With all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength
You're my soul, my hope is found
He is my man, my strength, my soul, is full of his song
This song in round, my whole face is proud and strong
What I do, what traps the beast, when fears are stilled, when shining seems
My comfort, my all in all, here is the love of Christ I can
He was the one who took on Christ, from the Solanic world was made
His hands of love and righteousness, swore by the ones he came to save
Still on the cross, the strange ones cried, the path of God was satisfied
For everything, God is still most great, here in the land of Christ, forever
There in the ground, his body lay, part of the world by God, the same
And bursting forth, in glorious day, up from the grave he rose again
And then he stood in victory
How lovely is your burning praise, oh Lord all I can give, for my soul and me can thank for you
Oh near my heart, he stands in song, within your presence
I see beneath the shadow of your face
I'm ready, I'm ready
I want to pray, the wonders of your mighty power
By the power, I shall take the world of refuge and strength, and I will know, all that I am, never cease to worship you
Shower the glory of our sin, for our majesty raise to the King
You are the greatest of the many, one with God the Lord, most high
Your hidden glory in creation, now revealed in you, oh Christ, what a beautiful name it is
What a beautiful name it is, the name of Jesus Christ my King
Nothing come past you then, what a beautiful name it is, the name of Jesus
You didn't want to live without us, so Jesus you're forever and always
My sin was greater, love was greater, we're once called separate, it's us now, what a wonderful name it is
The name of Jesus Christ my King, what a wonderful name it is, nothing come past you then, what a wonderful name it is, the name of Jesus
What a wonderful name it is, the name of Jesus
We therefore not hold you, the path of the world you walk, your silence the boast of sin and grace
The heavens are warming, the praise of your glory, for you are raised to life again
You have no rights, you have no equal, now and forever
We pray for blessings, we pray for pain, comfort for friar army, protection while we sleep
We pray for healing, for prosperity, we pray for your mighty hand to ease our suffering
And all the world you hear is wrong with me, yet love is way too much to give us rest at least
What if your blessings come through e-trots, what if you're healed in constant tears, what if a thousand sins were stopped, oh what it takes to know you're near
What if trots of the night are your mercies in the sky
We pray for wisdom, your voice to hear, we cry in anger when we cannot feel you near
We doubt your goodness, we doubt your love, as if every promise from your word is not enough
And all the world you hear is desperately, as long as we have faith to believe
What if your blessings come through e-trots, what if you're healed in constant tears, what if a thousand sins were stopped, oh what it takes to know you're near
What if trots of this life are your mercies in the sky, when friends betray us, when darkness seems to win, we know the pain reminds us hard
This is not, this is not our home, it's not our home
What if your blessings come through e-trots, what if you're healed in constant tears, what if a thousand sins were stopped, oh what it takes to know you're near
What if my greatest disappointment, or the aching of this life, is the revealing of a greater thirst, this world can't satisfy
What if trots of this life, the rain that storms the hottest nights, are your mercies in the sky
Alright, praise the Lord, he's already been at work in our midst, and I am grateful
Alright, simple mathematics, Larry, what's 3 minus 3? Go ahead, what is it? 3 minus 3 is what? 0, are you sure? Are you positive?
Aaron, what's 300 minus 300? Are you sure? Are you positive? Absolutely, without a doubt.
Okay, zero is not, zero is like positive and negative both, right, or something, I don't know
So, when we were kids we used to do in math, and they would give us sample problems, and they would say, well Johnny has 7 apples
And you take away 4 apples, and Johnny has 3 apples, and then take away 3 more apples, and how many apples does Johnny have?
And the answer they were expecting was? 0, apples, 3 minus 3, take away 3 more apples is 0, right, they were expecting 0 apples, right?
But how many apples does Johnny really have? You say 0, he has 0, if Johnny were real, how many apples does Johnny really have left after he lost his 7 apples?
Is it 0? We're all adamant, we all agree it's 0, you agree, Karina? If Johnny had 7 apples and he lost 7 apples, how many apples does he have left? 0, okay, so we all agree it's 0, right?
What if I told you that for most of existence that was not the correct answer? Would you believe me?
Grab your Bibles if you would, and go with me, maybe you'll say a little hoo to holler Amen, as we go to John chapter 20, Amen
This is God's Word, it is not my Word, I did not write this Word, praise God, it was written a long time, and inspired a long time before I was ever born
If it had not been I probably would not be saved, is the truth
John chapter 20 we'll begin reading in verse 24, this is going to go by kind of quickly and all three points are kind of dense, they're powerful, they're packed
So be with me and let's observe this and let's grow from it because it's really something, okay?
