Nate Schlomann
[0:00] Good morning again, Village. I’m glad that you’re here this morning. My name is Nate. [0:05] I’m one of the pastors here at the Village. You know, last time I was up here [0:09] speaking to you guys, I promised it wasn’t gonna be a year before I was back. [0:12] And I made good on that promise. I just want to make sure you guys know that. If [0:16] you are new here, Steve, one of our other pastors, he does the majority of the [0:20] teaching here at the Village. But once in a while I get to come up here. And so I’m
[0:24] glad to be with you this morning going through our series called The [0:28] Resistance that we’ve been doing this summer. What we’ve been doing this summer [0:31] is we’ve been talking about the resistance. And we’re not the resistance, [0:34] by the way. It’s a resistance that we put up to things that Jesus wants for our [0:40] life. It’s the resistance that we put up to the work and the change of the gospel [0:44] in our life. So we’ve talked about a few things along those lines. First two weeks
[0:48] we talked about our resistance to growth and our resistance to change. Things I [0:52] know we can all relate to. In the last two weeks we talked about our resistance [0:55] to commitment and our resistance to responsibility. In essence, those are our [0:59] resistance to the mission that Jesus has for us. Our resistance to a life of [1:03] following Jesus that he wants to have for us. And so we’re going to continue [1:08] that theme this morning. And I’m excited for what God has for us. I hope I can say
[1:14] it with clarity to you this morning. I’ve been a community group leader for a [1:18] long time now. A long time. Ever since we started our Village, less than two years [1:23] ago, I’ve been a group leader for years and years before that. I was a group [1:26] leader in many different churches and different areas too. And when you’re in a [1:33] group of people and when you’re studying together and looking at God’s Word with [1:36] the intent to live it out, when you’re studying God’s Word because you want to
[1:40] be on mission for him, something that always comes up just time and time again [1:44] is this idea that we genuinely believe this stuff, right? We genuinely believe [1:49] that Jesus is who he said he was, that he has a life for us to live. And yet [1:54] we’re still frustrated that we don’t always follow him the way that he says [1:58] we should. And there’s this frustration. It comes out in two big areas more than [2:03] anything else. Any group that you’re in, people always say, I need to read my
[2:07] Bible and pray more. And this comes up just all the time. And it’s true. If any [2:12] of us, if we did that, we would be following Jesus in a much better, [2:17] healthier way. So we do need to read our Bible and pray more. But there’s this [2:21] constant tension of, I know I want to follow Jesus. I know I genuinely believe, [2:27] but I struggle that I don’t always do that. And in a sense, that’s what this [2:32] resistance is all about. Why do we resist change? Why do we resist growth? Even
[2:37] though we know that those are things that Jesus wants for us that are going [2:40] to be good for us. So this morning I want to tackle that, but from a little [2:44] different perspective, from a little different angle. We’ve talked about [2:47] things that we resist. I want to talk about kind of an underlying issue of why [2:52] we resist those things. Why is it that we resist things that we know are good [2:56] for us, that we know that Jesus, who we love and who we know loves us, has the
[3:00] best for us? Why do we still resist these things? And I think it’s easy to say, oh [3:04] we do it because of sin. And that’s true. That is true. But that almost isn’t very [3:09] helpful. We need to define this a little bit more. Why is it, or what sin is it [3:14] causes us to resist the change that God has for us? And I think underlying all [3:19] these things is a resistance to belief. All right, this is kind of a root issue [3:24] of why we resist the other things in our life. Because we resist believing what
[3:28] the gospel really is and all the gospel really has for us. And so that’s what I [3:32] want to talk about this morning. I think scriptures are very clear. If you follow [3:38] Jesus, or if you believe in Jesus, you’re going to follow him. So anytime we struggle [3:42] with following him, in some ways it’s because we’re struggling with belief. And [3:47] so I think in looking at that and in kind of fleshing out what belief is and [3:51] how it works in our life, we’ll be encouraged to follow Jesus and to stop
[3:55] resisting the change that he has for us. Believing is one of those church words [4:00] that we kind of take for granted. We say we have beliefs, we even call each [4:05] other believers. We use this word all the time. We say believe in Jesus and you’ll [4:09] be saved. And that’s true, it’s absolutely true. That exact phrase is in the Bible [4:13] many, many times. Believe in Jesus and you’ll be saved. But I think believe is [4:18] one of these words that we use a lot and we don’t really consider what it means.
