“What is true faith? True faith is not only a sure knowledge by which I hold as true all that God has revealed to us in Scripture; it is also a wholehearted trust, which the Holy Spirit creates in me by the gospel, that God has freely granted, not only to others but to me also, forgiveness of sins, eternal righteousness, and salvation. These are gifts of sheer grace, granted solely by Christ’s merit.”
Trust is like oxygen. You only realize how necessary it is when it is gone. If all the oxygen were to disappear from this world for only five seconds, every building made out of concrete would turn to dust because oxygen is part of the compound that holds such structures together. The oceans would evaporate, and the remaining hydrogen would begin floating into space. Everyone’s inner ear would burst, and, of course, since there would be no oxygen, none of us could breath. We would find out how very necessary oxygen is if we were to lose it. Trust is like that too. You only realize how necessary it is when it is gone.
You are involved in many interactions every day that necessitate a level of trust. You are expressing some level of trust in me in this moment by even considering what I have to say. If you have children in nursery, you are expressing trust in those who are helping out in that room. You are expressing trust in our deacons as you give your offerings. Now you probably didn’t think twice about any of these acts of trust in the same way that you paid no attention to the oxygen in this room until I mentioned it. You only realize how necessary it is when it is gone.
You only realize how necessary trust is to faith when you try to imagine faith without it. You couldn’t have faith in a God whom you didn’t trust. You couldn’t have faith in what Scripture said if you didn’t consider Scripture to be trustworthy. Trust is a necessary component of faith.
Trust is a necessary component of faith. That is the claim of this sermon: trust is a necessary component of faith.
We will study this in two points. First: a matter of trust. Second: where this trust leads.
First: the matter of trust. Last week we saw that faith involves knowledge. You cannot have faith unless you know about the object of your faith. For an atheist to have faith in the big bang, he must know something about that theory. For a Buddhist to have faith in reincarnation, she must know something about that belief. For you to have saving faith, you must know something about Jesus and what he has done to save sinners.
Tonight, we see that faith not only involves knowledge; it also involves trust. An atheist who has faith in the big bang will trust that it accounts for the origin of the universe. He demonstrates this trust by building other beliefs off his belief in the big bang. A Buddhist who has faith in reincarnation will express her trust by bettering herself in order to climb the reincarnation ladder towards nirvana. If you have saving faith, you will trust that Jesus’ death really did forgive your sins and so you will stop trying to justify yourself; he has already done it for you. Faith cannot consist in only knowledge. It must involve trust.
Now I’ve mentioned an atheist, a Buddhist, and a Christian to show that everyone has faith in something and each of these expressions of faith involve both knowledge and trust. Now the question, of course, is which faith corresponds to reality.
Faith only matters if it corresponds to reality. Let’s say that a young man has faith that a young lady is interested in dating him. He has heard that she likes him—that is his knowledge. He trusts this information—that is his trust. He has faith that she likes him. The fact is that she doesn’t. He will find out that faith only matters if it corresponds to reality the moment he asks her out on a date and gets turned down.
Faith matters if it corresponds to reality. We’ve had a number of sermons in this series that have dealt with the reliability of what the Bible reveals in order to show how saving faith corresponds to reality. The burden of the sermon tonight is to show that this Biblical faith involves trust in what the Bible reveals.
The most famous definition of faith in Scripture is found in Hebrews 11 and it expresses this trust saying, “faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” The words “confidence” and “assurance” are words of trust. If you have confidence in a friend, you trust her. If you have assurance that your business partner will keep his end of the bargain, you trust him. The author of Hebrews uses these words “confidence” and “assurance” in regard to what the Bible reveals; “faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” In other words, faith is trust in the knowledge which God has revealed.
The Bible reveals that God created the heavens and the earth. Biblical faith trusts that knowledge just as an atheist’s faith believes in the big bang. The fact, of course, is that neither of us was there in the beginning. Each of us is trusting an account as to how nothing turned into something. As the author of Hebrews puts it, “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.” We Christians trust this knowledge because, unlike that atheist or ourselves, God was there in the beginning.
