Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
Pastor Dennis Tuuri

Sermon scripture is 1 Thessalonians 1:1-3

“Paul and Sylvanus and Timothy, to the church of the Thessalonians which is in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers. Remember without ceasing your work of faith and labor of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of God and our Father.”

Heat. Heat. Yeah. Heat. Oh, heat. This time the younger children may be dismissed to go down to their Sabbath schools. Their parents desire that for them.

Okay, we—I was thinking as I was reading the verses from 1 Thessalonians we just read that some of you were very patient. You wanted me to get into a New Testament book a couple of years ago, actually, and you patiently waited for that. Of course, what we did in the interim was go through a series of studies on the seven deadly sins and then I considered going off from that series into a series of talks on the seven virtues, which again was referred to by the early church fathers and throughout church history has been seen as the positive side of the negative seven deadly sins.

So what I decided to do was to sort of put those two ideas together and go ahead and go through a New Testament book and yet also try to hit most of the seven virtues in the context of a New Testament book. And I knew it would be fairly easy to do because three of the seven are faith, hope, and love, which are mentioned repeatedly in Paul’s writings, and the other four really are referenced also in most writings in the scriptures. Those are wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance.

So the seven virtues are really what they did was they took four classical Greek virtues—wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance—the early church fathers Christianized them, so to speak, and then added the three graces—might be a better word for them than virtues—faith, hope, and love from Paul’s writings and from the balance of the New Testament. And so faith, which is our topic today, is one of the seven virtues.

Olsen in his book on the seven virtues and the seven deadly sins says that Christianity did more than simply refashion the classical virtues. It gave meaning to virtue. And it’s important to recognize that when we play that out as we go through that. One of the big mistakes that people make about faith is to see faith as something in and of itself without a reference to an object. And so somehow people start thinking it’s faith that saves us, for instance, instead of the work of our Savior that is the object of our faith.

Faith today is much like kind of wishing and hoping for something that you want to come true but you’re not really sure if it will or not. And that is not biblical faith as we’ll see in a couple of minutes. The church fathers took these various virtues and looked at them from a biblical or scriptural perspective. And so that’s what we’re going to try to do in an overview fashion with faith today. And then we’ll talk about it in more detail as we go through the epistles because it’s reflected throughout.

We’ll look at a couple of those references today as well. But I wanted to just briefly talk a little bit about the seven virtues. It’s not as if the seven virtues are the opposites to the seven deadly sins. They’re not like one-for-one opposites—they don’t line up one for one if you know what I mean. They’re not the flip side of the seven deadly sins.

Rather, as I said, the way it was developed was that the four classical Greek virtues had the three biblical graces of faith, hope, and love attached to it. Those four Greek virtues of wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance really were enumerated by Cicero in 44 BC, not many years prior to the writing of the New Testament. And he really was just simply enumerating what had been spelled out in a broader fashion in Plato’s Republic. So that was the original source of them.

The idea of virtue—the term itself originally meant something that had power to it. So the power to do what a thing was created to do is implied in the term virtue. For instance, the old-fashioned use of the term virtue in reference to the eye would be that the virtue of the eye is in seeing and the virtue of the foot in walking, etc. The virtue of the hand in grasping things correctly. And so virtue has an aspect to it that is doing. And as I said, really the three—faith, hope, and love—of which one we’ll talk about today, faith—are more graces. They are evidences of the Christian graces and they are virtues, not something we attain to. They are graces that God gives us. But of course, it is important to recognize they do indeed act. And in fact, the passage we just read from 1 Thessalonians—that’s the emphasis of the passage, which we’ll turn to in a couple of minutes—is the action of those three virtues or graces: faith, hope, and love.

Now here in 1 Thessalonians, this is the very first—most people think chronological use in Paul’s writings—of these three terms. And as I said, if you look at the text it doesn’t really stress the faith, hope, and love but rather the action associated with them.

Paul says that he gives thanks remembering without ceasing your work, your labor, and your patience, and then he modifies those three words by saying your work of faith, your labor of love, and the patience of hope. But what really stresses is the action that’s associated or springs out from the root, which are these three graces or virtues of faith, hope, and love.

