Exhortation, February 1

Exhortation for February 1:

Jesus has many things to say about faith in our sermon text this morning. One of the main things has to do with the power of faith: He says that anyone who has faith the size of a mustard seed can say to a deeply rooted tree “Be uprooted and be planted in the sea,” and it will happen. Jesus is not talking about magic tricks here. Jesus is talking about a fig-mulberry tree, which is often associated in Scripture with Israel’s prosperity. To cast a mulberry tree into the sea is to uproot Israel and cast her out into the nations. And after healing 10 lepers He says that faith has saved the one who returned to Him.

What is faith? Protestant theologians have offered a threefold definition: Faith includes knowledge, since you can’t believe something if you’re ignorant of it. Faith includes assent, that is, acknowledging that what you know is actually true. Supremely, though, faith is trust: Based on what we know, and growing out of our assent to what we know, we trust what we have learned and entrust ourselves to God. Another way to describe faith is to say that faith is loyalty. Keeping faith with your spouse means being sexually and personally loyal. Keeping faith with a friend means sticking with him through thick and thin. Faith in God means loyalty to Him, clinging to Him in all trials and tribulations, trusting Him to guard and save us from all dangers, believing everything He tells us in His word. The world is divided into warring camps, the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman; faith means we enlist on the side of the seed of the woman.

This kind of loyalty cannot be confined to some particular sphere of life. We can’t say that we’ll be loyal to a friend “within the sphere of friendship,” but free to betray him in another sphere. When we get married we swear to be loyal through all changes and challenges of life, from whatever directions those changes or challenges might come. So also, loyalty to God is not loyalty in some restricted “religious sphere” of life. Faith is loyalty that determines our all our goals, aims, plans, programs, actions, relationships, feelings, thoughts, desires, ambitions. Nor is faith limited to the first step of the Christian life, as if we start in faith and then, when we grow up, we operate by some other principle. No: the Christian life is a life of faith from first to last, a life of loyalty to God in response to the good news of God.

The richest reference to faith comes at the end of the story of the ten lepers. One of the ten returns to Jesus, giving thanks to God with a loud voice, falls on His face, and worships. Jesus says, “Rise, and go your way. Your faith has saved you.” The text never says anything about the leper believing or trusting in Jesus but instead shows us what faith looks like, how a man with faith acts. Each of the former leper’s acts is important. When he sees that he has been cleansed, he turns back. Faith issues in repentance, in changing direction, in taking a new course. As he returns, He glorifies God with a loud voice, falls prostrate on His face before Jesus, and gives thanks to Jesus. Having turned in a new direction, the first expressions of faith are praise, prostration, and thanksgiving. Faith without thanksgiving and worship is a contradiction in terms.

But all of this is abstract without one other key element. There is a lot of talk today about renewed interest in spirituality and “faith.” But the faith of the leper is far more specific: it is faith in, loyalty to Jesus. When he turns back, the leper turns back to run to Jesus. When he glorifies God, he is glorifying the God of Jesus. He gives thanks to Jesus, and He falls in submission at the feet of Jesus, acknowledging Jesus as Master and Lord, acknowledging that Jesus has conquered him by his grace. Faith is NOT simply being thankful in general, or changing our course in life in general, or worshiping some God in general. If it is true faith, it is always faith in Jesus.

This is the only kind of faith that uproots trees and saves lepers. Ten lepers were healed in the story. The other nine went to the priest and were declared clean. But only one of the lepers was “saved.” The only one that was saved was the one who, in faith, turned, worshiped, and gave thanks TO JESUS.