Starting Point

“Don’t Stop”

Jeremy Halterman

Introduction

Everything has a starting point.
- Faith has a starting point.
For most of us, it started when we were kids.
- Maybe you grew up in some sort of faith community:
  - A church
  - A synagogue
  - A mosque
  - A temple of some sort
- You had a certain understanding of faith / spirituality / the divine.
  - Then life happened:
    - You went to college and heard things about the world that weren’t compatible with the beliefs you grew up with.
    - You faced the loss of…
      - a loved one.
      - a relationship.
      - health.
      - finances.
      - and you had this idea:
        
        If God loves me, if He’s for me, if He’s on my team, then I won’t face certain challenges in life,
        
        and then when you did face those challenges, it was a huge blow to your faith.
        
        Maybe you don’t have much of a faith to speak of anymore.
- Many of us are here in need of a restart—an adult starting point.
We’ve spent this series talking about how faith has a starting point.
- Today, after 6 weeks, we’re finally talking about the idea of faith itself.
- Faith might be the most abused, confused, and misused concept in religion.
  - The goal of today is to set some things straight when it comes to our understanding of faith.
Today’s message is actually grounded on the main reason why I’m a Christian and not something else
- or anything else.
- or nothing else.
To understand the concept of faith within a religious context, we’re going to first take a step back and look at the concept of faith apart from a religious context.
- Just a warning:
  - Because we’re looking at the concept of faith in general, we’re not going to get into Scripture until the end of the message when we talk about faith within the context of Christianity.
- Before we get started, we’re going to need a working definition of faith.
  - There are several words in Scripture that can be translated into the English word faith.
    - The type of “faith” that we’re talking about today is the most common definition of faith: belief.
      - You may hear me use faith and belief interchangeably.
        
        This is totally intentional.

Observations

The ability to believe is the most powerful force at mankind’s disposal.
- You may hear me say that and think, Hmm… “the most powerful force at mankind’s disposal?”
  - Do I really believe that?
  - What about… the atomic bomb?
    - Think about this: before the atomic bomb was created, somebody believed that it could be created.
      - Somebody believed that it should be created.
1. Everything that’s ever been done—good or bad—was done because somebody believed it could or should be done.
2. Every problem that has been solved was solved because somebody believed it could or should be solved.
3. Jesus says in Matthew 17 that faith has the power to move mountains.
  - If you’re like me, you’ve wondered why we’ve never seen an actual mountain moved through sheer faith.
    - When I was a kid, I used to sit in my room and try to move objects with the force—I mean faith.
  - Mountains have been moved by faith/belief:
    - Medical mountains
      - There are diseases that no longer exist because someone believed that they could and should be eradicated.
    - Scientific mountains
    - Financial mountains
    - Relational mountains
      - We’ve seen marriages that seemed irreparable radically transformed by the grace of God.
    - Athletic mountains
      - Records are constantly being broken.
        
        Have you ever wondered why we see new Olympic records every four years?
        
        Don’t say steroids.
        
        Once someone knows that something can be done, they realize that they might be able to take it one step further.
        
        Someone told me this week that in the earliest recorded Olympic marathons, competitors would walk portions of the distance.
        
        Now, there are people who run marathons on a diet of Bud Light and Doritos.
  - The mountain of slavery
  - Human rights mountains
4. Ideologies/beliefs drive world events.
  1. Beliefs began this nation in the 1700s.
    - Beliefs split this nation in the 1800s.
  2. Every revolution is fueled by belief.
  3. Hitler started and fueled a World War with speeches about his belief…
    - of what could and should be true of Germany.
    - of what was holding them back.
  4. International conflict can be traced to a conflict in beliefs.
    - Terrorism is rooted in a conflict of beliefs.
5. When we believe something is possible, we look for a way until we find a way.
  1. I’ve heard that tech companies (think Facebook or Google), as a form of initiation, give new employees an impossible task to perform or an impossible problem to solve.
    - The point is to see if the new employee will keep trying without giving up.
      - Eventually, the company will let them know that it was just a test and that the job they were given is actually impossible,
      - but every once in a while, you know what happens?
        
        They do it.
        
        They perform the impossible task.
        
        They solve the impossible problem.
        
        They come back and say, “Hey, I did the thing.”
        