[4:21] It’s kind of like faith. Faith is another one of those. We say we have faith, we [4:24] have belief. But we don’t often take a lot of time to kind of look at what that [4:29] really means and what that is. And so that’s what I want to do this morning. I [4:33] think there’s a tendency to simplify belief and we simplify it too much and [4:36] we take the meaning out of it that Jesus intends for it to have. There’s [4:41] definitely two kinds of belief in the scriptures. One is just kind of a casual
[4:45] phrase of speech that just kind of means I think something is true. And the [4:48] scripture uses this, there’s nothing wrong with that. We use language in this [4:51] way but it’s just like I believe this mic stands here. I believe the stand is [4:55] gonna hold my notes up. It’s just kind of a phrase that we use. It means that we [5:00] think something’s true. It’s not the kind of belief we’re talking about. We don’t [5:04] The belief that I’m talking about is very specific in scripture. And I want to
[5:09] look at a passage before we get started. This isn’t the main passage for us but [5:12] turn to Romans chapter 10. It’s gonna be up on the screen too in verse 9. But [5:16] this passage kind of fleshes out what true saving belief is in the scripture. [5:22] Because belief that saves is a belief that’s from the heart. It’s more than [5:25] just thinking that something’s true. It’s a specific kind of belief and we see it [5:30] in this passage. It says,
[5:45] So scripture is clear that if you believe in Jesus you’ll be saved. And there’s [5:50] there’s countless verses that say this exact same thing. We couldn’t go through [5:53] them all but if you go home look up believe in your Bible you’ll just see [5:57] the truth of this. Believe in Jesus and you will be saved. There’s no question [6:02] that belief brings salvation. The question is what is that belief? What does [6:07] it look like? In Romans 10 just to get us started it says that belief looks
[6:10] like something in our hearts. It’s a belief in our hearts that Jesus is Lord. [6:15] And that’s a different kind of belief than a belief that just thinks something [6:18] is true. That’s a specific belief. It’s a belief that Jesus is a God and that [6:22] belief changes us. So I’m afraid sometimes in church we use we use language [6:28] like oh just believe in Jesus. You know just, just believe. All you need to do is [6:33] believe in Jesus. And we we make believe something less than it is. Because it’s
[6:39] not just, it’s not all you need to do. Believing is a significant thing that [6:43] changes us. And that’s where we’re going this morning to look at that. I think we [6:47] better figure out what belief is because honestly in the church we’ve put we put [6:50] all our eggs in the belief basket. I mean this is how we tell people to be [6:54] saved. Believe in Jesus. So we’ve got to know what that means. We’ve got to know [6:59] what that entails. And that’s why I wanted to talk about this this morning. I
[7:02] think there’s a tendency when we’re talking about these resistance topics [7:06] like change and responsibility commitment. There’s a tendency, we agree, I [7:10] mean it’s in the scriptures. Scriptures say we have to resist these things. But [7:14] there’s a tendency to think well I know I’m not perfect. I can’t change all the [7:19] way. You know surely I can’t be fully committed. I can’t have complete [7:23] responsibility. I’m not gonna be perfect. So as long as I’m working on this a
[7:26] little bit I think I’m alright. And I think belief is kind of one of these core [7:31] things. You can’t believe most of the way. That doesn’t sound as comfortable. We [7:36] can’t just mostly believe in Jesus. And so I think in exploring belief and [7:41] exploring how important it is to believe in Jesus, I think that will also help us [7:45] to understand that these other things we can’t just mostly do either. We can’t [7:49] just mostly change. We can’t just be mostly committed. There’s so many
[7:53] passages in Scripture that talk about belief. Countless that we could pick. But [7:57] today I want to look at John 14. So you can go ahead and go there now. We’re [8:01] gonna jump in and this is a really cool set of verses where where Jesus just [8:06] kind of lays out what belief is. And we don’t have time to go through the whole [8:09] passage. So we’re gonna jump in kind of the middle. But what’s happening here is [8:13] Jesus is just about to go to the cross. It’s not far off at all. He’s got his
[8:18] disciples there and he’s talking to them. And he tells them, you need to [8:21] believe in me. More than that he tells them, you need to believe I’m God. If [8:24] you’ve seen the Father, you’ve seen me. You need to believe that because I’m [8:27] going to be with the Father and I want you to come with me. So that’s his [8:31] message to them. Essentially he’s giving his disciples the gospel. And so after [8:36] he does that though, they still don’t understand. They say, Jesus what are you
[8:42] saying? How are we gonna know where you’re going? We don’t understand where [8:44] you’re going. And Jesus’ response I think really cuts to the core of what [8:50] belief is. So let’s start there in verse 6.
