Living to Win Over Uncertainty
Tom Shrader concludes an eight-week series on 'Living to Win' by addressing uncertainty in seven key areas: finances, relationships, the world situation, children, health, old age, and death. He emphasizes that while life is filled with uncertainty, Christians can find stability by anchoring themselves in what Scripture reveals as certain - God's promises, His faithfulness, and the assurance of salvation through Christ alone.
“In a world that is filled with uncertainty, help us stop, get a grip, and understand, no, they're in Your control.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Living to Win (2005)
Recorded: May 26, 2005
Duration: 42 min
Themes: uncertainty, trust, faith, worry, fear, stability, doubt, hope, facing financial stress, struggling with doubt, worried parent, anxious about future, dealing with health issues, approaching old age, grieving death, seeking stability
Scripture: Hebrews 13:5, John 21:25, John 15, Colossians 3:2, Philippians 4:19, Matthew 6:33, 2 Peter 3:10, Psalm 103, Deuteronomy 6, 2 Corinthians 12:7, Isaiah, 1 John 5
Theological Themes: assurance of salvation, biblical authority, providence, god's faithfulness, divine sovereignty, scriptural promises, christian certainty, revelation
Full Transcript
Let's see what we've got here. This is week eight, our last week in our eight-week series called Living to Win. Let me remind you of the topics we've looked at: winning over guilt, winning over weakness, winning over anxiety, winning over fear, winning over worthlessness, winning over loneliness, winning over stress, and today, which I think is the perfect bow to all of this, winning over uncertainty.
I talked about it the first week, but when you read that list all at once, just sitting right through those eight topics, that's not exactly your positive, upbeat kind of list of topics. And yet, it's probably in terms of practical application has more application than any of the things that we could possibly do. Today has to be, I guess in my mind anyway, the most universal lesson we could teach in this sense: living to win over uncertainty. Every person in their life is faced with uncertainty.
You have in front of you a schedule for your day. Here's my day: I have an 8:15 meeting, I have a 9:15 meeting, I have a 10:30 meeting, I teach at noon, and I have a 2 o'clock tee time. That's my day, and all of it's open but the 2 o'clock. My assumption is that I'll be driving home around 6, 6:15, and that'll be the completion of that day. But that's not a certainty, is it? And yet it probably will happen. This is not designed to manipulate you—it's just to say life is filled with uncertainty.
Seven Areas of Uncertainty
Look at the seven things we're going to talk about. How do you deal with uncertainty in finances, relationship, the world around you, your children, your health, old age, and the uncertainty about death? We'll deal with those, and a majority of the time probably down toward numbers 5, 6, and 7, maybe, but we'll see.
John Chapman wrote this: "A Christian cannot live by philosophy. Only the light of Christian revelation gives the end, as well as the means of life." When he's talking about Christian revelation, what he's talking about here is the Scripture, the Bible.
John ends his gospel with this verse, John chapter 21, verse 25: "And there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books which were written." That's how he closes it. So we understand that Jesus did a lot of other things—this is part of them, we don't have them all recorded.
A Warning About False Teaching
I'm watching television one night. It's called Christian television, though it doesn't always represent Christianity accurately. I'm watching it one night, and this guy reads that verse, and he said, "Here's what this verse says. John's saying that Jesus did all these other things. John hand-selected those so that we could look at the miracles and the life of Christ and that we might believe that Jesus is who He said He was. But here's what John says: I didn't give you all the things that Jesus did."
Then the guy reaches down and lifts up a pamphlet and says, "Now, here is a pamphlet that contains many of the things that aren't recorded here that Jesus did." Now when you hear something like that, run. For goodness sake, don't send them money. Don't contribute to this.
Does God Still Speak Today?
Does God still speak to us today? We've got to go with yes on that, but there's always to me some level of subjectivity to this. We had a discussion the other day—see how you land on this one. We have a 15-year-old student, and the 15-year-old student is an extraordinary athlete, and is on the track, sophomore, already being contacted by all these schools.
