Resurrection Rhythm

Transcript

Gospel According to John, chapter 20. The gospel according to John, chapter 20. And when you found John 20, go ahead and stand with me for the reading of our Gospel text this morning.

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You'll remember that in year C, which is our liturgical year that we're in currently, the focus is upon Luke, right? Remember A, Matthew, B, Mark, and see Luke. However, throughout all three years, the lectionary will, which is just a series of readings, will intersperse the Gospel of John throughout. Well, and this is one of those. One of those moments.

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So notice these very powerful words from John 19. If you'll find verse 19, we'll start reading there. When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews. Jesus came and stood among them and said, peace be with you. After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side.

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Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you. When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them.

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If you retain the sins of any, they are retained. But Thomas, who was called the twin, one of the 12, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, we have seen the Lord. But he said to them, unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger in the mark of the nails and. And my hand in his side, I will not believe.

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A week later, his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, peace be with you. Then he said to Thomas, put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt, but believe.

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Thomas answered him, my Lord and my God. Jesus said to him, have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe. Now, Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing, you may have life in his name.

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Lord Jesus, thank you for this beautiful word. This morning we pray that the true author, the Holy Spirit, would come among us now, moving among our seats, but also in our hearts and minds this morning so that you can bring about belief in us that leads to new life. We pray in your name. Amen. And you can be seated.

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Well, this is a very famous text, of course, and one you've probably encountered before if you've been in church any length of time. Because quite frankly, this whole thing with Doubting Thomas here is a little fascinating, and it probably touches all of us in a place where we too, say, oh, you know what? I get Thomas here. I totally get Thomas here. Given the choice, I would choose to see Jesus physically rather than not.

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And I think that's a fine choice. And we're going to explore a little bit of that this morning. And where I want to begin, though, is really with the first thing said here. Notice when it was evening on that day, the first day of the week. Now, what is that?

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That's Sunday. That's Sunday. And of course, Easter happens on Sunday. And what is Easter but the resurrection of. Of Jesus Christ from the dead.

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So on that very first day, he shows up to them on that Sunday evening. So there on Sunday morning, he has these appearances and then shows up again Sunday evening, and then drop down a little ways and look again a week later, or some translations will say eight days later, and they're counting by terms of being Jewish. Okay, which means that you've got seven, seven days that. That ends a whole week. Seventh day being Saturday, and then the eighth day being Sunday.

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So again, a week later, his disciples were again in the house together. Notice you say. What's your point here, Pastor? This seems like a bypass. Well, first of all, in Holy Scripture, everything is there for a reason.

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Even if we don't understand it, everything is there for a reason. And I've missed this for years and years. But the importance of worshiping with others on Sunday is critical to being a Christian. Now, many would disagree with that, but I think it's written right here to the text. And let me give you a few reasons why.

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Every Sunday since that first Sunday is a mini resurrection Sunday where witnesses such as you and I, who have encountered the risen Christ, listen. It's people who know that he is risen. He is risen indeed. It's those kind of people who come and gather together to once again encounter him behind closed doors. You see, ever since that Sunday, Christians all over the world, in all kinds of socioeconomic, geographic, national, governmental situations, have purposefully, sometimes at their own risk, continued to meet on Sunday with their brothers and sisters to once again witness on the first day of the week the fact of the resurrection.

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The person who is our Lord and our God. And we are no different brothers and sisters. We when we encounter Christ, come under this obligation, as it were, to worship together. In other words, if it just happened once and then they worshiped on other days, then we wouldn't have a pattern. However, John is showing a pattern here of on the first day he shows up, and then on the first day again the next week, he shows up.

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And what we know when we read Acts and when we read Paul in Acts is that it was on the first day of the week that they gathered. And then again when communion was had, it was on the first day of the week. And even more once you get to Revelation, which also John wrote, when you get to Revelation, what does he say? He says, look, I was imprisoned, but it was on the first day of the week. And he calls it this.

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The Lord's Day. The Lord's Day. So in other words, Sunday becomes known as the Lord's Day. And whatever. How you might interpret that is this possessive.

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It's Christ day today. Not your day, not my day, not a day to catch up on our chores or this and that. But rather it is the Lord's day. They say, Pastor, I think we're like moving backwards to a time of what they call them blue light laws. Is that what they were called?

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Isn't that right where it was like Sunday, you couldn't be open on this day. You couldn't have. I mean, can you imagine going back to a time like that? It would seem oppressive to many, and many would. Would flip out.

