APR 16 2017 | Psalm 23

Sea Change Church · "Psalm 23" · Adam Stadtmiller · April 16, 2017
Psalm 23
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Amen. Thank you, Carol. Hashtag blessed. You guys are rocking. What an awesome staff we have here. I love coming to work. One of my favorite things to do is to build a team. I found in my, I did a personality assessment. You know, we all do those. And one of the things it says is you would rather win on a team than in an individual sport. And it's so true. I just absolutely love team building and the people that you see up here and that are your pastoral and administrative staff. I hope you enjoy them and love them. Stevie Wonder. Unreal. That was so good. The band tighter than a Turkish drum today. Fantastic. So at one point, did you say loosen up church or sing along or something like that or wake up? I think you said wake up. I did. That was solid. Okay. Well, hey, welcome to church on this Easter Sunday. My name is Adam Stadtmiller and I am the lead pastor here. And I love being the lead pastor here. It is such a fabulous place of, um, I would say kinetic faith. There was a lot of faith, uh, happening here on this little corner. And our desire is to see what happens on this corner really translate to the individual corner of your heart. And that that would allow you and give you the opportunity to change the corner on which you live. Uh, we really want to build intersections between the kingdom of heaven and the place in which we live to where it brings dynamic life change.

And to what brings culture change. And you know, what is the point of following Jesus if it doesn't actually make a dynamic change in your life? Uh, or it doesn't actually make a dynamic change in the place that you live. Uh, and not that we don't have these ebbs and flows in Psalm 23. Most of you have heard it says that, uh, we walk through the valley of the shadow of death. And so many of us on this corner do walk through those occasional seasons. We think about the Yules this week, new members of our church who, uh, asked their son on a motorcycle accident this week. And we think about them and I called them, uh, and just to offer a word of comfort. And I had nothing more to say other than we're here. Uh, one of the things we challenge people as we walk through these seasons in our life is to say in the valley of the shadow of death, as we walk through, hold on to hope and hold on to faith. And as you do that, the Bible says, it says, do not lay down in the valley of the shadow of death. We are walking through it because we're headed to a better place.

So today we're talking about that. And we're talking about some of the original fake news that you see. We see that there is a, a, um, a media generator here in the first century. Who knew? Uh, that is, that is, is pushing the story that Jesus did not rise from the dead. As a matter of fact, his body was stolen. And so they've created some type of story so that this would not be believed.

Reason being is because people, not always, but often have actions attached to their beliefs. One of the problems with Christ following is oftentimes we don't do what we believe. If that makes sense, we have all this incredible belief, but oftentimes we don't follow it. And so the Jewish leaders of the day were in a battle. They were in a battle for popularity. They were in a battle to control people's thoughts, to control their minds and to control their actions. If you look back as, uh, not too far back in 1945 or 1930, in the 1930s, as world war two was beginning to escalate, you look at the thought control and the propaganda that was coming out.

And, and obviously the Nazis were fantastic at propaganda, but this is not something that's new. The reason once again being is because if enough people believe something oftentimes, then it becomes their reality. And I'm not saying that just because a lot of people believe it means it's true. We do live in a bit of a cultural harvesting of opinion and truth at the moment where if the most people believe it, then it must be true. But once again, hearkening back and understanding history so that we don't repeat it.

There was a lot of things that were believed in the country. My ancestors come from Germany in 1930 that were very popular beliefs, but not true. So the question is, what do we believe? And not so just what we believe, but what do we have faith in? And faith is a interesting word. Faith is a word that can conjure up thoughts of unicorns and leprechauns. I have a friend I play basketball with. He is an atheist and I always tell him there's a seat waiting for him.

And he says, Oh, I promise I'll be there every week. He promises he's going to be there. Uh, and you know, he'll give me a hard time. I'll say, you know, this week I was playing basketball and he said, you know, it's Easter week. You know, what are you doing here playing basketball? I said, you know, I just gotta get my exercise. He goes, isn't God expecting some action this week? I said, you know, fair enough. God is expecting some action. And we go back and forth. And one of the things I love to tell him is, man, I'm just so impressed by your faith. And he's all, what? I don't, I don't have faith. So like, like Nacho Libre, you know, a wrestling partner. He says, I believe in science.

