We’ll read the first four verses of chapter 1, then we’ll jump to chapter 2, where we essentially have Habakkuk’s complaint to the Lord and then God’s response to him in chapter 2.
Beginning in verse 1 of chapter 1, hear now God’s word. The oracle that Habakkuk the prophet saw O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you violence, and you will not save? Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you idly look at wrong? Destruction and violence are before me. Strife and contention arise. So the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous, so justice goes forth perverted.
I’m going to chapter 2, verse 1. I will take my stand at my watch post and station myself on the tower and look out to see what he will say to me and what I will answer concerning my complaint. And the Lord answered me, write the vision, make it plain on tablets so he may run who reads it. For still the vision awaits its appointed 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, his soul is puffed up. It is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith.
Thus far the reading of God’s word.
And now for our New Testament reading and our sermon text this morning, would you turn to the gospel of Luke chapter 17, Luke chapter 17. And we’ll begin in verse five. We’ll be reading verses five through 10. Luke chapter 17, beginning in verse five. Again, hear now God’s word. And he, that is Jesus, said to his disciples, temptations to sin are sure to come. Oh, excuse me, sorry, verse five. The apostle said to the Lord, increase our faith. And the Lord said, if you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, be uprooted and planted in the sea, and it would obey you. Will any one of you who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, come at once and recline at table? Will he not rather say to him, prepare supper for me, and dress properly, and serve me while I eat and drink, and afterward you will eat and drink? Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, we are unworthy servants. We have only done what is our duty.
Thus far the reading of God’s word.
Would you pray with me? Our Father in Heaven, indeed, Lord, you have taught us from your word that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceeds from your mouth. And so God, we do ask this morning that you would help us to be attentive to your word, that we would receive it, God, that we would understand it, not merely for our intellect, but that it might take root, God, by the power of your spirit, working it into our lives, that it would take root and it would bear fruit in our lives. Oh God, we do pray that you would make this word effective. And I do pray that in this time, the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts would be acceptable in your sight, oh Lord, our rock and our redeemer. For we do pray all these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, as we come to the close of the year 2025, this is the time when many of us, hopefully all of us to some extent, take stock of the last year, kind of evaluate how it’s gone as an individual, as a family, as a church. But of course, too, hopefully looking forward to the new year and perhaps figuring out what you might need to do, what steps you need to take to make 2026 an improvement on 2025. Maybe this year has been more difficult or challenging than you expected, so how might your year be a little bit smoother? How might it be a little bit more productive? How might you have a little bit more in your savings account by the end of 2026?
But nonetheless, we ought to at times take stock and consider what do we need to get through the next season of our life? That’s just a thing of wisdom to stop, to pause, to reflect, and to evaluate, and to make plans for the future.
And even as we come to this text this morning, we see the disciples of Jesus are doing something similar over the last few chapters of Luke’s gospel. Jesus has really been preparing his disciples for a new season of ministry. I mean, Jesus already a few chapters before has said, you know, he is setting his face towards Jerusalem. And soon this will be the beginning of a new era, right? The church age and these disciples will take on huge amounts of responsibility.
And Jesus has been talking to them about what that responsibility looks like. He’s been talking about what life in this kingdom is going to be for them. He’s just essentially told them, you have to keep forgiving for the rest of your life. And the disciples are somewhat dismayed. How can I live in this way? How can I have what it takes to live the Christian life and to do this ministry that Christ has put before me? which, of course, I hope is a question we all ask ourselves. How can we do the Christian life well? What do we need to get through the Christian life? Well, not even just to get through, but to be successful, to do what Christ has called us to do.
And you notice in the midst of their own deficiencies that they realize that they in and of themselves don’t have what it takes to do this. And notice the cry that they kind of just naturally comes out of them as they realize their insufficiency. They say, Lord, increase our faith. That is the cry as they realize what is before them. And indeed, this is the cry of our hearts as well. Lord, would you increase our faith in you as I look forward in the Christian life?
And so as we come to this text and as we consider the year ahead of us, I would argue, I want to persuade you this morning that the one thing that we need as Christians above all else, all material goods, all things that God could provide is the same thing that these disciples cry out for. We need faith. We need faith and we need it now. We need it for the road ahead. And so I want us to consider that this morning, our need of faith and why we need faith so desperately like Christ’s disciples in this text.