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You know, they would have a heart attack this morning. Are you saying we should go back? I'm not saying we should go back. Politically, I don't care what the government does, okay? That has no bearing on your walk with Christ.

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If there is any obligation for us to meet together, worshiping in his name, witnessing to one another so that we can encounter Christ in our midst, all of a sudden, then that obligation goes before any state obligation. It goes before any other convictions that we might have a family time or anything else. You know, I've heard it. I've heard every excuse in the book, as you can imagine being a pastor. Right?

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And I get it. There's a lot of good excuses. There really are tons of them. People want to. Oh, I just.

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It's the only day where our family can be together. I dare say that if you were to just simply stay home today, rather than doing what you right here are doing, you wouldn't be spending time, any quality time with your family, not any more important than what you're doing in this place. Your children in this place are getting something much better than what would be on TV or a ball game that you would go to or perhaps play in or any other social event. Because if they could encounter Christ today, what is that worth to a young person? You know, one of the things that impacted me most growing up in church and I, you know, I love the fact that I grew up in church.

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I know some people have church heard and all that. And it's legitimate. It really is. My experience was unbelievable faithfulness. And I just remember there, there are people in my mind right now that are just literal pillars in the faith because they were there every Sunday.

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They were serving every time the door was available to serve another. And they didn't just come for themselves, you know. And you know what? Growing up, that impacted me as a kid. I thought that's what it means to be a saint.

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You know why the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, you know why they hold saints in high esteem? They have statues. They don't worship them like they're not supposed to. At least some parts they do. Okay, we can talk about that.

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But on paper, they're not worshiping them. Okay. What they're doing is a constant reminder of faithfulness, a life of faithfulness. And you know what? Here's what I've noticed.

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When you show up to stuff, to witness to Christ, like we did sunrise, like we did Easter, you know what? It encourages my faith. Have you noticed that faith is contagious like this? It passes from person to person and we strengthen one another. And who this room doesn't need their faith strengthened?

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Like, let's just be real. We all need our faith strengthened in Christ. No one has yet seen him face to face. And thus we must remind each other and encourage one another and call for God to send his Holy Spirit among us so that we can encounter the risen Christ in a place like this, with a amount of people just like this. Listen, it wasn't any sort of massive convening that was going on in this upper room.

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It was a small group of folks that were there, scared and locked behind closed doors in fear. And yet Jesus appears. You see, all I'm saying is this. I think we need to set up a rhythm of worship. A rhythm, if we could put it this way, of resurrection in our life, that on Sundays I'm going to make it a point to be in the house of God somewhere, even if you're on travel, to make it a point I'm going to make.

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Or if you can't even get somewhere, like find a place get another coworker in there and say, let's have a time of worship, because this is the day that the Lord has made, and we are to rejoice and be glad in it. Not I, but we. And this is why we also say in our version of the confession of faith, we believe. It's important that we believe, not just I believe. This is not a solo event, is it?

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No. There's a cloud of witnesses and those. Cloud of witnesses. We even remember him here at this church of those who write. I mean, I can picture Jerome Reimer saying to me.

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I mean, sitting here, yes. But also saying to me, you know, hey, I say, jerome, it's good to see you, man. He said, it's good to be seen, Pastor, you know, and it's true. Because guess what? He's gone now.

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He's gone to be with the Lord. But you know what? He still stays in here and in here for me. He still encouraged all the way to the end. He believed.

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And you know what? That encourages me, and it ought to encourage you. And we encourage one another, because where two or three are gathered, what? He is in our midst. He is in our midst.

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Okay, maybe one more thought on this. Coming to worship is not just getting something from me. One of the things that perhaps bothers me the most is when someone says, just really wasn't getting anything out of it. I think that's more of a personal matter than any problem here with you or with me or with the setup or the building or the music or anything else. People have been in way worse situations and still managed to hear from Christ, from prison, singing acapella with fleas all over them, and yet they can hear from Christ.

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How can we not? How can we complain? Do you understand? I'm not saying you have to stay at one church forever. Listen, there's all kind of reasons to leave.

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And everybody is going to leave a local church, whether it's in the casket or for other reasons, okay? Everybody's leaving, all right? Nobody's just going to stay in the church forever, okay? Let's just be real, all right? However, we don't come just to get.