Now, while there are no one-for-one correlations between the seven deadly sins and the seven virtues, I think it can be said that in the same way that pride is sort of like the root sin, faith may be the root virtue, as it were. Faith, after all, is required in order to move on to biblical love and biblical hope and wisdom, courage, and temperance as well. So faith, as we’ll explore it today, really goes underneath or behind the rest of these virtues.

So it’s important that we understand it correctly and the fact that it is anchored in something. It’s not cut off from something the way false faith would be today—seen as wishful thinking. Of course, the thing it’s anchored in is all critical in biblical faith. And we’ll consider that as we go through the scriptures.

Calvin said that in these three combinations of things pointed out in 1 Thessalonians 1:3—faith, hope, and love—we have here a short definition of true Christianity. And next week we’ll be considering love and the week after that, hope. And it’s because we’re only going to spend a week on each. It’s a real overview, obviously, but it is a synopsis, really, as Calvin said, a synopsis of a true definition of what Christianity is and what a Christian is—somebody who exhibits those virtues and they work themselves out in their lives.

We see these virtues repeated in various epistles. In 1 Corinthians 13, of course, faith, hope, and love are stressed. The order is different. Eddy in his commentary on 1 Corinthians 13 says that faith—that is childlike—then yields to the hope that is saintlike, to the love which is godlike in terms of the order of 1 Corinthians 13.

Faith rests in the past. Leithart wrote, while love is in the present and hope is in the future. Since 1 Thessalonians has a lot to say about the future and the coming of Jesus, there’s also a lot of references to hope in it. And that may be one reason why he concludes the list with hope as opposed to starting the list with hope, stressing as he does then Jesus Christ and the modifier to the hope that’s found in verse three as well.

I just wanted to mention that while these things—one of the references rather to these same three virtues in the book itself—in 1 Thessalonians 5:8 we read this. Talking about the context is the night and day difference between the world that is perishing and the world that is being birthed, as it were. 1 Thessalonians 5:8 we read: “But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love and for a helmet the hope of salvation. For God hath not appointed us to wrath but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ.”

And so you have those same three virtues mentioned there in verse 8. The breastplate of faith and love and the helmet—for a helmet, the hope of salvation. Now, I just wanted to bring that up briefly because it gives us there a picture. A breastplate is something most people think of in terms of being a defensive part of the Christian’s armor. And of course, in Ephesians, there’s a much more detailed list of the Christian armor.

And can you remember what the breastplate is in Ephesians? The breastplate is righteousness. And that’s important. We’ll bring that back to that in a couple of minutes as we get along in our study of the word faith in the scriptures. But it’s important here to point out that the seven virtues that we’ll be referring to in the next few weeks and into the next few months are very important. It’s like in a football game, I guess—your best defense is a good offense.

And many people point out the best way to avoid committing the seven deadly sins and falling into a pattern or a life habitualized by those activities is to have a life habitualized by the practice of the virtues, the seven virtues. And so if we go on the offensive and try to put on these virtues and understand how they’re gifts of God to us to be used for his kingdom, that’ll help us go a long way toward avoiding the seven deadly sins.

In Galatians, of course, it says that if you walk by the Spirit, you won’t fulfill the desires of the flesh. And again, that same basic truth is taught there.

Okay. Just briefly reviewing the text, we dealt with verse one. This is an epistle, essentially. We dealt with verse four for the last three weeks, where we have the person addressed, rather the person who writes the letter, who the letter is going to, and then a brief greeting—grace and peace. We tried to look at that and its full-blown biblical implications last week.

Verse two, which we don’t want to necessarily skip over—it isn’t our thrust today, but it’s important we just pause there briefly. In verse two, the first thing Paul says after the salutation of grace and peace and identifying who writes the epistle and who it’s written to, he says, “We give thanks to God always for all you, making mention of you in our prayers.” And really the giving thanks to God for you all has some modifiers. One is they give thanks by making mention in their prayers and also it’s modified by the remembering that work of faith, the labor of love, and the patience of hope, which is in verse three. But I just wanted to point out here that as Paul writes this letter to the Thessalonians, the first thing he does after giving them a benediction—grace and peace—is to point out, and it’s very typical of Paul, is to point out how he gives thanks.