And the first reason is this, our first heading is this, we need faith because it is a powerful faith. We need more faith because it is a powerful faith. So the disciples, they’re crying out, but they’re really pleading with the Lord. They’re asking Him, right, Lord, would you increase our faith as we consider all these things, which, as I’ve already said, this is, whether explicitly or not, this is the cry that we so often feel in our hearts. We so often feel that we need more faith in the Christian life. We So often feel weak and deficient. You know, you will look at the heroes of faith and we don’t feel quite like them. We often wonder, we question, we doubt the Lord. And in the wake of this pleading of this, you know, this very honest admittance from the disciples, Jesus responds with somewhat of a challenge to them, right? They say, Lord, increase our faith. And then Jesus responds, not with a direct answer as he so often does, he gives this kind of picture, this parable to help them understand.
And he says, if you had faith like a mustard seed. And here, as we hear what that potent faith can do, actually, Luke is being a little bit more generous than we find in Matthew’s gospel. In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus, in telling this, says, if you had faith like a mustard seed, you can move a mountain. You can pick it up and cast it into the heart of the sea. Well, Luke’s a little bit more understanding. He says, not a mountain, but Jesus tells it another time and says, If you had faith like a mustard seed, you could lift up a mulberry bush and you can move that around. Don’t worry about mountains, but if you can just muster up enough mustard seed faith, you can move. a bush, probably about five feet around, this big desert bush.
And as you look at the commentaries, as they so often do, they go into the weeds on the horticultural aspects of Jesus’s teachings. And they talk about how mulberry bushes have these really deep root systems, and they’re really hard to pull out of the hard soil. But that’s not the point. It’s not just the fact that this is a hard thing to do, that this is a laborious task to pull out a mulberry bush. I mean, the point here is that this is a miraculous thing, right? That none of us in our everyday experience see people going around and, by their faith, magically or miraculously lifting things up, moving things around, doing these feats of supernatural strength and things that would make you marvel.
or to put it simply, we don’t live lives, outwardly speaking, where we see a lot of mountains flying around and mulberry bushes flying around. We don’t see lives of dynamic faith, at least in the way that Jesus is describing it here to his disciples. And yet, while this is certainly somewhat of a challenge that Jesus is saying, that this faith should be active in your life, this type of faith, I hope we also, I want us to hear it this morning, not merely as a challenge, that Jesus is not giving us this insurmountable thing that we could never do.
In other words, Jesus is not focusing on them trying to muster up more faith. That’s not the point of what he’s saying here. If you only had just a little bit, the implication being you don’t have it. If you just had a little drop of faith, you could do this. and here I quibble a little bit with the translation in the ESV, it says, if you just had a little bit of faith, but more literally, Jesus is saying, if you have, if you have just a little bit of faith, I don’t wanna get into the subjunctive and the indicative and all that, but the point being, it’s not about the lack of the disciple’s faith that he’s getting at.
If you just had this, but you don’t, The point here is on the potency of the faith that his disciples do have. I mean, Jesus is saying, if you just have a little bit of the faith that I’ve given you, if you just have a little bit, you can do miraculous things. You know, this is strong stuff. Faith is powerful stuff, is what Jesus is getting at. That’s the old, you know, what is it, brill cream ad? You know, just a dab will do ya, is just what Jesus is saying. Just a little mustard seed size is enough to do great things. And indeed, we know this to be true, that faith is powerful. And we know this because something even more remarkable, something more miraculous than moving trees around has happened, is occurring even now, even 2,000 years later.
I mean, Paul will say it, explain it so clearly in many places, but think of Ephesians 2. What does he tell the believers at the church in Ephesus, and what does he tell to all Christians? He says, you were dead. You were dead people. You were dead, you were cut off from God. But then he goes on to say, by grace you have been saved. How? through faith, right? Through living and active faith, through the powerful faith that you have, you’ve been brought from, you know, not just one location to another, but you’ve been actually resurrected from the dead.
