Rev Camerer : God in the Grammar

Rev Camerer gave a great sermon this week and I think this is as good a place to record what I've learned as any. This is all from memory - he held my attention so I didn't manage to take any notes. He actually managed to hold the entire audiences' attention while explaining a few daunting grammatical terms like "relative and objective genitive." The passage is Romans 4:13-25, and the question in the sermon is basically, what is it about faith that saves? Is it the faith? How deep the faith is?

And here is how the question was answered. Two men stand by a frozen lake. The ice may be able to support them. One is very confident the ice will support him. The other is very doubtful; he imagines he is likely to fall through. They both step out onto the ice. And here is the point:

Does it matter whether they think the ice will support them?

No it doesn't matter. The amount of their belief isn't really that important. The important thing is the object of that faith: the ice. The ice will support them whether their faith is monumental or miniscule. Or conversely, if the ice is thin, the sincerity of a man's faith in that ice will not prevent him from falling through. It is not the greatness of our faith that saves, but the object of our faith: Christ. We don't need to be faith-giants. We only need enough to step onto the ice.

And he made a very strong point that the sincerity of faith of other religious groups won't be a huge factor in the end; the object of faith is still what is going to count in the end.

Well I thought it was pretty good; the ice illustration has been indelibly printed into my brain, so hopefully it will be useful for someone else as well, later.