[AI translation] Dear brothers and sisters, it is hard to imagine a simpler, flatter, more empty and meaningless expression than this exhortation to believe in God. Almost every sermon speaks in some form of believing in God. There is nothing strange about it, nothing astonishing about it, nothing interesting about it, it is so obvious. It can mean nothing as well as everything. And yet that is what I want to talk about now, to believe in God. And I want to talk about it because Jesus talks about it in this verse. In fact, it seems to me that all fourteen verses that I read after the first verse are just an explanation of what this call to believe in God means. And if we also try to understand and interpret this exhortation in the way Jesus explained and understood it, then this otherwise very empty and very flat expression will suddenly be filled with a rich content for us too, and we will realise that this is indeed the most important thing, that we believe in God in the way Jesus says here.Brothers and sisters, this exhortation already sounds different if we consider when Jesus said it to his disciples: a few days before his crucifixion. So he said it when he was telling the astonished disciples about his own death. And that He was suffering and willingly accepting a terrible, painful death on the cross, a redemptive death. When He spoke of His going away, and where He was going, His disciples could not follow. This in itself was so strange, so incomprehensible, and so mysterious to the disciples that it almost shook their hearts and souls. What would happen if all these things that Jesus had told His disciples were to come true! Well then, as if to say: Beware, now believe in God! So now, when the terrible tribulation will come upon you. When everything will go dark around you, and when you will have no idea what is happening. When you do not understand what is happening. Do not despair now and do not give up faith! Now, when your faith is going to be tested very strongly, now is the time to believe very seriously and to cling to God by faith.
Yes, brothers and sisters, it is in a way that faith is really needed when it is difficult to believe. Because there are situations in one's life when it is harder to believe and there are situations when it is easier to believe. For example, when one would otherwise have every reason to be anxious, even despairing: when life around someone becomes completely hopeless, and when things happen to him and around him that shake his heart and soul to the core, and when life becomes so messy, and when the problems that have piled up hide the face of God from one, and one believes that there is no God - then Jesus stands quietly beside you and says: Now believe in God! Now you really need to believe in God. When you don't understand, when you have no idea why the things that are happening are happening. And when darkness falls upon you, and there is no light and no encouragement, and no tangible or visible help for you - then believe in God! Then believe in him, then you must believe! Sometimes the heart sighs bitterly, "How much longer? Or when a weary soul cries out so painfully: I can't take it any longer! Well, that's when Jesus encourages you: now take up your faith! Now lean on your faith! Now really use your faith! There are times, brothers and sisters, when you feel like taking God to court. Perhaps even deny it, as Job's wife urged her husband when he was in that great tribulation: 'Curse God and then die, why bother with him if he treats you like that?' Is this what you deserve from God? - At such times, at such times, try to believe in God! Jesus also seems to be saying that when I am hanging there on the cross, and when you hear everyone around you and around me mocking you, and when you feel your heart breaking with pain - then believe in God! Don't believe what you will see! Do not believe what people around you say: believe in God - because it is one thing to see and another to believe. Maybe you see that Jesus was killed - you still believe in God! You may see that His cause has been defeated, and the cause of the Gospel has been defeated on this earth - believe in God!
And He will also tell you how to believe in God. He says: Believe in God, that ye may believe in me. So Jesus is narrowing down for us, making faith in God concrete. Do not just believe in a God in general - all men believe in a God, the Gentiles also believe, and the God-deniers also believe, and the unbelievers also believe in some form of some God or some concept of God - but you believe in a God, so that you believe in me. You will truly believe in God if you believe in me. From a Christian point of view, a true believer in God is one who believes in Jesus, who is a believer in Christ. We have come to know God in Christ, through Christ and by Christ, and we can know Him again and again. The concept of God in the very person of Jesus of Nazareth has become for us a personal matter and a living reality, someone to know, to speak to, to talk to, to sit down with, or to sit down with. Let us believe in such a God as we see in Jesus.
