The Communion of All the Saints

Okay, we're going to pray and we are going to get started. Let's pray. Eternal God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, grant us your Holy Spirit who writes the preached word into our hearts, so that we may receive and believe it, and be gladdened and comforted by it in eternity.

Glorify your word in our hearts, make it so bright and warm that we may find pleasure in it, and through your inspiration think what is right. By your power, fulfill the word for the sake of Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, in whom we pray, Amen.

Hope, Faith, and the Problem of Vanity

All right, now Dwayne's here and it's not that I'm purposely trying to avoid Leviticus. I'm not. It's kind of, it's reaching epic proportions at this point. But we're going to spend a little bit of time in our epistle text from the book of Hebrews today, and I want to talk about the idea of what hope, the function hope plays within our Christian faith.

And you're going to note then that there is an overarching narrative that informs the faith as to what is considered sound doctrine as opposed to false doctrine. And faith is a vital component of the Christian faith.

Without faith there is no Christianity. And then you can see then the role that faith will play in the life of a believer in the trials and the tribulations that we face. One of the things we talked about in the sermon today in Jeremiah 23 was this idea of false prophets who fill people's minds with vain hopes.

When we think about vanity, this is an important concept that we need to grasp as Christians again because we have forgotten as a kind of a big body of Christ, what exactly is vanity? There's a major magazine that is fancily named Vanity Fair.

And Vanity Fair, if you were to open up the pages of Vanity Fair, what is Vanity Fair all about? Yourself. Clothes, accessories, watches, perfume, jewelry, vacations. In fact, if you really want to know what the world's really all about, take a look at GQ.

Take a look at Cosmopolitan. Take a look at Vanity Fair. Read Esquire. And of course, we all from time to time might even like to peek over there and see what the latest fashions are so we don't look totally like we're out of date.

But you'll note, then, the focus is in on self. Vanity has to do with self. Now, for those of us who are in Christ Jesus—and that's everybody here, I'm assuming—that being the case, we will note, then, that we are saved by grace through faith apart from works so that no one may boast, and we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for what?

Good works. Good works. Now, Vain Hopes, then, there's a whole brand of preaching that kind of goes along the line of Vain Hopes, and they read the Bible where you can see the exploits of the saints. You think of Moses in the Red Sea.

You think of Gideon and his army of 300. Remember the story of Gideon, right? And you look at Samson and the things that he did. They look at these great exploits that people did by faith, and their belief is, and the way they preach is, you, too, are called to destroy your Philistines, to slay your giants, and things like this.

And what ends up happening is that they read the Scriptures in such a way that you are the hero, not Christ. And you'll note, then, that this has a long-time honored tradition within visible Christianity.

I would argue that this is kind of the impetus behind Roman Catholicism's view of the saints. I mean, so, Mike, when you were in Rome, is every Christian believer a saint? Not in the Roman sense, no. So, not every Christian's a saint in Rome.

Who are the saints in Roman Catholic parlance, in their view, right? And that does not mean they shot them out of a very large... Anyway, canonized, all right? So, puffed, okay. So, you'll note, then, so they will refer to the canonized saints as those who performed great exploits, if you would.

You know, that there's something super commendable in their Christianity that puts them in a different category than us, all right? So, you know, I think we were just in Ireland, and, you know, you talk to somebody from Ireland, and you say, you know, so tell me about yourself, and they'll say, well, I'm no saint, but, you know, you know, this is how they talk.

It's like, well, if you're a Christian, you are a saint. Now, that being the case, we note, then, that there is a proper way and an improper way to look at the life of the patriarchs, and even of the life of the saints within Christianity, so that you can rightly look at somebody's example, the things that they suffered, went through, or you can even take a look at their exploits by faith, and you can say the same God that they trusted in, the same Christ that I trust in, as they trusted in that Christ to get them through the ordeal that they went through, in the same way, those same promises that Christ will get me through these ordeals is the same, but when you start putting Christians on a different level, so you have a caste system within Christianity, you have the saints up here, you have everybody else down here, and then the backslidden down here, now you've got a problem.

You're not properly understanding the role of the saints, and oftentimes, then, in evangelicalism, although they don't believe in the saints the way Rome does, they haven't canonized them, the preaching is along the same lines.

