Date: 27 August 2023 | Pre­a­cher:
Series: | Bible text: James 2:17
Hint: This ser­mon has been machi­ne trans­la­ted. Plea­se note that we can­not accept any respon­si­bi­li­ty for the accu­ra­cy of the content.

Often we think faith has only some­thing to do with an inner atti­tu­de and our thoughts. Howe­ver, the Bible tea­ches us that faith also has a lot to do with how we act and behave. How roo­ted our faith is is expres­sed in our actions. It is not a mat­ter of pious actions, but of acting out of faith. And this faith always has its root in the encoun­ter with the holy God.


I would like to start the ser­mon today with a litt­le joke. An elder­ly cou­ple is lying in bed at night. The hus­band is rest­less, can’t sleep and keeps tos­sing and tur­ning. At some point it beco­mes too much for the wife and she asks him what is wrong. He starts almost mumbling, «Well, um, don’t you think it’s time again for…well you know.» The woman does­n’t quite under­stand. «Honey, what do you think?» He in turn repli­es, «Come on, you know what I mean. It starts with S and ends with X.» The woman, now quite indignant, says: «Lis­ten, it’s alre­a­dy half past ele­ven at night. Even you should rea­li­se that it’s sim­ply too late to call Spi­tex now! 

The faith of Abraham and Sarah

In fact, today I am going to tell you about an elder­ly cou­ple from the Bible who felt very much the same way. We are tal­king about Abra­ham and Sarah. When Abra­ham was 75 years old, God pro­mi­sed to make him a gre­at nati­on, to give him many des­cen­dants and to give the­se des­cen­dants a gre­at, fer­ti­le land. But Abra­ham and Sarah were alre­a­dy old and could not pro­du­ce any child­ren until then. Even after the pro­mi­se, this did not chan­ge for a long time. At some point, the two of them also tried it in their own way, with Abra­ham fathe­ring a child with Sarah’s maid Hagar. To cut a long sto­ry short, apart from a lot of dra­ma, this action did not bring much and alt­hough Abra­ham now had a son, this was not the ful­film­ent of God’s promise.

In Gene­sis 18 we can read how their sto­ry con­ti­nues after God repea­ted his pro­mi­se seve­ral times and made a coven­ant with Abra­ham. God appeared to Abra­ham in the form of three men. Abra­ham imme­dia­te­ly under­stands who is stan­ding befo­re him and pulls out all the stops to offer the Lord a feast. As they ate, the fol­lo­wing sce­ne took place: «And he said, Ver­i­ly in the year about this time will I come again unto thee; behold, Sarah thy wife hath a son. And Sarah was lis­tening at the ent­rance of the tent which was behind him. And Abra­ham and Sarah were old and advan­ced in years: and Sarah was no more after the man­ner of women. And Sarah laug­hed within hers­elf, and said, After that I am grown old, I should ⟨yet⟩ Have love lust? And ⟨also⟩ my lord is yes old!» (Gene­sis 18:10–12 ELB).

I’m sor­ry to dis­ap­point all tho­se who thought Sarah was laug­hing becau­se she no lon­ger had her peri­od. She did­n’t have her peri­od, but she laug­hed becau­se they had­n’t slept tog­e­ther for a long time. Why do I empha­sise this so much? After all, it can be seen as a simp­le detail. For me it is not just a detail, but shows the abso­lut­e­ly clo­se con­nec­tion bet­ween faith and action. Abra­ham and Sarah were enligh­ten­ed enough to know how child­ren are born. Would­n’t it have been abso­lut­e­ly logi­cal to have sex if they belie­ved that God would give them a child? They would pro­ba­b­ly have said with gre­at con­vic­tion that they belie­ve God and trust in his word. Howe­ver, their actions relent­less­ly reve­al that at that moment their faith did not go very far.

