Believing What We Believe

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Elmbrook Church 777 South Barker Road, Brookfield, WI 53045 www.elmbrook.org 262.786.7051 Series: Stand Alone Sermon

May 31 & June 1, 2014

Believing What We Believe Luke 24:36-53 Stuart Briscoe, Minister-at-Large

__________________________________________________________ I came up onto the pulpit here on one occasion years ago, and I thought, Oh, we have an unusually large congregation this morning.

Then I noticed that most of the ladies in the congregation

seemed to have on all their finery, including some beautiful buttonholes, all kinds of flowers around the place. about today?

So I said, It looks to me like it must be a special day.

What's so special

And there was a great chorus from the whole congregation, It's Mother's Day.

And I said, it is?

It's Mother's Day?

Oh, I thought it was Pentecost.

And it was rather interesting, everybody seemed to be aware that it was Mother's Day, and nobody, until I mentioned it, had given any thought to Pentecost.

And I thought that's odd.

How could

Pentecost slide off the radar screen for many, many churches today? My mother used to announce on March the 21st of every year, first of all, today is the first day of spring and then, secondly, she would announce, and it is my birthday.

And so she was

something of a reminder, the freshness of the joy and the fruitfulness of springtime.

And

so I knew I was always very interested about March 21st. March 21st is the time of the spring equinox. two Latin words.

You know what an equinox is?

The first one means equal, funnily enough.

It comes from

And the second one means night.

So it is the day -- the spring equinox is the day when daylight hours and nighttime darkness are the same.

It's equal, day and night.

over the equator.

And it happens every year when the sun is directly

It's amazing really this universe runs like clockwork, or more accurately,

clockwork runs like the universe.

And it is fascinating to me that this spring equinox thing

just happens every year, relentlessly, totally, reliably. Now, after the spring equinox, there will be a full moon. right on schedule.

And that happens regularly as well,

And right after the first full moon after the spring equinox is the first

Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. Do you know what it's called?

Easter.

That's how we figure out Easter.

Have you ever thought, You know, this is odd. was so late last year.

We have a special name for it.

Easter is so early this year.

Well, who just picks Easter out of the sky, you know.

Oh, yeah, it No, no, it is

all related to the synchronism of the whole universe, and God has ordained that there should be certain festivals that have their roots in the whole movement of the planet that have their roots in the whole of the Jewish religion, that have their roots in the Christian faith. Well, by the way, once they figured out Easter, it's relatively easy to add 50 days to Easter, and you come out with something else, critically important, and it happens every years, 50

days after Easter. it Pentecost?

Do you know what that's called?

Pentecost.

And do you know why they call

Because the Greek word is Pentekoste, and that means 50th.

So the 50th day after Easter day, which is the Sunday after the first full moon, after the spring equinox, you see, it all has its place, 50 days after that, that's Pentecost.

But 10

days before Pentecost is something else that's critical on the Christian calendar.

Do you

know what that is?

Well, it's 40 days after Easter day, and that is Ascension Day, Ascension

Day. And if Pentecost has pretty much slipped off the radar screen, like many of our churches today, and in many Christians' understanding, it is equally true so has Ascension Day.

One of the

things I like about being in Europe at this time of year is that Ascension Day is a national holiday in countries like Germany. (phonetic). anymore.

That's right.

They have a delightful name for it.

It is called himofault

You heard it first from the Elmbrook pulpit.

We won't go there

It means the heaven journey.

Now, I was delighted when I was assigned these two weekends to preach.

I was delighted to

discover that they coincided with the Sunday after Ascension Day and Pentecost, and I was already prepared to preach on these two things, and then I was reminded that I had also been assigned two passages from Mark's Gospel. we'll figure out Mark later on. All right.

So we had a little problem there.

But we solved it.

And

And now we're going to go with Ascension Day and with Pentecost.

One of the fascinating things to me in this whole calendar because, you see, these

Christian feasts, if you like, are all related to what actually happened in the early days of the Christian era.

