[The Easter Life is] A Life Lived by Faith (Chester UMC)

I opened today's sermon with a clip from Indiana Jones and the

Last Crusade. In this clip, Indy has to take a

literal leap of faith onto an invisible bridge to find the

treasure and save his father's life.

If you want to watch the clip, there's a link in the

description or you can search Indiana Jones Leap of Faith on

YouTube. Also, I want to let you know up

front that I made a mistake in this sermon.

If you figure it out for yourself, you get 50 points,

which you can use for anything you want.

At the end of the sermon, I'll tell you where the mistake was

and give you the correct information.

Talk to you then anyone. Is that the first time?

Is anyone here that that's the first time you've seen that

couple folks? It's like this classic movie.

I think that clip and that scene in in that movie is one of the

best illustrations of what it means to walk by faith and live

by faith that you can find anywhere where India's staying

there. He can't see the bridge.

It's invisible to him until he steps out onto it and it's

there. You couldn't see it before.

The reality of it didn't appear until he took that step, that

leap of faith. As we talk about living an

Easter life, we are an Easter people, people who are born out

of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

That's why we're a gathered community.

If Jesus had just died as a sacrifice on the cross, he might

be remembered as a great martyr. But we would not be here today

worshipping and celebrating together, certainly not in his

name and for his glory. We are an Easter people.

We exist as a community of faith because of Easter and what God

did on that day. And, and so as we are an Easter

people, we need to talk about what does it mean to live an

Easter life. And and last week we looked at

that that that living an Easter life is living in a world that's

been turned upside down. And today we're talking about

the fact that if we're going to live an Easter life, that means

we're going to live a life that's lived by faith.

And that's a lot of lived in one's sentences there and lives.

But a life lived by faith is the Easter life.

Thomas is a great window and and step into this question of

living a life by faith who has become you know, for a poor guy,

he has one doubt And for 2000 years he's known as doubting

Thomas that Rick. It reminds me of a joke that I

cannot tell in church. I'm going to pass on that right

now. Ask me later unless you don't

want me to get fired. But Thomas, one of the 12 had

been with Jesus for years, heard all of the prophecies.

But like everybody else, when he heard Jesus talking about being

betrayed, dying and rising again, he thought Jesus was

talking in parables. He thought he was telling a

story, not talking about something that would actually

physically happen. And so when Jesus died, Jesus

was dead. He knew he was dead.

People that he knew and trusted and helped bring him down from

the cross and helped wrap him in spices and linen had helped

place him in the tomb. He was dead.

There was no doubt about that whatsoever.

And what's more that there was the way we speak of the

resurrection now one day we talk about one day there will be the

resurrection of the dead that that when Jesus returns, all of

the dead in Christ will rise to eternal life.

That's very close to anyone who actually believed in the

resurrection, and not all Jewish people at that time believed in

the resurrection. But when they talked about the

resurrection, they talked about the Day of Resurrection, when

all of the faithful dead of Israel would rise.

There was absolutely no concept whatsoever of a single

resurrection of Messiah coming. Dying as a crucified slave and

then rising again from the dead was a thought that was beyond,

beyond anyone's wildest imaginations.

No one had speculated about that.

No one had theorized about that. It would not have occurred to

anyone as another good reason to to say that this whole story is

true. Because if you're going to make

up a story about what happened to your savior after he gets

crucified, you don't make up a story that he rose from the

dead. You make up a story that his

ghost appeared. Everyone believed in ghosts.

That would have been an easy sell.

Jesus's ghost appeared to me, but they didn't say that.

They said Jesus was resurrected. Well, that doesn't.

The day of resurrection is the day of resurrection for

everyone. They will.

No, apparently not, because Jesus is here and he's

resurrected. Apparently the day of

resurrection for everyone else is later, but Jesus rose from

the dead. But it's understandable that

Thomas would have a hard time believing this.

And Jesus had appeared to the women in the graveyard and then

he had appeared to the disciples in the upper room where they had

shared that Last Supper and then went into hiding after Jesus was

arrested. And and but Thomas wasn't there

when Jesus came. And so just like, you know, we

got to be a little bit fair when when the women came back and

said Jesus is risen from the dead and the men said, no,

you're crazy. Thomas didn't believe the guys

either. So at the very least, Thomas has

an egalitarian view of men and women on reliability of people

rising from the dead. He was like, I don't care if 25

or 30 of you saw this, 100 of you saw this.

Unless I see it, I cannot believe this.

