Sermons

A man with leprosy comes to Jesus and falls on his face before him. “If you are willing,” he cries, “you can make me clean.” Jesus reaches out his hand, touches him and says, “Be clean.” In that moment the disease left him.

This is the faith God desires: a confession that knows the world holds no hope at all, and still clings to Jesus, pleading with him for life. People live by hope, but despair is the heart giving way when a soul once held in love chooses the world in the end. Like Samuel when he was told to pray for Saul no longer, there comes a point where one sees that placing hope in people was itself despair.

The last step God’s people must climb is the step of despair. Only when Christians accept that the world has already been judged, and that no one changes unless born again of the Holy Spirit, can they share the gospel without losing heart. Knowing that despair, they come to see all the more deeply that Christ alone, shining in the darkness, is their hope.

Jesus gave himself as a ladder that stands always beside the steps of faith. The Creator came down to this earth, which he had made his footstool, and for the sake of sinners he cut himself into small pieces and drove in the nails, becoming a ladder.

Each Christian’s faith is different, yet whatever step one stands on, no one can climb without this ladder. Those who cling to the things of the world, determined to live by their own strength, and never set foot on the ladder can only end up back in the place of death.

On the day the angel’s trumpet sounds, this ladder will be gone forever. Before that day, while the opportunity to repent remains, one must take hold of the ladder and climb it to receive eternal life.

When an eagle’s beak and talons grow dull, it tears them all away itself on the rocky crags, and only after enduring a season in which it can neither eat nor fly does it rise higher into the open sky on a new beak and new talons. A young eagle, too, is able to fly only after a long training in which its mother drops it from the nest and catches it again, over and over.

This is the path a Christian must walk. Only with the resolve to cast off falsehood, hypocrisy and bad habits can a person stand in a renewed faith, and suffering is the hand of God letting go and catching again and again, to make his people strong. So it was with Moses: only after forty years as a prince and forty more as a shepherd in the wilderness did he come to see his own helplessness and become a leader who obeyed.

The story of Abraham, standing before the command to offer up Isaac, points to the same conclusion. True faith does not hold on to its own righteousness and its own zeal but entrusts everything wholly to God. Christians who lay aside the old things they once relied on in the world and gain new strength through patience come to know the freedom and peace of an eagle soaring through the open sky.

As the disciples were crossing by boat to Capernaum, a storm came upon them. When the waves rose high in the darkness, they forgot everything: the words they had heard until then, even the miracle of the five loaves and two fish. Only the waves before their eyes remained, and these became the object of their fear.

Satan sends such hardships to shake the faith of God’s people. Yet those who keep their faith and their lives apart can do nothing but tremble whenever trouble comes. Peter, too, saw Jesus coming to them over the waves and boldly stepped out onto the water, but when he saw the strong wind, fear seized him again and he sank.

Faith is made complete not in feelings but when it is shown in action. Whoever doubts, even with Jesus right before them, goes down into the water; but whoever holds on to his hand and relies on him to the end can walk even upon the roughest waves. May God’s people sail boldly across the sea of this world with a faith as great as a warship.

As Saul heads toward Damascus, an intense light pours down before him and a voice speaks. Struck blind and fallen to the ground, he realizes that the Jesus he has been persecuting is the living God. Though dismayed at the command to heal the eyes of his enemy, Ananias obeys.

After meeting Christ, Saul immediately leaves behind the faith of the Jews and enters a life of proclaiming the gospel. Yet he confesses that two hearts are at war within him. Because it was a faith that could be kept only by giving up human righteousness, a heart thankful for grace and the weakness of the flesh were always in conflict. He was beaten, shipwrecked, and even carried an illness in his body, but God did not take that thorn away. Instead, it was the hand that held him back from becoming proud.

Faith is sometimes full, like a high mountain, and sometimes collapses, like a deep valley. On the mountain, believers must be humble; in the valley, they must cry out to God. The glory of the world collapses in a moment, but faith that holds fast to Christ does not collapse.

Joseph proudly tells his brothers about his dream, in which their sheaves of grain bowed down to his own. Jacob’s favoritism had already turned them against him, yet Joseph gave no thought at all to how they felt; all he could do was boast that they had bowed before him.

Faith has steps like these as well. When Christians come to know a little of the Word, receive a church office and begin to serve, they reach a low, sharp peak, where conceit at knowing God well and pride begin to grow. The sin most often committed at this stage is judging the weak faith of other believers. Joseph, too, was spiritually immature, and so he failed to grasp God’s greater purpose and put his own boasting first.

Through his season of suffering Joseph came to see that even his brothers had been instruments in God’s plan, and in the end he fulfilled his calling to save his whole family. Christians who never climb past this step remain like stagnant water, however many years they attend church. But when they discipline and humble themselves, holding fast to their faith out of love for God, they come to true maturity and to their reward.

Lot’s wife was led out of Sodom by the hand of an angel, yet her heart stayed behind with the wealth and the relationships she had left. She knew that life lay in running on with judgment at her back, but in the end she looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.

Faith is not made by dragging someone along. Self-deception, laziness, discourtesy and stubbornness, not knowing what should come first: to see such stumbling blocks and leave them where they lie is a road that ends in a fall. David, too, stumbled at a time of ease after his victories in battle, because he had not cleared his stumbling blocks away.

When the Word collides with human nature and stumbling blocks begin to come into view, that shows how far one has grown. They must be cleared away the moment they are seen, for that is the way up the steps of faith.

In the vision, water flows out from the new temple and rises from the ankles to the knees and then the waist, until it becomes a river no one can cross. It was the revelation of a promise that captive Israel would be restored.

The order in which the water rises can be read as the stages through which a believer’s faith grows. Faith starts out in a flower garden and makes its way past stumbling blocks, over mountains and through valleys, and across a storm-tossed sea, until it reaches the place where it soars like an eagle. A flower-garden faith makes blessing its condition and gives way at the first frost. An eagle’s faith perseveres through the Word and through faith, and it recognizes the workings of Satan.

The vessel of faith differs from one Christian to another, so it is not right for believers to criticize and condemn one another. God does not want a showy flower garden. He wants a steadfast faith that gives thanks without conditions. Those who know their priorities and live according to God’s will come to stand like great trees that not even a typhoon can shake.