The following is the sermon I delivered at Grace United Methodist Church on Sunday, March 23, 2025. In addition to reading this article, you can also view the sermon (and the entire church service) HERE.

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Do You Believe? I Don’t Think They Did

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I’ll begin today by asking a few deep questions that seem simple at first, but, in fact, aren’t necessarily so straightforward nor easy.

• What do you believe in? 

• Do you believe in God?

• Do you believe in Jesus, the Messiah?

• Do you believe the words of the Apostle’s Creed?

• What does it even mean… to believe?

When one looks for the definition of “believe” in the dictionary, he quickly finds a host of definitions.  The following are some definitions from Miriam Webster:

: to consider to be true or honest

: to accept the word or evidence of

: to hold as an opinion : suppose

: to accept something as true

: to have a firm or wholehearted religious conviction

: to hold an opinion : think

Now, forgive me here, please, for a moment.  What I just presented was a host of definitions all meaning sort of the same thing, but in actuality meaning quite different things. 

And, I am going to go out on a limb here.  I think the words we most associate with “believe” are

Consider, Accept, Suppose, and Think…

I believe (yikes, here I go with that word)…  Okay, I think that when we use the word “believe,” we use it in the manner of something we accept as true, something we hope is true, but something that, for whatever reason leaves us with a tiny bit, maybe a scintilla, of doubt.

“I believe it will rain.” 

“I believe in the goodness of people.” 

“I believe that children are our future, teach them well and let them lead the way…” 

The word “believe” to me leaves room for doubt.  It might be the tiniest amount of doubt, but that doubt is there.  It exists. 

We’re human after all. 

Even if we are almost certain we know the answer to something, we’ve almost been conditioned to have doubt.  Think back to your days in school.  Did you ever know the answer to something the teacher was asking, but since no one else had their hand up, you kept yours down as well?

You were pretty certain, you believed, that you were right… but you didn’t know.

There is a fun story that illustrates this idea:

A pastor was giving the children’s message during church.

On this particular Sunday, he wanted to use squirrels as a theme to teach the children about the value of planning ahead. 

The pastor began by saying, “I’m going to describe something, and I want you to raise your hand when you know what it is.” The children nodded eagerly.

“This thing lives in trees (pause) and eats nuts (pause)…”

No hands went up so the pastor continued

“It is gray (pause) and has a long bushy tail (pause)…”

The children all looked at each other, but still no hands were raised.

The pastor said, “Come on, this isn’t difficult. Someone please guess.”

Finally one little boy tentatively raised his hand.  “Well…,” said the boy, “I know the answer must be Jesus…but is sure sounds like a squirrel to me!”

What do you believe in absolutely and totally without any doubt? 

With the things we are absolutely sure of, we don’t often, or ever, use the word “believe.”

Do you believe in gravity?  Do you believe this church building is actually here?  Do you believe when you are hungry… or is it something more… something different?

Do you believe that the sun is in the sky?

I don’t think “believe” the correct word to describe what the sun is in the sky.

We don’t believe the sun is in the sky.  We don’t believe in gravity.  It’s something different.

Completely different.

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Many non-believers (there is that word again) say that Jesus wasn’t the Christ.  That he didn’t rise from the tomb, and that he wasn’t resurrected.  Most people acknowledge that Jesus lived, but non-Christians argue that he isn’t the son of God. 

When we discuss the apostles, we say that they believed. 

That’s what we say also say about ourselves, “I believe in Christ the Lord…”

When we say the Apostles’ Creed, we say the word “believe” three times, but there is one word we do not say.

And that word is the word that is lost much too often in the telling of the story of Jesus.  The missing word is the word that makes all the difference.

The missing word is the word that proves the story is true.

You see, when we believe in something, as I have demonstrated, we leave room for doubt. 

And in this context, in regard to the apostles, I don’t think they believed in the risen Jesus.  It was something more – something deeper.  Something MUCH deeper.

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Let’s go back to the story of Jesus briefly for a moment.

Jesus had his ministry.  He did great things.  He said great things. 

Jesus had followers.  Those followers believed he was the Messiah, or, at least they came to believe he was the Messiah. 

But, even still, the Bible is filled with examples of how even his disciples didn’t truly understand Jesus’ words, his actions.  Because they were people, not unlike you and me, they probably, even in the presence of Jesus on a daily basis, didn’t truly understand. 

And then, during Holy Week, they saw the person, Jesus, the one they believed was the son of God beaten, tortured, made to wear a crown of thorns, ridiculed, humiliated, and crucified.

They saw the person they believed was divine killed in one of the worst ways possible, by being nailed to a cross. 

They saw him die.