Her parents have always dreamed of her going to a specific school back east, which contacted her already and is already willing to say that this looks like a done deal. This girl is a Christian; her parents are not. The particular sport she's engaged in, her parents want her to now pursue this, pursue this scholarship, and she doesn't want to do it.
She's convinced that God saved her for a reason, has called her to a purpose, and that God wants to use her in some way, that the athletic endeavor is interfering with what she could be doing around campus and with her friends. So she does not want—she's convinced God's called her to this, and she does not want to pursue the sports.
What do you do? Let me give you my answer. My assumption is it's the right answer, though I could be wrong. My answer is, you go pursue the sport.
The Explicit Always Trumps the Implicit
Now you may sit there and go, "Wait a minute, she's got this God thing and they're not godly." This is a great principle in dealing with Scripture: the explicit always trumps the implicit. So she's saying, "I want to understand God's will for my life." Well here you go. Here's what we know from Scripture: God's will for your life is that you would obey your parents.
They're unbelievers, and the principle might be very similar to that of an unbelieving wife by submitting to that husband—perhaps God will use those events to bring them to Christ. Now that's my belief. There were others in the room, by the way, that were adamant and said, "Oh no, God's called her to this." My question is, how do you know God's called her to that? How many 15-year-olds have had 14 different calls from God by the time they're 18?
We do know what this says. We do know what the Scripture says. So, the explicit trumps the implicit.
What You Know Trumps What You Feel
If we could stay along that same line of thinking, when we're dealing with these areas of uncertainty—and I know you're sick of this—what you know trumps what you feel. So here we are with all this uncertainty, and by and large, as the uncertainty plays itself out in our life, by and large, that produces some sort of feeling of anxiousness or worry, some trepidation. In those moments,
What do I need to do? I need to go to those things that I know for sure, and you'll see that pattern today. Let's look at it. We're not going to spend a ton of time on some of these. This is very similar, and in a way, a summary of what we've talked about.
Uncertainty About Finances
Uncertainty about finances. Each one of these references into these discussions, we just had a set of questions. Is there a crash coming? Where are we in the market? My kids are trying to move closer to the church, closer to our house, and so they've been pursuing trying to find a house, and they can't find a house. You can't even get a house.
We saw the white pole go up the other day. This is almost like a real estate striptease now. They stick the pole in, and let that sit there for a while and tease you, and they hang the little hooks, and that just spreads the word. You don't need a lot of marketing at that point, and then you put the sign up.
These people bought this house, my recollection, 18 months or so ago, for like $275,000, something like that, but it needed a lot of work. They fixed it up, and so he talked to them. My son-in-law saw the post, called them, and they said, "We don't know, a couple more weeks, probably four, four and a quarter, something like that, we're going to ask." He called the other day. It sold for $500,000. Is that where we are? Is that where it's going? And then you have a whole bunch of people that say, "Hey, that's a bargain." So where are we in that process? We don't know.
Let's say the unemployment rate drops all the way to .0000001, but you're the one. You'd rather see it at .99999, and you'd be employed. So the unemployment rate drops—are you going to lose your job? How about failure in business? Some of you are entrepreneurial. 80% of all new businesses fail in the first two years. How about this idea of financial security? How about uncertainty in terms of finances?
You know this, and I'm not going to spend a ton of time on it because we were there. Hebrews 13:5: "Keep yourself free from the love of money, be content with what you have." Why? Because God will never leave you or forsake you. It just so happens that as we're teaching this, I'm also teaching through the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus is talking about don't be anxious and I'll meet those needs.
It's not a call to apathy or complacency or being mediocre, but Jesus is saying, "Listen, you don't need to worry. If you want to worry about something, you want to worry about some great big thing, then you worry about me." Here's how I paraphrase this: don't fall in love with money, but fall in love with me. That's what He's saying.