So John 20 verse 24, you know already the story to this point a little bit, I hope Jesus has been resurrected and he appeared to his disciples on that day of his resurrection, that Sunday
In verse 24 of John chapter 20 it says this, but Thomas, one of the twelve called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came
So he missed out on the first appearance of Jesus to the group there behind closed doors, the upper room
The other disciples therefore were saying to him, we have seen the Lord, so the disciples, those who were called by Jesus to follow Jesus, to learn from Jesus, to see Jesus, to witness his miracles and to tell the entire world
The disciples of Jesus were telling Thomas, we have seen him a lot, but Thomas was struggling to believe that that was so
Verse 25 again, the other disciples therefore were saying to him, we have seen the Lord, but he said to them, unless I shall see his hands, the imprint of the nails and put my finger into the place of the nails and put my hand into his side, I will not believe
So this is a fairly radical, bold statement by Thomas, now it's interesting, we don't see a lot of Thomas talking throughout the Gospel, but there's one other very significant place in time where we do see Thomas speaking up
There's a couple of places where we see him talk, but there's one very significant one where he does something similar to this
It is upon the disciples hearing about the death of Lazarus, who was their friend and Jesus' friend, and Jesus said, okay, now that we have heard the report that he is indeed dead, we're going to go there where he is
And you know, anybody remember what Thomas said? He said, no, no, they all were questioning that, the disciples were questioning, he may have said that, but what he actually said in response was this, he said
Sure, let's go there where he is so we can all die with him
That's pretty bold statement, isn't it? See, already at that time, Jesus was being hunted a little bit, and to bring Lazarus back to life, that really set it on fire
When Lazarus came back to life, thousands and thousands of people believed that's an amazing miracle there is for sure, life after death, and Lazarus is alive, and Jesus is the miracle worker, and he has the power of God in him
No one can deny that, and it was from that moment on, as Thomas predicted, they began to truly in earnest to kill Jesus, and would have killed the disciples most likely given the opportunity
Thomas foresaw that, and when Jesus said, let's go there where Lazarus is, Thomas said back to Jesus, sure, let's go there where he is so we can die with him
That's pretty bold, right? Well now here is Thomas being bold again, if a little snarky, and saying, unless I see in his hands the imprint of the nails and put my finger into the place of the nails, put my hand into his side, I will not believe
Now remember that everyone in the room, including Thomas, had the predictions about the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus
They had been told, even in the book of John, we have multiple cases where John tells us they had been told it was coming, and yet in the face of that, Thomas is having a hard time
accepting that the disciples, the other disciples, have seen Jesus alive, that's significant, and then makes this very bold statement, ending with, I will not believe unless those pre-qualifiers
26 says, and after eight days, again his disciples were inside, now this could be confusing in modern teaching or whatever, we might not understand it, remember that in the Jewish day, they count the first day you're counting and the last day you're counting
So if I said in four days, I'm going to count today, then there's Monday and Tuesday, and I mean Wednesday, so when it's four days, it includes today, because there's plenty of today left, and you'd be discounting all the rest of today if you didn't count it that way
So when they say after eight days, they mean the eighth day, which is the next Sunday, right? So we had a Sunday instance and another Sunday instance, and this is very interesting, because I studied up on this to figure out and make sure I understood what was going on
And I found out that in the first century during the time of Jesus' resurrection and following, that Jesus' people, the people in the church, and especially one prominent writer, but there were quite a few of them, that began to believe a doctrine called the eighth day doctrine
Now we've not picked that up and carried it 2,000 years forward, but I'm going to tell you what it is, and you'll like the idea of it, I guarantee you
This is what it was. It was that after the seven days of creation, on the seventh day, the Sabbath, God rested, right? That after that, there comes another day
And it is essentially the day of the Kingdom of God. It is when God's Messiah will come, and if you will, save everyone, everyone that's willing to be saved, and begin the Kingdom of God
And so the eighth day doctrine said that on Sunday, the first day of the week, the day that he was resurrected, that that was essentially the eighth day from creation, extended forward to the eighth day, and from that point on we are living now in the Kingdom of God
That's pretty cool, isn't it? Think about it that way. So the Sabbath was Saturday, that was the day that God rested originally, and they're celebrating his rest, and they rest because he told him to recognize it, honor the Sabbath, keep it holy
And then on the eighth day, the rest, if you will, of the Kingdom of God ended. Now that doctrine doesn't really play out in all of scripture, but in fact it was the eighth day from Jewish point of view, the Sunday, and what happened then because of that?
What did we do because of that? Well, we changed the day of worship, right? And there are those who will resist that and say, well no, the Sabbath should still be, and I submit to you that the Sabbath was about resting and focusing on God
And you should have a Sabbath, that's a lesson for another day, but the Lord's Day, the eighth day, which was Sunday, it's also the first day of the week, which was Sunday, should be recognized as the day of worship because it was the day that Jesus was resurrected, it was the day that he met with them
And he institutes his church, and then from that point on, they always worship on the day that they first saw Jesus. Even James, the brother of Jesus, who was a devout Jew, and had always worshiped on Saturday, even while he was calling Jesus a nut for thinking he was the Messiah, had always done their worship on Saturday
But after Jesus came back to life, he began to worship on Sundays. Pretty neat. Neat doctrine, neat stuff, but not the majority of the text
And after eight days, after the disciples were inside, and Thomas with them, Jesus came, the doors having been shut, so boom, he's there. In fact, the word there can kind of like begin to be in their midst, or begin to exist amongst them, right?