One of the things that is fascinating to me is that 40-day period between

Easter day and Ascension Day, leading to the 10-day period to Pentecost. When Jesus was hanging on the cross and everything was basically accomplished in that he was going to die and be buried and rise again from the dead, he announced, basically, mission accomplished.

The word he used was tetalefiti (phonetic), which means finished, completed,

consummated, thorough, mission accomplished, I've done everything I came to do. Well, if that's true, why did he say 40 days after that? digging into it, and this is what I discovered.

That seemed odd to me.

them very straightforwardly what their task was going to be. the world, I am the light of the world." in the world I am the light of the world." So who is the light of the world? not here, you are.

So I started

Jesus had commissioned his disciples and told He said, "So long as I am in

That was straightforward enough, "So long as I'm Then he said, "You are the light of the world."

Well, Jesus said as long as I'm here, I am.

But when he's

And he laid it on the shoulders of that little group of disciples.

And then he rises from the dead and what does he discover?

He discovered this little group

of disciples now to be the light of the world are in total disarray, and they are experiencing a major monumental crisis of faith.

And the whole project resting on their shoulders is in

jeopardy. If they have lost their faith, if they are in total disarray, if they have been called and ordained and are going to be empowered to continue all that Jesus has begun to demonstrate all that he is and to take the message of what he has accomplished, if it all rests on their shoulders, and they're in a crisis of faith and they're in total disarray, guess what, we've

got a problem.

And that's why Jesus stayed for 40 days, and he had to deal with this crisis

of faith. Have you ever had a crisis of faith?

Have you ever come to the point of really questioning

where you are in this faith business?

I did when I was in my early 20s.

I'd been raised in

a Christian environment, I knew about the Christian gospels as soon as I knew about anything. As far as I knew, I had responded to what I knew as I was going along. involved, more and more interested.

I got more and more

I actually started preaching when I was 17.

So this was four or five or six years after I actually started to trying to explain what I believed, but things were not working for some reason. sense.

And I was questioning certain things.

I was able to go and talk to.

There was something that didn't make

And fortunately, I had an older friend that

His name was John Hunter.

very patiently to what I was trying to explain to him.

And I talked to John, and he listened Then he asked some probing questions,

which is what you need to do after you listened to somebody, then ask questions for clarification. And through his probing questions, I was able to clarify in my own mind and, therefore, into his mind, what was really troubling me.

And in the end he said, "Yeah, I got it.

your problem is, Stuart."

I was all ears.

believe what you believe.

You don't believe what you believe."

And he was right.

I know what

He said, "Your problem is very simple; you don't

I'd gotten all the information.

I'd gotten all the data.

I got it all

accumulated in my head, but actually getting into an understanding of what I believed and seeing the meaning of it and going from the meaning to the significance of it and making application of it in my own life, I'd fell short of this.

And that was why I was coming up with a crisis

of faith. Do you know, I am meeting many, many people who are in various stages of faith crisis.

And

I would suggest that what we need to do is ask ourselves a question:

Why

do I believe it? it?

What possible difference does it make?

What possible difference does it make?

What do I believe?

What do I believe?

Why do I believe

This is what Jesus started to work on.

Now, this 40-day period is recorded for us in two places, Acts 1 and Luke 24. a connection between the two because they're both by the same author. link between the two.

There is some repetition.

critical period in the churches history.

And there's

There is a very definite

And Dr. Luke is very anxious to explore this

I'm not going to read these long passages to you,

but we'll certainly refer to them to find out what was going on. One of the first stories that we read about in this -- in Luke 24 is of two disciples of Jesus immediately after the crucifixion are walking home to the village where they live, Emmaus, and on the way, they are discussing deeply how brokenly the events of the crucifixion day. And a complete stranger draws alongside them, starts walking along with them, and says to them, Excuse me.

You're deep in conversation.

What were you talking about?

been talking about the events that have taken place in Jerusalem. And they are dumbfounded by that question.

And they said, We've

And he said, What events?

