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Chris
 That's why we've got to know God's word. And my theology really, truly does matter.

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Chris
 Why I love to preach God's word and why I try to do it so passionately, because it's not just facts or things that don't really matter to the day-to-day of our lives. They literally matter in everything we do, every environment we live, every relationship that we are in.

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 (Music Playing)

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Brenton
 Welcome back to Further. I am Brenton Grimm. Chris Carr, how you doing?

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Chris
 Pretty good. I'm looking forward to our conversation today. We've got lots of things, important things. Yeah, for sure. We can talk about them. So we'll try to have to-- We'll have to try to keep it within reasonable time limits.

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Brenton
 I'll give you a time limit. Yeah.

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Brenton
 Yeah, so you started out John 14 this week. I want to start with-- you briefly mentioned that we need to eliminate the idea of taking a leap of faith,

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Brenton
 eliminate that from our language.

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Brenton
 Where do you think this idea came from, this idea of we just need to blindly trust or take a leap of faith when we're talking about big decisions in our life?

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Chris
 Yeah, I really don't know how to answer that question, because I don't know where it came from. But I think it's pretty evident that it is a very, maybe popular way of trying to understand what faith actually is. And I don't know if we've just been influenced by culture or it's just been somewhere along the line. We got to the point where we say, we just need to trust God.

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Chris
 And that's an oversimplification, I think, in many ways.

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Brenton
 Yeah,

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Brenton
 for sure.

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Brenton
 Why do you think that specifically is so problematic? I mean, that this idea is kind of out in the Christian world.

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Chris
 Well, I think it partly is problematic, because it's almost like we're saying you just need to check your brain at the door. And you don't need to think about it at all. And the Christian faith doesn't need to necessarily make sense.

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Chris
 Now, I want to be clear. There are some things that we are going to be unable to understand, probably fully. And certainly a lot of things that we might struggle to be able to understand. And God's ways are higher than our ways.

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Chris
 We know that the scripture tells us this, and God is omniscient. He's all-knowing. We're not. So there certainly are limitations.

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Chris
 But the Christian faith is based upon facts. It's based upon evidence on things that really have happened. The Christian faith is a historical faith. The gospel is historical.

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Chris
 And so I think, as I was trying to point out, is God always gives us reasons for why we should trust what He has said, what He has promised,

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Chris
 what He calls us to do. There are always reasons that we can look back on and see.

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Brenton
 Yeah. Yeah, I think of situations,

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Brenton
 biblically, even like Barnabas and Saul come to mind, right? So Saul had just had his Damascus Road experience.

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Brenton
 And Barnabas gets this vision that he needs to go and meet Saul.

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Brenton
 And the only thing that he had to trust in was God Himself. He knew that he could trust God, that whatever was going to happen, that it was part of His will. And so you could look at a lot of stories with Moses. You could look at a lot of these people throughout scripture that didn't have all the answers. They were, in a way, like they took it on faith. But this was based off of knowing God's character already, right?

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Chris
 Sure. Yeah. And faith is, again, that faith is a synonym for belief.

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Chris
 And they're synonyms for trust. And really what both of them mean, they mean is to put your trust in something. But God certainly does say to us, "Trust me."

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Chris
 We see that in our passage, "Believe in God," or "You believe in God, believe also in me. You trust God, trust also in me."

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Chris
 But the disciples had evidence for why Jesus was trustworthy already. He had shown Himself to be that.

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Chris
 And we can look back now with more evidence about why He is trustworthy because of what He was about to do following up from the passage that we talked about and the things that we're going to study in detail over the next year or so. Yeah.

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Brenton
 Right. Okay. You said that the sort of belief that Jesus is talking about in this passage is not just intellectual agreement, but a relationship of personal trust. Do you think that this is a big issue in the church today? You think that this is widespread?

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Chris
 I think it's a huge issue, yeah, for sure.

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Chris
 We can actually have a long conversation in this, but it's actually very much tied to the Enlightenment, things like rationalism and that, you know, Descartes, I am because I think, right? I think, therefore, I am, I think is actually the quote. And so, we think that we are thinking things and we are in a way thinking things, but we're much more than that. And the Bible talks much more about our heart than it actually talks about our brain, so to speak. It does talk about the mind quite a bit, but in the Scripture, there's a pretty close connection between the heart and the mind.