So he was suddenly there, you could say. Peace be with you, he said. And we know that he says a lot more about his peace being with us in other texts, so that's not our primary focus
We never dismiss the fact that he said, peace be with you, as a greeting, but that's not our primary focus here. 27. Then he said to Thomas, so he turns from the disciples who have all seen him alive before, to Thomas, the one who had not, the one who made the bold statement, the one who was saying, I will never believe unless I, what did he say?
See in his hands the imprint of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into his side. So unless that happens, I will never believe, he said. But then Thomas is confronted by the living risen Jesus, and Jesus says, reach here your finger and see my hands, and reach here your hand and put it in my side.
And he says, and be not unbelieving, but believing. Now I'm a huge fan of this translation, there are a variety of ways that's translated, and I'll try to explain to you when we break it down later why it's like that, but it doesn't carry its full meaning into the English, and that's why we get a variety of translations into the English.
But this is what Jesus told him, go ahead, do what you said you needed to do in order to believe, put your hand in my side, and be not unbelieving, but be believing. In other words, be transformed, be changed from your current position into the position that I want you in.
Verse 28, almost done with the text. Thomas answered and said to him, my Lord and my God. Now no record in the text here or elsewhere where it's also written that Thomas actually touched Jesus' nail scarred hands, or put his hand in his side.
He didn't actually have to do that, he needed to see the risen Jesus, and in seeing it, the evidence of his presence, the necessary interpretation of Jesus being there, brought him to the conclusion that Jesus was Lord, had right to be in control of his life and really the entire universe, and God.
Not just the Messiah or the Anointed One, although there were texts that supported that the Messiah or the Anointed One would be God in the flesh, but this is clear. He leaps to the head of the class, if you will, leaps to the right conclusion and said, this is God in the flesh.
My Lord and my God, he said, Jesus said to him, because you have seen me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see and yet believe. Now that last part there might be in a format that you're mildly familiar with if you've read your Bible at all or been under some sermons or whatever.
You know what that's called when Jesus says a, blessed are they who, whatever, what's that called? Does anybody know? It's called a beatitude, that's right. So this is another beatitude similar to what Jesus preached on the Sermon on the Mount.
When he stood up on the count of Rises and preached to the thousands of people who were gathered there and the bowl and his voice was projected, and maybe by a miracle, maybe by the acoustics of the place, but he preached to all of them and they all heard him and he gave the beatitudes one after another after another.
You want to read them, you can go to Matthew 5 and read them one right after another. Blessed are the poor, blessed are the meek, blessed are the peacekeepers and so on, the beatitudes.
And here is another, if you will, beatitude, and I submit to you maybe the prime directive beatitude for the Star Trek fans in the house. Blessed are they who did not see and yet believed.
Alright, because you have seen me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see and yet believed. Now there's three things I really want to point out to you here that really kind of, and I will say to you there were like eight, okay?
And I kept praying through them and studying on them and the Lord helped me kind of whittle that down so we could get down to a more manageable number.
So you could spend a lot of time studying this text more, I think, than just reading the story and learning from what's written there if you want to.
The first thing I want you to notice in the text that God relayed on my heart was that Jesus can see and or hear the quote unquote needs of those who quote unquote need to believe in him.
In other words, Jesus is not closed to your condition. Jesus knows if your parents were not Christians, Jesus knows if they said things that hurt you, Jesus knows if you've been frustrated, Jesus knows if you've been through difficult times,
Jesus knows when you're alone. I think about I was dating a girl when I was 19 years old and she was like 23 and she was supermodel beautiful whatever and the night I went in the bathroom and I said, Lord, don't get me out of the situation.
Just please get me through it. Be with me. And I was praying because I had moved the little charm on my necklace and I always thought of that as praying to some mysterious God somewhere.
But God miraculously got me through that experience with her and she didn't corrupt me and she drank all the time, but I didn't become addicted to alcohol even though I did drink and I could have become addicted.
She did drugs and I never got involved with drugs. She was supermodel hot, but I never had any form of intimate relationship with her.
So God got me through that relationship as I prayed because God could hear what I was there in the bathroom in the mirror moving the little charm on my necklace thinking there might be a God out there somewhere.
God can hear and he can see your needs. He can hear and see the evidence that you need.
I posted a little reel on Facebook this week of me speaking saying God is not afraid of your challenges of him.
We've got this idea that the God of the universe somehow, man, he's going to be cut to the quick. He's going to be caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
God is not going to be able to address my one reservation, my one question or my one concern.
Whatever that I've got the topper. I know there's been billions of people that have lived, but even though there have been billions, I know how it is that God cannot answer me.
What? This is the God of the universe.
Notice that in the text, Thomas is in the room with the disciples and saying, I will not believe unless this happens. And then Jesus suddenly appears and he doesn't say, excuse me, Thomas, I didn't quite hear you.
None of the disciples go running to Jesus. Oh, Jesus, right before you got here, Thomas said, blah, blah, blah.
They don't have to do it. Jesus heard Thomas's words in the room with the disciples before he appeared.
Now, you might want to kind of minimize that some. I said, well, Jesus was probably there, but they just couldn't see him.
He was like invisible. But it doesn't matter. You minimize it all you want.
The fact is that God can see and hear the needs of those who need to believe in him before they believe in him, before you have decided.
