that your loved ones who died in the faith are alive with Him, and that you will be, too, after you die, accept it by faith, not because you can prove it, or because you can see it, but because God says so. Seek God with that kind of faith—the faith of the leper, of the centurion, of the Old Testament saints, and, for that matter, which is the faith of a little child—and one day, in the next life, in the city that God is preparing for you, you will see with your eyes that your faith in God’s word was never in vain. Amen.

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