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We come to serve one another and encourage one another's faith.

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All right? Secondly, notice what Jesus says three different times here. Is this, peace be with you. Peace be with his. Think about this.

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Think about the importance of this. After his. After this holy week that we marched through ourselves and walked through together, it was a long week. If you participated in most of the events we had here at the church, it was A long week. Think about Jesus week, right?

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Like, in reality, think about his long week. All that happened. Think about the disciples and all the mixed feelings and doubts and exhaustion and you know what? Jesus finally appears to them. And what are his very first words?

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I know what my first words would have been. My first words would have been, guys, I told y'all this was coming, like, you know, because, you know, when I'm right, I like people to know I'm right. You know, it's like, hey, by the way, you remember I said and kind of predicted like, that they were going to win and, well, they won, didn't they? You know, I like people to know that, right? I would have been like, guys, don't you, like, ta da.

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You know, like, I mean, that's what I would have done. But what does Jesus do now? Some might say. Some might even say, hey, you know what? He's gonna be mad at us.

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He's gonna be miffed. You know, I mean, he's gonna come in and he's. Because, you know, when you don't do the right thing and you mess up and somebody's coaching you, it's like they're gonna start wagging the finger, you know, gonna start raising everybody. Hey, what were you doing? What were you thinking?

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Peter, come on, man. I had faith in you, dude. Where were you? I thought you were going to the end with me. And a little girl breaks your faith?

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No. Peace be with you. And more than likely, Jesus would have used shalom. Shalom. Which isn't just peace in the way we typically think of it.

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Like peace in the Middle east, which means no conflict. No, no. Shalom means everything rightly ordered.

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Copacetic, right? Everything is at peace. It's where it should be.

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And he says it not once, but twice on that first evening. And then once again the next week, he comes and says, peace be with you. We need to get out of our minds this idea that God is in heaven. Just constantly frustrated with us, which he should be, especially me. Trust me, I know I'm frustrating because it comes out in people that I love that let me know that I know I frustrate God, okay?

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And yet, you know what he continues to do? Lavish his grace and love and peace in my life. If I look to him now, you know what he won't do if I'm going in the wrong direction, he will frustrate my ways. And thank God he does. I'm thankful for that frustration because he's gently correcting me like a good father.

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But, you know, he's not mad at you. When he comes back from the dead, when he's accomplished the work of Christ, you know what he's ready to do? He's ready to forgive. Notice as soon as he says, peace be with you. Then he says, I'm going to give you the ministry.

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He says, peace be with you. Then he gives them the Holy Spirit breathes on them, which all that imagery from Genesis is coming back. The first Adam, this is the last Adam, and. And now the last Adam. Rather than receiving the breath of God.

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Think about it. He gives the breath of God. What a beautiful scene. Beautiful imagery, powerful for us. And then he says, if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them.

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If you retain the sins of any, they are retained. And what does Paul say? We have a ministry of reconciliation, which means there's something that's broken apart that must be forgiven to be brought back together. It's why forgiveness is so critical in all of our relationships.

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Jessica and I, we've been married for May 29, will be 21 years. But trust me when I say there's been a lot of forgiveness throughout the years, mainly on her to bear the burden. Truly, we. But at times we've gotten sideways with one another, said things that in the moment felt good but weren't true. And you know what?

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We've forgiven one another. Otherwise we had to part ways. And thanks be to God, he is a loving forgiver. In other words, he actually likes to forgive us. He's open arms.

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He's not holding it and doling it out just in little bits.

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Forgive them. They know not what they do. In other words, he forgives us. Even when it's hard for us to forgive us.

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He forgives us. And we must accept that forgiveness. And you know what that takes? Faith. Faith.

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Not doubt, not fear, but faith.

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And then he gives us once we are a forgiven people. He then turns around and gives us the ministry of reconciliation, of forgiveness. In other words, one of our most important jobs, perhaps Christians, is to forgive. I've been reading in Nehemiah, and he asked forgiveness for the whole nation. He takes it upon himself to say, you know what?

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Not only do I need forgiveness, not only does my family need forgiveness, not only does my local tribe need forgiveness, but the whole nation, we have sinned. We. He joins himself to them and asks God to forgive.

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It's one thing for you to be forgiven. It's another to. To bear like Christ did, the sins of the people. And you know what? Our reading.

