Matthew 7:24-25 “Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.”

Jesus’ picture of the storm beating against the house isn’t hard to understand, is it? Our faith is constantly under attack in this life from a number of different sources. All of them beat against us and try to make our faith fall.

You know the kinds of storms of life that stretch your faith to the limits–health problems, financial worries, families that are falling apart. Sometimes the crisis comes from a more directly spiritual attack. The Apostle Paul once said that God “was pleased to save us through the foolishness of what was preached.” And that is how our human reason is tempted to see so much of what our Lord reveals about his grace–foolishness. No one is immune. Storms of doubt and skepticism rage against our souls.

But the faith that is planted squarely on the words and promises of Christ does not fall, “because it had its foundation on the rock.” We stand on a word that supports us. Sometimes that’s because the word is like a road map, pointing us along the roads we ought to take as we react to the storms that beat on our faith. Some paths of action are more like escape routes for us. Some will only take us deeper into the storm. Jesus’ words help us see the difference.

The bedrock of this foundation for our faith always takes us back to the changeless and faithful love we know best from the simple truth of the gospel. God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life. This is love: not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. No greater love has anyone than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

It is this that led the apostle Paul to conclude: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future nor any powers, neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

We stand on a word that supports us, a firm foundation our faith can trust.

Matthew 7:24 “Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.”

Today we take the opportunity to hear God’s word for granted. A European friend who had been to the United States once commented on how many churches there are here. It seemed to him that there were church buildings all over the place. He is right. But it’s not just the churches. There are entire television networks devoted to making God’s word available. Not only are Bibles and Christian literature available from Christian bookstores, but you can also pick them up at any Barnes and Noble, or even Sams, Walmart, or Target. Many churches just give them away.

It hasn’t always been like that. When I was attending a Lutheran elementary school, I remember studying the Reformation and seeing pictures of a Bible chained to a stand in a Medieval library. No one could check the Bible out. In 1229 the Council of Toulouse put the Bible on the list of banned books. Lay people were not allowed to read it. That decision was reconfirmed by the Council of Trent some 300 years later. As late as the 1890’s Pope Leo XII allowed the lay people to read the Bible only if they read it in Latin, and only if they got personal permission from their priest first.

After Martin Luther learned from Scripture that Jesus had paid the full penalty for his sins, that forgiveness of sins is something God gives to his people for free, and that we receive this gift by faith, not because of our good works, he knew that the Bible had to be made available to everyone. In 1521 he began translating the New Testament into German. By 1522 it was done. By 1533 the entire Bible was available. Hundreds of thousands of copies were printed. During this period William Tyndale was emboldened to translate the Bible into English. Others translated it into the native language of their own countries. God’s word was available to God’s people once again. Today we take the opportunity to hear and read it for granted.

And maybe that is just our problem: we take it for granted. It’s not just that so few people actually read one of the Bibles sitting on their shelves at home. Fewer and fewer come to hear it. For all our churches, attendance on Sundays hovers around 20%. I realize Jesus is emphasizing hearing the word and putting it into practice in these words from the end of the Sermon on the Mount. But how can we put a word into practice we don’t even hear or read?

In the context of the Sermon on the Mount, putting this word in to practice means that we don’t rationalize our sins. When his word corrects some unbiblical idea we have, we don’t go looking for reasons why I am right and the Bible is wrong. We don’t chalk it up to a difference in interpretation. Jesus’ words are as plain and easy to understand as a Dick and Jane book from 1^st or 2^nd grade. So the child of God lays aside his or her false sense of sophistication and prideful skepticism and repents. He doesn’t let there be a wide gap between the word he hears at church or reads at home, and the life he lives in public.

Even more, hearing Jesus’ words and putting them into practice means living life like you believe his promises. Those promises give us the courage to live life fearlessly. “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son , but gave him up for us all, how will he not also, along with him graciously give us all things?” That kind of faith gave Luther the confidence to stand up to the pope, the emperor, and all his critics. Convinced by the word that Jesus was on his side, forgiveness and grace were his constant possessions, and heaven was his certain destination, he was not afraid to proclaim his faith even under the threat of death.

When we take our stand on a word we practice because we believe its promises, we find our courage, too.

Luke 23:43 Jesus answered him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.”

When God’s people agree they say, “Amen.” For us, that word is usually a response, a conclusion, the end of the matter. For Jesus, “Amen” was an introduction. We say “Amen,” we are certain, after we have heard. Jesus tells us we can be certain even before he has spoken. “Verily, verily,” “Truly I say to you,” “I am telling you the truth” are all ways of translating the word Jesus used to introduce so many of his sayings in the Aramaic, “Amen.”