So, you read a book like Stephen Furtick's Sun Stands Still, and it's a book supposedly about Joshua chapter 10, where Joshua did the most unthinkable thing, and that is that in the middle of a battle, the sun was getting ready to go down, and he said, sun stand still, and God listened to Joshua, and the sun stood still.

The sun did not go down, but a lot of people miss the fact that prior to the battle, God promised that Israel would have the victory over their enemies that day. God had made a promise, so when Joshua said sun stand still, he was trusting that what the Lord said to him before the battle was true, and the only means then for it to truly be fulfilled would be if the sun stood still.

So, in faith in what God had promised him, he told the sun to stand still. That was a long day. That was a really long day. That's a different battle. That was Moses, okay? Different battle. So, when we get to Hebrews 11, Hebrews 11 is this text.

It is the great hall of faith passage, and the patriarchs are invoked, but the other thing is that happens, and we saw it in our epistle text today, we are encouraged by their example to undergo and to go through suffering, and then the pinnacle example is our focus in on Christ, who is the founder or the author and the perfecter of our faith, and his life and death are held up as an example for us to follow.

So, the idea then is this, in the grand narrative that we understand that Scripture reveals, we are created by God, uniquely created by God. We are not the result of some accident that happened where grandma and grandpa amoeba were formed by a lightning strike in a pond of ooze back in the B .C. Jurassic era.

That's not how we came about. We are created by God, and our first parents rebelled against God, and by doing so, we have fallen as a race into sin, and every single human being has participated in Adam and Eve's sin because it is through the sin of the one man that the many, all of us, were made sinners, and that God, on the day that we fell, gave us a promise of a Savior who would crush the head of the serpent, and then fulfilled that promise in the virgin birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who is God and man.

He came to earth, suffered for our sins in our place. He rose victorious from the grave. He ascended into heaven, and then our promise then, as we confess in the creeds, is we believe that He will come in glory to judge the living and the dead, and this then frames our hope that gets us through our circumstances.

Now, the reason why then we all are born with one foot in the grave, which is a terrible thing altogether, the reason why is because we are currently living under a curse. We're living in a creation where then we are not permanent residents here.

Every single human being is a sojourner. Some get to sojourn a little bit longer than others, but we are sojourners nonetheless, and as we like to say, the tragic thing about youth is that it's squandered by the young.

It's like, oh man, I would be a dangerous fellow, very dangerous, and knowing and having the experience that I have now, if I were granted my youth again. Oh, the trouble I'd get myself into, right? But as it is, just like the flowers fade, so I am fading.

We're all fading, you get the idea. So the problem that we find ourselves in is that the consequences of sin is death, and I always like to say that the wages of sin being death, it seems like we're always giving little payments along the way to death until that final day when there's the big balloon payment and we die.

But in the midst of that, then our hope is not here. Our hope is in the new world, is in the earth that is coming that Christ is bringing with him. It's in the day that he creates the new heavens and the new earth and the new Jerusalem comes down.

So as a result of that, that hope then has a function within our faith here and now, because the thing that Christ has promised us, and we heard this today in our gospel text, he's promised us suffering.

He's promised that we are going to experience persecution, discord, disunity, and all the bleh that goes along with living in a sinful world. That being the case, the question is, how in the midst of discord, disunity, persecution, and suffering are we to even get through this?

Because I don't know about you guys, but there are some times that have come in my life that are so dark, so horrible, so awful that I can't take another step without wanting to just throw in the towel and say, I'm done with the whole thing.

How do you get through all of this? Well, faith, yes. Faith in whom for what? And that's where our hope comes in, because remember what Christ has promised us. Forgiveness of sins, reconciliation with God the Father, and an eternal life in a world without end.

And so our hope then informs our actions in the midst of suffering, and this text in Hebrews 11 bears that out beautifully. And you neglect the back part of Hebrews 11 to your own detriment, because it's not about the exploits you experience or you're somehow supposed to perform here and now.

It's about, for us Christians, keeping that hope of what Christ has promised us in the forefront of our mind, so we can get through the difficulties that we will experience here and now. And so you'll note then that the theology of glory, when it fills our minds with vain hopes, it's all about you being recognized, you being glorified, you, you, you, you, you, now, now, now.

