Principles Of Faith
Tom Shrader examines Jesus' appearances to His disciples on resurrection evening in John 20:19-31, showing how the crucified and risen Christ transforms fear into rejoicing through His presence. He emphasizes that peace comes not from the absence of turmoil but from God's presence, and calls believers to live missionally in the world rather than withdrawing into Christian subculture.
“Peace is not the absence of turmoil. Peace is the presence of God.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Principles (2009)
Recorded: 2009 at Cannon Beach Conference Center
Duration: 55 min
Themes: faith, fear, peace, resurrection, mission, presence, transformation, rejoicing, struggling with fear, facing uncertainty, new believer, feeling isolated, seeking purpose, pastor, missionary, church leader
Scripture: John 20:19-31, John 20:30-31, John 14:6, 2 Corinthians 5:21, John 14, John 15, John 16, John 17, Acts 2, Acts 17, James 1
Theological Themes: christology, incarnation, missiology, great commission, pneumatology, holy spirit, soteriology, salvation
Full Transcript
The perfect way to start the day. What a perfect song, what a great reminder. It's interesting, John didn't know where I was going to go with this today, but that really leads right into what I'd like to talk about.
You open your Bibles to the Gospel of John, and what I want to do is follow up and connect on what we talked about last night, as we were dealing with the whole idea of legacy. I want to try to tie these things together, and I'm operating on the point that you can't pass on what you don't already have. I'm also operating on the perspective that we're probably going to do more reminding than informing here this week that we're together. But I think this is a great place for us to jump off based on where we were last night.
Why John's Gospel
The Gospel of John is a gospel that I personally love. I mentioned it when I first met Larry - he said, "Why don't you start reading in the Gospel of John." There's a reason, by the way. I don't know if you understand this fully, but so often when you're talking to somebody who is perhaps new to the faith, or you have somebody who's asking questions, often we'll direct them not to the Gospel of Matthew, Mark, or Luke, or even to some other book in the Scripture, but we'll so often direct them to the Gospel of John.
The reason is really simple. In chapter 20, look at chapter 20 verse 30 for a second - it's at the end of the book, almost the very close. Rather than put his purpose statement up front, John has decided to put it in the back of the book.
He writes this in John chapter 20 verses 30 and 31: "Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of the disciples which are not recorded in this book." I think that's probably important for us to understand. I think we intuitively know that, but sometimes we just need to say that - obviously everything Jesus did is not recorded here in the Scripture. There were a whole bunch of other things in His life that happened, and other miracles even, and signs that aren't recorded here.
The Author - John the Beloved Disciple
But John - let me just remind you, this is John, the disciple whom Jesus loved. This is John, the disciple who had an intimate relationship with Christ. Jesus had this group of 12, and then a subset of that was Peter, James, and John. Jesus seemed to have them as an executive committee, and yet it seems that there was even a more special relationship that Jesus had with John. Again, he identifies himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved.
You have seen those pictures of the Last Supper, and you will see there's Jesus, and you'll see that there's one of the men who's leaning, resting against Him, and that's depicted as John - the very John we talk about here. He's John who's prolific in terms of gospel writing. He writes 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John, the book of Revelation, and this gospel as well. It is believed, at least through tradition, that he's the only one of the disciples who was not martyred, but died on the island of Patmos, exiled there sometime shortly after writing the book of Revelation. He lived to be a ripe old age of 93, 94, 95, something like that - we're speculating, but that's probably pretty close.
So it's that John, the eyewitness. John writes this gospel account. It's a first-hand account. He did not go and interview other sources. He is operating from what he knew.
John's Firsthand Account vs. Luke's Research
That contrasts, for example, with Luke, who begins his gospel: "Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things that accomplished, just as they were handed down to us by those who were from the beginning eyewitnesses and servants of the Lord, it seemed well and fitting for me, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it down for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus." Well, Luke is saying, I went and I gathered the facts, I did eyewitnessing, and I got their reports. But John is saying, "No, I was there."
The Purpose of John's Gospel
Now, verse 31, here's why this book was written: "...that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ" - that is, you would believe He's the Messiah, you'd be the one who was promised, the one that they've been waiting for for thousands of years - "that you would believe that He was the Christ, Emmanuel, God with us, the Son of God, and that in believing you would have life in His name." John said, I specifically chose these miracles.
So, John's Gospel is very different than the other three. John's Gospel doesn't have, as I recall, any parables in it. John's Gospel is considered in some ways the most theological of the Gospels. But John has a very distinct purpose in writing, and that is that we would be struck by the miracles that we see, and as a result of these miracles, we would believe Jesus is who He said He was.