[8:56] And Jesus said to him, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the [9:00] Father except through me. If you have known me, you would have known my Father [9:04] also. From now on you do know him and have seen him. The first thing that [9:09] we need to see is when the Bible talks about a saving belief, it’s talking [9:13] about something specific. It’s talking about believing that Jesus is God and [9:17] he’s the only way to the Father. With belief, the issue is Jesus and who
[9:22] he is. That is the core issue of belief. What Jesus is calling us to believe is [9:27] important. He’s not just calling us to follow some steps to heaven. Jesus [9:32] is not just calling us to agree with some philosophical system for how life [9:36] works. He calls us to believe in a very specific thing. He calls us to believe in [9:41] himself. He calls us to believe that he’s God. He says if you know him, you [9:47] know the Father. So belief in Jesus is belief that he’s God. There’s nothing,
[9:51] there’s absolutely nothing more important for your life than the fact [9:55] that Jesus is God. This changes everything. It should enter into every [10:01] aspect of your life. It should mean something different for everything that [10:04] you do. If it’s not true, Jesus is not God, that means a lot too. It means it’s [10:10] very weird that we’re all here this morning if Jesus isn’t God. We can’t [10:15] believe that Jesus is God and not have that change us. And there’s a bunch of
[10:19] reasons for that. One of them, if Jesus is God, then the book that talks about him, [10:23] the scriptures, is true and it can be trusted. And if that’s the case, [10:27] everything that we’ve talked about the last four weeks has a whole lot of [10:31] meaning. I don’t believe that Jesus is God because the Bible says so. I believe [10:38] that the Bible is God’s Word because I believe Jesus is God. That’s an important [10:42] distinction. Our belief is in Jesus. Now, God used a lot of things to bring me to
[10:47] that. He used the historical records of the Bible, the trustworthiness of it, but [10:52] he also used the disciples. He used the witness of the church through time to [10:55] bring me to this belief and this faith in Jesus. And once I had that faith, that [11:00] belief that Jesus is God, then the scriptures are completely trustworthy. [11:05] They’re his Word. They’re the thing that reveals him to us. And then that opens [11:09] up a whole set of things that we have that if belief in Jesus is God is what
[11:14] we have, then we have all these things that we need to live by. There are [11:20] massive implications of Jesus being God. This could be a whole sermon, so I’ll [11:24] just say a few. But first, and I think the most important, if Jesus is God, it [11:27] means he has the right to tell us what to do. I hope it means that. If you think [11:33] that Jesus is God, but you don’t think he has the right to tell you what to do, [11:36] that’s very, very weird. And side note, I meet a lot of weird Christians. And I do.
[11:45] Don’t be weird. If Jesus is God, he can tell you what to do, and he has, and he’s [11:50] going to. If God is good and Jesus is God, it means the life he describes for us is [11:56] the best life we could have. It means it’s the most joy possible. If Jesus is [12:01] God, it means figuring out what he has to say to us about living life is the [12:05] most important thing we could do. Life’s not going to make sense until we do [12:09] that. If Jesus is God, it means what he says here in verse 6 of John 14, that he’s
[12:14] the only way to the Father. It means that that’s true. If Jesus isn’t God, he’s [12:18] not the only way, he’s not any way. But he is. So do you believe Jesus is God or [12:25] not? This is kind of the baseline thing of belief. This is where belief starts. [12:29] This is what the Bible means when it talks about believing in Jesus. It’s a [12:33] belief that he’s God. We can’t understand belief outside of that. What [12:38] happens then, this is why this passage in John is so cool, a lot of times we
[12:44] know about Jesus. We know like who he is, but there’s this unbelief that creeps in [12:51] and kind of deceives us. And that’s what happens to Philip, one of the disciples [12:55] in this passage. If we read on, we’ll see that kind of displayed. So continue on [13:00] with me in verse 8. Philip said to him, Lord, show us the Father, and it is [13:08] enough for us. Remember, Jesus had just said, if you’ve seen him, you’ve seen the [13:11] Father. So Jesus said to Philip, just said to him, have I been with you so long and
[13:16] you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can [13:21] you say, show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am the Father and the [13:25] Father is in me? I am in the Father. The words that I say to you, I believe you, I [13:31] do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his [13:34] works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe [13:39] on account of the works themselves. So Jesus just said, he just said to the
[13:43] disciples, if you know me, you know the Father. And then Philip pipes up, how are [13:48] we gonna know the way to the Father? And what has happened to Philip is what [13:52] happens to us. He thinks he knows Jesus. Jesus is right there with him. He thinks [13:57] he knows him. But unbelief creeps in and it causes Philip not to act on the truth [14:03] that he already has. He already had everything he needed. But because he [14:07] doesn’t really believe that Jesus is God, he hasn’t understood that yet, it causes
[14:13] him not to act on the truth he has. And so when we’re deceived by unbelief, [14:17] unbelief deceives us, and when we’re deceived by it, we don’t act on the truth.