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Chris
 And those two things, I don't think, actually are two really very distinct, they are two different things, but they're inter, closely interrelated things. And so,

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Chris
 to get back to the church today, I really do think we have come to the place, and it's been this way for quite some time, where if you simply say or affirm certain theological facts and truths that are in fact true, that simply giving a nod to those things is actually saving faith and is true belief as the Bible, and specifically the Gospel of John

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Chris
 describes it to us.

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Brenton
 Yeah. How can we discern if this is true of us or not?

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Brenton
 Because I have to imagine that's kind of a sneaky thing, right? That we can believe all these right things, but maybe be missing that personal relationship. How do we judge that?

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Chris
 Yeah, that's a great question.

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Chris
 And there's a lot that we could say here and discuss. I do want to go back though again to our heart and is there an actual love for Christ?

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Chris
 If we go to the Great Commandment again, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength," and all goes before each of those things. And so, is there a love? That's the personal relationship. And then, if you talk about trust, I've used the illustration many times before is, you and I are sitting in chairs right now. We are evidencing our trust by actually sitting in the chair. We can look at the chair all that we want and say, "Hey, I believe that chair. I'll believe I'm putting an air coast. Nobody can see that but you." But I believe that chair can hold me up. It's got the right structure. I know how it's made and all that kind of stuff. But my actual trust in it is evidenced by sitting down and giving myself to it, believing that it will hold me up.

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Chris
 And so, it's not just a simply an intellectual understanding or affirmation about what the chair is or what the chair can do. It's actually giving myself to it. And now, with that said, I do want to qualify. There's that great quote where the man says to Jesus, "I believe, help my unbelief." And so, I think we can really struggle at times both with the affirmation of the truths and with the actual trust in those truths. And so, it's not like we're necessarily rock solid on those things all of the time. In some ways, all true believers have some unbelief in their heart. I believe in...

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Chris
 There's another reason we look forward to the day where our faith becomes actual sight.

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Brenton
 For sure.

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Brenton
 We're kind of implicit in this is like both of those are necessary. We need to agree to intellectual agreements, right? We need to believe things because we can't have a personal trust in someone that we don't know. And so, in verse 11 seems to back that up as well. What things maybe kind of baseline, like what things must we believe about God to be saved? What are the baseline beliefs?

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Chris
 Sure. I think the simplest way and the quickest way, this is a place where we could have a long, long discussion, but the simplest place to go is 1 Corinthians 15. Paul says, "Now I would remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received in which you stand and by which you are being saved." And then he goes on in verse 3, "For I delivered to you as a first importance, what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, and then he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scripture." So, at the bottom line, it's believing that Jesus is the Christ, which means that he is the Son of God, he's fully God and fully man, that he died for our sins,

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Chris
 or for my sins specifically, right? Like I'm a sinner and I need salvation, and that he was buried and then he was raised on the third day, so the resurrection. So, there is who Jesus is,

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Chris
 what he has done, why I need what he has done, and the capstone, which is really Paul's focus in 1 Corinthians 15, is a resurrection that he came back to life again.

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Chris
 And the reason that that is so important, and Paul goes on to elaborate this for another 50 some verses,

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Chris
 the resurrection is so important because it verifies that Jesus is who the scriptures claim him to be, and that what he did was sufficient for our salvation, that God accepted his sacrifice on our behalf, and that now he is, as Paul will say, the first fruits of those who are being saved. In other words, because he was resurrected, then we can one day know that we will be resurrected as well.

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Chris
 And so, those are kind of like there. And as we talked about before, that's what you need to be saved. Now, there are other truths that you may not recognize or understand, like the Trinity, when you are saved, but that true believers will not deny some of those truths. The Trinity being maybe first and foremost among them, and we could elaborate, you know, like we did in our Roman series with the concentric circles about the gospel and then the essentials and then convictions and then preferences. That gospel core is there.

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Brenton
 Yeah, that's good.

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Brenton
 And we've talked about this before, too, that we need to affirm these things and then not be in error in these other things, right? And so...

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Chris
 That's a good way to put it.

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Brenton
 But it's interesting you bring up 1 Corinthians 15, because what Paul is doing is he's pushing back against one of these other issues, right? There's people in that church that are saying, "Yeah, maybe Jesus resurrected, but we're not going to, right? We're not going to have a physical bodily resurrection." And so, what he's doing is saying, "Okay, if you believe that, then Jesus didn't resurrect either." And so, he's kind of taken this logical conclusion of this maybe seemingly secondary thing. Sure. And so, yeah, I think even in that example, we see how eventually if you start rejecting Christian theology, you're going to end up rejecting main things, too.