We would become convinced, through the work of the Holy Spirit in our life, that Jesus Christ was God come in the flesh to redeem His people from their sin. We would believe what we've read, and that is that Jesus was born of a virgin, that it was not an accidental birth. When Joseph found out that Mary was pregnant, he was going to respond to this. He had never been with her physically, and an angel appeared to him and said, "Joseph, Mary's going to have a boy, and you will name Him Jesus, for He will save His people from their sin." That's Jesus' whole purpose in coming. Jesus is an amazing teacher.
He's an amazing role model. He is clearly, in terms of human terms, there's no one who's ever been able to even come close to Him, yet He is God, and He came not to be a great teacher or a great leader, but He came to be a suffering servant and to die on the cross so we would have eternal life.
So John's Gospel takes us through that. It takes us through the public ministry of Christ, and then it takes us to those most intimate of moments. If you are one of those people, and so often we are looking for a Bible study, something I can get into, maybe on my own and work through, you aren't going to beat studying John 14, 15, 16, and 17. Boy, if you're looking for something, you want to go away, and you just want to kind of go in there and plumb the richness of that, that's Jesus with His boys the night before He dies. That's Him pouring out His heart. These are His marching orders, His last, before the crucifixion, His last comments to these guys. And then in chapter 17, it's Him praying. It's the real Lord's Prayer. We have the model that we call the Lord's Prayer, but the real Lord's Prayer is there in John 17.
The Crucifixion and Resurrection
Well, what happens as we work our way through the very end of that is that then Judas betrays Him. Jesus is now arrested. He comes before the Jewish leaders and then before Pilate, and then He's crowned with thorns, and then He's crucified. And when we got to John chapter 20, we get to the empty tomb.
We get to that first morning, and John records it again, and I'll let you read through there some other time. John records it that he gets this call. Mary Magdalene comes and says they've taken away the body. We don't know where the Lord is. And Peter and John are together, and they run to the tomb. John tells us that he got there first, but he didn't go in, but Peter did, and saw that the tomb was empty. And then they walked away.
John seems to indicate at that moment kind of conflicting messages. He says in chapter 20, verse 8, "the other disciple," he's talking about himself, "the one who came to the tomb first, then entered and saw and believed." Something happened, something clicked there. And there's two or three words that are available in Greek, and we would take one and just say, well, I see it's raining. But the word that's used here is different.
We might use it in English this way. You're dealing with somebody in a mathematics problem. You're trying to teach them mathematics, and all of a sudden you're working and working and working, and then one day, this miraculous day, it never happened to me in mathematics, but in this miraculous day, someone would say, "oh, I see it," meaning I get it, I understand it, I believe it. That's the word that John uses. Yet he goes ahead then and says, but they really didn't understand the scripture at this point.
Jesus Appears to Mary
They leave, Mary is there, she sees an angel, but doesn't seem concerned by it. Then she sees a guy that she thinks is the gardener, and said, "Where have you taken him? Let me know." And Jesus says, "Mary," and Mary understands that it's Him, Jesus. And Jesus said to her in verse 17, "Stop clinging to me, for I have not yet ascended into heaven, but go to my brethren and say to them, I have ascended to my Father, your Father and my God." And Mary came and announced to the disciples, "I've seen the Lord," that He had said these things to her.
Now I want to pick up, that's the background, in verse 19. When we talk about that first Easter morning, our emphasis is always on just that, the morning. But there's an evening time to that. Sometimes I'm not sure we connect these two things, but I want to connect them, and talk about the importance of passing on understanding and passing on faith.
The Exclusive Nature of Christianity
The exclusive nature of the Christian faith. It is my belief that what we have in the world when it comes to religion, is you have biblical Christianity, and then you have everything else. You have biblical Christianity, that's an understanding that we're sinners separated from God by our sin, and Jesus died, and if we believe indeed that God raised Him from the dead, and that Jesus is Lord, and then in fact we're a sinner and He died for us, then we have eternal life. Isn't that what scripture teaches? Absolutely. If I believe I have life, that's biblical Christianity.
Everything else I just put in the same bucket. Everything else is just some variation of religion. What separates us as followers of Christ from every other religion is this: biblical Christianity is about a holy God reaching down to a sinful man. Everything else is about a sinful man trying to somehow appease a holy God. Doing this, not doing this, going over there, don't drink this, do drink this, go to church then, kneel this way, talk this way.
We become known for what we do and what we don't do. It has a tendency of religion to become very narrow, very legalistic, very driven. Why? Because we're constantly trying to please God.
A Temple in Calcutta
We were in Calcutta and we were going down to see Mother Teresa's home for the dead and dying. It's an amazing place, Calcutta. It's so poor. It's overwhelming, really. It's overwhelming the circumstances. Right across the street from Mother Teresa's home for the dead and dying is a temple to the goddess Kali, the fertility god. We went in there and it was a really interesting experience.
We got to the back and there was a space about the size of this platform. Right in the middle of it, all of the concrete kind of sloped down to the middle and there was a drain there. There was a pole with a Y on the top of it. It was very strange. We said, "What is this?" They said, "Well, watch. They bring out a goat and they cut off its head and they sacrifice the goat to the goddess."
