Whose Report Will You Believe---The Resurrection
4/9/2021Jeremiah 38:14-23 John 20:19:31
When you get some news, what determines whether or not you are willing to believe it? How many of us have been hesitant because the news seemed to good to be true? How many of us have rejected it, because it went against what we were hoping for? How many of us have accepted it, because it was just what we wanted to hear?
How many of us have resisted it, because it meant we would have to change what we were already believing? How many of us have accepted it because it would make it easier to get along with others? How many of us have rejected it, because we did not want to change what we were doing?
How we respond to a report should actually depend on the truth of the report itself. Sometimes truth brings joy. Sometimes it brings tears and agony. Sometime it brings hope, and sometimes it brings despair. Though we may like to think truth depends on what we believe, truth is truth independent of our belief.
How many of you have ever believed something that was not true? Sincerely believing a lie, can have terrible consequences. Believing you are in a safe place when you are not just might cost you your life.
If someone interrupted the service today by running in and shouting “the smell of gas is all over the basement underneath, I think we should end the service now.” If you could smell gas coming out of the vents would your acceptance of the truth allow you to continue to wait 30 more minutes for the service to end before you took any action.
Sometimes we reject the truth, because we are afraid to take risks that truth may require of us. Go back with me for a moment into the story into our Old Testament reading. King Zedekiah and his people had been living in disobedience to God. They would not listen to the prophets who were telling them to change their ways.
As a matter they killed the prophets who told them the truth, that God’s judgement was coming on the city. They rewarded the prophets who told them lies, saying they were fine with God and that God didn’t care about their actual behavior. Their sin was no problem with God.
Jeremiah was one of the prophets who had told the king years earlier that God was going to send the Babylonian army to destroy the city unless the king and people repented. He preached this message for about 8 years. His message was rejected as foolishness and lies.
Well finally the Babylonian army has arrived, the city is surrounded by walls and the Babylonian army has surrounded the city. Noone can enter or leave the city. The Babylonians have overtaken the rest of the country and only 3 walled cities are still holding out, with Jerusalem being one of them.
King Zedekiah knows that his options are limited. Even though he has not been walking with God, he’s hoping the prophet Jeremiah will give him a message that at the last minute, God will come to their aid and defeat the Babylonian army. So he asks Jeremiah, “Is there a word from the Lord.”
Jeremiah says, “why do you ask me if there is a word from the Lord, if I tell you, you won’t obey it? Why not ask those false prophets who told you the Babylonians would never come to this city?”
Jeremiah goes ahead and tells the king,” yes there is a word. The Lord will bring the Babylonians into this city, burn it down with fire, and they will capture you and your family. However, if you voluntarily surrender to the Babylonians, you and your family will live, and the city will not be burned down.”
This was not the report that King Zedekiah wanted to hear. He said, he’d do it except for the fact he was afraid that if he surrendered to the Babylonians, some of us own people would try to kill him. Jeremiah told him, he did not have to worry about that. It wasn’t going to happen. What he needed to do was to obey the Lord otherwise disaster would come upon him.
King Zedekiah wanted to follow God at this point, but he did not want to have to risk anything to do it. He made the decision to believe a lie because he didn’t want to pay the price to accept the truth. One of the great lies of Satan is the belief that we should be able to follow Jesus, without having to pay a price for believing in him. We gladly accept lies over the truth of the Word of God.
The greater the consequences are surrounding a truth, the more we put ourselves at risk if we refuse to take action concerning the truth. If you know your brakes are not working on your car, it would be foolish of you to drive out our parking lot heading toward Euclid and speeding up to 50 miles an hour to make sure you caught the light. There are a host of things that could go wrong.
The greatest truth that exists in the world today is Jesus Christ. He said, “I am the Way, The Truth and the Life, no one comes to the Father except through Me.” What are you going to do with this report from Jesus? Is he actually claiming everybody should follow Him as the direction they are to take in life if they intend to meet God on friendly terms?