I think most of us would be in that same spot if you went out

to lunch after church sometime today and and someone sitting in

the booth next to you at whatever restaurant you're

eating at said, hey, you're not going to believe this, but my

cousin Bob rose from the dead last week.

He was dead and now he's alive. You, you would not believe them.

You would. It wasn't like it was just a few

minutes on the operating table. He was like at the Funeral Home,

at Freak, the funeral director out like crazy.

He's the one that called me and told me he was having kittens.

It was nuts. You would, you would smile, you

would nod, and then you would hope to get out of there before

something dangerous happened because clearly this person is

off their rock. I'm trying to say is it's not

unreasonable for Thomas to have doubted and Jesus never condemns

Thomas for his doubts. Thomas, we can we can see

Thomas's doubts. Unless I see the nail marks in

his hands and put my finger where the nails were and put my

hand into his side, I will not believe.

For Thomas seeing wasn't even believing.

He had to touch and feel this resurrected Jesus and he had to

know by the wounds that he could feel himself.

I what a horrible image that I I got to think when Jesus showed

up, Thomas was like, oh, please don't make me put my hand in

your side. Please don't make me put my hand

in your side. He needed more than just the

word of other people. He needed to experience it

himself. And Jesus never condemns him for

that. In fact, Jesus offers a blessing

to all of us through Thomas because Jesus did come back

again and Thomas was there this time.

He held out his hands. He said, hey Thomas, you want

scars right here, fingers side. You want to Thomas like no, I

believe now I believe don't have to do that.

My Lord, my Savior, my God. Thomas confessed and Jesus

offered this blessing because you have seen me, you have

believed. There's no condemnation, there's

no judgement. There's just observation.

Thomas, if he were alive today, would probably be for Missouri.

You know, show me. You want me to believe it, Show

me. And Jesus doesn't condemn that.

But Jesus recognizes a very important reality when he says

blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed.

Jesus recognizes that the vast majority of Jesus's followers,

if they're going to believe it, all have to believe without

seeing. I know a handful of people,

maybe less than a handful or maybe just two or three people

that I have met personally that tell me quite sincerely and

quite confidently that they have seen Jesus.

One of them is a man. I know he's a pastor down in one

of the Carolinas. I think it's North Carolina, but

it might be South Carolina. I got a 5050 chance called Naeem

Fazal and from Pakistan, born and raised a Muslim until Jesus.

He encountered Jesus and had a vision of Jesus.

He saw and he believed and his story is amazing.

He's got a book out there. It's really, really good.

I've had the opportunity to hear him preach live and speak to him

a couple times. He wouldn't know me from Adam,

but but he's, he's got an incredible story of faith to

tell and and he saw and that seeing enabled him to believe.

Jesus still does that on occasion.

But for the vast majority of us, we don't get to see, not like

that, not with our eyes, not a not a vision of our resurrected

Lord present with us. We have to believe based on the

word of others, on the testimony of others, the witness and the

example of others. That's where most of us are, and

thank God that for Thomas, who who prompted Jesus to issue this

blessing for all of us who have to believe without seeing.

Believing without seeing is the essence of faith, but faith is

more than just belief. I think really there are at

least three dimensions to faith and that's what I want to talk

about that. And we see these in in Hebrews

as well as other places in the Bible in the first dimension of

faith, the bottom line, first dimension of faith is, is

belief. Writer of Hebrews says this.

Without faith, it's impossible to please him that is God.

For who comes to? For he who comes to God must

believe that he is, and that he is the rewarder of those who

diligently seek him. If we don't believe in God, we

can't believe in God, right? We can't.

We can't put faith in God unless we believe that there's a God

there to put faith in. Belief is the first part of it,

but belief alone does not equal living a life of faith.

Bible says the demons believe, and they're shaken in their

shoes. Satan believes that God is God

and Jesus is Lord, and Satan's going to spend eternity cast

into the bit of fire. Simply believing is only one

dimension of faith. And if you can allow me to do

physics poorly this morning, 1 dimensional objects have no

actual physical existence that I'm aware of.

There's probably a physicist out there going Blevins.

You're wrong about that. There's these.

I don't know. You know, I'm, I'm doing poor

physics today. Then we do Sesame Street

physics. We can do high school physics

later. You know, we one dimension a

line is, is, is 1 dimension. It just has length.

And I never understood that because I'm looking at it on the

paper and going, I can see it has width as well.

And the teacher would say that's not really a line.

OK, I'm going to get off of physics before I make myself

crazy because 1 dimensions we can't see, we can't experience,

there's nothing there to it. It doesn't have an actual

reality. And that's the same with faith.

