Unbelief and the Holy Spirit: Jesus' Post-Resurrection Encounters

Show Notes

Episode 406: 
In this episode, Chris and Jeff dive into a fascinating discussion about Jesus appearing to his disciples after his resurrection. We explore the different accounts from the books of Mark, Luke, and John, shedding light on the nuances of Jesus' interactions with his followers. Throughout the episode, we also touch on the concept of rebuke, the importance of embracing mystery in our faith, and the significance of having the Holy Spirit dwell within us.

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You're listening to the Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun, in practical ways. Okay, Chris, Hey, it's gonna be a good one today. It is, of course, it is going to be. I hope you brought your best game today. I am always functioning at my best game. You are. Okay, Well that's kind of a letdown. Then this is the best you got. I was trying to get you. Bring it up a little bit. Okay, I have what you see. What you see is what you get. That's it. That's no other better level than this right here. Okay, Well, hey, today we have a kind of a good uh segment, disap morning. That's the best he's got today. People, We're sorry, so uh today we have a mail Bags episode mail Bags and So. It says from Susie M and Susie M. Hey, Susim. Several episodes ago you two talked about the amount of weddings you've both done, and it tended when you're at the reception, what's the song that's going to have you on the dance floor immediately? Yeah. I can answer this extremely quickly. I can answer it for you. The answer is I don't dance, But honestly, it's any song your mama doesn't dance and rock and roll. No, it's but it's any song that I feel like dancing to. Honestly, I don't have a song like, although I wish you're not like a dancer if I were to, I'm not a dancer dance like, Oh good, it's a wedding reception dance. But I will say this, I haven't heard it much lately, but every time there is the chicken dance, I'm out there. No no, no, no, no, no no, yeah, no, very sophisticated dancing advertising. Yes, I like that. You know what, you don't put it because it's my my my, No, But it's an Italian thing. I think it's probably in every everybody thing, but it's a major in my mind. It connects, well, I'm talking about a wedding reception. In my mind, it connects to you know, in my I see big Italian families doing it. Yeah, okay, yeah, that's hysterical. Yeah yeah. So I have never, never, one time have I thought I want to go dance. So it's just not my thing. I just but my wife loves it. My wife every time we go to reception, She's excited, she wants to get out and dance, and so I have no real good rhythm, not physical rhythm. I don't know why, which was weird because you know, we were both athletes, right, but it was. It was a weird thing. It's weird thing for me. But anyways, she always makes me get out on the floor for the chuchhaw slide. Yeah yeah, yeah, you know, slide to the left, Yeah yeah, slide to the right. You know that one? Yeah, back y'all, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I can I can do about sixty percent of that. I fail at forty percent, but I can. I can do about sixty percent. So there's that one. And then anytime they do at a James's at last, oh yeah, sure, then we get out on the floor for that. So there you go. That's great. Yeah. I would say. Also, just as a bonus response, is that I don't go to many wedding receptions. So I remember one year, and I haven't done this a lot lately, but one year I actually did twenty one weddings in a wedding season. Oh wow. And for those of you who don't live up north in the snow, wedding season up north is right around May to septemberish, right, and just a few creep into May and September. But it's pretty much the summer, and so there's only like maybe fourteen or fifteen weeks here to play with. I did twenty one weddings in that a lot of time. Wow, And of those twenty one weddings, the number of receptions I went to is zero. Oh wow, yeah, because can you imagine going to twenty one wedding receptions, right, especially when you had kids at home? Yes? Right, So so unfortunately I do a lot of weddings. Well now I probably only do like eight or nine a year currently, just because we have so many pastors and yeah, so many people like other pastors better than us. Yes, that's correct, that's correct. Let me see which one do we want? Not Chris, not Jeff. But but but I think I think I may go to one reception this this whole year. Yeah, so, well we were just at a reception together. Yeah yeah, yeah, okay, so maybe two so one of our one of our staff members had a wedding and so we were there. But yeah, I'm thanks for bringing that up, Susie M. Yes, you just made us both uncomfortable. I feel like CZM