You know, and I said, I just can't believe that you have so much faith to, to what you believe in, to believe that this just all happened. Like, and I said, you know, the faith, like, where does beauty come from? You know, asking these questions, you know, is just, and I, and I, and I just, I look at it, you know, uh, evolution and monkeys and the whole, and so I, we're going back and forth. This is a really good relationship. We have a really good time, but it's actually some profound thought going on.

And what I always tell him is, you do have faith. No, I believe in science. I said, no, because their science has come to a conclusion, but there are certain questions that it cannot answer. Like, how did it all begin? Well, it started with a gas and on and on. You know, the arguments. I don't need to share them with you. We understand society and how it works.

But at some point, even he, believing in science, has to make a decision to jump off a chasm and say, I don't understand it. I just am going to have to believe it. This is what is interesting about faith and something I feel that many churches to their suffrage have not allowed believers to do. And that's the doubt. I know that there's a lot of platitudes that go around and bumper sticker answers, and we do not want to be a bumper sticker answer church. If you have an issue, if you have a really strong, you know, um, problem, if you're currently walking through the valley of the shadow of death, we don't want to just say, Hey, God said it. I believe it. And that what? Remember what it said?

Settles it. I hated that bumper sticker. God said it. I believe it. That settles it. It doesn't settle it for me. I know that my faith needs to have doubt. Let me just say that again. Faith does not exist without doubt. Let me tell you why. We want to give you a healthy, um, um, opportunity to allow yourself to look, uh, at doubt in a very strong way because the, the, the definition of faith is overcoming something you don't believe. Faith is believing and has to have an obstacle. Faith without an obstacle is not faith. It's called foregone conclusion.

And so living a faith based life is on a regular basis coming up to the things like something we experienced with a congregant this week with the loss of their son, where I have to look at God and say, really God, you know, really? And I have to, on a regular basis, allow those doubts to come in and look at them strongly and saying, is there enough substance?

Is there enough substrate to my faith to once again, overcome this doubt? I think one of the reasons my children are still, um, learning how to own their own faith and desiring to own their own faith as opposed to rent their faith from me is because we have allowed them and encourage them in seasons of doubt to just chill and rest in the doubt.

Because it is the hope of faith that allows us often to persevere through doubt. Many people cannot persevere through doubt. It is the perseverance through doubt where faith, the muscle of faith is exercised. And here in this story, we see a group of people, women in particular, and I love the elevation of women in the scriptures. Oftentimes, oftentimes it is easy to point and, and, and, and, and pick a few scriptures out and, you know, and, and look at the suffrage of women.

But if you look at Jesus, and if you look at even this story alone, where the, the, the, um, resurrection of Jesus was announced to whom? Women, correct. Now, why would that be good? Because they got their, they got the blame for the original sin. You know that if you go back and read your, your, your, your Genesis 1, 2, and 3, God goes back and he has a tendency to redeem things that are broken and he does it in proper order.

And so it is the women that see the resurrection because it goes back in that narrative that just like man and both man and woman fell, that he goes back and says, let's reboot this. I want to say to you that God can reboot your life and God is calling you to believe and to have faith in him. And so I want to take this back to this idea of the story of Jesus, the, the, the, the, um, synchronicity of the scripture as we look at it as a, a story of truth, but also a story of faith.

And as we look at this story of faith, I want to ask you what you have faith in. And so with Jesus, for me, it's always been easy to believe that Jesus raised from the dead. I was with pastor Harry's doing a great job with the high school kids. And I just jumped in there and sat on a gross, dirty bean bag. They probably need to be washed sometime soon.

I'm thinking, uh, Harry, um, we've just remodeled that room up there. It's awesome. You guys, thanks for giving towards that. We're going to have an open house here soon. I keep saying it's coming. It is coming. And pastor Harry was speaking about the resurrection of Jesus. And I thought there are a lot of things that I doubt. I doubt on a regular basis.

And I think once again, doubt is healthy because it allows me the obstacle to actually have faith without doubt. There is no faith. And so if you are a doubter, having a healthy degree of doubt, like a doubting Thomas, which I would say healthy, but not moving in to being a skeptic. I think skepticism to the point where it affects our soul is so easy to get stained into the way in which we live.