That's all religion. That's a radical perspective of it but it's the same thing. I have people who come to me all the time. I'm in a church, I teach in a church, but then I teach out in the marketplace during the week. I have people all the time, they'll
Come to me and they say, in essence, what they said to Peter after he delivered that powerful sermon in Acts chapter 2: "What do I need to do to be saved?" That's all religion.
Now, that night, these guys are gathered together. Look at that in verse 19: "So it was evening on the day, the first day of the week, and when the doors were shut, where the disciples were"—here we go, we're picking up right where we left off last night—"for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, 'Peace be with you.' And when He said this, He showed them both His hands and His side and the disciples then rejoiced when they saw the Lord."
See what's happening? It's that night, they're gathered together. The doors are shut and the implication is they're shut and they're locked. Why? They're afraid.
Fear Transformed to Joy
The Jews have just succeeded in eliminating, in their mind, public enemy number one: Jesus. And now these guys rationally conclude, "If they got Him, we're going to be next." They're behind those doors and they're afraid, and we understand why they're afraid.
In verse 19, they're afraid. In verse 20, they're rejoicing. What turns our fear into rejoicing? How is it in our life where we are instinctively, intuitively—it's human nature—afraid? We talked about it last night. It all flows from sin, from Adam's sin and then our sin. We are afraid of everything, aren't we?
How do I turn my fear into rejoicing? Do you see the answer? It's tucked right there. In the last part of verse 19, Jesus appears and He says to them, "Peace be with you."
The Meaning of Shalom
It's that word shalom. It's a word that's more than just a casual greeting. He's not simply saying, "How you doing?" He's saying, "Peace," and they understood that to mean—and cut me slack, because this word's kind of been hijacked by the New Age movement—a holistic approach to life. It's God indwelling every aspect of our life.
Shalom is us finding the presence of God in everything we do, in all areas of our life. So that it is impossible for us to segment or to compartmentalize God to any one aspect of our life.
There's a wonderful new book that will be out in a couple of months, and the premise of the book is how do we become Monday Christians? The idea being, we become very effective on Sunday. We got it all done. We go to church, give a little dough, listen to a message. If we're really spiritual, go to a Sunday school class, maybe help with the little kids. Maybe do some of those things, sing in the choir for the big events, because you don't sing particularly well, and they can hide you there. So you're singing in the choir, they bury you there, all those things that go with that. You go home, maybe if you're super spiritual, you go back Sunday night, though not many places do Sunday night anymore. If they do, that's where they'll have communion, and they buried it there, and then you have that. There's Sunday.
But now it's Monday.
The Enron Example
I was reading a fascinating article by a guy the other day, and he said that the worst thing that's happened to this country in the last ten years is not 9-11. It's Enron, because there's an organization run by a guy who's overtly Christian, who's evangelical, who taught a Sunday school class, and yet was able to compartmentalize his life, and allow all of this stuff to go on, and oversee the whole midst of it.
Your faith isn't worth a lick if it doesn't work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. If you've just segmented it to Sunday, it's no good at all. In fact, we have to even wonder if it's real at all. This is really huge, isn't it?
And that's what He's saying. Peace. Jesus said peace.
What Transforms Fear into Joy
Now, here's what turns our fear into rejoicing: He showed them His hands and His side. What turns our fear into rejoicing? A crucified and risen Christ. That's what separates us. That Christ came to the cross with an intended purpose.
Can I fully explain it? Well, I can kind of give you the nuts and bolts of it, but it certainly is mysterious that Jesus was—and here's the technical term, though you can get it pretty quickly—the substitutionary atonement for us. He took our place.
Paul says it this way, and I'll just read it to you. 2 Corinthians 5, and it summarizes all of this perfectly. Verse 21: "God made Him, Jesus, who knew no sin, to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."
The Physical Reality of the Cross
When He was on that cross, the agony of the cross—you get this?—the agony of the cross was not the beatings. It was not the crown of thorns. This year for Easter, I kind of went back and just reviewed the physical aspects of the scourging and the crucifixion.
When they whipped Jesus, it wasn't like that. When I think whip, I think it is. That's kind of what you think of, isn't it? 20, 30, 39 lashes. That was not what they had at all. They had a stick, maybe 12 to 18 inches long, and on it were these strips of leather. And on the leather, they would have bone and glass. And the scourging would go like this: Rather than go and pull it out, the whole idea of the scourging was this: to take the glass and the bone and to take it into the skin, and rather than pull back—that wasn't it—but to pull down. So it would be boom, boom. And the whole idea was to lay open the person. Many people would die of the scourging. Literally lay the back open, begin to see even the organs themselves.
