God still works through the message

Sermon for St. Andrew’s Day – Week of Advent 1

Romans 10:8-18  +  Matthew 4:18-22

You all remember, I hope, that great confession of faith that Peter once made when Jesus asked His disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” And Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” What we often forget is that Peter wasn’t the first one of the apostles to come to that conclusion. His brother Andrew was.

You heard this evening how Andrew was called away from his boat to follow Jesus, to become a fisher of men, together with his brother Peter. But that wasn’t the first time Andrew met Jesus. Andrew was one of the very first two men who followed Jesus. And it wasn’t Jesus who first called them to follow Him. It was John the Baptist who pointed them to Jesus after Jesus returned from His 40 days of temptation in the wilderness. Look! The Lamb of God! That message convinced Andrew and the other man to follow Jesus. After spending just that one day with Him, watching Him and listening to Him, Andrew was already convinced about Jesus. He found his brother Peter and told him straight out, We have found the Messiah! We have found the Christ!

Isn’t that remarkable? Of course, Andrew’s astounding confession wasn’t made in a vacuum. He had been listening to the Word of God since childhood. He had also been spending time out in the wilderness with John the Baptist, listening to his preaching. Still, from the very beginning, before Jesus ever did a single miracle, before He displayed any of His famous mercy and grace toward sinners, before He foretold His suffering, before He rode into Jerusalem on the donkey and gave up His life on the cross for sinful man, the Word of God had already worked faith in Andrew’s heart, faith in the God of Israel and faith that Jesus was the very Messiah whom the God of Israel had promised to send, the one for whom mankind had been waiting since the creation of the world.

But such is the power of the word of God, whether preached by the Old Testament prophets, or by John the Baptist, or by Jesus, whether preached by Andrew or by Peter, or by any of those who have been sent to preach since. People don’t come up with faith in Christ on their own. It’s always the Word of God that does it, so that the same thing that Jesus said to Peter applies to Andrew applies to anyone who confesses Jesus as the Christ: Blessed are you, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. But the Father reveals it, not directly, but by His Spirit, through His Word.

And that word is very near you, as Paul wrote to the Roman Christians. “in your mouth, and in your heart,” that is, the word of faith, which we preach. For if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is the Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Andrew believed and confessed, first as a disciple, and then, eventually, as a called preacher, sent by Jesus to preach that same word, to bring it near to people all over the world, so that all people might call upon the name of the Lord Jesus, just as Andrew had done, For everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.

But, Paul reasons, in order for anyone to call upon the Lord with the mouth, he has to believe in the Lord with his heart. But he can only believe in Him if he has heard about Him. And he can hear about the Lord if there is someone to preach the message of Christ to him. And a preacher can only preach if he has been sent to preach, as Andrew was, along with the other apostles, as the Church has continued to send forth men into all the world to preach the Gospel.

Faith comes from hearing the message. That doesn’t mean that all who hear the message believe. Far from it! Paul goes on in Romans to describe how most of Israel didn’t believe, although they had had the message preached to them more directly and more abundantly than anyone else on earth. Still today, people hear the message of Christ through the Word of God and close their ears to it. But the message preached remains the only tool God uses to bring sinners to faith and then to justify them by that faith.

And that’s the whole reason why there are two advents of Christ instead of one. He could have come just once to make atonement for sin and to bring judgment on the world immediately. But there were thousands alive at that time and millions who had yet to be born who needed to hear the message, who would believe the message, and who would be saved by the message. This is the reason—the only reason!—why Christ delays His second Advent. He is not slow in keeping His promises. He is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but for all to come to repentance.

By God’s grace, you have come to repentance and faith, as Andrew did, through the Word of God alone. And others will, too, though it may be only a few. For those precious few, Christ delays His return. So for now, let’s make it our business to keep hearing the message and to keep sending out preachers to preach it, as Andrew faithfully did. And don’t worry for a moment about all those people who will not believe, and who will try to shame you because you do! Pray for them, and be confident of the fact that God still works through the message, and will continue to work through it all the way up until Christ’s second advent! Amen.