has written in before. Well anyways, so that's a good question. Yeah, sure, yeah, I don't do nearly as many weddings as as Chris does anymore for me, uh and I hate to do this, but because of my travel schedule, I can't ever lock anything in before like three three months out, and most brides want things locked in twelve months out, and so they'll say, hey, we either want Jeff or Chris or Kyle or Kevin right, and then they'll put me on the list, and then you know, I'm booked. I think almost every wedding that I was invited to do this year I wound up being out of country. So it's difficult to do that. So far, none of the brides will let me do it by zoom. Right. I love that, right. I could just be sitting there on the airplane on the airplane, do you bob take? But anyways, can't do it, so they won't let me do it by zoom. So is that legal? I don't know. I guess it would be. I don't know. Yeah, it's crazy though to even think about whether that'll be legal. So anyways, good question. Susie, and maybe we'll see you on the dance floor someday. Yeah, maybe, so maybe show Okay, cutting a rug it's legal if Elvis can marry you. Yeah, in Vegas. Pretty much everything's legal in Vegas, dude. So today we are celebrating, we've just come out of the resurrection, yes, and uh, that's right, and the ladies are celebrating and all these things. And then we're moving into well, then he showed up on the road to Amis. That's correct, he s yeah, on the road to Mais. And then now Jesus is beginning to appear to his other, to the disciples, right, yep. So we're gonna read from Mark, Luke and John. That's an odd combination. Normally it's Matthew, Mark, and Luke. This time it's Mark, Luke, and John. So it says in Mark chapter sixteen, verse fourteen. Still later, he appeared to the eleven disciples as they were eating together, and he rebuked them for their stubborn unbelief because they refused to believe those who had seen him after he had been raised from the dead. Okay, then there's Luke twenty four to thirty six that says and just as they were telling about it, Jesus himself was suddenly standing there among them. Peace be with you, he said. But the whole group was startled and frightened, thinking that they were seeing a ghost. Why are you frightened, he asked, Why are your heart's filled with doubt? Look at my hands, look at my feet. You can see it's really me. Touch me and make sure that I'm not a ghost, because ghosts don't have bodies. As you see I do. As he spoke, he showed them his hands and his feet. Still they stood there in disbelief, filled with joy and wonder. Then he asked them, do you have anything here to eat? And they gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he ate it as they watched. And then in John chapter twenty, verse nineteen, it says that Sunday evening, the disciples were meeting behind locked doors because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders. Suddenly Jesus was standing there among them. Peace be with you, he said. As he spoke, he showed them the wounds in his hands and in his side, and they were filled with joy. When they saw the Lord again, he said, peace be with you, as the Father sent me so I am sending you. And then he breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone sins, they're forgiven. If you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven. So Jesus showed up disciples. Yeah. So Mark focuses a little bit more on the rebuking of the unbelief. Yeah, he's like, uh. And by the way, Luke also mentions it, but just not with the word rebuke, which rebuke to us sounds a little harsh. But there was rebuking in a very loving way in Luke twenty four where he says, uh, he said, why are your hearts filled with doubt? Why are you frightened? Right? Look at my feet? In other words, Jesus is coercing them into believing, and at the same time those coerce means threatened with pain of threatened with pain. I don't think I think Jesus was blackmailing them into believing, Okay, not coorzing. So he was he was convincing them. He was having to convince them that that that was him, right, Uh. But there was there's a little bit of a like a like a sense of rebuking even in that loving and you know, and exchange. So so in other words, what I'm saying is, uh, it's so funny how we can hear the word rebuke and at least for me, I don't know if you felt this, but you hear the word rebuke and you think immediately like negative, right, I rebuke that? You know, it's almost like or if you rebuke somebody, it's like you're just anti. It's just it feels aggressive or strong. And yet you know that's just semantics, isn't it, because they're they're you know, what's the true definition of rebuking. Rebuking is just to say, hey, you know, I reject the fact that you didn't have faith. You know, where was your faith? Jesus