So Jesus had that. Then they took a crown of thorns, probably date thorns, 6 to 9 inches long, and thrust them onto His head. Then He carried this cross through town. Actually, the cross bar. Then He comes to the place of crucifixion, and they nail Him, not through the hands, but through the wrists, which would be really strategic, because that would be the area that would have all of the nerves and muscles in it, particularly painful.
And then they put them on a cross, and there would be a little ledge, so that they would sit on the cross. They would have their feet there, and they could rest on that ledge. They could sit and
rest on that ledge. Then breathing would become difficult, and they would push themselves up. That's why they broke the legs of the thieves. You could keep a guy crucified on the cross for a long time and keep him alive. But when they broke the legs, their body would then slump forward, and the way they would die is they would suffocate.
Now, you're moaning and groaning. That sounds pretty gruesome, doesn't it? That's not the agony of the cross. I would suggest to you that there are probably thousands of people that experience physical agony comparable to Jesus. The agony of the cross was not that. It was that moment on the cross when Jesus cries out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
It was at that moment that He is experiencing God's wrath, God's judgment upon all the sin that would ever be committed by anyone—man, woman, boy, girl—who would come to Christ in repentance and faith. Jesus got what we, His people, deserve. Jesus, who knew no sin, was treated as though He was guilty of our sin. And in this divine transaction, we exchange our sin for His righteousness. That's the gospel. That's the thing that allows me to come to God.
The Gospel is Our Daily Foundation
So when we talk about praying, I hope you get this. When we talk about praying, we talk about coming boldly into the throne room, not based on anything that we have done or will do or are doing. It's a term that we've been using around our church a lot lately, and I think it's got some traction, and I think it has people thinking. My fear is when we talk about the gospel, we relate it to that moment in time when we came in repentance and faith, and that's the end of the gospel.
That is not the gospel. That's certainly part of it, but we need to preach the gospel to ourselves every day. I need that same forgiveness every day. I need to understand that reality every day. I need to understand that I have access to the Father and confidence before Him every day. I need to understand the reality that He who began a good work in me will continue it until the day of Christ Jesus. Why? Because of Christ's finished work on the cross. Get it? That's the gospel. That's how you turn fear into rejoicing.
Now, there's something—and I decided this morning, we were having breakfast, and Janet and Susan and Judy and I were sitting there, and we were kind of talking about life stuff, and we were talking about how difficult life can be. So I decided that, and I'll just work on it tonight, I decided to maybe take a little side trip tomorrow and do something on suffering or pain or hardship, because there seems to be a lot of that around.
Peace in the Midst of Circumstances
But let me make a really fascinating point. These guys go from fear to rejoicing, and what I want you to see is their circumstances didn't change a lick. That's really significant. Their circumstances are exactly the same. The difference is that now, in the midst of the circumstances, they have the presence of God right there with them. Do you see that?
So peace is not the absence of turmoil. Peace is the presence of God. So in our life, it's not that these things are going to go away. I detest—I'm an easy-going guy. Not much stuff gets me upset. Perhaps the way people drive in Oregon would upset me. This is the worst driving I've ever seen. I said to Susan, I don't understand it. It says 55. Do you understand? That's just like a suggestion. Let's go. We got places to go. Every time I come here, I'm behind 50 people in a Subaru going speed limit. I don't get it.
But that aside, there's a few other things that bother me. But one of the things that drives me absolutely crazy are these men and women that teach that God wants you healthy and wealthy. That is so destructive. I think it raises money. I think it buys jet fuel. But I don't think it brings you closer to the Savior. I despise it because I think it's completely anti-biblical. I think the reality is God may want you suffering and hurting and struggling. Why would He do that? Well, we'll talk about it when we get to that session.
But do you see that? Do you see what's going on here? All the change—and it's a huge change—is their heart and their mind and their understanding of God. The most powerful force on this planet is a person whose heart has been changed, who's empowered by the Holy Spirit, and who has the Word of God pouring through them. That's the most powerful force on the planet. Nothing can stop that.
Sent Into the World
Now, there's a really interesting thing, and I'm going to try to tie this all together in a second. There's a really interesting thing that happens. Verse 21: "So Jesus said to them, Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, I also send you." Now, I want to camp and I want to spend a ton of time on this, but I'm not going to do it. But I want you to see this. They're afraid, they rejoice, and once they understand who Jesus is, Jesus gives them their marching orders. "Peace be with you. As the Father sent me, I send you."
How did the Father send Jesus? Well, He sent Him into this world. He sent Him in the most human of ways. He sent Him to be born. He sent Him incarnational. You are on a mission, and it's a mission that doesn't end until you take your last breath. He sent you into the world.
Here's what I know. I hang around with a lot of Christians. I hang around with a lot of Christians whose doctrine is absolutely solid. And I hang around with a lot of people. I bet I could pull it up right now and just punch this in and see what I've got going on email, and I guarantee you, I've got emails from somebody who's trying to raise money, who's trying to scare me about the ACLU. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's a scary world out there, right? Yep. Our flinch is to pull away from it.