We have to remember that God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, now that Jesus lived, died and rose again.
And it was true before he lived and it was true in some sense while he lived.
But the point is they are eternal beings, not eternal like they were never created and will never die.
You're thinking of like Rip Van Winkle or something, fell asleep, woke up, was really old. God's not like that.
God's been eternal always and always will be. So the moment you walk into heaven, if you have accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior,
the moment you stand before God or potentially judged for what you decided to do with Jesus who was the Christ,
the moment you stand before God having not accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and are found to be still in your sin,
whatever that might be, God is in a sense already there. God was there when you had questions.
God was there when you were hurting. God was there when the time was so dark you didn't feel like you could see him.
God is there. The God of heaven can see and therefore Jesus who is God can see and hear the needs of those who need to believe in him.
But, here's the big but in the story, it is absolutely a reasonable expectation of God for you to believe because you were told,
because what you were told was true. I was watching a detective show on the Roku channel, it's one of those free channels where you can,
they have different episodes on there and I watched this show called The Mentalist and I kind of liked it and there was no foul language,
no nudity, no sex scenes. I'm like, yes, is it? You get a police drama with mysteries, no nudity, no foul language, no sex scenes.
I'm like, whew, I was on cloud nine, I loved it. It was great. I think I had maybe occasionally not look at dead bodies,
but they really didn't do a lot of gross stuff with that which a lot of shows do.
Anyway, I was watching it and he sits down, they're having this very meaningful conversation, the main character and another character who is pretty much a main character
and he says, this is the truth and the other guy says to him, why should I believe you? Why should I believe you?
You've lied to me, you've deceived me, you've tricked me in the past, it's clear that you could be playing another character, why should I believe you?
And he says, because it's the truth. There's no other reason, not based on my character.
Now you can believe God based on his holy, honorable, and perfect character, he always keeps his promises.
But even though you can believe God based on his holy and honorable character, he always keeps his promises,
you're not being asked to believe God when one of the disciples or somebody who's a follower of Jesus tells you
and that's where it was, Thomas was being told by the disciples who were humans, who might lie, they might have an agenda, right?
So, but he was being asked to believe and it was completely reasonable, the expectation that he would believe their testimony, because why?
Because their testimony was true. Why is it we have so much trouble believing the truth? Because we're so indoctrinated with lies.
Because constantly, throughout our lives all the time, there are things that are, you'll be so happy if you go buy this $25,000 car
and you'll jump up and kick your heels together, right? And then you go buy a $25,000 car or maybe not quite so expensive
because that's a lot of money or maybe more expensive if you think you really need to go over, whatever, and you're not happy.
You'll be healthy if you eat or drink or don't eat or drink this, it'll, it's every, it solved my problem, I lost 100 pounds in a year.
And then you try it, very faithfully, it doesn't have the same effect for you after you spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars on it.
It's ongoing. The world is full of lies. In fact, the world is a kingdom of lies.
Whose chief liar is Satan himself. And he has taught all of his children how to lie. Read about it in scripture.
You lie because that's the works of your father. He is the master deceiver. He is the liar. And the world is full of it.
And where do we live? We live in the world. And so it's all around us all the time. And so you've got built into you the ability to detect
and to resist a lie. In fact, you're so good at detecting and resisting a lie that your first response to something that seems a little bit
not what you expected is to assume it's a lie. That's people. That's the human condition. It's what we are.
It's what Adam and Eve assumed God was covering up the fact that they could be like him if they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
They assumed he was covering it up. God. It's the human condition. And so we're real good at accepting that things are lies.
But the bottom line is it is completely a reasonable expectation for anybody that if they tell you the truth, you will believe them.
No matter how bizarre that truth might be. And if you don't, then it's on you. It's not even on them.
And so while Jesus can see and hear the needs of those who need to believe in him,
it is a completely reasonable expectation that those people who need to believe in him will believe when they are told about Jesus because frankly it's true.
Which is one of the reasons why we have this guaranteed insurance policy, if you will, that you can go out and tell anybody about Jesus.
Because if they choose not to believe, that's on them. I don't know what you're waiting for. I don't know what the church is waiting for.
I don't know what we're waiting for to tell anybody and everybody about Jesus. It's like we're waiting for,
I've got to get this polished argument that people will believe what I'm saying.
I have to be prepared to answer all of their challenges that they might come up with.
If you tell somebody the truth about Jesus and they don't believe and they come back with 17 challenges,
you know how many of those challenges you're responsible to answer? Where do we start? Zero! None!
You're not responsible to answer the challenges to the truth because the truth is the truth.
If you go to somebody and say, don't jump off that cliff, you will fall and die.
And they go and they jump off the cliff and they fall and die. It's not your fault. You told them not to do it.
And you expect that in everything else. But in salvation, in the truth of the gospel, we go, oh, they ask me not to talk about it.
Oh, I don't have the answers to all of their questions. And we make excuses.
The bottom line is the disciples are called to deliver this truth.
And all they are called to do is to deliver this truth and it's delivered the question, will you believe?
And in believing, people gain, get life. Let me finish this point. And that's essentially the next one.