[14:23] I think there’s a tendency maybe to give Philip a break here. You know, Jesus [14:27] hadn’t been to the cross yet. We didn’t have the full revelation of all the [14:31] scriptures, everything that we have. But on the other hand, he was right there [14:35] with Jesus. I mean, Jesus is sitting in front of him, literally saying, I am in [14:40] the Father, the Father is in me. And Philip still, he’s got this seed of [14:44] unbelief to that. There he has to ask for some clarification. He has to ask for
[14:48] some more information before he really acts. We do the same exact thing. That’s [14:54] what I’m talking about when we say we don’t always follow Jesus like we know [14:57] we should. We don’t always change when we know we should change. We don’t always [15:01] grow when we know we should grow. And it’s because of these little bits of [15:06] unbelief that creep into our lives. Here’s some examples. When we say that [15:11] we’re waiting for God to show us what to do with our lives, that is absolutely a
[15:16] seed of unbelief. Because if we believe that Jesus is God, then we believe, like [15:21] we said, that the scriptures are God’s Word. And they’ve been so clear on what [15:25] it is that we’re to do with our lives. Steve preached a whole sermon on it [15:28] last week and earlier the week before that too. What to do with our lives is [15:32] spelled out. And if we’re sitting around waiting saying, I still don’t know what [15:36] I’m gonna do, it’s unbelief. We haven’t believed Jesus. We haven’t believed that
[15:41] he’s God and we haven’t believed that his scriptures have told us what to do. [15:45] It’s no different than Philip asking to see the Father when Jesus just said, if [15:49] you’ve seen him, you’ve seen the Father. We say we’re just not called to a certain [15:54] level of commitment or responsibility. We’re not like those pastors up [15:57] there. We’re not like those leaders in the church. That’s unbelief. We just saw [16:03] last week that we’re all called to be reconcilers. We’re all called to be
[16:06] ambassadors for the gospel. When we say something like that, that we’re not called [16:11] to that level of commitment, it’s unbelief. We say we want to be part of a [16:14] community life, but we’re too busy. We know gospel community is important. We [16:18] hear it every week at the Village. I wish they’d stop saying it every week. [16:22] But we’re just so busy and there’s just so much going on and it just doesn’t [16:26] quite seem to happen. That’s unbelief in Jesus who has said that he is our rest.
[16:30] He said he is the way for our life to be complete. And so when we think that we’re [16:36] too busy for something, Jesus has called us to do. It’s unbelief. It doesn’t trust [16:41] us that he’s going to come through for us. The last thing I’ve got is unbelief [16:46] deceives us when we think we have no part to play in God’s plan for the church. [16:52] When we think, the church, there’s nothing for me to offer. You know, the Bible says [16:57] so clearly when we have belief in Jesus and he saves us, he gives us the Holy
[17:02] Spirit. So it’s the Holy Spirit working through us and it’s not us. So we all [17:05] have something to offer. Even on top of that, the Bible talks about how all of us [17:09] have gifts to offer the church to be used to build and grow and serve the [17:13] church. I talk to people kind of about this general subject all the time. It’s [17:18] really a lot of what I do at the village. And I have never, and I’ve met a lot of [17:24] people with a lot of different kinds of people. I’ve never met anyone that had
[17:29] nothing to offer the church. I’ve never met anyone that had nothing to offer. But [17:33] I’ve met countless people that have said that they don’t. And that’s unbelief. [17:38] That’s absolutely unbelief. And if believing is so important, if like I said, [17:42] we’re putting all our eggs in this belief basket, believe in Jesus to be [17:46] saved. We should be concerned if we see any kind of hint of unbelief in our life. [17:52] That should bother us. You know, if we see like Philip, we’re waiting for more
[17:56] things to act, even though Jesus has already told us the truth. That’s [18:00] unbelief. And we’ve just said believe in Jesus to be saved. And we notice [18:04] this should bother us a little bit. Jesus responds to Philip in verse 11. He [18:10] doesn’t try to convince him otherwise, doesn’t try to correct him. He tells him, [18:15] Philip, you need to believe. You’ve not believed. You need to believe. So once [18:18] again, he doesn’t just say you need to believe, though. He says you need to
