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The Sermon for Sunday, October 5th, 2025, the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity
The Lessons: Habakkuk 1:1-13; 2:1-4; Psalm 37:1-17; 2 Timothy 1:1-14; Luke 17:5-10
The Text: Luke 17:5-10
INTRODUCTION
In 1972 NASA launched the exploratory space probe Pioneer 10. According to Leon Jaroff in Time, its primary mission was to reach Jupiter, photograph the planet and its moons, and beam data to Earth about Jupiter’s magnetic field, radiation belts, and atmosphere. Scientists regarded this as a bold plan, for at this time no probe had ever gone beyond Mars, and they feared the asteroid belt would destroy Pioneer 10 before it could reach its target.
But Pioneer 10 accomplished its mission and much more. Swinging past the giant planet in November 1973, Pioneer 10 was then hurled by Jupiter’s immense gravity at a higher rate of speed toward the edge of the solar system. At 1 billion miles from the sun, Pioneer 10 passed Saturn, then swept past Uranus at some 2 billion miles, Neptune at nearly 3 billion miles, Pluto at almost 4 billion miles. By 1997, twenty-five years after its launch, Pioneer 10 was more than 6 billion miles from the sun. (Not bad for a device that was designed to have a useful life of only three years.)
And despite that immense distance, Pioneer 10 was still beaming back radio signals that scientists on earth could decipher. “Perhaps most remarkable,” writes Jaroff, “those signals emanate from an 8-watt transmitter, which radiates about as much power as a bedroom night light, and take more than nine hours to reach earth.”
Even a faint message can travel a long way. Similarly, even prayers with small faith can reach the heart of God, whose great strength can work the impossible.[1]
WHAT GENUINE FAITH IN GOD CAN DO
At the beginning of the passage appointed for today’s Gospel Lesson, the Apostles ask the Lord to increase their faith (Luke 17:5). Replying with a hyperbole, the Lord Jesus Christ points out that if they had faith even as small as s mustard seed, they would say to the mulberry tree which was near them, “Be uprooted and planted in the sea,” and it would obey them (Luke 17:6).
This saying shows that it is not the quantity of faith in God that is the issue, but whether there is faith or not. The mustard seed is one of the smallest seeds of all. Genuine faith as small as a mustard seed is sufficient for healings and miracles in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is faith that is not mixed with doubt. St. James warned against doubt in his Epistle:
If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord. A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.
(James 1:5-8, KJV)
St. James warns Christians not to doubt God when they ask for wisdom, but to ask in faith, since doubt reveals that one is double-minded, not trusting God. We also remember the Lord’s miracle of walking on the water, and how Peter began to walk on the water towards Jesus, and came to Jesus, but when he saw the strong wind, he was afraid and began to sink. The Lord heard his cry for help, stretched out his hand, and took hold of Peter, but asked him why he doubted (Matthew 14:31b).
Some have taught and preached that doubt is natural for human beings, and we will not have true faith unless we have some doubt. The passages from Holy Scripture that I have quoted appear to contradict this, and our Lord’s statement of what genuine faith can do underlines the necessity for all doubt to be absent from our faith in God.
As we examine our Lord’s saying on faith as a mustard seed, we might think that he is using as an example of what faith does, something that is unnecessary to anyone’s well-being. A mulberry tree is uprooted and planted in the sea. Does that do anyone any good? No, but the Lord is emphasizing the truth of how things that are impossible for human beings to do, can be done by God when believers exercise their faith in him. A tree, which is inanimate, cannot uproot itself and plant itself in the sea, let alone grow in the sea. The truth that this saying is conveying is simply that we must believe God for the impossible.
WHAT MUST WE BELIEVE GOD FOR?
The example Jesus uses in his hyperbole of faith must not be misused in such a way as to ask God for frivolous things. We must not put the Lord to the test, as the Lord rightly realized Satan was trying to get him to do in the temptations (Luke 4:9-12). Therefore, we should not deliberately go and handle snakes, believing God will protect us from all snakebites. When St. Paul was bitten by a snake after shipwreck on the island of Malta, he was not trying to show the islanders how adept he was at handling snakes. He was helping them by gathering wood for a fire to keep everyone warm during a storm (Acts 28:1-3). His faith in God to protect him from the harmful effects of the snake venom caused him to suffer no harm from the snake bite, and led to the islanders’ change of heart about him (Acts 28:6), so that instead of regarding him as a murderer whom Fate had not allowed to live, they thought of him as a god.
What things, then, must we believe and trust God for? We should believe and trust God for all that He has spoken to us and promised us. In the Bible, God’s holy Word, there are many promises of God which we must believe will happen. Then every Christian may receive specific messages or words from God concerning his life. Once he is sure a message is truly from God after prayer and discernment, he must believe God will bring it to pass. These messages may relate to his own life, or the lives of family members, friends, fellow-Christians, or colleagues.
There are many ways in which God may answer prayers offered in faith. We see that the heroes of the faith in Hebrews 11 all had faith in God, but there were different earthly outcomes of their faith. For some, it was not a matter of performing healings and miracles, but of enduring torture, persecution, and death, of wandering in deserts, and on mountains, and living in caves and holes of the earth (Hebrews 11:35-38). By faith God made them strong to endure so many hard things for the sake of obedience to God’s commandments and for the sake of the Gospel. Faith is often less about healings and miracles and more about being strengthened by God to do his will, which often runs counter to our desires and what we want to do.
MERE SERVANTS
Though many scholars of St. Luke’s Gospel do not see a connection between the Lord’s saying about faith in verses 5 and 6 and the Parable of the Unprofitable Servant in verses 7 to 10, I do. The person who reaches the point of having faith in God for the impossible while beginning to see the wonders that God is doing in him or through him in the lives of others, can begin to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, and even begin to take credit for the miracles that God is doing. Such a servant is warned not to even expect thanks from the Lord for doing only what the Lord has commanded him to do, just as a servant coming in from hard work in the fields cannot expect preferential treatment from his master but must continue to serve him in humility.
CONCLUSION
When you are living a life of faith, exercising faith in God, and God is doing remarkable things through you, can God trust you to maintain a proper attitude of humility and gratitude to Him?
[1] p. 161, Craig Brian Larson and Leadership Journal: 750 Engaging Illustrations for Preachers, Teachers, and Writers. Grand Rapids, Michigan: BakerBooks, 2002, 2007, 2008.