It is extremely rare, but not unheard of, for people to get saved through miraculous intervention.
You know what I mean by that? Most people get saved because somebody told them about Jesus and asked them if they believed.
Maybe asked them to believe. You can believe this based on my character, frankly, in Christ. I'm a pretty good guy.
I don't lie. And if I catch myself saying something is wrong, like a lie of ignorance, I try to fix it.
So you can pretty much believe what I say because that's who I've become, but that's in contrast to who I was before.
So you also have to believe in Jesus and his changing power in order for him to get me from who I was before to who I am now.
There's a guy I went to high school with back in the day, played games with back in the day.
And he came to New Heights and he said, I had to come to New Heights because I know who you were when you were in high school.
And I had to see that God had changed you. He was a Christian back then when I wasn't.
And he said, I had to see the change that God had done in you with my own eyes. And that's what we're living.
We say seeing is believing. You ever hear that before? Seeing is believing.
When I was a young kid, maybe like eight, nine years old, I brought my grade card home from school and it was in my bag or backpack or whatever I had.
And I told my mom, I said, Mom, straight A's. And she said, I'll believe it when I see it.
And we got the grade card out of my backpack and sure enough, straight A's.
And then she was happy. But she wasn't happy when I told her I got straight A's. She was happy when she saw it.
But the very truth of Jesus is this. Not seeing is believing, but wait for it, believing is seeing.
That's the truth of Jesus. Believing is seeing. I sat in the basement of East Lido Baptist Church after vacation Bible school with teenagers.
There was a young man there who was a professing Muslim. His parents were professing Muslims.
He came from a Muslim family and they were devout. His family was devout. He was not so much.
He was at vacation Bible school at the church building, but they didn't know where he was at.
And I didn't know they didn't know where he was at. I don't know that I would have done anything if I did know that.
But he was at vacation Bible school. And afterwards, he says, I have just one thing.
I hear what you're saying about Jesus. And he said, and quote, I want to believe, unquote.
However, our family is Muslim. We are Islamic. And my parents are devout.
And if I make this decision, I will be walking away from that. I'll have to hide in my own house.
And eventually I'll probably be found out because I'll have to learn about Jesus and so on.
And they'll kick me out of the family and maybe even I'll be killed.
And he said, so can you tell me why, if that's true, I should believe?
And you know what I said? You do by now. I said, well, you should believe because it's true.
I know it's true. It happened to me. The girl that invited me to vacation Bible school said, I said, ask her.
Is it true? Yes, it's true. So what evidence do you need?
He said, well, I need God to move in my heart and God to do something in me, God to change me in some way.
I said, well, he will as soon as you believe. That's how it works.
He has a comp- and I didn't say it this way, but I now understand this language.
He has a completely reasonable expectation of you to believe because it's true.
God does not have to do a miracle for you so that you can believe.
God does a miracle for you when you believe.
Until then, you're essentially putting your hand up and saying, God, no thank you. No miracles for me today.
But if you insist and do one anyway, I'll believe that you're there and let it affect who I am.
What? You see the logic? It's like the logic of the world with the target constantly moving.
My heart is the target, God. Hit it. Go ahead.
That's what we're doing. It is completely reasonable for God to expect us to believe when someone tells us because it's true.
And believing is seeing, not the other way around.
If you were alive when Jesus walked the earth, heard him testify, get this. You'll love this.
If you were alive when Jesus walked the earth and you heard him testify about how he would die and be buried and rose again, wait for it.
You wouldn't believe it until you saw it.
Even though Jesus is teaching, believing is seeing.
He's calling us to faith. Your faith literally opens up the channel between you and God.
Your faith in Jesus Christ busts a hole in the barrier that your sin creates between you and God.
And the salvation of Jesus by grace of God flows through it.
That's what Ephesians 2 is talking about when it says, by grace through faith.
It's a giant straw that's your faith going to God. You're taking a tiny sip of grace that saves your whole soul, your whole life, and everybody in it.
It's a completely reasonable expectation for you to believe.
And Peter says as much then in 1 Peter chapter 1 where he basically says,
You are believing and in your believing earning the salvation that God has for you.
So Jesus can see and hear the needs of those who need to believe in him.
But it is completely a reasonable expectation of God that they would believe simply because it's true when told what is right and true.
This belief then is life. It is life.
It is openness and acceptance and trust directed toward God in Jesus Christ.
Oh, but wait. In the modern world, usually when we say belief, we mean, I think it's true. I'm fairly sure.
Yep. I'm going to carry this thought around with me. I'm not going to just let it go just because somebody throws up a roadblock or something.
I kind of believe it's true. I hold on to this like I hold on to my family or like I hold on to my wife or like I'm cautious about some guy trying to sell me something.
So that's what we mean when we say believe and that is not at all what we're called to by Jesus. Rather, we're called to an openness and acceptance and trust directed toward God in Jesus.
The truth is that the events of Jesus Christ's life, death, burial, resurrection, the events of the Kingdom of God, the events of what God has done in his church over the millennia require a decision.
You have to decide what do they mean and what am I going to do about it?
But people don't want to decide what do they mean because then that's going to concern what they're supposed to do about it.