James said it this way, some people were saying there were

arguments about faith and works and how do faith fit with works

and oh I don't have to do any works, I just need to believe in

Jesus. And James said, you know what?

You, you show me your faith without your works.

I'll show you my faith by my works.

And the clear implication in the context of that is, is without

your works, you can't show me you have faith.

There's no evidence of faith. Your faith is not really real,

but belief is necessary. Belief is necessary, but it's

not adequate for faith. The second dimension of faith is

obedience. This is what most of chapter

Elevens of Hebrews, well, most much of chapter Elevens is

talking about over and over again, by faith, so and so, by

faith, so and so, and over and over and over again.

It's a person who did something because God called them to,

invited them to, commanded them to by faith, they obey by faith,

Noah prepared the ark by faith, Abraham obeyed and he left his

homeland and went to the promised land by faith.

And this was even tougher than that by faith, Abraham placed

his own son on the altar when God commanded him to offer him

as a sacrifice. And over and over again we see

that in Hebrews and we see that throughout the Scriptures that

the second dimension, the necessary dimension of faith is

obedience. That's the faithfulness part of

faith. You know, if, if, if a husband

says, oh, I, I have faith in my wife, I believe she exists, but

then is out, you know, catting around and doing all sorts of

things they ought not be doing. You can say what you believe she

exists, but you're not being faithful to her.

It's the same with God. We can believe God exists, be

100% convinced of it. But if we're not obedient to the

Word of God in our lives and in our living, then we are not

being faithful to God and we have no meaningful faith to

speak of, certainly not a faith that will save us in that day of

resurrection. Obedience is required.

One of the oldest and most classical definitions of faith

is obediently hearing the Word of God that that we believe that

it's God, that God has spoken this, and God having spoken it,

I will, we will now obey it. And that is faith.

That's one of the reasons why it's important to know and

understand the Scripture in depth.

It's one of the reasons why it's so important to live a life of

prayer and discernment. Because just knowing the

Scripture or, or knowing some of the rules in the Scripture isn't

enough for faithfulness to be faithful, to obey God, to follow

the voice of God. We have to be able to recognize

where God is, what God is doing, and what God is saying around us

so that we can join God in that. That we can step in to what God

is blessing, what God is calling us to do, what God is calling us

to say, maybe where God is calling us to sit down and shut

up. Whatever the call is, that we

respond in faith and knowing the Bible helps us recognize God

acting now and then in prayer and discernment, with Scripture

and with others. We follow faithfully where God

is leading. If God says go and we don't go,

doesn't matter how many times we said the sinner's prayer, we are

not being faithful to God and so we have no real faith.

Second dimension is obedience. We have to believe.

We also have to obey. There is 1/3 essential dimension

to faith which we have no control over whatsoever, but is

100% essential to our faith. And that is, this is God's

faithfulness to us. Paul writes to Timothy, he's

talking about we do this, you know, God does that, we do this.

God does that. And, and, and, and he concludes

with if we are faithless, God remains faithful for he cannot

disown himself. That the conclusion there, we

cannot Denisone himself. It, it doesn't make a lot of

sense without the preceding verse in which Paul said, if we

disown disown God, then God will disown us.

That's a tough one. If we say God, yeah, you're out

there, I reject you. I turn you down.

I turn my back on you. I will you exist.

I will do what I want to. You have no claim on me.

Go ahead and make me if you can. If we disown God, the Scripture

says God will disown us. But if we lack faith, if, if our

lack of obedience is, is produced by a lack of belief and

a lack of understanding, a lack of faithfulness, God still

remains faithful to us. Why?

Because God can't disown himself.

I think what Paul is part of what Paul is telling us here is

that faithfulness is part of who God is.

It's not just a thing that God does.

It's not just a some, some decision that God makes.

It's an essential in it's a part of God's character and identity.

It is part of who God is. So for God to be faithless means

for God to disown himself. It's like he's walking away from

himself. And even if we're faithless, God

remains faithful. And that is so good news for us

because that is also the reason why we are here today.

Jesus himself said no one comes to me unless they're drawn by my

Father who's in heaven. None of us would have faith in

Jesus apart from God's faithfulness to us and drawing

us to Jesus so that we can put our faith in him.

None of us would have the opportunity to be faithful to

Jesus, to be even alive, if God had not been faithful to

humanity and spared Noah when all of humanity had turned his

back on God and disowned God. If God had when when Jesus was

crucified, killed, murdered, brutally rejected God in the

flesh in front of us, rejected by the people that he came to

save, had were it not for God's faithfulness, we would have all

been destroyed, then humanity wiped out.