Jesus never tells us to pull away from it. Jesus said, "Just like God sent me into the world, boom, now you go into the world." It's absolutely essential for us to understand that we're supposed to navigate in this world.
The Danger of Christian Isolation
A tendency exists, and my suspicion would be, even as I get older, I even withdraw even more. We certainly have it down where we live. We have Christian schools, and Christian bookstores, and Christian music, and Christian this, and Christian that, and Christian comics that send me mailers. Christian, Christian, Christian.
Get this. Huge, huge, huge. Christian is not an adjective. It's a noun. It was never designed to be a word to be stuck in front of something else. It's who you are. And it's to take this into the world. You're to live in a missional way. You're to live in a way that you are going about. Isn't that what Jesus says? Go. Make disciples. Teach them skin on skin.
Now, you don't need to answer this question, but it does need to be asked. Are you doing that? If I got your calendar for the week, does it look like this? Does it look like a bunch of family stuff, and I'm all for family, and then a bunch of Christian stuff, and then maybe a Sunday school thing, and then maybe a church thing? Is that what it looks like? Because I don't think God's happy with that calendar, to be honest with you.
God's Purpose for Leaving You Here
He didn't leave you here just to hang around with a bunch of Christians. He left you here certainly for that. We're going to see that right now. I'm not against hanging with other believers. We're going to see an example of a guy who wasn't there, Thomas, in a minute. But He didn't leave you here just to hang around with His stuff.
He left you here so that you've got a steady flow of people in your life who absolutely disagree with your faith. He left you here so the person that's cutting your hair or the person that you talk to when you go to the Home Depot or the person you talk to when you go to the store or the person you talk to who serves you the coffee or the person who's there who's the server every morning or every other morning or when you're consistently going to the same restaurant so that they would see Jesus in you.
And there is no expiration date on this. It's like we really preach this to junior high and high school and college kids, but then it's like if you get older, I guess you don't do that anymore. Well, that's not biblical, is it?
You Are God's Messenger
So you have to ask yourself, if you get nothing else out of this weekend, which is clearly possible, nothing else out of this weekend, get this. God saved you so that you would be His messenger to the world. You are His display case. You are the vehicle He uses. He's not writing the gospel in clouds in the sky. He uses people. You.
There are people in your life uniquely placed there by God for you to reach, for you to come in contact with. Let's be honest. At this stage of life, the body starts to wear out. At this stage of life, all of a sudden, you're spending a little more time around doctor's offices and sick people and hospitals than ever before, right? And one of the great places for you to minister is there for them to see the hope that's in you because of Christ. You're just not another person in line grumpy about how long the wait is.
Ministry Through Life's Challenges
They're supposed to see something different about you, unique about you. It's the most powerful time for you to witness and minister maybe to your family. I watch it over and over again. My suspicion would be with this many people in the room that there's some of you that have families where you got kids that aren't even talking to each other. You got families and members of the families that aren't even speaking.
I've watched it over and over again where God will use sickness, maybe your sickness, as a rallying point to bring people together. And all of a sudden they see Jesus in Mom or Jesus in Dad in a way they never thought possible. And they see you persevere and you endure and you become that testimony that God uses to break down barriers and put families back together again. All as God begins to see you because your mission is never over until you die. That's really big.
The Gift of the Holy Spirit
Now, look what happens because this is really interesting. Verse 22. "When He had said this He breathed upon Him and received the Holy Spirit." He gives Him a little more information.
Verse 24. "But Thomas, one of the twelve called Didymus, was not with Him. So the other disciples were saying to him we've seen the Lord. But he said unless I see in His hands the imprints of the nails and put my finger into the place of the nails and put my hand into His side I will not believe."
Verse 26. "After eight days the disciples were inside again and Thomas was with them."
Understanding Thomas
I want you to see Thomas because Thomas gets beat up a ton. Thomas is a really interesting guy. Thomas is a guy who, there's a point where Jesus is saying let's go back to Jerusalem. It's about midway through the Gospel of John. And they've already said they're going to kill Him, they're going to kill Him, they're going to kill Him. And Jesus said we're going anyway. Thomas says well let's us go die with Him anyway. We'll just go ahead and we'll die too.
When Jesus, the night before He died He's got them gathered together. He said don't let your heart be troubled. I go to prepare a place for you. Remember that? I go to prepare a place for you. Were it not so I wouldn't tell you. I go to prepare a place for you. I come back to get you. You know the way. And it was Thomas at that moment who said we don't have a clue what you're talking about. That's what he said. We don't know the way. And as a result of that Jesus gave us, John 14:6 "I am the way, the truth, the life. No one comes to the Father but through Me."