It's going to affect what I'm supposed to do about it. So we're going to blind our own eyes. We're going to look at anything else.
We're going to focus on entertainment or whatever. But if you would do it right, then you will say to God, OK, God, this event means something.
I can see that it's important. Now, let me think about what I'm supposed to do. OK, now I'm going to do what it is that I'm supposed to do.
And if you read a beatitude, blessed are they who did not see and yet believed, you could start at the end of it and work backwards and get what it is that you want.
You want to be blessed, right? OK, I want to be blessed. So what do I do? I believe even though I have not seen. That's what you do.
If you believe and though you have not seen, then you are blessed. And what does blessed mean? It means that God will speak good into your life.
Not just that you'll be happy. That's a horrible translation, by the way. It's Markarios. It means blessed. It means God speaks good into your life, which will make you happy.
But to say that they're happy is to fall short. The word of the disciples would go out to many. That is what Jesus was authoring.
The word of the disciples would go out to many and many would believe this way. That is to say that they would see the events, they would see the interpretation of the events, and they would respond to them.
This beatitude undermines the seemingly greatest argument against the truth of the Gospel. People say, I'll believe if I see.
So let's take math and apply it to that same thing. Seeing is believing. Does anybody remember math class? When you see is, what mathematical sign do you substitute for the word is?
Equal sign. So is is gone. Seeing equals believing. Now, if seeing equals believing, what's the funny thing about equations? You can always flip them.
So now if the world argues seeing equals believing, as long as it's an equal sign, both sides are equal, then you can flip it and you can say believing equals seeing.
So all the world is arguing seeing equals believing. And wait a minute, guess what? They're actually right. They're just choosing to do the seeing without the believing.
They're saying seeing equals believing, believing equals seeing. Okay, I get that, but I choose not to see because I choose not to believe. That's exactly what Thomas was doing.
And it's completely a reasonable expectation of God that we would then believe based on the interpretation of the events and the response that is required of us, which is to believe.
The world can say seeing is believing, but in so doing, they're actually saying believing is seeing, which is the same thing that Jesus was saying. And really what they need to do is believe.
Now, I feel like sometimes I got to run the short track. You know what I mean by that? The lane on the inside when you're racing, the lane on the inside is considerably shorter than the lane on the outside.
That's why if you watch the Olympics, they stagger where the runners start so that they can end at the finish line where everybody's watching.
Because if you run on the inside track, it's shorter. You run on the outside track, it's longer. So that person on the outside track, they get to start.
It seems like they're starting way ahead of the person on the inside track. Right. And I feel like I kind of got the inside track since I became a Christian at least because I was present the day that the electrician came to this building.
And we thought, well, we're not going to use the building because we can't get power. It's a $26,000 estimate.
And we got to buy a miracle. That's what it was. A miracle. It was Ron ran into an electrician, old one that he used to know.
And the guy said, well, if you need anything, give me a call. And he gave him his number. And I said, Ron, do you happen to know this guy's number?
He's like, yeah, I just ran into the grocery store last night. So we called him. He came out and he said, yeah, we can do it. We can do it for a lot less and get the price down.
We can get businessmen to donate. We can get some donated materials. We'll get the price down.
And then he said, we're going to need a stretcher machine that pulls the cable out of the ground because you've got conduit run all the way out the street, 126 feet or whatever it was.
And he said, we're going to need this fancy machine. It usually costs thousands of dollars to rent one, but I might be able to get it donated.
They said, well, I wasn't able to get it donated. Was it worth the rent one? He said, come over here the week before.
We're going to pull it out of the ground and replace the electrical wire. And he walked over to the box and he said, well, let's just see if there's any slack or what happens.
And he pulled it out of the box and it came out a few feet. And he said, well, that's neat. And he pulled it out and came out like five feet.
And he turned around and put it under his line and under his arm. And he started walking and he walked that 126 foot cable.
That's this big around. First of all, that's heavy, if nothing else. But it was supposed to be bound together with the other cables, even bound together by wire or melted together because that's what they do when they're in the ground together for so long.
They melt together. And he pulled that cable out by hand himself, walked the whole thing on the ground and he came back and he said to me, he said, well, I'll tell you one thing I know for sure.
And this guy's not a Christian. He said, one thing I can tell you for sure. God is with you because that can't happen. What I just did right there.
And event after event after event like that took place in the birth of this church building to be our place of meeting.
So it's part of how we know. And those of you who were involved at that time or you saw something, you saw God do something miraculous and amazing or God healed your relationship or it could go all the way back to God saved your soul and came and took up residence in you.
His Holy Spirit began to live in you. And you went, man, God has done something. You know what that is? That's the inside track.
Now you said, I believe. Now you see. And now you believe and believing becomes like second nature. But then the world is constantly battering you trying to get you to quit. But life is in the believing.
That's how it comes. We believe we have faith and grace is delivered to us. We don't earn it with our faith. Right.
Abraham kind of did that. Right. He believed and God said, I see your faith. I count it to you as righteousness. But life is in God and life is in Jesus and grace is delivered to us when we believe.