[18:21] believe that I’m God. Jesus brings it back to that core issue. Don’t forget that [18:26] core issue. Belief that Jesus is God is the truth that changes everything. So [18:32] belief deceives us. But true belief has results, too. And that’s what I want to [18:37] look at now as we continue on to verse 12. So we have true belief that’s going [18:42] to do something in our lives. And this is just very clear how Jesus put this. [18:46] It’s pretty cool. It says, truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will
[18:51] also do the works that I do. In greater works than these, he will do, because I [18:56] am going to the Father. We saw earlier that belief, it’s more than just agreeing [19:02] something is true. Like I believe this screens here. Belief, the saving kind of [19:07] belief is this heart thing. It changes us. And Jesus is just really kind of [19:11] driving this point home here. He says, whoever believes in me will do the works [19:15] that I do. And so a lot of the things that we’ve been talking about the last
[19:19] few weeks have kind of served to explain what those works are exactly. What are [19:24] Jesus’s works? If we believe Jesus is God, then we believe his Bible’s true. And [19:29] we believe the things that he talks about in his scripture are the works that [19:34] we are then going to do if we believe. Jesus has told us throughout the New [19:39] Testament what kind of life we’re supposed to leave. It’s the kind of [19:43] things that he came for. It’s the things that he cares about. What I’m getting at
[19:48] is true belief always leads to mission. Jesus came for a very specific [19:53] purpose. We talk about this all the time with the village and we always will. [19:56] Jesus came to proclaim God’s redemption and then he came to secure God’s [20:01] redemption on the cross. This is the works that Jesus did. It’s what he came [20:05] for. He said he came to seek and to save the lost and in John 20 he says, just as [20:09] the Father sent me so I am sending you. These are his works. And now he said
[20:15] right here in scripture, if you believe in me you’re gonna do my works. Something [20:20] cool is he also says, and greater works than these will do. Because he’s going to [20:25] be with the Father. What’s he talking about there? That’s how we really know [20:28] he’s talking about the mission. Let’s think about this. When Jesus was here on [20:32] earth, even at this time, he only had but most a couple hundred disciples.
[20:38] That’s his main work, securing that redemption. After he goes to be [20:42] with the Father, this thing blows up really fast. There’s thousands of [20:46] believers and then hundreds of thousands and now millions. That’s how he can [20:50] say that we’ll do greater works than he will do. Parables all the time, Jesus [20:55] talks about the kingdom being like something small that grows to [20:58] something big. This is what he’s talking about. The works that he has are his
[21:02] mission and it’s going to continue to grow and to keep growing until we take [21:06] the gospel to the ends of the earth. I want to take some time now though to [21:10] really talk about this idea of what true belief is. Because Jesus has just said, [21:16] you know, if you believe me you’re gonna do my work. So we’ve seen belief leads [21:20] to action. Philip had unbelief so he didn’t act. He didn’t understand what he [21:24] was supposed to do. Jesus said if we do believe we’re gonna do his work. So we’ve
[21:29] got this idea that belief should do something in us. It’s not just agreeing [21:32] something’s true. You can agree that something’s true and not do anything [21:35] about it. If you believe Jesus is God, that kind of belief, you’ve got to do [21:40] something about it. So true belief results in action. A person can say they [21:46] believe in Jesus all they want. If their actions don’t back it up, that’s not true [21:49] belief. I’ve got an example here I want to give you guys. This is probably
[21:52] not a good example. We’ll see how this goes. I think it works. So say, [22:01] me and James, the worship leader here, say we play the lottery every week. [22:06] We’re terrible at math and we’re bad with our money. So that’s why we do that. [22:11] So every week we play the lottery. So one week though, James comes up to me [22:17] and is like, Nate, I don’t know where I got this. I can’t tell you. I know the [22:22] numbers this week. I’m absolutely sure. 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42, those are the numbers
[22:27] of the lottery this week. Some of you are laughing, some of you aren’t. I’m sure [22:33] that these are the numbers. I’m like, yeah, you never lied to me before, James. [22:39] I guess. That’s weird, but I believe you. That’s what I was, if I’m his friend, I’m [22:43] going to say, I believe you. So we go our separate ways and James calls me up that [22:48] night and he’s like, I’m about to watch the drawing on TV. Did you get your [22:51] ticket? And I said, yeah, I do every week. I’m bad at math. I got my ticket.
