The Object of Our Faith - Luke 11:29-32

Have you ever sat down on a chair and halfway down suddenly wondered whether it was gonna hold you or not?

You know, I that might happen every once once in a while, but most of the time we don't even think about it, right?

We just sit down on a chair and we we put our entire weight on the chair, and in a very simple sense, we're we're exercising faith in that chair.

We're trusting that that chair is gonna hold us up.

But here's the thing it doesn't really matter how strong you believe that chair will hold you, or how long you believe that chair is, or how strong you believe that chair is, because if it's broken, it's not gonna hold you, whether you believe it's gonna hold you or not.

You're gonna fall to the floor.

You can have tremendous faith in a bad chair and still fall to the ground.

But the opposite is also true.

You can have weak faith in a strong chair and still be held up.

Because ultimately what matters isn't the strength of our faith, but what matters is the object of our faith.

As we continue on on Luke chapter 11, we remind ourselves that Jesus had just performed this miracle of healing a man who had this evil spirit, which made him mute.

Luke 11 · chapter mention

And as the crowd was witnessing all of this, they had these different reactions.

Some accused him of doing his works by the power of Belzebuble, the prince of demons, and others, like the woman that we saw last week, were amazed and astounded at the authority and the power that Jesus was proclaiming or wielding.

But but still others were on the fence.

They didn't outright reject what he was doing, but they wanted to see more, to know that he was from God.

They wanted proof that he was someone that they can trust and follow.

And as we know, people haven't changed much today.

There are still many people who are still on the fence about Jesus.

They want to see more or they want to feel more.

They want to be sure that he is someone they can trust to completely follow.

I titled this sermon The Object of Our Faith.

That simply means what or what who we put our faith in.

We talk a lot about faith in the church, and faith is a necessary ingredient of Christianity, but the big question when it comes to faith is not whether or not we have it, but who is it in?

As we look at the passage once more, I want us to understand why it's not enough to have faith, but we must be sure that we have the proper faith.

As we consider faith, I want to point out the following from the passage: the wrong object, the true object, and then finish with asking a question.

Which one are you seeking?

Let's look at the wrong object.

Verse 29 again says, When the crowds were increasing, he began to say, This generation is an evil generation.

It seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.

So one thing we can say about Jesus is that he knew how to draw a crowd.

After he exercised his power over the demoniac, people were coming up from all around to see what he might do next.

They wanted to see what other wonders he might perform.

Knowing the heart of many in the crowd, he says that this generation is an evil generation.

It seeks for a sign.

Jesus knew that many of them wanted more proof to believe.

They wanted to see what he can do and what else he had to offer them.

As if the sign that they just witnessed wasn't enough.

They just witnessed a display of an amazing power of God, yet they wanted to see more.

They weren't quite ready to believe that he was the Messiah.

They wanted more proof to believe.

This is why Jesus calls them evil.

As he says, no sign would be given except the sign of Jonah.

More of that in a moment.

But for now, we must ask why is Jesus calling them evil?

That's a pretty rough label to put on these people.

What was the warrant for it?

Well, it was because their hearts were full of unbelief.

And before we say, well, I have no problem with unbelief.

That's not a problem with me.

Let's move on to the next point.

I want us to look at how close we can sometimes come or often come to these people in the crowd who were looking for more evidence for them to believe.

See, the problem wasn't that they couldn't believe, it's that they were seeking the wrong thing to believe in.

They were seeking for a sign in order to believe.

Their faith was in the wrong object.

Rather than it being on Christ, it was in what Christ could do for them.

The object of their faith was in what they can see be done.

Which, if we want to get technical, really isn't faith at all.

Faith is believing without seeing.

Yet these people wanted to see in order to believe.

Their faith was in the evidence which was the wrong object.

During the Middle Ages, a famous Christian theologian and philosopher named Anselm of Canterbury coined the frame or the phrase, faith seeking understanding.

The idea is I believe in order that I might understand.

See, these people in our passage, they had it backwards.