They actually stop dead in their tracks, and they

turn, and they say, Are you the only person around here who doesn't know what's going on? you just arrived from another planet, that sort of incredulity.

Have

You know, what's with you,

man?

Don't -- you don't know what's going on.

He said, Well, tell me what's going on.

And

they said, Jesus of Nazareth, a great prophet whom we thought, whom we thought, whom we hoped, whom we believed, whom we assumed, whom we gathered, all in the past tense, Jesus of Nazareth, whom we have believed, whom we had hoped would redeem Israel has been killed. So what are they saying? a crisis of faith.

We used to believe.

We used to believe.

We just don't believe anymore.

We don't believe anymore.

work out the way we thought they were going to work out.

Why?

And, therefore,

Because things didn't

We had figured out what we believed,

we had figured out the way things were going to work, things have gone terribly, terribly wrong. This is the most desperate situation that is imaginable.

The cruelty that has been vented

on Jesus, the fact that the crowds have turned on him, and they were just -- a few days earlier, they were adoring him. mockery of a trial. We had hoped.

The fickleness of people.

The shame that he was exposed to.

They said, It is a total scandal.

We had believed.

The

We had believed.

Now it's shattered.

You know what, I meet lots of people, and they tell me, I used to believe, but it didn't work out the way I thought it was going to. to do.

I used to believe, but God didn't do what I asked him

I used to believe, but things have happened in my life, and I think God must have been

standing in the corner of the room with his hands in his pocket.

I used to believe.

Crisis

of faith. If you read Luke 24, there's another incident after this Emmaus road thing, then things got turned around.

I will get back to this in a minute.

These two guys got turned around as well,

having walked all the way from Jerusalem to Emmaus, they're now set off to walk from Emmaus back to Jerusalem, because God through Jesus has opened their minds, opened their understanding, opened their hearts.

And they go back.

And guess what, they go to the disciples who are gathered and terribly afraid, and they tell them what they have discovered as they've met this stranger who turns out to be the Risen Lord. Do you know what happens?

The disciples don't believe.

And Thomas, he's one of these guys.

The disciples just don't believe.

Thomas -- he's a dear old doubting Thomas.

I'm a bit

of doubting Thomas myself, so be careful before you go there. A lot of people think doubting Thomas doubted because he had intellectual problems and he just couldn't believe certain things. believe.

But Thomas never said, Unless this, this, and this, I cannot

He said, Unless this, this, and this, I will not believe.

And so many people ask -- hiding behind a volitional problem by putting into the guise of an intellectual problem, it's not an intellectual problem at all.

What they're simply saying

is, God, unless you do this, unless you do this, unless I see this, unless I get an answer to that, I will not believe.

In other words, I'm in control of this situation.

Crisis of

faith. Because Jesus had also been pretty blunt with these two on the road to Emmaus.

They'd invited

him to dinner, and he had done some things, and eventually they began to realize who this stranger was.

And so he said, let's do a little Bible study.

So they got ahold of a copy of the Old

Testament, which is the scriptures at the time, and he does a Bible study, and he shows them

in all different sections of the scriptures the things concerning himself.

Just imagine what

that must have been like. Then he asked them a very pertinent question.

It's a very, very powerful question.

He said,

Now you are devastated by the fact that this mess who you thought was going to redeem Israel, you are devastated by the fact that he has been crucified. not the Christ to have suffered?

Here's the question he asked; Ought

Ought not the Christ to have suffered?

the cross, you're looking at it from a purely human point of view. You're looking at the shame.

You are looking at

You're seeing the cruelty.

You're looking at the sheer agony of the sufferings.

looking at it from a purely human point of view, but ought this not to have happened?

You're Is this

not the right thing? And he said, Let's look in our Bibles. what they discover?

And they start looking in the Bibles.

their idea of the Christ and what the Christ was going to do was totally in error. it to them. religion.

Do you know

They discover that they had a belief system that was totally wrong, that

This is what he explains.

Jesus unfolds

He explains to them the whole system of the Jewish

The whole system of the Jewish religion was that God had created men and women for

his own glory in order that he might enjoy them and they might enjoy him. to their own way.