He gives thanks for the Thessalonians and not just for the church in general. The term used there, he says that we give thanks to God always for you all. And it stresses that each and every Thessalonian believer was an object of Paul and Silas’s and Timothy’s prayer—giving thanks to God and were mentioned by God, by Paul, before the throne of God. And that’s an important thing for us to remember.

Again, we’ve talked about this a lot the last few weeks. But it doesn’t hurt to point it out again as we go through a verse like this that points it out to us—that when we think of each other and when we pray for each other, probably one of the first things we should be praying to God is giving thanks to God for each individual in the church. And if you pray through the church at all, or occasionally, or pray through perhaps the people in your prayer group, whatever it is, in your devotions, it’d be real good to remember that Paul’s pattern here is to give thanks to God in his prayer life for these Thessalonians.

Now, he’ll go on to other things as well. He wasn’t blind to their faults. He writes the letter in part to build them up in their faith, to continue them moving on, and to correct some doctrinal problems that they had. But he gives thanks first and he communicates the giving of that thanks to the Thessalonians.

You know, now Paul is no sycophant. He is not a man-pleaser. He’s not trying to get on their good side by telling them, “Oh, we really give thanks for you guys all the time.” Paul wasn’t like that. He was never one to shrink back from having to confront people, and that quite boldly. Remember we talked about his rebuke of the man who tried to get in the way of his missionary activity, Elymas the sorcerer.

But so what’s Paul doing here? Well, I think Paul’s doing what we’re supposed to do. If indeed our prayers to God are first and foremost thanksgiving to God for the work that he has caused in the life of members of our church, for instance, if that then sets up the pattern for our relationship one to another, then that means that we are going to, as we see each other and remember to give thanks for them and remind each other that we are thankful for their presence in the context of our church and we’re thankful for those people in the context of other churches who are members of the elect community of Jesus Christ who are faithful to their callings.

It’s important to communicate that thanksgiving one to another again to form the correct context for how we treat each other. Paul didn’t shrink back from it. We shouldn’t shrink back from it. We should be very anxious to tell each other how much we thank God for them and for their work. And we should do that, and of course before God’s throne room as well in terms of prayer.

So I would encourage you to see this as a model of how we approach one another and how we communicate one with another—giving thanks for each other and remembering to share that thanks with each other.

Paul goes on to talk about why he gives thanks. He makes mention of them in his prayers and the term there is like always making mention—always remembering—as well here. “Always remembering without ceasing your work of faith, your labor of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of God and our Father.”

“Knowing, brethren, beloved, your election of God.” Remember we said when we did the overview of this book that I think that the really the kernel of his giving of thanks is their election by God. And that election—that gracious calling by God of these Thessalonians—was evidenced among other things in these three items that he thinks or remembers here in verse three.

When he thinks of the Thessalonians, he thinks of them working in relationship to their faith. And he thinks of them laboring, toiling hard, exerting a lot of energy as a result of their love. And he remembers them being patient and enduring because of the hope that they have in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so he remembers these things. And these are the things really that evidence their election and are things that should characterize the Christian life—work, labor, and patience based upon faith, love, and hope—work as it were that proceeds from faith.

The faith is not the work he’s talking about here. The work is motivated by the faith and it demonstrates their faith, but it isn’t the fact that your faith is your work. Work is evidence of your faith.

Now, what’s the specific thing he had in mind? Well, we don’t know exactly. We’ll give some specifics later on from various texts about what that work might look like, but we know that they were anxious and in missionary endeavors and evangelistic endeavors. We know that they loved one another actively and that could be the work he’s talking about as well. But in any event, he’s talking about work that proceeds from faith.

And so that brings us to the topic of faith itself. And a proper understanding of that will help us to understand the nature of that work and what it has to do with our lives.