So it goes like this. This is the thing. And then we're in the conclusion. It goes like this. First of all, Jesus can see and hear the needs of those who need to believe in him.
But it is completely reasonable expectation of God that you should believe that they should believe because you were told and because it's right.
If it was right and no one ever told you, you could claim ignorance. But if it's right and you were told you're responsible to believe, it just makes sense.
And in believing is the life. God is life. Jesus is life. Jesus died on the cross to pay for sins. Believing in him is life. It's how you get saved.
And then that brings us essentially to the conclusion. We've got to get on with it. We've got to get on with it.
When it comes to believing, you need to get on with it. Every new thing that comes into your life that challenges your belief, what you should do is believe.
Thomas believed while Jesus was alive. He was at the Last Supper and said, I'll never betray you, Lord. He sided with Peter and said, I'll die if necessary, but I'll never betray you.
And he didn't. He fled, but he didn't betray him. He didn't say he wasn't a follower of Jesus. He just got away. Which is what Jesus essentially told them to do.
Now he needs to get on with it. Jesus is alive and he needs to believe that Jesus is alive. He's told by the disciples, he has a responsibility to believe because he's told the truth.
And he refuses to believe, saying, I will not until I see. Jesus shows up and says, you say, you wouldn't until you see. Now you've seen and you believe. But greater blessing for those who believe though they had not seen.
We need to get on with it. There's a phrase that is in this text that I mentioned to you is hard to translate. It doesn't translate super well into the English.
And there's a reason why it doesn't translate super well into the English because our verbs don't do very well what the Greek verbs do in certain cases.
And it is where he says, and be not unbelieving, but be believing. Be not unbelieving, but believing.
Now if you're looking at a different translation, you're going to see something a little different.
And Jason said his Bible verse this morning, or I'm sorry, Caleb said his Bible verse this morning, he says, no longer disbelieve, but believe.
So there are differences. But it's always about the difference between unbelief or disbelief and believing.
So I dug into the language and here's what I found. These words are in the Greek in what's called the perfect present tense, which means start believing and never stop.
Proceed forward believing. Continue believing.
So if we substitute the word continue to do so in the text, it would say something like this.
And be not continuing toward unbelieving, but rather be continuing believing.
See, it doesn't sound very good, does it? That's not how we speak in English. We don't talk like that.
But you could. But when you're translating a book into English, you want to make it so that people don't get bogged down or struggle with it or whatever.
And so it's not poorly translated. Be not unbelieving. So in other words, you're continuing to not believe. Don't be like that.
So it does say the right thing. It does say what's there, but we wouldn't necessarily know that without going into the background a little bit.
But rather be continuing in your belief. Be believing. So that does make sense. It says exactly what it says in the Greek, but we're not thinking of it that way when we read it in the English.
So in other words, what Jesus was asking you to do is stop trending toward disbelief and instead always trend toward belief.
So when you hear the truth, believe it. When the Bible says that you should do X, believe it.
What? Don't lie. Tie. Serve. Love. Huh, how about that one? Right? Love.
In other words, care about other people. When it says have this mind in you, which was in Christ Jesus, right?
Care more about what's happening to other people than about what's happening to you.
If you're truly on the way to heaven and others are on the way to hell, that should bother you pretty much more than anything.
More than whether your bills get paid, more than you get fed, right? Because if they go to hell, they will spend eternity in hell.
You will spend eternity in heaven. So how much ever suffering you may endure during this life, as bad as it might seem,
you're eventually going to get a final reward that blows it all away. And so are they.
But for you, it's a positive final reward. For them, it's a negative one. That matters. That's huge.
So what do we do? We testify and tell the truth and ask them to believe if they choose not to. That's on them.
If we're waiting for some kind of big moment, it already came. It's already done.
Jesus rose from the dead and made salvation available to anyone who would receive him.
Just go ask them to believe. And if they choose not to, that's on them.
And they may a week later, a month later, or six years later, decide to believe what you told them way back then.
But if you never ask them, the question is, how can you care so little about the fact that you are going for the gravy glory
vacation, guaranteed you've already won the lottery of all of creation, and they're going for eternity in hell,
and you're doing literally nothing about it. But we're all afraid of what someone might think.
Or we all say, well, they can't see God, so they're not going to believe. Seeing is believing, which means also believing is seeing.
And they can't believe. How will they believe unless someone goes and tells them, Romans says. So we tell them.
We've got to get on with it. The reason we're not telling them is because, wait for it, we're struggling to continue in belief.
And Jesus would say this to you, knock it off. I've done everything necessary. I saw all your questions, and I answered them,
and I gave you my Holy Spirit to be with you forever. Who longs? He's with you, always longing for nothing more than for other people
to come into the right relationship with me. We've got to tell and to ask. We have to. It doesn't matter what you look like,
what you feel like, what happens to you because of it, because you're going to heaven for eternity. So at that point, you've got to tell.
But the truth is, when you get on with it, eventually the thing that you built your getting on with it on becomes so well known to you,
so common that it's just the answer. In other words, you believed, opened the channel of faith to God, grace delivered, you're saved.