        Their boss goes, “No, you didn’t: the thing we gave you to do was impossible.”
        
        Employee: “Well, nobody told me it was impossible, so I did it.”
  2. Have you ever met someone super successful and just wondered,
    - Why that guy?
    - Why her?
    - I am so much more qualified than they are!
      - That was the problem.
        
        You were so smart.
        
        You saw all the reasons why something wouldn’t work.
      - They weren’t bright enough to know, so they tried it anyway,
        
        and it worked.
6. Belief empowers us to…
  1. try.
  2. try again.
  3. anticipate.
  4. hope.
  5. imagine.
  6. create.
  7. improve.
We constantly look for evidence to support what we already believe.
1. This is especially true for Republicans.
  - And Democrats.
  - And Independents.
  - And Libertarians and librarians and sectarians and Hungarians.
- This is true for everybody.
1. Let’s say you’re shopping online for a new car.
  - Maybe you’re not looking forward to spending the money.
  - Maybe you can totally afford it (because you weren’t bright enough to know that you shouldn’t be successful).
  - And then you find it: your new car.
    - It’s the right price.
    - It has the right features.
    - It drives forward and reverse.
    - It’s perfect.
  - After deciding on your new car, you leave the house to go to the grocery store.
    - You stop at a stop light, look to your left, and what do you see?
      - Your car!
    - Then you go a few blocks further and look to your right, and what’s there?
      - Your car!
    - Then you pull into the parking lot, and what’s parked right in front of you?
      - Your car!
  - Did all those people go out and buy that car on that same day?
    - No!
    - You just never noticed it until it was important to you.
2. There’s this amazing function of the human mind called confirmation bias.
  - We can only take in so much information at once.
  - At any given moment, there are thousands of things happening around you.
    - Sights
    - Sounds
    - Smells
    - Feelings
  - Your mind has to decide which things to let in.
    - Then it weaves those things into a story.
      - This is one of the things that makes us human.
        
        We don’t just see things.
        
        We see the things behind those things.
        
        Let me be more specific:
        
        In relationships, we don’t just see what people do, we think about their motives for doing those things.
        
        If you believe someone cares about you, loves you, is for you…
        
        When they do something good…
        
        When they make a mistake…
        
        If you believe someone has it out for you…
        
        When they make a mistake…
        
        When they do something good…
        
        People who believe the best see the best.
3. We filter out what doesn’t fit.
  - Scenario: you’re getting into it with your spouse…
    - I know: impossible.
    - Spouse: “Will you please quit leaving your dirty dishes in the sink?!”
    - You: “Maybe I’d ‘remember’ if you’d remember to move the clothes from the washer to the dryer!”
      - A couple of you just leaned over to your spouse and said, “Well, we know that those are both your jobs.”
        
        Congratulations: now you don’t share chores or a bed.
    - You go back and forth for a little while longer, and eventually your spouse just goes, “Ah, just forget it!”
      - “But hey, while you’re in there, will you grab the ketchup out of the fridge?”
        
        Whoa, plot twist.
        
        This story is like an M. Night Shyamalan movie.
        
        You look in the fridge and go, “It’s not here. We must be out of ketchup.”
        
        Spouse: “No, we’re not: I just bought some.”
        
        You: “It’s not in here!”
        
        Spouse: “It’s on the second shelf, right in the middle.”
        
        You: “I’m telling you: we’re out of ketchup!”
        
        Your spouse calmly walks over to the fridge, reaches in to the second shelf, and pulls out a fresh, unopened glass bottle of Heinz 57.
        
        “You mean this ketchup?”
        
        You lose it.
        
        This is called perceptual blindness.
        
        Because of the argument, the story that your mind was telling you was that your spouse was wrong.
        
        When ketchup came into the picture, your mind was still telling you that same story,
        
        Which meant that there couldn’t possibly be ketchup in the fridge.
        