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Which one was it? Revelation reading said we are all priests serving God. Most people just think this is the priestly office here where I'm at. No, everyone is a priest, everyone, a prophet witnessing to the truth of Christ, administering forgiveness, the forgiveness of Christ, not just your forgiveness, Christ forgiveness. We forgive because Christ so graciously forgave us.

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And if we don't forgive, we won't be forgiven. Jesus says this on a Sermon on the Mount. Isn't it what we pray in the Lord's Prayer as well? Forgive us as we forgive others. Yes.

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Forgiveness is one of the primary reasons he goes to the cross. And because he has already said it is finished, he is more than ready to forgive and so should we. It's not an option, it's an obligation. Now, finally, let's look at Thomas, as has been called doubting Thomas. And you know, I've been over the past couple years, I've been doing a lot of work on actually certainty, doubt and faith and where scientific trust and faithful religious trust come together and what is their relationship, even, you know, which are some philosophical problems actually, and theological.

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I don't want to give you all that of two years of work. Okay? I'm not going to do that this morning. Okay. I'm going to save you from that.

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Right. But I do want to say this.

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Being certain of something physically is different than being certain of something relationally. Wouldn't you agree? In other words, I had some ice cream last night because it was my birthday, you know, actually a dipped cone. I have not had one of those in years and years and I can only eat half of it because I just, you know, whatever. But I ate half of it and it was good, you know, and you could not have convinced me that I wasn't eating ice cream.

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I was very certain that I was eating Dairy Queen soft serve cone dipped ice cream. You know, you could have argued till you were blue in the face and it wouldn't have convinced me because I was certain of that, okay? Because I was there, right? I was tasting it, it was in my hand, etc. Etc.

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But if you turn around and said, okay, but do you know that Jessica loves you? I say, absolutely, I'm certain of that. But isn't it a different kind of certainty? I don't hold her love in my hand. I can't see her thoughts or her love.

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Exactly. In other words, we can be certain of certain relationships, but it's a different kind of certainty than what you would find physically, so to speak, because love truly isn't physical in itself. If it were, you could just say to your kids, hey, I'm going to share this love with you today. And there you go, you would have it. And they could disseminated among themselves.

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That's not love. It's not how it works.

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And yet I do believe that Jessica loves me. You know, I trust that I base my life on that. I assume as much because of certain things. And so too with Jesus, we can maybe go further and say, as Thomas Aquinas does, that there's actually a breakup of three, which is physics, which is that physical piece, mathematics, which lifts us a little beyond the physical, but still is based in the physical, and then to the meta, thirdly, physical, which would be beyond, just completely beyond. In other words, something that the physical isn't even considered.

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To give you an illustration, again, think about the ice cream. We can prove that it's ice cream by certain physical means. It's physics, et cetera, it's cold and etc. Okay, mathematics. How can it be lifting above the physical a little bit, but still kind of attached?

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Well, think about the number negative 20. Can you demonstrate that physically? I have negative 20 chairs. Show me that. You're not going to get that.

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And yet it's very certain there's negative 20.

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Yes, there's certainly. You can count 20 chairs off. But the negative is harder. It lifts us beyond what is physical. Okay, same thing with other parts of geometry and things that I have no idea about.

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But understand it's mathematical, right? Now when we move to something like metaphysics, that would be something like the law of non contradiction or something like why does something exist rather than nothing? And that it does tells us. But there's no way to really prove that at the end of the day, all right, now I'm not. I'm pulling back out of the weeds.

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I'm getting you back in the shallow end here with me. Because trust me, those things get high and mighty. Here's where faith comes in, though. Faith is a certain kind of certainty. It's a certain kind of faith.

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Trust. Trust means faith, allegiance, assumption about life. And we make these assumptions and some of them are so close to us that we don't really consider them until something goes wrong and then we start considering them. And this happened to the disciples. They were in a crisis of faith, were they not?

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He had been with them, now he wasn't. He had been with them. Then they saw him on a tree. He was with them alive. And then they saw him dead and now alive again.

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That's going to cause a crisis. And yet they were told to believe without seeing. Interesting, isn't it? And in fact, blessed if you believe without seeing, demanding the proof. So here's what I want to go with, that people don't doubt enough.

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This is what I thought about this morning, actually. People don't doubt enough. If you doubt it enough, you would actually come to a realization of Christ. And here's why. People stop short in their doubts and live in skepticism.

