Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning is from our reading of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the 11th and 12th chapters:
By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back…Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.
Thus far the text.
Dear friends in Christ,
Paul Harvey, many of you remember him well, had an old radio show, News and Comment, with perhaps his most famous segment, The Rest of the Story. In this segment, Paul Harvey grabbed his listeners with fascinating tales and long-forgotten facts about people like Richard Nixon, Charles Manson, Paul McCartney, or Adolf Hitler, or things like the light bulb, the history of basketball, Julio Gallo wine, or the invention of the laptop. Paul Harvey was a master storyteller in just three minutes. And he did that by making you feel the story, know the story, be interested in the story, and, ultimately, be a part of the story, hiding the common detail that binds it all together, transporting you into the circumstances that drove the story to Harvey’s ultimate conclusion, “Now you know… the rest of the story.”
What the author of Hebrews is doing here in chapter 11 is the very same thing. For his listeners, he is his generation’s Paul Harvey, and the rest of the story that he is telling takes us to his ultimate conclusion: Jesus. The story being told wraps you inside the history. And the history is like a time machine, transporting you across time and space. It makes you realize that you are part of the bigger story.
And so we are. We are part of the bigger story. And the only thing that matters to our story this morning is faith. It isn’t the people of the story; it’s faith. You see, the author here recounts how the old saints were like Jesus, what they did through Him. He doesn’t tell the whole story right away. He tells about Jesus. What matters is Jesus, what matters is forgiveness, what matters is faith.
You see, faith, this is the tie that binds all these men and women together in the full context of this passage of Hebrews. Faith is also then what ties us to these men and women. These men and women witness the faith of Jesus to us and with us. It’s all by faith. By faith Abraham, by faith Isaac, by faith Jacob, by faith Moses, by faith Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, David, Samuel, the prophets… by faith, these people are joined up in the greatest story ever told, the story that leads to the birth, life, teachings, death, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. By faith, we are now also part of this story.
But what kind of story is it? It is a story of our woe and anger. It is a story of God’s love and redemption. It is a story of our jealousy and strife. It is a story of God’s patience and virtue. It is our story. It is Jesus’ story.
For how many of us know that Abraham was an adulterer? He had a child with his wife’s servant, certainly with his wife’s permission, but he had relations with a woman who was not his wife. And how many of you know that Abraham was a preeminent liar, able to keep a straight face before pharaohs and princes, and essentially pimping out his wife so that he and his possessions would remain safe?
Of course, it seems this lying gene was passed down to Abraham’s son, Isaac, who did the exact same thing to a king, putting his wife in the king’s household. Then we have Jacob, the deceiver, stealing his brother’s birthright and blessing. We have Moses, the murderer and coward. We have Rahab, the prostitute. Gideon, the weakling. Barak, the man who led a woman into battle rather than take the charge. Samson, the prideful judge with seemingly no regard for his vow. David, the murderer, adulterer, warrior-king, who had so much blood on his hands God wouldn’t let him build the temple.
This is the story that the author of Hebrews is telling us? This is what he wants us to be a part of? This is what he wants us to learn? Yes, indeed. You see, while Hebrews recounts for us the great things God did through these men and women, Hebrews also reminds us that these men and women were sinners. They did not share the same good, virtuous deeds. What these men and women shared is a common image. This image was what God had created good in the Garden of Eden, and this image is what Adam and Eve destroyed and perverted. Rather than being created in the image of God, Adam created his children in the image of Adam, the image of sin, destruction, damnation. Rather than being like God in His righteousness, they became like the devil in their sinfulness. This is our story.
We cannot tell the rest of the story without telling about us. We are sinners, just as they were. We are adulterers, whether in thought, or word, or deed. We lust after men and women, objectifying them and desiring their bodies in ways that God has not given us. We are murderers, in thought, word, and deed. We hate our brother and sister and cannot forget the wrong they inflicted on us some 20 years ago, 20 weeks ago, 20 days ago, 20 minutes ago, and so kill them in our hearts, stabbing them through their own heart. We lie before God and man, making our lying tongues worthy of the fires of hell burning our proverbial pants. We are cowards, turning away from the truth, our responsibilities, our vocations, and abandoning those we should love and serve so that they are the ones who take the blame, take the curse, take the punishment that should be our own. We have pride. “Look how wonderful I am, how my family is, how my home looks, how my people are.” We put ourselves before others constantly. This is our story; this is our sin.
And yet, we, with those saints the author of Hebrews mentions, we may have our sin, but we also have our Jesus. We have our Jesus, just as they did. Jesus died for the Old Testament saints, just as He died for the New Testament saints, just as He died for you. Jesus saw your cowardice, your lust, your hatred, your adultery, your murder, your lies, and He loved you. He loved you so much, He desired to come and take your place in the fires of hell. He became the murderer, the liar, the luster, the adulterer, the coward. He became Sin, for you. He loves you. He takes your place on the cross of Calvary. And He did this, not only for you, but for your neighbor, for your enemy, for every person, male or female, Jew or Greek, white or Native. Jesus died for all.
And this death would mean nothing, if you could not partake in it. This death of Jesus would do nothing to or for you if you could not somehow receive it. Just as Paul Harvey’s broadcast would mean nothing to you if you had no radio, Jesus’ death would mean nothing if you had no faith. And just as you do not build the radio, but receive it from a store, you also do not build or create or form your own faith. Rather, your faith is received as a gift by the Holy Spirit. And where do we receive this gift, but in baptism.
Baptism is the radio, so to speak, by which God imparts faith to you so that you might be washed in the waters, not as a cleansing of the body, but a cleansing of your entire image and being, as an appeal to be saved, an appeal that is answered soundly and roundly in the affirmative. For when you go down into those waters, your old image of the first man, Adam, is drowned, held under by the hand of the wrath of God the Father, taken down until he struggles no more. And when you come up, the image of the last man, Jesus, is placed upon you by the loving hand of the Father, put on you so that you struggle no more but rejoice in the struggling of Jesus. He struggled, He suffered for you, not unwillingly, not in cowardice, not in fear, but gladly, and joyfully. He went down in His waters of baptism and took your sins upon Himself, so that when you come up from the waters, your sins, your lusting, your adultery, your lying, are gone from you and put on Him.
This is the story of all the saints. It is the story of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and Moses, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, David, Samuel, and the prophets. It is the story of me. And it is the story of you. By faith, Hebrews says, by the faith given to you by God Himself, by faith given to you in baptism, by faith, we are transported into the story because the story surrounds us. And as Hebrews tells us, we are surrounded by the great cloud of witnesses by faith. When we come to this altar, we confess that we are communing with all the saints, we confess that our sins are forgiven, just as those saints who have gone before us. By faith, we commune with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and Moses, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, David, Samuel, and the prophets. We commune with our faithful grandparents and parents who are no longer with us. And we commune with those saints who are with us, even now.
By faith, the gift of God in Christ Jesus, Hebrews tells us to cast off our sin, not by our own power, for who can do that? No, we cast off our sin because Jesus enters in, Jesus has perfected our faith, given us a new heart, His heart, and a new mind, His mind. Only He has the power to do this. By faith, we repent of our sin, just as the Old Testament saints did. By faith, we repent, we confess, we are forgiven, and we go forward in Christ into the world. By faith, we receive these all as gifts of Christ Jesus. The saints of the Old Testament knew this, the saints of the New Testament knew this. And now you know this, too, that, by faith, Jesus has forgiven you and set you free from your sin, not recalling your sins, but recounting the great deeds that He has done through you, through your baptism, through the Word, and soon, through this altar.
And now you know the rest of the story.
Now may the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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