And so I was there and I was thinking when he spoke about the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. And I thought, you know, I've never had a problem with the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. I've never doubted it. I, I don't look at it. Um, even though my friend at basketball tells me it's no different than leprechauns. I, I tend to look at, it's never been, it's never been hard for me.

But what I thought when he was speaking, and I love preachers who allow me to think differently, who it's usually you talk about the scripture in this way, but they have the ability to come to the other side and give me a new perspective. Or at least open my mind up to new thoroughfares of which I can travel in. And I love thought, not telling you to throw out.

Faith does not require you to throw out your mind. God gave us a mind for a reason. But as he was thinking, I thought to myself, is it harder for me to believe that Jesus died and rose from the dead or that God loves me? And it was a profound thought because believing that Jesus died and he is this big cosmic lifeguard in the sky has always been very easy for me to believe.

In some people, it's very difficult. We all have the different things and we're wired differently and we will have differences of the things that cause us to be challenged in our thinking and in our souls. But it has never challenged me. But the thought that God actually loves me has been, has challenged me greatly. To believe that the God who is so busy with this massive universe, which is still expanding, which has the energy to continue to expand, which is another question I have of where does that energy keep coming from?

Shouldn't energy eventually decrease as it goes out? I think that's how the laws tell us. But for some reason, that bang was so amazing that it just keeps increasing. And like my nine-year-old daughter asked me, and I won't get into too many of these thoughts, Dad, what's on the other side of the increase? So if you got to the edge of the universe, what is in the dark matter on that side?

We just have these conversations at night. She's nine. That's just how we roll. Great question. She also asked me recently, Dad, what's on the other, you know, colors on a spectrum and white, what's on the other side of white? I'm like, I have no idea what's on the other side of white. What are you talking about? You're weird. No. I've never doubted that Jesus rose from the dead, but I doubt all the time if he really loves me.

And the last five years, and especially since I've been here, I've been really on a journey personally to live out of a place of belovedness, to realize that there is a deep ocean of God's love, and that the first 25 years of my professional life, you know, Christ following, because I'm a professional Christ follower, right? Like, it's kind of a bummer when you get paid to follow Jesus, you know what I mean?

Like, you know, but what did it look like before? But in this life I've had of following Jesus, only in the last five years, I feel like the first 25 of professional following Jesus was just a christening of the ship. And actually, I feel like we've gotten out into the middle of the ocean, and Jesus is like, hey, I'd love you to abandon the ship.

You ever think about with Peter walking on water, it's really just abandoning. When he's called him out, it's really just abandoning what you use to keep you afloat. I mean, that's what Jesus has asked you to do, what keeps you afloat. Not that we throw it all away, but he's saying, are you willing to walk on water with me, and sink into the fathoms, I guess is what he's asking me, and to learn, like many do, to free dive.

And free diving is the ability to hold your breath longer than humanly possible, and to go deeper and deeper and deeper into the love of God. And so that is what heaven is. Heaven, when we get there, is not going to be some boring place, that's a lie of the enemy, but it'll be a time of going deeper into a new fascination of who God is. And so, in this journey of faith, the question that caused the women to, or the thing that caused these women to not only walk back from the tomb, was some amazing magical story of Jesus the great magician who, you know, rose from the dead.

What an awesome story. He'd already raised people from the dead. He'd raised Lazarus from the dead. The thing that caused them to run back was this. That they knew that they were loved by the Messiah. Because when Jesus presented himself outside of the tomb to Mary, many have a question of which Mary it was, but to this woman who had had a very difficult past, and he said to her, and she said to him, Rabboni.

And it was a term of endearment. It was a term of belovedness. I gotta say, Christianity is not still around because of a magic trick that God did with Jesus out of the grave. Christianity exists because a small group of people at the beginning knew that this man who lived this powerful life loved them deeply. That is why they run. That is why they martyr themselves.

That is why they continue on. And I gotta say that we do the church, we do you, an incredible injustice, if the entire Easter message is about Jesus raised from the dead so we don't have to go to hell. Hell was never created for humankind. Eternity with God was created for humankind. And he has called us to that. And so, like all of us, we stand on the precipice of faith.

Overlooking, like Indiana Jones, in probably the third and the worst movie of the trilogy, where he had to jump off the thing and there was a funny little knight in the Holy Grail. You guys remember that? No one else? What was it called? Last Crusade. Thank you very much. You can sit in the front next week. That'll really help. And he steps off onto this unknown chasm.