Colossians 3:2: "Set your mind on the things above." Philippians 4:19: "My God will supply all your needs." Matthew 6:33: "Seek first His kingdom." So that's what we need. We have this whole area of finance, we get concerned about that and we understand that because markets fluctuate. And everybody says to you, the minute you start talking about this, "Everything is cyclical. I've seen it up and I've seen it down and it'll be down again," that kind of thing.
Uncertainty About Relationships
How about uncertainty about relationships? Am I ever going to get married? If I do get married, will my marriage last? Am I going to have friends who care about me? Am I going to be alone?
There is out in Mesa a hospice house. When you go to hospice, you don't go to hospice and then get out of there alive. You go to hospice, that's it. There's I think 12 beds in this hospice house and I was in visiting somebody from the church. And so there's 11 other guests there and of the other 11, they had no one in the room with them. Now, I'm not trying to be judgmental—it could have just been the time of day or whatever—but all I can think of is here you are at the end of your life and you are all alone. Is that what I'm headed for?
Here's what Jesus says in John 15: "This is my commandment, love each other as I've loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lays down his life for his friends. You are my friends."
Understanding the Church
Let me talk about church a second if I could. I really believe that church is pretty well misunderstood in the environment that we live in. Number one, I think Barna says the number one reason people pick a church is to meet their needs. The church is never going to meet your needs like Nordstrom's. So if you want your needs met, go to Nordstrom's—they'll meet your needs. They'll even give you a personal guide to take you through.
Here's what the church is about. The church is a family. It's the body of Christ. There's the church at large but then there's the local church like the church we're in, the room we're in, the building we're in. It's a family.
And just like your families, they come in different sizes and shapes and they come with all sorts of different things. They also have a crazy nut aunt in the basement kind of like you do. They've got all sorts of quirks and they've got people in there they'd love to get out and people in there that they'd love to get in.
Here's what I've discovered, especially maybe through Priority Living, is there's a lot of people that I think have really underestimated the church. I will have people all the time that will say to me, "Priority Living does more for me than my church." And I'll always say the same two things to them. Number one, thank you. Number two, find a new church.
Priority Living is not church. If you've got to choose between coming to Priority Living and being an active part of a local church and you're at Priority Living and that's your choice, you've made the wrong choice. To me, we're like a five iron maybe or a really good driver. We're a club in your bag that you can use some way. Maybe we can supplement some of what's going on in your life, but we can't replace it. I cannot, and we have great—we have
great support from the churches around the valley at Priority Living. I think that the number one reason is for exactly this purpose right here. We're not trying to pull you out of a local church. We're trying to push you into the local church.
In the broadest sense, it doesn't matter to me what church it is as long as it's teaching God's Word and as long as it's a biblical church. That's what you're looking for. That's where you're going to find those needs met. That's where you go and you just don't go and occupy a pew, throw a few bucks into the collection plate. It should be the primary outlet for your time, energy, effort, and money in the body of Christ.
If you are not part, an active part of the local church, get this now, it's really important, something is wrong with you. You need to be part of the local church. If your excuse is, "I can't find a good church," then you haven't looked long enough and hard enough. But the problem's not the church, the problem is you. That's where those needs are met. That's where those relationships are developed.
It is so interesting to me, I never think in these terms, but I'm going to be part of a wedding on Saturday for a girl who came to our church when she was nine. I don't even think in those terms anymore. But we're a family. You need to be part of that. That's how God deals with those uncertainties in relationships.
When People Fail Us
Because people are going to desert you, you understand that. Your husband's a jerk, your wife doesn't meet your needs, all that. People are going to fail you. Friends are going to leave.
This is like tonight's graduation for the high school out our way. I love this. Because it'll be all those things, "Oh man, this is great, this is terrific, we're going to be friends forever." You're never going to talk to this person again. This is the last time you're going to see them. You're not going to see them. It doesn't work.