Okay. And the way we’re going to look at that is first to look at faith’s source. Faith’s source. I’m going to turn to the Old Testament, some Old Testament verses at first. And we have a valuable verse in Habakkuk 2:4 that the just shall live by faith or faithfulness, which is then quoted by Paul in the book of Romans as well as other places. The book of Hebrews also quotes this quotation from Habakkuk 2:4 and it gives us a link from the specific Greek word that is here translated faith back to a whole set of words in the Old Testament that are also translated faith or faithfulness.

And so it helps us to see the continuity of the scriptures again in terms of faith—the way we saw the continuity of scripture in terms of grace and peace before. Remember how our concept of peace was really defined or helped to be defined by understanding of the Old Testament word shalom, which is translated peace in the Septuagint of the Old Testament. And that helped us to avoid seeing these things in isolation from the scriptures in a more Greek perspective, ripped out of the context of the rest of the scriptures.

The Hebrew language of course is written very graphically and there’s a lot of visual imagery used in the language itself. And in this particular word there’s no difference. The word translated faith or faithfulness in Habakkuk and that basic group of words that is translated faith and faithfulness in the Old Testament has at the heart of its meaning firmness, steadfastness, or actually literally a firmness in terms of something that’s firm and solid.

And from that then we have various examples of other scriptures that help us to get this concept fleshed out. For instance, in Exodus 17:12 we read that Moses’ hands were heavy and they took a stone and put it under him. And he was lifting up his hands here to affect victory and he sat there and Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the one on the one side and the other on the other side. And his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.

As long as his hands were up, then they prevailed. And so to steady his hands, they put rocks underneath him. And the term steady there is basically the same term that’s translated faith or faithfulness in Habakkuk. And so faithfulness has the context of steadiness in terms of steady hands. Another place in the Old Testament it talks about the support that a mother gives to her child—that’s steadiness or firmness that she undergirds the child with. Firmness, certainty, the strong arms of the parents supporting the helpless baby—this is basically the idea behind faith in the Old Testament. It becomes the same—it’s the same word family as the word that’s translated truth or verity in the Old Testament as well.

And you can see why that would be connected. It’s steady. It’s certain. It’s dependable. It’s truthful. The word is sure and it is a true word. And because it is true, it is sure and dependable.

The biblical idea then is that belief or faith is a certainty. It is not something that we wish to come to pass or that we hope will come to pass. It is something that is a sure thing. It is dependable, steady, rock-sure, as it were.

The Old Testament word in the same word family is essentially the same word that’s translated or given to us in Greek as the Greek version of this Hebrew word “amen.” The word for amen in the Old Testament essentially is the same word. It means “surely” or “dependably it will come to pass.” And Jesus used that word in that way in the New Testament. Certainty.

If you turn to Hebrews 11:1, of course, we have a picture that this is also the way the word is interpreted in the New Testament. Hebrews 11:1. Of course, Hebrews 11 is the hall of faith, as some people have called it. And it gives us an introduction. I don’t think that verse one is meant to be a definition of faith. Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. By it the others obtained a good report.”

Now, I say I don’t think this is a definition necessarily because there’s a context to this. In verse 36 of Hebrews 10, he says, “You have need of patience that after you’ve done the will of God, you might receive the promise. For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come and will not tarry. Now the just shall live by faith, but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him.”

Now, Habakkuk—and we might get back to this later—that quote is referenced here. In the book of Habakkuk the prophet is considering the fate of Jerusalem and God is sending the Chaldeans upon them. And he tells Habakkuk this Chaldeans are coming upon them and are going to exercise God’s judgment against them. And Habakkuk doesn’t argue with that but he does become a little bit concerned because the Chaldeans are real bad guys. And so Habakkuk then asks God, he says, “Well, how can it be that these bad guys are going to come and punish guys that are really better than they are. I mean, our people are bad here, but they’re not as bad as the Chaldeans.”