By faith, we learn in the New Testament. By faith, we are reconciled to a holy God. By faith, we are justified by Christ’s blood. By faith, we commune with the living God. We pray to Him. We trust that He hears our prayers. You name it. All we could say, in short, that the faith that we have as Christians is the conduit or it’s the instrument by which we truly, we apprehend all the amazing, miraculous, wonderful blessings of God.
Whether or not it’s a great amount or whether or not it’s a mustard seed size, it’s through that that we have these things, we claim these things. And this is why we know faith is so powerful. This is why Jesus focuses in on how potent Faith is.
And one thing to stress here, one misconception we often have when we think about having more faith, of believing more, is we often conflate or mis-equate faith with willpower. You know, if we just have enough gumption, if we just have enough, you know, something inside of ourselves, if we just believe harder, then our Christian lives will be more productive. They’ll be more powerful. But the point is, or the truth is, we do not have this power within ourselves. Right, we do not deserve these things. We cannot acquire these things in and of our own strength.
I mean, faith itself, Scripture reminds us so often, is not something we manufacture, but even faith is a gift given by God to His people. And what faith does, the reason why faith is powerful is because it points us to rely, not on our own power, but on the very power of God. And then really this is the challenge in what Jesus is saying, right? Not the challenge to manufacture our own faith, our own inner fortitude, but the challenge of faith is to exercise that faith by trusting God more, by relying on Him more, by trusting that it is His power working in us that accomplishes great things.
To believe that God can do what we, cannot do apart from Him. Not just that we need a little bit of help, but we cannot do these things apart from Him. And in God’s grace, He so often brings us into situations where this is tested. Situations where this has to be demonstrated. Lord, I cannot do this in my own strength. I’m at the end of myself. Or as Paul will say, that God’s power is so often made perfect in our weakness. that God brings us to those places where we have to have faith in Him, that we have to live by faith, where our little mustard seed is utilized, not to show how impressive we are, how powerful we are, but to show that the power, the splendor, the efficacy belongs to God alone.
Therefore, we cling to God by faith. We trust in Him. We need Him to work, because if He does not, we are hopeless. So Jesus gives this picture, right, if you just had a little bit of faith, this is what it can affect, this is how powerful it is.
But then, you know, maybe the obvious question, the next following question, okay, what does that actually look like in the real world? What does a life lived by faith, trusting in the powerful working of God, look like? And that brings us to our second point this morning, that we need to live by faith because our faith is a productive faith. That is powerful, but secondly, it is a productive faith.
And to illustrate what the life of faith looks like, Jesus now goes on to give another picture, another parable here. And perhaps it’s strange, perhaps it’s a little bit jarring to you as he moves on here. Because now he transitions to this image of a slave working for a master, right? He goes from the kind of agrarian or agricultural picture to this, you know, a picture of an economic household.
The disciples, they’re asking about faith. They’re focusing on, we need more faith. And Jesus, in other words, he transitions to Christian service. And perhaps, maybe like me, when you hear faith and works and they’re in the same conversation, your radar starts to go off. We’re good reformed people. We want to have a clear distinction between faith and works.
And yet Jesus brings up works here in this conversation about faith. And of course, this is our Lord. He’s not going to have a law gospel confusion, right? He’s going to teach rightly our view of these things. And he is teaching just that. We, of course, don’t want to mix faith and works, but we also don’t want to completely separate. There is a relationship that Jesus wants us to see between the two. that they are not, in other words, not disconnected wholly from one another.
And in fact, we know one of the practical indications in our life that we have living faith is that we are people who bear fruit, that the tree is known by the type of fruit that it produces. I mean, even as I’ve just mentioned, that great passage in Ephesians 2 will go on to say something quite similar. Paul says that it’s all grace, it’s all a gift so that nobody can boast in anything But then he goes on, to what end have we been recreated? Well, he says, so that you might be created in Christ for good works.
We’ve been renewed, we’ve been brought from death to life to be given living faith, to be saved by grace in order to do the very things that we were created to do, to do the good works that we were unable to do in our sinful estate. And yet, of course, again, that question, what does that look like? What does it look like to do the good works that Christ has put before us to do?