That they had turned

That they had put a barrier between themselves and God, that they had been

separated from God by their sins.

That God is holy and righteous and just, and could not turn

a blind eye to their sin and their rebellion.

But at the same time, he is holy, that he is

holy and righteous and just, he is loving and gracious and merciful. And so God is looking for a way that he can be holy and righteous and just and loving and gracious and merciful, and he says their sin has to be dealt with. sin, however, needs to be forgiven. innocent substitute.

Their sin has to be judged.

And this is what he devices.

Their

He will judge sin in an

That the sin of a sinful people can be reckoned to an innocent substitute,

the innocent substitute can bear the consequences of their sin, and the guilty people, because of the work of the innocent substitute, can be forgiven and go free.

That was basically the

essence of the Jewish religion. And Jesus presumably pointed this out to them, and then presumably he said to them, Do you remember what John the Baptist said when I first appeared on the scene, he said behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Now he begins to open their eyes slowly to

the fact that God's principle of dealing with a sinful humanity is to deal with them in holiness, in righteousness, and justice, and grace, and mercy, and love, and put it all together in one package, and Jesus becomes the innocent substitute who will bear the consequences of the sin of the whole world so that God will be free to actually forgive their sin.

And their eyes

begin to be opened, and they begin to realize that the cross, in actual fact, from a human point of view, was a scandal.

It was horrible.

From a divine point of view, it was God manifesting his holiness, his righteousness, his justice, his grace, his mercy, and his love. begins to make sense.

And their eyes were opened.

And they said, Oh, now it

What they believed about the cross was dead wrong.

Now they were

beginning to believe the truth about the cross. We know that Peter got this eventually.

We don't know how soon he got it, but we know somewhere,

somewhere between Easter day and Pentecost, the penny dropped as far as Peter was concerned. This is what he said when he preached on Pentecost, he said, Now, listen, the most dreadful

thing has happened, wicked, cruel men took Jesus and they crucified him, and he doesn't spare the details at all, and he doesn't back off from telling the people that they are, in a sense, culpable.

They are responsible for what happened to Jesus.

But then he brings in an entirely different thought. of view what you did is unspeakable.

And he says, Well, from the human point

On the other hand, what God did was according to his

foreknowledge and his determined purpose and his own counsel. it all along.

That this wasn't a tragic happening.

In other words, God had planned

It's not God securing back to plan B because

plan A didn't work. This was all part of the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God.

And their eyes are open,

and they're saying, If it is true that a holy, righteous, just God can mingle those characteristics with love and grace and mercy in the cross, so that Christ will die for me so that I, the guilty one, might be forgiven, if that is true, then there's only one appropriate response, and it was the response of dear old Thomas for having started out by saying, Unless this, this, and this, I will not believe.

He has it revealed to him the truth of the cross,

and he bows at the feet of Jesus and he says, My Lord and My God. What do you believe about the cross?

How deeply do you believe it?

And what possible

difference does it make? If it be true that Jesus is God's son and gave himself for me, no sacrifice that I can make can be too great.

Those are the words of one of the England's most famous athletes who walked

away from his athletic career.

He was a cricketer, which doesn't make any sense to Americans.

But if you imagine this cricketer playing baseball, he would have been head of the batting averages for the whole league and heading up the pitching averages for the whole league and doing it every single year, year after year after year. internationally.

C.T. Studd was his name.

Not only nationally, but

And his eyes were open to the cross.

If it is

true that Jesus is the son of God and that he gave himself for me, no sacrifice that I can make can be too great.

Crisis of faith.

Let me talk to you for a minute about the resurrection.

When the disciples were gathered in

the room, this is all in Luke 24, they're gathered if the room.

The doors are shut and locked.

They're terrified that Jesus, having been arrested and tried and killed, they're the next to go.

And they just don't know what to do.

And Jesus suddenly stands in their midst and seems

remarkably at ease about the whole thing and he appears in their midst and he says, Peace or shalom.

