Those Who Have Hope

I invite you to take your Bibles and turn with me to 1 Thessalonians and chapter 4:

“Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we who are alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these words.”

Father, we pray that with our Bibles open upon our laps, that you will do for us what we so desperately need, and that is to take the voice of a mere man and the desires for cohesive thought and breathe upon them by your Spirit, so the voice that we hear is the very voice of God through the written Word of God, and that in hearing we might understand and in understanding we may obey. To this end we seek you in prayer. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

If you would care to turn to one other portion of Scripture, Acts chapter 17, I want to take a moment to set in context the eventual direction of this message. It may be that the setting in context will almost become the message, in which case we know what we have to look forward to—or be concerned about. But I want you to turn to Acts 17, because it is in Acts 17 that we have the biblical record of the founding of the church in Thessalonica.

Paul and his companions had gone through Amphipolis and Apollonia, and they came to Thessalonica, and on three successive Sabbaths, Paul took it upon himself, under the guidance of the Spirit of God, to reason in the synagogue, from the Scriptures, concerning the issues with which the members of the synagogue would be very familiar. His message centered on the issue of the Messiah. And, of course, there has never been a Jewish boy or girl born who has not lived with the notion of the Messiah, the question of his identity, the time of his coming, and so on. And the prophetic passages of the Old Testament were all pointing forward to the Messiah. Some, like Paul prior to his conversion, had lived with the idea that the Messiah was only going to be a dramatic and powerful conqueror. And consequently, when in the person of Jesus Christ there came these claims to messiahship, those who already had in their minds an expectation which did not include suffering, which did not include meekness—it only involved majesty—they therefore had no place for this Jesus.

And so, Paul, recognizing his challenge, goes into the synagogue, and he reasons with them, and he explains and he proves “that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead.”[1] That’s verse 3. His emphasis was: “You know that there was a Messiah who was to come. Well,” he says, “I want to show you that you have been missing the point here in part, and that the Messiah was to be also the Suffering Servant described in Isaiah’s [prophecy], as well as the great reigning King described in other prophetic passages.” And he labors to this end to make it clear, so that he could bring them to a point of understanding where they would be looking at one another and saying, essentially, “You know, that makes sense to me. He doesn’t seem to be making anything up. He’s quoting from our own Scriptures. He’s explaining it. We’re reading it from the very scrolls that we have. And he is making clear that the Christ had to suffer and also that he had to rise from the dead.”

And, of course, the Pharisees believed in a resurrection at the last day. They were cloudy as to how it would work and the way in which it would unfold. And now comes Paul, who, of course, had the best of Jewish credentials, and he unfolds for them the Scriptures, and he says, “Now, look: the explanations of the Messiah find their fulfillment in one who would die and rise again.” So far, so good. Then comes his punch line. Verse 3b: “This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Christ.” So far, they were happy to go along with the progression of thought: that the Messiah had to suffer, die, rise again. But now comes the kicker: “Jesus, whom I’m proclaiming,” he says, “is the very Messiah we’ve just described.”

Now, at that point there was an immediate division. Luke tells us that “some of the [people] were persuaded,” and they “joined Paul and Silas, as did a large number of God-fearing Greeks”—people who were surrounding the synagogue. They were folks who were interested in religion, couldn’t quite put it together. A number of them also believed. And we’re told that there were “a few prominent women”[2] who became believers at this time.

Paul was in no doubt about what he was doing. Paul was not traveling the country giving religious talks. Who needs another religious talk? Who even likes religious talks? Well, religious people like religious talks, presumably. But even they were weary of just more talk. Paul was not entering into the synagogue simply to pronounce philosophical speculation, because that becomes very wearisome. No, Paul had an express purpose. His dramatic change on the Damascus Road had made clear to him that he was now a man with a mission, and his mission was in no way uncertain. He was committed to seeing unbelieving people—whether Jewish or Greek, whatever background—to see unbelieving people become committed followers of Jesus Christ. And he wanted them to understand that becoming a Christian is a profound, personal, and permanent change. Becoming a Christian is not as a result of lineage. It’s not as a result of being born in the right environment—although that may help. It’s not as a result of hanging around church buildings—although hopefully that would at least point us in the right direction. But becoming a Christian is a profound, personal, and permanent encounter with the risen Christ that leaves us in no doubt that what we once were we no longer are, and we have been made radically different.