I gotta say, the unknown chasm of faith is much easier to step into and really isn't meant to be proven scientifically. There are many scientific proofs and we could go over all those things. But it's ultimately to be a bridge of love. That's what it is. To understand that God loves you. And so my question, if you walk out of here with anything today, it is this.

Do you believe that this God, this massive God who multiple universes, and the more universes they find, the more there are. And I mean, it's just, it's unbelievable. Just the thing you look at. Lately I was, I know this might sound weird. I was just intrigued with a fox's face. Like I looked at a fox's face and I was at the zoo and, or up in, in Big Bear and I was looking at this fox's face and I thought, really?

That just, kind of just happened? Like kind of just, the right decision? It just doesn't make sense to me. But in the midst of all that bigness, okay, that's just, you know, bigness, I'm just a word I'm going to make up. So you can use it. It's, it's good now. Is there enough time to love me? Is there enough time to love me? And the knotted ball of yarn that I am and that I often find that God has been so patient with me and so kind and it keeps building this bridge of faith that every time I mess up or screw up, he doesn't come and take, you know, a cleaver and try to hack at a ball of yarn.

You ever try to, to, you know, yarn gets so, it can get so knotted and matted that sometimes people, you just have to cut through certain parts. He's never done that with me. He's always stopped and slowly waited and I look back upon my life and there's been difficult times, a loss of family members through suicide, all types of things that have happened in our personal family.

My brother being hit in Vietnam, shot in Vietnam, all types of things that have happened. So we've had our midst, our things, and then in the midst of that, and all of you have well through sickness and disease, but in the midst of that, I look back and I see this beautiful cradle, fabric of God's love and it is that bridge that I have walked upon that has moved me away from the skepticism that says that God loves me.

And so we're looking at the scene today of these believers who were so committed to the life of Jesus and what he did on earth, but more so that he made each one of them know that they mattered. This is why they run from the tomb. This is why the story of the grave hypothesis, the stolen body of Jesus, as you'll see in your notes, hypothesis, really never caught on because people actually believe not only did he raise from the dead, but that he loved them deeply.

Jesus was not just a great teacher. Jesus is not just a stoic prophet. Jesus was a lover of people. He was incredible lover of people and those that were most sinful and the sinful that were willing to turn from their sin. and follow Jesus. He's an incredibly dynamic, revolutionary figure. And so you see the hypothesis that they put out was that possibly the disciples stole the body of Jesus.

But if that was true, you would have had the greatest, you know, bringing together of liars and black-hearted people that have kept this ruse alive and their entire message of love. How do you base what has happened over the last 2,000 years? 2.1, 2.3 billion Christians in the world, 2.1 actually, 300 billion, excuse me, 3 billion by 2050. How is that energy continuing to go forward?

And while we seem to be losing faith in the Western world, the other parts of the world, the faith is growing dramatically. just because we see reports in the news, and you probably won't see a puff piece on a Christian in any news recently that I've seen, but the fastest growing church is in Iran, around the world. What is causing that energy to go forward?

It is the love of God. It is people who have come encounter with the, come into encounter with a collision course with the fierce, relentless love of God. And to say to you that God is not a lifeguard, He is a lover of people, and He loves you, and His entire purpose of living was to die, that we might be connected and reconnected with Him. So I doubt it was the disciples, because how could we continue on in such a positive path if it's based on a lie?

I know that things that are deficient, they break down. Jewish leaders would have shown the body, right? It couldn't have been the Jewish leaders, which is one of the hypotheses, but it would have served them to, no, no, no, here He is, we got the body, we're going to show it to you. It wasn't going to be the Romans. You know, the Romans were pretty unaware of who Jesus was.

If you read the scriptures, there's a real lack of understanding. He's just another rebel, just another rebel without a cause or a small cause, and they had no reason to hide His body. There's ideas of thieves. No matter what it is, and no matter looking at all these possible things, because sometimes we can allow a question to become a noose. Let me say that again.

Sometimes we can allow a question to become a noose, and at the end of all of our questionings, we need to return to the place that we began, and at that place is a place of, will I believe that there is something more to this world? Because if there is, to tell you the truth, if there's nothing more, if this is just a big scientific experiment, I want off.