So one who does not know God through Jesus will never come to a true knowledge of God. I would like to emphasize this very much, lest someone come to the realization too late that he has believed in a concept of God that he has imagined! Because anyone who does not believe in God through Jesus is believing in a self-imagined concept of God, and that is a false god. There is no such god. And for that god it is not a pity to deny. I deny it too. We believe in a God who is in Christ, who declares himself. Look, no one has seen God but Jesus. He has seen. And He says such unheard of things in the very verse that is read: No man cometh unto the Father, but by me. And he says, "If you had known me, you would have known my Father. And he saith, He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. And he saith: Believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me. These are very mysterious statements, but they mean for us that God has made it very easy for us to believe in Him by believing in Jesus. For when we believe in Jesus, we believe in God. For Jesus lived God's invisible life among us in a visible human life. And by his life, his words, his actions, he showed us how God feels and how God thinks. Man on earth can never see God, but in Jesus, in his actions and in his person and words, something of the invisible glory of God is reflected. Now think how Jesus related to people in general when He walked this earth: Well, this is how God relates to you, to us! For example, when, you remember, little children were brought to Jesus, and he took these children in his arms and laid his hands on their heads and blessed them, he was showing that this is how God reaches out and desires your child. When Jesus says let the children come to me - as if God is saying to you, young mothers, let the children come, don't kill them before they are born, let them come! Love the future, let them come! - God says, through Jesus.
And remember how, with what unheard of involvement, Jesus turned to suffering people. I am often so amazed when I read it again, how he touched a man with an intestinal pox with his hand, his body bleeding from festering sores. He stroked him. Everyone was disgusted, Jesus stroked him, maybe even hugged him. Maybe he kissed him. He was able to go to another province, miles away, far away, for a half-fool, even for a complete fool - think of the Gadarene fiend. Just for this one man, because he saw how much he was suffering. That one, that outcast. See, that's how God feels at the sight of human misery. This is how God feels. What tender compassion Jesus always had for sinners: he sat down at the table with them and ate with them. He called them his friends and lifted them up, lifted them out of their misery. He made them new men and preached forgiveness of sins to the repentant. Know, brother, that in the same way the invisible God has mercy on you.
Camus, the famous French writer, wrote in one of his novels that the suffering of men is so terrible that it can only be endured in one way: only if a God suffers with them. Camus says that a god that remains only in heaven is not a true god. Only a God who is with people to the point of despair, who himself, like people, knows despair, knows what despair means - only such a God is a true God. Only a God who suffers with us can help us in the abyss when there is someone in suffering - only a God who suffers with us. Look at Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, when he prayed with sweat of blood, when he suffered his agony, or when he endured the wickedness, mockery, scorn, cursing, betrayal of men hanging on the cross, when he was truly in the suffering: such is the reality of God in human suffering! So real is God in suffering with suffering man. When he gives his life on the cross. In this too you see that God loves you so deadly. You and me, God loves us so deadly.
Just as at one point on earth and at one point in history the person of Jesus was a tangible and visible reality, so too God is here with us and among us. Jesus is the window to the heart of God: he who has seen Him has seen the Father, and he who believes in Him believes in the Father. Therefore he says, believe in God as you believe in me. You know, brothers and sisters, when a person believes in God as Jesus says, he sees God everywhere at the same time that other people do not see Him. As Philip said, show us the Father, and it is enough for us. Indeed, it is enough. To see God. Do you know what a comfort and what a bliss it is to see God in the events of the world and in the vicissitudes of one's own life? To see God's hand of punishment or blessing in the events of one's life. He sees God's plan, God's will! That is the greatest thing: when I see God in life, in everyday life. For example, a believer once replied to a liar's slander against him, "I see it as if someone held up a distorted mirror to me. In this mirror I see myself, even if distorted. And whatever in this criticism is a warning from God to me, I draw the conclusion for myself from it, and whatever in it is human malice, I no longer care about. Isn't it a great thing to be able to relate to human evil in this way?! Or another believer, who lost everything in the war and after the war, but really everything, once said to me: you know, I have accepted everything as a judgment from the hand of God. Yes, where others shake their fists, and where others cry for vengeance, the believer bows under the weight of divine justice and accepts it with gratitude and humility. How right this Philip is when he tells Jesus to show the Father, and that is enough for us. And Jesus does show the Father. And notice, brother, that where other men see only fate, see only blind chance, that you can see the Father, the face of the Father. And where another man sees only misfortune, there you can see the chastening of the Father's love. And where another man may be discouraged by success, there your heart may be filled with gratitude for the goodness of the Father who gives. Isn't that a great way to see God?! Is that how you see God?