So it is here. “Amen–I tell you the truth” Christ calls to the criminal crucified on the cross next to him. “You can believe what I am about to say to you. What I am about to share with you is no joke.”

And if ever there was a time to be serious and truthful, this was it. In just a few hours, these men on Jesus’ right and left would be ending their earthly journey and facing their eternal destiny. As the author of Hebrews reminds us, “It is given to man once to die, and then to face the judgment.” That isn’t a joking matter for people like us whose lives are stained with sin.

And so Jesus gives the man words that can also sustain our faith on the day of our deaths, and assure us that we have not misplaced our trust. “Today you will be with me in paradise.” Jesus himself would die just an hour, maybe two, before this man died. Jesus’ death was opening a door to another life, the Paradise of God–back to a world like the one at the far edge of all human memory, hardly more than a rumor now, yet hungered and longed for in the deep places of every human soul. Jesus’ death was opening the door to another world where there is no crime or criminal, no pain or punishment, no death or judgment. Jesus’ death provides the payment that opens the door to God’s own garden of delights, the Paradise of heaven.

And later, when this man’s legs were broken, and after a few minutes he hobbled through death’s door, there was Jesus himself waiting for him, receiving him, just as he had promised. “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

Someday he will be waiting on the other side of that door for you, too. That very day you will be with him in paradise. He is telling you the truth.

Mark 4:30-32 “Again he said, ‘What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade.”

Sometimes God’s people worry about the numbers. That is nothing new. Do you remember the prophet Elijah? He became so depressed by how weak and small the congregation of believers had become in Israel in his day, that he ran off into the wilderness, hid in a cave, and asked God to take his life. “The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me, too.” The situation was 7000 times better than Elijah thought, but he couldn’t get past the fact that the Word of God seemed so unsuccessful, and the number of believers so few.

Look at Jesus and his disciples. “Have no fear, little flock,” Jesus assured them at one point in his ministry, and a little flock they were. Beyond Jesus and the twelve, there were perhaps 500 believers by the time Jesus returned to heaven. That may seem like a healthy size for one congregation, but that was it for the entire planet. It was these 500 little souls in a sea of millions. The beginnings were rather small.

“The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground.” Small beginnings are nothing new for God’s kingdom. Nor are they a reason to worry or a reason to give up. “Yet when it is planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade.” We are in the business of planting the seeds of God’s kingdom. God makes those seeds grow into something far grander than we can see now.

But like the mustard seed, God’s kingdom grows into something far larger, far more grand than we might have expected. That’s his promise. About one out of four people in the world are nominally Christian. Those who possess a genuine saving faith may be far fewer. But you know that the kingdom of God is far bigger than your little congregation, or church body, or even all of the visible Christian churches in the world. It includes the whole population of heaven waiting for us to join them.

If you want a little glimpse of what the mustard tree looks like in the end, then, you have to turn to the last book of the Bible. There the Apostle John shares his brief view of it, “After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: ‘Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb’” (Revelation 7:9-10). In the end God’s kingdom grows to such a grand size that no one can count its members.

Judging by what we see happening in his kingdom today, maybe that exceeds our expectations. Judging by the love and the power of the God who gives us this kingdom, this is no real surprise.

In the meantime, don’t judge God’s kingdom by the numbers you see today. There is power in the gospel seed, and far more believers than you know.

Mark 4:26-27 “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows though he does not know how.”

The seed that makes God’s kingdom grow is God’s Word. You and I have a rather narrow and specific role here. We are like the man who scatters the seed on the ground. All we can do is scatter God’s word around. Actually, there is enough work there to keep us occupied our entire lives. There are about seven and a half billion people living on planet earth. More than five billion of them do not follow Jesus yet. Two hundred and fifty more people are born every minute–about 360,000 every day. That is enough to keep us busy just getting the seed spread around, just trying to make sure that everyone has heard the gospel.

Sometimes we don’t like our role very well. We aren’t satisfied to stick to the business God has given us. We grow impatient, because the seed of God’s Word doesn’t sprout and grow as quickly as we want. Then we get the idea that we are more than sowers. We think we are also genetic engineers. Perhaps we can create some hybrid seed that will grow even faster. We start tinkering with the message to make it more appealing. If we could just leave some part out, people would find it easier to believe. We might remove unpopular parts, like those that teach us God’s design for human sexuality. We might ignore the seemingly unreasonable parts, like the teaching about a God who is one and three all at the same time. We might tone down the scary parts, like the eternal torments of hell. People don’t want to talk about these things. It doesn’t make them feel uplifted.