When he writes to the Thessalonians now, these years after their beginning of the church, he writes to encourage them to commitment. He writes to make it clear to them what he makes clear in the rest of his letters: that if a person professes to be a Christian, that will be apparent in two particular ways. One, it will be seen in what the individual believes; and two, it will be seen in how they behave. To become a Christian is a mind-altering experience. Anyone who says it isn’t doesn’t understand what it means to be a Christian. We ought not to be afraid of that phrase, although it has negative connotations in certain places. To become a Christian is to change our mind about everything.

Becoming a Christian is a profound, personal, and permanent encounter with the risen Christ that leaves us in no doubt that what we once were we no longer are, and we have been made radically different.

It is, first of all, to change our mind about the problems of our lives. Prior to that time, we may think that our problems are environmental. We may think that they’re superficial. We may think that they’re as a result of things that other people have done to us. When we become a Christian (indeed, prior to becoming a Christian), we realize that the fundamental problem facing us is the problem of our own rebellion against God—that we have not been doing well in relationship to the Ten Commandments, and they’re the expression of God’s moral law, and so we find ourselves to be in violation of the perfect law that God has established. And so we have to change our mind, then, about our predicament. And until a man or a woman has been brought to the place where they’re prepared to change their mind about the predicament that faces them, there is no reason for them ever to embrace Jesus as a Savior. Why ever would you want a Savior if you have nothing from which to be saved? You could have an example. You could have a teacher. You could have a guru. You could have a philosophical leader. But that would be sufficient—unless, of course, you realize that you were a sinner, in which case, at that point, you and I would need a Savior.

And, you see, when the Bible is proclaimed in its effectiveness, when Paul was proclaiming it to these people, they realized that their change would be, first of all, in the way they think, and in the way they think about the world—in the way they think, indeed, about everything. It’ll change the way you think about your garden. It will change the way you think about the sunrise. It will change the way you think about the birds that sing. It will change the way in which you think about taking vacations. It will totally change you. If you doubt that, just get a good hymnbook and read it:

Birds with gladder songs o’erflow,
[And earth] with deeper beauties shine,
Since I know, as now I know,
I am his, and he is mine.[3]

Before then, I used to listen to the birds sing and say, “That’s nice. I wonder where they came from.” I used to look at the sky and say, “What a nice sky. I’m so glad we have it.” But now, since he became my Father and I became his friend, I say, “Listen to my Father’s birds chirping, and look at the glory of my Father’s handiwork.” It changes the way we think about things. We’re no longer proud and smug in our own creations. We’re no longer drawing attention to our own advancements. We are now bowing down before the wonder of who God is. It is a great change in belief.

It is an accompanying great change in behavior—a radical change in behavior. Indeed, if there is no change in behavior, there’s no reason to believe that there’s been a change in belief. Be very, very careful of somebody who tells you that they’ve changed their belief system, but you don’t see it in their behavior. Either they never understood it in the first place, or they don’t understand it now. But when you change the way you think about things, you will change the way you do things. It is inevitable. And you can think about it all kinds of ways. You can think about it, for example, in relationship to a golf swing. But we won’t get into that. I remember we had a bad time with that last time I was here. We’ll just leave that aside. It will change. When you change your thinking, you change your behavior.

Now, the Thessalonians understood this. First Thessalonians 1:8, Paul says to them, “I want to encourage you by letting you know that the message of the Lord is ringing out from you not only in Macedonia and in Achaia, but your faith in God has become known everywhere. Therefore, we do not need to say anything about it.”[4] Now, just stop there for a moment and think. How did the world know that these Thessalonians were different? They did not know as a result of seeing inside their heads. The change in belief would not become apparent as a result of just sitting opposite somebody on a train. But if—not that I’m suggesting there were trains in Thessalonica; it’s a mixing of metaphors—but if we were to sit opposite that individual and find that they behave a different way, then we would inquire as to what the difference in their behavior is.