It's God's faithfulness that opens the door for God's grace,

for God's patience, for God's mercy.

I've, I've said before, I'll say again, it's it wouldn't.

If you read the Old Testament and just see God as an angry,

vengeful, wrathful, destroying God, then then you're missing

most of the message of the Old Testament.

There is anger, there is wrath, there is vengeance, there is

destruction from God in the Old Testament, But it's after years

and years and years, generations and generations of patience and

mercy and God faithfully calling to his people to return to Him,

to abide with him, to obey him. His faithfulness is what makes

life possible for us and what makes our faith in Jesus

possible. These three things together are

what make that that Easter life of living a life of faith.

It is believing that God exists, it's obeying God when God is

calling to us, and it's God's faithfulness to us even when we

mess up, even when we screw up. Faith is not insanity,

stupidity, or ignorance. I have confessed that I am a

nerd. You knew that already, and I,

and I love Star Trek. Star Trek Next Generation is my

favorite Star Trek. I don't love everything about

it. There are things about it that

irritate me and, and Star Trek the Next Generation Faith, any

sort of religious belief, is always treated as being born of

ignorance and primitive thinking and a lack of understanding.

It's, it's for, it's for human beings or other beings that are

in their infancy of their, of their maturing process.

And one day they will mature out of faith and into science.

That's the way the writers of Star Trek, at least at that

time, the, the mindset and the conception that they had in

faith. And I think that's

representative of the lot of the attitude, a lot of what I see

when I'm surfing online and hearing people that are are

opposed to or antagonistic to or indifferent to faith, religious

faith of any kind, whether it's Christian or, or some other.

Is, is that it's stupid that you'd have to be really dumb,

really ignorant to think that there's an old man up in the sky

someplace who's keeping attendance on Sunday mornings

and, and, and punishing the good and, or punishing the bad and

rewarding the good. That that's a childish fantasy,

not a reality. That science tells us everything

we need to know about reality, how we are here, why we are

here, and what we are when we are here.

And that, that that faith is just childish stupidity,

ignorance or insanity. But there are really good

reasons to believe in God. A real a lot of really smart

people throughout history that were not crazy had strong faith

in God. You know, everyone from, you

know, will leave the religious leaders out for now because

they're, you know, I mean, kind of well, they're just biased.

They're deceived and, and can they really be smart anyway?

If if the best job they can get is leading in the church, It's

not a question to bring up, an administrative council will will

table that for another discussion.

Folks like Blaise Pascal, one of the most amazing mathematicians

in history, was absolutely convinced that God is real and

that faith in God is important and necessary.

People like Isaac Newton, one of the most influential scientists

and mathematicians in history, absolutely convinced that God

was real and faith in God is important.

Charles Darwin was pretty sure God was real and faith was

important. It's not insanity.

One of the good reasons to believe is there's a lot of

really not crazy people and really smart people who have

also believed. There are other good reasons I I

that I'm going to do that as a sermon series one of these days.

There's a lot of good books out there.

Probably the most well known is evidence that demands A verdict

by Lee Strobel, who was an atheist journalist who who

wanted to disprove Christianity and so did a deep dive research

into Christianity and ended up based on the evidence that he

found believing stop he repeat stop being an atheist and became

a follower of Jesus and wrote some really interesting books

about it. It's a good books that really

long can't some or even summarize it now.

But there are again things like the fact that the people that

said Jesus rose from the dead, if they were making that up, it

was a dumb lie to make up and it didn't get him anything except

persecution. All the people that originally

told that story were either martyred or died in exile

because of their faith. So there was no social advantage

to telling the lie. Would have been easier to just

give up on Jesus. The fact that women were as part

of the story from the beginning, the first evangelists in the

first, the first apostles, would have made the story less

believable. If it's a lie, why?

Why would you add that in? If, if, if it were a lie, Why

for 400 years when Christians were persecuted off and on in

various ways, when there were tremendous social costs to

following Jesus? Why would so many people commit

their lives to following Jesus if there wasn't someone there

that was worth committing your life to?

The martyrs who went to their deaths, whether it was being

burned alive at the stake, eaten by wild animals, or killed by

soldiers for the entertainment of others who went singing and

praising God, joyfully awaiting death and receiving death

because of the hope that they had in the resurrection.

Is it possible all of those folks were just dumb or insane?

You know, here's the thing, we can't prove that God exists.

We can't prove that our faith is in something that is real.