When here in the now, what are we called to do? To die to self, to repent, to be forgiven, to serve others. So, you know, everything's flipped on its head. The theology of glory, it's all about exalting yourself, performing exploits in the here and the now.

And when you read the scriptures in such a way that then the heroes become the model for you to become the hero, you've missed the whole point, because the hero is Christ. And so working our way then through part of Hebrews 11, let's start at the beginning.

Faith as the Assurance of Things Hoped For

Hebrews 11 .1. Faith is the assurance of things that are hoped for, the conviction of things that are not seen. Notice how it begins. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction, or you can even say here, the certainty, you know, aleghas could be translated as certainty, the certainty of things that are not seen.

So let me ask you, have any of you seen that your sins are forgiven? When I pronounce the absolution, do you guys sparkle and shine a little more?

No, at least I've never seen that. David, you do? Exactly. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,.

More like Monday morning, and I'm not, I don't want to get up. Yeah, exactly. And so note here, seeing is not believing. Hearing is believing. Feeling is not believing. Hearing is believing. Because you heard your sins are forgiven.

You didn't see it. I don't see, you know, you look the same like when you came in this morning. All right, all of you do. So I can't see that your sins are forgiven, but you know what? I heard. I heard that you were forgiven, and that requires faith.

Now there's a world coming. Have you seen it? What does Scripture say? No eye has seen, no ear has heard what Christ has prepared for those who love him. You have no concept, no clue of what's coming, which kind of tells me it's going to be just ridiculously awesome, right?

But I mean, you only get little tiny glimpses of it in the Scriptures, and it's all in words that you hear, but none of us have seen it. So you note then that faith is the assurance of things that are hoped for, the certainty or the conviction of things that are not seen.

For by it, by faith, the people of old received their commendation. By faith, we understand that the universe was created by the Word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of the things that are visible.

So I mean, that's, there you go. Are any of you eyewitnesses of the creation? No, I'm not. I only know one man who was Jesus, and he still is, right? He's the one I witnessed because he's the one who said, let there be light.

Now note then how faith plays. So by faith, Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which Abel was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.

By faith, Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found because God had taken him. Now, before he was taken, he was commended as having pleased God. And listen to the next thing.

Without faith, it is impossible to please God. Not difficult, impossible. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. And so note here, this is kind of an interesting thing.

You know, we all universally have probably experienced this. Have you ever read the Bible and sat there and go, I don't know what I just read. It just doesn't make any sense to me at all. You know, yeah.

Yeah, it happens to me every week too. You know, I got to preach it though. You know, so I got like a fire underneath like, well, you're either going to look like an idiot or you're going to figure out what this text is about.

You better get working. You know, they're paying you to do something here. But the reality is that there are whole portions of scripture. You read it and you sit there going, I don't get it. And the late Lutheran pastor, Valerius Herberger, what a name by the way, he was a pastor who served a Lutheran congregation in Poland.

And in his works, The Great Works of God is the name of his books. In his opening chapter, he talks about how that God himself within the scriptures has written into them mysteries, mysteries with which he requires us and desires us to wrestle with these texts in order to solve the mystery.

What does this text mean? I'm not sure. Well, you better sharpen your pencil, pull out some commentaries. Look at how people have handled it in the past and start applying yourself to this because these mysteries can be cracked.

They can be solved. And if you want to the key, it's always Jesus. This little shorthand, if you apply him early and you're trying to figure out the mystery, then you'll begin to figure it out. But you'll note then that God desires for you to seek him and then wrestling with his word to figure it out, to solve the mysteries that are in there.

That is an exercise in seeking God. That is an exercise in seeking his face, seeking his understanding, applying yourself realistically to his word, and showing that you believe his word to be his word.

And saying, I know that God is speaking to me here, but I don't know what he's saying. I'm going to figure this out. And then working and solving the mysteries. That's a way in which we seek God, a practical way.

And then, no, he goes on. By faith, Noah. I remember as a Nazarene, and I even saw a meme. Somebody threw a meme at me, not too long ago. I remember as a Nazarene, I was told that the reason Noah survived the flood was because he was obedient.