The problem when we tinker with God’s Word, and produce our own hybrid seed, is that we don’t get what we think we will get. At best, we have introduced a weakness into God’s kingdom that threatens the life of the new sprouts. At worst, we don’t produce Christians at all. All that new life we think we see is just weeds. New people may be present, but they have no faith.

It is for our faith and comfort that Jesus has placed all the power to grow in his Word, and not given that responsibility to us. “All by itself the soil produces grain–first the stalk, then the head, then full kernel in the head (Mark 4:28).” This is good news, and we have all benefitted from it ourselves. You have felt the power of God’s law cutting your heart open, exposing your pride, your selfish choices, your mean-spirited way of treating others, your cowardly giving in to sin. You know the power of the law to make you look over the cliff’s edge at the river of fire your sins deserve, and to know that God has every right to give you that final shove.

Even more, you know the power of forgiveness. God’s grace has overwhelmed your hearts with peace. When you have looked at the cross, your eyes aren’t stopped by the violence, the cruelty, the pain, the injustice, the seeming uselessness of it all, able to look no further. You see salvation. You see the love of God that is so big it made this sacrifice to set you free from your sins. You trust the promise that this death is your death, his life is your life, because he made your guilt his guilt. Now God considers you guilty no longer. You believe, because the seed of God’s word sprouted and grew in your heart all by its own power.

There is no reason to think that this same seed will lack the power to grow when we plant it in others. You know the promises. “My word…will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it (Isaiah 55:11).” This is how it works, Jesus says. You plant the seed. Then your work is done. The power is in the word.

John 6:12-13 “When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, ‘Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.’ So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten.”

I remember a line from the movie Mary Poppins, “Enough is as good as a feast.” Every one of the thousands of people here had enough to eat, we are told. John even says they had as much as they wanted. Our Lord is not stingy with his gifts.

Jesus revealed just how generous he had been when he had the disciples gather the leftovers, and they came back with 12 baskets full–conveniently one basket of bread for each of them. The situation that began as a crisis of need ended with a bountiful surplus.

I don’t want to minimize anyone’s struggle to make ends meet, but we still live in a land of plenty by and large. Most of us can easily say that we have been given more than enough for our body and life.

And what if we were more careful about picking up the scraps? I have seen the things you can find in a college campus dumpster at the end of a school year–perfectly useful furniture, electronics, even flat panel TV’s! Drive through my neighborhood when people put their bulk trash on the curb. There is furniture sitting in my house right now that came off someone else’s front curb. Think of the food that goes into your refrigerator only to be thrown away later because it spoiled before you thought to eat it. You didn’t really need it for the week or two it spent in cold storage.

Jesus’ words “Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted,” expose our sometimes careless way with his bounty. More than that, they expose the surplus he has given us when we take a closer look. And like everything else about this miracle, they teach us you can trust Jesus to provide.

We live in worrisome times for many. The economy may change, companies may struggle, and the banks may fail. But neither Jesus’ power nor his love for you changes, or struggles, or fails. You can trust him to provide, even more than we need.

John 6:10-11 “Jesus said, ‘Have the people sit down.’ There was plenty of grass in that place, and the men sat down, about five thousand of them. Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish.”

There are no ordinary conditions in which five loaves of bread and a couple of fish are going to satisfy the hunger of five thousand people. The fact that these loaves were likely smaller than the loaves of bread with which we are familiar, and that the gospels mention five thousand men, but also imply there were additional women and children, only emphasizes the gap between supply and need. Jesus could have just as easily created food for these people out of thin air. There was nothing preventing him from doing so.

But Jesus was pleased to take the humble little offering of this little boy and use it for the work he was about to do. What we have to offer could never be suitable for Jesus’ work, or enough for Jesus’ work, all by itself. But Jesus has redeemed each of us from our sins. He has cleansed us and claimed us for himself, and he receives us as his very own. And so he also receives our meager little gifts, humble as they are. He cleanses them with his grace. He touches them with his power. Then he uses them for his work, including the work of providing daily bread for ourselves and our neighbors. He doesn’t make our provisions appear out of thin air, generally speaking. With his grace, and with his power, he starts with what he have, he extends our supply, and makes it accomplish what he needs to be done.

That does not mean that we should expect to see a miraculous multiplication of our resources on the scale of his feeding the five thousand on a regular basis. We have no promise of a miracle like this.