For example, within a few miles of Thessalonica, there was one of the most significant mountains, both geographically and religiously, in the whole of the then-known world. It was Mount Olympus. And Mount Olympus was significant not only for its geographical stature, but it was significant on account of the fact that it was the home of the Greek gods, so believed. And so men and women within the framework of Thessalonica would be constantly focusing on Mount Olympus, would be thinking and thanking the gods of Mount Olympus, would be going off for picnics in the hope that the gods would not make it rain on them, and so on. And it was part and parcel of their lives. To be born there was—if they came, especially, from a Greek background—to be riddled with all of that thought concerning religion.

Now, let’s imagine that a couple had come to faith in Jesus Christ. They had heard the word that Paul had preached, and they had believed in him. And they were having one of their friends from a hundred miles away who were coming over to spend a couple of days with them in Thessalonica. And they sent word to say that “we’re going to come,” and they said, “By the way, when we come, we’re looking forward to our annual picnic on the foothills of Mount Olympus.” So when the word came to Mr. and Mrs. X concerning the impending visit of their friends and concerning the prospect of the picnic on Mount Olympus—which, of course, had been something that these two families had been doing all of their lives. They had done it before they had kids, and then they did it when they had kids, and then they did it every time as more kids came along. They were always having picnics on Mount Olympus. But now they came to faith in Jesus Christ. Now, Mount Olympus never meant anything to them, in terms of the gods. They weren’t interested in going back up to the shrines.

So they talked to one another; they said, “What are we going to do? They’re going to think we’re totally weird if we don’t go up that hill with them, you know? After all, we’ve gone there for years.” And the father says, “Yeah, I know. But since we found this other King called Jesus, since we embraced the lordship and kingship of Christ, we’ve never paid any attention to Mount Olympus. And after all, aren’t we supposed to reach our friends and our neighbors? Aren’t we supposed to have them come to faith in the same Jesus that we trust?” The father says to the wife, he says, “You know, I think if we go up there for that picnic, we’ll be able to cover our bases, but we’re going to confuse the issues of Jesus.” And they must have wrestled back and forth.

And eventually, the people come into town: “Hey, how are you doing?” “Wonderful. Come on in. Have a cup of tea.” The usual thing: sit around, talking about things. And then, of course, the question: “So, when’s the picnic? Same time as usual?” Wife looks at husband. Husband looks at wife. Who’s the bravest?

Wife goes first, as usual: “Well, you know, we were thinking we weren’t going to have the picnic this time. At least, we’re going to have a picnic, but we’re not going up on Mount Olympus.”

“What? But we’ve just had another little kid, and we haven’t ever taken our kid up to the shrine of the god of such and such, and we were looking forward to that.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. But we wanted to talk to you about that, about those shrines and gods and, you know, we’ll get round to it as you’re here for a while.”

“No, no, no, no! Tell me now! What’s the deal?”

“Well, we… You see, have you ever heard of Jesus of Nazareth?” And then it would go from there.

Now, let’s cut to the bedroom in the evening, when the mother and father who came, the visiting party came, they’re now lying in their beds, looking up at the ceiling, making maps with the cracks, and they’re lying, and they’re saying to themselves, “Well, here we are. Same place as last time. But goodness gracious! There’s something really weird going on in here. I mean, can you believe Sadie and George? No picnic? No Mount Olympus? No foreign gods? No shrines?”

And the wife says, “Yeah, did you hear what they were actually saying? You know, they’re actually claiming that this Jesus of Nazareth, who’s been dead for a while, he’s coming back.”

“Yes,” says the husband. “You know, it would be bad enough if all they were saying was ‘We’re into Jesus. Now let’s go for the picnic.’ It’d be bad enough if they were saying, you know, ‘We’re interested in the teachings of Jesus. He was a guru, and he was a great guy.’ That would be bad enough. But they’re absolutely gone totally nuts about this! They’re saying that Jesus not only died, but he rose from the dead, and not only that he rose from the dead, but he’s actually coming back.”

“Ah, let’s go to sleep. We’ll deal with it in the morning.”

Now, I don’t think that’s a far-fetched illustration. And that’s what’s supposed to happen now. When a person becomes a Christian, that person is radically changed. Now, for those of us who were brought up in Christian homes and wonder about this and say, “Well, you know, I haven’t been living long enough to be, like, a Hells Angel and everything and go worshipping at shrines. What’s supposed to happen to me?” Let me tell you what’s happened to you: if God in his grace has reached out to you in your tender life, understand this: you have been saved from a lot of stuff. And it will become increasingly apparent to you the older you get. Some are saved out of a lot of stuff. And if you talk with them, they surely would love to have been saved from it rather than out of it. But whether you were saved from it in prospect or out of it in reality, it is a radical change.