[22:56] I said, did you get the numbers? I said, I said, well, I didn’t really get those [23:00] numbers. I just went with my usual numbers. And so James would say, what, [23:03] didn’t you believe me? I’d say, yeah, I believed you. I just, I didn’t do it. [23:08] Now, what would you say? Do I really believe him? I’m a liar. I’m saying that [23:13] I believe him. Obviously, I don’t. Now, I could mean it. I mean it because he’s my [23:19] I want to be nice to him. I don’t want him to think I don’t believe him. I
[23:22] actually do think he could be right. It wasn’t, I didn’t think that enough to [23:27] drive me to action. Here’s what I’m afraid of. I’m afraid sometimes we’re [23:32] just being nice to Jesus. I’m afraid that sometimes we’re just saying, I think [23:38] you’re probably right. But we don’t take that action that demonstrates that we [23:43] really believe he’s God. Here’s one more really quick, shorter example. We all [23:48] kind of do this kind of thing. So say I’m with my wife, Katie, and we’re going
[23:51] to go to a movie and ask her what the showtime is. She says, 710. What’s the [23:55] next thing I do? I’m terrible. I pull my phone out. I load up my movie app. [24:00] She says, what are you doing? I said, I’m just checking the movie times. Don’t [24:03] you believe me? Yeah, I believe you. I’m just double checking. Now, here’s the [24:08] thing. I do in some sense kind of believe her. I think she’s probably right. I would [24:17] say, yeah, the movie is at 710. I don’t need to look it up. But I look it up. It
[24:23] didn’t have true belief. I’m afraid sometimes we just think Jesus is probably [24:27] right. We’ve got to have true belief. It’s a belief that Jesus is God. It’s a [24:34] belief that changes and drives us to act on the information that we have. Verse [24:42] 13 and 14 here are kind of interesting. And if we could get those back up on the [24:46] screen, some neat things going on here. I didn’t understand these verses for a [24:50] while. Read those with me. It says, whatever you ask in my name, this I will
[24:56] do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my [25:00] name, I will do it. So for a while I was like, oh, this means we have to say in [25:05] Jesus name, amen, at the end of every prayer, or it doesn’t count. And it also [25:11] means that evidently if I’m doing it right, I can get whatever I want. And it [25:16] hasn’t been working. In context, this is something much more clear. This is all [25:21] about the mission. If we understand what Jesus is saying, it’s actually really
[25:25] significant. So I hope in looking at this you’ll understand why we do say, you [25:29] know, in Jesus name, amen, at the end of prayer. There’s nothing wrong with that. [25:33] It’s not a magic trick, but there’s nothing wrong with it. But [25:36] there’s a reason that we say that. See, in their culture, a name meant a little [25:40] more than it does to us in our culture. In their culture, a name was kind of who [25:46] you are. It’s kind of the essence of what you are. It’s an essence of really
[25:49] what you stand for, what you’re all about. So when Jesus says, you know, ask for [25:53] things in my name, he’s saying after he’s just said, you know, if you believe [25:58] in me, you’re going to do my works. He’s saying, ask for things that are for my [26:02] works, ask for things that are for my mission. And what’s so cool is he says [26:05] right there in verse 13, this I will do that the father may be glorified in the [26:09] son. You just see this big picture of scripture. The mission is everywhere. The
[26:13] fact that God gets glory from it is everywhere. So Jesus says, if you believe [26:17] in me, you’re going to do my works. Ask in my name in honor of who I am and what [26:22] I stand for. The fact that I came to seek and to save the loss. That’s what [26:26] I’m about. It’s what I want you to be about. Ask for that and I’ll give it to [26:30] you. That’s the truth. Man, we don’t we don’t take advantage of enough. I know [26:35] it’s true. I’ve found it to be true just time and again through the planting of
[26:39] this church. But it’s still it’s not something that I believe enough. Jesus [26:46] wants to bless us when we’re working in his name. That means on his mission. And [26:51] so it’s the last thing on that. That means if you’re going to ask for things [26:54] in Jesus name, you got to be on his mission. You got to be in the game. It’s [26:58] not going to make you’re not going to know what to ask for. Whatever you ask [27:02] for is not going to make any sense unless you’re on mission for him. All
[27:05] right. Let’s finish up by going to verse 15 here. Nice short quick says if you [27:13] love me, you’ll keep my commandments. Um, truly sums up everything that we’ve [27:18] been talking about. We’ve talked about belief. True belief drives us to action. [27:22] And so just says if you love me, you’ll keep my commandments. It’s pretty simple. [27:27] And the last thing I want us to see is true belief always leads to obedience.