Is he actually saying that the claims he makes about Himself are true and that not only is he the Son of God, but that one day he will judge us for our actions and our thoughts.
Is he actually claiming that what we think is life apart from him is really not life at all but rather some kind of a deception? Does he mean life is something which lasts more than the time we spend here on earth and that the pursuit of wealth, romance, and power is not going to give us the life we seek after?
There was a group of people who had said yes to all of these questions, but they said it before Jesus was crucified. After they watched Jesus be killed and put in a grave, they were no longer sure that they could believe any of this. After all if Jesus could not save Himself, then why would anybody put their trust in Him to be saved.
On the third day after Jesus had been crucified, his followers had received the report that Jesus was alive. But the news was too good to be true. After all if Jesus was alive, why didn’t he come to be with them.
The followers had also received another report. That report said, that a rumor was going around that some of them had come and stolen his body from the tomb. That report would make them criminals.
They were in a bind. They didn’t quite believe the women’s testimony of having actually seen Jesus alive. Yet they knew they hadn’t stolen the body, but if someone had they would be blamed for it.
Unlike us, who had a joyous resurrection service at 10am, they had locked the doors and were living in fear that at any moment, the Jewish leaders would come and arrest them. They didn’t know which report they were going to believe. There in the midst of this confusion, unbelief, and fear something happened.
Jesus suddenly appears out of thin air in this locked building and says, “Peace be with you.” What do you think your reaction would have been at this point. The last time Jesus had suddenly appeared, was when he was walking on water, and they through they had seen a ghost.
When we want to serve God, but are confused, afraid, or not sure what to believe, Jesus gives us the same message, “Peace be with you.”
Jesus wants them to know that it is actually him so he showed them his hands and sides so that they could see where the nails had gone through on the cross and where the spear had penetrated his side.
It is at this point the Scriptures tell us,” the disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.” There was now no question as to which report they were going to believe. They were eye witnesses eligible to testify in court because they had a first had account.
They had undergone the greatest upheaval in their lives during the past three days. They had quarantined themselves off in order to try and save their lives. But Jesus wanted them to know, they were going to have to take some risks because his mission for them was not over. He said to them in John 20:21, “Peace be with you, as the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”
The year 2020 caused one of the greatest upheavals in the life not only of our church, but in churches throughout the body of Christ. But I believe for the year 2021, John 20:21 is the message God still has for us, “Peace be with you, as the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”
Jesus has a mission for the church to reach those who still do not know Him as Lord and Savior of their lives. Just like he let the disciples know, they were going to have to take some risks with their lives to fulfill his mission, we are going to have to do the same.
The message of the resurrection of Jesus Christ was never meant or intended to be quarantined inside the church. It was to be taken to those who never even heard of Jesus. Jesus did not send us out in our own power.
The Scripture says, in verse 22, And with that, he breathed on them and said, “Receive The Holy Spirit.” Jesus is not sending us out alone. The Holy Spirit is going with us. It’s the Holy Spirit that is going to touch people’s hearts. God simply needs our hands, our feet, and our mouths to make the message known.
We don’t want to go because we don’t want to be rejected. But the truth is we will be rejected even by those we think are going to be open to the report. Thomas was one of Jesus’ 12 disciples. Thomas was not there with the other disciples when Jesus appeared in the room.
Thomas had been willing to give up his life for Jesus back in John chapter 11. Thomas was there at the last supper with Jesus. He was there at the Garden of Gethsemane. He had watched Jesus forbid them from fighting for him to keep the soldiers from arresting him. He saw Jesus give up without a fight.
That did something to him. We don’t know if he hung around for the crucifixion or not, but he decided to walk away from the faith. He was not going to take any more risks for Jesus. We don’t know where he went or if he went into hiding. When he did finally show up with the other disciples, they couldn’t wait to tell him the good news. They told him, “we have seen the Lord.”
Thomas however chose to believe the other report that he had heard. That someone had stolen Jesus’ body. Thomas used his logic to arrive at what he believed was true.