But we are fools if we think that all our salaries, and all our savings and investments, and all the collected stuff with which we fill our homes, and our attics, and our garages, and even rented storage space could supply our needs for even one minute if Jesus did not love us and bless what we have with his sustaining power. But he does love us, and his power is at work for us.

Many, if not most, of you have even seen how he can take the little you have and make it stretch far beyond your expectations. You stumble upon an outstanding sale. You receive a well-timed and generous gift from someone. You get more meals out of the leftovers than you expected, the clothes last longer than they should, that old car limps along another year. Just coincidence? I don’t think so. In smaller, more subtle ways he continues to extend our supply. And if a great miracle were needed, he can still do that, too. It’s all evidence that Jesus can make do with just the gifts he has given us today.

John 6:7-9 “Philip answered him, ‘Eight months wages would not buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!’ Another of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up, ‘Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will that go among so many?’”

Philip saw only the problem. The need was too big. There was no way that they could buy enough bread to feed everyone. And Philip’s reaction is very typical when it seems like we don’t have enough, or we don’t have a way to fix the problem. We fixate all our attention on the problem itself, and the more we look at it, and the more we think about it, the more we worry, the less we actually get done, and the more pessimistic we become.

The inability to look beyond our needs or our problems only feeds our sinful nature and erodes our faith. It can even choke faith altogether. Remember how Jesus interpreted the seed that fell among the thorns in the parable of the sower and the seed? “The seed that fell among the thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life’s worries, riches and pleasures…” (Luke 8:14).

Andrew looked a little farther. He took inventory of what they had. But Andrew could only conclude that their resources were too small. “How far will that go among so many?” Andrew’s problem was the inability to look beyond self. “What can I do, what can we do, to fix the problem?” Generally, we think of self-confidence as a good thing, something we try to build in our children and each other. But if all we have is self-confidence, it is only a matter of time before we run into a need, an issue, a problem so big that we are completely overwhelmed.

The example of Philip and Andrew helps to confront our own pessimism and failure to look for help where help can be found. The solutions we need are not to be found in some self-help slogans or platitudes about seeing problems as opportunities, or making lemonade when life serves you lemons. Jesus confronts our pessimism to teach us that we can trust him to provide.

The answer that neither Philip nor Andrew stumble upon was the man who asked them the question in the first place. Jesus was standing right there in front of them! They had seen him drive away the demons, control the weather, and even raise the dead. Was this problem worse than those?

We have seen him endure torture and sacrifice his life to bring us forgiveness for our sins. We have seen him take his life back again and rise from the dead. We have been promised that he sits at the right hand of God’s power in heaven ruling all things for the good of his people on earth. We have his word that nothing can separate us from his love. That is reason for optimism, for Christ-confidence, for trusting Jesus to provide, no matter what the size of our need may be.

John 6:5-6 “When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip, ‘Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?’ He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do.”

John reveals a detail not noted in the other gospel accounts of the feeding of the 5000. Jesus was aware of the need to find food for this crowd even before his disciples were. He was the one who pointed it out to them and got them thinking about it. That shouldn’t surprise us, because he is the all-knowing Son of God.

Maybe it doesn’t occur to us that the same holds true in our own time of need. You or I may be surprised to learn that we suffer from a serious medical condition, or that we are losing our job, or that our home or car requires some unreasonably expensive repair. Or if we had some suspicions that something was wrong, we still feel some shock and disappointment when our worst fears are confirmed. We feel rattled. Our confidence is shaken. We get depressed or angry about our bad fortune. But our Savior is not surprised by the mess in which we find ourselves. He saw it coming all along. He knew long before we ever suspected.

Our initial reaction to that news may be, “Then why didn’t he do something to stop it?” And we are disappointed with God. But that is the reaction of unbelief and the sinful flesh, not of faith. Faith sees God’s promise, “He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do.”

You can trust Jesus to provide, because he always has a plan. Long ago, even before time began, the Lord anticipated the problem of sin, and he had a plan. In his first letter, Peter tells us that Jesus was chosen to be the Lamb of sacrifice whose blood redeems us from our sin “before the creation of the world.” Paul assured the Christians in Ephesus that God “chose us in him (that is Jesus) before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight” (1:4). He saw our need, and he had a plan to save us, before we even existed.

That foresight doesn’t stop at our salvation. Jesus “had in mind what he was going to do” to feed the 5000. He has in mind what he is going to do for our needs. You and I are already living in his plan, and he is in control of our lives, though this may difficult for us to see, because we can’t see how it all turns out as he does. Still, you can trust Jesus to provide, because he has a plan.