Thomas's Courage
Now even here Thomas gets beat up for this. He's beaten up pretty strongly. What does he need and all this. I want to point out I think there's some courage in Thomas here. It would take a very strong person. Remember he's hung with these guys now for three years. Judas is gone so there's now the ten.
Of them that are coming at him. Of the ten, three of them are Peter, James and John. They're the big three. For eight days these guys come at Thomas. I'm going to guess in a way that's relentless and they are unanimous and their story doesn't change. You know these guys are hanging around for eight days. They just didn't debate this constantly. And you know there had to be these times where Thomas is just away talking to one of the guys and saying did that really happen? And he said yes, it happened.
But Thomas, to me, though it's misplaced courage, demonstrates great courage doesn't he? Because he says I'm not going to say I believe even if I don't. I'm not going to say I get it just because you all say you get it. He's strong willed. I'm not going to believe unless I can see it.
Peer Pressure and Thomas's Courage
Peer pressure. Isn't that a thing? Peer pressure? Do you all still feel peer pressure at your age? I think you do probably. I was invited one time to speak to a junior high class and so one of the parents called me and said I heard you're speaking to the junior highs tomorrow. And I said I am. And they said what are you going to talk about? And I said I don't know. And they said why don't you talk about peer pressure? I said okay.
So I got to the junior highs the next day and I said I want to talk about peer pressure. I want to talk about the peer pressure your parents are under. To buy the right house to live in the right neighborhood because we're all under that all the way along. Thomas is under huge peer pressure here but he doesn't compromise.
Now this all shows us that we can be courageous and still be wrong. So there's a danger there. But he's very bold. He said listen here's what I want to do. I want to put my finger right in the hole in those hands and I want to put my hand right in His side.
Now remember when they came to Jesus, the official executioner declared that Jesus was dead. But just to make sure they took the spear and they shoved it up under His rib cage into the heart, punctured the sack of the heart so that water and blood came out separately indicating that indeed death had taken place. Thomas says until I can do that, unless I can feel it, I'm not going to buy this guys. He's from Missouri. I'm going to see it and then I'll believe it.
Jesus Appears to Thomas
Now they're together eight days later, look what happens. And Jesus came and the doors were shut and He stood in their midst and He says peace be with you.
I can't tell this and read this section without talking about Dr. Hugh Ross. You all know that name Hugh Ross by any chance? So some of you would. I had a friend who called me and he said there's a guy named Hugh Ross is going to be over in Phoenix. Why don't you have him teach your study? So I don't know him and he said take my word for it. This guy is good.
So Hugh Ross comes and I'm going to do this exactly like Hugh did it. I said our speaker today is Dr. Hugh Ross and rather than have me just read a bio, let me welcome Hugh and he'll tell us a story. This is exactly how he did it. He came to the podium. He said my name is Hugh Ross. Since I was seven years old I've wanted to be an astrophysicist. Well immediately there's a connection with me. No I'm kidding. I didn't know what an astrophysicist was. I said to the guy next to me what's an astrophysicist and he said I think that's the guy that invented astroturf.
The Hugh Ross Story
So Hugh starts talking and we're supposed to be done. The study goes from 7 to 7:45. So when I teach about 7:30 they start checking their watches. It's now 8. Nobody's left. It's now 8:15 so I get up and say guys we're done. We're way past time. We're in a restaurant. Way past time. You can go if you want. A few people leave. Now it's 9, 9:15, 9:30, 9:45. The room is still probably two thirds full.
So they come in and they say we've got to get you out of here. We've got to turn this room. So I said I feel like this has been really interesting because it's like this is like a bunch of smart guys and it's like stump Hugh really. So one guy said you know Dr. Ross you said such and such and you quoted this author but on his most - and this is exactly true - on his most recent work on page 427 he says this and I thought he's got him. And Ross said yes but on page 478 he says this. It would seem to contradict that. I'm going you've got to be kidding me.
So I said to him let me ask two questions. Number one, what don't you know? And number two, which I thought this was a great question, if you were going to drive to Yuma what would you think about? And he said well I'd have to think about it. And that was all I got. So we're done.
Well the reason I think about this passage is because in the middle of this someone asked him in John chapter 20 how did Jesus get through the locked doors, the closed room? So I have an answer for that. What's the answer? He's God. I mean He's God. That's how He did it. I mean I don't need a lot of this. Here's what Ross says. Ross says we operate in three dimensions. God operates in 11 dimensions. And then I dozed off. I don't know what came after that. So I like my answer better. He's God.
Jesus Confronts Thomas's Doubt
See the repetition here? See what He says? Peace be with you. And then He said to our boy. Then He said to Thomas, put your finger here. See my hands. And reach out your hand and put it into my side. And Thomas, here's the deal. I want you to not be unbelieving but believe.
And Thomas says you know what? No thanks. My Lord and my God. See that's deep real faith. That's what it means. Where am I going to find this faith? And we're going to have to talk about it another time. What that faith is. I'll give it to you in a nutshell. It's not believing necessarily in an action but it's believing in Jesus and who He said He is.