So if you want to survive the day of judgment, you better get busy being obedient the way Noah was obedient. And you're sitting there going, I feel like the emphasis is on the wrong syllable here. Because you'll note what the text says.

By faith, Noah being warned by God, even as yet unseen, in reverent fear, he constructed the ark for the saving of his household. In other words, he built the ark because he believed. So he believed the words of God.

By this, then, he condemned the world and became an heir of what? The righteousness that comes by faith. How was Noah saved? By grace, through faith. That's how he survived the deluge. By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance.

And he went out not knowing where he was going. By faith, he went to live in the land of promise as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.

What was Abraham looking for? A city whose designer and builder is God. And even as Abraham's life was drawing to an end, the great prophet Bono from the group U2 was singing, I still haven't found what I'm looking for.

You know it was brilliant. I love torturing millennials. Anyway. Okay. Okay. Great minds, I say, right? But that's the thing. Did Abraham find what he was looking for? No. Not at all. And you're going to note this is a recurring little refrain in this chapter that these men believed, but still didn't receive the things that they were promised.

And you sit there and go, well, that was them. But you're going to note this text is written to you because you are going to be rolled up into this text then. So he was looking forward to the city whose foundations and designer is God.

And by faith, Sarah herself received the power to conceive even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one man and him as good as dead were born descendants, as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. Are you any different?

We're all just passing through. You are a stranger in an exile here on the earth. I am a stranger in an exile here on the earth. They were strangers and exiles here on the earth. We are all just sojourning through.

Some of us are nearing the end of our sojourning. Some of us are young and we just have begun our sojourning. But give it a day or two and that all will quickly start to come winding down to an end. Boy, and I could tell you internally, I don't feel any differently than I did when I was 18.

But my body, that's a different story. There is like, there is cognitively no difference on how I experience and think and feel internally than when I was a young man. But my body says, you're not going to be here for too much longer.

I hope I have a few more years, but you kind of get the point. So all of that being said, Abraham, did he receive what he was promised before he died? No. Sarah? No. Have you? Will you? Only if Christ returns, because what are you promised?

So all of these died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.

If they had been thinking of the land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country that is a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

The Better Country and the Communion of the Saints

I'll note this, that over this past year, I've had the privilege, and it really is a privilege, to travel to two places that my ancestors are from. My maternal ancestors from Germany, I was able to travel to Wiesbaden this year, and I gotta admit, it was amazing to actually walk the streets that my mother walked when she was a child, that my grandparents walked, and my great-grandparents, but even more profound than that, the streets, was to be able to stand outside the Mark der Kirche, which is the market church of Wiesbaden, which is a Lutheran church there in town, and it is a wonder, and the spires are dizzying in their height, and that's the church of my ancestors, through my mom's side, to know that that's where they went to sing the hymns, to receive the Lord's Supper, to be baptized.

And my great-grandfather once told my mother when she was a little girl, and she said, if you ever get lost, or you're ever in trouble, you come back to Wiesbaden, because there's always family here that will be ready and willing to help you.

And I was assured that if I ever needed help, I just needed to go to Wiesbaden, my family would be there in a heartbeat to help me. And it's good to know this, but at the same time, is Wiesbaden my home?

No. I traveled to Ireland, and the Kennedys are from County Clare in Ireland, saw some of the same hills that my grandparents and great-grandparents and forebears saw and experienced. Is that my home?

They're gonna have to tear me in half right now, right? No. No, none of that's my home. It wasn't their home. And here's the sad part. The buildings they built, the knickknacks they collected, the artwork they looked at, the places they visited, the people they loved, none of them are there.

In fact, one of the things that keeps sticking out in my mind is we were in Ennis, which is the capital of County Clare, and there was a beautiful antique store. And I'm telling you, the antiques in that place are beyond anything I've ever seen here in the States, because you walk in and you go, that's clearly from the 19th century.

Whoa, take a look at that. That porcelain figurine was clearly made in the Georgian era. The artwork and artistry, you sit there and this is, this figurine is older than our country. And here's the thing, two whole floors, shelves totally packed of all of these knickknacks and paintings and clocks and things, and you know that these were in people's homes.