did that all the time anyway. And then and then so Mark Mark viewed it as being stubborn unbelief. That's what Jesus was rebuking. No, maybe he says he rebuked them for their stubborn we're describing their their unbelief. Yea, yeah, so you know, I think Jesus is pushing back in kind of a strong way. But you got to remember their friends, right right, so coming and going, come on, eyes, really you still didn't get it right because they were The unbelief that they had was the women had come and said, guess what we the tomb was empty. Peter and John come back and go it is empty. The women go we Mary Magally says, I saw Jesus and they're like, no, you didn't. Come on man, And then they're they're probably sitting around grumbling. He was the gardener. Come on, I saw what you wanted to see, right, That's that's it. And so then Jesus comes in. So the rebuke here doesn't have to be judgment from a you know, from a judge sitting on a bench, or a teacher smacking your hand with a ruler. I was thinking the same thing I was going to say, a nun smacking right. It doesn't have to be that. It can just be a couple, a friend challenging a friend going, come on, guys, are you serious. So I explained to you I was going to resurrect. Then you found out I did. It was three days, just like I said, Right, it could be that kind of a thing where it's it's it's a it's a friendly challenge. Yeah, to change your mind. Why were you behaving that way when I told you what was going to happen, or if it were perhaps a little more stern than that, then it was then I'm sure it was a loving challenge where if I were to look at you and say, Jeff, you need to hear this, look at me, I'm dead serious, right like you need to hear this. Well, Jesus did that often as well, right right, so you know he looked, you know, he looked at the rich young ruler. And it says in the scripture. I always I can never get over that phrase, but it says he looked at the rich young ruler and loved him, yes, and then said, okay, but then one thing you lack, go sell everything you haven't sell to the poor, give to the poor, and follow me. And I always think, like, that's such a strange and yet awesome thing to include. He looked at him right before this really hard truth and loved him and then gave him. And I'm thinking, I don't even know what that looks like. So so there could be rebukes in the form of love all the time. But anyway, and then John of course includes another whole thing. He includes the preceding of the Holy Spirit. Can I say one thing you can. Yeah, well it's a few more than one. So Mark just says he rebuked them for their stubborn unbelief yep. But then Luke and John both tell us what he said, right right, So you want to know what kind of If you just read Mark, you go wow, that he might have been really mad. But instead he starts off with very gentle peace be with you, not you idiots. Right right. He comes in and goes, peace be with you because they're freaking out, they can't believe what they're seeing. And then his rebuke, quite honestly, is just simply questions, why are you frightened? Why your heart's filled with doubt? And then he goes, look at my hands and my feet, just him proving what had happened was the rebuke. Right. All he's doing is so so rebuke doesn't always to be negative. It's it's about saying, hey, the way you're thinking is wrong, let's change your thinking. Rebuke should lead to repentance, and so in repentance just simply being changing your mind. So it's a fairly gentle rebuke because Luke and John both show us and tell us exactly what he said. Yeah, I'm not a ghost. So the rebuke was, go ahead, give me some food, I'll eat it, touch my body. It's real, right, So it's a fairly gentle rebuke there. So I think that there's a lesson for us that when we feel like we need to make a correction with people who are thinking the wrong way, it doesn't have to be a full on assault, typing in caps personal attacks. You know, Thomas, you stinking doubter. Right, he didn't have to do that. All he had to say was, look at my hands, give you let me prove to you, the dumbrel and that was enough. So the rebuke in Mark only gives you one sentence, I mean, one verse, and then Luke and John unpack it substantially more. And so that's one of the benefits again of letting the Bible be its own commentary. Otherwise you might think Jesus kind of mad at them there, right, And instead he wanted them to be at peace and to have confidence. Go ahead and touch my hands, give me some food, I'll eat it. So that was it. And then finally you get to him say receive the Holy never received the Holy Spirit. He breathed on them and uh, and that that's a cool and yet a little bit weird exchange. I'm trying to picture this in a movie, right, you know, like, uh, so it could be that he intentionally walked