Faith and the Word.

The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God, and the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.  Amen.

 

John 14:1 “‘Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. 2  In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. 4  And you know the way where I am going.’ 5  Thomas said to Him, ‘Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?’ 6  Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me. 7  If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him.’ 8  Philip said to Him, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.’ 9  Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how do you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10  Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works. 11 Believe Me that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me; otherwise believe on account of the works themselves. 12  Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go to the Father.13 Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.’”  (NASB)

 

          The setting of the assigned Gospel lesson for this Fifth Sunday in Easter is the Upper Room on Maundy Thursday. Jesus’s crucifixion is rapidly approaching and He knows it. The plans for His betrayal have been made and Judas is on his way to the high priest to put the plan into effect. Jesus knows that too.  At the end of chapter 13, Peter told Jesus that he (Peter) will never abandon his Lord. Jesus tells Peter that he will deny Him three times before the rooster crows.

          While the disciples seem unaware of what is going to happen in the coming 24 hours, Jesus knows that the disciples will find themselves in the middle of the most stark and brutal reality check they will ever face. Their whole world view, everything they think and believe about the Messiah and themselves will come crashing down.

          Against this background Jesus says to disciples, “‘Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. 2  In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.”

          As He faces His own crucifixion and in fulfillment of the promise that none of those who have been given to Jesus would be lost, Jesus is teaching the disciples that He is going ahead of them in death and life so that they will follow Him into the life of the world to come.

          These men had left their full-time vocations, their homes, and their families to follow Him. They had lived the better part of the past three years as students, evangelists, and leaders in the church. They listened to, walked with, and worked along the side of Jesus daily. But by Friday at sundown, all they had come to know would be called into question.

          Recently, and once again I have become in involved with pastors who have found themselves being ground to pieces under the harsh treatment the LCMS’s unjust dispute system, betrayed by fellow pastors, and battered by less than charitable congregations. These men find themselves out of the pulpit and vocationally lost. They don’t know what to do, where to go, how to make a living, and they don’t know who to trust any longer.  Everything they had known, their very identities, have been called into question. They live in fear and some break under the weight of it all.

          Perhaps you have or are facing that prospect too. Laid off, unemployed, loss of a loved one, a broken marriage, estranged family situation, or an illness that is stealing away your very identity.

          A crisis can cause one to question his or her standing before God, before one’s family, one’s friends, one’s vocation, and even one’s community.  By definition that is what a crisis does and no one escapes this life without enduring his or her share of crises.

          Here the opening verses of John 14, Jesus is confronting and the same time comforting the disciples because their faith is weak and they lack understanding. Yet, by design, they are on a collision course with the greatest crisis they will ever face. So Jesus plants the seed of His Word; He gives them His promise. Despite what they are going to see with their eyes and what they are going to feel (fear and uncertainty), He is still their Lord and Savior.

          In John 6:67-68 “Jesus said to the twelve, ‘You do not want to go away also, do you?’ Simon Peter answered Him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life.’”

          To whom shall we go?  With Jesus now dead on Good Friday, the answer to that question was not long so clear to the disciples. In the face of Jesus’s death would the disciples kowtow to the Pharisees, who preached salvation by works and regulations in order to save their own skin?  Would they embrace the philosophies of the day . . . Hellenism? Would they do what so many have done in our day? Would they simply go away and forsake houses of worship, services, and the Gospel Truth?

          As Jesus moves toward His own death, knowingly and willingly, He turns His attention to His disciples to comfort and teach them: “Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me.”  He tells them three truths.

  1. In [His] Father’s house are many dwelling places [and He was going] to prepare a place for [them] you.”  He told them;
  2. [He] will come again and receive [them and you] to [Himself].
  3. He tells them that He is “the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Him.”

          As He is about to go to the cross and as the disciples are about to live through the most difficult and terrifying 72 hours of their lives, Jesus is telling them that nothing has changed in His doctrine or His mission. He is teaching them the same things He had been teaching them all along. He would be betrayed, arrested, beaten, mocked, and crucified as the Lamb of God, but would rise on the third day.