Where are those homes today? Where are those people today? That antique store proves that they, like me, were just sojourning. We all are. We're just passing through. And so we have a homeland that we are looking to, and you will not find it in Finland or Norway or Germany or Ireland or in the UK.

You won't find it here in Minnesota. You won't find it in Grand Forks. It's not here. And our graveyard proves that. So why would you amass for yourself wealth here, influence here, affluence here, glory here?

It makes no sense. The people who seek after such things in the here and the now do not rightly understand the very situation that they find themselves in. They are not properly attuned to their environment.

And in the army, and I've never been in the army, they talk about the importance of battlefield awareness, right? I'm sure the same is in the Navy. I mean, if your ship gets in the middle of a firefight and you're not properly understanding where you are in the battle, the strategic location that you're in, whether it's someplace you need to move away from or that you can use to your benefit in the battle, and you don't properly identify who your enemies are and who are your friends, you're not properly oriented in the middle of it.

So the people who seek after fame, fortune, glory here and now, and their whole life is wrapped up in their things, in their stuff, in their bank account, in their clothes, in their watches, in their cars, and things like this, they are 180 degrees wrongly oriented.

In fact, they are embracing as friends those very things that are their enemies. So as it is, they desire a better country, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

By faith, Abraham. When he was tested, he offered up Isaac, and he who received the promise was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, through Isaac shall your offspring be named.

And now listen, we can see now what was going on in the heart and the mind of Abraham at that time. He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which figure of his speaking he did receive him back.

So you'll note that the sacrifice of Isaac is a type and shadow of the death and resurrection of Christ. This text teaches us that. But you'll note then that Abraham's faith in God was, God said through Isaac, all of your offspring shall be named and shall come.

And so God says, sacrifice him, and Abraham's fine. I'll sacrifice him. You're going to have to raise him from the dead, because you promised. Has God ever promised something and not delivered? Never.

He doesn't lie. So you'll note then that everything that Abraham did, he did not because he was just involved in some rank obedience to God. What he did only make sense, according to this text, because he believed that God, what he spoke, was true, and that God would never say to him one thing and do another.

So he figured, all right, well, through Isaac, my offspring will be named, so if God wants me to sacrifice him, fine. And God can raise him from the dead, because I believe that God's capable of doing that.

And that's what's going on. This is great faith. So by faith, Isaac invoked future blessings on Jacob and Esau. By faith, Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, bowing in worship over the head of his staff.

By faith, Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention of the exodus of the Israelites and gave directions concerning his bones. And you'll note then, remember when Joseph is dying, don't leave my bones here in Egypt.

When God comes and visits you, take my bones and bury me back in Canaan. And they did. They did. By faith, Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents, because they saw that the child was beautiful, and they were not afraid of the king's edict.

And you'll note, whoever wrote this is giving us more information than is recorded in the Torah. We were never told in Exodus what the motivation was for his parents to hide Moses. So this author is giving us more insight.

But remember, all scripture is God-breathed. And so God is the author of this extra information. And by faith, Moses, when he was grown up, remember this, he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter.

He chose rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. Boy, just consider that statement there, the fleeting pleasures of sin. Sin satisfies in the moment, but then leaves your mouth full of gravel.

In the moment, it's the best thing ever. And as soon as that moment passes, that moment turns to shame, to remorse, to grief, fleeting pleasures of sin. Sin is not freedom. Sin is slavery. So Moses considered, and listen to the statement, he considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt.

It is pure treasure, pure honor and privilege to be persecuted for the name of Christ. Scripture teaches this in both the Old and the New Testament, and Moses is an example then of that. And listen to how it goes on.

He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was what? Looking to the reward. Where were his eyes? Not here, not now, not after the fleeting pleasures of sin.

His eyes were focused on the reward that was to come. And that's a big part of Moses' faith, of Abraham's faith, of our faith. We keeping our eyes looking forward to the reward to come. By faith, Moses left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible.

By faith, he kept the Passover, sprinkled the blood so that the destroyer, the firstborn, might not touch them. By faith, the people crossed the Red Sea as on dry land. And that's absolutely, most certainly true.