And so God then answers Habakkuk and he says, “Well, there is a history that’s being worked out here. A time will come that the promise will be fulfilled—the promise that was made in the garden. It will come to pass surely. Deliverance, salvation will be affected finally, but not yet.” And then God says, “The just will live by faith or by his faithfulness.” And then he talks about how eventually he will also punish the Chaldeans for their sinfulness.

And so it’s the same sort of situation here. God was telling Habakkuk to be patient with what his plans for history were. To recognize that God’s promise to his people is yea and amen. It will come to pass. But there is a time frame to all of this. And the coming of the Messiah that Habakkuk looked for and the nation of Israel looked for deliverance was still some time out.

Now people have pointed out that at the time of the writing of Habakkuk, they had waited 33 centuries for the coming Messiah who would affect righteousness and peace in the earth and the new covenant times of gospel prosperity in terms of the preaching of the gospel and men converting. They had waited 33 centuries and God said be patient, be patient, it’s not time yet to Habakkuk. And then he tells them the just shall live by faith.

So I think what God is—all that simply to say that I think what God is doing in Hebrews 11:1 and following there is it has the context of exhorting the Hebrews to patience. And the basis for that patience is these—is the fact about faith. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

God’s word has directed them to certain things. And they must be faithful. They must believe that word as if it were reality to them themselves. They must let their vision of reality be characterized by that word of God to them. And if they do, then they’ll be patient under affliction and suffering. Deliverance will be accomplished.

So the same basic concept of faith being stability, dependence, steadiness from God is pictured in the New Testament.

Now Calvin has a good quote on this passage from Hebrews 11 in which he talks about how an integral part of course of what I just read is that faith is not sight. Faith believes what God has told us. It doesn’t see yet now. It is the assurance of things hoped for and the certainty of the thing that is not seen.

So it is not seen. Calvin said this about this. He said that the Spirit of God shows the hidden things, the knowledge of which cannot reach our senses—our eyes of sight, so to speak. Eternal life is promised to us but it is promised to the dead. We are told of the resurrection of the blessed but meantime we are involved in corruption. We are declared to be just and sin dwells in us. We hear that we are blessed, but meantime we are overwhelmed by unfair miseries.

We are promised an abundance of all good things, but we are often hungry and thirsty. God proclaims that he will come to us immediately, but seems to be deaf to our cries. What would happen to us if we did not rely on our hope and if our minds did not emerge above the world, out of the midst of darkness through the living word of God and by his Spirit.

Again, that concept of the Cordi Superius, seeing things from God’s perspective and the surety of his word and these promises to us—he calls us to a life of faith, a life of believing his word in spite of the eyes and sight showing us things differently from our perspective.

Okay? So faith has to it this concept in all the New Testament of surety and firmness. And the basis for all that is because faith is found essentially as an attribute of God. In Deuteronomy 7:9, we read that, “Know therefore that the Lord thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations.”

God is described as being a God who is faithful. God is faith. Deuteronomy 32:4, he—God is the rock. His work is perfect. For all his ways are judgment, a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he. Truth is the same word family as faith. There God himself is a God who is a God of faith and faithfulness, dependability and stability.

Because of that, Psalm 33:4 tells us that the word of the Lord is right and all his works are done in truth, in faithfulness, in stability and steadfastness. So faith comes out of the person of God. It is based upon the stability of his own person and who he is. It is an attribute of God, as it were. And because of that, it’s communicated to us in his scriptures.

And the scriptures in the Old Testament are said to be words that are faithful. Psalm 119:86, “All thy commandments are faithful. They persecute me wrongfully. Help thou me.” All God’s commandments are faithful. Psalm 143:1, “Hear my prayer, O Lord. Give ear to my supplication. In thy faithfulness, answer me, and in thy righteousness.”

Okay. Psalm 119:30, “I have chosen the way of truth. Thy judgments have I laid before me.” Because God communicates himself in the scriptures in a faithful sure word, we then are established when we choose the way of truth. Then we are established in that truth and we then become faithful.

