What Is Faith?

One Sinner Up a Tree

Habakkuk 1:1-2:4, Luke 19:1-10

A Sermon Prepared for the Hollywood Presbyterian Church

October 31, 2010

Rev. Stephen A. Herring

The Prophet Habakkuk begins his book with a list of the following complaints. 

“I cry for help, but you will not hear. 

I cry to you; ‘Violence!” but you will not save. 

You make me see wrongs. 

You make me look upon trouble. 

Destruction is before me. 

Violence is before me. 

Strife, and contention arise. 

The Law is slackened, it is made weak. 

Justice never goes forth. 

The wicked surround the righteous. 

Justice goes forth perverted.  Justice is all twisted up.”  (Habakkuk 1:1-4)    

After this long list of complaints, the prophet offers a solution as follows:

“The vision awaits its time. 

It hastens to the end. 

It will not lie. 

If it seems slow, wait for it. 

It will surely come, it will not delay. 

Behold:  Whoever’s soul is not upright within them shall fail. 

But the righteous shall live by faith.”    (Habakkuk 2:3-4) 

Taken as a whole, this scripture asks us two questions. 

1. Is our soul upright within us, or not?
2. Do we understand that the quality of our lives and the quality of our faith are the same thing? 

For our soul to be upright within us we must not be lying to ourselves.  We lie to ourselves by believing more in the power of what is wrong than we believe in the power of what is right.  As we live, each of us must confront a mass of imperfections of awesome proportions.  Just how much is wrong within our world?  Just how much is wrong in our lives?  What do we believe about all this wrongness?  How powerful is it?  How much ultimate reality does it possess?  How great and lasting is the power it can have over us?  If our soul is not right, not solidly grounded within us, all those problems can pull us down.  The problems can sink us if we let them.  Ultimately, all those problems and imperfections only have power over us if we choose to believe in them.  If we believe in the power of what is wrong, that wrongness will have power over us.    

This is where the quality of our faith determines the quality of our lives.  Now let’s be clear here.  I am not talking about material prosperity, wealth, health, recognition, success, status, or any of those things we covet so much.  Those things do not bring us any real or lasting quality of life.  There are plenty of wealthy, healthy, famous, successful people who are just as miserable as they can be.  Those things do not bring us quality of life.  The quality of our lives is determined by those things we choose to put our faith in.  Our lives are conditioned by those things which we come to believe have ultimate reality, and lasting power over us.  Faith is determined by the set of things we choose to believe are ultimately real within our lives. 

Habakkuk 2:4 says, “The righteous shall live by his or her faith.”  That word translated as “faith” is the Hebrew “Amonath.”  This is the same root as the word “Amen.”  The word describes the way we decide what is real, what is solid, what is actual, what is substantial, what is truly happening within our lives.  When we want to testify that something is real, we say; “Amen!”  Amen means “So may it be!”  “May it be true!”  That word carries over into the New Testament.  When Jesus says something, especially in John’s Gospel, he begins by saying; “Truly, truly I say unto you….”  In Greek that is literally; “Amen, Amen, I say to you….”  In this way the word “amen” means “truly.” 

So when we look at the problems and complaints within our lives, what do we believe about them?  Do we believe that they have ultimate power over us?  Is evil the sum, source, and center of our lives?  Does evil determine what is real for us?  I certainly hope not. 

For one thing, whatever is wrong with our lives today will be different tomorrow.  IT, whatever IT is, will change.  IT will become something else.  Troubles have a way of doing that.  They ebb and flow and migrate through our lives.  As bad as they may be, our problems are NOT eternal.  To see this we need only look upon the people we love and realize that though they are changing constantly, our love for them remains as strong and changeless as ever.  “Love never ends.” Paul says this in First Corinthians 12.   Everything else will change and fade away in time.  Everything else is imperfect, but what is perfect lasts for ever.  Perfect love endures perfectly. 

Once in the time of Jesus there was a man who lived a highly imperfect life.  He had lots of problems.  His name was Zacchaeus.   He was short.  He was also hated by those around him because he worked as a tax collector.  Tax collectors were hated by the local Jews.  They worked for the Roman occupation.  They handled the filthy Roman idolatrous currency.  They were greedy.  They were despised. 

Zacchaeus believed in something bigger than his problems because he wanted to see who Jesus was.  He went ahead and climbed up into a tree to be able to see Jesus over the crowd.  When the Lord walked to the place where Zacchaeus was in the tree, he called out to him; “Zacchaeus, make haste and come down, for I must stay at your house today.”  (Luke 19:5)  Zacchaeus received Jesus into his house, and he converted his whole value system, giving half his goods to the poor, and restoring four times anything he had gained dishonestly.  Jesus said; “Today Salvation has come to this house since he also is a son of Abraham.  For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”  (Luke 19:9-10) 

If we look closely at all of the troubles which are pulling us down so hard, at all of the pain and the sorrow and the frustration we are bearing, and at all of the complaints we can complain about, we should go ahead and sum it all up into one single basic want.  Whatever the problems are, we will be OK if WE WANT TO SEE JESUS. 

“Zacchaeus wanted to see who Jesus was, but could not, on account of the crowd, because he was small of stature.”  (Luke 19:3)  We want to see who Jesus is, but why can’t we?  We can’t see Jesus because of our pain, our grief, our disappointment, our limitations, our weakness, our illness, our grief, our failure, or whatever other problems we have.  Whatever it is that is holding us back, we need to climb up that tree.  We need to get above it.  We need to go out on that limb.  We need to put it all aside and risk everything because WE WANT TO SEE JESUS.  We want to see the righteousness, and the deliverance, and the love, and the forgiveness, and the goodness of God.  We want to see a Savior who will prove to us once and for all that what is ultimately real and true and lasting in our world is the love of God and the love we have for one another. 

When we take that risk, and climb above all that could separate us from each other and from our God, Jesus will call to us and invite us to dine with him.  Our time of waiting for deliverance is over.  It is time to celebrate.  It is time to be changed.  Amen.