Because I can tell you, if you did not believe God and did not trust Him, you would see the walls of water on either side and you'd say, I'm not going in there. Because as soon as I go in there, the walls are going to collapse and I'm dead.

But if you trust the Lord, you know that that path was made for your salvation, not your destruction. So then you trust God and you step into the Red Sea and the walls of water on either side, trusting that God's intent is to save you, not destroy you.

Because you've heard Him say that this is the means by which you will be saved in that circumstance. And so you'll note then, who according to faith is really doing all of the stuff? The person or the God whom they are trusting?

God is. So by faith, the people crossed the Red Sea as on dry land. But the Egyptians, when they attempted to do the same, they had no faith, by the way, did they? They drowned. By faith, the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days.

By faith, Rahab, the prostitute, did not perish with those who were disobedient because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies. And what more shall I say? And here's the part where if you pay only attention to the exploits of the patriarchs, you're going to miss the whole point.

Because halfway through verse 35, it's going to completely change in its tone. Yes, sir. There is no difference. The Greek word pistouho, faith, that's the verb form of it, means to trust. So faith, one of my mentors always described it, faith is like eyesight, trust is like eyesight.

It always has an object to which it is looking to. So, you know, like every time you sit on a chair, you have trust that that thing isn't going to collapse and you're going to end up on your butt, you know, flopping around on the floor, right?

And some chairs are more trustworthy than others. There is no difference. Effectively, pistouho is the same word, faith and trust. It's almost an identical concept. So now watch where this goes. So what more shall I say?

Time would fail me to tell you of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David, Samuel and the prophets, who through faith, listen to what they did, conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong and weakness became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight, women received back their dead by resurrection.

We all sit there and go, yeah, you're right. Now we're living, you know, the life of Braveheart or something, which is really historically inaccurate, but that's a different thing altogether. But now watch the turn.

Some were tortured, refusing to accept release so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned. They were sawn in two.

They were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated, of whom the world was not worthy, wandering about in deserts and mountains and in dens and caves of the earth.

And see, now you can kind of see something here. Our sinful nature looks for self-glory and thinks that I'm called to these amazing exploits that people are going to sing songs about me and tell about the things that I did.

And so what they are looking for from Christianity is how to go from victory to victory, from glory to glory, and it's all self-glory. And when persecution comes around, and it does, they're out. They're gone.

That's not what they are in the church for. They're in the church to figure out how to make their lives easier, better, more glorious, get better results, better behaved children, a better car, a better looking wife, and all the things that go along with the here and the now.

The one thing they're not willing to do is to suffer reproach for the name of Christ. But you'll note then that this text teaches that when Samson put the Philistines to flight and defeated them with the jaw of a donkey in battle, that that is on the exact same level before God as an exploit by faith as being tortured and martyred for the name of Christ.

And the only way that's possible is if you understand that God is the one who wills and to work in his own ways. Sometimes we are called to lay down our lives. Other times we are called to stand in faith, and God delivers and does something mighty.

You think about the fact that Martin Luther, he didn't set out to start the Reformation at all, and yet he is written into human history as a pinnacle person within human history, and we are here worshiping at Kongsvinger Lutheran Church, don't you know, you betcha, because of Martin Luther.

But he didn't set out to start the Reformation. He just said, wait a second, the scriptures say the righteous will live by faith. Salvation is a gift given by God, and by speaking those words he toppled the Holy Roman Empire and brought smashing halt to medieval Catholicism.

But that's not what he set out to do. In fact, he didn't do it, God did. He was just a man of faith. But in the same way then, look at what's happening in the world around us. I don't know if you've noticed, things are getting a little crazy out there, more so by the day.

There may come a time when your public profession of faith in Christ alone for the forgiveness of your sins, and that you believe such scandalous things as God created humanity, male and female, that it could cost you dearly.

And if certain ideological groups ever take power in this country, the thing you should expect is persecution, maybe even to the point of martyrdom. So how do you get through such a thing? By faith. You look forward to the reward.

You look past the circumstances. You have to have a broader view of history, and the broader view says in our confessions, he, Jesus, will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. And we see then in this text that there are those who were tortured, suffered mocking and persecution, and they were able to get through this all by faith.