Here we rea­li­se how clo­se­ly faith and action are inter­wo­ven. My hus­band and I have tried count­less sports. One sport that we like very much is clim­bing. Alt­hough we enjoy it very much, we very sel­dom take time for it and as a result the­re are often long breaks bet­ween two visits to the clim­bing gym. While my hus­band is very fearless in this area, it’s a dif­fe­rent sto­ry for me. I’m always a bit cau­tious on the first few holds until I get used to it again. If you were to ask me today if I trust my hus­band, I would tell you very cle­ar­ly and with con­vic­tion «Yes, abso­lut­e­ly! I trust him blind­ly!». Howe­ver, if I’m clinging to a wall 12 met­res abo­ve the ground and you ask me if I trust my hus­band, it’s a com­ple­te­ly dif­fe­rent sto­ry. I’m sud­den­ly unsu­re, I find excu­ses why I might not trust him com­ple­te­ly at that moment, and I have to admit to mys­elf that I pro­ba­b­ly don’t trust so blind­ly after all. It takes my con­scious decis­i­on at that moment, despi­te the fear, to trust my hus­band after all. The­re, this decis­i­on mani­fests its­elf very cle­ar­ly in my actions. I show my decis­i­on to trust when I let go of the but­tons on the wall and let mys­elf fall into the rope. It is also so much easier to tell God in our songs, pray­ers and con­ver­sa­ti­ons with others from church that one trusts God com­ple­te­ly and has a deep­ly roo­ted faith. But in our beha­viour, unfort­u­na­te­ly, it often reve­als that our faith is inde­ed often smal­ler than a mus­tard seed.

Faith colloquial vs. faith biblical

The reason for this dis­crepan­cy bet­ween our speech and our actions is, in my opi­ni­on, not so much our bad faith as our under­stan­ding of the con­cept of «faith». When we speak col­lo­qui­al­ly of faith, we mean some­thing some­whe­re bet­ween assum­ing and kno­wing. I think the­re are two big mis­con­cep­ti­ons about faith that are pro­ba­b­ly due to cul­tu­ral under­stan­ding and con­tra­dict the bibli­cal under­stan­ding of faith. First, we think faith is some­thing that hap­pens in our head and may­be our heart. We speak of faith as a con­cept tied to our thin­king. Part­ly it is still rela­ted to our emo­ti­ons, but it is not tied to our actions. In the Bible, howe­ver, we see a dif­fe­rent under­stan­ding of faith. In James 2:17–22 we read: «So also faith, if it has no works, is dead in its­elf. But someone will say, «You have faith, and I have works. Show me your faith wit­hout works, and I will show you faith from my works! You belie­ve that ⟨only⟩ one is God? You are right; even the demons belie­ve and trem­ble. But wilt thou know, thou vain man, that faith wit­hout works is use­l­ess? Was not Abra­ham our father jus­ti­fied by works, when he laid Isaac his son upon the altar of sacri­fice? Thou seest that faith work­ed tog­e­ther with his works, and faith was per­fec­ted out of works» (James 2:17–22 ELB).

 

The­se are harsh words and Luther would have lik­ed to dele­te them from the Bible. We know that it is faith that saves us and not deeds. In any case, that is the case. But this Bible pas­sa­ge shows us how clo­se­ly inter­wo­ven faith and action are. The Bible paints such a much more holi­stic pic­tu­re of faith. I think it is so beau­tiful the way it is descri­bed here in James. Abra­ham is the gre­at model of faith. Why is that so? Becau­se his deep-roo­ted faith was reve­a­led in how uncon­di­tio­nal­ly he obey­ed God. His deeds were the visi­ble pro­of of his faith. It is also important for me to men­ti­on here what the thrust is. I do not want to preach pious beha­viour here. It is not the faith that comes out of deeds. It is the faith that chal­lenges us to the deeds. The deeds do not pro­du­ce the faith, but com­ple­te it. It is important for me to empha­sise that my point is not to indict our beha­viour. I sim­ply want to take you on a jour­ney to dis­co­ver how much more expan­si­ve faith is. And yes, I agree that ulti­m­ate­ly it may be more con­nec­ted to our actions than we often like. It can be uncom­for­ta­ble to rea­li­se that we are not very good at hiding what our faith is like. But that is the sto­ry of the Bible. It is about peo­p­le who­se beha­viour reve­als their faith or, inde­ed, often their unbe­lief. Wit­hout this reve­la­ti­on, faith remains a nice idea, like a thousand other nice phi­lo­so­phi­cal ide­as. It sounds harsh, but some­ti­mes I wish the state­ments and pro­mi­ses of the Bible would influence my beha­viour as much as the pro­phe­ci­es of my wea­ther app.