They wanted to understand in order that they might believe.

But that's exactly what Anselm was trying to counter.

Faith seeking understanding is not opposed to understanding.

Unbelief asks questions.

Here's the difference.

Unbelief asks questions because it wants an excuse not to believe, whereas faith asks questions because it wants to believe.

And that's what, and that's the problem with the people that they were asking questions because they wanted an excuse not to believe.

And Jesus knew it, which is why he calls them evil.

And this is how we can easily fall into the same type of unbelief.

When our faith is only as strong as what we see God doing or not doing.

If you don't see it or if you can't imagine it, then you don't have enough faith.

It puts faith in the wrong object.

There, the object of the faith is in the healing, not in God.

And here's the thing: there are a lot of people who seek God only for what God can do for them.

And when or if he doesn't do it, then their faith starts to crumble a little bit, starts to shatter.

They're a lot like these people who only follow Christ for the miracles.

Notice how Jesus gained this big following when he was doing these mighty works.

But on the night when he was arrested, where were these people at?

He was all alone.

Even his closest friends abandoned him because many of the crowd just wanted to see things to happen.

They wanted to see the spectacular, they wanted to see the show.

And I would add, feel things to happen.

This is what many are waiting for.

To see something or to feel something.

This is one of the dangers of emotional Christianity.

Now don't get me wrong.

I think when someone is captivated by the love of Christ, they're going to express themselves and you know have some type of emotion somehow.

Emotions and excitement are not a bad thing, but we cannot allow our faith to rest upon that.

Because there are going to be some days when we aren't feeling it.

If your Christianity rested on whether you felt like a Christian every day, you wouldn't be a Christian every day.

There are going to be days when you're going to need something a lot stronger than feelings and excitement to get you through.

And that's where your faith kicks in.

It's not about what you feel to be true, it is about what you know to be true.

You know, some of you probably scroll through social media and see churches or Christian community groups express a lot of emotion and excitement, and they make it seem like Christianity is this 24-hour high.

And we have to be careful because we might look at that and question our Christianity.

How come I'm not always excited like that?

It's just like any other thing in life, right?

We scroll through social media and we only see people's highlights.

We see people taking vacations, and we we see people buying homes and cars and getting promotions, uh, out having a good time with friends, and we start to think, you know what?

I never take a vacation.

I never buy anything new.

I I have I've been at the same job for for years, and you know what, I don't have a lot of friends like they do.

And then we start questioning our lives, and we start questioning uh all kinds of things about us, but but we don't see the other things.

Right?

We don't we don't see people post the year they don't take a vacation.

Nobody posts that, or no one makes the car that that needs a boost their their profile pick.

No one, no one posts their low life.

It's the same with our Christian walk.

Don't let the vibrancy that you see elsewhere, maybe sometimes on social media, or even when we go visit another church, make you feel like your Christianity is any lesser.

Because it, I mean, we're honest, some churches spend a lot of money to produce that kind of energy.

But when the lights are off and the room is quiet, and the devil is that roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, you're gonna need to rely on something much stronger than feelings and excitement and energy.

You're gonna need to rely on some faith.

You don't need to rely on what you know to be true.

And it's then we need to be sure that your faith is in the right thing, that it is in the right object, not on what you see, not on what you feel.

Which leads to my next point the right object.

Look at verse 30.

For as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so will the Son of Man be to this generation.

So after Jesus points out how evil that generation was, he says the only sign that would be given would be the sign of Jonah.

As he says in verse 30, just as Jonah was a sign to the people of Nineveh, so will he, the Son of Man, be to this generation.

So to understand what Jesus means here, we need to know a little something about the story of Jonah.

And if you went to Sunday school as a child, you probably know this story quite well.

Jonah was a prophet who God sent to preach to the city of Nineveh.

And the problem was Jonah didn't want to go.

So he tried to run from God.

He gets into the ship and he sets sail, trying to run away from the presence of the Lord.