over and said, let me get close to you as I exhale on you. Or it could be that they all gathered together and you know how they touched four heads, you know, and they and that's a sign of you know, of affection of I've not seen you in a while, and it's you know, they were going a long journey and they come back and then they would touch four heads and then and Jesus could have been that he went around the room one by one, right and and you know, and just got close to all of them and then you know, breathed on them and said, you know, receive the Holy Spirit as he was as he was, you know, getting close to each one of them. So so it doesn't have to be like, hey, everybody gather around while I ceremoniously exhale on you, although it could have been that, you know, there there's it's not it's not told to us. It just says he breathed on him, right, right, Yeah, but it does include it as a detail. And you know, in OD it's a very odd detail. And here's another odd detail, the fact that Jesus believed in ghosts. He didn't say, hey, I'm not a ghost because they're not real. He said I'm not a ghost because ghost will have bodies. So there's you know, when I was when I was in Bible college, you know, you have the people who look at the commentary of scripture and say, hey, there's no reason why we need to believe in ghosts because you know, we we we're told exactly where the bodies go and all these different kinds of things. And uh, and that's one hundred percent true, one hundred percent true. There is no evidence, none whatsoever that would ever lead us to believe that ghosts would be like haunting a mansion or something. Right, right, But at the same time, you know, Jesus did say that, and I'm just like, well, he didn't. He didn't. He didn't have to believe it, so he he he could have been acknowledging that they believed them. Right. But when you think he would say I'm not a ghost, his ghosts aren't real, but instead he said I'm not a ghost because ghosts don't have bodies. So arguing in the moment arguing with a person who genuinely believes in ghosts to go. They didn't even believe he was going to resurrect, So there's that, right, they didn't believe anything he said to them. It seems to like they believe some of it, but not all of it. So for him to the main argument he was trying to make rate then was not there aren't ghosts. Ghosts don't exist. The main argument is going to say, is I'm real? Right, So he's not going to try to Sometimes people argue the wrong thing and plant an argumentative attitude into that person from the beginning, right, and so you start with the wrong argument and then you lose the argument. So he's not trying to disprove ghosts, and he's not claiming he believes in ghosts. He's acknowledging that they do believe in ghosts. And clearly I'm not one. Yeah, and right, that is all of what you said is definitely true, and logically, let's just leave it there. Thank you for joining us today. And logic logic would say that because when we use our brains to logically say this is probably what he meant. So and again I would even venture to say, it's very probable. That's exactly what he meant. So we could, we could land there. But at the same time, we don't know. And you know, that's what Jesus would know. No, I'm saying, we don't know, we don't know. Well, you know, so listen, there's the when I was going to seminary for my master's degree, in which I did not complete. I remember the professor was talking about the difference between the modern church and the postmodern church, and it was very interesting. He actually said, in the modern church, in the modern church world, he said, that's before most denominations came out, came to be, he said, and he goes, we live in a postmodern era. But in the modern world, there was a time for hundreds of years is where everybody thought that everything that should be known can be known in the Bible, like in other words, that the Word of God is exhaustive completely, it has every bit of knowledge that there is. So and that was the thinking, that was the mindset, and so he says, and so everybody, you know, took a big delve into it. And he said, and honestly, over the next couple hundred years, that's where most of our denominations, which our disagreements came from from the modern church thinking absolutely the Bible. The Bible tells us everything there is to know about ghosts or baby's going to heaven or dinosaurs or whatever it is, or simpler things, and and so, you know, denominations for the most part, are announcements of letting everybody know that, hey, this is what they believe, right, the Southern Baptists believe this. The difference between that and independent Baptists or these, you know, and the Pentecostals believe this, and the Methodists believe this, and it's all just a