Shalom.

Now, that's just everyday greeting on one hand.

So it's almost as if Jesus suddenly appears

in their midst and says Hi, or perhaps a little more formally, Good morning, good morning. But there's more to it than that. in control.

He says, Shalom, shalom.

God is

God is working after his purposes.

And their response is what?

They are terrified and they are afraid.

and they're terrified and afraid. ghost.

Everything is in order.

Why?

He's come to bring peace,

Because they don't believe.

They believe he's a

So he's got to deal with this.

They don't believe in resurrection.

They do believe in ghosts.

So the fact they're seeing

a resurrected person in their midst is irrelevant because what they believe determines what

they see despite the fact that we say seeing is believing when frequently the reverse is true. Believing is seeing.

If you believe in ghosts and you don't believe in resurrection, and

somebody who is resurrected stands right next to you, you will see a ghost. it is.

And that's what

So Jesus has to deal with that.

And he says, I'm no ghost.

He says, I'm no apparition.

You are not hallucinating.

In fact,

if you get ahold of me, and Thomas, if you want to put your fingers in these nail prints and put your hand in my sides, rather ghastly, but if that's what you want to do, go right ahead, and you will see that I am really me, that I have a tangible body, that I am not a ghost, that you are not hallucinating, and that in actual fact this body of mine is recognizable and yet is capable of things that are totally beyond your comprehension. In other words, I am risen from the dead. body I had only different.

I am risen truly in a resurrected body, like the

The one that I had was ideally suited in order that I might bear

in my body the sins of the whole world.

The one that I now have is a resurrected body which

is as ideally suited to the world to come as this body I'm inhabiting now and have inhabited is suitable for the world in which you're living, and because I live, you too will live. Do you believe that?

And do you believe that Jesus is able, by his mighty power, to take our

bodies and make them light unto his glorious body so that we too in the world to come will be as ideally suited to fullness of life in the new heavens and the new earth as we are capable of living fully down in this world and enjoying every dimension of human experience. the mind.

It blows

What do you believe about the resurrection?

Jesus said, I'm the resurrection and the life. shall he live.

is he talking about? with dying.

He that believeth in me, though he die yet

And he who lives and believes in me will never die.

You say what in the world

What he's saying is this, that the resurrection deals with death, deals

It deals with the devil, because the devil holds people captive because they're

afraid of death. But the resurrection takes the fear out of death. defeats the devil.

It takes the sting out of the grave.

It opens a new and living way into the presence of a holy God.

promises a resurrection for you for all eternity.

It

And it

And Jesus asks a very simple question, Do

you believe this? And I would ask a further question, do we believe what we believe? to tell that about your attitude to death. to danger.

Because you would be able

You would be able to tell that by your attitude

You would be able to tell that by your attitude to taking reasonable risks.

You

would be able to tell what you really believe by looking at the way you go about your life. You would be able to tell about the willingness to sacrifice.

You would be able to tell whether

you've simply committed to a comfortable easy existence, or are you going to say, Look, I'm expendable.

For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.

I'm a resurrection person.

And those disciples began to discover that their eyes were opened and their minds were opened and their understandings were opened and Jesus said, Now, your mouths need to be opened because you are witnesses to all these things. my death and resurrection.

You are the ones who have experienced the reality of

Now get the word out.

Take the time to figure out what is really going on here. we couldn't do that.

He said hold it a minute.

I mean, literally they said, Oh,

Hold it a minute.

Stay in Jerusalem.

in just a few days, listen, you will be clothed with power from on high.

And

You're going to get

holy ghost power. And this holy ghost power is not something that you can compare notes on. that you can argue about. by.

It's not something

And it's not something that you can determine somebody's spirituality

This power is essentially practical.

I'm commissioning you to be and to do.

It is going to be the enabling to be and to do what

For it would be a fool's errand for Jesus to say you

are witnesses to me and simply leave it in the hands of totally incapable people. be a fool's errand.

That would

He wouldn't be that stupid.