So faithfulness source is in the person of God, mediated through a sure, infallible, steadfast, dependable word that is a covenant word to us. And so in Psalm 89:28 “My mercy will I keep for him forever more. And my covenant shall stand fast, faithful, dependable, having verity and truth with it unto him, the one that God’s covenant is with.”

So faithfulness comes out of the person of God, mediated through his word—through the word that is a covenant word to us. That is faithfulness, dependability, certitude to us. And so that is why our Savior could say in Matthew 23:23, talking about the Pharisees and how they tithe and coming but rejected the weightier matters of the law. What were those weightier matters of the law? Now the covenant law and word they were judgment, mercy, and faith.

Judgment, mercy, and faith. By the way, just as an aside here, you can line those three up again with the requirements of man to do justice, to love mercy (or loving kindness), to walk humbly with God. What are the weightier matters of the law? Judgment, justice—to do justice to discern things correct in the basis of God’s standard—mercy, demonstration of chesed and truth, or rather faith rather—faith, truth, same basic concept. Why is faith connected in light of walking humbly with God?

Because faith says that it is not my understanding of the world that is going to dictate my actions. Faith says God has given me a word in the scriptures and to that word I am going to humble myself. Bring my thought life and my volitional life in subjection to that word from God. It is the humbling of oneself by exalting God and specifically by exalting God’s word to us and declaring that it is the source of steadfastness and it is the source and object of our faith.

Okay. So faith’s source comes from God. It’s mediated through his scriptures. The scriptures are a covenant word to us and they involve law. And because of that one can say, as Schaeffer wrote, that faith is the gift of a steadfast and faithful God whose steadfastness and faithfulness in relationship to us makes us steadfast and faithful. God is steadfast and faithful. He deals steadfastly and faithfully with us and as a result then we are expected to be steadfast and faithful as well.

Now because of this, the affirmation of faith—which is the second point of the outline. What is faith’s affirmation? What does faith affirm? Well, faith affirms what God’s word instructs us in. Turn to Luke 18. We’ll look at that for a couple of minutes. Try to get this concept across. Faith, if its source is in this word of God, it’s a revelation of God and of God’s covenant to us. It involves the law, involves blessings, involves cursings, which are the attachments to the law, the sanctions to it.

Faith is graciously given. The word is a gracious gift of God. So we have a gracious God giving us these things. Then faith affirms all of God’s word, and that has some pretty far-flung implications to it.

Luke 18:2 and following. Oh, I guess we better start up in verse two. “There was a city judge that feared not God, neither regarded man. There was a widow in that city. She came unto him, saying, Avenge me of my adversary. And he would not for a while, but afterward he said within himself, I fear not God, nor regard man. Yet because this widow cometh to me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.”

So you got a woman looking for justice from an unjust judge, and continuing to go to him, pleading with him to avenge her, and he finally gives in. And the Lord said, “Hear thou what the unjust judge saith. And shall not God avenge his own elect which cry day and night unto him, though he be long-suffering with them. I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?”

What does that mean? That’s a weird verse to get thrown in there, isn’t it? I mean, he’s talking about the situation and he says when God, when Christ returns, will we find faith on the earth? Well, there’s a couple of points to be made here. First of all, faith is related to the coming of the Son of Man. And prior to this, the coming of the Son of Man is said to be in terms of judgment. He draws back to times of coming. For instance, in the days of Noah—the days of the flood—the day of Sodom and Gomorrah. He was talking about various comings of God in judgment against wicked people.

And he was saying specifically that when God comes, the advent of God, the coming of God, it results in justice for the elect, for those who are God’s people. And it involves judgment, the destruction of the enemies of God’s people. You know, it just before this, it talks about the two standing in the field. One will be taken, one will be left. The one that’s left is not the wicked person in terms of the rapture. The one that’s taken is one who’s taken in judgment. That’s the whole point of that thing.

So he’s relating the unjust judge here and God being a just judge and certainly bringing salvation to his people and deliverance for them. He’s relating that to these comings listed just before this. And then he says then comes the verse, when the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith in the earth. What’s faith?

