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Apr 19, 2020

un-Belief in a time of virus

un-Belief in a time of virus

Passage: John 20:24

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: House Calls

We cherish the celebratory mood Easter can bring our way. But then Monday comes, and the world comes rushing back in (if it left at all), and we are left with our fears and doubts. What then?

Order of Worship

CALL TO WORSHIP: 1 Peter 1:3-8
OLD TESTAMENT READING: Psalm 31:1,3,7,9,14,24
CENTRAL TEXT: John 20:24-31
MESSAGE: (un)Belief in a time of virus
BENEDICTION: Jude 1:20-22

Children's Lesson

04.19.2020 Sermon Notes

Readings & Scripture

CALL TO WORSHIP: 1 Peter 1:3-8
LEADER: 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

ALL: 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, 9 obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

OLD TESTAMENT READING: Psalm 31:1,3,7,9,14,24
LEADER: Our Old Testament Reading related to today’s Central Text is found in the Psalms, chapter 31.

LEADER: 1 In you, O Lord, do I take refuge; let me never be put to shame; in your righteousness deliver me!

3 For you are my rock and my fortress; and for your name's sake you lead me and guide me;

7 I will rejoice and be glad in your steadfast love, because you have seen my affliction; you have known the distress of my soul,

9 Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eye is wasted from grief; my soul and my body also.

14 But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, “You are my God.”

24 Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord!

CENTRAL TEXT: John 20:24-31
LEADER: From the gospel of John, chapter 20, verses 24-31
LEADER: 24 Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” 26 Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” 28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” 30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

BENEDICTION: Jude 1:20-22
LEADER: 20 But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, 21 keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. 22 And have mercy on those who doubt;

ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES:

  • John 1:1-13
  • John 5:26; 5:39; 6:63; 8:12; 10:10; 12:50; 17:3
  • Matthew 28:17; James 1:5-8; Jude 20-22
  • Matthew 14:31
  • 1 Peter 1:8-9

Related Media:

4.19.20 Album

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  1. Have a go at these: what’s your soundest reasons for believing Jesus was risen. Now, the soundest reasons you’ve heard for following Thomas’s initial refusal to believe that?
  2. When are you most prone to doubt His resurrection? For what reasons, or in what circumstances?
  3. Why do you think Thomas’s story is included here—as a challenge to or a respect for initial hesitations to believe? Why do we immediately associate him with doubt, when Jesus did for him what he’d already done for the other disciples (in the previous paragraph)?
  4. Why might’ve John included the detail that Jesus appeared to them “eight days later” (On Sunday) when they were gathered in their common meeting place?
  5. In the absence of a physical encounter with Jesus what has been provided as evidence for belief? Why those?

QUOTES:

  • This is the sort of truth that is hard to explain because it is a fact; but it is a fact to which we can call witnesses. G.K. Chesterton
  • I know in their own terms what they saw was the raised Jesus. That’s what they say, and then all the historic evidence we have afterwards attest to their conviction that that’s what they saw. I’m not saying that they really did see the raised Jesus. I wasn’t there. I don’t know what they saw. But I do know that as a historian that they must have seen something. Paula Fredriksen
  • Just when I think I’ve finally found some balance between active devotion and honest modern consciousness, all my old anxieties come pressuring up through the seams of me, and I am as volatile and paralyzed as ever… Be careful. Be certain that your expressions of regret about your inability to rest in God do not have a tinge of self-satisfaction, even self-exaltation to them, that your complaints about your anxieties are not merely a manifestation of your dependence on them. There is nothing more difficult to outgrow than anxieties that have become useful to us, whether as explanations for a life that never quite finds its true force or direction, or as fuel for ambition, or as a kind of reflexive secular religion that, paradoxically, unites us with others in a shared sense of complete isolation: you feel at home in the world only by never feeling at home in the world.  Christian Wiman
  • . . .supposing a man’s reason once decides that the weight of the evidence is for it. I can tell that man what is going to happen to him in the next few weeks. There will come a moment when there is bad news, or he is in trouble, or is living among a lot of other people who do not believe it, and all at once his emotions will rise up and carry out a sort of blitz on his belief. . . .  C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
  • Now Faith. . . is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway… you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of Faith. . . .We have to be continually reminded of what we believe. Neither this belief nor any other will automatically remain alive in the mind. It must be fed. C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
  • I can't really explain what happened next. I was standing there looking at the statue, and then I discovered I was on my knees. I could hear an interior voice speaking to me. Not with my ears-it was more like a radio inside suddenly clicked on. The voice was both intimate and authoritative, and it filled me. It said, "I am your life. You think that your life is your name, your personality, your history. But that is not your life. I am your life." It went on, naming that "life force" notion I admired: "Beyond that, you think that your life is the fact that you are alive, that your breath goes in and out, that energy courses in your veins. But even that is not your life. I am your life. "I am the foundation of everything else in your life.". . . . I didn't become a Christian because somebody with a Bible badgered me till I was worn down. I wasn't persuaded by the logic of Christian theology or its creeds. I met Christ.  Frederica Mathewes-Greene

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