I literally, I want off. I don't want to, I just, it's great, I got my family, you know, but I was reading Ecclesiastes recently, and it's like, what's, I mean, that's what he says. He's a great skeptic. If you want to have some good doubt, and deal with that, go into Ecclesiastes. But if there's not a God up there, the Romans says, look into the sky to see it.

If it's not there, I just, I want off. I don't want to, I just, what's the point? It has to have more meaning. It looks around, and so me there is, but again and again, to look back, and invite Jesus, God, I'm sorry to have to ask you again, but can you show me you love me again? Because my faith is, I feel like it's on a razor thin, you know, margin so often.

And I even said in the first service, and it's probably hard to say, but I don't know if I'll follow Jesus in 20 years. I know I'm following him today. And all I have is today, and each day, knowing and looking back, but the more I believe, faith becomes certifiable for my life. Now look at this in your notes. Today we're witnessing a culture war that pits information versus faith.

Faith is a collision, and so many people are looking for a certifiable faith. I just got to tell you something about faith. Just like faith does not exist without doubt, faith is not certifiable. Faith is something that has to be believed upon what can be seen. That is the very nature of faith. And you are going to have to ask yourself, am I willing to live a faith-based life?

And faith comes in measures. People have, Jesus talks about measures. They talk about measures of grain in the Middle East, and you see this in the scripture. You know, a measure pressed down. They have this idea. The question is, how much faith do you want to walk in? Now, I don't believe that Jesus wants you to walk into a faith to the amount where we never ask a question.

A blind faith. Faith is not meant to be blind. Faith opens up your eyes to see. Faith is never meant to be blind. And as we walk in faith, it opens up new horizons. And perhaps you've never lived with enough measure of faith to actually see beyond what's coming next. Faith allows us to see because the substrate, the chemistry of faith, if you were to look at it, we'll show you in a moment, faith is sourced from hope.

The main ingredient of faith is hope. And so here in the scriptures, I want to say before we look at this one scripture, that faith being certifiable, we can't offer to you. And if you're here looking for a God that is certifiable, I can't give it to you because that's not what's on offer here. But what I can offer you something is the opportunity to step into faith and that faith begins to become a substance.

Faith is not a mist. Faith is not a smoke. Faith is not a mythical creature. Faith, it says in the scripture, is a substance. And let's look at this. First of all, it can't be certifiable. Jesus says that. Jesus says to Thomas, I love doubting Thomas's. We've thrown him under the chariot way too long. Throw him under the chariot. Get a little play of words there.

No laughter from this side. Okay, I'll work harder. Jesus looks at Thomas and he says this. Then Jesus told him, because remember, Thomas wouldn't believe and so he puts his hand into his side and he says, you know, because you have seen me, you've believed. Blessed are those who have not seen me and yet believed. The strongest faith is the faith you can't see.

And I gotta tell you, even if Jesus came to you tonight in bodily form and said, touch my wounds, in the morning you would wake up or three weeks later you would wake up and say, did that really happen? And if he came to you every single night for the rest of your life, at some point you might even ask yourself, am I crazy? You see, there's always going to be a measure.

Descartes said, the most we can know is what? I what? Think, therefore I am. He says, he tried to think, what can I prove? And the only thing that Descartes could prove, the only thing that he could prove was this. I have a thought so I must exist. Everything comes down to faith. Everything. My daughter says, how do we know we're not part of a person's dream? You should be Rod Serling.

You should write The Twilight Zone, my nine-year-old. I don't know. I think I'm part of God's imagination. It says that he created us in the imago Dei in the image of God and I think we are part of a dream, a beautiful dream that was dreamed by God that we find our reality in. And I'm living and I want to be part of a sweet dream, not some nightmare that the enemy is trying to put onto this world.

And through our faith we bring hope to this world. Quickly, I am circling the tower now. The wheels are getting ready to hit the tarmac. So just stick with me. Faith is a substrate. Now, I told Pastor Harry in the first sermon, I love when I have a word I want to use and it actually works. So sometimes I'll like have a word, like substrate, like I love words.

