“I Believe in…the forgiveness of sins,
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… the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting”
# 10 (and final) Sermon in Dr. Carlson’s Series on “Affirming the Essentials” -the Apostle’s Creed
In case you are wondering, I’m not hitchhiking. Stupidity plus a table saw equal stitches. Could have been worse…but it wasn’t. Praise the Lord. So there you have it. You know I was talking to a lot of guys today and a lot of you have done the same thing. Anyway, we all have seen it. It is much better today, I appreciate it.
Well there is an old story that I would like to start with. It has been around a long time but it is a great story. It is about a tight-rope walker named Blondin who was very famous in his day towards the end of the nineteenth century. As a publicity stunt he strung a wire over the Niagara Falls and walked from the Canadian side to the U.S.A. side. Thousands of people were there and when he got to the other side, he said, “I am Blondin, do you believe in me?” And they said, “We believe in you! We believe in you!” He said, “Do you believe that I can carry a man back the other way, all the way across, on my shoulders?” They said, “We believe! We believe!” And he said, “Which human being will be the first?” Dead silence, of course. Well, one man tentatively raised his hand. It turned out to be Blondin’s publicity director and he walked across. A great illustration about faith. Many say “I believe! I believe!” but few will get on the shoulders and believe.
We end, today, a series I started in the beginning of the summer on the Apostle’s Creed. As I said many times, there is so much to say I could have preached another ten sermons on it. I am going to try to get a lot done today, but just to recall what we first started with and that is the concept that we say “I believe”. It isn’t “We” it is “I”, because faith does start with us. And as we said it is more than just believing facts. Now we have recited many doctrines that we believe in – these are important doctrines. It is something we need to remember what we believe, the facts of what we believe, are very important. It isn’t just mishmash, it is something very specific. But I do want to make something very clear. I think we do people a disservice sometimes when we say becoming a Christian is really easy. All you have to do is believe. Well, yeah, that’s part of it; but there is a lot more to it, right? Believing means giving your life over. You know, and that is really the first rub. We don’t like to ask for help and we have to start by believing something is very wrong and we can’t do anything about it. That something is called sin, what’s in our heart. None of us like to ask for help.
My lovely bride this morning said, when I asked her to button my shirt, said, “That is the first time you have asked for my help.” “Oh, yeah, you’re right.” Good ole Chris who doesn’t want to ask for help, from anybody even the one who wants to help me the most. Then it goes on from there. Then we have to give our life to God, totally and completely, we have to surrender. That is what faith is. It isn’t just believing certain little fact things. That’s part of it, and we have learned that along the way. But that’s what faith is. It’s when we go and talk to people about being a Christian, let’s not lie about it, I am not accusing anybody of anything; but it’s not easy. It is simple, but not easy. It is not easy, and we need to ask ourselves where we are with that.
So we begin with that. When we confess, we believe. It is not easy. And we believe that, yes, it is by grace, it is a gift; but receiving that gift is not an easy thing. Then we move on to the rest of the Creed, these last three things. There is a logical theology to it. We have gone through to “I Believe”, we talked about God, we talked about Jesus, and then we got down to the “Holy Spirit”. Now the reason that is logical is because God loved the Church, Jesus died for the Church; but it is the Holy Spirit who brings the Church into existence by working on people’s hearts and drawing them together. So we “believe in the Holy Spirit”; then “the holy catholic church”, means the universal Church; and then we talk about “the communion of saints”; and then we get to personal salvation and that’s what forgiveness is. It’s our personal salvation because it is through the Church that anyone comes to know Christ. You know, we talk about that all the time, how it is our responsibility to witness. No one comes to Christ, unless through the Church; that is us— not a building, not an institution, not even the pastor, us—we go out and we tell people about Jesus. Every one of us came to Christ through the influence of someone in the Church, in the Church. And we talk about forgiveness. Now why is forgiveness so important? Because, at the risk of exaggeration, forgiveness is the most important need that any one person has. Everyone has a problem. We are all in trouble with God because of who we are, our sinfulness, our rebellion, our selfishness. We all need forgiveness and forgiveness is that path to the rest of the blessings we are going to talk about. It is something we all need. You know, Karl Menninger, the famed psychiatrist, once said that “if he could convince the patients in psychiatric hospitals that their sins were forgiven, seventy-five percent of them would walk out the next day.” I think he is right. I think he is right.
So it is very important and then the question becomes, how do we get it? Well, another wonderful story, a variation probably of one you have heard, about a woman who died after a long illness and she went to heaven. She met St. Peter at the gate, of course, and looked through the gate and saw the beautiful banquet table. Sitting all around were her parents and all the other people she loved and died before her. How do I get in, the woman asked? “Well, you have to spell a word.” “What word is that?” “Love.” Well the woman spelled love correctly and St. Peter welcomed her into heaven. You know where I am going with this… Six months later St. Peter (a little variation) came to the woman and asked her to watch the gates of heaven for him for that day. After a while, her husband arrived. “I am surprised to see you,” the woman said. “How have you been?” “Oh, I’ve been doing great since you died. I married the beautiful young nurse who took care of you while you were ill. And then, I won the lottery. I sold the little house you and I lived in and bought a mansion and my wife and I traveled all around the world. We were on vacation and I went skiing and I fell on a rock and here I am. Well, how do I get in?” “You have to spell a word,” she said. “Which word?” her husband asked. “Czechoslovakia,” she answered. Which some of you around this church could spell very easily.