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Chris
 Yeah, that's really good. I think really, really helpful. Sometimes we have to work backwards,

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Chris
 is really, I think, what you're saying. And we can say, "Okay,

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Chris
 you are denying this, and if you really work backwards then, that means that you're actually denying something more important."

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Chris
 And it could go back with the, we could talk about issues

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Chris
 like about male and female,

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Chris
 but there's only two genders.

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Chris
 Paul doesn't say that that's part of the Gospel, but if you were to deny that, there's a third or fourth or fifth category, or a male can be a female, eventually, and before too long actually on that issue, you will end up denying the Gospel. And so, people will say, "Is that a Gospel issue?" And the answer is, actually it is.

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Chris
 And there are a number of other ones that we could put up there, too. So, I think that's really helpful that you point out that sometimes we have to work not only forwards, but backwards.

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Brenton
 Yeah.

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Brenton
 You made the point that heaven is about being with Jesus. You know, I think that there's many different views on heaven, and a lot of times it's kind of escaping punishment, right? It's not necessarily like, "Hey, we get to be with Jesus. We get to avoid whatever else." What are some misconceptions that you were pushing back against here?

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Chris
 Well, I think that this actually ties in to what we were talking about earlier, about the trust, the trust matter, and the relationship of personal trust is like this,

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Chris
 this is not about us ultimately. Like, we're not the center and our, you know, our even our future where we get to be completely comfortable, completely free of pain and conflict and, you know, and of issues and sorrow and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, those are all true, but those are actually the side benefits. And I think the danger in it is because oftentimes

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Chris
 our view of heaven and the American dream end up being the same thing.

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Chris
 And Piper, I don't have it in front of me. John P. R. has a great quote. He says, "If you could have all the joys of heaven, but Christ was not there, would you still want that?" And he uses that as a say, like, if that's where you're at, then you don't actually understand the gospel and you don't understand what it truly means to be saved.

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Chris
 And I tried to make the case from the Scripture briefly, like we were created to live in God's presence. That is our home.

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Chris
 Our home isn't so much a physical place as it is a personal relationship.

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Chris
 And yeah, it is a physical, yeah, heaven is a physical place. I think this is where there's a common misunderstanding of what heaven is, is that heaven is not someplace up in the clouds somewhere where we have a mansion waiting for us. It is a new heaven and a new earth. And by the way, we know that from the book of Isaiah. So, passages like Isaiah 66, Old Testament, and we know it from where the Bible ends in Revelation 21 and 22,

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Chris
 that heaven and earth meet. It's really interesting, I didn't get into this on Sunday, but you talked about the Father's house, how the disciples would have understood the Father's house.

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Chris
 The Father's house for them, what do you think in their mind, they're thinking about the Father's house. So, this is first century Judaism and I'm sorry to put you...

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Brenton
 The temple, right?

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Chris
 Yeah, the temple.

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Chris
 So, they're naturally thinking about the temple. What's the temple? The temple is a place where heaven and earth meet.

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Chris
 Okay? So, that's where God resides, but it's the place where God comes to heaven and earth meet. So, what we are supposed to take is heaven in the future is heaven and earth united again, which I think is what the garden of Eden was. And the Bible begins in a garden and ends in a garden.

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Chris
 And so, it's this amazing place here,

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Chris
 recreated, renewed, but it's where God resides with his people again. And that's the point. And I don't know if I'm answering the question or not, but... Yeah, I don't know. I forget what my question was. Well, it's like, what are the misconceptions here? It's like this...

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Chris
 I think our view of heaven, I think is... And I really have it on my list, on my heart to do a full series on this, because I think we go back and forth between... Or we have different views. Like some people, they just get this eye view. It's kind of an ethereal view of heaven of like... And I joke sometimes, like we're sitting on clouds shooting Nerf guns at each other with wings and harps and stuff like that. And so, there's that. But then there's this other view where it's primarily about stuff and comfort. And again, that's all. And we're missing the fact about we were made for him.

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Chris
 And as Augustine famously said, "Our hearts are restless until we find our rest in him." And so, that's... And that's why I think we gotta be careful of here in this earth, is being so focused on accumulating and things and put so much hope in all of that.