But God caused this big storm to come, which eventually got him tossed out into the sea.

And while he was in the water, we have this great fish that comes and swallows him up.

As a side note, Jesus is telling the story as a historical fact.

You know, some people would try and say that the Bible was full of made-up fairy tales and supernatural stories, and the Old Testament wasn't meant to be read uh literally.

It's all allegory.

It didn't really happen, but Jesus is telling this story as it really happened.

The great fish found Jonah in the water and swallowed him up.

And this we read in Jonah 1.17.

And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Now notice how Christ relates himself to this story, and he makes the connection for us in Matthew chapter 12.

Matthew 12 · chapter mention

For just as Jonah, 1240, for just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three nights and three three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

So Jesus is speaking here about his death and resurrection.

After his death on the cross, he was in the tomb for three days, and then he rose from the dead.

This here is the only sign that the people would be given to believe.

In other words, Jesus is saying, You want a sign that I am the Messiah, you want a sign that I am the one who has been sent from God, you want a sign that I am the one who is going to save his people, then don't look to the healings, and don't look to the miracles, and don't look to the fire that might fall from heaven, but look to the resurrection.

One day you will see me put to death on the cross, and they will place my body into a tomb, and three days later you will find it empty.

And that right there will be your proof.

That is the only sign that I will give you.

And if you don't believe me then, then guess what?

You're probably never going to believe me.

First Corinthians chapter 15, verse 13 says this.

1 Corinthians 15:13

But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.

And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain.

We are even found to be misrepresenting God because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise, if it is true that is that the dead are not raised.

For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.

And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.

So Paul is basically saying here that the resurrection is the proof of the good news.

It is proof of the gospel.

If Jesus had not risen from the dead, then there is no gospel.

There is no hope.

We would still be dead in our sins and our trespasses.

But because he has risen from the dead, we who believe have been made alive together with him.

And instead of being dead in our sins, we have been rescued and risen into new life.

And instead of death conquering us, we through Christ will conquer death.

The resurrection proved who Jesus was.

That he wasn't just this prophet or he wasn't this great faith healer or some miracle worker.

No, he was the Christ.

He was the Son of God.

He was the promised Messiah who would come into the world to save his people from their sins.

In other words, to believe in the resurrection is to believe in Jesus.

It's to believe in who he truly is.

A healing is not going to prove it, nor is an exorcism, nor is any other miracle.

Those might help confirm, but the proof is in the empty tomb.

A sign is an event that signifies something.

And Jesus is saying that the only sign that is going to signify who I truly am is when I'm resurrected from the dead.

Will you believe then?

Will you believe when I come out of the tomb?

The sad thing is that many of them didn't.

And today it's the same.

Many don't.

There are many who, even today, who want to see Jesus do something more.

The resurrection, the story of the resurrection, that's not enough.

The gospel's not enough.

The good news that Jesus can save you from your sin, that's not enough.

People will come to Jesus for something else, and they're placing their faith in and the problem is they're placing their faith in the wrong object.

And here's really the question, here's really what the question comes down to.

Is Jesus truly enough?

When you came to Jesus, what did you come for?

Did you come for a better life or a better marriage or a better perspective or a change of course or a miracle of some sort?

Or did you come to Jesus for Jesus?

Would it be enough to have him without having any of those other things that you thought you might have when you came to Christ?

Because until Christ is enough for you, you are never going to be satisfied.

See, that's the problem with the people in the crowd who Christ called a wicked generation.

It's that they wouldn't have been satisfied with another sign.

Who are we kidding here, right?

They wanted to see him do more.

But what if he did something else?

Do we really think that they would have believed?

If Jesus would have given them another sign, they would have just asked for another one.

I mean, they just saw him perform a sign.

They just saw a miracle of him exercising his power over the demon-possessed man, but they wanted to see more because their hunger was to see something.

Their hunger was to see miracles and excitement and buzz.

Their hunger wasn't for the truth, it was for something else.

It was to satisfy whatever it was or is they desire to see.