To see Him is to see purpose, to see meaning, and to look with confidence and serenity into a distrustful and troubled world. And that is enough. Can an earthly man want more than to see God like this?! And so only in Jesus can God be seen. And another thing: for the one who believes in this way, the horizon begins to widen. See what unheard of heavenly horizons Jesus opens up when he says, "In my Father's house are many mansions, I am coming to prepare a place for you. We so need Jesus to warn us sometimes: do not cling so much to this earth! This land is important, but do not cling to it, it is not everything! It is not everything that you see, nor is it everything that we cannot see, because the universe is so vast. Even the whole created universe is in fact only a certain kind of dwelling place in the great great realm of God. Beyond that there is so much more. Invisible worlds. Let us try for once to think about the richness of God. Let us try for once to see something of the riches of God. 'Do not make it your own,' says Jesus. Don't measure the greatness of God to your own smallness! As a thousand years are as a day before Him, so a thousand worlds like the one you are searching with your observatories are as a matchbox in His vast world.
To believe in God is also to be free to transcend what can only be seen. And to see and appreciate events from a perspective that includes heaven. Try it: how differently you will see and appreciate events once you put them in the perspective of heaven! Jesus says: "I will come and prepare a place for you. And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also." These very precious and very heart-warming words mean something, brethren, that every man lives here on this earth until a place is made for him in eternity. For one man it will be a shorter time in preparation, for another it will be a longer time in preparation; and while we are here on earth quietly living - or not so quietly - and working, struggling, wrestling with problems, and trying to do our duty, while the place is being prepared. While we sit here now and listen to the Word, the place is being made for us in eternity. And when that place is ready for someone, Jesus will come and take them to Himself. Because He wants those who believe in Him to be where He is. Let us try to look a little beyond earthly boundaries and limitations and see things in a larger perspective. I was talking to someone in hospital the other day about this verse and he said, "I will not despair if every earthly door closes on me, because I know another one is already opening. Of all the many glorious dwelling places of God, the door of the one prepared for me is the door. To believe in God, as Jesus says, is also to live, to live in the certainty that there is a place where I am welcome home. And it is a very good knowledge to be able to walk on this earth knowing that there is a place where I welcome you home. I will not miss out on eternity for lack of space. That's for sure. It will not happen to anyone what happened to Jesus when He came to this earth, that there was no room for Him at the inn, in fact He Himself went ahead, He Himself is making room. And He comes for His own. Not death, He comes and He brings His own to Him. Until then I can live and wait in peace, I can prepare and do all my work in peace. How good it is to believe in God by believing in Jesus Christ!
Finally, Jesus adds, "Truly I say to you, whoever believes in me will do all the works that I do, and greater works than these, because I go to my Father. So to believe, so to believe in God, as Jesus says, does not mean idle idleness and devotional meditation, but very serious activity and very serious action and work and movement and life. Jesus says: whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and even greater works than those - almost unbelievable. How is this possible? It is only possible that Jesus went to heaven not only to prepare eternal rest for his own, but also to express his work on earth from there with full divine power, and through his own. For Jesus himself continues his own work. What He began and sealed with His blood, He Himself continues, but through you who believe in Him. Now not as narrowly as before, not just within the borders of one country, but now throughout the whole world, so now on a larger scale and on a larger scale - which means that He will do greater things than those. The Apostle Peter's sermon on Pentecost had already converted three thousand people, and many more since then. So the gospel is spreading wider and wider and wider. And it is possible for us to do the works of Jesus because He says He has gone to the Father. That is, because He is now working from a higher dimension. His power is working from a higher dimension, and it is working through you, through us. So what a believer does in the name of Christ is actually done by Jesus. What is quite astonishing is that in every word, in every movement, in every action that is done by faith, that is done with love, Jesus is in it. In it there is the power of redemption - that's what it means to say, 'Whatever you ask in my name, I will do'. So, the believer's supplication is the beginning of a divine action. Your prayer, your prayer in faith, is answered by the risen power of Christ.
Where, brethren, are these actions in our lives? These are the great works that God wants to do through us in this world. I believe that if we would dare to believe more in what Jesus says that He is doing through us, our whole life would be more useful and blessed. But it would be good to believe in God in the way Jesus says! Do we not feel that this is indeed the most important thing: that it is not so empty and not so flat a statement to believe in God?! But that is what we want, isn't it? That is why we are here. Let us then cling to this promise of Jesus: 'if you ask anything in my name, I will do it'. Because that we may believe in God in this way, He can also do it. So, brothers and sisters, let us ask together, let us ask together, let us ask in the words of the song:
Teach us to believe, Lord, teach us to ask.
Childlike, teach us to ask for great faith.
Inspire my heart, inspire it, for thee
To gather souls! Teach me to ask!
(Canto 479, verse 1)
Amen.
Date: 29 March 1966.