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September 03, 2006
The Evidence for Trust in Jesus
Deuteronomy 18: 15-22/John 5: 30-47
September 3rd, 2006
This morning we have listened to two very striking passages from the Bible, first from Deuteronomy where Moses promises that God will provide another prophet like him. And the question that looms over the years since Moses lived is, “Who was that prophet? Or maybe, “Has that prophet come yet?” We Christians believe Jesus was that one who was actually far more than a prophet. Indeed we take pride in this and ask why everyone doesn’t.
The second passage from the Gospel of John shows us Jesus involved in discussion with fellow Jews about His credibility. What is the evidence that He was legitimate—that is, that in healing on the Sabbath He did the work of God? Was He the one about whom Moses and many other prophets spoke?
Whose testimony should they believe? They looked to current opinion. Jesus pointed out to them that they accept the authority of those who speak on their own authority. Teacher such and such said this so we accept what he says. Nicodemus probed beneath the opinion of the teachers of his day and so he came to Jesus by night to see Jesus for himself. He knew his Bible. He came to see that there was more to Jesus than met the eye of his contemporaries.
John the Baptist believed Jesus was the Lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world. Should they believe John the Baptist who spoke so glowingly of Him? They didn’t, though all admired John.
Jesus said there were three “evidences” they should believe. First, his works, second, God the Father, and third, the Scriptures. Let us consider these three evidences shortly.
These two passages—from Deuteronomy and the Gospel of John--that point us to Jesus prodded me to ask the question, “What is the evidence for trust in Jesus?”
We can take that question in two ways. First, we might take it as Josh McDowell intended in his well-known book, Evidence that Demands a Verdict. That is, what is the historical and biblical evidence pointing to Him that should compel us to trust in Him?
Second, we might take it from the other angle, “What is the evidence that I trust in Jesus?”
In large measure I think the second question is the most important. Because Jesus is not on trial before us. We have come to treat matters of faith as a great trial with the world as the jury. Christianity is the defendant along with Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, and all the other religions that compete for followers. Which one is right? In a way we seem to think that the one that gets the most votes wins. We are big into statistics, you know—democracy however, doesn’t work in matters of faith.
How many members in a religion marks its “success” after all. We’re big into numbers. So we’re worried that Islam is gaining so fast, and Mormonism, and as Presbyterians we worry at the loss of members that many of us think is indicative of something grim. Thus we see external evidence as a clue to what’s going on.
But over and over again the Bible makes plain that it is what’s going on in the human heart that matters. The prophet Isaiah grabs me: “This is the one to whom I will look, the one that is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word.” This puts the focus squarely on the individual. God looks through the institutions we establish in our structuring of what is right, often informed by what we are accustomed to. He probes past all of this to the heart of the one who will find Him only if this one seeks Him with all her heart.
Belief, obedience to God’s ways, faithfulness in following Jesus happens one person at a time. And this is the evidence that is either there or not there that we have trusted in Him.
Although I believe it is certainly important that we speak what is true about Jesus so that people may know rightly of him, it is far more needful that we live what is true. And this is what I hope you may consider deeply in your heart. Not just how I or anyone argues persuasively that Jesus fulfills prophecy, or that He was the Son of God—an idea we do not, indeed CANNOT understand. But what you and I can understand if we evidently trust Jesus because we take His word to heart, and try earnestly to live what He teaches us.
We have erred in the terms we use. A teaching we may learn and then recite. So we refer to Jesus’ teachings as lessons learned in school, from a book. But if Jesus’ teachings are not just information but commands that must be obeyed from the heart they take on a different cast. We are compelled to obey commands from our legal system that seem to have immediate consequences if we disobey, but what about commands that don’t have immediate consequences? Jesus’ commands don’t have immediate punishment if we disobey them.
If each time we did not perform according to the golden rule, doing unto others as we would have them do to us, there was an immediate punishment—say a severe headache, or an immense pang of guilt, we might get the idea that this is a command. And we would start to take note of how we are treating others, lest we get a horrid headache or a severe dose of guilt. If each time we did not feed the hungry that we are able to feed, or clothe an insufficiently clothed person in the dead of winter that we could clothe, or deliberately go to the prisons to care for the Jesuses that are incarcerated, or care for the lonely sick in hospital—we received a severe headache or a horrendous pang of guilt, then we might realize that the commands of Jesus were indeed COMMANDS.
But this does not happen. We become accustomed to disobedience in the particulars of Jesus commands. We disobey without remorse because we do not receive immediate punishment. Jesus will not force us to obey Him. The church doesn’t dare. We’ve tried to follow Scripture in this. What happens is that folk simply go elsewhere.
Obedience must come from the heart, out of love for Him. And we know that we love Jesus if His commands are so important to us that we obey them. And if we do obey from the heart there is a luminous quality to our lives that starts to glow.