Again, we’ve already said, we don’t see a lot of mulberry bushes flying around. We don’t see miraculous things happening day in and day out. And we look at the stories of scripture, we see these mighty works, we see the parting of the Red Sea, we see God’s people being brought into the promised land, we see people raising from the dead, being healed of their diseases. And so we might wonder as we reflect on our own lives and question, am I exercising faith because I don’t see these things?
We look back at the last years, we look even at the earthly resolutions that we make. How did you do in February or March on those New Year’s resolutions? Often our lives don’t look like constant incremental growth and success and going from good to better to best. So what does the faith-filled life look like? Well, we see in verse 7, Jesus says, What does the faithful Christian life look like? It looks like serving your master. What does it look like to have faith in Christ? It looks like milking and plowing and doing all the chores that need to be done on the farm, on the master’s land. It looks like serving God, doing the thing that he has put before you to do. I mean, exercising faith so often in our lives just looks like the mundane things that God has put before you. In his providential care, in his providential leading, the things that you have been called to do, doing those things, trusting in God, doing it as before his faith, that is exercising Christian faith. And I hope this is a great comfort. to all of us this morning.
As mothers, as you raise up your little ones in the hours that nobody sees, that is exercising faith in God. Your children honoring your parents, doing your schoolwork, being diligent and being obedient to your Heavenly Father, that is exercising your faith, doing your job day in and day out, your 40 plus hours a week, just doing it, being faithful, loving your neighbor, loving your coworker, that is exercising your faith, that is serving your master. And even in seasons where there is no apparent fruit, and we don’t see miraculous things, we don’t see great growth, we seem to be barren, God hasn’t given us what seems to be fruitful labor to do, we can trust that even in those barren seasons, that as we serve God, that by faith we can see there is fruit here. God is doing something here, God is using this. We can be confident that as we faithfully serve our Lord, we are doing what he’s called us to do. We are exercising faith.
And of course, we know that that faith produces many other things. It doesn’t just do what’s before us, but actually changes us. It produces something inside of us. And that’s really one of the things Jesus highlights here.
In particular, faith produces this wonderful fruit of humility we see in this text. That living in confident trust of God, it eradicates in us, you could say, presumption. As we live this sort of life, we do not presume upon God. You know, Jesus asked that question, you know, does the slave expect that he’s, after he’s done everything, that he gets to sit down and eat before his master eats? The idea being, if I just do the right things, doesn’t God owe me something? Doesn’t my master owe me a seat at the table?
Essentially, and we often flip our labors for God into this kind of quid pro quo relationship where essentially we make it so that God is essentially serving us, right? I do what God tells me to do and he gives me what I expect. He gives me my reward. Yet living by faith rightly orders this relationship. to God. It eradicates self-righteousness. The idea that I can earn anything before God is done away with. I cannot earn. I am purely at His good graces. I am purely reliant on His kindness to me.
Indeed, faith teaches us everything that we have, everything we’ve been given, everything that we rely on God for is a gift of His grace. It’s a kindness to His servants. I mean, when you believe that everything that you have is a result of God’s grace, what is the right response of the Christian life? It’s not, yeah, look at all that I did. Look at all the amazing things I did in God’s name. But it’s this beautiful declaration that Jesus gives at the end of this. We look back at our life, lived by trust in God, and we can say, I was just doing my job. I just did what my master told me to do.
no sense of entitlement, no sense of God holding back on me, no sense that God has been unkind to me, but just know God has been kind to me, God’s been gracious, and I did what he called me to do. And all the fruit is to his glory.
Indeed, it is this type of faith that we need. It is this type of faith to trust that in our mundane, everyday lives that we can be fruitful for God. And yet we do, as we consider the importance of this type of faith, we want to be careful because faith in and of itself is not the goal here. Faith in and of itself is not the goal in scripture either. That is, this idea of trust or faith in the abstract.
And that brings us to our third point this morning, that the reason why our faith is powerful, thirdly, is because it is a personal faith. A personal faith. And we learn this even from the question itself that starts the text, this cry of the disciples. I mean, notice who this cry is directed towards. The disciples are not just crying out into the air, oh, I wish I had more faith. No, they’re crying out to Jesus. Lord, would you, Jesus, would you increase our faith? They know they can’t do it themselves, they can’t muster it up, they need Jesus to do this work in their lives.