[27:34] Keeping Jesus’s commandments and living his mission are not really any different [27:38] at all. Okay, so obeying the commandments of Jesus and being on mission are kind [27:43] of the same thing. And that’s because Jesus’s commandments are all about [27:46] mission. What are Jesus’s biggest commandments? He says to love God. And [27:52] how do we love God? God’s just said in verse 13, what glorifies him, what [27:56] brings him glorious being about his mission. God wants worshippers to worship
[28:00] him. So the way that we love him is we be about the mission. We gather [28:04] worshippers to worship him. The other commandment that Jesus has so we’re to [28:09] love people. The most loving thing that we can do for people is introduce them [28:13] to Jesus. It’s the mission. Obedience and mission are just tied together. They [28:18] don’t really, they can’t be separated. The mission is obedience. Obedience is [28:22] being about Jesus’s mission of seeking and saving the loss. But I want us to see
[28:26] also that obedience and belief are also wrapped up together. So this idea of [28:32] believing and what true belief is, is also wrapped up in obedience. Turn to [28:37] John chapter 3. This is the last verse we’ll be in this morning, 36. We’re gonna [28:46] see that belief and obedience really go hand in hand. It’ll be up on the screen [28:53] too. It says, whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. Whoever does not [28:59] obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. And notice
[29:05] that in the ESV it contrasts believing and obeying. So it says, whoever believes [29:12] in the Son has eternal life. Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life. And [29:15] a lot of your translations may say whoever believes in whoever does not [29:18] believe. That’s an okay translation too, but these are actually two different [29:24] Greek words there in John 3.36. And so they can be translated different ways. [29:28] And what this kind of shows us is just the nature of belief actually. Belief
[29:34] can also be seen as, or unbelief can be seen as not obeying. Belief can be seen [29:39] as obeying. If you believe, you obey. And so Jesus says, if you believe him, you’re [29:45] going to obey him. And if you don’t obey him, you don’t believe him. It’s kind of [29:48] that simple. So obedience and belief just go hand in hand. I want to take just a [29:54] moment here though to kind of almost have a word of caution with some of the [29:58] things that we’ve been talking about, because it can be so easy to read verses
[30:04] like, if you love me, you’re going to keep my commandments. And if you believe [30:09] me, you’re going to obey me. And if you don’t obey me, you’re not going to see [30:11] eternal life. And it can be easy if we’re thinkers at all to think, wait a [30:15] minute, I don’t always keep the commandments. Does that mean I don’t love [30:20] Jesus? I don’t always obey. Does that mean I don’t have salvation? Does that [30:26] mean I don’t believe? I don’t always obey. Does that mean I don’t have eternal
[30:29] life? And this can very quickly go somewhere it wasn’t meant to go. God did [30:34] not give us kind of all these details on what true belief is to make us doubt our [30:38] salvation. It’s not his intent. He tells us these things so that we can be secure [30:43] in our belief and so that we can believe him more and be more grounded in [30:46] our belief. So we’ve got to understand this a little bit. When I preached last, [30:50] I talked about Romans 7 and we’ve been talking about it on and off. But there’s
[30:55] this idea there that even though we’re saved, we still have this indwelling sin. [30:59] And it’s not who we are. It doesn’t define us. But it’s something we do have to [31:03] fight in our lives. And I’ll tell you, unbelief is maybe the most difficult [31:09] indwelling sin to deal with. And that’s what that is. Unbelief is an indwelling [31:13] sin that we’ve got to fight. So it’s not that we’re checking every one of our [31:17] actions and every one of our thoughts and saying, oh, does that mean I don’t
[31:20] believe and that I’m not saved? That’s not what it’s about at all. We each do [31:25] things every day. Each one of us does things every day that we would do [31:30] differently if we fully believed Jesus was God. So if that’s the case, then we [31:36] would have a problem. But what it really is, is we should be looking at [31:39] every thought and every action that we have and we should be saying, is this an [31:43] action that’s a result of belief or is this an action that’s a result of
[31:48] unbelief that I need to repent of and fight and recognize as indwelling sin in [31:54] my life? And that’s how we need to approach this. Here’s how I think [31:57] we should think about belief. Are we on a trajectory of belief? What I mean by [32:02] Are we believing more and more? Is God growing us? And this is where these [32:06] things like growth and change are important. We should be able to look at [32:11] our life and say, this is different about my life because of my belief that
[32:15] Jesus is God. Specifically because I believe Jesus is God. This is different [32:21] about my life. I’m working on these things. I recognize that as sin. I’m [32:25] changing in that area. If we can’t have that kind of introspection and that kind [32:31] of examining of ourselves, then there is cause for worry. Then you do legitimately [32:35] need to be concerned if you can’t do that. Then you probably don’t have true [32:38] belief. True belief puts us all in in following Jesus. True belief means we’ve
[32:46] got all our chips in with Jesus. This is what Paul talks about in 1st [32:52] Corinthians 15-19. He says, if in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of [32:57] all people most to be pitied. What Paul is talking about there is if we really [33:02] believe that Jesus is God, that’s where we’re going to put everything. We’re going to put [33:06] everything on that. We’re not going to hedge our bets a little bit with this [33:10] life. We’re not going to mostly believe and hold a little bit back for this life.
