Look What Faith Can Do!

7th Sunday after Pentecost, 8/4/19
Luke 10:25-37


Look What Faith Can Do!
I. It recognizes sinfulness.
II. It rejoices in forgiveness.


“Look, Mommy! Look what I can do!” Unfortunately, the little boy’s mother is up to her elbows in a mixing bowl and her undivided attention is on the recipe in front of her. It’s crucial at this moment that she gets the ingredients just right.

But all the while her son is getting more and more impatient. “Mommy, look! Look what I can do!” But his pleas go unheeded. The family’s evening meal depends on her getting this dish prepared right now in the right way. Therefore, she doesn’t even glance his way.

“Mommy, are you going to look at what I can do or not?” is his attempt to disguise his puerile command with a loaded question. This time his mother notes the growing desperation and deepening disappointment in his voice. As his mother who loves him dearly, she stops what she’s doing and gives him her attention. And what he shows her amazes her. For the first time in his 4-year-old life, he writes his name on a sheet of paper for her and with overwhelming joy loudly declares, “Look what I can do!”

Our Savior was confronted with a similar situation one day during his earthly ministry. Our text states that an expert in the law approached him with a question. As the all-knowing Son of God, Jesus knew that, behind this question lay a heart that was steeped in work-righteousness. He had come to Christ with the attitude that he could do it all—he could do whatever was required to enter eternal life.

Jesus used his question and answer to launch into a story which proved he was wrong. Jesus used the story of the Good Samaritan to impress the man not with what a person can do, but with what faith can do. Look! Look what faith can do! As people who are concerned this morning with producing fruits of faith, this portion of God’s word has much to tell us. More importantly, it offers much to encourage us in producing fruits of faith.

Part I.

Have you ever met a person who just didn’t get it? Maybe they just didn’t get that you didn’t care for them. Or maybe they didn’t get the solution to the problem that you were explaining to them. Or maybe they just couldn’t see how they were the problem.

The expert who approached Jesus was one such person. He just didn’t get it. He was blind to the spiritual truth about himself. He showed it in a number of ways. First, he asked Jesus, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Notice that he didn’t address Jesus as “Savior” or “Lord.” He called him “Teacher,” because he thought that Jesus might have something to teach him about getting himself to heaven. And that’s exactly what he showed when he asked, “What must I do?” His personal theology was based on his attempts to earn eternal l life for himself. And remember, this man was no dummy. He was an expert in the law—the first five books of the Bible. He wanted to use that law to get himself into heaven.

Think about that—he was an expert in God’s word, and yet he missed the point of that word. God had not given his law to save anyone. He had not given his commandments to show people how good they are. God once said through Paul, “No one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin” (Rom. 3:20). This man wanted to use God’s law to prove how good he was. He showed it by correctly summarizing the law with the words, “Love God and love your neighbor.” In his own mind, he had done exactly that.

But when Jesus told the man, “You’ve got it right. Go and do it,” the expert in the law knew it couldn’t be that simple. So he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” He wanted Jesus to limit the legal definition of a neighbor. He wanted Jesus to say, “Your neighbor is limited to the guy living right next door to you.” That way the expert in the law might be able to reply, “Yes, I’ve always loved my neighbor as myself.” But, in thinking that way, he was only fooling himself.

The truth about himself was that he had violated God’s law in every aspect. The truth was that he had not always loved God. The truth was that he had not always loved his neighbor as himself. His heart harbored sinful pride, greed, lust, discontent, hatred, and envy. And those sins in his heart had given rise every day to sinful words and actions. That’s the way it is with every sinner.

And that’s exactly what our Christian faith tells us. It tells us we have not done what God requires. We know and believe what we just confessed—that we are by nature sinful and that we have disobeyed God in our thoughts, words and actions. There isn’t a single commandment that we can hold up before God and exclaim, “Look, God! Look what I can do! I can keep this commandment!” The truth is, we’ve trashed them all. Over and over again. Daily.

So, look! Look what faith can do. It recognizes our sinfulness.

No doubt you’ve heard the story of the emperor’s new clothes. A royal designer convinced the emperor that his birthday suit was the finest set of clothing he’d ever seen. And the people in his kingdom supported this ridiculous opinion. It took a little boy to shout out the truth, “The emperor is naked!”