And, and that's, that's the, that, that's the risk of things

like Lee Strobel's evidence that demands A verdict and that sort

of thing. There's a lot of evidence out

there, but we still not in the way we talk about proof with

science. It's, it's impossible to do

that. That leap of faith is required.

It is essential, and as Grace read at the beginning today,

that that faith is what gives substance, is what makes real.

It is the evidence of what we cannot see.

Faith is what makes it real. That's why I love that image of

Indiana Jones sticking his leg out and stepping off of that

ledge and onto that invisible bridge.

It was for, you know, we said, well, no, it was, it was there.

His faith didn't make it real. His faith made it real for him.

Had he not been willing to take that step of faith, it might as

well have been that there was no bridge there.

God is real. We can never really know it

until we take the step. And even then there's room for

doubt like Thomas and so many others have had over the years,

But there are also good reasons to believe.

And if, if you're sort of the sort of person that, that, that

that's important to, or you're talking to someone who needs

that kind of evidence, then again, there's lots of

resources, resources out there, You know, just search Lee

Strobel on, on Amazon. And there's some other books

too. I'm happy to connect you with,

to, to connect and, and get some of that.

But there are good reasons, by the way.

Everything that science says about the origins of the

universe and how we got here and why we are here is also simply a

matter of faith and not science. Here's an interesting thing.

Again, if you're a science person and I'm getting this

wrong, let me know. I don't like to get things

wrong. This is how part of how I

understand it. The Big Bang theory is currently

in the scientific community, the most popular theory to explain

how and why we got here. But, but for The Big Bang theory

to be right, there's not enough matter in the universe.

There's there's we, we could somehow they do this, they can

measure how much matter there is in the universe.

I don't know how, but people that are a lot smarter than I am

can do that. And, and for The Big Bang theory

to work, there's not enough matter.

There should be about twice as much matter as there is.

And so scientists developed the theory of dark matter.

Have you heard of this? Let me let me describe dark

matter to you and see if it sounds familiar.

Dark matter. You can't see dark matter.

You can't measure dark matter. There is no way to perceive dark

matter at all. It is the nature of dark matter

that we will never be able to directly observe dark matter,

but the scientists tell us we can see the effects of dark

matter on the things around it. That's how we know it's there,

because it has to be there, because these other things are

happening. Does that sound familiar to you?

Sounds a heck of a lot like God to me.

So part of this is recognizing too, that that that there are

things beyond science's ability to explain.

And, and when you push scientists hard enough, they

arrive, you know, atheist hard enough, they arrive at faith and

belief somewhere there as well. There was a line and, and one of

Stephen Hawking's books where he said ultimately he concluded

that the universe came into existence because the universe

decided to exist. That's not science.

It's not, we can't prove that he's wrong, but that's not

science. And so when we're deciding what

to believe, look at the good reasons to believe what the

Bible tells us the good reasons to believe.

One of the reasons I've clung to my belief throughout my life and

my faith even at times when I was like, really is when I think

of folks like my grandmother, Ruth Blaine, my mom, other other

people in my life who had such tremendous faith.

And like, I know they're not dumb.

I know they're not crazy. And they believed through a lot

worse than what I'm going through right now.

So maybe I can hold on to these good reasons to believe.

You're so important. The thing that Indy did at the

end of that, and he did it for himself.

He knew he was going to have to come back and he didn't want to

have to deal with the mental anxiety of taking another leap

of faith. So he threw the dust out there

on the bridge. Our obedience in faith, our

stepping out and believing in God, trusting in God, obeying in

God, obeying God makes us the dust on the bridge.

For the people that follow after, how do they know they can

trust God? There's someone out there.

I don't know what they're standing on.

I don't know what's keeping them up right now.

I don't know what's keeping their head above water.

I don't know what's keeping them from falling into oblivion.

And we can say it's it's Jesus. Without him, I got nothing.

It's the only hope I have. If I'm not sinking, it's because

of him. We become the dust on the

bridge. We become in our faithfulness,

not just what we say we believe, but how we live obediently to

the Word of God. We become the evidence that

other people need to take that leap of faith themselves.

That's what it means to live an Easter life, a life lived by

faith in Jesus name. Amen.

Amen. You may have already realized

that the mistake I'd made was that I got my authors and book

titles mixed up. Lee Strobel wrote The Case for

Christ, Not Evidence that Demands A Verdict.

Evidence that Demands A Verdict was written by Josh McDowell.

Both are good books about historical evidence that

supports Christian faith. Lee Strobel's book is a little

more readable, and Mcdowell's book is a little more dense and

scholarly. But both are worth reading, and

I hope you'll check one or both of them out.