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Brenton
 Yeah. And I think that's kind of my follow-up question to this. Like why

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Brenton
 is what you're saying our view of heaven so important to us today? Like how does that change the way we live our lives now?

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Chris
 Yeah. Well, I'll just give a personal example of this is...

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Chris
 This is something that the Lord's really been working on me about over the last several days. Because I've got just honestly a lot of different things going on. We're in the process of selling our house, looking for another one, trying to find a place to live in between.

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Chris
 And then, and there's a lot of different details going on in that.

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Chris
 And that's on top of everything that happens in the church and all the responsibilities and family and all these kind of things. And some really good things, but also a lot of challenging things. And so,

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Chris
 I've just found myself getting just like focused on and actually just somewhat discouraged and overwhelmed, maybe is the best word about all of these different things. And I've had to step back and just to recognize that the Lord,

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Chris
 like none of this is like news to Him. None of this caught Him by surprise.

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Chris
 And home, a house, having a place to live is important out here, right? And all of these things. But at the end of the day, He knows and He's got it under control. And you talk about evidence for a reason why I should trust Him. I can look at my life and like it's, we've been here before and He's always provided, always worked those things out. And it's just an opportunity for me to step back and say, okay, this is what He really is looking for from me. Am I going to actually practice what I preach and like just trust Him and just say, okay, what are you trying to show me? What are you trying to do in me? And this is more about, honestly, it's more about character formation than exactly about everything going the way that

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Chris
 I wanted to go. So, the ultimate challenge has been, what am I going to pray for? Am I going to pray that all the details will get worked out and that it'll go the way I want? Or am I going to pray that I'll be shaped and I will walk with Him in the midst of that? So, yeah.

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Chris
 Yeah. That's good. Yeah. Is that speaking to you at all? Yeah, for sure.

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Brenton
 No, it's, I mean, it's good to hear like a real world example of that because I think we can get so overwhelmed and feel like everything is on our shoulders.

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Chris
 Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, this guy care about where, whether my house actually sells and whether we would find the place that we would just like really, really want. And in the meantime, that we find a good place. Obviously, he cares about all of the little, the myutas details of our lives and even much bigger ones, like the ones I'm bringing out.

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Chris
 But Jesus talks about this in the Sermon on the Mount. He takes care of the sparrows. He's going to take care of us. And what he really wants is that we'll seek first his kingdom and all these things will be added into you. And so, that's easy to say. It's much harder to live. But as I see that that's you know, the work that he's trying to do in me. And like you talk about control too, is like, just also shows how much of a control freak I can be.

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Brenton
 Yep. Yeah. No, I'm with you. All right.

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Brenton
 In verse 6, Jesus makes one of the boldest and most exclusive claims. He says, "I am the way and the truth and the life." Obviously, there is a lot of pushback on this idea today. Really?

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Brenton
 If you need to get out more. Yeah. What are some of the common arguments against it today? Like, where do people land in response to this?

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Chris
 Yeah. I mean,

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Chris
 I think people are fine if Jesus were to say, "I am a way,

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Chris
 a truth, a life." But the is where it gets the pushback because people just want,

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Chris
 nobody wants to tell anybody, or at least they don't want anybody to tell them that the way that they are, the going or the path that they are choosing or that their truth as like my truth is not actually the truth.

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Chris
 And so, it's offensive because it puts us in this place where we have to submit to something really higher than us. We want to leave our options open and we want to be free to choose whichever path that we want to go. So, at the end of the day, I think there's a lot of different responses, but that's really where it comes down to.

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Brenton
 Yeah.

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Brenton
 Just thinking about, this isn't the only

[00:26:41:00 - 00:26:53:01]
Brenton
 kind of hard truth that doesn't resonate with our world very well. As we think about some of the more offensive doctrines that we as Christians hold to, like this one,

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Brenton
 the exclusivity of Christ or original sin or any of the other hard ones, we talked about marriage and sexuality a little bit earlier. How can we get better at boldly holding to them, right? Even in the face of criticism,

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Brenton
 how can we be bold with these things?

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Chris
 So,

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Chris
 yeah, I mean, what do you mean exactly by bold?

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Brenton
 Well, I think that it's easy for us at times to shrink back from things that we would easily claim in a room full of other Christians when we're with people that disagree, it's easy to shrink back and not hold to those things. So, like, no matter where we're at, what situation we're in, how can we hold to these truths that we, like this one, the exclusivity of Christ is absolutely foundational to what we believe.