So I'll come up with a word in my sermon and I'll look it up and it'll mean exactly the opposite of what I'm trying to say. And I still try to use it but it doesn't work. And then the word becomes more important than the sermon. This time it worked. It was like I pulled the lever on substrate and it showed me that faith is actually a substrate. Look what a substrate means.

It's a substance or a layer that underlies something or on which some process occurs. You know, it is a process of life change. The Jewish leaders were so petrified because they knew that if people believed it, whether they believed it was true or not and they did not, that it would change the way that they lived. The Jewish leaders were trying to see, they wanted Jesus to be a different kind of king.

They wanted a political king. They wanted a political solution to overcoming the Romans and their greatest fear was that that dream would be taken away and not only was that dream taken away through the life of the believers that followed but within 400 years the entire Roman Empire would bow their knee to Jesus. Now some of that was really positive and we can look at history and I love a healthy separation of church and state because the church has never done really well when it's completely in power.

It's great. Actually when it's being persecuted the church seems to do the best. I say it all the time. You know the most difficult thing in church is what? It's people. It's true. People are difficult. Relationships are hard. You want to know the best thing about the church besides Jesus? People. And it is living in these relationships and so faith is this substrate that brings life change.

At the place where faith and action meets the kingdom of God can expand and if you look at the Christian work around the world you will see orphanages you will see hospitals you will see the poor being fed but you never see this but if you want to go look for it start seeking around on Google and find different Christian missions that are happening not just because of a magic trick but because they have experienced the love and mercy of God on their heart.

If you were to remove 2.1 billion Christians from the world you would feel it. Let me just say that. If you were to remove 2.1 billion Christians from the world the world would feel it. The scripture talks about a season where they will be removed from the world and it talks about what happens but there's still hope after that. And so we see this substrate Hebrews 1 11.1 one of my favorite verses says this Now faith is a substance it's not a myth it's not a smoke it's not a thing it's a substance it's real.

Does that make sense? It's real. Faith is a substance that of things what? Hope for. You see faith is hope. If you had a chemistry experiment and you were going to look at faith and you wanted to see what it was made of we were looking my daughter and I were looking last night at peroxide I think it's H2O2 or something like that I could be wrong. Some of you chemists know but if you were to put it together for faith it would say this hope it is hope and I think the greatest hope is this I hope there's something out there bigger than me that will speak to my heart and love me and I gotta say when you open yourself up to the relentless love of God He will unleash and it might not happen right away but if you continue to persevere in faith He will unleash a storm of His love and consolation upon your life it won't always be easy but if you press in and have the faith to doubt to stand on there and say I'm gonna have the faith to take some time to look at my doubts you see it takes faith to look at your doubts it's easy to throw out Jesus with just another story but to stand back because Jesus said something different than any other spiritual path set whether it be Muhammad whether it be Buddha none of them claim to be God he's actually a complete as Bono said nutter is the word that he used either a complete you know crazy man or Jesus is the Son of God and real and so I want to encourage you to continue to have enough faith to look at doubt that we move on finally and this is the last point is this faith actually goes from being a verb of something that we an action that we do to something that we become faith has the ability to change the kind of person you are it believes in things that are hoped for it begins to act in love and so the hardest thing with Christ following is not letting your faith just become an act a thought or a belief but faith to become so steeped in your life that it changes you to the very core of your being and that's where it always needs to be changed I tell you on a daily basis I need that I need Jesus to change my heart every single day day to day month to month year to year as we look about that and so the question that I finish with is this I guess what happened to the body of Jesus I don't know but even if I could prove to you that Jesus rose from the dead would it really matter if we didn't have the faith to believe that he loves you individually and that if you were the only person that he came to rescue he would have emptied heaven his father would have emptied heaven of its jewel of its treasure that he might come and find you that you are treasured by God this is the gospel at this corner that we want to preach it is a gospel of hope it is a gospel of God's love that calls people to know a father you know other than Judaism I don't know of another religious path that shows God as a father the world needs a father to comfort them to be strong to come alongside them and speak kindly and gently into their ear and I want to say that is the message that has caused Christianity continue to go forth not always perfectly there's done some horrific things because once it's filled with people but at the same time it has continued to march on with this message of a man whose life brought meaning to his death his resurrection and he's coming back again would you stand to like to like to like to like to like to like to like to like to like to like to like to like to like to like to like you and I'm to like to like to like this with a story and I'm to like you