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But what we should do when we doubt is keep pursuing until we find hard ground, until we find the proofs, whatever they may be. And they're not going to be physical proofs. God is immaterial. So that we might as well not even look for it like that. Okay?

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But there are other ways, like with Jessica, that I can know that I'm loved. From my family, I can know that I'm loved. And you say, well, prove it. And it's hard to. To show you.

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And yet it's a reality for me. My phenomena, my experiences are impossible to. If I told you I met Christ at 5 years old and asked him to come into my heart, and you say, no, you didn't prove it to me. I literally can't. Other than it was my actual experience.

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And you know what? That's more true than ice cream, actually, for me is my experience with Christ. Do you see what I'm getting at? Is some people, they doubt, and then they live in it and say, oh, well, because we doubt, therefore, that's proof that there is no God. No, no, no doubt ought to lead to God.

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We don't doubt our doubts enough. That's what I'm saying. In other words, if you truly are a doubter, go with it and begin to doubt why you're doubting this and how one might prove it. All right? And so let me give you one of my favorite illustrations, which is CS Lewis.

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So bear with me just a moment just to say, C.S. lewis was an atheist most of his life, all right? And he was a very smart atheist, but he had a conversion. And here's part of this story. He's like, this is autobiography, by the way.

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Surprised by joy. He says this. You must picture me. Think about this. You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalene, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted, even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet.

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He wanted so badly that there not to be a God. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me in the trinity term of 1929, I gave in and. And admitted that God was God and knelt and prayed. Perhaps that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all of England, he said he was probably the only convert who was drug into the kingdom. Eyes darting back and forth, scared of who he was going to meet.

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But he knew there was a God. In my own life, I find some resonance with this because I never have doubted in my life that there was a God. But what kind of God that was and what we have here in our text is this kind of God. Peace be with you. He wants to make peace with us.

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He wants to give us peace that surpasses knowledge. He wants to give us his Holy Spirit in his book the Problem of Pain, which, as you may know, came out of the death of his wife, Joy was her name, which is why his autobiography, by the way, is called Surprised by Joy. When I was an atheist, if I kept on asking why the universe was there at all or why anything exists rather than nothing, I felt I was making a fool of myself because according to my atheist teachers, there was no answer. But now I see that if there were no answer, I could have never asked the question. You see, a lot of people think because there are questions, there is no God, but you're reading it wrongly.

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Turn that around. Because there's questions. There is a God because there is something rather than nothing, and someone who has defeated death on our behalf. So when doubts come, live into them, but then beyond them. Because here's the reality.

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Faith is both a virtue and a gift, which means it's something we practice and make a habit of doing. Again, a rhythm. But it's also something God gives us as we trust in Christ. So wherever you might be on your faith journey, don't let doubt stand in the way. Let it be fuel for the fire to get to know him more.

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For instance, just like in a relationship, if you begin to doubt, what do you do? You go to that person, hey, I'm feeling like this or that. And you know what it ought to lead to? If there's something real there, if there's something loving there, you know what it leads to. It leads to more love.

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It leads to knowing them and trusting them even more. That's what you're going to find if you trust Christ, if He gives us this gift of faith. So worshiping on Sunday, it's a matter of faith. It's trusting Jesus. Even when we can't see him, we can encounter him here together.

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And Sundays are meant for this corporate encounter. So let's get in a rhythm of prioritizing Christ together on Sundays, guarding that time just as strongly as Jessica and I have guarded date nights where, where we have to have just time together apart from the kids. The kids are going to leave. We don't want to leave each other when the kids leave. And we are at the core of the family, not them.

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And so we've protected that time. And we must protect time with Christ, with our brothers and sisters in the family of God. Also, no matter how locked up we may feel with fear or doubt, no matter how many doors we've shut to try and hide from him, he can still make an appearance. Just realize when you least expect it, he shows up. And understand this doubt itself is not necessarily this good thing.

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And yet it's. It can be a tool to know him more. It can be a tool that leads us to trust him more, to seek Him. Because here's what the Bible says, if we seek him, what we will find Him. That's why I'm saying, are you sure you're doubting enough to look like, actually look, actually ask in Those moments, like C.S.

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lewis in his room by himself asking, call out the name of Jesus and see if he doesn't come. See if he doesn't encounter you with this. Peace be with you. Here is my Holy Spirit. And now I send you out with a ministry of reconciliation.

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So today, don't doubt. Instead, believe in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Total Duration 00:36:45