For Thomas, seeing was believing. For us, believing is seeing. We believe and we see. God opens our eyes to see this amazing truth. It is a gift of God that you believe this gospel to be true. It's not something you discovered on your own.
I hope you understand that. It's not something that you calculated. It's not a Da Vinci code that you cracked. Haven't you had that happen? Where you're sitting and you're talking to two people and one hears this gospel and they respond with tears, with a broken heart and the other simply says, "I don't buy it."
What happened there? They both heard the same message. Is one person just way smarter than the other? Is one person just a little bit more clever than the other? You know what happened? God opened their eyes to see that truth. The Holy Spirit invaded their heart. God opened their eyes to be able to see that truth. It is a gift of God. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus.
Do you believe today? Because if you believe, there's one person and one person only you need to thank for that. And that's the triune God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—who opened your eyes to see that amazing truth.
Our Understanding of God and Man
Well, you can't pass on what you don't have. What we're really hammering at in session one and session two is an understanding of who we are and who God is. A.W. Tozer has an amazing insight. Tozer is an interesting guy—no college, common sense, an ability to be precise and concise. He says this about our theology: "Our theology has two problems in it. One, it does not descend low enough. Two, it does not ascend high enough."
It does not descend low enough, meaning this: we have too high a view of man. We don't understand how debilitating sin has been to us. We don't understand how sin has affected all areas of our life. We don't understand how our flinch, even as the earliest kid, is to lie, to conceal, to hide. And we never get away from it, do we?
That phone rings and you pick it up and they say, "Bob, I thought you were going to..." "I was just getting ready to call." Or it rings and you say, "Tell him I'm not here." That's a great thing about caller ID—you don't even have to lie anymore. You just let it go. Why is that our flinch? Our flinch to just shade the truth a little bit?
The Problem with a Minimal View of God
Our theology doesn't descend low enough and it doesn't ascend high enough. For most people, maybe not you all, but for most people in this country that would call themselves Christians, they have a very minimal view of God. In fact, there's a bumper sticker. I hate this bumper sticker. If you have this bumper sticker on your car, please go ahead and rip it off before I see it.
I hate this bumper sticker. It's not around much anymore. But do you remember it? It went like this: "God is my..." Do you remember what it was? Co-pilot. I hate that bumper sticker. Listen, think this through with me. If God is the co-pilot, what are you saying about yourself? You're the pilot?
Does that sound remotely accurate to the relationship you want with the Creator God? "I know You created it. I know You're the heavenly God. I know You're the powerful God. You sit right there and let me handle this. And if it gets really treacherous, I'll throw the controls to You only until You get me through it, and then I'm going to take them right back." See, that's that minimal view of God that we have. That somehow He's a God who's there, but He would never really intervene or He'd never really push.
God's Intimate Involvement
There was a song that was very popular maybe 10 or 12 years ago called "Our God is a Distant God," and it's really kind of a beautiful song in a way, but the problem with the song is our God is not a distant God watching from afar. He's a God that's intimately involved. He sees the sparrow. He has the hairs on your head counted. He's intimately involved.
So big is God—this is huge—that everything that happens in your life is either caused by or allowed by Him. And if that's not true, He's not God.
Growing Deep in Faith
Now, how do I grow deep in that faith? I've got four or five things here, and they're going to sound a little bit familiar because it's a lot like last night.
Number one: establish a consistent time in God's Word. We believe that the Bible is the final authority in our life. We believe that it might be kind of interesting what I think or what I feel or what you think or what you feel, but the reality is all we care about is what God says.
Now, let me give you a little warning about the Bible. I've learned this too. The better the church you're going to, the more dangerous it can become that you become a Bible worshiper. We don't worship the Bible. It's a book. We don't worship the Bible. We study the Word of God so that we can worship the God of the Word. That's really an important distinction.
We are not worshiping this. It is important, absolutely. It's essential for us to understand who God is. He reveals Himself. We talked about it last night in Creation. We can look around. We can see the power of all wonder. He revealed Himself through Jesus, but He gave us this Word. He wants us to become stewards and students of that Word, to know it, to understand it, so that I have to be going back to that over and over again.
Now, I'll confess this to you. I'm not naturally driven to the Word. If I didn't have to teach, I'd have a very hard time studying. But you need to become a student of the Word. And one of the things I know, if you're retired, I know you're really busy, blah, blah, blah. But I know this: you got time. I know you're really busy. "Don't know how I used to get it all done." I've heard it all. Whatever. You got time. And some of that time needs to be in a really critical way devoted to spending time in God's Word.
Bible-Based Beliefs vs. Experience-Based Faith
Here's the second thing: let the Bible establish your beliefs, not your experience. So we don't take our Bible and validate it with our experience. We take our experience to see if it's validated through the Bible. So we live in a very pragmatic time. I mentioned Larry Wright. I love Larry Wright. But Larry had one thing he used to say that would drive me nuts.