Many are the times when we ape the spiritual condition of this expert in the law. We refuse to be honest with ourselves. Without taking a laser look at what the law of God demands, we conclude that we’re not so bad. In fact, we’re kind of good. We try not to abuse people. We make every effort to do what is right. We have no trouble locating a world full of people who are worse sinners than we are. Or worse yet, we listen to pop psychology which convinces us that there’s nothing spiritually wrong with us. So we easily conclude that, if we have problems, it must be someone else’s fault. Such an attitude needs no Savior from sin. Such an attitude thinks that it knows exactly what’s required of us to get our own way into heaven, just as this expert did. But we couldn’t be more wrong. Praise be to God, our faith tells us like it is. We’ve sinned. Sinned deeply. Sinned often. In fact, we have a sinful nature from conception. We’re sinful garbage dumps not monuments to our personal piety. There’s a world full of sinners out there who deny that truth. But your faith recognizes it. Thank God it does, because that faith then also trusts Jesus to make you spiritually clean through his forgiveness. Don’t fool yourself! Look what faith can do! It recognizes sinfulness.

Part II.

As a Christian, you know and believe that only in Jesus do you have forgiveness, only in Jesus do you have the holiness that God demands, only in Jesus do you have the ticket to eternal life. Amazing, isn’t it? What you could never earn on your own, God freely gives you. What this expert in the law had spent his life looking for, you already possess. He had spent day after day reading through God’s law and making sure his life met its demands. He had adjusted his definitions of God’s terms such as “neighbor” to make sure that he measured up. But he still wasn’t sure. He was haunted by the feeling that he hadn’t done enough. In order to cover his bases, he wanted to hear what Jesus had to say.

Jesus wanted to tell him, “I give you full and free forgiveness.” He wanted to tell the man what you and I already know and believe. But such good news is useless to the person who is convinced they have nothing to forgive.

You and I know it. We know the debt of sin that Christ has forgiven us. We believe that he carried it by himself to the cross and there paid our debt in full. We trust in a Savior who was crucified for us.

And that trust—that faith—produces Christ-like love in us. That’s what Jesus wanted to impress on this expert in the law. The expert wanted to narrow his definition of neighbor. Jesus wanted him to expand it. You see, when we rejoice in our forgiveness, then we also have a love for Christ which doesn’t stop at doing only what’s expected of us. That’s where the expert wanted to stop. He wanted to limit his neighbor to the man living next door to him. He wanted to be able to say, “I’ve always loved that guy the way I should.”

Jesus pointed out that, if he had joy in his forgiveness through faith in Jesus, then he would have an extraordinary love for his neighbor. That’s the love that the Samaritan showed. Samaritans and Jews hated each other. There’s no way a Jew would ever consider a Samaritan to be his neighbor. And yet this Samaritan got off his donkey, cleaned and bandaged the Jew’s wounds, put him on his donkey, and took him to an inn. What would cause a person to show such extraordinary love? Only love for Christ which rejoices in forgiveness.

In fact, his love went further than that. The Samaritan gave him money to keep him for quite some time with the further provision that, if he ran up a bill that exceeded that amount, the Samaritan would pay the amount due the next time he passed through. An incredible deed which showed incredible love! Where did such a love come from? Only from Christ, who had forgiven his sins.

You see, everything we do as believers goes back to the love which Christ has for us. Paul wrote, “For Christ’s love compels us” (2 Cor. 5:14). We deserved to suffer. We deserved to die in hell for our sins. But Jesus suffered for us. In fact, he died for us. Has anyone else ever done that for you? Jesus died so that you could live, not just for a few more years on this sinful earth, but forever with him in heaven. A love for the Savior who did that for us move us to rejoice in our forgiveness by showing such love for others—such extraordinary love.

Are you having difficulty at times showing that kind of love? If so (and we all have difficulty), it won’t do you any good to push yourself. Such love comes from faith. If you want to be able to love more, you have to have more faith. You get more faith when you hear about Jesus’ love for you and when you receive his sacrament. Make more use of that word and sacrament and God will grow your faith. Then look! Look what faith can do! Amen.