A hunger for anything else in this life will always leave us wanting more, always leave us craving but never full, always searching but never finding, always needing but never having.

John 6 35 says this.

And with Christ, who see Jesus as enough, who look to the person and work of Jesus Christ and say, you know, that that's that right there, that's exactly what I need.

I have found everything I'm looking for in this man.

And if he's not enough for you, then maybe you're placing your faith in the wrong thing.

You're placing your faith in the wrong object.

Because the true object of the Christian faith is Christ, not his gifts, not his blessings, not his miracles, but him.

Because he's the gift.

He's the blessing, he's the miracle.

We've established the wrong object.

We've looked at the right object, the true object.

Now the question is, which one are we seeking?

Which one are you seeking?

Let's look at verse 31.

The queen of the south will rise up in judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here.

The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they represent, I'm sorry, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.

Christ is comparing this crowd to, or contrasting basically, the this crowd with the Queen of the South and the people of Nineveh.

He's contrasting their desire, the Queen of the South and the people of Nineveh, their desire to know, and the crowd's desire to know.

The Queen of the South refers to the Queen of Sheba, who's found in 1 Kings chapter 10.

1 Kings 10 · chapter mention

And there we read of this queen who heard of King Solomon's great riches, and she was told of how wise and rich he had become, and she could hardly believe it.

But you know, yeah, she was skeptical at first, but instead of remaining skeptical from afar, she says to herself, I'm going to come see this for myself.

And this we read in 1 Kings chapter 10, verse 6.

1 Kings 10:6

And she said to the king, The report was true that I heard in my own land of your words and of your wisdom, but I did not believe the reports until I came, and my own eyes had seen it.

And behold, the half was not told to me.

Your wisdom and prosperity surpassed the report that I heard.

Happy are your men, happy are your servants, who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom.

Blessed be the Lord your God who has delighted in you and set you on the throne of Israel, because the Lord loved Israel forever, he made you king, and that you may execute justice and righteousness.

Then she gave the king 120 talents of gold and a very great quantity of spices and precious stones.

Never again came such an abundance of spices as these that the queen of Sheba gave to Solomon.

So this queen hears this report about King Solomon.

She's got his abundance of riches.

But at first, you know, she doesn't believe it.

She's a little skeptical.

So she comes to his home so she can see this all with her own eyes.

And what she finds there is something greater than the report that she's been given.

And look at her response.

She's amazed at what she sees.

She's amazed at this home.

She's amazed at the culture in this home that she found in Solomon's house.

There's not only riches here, but there's also people here who are blessed, who are happy.

Even your servants are happy and blessed.

The queen was witnessing all this, and she's just, she's confounded, she's amazed.

She can't believe it.

She's seeing something that is different, that's otherworldly.

This is not your ordinary run-of-the-mill kingdom.

There is something different and special going on in this place.

And she believes that this is all from God.

And she says, Blessed be the Lord your God who has delighted in you and has set you on the throne of Israel, because the Lord loved Israel forever.

He has made you king that you might execute justice and righteousness.

I'm not sure if you're making the connection here.

But this is the response the people in the crowd should have had.

She said, This man is from God.

This man was appointed here to be king from God.

This should have been the response of the crowd.

This man, Jesus, is from God.

God the Father has appointed this man king to rule over the house of Israel forever.

And then notice not only did this queen praise the Lord for what she saw God doing in the kingdom, but she also gave Solomon gifts.

She heard about the news, what was going on, so she comes and she seeks and then she believes and then she confesses and then she gives.

This is the trajectory of salvation, right?

We hear the gospel, we seek and investigate his claims, we're granted faith to believe, we confess our sins, that Jesus Christ is Lord, and then we give our life to him.

That's our gift.

We give our lives to him.

We give our soul to Christ.

The problem is that many people stop at that beginning part.

They hear the word, but they never seek the truth.

The word never takes root.

Like the parable of the soul.

