If you’ll turn with me in your Bibles, our first scripture reading this morning comes from the Gospel of Luke, the third chapter, beginning with the first verse. Luke writes,
‘In the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Anas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, the son of Zechariah, in the wilderness. And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet:
‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall become straight, and the rough places shall become level ways, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”
From the Gospel of Luke, we turn to Paul’s letter to the Philippians, chapter 1, beginning at verse 3. Paul writes,
‘I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to feel this way about you all because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.’
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray.
Father God, you have given us your word, a word that comes to us and fills us and encourages us in hope and builds us up in faith. By the power of your Holy Spirit, open our hearts to truly receive your word, bury it deep within us so that it becomes the core of our being. Open our minds and our ears to hear and listen and then obey what you have called us to do. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.
So during this Advent season, we look forward to the second Advent of Christ in hope, and we join the ranks of all the elect in our shared and collective faith in Him. But what exactly is this faith? Hebrews 11:1 tells us that now faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.
So clearly, there is a connection between hope and faith—sola fide. We talked about this a while back: faith alone, but not a faith that is alone. Faith is both something that we possess and something that we do. We Christians are given faith, the power, will, desire, and understanding to believe on Jesus Christ, to believe that He alone is the Messiah, the Anointed One of the Lord, and the only Savior of God’s chosen people.
Then, because we believe this truth, we must act accordingly. In faith, we must live in response to this grace of Christ and live in a certain manner, obediently to the Lord and His holy law. Because Jesus is who He is, because Jesus has done what He has done, and because Jesus will do what He has promised to do according to the pages of sacred scripture, all for the glory of God alone.
Hope is something more than just mere wishful thinking, while faith is something more than just believing or saying that you believe something. Neither hope nor faith matter unless there is consequential action because of them. A stereotypical American child today who believes in Santa Claus hopes to receive various toys and presents on Christmas morning. Therefore, they try to act good; they try to behave themselves and try to treat others nicely because they believe that there is someone always watching them.
They are being good for goodness sake so that they will get their little heart’s desire. Being good is the natural consequence of their hope. And most every child, every parent who fosters a belief in Santa within their child is going to do their best to ensure that the kids get their desired presents, regardless of how they behave during the month before Christmas, much less regardless of how they behave all the rest of the year.
That is not biblical hope, nor is that biblical faith. This summer and early fall, many people in Florida, and one here in Mansfield, Ohio, believed that the Tampa Bay Rays were the best team in baseball. They had the best record, but that did not much increase the number of fans in the stands at Tropicana Field down in St. Pete, nor did this belief help to quash the rumors about management wanting to relocate the team or to even split the season with Montreal, Canada.
This faith or belief did not help the Rays win the 2021 World Series; that was the Atlanta Braves. So this is most definitely not biblical faith.
So what is the Levite Zechariah? He was a man of faith. He and his family had served before the Lord in the Jerusalem Temple for centuries. Yes, true, it was their livelihood as Levites, but Zechariah clearly knew the Lord and believed. He remembered. He had faith and believed the promises of God and lived accordingly so that he and his wife Elizabeth were both considered righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord.
A condition and label reminiscent of men like Noah and Job. This does not mean to say that they were sinless or perfect, but that their hearts were faithful to the Lord, that they loved the Lord and believed on Him alone and trusted in His promises, even against 400 years of prophetic silence and cultural confusion and assimilation.
It is reasonable to presume that they were in as much of a state of grace as every modern believing Christian like us. They believed God just like Abraham believed, and like he, they and we—our faith in the Lord, in Jesus—is what is counted as our righteousness.
The faith and righteousness of Zechariah and Elizabeth was rewarded with the son, John. Now John was the first true prophet of the Lord since the close of the Hebrew canon, and it was he who had later baptized his relation Jesus of Nazareth into communion with sinful humanity in need of repentance and who would later call upon the people of Judea to repent and believe, to have faith, thereby preparing the way for the Son of God’s ministry.
People went down to the river because John offered them something that they didn’t get when they went up to Jerusalem to offer their required sacrifices. They went to John and received the assurance of their faith. They became confident and encouraged in their standing before the Lord through their acts of earnest and public repentance.
