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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] He is risen indeed.
[00:00:04] Hallelujah. Please be seated.
[00:00:09] So we heard that gospel lesson this morning where Philip probably spokesman for everyone, but Philip said, show us the Father, show us. He's saying, show us God and Jesus response is just so beautiful. He says, believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. Or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves.
[00:00:36] Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I have been doing and they will do even greater things than these because I am going to the Father. This is Jesus way of saying, you've seen me, you've seen the Father, let's pray.
[00:00:59] Show us the Father today through Jesus.
[00:01:05] Amen.
[00:01:08] So it's been a bunch of years ago now, a televised interview that took place between Kirk Cameron, maybe you remember him, he was a star on, on Growing Pains, long time ago, television show.
[00:01:25] He's now an evangelist. And he staged a debate on television to show God to Brian Sapient and his girlfriend Kelly, who were members of an organization then called the Rational Response Squad. And that particular organization was pro atheist and pro think tank.
[00:01:48] In other words, they didn't believe in God.
[00:01:53] And Kirk Cameron staged this interview to show them God. It was billed as like this major confrontation.
[00:02:06] Well, I watched it and I'll just tell you, it lacked depth, okay. But it pointed to kind of a trend existent then and still existent today.
[00:02:17] Many people want to be shown God so they can be satisfied. Show us God.
[00:02:23] Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Victor Stenger, these are some of the big names that are out there.
[00:02:32] All of this is an attempt to show that the scientific method cannot prove the existence of God.
[00:02:41] And something else to show where Christians have failed to live up to the expressed life of Jesus.
[00:02:52] Well, that point is pretty well taken as well, isn't it?
[00:02:58] Maybe you remember some of us that are cotton tops.
[00:03:07] Yuri Gregarin. I think I said it right. No, Gagarin. Yuri Gagarin.
[00:03:13] He was the first Russian cosmonaut. He famously said after he had come back from space, he said, my atheism has been confirmed. I went up in space, I looked around and I did not see any God.
[00:03:29] Remember that?
[00:03:33] Well, Shortly after that, C.S. lewis, who is a famous Christian author and apologist, he wrote an essay responding to Gagarin.
[00:03:43] He said, if there is a God who created everything, he would not relate to us the way that a person who lives upstairs relates to a person who lives downstairs.
[00:03:54] And he said that's really Gagarin's assumption, that God lives somewhere up there. And if we climb up high enough, will be able to find him.
[00:04:03] Well, Lewis went on in his essay, he said if God is creator, he would relate to us more like Shakespeare relates to Hamlet.
[00:04:13] Hamlet, you know, is a play that Shakespeare, a playwright, actually wrote.
[00:04:20] Lewis wrote. He said Hamlet is never going to meet Shakespeare by going backstage.
[00:04:26] The only way Hamlet can know anything about Shakespeare is if Shakespeare writes himself into the play.
[00:04:34] Well, that's pretty good wisdom, isn't it?
[00:04:37] But let's just pause here a minute and say that the gospels, our scriptures go one better, don't they? Because God did write himself into the play.
[00:04:52] He wrote himself into all creation, as I was trying to show the children this morning. And amazingly, he did so not only as a judge, but also as a suffering redeemer and savior of all mankind.
[00:05:09] So anyway, the debate rages on, okay, between those representing intelligent design and those representing evolutionary origins. The focus of the argument all centers around that word design or intelligent design.
[00:05:27] And Kirk Cameron, who I opened with, said it this way. He says, if there's a picture, there has to have been an artist.
[00:05:35] If there's a creation, there has to have been a creator.
[00:05:42] And that takes us back to Philip in our text this morning, who asks to see the Father.
[00:05:50] He wants to see God. Really. He wanted something more than, well, proof, some kind of proof that God exists.
[00:06:04] He wants something practical.
[00:06:07] He wants to see God, you know, he wants to have his senses tickled somehow.
[00:06:20] Of course, Jesus answer is great. He says, those who have seen me have seen the Father.
[00:06:27] And Jesus really understands what Philip wants here. In his heart of hearts, he understands what Philip really needed. He didn't need philosophical proof so much as he needed to experience a reality greater than what he already knew. And Jesus says to Philip, why do you ask me to show you God? I've been doing it all along.