And when you get on with it, when you're believing it, that everything that you encounter, it will be your natural reaction to go,
I believe, I believe, God's got a plan. This is going to work out. Something's going to happen. Maybe a miracle. What are we waiting for?
Let's pray. Let's get right on that. Let's pray about it right now. Not, I'll pray with you if I think about it.
But let's get on it right now and pray because God might do a miracle. God is with us. God is watching over us.
God cares about us. God's our King. God's in charge of everything. And it becomes commonplace. That's the answer every time.
Let's believe. Remember I mentioned zero to you at the beginning? And everybody in this room, everybody here accepted that zero is the answer to 3-3.
Now, but somebody went, oh, he's got something up his sleeve. Something's not right. He's obviously up to something.
So zero, as we know it, did not become commonplace in society until sometime between 300 BC and 30 BC,
which means at this point in time where we are, and you can, this is another discussion we end up debating,
but I'm a firm believer that the earth has been here maybe about 6,000 years. You can believe whatever you want to believe,
but the Bible calculates out to that amount of time and the best studies and everything line up with that.
The astronomical charts that they do can line up with that, all of that. Right?
So that being said, if that's true, that means that for, wait for it, 4,000 of those years, zero was not the answer to 3-3.
Does anybody know in Roman numerals what the symbol for zero is? There isn't one.
In the Greek number system, previous to the Hellenistic period, which is the time we're talking about,
they calculated all their numbers, negative or positive, didn't matter.
They calculated all of their numbers with a different set of numbers.
So in other words, the ones column had a whole different set of numbers for the ones column than had for the tens column
than had for the hundreds column. Yeah, than had for the hundreds column. Right?
A different set of numbers. So not 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 for the ones column,
and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 for the tens column, and so on. They didn't do that.
They had a different set of numbers. Then when you got back into the thousands, that's ones of thousands,
and you would use the number for ones. And you'd repeat. And you could do big numbers out to a billion or whatever,
but you had three different sets of numbers that you had to know.
You see, math has not always been what you think it is. But somewhere along the line, somebody came up with the idea,
and there's a couple of people credited with it. A guy in India supposedly brought it to our society,
and that not until much later, 628. Right? So now we're talking about, we have so accepted 0 as a concept,
except that 3 minus 3 equals 0, and we can all unify on that point, even though it's only been around for 1,400 years
in our society, in English European society, brought over by an Indian man, not American Indian, but from India.
Alright? And he gets the credit for it. But we have so accepted that concept that we would all agree on 0.
The correct answer, by the way, is 3 minus 3 is nothing. Not 0. 0 is a symbol of nothing.
If you have three apples and you lose all your apples, what do you have? You have nothing.
You have your clothes, yourself, whatever. There's no apples. There's no reason to even think you have zero apples,
because all the apples are gone. They were here, they're gone. And if somebody comes and looks at you and says,
how many apples you have? You say, well, none. Why would you even ask me how many apples you have?
He doesn't have any apples. Because a minute ago he had apples. And they took them away from him, and now he has zero apples.
No, he doesn't. He just has no apples. I don't see any apples. Why are we talking about apples? There's no apples here.
Right? But we have accepted the concept of 0. And when you accept the concept of believing like that,
which is what Jesus called Thomas to, and the disciples to, and the church to, then martyrdom is on the table,
and miraculous healings are on the table, and belief in the crazy things that God can and does do on a daily basis,
they're all back on the table. Are you trending toward believing, or are you trending toward disbelieving?
I submit to you that in American society, if you are an American citizen, the tendency is going to be to trend toward disbelieving,
because you're assailed all the time by stuff that wants you to believe, that doesn't make any sense, and you know it's not right.
You're being told all the time. Which is why we have to not be conformed to the world, but transformed by the renewing of our mind.
You need to spend time in the Word. You need to pray. You need to be in church. You need to sit under preaching and teaching.
You need to serve. You need to give. You need to act out the Kingdom values.
Because in Kingdom values, you will find in yourself the ability to go on for the rest of your life believing
and desiring nothing more than to believe and wait for it. When you believe, you will see.
Get on with it. And when you get on with it long enough, it will become like habit. It will become like zero.
God's the one who said it. God originates. Listen, we still see stars in the sky, and He started that at the very beginning.
It still reigns, and He started that in Noah's day. Whether or not God made zero, we can debate that.
But this is what's true. God is asking you, and He's asking me, to get on with believing.
To begin, and to never end, and to never lean back, and to never trend away from, and to make believing part of our everyday existence all the time.
So that when the Antichrist, or a demon, or an evil teaching, or something comes in your life, you should readily go,
Ugh, that's not me believing. That's not me leaning into believing. I recognize it right away, and I want nothing to do with it.
Because I am a person getting on with believing. And I for one am committing myself to that.
I was present. I may have the inside track. I have seen people miraculously healed. I have also seen it when I prayed, and people were not miraculously healed.
I've seen demons cast out. I've seen dark spaces in people's eyes. So dark they look in there, and it's like outer space was in their head.
And then demons cast out. Not able to say the name of Jesus, and then they can. And a half dozen, or ten situations.
I've seen people, and some of them are in this room, transformed completely from the inside out by the presence of God.
That's the inside track. You want to see it? Believe.