Now, I want to say to you that the absence of such teaching has not only led people to spurious professions of faith in Jesus Christ but confuses the watching world about what it means to believe in Jesus Christ. Because if what we present to people is this: “Listen, all that it means to become a Christian is you just do this ‘belief thing,’ It’s a kind of esoteric thing. You ‘trust’ Jesus.”

“Well, what does that mean?”

“Well, I don’t really know what it means, but you just do that. And then you can do what you like. I mean, you can go back up Olympus. You can go to the same movies. You can listen to the same music. You can hang with the same friends. You can do all the same stuff. I mean, it doesn’t matter. All you do is you just plug in, and then you just go with the flow.”

And there’s an awful lot of people who apparently plugged in and are going with the flow, and they don’t know who in the world they are, what they are, and nobody knows what to do with them. The difference and the difficulty is that someone never told them, “Listen: new life, new lifestyle.”

Before you got married, ladies, you had a certain name. When you got married, you got another name. You got a change of name and a change of identity. Your husband loves you exclusively—or should—demands all of your affections (share a little with the children and your parents, but by and large, all of your affections), all of your time, all of your devotion. And rightly so! It’s the expulsive power of a new affection. The old guys, the old cronies, the old haunts, the old places, they’re gone. Why? Because I have a relationship with this individual. It would be a strange husband who said, “Now, look: I want you to sign here, and I want you to become my wife, but I want you also to know you can do what you like, anytime you like, with anyone you want, anywhere you want.” You look at the guy and say, “I don’t think that’s a marriage. I don’t know what it is, but I don’t think it’s a marriage.” And you would be right. It’s not a marriage!

Let me tell you, young people: you commit your life to Jesus Christ, you just signed up for a holy life. You just signed up for a different life. You signed up for a radical change. There must be a change in your behavior. There must be a change that issues from the way you think. Previously, you thought about things in a certain way, and now you think differently. And the reason you think differently is because the Spirit of God has come to live within your life, and like the people there in Thessalonica, they turned from the lifeless idols to the worship of the living God. And their friends said, “They no longer worship at those shrines. It’s got something to do with Jesus. I haven’t had time to ask them.”

“Oh,” you say, “well, that’s Thessalonica, two thousand years ago. This is Cleveland.” Let me tell you something: Cleveland is full of idols. Contemporary Western culture is full of idols. People have come out of a week of worshipping idols, worshipping money, worshipping power, worshipping fame, work, sport, entertainment, food, alcohol, drugs, sex. There are at least half a dozen magazines dedicated to every idol that is in offer. Just go in Borders bookstore and drown yourself under the magazine racks. And if you look at them, they are the preoccupations of our culture. They are idols.

Now, if Jesus Christ cannot break the bondage of those idols, then he is less than the person he claimed to be. But in the case of these Thessalonians, he broke the bondage for them. They were once always there. Now they’re over here. And people said, “Why is that?” And they were unashamed. A radical shift had taken place on account of their discovery of the gospel, under the grace of God.

Biblical standards of behavior are absolutely vital. And so it is that to suggest that Christianity is a private, internal experience which matters a little bit to us and may be interesting to others is to misunderstand the New Testament. These Thessalonians were committed to a life that is pleasing God. And that’s why in chapter 4 Paul says, “We instructed you how to live in order to please God.”[5] You see, they’re no longer like the rest.

Let’s finally get to the verses that we’re supposed to be studying. Verse 13: he says, “Brothers, we do[n’t] want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men.” Just look at that little phrase, “like the rest of men.” That is an obvious distinction, right? It’s a distinction between “the rest of men” and them. Who are “the rest of men”? And were they once like “the rest of men”? Absolutely! That’s the point. They were once like the rest of men, and the rest of men were “without hope and without God in the world.”[6] That’s what Paul says in Ephesians. He says, “You were formerly without hope and without God.” Phillips paraphrases it in this way: “You were without Christ, you were utter strangers to God’s … community. … You had nothing to look forward to and no God to whom you could turn.”[7] That’s a picture of “the rest of men.”

