Believing is More than Seeing
Sermon link: https://youtu.be/WxUybopq0ZM
Readings: 2 Corinthians 5:1-10, Psalm 91, John 20:19-31
You've heard it said, "seeing is believing", but I tell you believing is seeing. Believing is the starting place, it is where we discover, find and live in hope and life. It is the place where hope becomes reality and where God walks among us. Obviously, I am talking about one very particular type of belief in Jesus Christ as our Savior, king, God, the one who died for us, rose to new life, and now sits beside the Father in heaven. This belief is the centre and starting place for all potential and blessings. As Jesus says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe”
Let's first take a step back and look at this need for belief in a very worldly way, because it does present the same truth. If you don't believe an outcome is possible, would you pursue it? Or if your fear overpowers your belief in a hopeful result, wouldn't you hide from doing it? Even if something is in the midst of happening but we don't believe it, we will probably miss it. Belief already plays a big part in our lives, but sadly as it stands most people base their beliefs on very worldly, limited, and broken realities.
The result of this is that we limit ourselves, we limit our hopes and the potential of any moment. Like the disciples, we allow our fears to lock us in, we push away the joy that could be ours, and we don’t know the power of God in our midst. Or in modern fears, we become overly protective of what we have, we don’t invite in the stranger, we feel awkward about new interactions, we don’t change our path, we depend on what is known and comfortable rather than what is possible in God. Or you could look at something like the resurrection. We believe in the literal resurrection of Jesus Christ, but how far does that belief go? Does it only reach as far as the new flowers in spring, or the restoration of relationships, or the birth of a new child, because that is what we have seen and experienced? Or does our belief in the resurrection stretch into the reality that it has freed us from sin and evil forever, it has pulled us out of the pit into a land of bounty, it has redeemed all suffering, that it has defeated death and has offered us a doorway into eternity through Jesus Christ? That latter kind of faith knows no limits to hope.
Our lack of faith limits us in experiencing and seeing the bounteous joy of God and sharing it. Even worse though, our lack of faith can also limit God’s potential to work through us and in us. So faith is not just seeing the potential and reality, but in some ways it makes room for God’s powerful work to happen.
Don’t get me wrong, God’s loving work is going to happen anyway. He has a plan for the world and nothing, not even our sin, lack of belief, or his death will get in the way. The difference our faith makes is how much we will see and participate in it locally and personally.
Chances are over the last few sermons you might have experienced a bit of a disconnect. Here we were looking at these stories of the resurrected Christ where he walked beside them and ate with them, where he would appear beside them and they could touch his wounds and talk to him. Then I told you that we can do the same thing. Yet Jesus does not walk beside us or sit beside us in the same way. It is a lot harder to hear his voice or two feel his presence than it is to do with the person next to you. But Jesus tells us today that we are even more blessed if we are able to believe and know God when we have not seen or touch him. Even though it might not always seem it, we can be thankful for a more profound way of knowing God, through faith in Christ.
Faith is an essential reality in our relationship with God. Faith is what causes us to step out and meet him. Faith is what causes us to follow him even when everything else may tell us not to. Faith is what allows us to see the incredible work that he is doing. Faith is what causes us to be faithful and meet a faithful God. Notice, that in all these examples, God is faithfully doing the work needed, but it is through faith that we meet him there.
That brings us to the strange reality that Paul talks about in Corinthians 2. We Christians live on earth in a broken world and people and yet this is not our home, this is not what we look for, this is not where our hope rests. We are a people caught between two worlds, the world of our basest senses and the world that our faith leads us to experience, the world of a broken humanity and the world of heaven on earth. In some ways they both exist and for this life we must learn how to walk in-between both. We must learn how to speak and move into the known world, sharing the reality of our faith, so that together we might speak and move into the world that is coming to be.
Paul is definitive in saying, this life still matters. This earthly broken life has an effect on how we experience the world to come. I don’t know what Jesus’ judgement of our good and evil will look like, but what we do now, matters to our eternal home and how much we belong.
This isn’t the reason we want to please God. We want to please God because he has given us everything we are and know and he still promises us more. We want to please God, because he is immensely pleasing. We want to please God, because he deserves it. We want to please God because we have met a faithful and gracious God who we can trust and follow. There are so many reasons to be faithful, but again it also starts with faith, a faith that points our way to seeing and experiencing what is beyond us.
The result of faith is not always a karmic retribution of good things. In fact, sometime it is an essential part of our calling to faithfully suffer like Christ, so that we might point people toward’s the hope in a world beyond. The beautiful part about faith though is that there is always far more in our relationship with the creator then there is outside of it. The beautiful part about faith is it can help us see beyond the worst situation towards hope and life in God. The beautiful part about faith is that it creates faithful relationships that only speak more into the world to come. The beautiful part about faith is that it allows you to see the infinite and powerfully loving God is with us in the Holy Spirit.
So, how far does your faith go? When God shows himself in a beautiful way, do you look for something even greater? Do you continually challenge yourself to believe and trust more beyond sight? Do you challenge yourself to trust God’s guidance and step out beyond your comfort and understanding? Do you take the time you couldn’t spare to build a relationship with your savior who spared you? There are so many nextsteps to grow and challenge yourself in faith. The important part is that we are doing them, because it is in the mystery that we meet God. We are called to walk by faith and not by sight. AMEN
Bible Study: 2 Corinthians 5:1-10, Psalm 91, John 20:19-31
John 20:19-31
Why do the disciples lock themselves inside?
What doyou think it mean that Jesus appears inside the closed house twice?
Why do you think seeing Jesus changes their fear to joy? Does this relate to our seeing or knowing Jesus in life?
Why do you think Thomas can’t believe the experience of his disciples?
Why was it important for him to see and touch Jesus?
Jesus basically repeats Thomas’ words back to him when he appears. Why do you think he does this? What does it mean?
How could someone be more blessed for believing without seeing?
What does this speak to us today?
2 Corinthians 5:1-10
What is Paul talking about when he is talking about the tent?
What do you imagine this building from God to be like?
Does Paul mean by this that we are waiting for a purely spirit afterlife? (Relate to Revelation 21:1-3)
What is the burden that we groan under? (Relate first to the text (vs 4), before looking at our experiences, but then feel free to relate your experience to what the text is pointing us to)
Who has prepared us for this new home? And how?
How is the Spirit a guarantee of this new home and life?
Why does Paul believe we have reasons to be confident?
What does it mean to find our home in the body vs. home in the Lord?
How can we walk by faith and not by sight? What would this look like in our choices and how we live?
Why do we want to please God? (Within the text and without)
Why is it important that Jesus comes to judge all the good and the bad?