[33:15] We’re going to live our lives in such a way that if it turns out Jesus isn’t God, [33:20] our life looks pathetic. We’re to be pitied. True belief puts us all in in [33:25] following Jesus. I think that’s where we really understand we can’t believe [33:30] mostly. We can’t take belief just most of the way and then back off a little bit. [33:37] We’ve made it seem, in church language, we’ve made it seem as if belief is just [33:43] believing something’s true. It’s not. Belief is believing in your heart
[33:46] Jesus is God and then acting on that. Belief is living in light of the fact [33:50] that Jesus is God. Is the trajectory of your life one of belief? That’s what we’ve got [33:58] to ask ourselves. Are you all in in following Jesus? Is everything that you [34:01] have dependent on the fact that Jesus is God? Is there anything in your life that [34:07] would be different if Jesus wasn’t God? Do you believe more today than you did [34:15] yesterday? Are you going to believe more next week than you did this past week?
[34:19] These are the things we’ve got to ask ourselves this week as you’re reading [34:22] your Bible. This was really meaningful for me. Read it in the eyes of belief. [34:27] Don’t read your Bible and think, do I think this is true? Read the [34:32] scriptures and think, is my life reflecting that I believe this? Can I see [34:38] belief in the actions of what I’m reading? Living for Jesus is not supposed [34:44] to be a burden. If living for Jesus is a burden, we’re doing it wrong.
[34:50] We’ve talked pretty frequently how Jesus is our joy. If it has become a burden, [34:57] I think it’s because we’ve disconnected belief from mission and obedience. [35:01] It’s because we think of belief as this one-time thing where we believe and [35:06] that’s good and we get salvation and now we got to move on and grow from there. [35:10] Belief was never supposed to be disconnected like that. My belief is [35:14] supposed to be, in fact, what fuels our mission and it fuels our obedience. It’s
[35:18] just the simple, it’s not complicated, the simple belief that Jesus is God. This [35:22] fuels our obedience and our mission. So when you’re thinking about these [35:28] things that we’ve talked about the last few weeks, how do I need to change? How [35:32] do I need to grow? How do I need to have responsibility and commitment? This is [35:37] as you think about those things, you can’t think about it, what am I going to [35:43] do for God? God doesn’t need you to do anything for him. We’ve got to have a
[35:48] different mindset on these things. We need to think, how can I, through my [35:53] obedience, through my mission, how can I, through changing, through growing, through [35:56] my commitment, through my responsibility, how can I demonstrate that I believe [36:01] Jesus is God? It’s a very different thing. That’s not a burden. It’s a joy and [36:07] it’s a living out this truth that has changed everything. So that’s where we [36:12] need to go. Let’s pray this morning. God, I just pray for all of us here that you
[36:19] would help us in our belief, Father. God, help us not to settle for a belief that [36:28] just thinks that you might be right. God, help us not to settle for a belief that’s [36:37] being nice to you, Jesus, because you’re a nice guy. It’s not good enough. Father, [36:42] I pray that we would believe in our action. God, I pray that belief would be [36:47] the source of our service to you. God, help people here. Help me, Father, to [36:54] repent of areas where I have not believed. Help us to change. God, I thank
[36:59] you for your word. I thank you for your revelation of your Son. [37:06] Help that to change every area of our life. Amen.