A few of you still talk to the people. If you're from Phoenix and your people, most of you are from other places, you don't talk to your high school friends. I got one guy that I talked to. I emailed the other day the guy that I was probably closest to in high school, that was two weeks ago and never got an email back from him. So I don't think we're friends forever.
Uncertainty About the World
Here's the third thing, uncertainty about the world. Every day you turn on the television or the radio, you hear these stories. What's going to happen? In fact, the first time we taught this, let me give you one of the questions we asked: Will the Soviets conquer the free world? See how quickly things change? And it's a changing world.
I was watching television the other night and they had pictures of the peace protest that were going on somewhere, I don't know where, and there were a bunch of these kids and they're walking and they had a sign and they had the peace symbol, but they had forgotten to drop the line down. So they were walking around protesting with a Mercedes foot ornament was the emblem that they had. Lost some of its punch as I looked at it. It did make me laugh.
What's going to happen in the world? Again, when I was a kid, it was duck and cover. And now it's a whole different world we live in. My righteousness draws me near speedily. My salvation is on the way. My arms will bring justice to the nation. My salvation will last forever. We don't know.
How Should We Live in Uncertain Times?
I want to have you turn to 2 Peter chapter 3, because there's a lot of uncertainty we understand about the world around us. You can't turn on TV without somebody talking about the very latest and end times. Are we in the last days? By the way, the answer to that is yes, because the last days began when Jesus ascends into heaven and that's when the last day started. So we're in the last days, you bet.
It's Wednesday coming, and you always have somebody that's got the day and the time. We know whatever that is. It won't be that day and that time because nobody knows the day or the hour. But it is coming. The question is how do we respond to that?
Look at this. 2 Peter chapter 3, verse 10: "But the day of the Lord will come like a thief in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat and the earth and its works will be burned up." Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, here's the issue. What sort of people ought you to be? What's He talking about? In terms of holy conduct and godliness.
There's an uncertainty we understand in some of the specifics about the world and how the world's going to end and what's happening in this world. We got all those figured out. What do we do in the midst of that? We live in a way that brings honor and glory to God. That's what this is all designed for.
Focus on Living for God's Glory
I'll confess to you, I have never been interested in the slightest way in the last days. I must be something wrong with me because I know people read books about it and study about it, get all excited about it. It's just never been a source of intrigue to me. I can go the other way. Just like creation's never been a real big topic for me. How we got here, all this stuff. We got Adam, we got Eve. There it goes. I'm fine in there.
But that's what I find myself trying to spend the majority of my time on, is here's what God says, how can I live a life that brings honor and glory to Him? Literally, because I wake up now, we go to bed at eight. So I'm up a couple of times through the night, just awake, and I'll turn on the radio and there's just wacky stuff on there at night. That stuff on KFYI is just crazy stuff. That's nutty stuff, really, seriously. You call in and you can say anything to this guy.
The guy calls in last night and he said, "We bought this house and there's ghosts all over, and we see these ghosts." He said,
That's incredible. I guess somewhere in there, you can say whatever you want, and they'll go, wow. You get into some of these things of how the world's unraveling, and it can really begin to become a source of distraction and discouragement. But God says, listen, my salvation—another word for salvation, my deliverance—is here for you.
Uncertainty About Your Children
I'm going to spend a little time on this because it's a big one. Uncertainty about your children. When we talked about worry in this series, I had several people come to me and said, "I don't worry about money. I don't worry about this. I worry about my kids. I worry about their safety."
You know this. When I was a kid, in the summer, my dad would have things for us to do. My mom would have stuff for us to do. We'd get up, get it out of the way, get it all done, and then we would just go. We'd leave. We'd go up to Taylor School and play baseball. We'd play hide and seek. We'd run around. We'd get hungry. We'd come back and eat. We'd go out and play again.
I don't remember my mom—not that she was derelict in her duties at all—I just don't remember her doing a lot of checking on us. She wasn't particularly worried. Now it's kind of a rough end of town, but she'd give us money, and we'd walk three blocks to the store and get some grocery items, and walk back home. You never thought about it.