“The rest of men” this morning in contemporary culture have got nothing to look forward to and no God to turn to. And that’s why hopelessness so pervades our generation. That’s why after all the anticipation and all the excitement of the ʼ60s—that “[you] got to admit it’s getting better,”[8] and it didn’t get better—we went into the ʼ70s, trying to fix what we broke in the ʼ60s. We went in the ʼ80s to try and fix the ʼ70s. And now the children of the ʼ90s have grown up with no basis of belief whatsoever, and they’re checking out faster than we can ever stop them. Why? Because they have no God to whom they might turn, and they have nothing to look forward to.

Do you realize that’s the average teenage kid in America: no God to whom they may turn and nothing to look forward to? And so they’ve got to fill their life with something. And that’s why at the end of the week, on Friday, the radio stations, all the DJs are always hyping it up: “Well, it’s the weekend. Oh, we’re looking forward to the weekend!” You get them on Monday morning, tomorrow morning, tune in five thirty: “Oh, well, I’ve just had my fifteenth cup of coffee, trying to get started. What a drag, man, Monday. Don’t worry. Don’t worry. It’s already six thirty. We’ve already been through an hour of it. We’ll get it hyped up.”

And then they find little things to help you. You’re driving in your car, there’s nowhere to go, nothing to look forward to, and the man says, “Channel 43 plays favorites!”

You say, “Oh, yeah, channel 43 favorites!”

He says, “Hogan’s Heroes tonight at nine o’clock.” He says, “I know nothing!”

You say, “Yeah, yeah. I like Hogan’s Heroes. That gives me something to look forward to. Yeah, okay.” So you make your calls—cold calls, hot calls, medium calls. And you say, “You know what? I’ll get some peanuts and sit down, I’ll watch that stupid, dumb program, and then I’ll check out, and then I’ll have got rid of Monday. Then I’ll give Tuesday a shot.”

See, the great sense of utter emptiness and alienation… And I don’t care what level you’re living at, I don’t care whether you fly executive jets, I don’t care whether you make a million and a half every month, let me tell you: the more I live and move and breathe in this wonderful country, it doesn’t matter how many zeros are at the end of these guys’ paychecks. They are without anything to look forward to and no God to whom they can turn. And it is the responsibility of the Christians so to behave our belief that they will be caused to say, “Excuse me, could you come into my office and close the door?”—not so that they might fire you but so that they might say, “I notice there’s something different about you.”

I had a wonderful testimony just this week from one of the streets in Solon. I asked a young man, I said, “And how did you come to faith in Jesus Christ?”

He said, “We noticed that the couple across the road had gone weird on us.”

I said, “What do you mean, ‘gone weird’ on you?”

He said, “Well, we used to do a lot of things as a family. We’d go over and do things in the backyard and everything else, and the father said a run of dirty jokes that could just knock your socks off. And suddenly, this couple stopped laughing at the jokes. That was the first sign we had.” Now, why did they stop laughing at the jokes? ʼCause a change of belief brings a change in behavior. And he said, “Eventually, they remained so nice, such wonderful neighbors, that when we were having one of these backyard events, I asked one of the kids, ‘What’s the deal?’ And the boy told me that he had trusted in Jesus Christ as his Savior. And I said to him, ‘Why don’t you tell me more about that?’ And he told me more about that, and I trusted in Christ. And my brother asked me, and I told my brother. And my mother did the same thing, and my father came last.” And the whole family today has had a profound, personal, permanent change as a result of the inroads of discovering a radical new belief.

In the context of the world in which Paul was writing, you see, the hopelessness was revealed in the most obvious of ways. The tombstones revealed emptiness. But down in the catacombs, in the dungeons where the Christians were being kept for hors d’oeuvres for the lions, the story was different. So, up on the high street you had all these tombstones that basically said, “We’re without God and without hope in the world.” And then you went down into the catacombs, where the Christians had been imprisoned, ready for their imminent death, and you found scrawled on the walls, “Jesus is coming back. Jesus is alive. We’re looking forward to seeing Jesus.”