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Brenton
 What gives us boldness in the face of criticism like that?

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Chris
 Yeah.

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Chris
 So, I think probably the best response I would come up with is in 1 Peter chapter

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Chris
 3, and Peter's writing to people who are facing very serious persecution for their faith. And he says, verse 13, "Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good?" And the answer to that is there's lots of people, okay? Like, these are people who were probably going to, some of them be martyred in Nero's great persecution, okay? So, like, you talk about persecution, like these people could see it coming if they weren't experiencing it already.

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Chris
 So, but he says this, it goes on, "But even if you should suffer for righteousness sake, you will be blessed." So, first of all, it's remembering that we are blessed if we actually face persecution for Jesus. That's the way of us. And that goes back to the Sermon on the Mount, like Peter's just thinking, I think here of the last beatitude.

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Chris
 "Blessed are you when you are persecuted for righteousness sake."

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Chris
 And then he says, "Have no fear of them nor be troubled," there's that word again, "but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord is holy, always being prepared to make or defense anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect."

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Chris
 So,

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Chris
 the key phrase, "but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord is holy," which means set apart Christ as Lord.

[00:29:38:17 - 00:29:40:16]
Chris
 And so how we can grow in that is

[00:29:42:15 - 00:30:28:05]
Chris
 just going back to this truth that Jesus Christ is Lord, which means he's God, but he's also our Lord, like master. He is the one that ultimately that we answer to. He is the one who holds our fate in his hands. And so that's why he says, "Who's going to harm you if you do it?" Okay, they might harm you physically and they might harm you in the here and the now, but they can't do anything about your eternity, about your soul, about your salvation. And Jesus actually talks about who we should fear is we should fear the one who holds our eternal life in his hands. And that's Jesus, and Jesus has given us eternal life.

[00:30:29:10 - 00:30:51:04]
Chris
 And he goes on verse 16, "Having a good conscience so that when you're slandered, those who revalue good behavior in Christ may be put to shame." So, I would just add here that when we're doing it boldly, we do it with gentleness and respect, and we do it in such a way that our behavior is good so that the people who are persecuting us ultimately,

[00:30:52:06 - 00:30:55:09]
Chris
 as the Proverbs put it, we're heaping burning coals on their head.

[00:30:56:14 - 00:31:03:23]
Chris
 And I think that's an important caveat because we can be bold in all the wrong ways, and there's lots of examples of that too.

[00:31:05:16 - 00:31:25:08]
Chris
 So, I mean, there's a lot there, but I really think it goes back to being centered on our... It's about our relationship with Christ and like trusting who he is and what he's done and that he's gonna continue to be with us. So, Jesus says, "Believing God, believe also in me, you're troubled,

[00:31:26:23 - 00:31:32:08]
Chris
 so believe in me, trust in me." And that's the way that we're bold in the face of

[00:31:34:03 - 00:31:35:23]
Chris
 hostility towards Christianity.

[00:31:35:23 - 00:31:54:04]
Brenton
 Pete Yeah. Right. Well, yeah, I mean, you bring it up in 1 Peter 3 and them being under Nero at that point, kind of puts our situation and perspective a little bit too, that, you know, we're just not facing that right now. Jared No. Pete We could in some day.

[00:31:54:04 - 00:31:56:19]
Chris
 Jared But the principle, like...

[00:31:56:19 - 00:31:57:21]
Brenton
 Pete Yeah, for sure.

[00:31:57:21 - 00:32:34:10]
Chris
 Jared Principles are the same and it can feel at least emotionally like you're not necessarily facing your life, you know, you're gonna be thrown to the lions or anything like that, but when you're facing people especially that maybe you respect or you care about, just could be family, friends, co-workers, and they're just like, you know, your fear like, "Am I gonna lose this relationship?" That's a real, legit type of suffering potentially, or the fear of it anyway.

[00:32:34:10 - 00:32:39:07]
Brenton
 Pete Yeah, for sure. Jared Okay. All right. Well, I think we will wrap up there.

[00:32:40:12 - 00:32:42:00]
Brenton
 Thanks for your time. Thanks for your sermon.

[00:32:43:15 - 00:32:54:10]
Brenton
 Next week, we will be back in John 14 and it'll be Clay Baker and Matt Mitchell. If you have any questions, ask at furtherpodcast.com and we'll talk to you next week.