Now you won't let your kid walk from here to the corner. If the ice cream man comes, there's kind of the implication that this is some little sinister guy, and he's going to sweep these kids away. We don't even let our kids ride bikes. We used to get on a bike, jump on, and away you'd go. You'd fall over. Now these kids go out to ride a bike, and they look like gladiators. They've got these helmets and pads. Give me a break. Let them fall. Get beat up a little bit. Be good for them.
But you've got all those worries. Because I'm hanging around a lot of people who were really wild, and then got saved. Are my kids going to make the same mistakes I made? I always had this fear that there'd be that day where the girls would come and say, "Dad, did you ever...?" And the answer was yes, unless the question was study. Yes. Yes. I did. Are my kids even going to care about me? I find a lot of parents who are saying, "I have no relationship with my kids. They'll check in once in a while." Are my kids going to be interested in God and the things of God?
It was about five years ago, and I was talking about the girls and the state cheer competition. Sarah had come back, put together all of the dance thing. Haley's pretty strong-willed, Sarah's pretty strong-willed, and there was a lot of friction at the cheer team. Bottom line, they came in and won the state competition. It was just a great moment.
I was talking with a gal, a little grandmotherly lady, and she starts talking about her granddaughter. She said, "My granddaughter's a sophomore in high school, she made varsity in two sports, she got all A's, she'll likely be class valedictorian." Well, typically, when grandmas are talking like this, they're smiling ear to ear. No smile. Then she said, "But she doesn't know Jesus, and this is all a waste." Everybody's telling her what a great girl she is. They're all telling her what an athlete she is, what a scholar she is. She's the sweetest girl, but she doesn't know Christ. This little grandma is vexed over this issue.
Here's another thing I've discovered, because we have some of you who are a little older in this room. I've discovered that a lot of these parents now are more than happy to let you come in and essentially raise these kids. If you've got the energy to do it, and the time to do it, you ought to do it. Not necessarily raise them, but come in and you can have a profound input into these kids' lives.
God's Promise for Our Children
Psalm 103: "But from everlasting to everlasting, the Lord's love is with those who fear Him and His righteousness with their children's children." Is that a promise that guarantees all of our kids will be saved? But the Scripture's clear, Deuteronomy 6. Here's what God wants you and me to do. Whether we walk, whether we stand, whether we lie down, we're to share truth, teaching with our kids.
I'll give you a great example of that. That was Susan. Susan turned the whole world into a teaching laboratory for these kids. A trip to the grocery store was a trip through some of the most creative teaching Scripture moments you've ever seen.
Uncertainty About Your Health
How about this? Uncertainty about your health. Am I ever going to be disabled? Is there any chance that this glass of wine with dinner could turn into a couple of glasses of wine, and then a bottle of wine, and then a few martinis at lunch? Could my life kind of careen out of control? And then all the health problems that go with it. We'll talk about health, and it leads us right into old age and death as well.
But here's the premise. One out of one people die. That's a given. Today at noon, there is the second table over on the left, and that table is essentially the same people at that table every week. There's a guy, a big strong guy. He kind of organizes it. He's ringmaster. When we break in August, he'll get them together a time or two, maybe a Christmas dinner. There's two or three people who are at that table who came
into the study who didn't know Christ and through his witnessing to them, God used that moment to save them. He was at PL last Thursday, and I'm dropping my stuff off at the table and everything, and I got a call Saturday morning that he didn't feel well Friday, got up, and before he could get to the hospital, he was dead. And we're shocked by that. We're shocked by the circumstances. We're not shocked by the fact that he died. Nobody went, I would have never guessed he'd die. Nobody said that. Nobody said, oh wow, this is a complete surprise that somebody would die. And that process, it becomes, the whole idea of leading up to it often is the idea of sickness.