Well, faith is a steadfast reliance upon God’s person, God’s word, his law, and God’s covenant, which involves judgment, judgments, blessings, and cursings. Faith is a knowledge on the part of the people, like the knowledge of the widow, that God will indeed answer our requests for deliverance from our adversaries. And Jesus says, “Will you be as faithful as this woman comes? When the judge finally comes, when God finally brings forth his judgment, temporally in time, over the enemies of his people, will he find faith? Will he find you affirming that judgment, that word of his?”

Faith affirms the entire covenant word of God. And because it does that, faith affirms the curses of God’s law. It believes them. And it believes that those people who trouble God and trouble his people will be dealt with by God in a judgmental fashion.

Moffett’s translation of these last couple of verses of this Luke 18 section says, “Listen, says the Lord, to what this unjust judge says, and will not God see justice done to his elect who cry to him by day and night? Will he not be tolerant to their opponents? I tell you, he will quickly see justice done to his elect.”

Quickly see justice unto his elect. So we’re celebrating Christmas times and the question for us is, as we have talked before about the advent of God. When God’s advent in judgment is found in this nation, will Jesus find faith on your behalf? Or when God’s judgment is delivered into your household, will he find faith on your behalf?

What is faith? Faith is an assurance that this is the word that governs and describes and depicts reality to us. The word that must be relied upon. So faith affirms more than simple point action salvation in Jesus Christ. Although it certainly affirms that—the just shall live by faith. We are saved by faith and that not of ourselves. It’s the gift of God, the gracious gift of God. Certainly it affirms that.

But it affirms much more than that. It affirms the curses of God’s word in terms of the faith that Christ talks about in here in the book of Luke. Abraham in Romans is described as having faith in God’s word. But what specifically was he described in terms of having faith in? He was described as having faith in God’s promise to Abraham of a seed. Faith. God, Abraham’s faith, believed God’s word that instructed him that in spite of the deadness of his body and the deadness of his wife’s body in terms of ability to produce seed, that indeed they would have children.

Abraham believed God. Abraham did not stagger at the promise of God. That’s what’s talked about in Romans—the promise of God. What’s the promise? The promise is related to the covenant, to the word. Faith affirms that covenant word. It affirms the scriptures and as such it affirms the promises of God to his people.

And so that’s an essential aspect of faith—is the affirmation of the covenant, law, blessing, cursing. Now, if faith affirms the law in all these details, and if our faith affirms this entire scripture to us, then one of the things that it affirms to us is judgment upon ourselves because we know that this word that describes reality to us tells us that we have fallen short of God’s righteous requirements. This word that we have faith in tells us that God’s righteous requirements exacts the death penalty for people who disobey his law.

And so that word tells us indeed—and we affirm by faith—the death penalty, our due for our sin is death, hell, and punishment.

And so we move to the evidences of what faith affirms. And the first evidence I’ve listed in the outline is repentance. Repentance. When God gives us the gift of faith to affirm this word, the first effect it has in our lives is repentance for our sins. Because we affirm the reality of this word description of good and evil. And we affirm then that we are evil and need salvation from God.

The Westminster Catechism, question 72 and 73, speaks of this aspect of faith and justification by faith. What is justifying faith? the catechism asked. Justifying faith is a saving grace wrought in the heart of a sinner by the Spirit and word of God whereby he being convinced of his sin and misery and of the disability in himself and all other creatures to recover him out of his lost condition, not only assents to the truth of the promise of the gospel, but receives and rests upon Christ and his righteousness, therein held forth for pardon of sin, and for the accepting and accounting of his person righteous in the sight of God for salvation.

How does faith justify a sinner in the sight of God? is question number 73. Faith justifies a sinner in the sight of God, not because of those other graces which do always accompany it, or of good works, that are the fruits of it, nor as the grace of faith, or any act thereof were imputed to him for justification, but only as it is an instrument by which he receives and applies Christ and his righteousness.