You know, that is a constant theme. Christian theology differs from the world’s view that you can’t get into heaven by just doing stuff because you can’t make up for it. I love St. Peter jokes but that’s the old “what do I have to do to get in?” Well we talked about it—you have to believe, of course, believing isn’t that easy but that is what it is. “It is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is a gift of God.” (Ephesians 2:8) You receive it by this surrender we call faith. And that is what forgiveness is. Forgiveness, though, is just the beginning. Look at this. It doesn’t use the word forgiveness, but “and those he predestined, (and that is worth another sermon, we will leave that one alone) he also called; and those he called, he also justified.” (Romans 8:30) Now that word justified is a technical term for forgiveness, acceptance, being right with God. That’s what God does. He calls people and then he justifies them, he forgives them, through faith and “those he justified, he glorified,” that’s where we are going.
But forgiveness is only the beginning. You know it starts right now. We move on to the next piece. We believe in a resurrection. Now yes, that’s the end of the world, or the end of our lives or whenever the end of history is. But your resurrection began when you believed. For the Bible says, “As for you, you were dead in your sins.” (Ephesians 2:1) You know, this is not meant to be judgmental, but sometimes when I met people who do not believe, you can see the death, you can see they’re blind. Now I have an advantage over some people. I became a Christian not in a gradual sense, I became a Christian, BOOM, I believed. Now, I didn’t become perfect or anything like that. But I remember the darkness. I remember. I have an advantage over people who don’t remember; and it is all legitimate, don’t get me wrong. But my advantage is that I remember what it was like to not know and to be blind, to be dead; and it is true. When you become a Christian, you enter into life, you become raised. So the second phase is when you get your new life, later. I just want to tell you that. Jesus said, “I came that you might have life and have it abundantly now.” (John 10:10) We often think we just have to hang on buddy, we got to hang on; we got our ticket on the train; we just have to hang on. No, your life begins now and if you are unhappy all the time or you are just miserable, God doesn’t want you to be that way. Life is hard. We have accidents. We have sicknesses—we heard about the cancer. People have terrible diseases. But new life begins now.
We believe in a resurrection and Jesus is the one who gives us that resurrection. “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies.” (John 11:25) Now what does that mean? It means that as Christians, we believe that life is a journey with a destination. Life is a journey with a destination. Through this series we talked a little bit about what the world believes and the differences between us and them, and that’s good. It is good to clarify differences, not to be judgmental or uncooperative or anything like that, to walk around pointing fingers; but we do believe some things that other people do not. We do not believe in reincarnation. Some Christians talk about those being compatible. Reincarnation has nothing to do with Christian theology, nothing to do with the Bible, nothing at all. And who wants to be on a perpetual treadmill like a mouse, round and round and round; and that is what it means. You are going to live and you don’t know what you are going to get. “It is like a box of chocolates,” and you may get a different life: you may be a cow, you might be something else, you might be poor, you might be rich, and you don’t even know what the standard is. I got to be something and finally get off this train. That sounds horrible to me. Christian theology says you have a destination. Death is not the end of the story. It is a story that has a beginning and an end. That is what resurrection is. That is what resurrection is. We believe that we have a story which has a chapter. This life is the first chapter. And yes, we are going to die, this body is going to die; but it is going to be raised. It is going to be raised.
We believe that Jesus is going to raise us from the dead and not only is that not reincarnation, it is not just life after death. You know there are a lot of stories like that. I am not sure if it is true or not, but a lot of people put a lot of stock in the research of Elisabeth Kϋbler-Ross, about the stories how people when they die rise up and in some cases look at the room in which people are trying to resuscitate them and then they go through a tunnel with light and all those kinds of things. I guess we will find out. But you know, a lot of people don’t read the other stories she tells. Some people have not awakened, going “this is great.” Some people awaken screaming because they were by some lake of fire.
I remember a few years ago there was a show called “The Equalizer” about some former CIA guy who would go along and if somebody got in trouble he could get them out of it by his means. There was one show in which he was trying to talk to some gang members and brought in some friends who talked about their experience of being on this lake of fire and somehow some person of light touched them on the shoulder and they woke up. Hmmm. There is a destination, isn’t there? One or the other; and in Christ, we have the right destination.
Billy Sunday was asked one time, “What must I do to go to hell?” and he said, “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.” But as Christians we believe we have a wonderful destination and within that we get a whole new body. That is what the Creed says, “I believe in the resurrection of the body.” Now, back then, there was a philosophy going around that is still prevalent today, that anything spiritual was good, anything material was bad. So this was put specifically into the Creed to combat that, that the Christians believe that the body is going to be remade totally. Now, why is that so? Why do we have to get remade? Well the Bible says that the entire creation has been subjected to the bondage of decay. We don’t know the whole thing but in the fall of Adam and Eve the whole creation became decaying. Now that is more physics than I can tell you about. But the promise is that somehow, someway, God is going to remake it all including us. That is what Paul says, “The creation itself was subjected …to this bondage of decay” (Romans 8:20-21) and then he goes on and talks about how all of us are going to be remade into a new body, a whole new way of existence.