God May Want You Sick
Second Corinthians chapter 12, verse 7: "There was given to me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me." This is Paul writing, and he said Satan has sent him this thorn in the flesh. We don't know what it is—lots of speculation: epilepsy, migraine headaches, a problem with his eye. It doesn't really matter for the discussion what it was. It's from Satan, but God allowed it.
"Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me." Here's what he said: I prayed and prayed and prayed, and God didn't take it away. Now here you go, so much for that theology that says God wants you healthy. That's a great lie, I'm telling you. I'm in the hospital following these people, oftentimes in the rooms where you've had one of these health guys who come in and said to the person, "There must be sin in your life, there must be something wrong with you, you wouldn't be in this room and you wouldn't be sick if there wasn't sin in your life. God wants you healthy." That's not true. God may want you sick. God may want you to struggle.
My suspicion is that for Paul, who could easily be a proud man—he's successful in his area of endeavor, and whenever you're successful, you're prone, I think, to pride and arrogance—He said, all of a sudden there's humility here. Look at this: "My grace is sufficient for you," God said, "for my power is made perfect in weakness." Paul said, "That is why I delight in weakness, and when I'm weak, then I'm strong."
The Greatest Asset Can Be Sickness
I don't know, somewhere last week, it was either in this study or one of the studies, I happened to be talking about Larry Wright. And I'm convinced, absolutely convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt, that humanly speaking, the greatest asset that Larry Wright had was his arthritis and his cancer and his sickness. I'm absolutely convinced of it. It's like today, I'm going to frittle away five, six hours, whatever it is, playing golf today—that was never a distraction for Larry. Larry had a finite amount of energy, and that energy was focused in one area. If you said to Larry, "What is it you do," he would say, "I teach Bible."
It also made him, and these are the three words I wrote down: caring, compassionate, and a lover of the truth. I would sit with Larry and talk about a couple that are in our church, and talk about the struggle they're having in the marriage, and the likelihood that it could be heading for divorce, and Larry, who didn't even know these people, would begin to weep. And I, whom they're shepherd, would be going, "What are you crying about?" And that's what that pain did.
God Doesn't Owe Us Answers
Here's what Joni Erickson taught him. Again, you're probably familiar with Joni Erickson, but as a teenager, a diving accident paralyzed from the neck on down. You've seen her on Larry King, you've seen her painting with that brush. I have no idea how you can possibly do that. I was reading a book that she had written, and she writes this: "Why has God not healed you?" was a question that I'm asked. Here's what her answer is: I read Job and discovered that God will never have to give me an answer for what He did in my life, but I will have to answer to Him for everything I've done in my life.
So at the end of this life, it's not going to be me going, "God, why did you?" But it's going to be God going, "Tom, why did you?" And when it comes to the uncertainty of health and sickness, I've just learned God really uses this sickness.
God Uses Sickness in Magnificent Ways
We have a girl in our church who is down—she was just at the heart hospital, she just had a pacemaker, it's a second or third pacemaker. They put a pacemaker in, bacteria grew around the pacemaker. This girl has so many problems, so many problems. Of the last year, she's been in the hospital like eight months of this year. She's just in the hospital, and they can't get it, they can't figure out what this is. And everything they do creates another problem.
There are so many problems, physical problems in this girl's life, and they've been like this for years: heart problems, all these other issues. And so the other night, after it was a Sunday night, and she was getting ready for heart surgery the next day, so we went down, had some things going on, and went down to the hospital about 10 o'clock. I didn't think we'd get in, but slid in the back door and got upstairs. And just being around her is so encouraging. She's in so much pain and so much hurt. To listen to her talk about it, I said, "What are your doctors like?" And she said, "Well, this one is a really hardcore Buddhist, and I'm trying to explain to him that Christ is the only way."
I want you to understand something. The sickness is usually part of life, though some do escape it. The sickness is part of life, and God uses that in a magnificent way. My grace is sufficient for you.