By faith, you trust the knowledge Scripture reveals. You believe that the Lord is your shepherd because Scripture reveals it. You believe that Jesus loves you because the Bible tells you so. If you are a Christian, you trust Scripture. Take, for example, the ending of the book of 2 Kings. This book ends with a glimmer of hope in the midst of the Babylonian exile. “In the thirty-seventh year of the exile of Jehoiachin king of Judah, in the year Awel-Marduk became king of Babylon, he released Jehoiachin king of Judah from prison. He did this on the twenty-seventh day of the twelfth month. He spoke kindly to him and gave him a seat of honor higher than those of the other kings who were with him in Babylon. So Jehoiachin put aside his prison clothes and for the rest of his life ate regularly at the king’s table. Day by day the king gave Jehoiachin a regular allowance as long as he lived.” Now clay tablets found in Babylon have confirmed that, for whatever reason, this king of Judah was indeed given preferential treatment. Archeology has confirmed this, and if you are a Christian that is helpful to know but you trusted the truth of 2 Kings before you heard that archeological confirmation. You trusted 2 Kings because you trust Scripture.
Faith necessitates trust but don’t imagine that your trust must be perfect. It must be present. Consider Sarah. She certainly had a wavering trust, at best, in God’s promise of a child and yet Hebrews 11 holds her up as a woman of faith saying, “by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who had made the promise. And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.” Sarah’s faith wasn’t perfect, but it was present. There is hope for you and I when it comes to this life of faith.
Now Sarah is a helpful illustration of faith because Scripture makes clear that she put her faith in a specific promise. God had promised Abraham that he and Sarah would have descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore. Abraham and Sarah didn’t have faith that God would give them a child merely because they wanted children. They had faith that God would give them a child because He has promised them a child. Faith involves trust in specific promises.
Faith is not a wish. It is a trust in a specific promise that God has made. You can have faith that there is life after death not merely because you want there to be something after death, but because Jesus has promised, “my Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?” You can have faith that your sins are forgiven not because forgiveness is a helpful psychological trick but because God has promised that, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
If your faith is mere wishing, you will always find yourself wondering if your faith will be rewarded. Your faith must rest upon promises made by God. “The Lord is trustworthy in all He promises and faithful in all He does,” as the Psalmist puts it. That is the grounds for your faith. The same level of certainty can’t be said for your wishes. Stop wishing. Have faith in the God of promise.
Jesus trusted specific promises. Jesus spoke about his resurrection so confidently because he believed Isaiah 53:11, “After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied.” He trusted Psalm 22 even as he spoke from it on the cross, “God has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one; He has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.” That is the Psalm which begins with the words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Now please notice when those promises were fulfilled for Jesus. They were fulfilled after his death. Jesus didn’t see the light of life as Isaiah 53 promised until after his death. The idea that people of faith will enjoy all God’s promises in this life is a terrible lie. You aren’t promised a heavenly life here on earth. David didn’t have one. Paul didn’t have one. Jesus didn’t have one. Don’t expect one. Be like Jesus. Have enough trust in the promises of God to believe that they are stronger than death. That is the faith that Hebrews 11 speaks of. “All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.”
If you trust God’s promises in such a way that you can die happy knowing that God has not once let you down and that He will give you more than you can ask or imagine throughout all eternity, then God is not ashamed to be called your God. Faith is so very precious to God because it is an act of trust in Him. You are honored by the trust of others. God is honored by your trust. God is supremely honored when people like you trust Him to such an extent that you can die happy knowing that you haven’t wasted your life but rather have invested it wisely. This is why Paul could say, “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived”— the things God has prepared for those who love Him.”
Now if this trust is alive in you, it will behave in a certain way. We see that in our second point: where this trust leads. This trust which is part of faith leads to action. Noah trusted what God revealed to him about the coming flood and so we read, “By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family.”
Noah’s trust led to action. If Noah didn’t attempt to save his family by building that ark, we could safely assume that he, like the people to whom he preached, didn’t believe God’s warning. Since Noah trusted that warning, he acted. If you have faith in the knowledge you have received, you will be willing to act on that knowledge.
Think of it in terms of CIA intelligence. The CIA received intelligence that Osama Bin Laden was in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. They deemed this intelligence to be trustworthy and so they acted upon it. Any person of faith behaves in the same way. If she has trust in the knowledge God has given, she will act upon that knowledge. That is why Noah built the ark. That is why the disciples preached the resurrection after Jesus ascended. That is why Paul stopped persecuting the church and joined the church.