So the catechism tells us that faith affirms God’s death penalty upon us, and it also affirms that Jesus Christ’s righteousness is our only hope before the throne of God. And when God gives us saving, justifying faith, that’s what it does. The catechism is very careful in that last verse to say it’s not the faith that saves us. It’s not the accompaniment of faith, the repentance and the demonstration of faith in us that saves us. Rather, it’s the work of our Savior Jesus Christ.

And faith believes that work that is spelled forth in these scriptures and so puts us in a justified position with God in terms of salvation.

So the first evidence of biblical faith—that says that God’s word is reality, it depicts truth in a dependable and sure way—is an acknowledgement of our sins, a repentance of those sins, and then an acknowledgment of the righteousness of faith in Jesus Christ imputed to our accounts by God and it is salvation.

But secondly—and that most of us know that is true, that faith is necessary for salvation. It takes us to Jesus Christ and his righteousness outside of ourselves. But secondly, the evidence of faith is work. And I’ve got a lot of scripture listed there. We won’t necessarily look at most of them, but this is so important here. It’s such an important aspect of this verse.

Paul, as I said before, does not stress their faith. He stresses the result of their faith, which is work. What kind of work is it? Well, it’s work in conforming—we don’t know the specific thing he was thinking of—but whatever it is, it is work that evidences the reality of this as the command word to the church at Thessalonica. The work of faith says that this is reality and this is how I’m going to order my life.

And so faith, if faith is anything, if it’s faith in this scriptures here, it is going to have to find itself manifested in work. Now, it’s not the works that save us before God. It’s not the works that merit faith on our behalf, but work evidences our faith. James says that faith without works is dead. Well, of course, that’s true. When you understand that faith is saying yes, it is saying amen to God’s revealed word and to his covenant. If we say amen to it, why would we live our lives apart from it? Why would we not evidence our amen-ness, the steadfastness of God’s word in our life?

Indeed, Galatians—even in the book of Galatians, where Paul is very careful to talk against the error of faith of works righteousness—still in Galatians, he says that in Jesus Christ, neither circumcision avails anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith which works by love. Faith necessarily works by love. You can’t have one without the other.

I’ve listed various verses there. We won’t go through most of them, but it is worthwhile reading Isaiah 7:9. “The head of Ephraim is Samaria. The head of Samaria is Remaliah’s son.” This is a prophecy being given and a statement of truth. And then the text goes on to read. God’s prophet says, “If you will not believe, surely you shall not be established.”

And really, they’re essentially the same word there—the same word family. If you don’t believe, you won’t be established. The point is, if you do believe, you are established. It does manifest itself in your life.

So faith is necessary for the establishment of our lives and the faithfulness that’s demonstrated in our lives. Proverbs 12:22 says that lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, but they that deal truly are his delight. They deal truly. Why? Because God has established them by bringing them to a position of faith and his word and that word then governs their lives and makes faithful men out of them.

The same is true in the New Testament. In Colossians 1, we read that Paul is giving thanks to the church of Colossae as he did in the Thessalonians. He says, “Since we heard your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love which you have for all the saints, for the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, whereof have ye heard before the word of the truth of the gospel which we which has come unto you, as it is all the world and brings forth fruit as it does also in you since the day you heard of it and knew the grace of God in truth.”

So again he says there that faith, hope, and love all have their evidences in works.

So faith, as I said, is an affirmation of God’s word. It’s an affirmation of the God who gave us that word. It’s an affirmation of covenant. And because it is those things, it is manifested first by repentance and then secondly it’s manifested by work. And that work is characterized as faithfulness on our part by God’s word.

And then third, faith is manifested or evidenced by boldness. Boldness. It’s interesting that in Mark 4 and other places that faithfulness is seen as opposite, or on the other end of fearfulness. Somebody is afraid. The point is made, why do you fear? Have you no faith? Is your faith small? Faith and fear are two opposite ends of the spectrum. Why? Because faith acknowledges the truth of this word. And because of that, it involves with it a degree of boldness to the approach of God’s throne.

Hebrews 10. Let’s turn to Hebrews 10:19-24 to see this. We read: “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holies by the blood of Jesus by a new and living way which he has consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say, his flesh…”