Acts 1.1-8 Believe 28th May 2006
1. Play sound clip “I’m a believer” Are you a believer?
If you are… do you know WHY you believe?
Do you know WHAT you believe?
Have you told anyone else that you are a believer?
At the moment there are messages just starting to appear… telling us how important it is to believe.
Have you seen them?
Here’s one. Show Mars “Believe” bar.
Now when you eat a Mars Bar you are encouraged to believe. (Ask Believe what?)
Believe that England can win the world cup.
Slide 2 Mars bar
In 1910 Fred and Ethel Mars invented a chocolate bar and began what is now a multinational company operating in over 65 countries with a turnover of 18bn dollars. Andrea Taylor, Trade relations Manager UK says MARS is in an ideal position to fuel positivity in the build up to this year’s World Cup with the name change to ‘BELIEVE’. The campaign … will give MARS huge visibility and high scale presence at this key feel-good time.” So if you haven’t seen the adverts for believe bars yet… you will very soon.
Once upon a time we were asked to believe that a Mars a day would help us to …(work rest and play)
We were asked to believe that in some way a Mars bar was good for us… even though there is more calories in a mars bar than in a Big Mac & French fries combined !!!
Now, the makers of Mars bars want you to believe that when we buy a Mars bar we are thinking positively – and if enough people just believe that England can win the world cup.. then they will.
There you go - and you thought you were just eating a Mars bar.
You might think that whether or not England win doesn’t depend upon how skilful the players are… it just depends on what millions of people wish for.
Wishing is a better way of describing the sort of believing that the Mars bar marketing people are talking about. Maybe that is what you believe.
After all anybody is free to believe whatever they want aren’t they? Of course we are.
Slide 3 Does evidence matter?
But does there have to be any sort of evidence to support what we believe?
Christians believe certain things.
Is there any evidence to suggest that what Christians believe is the truth? Or is having a Christian faith simply a matter of believing something but without having any reason to think that what you believe may actually be true.
Slide 4 What do you believe?
So think about it… what do you believe?
What do you believe about Jesus?
You can say that Jesus never existed. But you can’t find any rational person on the planet who would deny that the evidence for the existence of Jesus is overwhelming.
The arguments about Jesus all come down to one question? Who is he?
You can say, like the Da Vinci code does that not until 300 years after his death was Jesus regarded as anything more than just a prophet by his followers.
You can say it – you can believe it… but only if you ignore all of the evidence.
Slide 5 Da Vinci Code.
If you weren’t here when I talked about the Da Vinci Code you can read what I said on the website. I just gave a couple of examples to show that what is written in the Da Vinci Code is not historical fact... but historical fiction. Anybody is free to believe what it says. But I think it matters whether or not what we believe is based on any evidence. And there is plenty of evidence about what the very first followers of Jesus believed about him.
The passage from the bible that we read today was written within 60 - 70 years of the resurrection.
Slide 6 Rylands Papyrus
And if you want to see a part of a gospel that that is old enough to have been read by the grandchildren of the first disciples of Jesus…. you can go to the John Rylands library in Manchester and see it.
Being a Christian is not a matter of having a blind unreasoning belief.
If I say I say “I believe this book, the BIBLE - contains an accurate record of what Jesus said and did.”
That belief is based on evidence… overwhelming evidence that the bible we read now is what was originally written by the bible writers.
Christian belief is not about wishing for something.. like wishing and hoping that England will win the world cup.
Slide 7 Cross
The claim of the Christian faith is that in a real place… the land of Israel, at a particular moment in human history… Jesus lived among us. That he died on the cross… and that he was raised to new and eternal life. That he ascended to his father in heaven so that his followers everywhere might experience his presence in a new way through the gift of his Holy Spirit to them…
and that one day, just as Jesus said… he will return.
In the bible reading this morning we heard the words of Jesus to a group of people who had come to believe that he really is the Son of God.
Slide 8 Cross
He said to them…
…when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you will receive power and will tell people about me everywhere
He was proved right. They did tell everyone about him. And it was an amazing turnaround.
This small group of followers had fled for their lives when Jesus was arrested. They had seen him die.