The Uncertainty of Old Age
Here you go, two more. What about old age? Social security going to fail? No. Am I going to have a place to live? Yeah, you are. I mean, most of the people in this room, we're not wrestling with: Am I going to have food? Yeah. Will I be healthy enough to want to live? I don't know. Are you going to have regrets? You can really answer that. That's my biggest fear.
I mean, I've got it figured out. You're going to find some way to live and some way to eat. I know there are cases, but they're rare, certainly among this demographic here. But are you
going to sit at the end of your life and say, "Have I lived a life that's worth living? Have I wasted my life?" Isaiah says this, and this is God speaking: "Listen to me, you whom I have upheld since you were conceived and I have carried you since birth. Even to your old age and gray hairs, I am He, and I am He who will sustain you. I have made you, I will carry you, I will sustain you, I will rescue you."
The Ultimate Uncertainty: Death
That old age and that health leads us right into the last one—the uncertainty about death. How long am I going to live? What kind of death am I going to have?
John Wutenberg, many of you know John who was in this study, John was 88 years old, got up about two weeks ago now, didn't feel particularly well, fell down and died that night. John was just a big strapping old guy who was really never sick. Am I going to die that way? Am I going to die this slow, agonizing death? Again, what we said earlier, it really doesn't matter the process necessarily, but the outcome is inevitable.
And is there life after death? Can I know for sure?
A Funeral That Changed My Perspective
I had not been doing this church thing very long when a lady from the church came to me and said, "My dad hates church, hates the Bible, hates everything related to it. He died. Will you come and do the funeral?" I thought, I don't have a clue. I mean, I never went to school—I assume in school they help you figure some of these things out. So I said, "Alright," because my objective was to minister to her at this moment, and it was important to her.
So I thought it through and thought it through, and here's what I did. I got there, and when it was time, I said, "Alright, here's Bob. Now I don't know Bob. I never met Bob. So if we're going to talk about Bob, if I do it, it's going to be phony. If you do it, it can be real. So I want to give you all a chance to talk about Bob. Whatever it is you want to say about Bob, you go ahead and say it."
So they did their little thing. I said, "Now, here's what I do know. What Bob experienced the other day is what you're going to experience. So let me talk to you about something I do know. I don't know Bob, but I do know about death and what happens after you die." Now see, that's something we can talk about.
What happens then? That's the curiosity. That's the fear of death. The fear of death foremost is not just the physical aspect of it, but what happens then? Is this real?
The Biblical Answer to Death's Uncertainty
We're not left to wonder. First John—your notes say John 5, but it's First John—First John 5, John writes this: "And this is the testimony. God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life. He who doesn't have the Son does not have life."
There's the bottom line. Do you know Jesus? What do I have to do to go to heaven? That's the real question.
I tend to think in simplistic, practical terms, and my question that drove me early on, 25 years ago, was: What happens when I die? Is there a heaven? If there's a heaven, I'd like to go there. If there's a hell, I'd like to stay out of there. Is there a way that I can know about this?
Three Views on Getting to Heaven
Everybody seems to have a view, right? There's views all over. Everybody, in a sense, is a theologian on this, and there's all sorts of diverse views.
There's a view, and I'm going to put it all in one category. There's a religious view, and that basically is taking all the religions of the world and lumping them together and saying, basically, the religious view is this: You need to do some things. You need to do this, do this, don't do this, do this, do this, do this. You may have some that even acknowledge Jesus and say, "Jesus died, but you need to do this and this and this." That's religion.
There's another view, and it's kind of a subset of that—it's the dominant view, and that is, I always call it the Fashion Square view. If you go to Fashion Square, interview 100 people, "What do you have to do to go to heaven?" They're going to say, "Be good." The minute they say, "Be good," you say to them, "How good?" And they'll go... Or "Good by whose standards?" And they're stumped.
I find that, really, when I'm talking to people, and I'll get that, and they'll say, "Just be good," and I'll say, "How good?" and they'll say, "Well, pretty good," and I'll say, "Who defines good?" And all of a sudden, they realize that they're just—this is a seat-of-the-pants theology they got going.