[00:06:48] And Jesus is simply letting Philip know that his very life has been showing him the essential nature of God, really.
[00:06:56] God with skin on.
[00:06:59] And that's true for us today as well.
[00:07:06] See, in Philip's world, in Philip's world, people had what we would call the Old Testament scriptures. And those scriptures are, are full of, well, God's pronouncements about how people are supposed to get along and what to do when they don't get along. And it gave rise to such philosophies as an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
[00:07:34] You know, God gave us the way to take care of ourselves here. And that's how you do it. If somebody offends me, I'm going to offend them right back.
[00:07:42] Well, Jesus comes on the scene and he's offering up grace.
[00:07:49] Grace instead of legalism.
[00:07:52] So that in Philip's day, those who had been wronged often sought revenge. But Jesus comes and he shows a forgiveness that made revenge unnecessary in Philip's day, and really in our own day, well, people worked everything out to their own advantage.
[00:08:13] But Jesus shows a love that seeks the advantage of others first.
[00:08:21] Now that's a completely different way of looking at God, isn't it?
[00:08:29] It's a completely different way of looking at life, for sure.
[00:08:35] And all these approaches, alternate approaches to life.
[00:08:41] Jesus is showing Philip and others something beyond human understanding, a kind of a new dimension of human experience. He was taking them by a different route into the heart of God.
[00:08:56] What a difference.
[00:08:59] To see God differently.
[00:09:05] To see the heart of God.
[00:09:12] Did Pastor Pete just say, see the heart of God? Yes, he did, Jesus. Life, death and resurrection, show us the heart of God.
[00:09:24] And again and again he says that there is more to life than riches and that we don't have to blame someone else when bad things happen and that we are fulfilled beyond imagination when we seek the good of others before ourselves.
[00:09:39] It's completely topsy turvy. It's completely upside down in way of thinking.
[00:09:45] But that's Jesus.
[00:09:49] I like to watch old reruns, different ones. Right now, one of the ones that I've gotten interested in is Little House on the Prairie. Who remembers Little House on the Prairie?
[00:10:03] Still speaks today, in my opinion.
[00:10:06] Well, we have Charles and Carolyn as the ma and PA of the series, you know, and they're someplace out on the steeps of the Kansas prairie.
[00:10:19] They have this friend by the name of Mr. Edwards.
[00:10:22] And in one particular episode, Mr. Edwards reveals that he doesn't believe in God anymore.
[00:10:30] He used to believe in God, but he announces quite emphatically he doesn't believe in God anymore. Because he says, what kind of a God would let his wife and his daughter die like they did?
[00:10:45] Well, they had died of smallpox, and smallpox was beyond anybody's control, especially in those days.
[00:10:57] And he presses the question, why?
[00:11:01] And Carolyn, our heroine of the whole story, Carolyn, she doesn't have an answer.
[00:11:11] How do you justify the ways of God to mankind?
[00:11:16] You and I can't do that.
[00:11:18] Actually, it's not our job.
[00:11:21] But what Carolyn does do is read the hurt in Mr. Edwards.
[00:11:30] And she says to him, you're punishing God.
[00:11:38] And it stuns Mr. Edwards, stuns him into silence.
[00:11:44] But she continues, she says to him, it's not that you don't believe in God, you're just angry with Him.
[00:11:57] You want to control God, you want to be God in God's place is really what she was trying to communicate.
[00:12:06] And the story unfolds, and you'd have to go watch it to see what happens next. But we get that, don't we?
[00:12:13] Don't we understand that we all know about that kind of anger when things are flying out of control or things don't line up the way we thought that they should or the way that they could have anyway.
[00:12:26] And you can insert your own episodes for experience like that.
[00:12:33] But that anger sometimes leads us to, well, an eye for an eye or tooth for a tooth.
[00:12:42] You know, that seems sensible to us in our human way of thinking.
[00:12:49] But Jesus comes on the scene and he wants to give us something more profound, a more profound vision for life to lead us to an understanding that.
[00:13:00] Well, an understanding that's larger than life. And that understanding is to love.
[00:13:08] To love the way Jesus loved that even on the cross, he said, Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing.