What he did is say, You are witnesses to me and in a few days time you will be clothed with power from on high, and you will have every ounce of ability to be what I'm calling you to be, and you'll have the supernatural enabling to do what I have called you to do.

Nothing

more and nothing less.

If he's

So you will no longer be free to say, Oh, I couldn't do that.

called you, he's equipped you.

Do you believe that?

You see, our problem is we have a crisis of faith.

And very often a crisis of faith leaves

us in the position where we don't really believe what we believe. Now, why is that?

Is it because there are different levels of belief.

the facts, but never get the meaning. not finish, I'm going to stop.

And sometimes we believe

I heard a story, and I'm going to finish with this -- well,

Have you looked at the outline?

That's your homework for the

whole week. Let me finish up with a story. checkup.

I read about it this week.

A fellow took in his car for its

The end of the checkup, he was -- got in the car to drive it out of the shop, and

he remembered something.

Put the window down and stuck his head out, turned to the young guy

who was just helping clean up the place.

He wasn't a mechanic or anything.

He said, Hey,

son, can you go around the back of the car and just tell me if my right turn indicator is working? Can you do that?

He said, yeah, sure.

no, yes, no, yes, no.

Okay.

Is it working?

This is the high point of the sermon.

you do this a half an hour ago? Well, what was going on here?

He said, Yes, no, yes, no, yes, Enjoy it.

You say, Why didn't

Okay. Well, the young guy is -- asked would you just check to see

if this right turn indicator is working.

So he looks at it and the light comes on, yes, it's

working.

Comes on, yes, it's working.

Light goes off, no, it's not.

Goes off, no.

So in

actual fact, that's a very accurate answer at one level, but it doesn't answer the question. The question is not is this light coming on and going off, coming on and going off, coming on and going off?

The question is is the right turn indicator working?

Now, it's possible

this young guy, even though he's not a mechanic, he's been around the shop enough, so he's learned a thing or too. light will come on.

He knows that an electric circuit is made, the contact is made, the

And if the contact is broken, it will go off.

himself, Is the contact made?

So maybe he's saying to

Yes, no, yes, no, yes, no, but that's not the question.

The question is is the right turn indicator working?

In other words, the basics, the mechanics,

the details, are that contact needs to be made and broken in order a light can come on and

off in order that the light will flash and gain people's attention and alert them to the fact this driver is going to turn to the right.

What does that require?

the basic facts and understanding the meaning. the significance.

It requires getting beyond

And in understanding the meaning, recognizing

And in recognizing the significance, making the application.

When my friend said, Stuart, your problem is you don't believe what you believe, I did believe the facts. me.

I did have the mechanics.

I didn't grasp the meaning.

The significance had eluded

So I haven't made the application so the result was at a level I believed, but the level

I needed to be, I didn't believe.

It's called a crisis of faith.

And you know, sisters and brothers, to one extent or another, we'll all find ourselves in that scene.

And that's why this statement of the man to Jesus on one occasion is so appropriate.

This is what he said, "Lord, I believe."

Then what did he say, "Help my unbelief."

Lord, it is my chief complaint that my love is weak and faint, but I love thee and adore, oh, for grace to love thee more. Let's pray again. earlier disciples.

It's fascinating for us, Dear Lord, to try and stand in the sandals of these And begin to think their thoughts and experience their experiences.

And

deliver us from putting these people on pedestals, making saints out of them as if they had arrived and that we could just look at them and revere them. to do that.

You never gave us the freedom

You only gave us the story, the narrative, as to the role that they played and

what kind of people they were, and what a remarkable thing it was that you were who you were in their lives, and it is very, very easy for us to make application of this and recognize how similar we are to them.

And how wonderfully the same you can be to us.

And we ask that

you help us to be honest with ourselves and find out if we do believe what we believe and if so to what extent.

So send us on our way, pondering these things in our hearts.

Pondering

what do I believe, how deeply do I believe it, and what possible difference does it make? us, Lord.

In Jesus 'name.

Amen.

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