disagreement on the interpretation of the Bible. He says, But then the postmodern era is a mentality that says, hey, we'll do our very best to interpret what the Bible says. We'll use one hundred percent of all the information that's given to us, but we have to embrace the mystery of God. There has to be room that says, we just don't know. And so it's like, we will take our very best guess with the information that Jesus gave it to us, gave to us, But if you wanted us to know more, guess what he would have given us more. So, if he gives us this much and we're going to use all of that, we can draw our own conclusions. But if it's not black and white, that just means we don't know, but we're gonna we're gonna rest on what we do know. That's a loose definition of modernism versus postmodernism. With regard to I agree, it's certainly within the Christian world as opposed to the world view of postmodernism. As you can't know truth, that's that's postmodernism. So maybe you should have corrected your professor. And I know, I don't know. I'm sure. I'm not sure. He was trying to summarize and define postmodernism and it's in its full form. I think what he's saying is he's saying more of a postmodern right, sure, you know. And the thing is just to say, hey, we don't have to know. Well, God says, my ways are not your ways, right right, my thoughts are not your thoughts, right. So there are some things that God just chose not to tell us, but the things he did tell us we can just take as being that way. So well, just the other day we were at staff meeting and we were talking about when you're drawing all those options of yes and no, and I said, I said, well, the real answer is we don't know, Right, that's the real answer, I said, But we can. We can definitely use logic and use opinions and everything else. We could use everything we have, I said, But in the end, the real answer is we just don't know. Yeah. I think that when it comes to the things that we don't know, it's important that we have really good thinkers working through the things we don't know. If we just settle with a oh, I don't know, I don't know that there's an answer, and if every single Christian says I don't know. If there's an answer, and nobody's out there wrestling with it, we don't have a single Einstein among us it's going to work through. Then there will never be a new thought within Christianity. There'll never be a new idea, there'll never be a major breakthrough. And so you have to have those people who are constantly pushing, while you still have the orthodox theologians who are saying, okay, we're going to hold true to what is the established, revealed truth, while you have people around the edges thinking big thoughts. And so here you go, man, this is it. Jesus gives them the Holy Spirit in this moment, received the Holy Spirit, and then he commissions them to go and spread the gospel. The fact that sins can be forgiven. That it all hinges on that now whether or not our sins are forgiven through Christ. And let's recall back, and I know we're getting toward the end of our time, but recall back when he said, I'm going to be leaving you, and it's better that I leave you because you're going to be receiving the Holy Spirit. So you know, Jesus is God in a body. The Holy Spirit is God in us. Right, so every believer you know, is filled with the Holy Spirit of God in us. And so again, because he, you know, did away with the old system and he established a new covenant. God does not God the Father does not exist in an address, in a singular location in the Holy Holies in the Temple. All of a sudden, now you know, the Bible later on tells us that we're the temple, right, We're the ones. And so it's like we're the Holy Holies, is us right? And so and so here is that moment, that moment where you know, I can imagine the joy of Jesus knowing that it has finally come to fruition, you know, And he's like, He's like, hey man, you have no idea what this is going to be like, but you're gonna have the power the Holy Spirit inside of you. And even though that you and I, as Christians, we've been taught that our whole Christian life, that we have the power of God and the Holy Spirit inside of us. This is a new thing. They're the only ones at that time who went from all three. They did all three. Right, God's only in the temple, God's in front of me, God's inside of me. That's the first time I've ever heard that thought. That's pretty neat. Yeah, that's the first that's literally the first time I've ever read that thought. Well, that is pretty crazy. Good job, good job, Chris, I mean, yeah, there you go. Yep, he's pushing the edges all right, good anything else? I think that's it. Okay, Well, we're going to pick up where that left off next time, and hopefully we'll see you there on the bubble. Guys. H