          In this sense there is no crisis. What was about to happened had been set in motion before the foundations of the world were laid. The disciples found themselves in crisis because of their weak faith, failing courage, and lack of understanding.

          Despite all the evil, hardships, heartaches, broken-ness, and all that was about to happen, nothing had changed. There is no where else and no one else to go to. Jesus remains the way, the truth, and the life.

          All the other verses and the exchanges between Thomas and Jesus and Philip and Jesus that followed show that nothing is going to change in the mission of Jesus Christ because the crucifixion of Jesus was the mission all along.

          The disciples don’t want to live by faith. Thomas:  “Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?” Philip 8 “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.”

          Living by sight rather than by faith does not serve the Christian well.  It never does. Living by sight is an exercise of the law and not of the Gospel. People who live by sight are constantly looking for evidence of God’s will in their circumstances. This is like reading tea leafs. They take a select inventory of their circumstances, then draw conclusions about what God wants them to do. When the circumstances change all bets are off and the process starts all over again. That is living by law and not by faith. We are all guilty of this sort of thing.

          People who live by sight, rather than by faith, also look for evidence of one’s standing before God in outward appearances. They engage in so called “good works” and see God’s favor in what they do and in what “blessings” they have, rather than in what God has done for them and promises in His clear Word.

          Listen to the third and fourth theses of Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation. 3. Although the works of man always appear attractive and good, they are nevertheless likely to be mortal sins. 4. Although the works of God always seem unattractive and appear evil, they are nevertheless really eternal merits.

          On the night in which Jesus was betrayed, Jesus calls the disciples, you, and me to live by His Word.  Listen carefully, 11 “Believe Me that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me; otherwise believe on account of the works themselves.”

          God gives and receives faith based on the works Jesus did, after all they are a part of His Word.  But here Jesus is telling the disciples to simply believe that He and the Father are One because the Living Word of God says it is so. He is saying in essence here what He said to Thomas on the Second Sunday in Easter, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.”

          Jesus is teaching them that faith in His promises will rightly see and understand what Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday are all about. They are all about saving sinners who cannot save themselves.

          Christians are people who are constantly bouncing back and forth between living by faith and living by sight. That is the point of St. Peter’s epistle lesson this morning. He was writing to Christians who had been scattered throughout Asia Minor as a result of persecution. He was writing to Christians who were being persecuted.

          The epistle calls Christians, as the Lord Jesus once called Peter Himself, to live by faith, trusting in and returning to the Word of God rather than judging things by circumstances and appearances. Why were they being persecuted? Was God displeased with them?

          1 Peter 2:2 “Like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation, 3 if you have tasted the kindness of the Lord.” 6 And he who believes in Him will not be disappointed. . . . 7 The stone which the builders rejected, This became the very corner stone . . .  9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession.”

          The disciples experienced a crisis of faith because they did not understand. That crisis began as they watched Jesus arrested on the Mount of Olives and hit its apex on Good Friday and Holy Saturday. They had forgotten the promise of the third day.

          The Christians to whom Peter was writing too had to be reminded to live by faith, to trust God’s Word, God’s declaration, and God’s promises. Many others had rejected the Stone, that is they had crucified Jesus and refused the gift of faith. But those to whom Peter was writing and to those whom God had called in Christ, these are a “chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession.”

          When we look at the people of the church we do not see a holy and sinless people.  If we judge the church by the circumstances we find in and around her, there is no other conclusion to draw other than that we are not holy people.

          Jesus told the disciples He was on His way to prepare a place for them and for you and that He would come back to get all believers and take them to the place where He now lives eternally. But the way to that place where all those mansions await their future occupants was through the cross.

          As Christians we are Christ like. That means we have been given His very image, His righteousness, and as such we too must suffer through this life so that when He comes to call us home we will answer and be with Him where He is, a people of God’s own possession, a chosen race, a royal priesthood who live by faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Amen

 

May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Amen.

Faith and the Word

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