Surely if Jesus could have raised himself from the dead, he could have stopped the arrest, he could have stopped the trials, and he could have stopped the crucifixion.
If he had risen from the dead, surely he would have appeared to the religious leaders and put them in their place. Surely he would have appeared in the temple itself. How many of us know, we can’t always understand why God doesn’t do things in the way we think they should be done? God has His own purposes.
Thomas boldy declared, “You want me to believe. Then take this message back to your risen Jesus. Unless I see the marks in his hands, and put my fingers where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” Thomas made a conscious decision to reject all notions of a resurrection. He made a conscious decision to believe a lie.
If the other disciples wanted to go on with a delusion that was unscientific and obviously the result of a messed up mind they could, but he would have nothing to do with it. We all have reasons for why we accept or reject the resurrection of Jesus. But do we know the possibilities that exists for either accepting or rejecting it.
If Jesus rose from the dead, then what God says I can become is true. God says I can become a son or daughter of God with all the privileges afforded to a son or daughter.
God says that nothing has to enslave our minds or our bodies and that we can become new creatures in Christ regardless of what our backgrounds have been. God says we can be set free from any addiction, any lust, any bondage, any unforgiveness, any pain and anything else the devil throws at us.
God says we have His Holy Spirit living within us which will give us the power to allow God to make any changes that God wants to make in our lives. We are not in this transformation process by ourselves.
God says that there is purpose and meaning for life and that God has a plan for us to play in it. God says we don’t have to live in despair and desperation because he can bring joy and peace in our lives. God says that when our time on this earth is over, we will spend eternity with him in heaven.
If Jesus did not rise from the dead, then we should do whatever we want to make us happy because there is no meaning in life. There is no reason to pray and no reason to believe we are promised a better future. There is no reason to believe our sins are forgiven.
There is a judgment waiting for us that will find us guilty of being in rebellion against God which will separate us from God for all eternity. Some believe that when we die, that’s it, but somehow our internal system of justice keeps most of us from believing that. We do believe really bad people should have to pay for what they have done.
So like Thomas, we declare our terms of what must happen before we stop believing a lie. What does God have to do in your life before you stop believing the lies you believe about yourself, about God, about the word of God.
Thomas had a privilege we never will have. He actually talked and walked with Jesus for 3 to 5 years. Did Jesus really owe him a miracle to believe? He had heard Jesus say, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will build it again.” Thomas chose to reject Jesus, but at least he was honest about it. Some of us reject Jesus, but still want to be called a follower of Christ.
So Thomas lived as though Jesus’ resurrection was a lie for about a week. Even though he no longer believed as the other disciples did, they were still friends, and he still hung around with them when it was safe to do so. Once again the disciples were in a locked room, but Thomas was with them this time. Jesus again appeared out of nowhere. The first words to come out of his mouth were, “Peace Be with you.”
The next words, went straight to Thomas, when Jesus said to him “put your finger here, see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” Jesus knows about all the ultimatums we have given, he knows all the reasons we claim we can’t believe, and he knows the truth of what it really in our hearts. If you had been Thomas, “how would you have felt at that moment with the risen Jesus standing before you.”
One day you will stand before the risen Christ. And you will have to defend why you rejected the Report that Jesus is alive. What defense will you offer for yourself? Thomas encountered Jesus before he died so when he made the confession “My Lord and My God” he had a chance to repent and give his life to Jesus.
The scriptures tell us that one day, every knee is going to bow and every tongue is going to confess that Jesus is Lord. But it will do nothing for the life they could have had here on earth or for this life they will have in eternity.
Don’t let the fear of people or wanting the approval of others cause you to fail to believe the report that has been given concerning Jesus Christ. Your present and your future is hanging in the balance.
John ended this chapter by saying John 20:30-31 (NIV2011)
30 Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31 But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
God has given us plenty of evidence for the resurrection. We have received a report from first hand eyewitnesses. Yet the final choice remains in our hands. “Whose report will you believe?”