[00:13:24] It's that kind of love that seeks to embrace each of us and that kind of love that seeks to transform each of us.
[00:13:35] And seeing God and experiencing him in this way is far more powerful than attempting some intellectual proof of his existence. Jesus, his message to Philip, his message to us. He's projecting a time when God's alternate way of living would take over in the Christian community and show people who God really is. In effect, Jesus is saying, you ain't seen nothing yet.
[00:14:03] And I no sooner say that, and I'm hearing my homiletics professor back here say, you can't say, say ain't from the pulpit.
[00:14:17] To which I would counter today and say, well, I can, because it's part of a fixed, idiomatic expression.
[00:14:24] And it wouldn't make any sense if I didn't say it that way.
[00:14:27] So. And by the way, it's more memorable. You'll go home and say, pastor Pete said ain't from the pulpit.
[00:14:35] You ain't seen nothing yet is really Jesus message to Philip. And of course, many rightly point at the failure of Christians to live up to God's calling over the centuries. I mean, look at Pope Urban II, who in 1095 AD launched the first Crusade to. To slaughter the Muslims.
[00:14:56] And in our own day and age, the folly of Pastor Fred Phelps, who launched crusades of his own kind against people of an alternate gender orientation.
[00:15:08] Christians have often failed to show to others the God that they have seen in Jesus.
[00:15:15] Elton John said Christianity should be outlawed because it's become a religion of hate.
[00:15:21] I wonder where he got that idea.
[00:15:24] Or Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi who famously said, I like your Jesus, I don't like his followers.
[00:15:37] On the other hand, these same critics often fail to note the enormous impact of Christianity into the lives of people the world over. They easily overlook the huge amounts of money and time and goods and social services.
[00:15:56] I'm speaking of hospitals and schools and institutions that Christian individuals and organizations shared with hurting communities the world over. The contributions made by Christianity to Western society, those contributions are immeasurable. The Gospel has been the very building block of civilization because, I mean, think about this. Without it, Michelangelo would not have painted the Sistine Chapel.
[00:16:24] Without the Gospel, Dante would not have written the Divine Comedy.
[00:16:29] Without the Gospel, George Frederick Handel would not have composed the Messiah.
[00:16:36] Wren would not have built St. Paul's Cathedral. See, the Gospel, it pervades not only the moral conventions of the west, that is our laws, but also education, science, medicine, literature, language, architecture, the rituals which shape the Christian and the non Christian community alike. I mean, just stop and think about Christmas.
[00:17:04] That's the world over Easter.
[00:17:12] The world stops to acknowledge.
[00:17:17] And Christians have done these very things because they've been touched by the love of God in Christ Jesus.
[00:17:28] The evangelist John wrote so clearly, so succinctly when he said we love because God first loved us so well. There are so many other examples.
[00:17:42] Here's one more. The love of God in Christ Jesus motivates some 70% of Americans to give to charities annually. Some 4% gross of their incomes totaling up some quarter to half a trillion dollars annually.
[00:18:04] Jesus was right when he said in Palestine so long ago, well intimated, at least to Philip, you ain't seen nothing yet.
[00:18:16] You want to see God?
[00:18:22] Here he is.
[00:18:26] Look around people, God's people, living out in practical ways the love of God, which by the way, is the most convincing evidence for the existence of God.
[00:18:46] It shows that the troubling dimensions of human character, such as hatred or apathy or revenge or even dictatorial regimes, can be addressed by God's love, God's forgiveness, God's life.
[00:19:08] Listen again, very truly. I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I have been doing and they will do even greater things than these.
[00:19:19] To each of us, Jesus is saying, you ain't seen nothing yet.
[00:19:28] That's three times, Professor Seltz. I'm sorry.
[00:19:33] In showing us the Father, Jesus shows us what the Spirit's movement looks like. Among his people.
[00:19:43] The God who comes to us, the God who dies for us.
[00:19:49] The God who rises from the dead so that we might rise to new life.
[00:19:57] We who believe that this is true daily look for ways that we can rise above our human shortcomings and our failures. And show others what God really looks like. So that they, just like Philip, can see him.
[00:20:16] Amen.
[00:20:18] And amen.