This devotion was given at the Brookfield Park Nursing Home in Traralgon, 10.45am.
Text: (2 Timothy 2:8)
Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead.
Prayer: Heavenly Father, send your Holy Spirit to all of us, so that I may speak well, and we all may hear well, in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
I remember once I went to visit a sick man in a hospital. While I was there, I read him something from the bible and said a prayer together and gave him the blessing. And as I was leaving the man in the bed next to him called out to me and said hello. He said to me, “I’m very sick, but I’m not a Christian, and I don’t have any faith to make me well again.”
This is a very common misunderstanding. People often think that “faith” is something that comes from inside a person’s heart. Now, it’s true: faith has to be put in a person’s heart, and it has to live people and grow there, but it never begins there.
Sometimes we Christians get this wrong too. People say, “How do you know that God exists?” And people respond by saying, “I can feel him.” Or, “he speaks to me”. And things like that.
But that sort of thing doesn’t really help anyone. People say, “Well, you have your beliefs and I’ll have mine.” Or, “what’s true for you isn’t true for me.” Or, “I’ve never experienced this—therefore God’s not true.”
Everyone has different experiences. Different cultures have different experiences when it comes to the faith. I remember when I was studying to be a pastor, one of our professors asked us, “How many of you came here to study because you thought God was telling you to do this in a dream?” Nobody put their hand up. But then the professor said, “When I go out into Central Australia to teach the Aboriginal pastors and ask them the same question, they all put their hands up!”
So you see, different people, different cultures, experience the faith differently. You can’t base faith on experiences.
One of the things that Christians say together every Sunday, and some people even say this every day, is “On the third day Jesus rose again from the dead.”
This is one of the most important things that Christians believe. We don’t just believe that anyone rose from the dead, or that to rise from the dead is possible, but that at a certain time in history, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, rose from the dead.
Sometimes when a person dies, we might say that they live on—maybe in our hearts, in our memories and things like that. That’s not what we mean when we’re talking about Jesus. When we say that Jesus rose from the dead, we mean that he was dead, and then he stood up and walked out of his tomb.
So when we talk about faith, what’s important is not that we have certain feelings, and certain experiences, but that something happened in history outside of us. We believe that Jesus rose from the dead—and that this is an historical fact, just as factual as that World War II happened, or September 11th happened, or that Prince William and Kate got married, or that Geelong won the AFL premiership last year. (We might not like it, but we can’t argue with the fact that it happened!)
This is the same thing with the resurrection. Christians believe in something historical, something factual that happened, and when we talk to people about the faith—we say, “Well, see what you think—do you think it happened or not? Is Jesus still dead or is he risen from the dead?”
So you see, faith comes from outside of us, not inside of us. Even when it comes to salvation, we don’t put our faith in the fact that we feel saved, or feel happy, but the fact that Jesus died and rose. That’s why Christians practise baptism and baptise people—it’s not so that they feel good or for them to express themselves and their faith, it’s so that Jesus can give them the Holy Spirit and that they can be confident that God has given them everything not from inside of them, but from outside of them.
But then people say, “Jesus rose again from the dead.” So what? Well, we don’t believe simply that he rose again just for himself, but for everyone, for you, so that we will also rise from the dead with him.
Let’s talk about football… I remember once I was near Geelong and I was catching the train back home, and I looked around at the train station, and everyone was dressed in Essendon colours. Now if Essendon won the game, who actually is it that won? It’s the football team that won. It’s the players. But then, when the football game is played, there’s all the supporters cheering them on, and when they win the game, all the supporters celebrate. It’s a win for everyone, not just for the players!
In the same way, when we say that Jesus rose from the dead, it’s a win not just for Jesus, but it’s a win for everyone. It’s a win for everyone who is going to die. It’s a win for everyone who is suffering and abandoned. It’s a win for everyone who is low in the eyes of the world and society. It’s a win for everyone who feels rotten and miserable. It’s a win for everyone who is a sinner—everyone who is lost, everyone who is condemned. It’s a win for the entire human race.
You can be certain that resurrection from the dead will happen to you, because it’s been done before. And if it’s been done before, it can happen again. And so we say, “On the third day he rose again from the dead.”
Amen.
Heavenly Father, teach us to remember your Son, Jesus Christ, risen from the dead. We thank you for the blood of Jesus, shed in his death on the cross, which was the payment for all sin. And we thank you that he also rose again from the dead and promises to give eternal life to all who believe in him. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
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