Our world today, with all of its technological progress, all of its Pentium chip advances, all of its Windows 95, is unable to address the real software issues. ʼCause the real software issue is a software issue of the human heart. And there’s not a computer program that can answer the cries of the human heart. America might be online with itself, but it’s out of line with God. And to those of us who’ve been put online with Jesus Christ has been given the responsibility of going to those who are out of line with God and telling them about this same Jesus and that he’s definitively coming back. Do you believe he’s coming back?

Lord Shaftesbury, one of the prime social movers in Great Britain in an earlier generation, said, “I do not think that in the last forty years I have lived one conscious hour that was not influenced by the thought of the return of Jesus Christ.” One of the key politicians of the day! “I haven’t lived one conscious hour,” he says, “without the thought of the return of Jesus.” It absolutely fired him. “Soon and very soon we’re goin’ to see the King.”[9] Soon “the roll” will be “called up yonder.”[10] They’ll call your name tomorrow, in various contexts. Some of you go back to school. They’ll get you in a room. They’ll take one of those computer printouts. They’re going to read the list. They’re going to call your name and see if you answer. There’s a day coming when God is going to read the list. He’s going to call the names. If your name’s there, fine. If not, you got a problem.

See, I like to know the end of the story, don’t you? I like to back my car into parking spaces. I don’t like these signs, “Nose in only.” I know what it’s about. Seemingly, it’s to speed up the progress of getting you in—and, consequently, to slow up the process of getting you out. So, as long as no one’s looking, I always back in. ʼCause I’m thinking about leaving when I’m arriving. Now, let me tell you something: if you haven’t started thinking about leaving, checking out of life, you’re not in any position to face Monday. You’ve got to get your exit planned so that you can enjoy your time at the game. You got your exit plan?

See, you’ve got to know what the downside risk is in going into an investment, don’t you? What the worst possible scenario here? How much do I lose on this deal? I mean, what if it goes belly-up? What happens to me? Let’s find out what the eventuality is before we all chip in. You guys do that all the time. Well, have you done that with life? Do you know what the downside risk is of continuing to disbelieve in Jesus Christ? The Bible says it’s eternity in hell. That’s quite a downside risk! And yet some remain stubborn in our unbelief, unprepared to face the challenge.

Now, all of that by way of introduction to the sermon which will follow next Sunday. Let me make some concluding statements to the longest introduction for a while.

People are asking, “Where did I come from, where am I heading, what will happen when I die, and how is this all going to end?” They are. They may not be asking it just in that way, but they drive in their cars, and they every so often say to themselves—when the sky becomes really dark, and it’s three o’clock in the afternoon, and you get one of these dreadful thunderstorms, some bright spark’s bound to say—“I think it’s the end of the world.” And everybody laughs a kind of nervous laugh, hoping, of course, that it isn’t and wondering how it will be.

Some have decided that history is circular; it’s not linear—that, like the Hindus, we’re just coming around and around and around. If history is linear and has a point of beginning and a point of conclusion to which we’re moving, as the Bible says it does, then we can look back to the beginning, and we can look forward to the conclusion. And here it says that Jesus, who died, who was buried, who was raised to life, is coming again.

Now, for some of you, I recognize that in speaking to your friends, until you deal with the issues of the death and the resurrection of Jesus, you’re not going to be able to deal with his return. And that is why we labored so hard in 1 Corinthians 15 to provide material on the resurrection of Jesus Christ, because it is such a pivotal doctrine. Paul says, “Because we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe he’s coming again.” See, because anybody’s got every right to say to us, “Well, how do you know it’s just not a pipe dream? How do you know it’s not just something you dreamt up? After all, life is tough and then you die. And so the Christians just made it up: pie in the sky when you die. And you need to have something to look forward to. You mentioned that earlier. And so you’ve got this idea that Jesus is coming back again. Where’d you dig that up from?” That’s a good question. What do you say to the person who says that? “Well, that’s just my belief.” The person says, “Well, guess what? It’s just not my belief.” Someone says, “Well, it’s my belief over here.” So, here’s the question: Does belief make it so? Or is truth the basis of belief?