The second mis­con­cep­ti­on about faith is that it is a con­fi­dent assump­ti­on. I am con­vin­ced that faith is more than a hope or a pre­sump­ti­on. To under­stand this, let’s read Hebrews 11:1–2. «But faith is a rea­li­ty of what one hopes for, a con­vic­tion of things not seen. For by it the anci­ents obtai­ned tes­tim­o­ny»(Hebrews 11:1–2 ELB). In part, the word «hypo­sta­sis», which is trans­la­ted here as «rea­li­ty», is trans­la­ted as con­fi­dence. If we belie­ve many wise theo­lo­gi­ans from histo­ry, it quick­ly beco­mes clear that we are clo­ser with rea­li­ty. Hypo­sta­sis means foun­da­ti­on or even basis of exis­tence, essence, rea­li­ty or actua­li­ty. I think you agree with me that if faith is a rea­li­ty, a rea­li­ty, that it is much more than just hoping for some­thing. Also the word «being con­vin­ced» is much stron­ger than sim­ply a firm con­fi­dence. The word can also be trans­la­ted as «being con­vin­ced». It is other­wi­se men­tio­ned in con­text when the evi­dence is so clear that in a legal dis­pu­te it can be cle­ar­ly assu­med that the accu­sed is guil­ty or inno­cent. Are we awa­re that our faith is not based on assump­ti­ons, but on a rea­li­ty. I will not go into the evi­dence its­elf here, but note that purely from a his­to­ri­cal point of view the­re is good evi­dence that Jesus was cru­ci­fied and resur­rec­ted. The­re are real­ly very good reasons to belie­ve what the Bible says. The Word of God is the basis of our faith. And this faith is by no means based on a faint hope, which is almost naï­ve. I will glad­ly grant you that if you belie­ve what is writ­ten in the Bible, it does not have much to do with a foo­lish trust, but with a tan­gi­ble reality.

Encounter with the holy God as the root of faith

Befo­re I con­clude, I want to talk again about Abra­ham and Sarah. As pro­mi­sed, Sarah gave birth to a son a year later. This son was final­ly the ful­film­ent of God’s pro­mi­se. It does not say exact­ly, but I would be very, very sure that Abra­ham and Sarah con­cei­ved this boy natu­ral­ly. Their faith had been rea­wa­ken­ed and given new impe­tus. Through what did this hap­pen? It was the encoun­ter with the Lord. It was the Word of the Holy God that awa­ken­ed new faith in Abra­ham and Sarah. This encoun­ter its­elf was not plea­sant for Sarah, for the Lord reve­a­led her unbe­lief. She was expo­sed at that moment. And yet it was pre­cis­e­ly this encoun­ter that streng­the­ned her faith anew. It was her wake-up call that her actions testi­fy to a dying faith. But it was also a wake-up call for her to make a new decis­i­on to hold on to God’s pro­mi­se. It is in their deeds, in their obe­dience, that their faith is com­ple­ted. The result is the glo­ri­fi­ca­ti­on of God. That is the direc­tion of action. From the encoun­ter comes faith and from faith fol­lows action. Whe­ther God encoun­ters you is not up to you. But it is our respon­si­bi­li­ty to seek God with all our heart. Second­ly, we have the pri­vi­le­ge of having access to God’s Word. When­ever we want, we can immer­se our­sel­ves in His Word.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Possible questions for the small group 

Read the Bible text: James 2:17

  1. What pro­mi­ses has God given us in his Word? What attri­bu­tes are attri­bu­ted to God in the Bible?
  2. Now think tog­e­ther about how it could mani­fest its­elf in our actions if we real­ly belie­ve the pro­mi­ses and belie­ve in a God as descri­bed in the Bible? (For exam­p­le, God is our pro­vi­der. Do we behave like this or does our beha­viour per­haps some­ti­mes show more that we see our­sel­ves as providers)?
  3. Are the­re are­as in your life whe­re you are chal­len­ged to make a decis­i­on and reaf­firm your trust in God through your actions?
  4. How would you defi­ne «faith»? What con­sti­tu­tes faith for you?
  5. We can­not force an encoun­ter with God, but we can reach out for it. Dis­cuss how this can happen.
  6. Share how you can stay tun­ed to dive into God’s Word again and again.