You know, I think this is very important for us to remember, something to celebrate. The Bible does talk about people rising out of the graves and those kinds of things and I suspect that is going to be true; but I think we just have to remember what the end point is. I was a pastor of a church out in West Virginia and it had a big graveyard, kind of like this one, and some of the grave stones got moved and they were digging around and they found a grave. It turned out to be a soldier’s grave and the only reason they knew that was because it had five brass buttons and that was all that was left, that was all that was left. You see, we are going to get a new body. Now we can speculate. Is it going look like the way we are? In some degree, I hope not, I mean, I hope it looks a lot better than this one. We don’t know. John even says we don’t know what we are going to be like but we are going to be like Jesus. You know, I find the story of Jesus having resurrected, walking with the disciples on the road to Emmaus and they didn’t even know who he was. He looked the same but there was something different, and he wasn’t even glorified yet. So, yes, people are going to know who we are and we are going to be who we are but there is going to be something really different. He could go from one room to the other with this kind of thing …I am going to go. He didn’t have to walk through a door. I don’t know what that means but we are going to get a physical body, a new one that will not die. All the things that are wrong are going to go away. As a pastor, I get to see all of it. Everybody has a problem. The bipolar is going to go away. The bad hearts are going to go away. The cancers are going to go away. The crippledness is going to go away. The heartache, the evil, all of it is going to be different and we should celebrate that. We need to live our lives here but we have so much to look forward to. We have this whole new body and we don’t know all of it but we are going to be like him, and that should be enough. As John says, “What we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we will be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” (1 John, 3:2) We can’t even imagine how he is. It is going to be great. In the meantime, just rejoice in that truth.
Four and five go together, we “believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.” You know what, I want to encourage you. We are going to go to heaven and you know what you won’t have to do there? You won’t have to listen to another sermon, because there won’t be any need for them. It is just going to be worship, and you know what? The choir people will finally be the boss. You won’t have to worry about whether it means something to you or you don’t like the style. You won’t care. On the other hand, I remember a quote by Prime Minister Lloyd George who said “the thought of perpetual church services depressed him and kept him from believing for many years.” That is not all we are going to do. I believe, personally, we will work. We were created in God’s image and the first thing God said to Adam was go do something. It is part of the image, except work for us now is a drudgery; it’s boring sometimes. It won’t be boring there. I have no idea. Sometimes we can speculate about things. We should not go too far with this, but, you know, the Bible talks about creating “a new heaven and a new earth,” which begs the question: Where is heaven going to be? Well the Bible suggests there is going to be a new heaven and a new earth. We just have to remember wherever God is, is where heaven is and leave it at that. I personally hope we get to explore whatever new universe there is because my first hundred thousand years is going to be doing that. But if God says you have to do something else, I don’t care. It is just a whole new life not subject to decay, not subject to heartache. I think it is really good to dwell on the “no mores,” the talks about –no more suffering, no more hunger, no more darkness, no more evil, no more disease. And I love this piece: “I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Now the dwelling of God is with human beings, and he will live with them. They will be his people and God himself will be with them and be their God.’” (Revelation 21:3) That’s all true now but not yet. It is already true but not fully so. When we get to see God as he is, and we can’t even imagine that sight, that’s the whole story. In Eden God dwelled with Adam and Eve and that ended and God is restoring it. “And he will wipe away every tear from their eyes… no more death, no more mourning, no more crying, no more pain for the old order of things has passed away.”(Revelation 21:4) The old decay, all of it, has gone away.
Later Paul writes, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.” (1 Corinthians 2:9) Our brains are way too small. I have talked about Winnie the Pooh a lot of times— bear with little brain— that’s us. We can’t imagine it, but we can look forward to it. That does mean we don’t live our lives well here; but we have a future that is guaranteed in Christ, so be joyful, no matter what happens. And remember that God is going to make it right again. I am going to close with a story that Max Lucado tells and I think it says a great deal about the whole thing.
He said, “My mother still lives in the same house. You couldn’t pay her to move. The house that seemed so big when I was a boy feels tiny. On the wall are pictures of mom in her youth, her hair autumn brown, her face irresistibly beautiful. I see her now still healthy, still vivacious but with wrinkles, graying hair, slower step. Would that I could wave the magic wand and make everything new again. Would that I could put her once again in the strong embrace of the high plains cowboy she loved and buried. Would that I could stretch out the wrinkles and take off the bifocals and restore the spring in her step. Would that I could make everything new. I can’t, but God can. God doesn’t reform, he restores. He doesn’t camouflage the old, he restores the new. The master builder will pull out the original plan and restore it. He will restore the vigor. He will restore the energy. He will restore the hope. He will restore the soul.”