        So there wasn’t.
- So all this makes it seem like the ability to believe really isn’t such a great thing.
The ability to believe is one of God’s greatest gifts to mankind.
- You will generally be happier if you have something to believe in.
- People who believe in a loving God are happier:
  - More patience
  - More compassion
  - Lower blood pressure

Faith/belief is an gift available to everyone.
- Faith can drive us to make things happen.
- Faith can cause us to see things happening.
  - If you believe deeply enough, any belief system can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
    - Is it possible that Christianity is just some sort of giant Jedi mind trick?
      - “This is the Messiah you’re looking for.”
  - We often say that seeing is believing,
    - but it’s almost more accurate to say that believing is seeing.
      - So basically, the bottom line for this morning is…
        
        Don’t stop believin’
        Hold onto that fee-ee-ee-lin’.
[clap, clap] Let me pray for you.
- No!
- If that’s all there is to my understanding of faith, then why am I here?
  - Why am I a Christian and not something else
    - or anything else?
    - or nothing else?
Think about this:
- Why did Christianity even survive the first century, when there were plenty of safer religions to be a part of?
  - The earliest followers of Jesus knew exactly how dangerous it was to be His disciples, because they saw their own leader brutally and violently murdered because of what He taught,
  - and when Jesus died, His disciples hid,
    - because their leader was dead, and they were next.

Jesus’ followers hid because they believed that He was dead.
- and they believed He would stay that way.
1. They believed that He was a powerful speaker whose powerful speaking got him killed.
2. They believed that He couldn’t have been the Messiah.
3. They believed that He couldn’t have been the Son of God.
4. They believed their lives were in jeopardy.
- Jesus’ disciples lost faith in the end.
  - They hid.
  - Peter denied even knowing Him.
- Then something happened, and everything changed.
  - Jesus came back.
    - Take that, M. Night Shyamalan.
  - A few weeks later, we see Peter and John and others in the streets of Jerusalem, preaching about Jesus.
    - You know what the crux of their message was?
      - You can read it for yourself in Acts 2–3.
      - This is what sets Christianity apart from every other faith system.
        
        Other faith systems take their teacher’s teaching and teach it.
        
        Muhammad
        
        Buddha
        
        but Peter and John weren’t going around teaching Jesus’ parables and sermons:
        
        “Blessed are the poor in spirit…”
        
        “There once was a man with two sons…”
      You killed Him.
      God raised Him.
      We’ve seen Him.
      Say you’re sorry.
    - Remember when we looked at Paul’s message in Athens?
      - He didn’t ask the Athenians to believe that Jesus’ teachings were in some way superior to theirs.
        
        He asked them to believe that something happened.

…he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.
— Acts 17:31 (ESV)

The word for “assurance” in the original language is the same word that’s translated elsewhere as “faith.”
- What in the world does it mean for God to “give faith”?
  - It means that faith isn’t just something that we muster up.
    - Ephesians 2:8 tells us that faith is a gift of God.
  - So where do we look to find faith?
    - There’s a hint in this verse: God has given faith to all by raising Jesus from the dead.
      - Something happened that we can believe in.
    - Here’s another passage:
      
      Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see.
      — Hebrews 11:1 (NLT)
      - This chapter is often referred to as the “Hall of Faith.”
        
        The writer goes on to describe the faith and experiences of people who have gone before,
        
        and he encourages us to have assurance today based on God’s faithfulness in the past.
        
        And this is the hinge point for the Christian faith.
It’s not…
- “We believe that this teaching is valid.”
- “I like what the Bible says about this.”
We believe that something happened.
- We believe that Jesus was crucified for our sin and that God raised Him from the dead.
But we don’t believe it just because the Bible says so.
- It’s better than that.
  - People believed for hundreds of years before the Bible was even assembled.
    - We believe it because…
      - Matthew, John, Peter, James, and others saw and preached and were tortured and even murdered for their unwavering belief.
      - Luke investigated.
      - Paul, who hated and worked to assassinate Christians, believed and died preaching the Gospel.
      - something turned terrified unbelievers into courageous, risk-taking evangelists whose main message was We saw Him die, we’ve seen Him since, none of us were expecting it, and now everything is different.
    - Christian faith: belief in what we do not know based on what we can and do know.

Conclusion

If a man can predict his own death and resurrection, believe what He says:
1. Matthew 6: God hears our secret prayers.
2. Luke 11: God is our Father.
3. John 16: God will sustain us through difficulties.
4. Matthew 5: Heaven is real.
5. John 15: God loves you.
That is why we’ve been saying that the starting point for the Christian faith is the answer to this question:
- Who Is Jesus?
A single event changed how Jesus’ disciples answered that question: the Resurrection.
They went from unbelief to belief in a single moment—the moment they saw the Risen Christ.