They didn’t believe he died.  The saw him die.  There wasn’t a question.  He was crucified, dead, and buried. 

The game was over.  The person they followed, the one they thought would bring glory and whatever else was dead. 

Now, the more one studies Jesus’ disciples, the more they learn that these people were, in many cases, weak.  They were flawed.  They were doubters.  They were often cowards.

Faced with a frightening situation, after Jesus was taken from the garden and brought in as a criminal, even Simon Peter himself denied Jesus.  When it all looked bleak, Simon Peter didn’t stand up and say, “That’s the Son of God.”  No.  He claimed he didn’t know him.  He denied Christ three times before the rooster crowed.

And after the crucifixion, the person they believed in was gone, dead, and buried.  It was finished.  It was over. 

I don’t think that on that Saturday, the day before the first Easter, that many believed in Jesus any longer.  They were human after all and they just watched him suffer and die.

I’ll ask the tough question – would you in that situation have continued believing?

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Now, a lot of what happened to the apostles over the rest of their lives isn’t known, but I think we can believe (sorry), take as fact, that much of this is true:

Peter was crucified upside down.

Andrew was crucified.

Thomas was stabbed through with a sword.

James was stoned and clubbed to death.

In short, the apostles, or many of them, along with the earliest followers and believers in Jesus (like Stephen who was stoned to death and Paul who was beheaded) met horrific deaths. 

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Some who doubt the divinity of Christ say that the fact that he died proved he wasn’t divine – that he wasn’t God’s son, but this is where so many get it all wrong.

The fact that he died proves he was God’s son.

Jesus didn’t believe he was God’s son, it was more.  Much more.

Think about the torture he went through.  Brought before this person and then that person and back again.  Man handled.  Whipped.  Tortured.

He could have stopped it all, probably, at least at the start, by saying “I take it back.  I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean what I said.”

But he didn’t because he didn’t believe he was the Son of God.  He knew.

He knew, he didn’t believe, he knew, he was God’s son.  He knew what was on the other side.  He knew what he had to do, what he had to endure. 

And those doubting followers, the ones we call the apostles, once Jesus rose from the grave, once he came back, and talked with them, and taught them, then, for the first time ever, they also didn’t believe.  They knew.

At that point, they didn’t believe, they knew.  At that point, they were not confused.  They finally understood.

Some try to make the claim that if they were truly with God that they wouldn’t have died horrific deaths.  No, no, no, no….  that line of thinking is wrong. 

The fact that these men, many (if not all) who were initially cowardly, later when faced with the most dire of circumstances, the circumstances that would end their lives, didn’t cower, they weren’t afraid because by then, they also knew.

They knew the risen Christ was real.  They did not believe.  There was no doubt.  There was no room for doubt.  The truth was readily apparent.  The truth was as clear as anything that was true.  The truth was a real as the sun in the sky. 

At that point, they KNEW!

That’s the glory of this story.  That’s the glory of the Bible.  That’s the glory of Jesus and the glory of God. 

There was no doubt.  None.  Not the tiniest bit.  The apostles suffered because they knew – and because they suffered, we know.  That’s the gift they gave us. 

We know of the glory of Christ because of the suffering – that’s what proves the story.  That’s what makes it as much of a fact as the sun in the sky, the fact that we are together in a church building, the fact that you will eventually be hungry, the fact that gravity is real…

Jesus is as real as all of that. 

He knew what he was (and is) and after he died and came back, his apostles knew as well.

Knowing is more than believing.

And because the apostles came to know.  We now know as well.

For us, this is the challenge. 

We want to get to the point where we say, “I don’t believe in Jesus.  I know of Jesus.”

The story in the Bible lets us all know that there is no doubt.  Our job is to get to the point where we accept that, where we don’t simply believe it, but we know it…absolutely. 

We need to pray and study and worship and consider so we can get to the point of saying, “Jesus loves me, this I know…”

The story of Jesus is more profound and deeper than we probably ever thought imaginable. 

It’s the truth of the Bible and the fact that they did kill Jesus is what makes it all so true. 

What some think are the reasons to doubt – Jesus dying, his followers dying horrific deaths – are actually the facts that prove the truth. 

Yes, we believe.  Of course we must believe, but we also need to trust in the Lord so much that we can move from believing to knowing.

That’s the challenge, that’s, in essence, to a large degree, why we are here.  We come to church to learn about God and Jesus so that we can be moved from believing to knowing. 

We read the Bible so that we can learn the stories of those who didn’t just believe, they knew.

And the hope is that if the Disciples and others like Stephen and Paul can move from doubt to believing to knowing, then we can as well.

And the Glory of all of this is that God doesn’t need us to suffer to know the truth.  It starts with simply believing.

Amen.