Biblical Christianity's Answer
Standing, juxtaposed to all of that, is biblical Christianity, which says this: There's nothing you can do. You can't be good enough. There's nothing you can avoid. You have no power in and of yourself to ever earn heaven. Heaven is a gift from God, and it's given to those who believe in Him.
Even that's not quite enough—we've got to go a little bit further, because James says, "The demons believe in Him, and they shudder." When the demons come and invade men, and they speak to Jesus, and they'll say, "You're the Messiah, you're the Son of God," they understand that. It's not enough to just have an intellectual assent that says, "Alright, I checked that off, I believe that that's factual."
The Difference Between Belief and Faith
This belief that He's talking about is somehow deeper than belief. It's a faith that transforms the way I think. Faith to me is kind of taking that belief, and in a sense, putting my money where my mouth is.
Heaven is filled with people of, I would guess, different religions, but all have this in common: they believe Jesus is who He said He was, and they've trusted Him for His life and His death. Hell has in it Baptists, Episcopalians, Catholics, obviously Methodists—just kidding, just kidding—but all these people. You have people that have walked aisles of Billy Graham crusades, people that have prayed to receive Christ at Campus Crusade things. It's filled with people, or has in it people who believe in Jesus, but there's a difference between the faith and the belief.
You see that? That's what He's saying. "Whoever has the Son has life." Who believes Jesus is who He really said He was. Who acknowledges—
a sin, the sin separated me from God, and I'm trusting Christ and Christ alone. And how will I know that's real? My life will begin to change. My life will begin to change.
So if you're one of those people that say, "Yeah, I believe, I believe, yeah, I believe," I was reading the other day an article from 1929, and one of the church guys was complaining that the world is becoming materialistic, and that people were taking their Christianity and isolating it to Sunday. I honestly think that a lot of the people that are running around saying they're Christians really aren't. I really do believe that.
We dealt with it in church the other day. Jesus says, "Enter by the narrow gate. The way is small. The way is hard, and there's few that find it that lead to life." And I find all sorts of people who say they're Christians, who have no knowledge of the Scripture, who aren't engaged in the things of God, marginally involved at a church. But then when they die, we bring them into a church, and the first thing they try to do is get this guy to heaven.
The Reality About Heaven
It almost seems to me that the more certain it is the guy's lost, the faster they try to proclaim that he's in heaven. "He's in a better place." I've got to tell you, I'm so sick of hearing "he's in a better place." I hear this about every person. The minute a guy dies, what I hear is "he's in a better place." I doubt it.
It's few. That's what He says. Few. It's few. And all of them have in common their faith and trust in Jesus Christ and Him alone.
The One Certainty
Uncertainty in this life? Filled with uncertainty about all these different areas. The one thing we do know for sure is you're going to die, and the remedy to that, the cure not for death but for eternal separation from God is Jesus Christ and Him alone.
I mentioned earlier, talking about living a life with no regrets. This series that we'll start next week is perfect for that because we're going to go back and just talk about legacy, living in a way of building a legacy and living with so many of the things that we do today, what we sow we will reap. We'll talk about all that next week.
Closing Prayer
Father, help us see this truth. Help us understand that in a world that is filled with uncertainty, in a world that has really at its core this whole idea that things are changing all the time, and we can be almost persuaded sometimes that things are out of control. Father, help us stop, get a grip, and understand, no, they're in Your control.
So Father, whether it's finances or relationships, whether it's the world around us or kids, whether it's our health or old age or death, help us understand that if we have an intimate personal relationship with You, we can rest in the assurance that You know what's best for us, that the things that You allow or even cause in our life that we might not select, You will give us the grace not just to survive but to thrive in the midst of that. Father, thank You for that truth. We pray to You this morning. In Jesus' name, Amen.
Have a great week. We'll see you next week. Amen.