That is why you obey God. You obey God because you have faith in the knowledge He has revealed. He has revealed that, “the way of the transgressor is hard,” and, being a logical person, you don’t want life to be harder than it already is and so you try to avoid transgression. God has revealed that you must “trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight.” You want your paths to be straight and so you seek to trust in Him rather than leaning on your own understanding. The man who doesn’t trust those verses does not behave in that fashion. He might know those verses, but he clearly doesn’t have faith that they are reality because he doesn’t act accordingly. Trust leads to action.
Trust also gives peace. If you trust a man, you are at peace that he will do what he says he will do. You are not restless with fear that he might fail you. Think of it this way: let’s say that I have invited you over for supper tomorrow night. I ask you to pick up some pizza. I make it very clear to you that I’m counting on you for the pizza. I send you a text tomorrow reminding you to pick up the pizza. When you come over, with pizza in hand, you find that I have already picked up pizzas. You would have good reasons for doubting my faith in you. I have demonstrated that I didn’t trust you because I kept trying to secure what I asked you to secure.
The man who has faith in Christ stops trying to secure what Christ promises to secure. Such a man doesn’t claim faith in a God who controls his life and then use tarot cards to try to read his future. He doesn’t claim faith in Jesus and then hedge his bets by practicing the five pillars of Islam. He behaves like Peter, who when asked by Jesus if he would abandoned Jesus like everyone else, said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” The man of faith stops searching for something in which to put his faith because he has already put his faith in Jesus.
Faith involves trust but this trust is always imperfect. For the Christian, the object of faith—God—is the only perfection. Our faith is always imperfect. We all stand with that panicked father who told Jesus, “I believe. Help my unbelief.”
The perfection of your object of faith matters more than the strength of your faith. A certain point in the winter, some people begin driving their trucks on lakes, both for fun and to set up their ice fishing houses. Imagine that the ice was too thin to hold up any vehicle, but a man has total trust that the ice would hold his truck. He has no doubt. He believes with all his heart that the ice will hold him up. Would that total trust be enough to hold up the car? Not for a second. The relative strength of his faith doesn’t matter. It is the reliability of the object of faith, in this case the ice, that matters. Now imagine that the ice is more than thick enough to hold any vehicle. A man is preparing to drive his truck on onto the ice, but he is quite nervous. He isn’t sure if it will hold but he idles forward on to the ice anyway. He fears that it will crack any moment. Does the ice hold? Of course it does. The relative strength of the faith doesn’t matter. The man had enough faith to drive out onto the ice and it is the thickness of the ice that ultimately matters.
If you have put your faith Christ, you have every reason to trust that what the Catechism says is true for you, “God has freely granted, not only to others but to me also, forgiveness of sins, eternal righteousness, and salvation.” Your trust that forgiveness, righteousness, and salvation are yours might be wavering, but it isn’t the perfection of your faith that forgives sins. It is the perfection of Jesus’ sacrifice. He said, “it is finished.” You don’t need to wait for your conscience to say that to you.
Your trust won’t be perfect. Your knowledge won’t be perfect. In other words, your faith won’t be perfect. What matters is whether the object of your faith is perfect. Consider Jesus. Consider what is known about him. He behaved as no man has ever behaved; he is sinless. He loved the Lord his God with all his heart, all his soul, and all his strength and his neighbor, meaning you and I, as himself. The fact that he rose again from the dead is thoroughly validated. This should give you every motivation to look into all that he has to say. If a man promises that he will rise from the dead, and then does, you would be wise to examine what else he has to say. Consider what is known about him.
Consider his trustworthiness. Those are the two components of faith—knowledge and trust. Consider Jesus’ trustworthiness. Inspect his life as recorded in the gospels. He is transparent. He is an open book. He never once neglected to do what God called him to do even to the point of his own pain and death. He keeps his promises. He will keep his promises to you. This man who is God is more than able to keep his promises today. He is worthy of your faith.
If you have put your faith in him, you know that he hasn’t failed you. “Don’t let your hearts be troubled,” he says. “Trust in God. Trust also in me.”
If you have put your trust in him, you know that you have no need to be troubled. You know him. You trust him. So know him. Trust him. Amen.