Through their faith, their hearts were being circumcised, and they began truly living the life of faith called for by the prophet Jeremiah, who said,
‘Circumcise yourselves to the Lord; remove the foreskin of your hearts, O men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, lest my wrath go forth like fire and burn with none to quench it because of the evil of your deeds.’
The commands of Torah have always demanded faithfulness to the Lord and not a requirement of works. God loves His people and expects us to respond in love, not out of obligation or a desire to purchase His favor. The people of Israel were not chosen by God for any particular greatness but because they were the least of nations.
There was nothing about them that screamed ‘pick me.’ When Israel was faithful, they were obedient and did what was right before the Lord, but whenever they fell—and they fell short—God graciously provided us a means of restoration.
The whole sacrificial system pointed to the true, total, efficacious, and perfect sacrifice of Christ on that Roman cross. What started off as a symbol made effective by faith had become a means of self-justification and an assumed means for the desired end. The temple sacrifices became considered important for their own purpose—a requirement for righteousness—instead of a reminder of the righteousness of God and His desire for our human holiness to be a reflection of His own.
John’s ministry in the Jordanian wilderness reminded the people why the temple service was necessary. He reminded them that no one is made righteous by their works of religion, but instead that the elect who are unrighteous by nature may be considered righteous through their faith in the Lord alone. God was their righteousness; there was none within them except for whatever God has accounted to them.
John’s baptism and call to repentance worked to straighten them out, smoothing the way for the people to receive the grace which Christ freely offers to us. The baptism of John did not cleanse people of their sins; his baptism did not grant them forgiveness, but it did allow them to take a public stand and repent of their sin, accepting by faith the true atonement made for them and for us by our great High Priest.
So faith is trusting God and depending on His providence, believing that He will and has forgiven you, relying on Him to fulfill all that He has promised, even at great risk or cost to yourself. Faith is living and being different from everybody else out there in the world, living and doing God’s thing instead of your own thing.
Faith is knowing and doing what the Lord requires of you: to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God because He desires steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. Zechariah and his son John lived out their faith through belief in who and what their ministries pointed to: the righteousness of God, the sinfulness of man, our need for redemption, that God is the Redeemer of Israel and that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and that the Lord would make them to be exactly what He has called us to be—a holy people.
Zechariah and John believed and trusted in the gospel of God made manifest in Jesus Christ, our Redeemer and Savior, the true and only perfect sacrifice for sin, which the entire temple system was designed to point to in faith. And it is by this same faith that we are justified before God, and then it is because of this faith that our desire to be obedient to Him grows within.
Then we will want to love what He loves and hate what He hates. Then by our obedience to Him through our training in righteousness, we become better people and consequently better followers of Christ. We are constantly being improved while we are being sanctified, working together in partnership with the Holy Spirit. In faith, this gracious gift of faith is such an encouragement for us because even while all the world seems to be going to hell around us, we don’t have to.
With our faith in the promises of Christ, we may stand firm in the midst of this chaos and thank God for all that He has done, is doing, and will do. We can thank God like Paul because we are partakers in His grace.
Now, the Apostle Paul, he was a guy who suffered a bunch of tough times—being beaten, stoned, run out of town, shipwrecked, snake bitten, falsely accused, and imprisoned. More tough times than most any other person could possibly endure. Yet throughout all of these trials, he never lost hope; he never gave up on his faith, and he never gave up his faith in Christ. His faithfulness was an example to all the churches he helped to plant across the Roman Empire and is still an example for us today.
But it was the confidence born out of this shared faith with his fellow Christians that kept him encouraged during his worst days. While Paul was imprisoned in Rome, guarded by Caesar’s best, he remembered, prayed for, and thanked God for the believers over in Philippi. He was encouraged in faith by their faithfulness to Christ. Their faithfulness in this church had grown after Paul’s false imprisonment there following the exorcism of a prophetic demon when Paul was beaten and imprisoned illegally without trial and suffered a punishment that was prohibited against a Roman citizen.
Yet still, he loved the church and the people of Philippi, forgiving them for his past mistreatment because of his faith and love for Christ. So he names them as fellow partakers of grace. But how can they really be sharing in this same cup of grace while separated by such a great distance?
Through their partnership together in the gospel of Christ, living out their faith in Jesus, they shared both in his imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. During some of his journeys, Paul was supported by the Philippian church, and now while he was imprisoned in Rome, they sent gifts and helpful care by way of one of their church members, Epaphroditus.