And even more than this, as we know, we think about what our faith is, what it consists in, what it’s pointed towards, we declare, we trust that Jesus himself is the object of our faith, that our faith is directed towards something and it is a person, it is Jesus Christ himself.
which is so important because if you are like me, sometimes your faith feels like a mustard seed or even less. Sometimes it feels strong. Sometimes you feel like you’re doing well, that you have a good foundation, that you’re trusting God. But we all know that you can have all the faith in the world in something that will not save you and it will fail you. that you can trust in your wealth, you can trust in your own power, your own ability, you can trust in that winning lotto ticket that you just bought. Whatever it is, you can trust in it, but it will, at the end of the day, it will fail you.
Or, as Jesus teaches us, you can have faith the size of a mustard seed, not just in general, but in Him. You can trust Him with all that you have, and you can trust that that is sufficient. That He, in other words, He is sufficient.
Why is our faith so powerful? Because it is directed at the one who is all powerful. The one who earned and accomplished our salvation. The one who even now, as we looked at him, he stands as our mediator at the right hand of the father. The one who even now, as we pray by faith, as we trust, as we long for him to do things in our life, we know that the scripture teaches us he himself, he is praying on our behalf. He is interceding for his saints.
So we pray, we should continue to pray as we so often do, Lord, give us more faith, help us to trust you more. But hear this this morning, Christian, that as you pray that prayer, that the answer to that prayer is the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Jesus gives you himself to answer that. He says, look to me, look no further than what I have done for you, what I am doing for you even now. Don’t look inwards. Looking inwards is often a recipe for disaster. But he says, consider what I have done for you. When you are questioning your salvation, when you’re questioning your standing before God, when you’re questioning His goodness to you, when your guilt or your sins or your memory of past things you’ve done, when that weighs on you, when it condemns you, Jesus says, look no further than the cross. Look no further than what I have accomplished for you. Look to your Savior broken for sinners and know that your faith is sufficient, that I am sufficient.
And indeed, what a Savior we do have as believers. I mean, we have this parable, which is a reflection, to some extent, of the Christian life, right? That the master, as we would expect, the master eats, the servant serves the master, the master eats, and then the servants will then come. They’ll be able to rest from their labors. They’ve done a good day’s work, and they get to rest. And yet, that is not a full picture of the master that we have.
I mean, our master comes to us, the gospel tells us, he comes and gives us rest before we’ve even done the work, right? Before we could even claim anything, before we even did the good works that Christ set before us, we entered into his rest, we’ve been reconciled to the Father, we’ve been forgiven, we’ve been brought near by the blood of the cross. And indeed, not at the end of our Christian life, but time and time again, Christ comes to us
You know, as we even read in John’s gospel, he takes on the servant’s garment and he feeds his people. He condescends to give them what they need for the Christian life. He certainly calls us his servants. We are his call to serve our Lord, but he also calls us his friend and he calls us his brother and his sister.
So as we continue to trust in God in this life, as we continue to look to the new year and all the challenges and hopes and the glories that God has before us, let us be confident in this, that we can exercise that faith, that we can trust in Jesus as much, if not more, than we did this year. And not because of our efforts, but because of what Christ has done for us, we can know that he will bear fruit in our lives.
And so if you want to resolve to anything, if you want to commit to anything this new year, 2026, well, I would argue that you should resolve to trust in Jesus more. I think that’s a safe bet that that will bear fruit in your life. And as we do so, as we live this Christian life, as we look forward to that final day, we can be confident that our Father will declare to us on the last day, not because of our greatness, but because of Christ’s work He will say to us, well done, my good and faithful servants. Enter into the joy of your master.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Let us pray. Our gracious God, we do thank you for the words of our Lord. We thank you, God, that he answers that cry of our heart to trust more. And we thank you, God, that you always put Christ before us as that to which we always need to look to and that which is sufficient for our faith. Lord, we do ask that we would bear fruit this year. We pray that, God, you would continue to build your church and that through our meager efforts, Lord, through our humble endeavors, God, you would advance your kingdom through the proclamation of your gospel. We do pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.