Slide 9 nonsense
The records say that when they first heard a report from some of the women followers that Jesus was alive again .. “the story sounded like nonsense, so they didn’t believe it. Luke 24:11
Can you imagine what they must have actually said? I think that Luke, the gospel writer was just being polite!
But they came to believe that Jesus was alive because of the evidence that they could not ignore.
As we heard in the bible reading this morning…
Slide 10 Acts 3
During the forty days after his crucifixion, he appeared to the apostles from time to time and proved to them in many ways that he was actually alive. On these occasions he talked to them about the Kingdom of God. In one of these meetings as he was eating a meal with them….
They ate meals with him.
They listened to him teaching them about the “Jesus Code…” how passages in the old Testament scriptures written hundreds of years before Jesus was born, actually pointed to him coming.
Slide11 Isaiah 53
Like the book of Isaiah 53.. when it says
he was wounded and crushed for our sins.
He was beaten that we might have peace. He was whipped, and we were healed!
6 All of us have strayed away like sheep. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the LORD laid on him the guilt and sins of us all.
8 From prison and trial they led him away to his death. But who among the people realized that he was dying for their sins—that he was suffering their punishment?
9 He had done no wrong, and he never deceived anyone. But he was buried like a criminal
Slide 12 Blank Slide
All the evidence is that this group of people were so convinced by the evidence of what they had seen and heard - that even in the face of death and persecution they never stopped telling people the truth about Jesus. He is risen. He is the son of God.
As a church we have a set of statements that express our values .. I was looking at them with a group of folk on last Wednesday evening. Here is a part of one of them…
Slide 13 We will help people ----- to believe…
Unlike the makers of Mars, we’re not trying to sell a product we simply want to introduce people to a person.
Here is the rest of that statement… (Show statement.)
We will help people who do not know Jesus to believe in him and become his faithful followers.
In this service Tim and Emma and the godparents, when they bring Roman for baptism will be publicly declaring what they believe.
Belief is a big thing when we we’re talking about Jesus.
Belief is something that affects the whole of our life. When we talk about believing in Jesus we are talking about trusting him, loving him, thanking him for being our saviour and wanting to honour him in our life now.
So it important to know what you believe about Jesus… and why you believe it.
Don’t be content with second-hand beliefs.
Don’t be content with just copying what other people believe without thinking about it.
And whatever you.. don’t make the mistake of ignoring the question “Who is Jesus”
Here is a practical suggestion.
If you don’t know what the bible says about Jesus. Read it. In a modern translation.. in normal English.
If you can’t read it... ask someone who can.
Listen to it on a CD or listen to it on your Ipod.
Watch it on a late night satellite TV… seeing the words of the bible and thinking about what they mean is better for you than a lot of the other stuff that’s on late night satellite TV channels.
Living in a situation where the bible is more widely available than ever before… I can’t help thinking it will be a fairly feeble excuse if one day you have to stand before Jesus and he asks” Why did you keep on ignoring me? Why didn’t you ever find out anything about me?” And all you can say is .. “well I just never got round to it really… I was busy at work, I got a lot of decorating to do at home”… or whatever. Big mistake!
What you believe about Jesus will make a difference to how you live now. It will also make a huge difference to how we live in the next life as well ! Either we will live the next life in the presence of Jesus because we have lived in friendship with him here.. or we will discover in the next life that we are separated from the presence of Jesus and from the love and goodness of God.
I know which I opt for!
Slide 14 Believe
When I was a lot younger than I am now I went to university to study theology. I knew lots of theology. I studied greek, the language of the new testament. I knew lots about the Christian tradition. I knew lots of philosophy. I knew lots about other faiths and religions. I didn’t know - Jesus.
It was not until twenty years after I left university that I finally understood what Jesus had done for me, how he had died for me, so that I could be forgiven. And it was then that I received his forgiveness and experienced the presence and power of his Holy Spirit with me.
I didn’t have to go to university to find Jesus… I just had to go to the cross.
When I knew him… that’s when God asked me and Pam to leave our home and what we were doing before, and give the rest of our lives to telling the good news about Jesus.
Do you know him? Are you a believer?