We were eating in a hamburger joint in Santa Barbara last week. The waitresses were an interesting group. Every so often, they grabbed the ketchup bottles and used them as microphones—dummy microphones—and then they sang to the music that was playing in the background. In the course of engaging them in conversation, we asked one of the girls, “Where do you study?” (Presuming she studied. I mean, we felt sorry for her. We hoped she wasn’t simply spending the rest of her life grabbing ketchup bottles and singing, you know, doing that kind of stuff.) And she said that she was a student at the University of California in Santa Barbara, and I said, “Well, what are you studying?” And she said, “Well, I’m studying philosophy.” I said, “What do you want to be?” She said, “I actually want to be a professor of philosophy.” I said, “A professor of philosophy that pretends that ketchup bottles are microphones and sings in a hamburger joint?” She says, “Yeah, I suppose. You know, anything for a buck!”

So I said to her as she was coming back and forth, I said, “Hey, by the way, Samantha: What do you think of the idea of objective, absolute truth?” She said, “I think it’s a crazy idea!” She went back somewhere else. She came back again. I said, “Hey, Samantha: Is there anyone on your faculty that would believe in objective, absolute truth?” She thought for a while, and she said, “Well, you know, there’s one guy who’s really, really, really weird—way out. I think he might.” She said, “But nobody does.”

So I said to her, I said, “You know, do you know that I’m seated in the heavenly places with Christ Jesus?” (No I didn’t. You know I didn’t.) I said to her, “We’ve got a lot of discussions to have. We got some major discussions here.” And so we started at first principles—the whole idea of conscience, the whole idea of an innate awareness of morality (“Where does it come from?” and everything)—so that we might eventually get to the business, say, “Have you ever considered the thought that Jesus of Nazareth might be the person he claimed to be?” That’s starting point.

“No, I never. Why would I ever? How would I ever go about considering that?”

“Well, the Gospel of John would be a help to you, because John said, ‘These things were written that you might believe and that by believing you might have life in his name.’[11] And we’re going to have to talk about the fact that Jesus of Nazareth died. And he died for an express purpose: he died on the basis of sin. And that means you and me. Therefore, we’ve got a problem. And that he was risen from the dead—and that’s a complete mindblower, and that’ll take time. And here’s the real pièce de résistance: he’s coming back again, personally, visibly, bodily. It’s going to be dramatic. It’s going to be decisive. It’s going to be like lightning across the sky.”

True belief issues in transformed behavior.

Can’t you just see her picking up the ketchup bottle, saying, “Excuse me? There’s ‘a whole lot of shaking going on.’”[12] Because the fact of the matter is that the culture into which you and I are returning tomorrow morning—and understand this clearly—you can talk to them, and they might listen. But nothing will make a greater impact than when your business buddies, your college roommates, your high school friends, your bridge playing partners see that you have turned from idols to serve the living God.

True belief issues in transformed behavior. New life, new lifestyle.

Let’s pause just in a moment of prayer.

I could probably call that “The Sermon That Might Have Been.” And I recognize that it’s not where we thought we would go, but it is where we’ve been. Some of you today have never known that profound and personal and permanent change. We’d love for the opportunity to talk to you about it, where our room off to my right here, through the double doors, is there that we might be able to give you literature, talk with you, answer some questions, and perhaps lead you to this great and momentous change.

And for those of us who profess to be changed but whose behavior is less than it might be, we know, Lord, that you are speaking to us concerning that. And as we think of this afternoon and the opportunities of telling others, we pray that the thought of the soon return of Jesus Christ may produce within us a desire to live a holy life and a genuine desire to see our friends and our neighbors become committed followers of Jesus Christ. Lift our gaze to the time when Christ will come and take us home. For Jesus’ sake we ask it. Amen.

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[1] Acts 17:3 (NIV 1984).

[2] Acts 17:4 (NIV 1984).

[3] George W. Robinson, “I Am His, and He Is Mine” (1876).

[4] 1 Thessalonians 1:8 (paraphrased).

[5] 1 Thessalonians 4:1 (NIV 1984).

[6] Ephesians 2:12 (NIV 1984).

[7] Ephesians 2:12 (Phillips).

[8] Paul McCartney and John Lennon, “Getting Better” (1967).

[9] Andraé Crouch, “Soon and Very Soon” (1976).

[10] James M. Black, “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder” (1893).

[11] John 20:31 (paraphrased).

[12] Dave Williams, “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” (1955).