The Philippians were a church who supported the Apostle’s evangelistic ministry and helped to care for their father in faith and his needs during his incarceration. Thus they were able to share in his imprisonment through their assistance and provision, their concern and prayers for him which echoed his prayers and concerns for them.
And because like Paul, they had learned and come to understand what it means to be prisoners for Christ, bound to testify to the faithfulness of Jesus through their own witness of self-sacrifice, supporting his ministry both financially and tangibly, the Philippians were defending the gospel in Rome and in Philippi, standing right there next to Paul proclaiming, ‘Curio Christu,’ Christ is Lord, in defiance—in bold defiance—of Caesar and all the powers of this world.
Their lives, being changed and lived differently from the ordinary pagan Roman citizens or retired soldiers who populated their city, was a testimony to the greater morality and higher ethics of the law of God. They lived better in community and in love than their neighbors. Their changed lives were the evidence and proof of the power of Christ’s cross and what that gospel means for us—peace with God, peace with each other, freedom from guilt, freedom from shame, freedom from the fear of death and the uncertainty of what’s next.
Their changed lives showed them to be new creations and were a bold confirmation of the gospel. It was an expression of the triumph of the heavenly kingdom over the kingdom of sin and death. They lived by faith in hope, encouraged by every slight and insult hurled against them for living out their newfound faith.
Because those insults and the anger confirmed for them and each other that they had been changed. They no longer were who or what they had been—children of wrath doomed to destruction. Instead, now they were children of God adopted in faith. They were condemned, but now are redeemed. They were judged guilty and bound to their sin, but now they are forgiven and free. They were sinners without hope, and now they are saints possessing a promise in hope—all by faith.
That is what biblical faith is and does; it is belief that changes you and impacts the world around you. Paul was encouraged through the faithfulness of the Philippian church, watching the seeds that he had helped to plant—watered and grown from his own conviction of faith—to see them sprout leaves and grow tall and strong.
And the Philippians were encouraged by their faith, by how they lived differently and better than the pagans, and how they were progressively falling out of fellowship with the world. Are we like the Philippians? Are you?
Are we living faithfully? Does the world know that Christ is your Lord instead of Caesar or Satan? Do you love what Christ loves and hate what He hates? Do you express His love to others through your activities and mortify the sin within yourself? Can you be convicted by the world on account of your faith in Jesus? Are you a prisoner for Christ?
Are you impelled to testify about His goodness and mercy and love for you and all of His elect? Are you being encouraged like Paul, like the Philippians because of your faith and the faithfulness of your family and friends?
Because we should all be encouraged because the consequences and evidence of their faith proves their hope and expectation true, just like yours. So just what is this hope and expectation? We hope for the completion of our progressive sanctification and expect our future glorification with Christ on the day of His second advent.
So while we look forward to the day of Jesus’ return when the good work which the Holy Spirit has begun inside each and every believer is completed, we long for and expect the day when sin—whose power we have been put to death to—when sin is put to death within us and we are made truly holy because God, our Father, is holy.
Then the love of Christ will abound; we will love all as Christ loves us and loves them. Then we will know and understand what is true and good and right. Then the law of the Lord, which is written on our hearts, will be forever in our minds and flow out from our mouths.
That is how we will approve all things that are excellent and good. Thus we will be truly pure and blameless before our Lord in spirit and in truth, justified and possessing the righteousness of Christ.
Paul’s hopeful expectation from the faith of the Philippians is the same expectation which John had of those who came to see him in Judea, and it is the same expectation which Jesus has for us on account of faith. They expect that we will be the fruit of righteousness, the fruit of His righteousness, so that by our lives of faith, we will bring our Savior all the glory and praise to Him.
So be encouraged in your faith when friends abandon you on account of it, when the neighbors ignore you on account of it, when the 24-hour news cycle condemns you for it, or when the government imprisons you for it.
You are standing in good and faithful company. We are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses that we cannot help but be more and more encouraged in our faith than we are when troubled times come upon us.
So stand firm in your faith because truly, faith is the only thing the world cannot take away from you. Stand firm in your faith no matter what because in Christ alone, your hope is secure.
So take courage and give thanks to the Lord for all things in faith. Amen.