Remember, it's either landing on bad ground or the enemy is coming and swooping and taking away the seed.

This is why the queen of Sheba is going to rise up and judge those who were in the crowd that day.

Because she came, she saw, and she believed.

The people came, they saw and they rejected.

Their hearts were cold.

They turned Christ away.

They said, He's not enough.

He's not who we want.

We want something more.

We want something better.

Jesus was not enough for them.

And it's the same way with the men of Nineveh.

Much like the people in the crowd that day, they too, the men of Nineveh, if you know that story, they were a wicked generation.

It's not the fact that they're a wicked generation.

It's the fact that they refused to repent.

God showed them mercy.

They repented and God showed them mercy and they believed at the preaching.

They heard the preaching of Jonah and they repented and they believed.

Yet these people in the crowd will not hear or listen to someone who is greater than Jonah.

They will not listen to the words.

Instead, they're rejecting his words.

Why?

Because when they came to Jesus, they didn't come seeking the truth.

And they didn't find what they wanted to see.

They were looking for something else.

They were expecting something different.

When they came to Christ, they said in their hearts, you know, after seeing this man, I don't think he has anything to offer me.

I don't know if he's right for me.

I don't know if I should follow him.

I need to see him do something.

Hebrews 4 2 says this.

For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them because they were not united by faith with those who listened.

So there are many who hear.

There are some who are united by faith, and some who are not united by faith.

And there are many people who come to see who Jesus is and what he can offer them, but are never truly benefited by him.

They never receive all that Jesus can offer them.

Because here's the thing: they're looking for the wrong benefits.

When the true benefit is having Christ, when someone comes to Christ, he is the great prize.

Christ is the prize, not his gifts, not his wonders, nor any other good thing that we can thank him for.

And there are many.

I don't mean to diminish those.

He gives us great things to appreciate, to love, to enjoy.

We are thankful for those.

We praise him for those, but we were not created to be satisfied in those.

We were created to be satisfied in communion with the triune God.

Any life outside of that will always be lacking and always be wanting and always be seeking for something that it can never find.

Who or what is the object of your faith?

That question will be answered by what you are hoping to find when you come to Jesus.

Why are you seeking Him?

Is it for a new perspective?

Is it for a new outlook?

Is it for a better life?

Is it for a better marriage and so forth?

Or is it because you know that Christ is everything that you've been looking for?

And that he doesn't have to prove himself to you.

And that he doesn't have to show you something.

He doesn't need to show you this or that, because he's already proved himself by rescuing you from death.

He's already showed you something by bringing you to new life.

Philippians 3, verse 8.

Philippians 3:8

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord.

For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, in order that I might gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith, that I might know him and the power of his resurrection and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.

Some of you know this text, right?

The Apostle Paul had it all.

He had everything that a good young Jewish man would want in this time.

Jewish men were praying for the things Paul already had.

He already had it all.

And he said, you know what, none of that means anything.

My status in the community, my popularity, my respect, my education.

None of that means anything compared to this.

I didn't know, I didn't know about this.

My whole life I was seeking the wrong thing.

I was seeking to make a name for myself.

I was seeking to enjoy the benefits of my education.

But when I found this, I said to myself, that's nothing.

That stuff is is rubbish.

And I have found it all.

And I consider all that nothing compared to what I found in Christ Jesus.

That I might know him, that he may know me, that I might know this power of the resurrection.

And no, no, notice what he says that I might share in his sufferings.

That's Christianity right there, right?

That's that's that's something that this world doesn't understand.

That I might share in the sufferings.

Lord, to suffer with you is better than obtaining my hopes and dreams.

I want to suffer with you because I know if I suffer with you, then I will live with you.

I will rise to new life with you.

Let Christ be the object of your faith.

Not your success, not your lot in life, not your circumstances, not even the way you feel.

Some of you might not be feeling it today.

Remember, when all those things seem lacking, Christ never is.

He is the immovable object of our faith that is fixed and secure and that is ever satisfying.

Let us pray.