Think it's wrong. He used to say this: "I know that this works because I put it in the test tube of my life and it works." Well, that's not true. I know that it's true because it's true. Not because it works. Does it work? Yeah. But it's not because it works. It's because it's the truth. So be very careful.
Because somebody will come to you, and I get this all the time, and they'll say, "Boy, you're into the Bible." And they'll say, "I believe the Bible contains the Word of God." Are you comfortable if somebody says to you the Bible contains the Word of God? No. We aren't. We don't want the Bible contains the Word of God because if I go with that statement, what? I've got to find out what part is and what part isn't.
It's not that the Bible contains the Word of God. It's the Bible is the Word of God. That's really important for us. You're like me, I assume, pragmatic. I want to know what works. When I come to the Scripture, my task is not to figure out how to make this utilitarian. It's to figure out how to understand if it's true.
Settling Doubts Through Devotion
Here's the third thing: settle as many doubts as I can in my mind through devotion. There's this passage in James that we're going to go there one of these sessions, I think. He's talking about trials and difficulties. He says, "If anyone lacks wisdom, let him ask." And then he says this: "But let him ask in faith without any doubting. For the one who doubts is like the sea, the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. For that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord. He's double-minded, unstable in all his ways."
I don't fully understand all of this. And this happens all the time. I guarantee you in this room, there are a whole bunch of you that are better students of this Word than I am. We get that in church all the time. People go to these people's house and they want to play Bible trivia. I hate that. I have no interest in playing that at all.
I can't remember a verse out of here. I mean, I get some of them, but I study and I work, and I'm just not the greatest student in the world. But I know this: I know it's the Word of God, and I don't doubt Him. I don't doubt Him. I don't fully understand all that He's doing. I don't fully understand all He's doing in the world, but that's too big for me. I don't fully understand all He's doing in our family and in our life. I don't fully understand all this, but I know this: I settle my doubts by knowing Him more and more and more.
Measuring Experience by Biblical Standards
Here's the fourth thing: I measure my experience, then, by the biblical standards. So you have it in Acts 17, you have the Bereans. So when they come in and they come in and teach, somebody would go, "Hmm, let me see. Does that sound right?"
Here's one of the things that happened to me, and I'll bet it's happened, I hope it's happened to you: I don't know all these things, but I know the basics so well that if somebody comes in and they begin to teach, I may go, "You know what? I don't know exactly why, but that doesn't sound right. Give me time, and I'll find out why. But I don't know right now, but something's wrong."
And here's the fifth thing: you just have to accept the existence of unanswerable questions. This, by the way, is not intellectual suicide. But you've got huge questions when you start talking about the origins of evil and the existence of evil and all those kinds of things.
The Limits of Human Understanding
But you have things in your own life. If somebody comes to me and says, "Tom, where do you like to go for dinner?" I'll say, "Well, I like to go to the Kona Grill." "What do you get at the Kona Grill?" "Macadamia nut chicken. No vegetables, extra mashed potatoes, two gravies." "How do I get to the Kona Grill?" "Well, go right down here, make a right, go down a mile, make a left, you'll be at the mall. When you get three miles, park in the back of the mall, you'll see the signs." I can answer questions like that.
If you come to me and you ask a question, and it starts like this: "Why?" And if it's followed by the words, "why would God?" Then almost always my answer is, "I don't really know." I don't really know why God would allow that baby to die. I don't really know that. I don't really know why God would have you suffer the way you suffer. I don't know. I don't know why.
But I am comfortable that God doesn't owe me an explanation to everything He's doing. He's an infinite God. And I'm not even arrogant enough to think that if He explained to me what He was doing, I could comprehend it in my finite mind.
Passing on a Faith Legacy
When we're talking about passing on a legacy, man, if you can pass on that kind of faith to your sphere of influence. Remember what we said last night? Not just family, but sphere of influence. If you can pass on that kind of faith to your sphere of influence, what a legacy that would be. It would be huge.
We're going to look tonight at something that is almost totally lost in the world we live in now. And that is a principle of consequences. That it matters what you do. We've lost some of that. We've got to figure out how to pass that on. We'll talk about that tonight.
Father, thank You for these amazing, wonderful truths. God, thank You that peace is available to us. That peace is not at all the absence of turmoil in our life, but it's Your presence in our life. God, thank You. Thank You that You open our eyes to see this truth. We pray to You in Christ's name. Amen.
I notice the transcript you've provided appears to be incomplete - it only contains "That was great. Let's get our hymn book." which seems to be a transitional moment rather than sermon content.
Could you please provide the full sermon transcript for "Principles Of Faith, Part 9 of 9"? I'm ready to clean and format it according to your specifications once I receive the complete content.