Indeed, it is more than a clever statement to say that the only book about Jesus that people can understand is the book of your life and mine. How many have been turned off by Jesus Christ by the Bible? A lot of folk talk about the Bible who have never read it. But they have read your life and mine. And their opinions of the Bible are often based on what they have read in your life and mine.
So the great question is, “What is the evidence that you and I trust in Jesus?”
The objective of faith is to bring the human heart into the ways of God. And by heart we mean the whole life. You can tell what a person really believes by what he does, much more than by what he says.
But it is our duty to try to understand what Jesus said about why we should trust in Him—as the beginning point of showing we trust in Him.
In John’s Gospel we read this morning that there were these three evidences: first, His works, second,
God the Father’s witness, and third, the Scriptures.
There were those in Jesus day who were struck by His works.
Thus word of Jesus got to Josephus, the first century Jewish historian who was born shortly after Jesus was crucified said of Jesus something like this:
At that time there arose Jesus, a wise man, if one should call him a man. For he was a performer of marvelous works, a teacher of those who receive the truth with pleasure. And he won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. It was said of him, ‘This was the Christ.’ When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by the foremost men among us, condemned him to the cross, those who first loved him did not cease. For he appeared to them again alive on the third day, the prophets having foretold these things and many other marvels about him. And even now the tribe of Christians, so called after him, has not disappeared.
Wow! Josephus seemed to know all that was most important about Jesus. He even knew that the Hebrew Bible foretold Jesus’ coming.
Indeed many people were amazed at His works, who never got beyond wanting Him to do more and more of them. After all, when He fed them they didn’t have to work hard for their food. And if He healed them, they felt much better. But they never saw past the signs that He did to believe in Him.
Then there was the testimony of God the Father. How were they to pick up on this if they could not hear God the Father’s voice? Jesus noted, “His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen.” But the one witness of the Father they did have they neglected. “You do not have his word abiding in you.” What was this word? I think this word must refer to the witness of history, the witness that came through daily life of the insufficiency of sacrifices they offered to do what they longed to do when they offered them faithfully. Each time a father brought the family to the Temple to sacrifice a lamb there must have been the feeling, “There has to be more to loving God than this.” There must have been the sense that God wanted more than to see a lamb die. They offered sacrifices out of duty, while their hearts longed for God. And their need could only be satisfied if the object of their desire was a person rather than a strange, mysterious, illusive, hidden God. Their very sense of lack testified to the One who would satisfy them when they saw Him.
But when this One came, they didn’t realize He was the One. There is an inertia in the human heart. We are trapped in custom. Even we who claim to have seen Jesus are trapped in our customs so that we know the word, know the story of Him, but He may not have penetrated into our hearts.
The third witness was the Hebrew Bible. How so? Subtly, mysteriously the witness of the Father comes through as we read even the Hebrew Bible. We examine all its parts and can see it points to a final blessing to the world. Not just monotheism, but a person—one like Moses, no—better than Moses. Because their ancestors hardly received Moses with respect. His reputation far exceeded how Moses was received in His own day. He was rejected, often treated with contempt. God had to protect Moses from his own people’s rebellion.
There is not time to suggest how all the Old Testament pointed to Jesus. Nor is this needful because what is important is not encyclopedic knowledge of the fact of Jesus, but submission to the will of Jesus.
As Jesus said that His judgment was just because it was not His will but the will of the One who sent Him, so you and I can expect that we have to get beyond our own will to do His will. We have tried to blend our strong wills with impressions of what it is to be a Christian, and it doesn’t work. Only if in your day to day life, and in my day to day life we deliberately ask, “Lord, what is your will?” will we ever know His will. Asking God’s will is 99% of the battle of life.
How the Church is hurt by our strong wills, what we want very much, not having asked with all our hearts, “Lord, what is your will?” of everything we say and act upon. A proof that the Church is of Divine institution perhaps, is that it has survived despite the chaos of strong wills by which we are torn.
This is why it is evident that the key evidence that will be persuasive to the world that Jesus is worthy of trust is that we have trusted His will for us—that we seek His will as the guiding principle of our lives. This is so uncommon, and its results are so full of grace, that the truth will come through—the great truth by which we show we have been saved. Saved from what? Saved from ourselves. Saved from our fighting conflict of wills by which the harmony in the Church is evident.
As we take the Lord’s Table this morning, as you hold that bread and cup in your hand will you, in your heart say with honesty, “Lord, let your will be my will.” If you and I do this often enough we start to believe and seek what we pray for. The world waits for us who say we trust in Jesus to show evidence that we actually do.
Let this begin this morning. Let this begin again tomorrow morning. Let this begin across the body that gathers here today. And I wonder what will be the effect as others see the evidence that we trust in Jesus.
Let us pray. O Lord, grant to us to trust in Jesus in whom we say we trust. Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at September 3, 2006 09:30 AM